Tea party Republican Congressman from Tennessee, Dr. Scott DesJarlais, a physician, is pro-life, and has voted for anti-choice legislation several times, but he’s got an inconvenient problem just one month from election day: It’s become front-page news today that he pressured his mistress—one of his patients, apparently—to have an abortion:
“You told me you’d have an abortion, and now we’re getting too far along without one,” DesJarlais tells the woman at one point in the call while negotiating with her over whether he’ll reveal her identity to his wife. They then discuss whether he will accompany her to a procedure to end the sort of life the congressman now describes as “sacred.”
“If we need to go to Atlanta, or whatever, to get this solved and get it over with so we can get on with our lives, then let’s do it,” Desjarlais says.
“Well, we’ve got to do something soon. And you’ve even got to admit that because the clock is ticking right?” he says at another point.
The clock is ticking on this heel’s time in Congress, is how it looks from here. How could a conservative voter in his district pull the lever again for this hypocritical cad?
BUT THE BEST PART, the best detail in all of this, is that Desjarlais MADE THE FUCKING TAPE HIMSELF! Yes, it appears that he wanted to play the tape of this conversation to his now ex-wife, in an attempt to convince her to take him back. Yeah, that makes sense!
The clip with Newt Gingrich at approximately 1:40 is a fucking classic. Also, notice how Rick Santorum speaks of the multi-millionaire who beat him for the GOP nod with such unbridled contempt. You can tell that he absolutely hates Mitt Romney. Then again who can blame him? Santorum doesn’t even try to hide it. He can’t! (It almost makes me like him, but not quite).
Some Democrat-leaning PAC or The Daily Show or Rachel Maddow needs to make a slicker, nastier version of this puppy, pronto! There’s so much great material to work with.
Have you seen the brand new Mitt Romney ad yet? The one where Mittens tries to show his concern for us average Americans? You know, the little people?
The new commercial has already made its online debut, but as reported by The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, starting Friday, in all of Romney’s media markets, in nine swing states, it will be the only ad they’ll air.
This underscores that the Romney campaign is betting all of its chips on the new approach represented in the minute-long ad, which is about cleaning up the mess made by Romney’s remarks about the freeloading 47 percent, and about reframing the Romney message as a forward looking one. The Dem source says ad buy info indicates that other currently running spots — one hits Obama as soft on China; the other is a positive ad touting Romney’s plan for the middle class — will be replaced by this one
The new ad features Romney speaking directly to the camera; he allows that he and Obama “both care about poor and middle class families.” The size of the buy behind it suggests the Romney campaign sees the need for a major effort to reverse the damage caused by Romney’s disdainful comments about nearly half the country. After a months-long campaign by Dems to paint Romney as uncaring when it comes to working and middle class Americans, video of Romney himself playing to type is potentially devastating. Today’s NYT/CBS poll found that only 38 percent of Ohio voters think Romney cares about the needs and problems of people like them.
The new ad’s acknowledgment that Obama, like him, cares about ordinary Americans also suggests a shift to a somewhat softer approach to the president. While the ad paints a dire picture of the Obama economy, it seems less harsh in tone than Romney messaging that suggests Obama harbors sinister redistributionist leanings that will take away the wealth and health benefits of middle class Americans and hand them out to those other people.Obama’s favorability ratings remain high, and there is no sign swing voters see Obama in the more lurid terms the Romney campaign had been employing, so this may be a shift, too.
The ad also represents a significant reframing of Romney’s message. The previous, backward-looking frame — “are you better off than you were four years ago?” — is replaced in this ad with the forward-looking assertion that we can’t afford another four years like the last four. So the investment in the new spot suggests an admission that the previous framing failed and a heavy bet on this new messaging as his best shot of salvaging his candidacy.
Take a peek, won’t you? I’ll wait. (Note how Romney refers to struggling Americans as if to distance himself from “them,” rhetorically. In the now infamous hidden camera video, he called, uh, “them” “those people.” Richie Mitt just can’t help himself, apparently)
The problem is… Well, the problem is the Democratic rapid response video that really rips the whole high stakes, last resort Romney “I have empathy for ‘them’” rebranding gambit a new asshole.
Imagine for a moment that you are Mitt Romney. Walk a mile in his $3500 hand-made Italian leather shoes. Your team of highly-paid, expereienced campaign professionals have convinced you to go “all in” on just one single very, very important ad to humanize yourself in voters’ eyes and show “them”—“the 47%”—that, oh boy do you really, really care about “them.” All the pre-debate chips are being bet on this one, single commericial that is perceived as the (current) last best hope of turning around one of the all-time worst, most idiotic, painfully inept national political campaigns in all US history. It’s a tall order, but as Sargeant reports, they’re dropping stuff right and left that just didn’t work and placing their hopes on this new 11th hour strategy.
So you’re Romney and you approve this new strategy to show that you’re not a heartless rich bastard like everyone seems to think you are. By George, you’ve got compassion and empathy! This’ll show them!
And then you see the video embedded below. Wouldn’t you just puke blood?
This new anti-Romney commercial is one of the most withering, vicious, nastiest kicks in the nuts that Romney has yet recieved from the Obama camp, and let’s face it, they’ve landed some real body blows already. All of them so far in this election. Now Romney gets to absorb another punch to his throat and his entire ad buy—which hasn’t even started yet—is about to get trumped in the news cycle by this cheap little web video.
It’s hilarious to watch Romney flounder. He seems to have no idea of what to do next. May I politely suggest curling up in a fetal position on the floor?
There’s no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude, but Romney takes it to a whole ‘nuther level!
This is getting really to be… counter-intuitive isn’t it? The whole Mitt Romney “situation” I mean…
Republican political adviser Alex Castellanos (who worked for Romney’s campaign in 2008) told Politico’s Maggie Haberman that when he heard about the Romney team deciding to release the candidate’s tax returns today, hot on the heels of, well, months of stupid moves and self-inflicted wounds, he thought it was a joke:
“At first I thought this was an April Fool’s Joke,” said Castellanos, who tweeted something to that effect at me earlier. “But it isn’t April. I can’t imagine that David Axelrod will now say, I’m glad Mitt put this issue behind him. This will drag Mitt’s taxes back into the debate. And there’s not many days left. I just can’t imagine why they would do this. There are 40 days left and you have now made more of them about Mitt’s taxes….you don’t serve a life sentence and then confess afterward. They’ve taken their beating on this (already) ... I just don’t understand how a (being a) ‘little pregnant’ strategy (works).”
Mitt Romney—“If that is, in fact, your real name”—dude, you are truly the fucking Inspector Clouseau of American politics!
Stephen Colbert pans Mitt Romney’s inept attempt at Hispanic outreach yesterday at the University of Miami-hosted Univision conversations with the Presidential candidates.
Mitt Romney’s VP running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan was booed repeatedly throughout his speech at the AARP convention today. Some of the loudest boos followed Ryan’s claim that the Affordable Health Act “turned Medicare into a piggy bank for Obamacare.”
Ryan’s lying to them. He knows that he’s lying to them and they obviously know that he’s lying to them:
“The first step to a stronger Medicare is to repeal Obbamacare. I had a feeling there would be mixed reaction, so let me get into it. It weakens medicare for today’s seniors and puts it at risk for the next generation. First, it funnels $716 billion out of Medicare to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. Second, it puts 15 unelected bureaucrats in charge of medicare’s future.”
Congressman Ryan has included the exact same $716 billion savings from Medicare in his own infamous “Ryan Plan” budgets. Repealing Obamacare would take away several popular benefits for senior citizens included in the law, such as ending the “donut hole” exemption that required seniors to pay more out of pocket for brand name prescription drugs. And they know it.
Fuck Paul Ryan. What a smug Republican shithead he is.
While the media is busy focusing on the idiotic “47% of Americans are lazy bums looking for handouts” comments made by Mitt Romney in the “secret” videotape from that $50,000 per plate Republican donor luncheon back in May, now that Mother Jones has published the full transcript of the tape, new turds of “wisdom” from Shit Romney are starting to float to the top. Like this one:
“So we can capture women’s votes, we’re having a much harder time with Hispanic voters. And if the Hispanic voting bloc becomes as committed to the Democrats as the African American voting bloc has in the past, why we’re in trouble as a party and, I think, as a nation.”
Just when you think he can’t possibly get any worse, he gets way worse!
The GOP has finally seen that silver bullet. Only it’s not aimed at the guy they were trying to take out.
That it’s a fuckin’ self-inflicted wound, makes this all the more delicious!
Elizabeth Heath tried to get her head around this latest Romney gaffe at Mamiverse, a website for Latina mothers:
Whoa. It’s one thing to say that the Republican Party will struggle without the Hispanic vote. But to say that “we’re in trouble…as a nation” if Hispanics become committed Democrats suggests that Mr. Romney is nationalistic and maybe, just maybe, a little racist. Perhaps he’s worried about the U.S. becoming a nation of Democrats, as Hispanics, who already make up the country’s largest and largest-growing minority, continue to lean Democratic in their politics. Or is he worried about Hispanics taking over and the white males who make up his constituency becoming a minority? One has to wonder.
One does!
Good luck trying to back-pedal this one Mittens. You’re going to need heaps of it.
Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter… start your “spingines.”
SNL‘s parody anti-Mitt Romney ad is pretty hilarious, but the piece already seems a bit outdated with so much humiliating water running under the bridge for poor Mitt ever since it aired…
“This man has no dick.”—Bill Murray in Ghostbusters
Another day, another massive, Matterhorn-sized pile of shit for Mitt Romney to step in. In this case, it was actually some shit with a long fuse that he stomped around in awhile back that was caught on videotape. Today that tape came back to haunt him. Today was the day, as Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce so brilliantly put it, that Mitt Romney “declared a class war on himself. “
In a closed-door meeting with an inner circle of high-end, millionaire GOP donors, Romney let his hair down—as much as he ever does, of course—and testified to his fine-feathered friends that:
“There are 47% of the people who will vote for the President no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this President no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”
Here was Romney raw and unplugged—sort of unscripted. With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don’t contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative. Yet Romney explained to his patrons that he could not speak such harsh words about Obama in public, lest he insult those independent voters who sided with Obama in 2008 and whom he desperately needs in this election. These were sentiments not to be shared with the voters; it was inside information, available only to the select few who had paid for the privilege of experiencing the real Romney.
“Generally you don’t see that kind of behavior in a major appliance.”—Bill Murray in Ghostbusters
He said this shit, too:
My heritage, my dad as you probably know was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico, and, uh, had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this. [Rich donors cracking up]
But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. He lieved there for a number of years. And, uh, uh, I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be, uh ... Latino.
I hope none of you had liquids in your mouth when you read that last one, but I would imagine that whopper of a line left plenty of shorted-out computer keyboards and iPads in its wake.
And best of all, he said THIS:
“We ... we, uh, use Ann sparingly right now so that people don’t get tired of her.”
I can think of at least one numskull Mormon multi-millionaire Republican Presidential candidate who’s going to be sleeping on the couch tonight. You, too?
If Romney is this comically clueless when it comes to talking about his own wife in public, how would Mittens fare with the G8 leaders and NATO? Vladimir Putin probably can’t wait to look deep into Mitt Romney’s eyes and make him piss right in his pants…
I’ve always seen Mitt Romney as “Thurston Howell III” from Gilligan’s Island, but he’s really much closer to another Jim Backus character: “Mr. Magoo”!
Happily, we’ll probably never get to find out what sort of damages Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan would inflict upon America. I am actually starting to give a lil’ credence to those wingnut conspiracy theories that Mitt Romney is a Manchurian candidate sent to infiltrate and then destroy the Republican Party. I mean, this guy sucks! He’s the worst of the worst. How can Mittens even top this latest misstep? Pull his dick out during the third debate?
“This chick is TOAST!”—Bill Murray in Ghostbusters
“Mitt Romney wants to help all Americans struggling in the Obama economy. As the governor has made clear all year, he is concerned about the growing number of people who are dependent on the federal government, including the record number of people who are on food stamps, nearly one in six Americans in poverty, and the 23 million Americans who are struggling to find work,” Romney spokesperson Gail Gitcho said in a statement. “Mitt Romney’s plan creates 12 million new jobs in four years, grows the economy and moves Americans off of government dependency and into jobs.”
AS IF this even begins to address this latest mess. So sweet to watch this shit happen in real time. And it’s not even like I’m “rooting” for the Democrats or Obama to win, I just want to see Mitt Romney and the Republicans lose!
UPDATE: Romney himself finally made a statement about the videotape at a press conference Monday evening, via AP
Republican Mitt Romney says a video clip in which he called nearly half of Americans “victims” was “not elegantly stated” and was “spoken off the cuff.” But he says President Barack Obama’s approach is “attractive to people who are not paying taxes.”
...
The Republican nominee did not disavow the comments but said they were made during a question-and-answer session. He said it was indicative of his campaign’s effort to “focus on the people in the middle.”
Not elegantly stated? Oh my, now aren’t we deluded?!?!
During the presser Romney called for the entire videotape to be released. Mother Jones seems happy to oblige him. MJ reporter Adam Serwer tweeted:
“Mitt wants the full video huh? Well don’t worry, there’s more to come.”
The liberal American Bridge PAC has already hit Romney, hard, over his private remarks with a viral video. Watch until the end:
And at this late stage of the game, Romney has little time, and few options left, to change their minds…
So if money isn’t doing it, and Romney’s personality isn’t winning him converts, what’s left?
The debates. They start in early October, then it’s bam, bam, bam: 10/3, 10/11 (veep), 10/16, and 10/22. They will present Romney with his last chance to gain points from Obama.
However, he can’t score points by playing it safe. If he tries to be nice and gracious and not touch Obama like he touched Gov. Rick Perry in one of those early-season debates, he might earn brownie points, but Obama will remain unscathed.
So he has to attack.
But remember, people think he’s a dick. So Romney has to attack in a manner that doesn’t reinforce the narrative that he’s a dick. And who really thinks Romney has the chops to pull that off? He can’t interact with NASCAR fans or picnicking ladies or British prime ministers without coming off as a dick. He’s now supposed to deftly attack—with a convincing smile—the guy who is standing between him and his birthright presidency?
Meanwhile, Obama can play it safe. He is winning. He can be gracious and accommodating, all the while rising above any nastiness with presidential bearing. He doesn’t need to win these debates as much as not lose them, and that makes his job so much easier.
It seems pretty clear cut. If Romney plays it safe, he continues to lose. He has to throw that Hail Mary. But by going on the offensive, he’ll remind people that they think he’s a dick. Because he is.
Watching Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney and the Marie Antoinette Republicans flailing this hard—like fish on the sand, right?—is such good fun. I’m not that all hot on the Democrats or Obama, but I would very much like to see Mitt Romney’s richie rich nose rubbed in dogshit in November.
Today, we are publishing more than 950 pages of internal audits, financial statements, and private investor letters for 21 cryptically named entities in which Romney had invested—at minimum—more than $10 million as of 2011 (that number is based on the low end of ranges he has disclosed—the true number is almost certainly significantly higher). Almost all of them are affiliated with Bain Capital, the secretive private equity firm Romney co-founded in 1984 and ran until his departure in 1999 (or 2002, depending on whom you ask). Many of them are offshore funds based in the Cayman Islands. Together, they reveal the mind-numbing, maze-like, and deeply opaque complexity with which Romney has handled his wealth, the exotic tax-avoidance schemes available only to the preposterously wealthy that benefit him, the unlikely (for a right-wing religious Mormon) places that his money has ended up, and the deeply hypocritical distance between his own criticisms of Obama’s fiscal approach and his money managers’ embrace of those same policies. They also show that some of the investments that Romney has always described as part of his retirement package at Bain weren’t made until years after he left the company.
Bain isn’t a company so much as an intricate suite of steadily proliferating inter-related holding companies and limited partnerships, some based in Delaware and others in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and elsewhere, designed to collectively house roughly $66 billion in wealth in its many crevices and chambers. When Romney left in 1999, he and his wife retained significant investments in many of those Bain vehicles—he claims they are “passive investments” and that they are managed in a blind trust (though the trustee isn’t blind enough to meet federal standards of independence). But aside from disparate snippets of information contained in his federal and Massachusetts financial disclosure forms, his 2010 tax returns, and SEC filings, the nature of those investments has been obfuscated by design.
When he disclosed his finances to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in 2007, Romney took care to publish the underlying holdings of many funds he invested with—after disclosing his $1 million-plus stake in “GS 2002 Exchange Place Fund LP,” for instance, he listed six pages of individual equities the fund held, from Panera Bread Co. to Tribune Co. But when it came to the Bain investments, he simply listed the value of his investments in odd-sounding entities like “Sankaty High Yield Partners II LP” with no indication of what was inside. In an accompanying note, he claimed that he had tried and failed to get the information: “The filer has requested information about the underlying holdings of these funds and values and income amounts for these underlying holdings. However, the fund managers have informed the filer in writing that this information is confidential and proprietary, and has declined to provide such information.”
That information—for Sankaty and 20 other funds—is now available here, in the form of 48 documents totaling more than 950 pages. They consist predominantly of confidential internal audited financial statements from 2008, 2009, and 2010, as well as investor letters from the same period, for Bain entities that Romney has previously disclosed owning an interest it. Owing to the timeframe—during and after the catastrophic economic meltdown of 2008—some of the investments show substantial losses. One limited partnership had even entered into liquidation as of October 2008 after failing to meet certain payments owed to partners. Others show astronomical gains.
The documents are exceedingly complicated. We don’t pretend to be qualified to decode them in full, which is why we are posting them here for readers to help evaluate—please leave your thoughts in the discussion below. We asked an attorney who specializes in complex offshore corporate transactions, including ones involving Cayman Island entities, to review them and help us understand them. (We also asked the Romney campaign. It hasn’t responded yet.)
After THIS, how the hell is Mitt Romney going to be able to continue stonewalling on his MIA tax returns? Maybe he should just release them right now to, uh, I dunno, change the topic from how Paul Ryan wants old people to starve and die and for women who have been raped to give birth to the rapist’s baby ‘cos that’s what Jesus told him to do?
The idea that these documents are, currently, as I type this, being analyzed by crowd-sourcing is either a fortunate or very unfortunate fact of political life in 2012!
Depends on who you are, I guess. Mitt Romney must be going fucking insane right about now.
Judge Tom Head, a Texas Republican who chairs Lubbock County’s Commissioners Court told a local talkshow on the Fox 34 station that the county needs to increase the property tax rate by 1.7 cents in coming fiscal year so that the sheriff’s department is adequately prepared to fend off the U.N. troops who will be sent to Lubbock County if President Barack Obama is re-elected and “the people” revolt. Yes that’s what he said.
A judge! An important man who makes important decisions about other people’s lives…Via Fox 34:
Head said he and the county must be prepared for many contingencies, one that he particularly fears, is if President Obama is reelected.
“He’s going to try to hand over the sovereignty of the United States to the UN, and what is going to happen when that happens?” Head asked.
“I’m thinking the worst. Civil unrest, civil disobedience, civil war maybe. And we’re not just talking a few riots here and demonstrations, we’re talking Lexington, Concord, take up arms and get rid of the guy.
“Now what’s going to happen if we do that, if the public decides to do that? He’s going to send in U.N. troops. I don’t want ‘em in Lubbock County. OK. So I’m going to stand in front of their armored personnel carrier and say ‘you’re not coming in here’.
Ooooohhh, big man! I love how the Fox newscaster on the Lubbock station looks like he’s about to bust about laughing at Head’s “heroic” bravado. What a fucking idiot, oy vey!
Do you know how people as dumb as Judge Tom Pinhead here get into elected office?
First they decide to run.
Second, more people vote for them than voted for their opponent.
Sometimes more stupid people than smart people vote in certain parts of the country and that would explain why Tom Head is a judge.