News Roundup for 3/9/12

Mitt Romney

-Headline of the Day-
"Romney woos Southerners: I had some ‘cheesy grits’ at the Hilton, y’all."

Hoo-dangit! That ol' Mitt Romney fella was down there in Pascagoula, Mississippi and danged if he didn't fit right in. Bein' in the south and all, Mittens reckoned this'd be a fine time to start playin' to them stereotypes.

Mitt told a crowd that "strange things are happening to me." He was fixin' to have him a boney fied transformation right up there on that stage! It was riveting. "I am learning to say y’all, and I like grits and things," he told them. Who doesn't like grits and things? Whenever I go out for breakfast, I always tell the waitress, "Have the cook whip me up a big ol' honkin' plate of them grits and things." They always know what you mean.

Then, in Jackson, Romney got downright homey. "Mornin’ y’all," he told the crowd. "Good to be with you."

"I got started right this morning with a biscuit and some cheesy grits, I’ll tell ya. Delicious," he added. "Hilton Garden Inn knows just what to serve me in the morning."

He then went on to praise The Dukes of Hazzard, tell everyone how much he loves chawin' tobbaccy, and played the spoons on his knee. "Y'all love me yet?" he asked. "Because I've got a banjo back on the bus, if that's what it takes." (Raw Story)


-Mitt's road to the nomination-



Paved with greenbacks -- and future kickbacks. (Truthdig)


-Bonus HotD-
"Confirmed: Fracking Caused Ohio Earthquakes."

Maybe we shouldn't be doing it then?

Naw... Now is not the time to be rational. (ThinkProgress)

News Roundup for 3/8/12

Boehner came up with a brilliant wedge issue
-- and now he's stuck with it

-Headline of the Day-
"Dems twist knife in birth control fight."

You hear about this Rush Limbaugh thing? Oh, it's terrible! He's yelling at ladies he doesn't even know and calling them whores and prostitutes, just because they want prescription drug coverage.

Turns out that this isn't just a sudden bout of Tourette's or something. It was brought about by a big Republican freak out over employers' coverage of birth control. It seems that employers can no longer force employees to live by the employers' religious beliefs and this is the worst thing ever!

Anyway, this is becoming a problem for Republicans, since the whole thing is stupid and everybody knows it. GOP leaders just want it all to go away (although Limbaugh isn't really playing along on that point).

So a bunch of Democrats, who also happen to be women, cooked up a plan. This thing isn't going to fade away, as GOP leadership hopes. Republicans are going to have to come out -- in public and on the record -- about how they feel about contraceptive coverage.

According to Greg Sargent, "In a letter to Speaker John Boehner — which was sent my way by a source — the 12 female Senate Dems, led by Patty Murray, are demanding that he drop his promise to hold a vote on the House version of the Blunt amendment, which has over 200 Republicans co-sponsors.

"The letter from the female Senators — which is timed to International Women’s Day — asks Boehner to pledge not to move any more birth-control-related legislation in the House."

See, the problem here is that the nuts are dug in on this issue because of Limbaugh. They think they have to defend him and in doing so have taken his whole slut/whore/bitch line as Gospel. If Boehner drops the issue, they're going to be ma-ad. But if he puts it up to a vote, everyone else will be. For the record, "everyone else" outnumbers the nuts by, like, a lot. This is what you call being between yer rock and a hard place. If Boehner let's the issue fade, a bunch of females get to shout "victory!" from the rooftops and piss off the GOP base. If not... well, that's pretty much like flooring it into the brick wall of public opinion -- in an election year that's already looking a little shaky for the Grand Old Party.

Of course, it wasn't the dem women who put Boehner between that rock and that hard place. Some guy named "John Boehner" did that.

They're just making sure he stays there for a while. (Plum Line)


-Cartoon time with Mark Fiore-
Hey kids, this week we're going to learn all about a Iran and the nuclear weapons program it doesn't actually have...


Click for animation

Bonus fun: it wouldn't really be a war over nuclear weapons, since Iran doesn't actually have any of those. It'd be a war against Forbidden Knowledge -- which is futile. (MarkFiore.com)


-Bonus HotD-
"Joe The Plumber/Future Congressman Whining About ‘Gotcha’ Questions Already."

Hey, he learned that whine from the best. (Wonkette)

Breitbart's Final Smear

Andrew Breitbart's "last laugh" seems to be more of a hiccup. Before he died, Breitbart promised to release damning video from Barack Obama's college years. "I have videos," he told the collection of birthers, racists, and other assorted nuts at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). "This election we’re going to vet him."

This is the story of an empty threat laid bare by unforeseen events. It's becoming clear that Breitbart didn't have any damaging video, but that's not stopping his fans from clamoring for it. And that's a bit of a problem.


[Brett Smiley, New York Magazine:]

Breitbart.com's explosive, blockbuster video that would expose Barack Obama as a radical commie who wasn't vetted by the media was almost entirely hype.

Breitbart.com's editor-in-chief Joel Pollak and editor-at-large Ben Shapiro appeared together on Fox News Wednesday night with Sean Hannity to discuss the one-minute teaser clip released earlier today in which a younger Barack Obama, president of Harvard Law Review, spoke to a group at a rally about racial equality among the Harvard Law staff. The demonstration was led by professor Derrick Bell, who took an unpaid leave of absence in protest of a lack of female black professors at the school.

"Open your hearts and open your minds to the words of professor Derrick Bell," Obama said in 1991.

And that was it.


The rightwing blog PJ Tatler explains what the big, terrible, shocking deal is here. It turns out that Derrick Bell, who died last year, was a Harvard law professor who was "credited with developing 'critical race theory,' which suggested that the U.S. legal system was inherently biased against African Americans and other minorities because it was built on an ingrained white point of view. He argued in his many books and lectures that the life experiences of black people and other minorities should be considered in hiring decisions and in applying the law."

So far, so nothing. But we're not to the stretchy part yet. Citing his obituary, PJ finds that "Some scholars, both black and white, challenged Bell’s ideas, as well as his strong support of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan."

Aha! There you go; young Barack Obama once knew a guy who knew Louis Farrakhan. Therefore, Barack Obama hates white people. This is weak. This isn't even guilt by association; it's guilt by association, by association. It's a crazy game of "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon," where you can connect anyone to anyone you like -- perfected by the logically-impaired Glenn Beck, before Fox got sick of hosting that hothouse of lunacy.

But why stop there? Why stop at Farrakhan? Here's video of Louis Farrakhan praising Ron Paul for wanting to audit the fed. And Ron Paul infamously ran a racist newsletter. Since, as the wingnuts seem to believe, if you know someone it means you agree with every single thought they've ever had, we have to conclude -- as we follow this chain -- that Barack Obama doesn't hate white people, Barack Obama hates black people. Obama believes what Bell believed, which was what Farrakhan believes, which is what Paul believes. Right? I mean, according to the rightwing blogosphere, that's the way things work.

Of course, that means you can take Paul's association with the Republican Party and eventually make Eric Cantor believe what Farrakhan believes or John Boehner believe what Obama believes. In fact, since there is no unknown person in the world, we all believe the same damned things, since association is like a virus that turns you into an ideological clone of everyone you know. What's all this fighting about then?

What we learn from this little exercise is that -- as the right argues until it's more convenient to argue otherwise -- everyone is an individual, capable of generating their own thoughts. We also learn that the old saw about politics making for strange bedfellows is true.

And we also learn that you shouldn't make empty threats to generate headlines and drive traffic to your site. It might just bite you in the ass in the great beyond. Which, if we continue this line of reasoning, is exactly what Andrew Breitbart believed. Makes you wonder why he did it.

-Wisco

On Super Tuesday, Mitt Fails to Lock It Down

The janitors are sweeping up the confetti after the Super Tuesday celebrations last night (at Gingrich 2012 HQ, those janitors are fifth graders) and looking back, "Super" seems a little hyperbolic. By the numbers, Mitt Romney's the big winner, but the battle actually left him looking weak. In his least contested and most decisive win -- Massachusetts -- turnout was positively anemic. You could argue that this was because Mitt was a shoe-in, so people didn't bother voting. But that doesn't explainb Ohio, a hotly contested race with likewise light voter turnout. "Turnout has been low... modest, you can insert the term you want," says Secretary of State Jon Husted.

In that state, Romney outspent Santorum 3:1 and it was a nailbiter all the way to the wire. As a result, it looks more like an election bought than an election won. And momentum? It's just not there.


[Politico:]

Romney, as we’ve written before, is likely heading into another bounce-free news cycle. The former Massachusetts governor’s campaign and its backers had hoped to use a strong night to start making the case that it’s time to wind this down, and his election night speech, delivered from Boston, was supposed to convey the aura of a nominee-in-waiting.

But in the end, he underperformed. He does not head into Wednesday with the spin on his side, and his campaign has done little to finesse expectations throughout this race. The muddled results Tuesday — Romney’s cache of victories, Newt Gingrich’s win in Georgia and Santorum’s surprisingly strong clinch in Tennessee accompanied by wins in Oklahoma and North Dakota — are going to do little to bring an immediate end to the primary.


So on it goes. No one but the candidates are talking about who should drop out or who can't go on. Romney hasn't put this thing to bed. The self-destructive primary season continues. It seems that after every big GOP primary night, the biggest winner has been Barack Obama. It's so true that it's becoming cliché to type those words out.

There isn't really much more to write about it without padding the post, so this will be a short one; Super Tuesday was a Super Yawn. No knockout punch by anyone, no candidates shed, no big turn-around, no excited crowds of voters. Just the same story we've seen over and over: people not very excited about Mitt Romney, but convinced -- at the last minute and through great expense -- that he has the best chance at beating President Obama. He's racking up the delegates, slowly but surely, and his (probable) road to the nomination seems like a long slog, if not a death march; an exhausting trudge through unfriendly territory.

At the end of that march, bone-weary and bruised, he'll meet an opponent who's freshly rested, showered, shaved, and has had a good breakfast. As a metaphor, it should seem heroic. But the truth is that it's all beginning to look so slow and predictable as to be dull.

-Wisco

News Roundup for 3/6/12

More popular than Newt Gingrich

-Headline of the Day-
"Romney Rebounds Among Conservatives, But GOP Contenders All Stay Underwater."

It's Super Tuesday, so gather the children round the Super Tuesday for Super Tuesday dinner and regale them with stories of how the Super Tuesday winner is bound to be the most popular person in all the land -- because lying to kids on holidays is some sort of holiday tradition.

See, new polling shows that while Mitt Romney's made some ground with conservatives after winning in Arizona and Michigan, everybody else still hates him. And if it's not Mittens who comes out on top tonight? Doesn't matter. When it comes to GOP primary candidates, we hate all of them.

According to the report, "All four Republican contenders remain underwater in overall favorability in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, marking the difficulties the survivor may face against Barack Obama. More Americans hold negative than positive views of Romney by a 10-point margin, Rick Santorum by 8 points, Ron Paul by 9 points and Newt Gingrich by a whopping 33 points."

Yeah, we really don't like Newt. I'll wait a moment until you're done laughing at him.

Done?

Now?

Still, really?

OK, we have to move on. Anyway, things don't look good from a historical standpoint here. The article tells us, "[A]s noted in previous reports, all are well below the levels of popularity attained by previous candidates -- John McCain and Obama among them -- at about this stage of their own nomination battles."

So let's see glued to our TV sets and watch as Republican voters in ten states try to decide which hated public figure they're going to have to settle for (ABC News)


-Desperate times call for...-



Click for full strip

I don't think it would help. (GoComics)


-Bonus HotD-
"President Mocks Fox News Reporter’s Question About Gas Prices."

In answer to Fox News White House Reporter Ed Henry's question about whether he actually wanted gas prices to rise, President Obama said, "Ed, just from a political perspective, do you think the President of the United States, going into reelection, wants gas prices to go up even higher? … Is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?"

Interestingly, the words "stupid," "fucking," or "question" were not used in that response. (Talking Points Memo)