Countdown to Election 2012: Week Twelve in Review - Bonus Video: Mitt Romney's "Disclosure"

by Sunnyjane

I'll proudly tell you my foreign policy 
experience:  I voted to send people to war!

Yes, dear readers, it's been one of those weeks.  If Paul Ryan's response to the question on his lack of foreign policy credentials reminds you of the 2008 Republican vice president candidate's response of When Putin rears his head to a similar question from Katie Couric, you're forgiven.  The quality of GOP candidates for that important office has not improved in this election cycle.  

Such excitement!  Such diversity!
White people like me, they really LIKE me!

But according to GOP leaders and pundits, it cannot be said too many times that in choosing Paul Ryan to be his vice presidential running mate, Mitt Romney made a bold and courageous choice. Yup, he's mid-west-heartland white, he’s a hard-line-far-right-wing-nutty Christian, and he’s one of those works-out-every-day males. And what do those attributes add up to? That's right -- White Christian Male. Yes, indeed, when it comes to being bold and courageous, Mitt Romney’s a real risk-taker!  



Romney/Ryan: The Trust Me/Tea Party Ticket

 Just trust me, suckers.
(hee, hee)

It will come as no shock to readers of this blog that Mitt Romney cannot actually tell voters how he plans to govern as President of the United States.   How do we know this?  He told us back in March 2012 that  I won't detail my plans because then I'd lose.  Whatever the subject, Mitt's discovered that Americans don't actually like his policies, and he's not going to win by flipping, flopping or lying on the issues.  From his tax issues to his stand on immigration, Mitt has decided that we're just going to have to trust him.  This blatant disregard for the right of voters to understand his beliefs and policy plans is not just progressive bloggers' assumptions, it has been verified by the candidate's campaign. Very recently, Romney advisers said their guy has no plans to pivot from [his] previous view that diving into details during a general-election race would be suicidal.  One even went so far as to state that Campaigns that are about specifics, particularly in today’s environment, get tripped up.

Ryan preaches anti-American gospel
to Wisconsin Tea Party slugs in June  

Koch Brothers' love child Paul Ryan has achieved the far-right conservative pinnacle in this election year.  His selection as the GOP vice presidential candidate is a Teabagger's wet dream on sildenafil citrate.  Initially unimpressed with Mitt Romney's I'm severely conservative claims, the spokeswoman for the Tea Party Express recently said, Selecting someone like Paul Ryan...proves that Mitt Romney is committed to addressing the economic issues that have been troubling our nation for the last four years.  

Paul Ryan has been in the House of Representatives for thirteen years and has proven himself to be one of the most do-nothing legislators in history.  Besides voting Yes to everything that Bush II proposed, and No to everything President Obama has proposed,  he has renamed a Post Office, done something or other about the excise taxes on arrows, and written two different versions of a hocus-pocus GOP budget plan.  And while we'll talk more about Ryan's, ahem, activities in the House downthread, it's important to understand that for these less than remarkable accomplishments the tax payers have given him $2,262,000.  [Note: Cutting his salary has not shown up in the spending cuts he proposes in his budgets.]  With this history, he'll be just one of many Tea Party lawmakers who went into the House with no legislative experience and came out with the same record.

A Week of Extremes and Extremists

*Although we should not have been, most Americans were shocked and sickened by the pronouncement from anti-abortion Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) that legitimate rape does not often lead to pregnancy because the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.   This intellectual and cultural freak of a human being is currently running for the United States Senate against Claire McCaskill, and if the voters in Missouri have any sense of decency at all, they'll not only refuse to elect him to that post, but will see that he is not sent back to the House as well.

And to demonstrate their...um...personal disgust and outrage at such a statement, the Trust Me/Tea Party ticket quickly sent out this lily-livered piece of tripe:  Governor Romney and Congressman Ryan disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement. A Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.  That's about as limp a statement as the one he made after Rush Limpballs Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute: I'll just say this, which is, it's not the language I would have used.  But after realizing he might be just a wee bit out of step with GOP leaders -- not to mention that the Democrats are tying Akin's comments to the Republican ticket -- Romney got around to saying, Congressman Akin's comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable and, frankly, wrong. Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.   Who is this we you're talking about, Mitt?  Oh OK, we can read the tea leaves: Ryan can't speak up against this atrocity himself because he is in complete accord with Akin. That's right, Ryan and Akin co-sponsored a bill to redefine rape as meaning forcible rape.  And just in case readers forget, Ryan's misogynistic legislative history includes his cosponsoring a bill to give a fetus personhood rights, voting to defund federal family planning programs,  authoring a budget that dismantles Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs that aid women, and voted many times to prevent women in the military from using their own money to pay for abortions at military hospitals.  So that's the legislation we've paid him $2.25M for over the span of thirteen years.  [I want my money back, Mr. Ryan.]

Of the Akin situation, President Obama said, The views expressed were offensive. Rape is rape and the idea that we should be parsing and qualifying and slicing what types of rape we’re talking about doesn't make sense to the American people and it certainly doesn't make sense to me. 

Rape: An Affront to our Shared Humanity.  If you can stand it, you must see this video filmed two years ago when President Obama signed the Tribal Law and Order Act, giving tribal police greater authority to prosecute and punish criminals.   In it, Lisa Iyotte, who was raped in front of her two small girls, strives to contain her emotions enough to introduce the President.  It took him about fifteen seconds to recognize her distress and he went to her, hugged her, and stood by her side until she got through it.   Have tissues handy.

Moving on...

*Some down-ballot Republicans, i.e., those at the state level, are in a swivet about the Ryan pick for vice president.  Seems they don't know whether to embrace that radical budget or turn their backs on the whole ticket.  [Heh]

*And speaking of the budget(s), it seems that befuddlement abounds in ye old campaign.  See, Mitt's got one and Paul's got one, and nobody knows what's what.   Rachel Maddow encapsulatedthe issue like this: the day after the Ryan announcement, Romney said it’s my plan, not his plan; Monday, he said the plans are the same; on Tuesday, he said the plans are very different; on Wednesday, Romney started running on the Paul Ryan plan again.  There’s more, but surely Americans get the picture by now.  So Mitt decided to show to us dummies exactly how the Romney plan (or the Ryan plan, or the Romney/Ryan plan, or…) is different from the Obama plan.  Writing on a whiteboard, Romney proved to us that, well…um…he proved to us that he can actually write on a whiteboard!  

When Brit Hume asked Ryan  just exactly when the Romney plan would balance the budget, Ryan said he didn't know because we haven't run the numbers on that specific plan.  Does anyone else find it perplexing that Mitt Romney, who never saw a spreadsheet he did drool over, and Paul Ryan, Mr. Republican Budgetmeister, have never even run the numbers on their individual or combined plans?

*John Sununu got a little frazzled when challenged by Soledad O'Brien on the difference between President Obama's Medicare Plan and Romney's plan.  Soledad, stop this! he shouted. All you’re doing is mimicking the stuff that comes out of the White House and gets repeated on the Democratic blog boards out there.  After O'Brien explained that it was not her evaluation of the two plans, but rather the CBO's and CNN's independent analysis, Sununu said, Put an Obama bumper sticker on your forehead when you do this!  This titillating little exchange provoked David Schuster to say later that it seemed like Sununu hasn't taken his medication.  

*Paul Ryan is very forgetful!  He forgot that he had asked for stimulus money.  In a conversation with the caller during a radio interview he was doing in 2010, he  said, No, I’m not one (of those) people who votes for something then writes to the government to ask them to send us money. I did not request any stimulus money.   And then he suddenly remembered that he had left his $1 - $5 million trust off his disclosure forms until he was vetted by the Romney campaign.

*Ryan blamed President Obama for the shutdown of a GM plant in his Wisconsin hometown, saying Obama's "terrible energy policies" led to $4 a gallon gas and the closure of the company's oldest assembly plant, breaking the Democrat's promise to keep it open.  The only problem with this little rant is that plant closed down in December 2008, while George W. Bush was still the president.

End Note

While Paul Ryan sent people to war, President Barack Obama brought them home.  And all too often, they came home in flag-draped caskets.

+++

BONUS VIDEO (by Patrick):

One of our Californian readers just sent us the link to the following very smart and very funny video, which was published on youtube yesterday - and I am sure that Sunnyjane won't mind if we add this to her post! After all, Mitt Romney lacks proper "disclosure" on so many levels!

This is a must-see!

Watch: