Election 2012: Week Two in Review

by Sunnyjane

Admiral Romney, the USS Pinafore's Ruler of the Navy: "A partnership is the only ship that I ever have seen!"

Military Madness

Readers familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan's delightful Victorian-era operetta HMS Pinafore will easily recognize and understand the correlation between that comedy's Sir Joseph Porter character and Mitt Romney.  Sir Joseph went on to say: 

      I grew so rich that I was sent 
     By a pocket borough into Parliament. 
     I always voted at my party's call 
     And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.  
     I thought so little, they rewarded me, 
    By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navy.  

The jab here, of course, is that too often people who are extremely unqualified are elevated to positions of power simply because they are wealthy and are willing to kiss the, uh, rings of their puppeteers.

Pinafore also pokes fun at the British class system of the period, to which we can all relate during this election cycle, when Sir Joseph states, A British sailor is any man's equal -- except mine!

Mitt Romney desperately wants the title of Chief in Command.  But during the final presidential debate on October 22, President Obama  proved conclusively that the Republican candidate's foreign -- and domestic -- policy expertise is limited to sending jobs to China, putting his money in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, and lying to get votes.  These things make him frighteningly incompetent to assume the position of Commander in Chief of the United States of America.

The Professor Puts the Dunce in the Corner
 

Um... Subs?  Aircraft carriers?
 Can I respond retroactively?

After about thirty minutes, the stench of Roasting Romney permeated the air in Boca Raton, FL.  Trotting out his well worn apocalypse-now whine that the United States has fewer naval vessels than it did in 1916, the President took the opportunity to do a little schooling: Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.  Obviously, Mitt  Romney's definition of naval supremacy means that the finest citrus fruit comes from Florida.  Yes, he's just that daft.

Romney also thought it a dandy idea to bring up the President's oft-debunked 2009 Apology Tour.  That was a mistake, a big mistake.   A little fact checking would have been helpful, but the Romney campaign does not care about facts or, as we know, the truth. But they thought their candidate could get away with this lie.  The President did, indeed, visit other countries -- Europe, the Mid-East, and Latin America -- after he assumed office.  It was not, however, to apologize for America, but rather to clean up the mess George W. Bush had made over the previous eight years, when our reputation went into the toilet.  Romney was especially gleeful to report that President Obama had skipped Israel.  The President did not hesitate to say he had been there as a candidate and I didn’t take donors. I didn’t attend fundraisers. I went to the Holocaust museum there, to remind myself of the nature of evil and why our bond with Israel will be unbreakable.  The donors and fundraisers jab was, of course, in reference to Romney's embarrassing Geopolitical Magic Carpet Trip in July when he dragged along big-bucks Sheldon Adelson and scheduled a $50,000 fund-raising dinner on a sacred day of fasting in Israel. 

The President's Apology Tour -- which was actually a Mending Fences Tour -- seems to have been successful, since of the twenty-one countries listed here, only Pakistan would rather see Mitt Romney in the White House.

Map Maker, Map Maker, Make Me a Map

Iran: Big Green Blob, Two Big Waters.
Syria: Small Brown Blob, One Big Water.
Romney:  Big Gray Blob, No Clue.

Cartographers the world over are said to be popping antacid pills at an alarming rate, due to Mitt Romney's five-time claim that Syria is Iran's only route to the sea. 

Romney can spout all the correct words -- Syria, Assad, Hezbollah, Lebanon, Iran, Israel -- without having a clue what he's talking about. 

Now, admittedly, I am not the sharpest needle in the pin cushion, but I've looked at this map rather closely -- far more than it deserves -- and if Syria is Iran's only route to  the sea, then I'm a two-year old Pop-Tart.  Did the only  candidate for president that the Republican Party could come up with sleep through the 1980s' Iraq-Iran War and the 1990s' Persian Gulf War? 

A Village in Indiana Has Found Its Idiot

I disagree with what the fool said, 
but I fully support what the fool said.

On the same night Mitt Romney was demonstrating to more than fifty-six million American voters that he is unfit for the Office of the Presidency, the only Republican senate candidate he has endorsed in the 2012 General Election was telling the Hoosier State electorate that if a woman became pregnant as a consequence of rape, it was what God intended.  While Richard Mourdock made a small effort to, um, purify his statement, let's make one thing clear -- he meant exactly what he said: I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God.  And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.

Make no mistake, this is Romney's kind of far-right-wing Christianista nut job.  Mourdock is right up there with Rick Santorum who believes that rape babies are gifts from God; Paul Ryan who believes that rape is just another form of conception; and Todd Akin who believes that with a legitimate rape, the woman has magical powers to shut down conception. If there is a Romney/Ryan administration, every rapist will be assured that his violently conceived child will have an advocate in the White House.  Yes, seriously.

Hurricane "Superstorm" Sandy

The mother of all hurricanes hit the East Coast of the United States during Week Two, and  President Obama cancelled his scheduled campaign stops to take control of the situation.  Mitt Romney was taking advantage of that situation by running around Ohio campaigning, but keeping the people in harms way in his prayers.  Uh huh.   Then Romney decided that he had to get in on the action and started urging people to donate disaster relief items for the victims.  Never mind that the Red Cross does not want donated items.  

On behalf of all Politicalgates readers and commenters, special thanks to Sleuth1 for her devoted and far-ranging coverage of the hurricane.  Excellent and extremely beneficial effort, Sleuth1! 

       

Let's imagine a Romney presidency during this crisis:

Aide:  Mr. President, there's a huge hurricane coming that's threatening the United States! 

President Romney:  Really?  OK, get FEMA on the phone and tell them to handle it. 

Aide: Um, Mr. President, you got rid of FEMA.  You sent responsibility for disaster relief to the states so you could shrink government and save money. 

President Romney:  I saved money?  Well, money is more important than people’s lives, right?  I’ll take a nap now; call me when it’s over.  Oh, and if any governors want to whine to me about their state's desperate situation, switch the phones to the Call Center in India.

Remember Michelle Obama's statement at the Democratic National Convention:  Being President doesn't change who you are.  It reveals who you are.
 

A natural or national disaster is one of the best arguments for early voting in every state, no restrictions and no justifications required.

END NOTE

Courtesy of Rolling Stone

 We have a real leader in the White House.  Let's keep him there.

Who supports American workers, and who supports Chinese workers?  Just askin'.

  V  O  T  E     B  L  U  E

Congratulation to Politicalgates' newest citizen, Linda, who voted in her first ever U.S. election -- for the Obama/Biden ticket! 

Countdown to Election 2012: Week Six in Review

by Sunnyjane

"Don't simply feed fish."

Hey, You People!  Stop it!  Don't feed Flipper!  Why, after they've been fed, fish will demand unpolluted water to live in; you know, the kind where humans have not dumped their garbage, their oil from off-shore drilling disasters, and their poisonous agricultural runoff?  Hell, next they'll insist on reasonably priced healthcare, affordable college loans, decent-paying jobs, and access to birth control.

OK, maybe that's not exactly the message Paul Ryan was trying to send an attendee at one of his recent rallies, but his actual response was as soulless and gutless as a freshly filleted bluefin tuna.  A woman had the temerity to explain that she worked two jobs, only took home $316 a week, and wondered what the Romney/Ryan plan was to help people like her get off welfare.  He answered: We need to have that dynamic economy return. You do that by growing the economy and giving people a hand up, not a hand out. Teach a man how to fish, he can feed himself for life. Don't simply feed fish. 

And that, dear readers, is what you get when you let Ryan be Ryan.  

Political Death by a Thousand Self-Inflicted Cuts  

If a spacecraft from an alien solar system were to hover over the United States of America during this election cycle, the commander would radio back to the Mother Ship: No sign of intelligent life detected on this planet. As proof, let's take a peak peek at Week Six stories -- in no particular order.

It's not ladylike for Republican women
 in Missouri to carry their own signs.

*Defying every Republican call in the country to withdraw from the U.S. Senate race in Missouri after his legitimate rape fiasco, Todd Akin has doubled down on his eighteenth-century beliefs, and the GOPers have no choice but to support him.  Not that it's going very well, mind you. After incumbent Claire McCaskill called him out on his extreme right-wing views in a recent debate, Akin complained that she was very aggressive,  acted like a wildcat, and was not at all ladylike.  Don't you hate it when that happens?

Typically, Akin is too dumb to realize that his statements were merely fodder for his Democratic opponent.  McCaskill took to television news outlets the next day to repeat the story, telling viewers that Akin believes liberalism is a hatred of God, and that he has voted against bills such as the Sex Offender Registry and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I mean, McCaskill said, this is somebody who makes Michele Bachmann look like a hippie.

*The Debate Cycle is now in season, beginning on Wednesday, October 3.  While the Democrats are not too keen on the idea of CNN's Candy Crowley as one of the moderators,  Romney threatened in August to boycott the debates completely if anyone from MSNBC was selected to fulfill that duty.  The GOP campaign is working hard to lower expectations of a great debate from their candidate, and Mitt himself has been practicing zingers for months [like Palin, he must be a tad slow] while the Obama campaign has assured Americans that the President has more important information to impart. [It will be interesting to see how long Mitt can hold a smirk after President Obama calmly refutes these carefully practiced zingers.] From the Good Help is Hard to Find file, Chris Christie must be using his Republican Talking Points Playbook as a heavily laden snack tray because he's touting Romney as such a great debater that Wednesday night's the restart of this campaign. Come Thursday morning, the entire narrative of this race is going to change.  And in a massive fail from the Good Mormon Wife file, Ann is out there warning the country that Mitt just might not be mentally stable enough for the office of the presidency.  Now that should give our citizens some heart-warming comfort, right?

*On the national security front, President Obama scored a major victory in cementing America's Middle East policy when Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Benjamin Netanyahu assured the U.N. audience that no strike against Iran would happen until next spring, at the earliest. He also gave the President credit for leading the effort to impose strict sanctions against Iran.  This sudden move effectively snatched a Romney foreign policy debate argument right out from under him.  In a related story, Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times wrote that this turn of events had added to the credibility of the Democratic Party to lead the way in foreign policies, while   Mitt Romney ... acts as if he learned his foreign policy at the International House of Pancakes, where the menu and architecture rarely changes.  [Oy!]

*Out and about with the lowlife forty-seven percenters on the campaign trail isn't going too well. After long and loud proclamations that the President has raised taxes on the middle class with the Affordable Healthcare Act, Paul Ryan seemed to suffer some sort of gastric attack when Romney admitted that the President had not raised taxes.

And still in Ohio, where the current forecast has President Obama winning the state by 86.1%, Mitt had to use his cheerleading skills to remind supporters that it is he, not Paul Ryan, who is at the top of the ticket.  This episode caused Joe Scarborough to drop his face in his hands and exclaim , Sweet Jesus ... what a horrible politician.  [Perhaps a more appropriate sentiment would have been Hail Mary, full of grace, the RNC just lost this race.]

H/T: ProChoiceGrandma

*And speaking of vice-presidential nominee and budget guru Paul Ryan, he appeared on Fox News as part of the Sunday Republican lineup to tout the Romney/Ryan ticket. However, when pressed by Chris Wallace to explain Mitt's tax plan, he stumbled around and finally said, I don’t have the ... It would take me too long to go through all of the math.

*A couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney was caught TANdering to Hispanic voters, which caused quite a bit of TANdemonium throughout the blogosphere.  Well, now he's CHANdering to that same voting bloc by suddenly flip-flopping on the issue of deporting young illegals who were brought to this country by their parents: The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid … Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration reform plan that I've proposed.  [Note: To my knowledge, the only immigration reform plan that Romney has proposed is self-deportation.]

   

**There's nothing wrong with the Romney/Ryan campaign that can't be cured by a good turnout on Election Day for President Obama.  Vote early!**  

Interested in attending a Debate Party Wednesday night?  Sign up! 
H/T: Kathleen

END NOTE

This office is occupied and this seat is taken for FOUR MORE YEARS.

Memo to Republican Tea Partiers: GET OVER IT. 

   

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: