Showing posts with label 2012 elections. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label 2012 elections. Show all posts

  • You know, I was starting to wonder where my man Herman Cain ran off to after his campaign's most unfortunate denouement. Turns out he's settling in quite comfortably at Tuffs University, plus he's got his own radio show. Glad he's landed okay, unlike millions of people who are still out of work in a still-uncertain economy.

    If you want to know what Rick Perry and those other schlubs are up to, Lawrence O'Donnell is your guy.

  • It's my understanding that, when a candidate admits socially toxic views, the electorate has a way of shutting that whole thing down. -Random voice on the Internet

    Yesterday, millions of Americans did just that. They shut that whole GOP/Mitt Romney thing down. Now the president can get back to the business of running the country while conservatives dry their powder in ovens and check up on their stocks of canned rations, MREs and 7.62mm x 39 ammo (because 5.56mm is for silly cheese-eating UN sissy boys).

    A few observations during Election Day:

    - I was worried that Florida was gonna do what it did in the 2000 election and fuck things up for everyone. As it turned out, Florida didn't even matter. As soon as Ohio came into the picture, the race was over. And as soon as Colorado came into the picture, Ohio didn't matter any more, either.

    - Women were not amused by the GOP's rhetoric regarding their rights, namely reproductive rights. As it turns out, downplaying things like rape and incest while demonizing birth control and abortion tends to make the womenfolk a wee bit pissed - pissed off enough to turn out in force. The end result? A record number of women are now in the Senate, and guys like Todd Akin suddenly have more time to squeeze in a round or two of golf.

    - Despite all of the shady ass attempts to prevent people from voting, whether it be through voter ID laws, faulty machines or passive aggressive attempts at inconvenience, people are going to put in their two cents on who's gonna run the country. Case in point: my own mother, currently getting up there in years, stood in line for three hours just to make her vote count. It probably wasn't as bad as the woman who voted while going into labor. Or the guy who had a heart attack while voting.

    - Hurricane Sandy might have kicked the eastern seaboard's ass, but it wasn't enough to stop them from voting. Good thing those folks did vote, because there's yet another storm headed their way.

    - George W. Bush rode the re-election wave on 284 electoral votes, which earned him a mandate. Why? It just did, apparently. Barack Obama has no mandate, according to Charles Krauthammer, not even with 303 paltry electoral votes. No, it doesn't compute - that's the point. Even if Obama won all 538 electoral votes, nabbed 85% of the popular vote and got the ringing endorsement of the Founding Fathers resurrected once more, he'd still wouldn't have a "mandate."

    - Mitt Romney didn't even have a concession speech on hand. That's how conceited this guy was. Also note that not once did he mention his opponent by name - he just referred to Obama as "him." You could sense he was this close to shooting a peasant pheasant or two just as soon as he got back home to his palatial digs in PA/Mass/UT/Mexico/Mars.

    - Many white Americans are having a hard time reconciling the president's victory with their all-consuming desire to return the country back to whiteness "greatness." Poor Vicky Jackson had already picked out a nice gravestone for her beloved country. I think it's the same one Jimmy Savile's family picked out before they had it ground up and tossed away for appearances' sake.

    - Everyone hates Nate Silver. That's what you get for showing up pundits and making statisticians look stupid.

    - Donald Trump is making great strides towards pushing himself towards total and complete irrelevance every time he opens his mouth. Makes you wish he reserved his bombasticness for The Apprentice. Imagine Gordon Ramsey getting into political commentary.

    - Despite spending a record amount of money on the 2012 electoral campaign, no amount of money could buy the votes wealthy conservatives needed to get their guy into office and their agendas pushed forward. The Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, Linda McMahon and many others spent ridiculous sums of money - and now they have nothing to show for it.

    - Obama cried a little, and that's okay.

    - This will more than likely be the last time you hear about or see Mitt Romney. After this, he's done.

    Speaking of which, I spent most of my time on Twitter drinking the tears of distraught Republicans who now have to contend with the aftermath of their hopes and dreams, as well as the added prospect of living with themselves and their own hatred and prejudices for another four years. It's where I stumbled upon Vicky Jackson's baleful eulogizing of the coming Great Dark Epoch. Imagine if these people actually had their way and if Romney had won.

    I also stopped listening to pundits a long time ago. It's a waste of my time and they're not telling me anything that I don't already know or can't find out on the Internet. As a result, no CNN/FOX/ABC/NBC on TV. Just independent and local news sources, Tweets, Tumblr and the occasional foray to CNN.com or ABC.com for verification's sake.

    Okay. Party's over. Bradley Manning's still being tormented to the point of madness in a military prison. Julian Assange is still an enemy of the state. We're still wasting lives and money and futures in Afghanistan. We're still murdering Afghan and Paki civilians at an ever increasing rate by remote control. We're still on the hook for any future failure of a fundamentally unreformed banking system. We're still a prison industrial nation.

    I hate people who do this. I really do. It's annoying as fuck and it should stop. At least those are my first thoughts seeing someone go off on this tangent.

    President Obama is still in office. Keeping him in office was Job One. Now with a bit more political capital, he can now work towards unfucking all of the above, something that would not be happening under a Romney administration. But at least you'd be able to nurse your thumb in a corner over the above. Some people just like doing that and that alone. Remember the concept of "beautiful suffering."

    Also remember that saying "fuck the world, I'm getting off" is what led to the awful, awful blood bath that gave the GOP the House in 2010.

    By the way:

    This country has a long road ahead of it. And that's all I'll say about that.










    Wait, did Puerto Rico just become a state?

  • President Barack Obama was projected the winner of the presidential race over Mitt Romney by NBC.

    The president scored a critical win in Ohio.


  • See this man? This is your President. Some of you might not think he's "your" president because he doesn't look like you. Rest assured, he is. Since January 2009, he's done a lot of work keeping this country from hurling itself off the fiscal and socioeconomic cliff and dashing itself onto the rocky shores of austerity and insanity. This is in spite of an entire political opposition that apparently wants the country to do just that.

    Here's all of the things this man has done since 2009, courtesy of The PCTC Blog. The man works hard. He's grayed tremendously since starting this job. That's a sign of stress a hard worker. Vote for this man.


    See this man? This is not your President, although he really, really wants to be your president. That would be a bad idea. He's supported by a political opposition that's dedicated the past four years to pissing on the president's head. They don't like him. They really, really don't like him. But they like this guy. Sorta. At least they like him enough that they're using ballots for playing cards, making them disappear like magic. They reappear in garbage cans. No one knows how or why. Do not vote for this man.

    This man is a consummate liar. He likes lying a lot. In fact, he's lied so much about so many things that people are now wondering whether his ethereal form actually occupies a bizzaro-world where every single one of the man's lies are actually truth. Perhaps he's a very honest man in that world. If you asked this man if he took a poo last night, he'd probably lie about that, too. Do not vote for this man.

    This man isn't all that concerned about the poor, those living from paycheck to paycheck or those barely in the ranks of the middle class. Those are not "people." Corporations are people. This man isn't all that comfortable campaigning around poor people, especially poor people who hate the president for some odd reason. He needs their votes, even if they reek of Natural Ice, Tyson's pre-cooked hot wings and strong flatulence. Do not vote for this man.

    He doesn't like being questioned. Or people looking up his tax information. Or people wondering why he has to keep his money in the Cayman Islands, away from America and all the poor people. When asked why did he give thousands of jobs to poor people in Mexico when poor people in America could have had those jobs, he shrugged, smiled and muttered something about "free markets." He calls himself a "job creator." Most of those jobs involve a 2,000-mile commute across ocean. Do not vote for this man.

    He doesn't like women. Actually, the political opposition that supports him doesn't like women. I'm pretty sure he's ambivalent about them, although he once claimed to have blenders binders full of women. That sounds pretty uncomfortable, but I'm sure it's more comfortable than taking a transvaginal probe to the vagina, or so I've been told. He doesn't like minorities, either. Minorities don't like him, so it evens out. Do not vote for this man.

    If you are a woman, a poor person, minority or any other ordinary American, do not vote for this man. This man is bad and the political opposition supporting him are worse. They are not good people. They will throw the country off the fiscal and socioeconomic cliff and clink wine glasses as the country splatters into bloody chunks on the rocks below.


    This is a ballot box. This is where your vote goes. Yours may not look exactly like this, but that's okay. A nice group of people are supposed to count these and tally up the scores, so another group of nice people can be elected and vote for one of these men. Some people would rather use them for magic card tricks. Others want to keep you away from the box, period. Don't let those people keep you away. Even old ladies are determined to get to the ballot box. Don't get outdone by an old lady.

    Don't stay at home, either. The nice mailman won't pick up your ballots anymore and watching the nice people count votes on TV without your vote being there sucks. Go to the ballot box and vote.

    The above is a public service announcement from Mack Lyons, sole proprietor of Different Day, Same Shit, formerly a Fortune 500 company until someone at Fortune realized it was not an actual company. These things happen a lot.
  • If anyone was looking for an "October Surprise," Hurricane Sandy was it. Even though the storm had been downgraded from a Category 1 hurricane to a mere tropical storm, it was still the worst natural disaster to strike New York City and the rest of the Northeast U.S. in over a hundred years. As of yesterday, over 4.8 million people in over 15 states are still in the dark. Major portions of NYC's subway infrastructure remain flooded. Over a hundred homes in Rockaway burned to the ground shortly after the storm. Places like Hoboken, N.J. not only have to deal with a lack of power, but overflowing sewage and gas shortages, as well.

    This is what the NYC looks like shortly after it was hit by Hurricane Sandy. Pictures say far more than words can.

    After this weekend, there's only a single day standing between Americans and the nearest voting booths -- at least for those who aren't reeling from the devastation. There's plenty of talk about how Hurricane Sandy could tip the electoral scales in favor of Mitt Romney, since not only are many voters in the traditionally liberal Northeast are too busy cleaning up after Sandy, but whatever infrastructure that could have been in place for the elections...well, it might be a bit of a mess, depending on where you are.

    Earlier, both Dick Morris and Karl Rove were crowing over a projected "landslide" for the Republican contender. Post-Sandy, the sight of President Obama "being presidential" and the resulting poll data is making poor Dick second-guess himself. Nevertheless, these are dangerous times and I fully expect the Romney campaign and the GOP to do everything they can to tilt the election results in Mitt's favor, even if he continues to do an outstanding job of eating his own wingtips every second syllable.

    Hurricane Sandy wound up a brief conversation piece between me and a close family member. We both talked about the potential impact it could have on President Obama's re-election chances and how millions of people unable to head to the polls can tip the elections in one direction or another. She thought it would be best to simply postpone the upcoming elections until the bulk of the Hurricane Sandy cleanup work was done. Sandy has already put a damper on early voting in many areas and I can't see how those affected are going to be in any condition to head to the polls -- that is, if there are any polling precincts set up nearby.

    She's not the only one wondering if Election Day should wait. The main problem with any postponement is a legislative one, unless there's some legal gymnastics involved:

    When people go to the polls on Election Day, they aren't voting directly for their choice for president or vice president. Instead, they are voting to select representatives -- or "electors" -- to the Electoral College, the body that actually determines who will be president and vice president.

    The Constitution gives Congress the authority to determine "time" of choosing those electors. In 1845, Congress passed a law that set the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November of every election year as Election Day across the country.

    The same law also gives states some leeway in picking electors to the Electoral College. But to exercise that leeway, a state must have "held an election for the purpose of choosing electors," and "failed to make a choice on the day prescribed by law." When that happens, the law says "the electors may be appointed on a subsequent day in such manner as the legislature of such state may direct."

    But the law passed by Congress setting Election Day only allows a state to pick its electors on a later date if it has already held an election on Election Day and "failed to make a choice" on that day.

    So a complete statewide postponement would arguably violate the 1845 law, the 2004 report suggested. But the report also pointed out that the Supreme Court has emphasized the role states play in selecting the presidential electors, so a state might be allowed to postpone an entire statewide vote for president in emergency circumstances like a hurricane or other natural disaster.

    Not only do you have this, but there are many who'd argue that creating an exception to the rule in this one case will open the door to more exceptions and eventual abuse in the future. Then there's the prospect of people complaining over a region and a largely liberal one at that receiving preferential treatment. They'll cite examples like Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that devastated much of the Mississippi River Valley back in 2011. However, those disasters occurred nowhere near the presidential election timetable, not even close.

    I'm torn -- as much as I want to make sure everyone gets the opportunity to cast their vote come Tuesday, I hate thinking about the Pandora's Box that'll get thrown open in the event of a postponement.
  • America has always had a distinct problem with its ethnic relations vis-a-vis blacks and whites, from the moment the first dark-skinned person set foot on this nation's soil for the sole purpose of bonded labor to today, as a descendant of once-removed relations of those people now sits in command of the most powerful nation on the planet. It never had to be this way, but once the founding fathers chose to ignore the issue of granting liberty to only a narrow subset of individuals that mainly included themselves and others like them, the die was cast. The fact that a large swath of Americans were happily indoctrinated to see their darker relations as inherently inferior beings and encouraged to uphold institutions that religiously enforced their lowered status in addition to their own was merely icing on the cake.

    As much as I hate saying it, "racism," or America's inability to cope with "clearly inferior" human beings in positions of power and influence is thoroughly baked into the core of this nation. Bringing attention to this fact  is a dangerous endeavor, as is bringing attention to how many American individuals would sooner destroy certain institutions rather than see them occupied by those of certain skin hues. It's an irrational and frightening feeling brought on by a staggering combination of fear and a certain loss of power or personal standing. The last thing certain people want to experience is having their own personal status drop or stay stagnant as the star of the nation's punching-bag and draft-mule classes rise over their own.

    Entire political wings have, in various guises, cultivated, promoted and endorsed acts that kept those of a certain hue embedded firmly in their assigned roles as expendable labor for the wealthy, an easily accessible whipping boy for the well-to-do and emotional vent and distraction for the lower classes. From the 1940s to today, the safe harbor for politicians and their supporters who sought to maintain this "status quo"  shifted from the Democrats (the former home of the Dixiecrats) to today's Republican party, an evolution that accelerated in pace after the signing of the Civil Rights Act by Democrat president Lyndon Baines Johnson and soon-to-be Republican president Richard Nixon's use of the infamous Southern Strategy.

    Which brings us to the following clip of MSNBC's "The ED Show," featuring United States Army Colonel Lawrence B. Wilkerson as a guest. Wilkerson, an older white man with considerable military experience and credentials, makes the obvious known. It's a fact that would face scathing amounts of disputation if the below words were to have been uttered, as they have before, by people of a certain hue.


    My party is full of racists, and the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House, has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as Commander-In-Chief and President, and everything to do with the color of his skin, and that's despicable.

    Wilkerson was former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, who himself has lent his reasoned support to current U.S. President Barack Obama's re-election efforts. Wilkerson's comment came in response to New Hampshire Governor John Sununu's opinion of Powell's presidential endorsement:

    "Frankly, when you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to wonder whether that's an endorsement based on issues or whether he's got a slightly different reason for preferring President Obama," Sununu said.

    When Morgan asked him what that reason is, Sununu said, "Well, I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

    Suggesting that a person of color's support for another person of color is based solely on their solidarity via skin hue isn't just ignorance squared on its face - it's also one of the oldest methods used by white Americans to discount and discredit people of color in high positions. To suggest that someone got where they are in life solely on their skin color is supposed to call their actual abilities and skills into question. It also quietly reinforces the incredulousness of black Americans being capable of high-level work -- according to prescribed beliefs reinforced over and over again throughout time, they're only suited to physical labor, menial servitude and occasional entertainment.

    The funny thing about Sununu's comment would be its absence had Powell simply endorsed Mitt Romney. Not only would that had been in keeping with Powell's political affiliation, it also would have kept him firmly in the "one of the good ones" column as far as many of the unreconstructed were concerned. Having "one of their boys" (in more ways than one) stray off the plantation (in more ways than one) to support "one of their kind" is an unforgivable breech that must be responded to. In lieu of whips and foot amputations, Sununu's cutting remark served as the verbal whip to quickly but obliquely put Powell back in his preassigned place.

    Meanwhile, a recent Associated Press survey highlights the remarkable levels of racial antagonism that remains against people of color, most notably black Americans. As it turns out, a constant "anti-black" narrative running in the background of the nation's consciousness for centuries on end takes great difficulty to shut down:

    In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

    "As much as we'd hope the impact of race would decline over time ... it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago," said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

    Experts on race said they were not surprised by the findings.

    "We have this false idea that there is uniformity in progress and that things change in one big step. That is not the way history has worked," said Jelani Cobb, professor of history and director of the Institute for African-American Studies at the University of Connecticut. "When we've seen progress, we've also seen backlash."

    Obama has tread cautiously on the subject of race, but many African-Americans have talked openly about perceived antagonism toward them since Obama took office. As evidence, they point to events involving police brutality or cite bumper stickers, cartoons and protest posters that mock the president as a lion or a monkey, or lynch him in effigy.

    Wilkerson's correct and so are countless others who've said the same thing but without the added gravitas of being an older white male of prestige and authority - there are scores of people out there who, by their own sheer ignorance and embedded programming, simply cannot and will not abide by the presence of Barack Obama or any other black American as their leader. It simply goes against the embedded programming that declares him and his kind to be inherently inferior in mind and morals to ordinary, upstanding white Americans, causing them to overlook the moral deficiencies in their own people as long as it means keeping the blacks in their prescribed social roles, in turn keeping themselves a rung or two above them in regards to social standing.

    This is the sort of attitude that had people courting a collection of political caricatures during the primaries and afterwards, throwing their lot in with a capricious, dishonest individual of thin moral character who finds far more comfort among his fellow landed gentry than with ordinary American citizens. Unfortunately, a significant portion of white Americans would rather cast their lot with wealthy people who at least look like them (with the hope of receiving whatever crumbs fall off their table) than to stand with others of similar socioeconomic stature due to these preconceived notions. It's helpful to note that the average poor white southerner kept throwing his lot in with the wealthy planters who saw them just as they saw their black counterparts: as labor and resources to be exploited as needed.

    The fact that many people are busy psyching themselves up to defend the social status quo and, at the same time, relieve themselves of the triggers to Extreme Color-Aroused Emotion, Ideation and Behavior Disorder (ECEIBD), is a scary and depressing sign of the lengths we'll have to go towards ensuring anything resembling ethnic equality. It'll have to start with several hard and long rounds of mental deprogramming, a task that this nation never seems to be up to.
  • The GOP has a knack for utilizing fear as a prime motivator for their constituents' support. As such, there shouldn't be any surprise over the following story:

    Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told a rally in northern Ohio on Thursday night that Chrysler was considering moving production of its Jeep vehicles to China, apparently reacting to incorrect reports circulating online.

    "I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair America will win."

    Kinda ironic for a man who once specialized in moving companies overseas to tap into the average worker's fear of seeing their job hop on a slow boat to China just to get their vote come Nov. 6.

    Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

    The Bloomberg story, though accurate, "has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. work force. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats," Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri said.

    "Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation."

    So the Romney campaign takes a story about Chrysler considering building Jeeps in China for the Chinese market and spins it into a yarn about Chrysler moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. to China. That's one way to get a few votes from the low-information set.

    Personally, I want to know how moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. and into China would work. Unlike cheap electronics, toys and plastic lawn furniture, shipping a fully assembled car overseas is pretty intensive work. Having a $2.50 plastic toy manufactured on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat into the U.S. is one thing. Having a $25,000 American car built on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat back into the U.S. raises plenty of questions (i.e. "What the hell where you thinking?")

    The Japanese, Korean and German auto manufacturers eventually moved production of their U.S.-bound products to the U.S. -- when it comes to cars, it's usually much easier to build your products where you sell them instead of undergoing the expensive and time-consuming task of shipping them to overseas markets. Economies of scale and all that.

    This is just one of many stories our friend Mitt might be glad to develop "Romnesia" over.

  • I know, I know. I haven't even offered an analysis of the last presidential debate. So many people have done a better job of that, that it seemed like it wasn't worth doing.

    In short, President Obama followed Crazy Joe Biden's lead and dragged Mittens around the stage by the ears on a great many issues, especially on Benghazi. I'd like to see more of that in this debate. After all, it deals largely with foreign policy.

    And because yours truly is dealing with a monumental work load outside of the blogosphere, I most likely won't be attempting anything resembling a live tweet of the debates. Instead, I simply leave you with this live broadcast of the final 2012 presidential debate (which will soon be replaced with an archived version after the live broadcast ends).

    We can only hope that the verbal blunders keep rolling in on Mitt's side. I wouldn't mind seeing "binders full of women" being turned into an autotuned rap song at some point.


  • Mitt Romney's desperate pivot to the center was highlighted by the president earlier today during a Virginia rally. First, we had the "Etch-A-Sketch." Now, we have "Romnesia:"

    “Now that we’re 18 days out from the election, ‘Mr. Severely Conservative’ wants you to think he was severely kidding about everything he said over the last year,’’ Obama said in a speech devoted almost entirely to attacking Romney, and during which he gave little indication of what he would do in a second term if reelected.

    Building in intensity, Obama continued: “He’s forgetting what his own positions are, and he’s betting that you will, too. I mean, he’s changing up so much and backtracking and sidestepping. We’ve got to — we’ve got to — we’ve got to name this condition that he’s going through. I think — I think it’s called ‘Romnesia.’ ”

    At first, the Romney campaign thought the president had discovered Mitt Romney's long-lost mixed-race daughter from an illicit fling back in 1982 or thereabouts. After the initial confusion wore off, the RMoney team wasn't all that pleased with the president's zinger.

    “America doesn’t need a comedy routine; it needs a serious plan to fix the economy,’’ Romney senior adviser Danny Diaz wrote on Twitter.

    You can't really call $5 trillion in tax cuts over ten years a "serious plan" to right the economy. Personally, I don't think Romney has a plan anymore. He certainly doesn't have a clue...


  • A certain group of liberals complained about Joe Biden's drubbing of Paul Ryan during the VP debates. Not because he won the debate, but because of the way he won it. By derisively mocking the living daylights out of the Republican congressman and VP candidate, he crossed a line that these folks can't bear to see crossed.

    "The smile, the laugh, I think a lot of people maybe view that and think that he was a little too hot, too aggressive, maybe condescending," said NBC's David Gregory of Joe Biden's debate performance.

    A little too hot. Too aggressive. Perhaps condescending. These are traits that are perfectly acceptable in GOP candidates but anathema to Democrats. If the situation was reversed, everyone would be wondering why Biden couldn't have been a bit more aggressive. As I said before, you just can't win.

    President Obama couldn't afford to be anywhere above lukewarm, anywhere near aggressive or even the least bit condescending, lest he be deemed an "Angry Black Man" or worse, an "uppity negro/ni*CLANG*."  Crazy Joe had to harness that "Angry Black Man" on his behalf, essentially.

    Hopefully, the president won't let his past performance dictate what happens during this debate. President Obama has to bring his A-game this time, otherwise the results could have disastrous consequences.

  • On Friday, a man was photographed by Getty Images at a rally for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket in Lancaster, Ohio, wearing a T-shirt that read "Put The White Back In the White House." Conservatives now say the man may have been a liberal plant designed to make Romney look bad, and the GOP nominee has disavowed the racist T-shirt. On Saturday, a Romney spokesperson told Buzzfeed the shirt is "reprehensible and has no place in this election."

    A "liberal plant" is probably one of the lamest excuses offered so far. Besides, Mitt Romney doesn't need some guy in a T-shirt to make him look bad, since he's spent his entire campaign making himself look like extruded crap.

    What's more telling is how certain segments of this nation's population would rather choose a capricious, tone-deaf and arrogant man who cares nothing about the ordinary population save for their ability to generate greater wealth for him and his peers over a man who's made some serious strides towards helping Americans of all walks of life, for the sole reason of his ethnic makeup. You give these people a knife and tell them a black man was living inside of their stomachs and they'll stab away with sheer, uninhibited gusto.

  • You have to give the Republican National Committee credit for knocking out a new attack ad straight after the Vice Presidential debates. While Vice President Joe Biden's derisive chuckling made for lovely Twitter fodder, this was probably why so many people wanted ol' Crazy Joe to mask his contempt for veep hopeful Paul Ryan. Then again, there are a million things the RNC and others could use to create an attack ad.

    Perhaps Joe Biden should have been as somber and as stone-faced as possible. I'm sure people will ding him for being too "aloof" or "unresponsive." One way or another, you just can't win.

    Keep in mind the RNC haven't yet found anything substantive to bang Biden on, hence the above. Meanwhile, Think Progress was keeping tabs on the entire debate with a series of wonderful live posts. Great for calling out the loads of malarkey Ryan tried throwing at Biden and the audience.
  • Poor President Obama was not a trial lawyer; he was a law professor, and it showed last night. When Mitt was telling lie after lie in the thin air of Denver, (28 and counting) all he could do was stare at him like a deer caught in the middle of the night on a country road. And, to his credit, the more Mitt got away with it, is the more he lied. The shady narcotics cop had the law professor on the run.
    In so many words, the Field Negro lays down how President Obama wound up looking outgunned during the Denver debate. Personally, I don't think the president was prepared for the never-ending stream of bullshit that came his way during the debate, nor was he quite ready for the jaw-dropping speed and tenacity of Romney polka dancing his way towards dead center.

    As for winners and losers, there weren't any. Romney's forceful performance, much of which consisted of the well-heeled Massachusetts governor running roughshod over debate moderator Jim Lehrer, might have convinced the media, Teabaggers and low-information voters that he was the winner, but the metric fuckton of lies and half-truths dispensed during the debate will be his undoing down the road. At best, Romney's performance earned him a Pyrrhic victory.

    Meanwhile, Obama's performance seemed factual, but feeble. As many others mentioned, President Obama isn't much of a tenacious debater and his performance trended more towards the Field Negro's quoted description. Perhaps he was trying as hard as he could to keep his inner Angry Black Man's black ass from booking an instantaneous flight from D.C. to Denver. Some people don't like it when that guy shows up.

    This is just one debate out of many. Next up: Joe Biden takes on Paul Ryan. Without any Angry Black Men around to gum up the works, that debate might have more of the satisfying knock-down drag-out scrapping many people were expecting.

    If you want more commentary on the Presidential Debate, look no further:
  • Not shown: the termination notice Mitt Romney gave him during the morning meeting.
    Like most Americans and possibly others around the world, I grew up with Sesame Street. Big Bird, Ernie and Bert, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch and that weird Snuffleupagus thing. As a young kid, Sesame Street was just one of the many programs I watched on a regular basis on PBS. My mother figured planting me in front of a TV tuned to PBS was a slightly better alternative to just planting me in front of a TV, period. Given her druthers, she would have rather had my nose buried in a book.

    So seeing Mitt Romney, a man who's already expressed a willingness to dispose of employees as easily as one tosses a used tissue, proclaim a love for the big yellow tuft of feathers in one breath and crap in the bird's nest in the next irked me a bit. I like Big Big and I sure wouldn't say the following to a guy who hosts one of the premier news and debate shows on PBS:

    I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I’m not going to -- I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it. That’s number one.

    Mitt's little golden moment shouldn't surprise anyone. No, I haven't wrapped my head around how PBS became a line item that requires a Chinese title loan to keep afloat, either.

    If Fred McFeely Rogers was still alive, he'd probably have some choice words for our friend Mitt. Then again, perhaps Mitt would try to bully Mr. Rogers around before the shame subroutine on his neuronet processor kicked in. Fortunately, we have Neil deGrasse Tyson around to send a few of those choice words his way:


    For the record, 60 percent of PBS funding comes from private donors and grants, which explains the yearly PBS donation drives. In 2010, federal funding accounted for a mere 12 percent of revenue. For 2015, Congress plans to set aside approximately $445 million for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the entity that handles the funding for PBS and NPR. In the grand scheme of Congressional budgets that include ludicrous things like corn subsidies and multi-billion dollar military equipment, the money allotted for CPB is the literal equivalent of the grocery store coupon you clipped out of the newspaper. It's not even worth the penny you just vacuumed up by accident that time.

    And yet, it wound up being an expenditure that has to be stopped.

    I doubt Mitt would do something as stupid as "kill Big Bird." His words, like so many others, are red meat for an audience who gets off on the thrill of ideological gore. They already see PBS as an indoctrination tool wielded by liberals to teach kids subversive social skills like sharing, empathy and tolerance. The arts, public programming, most forms of education and programs that benefit the poor are looked at with an evil eye by conservatives. I'm sure corporate execs don't have much love for PBS or Big Bird, either. After all, it would be a major coup for corporations if they could somehow can the "no commercials during the show" format in favor of...what you already see on decidedly non-public television.

    Make no mistake, this isn't about cutting waste. It's all about indulging in a unique type of "tough love" fantasy that involves conservative father figures whipping America's soft behind with a wire hanger. It's a fantasy continuously cultivated by Republicans who don't mind coasting on a wave of bootstraps-induced cheerleading from their die-hard constituents, many who believe they shouldn't be indulging in "any of that faggot hippie shit." These are the very people who will not only kneecap the futures of their own children just to run a "liberal pussy," "red diaper doper baby" or a "Muslim Socialist Kenyan Marxist nig*CLANG*" out of office, they also believe that the guy they vote into office genuinely gives a fuck about them, even as their state whittles down their Medicaid coverage to a bottle of aspirin, a semi-sterile lance and a few bandages.

    To think that Mitt Romney genuinely cares about your situation is like a drug addict believing his dealer genuinely has his best interests at heart.

    This is the approach we have to take to get America to a balanced budget. The president said he’d cut the deficit in half. Unfortunately, he doubled it. Trillion-dollar deficits for the last four years. The president’s put it in place as much public debt -- almost as much debt held by by the public as all prior presidents combined.

    The above conveniently forgets the continuing debt created by engaging in two major military operations overseas, tax breaks largely benefiting a sub-section of Americans and foreign nationals whose wealth remains out of national circulation and a devastating economic downturn that's resulted in high unemployment rates and dim prospects for today's job-seeker, the very same people who are being told to pull up their bootstraps, suck down those cheap tins of cat food and get back to finding a job during a jobless recovery.

    $15 trillon dollars seems like a big amount to someone who's looking at, say, $15,000 of credit card debt. The difference between the U.S. debt and your debt is that 1)the U.S. has the ability to print as much of its own scrip as it wants to pay down that debt and 2)you don't. And if you did, you'd be up for federal charges right about now. Unlike Greece, the U.S. has the ability to momentarily print its way out of debt if it wanted. For obvious reasons, it's not a very good idea, but the option is there. So is taxation and the elimination of loopholes, wasteful subsidies and pork spending, but we all know how popular those options are with most folks.

    Balancing the budget on the backs of Big Bird and Elmo won't do shit except give die-hard FReeper-types a penile salute at half-mast and GOP candidates something to point out to their constituents as they make their reelection runs. Cutting and slashing puny programs like public broadcasting might satisfy those who just can't wait for the ideological coat hanger to thwack America's hind parts, but it won't do anything to solve the problems plaguing this country.

  • For anyone who missed the first presidential debate of the quickly-closing election year, here's the full debate courtesy of YouTube and the New York Times.

  • After working hard to pin a non-existent voter fraud scandal on the Democrats, which led to a wave of voter ID laws in several states, the GOP is now caught knee-deep with its pants down in a voter fraud scandal of epic proportions. Since then, the GOP has scuttled early voter registration in Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia, all five being crucial swing states.

     And BTW, it looks like you won't be needing photo ID to vote in Pennsylvania this election:
    In response to a recent state Supreme Court remand, unanimously voiding his previous August ruling, Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, issued his new ruling [PDF] today on the state GOP's polling place Photo ID restriction law. o He enjoined just a part of the law, but it effectively strikes down the most onerous provision of it --- but only for this November's Presidential election. There were also a number of troubling caveats with what he left in place, rather than striking down the entire statute as the petitioners had sought.

    As there has been some confused and confusing reporting on the ruling today, here is where --- barring any additional court challenges --- the law stands at this moment, just over one month from Election Day...

    Voters will NOT have to show a state-issued Photo ID at the polling place in order to cast a normal ballot. Poll workers MAY ask voters for Photo ID, but they may NOT keep them from voting if they do not have one. Voters will NOT have to cast a provisional ballot if they do not have state-issued Photo ID. Hopefully that clarifies the key points of today's ruling, which is being misreported in some quarters. o Also of note, the court refused to enjoin the Commonwealth's tax-payer funded $5 million ad campaign, as written into the statute for the purposes of "educating" the public about the polling place Photo ID requirement (even though it no longer practicably applies for this election.)

    Not what everyone wanted or expected, but it's a start.

    Meanwhile, yours truly awaits tonight's presidential debate. You can check 2012 Election Central for the latest details, including live streaming. As much as it pains me to do so, I'll refrain from mocking him until he starts actually making gaffes on live television. :)
  • As the 2012 Presidential Election campaign enters the home stretch, the folks over at the Daily Caller dug up a 2007 video of President Obama addressing a mostly black audience at Hampton University. In the video, the president is shown empathizing with the audience while talking about how racism played a role in how Hurricane Katrina victims of a certain complexion were treated:



    In a video obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama tells an audience of black ministers, including the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, that the U.S. government shortchanged Hurricane Katrina victims because of racism.

    The people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much!” Obama shouts in the video, which was shot in June of 2007 at Hampton University in Virginia. By contrast, survivors of Sept. 11 and Hurricane Andrew received generous amounts of aid, Obama explains. The reason? Unlike residents of majority-black New Orleans, the federal government considers those victims “part of the American family.

    Bad Obama, bad! You're not supposed to hint the truth about the U.S. government's shabby treatment of hurricane victims in New Orleans. You're not even supposed to get too chummy with your fellow black folks either. You're not "their president" - you're America's President™, damnit! What if they get all uppity angry and start rioting like they did back in L.A. that one time? And who the hell told you you could start praising that awful, divisive Negro Jeremiah Wright again? How dare you...you....you (Marxist/Socialist/Ni*CLANG*/Kenyan)...

    Looks like the president kept it a bit too real for the comfort of certain Americans. Didn't this man know he had to remain as racially neutral as possible and essentially stay away from being that stereotypical "controversial, angry black man"? That means keeping well away from "radical" people with "inflammatory rhetoric." Come to think of it, any time prominent black Americans broach the subject of mistreatment by a majority-white American government, it's deemed too "radical," "inflammatory" or "divisive" for discourse and quickly hushed up under a torrent of gasps, guffaws and "How dare you"-type phrases.

    The fact that this video "surfaced" this late in the presidential campaign suggests the GOP is practically out of gas. Rigging the vote didn't work, demonizing the president on social, foreign policy and economic grounds didn't work either, and now, it looks like Romney's done wonders strangling his own campaign to death. The only thing left, preferably before poor Mitt finishes the job by bombing in today's debate, is to whip out the race card and hope the low-information, low-IQ voters become color-aroused enough to make a Hail Mary play in Romney's favor.

    It won't happen. With President Obama bagging up most of the swing states, maintaining a comfortable lead in Electoral College estimates, it appears to be lights out for Mitt. Instead of having a debate tonight, news outlets all over should broadcast a mock funeral for Romney's campaign, with a casket signifying his campaign hopes and dreams placed in a gilded wagon. Rafalca will have the honor of pulling the gilded wagon to the shores of Massachusetts, where the casket can be placed on a funeral pyre, set aflame and allowed to drift away with dignity.

  • Lady Anne Romney, the ceremonially ordained help meet of The Most Noble Willard Milton Romney of the Massachusetts Commonwealth, aspirant to the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic, has officially retired to her chambers after a most unfortunate episode involving herself and the ungrateful peasantry littering the countryside.

    Previously, Lady Anne suffered a bout of exhaustion while condemning the odious actions of the peasantry made against the Honorable and Right-Leaning Noble, who only sought to look after the interests of the impoverished common peoples in addition to his own. After taking to a nearby fainting couch, she bravely ventured alongside her husband, the ever-noble Sir Willard, into the desolate wilds of Omaha. Omaha's better known for being the only place where a noble cannot find a decent steak, despite the presence of a nearby plant that specializes in delivering horsemeat to starving peasants nationwide, with said meats labeled as "steaks."

    "Good thing we didn't bring Rafalca along for this journey," noted Sir Willard, who made a mental note of where to send the currently healthy dressage horse for a "dignified retirement" when the time came.

    Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding her attempts to put the savage peasantry in their proper place caused her servants to abruptly cancel many of her scheduled appearances and interviews with cheaply dressed and foul-smelling common reporters. As soon as House Romney makes its return to the commonwealth, Lady Anne plans to retire to her chambers for the duration of Sir Willard's campaign for the position of Chief Administrator of the American Republic.

    Meanwhile, peasants in the inconsequential territory known as Iowa have already begun the process of voting, which apparently entails hitting themselves with hammers. Votes are tallied by the local bloodletter counting the number of lumps that appear on the voter's head after being struck -- one lump for the treacherous liar-in-chief, Baraq Hussein Superallah Obama al-Kenya, two lumps for an "independent" candidate consisting of a straw-stuffed scarecrow with a picture of the trickster outlaw Ron Paul and three or more lumps for Sir Willard.

    The day nearly turned uglier than usual when one of Sir Willard's campaign aides was found wantonly attacking voters with a hammer. When interrogated, she claimed that she merely wanted to "move the voting process forward in her lord's favor." She was later slaughtered and turned into a lovely assortment of "Omaha Steaks."
  • Mitt Romney is America's gift that keeps on giving, day after day. First off, the following video footage unearthed by Mother Jones dating back to 1985, detailing Bain Capital's goal of identifying companies with "potential and hidden value," purchasing significant stakes in said companies only to "harvest them at a significant profit."


    The fruits of Mitt Romney's profit harvest:


    Unlike the former steelworker interviewed in the second video, at least Romney does not have to worry about being strapped for cash. From 2005 to 2010, he made a sizable $25,000,000 from his foreign investments and income. The idea of a businessman making a tremendous amount of money from strategic investments and well-placed financial bets isn't a bad thing in of itself, as long as it isn't done in a capricious manner that's directly hostile to American interests...


    Being out of touch and out of tune with the financial interests of ordinary Americans, what Mittens himself termed as the "47 percent," is a clear indicator of how unfit this man is for the position of the nation's chief administrator.

    Meanwhile, recent polls from the Huffington Post show President Obama comfortably in the lead for electoral votes, 332 to Romney's 191. The president is also on track to sewing up critical swing states including Florida, Ohio, Colorado and North Carolina. At this point, the election might turn into a cakewalk for Obama and an absolute blowout for Romney. That doesn't mean Democrat voters should be complacent and coast as they've done in 2010. There's still plenty of work to be done between now and November 5.

  • In lieu of anything resembling actual content, here's a PSA from Samuel L. Jackson encouraging everyone who's still passive about the upcoming presidential election to please, pretty please, wake the fuck up.

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