Mitt Romney Would Have Stopped the Russian Invasion of Crimea

With Mitt Romney's unique ability to see into the future, combined with his strong decisive personality — Russia wouldn't have DARED to even look cross-eyed at Ukraine or Crimea.  If Mitt Romney was our Commander-in-Chief, he would have had Vladimir Putin quivering in his vodka.

Romney shared his unique vision today on Face The Nation: 

“The president’s naïveté with regards to Russia, and his faulty judgement about Russia’s intentions and objectives has led to a number of foreign policy challenges that we face.  And unfortunately not having anticipated Russia’s intentions, the president wasn’t able to shape the kinds of events that may have been able to prevent the kinds of circumstances that you’re seeing in the Ukraine, as well as the things that you’re seeing in Syria.  I think effective leaders typically are able to see the future to a certain degree, and are able to take actions to shape it in some way.  And that’s, of course, what this president has failed to do. And as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton as well.  There’s always the potential that we could have kept them from invading a country and annexing it into their own.”

Oh well, at least Mittens is making progress.  During the 2012 election he kept referring to the Soviet Union, which hasn't existed since 1991.  One of his handlers must have shown him a history book, since he's actually saying “Russia” now instead of “the Soviet Union.”

But he's still saying “the Ukraine” even though they dropped the “the” a few decades ago.  It's just “Ukraine” now, Mitt, without the “the.”

Coming soon:  Mitt Romney shares his up-to-the-minute expertise on Ceylon, Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Yugoslavia.

Mitt Romney's Revenge

Mitt Romney went down in flames in the 2012 election, but his private equity / corporate raiding M.O. will be playing a larger role than ever during the 2014 and 2016 elections.

Romney's failed campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, has created America Rising — a centralized opposition research firm.  Unlike Political Action Committees and those ubiquitous fake “charity” groups that aren't required to disclose their donors, America Rising is privately owned; profit-driven.

The mission of America Rising will be to dig up dirt on any and all Democratic candidates, nationwide, 24/7/365.   Republicans are hoping America Rising will be “the party's most sophisticated, modern, and centralized opposition research effort ever. It is key to the GOP's hopes of resurrecting itself after the soul-crushing presidential defeat of 2012.”  [from the linked article]

We'll see.  Interesting times ahead.

Mitt Romney was Assertive; Joe Biden was Rude

I’m persistent; you’re stubborn.  The guerrilla warriors whom I agree with are brave freedom fighters; the ones I disagree with are bloodthirsty terrorists.

When Mitt Romney barged and plowed and bulled right through last week’s debate moderator — yes, there actually was a moderator, believe it or not — Republicans loved it.  Nobody could even count the times Romney talked right over President Obama and Jim Lehrer.  This meant, of course, that Romney was forceful and articulate.

Joe Biden did maybe half that much interrupting of Paul Ryan last night.  Joe Biden was rude, boorish, immature.

Republican “logic” — don’t even go there.

And in the ongoing question of “Are you better off now than you were four years ago,” consumer sentiment is now at its highest level in five years.  Sounds like another leftwing conspiracy for Darrell Issa (R—Car Thief) to investigate.

Gary Johnson for President

All together now:  “There’s no difference between the two parties.”  And now There IS.

Gary Johnson — aka 2012’s answer to Ralph Nader — is the Libertarian candidate for the White House.  He served two terms as Governor of New Mexico.

This is a little-known fact, but Gary Johnson was actually running for president on the Republican ticket.  Yes, THIS year.  Seriously.  The reason you didn’t know that is because the media kept pretending he wasn’t there.  Everyone jokes about Ron Paul being ignored by the media, but Ron Paul was treated like a Hollywood celebutante compared to Gary Johnson.

Republicans love to preach about “individual freedom” and “limited government,” but come on, it’s just a soundbite.  It has a nice ring to it, but you’re not supposed to take it literally.  And then along came Ron Paul and Gary Johnson, actually MEANING it when they said “limited government.”  This made things a little awkward for the Warmongering Biblehumping wing of the GOP.  Hence the cold shoulder from the “media.”

I personally could never vote for a Libertarian candidate.  I sort of have this thing for funding the infrastructure, protecting the environment, providing job training for laid-off workers, stuff like that.

But for millions of voters who want the government to just go away — no more funding for the infrastructure, the safety net, the Pentagon, the Prison-Industrial Complex — there’s finally a choice.

If you think people are unemployed because they’re shiftless and lazy and they can just hurry up and die, AND you think The Handmaid’s Tale is a blueprint for America’s future — vote for Mitt Romney.

If you want the government to stop “meddling” in the economy AND stay the fuck out of your “morals” and personal life — vote for Gary Johnson.

Six Years Ago Today, Freedom Died

April 12th, 2006 was the beginning of the end for America.  On that date, Mitt Romney —  the socialist governor of Massachusetts — staged a Government Takeover of the health care industry in Massachusetts.  For these past six years, meddling socialist bureaucrats have been barging in and inserting themselves between Massachusetts residents and their doctors.

Government Death Panels have been looming over our heads for the past several years, but we all need to remember:  These Death Panels got their start in Massachusetts six years ago today.

This is what we would expect from a simpering pinko like Mitt Romney.  But America’s betrayal runs much deeper.  We’ve found out that the Heritage Foundation — America’s last bastion of Freedom and Personal Responsibility — has stabbed us in the back.  The Heritage Foundation was actually in FAVOR of Mitt Romney’s coup d’état against the People of Massachusetts.

What?!?!?!?  If you love Freedom and hate Communism, you’ve just had the rug pulled out from under you.  Everything you know is wrong.

In a speech exactly six years ago, Mitt Romney said:

“Special thanks as well to the Heritage Foundation.  Two of its leading scholars are the ones who helped design and craft what we now call the Connector, which is the centerpiece of the insurance reform portion.”

NOOO!!!  Oh America, we hardly knew ye.

And those Communist vermin at the Heritage Foundation didn’t even have the balls to admit they were establishing Death Panels to control the people’s health care.  They had to hide behind flowery euphemisms like “patient-centered” and “consumer-based market.”

It’s COMMUNISM, you flag-burning bunch of pinkos!

And now, Heaven Forbid, Mitt “I Hate Freedom” Romney is running for President of the United States.  If you don’t want the rest of the country to turn into a giant festering Massachusetts, please vote for his opponent.

Romney’s Vulture Capitalism Being Dragged Into the Spotlight

Ever turn on a kitchen light and see cockroaches scurrying frantically back into the walls?  Right now Mitt Romney and his fellow vulture capitalists are trying desperately to scurry back into the shadows.  They prefer to do their “work” away from the public eye.

They can run but they can’t hide.  Gingrich’s and Perry’s attacks on Romney’s career as a corporate raider — and other rightwingers’ attacks on Perry and Gingrich for “attacking capitalism” — have brought this entire sordid subject into the limelight.  They’ve changed the conversation.

Corporate raiders, private equity firms — and whether these companies help the economy or only enrich a few at the expense of the many — this subject is being debated and argued furiously throughout the country.  Several months ago you could have put an entire room to sleep if you said “Bain Capital” or “private equity firm.”

This new public scrutiny is the last thing Wall Street wants.  They liked it better when the entire subject was too complicated for the public to understand, and too boring for anyone to even care if they understood it or not.  Those days are over.  The rock has been lifted and the public is getting a close look at those squiggly creepy-crawly creatures squirming in the sunlight.

Newt Gingrich referred to the documentary which exposed Mitt Romney’s “job” record:

“Now, this rattled a number of so-called conservatives, who say that to challenge where the money went and to challenge what deals were cut is to be anti-free enterprise.  I'm not going to back down or be afraid to say we, the American people, have the right to know, and any candidate for president has an obligation to tell us, and I think that these extraordinarily wealthy institutions are going to somehow bring enough pressure to bear to say, 'You better shut up,' tells you just how bad-off the system has gotten.”

Whatever anyone thinks of Gingrich, and whatever his true motives are, that statement was spot on.

While Gingrich and Perry are pretending to be populists so they can derail Romney’s campaign, Romney is being defended by a Who’s Who of the Far Right:  Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Karl Rove, Jim DeMint, and Rudy Giuliani.  Guiliani in particular has made some huge investments in vulture capital firms.

These ongoing arguments and mutual attacks can only be a good thing.  The louder the arguments get, the more front-and-center this whole issue will become and the better informed the voters will be.

Mitt Romney: Job Creator. NOT!

It’s already well known that Mitt Romney eliminated zillions of jobs during his career at Bain Capital and other private equity firms.  Hopefully, the Democrats’ TV commercials will drive this point home relentlessly to everyone who doesn’t already know this.

But it gets even better.  This is the most specific item yet about Romney’s distinguished “career.”  A Kansas City, MO steel mill, Worldwide Grinding Systems, went out of business less than ten years after Bain Capital became the company’s majority shareholder.  Romney was CEO of Bain Capital during this period.

Worldwide Grinding Systems had been in business since 1888.  When the company folded, its workers were denied the severance pay and health coverage they’d been promised.  And their retirement pensions were reduced by $400 a month.  Nice job Mitt.

And the flipflops get even better too.  Mitt Romney has already performed more flipflops on more issues than any creature in the universe.  And now this:  Romney was against the Wall Street bailout of 2008 — when George W. Bush was president — and he was against Obama’s bailout of the auto industry.  But when Worldwide Grinding Systems went bankrupt — thank you Mitt Romney — the company received a $44 million bailout from the federal government.

And after the dust settled, Bain Capital ended up making a $4 million dollar profit — plus $4.5 million in consulting fees — from purchasing and destroying Worldwide Grinding Systems.

Does anybody seriously want this leech in the White House???  What Bain CEO Mitt Romney did to Worldwide Grinding Systems, President Mitt Romney will do to America.

Mitt Romney Personally Responsible for Destroying Five Million Careers

When Mitt Romney was working for various private equity firms, he single-handedly eliminated five million jobs.  The elimination of these jobs has taken $14.7 billion out of the U.S. economy.

NOTE:  The above paragraph was not intended as a factual statement.  It was only an illustration of Mitt Romney’s newest variation on the Big Lie technique.  Instead of the usual endless repetition of “job-killing regulations” versus the “job creators,” Romney is using specific numbers to give his Big Lie some authority.

Romney told a New Hampshire audience:

“The rate of regulatory burden has increased four-fold since Obama has become president. Four times the amount of regulation coming out per year as in the past. And so businesses say, ‘gosh, I’m not sure I want to invest in America.’”

The facts — remember those quaint old things — are a bit different.  The Obama Administration has actually approved 4.7% fewer regulations than George W. Bush had approved at this same point in his administration.

Mitt Romney’s campaign staff even admits there’s no truth whatsoever to Romney’s statement.  But it’s an interesting variation on the Big Lie.  Usually the Big Lie consists of a few simple phrases that get repeated millions of times until they become the conventional wisdom.

Or you can put out a bunch of subtle implications and innuendos and let them seep into the public consciousness.  The biggest example of this was Bush-Cheney “implying” that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.  They never came out and said it, but there were jillions of public statements that purposely blurred “al Qaeda Iraq Saddam bin Laden Hussein 9/11 Iraq 9/11...”  It worked like a charm, since millions of bone-stupid Fox viewers still believe Saddam Hussein helped mastermind the 9/11 attacks.  And at the same time, if someone called Bush-Cheney on their Big Lie, they could honestly say “What??? I never said that!!!”

Apparently the more variations there are on the Big Lie technique, the more effective each variation can be.  In fact it’s kind of fun.  Let’s take Newt Gingrich (please!).  You could put out a few subtle rumors and innuendos about Newt Gingrich, prostitutes and drugs.  Or you could Mitt Romnify it and say:  “Thirteen underage prostitutes were arrested during an orgy at Newt Gingrich’s mansion.  Police also seized $25,000 worth of cocaine.”

[ahem]  Again, the above paragraph is not making any accusations against Newt Gingrich.  It’s just another hypothetical example of the Big Lie Technique, as told by Mitt Romney.

The Romney Rule

The Buffett Rule refers to the idea — suggested by Warren Buffett himself — that millionaires should NOT pay a lower tax rate than middle- and lower-income earners.  But if you want an even better name — and a much more bumpersticker-friendly soundbite — how about the Romney Rule.

Mitt Romney is the perfect poster child for the absurd inequality of our tax laws.  As you probably know, the richest Americans derive most of their income from investments, rather than wages or a salary.  And the tax rate on capital gains is much lower than the tax rate on money that a person has actually worked for.

Obama wants to remedy this by establishing a minimum tax rate on the wealthiest .3% of American taxpayers.  That number would come out to roughly 450,000 taxpayers.

Mitt Romney would be hit especially hard by the Romney Rule since most of his wealth has come from capital gains.  (More specifically, Romney has made most of his money through purchasing solvent companies, driving these companies into debt, laying off the workforce and shipping the jobs overseas.  But that’s a whole ‘nother post.)

Romney is desperately fighting this Wall Street image and various nicknames like Millionaire Mitt.  He repeatedly describes himself as “currently unemployed” and “part of the middle class.”  Romney’s Achilles’ Heel is showing.  Democrats need to keep hammering away at Millionaire Mitt and the Romney Rule and all the rest of Romney's Wall Street baggage.

Even Mike Huckabee has said that Romney comes off “like the guy who laid you off.”

PrioritiesUSA Action is among the organizations trying to turn the “Romney Rule” into a ubiquitous slogan.  That should be easy to do, considering Romney paid a 14% tax rate on his income last year (according to Citizens for Tax Justice).

And the Illegal Foreclosures Keep On Coming

The foreclosure mills and robo-signers have disappeared from the headlines, but they’re still going on with a vengeance. Fake signatures, employees signing foreclosure documents they haven’t even looked at, homeowners being railroaded and deprived of due process — you name it, it’s still happening.

County officials in three states have received thousands of mortgage documents with “questionable” signatures over the last few months. One name — Linda Green, whoever that is or was — has turned up on 1.300 documents in dozens of different signature styles.

When caught red-handed, these foreclosure mill scumbags generally react with that phony “shock” and “bewilderment” that seems to work like a charm for large corporations. “Oh. Huh. I thought we fixed that.”

Funny how you can commit a crime that ruins thousands of people’s lives and then wriggle out of any legal consequences just by acting befuddled. Imagine if an individual could pull that off with petty crimes.

“Marijuana? Officer, I had no idea. Somebody gave it to me; I thought it was a cigarette.”

“Shoplifting? Huh, I thought I paid for that already. No biggie, just tell me how much I owe and I’ll pay it and be on my way.”

And now, Mortgage-gate segues into the many faces of Mitt Romney. One of Mitt Romney’s personalities said:

“We’ve got housing prices continuing to decline, and we have foreclosures at record levels. This president has failed.”

One of Mitt Romney’s other personalities has accepted over $100,000 from one T. Martin Fiorentino Jr. This is the same T. Martin Fiorentino Jr. who has lobbied frantically against legislation to crack down on predatory lending. Fiorentino has lobbied on behalf of Lender Processing Services, which has been one of the ringleaders of the robo-signing scandal.

Mitt Romney: “Obama’s is Longer Than Mine”

Mitt Romney is going to be tarred forever with Obamacare/Romneycare, no matter how much squirming and twisting and doubletalking he does.

In his latest squirmfest, Romney says his mandatory health insurance plan — when he was Governor of Massachusetts — is completely different from Obama’s health plan because “My bill was 70 pages. His is over 2,000.”

Also, I was wearing a blue shirt when I signed Romneycare into law, and it was raining. So there.

Romney also defended Romneycare by saying “we solved a serious need that existed in our state.”

Oh, and there wasn’t any “serious need” for Obama’s Affordable Care Act? Hmmm, I seem to remember something about tens of thousands of Americans dying every year from lack of medical care, jillions of people unable to get health coverage because of a pre-existing condition, countless others getting dropped by their HMOs when they had the nerve to get sick…

But it’s fun to watch Romney squirm and dance. He still thinks if he keeps on digging and digging, he’ll get out of that hole he’s dug himself into. Keep digging, Asshole.

In other news: Corporations can’t be put in prison, but their executives can. When it comes to health care fraud, federal agencies are going to start going after specific executives instead of some amorphous paper entity known as “the corporation.”

Pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, nursing home chains and any other company that deals with Medicare and Medicaid — the kid gloves are off. Instead of the corporation paying a pocket-change fine and then going about its business like nothing happened, individual executives will face criminal charges if they engage in health care fraud. Executives don’t even have to be personally involved in a fraud scheme. If they could have stopped the scheme if they had known about it, they do the perp walk.

Also, the guilty company can be banned from doing any further business with government health programs.

Health care fraud costs taxpayers $60 billion a year. Maybe this will put a dent in it.

Mitt Romney: COMMUNIST

Fellow Freedom-Loving Americans, we can no longer blame Barack Hussein Obama for the death of our great nation. You won’t believe where the Kenyan Muslim got most of his ideas for socialized medicine.

Would you believe, Mitt Romney. That’s right, Mitt Mao Stalin Romney is the real culprit here.

In the early 1990s, the Heritage Foundation came up with the idea of requiring everybody to purchase health insurance. They liked this “market based” idea much better than the Nanny State approach of requiring employers to provide health coverage or — the worst possibility of all — having those dreaded government bureaucrats provide health insurance.

This “market oriented” individual mandate was the cornerstone of Republican counter-proposals to “Clinton Care” in 1993-94.

In 2004 the Governor of Massachusetts — that would be Mitt Romney — followed through with the Heritage Foundation’s advice. And in 2006 Governor Romney signed the law requiring Massachusetts residents to have health insurance.

The author of this article — Brad DeLong — says:

“Having conquered Massachusetts, RomneyCare is now the law of the land. But how did Republican RomneyCare become Democratic ObamaCare?”

Don’t hold your breath waiting for the rightwing talking heads to start asking these questions. That would require too much (“ugh!”) thinking for their dimwitted listeners.

And now for today’s Bible passage: “Death to all Democrats who voted for health care reform!!!”

Yes, the Far Right’s favorite minister is spewing again. These Holy words of wisdom came from Orange Country Pastor Wiley Drake. Wiley Drake has previously prayed for The Lord to kill President Obama.

Hallelujah! Feel the Love!!!

Dick Cheney: Eight More Years

Well, not Dick Cheney exactly. But if Rudy Giuliani gets into the White House, he wants his vice president to be someone like Cheney.

Giuliani was answering questions from voters in New Hampshire, and one of them asked who would be Secretary of State in his administration. His answer was:

“Let me 9/11 answer with the 9/11 question of what you 9/11 would look for in a 9/11 vice president first — again without any 9/11 presumption that I'm 9/11 going to be the nominee. A vice president 9/11 has to be a partner in the 9/11 administration. The vice president has to know 9/11 everything that's going on, just in case 9/11 the vice president has to step in at a moment's notice.”

He said he spoke with Cheney on September 11, 2001 and felt that the vice president “had a sense that he knew what he was doing.”

Giuliani also said he might choose his current White House rivals to serve in his cabinet. There's something to look forward to: President Giuliani, and the top cabinet posts being held by Mitt Romney, John McCain, Mike Huckabee…

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With Barack Obama winning in Iowa, the attack is on. Mitt Romney said: “Did you listen to Barack Obama? He is a new face, but gosh when you listen to what comes out of his mouth. It’s like, ‘We're going to just get our troops out of Iraq.’ Have you thought about the consequences?”

Well, Asswipe, that’s pretty much how we got INTO Iraq, isn't it? Were you thinking about “the consequences” then?

Oh, that’s right, there'll be a bloodbath if we pull out of Iraq. If we pull out now, there'll be a bloodbath. If we pull out in 900 years there'll be a bloodbath. Well, as the Great Ronald Reagan once said: “If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with.”