Romney’s Maxim: It’s a horrible idea, unless it works, then it was my idea.

Mitt Romney is just simply a liar:

“I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.”

[…]

“It was the UAW and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet.”

source: Romney: I Take Credit for the Auto Rescue | TPM Editors Blog.

Again: Mitt Romney opposed government backing for GM and Chrysler prior to bankruptcy. GM and Chrysler needed bridge loans to get to the pre-packaged bankruptcy and no one with the money required for such a big bankruptcy in the private sector was willing to do it. It’s a clear distinction, with a huge difference. For months he’s been running around and saying that Obama doesn’t understand the economy and yet he is either too dishonest or too ignorant to know he makes no f*cking sense when he claims he takes credit for the auto rescue.

Not only does Romney remind people of their asshole boss, he reminds them of their asshole boss who takes credit for everything he had nothing to do with.

So in one week, Romney feigned disgust with President Obama for leading the strategic efforts to capture and kill bin Laden and then taking credit for it, but then he takes credit for an auto-bailout implemented by Presidents Bush and Obama that he opposed while Romney was a professional campaigner for the last 5 years.

Indiana Republicans have voted out longtime Senator Dick Lugar in favor of Richard Mourdock who ran against the auto bailout and as State Treasurer sued the U.S. government because he felt the TARP funded auto bailouts, that saved thousands of jobs in Indiana, “violated the constitution”.

If any President would do it, then why do we have elections?

“I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have, obviously, under those circumstances, done the same thing. And to now take credit for something that any president would do is indicative of take over campaign we’re under — we’re — we’re seeing…So all I can say is that this is going to be a very rough campaign,” McCain told Fox News in an interview set to air Monday night.

Can “Any President would have” be taken seriously? The Romney campaign is trying to create a feeling that a candidates positions and political patrons don’t matter by blurring distinctions between Romney and Obama. Republicans know Romney fares better if undecided voters believe that we’ll be OK no matter who we elect. They know Obama’s muscular foreign policy record and aggressive methods have taken away a public opinion advantage most Republican candidates have enjoyed for years.

From Mediate, Romney 2007:

While Barack Obama’s rivals attacked him vigorously over the statement at the time, not all of them did so on the basis of opposition to unilateral action. What did Mitt Romney say then? A source from Priorities USA Action points out that he said this to Reuters at the time:

“I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours… I don’t think those kinds of comments help in this effort to draw more friends to our effort,” Romney told reporters on the campaign trail.

…Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is one of the Republican front-runners, said U.S. troops “shouldn’t be sent all over the world.” He called Obama’s comments “ill-timed” and “ill-considered.”

“There is a war being waged by terrorists of different types and nature across the world,” Romney said. “We want, as a civilized world, to participate with other nations in this civilized effort to help those nations reject the extreme with them.”

Bush claimed that he wasn’t worried about Bin Laden’s whereabouts. Romney, McCain, and Clinton campaigns all dinged Obama for this stance during the 2008 campaign. Obama committed to quite a few things unequivocally regarding military action in the Middle East during the ’08 campaign: ending the war in Iraq, re-dedicating US Forces to Afghanistan, and hunting Bin Laden and al Qaeda in Pakistan with or without Pakistan’s permission.

Republicans make government bigger! You know who has made government smaller the fastest in the last 40 years? The Obama Administration:

In the first quarter of this year, the real gross domestic product for the government — including state and local governments as well as federal — was 2 percent lower than it was three years earlier, when Barack Obama took office in early 2009.

The last time the government actually got smaller over the first three years of a presidential term was when Richard M. Nixon was president. That decrease was largely because of declining spending on the Vietnam War.

[…]

The private sector grew faster in the first three years of the Obama administration than it did in three of the previous five administrations — the exception being Bill Clinton’s administrations, when private sector growth was more rapid. In both of George W. Bush’s terms as well as in the first three years of the George H. W. Bush administration, though, the private sector grew more slowly.

A simple observation that illustrates that Republican Administrations nor those called Republican “Deficit hawks” are really primarily worried about “deficits” and “spending” growing to fast.

If you look at the full chart, back to George HW Bush, you reach an inescapable conclusion: the biggest spenders and borrowers are Republicans and the most fiscally conservative presidents have been Democrats. Given the last two decades, the TeaParty, if they really want to shrink government, should be voting for Obama.

“Big Government” Obama? – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Facts, you know, suck for people who want everyone else to ignore them.

Quite frankly, a lot of the folks sitting in journalist chairs for cables news channels were once campaign operatives or are really friendly with people that are campaign staffers. Being human they or a friend have probably f*cked up before and had a candidate or official stand up for them even when they screw up (and I’m sure they remain thankful for) or had candidates load them with blame and ditch them whenever they get the chance (which is …you know…thankless…).

Mitt Romney should probably deploy a barbecue + tire swing strategy to show how much of a great f*cking guy he is unlike the “aloof”, tire swingless Obama.

Apparently, 1000/70000 = 14000/18000 = empty.

US Senator Bernie Sanders is a Socialist. Plain and simple. Although he caucuses with the Democrats, he has to fund raise and organize and staff his campaigns without aid from the DNC. Politically, he is not bound by loyalty to any party so he can effectively stake out his Socialist ideals, propose socialist bills and even criticize the Democratic President without worrying about losing organizational or financial support.

Ron Paul today is a Republican. He runs for office as a Republican. (He never won office as a Libertarian although he ran for President in 1988 as a Libertarian). He caucuses with them and he gets support from the RNC, NRCC and The Republican Party of Texas. In practice and platform he disqualifies himself as the standard barer for Libertarians. From Paul’s website:

Congressman Ron Paul of Texas enjoys a national reputation as the premier advocate for liberty in politics today.

Liberty /?lib?rt?/ (Noun):

1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control.
2.freedom from external or foreign rule; independence.
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty.
5. permission granted to a sailor, especially in the navy, to go ashore.

There is a stark contrast between the definition of liberty (specifically #3) with the delegate strategy being employed by Paul’s campaign for the Republican US Presidential Nomination. Since Paul can’t win the Republican nomination or clout for his platform by winning majorities of popular vote at state levels, he is running a campaign within a campaign to secure a stronger position in the Republican Party. The Paul 2012 campaign is flooding precinct, district and state conventions to secure delegates. The Republican Party’s voters prefer Romney, Santorum, and Gingrich over Paul. That’s their choice. Paul’s campaign is using the GOP’s convention nominating rules to secure delegates intent on ignoring the popular voters’ preference when given the chance

Rep. Ron Paul’s campaign has been sending its supporters into state GOP conventions to fight for slots as delegates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. This weekend, they had success in Nevada and Maine.

In Nevada, Mitt Romney had won the state’s February caucuses with more than half the vote. But Mr. Paul’s supporters nonetheless captured a majority of the delegate posts, which were assigned at the state convention this weekend.

Of the state’s 28 delegates to be sent to Tampa, 22 are known Paul loyalists, the Las Vegas Sun reported.

State GOP rules require many of these Paul supporters to vote for Mr. Romney to be the party’s presidential nominee on the first ballot at the convention, reflecting his win in the caucuses. If there was a second ballot—and few expect there will be—these delegates could then vote for Mr. Paul.

In Maine, local media reported that Paul supporters wrested control of the state GOP convention and claimed a majority of delegates, though it was Mr. Romney who had won the party’s caucuses in February. Mr. Paul appears to be doing well in Iowa, as well.

Mr. Romney is all but certain to be named the party’s presidential nominee at the Tamp convention. Still, sending loyalists to Tampa could give Mr. Paul some clout, even though he has not won a single nominating contest this primary season. Among other things, the Paul campaign has said it has ambitions to write Mr. Paul’s libertarian-influenced ideas into the party platform.

It isn’t stealthy, sneaky, stealing or robbery. But it ain’t liberty either. Voters voted, their preference was clear, this campaign strategy usurps their intent. How does that make him a standard bearer for liberty?

Former NM Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Gary Johnson, on the other hand, took the hint from GOP voters. He realized that the party he was a member of wasn’t amenable to Libertarian ideologies he believes in and went and ran as a Libertarian. Though it’s kind of like Johnson said to his former party: “You can’t fire me, I quit”, he still believes in the Libertarian ideology and has decided to align himself with Libertarian voters. Johnson is clear in understanding the Republican Party and Libertarian ideology are incompatible. Ron Paul, as he has been for years, is a Republican and has been a part of the federal government he says should be as small as possible.

Seems like a rebuke to austerity measures sanctioned by Sarkozy: BBC News – Nicolas Sarkozy’s turbulent time as French president.

We know in 2010, youth voters checked out on Democratic Politics (see : Young Voter Turnout Fell 60% from 2008 to 2010; Dems Won’t Win in 2012 If the Trend Continues | The Nation).

What did we get? A Tea Party. A Tea Party hell bent on screwing you over even if you just let them be:

The younger generation’s reaction to conservative-led stalemate is to consider our government irrelevant. That’s a big mistake. To paraphrase: you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Transformation does not mean, as some now argue, wholesale “reinvention of government” in the sense of restructuring our Constitutional structures. It does mean the ability to adopt new laws and policies that stimulate U.S. response to this revolutionary era. No need for a lengthy shopping list. We all know what this means: a world class education system for a larger number; public infrastructure systems that work; a healthy, trained work force; new research and inventions; a healthy environment.

Dear youths,

Please f*cking register to vote & then vote Tuesday, November 6, 2012. Thanks.

Sincerely,

Former youths.

Read Touré’s “Where’s ‘Stand Your Ground’ for Marissa Alexander” and then ask me why the NRA isn’t advocating for her gun rights.

Chen Guangcheng looks to be headed to US University to study:

The US and China have agreed to resolve the Chen Guangcheng crisis by sending him to the US on a student visa with his family.

Chen: Saved By College – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Contrast that with Romney’s commentary:

Campaigning in Virginia, Romney was quoted as saying that if news reports that Chen was pressured to leave the U.S. Embassy in Beijing are true, it would represent a “dark day for freedom” and a “day of shame for the Obama administration.”

[…]

Romney, according to the Los Angeles Times, cited news reports that he said suggested the administration may have “willingly or unwittingly, communicated to Chen an implicit threat, to his family,” and might have “sped up” the process of his exiting the embassy to clear the agenda for broader talks on the U.S-Chinese relationship that started Thursday.

“It’s also apparent, according to these reports if they’re accurate, that our embassy failed to put in place the kind of verifiable measures that would assure the safety of Mr. Chen and his family,” Romney said. “If these reports are true, this is a dark day for freedom and it’s a day of shame for the Obama administration. We are a place of freedom, here and around the world, and we should stand up and defend freedom wherever it is under attack.”

A lot of diplomacy probably begins with unverifiable measures and ends with concrete advancements. It’s kind of nutty to criticize a diplomatic situation before it’s resolved.

From the Chicago Sun Times, via Eschaton (Heckuva Job):

The private investors who run Chicago’s parking meters are doing better than expected, and now they’re demanding an additional $14 million they say they’re owed under obscure provisions of the wildly unpopular 2008 deal that privatized metered parking and caused rates to soar, records show.[…]

The $14 million bill stems from parking revenues the meter company says it lost when the city took meters out of service last year because of street repairs, festivals and other city-sponsored activities, according to documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

This is the second time in a year that the company has hit City Hall with a claim for a big parking tab. The Emanuel administration already is in arbitration over a $13.5 million claim over free parking that Chicago Parking Meters says it provided to people displaying disabled-parking placards or license plates in 2010.

That makes the total disputed amount more than $27 million.

The parking meter company took in more than $80 million from meters across Chicago in 2011, according to documents it filed this week with city officials.

See, the private company is not running city parking meters. They are running parking spots in Chicago. and they want their money. City Parking Meters are there for a lot of reasons, and not just to simply to provide parking, but also to control parking availability and provide flexibility for important public esteem building events that need street space to be held, accommodations for the disabled and the like.

Privatized meters are there to make a private company who runs them, money from controlling parking.

From the Sun Times article I cited earlier in this post, Chicago meters made 23 million in revenue the year prior to the private takeover. If you expect this level of production for the next 75 years, they will yield about 1.785 billion for the company that paid 1.15 billion to lease the meters from the city.

Meter revenue has already exceeded that in the 3 years since the private takeover:

Meter collections kept by Chicago Parking Meters LLC since then:

2009: $45.6 million

2010: $71.2 million

2011: $82.8 million

Average those together and you get $4.7904 billion over 72 years. Over 400% profit. 72 more years of this sh*tty deal for Chicago tax payers as revenue from the parking system of their city is siphoned away for a discount price.

When you read some of the testimony of Cheri Young and others in the Campaign Finance Trial against John Edwards, I don’t see how you can’t come to believe Edwards was a seriously unfit for any kind of leadership role. And it’s not because of the affairs. The infidelity is not a dis-qualifier to me. That’s a personal failing.

The descriptions of Edwards churlish, consistently abusive, short sighted and disloyal behavior when dealing with his own transgressions are astonishing. Edwards asked his rich donors to fund cover ups of his unseemly behavior, demanded Andrew Young and his wife (supposed friends) publicly make a mockery of their marriage, and put trust in a couple who would publicly betray their weddings vows and family for another man’s political ambitions. It kinda seems like Young damn near threw out his marriage so John Edwards could stay in a presidential campaign.

The unnerving thing is that we may have only been saved from an Obama Veep or Attorney General designate selection of Edwards by Axelrod being so familiar with Edwards in 2004:

David Axelrod, Mr. Obama’s chief strategist, worked for Mr. Edwards in the 2004 cycle, a relationship that did not end amicably. (In an interview with The New York Times Magazine last year, Mr. Axelrod explained the campaign’s failure by pointing to Mr. Edwards: “I have a whole lot of respect for John, but at some point the candidate has to close the deal and — I can’t tell you why — that never happened with John.”)

During the 2004 general-election campaign, Mr. Edwards was not seen as a team player on the ticket with Senator John Kerry. They couldn’t even agree on a campaign slogan: Mr. Kerry tried to rouse audiences with the chant, “Help is on the way.” Mr. Edwards stuck to his own version, “Hope is on the way.”

Or maybe we were spared Obama/Edwards ’08 by ’04 Democratic Candidate John Kerry telling the Obama folks he was down on Edwards as a running mate who lacked discipline and left much to be desired in the VP candidate debate where he allowed Cheney to basically seem like he outmatched him:

Edwards, in 2004, was chosen partly for his campaign skills, though Kerry had reportedly wanted the more stolid Dick Gephardt, the former House Majority Leader, and was deeply disappointed at his performance on the trail and in his debate with Dick Cheney.

Or maybe dismayed Edwards 08 staffers would have soldiered up tanked Edwards further ambitions had he made it to late rounds of vetting:

As they became more and more convinced that reports of his extramarital affair were true, members of John Edwards’s presidential-campaign staff considered sabotaging the whole enterprise in order to prevent him from losing the election for the Democrats.

In any event, the vetting worked, because in the summer of 2008, even though Edwards polled as a more popular VP choice than Joe Biden did in many of the swing states and was a popular choice to many Dems who doubted Hillary Clinton would get the nod after a contentious primary Obama picked Biden ended up winning the election.

Mission Accomplished was in 2003 before George W. Bush started the war in Iraq after already having launched a war into Afghanistan with pre-approval from the US Congress. (The Iraq war is the war President Obama wrapped up like…the other day).

This happened earlier this year after the Super Bowl Karl Rove freaked out over the Clint Eastwood commercial being some defacto Obama campaign ad. Smart Republicans are aware that their “Cowboy Commander in Chief” spin to the American people has worn thin and is no longer backed up by an implicit, unchallenged trust of the GOP brand. The reality of an Obama Administration, centered around the military operations to unseat Qaddafy and kill bin Laden, has changed public perception of Democratic Executive regarding foreign policy and these pop culture landmarks are things that voters remember as positively defining moments about the President.

Jon Stewart tackles the right’s hypocrisy in decrying the Obama campaign’s ad that use Romney’s vocal opposition of the very plan devised by the Obama Administration to successfully surprise and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Ric Grenell resigns because his boss is beholden to a party base that fervently embraces bigotry. Grenell served Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House’s UN delegation for years.

I’m not surprised anymore when I find out a woman, person of color or LGBT person is a Republican staffer or candidate but I am surprised when anyone is shocked when they get put in their place by their party’s base. This is the party platform. It’s what they believe. If you carry the banner of a candidate who subscribes to most or all of these beliefs, you choose to live with the consequences of those beliefs. When pundits guess that the intentionally vague Romney is a moderate or will tack to the center, they need to understand that Romney needs to energize his base to win and he can’t do that and moderate enough to be in the center of any political spectrum.

And Romney’s statement that they begged Grenell to stay is bullshit and spin. Grenell’s no newbie, he was qualified to be a neo-con foreign policy spokesperson, and he’s already worked for Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and the Bush Administration as UN spokesperson in the aughts. Romney is literally to the right of the 1990’s Gingrich led Republican delegation and the George W. Bush White House.

Update: this is the surprise I was talking about

“The Romney campaign should have spoken up publicly in defense of Rick against the attacks over the past two weeks,” GOProud’s executive director Jimmy LaSalvia said in an interview with me just now.

“This was an opportunity to send an important message that Mitt Romney wants everybody to get behind him and to support his camapign,” LaSalvia continued. “They let that opportunity pass.”

How can you expect the Republican Party to support you when a plank of the party’s platform is that you are a person to be campaigned against?