Countdown to Election 2012: Week Thirteen in Review - Bonus: New "zinger" by Stratfor Vice President Fred Burton

by Sunnyjane

What, you thought I was gonna choose HER?
Come on, she's one of those 'sheik' people!

Romney Tapped Paul Ryan and  Obama Shrugged: We're Ready

We're both too marvelous for words!

Mitt Romney, who never met an adverb he didn't love, has marvelously chosen the most severely conservative member of the House of Representatives to be his vice presidential candidate.  Privatizing Ryan is supposed to save the Republican candidate's ass flagging campaign by taking the heat for his budget plan so the press and the Obama campaign will stop asking for Romney's tax returns.  That may work for a few days, guys, but don't start popping those lemonade corks quite yet.

This new Republican team, which is blatantly representative of the current wave of vulturalism -- a devastating combination of vulture and cultural conservative principles -- is eager to take America backward to the disastrous polices of the Bush administration, and beyond.   Ryan's budget is little more than a Creed of Greed on Speed, and he's a strict adherent to his own gospel. David Frum, feature writer for The Daily Beast and Newsweek, called Ryan's plan wrong, and dangerously wrong.  Even the right-leaning New York Times was appalled,  saying in March 2012: Mr. Ryan became well known last year as the face of the most extreme budget plan passed by a house of Congress in modern times. His new budget is, if anything, worse, full of bigger, emptier promises. Oddly enough, Romney is now trying hard to distance himself from the Ryan budget plan.  Forget that act, Willard; you've shown your support for that marvelous document too many times.   You chose your running mate based on this anti-American piece of trash, and now you own it.  You are the one who said of Paul Ryan while announcing him, He appeals to the better angels of our nature.   [Call me stupid, but I have absolutely no idea what message that sappy, sentimental pronouncement conveys.]  

Paul Krugman, among other outstanding credentials a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences winner, stated recently:  [Ryan] is, in fact, a big fraud, who doesn't care at all about fiscal responsibility, and whose policy proposals are sloppy as well as dishonest. Of course, this means that he’ll fit into the Romney campaign just fine ... He's a hard-core conservative, with a voting record as far right as Michelle Bachmann's, who has shown no competence at all on the numbers thing.

As for Romney's contention that Ryan's plan is not his budget plan, David Axelrod nailed it when he said, It's  laughable ... For the middle class it feels like a choice between a punch in the nose and a knee to the groin. The fact is both plans call for trillions and trillions of dollars of new tax cuts skewed to the wealthy.

Here, I think, is the bottom line:  A presidential candidate's budget plan is an ideological statement of priorities and values.  Of the current presidential candidates' plans, which most justly fulfills the needs and ideals of ninety-nine percent of Americans?  

Romney, Ryan, and Other News from Far Right Wingnutterstan

*To a budget question from Bob Schieffer on 60 Minutes Sunday night, Paul Ryan made a response that earned him a decidedly oh-shit-don't-say-that look from Mitt Romney: What we’re saying is, taking away the tax shelters that are uniquely enjoyed by people in the top tax brackets so they can’t shelter as much money from taxation, should lower tax rates for everybody to make America more competitive.  Makes you wonder how Romney's big backers are feeling about their marvelous ticket now.  

I am so also too
marvelous!

*Is Mitt Romney demonstrating that he has even a modicum of good sense in refusing Sarah Palin a speaking gig at the GOP convention?  No, more likely he's indulging in a bit of spite towards the failed 2008 vice presidential contender and quitter governor of Alaska: she ruined his big I'm-running-for-president announcement in June 2011 when she stalked him during her asinine One Nation bus tour.   Palin never formally threw her endorsement behind Gingrich, but she certainly supported him during the primaries. She has never given her infamous Mama Grizzly endorsement to Romney and merely took to Facebook to congratulate Paul Ryan as an excuse to further spew her hatred for President Obama. So how's that It's God's Plan thingy workin' for you, Sarah?

*While he voted against the stimulus package and has promised in his budget to slash government spending, the entire state of Wisconsin and Paul Ryan's own district have certainly benefited from that nasty old government spending.  

*Mitt Romney still has no intention of releasing more of his past years' tax returns, even at the urging of Jon Huntsman, Sr., who said he was disappointed that  the presumptive Republican presidential nominee won’t be fair with the American people.

And those same American people want to know how many years of tax return Romney demanded of those he was vetting. We received some insight from always-a-contender-but-never-a-champion Tim Pawlenty who, when asked on ABC's This Week if he had submitted more than two years of returns to the Romney campaign said, Well, we don’t get into the details of the vetting process, but I — I gave them a bunch of tax returns. I don’t remember the exact number of years.  

Staying true to his brown-nosing history, Paul Ryan kissed Mitt's cheesy grits and announced that while he had given several years of tax returns to the Romney campaign, he would only be releasing two years for public scrutiny.   So there!

*Outside that tiny rarified bubble in which the One Percent lives, Romney and the Righties have managed to alienate most every demographic in the country.  With the addition of Ryan on the ticket affording closer scrutiny of his anti-American budget plan, it is easier for seniors to get the full impact of how that little proposal affects them.   In Florida alone, the negative reaction has reached Hurricane Romney Level Five strength for its Medicare/Medicaid proposed slashing.  The Sunday papers absolutely destroyed the Romney/Ryan ticket.

*Early in the debacle that would become Week Thirteen, another campaign staffer went face-first into a huge pile of elephant poop.   While pushing back against an Obama campaign ad that showed the story of a man's wife who had died because they did not have affordable health care, Andrea Saul said, if the people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care.  You know if Red State's Erick Erickson's reaction was blood-pressure popping, Romney must actually have uttered a real American swear word.

*No matter.  Mitt committed his own political and social faux pas when he outsourced calling Tim Pawlenty to give him the bad news to his son, Tagg.  Does this mean when the 3:00 AM call comes to a White House inhabited by Mitt Romney, it will be answered by a call center in India?

*In his continuing effort to destroy the good will President Obama has built with our allied nations, Romney insulted the Japanese by telling a group of donors, We are not Japan. We are not going to be a nation that suffers in decline and distress for a decade or a century.  What a baka: fool, idiot, jerk, dolt, imbecile, or idiotic dumb ass!

*The GOP candidate attempted to find some empathy with the common people by visiting a millionaire farmer in Iowa to discuss the state's withering corn crop.  Hardly a get-your-hands-dirty toiler of the soil, his host is also a real estate developer and concert promoter for his 24,000 square-foot event center.  But wait, that's not all, shoppers!  This poor guy has also received $133,000 in federal payments for not growing crops on a small portion of his land.  [We're a little confused, Mitt, so could you explain to us  again how those sworn-by-GOP no hand-outs, no culture of dependency thingies go again?]

From the Sane Side of the 2012 Election Campaign

*President Obama signed an executive order to further enhance the administration's efforts to advance the rights and status of women and girls, to promote gender equality in U.S. foreign policy, and to bring about a world in which all individuals can pursue their aspirations without the threat of violence.

*In a stick-it-to-Michele Bachmann moment -- and to everyone else on the right who believes her racist fairy tales -- President Obama praised Huma Abedin at a Ramadan Iftar dinner at the White House:  The American people owe her a debt of gratitude -- because Huma is an American patriot, and an example of what we need in this country -- more public servants with her sense of decency, her grace and her generosity of spirit.  So, on behalf of all Americans, we thank you so much.

*After the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque was burned to the ground by suspected arson, the people of this Missouri town are fighting back with a mighty message against intolerance and hatred.   As they came together in community spirit after the devastating tornado struck their town, they are vowing to help rebuild the mosque.  Way to go, Joplin!

*In a snort-inducing turn of events, a judge has ordered Judson Phillips, the Tea Party Nation "CEO" to repay $748,000 to the Venetian Las Vegas Casino Resort for a bill he incurred by reserving more than sixteen hundred rooms and then cancelling a few weeks before the event because nobody wanted to go.  [For a stranger-than-fiction bit of irony, the Venetian is owned by Sheldon Adelson.]

*And some really great news:  Gabby Giffords goes home to Tucson!  

End Note

(Courtesy of The Obama Diary)

Always remember: Mitt Romney lost to the man who lost to Barack Obama in 2008.

+++

Bonus by Patrick:

Many thanks to Sunnyjane for another great post!

There is something I just have to add.

At the beginning of the post, Sunnyjane included the following joke:

So far, so good. But WHO would actually joke about a person of Indian descent like that...?

Well, our new "friend" Fred Burton, Vice-President of the private global intelligence company "Stratfor", who we know enjoys to drop "zingers" in his work emails (see here, here and here), made a remark in the leaked Stratfor emails which comes...well, very close. :-)

See this email exchange, one of the most entertaining exchanges I found in the Stratfor-emails so far:

burton@stratfor.com wrote:

Bobby Jindel? He's some sort of Indian.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Isn't that epic! You simply cannot make it up.

Also, nice how Fred Burton asks his colleagues:

"Want me to ask michael steele?"

Just sweet.

Speaking of sweet: Our incredibly talented reader AzureGhost created another great piece - meet Anntoinette Romney: