Mitt Romney Claims To Be “Severely Conservative”
It’s like watching a robot self-destruct … David Frum opines on CNN:
Mitt Romney ended a very bad week with a pretty good weekend.
Tuesday, Romney lost two caucuses and a nonbinding primary to Rick Santorum. Saturday, Romney won the also nonbinding Maine caucuses and the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Four weeks from now, no one will remember the Maine caucuses. I’m guessing though that people will remember a phrase from Romney’s speech to CPAC on Friday, in which he described himself as a “severely conservative” governor of Massachusetts.
Jay Smooth’s ‘Phony’ Welcomes Mitt Romney (Thanks Jay-Z)
Jay Smooth’s new parody video is tearing up YouTube. He explains:
After Jay-Z recorded “Glory” to welcome his new daughter into the world, I wondered what it would sound like if Republican voters made a song to welcome Mitt Romney as their now-inevitable nominee.
How Accurate Were the Nevada Republican Caucus Results?
Mark Wachtler writes in the Examiner:
For the second time in just five primary states, the Republican Party, with the assistance of the national corporate news media, is raising questions about the legitimacy of this season’s primary election system. First, the Iowa Republican Party and the entire American media knowingly reported the wrong Iowa Caucus results with the wrong person being declared the winner. Last night, it appears the same thing may be happening in Nevada. And again like Iowa, critics are accusing the GOP of suspicious activity.
Perhaps it’s indicative that the beneficiary of these recurring vote counting “mistakes” always seems to be former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. He’s just happens to be the same man that both the Republican Party establishment and the four corporations that own all of America’s news media outlets are actively supporting.
Newt Beats Mitt
Could the Republicans choose worse names for their leading presidential candidates? Anyway, looks like the doughboy is still in the race according to this report from The Official Republican Party News Channel Fox News:
Newt Gingrich has won the South Carolina Republican primary, Fox News projects, further scrambling an already volatile presidential race which has produced three different winners in three states as the candidates head next to Florida.
Fox News projects that Mitt Romney will place second in the Palmetto State, where he was leading in the polls just one week ago. With 5 percent of precincts reporting, Gingrich has 38 percent and Romney has 32 percent. Rick Santorum will finish in third place, Fox News projects, while Ron Paul will finish last …
Living In A Real World House Of Lies
If you go to the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street near Times Square in Manhattan, just down from the Wax Museum and around the corner from the bus station, and look up, you’ll see an oversized billboard for Showtime’s fast -paced “House of Lies,” a new cable TV series that is more like a realistic docudrama about the world of hard-charging management consultants.
Don Cheadle stars in this tightly written challenge to the popular “Mad Men” glorification of Madison Avenue in the 1950’s, spiced with the insertion of pretty graphic hot sex that makes Janet Jackson’s Superbowl moment seem like it belonged on the Disney Channel. An actor on the series laughingly downplays the explicit physical grappling as “naughty.”
At a time when Mitt Romney, a former management consultant himself in his years at Bain, is running for president, this show offers insight into just how vulgar vulgar capitalism can be.
In one…
Mitt Romney Caught Buying Votes
So that’s what’s so magic about Mormon underwear–it’s lined with $10’s and $20’s. I only hope that poor woman accepted it with a pair of boiled iron tongs. From CNN’s Rachel Streitfeld:
Sumter, South Carolina (CNN) – Mitt Romney gave a handful of cash Saturday to a woman who had told him she was struggling financially after an event in Sumter, South Carolina.
An aide said the GOP candidate gave the supporter “what he had on him” – about $50 or $60.
The woman, Ruth Williams, met Romney earlier in the week and told him she was having trouble making ends meet. On Saturday, Romney recognized Williams while he was shaking hands with supporters after a rally, an aide said.
Romney spoke to the woman and handed her several bills.
“He was kind to me,” Williams said. “He held onto me and he made Gov. [Nikki] Haley and them come see about me.”
Williams told reporters…
The Candidates And The Military Industrial Complex
Megan Carpenter investigates the ties that bind, for RawStory (with thanks to DeepCough):
Though Americans far and away identify economic problems as the biggest issue facing the nation, according to Gallup, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has been gaining support by talking about the need to restrict the military industrial complex and end what he terms “war profiteering” — most recently in his victory speech after the New Hampshire primary.
By contrast, former governor Mitt Romney (R-MA), currently leading the pack of GOP candidates, called for a strong America and a strong relationship with Israel — rhetoric that has most often accompanied robust military spending. Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Obama thought last year that the prospect of automatic defense spending cuts would be enough to pressure the supercommittee into a deal on the debt: it wasn’t, and now he may be stuck with them.
Given all of that, and Romney’s pro-business platform, you would think he’d be the…
Why Mitt Romney Likes Firing People (Video)
There’s plenty of hub-bub on the internets about Mitt Romney saying he “likes firing people.” He’s what Mr. “Corporations Are People” said in a longer clip below and an article from Suzanne Lucas on CBS News that likely explains his thinking:
The presidential election is just one big job interview, so it makes sense that as long as we’re talking about hiring, we should talk about firing. Mitt Romney recently said: “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I’m going to go get somebody else to provide that service to me.” Horrifying, right? How on earth could any human being like firing anyone? Well, to be fair, he didn’t say he liked firing anyone. He said he liked being able to fire someone. And so do you. You do it all the time.
Psst: Romney Is A Mormon
Now you may think this headline is stating the obvious, but actually less than half of Americans have any idea that he’s a moron Mormon according to the Washington Post:
Less than half of Americans know that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney is a Mormon, despite recent media attention focused on his faith, a new survey shows.
Just four in 10 Americans — 42 percent — identified the former Massachusetts governor as a Mormon, according to the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute. That figure remains unchanged from July 2011, despite a flurry of media attention after an evangelical supporter of another GOP candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, called Romney’s religion a “cult.”
The only group that showed an increased knowledge about Romney’s religion was white evangelicals, whose knowledge of Romney’s faith rose from 44 percent in July to 53 percent in mid-October…
[continues in the Washington Post]
Mitt Romney: “I’m Running for Office! I Can’t Have Illegals!” (Video)
I think Mitt Romney is running for the office of fakest human being to ever live …
Mitt Romney & Company: Making It Rain (Photo)
Via the Atlantic:
Mitt Romney made a lot of money, has a lot of money, and spends a lot of money campaigning. Now we know he also once posed with money.
The photo shows Romney with his colleagues at Bain Capital, which provided it to the Boston Globe. The Globe reports that Romney kept things loose at Bain’s office, despite the pressures of working there. After posing for a company-brochure photo, Romney and his Bain associates snapped it again with $10 and $20 bills. Romney led Bain Capital to grow from a staff of seven managing $37 million to a staff of 115 managing $4 billion, the Globe reports.
Great News, Everybody: A New (Secret) Bailout!
The Parable of the Blind. Pieter Bruegel (1568)
In Business Insider, scuttlebutt that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be softening up Obama, Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner for yet another round of bailouts for the incompetent multinational financial elites.
Awesome! I was afraid that the next round of bailouts would require “patriots” like representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) to take to the floor begging again. I feel so relieved now, knowing that the whole thing can proceed quietly without anyone having to jeopardize their campaign funding.
But where do our other, prospective “leaders” stand on this topic? Hard to say. Irrelevance and opacity seem to be the primary tenets of the major candidates’ PR machines. Here’s what I mean.
Ron Paul’s heart may be in the right place regarding the need to end counterproductive wars and pointlessly intrusive social wedge issues, but his knack for failing to identify urgent priorities remains unequalled. Witness the most recent…
Republican Presidential Race Picking Up Speed
Recently the Republican Party had a presidential candidate debate with Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. Surprisingly, considering how hard the mainstream news has worked to ignore him, Ron Paul was also present.
There’s a lot not to like about these goons and right now I’m still taking it all in, but what sticks in my memory is Rick “I Don’t Have A Prayer” Santorum attacking Ron Paul in the previous debate for underestimating the “threat” from Iran. Personally, I think that might be the only thing Ron Paul has gotten right, and seeing this one bit of sanity being attacked should worry us all.
In the aftermath of the debates, the question is: Who came out on top? This article offers some insight, but what does the Disinfo community think? Who’s in the lead, who will we see fall first, who will make the…
Romney: ‘Corporations Are People, My Friend’
Mitt Romney. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi (CC)
Do not vote for this man! Via AP:
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, clearly irritated by a handful of hecklers amid supporters at the Iowa State Fair, insisted Thursday that “corporations are people,” a comment Democrats gleefully predicted would be a defining moment of his campaign.
Hours before he was to face most of his primary opponents in an Iowa debate, the former Massachusetts governor was outlining options for reining in the federal deficit and overhauling entitlement programs. He acknowledged that raising taxes on individuals was an option, but he said he opposed it.
That’s when about a dozen hecklers started shouting at him.
“Corporations! Corporations!” they said, seemingly suggesting that corporations should take the brunt of new taxes.
“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said with uncharacteristic pique…
[continues at AP]
Stop! Mormon Time!
The MC Hammer mash-up of one of my all-time favourite Tube finds: the infamous and frequently taken down ‘Banned Mormon Cartoon’:
(h/t to Ectoplasmosis)
It works on so many levels: there’s the layer upon layer of questionable taste, to be sure, but it also nails the near-Docetic Christology of the LDS. It turn out that you really can’t touch – MORMON JESUS!
And it seems Mitt Romney could say the same about his bid for the White House …
Just Say No To Freedom Of Religion
Mitt Romney. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi (CC)
The inimitable Christopher Hitchens says the taming and domestication of religious faith is one of the unceasing chores of civilization, at Slate:
A recent blizzard of liberal columns has framed the debate over American Islam as if it were no more than the most recent stage in the glorious history of our religious tolerance. This phrasing of the question has the (presumably intentional) effect of marginalizing doubts and of lumping any doubters with the anti-Catholic Know-Nothings, the anti-Semites, and other bigots and shellbacks. So I pause to take part in a thought experiment, and to ask myself: Am I in favor of the untrammeled “free exercise of religion”?
No, I am not. Take an example close at hand, the absurdly named Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. More usually known as the Mormon church, it can boast Glenn Beck as one of its recruits. He has…
