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.