Mitt Romney makes me want to puke. He’s a bald-faced liar whose shameless, morally and intellectually-bereft candidacy will hopefully be rejected soundly by informed American voters in November.

I was especially annoyed watching this clip of him this morning on Fox News. If you need convincing that he’s lying as he claims credit for giving Obama the advice that saved the auto industry, have a quick read of Romney’s own editorial, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” which was published in The New York Times on November 18, 2008.

Then watch in horror as he says THIS:

Well, there’s a nice chance in debates to talk about truth and fiction. I don’t think many people understand that the president took the car companies into bankruptcy. They went into bankruptcy, exactly as I proposed. So the difference between us is that I would have done it earlier than the president did, and saved the American taxpayers about $20 billion.

The thing is, if you follow Romney’s face closely and you are aware that what he is saying is a bold-faced lie, his eyes seem to give it away that he, himself, is all too well-aware that he’s telling a “liar, liar, pants on fire” kind of fib.

The question was never if the Big Three car manufacturers should be restructured in a managed bankruptcy, but whether the automakers would go through that process with the backing of the federal government.

Or without it, as Romney himself advocated in the fucking New York Times!

The problem is, that 2008 editorial follows Romney around like a wet sulfurous fart on hot, humid day. Even Fox News reporters are fully aware of what’s going on. Tell me Bret Baier doesn’t know that Romney is lying through his teeth here. Of course he does! Listen to how he phrased the question. He assumes that even his viewers have enough bare-minimum recent historical context to understand what’s being left unsaid (why? BECAUSE IT’S SO OBVIOUS, THAT’S WHY).

It was a gross move when Mitt Romney, the son of the man who was credited with turning American Motors around in the 1950s and who was a popular governor during Michigan’s heyday, wrote that editorial in the first place. That he is now claiming credit for turning around the auto industry, it makes me fantasize about hocking up a big, fat greener and spitting it right in his lying face. The man deserves NO respect. Never in my lifetime has a more repulsive, morally bankrupt character topped the national ticket of a major political party.

Say what you want about Sarah Palin, at least she was sincere! Nixon seems like a idealist compared to a cynic like Romney.

YouTube commentor rodneyriddnauer remarked:

Understand one thing: you may not “like” President Obama, but Mitt Romney is a complete, all-out, unapologetic LIAR. Even the few details he does offer are simply made-up gibberish that Fox then has to try and bolster.

Folks, it ain’t about is The President 100% perfect and unflawed…it’s about which of these two men is worse for YOU, the average working American.

Romney/Ryan will GUT every safety net in our framework, and send your job to China or India. Believe that.

Watch in disbelief as Romney claims Obama copied his idea to save Detroit. Is it ANY WONDER why the Republicans have already conceded Michigan, Romney’s home state, and pulled all of their TV ads?
 

 
Via Daily Kos

 
I’m not saying I have the answer, but it’s fascinating to hear Lenore Romney say that her husband, Governor George Romney—Mitt’s father—was on welfare for the first years of his life.

YouTube has been playing Whac-A-Mole with this clip for some time now, so watch this one while you still can. Here’s a clip of George Romney talking sense about the Vietnam war when he was running for President against Richard Nixon. How could these two have raised Mittens???
 

 
Posting at the Nashville City Paper, Ken Whitehouse reports that an anonymous hacker, or plural, hackers, is claiming in a Pastebin message to have gained “all available 1040 tax forms” from Mitt Romney by accessing computers in the Franklin offices of financial services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. If this is true, this was an incredibly ballsy thing to attempt.

An excerpt from the hacker message says:

“Romney’s 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney’s tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.

The group will release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012.”

Then a follow up letter was also posted that reads:

Dear PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Using your Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067 Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860 we were able to gain access to your network file servers and copy over the tax documents for one Willard M Romney and Ann D Romney. We are sure that once you figure out where the security breach was, some people will probably get fired but that is not our concern.

All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form. The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.

The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying. Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished. The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever.

Failure to do this before September 28, the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything.

Bitcoin Address to Stop Release:
1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8

And the same time, the other interested parties will be allowed to compete with you. For those that DO want the documents released will have an different address to send to. If $1,000,000 USD is sent to this account below first; then the encryption keys will be made available to the world right away. So this is an equal opportunity for the documents to remain locked away forever or to be exposed before the September 28 deadline.

Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us.

Bitcoin Address to Promote Full Release:
12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB

Cheers!

Reference to avoid Fakes that only you will have.
1.all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty
2.he moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father

Despite the Mission Impossible meets a Nigerian 419 email scam feel to this one, it’s pretty obvious who the loser is in all of this, isn’t it? Hard to say exactly what’s going on here, but if this is a scam, it’s a goddamned elaborate one done in the full glare of the media. And the claims are so specific. Clearly it would be known to someone within the Franklin offices of PWC if there is any truth to this story of the break-in and quite simply if Romney’s tax returns could even be retrieved from that particular office or via an intranet that someone working there would have access to. They would just know.

Whitehouse writes that the City Paper was unable to independently confirm with county officials or representatives of PricewaterhouseCoopers if they have received packages like the ones described in the message. Neither would federal law enforcement confirm or deny an ongoing investigation into the alleged hack.

UPDATE: PricewaterhouseCoopers is saying that there is no evidence a break-in occurred, according to TPM, and gave the following statement:

“We are aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems. We are working closely with the United States Secret Service, and at this time there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised or that there was any unauthorized access to the data in question.”

SECOND UPDATE:

Secret Service Eyes Romney Tax Return Blackmail Attempt

George Ogilvie, a Secret Service spokesman, confirmed to TPM that the agency is “investigating the incident,” but could not add further details.

In an interview with The Tennessean, the executive director of the Williamson County Republican Party said she also initially thought to treat the matter as a hoax.

“A million dollars seemed kind of low,” Jean Barwick told the paper. “If you’re going to go for a million, why not go for $100 million.”

At first, she contacted only the state GOP, to see if it got a similar package. But then on Wednesday, Barwick decided to contact the police. Charles Warner, a spokesperson for the Franklin Police Department, told TPM that based on what officers were told, the department called the Secret Service. (Warner added that the Franklin police did not respond to any complaints at the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ during August.)

No one from either county party appears to have attempted to look at the contents of the USB drives.

Burr, the Democratic Party Chairman, said he had kept the USB drive in his briefcase. At one point, Burr said, he considered plugging the drive into an old computer, but he said the “last thing I wanted to do was plug it in to a computer that I cared about.”

Wednesday morning, Burr’s office started to get calls.

“We got a call from an affiliate of The Tennessean newspaper here,” Burr said. “Almost immediately after that we got a call from the Secret Service.”

Secret Service members came by a few hours later, and took the materials with them.

Via TPM

 
In case you missed that “humanizing” biopic of Mittens at the convention last week, this should suffice…

An ART NOT WAR production starring Kerri Kenney as Ann Romney. Narrated by Alex Fernie. Produced by Daron Murphy & David Ambrose. Directed by Laura Dawn. Written by Laura Dawn, Eddie Geller, & Daron Murphy.

More at www.manfrombloomfieldhills.com.
 

 
Hugh Atkin, who made the viral video hit, “Will The Real Mitt Romney Please Stand Up (feat. Eminem)” is back a new winner. He writes:

The real Mitt Romney stands up and reflects on who he is, what he believes and why he is running for office.

Mitt is large. He contains multitudes.

 
No sooner did I post the below item on the Battle for Blair Mountain—the largest working class uprising in American history that you’ve probably never heard of—then I clicked over to Raw Story to find this puke-inducing item: Coal miners say they were forced to attend Romney event and donate.

This story broke on the WWVA AM radio station in my own hometown of Wheeling, WV. I’ve got no doubt that many, probably most, of these miners will be voting for Mitt Romney, anyway, but this is still fucking shameful, isn’t it?

A group of coal miners in Ohio feel they would have been fired if they did not attend an Aug. 14 event with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and contribute to his campaign — and to make matters worse, they lost of day of pay for their trouble.

In phone calls and emails to WWVA radio host David Blomquist, employees at the Century Mine in Ohio said they feared retaliation if they did not attend the Romney event.

“Yes, we were in fact told that the Romney event was mandatory and would be without pay, that the hours spent there would need to be made up my non-salaried employees outside of regular working hours, with the only other option being to take a pay cut for the equivalent time,” the employees told Blomquist. “Yes, letters have gone around with lists of names of employees who have not attended or donated to political events.”

“I realize that many people in this area and elsewhere would love to have my job or my benefits,” one worker explained. “And our bosses do not hesitate in reminding us of this. However, I can not agree with these callers and my supervisors, who are saying that just because you have a good job, that you should have to work any day for free on almost no notice without your consent.”

“We do not appreciate being intimidated into exchanging our time for nothing. I heard one of your callers saying that Murray employees are well aware of what they are getting into upon hire, or that they are informed that a percentage of their income will go to political donations. I can not speak for that caller, but this is news for me. We merely find out how things work by experience.”

Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore told Blomquist that the charges were untrue.

“There were no workers that were forced to attend the event,” Moore said. “We had managers that communicated to our work force that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend the event. We had a pre-registration list. And employees were asked to put their names on a pre-registration list because they could not get into the event unless they were pre-registered and had a name tag to enter the premises.”

“What about not getting paid for an eight-hour day?” Blomquist wondered. “If the mine was shut down for the visit, I understand, but wouldn’t it be fair — let’s use the word ‘fair’ — to still pay these individuals for that day? I mean, it wasn’t their fault they weren’t working.”

“Our management people wanted to attend the event and we could not have people underground during Romney’s visit,” Moore insisted.

“But why not still pay then their wage for that day?” Blomquist pressed.

“By federal election law, we could not pay people to attend the event,” Moore replied. “And we did not want anyone to come back and see where anyone had been paid for that day.”

“I’m not saying pay then to attend the event, I’m saying, ‘Hey look, we have to close down the mine, if you want to attend this event, that’s fine, but you’re still going to get a day’s pay for the work that you would have done,’” Blomquist pointed out. “Why not do that?”

“As a private employer, it was our decision and we made the decision not to pay the people,” the Murray chief financial officer said.

The Center for Responsive Politics show that Murray Energy has contributed nearly one million dollars to Republican candidates in the past two years. I wonder where all that filthy lucre came from? Actually I don’t, it’s pretty damned obvious where it came from.

 
The pathetic nincompoops who are in charge of running Mitt Romney’s political self-immolation campaign have found a novel way to make sure that their hapless candidate continues to be chained to the twin topics of the rotting, stinking Republican albatross of Missouri’s idiot bastard son, GOP Senate candidate Todd Akin and his running mate Paul Ryan’s rather uncompromising views on abortion:

Ban the two topics—which are joined at the political hip—from the discussion entirely.

Yeah, that’s the ticket! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. THAT edict will surely keep a lid on this whole “legitimate/forcible rape” flap and the GOP’s “Todd Akin platform” problem, won’t it?

As you can see here, no one even mentions Todd Akin or abortion (Did you hear anything? I didn’t hear anything…)

 

 
PS: And no questions about Bain Capital, “Romneycare,” tax returns, dressage or “Massachusetts,” ‘kay? 

UPDATE: The Romney camp denied that it put restrictions on reporters. “This is not how we operate. The matter is being addressed.” Then…well, Mitt happens, I guess: Second Local Station Says Romney Camp Asked For No Akin Questions

Via Little Green Footballs

 
God bless you Nick Denton! There is no schadenfreude quite like Republican schadenfreude and this is just…. a beautiful thing.

Gawker’s John Cook on what they’ve got:

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.)

The full set of Gawker’s “Bain File” documents can be read here.

Here’s what Gawker has found so far.

Equity Swaps, AIVs, and Mitt Romney’s Other Tax-Dodging Tricks
Mitt Romney’s Endless ‘Retirement’ Package
How Mitt Romney Puts His Money Where Obama’s Mouth Is
Derivatives, Short Sales, and Mitt Romney’s Other Exotic Financial Instruments
Mitt Romney Is the National Enquirer’s Banker

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.
 

 

 
We always get a kick out of San Francisco artist Jason Mercier’s witty portraits of pop culture icons made out of junk, garbage and recycled materials. His creations are often the very definition of “form is an extension of content.” In this case, Mercier may be making a statement regarding the current state of politics in America - the USA is being run by jerks and meatheads and we’re all headed for the slaughterhouse. Stampede, anyone?

In this instructive video, Mercier shows us the process of turning dead flesh into art.
 

 
Little Face Mitt is a Tumblr dedicated to “Unsettling pictures of Mitt Romney with a very tiny face.”
 

 

 
Via Nerdcore

Image via Billionaires for Wealthcare

Although Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Congressional Republicans as a whole are trying to take the offense on Medicare by painting Obamacare as siphoning off funds from Medicare that will materially harm seniors—it worked like a charm in the 2010 midterm elections—an article that appeared this morning on Talking Points Memo about Romney and Ryan’s actual intentions re: Medicare is getting a lot of attention.

As has been noted repeatedly, that strategy requires Romney and Ryan to disavow Medicare reforms the GOP recently endorsed overwhelmingly as a part of the party’s budget, which Ryan authored.

[Good luck with that one, boys]

From “Mitt’s Medicare Strategy: Don’t Tell Seniors Truth”:

All along Romney has been claiming that he and Paul Ryan won’t change Medicare for existing beneficiaries — only for the people who will get old in the “future.”

[Like nearly all of us, yeah?]

Now Romney’s own advisers and campaign surrogates are saying that this ain’t so.

As outlined in a memo the campaign released Saturday, Romney plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act in its entirety, and thus to spend over $700 billion more on the program in the coming decade than the government would spend if the health care law stands.

That commitment would leave Medicare poised for insolvency in 2016, years before he proposes to phase in the voucher system. Which means Romney would have two options: find new Medicare cuts or taxes to extend the life of the program, or preside over its demise.

On Fox News Sunday, Romney adviser Ed Gillespie tried to address the conundrum. “There are other reforms as well. As you know Governor Romney supports increasing over time bringing the Medicare eligibility age in line with the Social Security retirement age.”

But raising the Medicare eligibility age is a benefit cut, and implementing the increase before 2016 would violate Romney’s pledge to leave the program unchanged for people between ages 55 and 65.

Avik Roy, an outside health care adviser to the Romney campaign, admits that committing to billions of dollars in higher Medicare spending in the near-term will make it difficult for Romney to achieve its separate goal of reducing overall federal spending to modern lows. But he notes that Romney could make up the difference elsewhere in the budget or, by “mak[ing] other changes to the Medicare program, such as increased means-testing, that don’t alter the program’s basic structure.”

Further means-testing of Medicare would amount to a benefit cut to current seniors.

These admissions rest on top of the fact that by repealing the Affordable Care Act, Romney would wipe out new Medicare benefits included in the law. Repeal would result in higher payments to doctors and hospitals, and the restoration of overpayments to insurers participating in Medicare advantage. But for beneficiaries, it would re-open the Medicare prescription drug donut hole and eliminate coverage for preventive services and annual checkups that the ACA created.

Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan would cost senior citizens an additional $6400 or more a year out of pocket! Did you hear that Republican retirees? Considering that Paul Ryan’s “voucher” amounts to “Here’s a coupon for your old age, go fuck yourself oldster and please hurry up and die” HOW IN THE WORLD—at a time in history where far fewer than half of the American population has anywhere NEAR the amount of savings they’ll need to retire on—-can the Republicans think running on a platform that essentially says to senior citizens: “Let them eat Advil!” is anything but a very, very bad idea?!?

A “wheelchair army” would come to Washington, DC and kill them all if Paul Ryan’s plan were put into place. Every damned one of them. You have to shake your head in amazement at people who are anywhere near retirement age who would vote Republican. It’s beyond idiocy.

I had a friend who died when he was 94 years old. How in the hell would, say, even a spry 84-year-old, just come up with another $6k a year? How the fuck would you do it at that age? Get a job as a greeter at Home Depot? Flip some burgers at McDonald’s? Slot machines? The fucking lottery? Pulling it out of your ass? INVESTING IN WALL STREET???

It’s preposterous… and it’s pretty much what the Republicans have in store for you. For YOUR old age! Nope, it’s not an abstraction, dumbshit Fox News viewers and “low information voters,” (LIV) it’s your “golden years” that Mitt is talkin’ ‘bout!

The Democrats, if they play their cards right politically (which they never, ever do, but might it happen by accident?) could inflict some major damage to the Republicans this election if they’d run a few commercials with a wheezing 90-year-old dealing with bill collectors, having to choose between food and his prescriptions and being told “We’re sorry sir, your coverage won’t pay for dialysis anymore” by a kindly-faced nurse who smiles as she shuts the door in his face.

The same actor in all of them. Maybe it’s a couple. Yes! It’s a couple, even better.

Remember those famous Taster’s Choice coffee commercials with the serialized narrative of the flirting good looking yuppie neighbors back in the 90s? Now imagine the flipside of that: That same couple is old, retired and the 83-year-old husband husband is eating Ramen noodles so they can keep the lights on in their apartment.

An elderly man staring straight ahead has tears running down his face. CAMERA PULLS OUT, REVEALING his wife, asleep in a medical bed in their living room with IV drips and heart monitors beeping softly in the background.  He is holding his sleeping wife’s hand.

The camera sees collection notices in his hands. The top one, which the camera lingers on long enough to read indicates that their gas and electricity is about to be shut off

The man, sobbing, lays his head on sleeping wife’s body.

The lights in their apartment sputter and go off.

The heart monitor stops beeping.

I condone all the sex you want sweetheart, but l shouldn’t be the one to have to pay for you birth control pills… #takethattothebank

— Jenna Jameson (@jennajameson) August 17, 2012

Thank you Chris Campion!

For Immediate Release:
August 20, 2012
Americans for Inequality
Contact: Warren Bancroft, Interim Director
AmericansforInequality@gmail.com
Phone: 603-540-3845

[Manchester, New Hampshire] The Board of Directors of Americans for Inequality, a citizens’ advocacy group which promotes the benefits of inequality, voted to endorse former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (R) for President. “The Board of Directors voted to emphatically endorse Governor Romney’s candidacy for President” said Warren Bancroft, interim Chair of Americans for Inequality. “Americans for Inequality is prepared to commit considerable resources to help make Mitt Romney the next President of the United States. We will join Governor Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan at St. Anselm College in Manchester, NH Monday August 20th at 8:00AM, and a press conference following shortly thereafter.”

In the 2012 Presidential campaign, Americans for Inequality has been the first organization to educate voters about the benefits of vast inequalities.  Americans for Inequality has been a pioneer in changing the narrative away from the costs and perils of inequality—-and toward a new appreciation of how inequality plays an important and beneficial role in our economy.

“For far too long the poor, unemployed, and elderly have been coddled by America’s generous welfare system and exempted from contributing their fair share in taxes, while banks and companies have suffered under an oppressive regime. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s budget plan will mostly rely on ending the era of entitlement and providing tax relief for upper-income households. That’s the beauty of the Romney/Ryan plan: the higher the income, the higher the tax break. Their budget plan will ensure that inequality will remain with us, as it should, for many years,” said Bancroft.

The Americans for Inequality endorsement was not, however, a unanimous one.  One member of the Americans for Inequality Board voted against the Romney endorsement.

Chester Prattfield noted how inequality has accelerated under President Obama, and that it could continue for another four years. “The current recovery has been the weakest and most unequal recovery since WWII, both in terms of income and wealth. The financial industry is back on its feet and corporations are making record profits.  Class mobility and opportunity are declining as inequality becomes entrenched, and that’s what we want to see. But there is room for improvement. Job creators do 100% of the work, but from 2009-2011, they only received 88% of the national income.  And companies such as Exxon Mobil pay as high as 2% in federal taxes—they need relief.”

“While I voted to endorse President Obama, and will continue to personally support his campaign, I understand and respect the decision of the Americans for Inequality Board,” said Prattfield, Americans for Inequality co-founder.  “I appreciate the thoughtfulness the Board of Directors has put into this decision.”

 

 
Thank you Mr. Glen E. Friedman of New York City, New York!

 
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.

 
DEVO’s new song ‘Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!  (Seamus Unleashed)’ hilariously mocks Mitt Romney for strapping his dog Seamus onto the roof of his car in 1983.

DEVO’s Gerald Casale, who has also spearheaded the “Remember Seamus” Facebook group and supports the popular Dogs Against Romney website, told Rolling Stone:

“This isn’t a red-state thing or Devo stumping for Obama,” he says. “But I think any animal lover that hears the story will learn so much about the character flaw of Romney. It’s just a deal-breaker about the man. My God, the world is a scary place with seven billion people. What you want in a leader is a guy with some humanity at his core. I just don’t feel that Mitt does.”

In 2008, Devo did a fundraising show for President Obama in their hometown of Akron. Does Casale approve of his job performance over the past three-and-a-half years? “No!” he says. “Absolutely not. Devo are not naive people. If anyone still thinks that the President of the United States of America runs things, they really live in the Wizard of Oz-land. My God, we’re a plutocracy. We’re owned and leveraged by global corporations.”

Dogs Against Romney have this one yard sign that I really like.

Listen to DEVO’s “Don’t Roof Rack Me, Bro!” below:

 

 
PS The GOP have a “Contact Us” form on their website. “Seamlus Taxdodger” (that would be uh… me, a “disgusted former GOP voter”) just left them a comment. Maybe you’d want to leave them a message, too?