There is no better way for me wake up with a smile on my face than on a morning when there is fresh Republican schadenfreude awaiting me.

In a follow-up letter to Mitt Romney’s campaign manager, Matt Rhodes, who accused the Obama campaign of using Romney’s tax returns as “the core message of your campaign,” Jim Messina, from Obama’s camp, replied with the following, hilarious “Catch 22” proposal

Dear Matt:

I am writing to ask again that the Governor release multiple years of tax returns, but also to make an offer that should address his concerns about the additional disclosures. Governor Romney apparently fears that the more he offers, the more our campaign will demand that he provide. So I am prepared to provide assurances on just that point: if the Governor will release five years of returns, I commit in turn that we will not criticize him for not releasing more—neither in ads nor in other public communications or commentary for the rest of the campaign.

This request for the release of five years, covering the complete returns for 2007-2012, is surely not unreasonable. Other Presidential candidates have released more, including the Governor’s father who provided 12 years of returns. In the Governor’s case, a five year release would appropriately span all the years that he has been a candidate for President. It would also help answer outstanding questions raised by the one return he has released to date, such as the range in the effective rates paid, the foreign accounts maintained, the foreign investments made, and the types of tax shelters used.

To provide these five years, the Governor would have to release only three more sets of returns in addition to the 2010 return he has released and the 2011 return he has pledged to provide. And, I repeat, the Governor and his campaign can expect in return that we will refrain from questioning whether he has released enough or pressing for more.

I look forward to your reply.

Jim Messina

Obama for America Campaign Manager

If this isn’t the political “Fuck you, asshole” equivalent of Ron Jeremy asking if he can “just put the tip in,” I don’t know what would be. Poor Matt Rhodes with all of that egg white all over his face. (Oh… that’s not egg white?)

And if you haven’t heard yet, Mitt Romney will pay an effective tax rate of 0.82 percent under his running mate Paul Ryan’s budget proposal for millionaire and billionaire tax breaks, while the rest of us make up the difference! Pretty sure this is a point the Obama campaign will be highlighting A LOT over the next 86 days.

 
A terrific older essay by Esquire’s Charles P. Pierce on how fucking insane Republican Party has become (it appeared in the magazine’s May 2012 issue) has been resurrected on reddit/r/politics. I must have missed this one when it went around the first time, but it has not dated in the least since then (if anything it’s more true with each passing day). A gem, courtesy of one of the very best political writers in America today:

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the Republican party, root and branch, from its deepest grass roots to its highest levels, has become completely demented. This does not mean that it is incapable of winning elections; on the contrary, the 2010 midterms, as well as the statewide elections around the country, ushered in a class of politicians so thoroughly dedicated to turning nonsense into public policy that future historians are going to marvel at our ability to survive what we wrought upon ourselves. It is now impossible to become an elected Republican politician in this country if, for example, you believe in the overwhelming scientific consensus that exists behind the concept of anthropogenic global warming. Just recently, birth control, an issue most people thought pretty well had been settled in the 1960s, became yet another litmus test for Republican candidates, as did the Keystone XL pipeline, to which every Republican presidential candidate pledged unyielding fealty despite the fact that several prairie Republicans and an army of conservative farmers and ranchers are scared to death of the thing.

In Washington, there is no leadership anymore, no “Republican establishment” to which anyone can appeal. The ferocious strength of faith-based know-nothingism in the party’s base has resulted in a stubborn refusal to adopt even those ideas — like an individual mandate for health care, or cap-and-trade as an energy policy — that began as Republican ideas.

In the states, we have seen a staggering overreach on the part of Republican governors in the Midwest regarding labor rights, wildly restrictive voter-ID laws aimed at solving a problem that doesn’t exist, immigration statutes that are leaving lettuce to rot in the fields because nobody’s left to pick it, and a welter of preposterous antiabortion statutes. And behind all of that, a party base that has constructed its own private history, its own private language, its own private logic, and its own wholly rounded private universe.

That’s how Sarah Palin can tell people that Barack Obama wants to bring us “back to days before the Civil War” because Obama once hugged Derrick Bell, a law professor at Harvard. That’s how an insurance-friendly health-care bill can be declared to be socialism when it’s not being called the first step toward fascism. That’s how Mitt Romney came to tie himself in a bowline trying to run for president, even though he was the only real candidate in a field of crackpot poseurs, and even though he was running the only real campaign as opposed to tent revivals, exercises in brand maintenance, and extended book tours. Too late did Romney realize that the path to the nomination led through an alternate reality.

This was a development long in the making, and one of which we may well never see the end. It began with the vicious, truthless campaigns run by the National Conservative Political Action Committee in the late 1970s. This initiated the creation of a conservative network that was outside the formal party structure. To this was added independently financed think tanks, Christian colleges and (later) Christian academies and organized home schooling, and conservative boot camps that produced young people, and young candidates, whose primary allegiance was to conservative ideology and not to the Republican party. Eventually, as was proven by the failed candidacies of Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, which helped lose the Republicans a golden chance at controlling the Senate as well in 2010, these people cared less about whether the party succeeded than they did that their ideology was kept pure and their private universe invulnerable. In trying to control the uncontrollable and to appease the insatiable, forcibly locked in with itself, like the Beales in Grey Gardens, the party gradually lost its mind.

That last sentence is quite simply… prose perfection. Pierce deserves a Pulitzer prize based on that line alone*.

He concludes:

The Democratic party has an obligation to beat the Republican party so badly, over and over again, that rationality once again becomes a quality to be desired. It must be done by persuading the country of this simple fact. It cannot be done by reasoning with the Republicans, because the next two generations of them are too far gone.

The whole thing is most definitely worth your time. While you are there, you should bookmark the Esquire Politics blog, it’s an essential daily read for political junkies.

His post this morning about Harry Reid and why he’s letting it rip so hard on Mitt Romney is also a must read.

Let’s Stop Being Upset with Harry Reid Already (Esquire Politics)

(*If it were up to me, I’d award a Pulitzer to Charles P. Pierce, if for no other reason, his snarling use of an all-purpose, southern-fried epithet my grandmother used to employ with great disdain: “dipshit doodlebug.”)

 
Stephen Marks, the well-known Republican provocateur and author of Confessions of a Political Hitman is back. Marks’ latest stunt is FightBigotry.com, an FEC registered Super PAC that aims to stick it to President Obama for “his disturbing, yet crystal-clear pattern of tacitly defending black racism against white folks before and since being elected president.”

He/they have an ad:

The Obama administration has injected race into the presidential campaign. Obama Attorney General Eric Holder recently said – with no argument from the president – that their white critics are motivated by race. Implying whites are too stupid to have honest disagreements with the president without being racist is in-and-of-itself racist against whites, reinforcing Mr. Obama’s disturbing pattern of tacitly defending black racism. …

Obama’s attorney general said pursuing the New Black Panthers does a great disservice to whose “who risked all, for my people.” So it’s okay for his people to commit racial crimes? In 2009, President Obama defended his friend Henry Louis Gates after a racist altercation with police, telling a white officer he wouldn’t speak to him but would speak to his mama. Mr. Obama’s response? “The Cambridge police acted stupidly.” …

Mr. President, you ran as the candidate of change. But one thing has not changed—your tacit defense of racism against white folks, despite receiving nearly half the white vote to win the presidency.

How many undecided voters do you reckon this ad will sway? It’s aimed squarely at a red state demographic that the GOP has had in the bag since the day they were born and weaned on Chick-fil-A and is unlikely to make ANY converts. As in none, zero, zip. It’s a complete waste of effort and money.

On the flipside, how many people will watch this and roll their eyes at how craven and desperate the GOP seem to be getting?

I don’t think this ad is going to have quite the effect Stephen Marks anticipated, unless a torrent of ridicule was what he was aiming for! If anything, it helps Obama!

Second-rate Lee Atwater wannbe Marks claimed that he was retiring from politics in 2008. He should have stay retired if this is the best thing he could come up with. Pathetic.
 

 
Life should be good for Mitt Romney, but the multi-multi-millionaire Republican just can’t seem to catch a break. Ever. After a brutal week and a half (on top of a brutal month and a half) that saw him called a “wimp,” “the American Borat,” and a racist for his dumbshit musings on Palestinian culture, Romney probably thought that his mittadventures abroad—meant to shore up his foreign policy gravitas—would at least win the booby prize of taking the spotlight off of his MIA tax returns….

It didn’t happen that way, did it?

I like the way Alternet’s Joshua Holland phrased it:

“Mitt Romney knows how to do a cost-benefit analysis, and he’s determined that it’s better to be dogged by reporters for failing to release his tax returns for the duration of the 2012 campaign than it is to make the documents public.”

On the other end of the spectrum, conservative pundit George Will made a similar observation on ABC’s This Week:

“The cost of not releasing the returns are clear. Therefore, he must have calculated that there are higher costs in releasing them.”

A “cost-benefit analysis,” I’d imagine is exactly how the MBAs in the Romney campaign looked at the situation. Anyone with even a remote interest in the matter knows that there has to be SOMETHING in those returns that is so toxic, so damaging to Romney, that a sober decision was made to stonewall the press! Extraordinary! Who in their right minds would try to get away with something THIS DUMB? “No matter what they throw at us, we say nothing, and we don’t release the returns.” This calculation, it would seem to me, was a hope against hope (and common sense) that events (like a mass murder, the Olympics, the Jackson family) would overtake the “Release your tax returns, Mitt” news cycle.

A news cycle that even saw several prominent Republican leaders say that they thought Romney should release his tax returns! Good luck with this one, Mittens. You’re going to need it.

The birthers didn’t stop even after Obama showed them his long form birth certificate. The matter of his MIA tax returns is not going to go away for Romney, nor should it. When you consider just how feverish and over-the-top the speculation has already gotten, it’s all the more remarkable that they haven’t just released the damn tax documents already. I mean, seriously, how bad can they really be?

Plenty bad, apparently, how else to explain that Romney hasn’t released them after all of the pain he’s sustained?

Governor George Romney, Mitt’s father, is practically THE national politician who started the tradition of releasing many years of tax returns. “One year could be a fluke, perhaps done for show,” he famously said in 1968, a remark that has come back to haunt his son!

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made his decidedly “loose-lipped” statement that an acquaintance of his who has investments at Bain Capital told him that Romney paid no taxes whatsoerver for a decade. Although this scenario seems highly unlikely, that didn’t slow Reid down from trolling Romney mercilessly with this scurrilous gossip, as The Las Vegas Review Journal reported:

Sen. Harry Reid caused a stir this week when he told an interviewer that Mitt Romney hasn’t released more of his tax returns because “he didn’t pay taxes for 10 years.” On Wednesday, Reid doubled down on the charge.

In an interview published Tuesday, Reid said an investor in Bain Capital, the former private equity firm of the Republican presidential candidate, told him in a phone call that Romney had paid zero taxes.

“Now, do I know that that’s true? Well, I’m not certain,” Reid told the Huffington Post, declining to identify his source. “But obviously he can’t release those tax returns. How would it look?”

His poor father must be so embarrassed about his son,” Reid said, referring to then-Michigan Gov. George Romney making public 12 years of his tax returns when he ran for president in 1968.

Reid also suggested that Romney’s suspicious withholding of his tax returns would bar him from getting a Senate confirmation for a Cabinet post. This is a pretty serious thing for the Senate Majority leader to say, and no matter what you think of Reid’s politics, or even if you are offended that he was obviously just baiting Romney with malicious hearsay, that last bit is undeniable…  He wouldn’t get confirmed for a Cabinet post!

And although I laughed out loud when I read what Reid had said—I’m someone who wants to see Romney and all Republicans defeated and defeated badly, but I’m no Democrat, either—the stark truth of the matter is that whatever percentage of Mitt Romney’s income he paid taxes on, from zero to whatever it really is, his effective tax rate is undoubtedly going to be a helluva lot less than you or I pay on our mere mortal incomes because Mitt’s only going to be paying capital gains taxes on his pot of gold. Probably about HALF of what the rest of us little people pay.

Do ya think this information will thrill the GOP’s blue collar base, who probably have no idea what the capital gains tax is, but who will only see spectacular unfairness?

That alone would sink his battleship, of this I have no doubt, but what else could be in those returns that is so bad that it merits having to withstand a steady barrage of shit being flung in Romney’s direction on a daily basis? The only way to end this Mitt-storm would be to release the returns, but APPARENTLY, based on ALL THE AVAILABLE EVIDENCE it’s still better for him to stand there all shit-covered. Go figure! It must be pretty damaging if they’re this steadfast in their refusal to release the tax docs. And again this only turns the heat up more. The longer this brouhaha over Romeny refusing to release his tax returns goes on, the worse we can assume it is.

The thing is this information probably IS going to come out and come out soon—those tax returns (23 years’ worth) were put in the hands of the McCain campaign’s VP vetting committee back in 2008, so you can be as sure as shit that they are “around” and are just waiting safely in a vault “someplace” before they are put into the hands of the highest bidder.

One would assume that Mitt’s tax documents are in the possession of the Obama campaign, too. (Not that I have any insider information, it just stands to reason, does it not? Then again, if they did have them, what are they waiting for? I suppose timing is everything!).

There’s only one way for Mitt Romney to be able to in any way control his narrative and stage manage the (inevitable) release of his tax documents and that is to do it now and to do it himself before some other party beats him to it. Any expert consultant on public relations “damage control” would see where this was going to end and surely Romney has been told this and is well aware of what the refusal to release his returns has cost him.

And yet here we are.

See how this works? That’s what I mean by Chinese fingercuffs: The more Romney struggles against the inevitable, the worse he makes it on himself. It’s a highly unusual position, historically speaking, for a presidential candidate to have put himself in, I think all Americans of all political stripes can agree on this.

Below, new Obama campaign ad takes aim at Mitt Romney’s “ideas” for reforming the tax code. Yours go up around $2000. For millionaires, like Romney, well their taxes go down. Sounds fair, right?
 

Further reading:
The Tax Trap Springs Shut on Romney (New York)

 
Money can’t buy you friends, but it can buy you new (nonexistent) Twitter followers. Just ask Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney!

Yep, it would appear that Mitt Romney’s startlingly inept presidential campaign is at it again. Today’s mishap? Buying up fake Twitter followers to give the appearance that Romney’s lackluster social media fortunes (at least in comparison to Obama’s over 17 million followers) might be turning around… but not just a few, a few football stadiums’ worth!

The Romney camp must be kinda new at this stuff. How else to explain how Romney saw his Twitter followers spike with over 100,000 new followers added within 24 hours (and not the 1000 to 5000 new followers Romney’s account normally gets)? His best day EVER was gaining about 9000 new followers in April. Peek You analyzed the Twitter accounts of the Republican presidential contenders in 2011, and found that only 26% of Mitt Romney’s followers were actual human beings! (Amusingly, 92% of Newt Gingrich’s followers were fake accounts.)

This is what you might call a statistical anomaly.

There are other ways to describe it, too, of course…

Via Little Green Footballs:

Check the number of followers, then watch as it increases by a hundred or so every time you reload the page. If you look at all these followers, they seem to have major trouble with spelling simple English words, have names that sometimes seem to be random assortments of syllables, and have no (or very few) followers themselves.

At the current rate, he’s adding about 10,000 followers every hour.

Strangely, a great many of Mitt Romney’s new followers, for some reason, have tweeted this gibberish:

“Lmao lucky there was no time left on the clock lol home boy dead hit dat half court shot”

Search for that word salad on Twitter and look who comes up. Some of these “people” haven’t tweeted even once since last year and yet TODAY they all just up and decided to fire up their moribund Twitter account, follow Thurston Mitt and then tweet inane shit like that?

Kids these days, right? Wasting their time on that Twitter, posting nonsense like “Lmao lucky there was no time left on the clock lol home boy dead hit dat half court shot” when they could be watching Internet porn or playing video games. I mean, what gives?

How ridiculously low-brow and stupid Romney’s Twitter followers seem to be would be alarming IF THESE PEOPLE REALLY EXISTED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

If you can’t even manage a fuckin’ Twitter account, or delegate better than THIS, how you gonna run a country, Thurston Mitt?

Meanwhile, against all evidence to the contrary (see chart below) the Romney campaign is denying that it purchased any Twitter followers!!!
 

 

 
After the past week of just painfully pathetic public prat-falls capped off by the devastating new Obama TV spot released over the weekend that left Mitt Romney’s patrician glass jaw smashed into tiny bits, you’d have to imagine that the Tea party-led rightwing shock troops, having pinned ALL of their post-2010 electoral hopes and dreams on the deeply flawed shoulders of one Thurston Howell III Willard Mitt Romney, is more than a little worried.

Who wouldn’t be? The man is an excruciating embarrassment as a candidate. Mitt’s a self-parody who jumped the shark before he even became the official nominee! What a “Debbie Downer” on the GOP morale he must be! It’s hard to keep rooting for the home team when the quarterback is such a witless plonker, isn’t it? The GOP is terrific at getting the vote out, but will the faithful line-up to vote for a tax-dodging plutocrat with Cayman Island bank accounts like Mitt Romney? If you know, for sure, that your vote will count for nothing, would you even bother making the effort to vote? If the very act of voting is perceived as a waste of time? What if it’s a little rainy that day? Can even a superior ground game on election day (the GOP always has a better ground game, always—it’s a lot easier when your base voters are easily-herded, authoritarian-loving sheeple) make a difference with Mittens? It will be interesting to see. My gut tells me there will be lower GOP turnout this year than in 2008. Not that much lower, but lower, crucially lower.

Mittens looks like a sad, ineffectual “Richie Rich” who just had his pants pulled down in front of the entire class and then a plate of school lunch spaghetti dumped over his head (Karma’s a bitch, Thurston!). Romney seems undignified, unsure and weak. He’s (quite obviously) the worst candidate one of the two parties has nominated since hapless Democrat Michael Dukakis back in 1988.

THIS bungling sacrificial lamb in khakis is the best candidate all of that sweet, sweet Republican money can buy? Mitt Romney? Seriously?

After last week, it wasn’t just the Democrats and Independent voters who were asking that question, the Republicans are asking it aloud now, too.

Scanning the rightwing blogshere in the aftermath of that weekend YouTube bomb Obama lobbed into Romney’s lap (more a nuclear warhead), it’s incredible to the extent that the rightwing is wringing its collective hands over “the Romney problem”: From FreeRepublic’s redneck red staters to Breitbart editor John Nolte (who called the Obama ad a “kill shot” aimed at Romney), let alone East coast “establishment” Republican stalwarts like William Kristol (the man who extolled the virtues of Sarah Palin to the McCain camp, don’t forget) and the increasingly barmy George Will (Why does anyone care what he thinks? Why the hell did I just mention him if no one forced me to???) Republicans, clearly, are starting to hit the panic button.

Even the dumbest, doofiest Fox News-watching flag-waving, red, white and blue Republican true-believer dipshit can recognize a loser when they see one, smell the blood, and predict the inevitable November outcome as they take a look at Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney. Romney’s GONNA LOSE and the entire country knows it, or at least strongly suspects it. Even Romney must realize his performance is getting panned and why. The guy has NO GAME, zero, none, no charisma, apparently no empathy, just… bales of money. It won’t be nearly enough. I’ve never seen a poorer-looking national candidate in my life. (Michael Dukakis must be watching his fellow former Massachusetts governor with glee as Romney erases his reputation as a nightmare national ticket political punchline with each newly reported misstep and ineffectual response to Obama’s repeated kicks to his balls. (“Is (fill in the blank) the ‘Mitt Romney of 2___?” will be a cliche in the punditry for years to come, mark my words).

So what happens next? Well, this could get interesting.

Memo to the mainstream media: It probably won’t.

Among credible Republicans who is gonna be dumb enough to want the gold-plated booby prize that an open convention—something that was discussed for MONTHS leading up to Romney’s week from Hell—could bestow upon them? Newt Gingrich must be having quite a good “I told you so” chuckle, not that a desperate GOP is (ever) going to be desperate enough to give that slimy amphibian another look.

Cain, Santorum, Perry… you all probably shouldn’t sit by the bat-phone holding your breath, either, fellas.

Who could or would step up for the good of the Grand Old Party, to carry that tarnished brand’s sword in November, even unto certain career-ending defeat, if Romney were to be pushed aside? Besides mentally deficient, unhinged attention seeking halfwits like Sarah Palin, Allen West, Michele Bachmann, Steve King, Louie Gohmert, etc., etc. who is that, ahem, white knight going to be? Well, not one of these folks. It’s useless speculation.

Ron Paul? He’d take the sword into battle, but it will never be offered to him. Not worth discussing him, either. They won’t even let him speak at the convention and that seems to be the big reason he ran, to influence the GOP platform. Not gonna happen.

Rep. Paul Ryan? Rep. Eric Cantor? Chris Christie? Bobby Jindal? Jeb Bush? Scott Walker? Think any one of them is jealous of the nationally televised dick-stomping Mitt Romney is getting? Marco Rubio knows he’s not ready, even for the VP slot. Maybe John Boehner will run? Orin Hatch? Who then? Someone you’ve never heard of? Will James Baker III come out of retirement at 82? John Sunnunu? Is a picture starting to paint itself?

WHO among the Republicans save for Mitch Daniels or Tim Pawlenty—would even have a tiny chance of taking enough blue states to flip the race if pulled in at the last minute to replace Shit Romney? Christie is the governor of one, but as a former resident of the Garden State myself, I wouldn’t even bet on Christie getting a second term. His popularity is already dropping. Besides that, any smart Republican would just stay out of it until 2016, it just stands to reason. This go round is a strategic non-starter.

Thaddeus McCotter?

Fred Karger, maybe?

HEY, WHAT ABOUT DONALD TRUMP!?!?!

John McCain?

My point, if there is one, is that the Republicans have no plan B. Any speculation that there will be an open convention, I think, is utter poppycock. There is no one on that team that can beat Obama. There is no one on that team with half a brain that really wants to try. They’re stuck with Mitt Romney, what choice do that have now? I hate to say it—I mean I really, really hate to say it—but Newt Gingrich was 100% right about Mittens and the GOP should have taken his advice and looked for a Romney alternative while there was still time. Not that I think they should have picked Newt (he’d have been slaughtered) but it’s so apparent what a loser Romney is, that, in truth, practically ANYONE would better.

If someone offered you—at a great bargain, too—a lotto ticket guaranteed not have the winning number, would you buy it? Look how many Sheldon Adelson bought and now he wants to buy some more. I say let him!

(I used to think that Citizens United decision was the worst thing that could happen to this country. Now I’m looking at it more as a “give ‘em enough rope” kinda scenario. Many Republicans might tend to agree with me by the time the 2012 election cycle is over. A billion dollars spent advertising a faulty (Fawlty?) product such as the candidacy of a buffoon like Mittens is a billion dollars spent reminding the American voters why they don’t want this blue-blooded nincompoop in the fucking White House. “Hey smell this, it smells like shit” amplified with a billion dollar advertising spend might backfire badly with a derp like Romney topping the ticket…)

The Obama campaign has defined Mitt Romney in the eyes of America as a whiny blue-blood with too much money made from sucking the blood of the little guy. Maybe a felon? Sounds about right to me. That classic commercial is so smart, and so vicious that it is positively thrilling. It’s what the Democratic base wanted to see and what John Nolte fears it was: a “kill shot.” Tell me that Obama doesn’t look like Muhammad Ali about to take down well, take down Thurston Howell the fuckng third? What else can really be said about this situation?

And the best part of it will be the batshit crazy reichwing reaction everyone is bracing for after Romney is crushed in a landslide defeat. How long will it take until after the vote is in before a crazed sheriff from Arizona or a freakish fuck like Rick Scott of Florida is shooting his mouth off on Fox News about election fraud and that’s the next new dumb dumbly dum-dum thing we’ll have to listen to until 2016???

A wasp’s nest got stirred up in 2008 that still won’t get put to rest during the second Obama term, and expect full retard from the GOP in 2016, but I’m getting ahead of myself…

 
Although Drudge Report and other rightwing media outlets have been reporting that Mitt Romney is considering former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as his vice presidential running mate (in a vain attempt to drown out the massive Mittstorm Romney currently finds himself in the middle of, perhaps?), Romney himself declared that he would pick only a pro-life running mate at a South Carolina candidate forum in September of 2011:

Moderator: Gov. Romney, will the person you chose as your vice presidential running mate be someone who shares your pro-life and pro-marriage convictions?

Romney: I certainly imagine so, I haven’t made and selections in that regard … [as I look around at the people I would consider] I would expect that they would all be pro-life and pro-traditional marriage … but this is an important enough issue that the person that I would select in that position would share my views on those important issues.

Host: So more than just expectation — would share those views?

Romney: Yes … that person would share my views, yeah.

Someone had better break it to Mittens that Condoleezza Rice is pro-choice.

The rumors that Rice is going to get the GOP VP slot have been seized upon by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Peggy Noonan, the WSJ, WIlliam Kristol and everyone’s favorite dingbat dipshit, Sarah Palin. Truly the selection of Rice would have been a brilliant one, but how is Mittens going to square the fact that she’s pro-life with his pledge and the fact that the religious right would be furious at him???

Here’s what Condoleezza Rice told Washington Times correspondent Bill Sammon after she described herself as “mildy pro-life” to him in 2005.

Sammon asked her “But it sounds like you do not wish to change the laws that now allow (abortion)...”

“Well, I don’t spend my entire life thinking about these issues. You know, I spend my time really thinking about the foreign policy issues. But you know that I’m a deeply religious person and so, from my point of view, these extremely difficult moral issues where we have—where we’re facing issues with technology and the prolongation of life and the fact that very, very young babies are able to survive now—very small babies are able to survive—these are great moral issues.

What I do think is that we should not have the federal government in a position where it is forcing its views on one side or the other. So, for instance, I’ve tended to agree with those who do not favor federal funding for abortion, because I believe that those who hold a strong moral view on the other side should not be forced to fund it.”

Not at all an unreasonable position, but when has the Republican party ever been about reasonable?

When Sammon pressed Rice and told her that in order to become a Republican president, the applicant for the position must be firmly pro-life, Rice replied:

“I’m not trying to be elected.”

And in case Romney didn’t get the message, this morning the Susan B. Anthony List — a pro-life advocacy group — sent TPM a video clip of Romney at that 2011 South Carolina candidate forum. He might have forgotten, momentarily, that he’s supposed to be pro-life, but trust me, the rigthwingers are going to remind his ass, but quick!

Why would Rice want to get herself involved with the clownjob Romney campaign, anyway? Her place in history has already been set. No matter what one might think about her years serving in the Bush administration, she’s not an undignified, or unintelligent person. Mitt Romney may need Condi Rice, but she certainly doesn’t need him!

It’s not been a good week for Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney has it?

And in case you missed it, Rachel Maddow took Romney’s head off last night over the Bain lies. And the Boston Globe refuses to retract their reporting. Big fun.There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude.

 
WHAT did Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney THINK was going to happen when he stood there and told seven million African-Americans that he would take away their healthcare???

Applause??? He’s lucky he wasn’t punched in the fucking face.

Romney has the BEST team of political advisers money can buy. Obviously.

BONUS: Check out Romney’s advisers helping their candidate deal with his “white man problem.” (This is the video that all of the wingnuts are hilariously condemning as “racist” today (white on white racism, don’t you know???  It’s really got their panties in a twist to see their guy mocked this… um… easily!. Video by The Message, a new progressive online media hub.)
 

 
I love watching Republicans playing the absolute WORST possible hand they could have been dealt. There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude. Those assholes were caught so off guard, and it has been bust-a-gut hilarious to watch them scramble. Thurston Howell III Mitt Romney and “Team Backwards” are royally fucked, so what’s their plan? ANOTHER “symbolic” repeal vote!

You lost, GOP clown boys… Now move on, you pathetic dickheads.

NOPE, that’s not gonna happen!

The Hill: 120 Republicans Introduce Bill To Repeal The Health Care Mandate
Just hours after the Supreme Court upheld the requirement to buy health care insurance or face a penalty, 120 House Republicans proposed legislation to eliminate the mandate. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), called the mandate a tax, since that is how the court justified keeping it around. The Supreme Court said the government had no right to require the purchase of health insurance under the Commerce Clause, but said the mandate and its penalties could stand as a tax on people who choose not to buy health insurance.

Politico: The Republican Recipe For Repeal
Republican hopes to repeal the health care law may come down to a bank shot: A GOP sweep in November and a simple Senate majority—along with some arcane budget procedures—could kill the individual mandate in 2013. The House will hold a symbolic vote to repeal the law on July 11, but the real long-term strategy for rolling back the law is already under way. Republicans are stoking voter anger over the law until Election Day, which they hope will produce a Mitt Romney presidency and an all-Republican Congress. And it ends by employing budget rules that would allow a fast-track repeal with a 51-vote majority in the Senate, circumventing a Democratic minority and potential filibuster.

CBS News: Cantor: Health Care Repeal Vote Coming July 11
The Supreme Court gave some validation to the Affordable Care Act on Thursday when it declared the law constitutional, but House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is ready to move forward with yet another House vote to repeal the controversial law. “We know that most of the American people don’t like this law,” Cantor said on CBS’ This Morning Friday. The House, he said will “look towards the kind of health care people want,” which he said is “patient-centered.” Cantor said that the Republican-led House will take up a repeal vote on July 11th, after Congress comes back from its July 4th recess. The House first voted to repeal the law in January 2011, soon after Republicans took control. The move, however, was essentially symbolic .

Exactly HOW MANY American families with dependent children under the age of 26 do they really think are going to vote for them this year? Even some of the staunchest older Republican voters are going to rethink their commitment to the “party of Reagan” between now and November, if only so their young adult grandchildren won’t be thrown off their parents’ health insurance. Many of them won’t go to the polls at all, preferring not to vote against their party, but not wanting to vote against the benefits their own families will be receiving as a result of healthcare reform.

It might surprise the Republican leadership, that for many red state voters, standing up to the black guy isn’t their highest priority. Their families are.

Methinks, the comically flailing GOP might want to do some “internal polling” on the matter! Having to watch their leadership and their glass-jawed nominee dig an even deeper hole for themselves must be very depwessing for old school Republicans to witness. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place and none of them saw this coming! Liberals and conservatives alike were shocked by yesterday’s SCOTUS decision, there is no denying it, but it’s plain for all to see that the GOP had no “Plan B” by their flat-footed response and scheduling of a July 11 public hissy fit! They must want to be mocked by late-night comedians, judging from their behavior.

It’s fun to watch the Republican Party engaging in a Mexican standoff with itself. This quagmire will be very difficult for them to wiggle out of before November. Casting yourself as the party who wants to pull the rug of healthcare out from under a public who is only too well aware that the guarantee of employer-provided insurance is a thing of the past, is a difficult position to be put in, but they did it to themselves, plain and simple. And now they have to deal with the consequences of that.

If you look at the incredible zig-zag trajectory of the political landscape after just 3 1/2 years of an Obama presidency, it’s striking to see how how truly “transformative” of a figure he’s been, just NOT in the way it looked like he would be on January 20th, 2009…

Below, hapless-looking lick-spittle waterboy to the rich and powerful, Eric Cantor, lets the American people know which side of the class war he and his party are on. God, I hate this guy’s fucking face….
 

 
Caption this…

(When I first saw this, I actually thought the shadow on Boehner’s suit was a piss stain.)

Behold the face of a fuckin’ dummy

Matthew Davis, an attorney in Lansing, Michigan—and the former spokesperson for the Michigan Republican Party—sent out an email this morning that posed the question “Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?” now that the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Obamacare.

Davis sent the email just moments after the Court’s decision was announced to conservative activists and he even sent it off to several media outlets.

Is Armed Rebellion Now Justified?

Implicit in Benjamin Franklin’s fabled response at the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention was a dire warning: That the Republic would one day devolve into tyranny unless we the people prevented it.

In 2008, we the people elected Barack Obama as president, and the 100-year progressive trek to tyranny begun in 1912 with Woodrow Wilson’s election was complete. It cannot be said too many times — for the purposes of emphasis and clarity — that the Constitution was possible ONLY AFTER the American Revolution; and that the war itself would not have been possible without the collective agreement, as so eloquently articulated in the Declaration of Independence, that the course of human events will sometimes justify one group of people to sever themselves from their oppressors.

In other words, America itself was possible only after its people summoned the will to risk their lives and their futures — as well as those of their children — for a freedom they did not enjoy but knew was their gift from God. Along with their desire to be free came their willingness to engaged in armed rebellion for their freedom.

If government can mandate that I pay for something I don’t want, then what is beyond its power? If the Supreme Court’s decision Thursday paves the way for unprecedented intrusion into personal decisions, then has the Republic all but ceased to exist? If so, then is armed rebellion today justified?

God willing, this oppression will be lifted and America free again before the first shot is fired.

Davis added his own personal note saying, “… here’s my response. And yes, I mean it.”

Ohhhhhh big man talkin’

Clearly Davis wanted the attention this will bring him. Let’s hope he gets what he so richly deserves!

Via Michigan Capital Confidential

 
No moss grows under Republican feet!

WASHINGTON—Citing a mutually shared vision of health care in America, congressional Republicans and the deadly bone-marrow cancer leukemia announced a joint effort Wednesday to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the historic new bill that extends health benefits to 32 million Americans nationwide.

“Republicans have no greater ally in this fight than leukemia,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), who was flanked by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), and the abnormal increase in white blood cells. “Denying insurance to Americans with preexisting conditions and ensuring that low-income Americans stand no chance of receiving quality health care are just a few of the core beliefs that the GOP and leukemia share.”

“And believe me, if anyone is angrier than the Republican Party that children can no longer be denied coverage for having preexisting conditions, it’s leukemia.” DeMint continued. “We’re a match made in heaven.”

In the coming weeks, Republicans and leukemia will travel the country in an effort to diminish support for the increasingly popular bill, which GOP sources said goes against everything that Republicans and the massive accumulation of toxic cells stand for.

Cancer, apparently was left stunned by the Republican snub!

Read more at The Onion

Below, Yertle the Turtle weighs in on SCOTUS decision. He seems a lil’ down, don’t cha think? He’s lost that pep in his step…
 

 
I read a comment this morning suggesting prank phone calls to conservative radio talk shows.  The commenter had heard one such call where the caller just started laughing hysterically once they put him on the air.

Childish? Sure.

Fun? You betcha!

So in an effort to encourage this form of merriment, we’re going to hold a contest for the next 48 hours to see who can make the best, funniest, or even just the most childish prank phone calls to reichwing radio shows. All you have to do is record your prank phone call, post it to YouTube, link from the comments on this post and then DM’s readers will select the winner.

It’s that simple. We don’t know what the prize will be yet, but we’ll try to make it a good one. I don’t think the prize is actually the lure here, but we’ill update the post once we figure it out.

(If you can get on Rush, Glenn Beck, Dr Laura Schlessinger or on Michael Savage’s show, you’ll get extra points!)

PLEASE SPREAD FAR AND WIDE VIA SOCIAL MEDIA!

A 2004 Harry Potter book burning in Missouri

This Troy, Michigan civic brouhaha happened last November—I confess it was news to me—but it’s currently getting a second go ‘round via reddit/r/politics and Redditor ClydeStuff.

Absolutely worth watching, this “reverse psychology” propaganda tactic is GENIUS and could be successfully adapted to a number of different situations in other parts of this country, as you will see:

The city of Troy, Michigan was facing a budget shortfall, and was considering closing the Troy Public Library for lack of funds. Even though the necessary revenues could be raised through a miniscule tax increase, powerful anti-tax groups in the area were organized against it. A vote was scheduled amongst the city’s residents, to shut the library or accept the tax increase, and Leo Burnett Detroit decided to support the library by creating a reverse psychology campaign. Yard signs began appearing that read: “Vote to Close Troy Library on August 2nd - Book Burning Party on August 5th.” No one wants to be a part of a town that burns books, and the outraged citizens of Troy pushed back against the “idiotic book burners” and ultimately supported the tax increase, thus ensuring the library’s survival.

As someone who has toiled in the trenches of advertising and marketing myself, I genuflect to whoever thought this up. This is the kind of thing that can really cheer you up when you’re feeling down about living in an Idiocracy.

The creatives on this Swiftian tour de fource should be snapped up by the Democrats now and given extremely high-paying consultant gigs. And the Democrats should unleash them and fund them to do whatever it takes to deploy this stunt nationally and stay the fuck out of their way.

BRAVO! Standing ovation!

Troy, Michigan’s controversial mayor is Tea party favorite, Janice Daniels. You may dimly remember her as the dipshit who made national news last summer when an unintelligent, unfunny comment she made about gay marriage in New York on Facebook came back to haunt her. Then a few months after that she said she wanted an expert to testify that homosexuality is a mental illness at an anti-bullying educational forum for high school kids!

Dum-dum Daniels, who now faces a recall vote in November which she will surely lose, is also deeply unpopular for her vote against millions of dollars in federal funding to build a transit center near the Troy/Birmingham border that would have created hundreds of new jobs in the area and increased the town’s tax base.

Last week, reacting to news of the recall vote being called, Daniels, doubled down on the stupid by musing aloud that she felt homosexuality might be “dangerous”—like cigarettes!

Ignorance and ideology is a nasty combination.

Of course as soon as she is recalled, Fox News will probably race to sign-up Janice Daniels as a commentator on gay and lesbian issues! I mean hey, wouldn’t she be the perfect spokesperson for all those dimwitted Christian Americans who have had their First Amendment rights stomped on by TEH GAY AGENDA?!?!?
 

 
I LOL’d at this comically forlorn shot of loathsome sack of shit former Speaker of the House and Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s meeting in Washington, D.C. today.

Doesn’t ANYONE give a shit about Newt? Apparently not even conservatives do, which is something for the cable news channels to take note of.

CNN, CNBC and MSNBC—we know Fox News isn’t going to have him back—need to let this slimy amphibian crawl under a rock and delete his number from their auto-dial. No one will miss not seeing Newt Gingrich on their teevee set. No one cares what he thinks.

Now that it’s patently obvious she’s never going to be First Lady—and he’s flat broke—I wonder how long pretty “Stepford Wife” Callista will stick around? Can you imagine what it would be like to watch that old goat age? Sitting around in his underpants farting and pontificating about stuff every day of your fucking life?

She clearly got the wrong end of a poorly negotiated Faustian bargain!

Via BuzzFeed