Romney debate strategy: flip flop and talk really, really fast

Mitt Romney showed up at Wednesday’s debate with President Barack Obama looking not at all as if he’d struggled with a bout of diarrhea the night before. Instead the Governor appeared tanned, fully caffeinated and chomping at the bit — one half-expected steam to puff from both ears. In contrast, President Obama appeared calm, cool, and, according to most pundits, professorial. The Jock versus the Nerd. In an interview on CNN Tuesday, former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson said that after moderating a debate in 1992 between then-President George H.W. Bush and challenger Bill Clinton, viewers told her afterward that […]

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S**t Mitt Romney says

In a campaign year that seems more like a production of Comedy Central than a battle between two serious challengers, Campaign 2012 will go down in history as one which made us laugh, cringe, and cry…simultaneously. And you thought Campaign 2008, with Sarah Palin winking and gamboling about, was bizarre… Ah, Mitt Romney. Is there some sort of disconnect going on between your brain and your mouth? Romney’s gaffes often go way beyond the maladroit of President George W. Bush. It almost seems as if Mitt Romney is always thinking aloud, sans filter and self-editing. I’ve said this before, and […]

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Holding stolen documents for ransom a new cottage industry? Hackers alledgedly steal Mitt Romney’s tax returns

In William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, cyber-criminals traffic in stolen information and data; now an anonymous group of hackers have claimed to have cracked into the servers of PriceWaterhouseCooper’s Franklin, Tenn. office and stolen Mitt Romney’s tax returns prior to 2010. I doubt that this is the kind of inventive entrepreneurship Romney has been touting on the campaign trail: ransoming stolen documents for start-up capital. On Sunday, the presumptive data-kidnappers posted this ransom note on Pastebin, a site which allows people to paste text anonymonously: Romney’s 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the […]

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What if the chair talked back to Clint Eastwood…

It was surreal watching Clint Eastwood, a man with five Academy Awards sitting on his mantle, performing an improvisation with an empty chair at the Republican National Convention this past Thursday. Eastwood’s performance art was the opening act before Florida Senator Marco Rubio gave his speech nominating Mitt Romney for President, followed by Romney and his own Big Speech. This was either the dumbest idea ever or an absolutely brilliant idea — and considering how dull and uninspiring Mitt Romney’s speech turned out to be, perhaps it’s the latter. Not that there hasn’t been awkward programming at past Democratic National […]

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Mitt Romney’s Marie Antoinette moment: party yacht flies Cayman Islands flag

Oh, what have we here? Why it’s a yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands — a yacht owned by a Florida developer who hosted a lavish party in honor of Mitt Romney’s formal nomination. The yacht, aptly named “Cracker Bay,” was attended by about 50 GOP party animals, including Romney relatives. A woman living aboard a less impressive boat moored at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina remarked, “I think it’s ironic they do this aboard a yacht that doesn’t even pay its taxes.” Indeed. Definitely a ‘Marie Antoinette’ moment for Mittens. I reckon the most Republican spin doctors […]

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Defiant Todd Akin refuses to drop out of senate race, blames “liberal elite” for GOP bullying

It’s getting really ugly for Missouri Rep. Todd Akin — and we’re not talking about his comb-over. The congressman is still smarting over Republican Party echelons calling for him to step aside and allow a (hopefully) less gaffe-prone candidate to take on U.S. Senate Democratic challenger Claire McCaskill. Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, during an appearance on CNN’s ‘Out Front,’ urged the congressman to “step aside and let someone else run for that office.” The GOP Chairman added that he “prefer that Todd Akin do the right thing for our party and our candidates” and “not come” to the RNC […]

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Missouri Rep. Todd Akin: Women’s uteri have spidey-sense in cases of rape

Just when the GOP thought they’d put a lid on Republican candidates making stupid public comments, here comes Missouri Republican Congressman Todd Akin with a new zinger (he’s currently vying for the Missouri U.S. Senate seat against Democrat Claire McCaskill). In a brief paragraph, uttered in an interview on Sunday, Rep. Akin managed a grammatical trifeca of irony, oxymoron and redundancy by attempting to define ‘legitimate vs illegitimate rape.’ “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that is really rare,” The Tea Party-backed Akin said of pregnancy caused by rape. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female […]

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Blip from the Past: GOP desperate for midterm victory, retool Contract With America

It’s been two years since the American people had collective temporary insantity and allowed the Republican Party to take over the House of Representatives, I submit this post from April of 2010 (as it appeared on Alan Colmes’s Liberaland). In the two years since John Boehner has presided as Speaker of the House, he and his Republican minions have been quite busy — just not in the way the American people had hoped. We thought these mooks would focus on creating jobs (with ideas other than giving more tax breaks to rich people)? Seriously? Apparently House Republicans never got the […]

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Blip from the Past: Tax cut deja vú, or Smirk can kiss MY ass

Eleven years ago, President George W. Bush decided it would be charitable to throw some scraps to his serfs…erm…middle class Americans by way of Treasury-issued checks. Of course, if you were lucky enough to be in that golden upper 1%, yours would not be scraps, but a lavish and never-ending buffet. Did this help the middle class? Nah. Did this help clean out the last of the Clinton surplus? Yep! Did this help to increase the deficit, forcing the Times Square Deficit Clock to be restarted? You betcha! This post from July 23, 2001 serves as a reminder: beware of […]

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John Sununu: stupid surrogate tricks

I guess Mitt Romney is a little piss-poor when it comes to articulate, thoughtful campaign surrogates. He’s got Donald Trump blathering on about President Obama’s birth certificate and now he’s got John Sununu calling the President “stupid.” Sununu really stepped in it again today. To be charitable, the worst of the quote was taken out of context:  “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way, and I wish this president would learn […]

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