A Formal Thank You to Florida Republicans From Mitt Romney's Liberal Cabal!

Newt Gingrich told you on your Fox News that "the only effective way to stop a Massachusetts liberal from becoming our nominee is to vote for Newt Gingrich", but you either didn't believe the little fat man any more than either of his first two wives did, or you did believe him and you've finally decided to join us in our flag-burning Christmas-killing crusade to turn the United States of Real Americans into the European Wannabees of Hippie Abortionists.



Mitt's Magic True Blue Massachusetts Liberal Underwear

Now that Mr. Inevitable Willard "Mitt" Romney is finally --- thanks to Florida's Republican voters this evening -- really Mr. Inevitable, we in America's Secret Liberal Headquarters can reveal the real magic underwear that has helped propel our rich handsome mouthpiece to the top of the GOP ranks. Magic Mormon Underwear? No, that was always just a smokescreen. He's wearing what we all wear, Magic True Blue Massachusetts Liberal Boxer Shorts (except for sometimes when he's in a fashionably adventurous mood).


Now it's clear that we in the Cabal can't lose. It will be a Massachusetts-Michigan-Mexican Mormon GOP Liberal versus an Hawaiian-Kenyan-Illinois Muslim Democratic Liberal in November.  What are you Teapartiers going to do about it? Vote for Ron Paul?

Progress Report

Here's your photographic update on the status of the construction of the new World Trade Center.

If the remaining GOP Presidential candidates were characters in novels.

Chickenhawk Newt

I don't want to be accused of not being evenhanded in my coverage of the GOP Presidential candidates.  I know I've been spending too many entries on Mitt Romney lately, but he's made himself such an easy target. Releasing his tax returns on the day that President Obama is delivering a State of the Union speech concentrating on our inequitable tax system written by and for the rich? What was he thinking? Why wasn't he thinking?  But this isn't about Mitt.  This is about Chickenhawk Newt.
You need to read this Vanity Fair article by Peter Boyer from 1989, "Good Newt, Bad Newt," about how Newt was horrible long before his Freddie Mac lobbying and his recent race baiting, but the story that needs to be as well known as Romney's Dog on the Roof is the story of hawkish Newt's Vietnam War experience.  He was old enough to serve, but he didn't.

Sure enough, he found himself listed among a sizable group of noted conservative hawks (including George Will and Richard Perle) who had managed to avoid the war-the "war wimps," as they came to be called. In 1985, he told Jane Mayer of The Wall Street Journal that he still believed that "Vietnam was the right battlefield at the right time." Why didn't he go? "Given everything I believe in, a large part of me thinks I should have gone over," he allowed. But, recovering, he added, "Part of the question I had to ask myself was what difference I would have made."

What if every young draftee and volunteer asked what difference they would make in the course of any war.  You're young. You're patriotic. You're cannon fodder. You don't ask questions. Newt's sense of grandiosity is not a new thing. It's hard to imagine him volunteering for any military service as less than commander in chief (maybe, in a pinch, head of the joint chiefs of staff).

"...banks aren't bad people ..." (says Mr. Willard "Corporations are people, too" Romney)

Here's Mitt Romney in Lehigh Acres, Florida earlier today:

How Rich Is Willard "Mitt" Romney : The Answer(s) to the TBL Math Puzzler of the Day

This morning I posted the following question on Twitter. "Your Math Puzzler of the Day : If Willard "Mitt" Romney drops a twenty on the sidewalk, is it worth his time to bend over and pick it up?"

I didn't know the answer myself when I tweeted the question, but I had the feeling that it would be a close call.

Now I've done the math and I have two answers.

1.  Based on income, the surprising answer is Yes!  He has reported his estimated 2011 income as $20,900,00.00.  If we assume for the sake of argument that he actually "worked" for this investment income at a rate of 40/hrs week and 52/wks year, his hourly pay would be $10,048.07 per hour, or $167.47 per minute, or $2.79 per second. So, if Mitt could pick up that twenty-dollar bill in less than 7.17 seconds, it would be worth his valuable time to bend over!
2. Based on net worth, the answer is No, keep walking and let some pauper pick up your loose portrait of Andrew Jackson.  If we accept a commonly reported net worth of $250,000,000.00 for Mr. Romney, then $20.00 represents 0.000008% of that quarter of a billion dollars.  Let's compare that to a more normal net worth of $250,000.00, which might be closer to yours and mine.  0.000008% of that 250K would be two cents.  I think we might not miss a step for those two loose pennies.

It's a silly question anyway. I'm sure he has someone to carry his money for him. He looks like a germophobe to me, and you don't know where that stuff's been.

Statistics Are Simple When You Simply Make Things Up

"Contrary to the President's constant disparagement of people in business, it's one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs -- what a fitting name he had -- created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew."
--Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, 24 January 2012

Governor Mitch "Mr. Excitement" Daniels

In what was possibly the least charismatic appearance in a very long history of uncharismatic GOP speeches I've seen in my lifetime, Mitch Daniels droned the Republican rebuttal to President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night.  The awkward reference to the meaning of Steve Jobs' name caught my attention momentarily because the Indiana Governor was obviously proud of his simplistic meaningless link between "Jobs" and "jobs".  But was there a grain of truth in what he said?  Of course not.

Click on the NPR Factchecking I heard on the radio this morning, or this New York Times blog entry from Paul Krugman, or this Truth Squad article from CNN.  The gist of all of them is this: Steve Jobs was a nice guy and Apple Computer is a successful corporation, but the statement doesn't even have a slight whiff of truthiness to it (though it will be accepted as the Fifth Gospel of the Bible by many GOPpers: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Mitch).  Apple has about 60 thousand employees (though it's not clear how many of them were added to the payroll since Barack Obama took office). The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the number of jobs added in the US due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 at between 1.4 million to 3.3 million.

If my simple math is correct -- dividing 1.4M and 3.3M by 60K -- we can see that the stimulus bill the GOP loves to condemn created the employment equivalent of 23 to 55 new Apples. Don't let Mitch Daniels' boring style lull you into thinking that he's more serious, or less of a liar, than the clowns who did decide to join the GOP Primary circus this year.

(Governor Daniels was previously the Director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush. How much did his obvious innumeracy add to the economic disaster of those eight years?)

Hey John, Where's Your Obligatory Flag Jewelry?

Did you get dressed in the dark?  Or in the bathroom of the bar around the corner?

If either President Obama or Vice President Biden had arrived at tonight's State of the Union speech without the mandatory Stars'n'Stripes jewelry on the lapels of their dark suits, the Right would be screaming with outrage and asking for longer form birth certificates to prove our President wasn't actually born in Kenya.
But a right-winger like Speaker John Boehner can appear with no patriotic hardware on his lapel because no one on the Left gives a fuck.  But I figured I'd post this picture from a few minutes ago and mention it anyway, just because of the hypocrisy of the thing.

Ron Paul Gives You More Than a Warm Fuzzy Feeling When You Give $94.95 (+$7.50 s&h) to His SuperPac.

http://ronpaulactionfigures.com/

It's all well and good for Ron Paul's Revolution SuperPac to offer Ron Paul SuperActionFigures in order to raise money to attack other Republicans, but I'm not going to be tempted to order any 2012  Republican Primary "Instant Collector's Items" until someone offers the one that comes with  the authentic scale Magic Mormon Underwear.

Abraham Lincoln Explained the Dangers of Corporate Personhood in 1864

Two years ago today I posted this quotation from South Carolina's least favorite Republican President (at least they don't hate Barack Obama enough to secede from the Union) in honor of the Supreme Court's Citizens United case that had just been decided earlier that week. I followed it at the time with a short rant about the ramifications of this groundbreaking Corporate Personhood case, but now it doesn't need any further elaboration:

"I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."

--Abraham Lincoln (letter to William F. Ekins, 21 November 1864)

Language Matters: "Self Deportation"

Last night's GOP Debate at the University of South Florida - home of the Bulls(hit) - was refusing to live up to NBC's pre-fight teasers, but one memorable bit of language will survive the event.  I watched the whole thing, where the main early rounds revolved around Mitt and Newt sniping about each other's unfitness for the office of the Presidency. All of my nodding in agreement, "Yes, you're both right about your opponent's inability to hold any position of authority," started acting as a soporific, as it also did for the sideshow acts of Santorum and Paul who stood there trying to keep their eyes open as they waited for the stray question that might be thrown their way to uphold an appearance of evenhandedness.
The fact that the crowd was instructed not to clap or give rebel yells also contributed to the lullaby effect of last night's festivities (though they couldn't help but cheer when Mitt mentioned Fidel Castro's death, or when Newt doubled down by saying that Fidel would go to hell -- you can't stop Republicans from cheering death and holy retribution!), but I was roused from my stupor when the topic turned to immigration and Mitt Romney said, "The answer is self deportation, which is people decide they can do better by going home because they can’t find work here because they don't have legal documentation to allow them to work here...We’re not going to round them up.”

Though all the first-page Google results for "self deportation" are about Romney's undocumented immgrants' honor system announced last night, it seems he didn't make up this innovative concept.  The government under George W. Bush (the one man NEVER mentioned at a 2012 GOP event) proposed the same thing in 2008, as shown here in this Houston Chronicle article, "ICE offers details about self-deport program".  And what is the incentive for undocumented workers reporting themselves to ICE and sending themselves back to their home country? "Should they ever want to return to the country legally, the application process wouldn't be as lengthy because the government would know their specific departure date." Not an incentive that would lead to widespread self deportation.
- -
Beyond the policy arguments, there's something about the word that really caught my attention on more than a political level as soon as I heard it.  If this were an era of a thriving hallucinogenic subculture, I could see "self deporting" and "self deportation" as great evocative euphemisms for tripping. At least in that context the concept makes sense.

Live from Tampa at Nine EST: "Leeches & Shaved Heads & Tear Gas, Oh My! -- Part 1"

The elite liberal media giant NBC has an interesting description for tonight's GOP Debate on my (elite liberal media giant) Time Warner Cable guide page.

According to independent listings and television ads,  NBC will be showing the Tampa debate between the final four clowns looking for the honor of losing to President Obama in November at nine tonight.  And while it may be extremely clever and poetically very accurate for the peacock network to title the debate "Fear Factor" and subtitle it "Leeches & Shaved Heads & Tear Gas, Oh My! -- Part 1", doing so certainly betrays their elite intellectual East Coast sympathies and aesthetics.

What are your drinking words for tonight's GOP Debate?

True Blue Florida Liberal Stein

The debates aren't quite as much fun since the Cain, Bachmann, and Perry busses have left the Clown Caravan, but there should still be some entertaining moments among the final four at tonight's GOP Debate at the University of South Florida in Tampa.  If you want to get drunk tonight (I'll be filling my stein with Hurricane Kitty), then take a drink every time one of the following all-too-predictable phrases is uttered.

Newt Gingrich: "I worked with Ronald Reagan," "The Elites in Washington and New York," "Saul Alinsky Radicalism,"  or "Food Stamp President"

Mitt Romney: "Attacks on Free Enterprise," "Crony Capitalism" (in a sentence referring to Barack Obama)

Rick Santorum: "Faith" and "Family" in a single sentence, or "I'm In The Final Four!"

Ron Paul: "I'm a Doctor," "End the Fed," or any single sentence that contains three (or more) repetitions of the word "Liberty"

I'll be tweeting with a #GOPDebate hashtag as @TrueBlueLiberal during the debate until I'm too drunk to control my fingers.

"... I ain't marchin' anymore ..."

If you missed PBS's American Masters on Phil Ochs tonight (watching the championship football game between the New York Liberal Media Elites and the San Francisco Left-Wing Extremist Environmentalists?), please try to catch it when it comes around again.


In the meantime...

Now the labor leader's screamin' 
when they close the missile plants, 
United Fruit screams at the Cuban shore, 
Call it "Peace" or call it "Treason," 
Call it "Love" or call it "Reason," 
But I ain't marchin' any more, 
No I ain't marchin' any more

Gabrielle Giffords Steps Down: "I have more work to do on my recovery"

All the best.

"... and the forests will echo with laughter ..."

Mitt on Fox : "I'm not one sixth the man that my father was."

Mitt Romney's explanation in the following video for why he will be publicly releasing only his tax returns for 2010 and 2011, while George Romney  released 12 years of returns in 1968, seems to relate to the fact that his returns will be posted on the internet and subject to actual scrutiny.



I'm sure that nothing interesting or shady or illegal occurred in the tax years of 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001, or 2000. I'm sure that Romney wasn't looking for more aggressive or questionable tax-avoidance strategies before he started actively running for President.

Remember Bush's War on Iraq when you think about who to vote for in 2012.

It's important for everyone to remember that the Bush/Cheney Administration was planning their attack on Iraq before 9/11/2001 and before they even took office. Don't believe anyone who now says they didn't know they were electing potential war criminals in November 2000.

There are four contenders left for the 2012 GOP nomination as the South Carolina primary results coming in  tonight. None of them has left any doubt about where stand on the question of war with Iran.

The Winner of Iowa, Rick Santorum, doesn't see any need to wait for formal US aggression to commence.  In the meantime, he's a supporter of terrorism within Iran. "On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that's a wonderful thing," Santorum says in the following video. Since Republicans hate science just as much as they hate Iran, this type of terrorism is especially satisfying to someone from the Neanderthal wing of the party like Rick.



The Winner of New Hampshire, Mitt Romney, who has been running for President for much of the last decade, is on the record in this debate from 2007 saying that he would not take tactical nuclear weapons off the table when dealing with Iran:


Tonight's Winner in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich, hasn't been running for President quite as long as the man he's beating tonight, but he has been just as bellicose as the men who won Iowa and New Hampshire:


There is a fourth member of the final four, Ron Paul, who hasn't won any GOP primaries, and probably won't win any.  I don't agree with him on many domestic issues (other than the civil liberties and drug law issues where he's 100% right), but he deserves to be heard putting his fellow Republicans in their place on the issue of war and peace.  He's schooling Rick Santorum in the following video, but he could be talking directly to Newt or Mitt just as easily:

Callista Gingrich one step closer to being First Lady

With Newt Gingrich's victory tonight in South Carolina, Callista Gingrich is one step closer to completing her long-range plan to become The First Lady as well as The Third Wife.
 The last time she got into the White House, she did so by preying on the lust of Martin Short. This time the Martians are using Newt Gingrich's unusual sexual tastes as the key to their path to US and World domination.

Bottoms Up! (Adv.)

Click Here:  South Carolina True Blue Liberal Mug for more details.

I know what I'll be drinking my vodka out of tonight as I watch the South Carolina GOP Primary results come in.

I'm hoping for a four-way tie.

Representative Maurice Hinchey

In these years of low approval ratings for Congress, I have been very appreciative of my Representative in Washington, Maurice Hinchey. Read his Wikipedia entry for an impressive list of stands on environmental issues during his time in Congress, most recently with his co-authorship of the FRAC act to end the exemptions from the Clean Water Act given to the gas and oil industries by the Cheneyites.  His anti-fracking activism invoked the wrath of Karl Rove's American Crossroads in the 2010 elections (the 21st-century badge of honor -- the equivalent of being on Dick Nixon's Enemies List).

Later today, Congressman Hinchey will be announcing his retirement from Congress after this term. I want to wish him a happy well-earned retirement, good health, and thank him for his service.  There will be no jokes or snark in this entry.

Has Newt Gingrich been vetted by a qualified graphologist?

I found this signed "Personhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge" of Newt Gingrich's on the PersonhoodUSA.com website. This is the personhood group that wants personhood for zygotes, not personhood for corporations, though the overlap between right-wing groups that want to award personhood to both (while removing it from Mexicans, students, and elderly African-American voters) is large.

But this post isn't about strange pledges from fringe groups or the even stranger GOP compulsion to sign them all. This is about the handwriting on Newt's form. I'm not a trained graphologist, but I don't want the hand that held this pen anywhere near any nuclear buttons or any other lever of power: 

Won't someone in the Garden State offer Chris Christie a wafer-thin mint?

"... Rick, I'll tell you what, 9 dollars and 28 cents, a $9.28 bet ..."

You may remember this exchange from the Iowa GOP Debate of December 10, 2011:

Rick Perry: "... I read your first book and it said in there that your mandate in Massachusetts, which should be the model for the country — I know it came out of the reprint of the book, but, you know, I’m just saying, you were for individual mandates, my friend.”

"Mitt" Romney: “You know what, you’ve raised that before, Rick. and you’re simply wrong.”

Perry: "It was true then, it’s true now…”

Romney: (extending his right hand) “... Rick, I’ll tell you what, 10,000 bucks, 10,000 dollar bet.”

Perry: (no hand extended) “I’m not in the betting business...”

 I had wondered here at the time if $10,000 were the same as $50 for you and me and the people we know. With all the discussion over the last day of Romney's wealth and tax bracket, I thought about this question again, so I did some very minor research and some very simple math.

If we accept that Romney's net worth is close to the $250,000,000 that is most commonly reported, then $10,000 is .004% of his net worth. 

Romney will be turning 65 on March 12 (Happy Retirement Day!), so if we take the $232,000 average net worth of an American over 65 and multiply it by .004%, we get $9.28.

So Mitt was really offering Rick a friendly meaningless bet of $9.28 in normal people's dollars. Or less. For the average person in the age group 55-64 the relative amount would be $7.21, and 45-54?: $3.93, 35-44: $2.06, 25-34: $0.34, and Under 25: $0.06.  Pennies.

To put his laughably small speaking fees of $374,000 in perspective, that deceptively healthy number would have a relative worth to you and me of $2.21 to $348.00, depending upon our ages. Hardly worth bothering the IRS about.

Massachusetts Moderate Mitt Romney does NOT want to lower his own tax rate to zero (Newt does).

By the way, those speakers' fees that don't amount to very much mentioned in the last line have been reported to amount to a mere $374,000 last year.  
Here's the full transcript for those of you who can't watch a video at work:

ROMNEY: I also think that the Speaker’s [Newt's] plan to eliminate the capital gains tax for high-income individuals--capital gains, interest, and dividends--would not only be a very expensive decision in terms of having to fill an even larger budget, but would provide people with very high income the possibility of no tax at all. You’d have individuals -- the Warren Buffet argument -- Warren Buffett, Bill Gates [AND ME] would probably pay no taxes at all. And today they probably pay 15 percent. Very high-income people in this country probably pay 15 percent taxes if their resources are coming from investments. And under their plan it would go to zero.I just don’t think that’s the right course. With our precious dollars, we should focus on providing relief, tax relief, in two areas: one is for middle-income Americans, who have been hurt the most, and the other is to bring our corporate rates to a level where we could draw people from other countries to bring their funds back in this country.

QUESTION: What’s the effective rate you’ve been paying?

ROMNEY: What’s the effective rate I’ve been paying? It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything, because my last 10 years, I’ve...[BEEN RETIRED AND RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT AS A HOBBY] my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income, or rather than earned annual income. I get a little bit of income from my book [THAT NOBODY BOUGHT] but I gave that all away. And then I get speakers’ fees from time to time but not very much. Ha Ha.

And if Mitt Romney's tax advisors were doing their job, they would be telling him that it would be fiscally imprudent for Romney to vote for himself. He gets a better tax deal under any of his competitors' schemes, not just Newt Gingrich's.

SpreadingRomney.com



http://spreadingromney.com/



I'll be linking every mention of Mitt Romney to SpreadingRomney.com in honor of Seamus's ride to Canada on the roof of Mitt Romney's car.


Won't it be great when anyone named Romney is as incapable of Googling or Binging their own family name as people named Santorum?

"...I am eggs of all persuasions..."

Frank Zappa's introduction (with German subtitles) of this performance of Sofa #2 in 1978 is brilliant, as is the performance of this short bilingual song from One Size Fits All.

 Enjoy!
 

I am the heaven
I am the water
Ich bin der Dreck unter deinen Walzen
Ich bin dein geheimer Schmutz
Und verlorenes Metallgeld
Ich bin deine Ritze
Ich bin deine Ritze und Schlitze

I am the clouds 
I am embroidered 
Ich bin der Autor aller Felgen 
Und Damast Paspeln 
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette 
Ich bin der Chrome Dinette 
Ich bin Eier aller Arten 

Ich bin alle Tage und Nächte 
Ich bin alle Tage und Nächte

Ich bin hier 
Und du bist mein Sofa!!  

The Fine White Whine of the Day (about events under the Tuscan sun)

I couldn't help reproducing the text of this email from the Independence Hall Tea Party Association here in all its glory. I didn't do anything to the original press release but crop the white areas surrounding it and add the highlighting to the various spellings of Tuscan/Tuscon/Tucson (they finally got it right - temporarily - the third time).




This post isn't simply about the need for geography education among those who believe in home schooling. It's about the sense of victimization and entitlement among those who condemn victimization and entitlement in anyone other than themselves. It's about presenting another example of the constant Fine White Whine emanating from the political Right.

Finally, while they ask for Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz to step down to atone for her criticism of the Tea Party, they are not above stating that "the perpetrator of the Tuscon [sic] shooting was an unstable individual with left wing sympathies, someone whose world views were more like Occupy than Tea Party."

"Whine and then blame someone else" could be the motto of these groups, but they should watch their spelling -- and study an atlas containing Italy and Arizona -- if they want to gain any credibility beyond their true believers.

Language Matters: What adjective do you put before "Capitalism"?

If you answered that question with anything other than the word "Crony" you haven't been paying attention to the 2012 GOP Presidential Primary (a.k.a., Clown Circus).

Newt Gingrich today is quoted as saying that "Crony Capitalism is not Free Enterprise" when talking about Willard "Mitt" Romney's brand of vulture capitalism.  (LA Times)

Michele Bachmann (how we miss you!!) invoked crony capitalism as a charge against Rick Perry in late December when talking about his campaign contributors and favor seekers in Texas (National Journal)

Mitt Romney jumped on the CroCap bandwagon a few days ago when talking about President Obama's recess appointments to the NLRB, stating: "This president is a crony capitalist. He's a job killer." I'm not sure how the "socialist" President or the socialist Unions he was serving could also be capitalists, but you'll have to go to Mitt for clarification. (CBS News)

Jon Huntsman worries about how "we have crony capitalism in Congress" because of the lack of term limits and the revolving door between K Street and Capitol Hill. (Investors.com)

Herman Cain jumped on the anti-crony capitalism express back in September when leaping onto the pile of conservatives gleefully swarming over the corpse of Solyndra. (ThinkProgress)

Ron Paul calls lots of people crony capitalists and he made it clear what CroCap isn't in early November: "Crony capitalism isn't when somebody makes money and they produce a product." I don't think anyone's accusing either Mitt Romney or Rick Perry of producing a product. (Politico)

It all seems to have started back in early September when their intellectual leader, Sarah Palin, first starting trotting out the Crony Capitalism label in association with Rick Perry. (firedoglake)

I personally can't think of a better adjective to be inextricably linked with  the word "Capitalism", but why is the GOP doing our work for us?  Did they check with Frank Luntz first before making "Crony Capitalism" (which always reminds me of Bushie and Brownie and Katrina) the unforgettable alliterative enunciation of the year?

Rick Perry, the original target of Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann's "crony capitalism" jibes, went one step further in an interview with Fox today, accusing Mitt Romney of being a "vulture capitalist: "There’s a real difference between venture capitalism and vulture capitalism. I don’t believe that capitalism is making a buck under any circumstances." (FoxNewsInsider)

If they keep this up, "Capitalist" will be a worse insult than "Socialist" in their political lexicon (just as it always has been in mine).

I'm sorry, but somehow I seem to have forgotten Rick Santorum.

This was the dream candidate the GOP was looking for? Make him an honorary member of the GOP Clown Circus.

Watch Chris Christie at a Romney event in New Hampshire tell a heckler in the audience chanting "Christie kills jobs" that "Something may go down tonight, but it ain't gonna be jobs sweetheart." The "sweetheart" is condescending enough from this fat chauvinist pig, but is there any other way to understand his "going down" remark than in the obvious sexual way, especially from someone who likes to picture himself as a Joisey tough guy?

I'm so glad that he's no longer my Governor. What a fucking embarassment.
And look at Mitt in the background of this video wondering, "Do they make Magic Underwear in a size that would fit that ass?"

Look, it's the original cast of American Psycho!

Can't you just imagine these young go-getters going to expensive restaurants and getting expensive suits and custom business cards when they aren't busy with murders and executions?

Santorum

http://spreadingsantorum.com/

Now that Rick Santorum is in the news with his co-win in the Iowa caucuses*, it's possible that Google searches on "Santorum" may have stories about him occasionally appearing above the word that was created in his honor by Dan Savage because of this remark by Rick Santorum in April 2003:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything… It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution... You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong healthy families... In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing."

So we need to link Santorum, Santorum, Santorum, Santorum, Santorum, Santorum, Santorum to SpreadingSantorum.com and keep the definition alive and at the very top of all Google and Bing searches for Rick Santorum.

________
* On the morning after the voting in the cornfields, I thought of poor Emily Litella every time one of the announcers on NPR said "Voting in the Caucasus".  It made me miss Gilda Radner.

Who Knew Newt Was Into Sharing the Wealth With the Poor

Daily Negations by
Lagowski & Mumma

I picked up this old book from 1996 this morning to look for the Daily Negation for January 5th (maybe because I was simply in too good a mood today). It seems that Newt Gingrich was a good tool for bringing a person down even 15 years ago. Here's the negation for January 5, "Entitlements", starting with a quote from Newt delivered before the House Ways and Means Committee on January 5, 1995.

And in 2012 he just wants to give them jobs as janitors.

The new World Trade Center's cool and tall and all, but it doesn't hold a candle to this seagull.

I'm just saying.

"... the earth will see you on through this time ..."

It's a beautiful cold January day where I am and I want to continue this day of forgetting about Republicans and war and capitalism and ... as much as that's possible for me anyway.
I'm currently finishing the last few pages of Into the Silence:The Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest by Wade Davis, and "Mountains of the Moon" is the song stuck in my head this morning.

I hope everyone finds time to take a walk today, maybe start a great new book, or at least get a song stuck in your head.

This Week in the GOP Clown Circus

The "GOP Clown Circus" has officially folded its tent and left town.  Calling the remaining travesty a clown circus after Paul Romtorum won Iowa is an insult to its star buffoons, Perry, Bachmann, and Cain.

• Michele Bachmann has just admitted that god made a mistake in telling her to run. (New York Times)

• Rick Perry seemed to be gone, but with Crazy Eyes out of it, he may not be dropping out. (Huffington Post)

• Herman Cain and his wife are doing fine in political retirement, and he promises, when he does endorse someone, to make it "unconventional."  (Politico)

Here's hoping that Herman's unconventional endorsement will be awarded to Sarah Palin or Donald Trump.  Then the Presidential race would be a full-blown clown circus again, something worthy of a painting by John Wayne Gacy, (Iowa's favorite Hollywood cowboy star).