Monday, September 10, 2012

Money Where Your Mouth Is

As I mentioned in the podcast on Sunday, Hustler Magazine owner Larry Flynt is now offering $1 million for Mitt Romney's tax returns.

Hustler publisher Larry Flynt has offered up to $1 million to anyone who releases details of Mitt Romney’s tax returns.

In a full-page ad to be featured in The Washington Post and USA Today, the porn mogul offers the huge sum of cash to anyone who can provide verifiable information regarding the Republican presidential candidate’s “unreleased tax returns and/or details of his offshore assets, bank accounts and business partnerships.”

“What is he hiding?” Flynt asks in the ad. “Maybe, now, we’ll find out.”

As I said Sunday, I agree with Bon's take that we will see Mitt's dark secret before the campaign is out, it was always inevitable.  Flynt's just speeding up the process, because now whoever breaks this news first gets a million bucks.  Go capitalism!  What's more American than good ol' supply and demand?

The demand price is now one million dollars.  I'm betting someone's going to supply the info, and soon.

Part And Parcel

Mitt Romney, call your office.  Now.

Mitt Romney said Sunday that he likes parts of ‘Obamacare’ and will keep key provisions involving pre-existing conditions and young people.

I’m not getting rid of all of health care reform. Of course there are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I’m going to put in place,” he said on NBC’s “Meet The Press. “One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. Two is to assure that the marketplace allows for individuals to have policies that cover their family up to whatever age they might like.”

The remarks could have huge implications as they signal a marked shift from Romney’s strong, unequivocal support for full repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which he has consistently held since the Republican primaries.

Politically, the pivot risks drawing the ire of conservatives, who have been adamant that Republicans repeal the law in its entirety if elected. It’s a major gamble that could reflect Romney’s need to win over more independent voters, who support those provisions.

And with that, the Romney post-convention meltdown is pretty much complete at this point.  Obama is up significantly now over the last several days, and now Romney has dropped this bombshell on the base after signaling that he was going to go hard after Obama.

It's ridonkulous.  Mitt Romney is atrociously bad at campaigning.  He really is the only guy who could have taken what should have been a decent chance of a Republican win and totally screwed it.  I mean the rest of the GOP pack would have either have already alienated the base to the point of getting filleted in the primaries (Huntsman, Huckabee) or never gotten above 40% in the general (everyone else).  Romney was the best shot they had...and he was screwed from day one.

Here's the thing however.  Mitt Romney didn't even make it through Sunday without completely flip-flopping on that position.

In reference to how Romney would deal with those with preexisting conditions and young adults who want to remain on their parents’ plans, a Romney aide responded that there had been no change in Romney’s position and that “in a competitive environment, the marketplace will make available plans that include coverage for what there is demand for. He was not proposing a federal mandate to require insurance plans to offer those particular features.”

Pull up a chair.  This is going to get ugly.  Romney's a complete laughingstock.  The last 96 hours have been an utter disaster for the man.  He's fading into "done" territory at breakneck speed here.  Watch this week carefully.

StupidiNews!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Last Call

Paul Krugman vs. Rand Paul, folks.  On live teevee.


PAUL: The thing I don’t understand is that your arguing that the government sector is struggling. Are you arguing that there are fewer government employees under Obama than there were under Bush?
KRUGMAN: Of course. That’s a fact. That’s a tremendous fact.
PAUL: No, the size of growth of government is enormous under president Obama.
KRUGMAN: If government employment had grown as fast under Obama as it did under Bush, we’d have a million and a half more people employed right now — directly.
PAUL: Are there less people employed or more people employed now by government?

Well, Rand...umm...about that, yeah...

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/gov_employ_obama_bush-e1347207776160.png


About half a million less or so, Rand.  That Census spike there?  Totally temporary, and since then, government employment has in fact dropped like Rand's IQ.

My Senator is a moron, folks.  Don't blame me, I voted for Jack Conway.

Podcast Versus The Stupid!

This week Bon and I tackle the Barack and Big Dog show at the DNC, Mitt Romney being arguably the worst campaigner in history, and Larry Flynt offering a million bucks for Mitt's tax returns.

Listen to internet radio with Zandar Versus The Stupid on Blog Talk Radio
You can click on the ITunes button there to put the episode in your podcasts, you can download the mp3 here, or the Windows Media file here.  Take us with you and give a listen! Check out our previous episodes at our episode archive page too!

Here We Go Again

A Springfield City Council member is drafting language that would ban over-the-counter sales of a key methamphetamine ingredient.
Zone 1 Councilman Jeff Seifried said he intends to “start a discussion” on the topic and asked city legal staff to work on language for a bill that would likely require a prescription for the purchase of a popular cold and allergy tablet, pseudoephedrine.
These measures are failing all over the place, and for good reason.  Thousands of families aren't able to afford a co-pay or a day off to see the doctor for cold medicine.  Nor should they have to.  The drugs are safe for normal consumption, and the failure on the part of law enforcement should not result in a burden on people who are already struggling to make ends meet.  Those same people can't afford sick days, and may be going without something else just to get the medicine.

One proposed solution has been a database where you are forced to provide your driver's license to purchase "dangerous" OTC medicine.  No, that's not unnerving at all.  Meanwhile, delivery trucks are moving it to criminals by the case, and citizens are forced to sign and pay for the expense of having their right to privacy squashed.

Fight the battle a different way.  This will just send people over city or county lines, idiots.


Your Insanity Is Exquisite, Sir

John Hinderaker's clean break with political reality is so snowflake-intricate, so crystalline perfect in its construction, that part of me feels bad stomping all over the thing like a drunken brontosaurus with a restless leg syndrome having a panic attack during an earthquake.  I mean, it takes serious and sustained, considerable effort to build a Fortress of Denial like this, each brick lovingly collected from the fetid swamps of internet bullshit that he resides in, much like Yoda's Dagobah home (only without all the personable rustic charm) and held in the hefty walls by the mortar of utter cluelessness.

And yet inside this seemingly impervious shell of manufactured nonsense, the tiniest cracks are beginning to appear...for our brave Hindrocket is facing the first gnawing echoes of doubt that Romney might...might actually lose.  Madness is seeping in the edges of Johnny's vision, things he can't explain, vexatious ideas that he thought were long buried have come bubbling slowly up to the surface like a gigantic fart in a tar pit.

And so, steeling himself like the Neanderthals of old, he stands beneath the open sky, looks up into the face of the heavens, and asks "Why?"

But it now appears that the election will be very close after all, and that Obama might even win it. It will require a few more days to assess the effects (if any) of the parties’ two conventions, but for now it looks as though the Democrats emerged with at least a draw, despite a convention that was in some ways a fiasco. In today’s Rasmussen survey, Obama has regained a two point lead over Romney, 46%-44%. Scott Rasmussen writes:
The president is enjoying a convention bounce that has been evident in the last two nights of tracking data. He led by two just before the Republican convention, so he has already erased the modest bounce Romney received from his party’s celebration in Tampa. Perhaps more significantly, Democratic interest in the campaign has soared. For the first time, those in the president’s party are following the campaign as closely as GOP voters.
So the Democrats’ red meat, over-the-top attacks on Republicans apparently worked at least as well as the Republicans’ more positive, low-key approach

Do you see now why I feel pangs of guilt about destroying this sweet, sweet marzipan castle of utter derpness?  One plows through the spider's web in between those bushes on the front lawn near the mailbox in the dew-kissed morning stumble to check for your junk mail all the time, but the spider built that himself dammit, and you are destroying something real even if it was ephemeral and obnoxious in the grand scheme of things.  It was very real to the spider, at least.

Meanwhile, John has his answer as to why.

On paper, given Obama’s record, this election should be a cakewalk for the Republicans. Why isn’t it? I am afraid the answer may be that the country is closer to the point of no return than most of us believed. With over 100 million Americans receiving federal welfare benefits, millions more going on Social Security disability, and many millions on top of that living on entitlement programs–not to mention enormous numbers of public employees–we may have gotten to the point where the government economy is more important, in the short term, than the real economy. My father, the least cynical of men, used to quote a political philosopher to the effect that democracy will work until people figure out they can vote themselves money. I fear that time may have come.

And so the exquisite Castle Derp is now a tomb, replete with catacombs worming through the earth, ready to receive the shattered corpse of the America That Only Exists In John Hinderaker's Head, as it comes home to rest quietly along with the ghosts of empires past.  Already the cables and tubes of the Gubment Matrix Machines are snaking their way in, ready to turn the people in John's mind into batteries for the infinite Agent Obamas that will consume us all!  Mammon rises!  Mammon rises!  Give witness and despair!

Or, you know, a much easier explanation that Romney is losing other than that we're all simulacra existing inside the fever dreams of a failed think tank stooge is the notion that America has kind of figured out that the GOP really did spend the last four years opposing everything the President and Democrats tried in order to sabotage the economy in order to try to win.

President Obama and the Democrats have succeeded at convincing voters that Republicans are trying to delay economic recovery, according to a series of recent polls.

The new data suggests that about half the country, including a majority of self-identified independents, believe that congressional Republicans are using their political power to thwart Obama’s efforts to reduce unemployment, presenting Democrats an opportunity to make this argument more explicitly as the 2012 campaign moves forward — to undercut Republicans’ claims that Obama and the Dems bear full responsibility for the economy, and to make their pattern of obstruction a real liability for them.

So there's that.  But...shh...don't tell John.  It'll ruin his beautiful nightmare.

Saving Ryan's Cuts To Privates

I wonder if Paul Ryan knows that Mitt Romney just threw him under the bus.

Mitt Romney said his fellow Republicans were wrong to agree to a deal last summer that included a series or automatic cuts to defense spending in exchange for an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

The Republican presidential nominee said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that GOP lawmakers made a "big mistake" in signing off on the deal, which prevented a U.S. default on its borrowing obligations.

"I thought it was a mistake on the part of the White House to propose it.  I think it was a mistake for Republicans to go along with it," Romney said.

That deal included a series of automatic cuts, including $55 billion in cuts to defense spending, set to take place automatically in January. The automatic cuts, known as the "sequester," were designed to be so politically distasteful so that lawmakers would have an incentive to reach some alternative compromise. But they reached no deal, and the sequester looms just a few months on the horizon.

Umm...Mitt?  You are aware who the numbers guy for the Republican side on this deal was, right?  The chair of the House Budget Committee? Your pick for Vice-President?  Paul Ryan?  Is that ringing any bells with you, man?

Republicans are trying as hard as they can to get out of these defense cuts, but Obama has them over a barrel and they know it.  He's outsmarted them AGAIN and they're simply counting on the media saving them.  A real journalist would have immediately asked if this means Romney was disagreeing with the votes of his own veep pick, but of course, David Gregory.

But guess what?  This time, if nothing is done, the GOP loses.  Big time.

Have fun with that, guys.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Last Call

Stanley Kurtz at NRO demands that Robot/Zombie '12 play even dirtier, dammit or the Kenyan usurper commie ni-CLANG will WIN or something!

I can’t say for certain that Romney’s strategy is wrong. But I do think it’s far riskier than we realize. Treating Obama as a nice guy in over his head, rather than a smart leftist who knows exactly what he’s doing, leaves the Democrats’ bogus narrative about government unanswered. America is changing, and Republicans are naive to rely on the public to simply recognize the problems in the Democrats’ claims without significant help from our nominee.

Republicans won big in 2010 by defining Obama as an overweening ideologue. Yet that was the Tea Party’s doing, not the Republican establishment. In those days, Romney even jumped on the tea-party bandwagon with some surprisingly cutting observations about Obama’s leftism. Obama may not have pivoted after the 2010 election, but Republicans did. They toned down their attacks on the president’s ideology, and to some extent helped to build up the very wall of “likeability” they now fear to scale, even as the president rejected the Clintonian way and stayed to the left. Were Republicans smart to hold their fire? Romney did try out the argument that Obama is moving us toward European-style social democracy during the primaries, but he’s dropped that now in favor of the kinder and gentler “break up” approach.

Translation:  GET IN THE MUD LIKE A PIG, SON.  And I hope Romney takes Kurtz's advice.  It'll be a disaster for him, because nobody likes the guy.

On the other hand, BooMan points out that if Obama really was more like Clinton, he would have cracked by now and he would have caved on everything instead of setting the GOP up for a huge failure this fall.

Remember that the Republicans won big in 1994 by defining Clinton as an overweening ideologue. And Clinton responded by bringing in Dick Morris, signing a horrible welfare reform bill, the Balanced Budget Act, the Iraq Liberation Act, and disastrously deregulating the banks. The Republicans attempted to bully Barack Obama in a similar manner, but so far they have got nothing. Had they been willing to make some concessions on revenue, they probably would have found some willingness on Obama's part to emulate Clinton, at least to a point. But they weren't, and he didn't. So, as a result, conservatives like Mr. Kurtz see Obama as having "rejected the Clintonian way." He didn't pivot after suffering catastrophic losses in the midterm election.

I find this less interesting for its literal truth that for the way it shines a light on the Republicans' strategic thinking. There is a bit of a meld. On the one hand, regardless of the Democratic president in the White House, the playbook says to refuse cooperation and to paint them as a far-left ideologue. On the other hand, the Republicans in charge of executing this play have a strong tendency to come around to believing it's true and real. They didn't stop thinking Bill Clinton was a far-left ideologue when he started signing their legislation. They only acknowledge a "Clintonian way" in retrospect.

So yes, I think we're going to get to the ni-CLANG moment really soon now, especially now that it appears Obama is going to win.

Food For The Heart And Soul

Republicans, complain all you want to about the President moving his acceptance speech Friday indoors due to storms, what the Democrats did afterwards for Charlotte is outstanding.

All the fancy catered food intended for the VIP suites and club rooms at the stadium – and perhaps even for the president himself – was redistributed Friday to local soup kitchens and shelters, via Second Harvest Food Bank of Metrolina.

On the menu: thousands of pounds of pecan-fried chicken, baked orzo, fresh crudités, three-bean bake, fresh-cut fruit and something called short rib cobbler.

And that’s only a partial list.

It had all been prepared in advance by chef Jon Morey and the kitchen staff of Delaware North Inc., the official food provider for the stadium. A dollar value for the food was not immediately available.

“It’s really a wonderful order,” said Kay Carter of Second Harvest, which got 7,500 pounds of the food.

“None of this food will go to waste. We contacted every shelter and soup kitchen in town and asked them how much refrigeration capacity they have and how many are they feeding. It will all be gone at the end of the day.”

Second Harvest has a history of redistributing fresh food at a moment’s notice, she said, including leftovers from major golf tournaments.

However, the Democratic National Convention’s gift is different, if only for the inclusion of enough popcorn for 70,000 people, popped and stuffed into bags. It will go to the community’s various children’s programs, including low-income day cares. “At least it doesn’t weigh a lot,” Carter said.

This is outstanding, and more people need to know about it.   Spread the word.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/09/07/167529/dnc-gives-7500-pounds-of-leftovers.html#storylink=cpy

Well, Somebody's Definitely Smoking Something

Paul Ryan came out this weekend in favor of states being able to decide if they want to legalize medical marijuana or not.

In a pre-taped interview based on questions submitted by viewers of KRDO in Colorado Springs, Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan (WI) endorsed the view that states — like Colorado — should be able to decide their own laws on medical marijuana.

Anchor Eric Singer asked Ryan, “In Colorado we have medical marijuana. Under a Romney Ryan ticket, what happens?” Ryan replied, “It’s up to Coloradans to decide.”

In response to a follow-up question from Singer, Ryan elaborated: “My personal positions on this issue have been let the states decide what to do with these things. This is something that is not a high priority of ours as to whether or not we go down this issue. But I’ve always believed is the states should make the right to decide.”

To recap, the federal government must decide who who can and can't marry because it might offend people and the federal government must override state's rights to decide, they must control every aspect of a woman's reproductive system because it might offend people and they federal government must override a woman's right to decide about her own body, but bogarting a joint is a "state's rights" issue.  

In other words, Ryan's playing for the GOLD WEED END THE FED vote.  Surprise!

Dear America:

"I can't believe the incestuous relationship between MSNBC and the Democrats.  It was on full display at the Democratic National Convention.  The MSNBC hosts totally failed in their duties to savage the President's failed everything of failure!  Also, I've never heard of FOX News.  What does that have to do with anything?"

--The usually better than this Jazz Shaw, Hot Air

Bonus Verbatim Stupid:

But perhaps one of the most obvious and potentially embarrassing examples comes from the broadcast news coverage itself. The video below is from Joe Scarborough’s show on MSNBC from Friday morning when the new jobs numbers came out. Disclosure: I watch Morning Joe pretty much every day and enjoy Joe’s exchanges with people from both sides of the aisle. But knowing what we know now about exactly how the unemployment rate managed to drop, this is pretty sad.


To be fair, I've been saying Joe Scarborough is an idiot for years now.   But I've also been saying with millions of Baby Boomers reaching retirement age or taking early retirement (forced or unforced) as the oldest of them are hitting 67 this year,  labor force participation dropping is now going to be structural for a very long time.  The same thing would be happening if McCain was President, and I'd be making the same exact argument.

And let's not forget in January 2009, we were losing 750,000 jobs a month, nor should we leave out the fact that that we continue to have positive job growth despite the Republicans blocking any and every stimulative measure proposed in the last two years.  There's a reason why Congress has an approval rating of about 12%, Jazz.  They're not exactly doing anything about jobs either.

And really, man...FOX News.  All I'm going to say.

There's A Dimensional Cross-Rip Around Here, Be Careful

The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan has a bit of a problem with reality.  Her seemingly endless mendacity is only matched by her complete denial of the actual political landscape in favor of her own bizarre dimension she resides in, a universe where Democrats are the extremists and Republicans are the logical, reasonable centrist types.

Barack Obama is deeply overexposed and often boring. He never seems to be saying what he's thinking. His speech Thursday was weirdly anticlimactic. There's too much buildup, the crowd was tired, it all felt flat. He was somber, and his message was essentially banal: We've done better than you think. Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

There were many straw men. There were phrases like "the shadow of a shuttered steel mill," which he considers writerly. But they sound empty and practiced now, like something you've heard in a commercial or an advertising campaign.

It was stale and empty. He's out of juice

You ever notice that when Barack Obama is effective in a speech, he's considered Angry Black Man by the assholes on the right.  But when he really hits one out of the park, he's a bloodless, boring intellectual.  But Obama wasn't alone in receiving scorn and derision from Noonan's schizoid episode here.  Being a Republican wingnut woman, she reserves special rancor for the symbol of all things wrong with Those Awful Liberal Hussies, Sandra Fluke.

The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. Big speeches from the heads of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, HHS Secretary and abortion enthusiast Kathleen Sebelius and, of course, Sandra Fluke.

"Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too

Peggy Noonan really is one of the great projectors of our time.   She not only completely repeats the right wing lies about the President health care plan that she's paid to parrot out of her empty head, she uses them as the basis of her attacks on anyone who dares to tell the truth around her.  The truth about regulating birth control for insurance companies simply means that being a woman can no longer be considered a pre-existing condition, and that insurance plans need to offer coverage.

This does not mean that government is paying for birth control.  Noonan doesn't care about the truth, but she sure loves to go personally after a Georgetown Law student who made the mistake of speaking up for women from my generation.  (Mark Steyn too is greatly offended that Sandra Fluke is allowed to speak, apparently she should know her place and shut it because the menfolk like Mark are talking about the national debt which will kill all of us any second now.)

That's the awful dimension Nooners lives in.  Careful, don't fall in.

Called Out On The Carpet, Part 2

The saga of Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted continues, as his quixotic quest to deny early voting rights to Democrats in particular ran into a buzzsaw this week of a federal judge named Peter Economus.  The Judge ordered Husted to show up to explain this whole "I don't have to comply with your court order" thing to restore early voting to all Ohioans, and Friday, Husted's office replied with "We're really sorry about that, I had a cold.  Yeah, that's it."

Ohio Secretary of State John Husted said in court documents filed Friday that he’s really, really sorry for refusing to allow early voting preparations in Ohio, and promises not to do it again unless another court gives him permission.

That was the result of Judge Peter C. Economus’s ruling Friday, which concluded a hearing that saw Sec. Husted rebuked by attorneys for the Obama campaign in a stinging victory over Republican voter suppression efforts.

Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable injury if in-person early voting is not restored the last three days before Election Day, and there is no definitive evidence before the Court that elections boards will be tremendously burdened,” Judge Economus wrote. “Certainly, the public interest is served by restoring in person early voting to all Ohio voters.” He added that letting all Ohioans have access to early voting meets the standard of keeping voting “uniform, accessible for all, fair, and secure.”

Yeah, that's the sound of a Republican getting smacked the hell down for trying to so obviously stack the voting deck in favor of the GOP.   Husted's office ran away like a bunch of kids trying to toilet paper the school gym.

“The Secretary’s intention was not to create a stay of this Court’s Order,” Husted’s attorneys explain in a court filing obtained by the Election Law Blog. “The Secretary intends to pursue his differences with this Court’s judgment only through the expedited appeal process put in place by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. To the extent that Directive 2012-40 could be read to imply any different compliance disposition, the Secretary apologizes to the federal district court for creating that misimpression”.

Yes.  Because outright voter suppression is "a misimpression".   We're sorry you thought we were trying to rig the Ohio vote.  We're sorry you decided to actually stand up to our efforts to take the vote away from thousands of urban minorities.  We're sorry you misunderstood us

Jackass.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

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