Last Call

TNR's Alec MacGillis explains why Romney walked right into the jet intake on Paul Ryan by noting that Romney said during the debates that Newt Gingrich's plan to eliminate capital gains taxes would have meant that Romney would have paid no taxes for the last two years.  Romney himself said this.

Guess what the Ryan budget plan does?

Don't believe it? Romney himself said so, just a few months ago. The Ryan plan -- formally, the "Roadmap for America's Future" -- "promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends; also eliminates the death tax." Mitt Romney's income -- more than $20 million each of the past two years -- comes almost entirely from capital gains on his investments, or from "carried interest," a cut of Bain Capital profits that are taxed as capital gains (the infamous "hedge fund loophole.") His only major ordinary income was from the speaking fees he collected ($374,000, or "not much," as he put it.) This explains why his tax rate was only 13.9 percent last year -- because the capital gains rate is 15 percent, well below the top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income.

So if the reason that Mitt Romney isn't releasing his taxes is because he's managed to game the system and end up owing zero in taxes for several years,  then picking a running mate whose plan would assure that Mitt Romney would basically never pay federal income taxes ever absolutely assures that Romney cannot release his taxes now.  He'd lose by 20 points.

But Romney doesn't have to release his taxes to be attacked on this issue, and rightfully so.

Not that they even need the Romney example, really. There is an easy broader case to be made against exempting capital gains, which are already taxed at a lower rate than they have been in decades (thanks partly to a certain former Democratic president.) Consider: over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of all capital gains have gone to the top 5 percent of taxpayers and half have gone to the top one-tenth percent of taxpayers. It is the favorable treatment of capital gains that has helped drive income inequality to its current levels and that results in the 400 households with the highest income in the country paying such jarringly low tax rates. And Ryan wants to now eliminate the tax on this income entirely? Just seven months ago, Romney argued convincingly in his exchange with Newt that this was taking a good thing a bit too far. Now he's tied at the hip to the leading champion of this approach -- and has turned himself into the poster boy for why it's a terrible idea. In that sense, Ryan and Romney could hardly be more ill-suited to each other's needs: Romney puts an inconvenient face on the extremity of Ryan's plan, while Ryan's plan sheds even more light on Romney's taxes -- or the glaring lack thereof.

OK Team Obama, you got a fastball the size of a beach ball over the plate.  Swing for the fences.  These guys are going to decimate Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell Grants, you name it...to make sure people like Mitt Romney pay zero taxes on their millions.

I'm betting Team Obama is cool running on that.  In fact, they wasted no time today and released this web ad:



Oh, and where's your tax returns, Mitt?

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

Episode 2: Robot/Zombie '12, where we discuss Romney's horrible choice made from other horrible choices, and Bonnie calls Moose Lady a "Waffle House hooker".

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio

Enjoy.  (Yes, we're sorry about the noise in the background, we're still getting the kinks worked out.  Bite my shiny metal ass.)

Happy Birthday! ZVTS Turns 4

We're four years old this week!





Another year and we're still here, thanks to you guys. We'll have this week's PVTS up for you later on. Here's to making it to five...

StupidiMom

Angela Carrillo is held on two felony counts for allegedly assaulting a minor. Court documents say late Thursday night, two women told Carrillo they were going to take the child for a walk - but instead brought her to the emergency department to report the abuse.

One of the women told police she had to revive the child Monday after Carrillo beat her. Documents also say Carrillo allegedly yelled at the child and told her she was "tired of raising" her and that she "looks like her dad."

When asked about the child's injuries, Carrillo told police the child fell down the stairs.

Yeah, and if I ever catch up to this woman I'll be telling police she walked into a door.

How awful it must be to be beaten because you look like someone else.  Someone your mother decided to have a baby with, only to punish her for living.  At least this child had a couple of angels who stood up for her and helped end the abuse.

If only they could all be so lucky.

Gripping Stupidity

Why was a teenager groped by a stranger?  Well, because he just couldn't resist.  Thank goodness he's temporarily out of population while he learns a little impulse control.

Jackass.

Specifically, Morris is accused of groping a woman’s buttocks outside a dressing room at a Walmart in North Lauderdale. The teenager, pictured in the adjacent mug shot, was arrested shortly after the incident Thursday evening.

During questioning by law enforcement, Morris copped to grabbing the victim’s rear end and provided an explanation, of sorts, for his behavior, according to a sheriff’s report.

“Her booty looked so good,” he noted, “I just couldn’t resist touching it.”

Keep up that trend, and they'll be saying that about you in prison, princess.

We Are Not Amused, Sir

Mitt Romney has decided that the mean, mean old black President should stop picking on him and that everything he doesn't want to talk about anymore is now off-limits, and if that President Obama doesn't accept his offer, then it proves he's the anti-Christ and that we should all hate him forever.

Romney said he would prefer the campaigns “only talk about issues,” and claimed that “our ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … We haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”

Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul offered up a broader take on whether Romney was really suggesting that his career at Bain Capital — the crux of his argument that he is better equipped to handle the economy — should be considered off-limits.

“The governor was expressing his view that he hopes we can have a campaign focused on the issues rather than one of desperation and lies as we’ve seen from the Obama campaign,” Saul said in an e-mail.

On its face, this is Romney admitting his completely screwed and that his campaign is falling apart.  But that's actually the point: the fact that Mitt Romney is whinging to Chuck Toddler that Obama is crushing him is dead proof that he's now expecting the Village to bail him out.  He's working the refs, because the last thing the Village right now wants is the notion that "Romney is toast" to take hold 3 months before the elections, and everyone tunes out the pundits and the press.

Guess that's why he picked Paul Ryan as his running mate.  He's going all in on the White Guy Austerity ticket.

Game's afoot, Watson.

The Bold, Bold Flavor Of Nevada

Considering the fact that Romney picked Paul Ryan this morning, it's useful to go back and look at Nate Silver playing a maddeningly good Devil's advocate by suggesting Mitt Romney should have made a REAL "bold" pick:  moderate GOP Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada, if he wanted to you know, win.

If Mr. Romney were to pick a more moderate Republican, one potential choice stands out: Gov. Brian Sandoval of Nevada. Nevada, like Ohio, is a swing state. It contains fewer electoral votes than Ohio, but Mr. Sandoval is considerably more popular back at home than the relatively anonymous Mr. Portman — so the pick could have about the same electoral impact.

Mr. Sandoval, also, is Hispanic, at a time when Mr. Romney has struggled to pick up any support among that group of voters.

But Mr. Sandoval favors abortion rights. “I am pro-choice; I oppose partial-birth abortion, late term abortion and federal funding for abortion,” he writes on his Web site. Mr. Sandoval also favors domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, but not same-sex marriage.

Although Mr. Sandoval is fairly conservative on many other issues, his abortion position alone would make him a huge risk with Republican activists — especially if they have their hearts set on Mr. Ryan. There could be fireworks at the convention. It might actually be worth covering as a news event, for a change.

And Mr. Sandoval is risky in some other ways. With less than two full years in office, and hailing from a low-population state, he would be making a huge jump to the national stage.

But if Mr. Romney wants to take a risk, Mr. Sandoval would also present considerable upside. One drag on Mr. Romney is that the Republican Party is unpopular. Presenting someone who is a fresh face to voters in all senses of the term — demographically, ideologically and otherwise — could mitigate that.

Veeps are like proctologists:  first do no harm when your job is dealing with assholes.  In that respect, I think that while Nate makes an eminently logical point here, the reality is that a pro-life Republican on the national stage of the GOP has the political lifespan in 2012 of a fruit fly made out of snowflakes dropped into a volcano from atmospheric reentry. They wouldn't burn Romney in effigy, they'd burn him in person.

Second, Paul Ryan was the choice because Romney's going to want an attack dog, and Romney's idea of an attack dog is Paul Ryan, sort of a mildly insulting, cold-blooded accountant type.  That's who went around delivering the bad news in Romney's world for 25 years at Bain, bureaucratic hatchet men.  Nobody's going to be better at telling America that anyone under 50 today will never see a dime of Social Security or Medicare once the GOP gets through than Paul Ryan, folks.

Still, on paper Sandoval is a pro-choice Latino Republican.  He's exactly who Mitt Romney would need in order to win in a world where the Republican Party wasn't so completely bugnuts insane, so I respect the pick.

I just think this is Nate being a bit too Ivory Tower here again.  Reality proved who's running Romney and the GOP, and it's not the sane people.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• It's Romney/Ryan on the ticket:  Mitt Romney will announce his selection of Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate this morning from the deck of the USS Wisconsin.
• The US Army is testing a giant spy blimp for urban reconnaissance missions currently over the state of New Jersey.
• The US women's 4x100 relay team not only won gold, but set a new world record in the race with a blistering time of 40.82 seconds.
• The Pentagon is looking into replacing the aging Air Force One in time for the inauguration in January, 2021.
• A project for the first LGBT gamers convention is getting underway with crowdsourced support.