Category: Presidential Campaign

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot??!!??!!??

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OK, I get the optics.

Having Obama give his nomination acceptance speech in a huge outdoor stadium, with a much louder and more enthusiastic crowd, as he did in 2008.

It gives his speech more excitement.

I get it.

But to give the speech in Bank of America Stadium?!?!?!?

First, he chooses an anti-union right to work state, and now he’s testifying in an edifice named after a bank?

And it’s not just a bank.  It’s one of the “too big to fail” banks that got billions (trillions?) in taxpayer bailouts.

Great googly moogly!

So, the Keystone XL Pipeline Is On Hold

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The ‘Phants forced a decision in the payroll tax bill, and so he denied the application:

President Obama on Wednesday rejected, for now, the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, saying the $7 billion project could not be adequately reviewed within the 60-day deadline set by Congress. While the president’s action does not preclude later approval of the project, it sets up a baldly partisan fight over energy, jobs and regulation that will most likely persist through the November election.

The president said his hand had been forced by Republicans in Congress, who inserted a provision in the temporary payroll tax cut bill passed in December giving the administration only until Feb. 21 to decide the fate of the 1,700-mile pipeline, which would stretch from oil sands formations in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast.

The State Department, which has authority over the project because it crosses an international border, said there was not enough time to draw a new route for the pipeline and assess the potential environmental harm to sensitive grasslands and aquifers along its path. The agency recommended that the permit be denied, and Mr. Obama concurred.

“As the State Department made clear last month,” the president said in a statement, “the rushed and arbitrary deadline insisted on by Congressional Republicans prevented a full assessment of the pipeline’s impact, especially the health and safety of the American people, as well as our environment.”

The Republicans think that they have an issue, but it will be long forgotten by election time.

As to the final outcome, it will be approved after the election, and Obama will tweak the route a bit, and claim some sort of post partisan victory, all while basically selling out to big oil.

Like a Bad Penny

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Un-Dirty-Word Believable

She keeps coming back.

Sarah Palin has endorsed Newt Gingrich, and Newt Gingrich has said that Sarah Palin would have a “major roll” in his administration:

Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he would consider former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for a “major role” in his administration if he is elected president.

“Certainly, she’s one of the people I’d call on for advice. I would ask her to consider taking a major role in the next administration if I’m president,” Gingrich said on CNN. He added that he has not discussed the idea with Palin, who he called “a very good reform governor.”

Palin told Fox News on Tuesday that she would vote for Gingrich in South Carolina “in order to keep this thing going.”

Palin has not endorsed a candidate in the Republican race, and her comments Tuesday weren’t exactly an endorsement either, although Gingrich characterized them that way on CNN.

You see, Sarah Palin is saying that the problem is that in 2008, there was a candidate who was not properly vetted (@ about 1:10 in the vid), and she’s referring to Barack Hussein Obama, not Sarah Louise Heath Palin.

Who says that Irony is dead?

Ha Ha!

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The latest PPP (pp)polling, Rick Perry is in third place in Texas.

Normally, even in losing a Presidential primary contest, one tends to pick up a bit of stature both locally and nationally, in the case of Rick Perry, I think that it may very well have destroyed his future prospects in the state.

Rick Perry has three big problems: Collapsing poll numbers, worse debate performance than J. Danforth Quayle, and … let’s see … I can’t … The third one, I can’t … Oops.

Well, Damn! This is Interesting

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William Cohan, Bloomberg Columnist and former investment banker unloads on Mitt Romney with both barrels:

By bidding high early, Bain would win a coveted spot in the later rounds of the auction, when greater information about the company for sale is shared and the number of competitors is reduced. (A banker and his client generally allow only the potential buyers with the highest bids into the later rounds; after all, you can’t have an endless procession of Savile Row-suited businessmen traipsing through a manufacturing plant if you want to keep a possible sale under wraps.)

For buyers, the goal in these auctions is to be one of the few selected to inspect the company’s facilities and books on-site, in order to make a final and supposedly binding bid. Generally, the prospective buyer with the highest bid after the on-site due-diligence visit is selected by the client — in consultation with his or her banker — to negotiate a final agreement to buy the company.

This is the moment when Bain Capital would become especially crafty. In my experience — which I heard echoed often by my colleagues around Wall Street — Bain would seek to be the highest bidder at the end of the formal process in order to be the firm selected to negotiate alone with the seller, putting itself in the exclusive, competition-free zone. Then, when all other competitors had been essentially vanquished and the purchase contract was under negotiation, Bain would suddenly begin finding all sorts of warts, bruises and faults with the company being sold. Soon enough, that near-final Bain bid — the one that got the firm into its exclusive negotiating position — would begin to fall, often significantly.

Of course, some haggling over price is typical in any sale, and not everything represented by sellers and their bankers is found to be accurate under close examination. But Bain Capital took the art of negotiation over price into the scientific realm. Once the competitive dynamics had shifted definitively in its favor, the firm’s genuine views about what it was willing to pay — often far lower than first indicated — would be revealed.

And then there is the closing line:

I have no idea how Romney might behave in office. I do believe, however, that when he was running Bain Capital, his word was not his bond.

This guy has clearly been waiting for years to unload on Romney, and this take-down is truly a thing of beauty.

H/t The Shrill One.

A “Black Door” to Co-Opting Occupy Wall Street?

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Glen Ford’s thesis is that the recent involvement of prominent African American clergy is an attempt by the Democratic Party powers that be to co-opt the movement, and I am inclined to agree:

The Occupy Wall Street movement has, to date, “been effective in warding off cooptation by Democratic Party fronts such as Rebuild The Dream and MoveOn.org.” But OWS’s recent alliance with Black clergy-based (and Russell Simmons-backed) Occupy The Dream raises serious questions in this election year. “It appears that Occupy Wall Street’s new Black affiliate is also in ‘lock-step’ with the corporate Democrat in the White House.”

The Democratic Party may have entered the Occupy Wall Street movement through the “Black door,” in the form of Occupy The Dream, the Black ministers’ group led by former NAACP chief and Million Man March national director Dr. Benjamin Chavis and Baltimore mega-church pastor Rev. Jamal Bryant. Both are fervent supporters of President Obama.

Occupy The Dream’s National Steering Committee is made up entirely of clergy, as are its Members at Large, but its secular inspiration comes from media mogul (and credit card purveyor) Russell Simmons, who was a frequent visitor to Manhattan’s occupied Zuccotti Park. Simmons is co-chairman, with Dr. Chavis, of the Hip Hop Summit Action Network, whose website is now mainly dedicated to the Occupy The Dream project. It is through Simmons that the ministers hope to attract entertainers and athletes to Occupy The Dream events.

………

Far from tamping their Obama fervor, the OWS brand equips the “Dream” ministers (and Simmons’ entertainment assets) to accomplish a special mission: to insulate the president from the Occupy movement and the national conversation on economic equality – or, better yet, to make him appear to be part of the solution. If they so choose.

………

We do, indeed, face a test in 2012: Will the Democratic Party be enabled to swallow up the Left – as it does every four years – including the fragile and tentative structures of the Occupy Wall Street movement? And, will the Democrats enter through the Black door?

Let’s be clear, if Obama’s campaign political operatives are not trying to co-opt OWS, they are incompetent, and this seems to be a low risk-high payoff tactic to accomplish this, so I’m inclined to believe that Plouffe’s or Axelrod’s finger prints are on this.

H/t Yves Smith.

Heh.

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It looks like it will be just Romney and Paul on the Virginia primary ballot, because the VA Republican party actually started verifying signatures:

Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who came within a few votes of winning the Iowa caucuses, didn’t get on the ballot in Virginia or the District of Columbia. His campaign also filed incomplete slates of delegates in Illinois and Ohio, which could limit his ability to win delegates in those key states.

Virginia has been a tough ballot to crack for several GOP candidates because the state requires campaigns to collect signatures from at least 10,000 registered voters. Romney and Paul were the only ones who made theballot for the March 6 primary.

Perry sued, and was later joined in the lawsuit by Gingrich, Huntsman and Santorum. But on Friday, a federal judge in Richmond refused to add them to the ballot, saying the candidates should have challenged Virginia’s primary qualifying rules earlier.

Whatever you say about Paul, his campaign has it’s sh%$ together, and Romney, with his high dollar campaign, is on all the ballots as well.

The rest of them are running a junior varsity campaign.

Mitt Wins, Huntsman is Toast

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Basically, Huntsman needed to come in 2nd place, and he’s a distant third:

Mitt Romney swept to victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, turning back a ferocious assault from rivals who sought to disqualify him in the eyes of conservatives, in a contest that failed to anoint a strong opponent to slow his march to the Republican nomination.

Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, won by a double-digit margin, a validation of his strategy to use his neighboring state to cement his standing as the front-runner. The candidates who had hoped to use the primary to emerge as his leading rival fared poorly, leaving a fractured Republican opposition.

“Tonight we celebrate. Tomorrow we go back to work,” said Mr. Romney, who strode into his victory party at Southern New Hampshire University less than 30 minutes after the final polls closed to present himself as the candidate to beat for the Republican nomination.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas, whose candidacy has never concerned Mr. Romney, finished second. Former Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah, who staked his entire campaign here, placed a distant third but pledged to fight on.

A week after winning the Iowa caucuses by just eight votes, Mr. Romney pieced together a coalition of moderate and conservative voters. The margin was more comfortable than commanding, but he will benefit handsomely by having five rivals still competing against one another to emerge as his main opponent as the race moves to South Carolina.

So, it’s now Mitt’s race to lose:

  • Huntsman bet it all on New Hampshire, and lost.
  • Paul won’t win, ever
  • Santorum flamed out, Google Bombed out, lobbyist cashed in out, and crazied out.
  • People now remember that Newt Gingrich is that guy who used to be Newt Gingrich.
  • Rick Perry is too stupid for people who fondly remember George W. Bush.

What will be fun is watching Newt going after Mitt for being a successful capitalist while the Frothy Mixture and Perry compete for the Neanderthal vote, which is big in the Palmetto State ‘Phant primary.

The only question now is whether Perry of Santorum gets outed in an airport bathroom first.

First Ron Paul, Now RuPaul

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Are politicking in New Hampshire:

Drag superstar and reality TV host RuPaul made an appearance on the campaign trail in New Hampshire on Saturday.

Looking spruce in an ice blue tailored wool coat and studious-looking, horn-rimmed glasses, the nearly seven foot tall “Supermodel” singer was “campaigning” in the state. He announced that his goal is to raise awareness that he is not Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), and that he is not running for president. The latter piece of news was met by the assembled crowd with some disappointment.

The International Man/Woman of Mystery then issued a challenge to Ron Paul and all of the other Republican candidates before reminding the crowd, “You better vote.”

If he were in the debates, it would be one for the ages.

The oddest thing here is that if he were running for the Republican nomination, I think that it would actually make it a more reality based community.

We are living in very strange times.

Jon Stewart is Right

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At about 3:30, but it’s worth it to watch the whole thing

You can make fun of Rick Santorum without having to resort to making ass juice/frothy mixture/Google jokes.

There’s simply way too much insanity even without Dan Savages bit of literary genius.

Case in point, he just said that the “American left” “hates Christendom”, because, among other things, they think that the Crusades were an aggression against the Arab world.

Because, the mass slaughter in Jerusalem, and the pogroms and murders that swept through Europe was all hunky dory.

On behalf of my ancestors, who were doubtless murdered and raped by your ancestors, go Cheney yourself.

H/t The Reality-Based Community, who asks the obvious question, “Is he going to endorse the Inquisition next, and expose Voltaire as an undercover jihadist and proto-Marxist?”

Seriously, I’m not sure if Santorum is simply bat-sh%$ insane, if he’s just used to saying this crap because it’s what College Republicans do to tweak people in order to get their juvenile jollies.

Truth be told, it doesn’t matter.  The end result is the same.

This is Not a Sudden Case of Balls

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It’s just that, at least until November 2, Barack Obama is more scared of the Occupy movement than he is of the Republicans, hence his recess appointments today:

President Obama kicked off the election year aggressively, picking a fight with congressional Republicans by sidestepping the Senate to fill the top job at the government’s newly created consumer protection bureau.

He also filled three vacancies on the National Labor Relations Board, which referees labor-management controversies — a priority of his allies in labor unions.

The appointments Wednesday, which had been stalled in the Senate, came as Obama moved to make confronting Congress a central part of his strategy for reelection. His job approval rating remains low, but Congress’ standing is even lower — “as unpopular as Ebola virus” — as one administration aide recently put it. In a confrontation between the two, the president will have the upper hand, White House aides say.

Actually, the NLRB appointments might be more significant, because the Republicans had shut down the board for lack of quorum.

I don’t expect the CFPB doing much, because Obama was dragged into the entire idea kicking and screaming, and his closest financial regulation adviser, Tim “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, hates it, and with Elizabeth Warren effectively neutered by virtue of her running for Senate, which pretty much requires her to be in lock step with the Obama administration, I expect to see a remarkably passive posture from Richard Cordray.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Barack Obama will do the right thing, once he believes that he has no alternative.

Damn!

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Michelle Bachmann has dropped out of the Presidential race.

If Rick “Miss Malaprop” Perry drops out, as seems likely, I may have to start writing, because it’s getting to the point where the snark does not write itself.

The Weirdest Sh*$ Out of Iowa

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A Santorum Salad, Really?!?!

Actually, the weirdest Santorum in Iowa.

Seriously, a restauranteur in Boone has christened their chicken salad a Santorum Salad.

I’m not sure whether or not this guy is aware of the neologism (first link) or not, but that chicken salad does look a lot like I imagine Santorum would look.

Yes, despite my complaints, I’m going to have to post about Iowa today, but this little taste of the surreal makes it feel a little bit better.

It’s Too Close to Call Between Mitt and “The Frothy Mixture.”

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They are still tabulating votes in Iowa, and it’s too close to call between Romney and Santorum,with Paul being a close 3rd:

Returns from 1,703 of 1,774 precincts showed Santorum with 24.6 percent, Romney with 24.5 percent and Paul with 21.3 percent. Santorum had 29,046 votes, Romney 28,928 and Paul 25,121.

It’s pretty clear that, no matter how it turns out, Mitt wins this.

Rick “The Frothy Mixture” Santorum has no funds and no organization, and he won’t play well in New Hampshire, and Ron Paul is … Ron Paul, so it’s now Mitt’s race to lose, regardless of how the next few thousand votes break.

Romney needed to lose, and lose big for someone to be in a real position to challenge him.

Then again, considering my record of prognostication…………

John Stewart Weeps

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Well, it was fun while it lasted, but Newt Gingrich’s numbers are imploding.

Seriously, this makes Rudy Giuliani’s flame-out in 2008 look look like when Saddam set fire to half the oil wells in Kuwait.

PPP notes that, “Gingrich has now seen a big drop in his Iowa standing two weeks in a row.  His share of the vote has gone from 27% to 22% to 14%.”

He’s lost almost half of his support over the past 2 weeks.

His campaign isn’t doing a Dorian Gray, it’s a face melting Raiders of the Lost Ark thing that he has going.

FWIW, I think that the cause of his numbers dropping is not that he is saying batshit insane stuff, but because people are starting to realize that he is doing so as a sacrifice at the church of Gingrich, and that there is nothing that he wouldn’t say to sate his own ego..

One wonders if RuPaul Ron Paul starts getting some coverage of his decades long history of explicitly blatant racism if he wins Iowa.

I’m sick and tired of the press ignoring this, because he gives good article.