Bob Mac

Today, my father-in-law received a Romney solicitation which begins:

“I am running for President of the United States and because you are one of America’s most notable Republicans, I want to personally let you know why.”

They have a very bad mailing list. Poppy died in January. He voted a straight Democratic ticket starting in 1934. He had a PhD and expected
civilized people to use earned honorifics.

If they really wanted either a contribution or a correction, postage would have been a nice touch. Further proof that this outfit doesn’t have the sense God gave gravel, but they are spending all that money the Koch’s are sending.

Good. I hope they spend it all. I’ll recycle all their mailings.

Da Chipster

In the never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American Way, which sometimes seem to be contradictory goals, a victory was won on a key front which adavances the cause of all three.

My adopted state, Ohio, which is currently being run by a gang of smarmy, self-serving, conniving wretches (aka “Republicans”) has been given extra voting time on the weekend before the election.

This was the denouement of the recent “Obama hates the troops” brouhaha, wherein the Rightistas said that expanding the right to vote on that last weekend to everyone, not just military, was “anti-military.” Even though, four years ago, everybody could vote that weekend, anyway, and the military didn’t complain even once.

That, of course, did not stop the GOP from “fixing” a “problem” which doesn’t exist, only to have the “solution” make voting harder for key Obama demographics, including old people, working people, minority people and sentient people.

Such helpful, handy, unneeded, un-asked for and unConstitutional fixes are all the rage among the Rabid Right, who can’t win without lying, cheating, obfuscating and lying again, all while carrying a cross, wrapped in the flag, with a cherry on top (until marriage!)

The Republican OH SecState has managed to put the kibosh on the other weekends leading up to that one…so far! He’s even FIRED two Dem Election Board members in Montgomery County who tried to defy his imperial edicts. But this decision (as well as others in FL and TX) sets the table for more such victories in Ohio…and elsewhere.

bob

Sure default Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney lined his pockets to the tune of a quarter-billion-dollars or more as chief of Bain Capital. But in the process he innovated and created jobs and generally behaved as the sort of model capitalist that any American could be proud of, right?

GOP spin-meisters notwithstanding, Rolling Stone political reporter Matt Taibbi followed the money and did the math, and came to a somewhat different conclusion:

Last May, in a much-touted speech in Iowa, Romney used language that was literally inflammatory to describe America’s federal borrowing. “A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation,” he declared. “Every day we fail to act, that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love.” Our collective debt is no ordinary problem: According to Mitt, it’s going to burn our children alive.

And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

See, Mitt’s strategy at Bain Capital was to pick a target company that was pulling in money but struggling to stay profitable. Mitt/Bain would put up a wee down payment and get their buddies at places like Goldman Sachs to lend them the rest – sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then, Bain would use the money it just borrowed to buy up a controlling interest in the target company. Then, Tabbai reported, Bain would transfer responsibility for the loan from Goldman or whomever to the target company itself. And then, Bain would advise the now-debt-riddled target company on how to reduce expenses, i.e. who to lay off. Finally, Bain would charge millions in “management” fees for this swell advice.

However, it turns out the Mitt Strategy wouldn’t have been nearly so profitable if not for a fine loophole in the U.S. government’s tax code. Reports Tabbai:

The entire business of leveraged buyouts wouldn’t be possible without a provision in the federal code that allows companies like Bain to deduct the interest on the debt they use to acquire and loot their targets. This is the same universally beloved tax deduction you can use to write off your mortgage interest payments, so tampering with it is considered political suicide – it’s been called the “third rail of tax reform.” So the Romney who routinely rails against the national debt as some kind of child-killing “mortgage” is the same man who spent decades exploiting a tax deduction specifically designed for mortgage holders in order to bilk every dollar he could out of U.S. businesses before burning them to the ground.

Feeling chilly this afternoon? Blood not boiling enough today? Read the rest of this report (and there is a lot) and fire yourself up.

Da Chipster

Well, the first half of the 2016 Republican National Convention is over and this is what we’ve learned:

→ Chris Christie is unaware of who the nominee actually is.

→ Condi Rice is unaware of who she worked for, never mentioning him by name and only once by “Administration.”

→ Clint Eastwood is a much worse actor than we thought.

→ Mike Huckabee is much creepier than we thought.

→ Ann Romney IS a witch. With a capital “B.”

→ Paul Ryan’s divorce from reality is final.

→ John Boehner hopes minority voters will self deport. (h/t Bob McC)

→ The GOP elite often wonder how the other 99.9% live. Actually, I’m guessing they rarely wonder at all.  (h/t BJH)

→ The GOP as a whole seems to have lost their diaries covering January 2001 thru January 2009, except for family.

→ Finally, some guy named Romney talked, but has yet to produce an original thought, an honest statement, or a complete tax return.

I am having a hard time deciding who is more confused by Clint Eastwood’s speech – me or Clint.

It’s probably me because Clint is backstage taking a nap and I’m still confused.

I wonder why invisible Obama agreed to sit in that chair?

And, what are the odds that Clint played the drinking game before his speech.

Lastly, when is Marco Rubio going to mention Mitt Romney? Every damn Republican speaker at this convention is running in 2016.

Somebody please help me understand what these Republicans mean about our rights not coming from government but from God.

I don’t get it. At all.

MY right to vote came from government. If James Madison is the founding father they are talking about, Barack Obama would not be allowed to vote. Government changed that.

Talk to me about slavery. God and the founding fathers allowed that. Government fixed it.

Women are still fighting for equal pay for equal work. Only government can fix that. Obviously, God is slacking off on that.

Did the founding fathers and God fix sweat shops? No. Government did.

I am a woman of faith but sometimes – no, many times – God uses wise and courageous men and women to fix things. Those men and women are government.

I put my faith in God but my expectations in government.

Using liberals, God brought us this far. Let’s not go back