Category: Presidential Campaign

Some Navel Gazing on My Part

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I’ve been fairly clear on this blog that I think that various actions of Obama renders him unfit to be President.*

I also understand that there are people who make arguments that could be called compelling to vote for him, most notably the Rude Pundit’s, “In the End, Vote for Obama Because F%$# Romney,”† (%$# mine)  because Mitt Romney is unfit to be President as well.

While I was in Ashland, I talked with my dad about this, and explained to him my position, and further explained that, living in Maryland, I had no moral dilemma, because my vote for President had not consequence.

He asked me what I would do if I lived in a battleground state, and I responded, “That way madness lies.”

My was flip, and it was a cop out. 

I simply don’t know what I would do if I lived in Ohio, or Virginia, or Florida,‡ or New Hampshire, or Wisconsin, or Colorado, or Iowa, and any statement that I might make would be self serving and shallow, and ultimately meaningless.

What I’m saying here is that, on this matter, if you think that I’m full of sh%$, then I’m full of shit, and if you think that I have a f%$#ing point, then I have a f%$#ing point. 

There are any number of times where I make an argument that is fact based, and I try my best to supply links to those facts, but this is not one of those times.

I think that I’m right, but opinions are like assholes, everyone has one.

*Normalizing torture by refusing to prosecute, his war on whistle-blowing, his steadfast refusal to prosecute the malefactors of wealth, his assertions of a executive authority that makes Dick Cheney look mild, etc.
†H/t Cthulhu for the catch.
‡OK, I know what I would do if I lived in Florida, I would kill myself.

Krugman is On Fire

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His referring to the Republican Party as The Blackmail Caucus is prize:

But are we ready to become a country in which “Nice country you got here. Shame if something were to happen to it” becomes a winning political argument? I hope not. By all means, vote for Mr. Romney if you think he offers the better policies. But arguing for Mr. Romney on the grounds that he could get things done veers dangerously close to accepting protection-racket politics, which have no place in American life.

I prefer to think of them as hostage-taking terrorists, but Krugman is eloquent and to the point.

Go Read.

2¾ Hours………

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I did early voting today. The line was huge.

I, or more accurately my evil minion/cameraman/son Charlie, shot a video until my phone ran out of juice.

I will put this on the most boring Youtube Channel ever™ as soon as I finish editing it.

I wrote in Jon Stewart. (I am so glad that I live in Maryland)

I Bet Those Log Cabin Republicans Feel Stupid Now

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Yesterday, I said that the Log Cabin Republicans were idiots for believing that Mitt Rmoney would sign ENDA, which would outlaw workplace discrimination against gays.

Well if you are a gay Republican and think that Romney is going to protect your job from bigots, the news that he actively prevented sane sex parents from being listed on their children’s birth certificates:

It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,” reflecting the new law.

 But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures.

 He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father” on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,” in ink.

 ………

 Romney expressed similar beliefs during a speech in 2005 to socially conservative voters in South Carolina, as he was beginning to be viewed as a serious candidate for president.

 “Some gays are actually having children born to them,” he declared.”It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.”

Why on earth do gay Republicans think that Rmoney will protect them in the workplace if he wants to deny them basic rights as parents?

Seriously, Mitt Romney just sold you the Brooklyn Bridge.

BTW, as a note, Murray Waas wrote this, and I’ve always been impressed by his journalism, and he got this story despite attempts to cover this up:

In a preliminary response this month, the Department of Public Health withheld most of the documents because they reflected conversations between lawyers working for the state and “are therefore exempt from disclosure by the attorney-client privilege.” The Globe subsequently obtained many of the documents from a source who requested anonymity.

Here’s a piece of advice if Murray comes calling about a story, tell him the truth, because he’ll get it anyway.

Murray Waas is now officially on my list of “People I Do Not Want to Piss Off”.

I Won’t Be Liveblogging the Debate

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I have an appointment at 9:15, so I won’t be watching the debate.

I truth be told, the real meaning of the debates will be how it gets called by the press anyway.

As to my advice to the candidates, it is as follows:

  • Obama, don’t hippie punch. It will be tempting, because you hate the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, but it won’t convince the undecideds, and it would serve to demoralize your base.
  • Mitt, you have to go off the reservation. You need to attack Obama for not going after the banksters. Note that, despite clear evidence of fraud, there has been zero prosecutions of big bankers and no meaningful prosecutions of big banks.

FWIW, I predict that neither of them will do this.

Obama will go after liberal strawmen, and Rmoney won’t go after the banksters.

I Have a New Favorite Abraham Lincoln Quote

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And it is from the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Stephen Douglas was arguing for “Popular Sovereignty”, where he argued that the new territories could ignore the Dredd Scott case, because they would be acting as independently of the Federal Government.

To say that Lincoln thought that this was weak tea is an understatement, because of the sweeping nature of the Supreme Court decision:

Has it not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?

Heh.

Imagine that. People were making fun of homeopathy 170 years ago.

I Knew that Rmoney Was Using His Taxes to Deceive

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Romney’s lawyer has admitted that they massaged his tax returns to hit a politically expedient:

Mitt Romney’s lawyer admitted to the Democratic accusation that the Romneys could have paid a lot less in taxes in 2011, but they manipulated the returns so as to conform to an August Romney claim that he always paid at least 13%.

The AP reported:

But, Brad Malt acknowledged, the couple “limited their deductions of charitable contributions to conform to the governor’s statement in August, based on the January estimate of income, that he paid at least 13 percent in income taxes in each of the last 10 years.”

………

Romney told us that paying more than he owed would disqualify him from the presidency, but he has now paid more than he owed in order to make his earlier statement about never paying below 13% appear to be true. Not to worry, though, Mitt Romney can merely amend his return after the election in order to get that money back from the government, like any 47%-er would want to do.

Additionally, there are no details on the offshore accounts in his Bain Retirement account, and note here, Romney is not personally evading taxes here, he couldn’t because it’s his retirement fund that is pays taxes right now, not the Romneys.

Furthermore, his use of the average rate may be a bit of statistical slight of hand:

5:32 pm by Liam Denning

 We checked with the Romney campaign and the 20-year tax-rate average is a simple one (i.e., the average of the percentage in each year) rather than a weighted one (i.e., where you add up all the tax paid across the 20 years and divide it by all the income).

 It’s a potentially important difference because the simple average treats each year equally — whether Romney earned, say, $5 million in that year or $30 million. It is especially important if Romney paid a low tax rate in a year in which he earned a lot but paid a high tax rate in years when he earned less. The weighted average would give a more accurate picture.

 Of course, releasing the actual underlying year-by-year data would clear up any confusion — but that is a step Mr. Romney has said he won’t take.

Well, we don’t know what is hiding in has tax returns, but we know some of what he is intended to obscure in this release.

Mitt Has Released His Taxes

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Well, he sort of released his taxes. He released his 2011 taxes, and “summary” for the past decade:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney fought back on Friday against Democratic charges he paid no taxes in some years, releasing a letter from his accountants saying he paid an effective federal tax rate of at least 13.6 percent annually over 20 years.

 Despite heavy political pressure, Romney stood firm in refusing to make those returns public, but followed through on an earlier promise to release his 2011 return. It showed he paid $1.9 million in taxes on more than $13 million in income – an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent.

 ………

 Romney has refused to release returns from his years as head of Bain Capital, a private equity fund that Democratic critics have charged plundered companies and cut jobs in a quest for profits. Romney has an estimated net worth between $190 million and $250 million.

 ………

 The Romney campaign published a statement on Friday from former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Fred Goldberg, who declared the returns “reflect the complexity of our laws and the types of investment activity that I would anticipate for persons in their circumstances.”

 Goldberg said, “In my judgment, they have fully satisfied their responsibilities as taxpayers.”

 The letter from accountants PricewaterhouseCoopers said the average of Romney’s annual effective federal personal income tax rate during the 20-year period up to 2009 was 20.2 percent, and he and his wife, Ann, had a charitable deduction rate of 13.45 percent.

Seriously, there is something really hinky about his tax returns that Mitt is desperately trying to hide.

BTW, if you want to run the numbers, I guarantee that he paid only about $10K in social security and medicare taxes, which would be less than 1%.

Ordinary mortals who earn less than about $100K pay about 7½% on every penny for social security and medicare, and that’s before the stuff that he squirreled away in his (now closed) Swiss bank account.

Mitt Discovers His Inner Oompa Loompa

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This is Mitt Rmoney


This is Mitt Rmoney in Channeling his Inner Oompa Loompa


Any Questions?

It appears that Mitt used spray tan for his interview on Univision.

Seriously, when you attempt to do outreach to voter groups, wearing black* face does not work.

Mitt and his team decided that it could be handled with a spray tan.

That is not outreach, that is stupidity.

H/t Cthulhu at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

*OK, Orange.