Mitt Romney – Page 2

C-Span Caller: “Does Mitt Romney have a big Penis?”

I usually find prank calls into shows that allow live calls to be lame forms of amusement but this one is kindov noteworthy…

During an early morning appearance on Wednesday, Jan. 11, Chairman Wayne MacDonald of the New Hampshire Republican Party fielded caller questions, including one from a prank caller named “Dan,” who claimed to hail from Portsmouth, NH.

“I used to be an assistant to the Portsmouth city manager and part of my job would be to help prepare for the primaries, so I know a little bit of what Chairman MacDonald is going through,” the caller began. “A very little bit, I know you have a big job today sir.”

Leading into his question, “Dan” continued: “My question in regard to how turnout will affect the eventual results. Mr. Chairman, do you believe that Mitt Romney has a big penis?”

This was really insulting and inappropriate. the dude has 5 sons and a hot wife. of COURSE he’s got a big penis. wtf, caller? jelly much?
ROMNEYS PENIS 2016!

Stupid: Republicans Forget how Capitalism Works / WTF it even IS

“Capitalism Comes Under Fire in Republican Primary Campaign”, says the National Journal – and sadly – they’re right.

The Democrats started it, and now Republican rivals are piling on. Mitt Romney is suddenly playing defense about his career as a venture capitalist–and in a Republican primary campaign, of all things.

The attacks on Romney’s Bain Capital career from fellow Republicans may be coming too late in the game to knock him off his path toward the nomination. They may also be ineffective in a party that lionizes capitalism and the business sector that propels it.

Republican candidates for the presidential nomination are doing themselves, their party and their country a disservice in their attempts to derail future President Mitt Romneys path to the nomination. Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry and especially Newt Gingrich (who has flip flopped on his pledge to not run negative ads) and his PACs have all hammered Romney on his very reputable work at Bain Capital, a large investment firm.

The issue of criticism is that Romney was a destroyer of lives because his company, Bain, fired people when it invested in them. Well no shit it did. A legitimate criticism would be if Bane gutted and crushed companies, stomping on the little guy while padding their fat wallets and using the money to snort coke off of strippers ass cracks. That is exactly the claim (minus the last part), of course, being made by 1 expected culprit (MoveOn.org) and one not so expected culprit: Newt Gingrich.

The Wall Street Journal delves into the numbers of the Bain record and things come out pretty exact to how Romney has described when asked about it:

Mr. Romney has told potential voters how at Bain he helped launch or rebuild companies such as Staples Inc., Domino’s Pizza Inc. and Sports Authority Inc., creating more than 100,000 jobs.

His rivals have sought to turn his Bain tenure against him. Rick Perry has run an ad saying Mr. Romney “made millions buying companies and laying off workers.” Newt Gingrich has said Mr. Romney should “give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain.”

Mr. Gingrich laced into Mr. Romney at this weekend’s debates, and a group associated with the former House Speaker plans to release a 28-minute documentary blistering Mr. Romney’s Bain tenure. Meanwhile, on ABC on Sunday, Obama strategist David Axelrod criticized Mr. Romney as “a corporate raider.”

Mr. Romney describes job losses and bankruptcies as an inevitable byproduct of the capitalist system, and has said that in some cases, eliminating some jobs may save the rest of the company. In response to Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Romney said: “Doesn’t he understand how the economy works? In the real economy, some businesses succeed and some fail.”

Asked in an interview about Bain’s bankruptcy and failure rate, Mr. Romney said that in buyout deals, “our orientation was by and large to acquire businesses that were out of favor and in some cases in trouble.” He added that Bain wasn’t the type of firm that stripped companies and fired workers, but instead, “our approach was to try to build a business. We were not always successful.”

I give MoveOn a pass cuz that’s their job: to smear Republicans as evil money hungry heartless crooks. But WTF is Gingrich’s excuse for this bullshit?

This is a stupid and losing issue for all who attempt it because what you’re essentially doing is attacking Mitt Romney for having the audacity to believe in and take a chance on investing his money into struggling companies and doing a kickass job at it (Bain has a 3 to 1 record of succeeding in rescuing said struggling companies).

James Pethokoukis reminds the GOP field how capitalism works:

Of course, Romney and Bain weren’t in the game to create jobs. They were in it to make money for their investors and themselves. Then again, the same would go for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Warren Buffett, and just about every other successful entrepreneur and investor you could name. But that is the miracle of free-market capitalism. The pursuit of profits by creating value benefits the rest of society through higher incomes, more jobs, and better products and services. This isn’t “destructive creation”—like, say, crippling U.S. fossil fuel production before “clean energy” sources are viable—but “creative destruction” where innovation and efficiency sweep away the old and replace it with a more productive and wealthier society.

This is one my favorite examples is one that Pethokoukis also shares as one of his:

Through this constant roiling of the status quo, creative destruction provides a powerful force for making societies wealthier. It does so by making scarce resources more productive. The telephone industry employed 421,000 switchboard operators in 1970, when Americans made 9.8 billion long-distance calls. With advances in switching technology over the next three decades, the telecommunications sector could reduce the number of operators to 156,000 but still ring up 106 billion calls. An average operator handled only 64 calls a day in 1970. By 2000, that figure had increased to 1,861, a staggering gain in productivity. If they had to handle today’s volume of calls with 1970s technology, the telephone companies would need more than 4.5 million operators, or 3 percent of the labor force. Without the productivity gains, a long-distance call would cost six times as much.

Pethokoukis notes: “Romney’s career as a free-market capitalist? No apologies necessary.” – which is fun because “No Apologies” is also the name of Romneys book.

REMINDER: Crony Capitalism = Bad. Traditional American Capitalism = The best system on the planet.

Like I said – Shame on Huntsman and Perry for jumping on this issue too, but Gingrich is the most damaged in putting all his chips on this “stupid” attack line:

And finally, there is Sheldon Adelson, longtime friend of Gingrich an major donor to Republican causes. Did he intend his $5 million for the super PAC to be used to attack capitalism? Somehow I get the sense this was not what he had in mind.

The entire effort has the potential to put the final nail in Gingrich’s presidential campaign coffin and cement his reputation as the most reckless man in politics As Tim Pawlenty, a Romney supporter, said today on the topic of Bain, “It’s an old issue, and first of all, it’s the Democrats’ issue, it’s the issue that Barack Obama comes out after Mitt on. The Democrats have brought this out for years. For Newt or other Republicans to be attacking private enterprise in this way, I think, is really just embracing the Democrats’ message. It’s, unfortunately, not what Republicans should be doing.” But Gingrich is above his party. Remember, he’s Churchillian! (You may recall when there was push back on his first anti-Bain attack, Gingrich retreated, saying he should not have phrased his criticisms in that way.)

This is the Gingrich effect writ large: Creating havoc, blemishing careers and giving the Democrats plenty of laughs. Gingrich is likely to do poorly tomorrow as will Perry (making two rotten outings in a row for both of them). There is no appetite in the GOP for these candidates or their brand of anti-capitalistic pandering. The historian from Freddie Mac and the crony capitalist from Austin do not, we clearly see, embrace the Tea Party ethos. The referendum on this entire gambit should be swift. Whether it ultimately helps Romney or not, Gingrich is a reminder of the very worst in American politics.

Fun bonus? The New York Times reports that Newt Gingrich both invested in and worked on an advisory board for Forstmann Little — a competitor of Bain in the leveraged-buyout industry. So in other words: It’s okay for Newt but not for Romney. Nice. Fortune Mag reports the same:

Upon leaving Congress in 1999, the former Speaker joined private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. as a member of its advisory board.

It is unclear how long Gingrich served on the advisory board, or how much he was paid. The campaign has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Forstmann Little was one of the world’s original leveraged buyout firms, although its founder — the late Teddy Forsmann — often railed against what he saw as over-leveraging by rival firms (presumably including Bain). It effectively began winding down operations in 2005, following a legal dispute with the State of Connecticut over failed investments in a pair of large communications companies. Forstmann Little lost the case at trial, but wasn’t required to pay any significant restitution (both deals were done within two years of Gingrich being named to the advisory board).

During Saturday night’s GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, Gingrich said: ”I’m not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers.”

In NY Mag, Jonathan Chait says that it is a “myth” that Romney is a job creator, which is a poorly stated version of the reality. The truth is that Romney was responsible for creating thousands of jobs – a lot more than had to be done away with to save a company, for sure – however, guaranteeing any number of added jobs was not the business he was in because that is not what capitalism is or does.

On the other hand, bringing ourselves face-to-face with the very real victims of Romney’s business career explodes his fairy tale of having been a “job creator.” He was in the business of creating wealth, not jobs. Capitalism increases a society’s standard of living, but it does not increase its rate of employment. If your goal is simply to give every willing worker a job, then socialism is the system you want.

Since we want to increase our standard of living, we want capitalism. That wealth benefits the whole society over the long run, but in the short run it can destroy lives and communities — which, of course, is one justification for the role of government in siphoning off a portion of the limitless wealth generated by the Mitt Romneys of the world in order to alleviate social dislocation. But the thrust of Romney’s platform is that people like himself give too much already, and those left behind get too much. His self-presentation as a “job creator” is an attempt to paint over that ugly reality. Republicans must be furious that Gingrich, of all people, is helping expose it.

And finally: Jim Geraghty on how the virtues of firing people when the circumstances require it:

So, here we are, at the day first primary, and the main objection to Mitt Romney from Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry is that he fired a bunch of people? More than his liberal-softie sounding rhetoric in 1994 and 2002? More than his crusade to liberate us from the individual mandate of Obamacare in order to leave the states free to enact their own individual mandates? More than the fact that he’s won exactly one general election in his life, in a year that the left-of-center vote was divided?

Objections to private-sector layoffs from the party that wants to shrink government? How do we think all of those employees of the federal bureaucracy will get of the payroll? Mass alien abductions?

When you think about it, isn’t it possible that the layoffs enacted when Romney was at Bain constitute one of the boldest moves of his career? One of the times he’s been willing to do something unpopular because he thought it was right, and in the long-term interest of the institution he was managing, instead of following the polls and telling people what they wanted to hear?

Much of the focus came upon Romney’s comment that he likes being able to fire people who provide services to him, if he’s not happy with the quality of the service.

You know, the way you can’t with the Department of Motor Vehicles, or the way you can’t (or at least not without Herculean determination) with a crappy teacher at a public school. The way you can’t fire a tenured professor at a state university, whether or not he gives good value for his salary and benefits to those who pay his salary (the students and the taxpayers). The way we can’t take our business to some other government, without leaving the country.

The Dark Knight Rises as an allegory for the 2012 Election

All this talk of Mitt Romney (whose primary win in New Hampshire tomorrow and then in South Carolina and then in Florida will secure his nomination for president) and his previous work at the investment firm Bain Capital has made me think of a metaphor…

Mitt Romney = Bane.
The toughest match the Dark Knight has ever had to face.

Barack Obama = the Dark Knight
Once thought of as a hero, now thought to be a monster, he must return to fight for his ideals.

Commissioner Gordon = The Tea Party
Traditionalist called by a sense of duty to engage in a battle to preserve what is radically decaying before his eyes.

Catwoman = Occupy Wall Street
An otherwise uninvolved player, motivated by and attracted to chaos whose sense of entitlement brings her/them to class warfare and a life of law breaking they feel is morally justified cuz rich people have stuff and they don’t. She’s angry because she’s ignorant – mainly in her misunderstanding of economics, thinking of it as a pie with a finite amount of slices.

How does it all end?…

Take it either way:

Romney/Bane succeeds in doing what other more experienced contenders previously failed at and breaks the people’s hero?

Obama/Batman gets broken by a strong challenger but ultimately wins in the end?

We’ll find out in about 10 months…

GOP New Hampshire Debate

Live blogging the event….

Ron Paul notes that Santorum is a “big government conservative”. He is. (click for a long list of evidence).

Santorum is doing well. He is making me doubt the things i’ve bashed him for:

Lobbyist? He says he approached a local coal company to lobby for them specifically to defeat Cap & Trade.

Voted Most Corrupt? He says that’s a charge sent by a liberal organization every election cycle just to smear conservatives.

hmm… there could be truth to both of those. Got me wondering…

Yahoo! has this question:

UPDATE: they fixed it…

Moderator asks okay question that rests on stupid premise: “only 2 of you have served [in the military] – do you think that makes you better suited to be President?”. This is so stupid. Didn’t work for George Bush Sr – didn’t work for Bob Dole – didn’t work for John Kerry – didn’t work for John McCain and although G. Dubya won twice, it wasnt at all thanks to his ~~Air Force~~ Texas and Alabama Air National Guard service. this issue is a dud.

Ron Paul refines his “chickenhawk” argument against Gingrich so it sounds more sane: says that if you got multiple deferments when you had the chance to serve then you shouldn’t order anyone into war. that makes total sense but is a big difference from the chickenhawk argument which smears everyone who did not elect to join the military as having actively hid from it. That is stupid. Paul is doing really well tonight. I wish he ran this good a campaign in 2008 and/or performed this well in the 08 debates.

Newt says it is “inaccurate and false” that he asked for deferments. I don’t care cuz I’m more annoyed that he said “inaccurate AND false”. They mean the same thing, dude…

[commercial break]

Do states have the right to ban contraception? what in the what? — oh shit – Romney is voicing my exact reaction and chiding Stephonopolous for asking it. The question was based on a court case but still asked oddly. — NOW Stepho cuts to the chase and asks whether the Constitution has a “right to privacy”.

Ron Paul on the right of privacy in the Constitution: it pertains to your personal belongings and the state meddling with them with warrentless searches and whatnot.

Question from Yahoo asker: Since you’re against same sex marriage, what do you want gay people to do with their partners?

Gingrich: Favors hospital visitation rights, will and similar sensible laws. just quibbles over the word “marriage”

Huntsman: “Civil Unions are fair and I support them”. Doing well until he uses the old trope by saying he doesnt believe his marriage is affected by gay couples or same sex marriage or civil unions or idk what he;s referring to there but either way its stupid because no one has ever said gay relations of any kind affect their marriage. dumb thing to say.

Santorum: Let the states decide – but then stops himself and says there should be a singular Federal law so people arent married in one state and not married in another. derp? Then says “this is a state issue not a federal issue” – double-derp? Moderator asks what happens to same sex marriages if Santorum passes a law saying marriage is one man one woman – Santorum doesnt answer. just repeats that if the law passes it passes.

Romney: says its a “wonderful thing” for people to commit to each other long term but they don’t need to call it “marriage” and receive approval from the state that way and I bite my nails because I like Mitt and that is almost the right answer but only if he follows it up with “BUT, lets give le gayz more legal rights” like what Newt said. Thankfully he did go on and is talking about those rights right now as I type this: basically favors civil unions, legal partnerships, etc and just wants to preserve the word marriage. I don’t care about the word marriage but I dont have a problem with this traditionalist-but-non-hater position. whew! glad he got it right and remained the only candidate to avoid saying things that I would be embarrassed by if I were to publicly support.

Gingrich comes back and asks (openly, not to any individual) whether the Catholic church (he is a convert to Catholicism) should be forced out of the adoption business because they dont adopt out to same sex couples. gets applause.

Romney agree’s and notes that that is exactly what happened in Massachusetts by a court order he disagrees with.

Stepho beats the dead horse of Ron Paul running as a 3rd party candidate even though he says he doesnt want to and has never expressed interest in doing so. Paul gives the same answer as always: he’s not doing it and has no plans to do it but won’t promise not to do it.

Ron Paul says he’s doing well in the polls and says with a warm smile that he’s getting “closer to Mitt every day”. People laugh. its a nice/friendly moment.

Perry is asked if everyone on the stage should rule out a 3rd party bid. Perry doesnt answer and instead says anyone on the stage is better than Obama and then goes back to same sex marriage and says he wants a Constitutional amendment to define marriage.

Romney and Huntsman on when to leave Afghanistan: Huntsman says leave right away and dont invest another penny in that boondoggle. Romney says get em out soon but no hard date cuz you’ve got to asses the details as President first.

Perry says to send troops back into Iraq… when pressed: Perry says we need to because Iran will move in “literally at the speed of light”. Holy shit, those are fast Iranians…

[commercial]

Romney says that there are things Government can do to help the job market – like fix bridges n shit, but fundamentally government does not create jobs, it can only encourage the private sector.

I miss these two:

Romney: bring down taxes to be competitive with other nations and give relief to people who need it most and mostly hurt by the Obama economy, the middle class. Reduce rates. Reduce the amount of exemptions. Simplify the tax code and broaden the base — God damn you Republicans who don’t love this guy are stupid. He’s SO your best candidate in decades…

blah blah boring stuff – im checking twitter for a few minutes…

Huntsman vs Romney on China: Huntsman pulls the “i know Chinese” card and says a sentence to Romney in Mandarin and doesn’t explain what it means. SO. fucking. Douchey….

Huntsman says Romney wants a trade war with China. Romney says “nigga, the fuck you talkin bout?” (paraphrase) and does a thing with his hands saying he doesnt want a trade war but “we sell China *this much* [higher raised hand] – they sell us *this* much [much lower hand gesture] – who do you think doesnt want the trade war?” – bam.

[commercial break]

oh. that’s the end.

Well that was one of the best ones they’ve had. Everyone did very well.

Post debate commentary by ABC panel: Donna Brazil, former Gore campaign manager said that it was a good night for Democrats because no one attacked Mitt Romney. When everyone on the panel gave a hearty “wtf?” to that comment she explained that the weakest candidate is the one that no one attacks and that was Mitt Romney so Democrats are happy. Everyone reacted in unison with a “nooo. you don’t mean that” in the tone of when you say “aawww, c’mon” when an elderly great aunt says something controversial but you want to brush it off and ignore it instead of deal with it.

UPDATE: here’s an out-of-context recap, but the clips are not at all in chronological order.

Romney wins Iowa Caucus by 8 votes

I’ve been hatin on tricky Rick Santorum this election cycle but I gotta admit that he worked hard, gave a great speech with no notes, has a beautiful family and some okay ideas. its just that… the guy who beat him by just 8 votes also gave a great speech with no notes, has a beautiful family and a lot of GOOD ideas in addition to his okay ideas + doesnt freak me out and doesn’t hold any positions that would embarrass me out of publicly/vocally supporting him, so I’m gonna say good job and congratulations to Mr Santorum, but we’ve got a better choice (by a wide margin) in this race.

In other thoughts: Caucuses are weird and outdated and this emphasis on Iowa being the first in the country to vote for president is even weirder and more outdatederz. Shiz needs to change.

California doesnt vote in this process until June and the nominee is always chosen by then. Lame. Change it. Should be a lottery on which states go first. Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t representative of the rest of the country enough to have such an important role in this process.

Wanna Bet? Romney Puts His Money Where His Mouth Is While Perry Wimps Out.

Texas Governor makes a false claim and is called on it, but somehow the person who called him on it is the one whom pundits are saying made a “gaffe”.

In the 94q3542p59876394867th debate last night in Iowa, Texas Governor Rick Perry repeated a false attack against former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney that conservatives who dislike Romney for being too sensible just can’t stop lying about. Here is FactCheck.org‘s summary of it:

Perry once again falsely accused Romney of writing in his book “No Apology” that he wanted to impose his state’s health care plan at the federal level.

Perry: I read your first book, and it said in there that your mandate in Massachusetts, which should be the model for the country — and 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.

Romney: You know what, you’ve raised that before, Rick. And you’re simply wrong.

Perry refused an offer from Romney to bet $10,000 as to who was right. In fact, Perry is wrong and Romney is correct. As we have written a couple of times before, the book was revised and this line was removed: “We can accomplish the same thing for everyone in the country.” But the phrase “the same thing” refers to the goals of the state law: “portable, affordable health insurance,” not the controversial individual mandate or the entire law. Romney saw the Massachusetts plan as a potential model for other states, if they so choose, but not as a federal mandate.

So Romney “bet” Perry $10 thousand dollars over the issue and Perry declined. “Bet” is in quotations because there are two types of betting: 1) a gamble on what is only a possible outcome and 2) a challenge to a claim of fact. To Romney, it is the latter and to Perry it is the former. In other words: Perry would be gambling if he took the wager because he knows he might be wrong since he didn’t read the book and is only going on what his handlers keep giving him despite multiple news sources reporting that the shit just ain’t true. To Romney, there is no gamble because he wrote the book and knows Perry is saying something false.

So the reaction after this is that Perry is being a douche by not correcting the record AND not accepting $10,000 to his failing campaign just to prove what he keeps saying at these debates, right?

Nope: the media attack line is that Romney made a blunder by offering the bet.

Kathie Obradovich says that “Romney bet was one of his worst debate moments”

But Perry really made his mark when he successfully goaded Mitt Romney into one of the worst moments he’s had in a debate so far. Perry challenged Romney on a passage in his first book, claiming an early edition said the Massachusetts health-care program should be a model for the national plan.

Romney disputed the claim and when Perry persisted, he jokingly offered a $10,000 bet. Perry didn’t take the bet, but he won the point. Romney was casually offering the equivalent of about one-fifth of the average median income for an Iowa family. Romney’s privileged background was driven home later when the candidates were asked whether they’d ever had to cut costs in their own family budget.

“I didn’t grow up poor,” Romney said, and noted that if voters are looking for someone who did, they’ll have to vote for somebody else.

That line sounds rhetorical, but evidently there are a shit-ton of morons looking for someone who “grew up poor” to be their nominee.

This is not Romneys worst debate moment, it is everyone who thinks this is an issue at all whatsoever’s worst debate moment. Whether its the casual observer at home or the educated and experienced political pundit or anyone in between – they all have no excuse for not knowing better.

Ed Morrissey on Hot Air, a conservative blog, continues the Leftist stupidity:

Romney, however, made the gaffe of the evening when he attacked Rick Perry, of all people. Until now, Romney has been very careful not to punch below his class, but Perry got under his skin and Romney ended up going after Perry on Gardasil all over again. He didn’t do it well, either, and when Perry attacked Romney over statements in his book regarding health care, Romney tried to intimidate Perry by challenging him to bet $10,000 over the issue. If Romney wanted to make himself look rich, arrogant, and clueless, he could hardly have done a better job. When was the last time someone challenged you to a ridiculous bet in order to intimidate you out of an argument? For me, I think it was junior-high school.

What the hell? There is no one running for president that does not have $10,000 of disposable funds to risk, but as I said: If Perry actually read the book (which he didn’t) and it said what he claims it says (it doesn’t) then he’s not risking anything. So why is someone calling them on it a bad thing, again? Oh ya. Because Romney has made a lot of money in his life and is more of a millionaire than the other millionaires on the stage and that’s bad because not everyone in America has made millions so they don’t want to be reminded that the person who might lead their country was more successful than them. This is stupid with stupid sauce poured all over it.

At least one guy gets it:

You may not have heard: Romney laid down a bet with fellow candidate Rick Perry for a cool $10,000 (or what Newt probably spends on lunch every week) during a recent debate. Doesn’t Mitt know that candidates, no matter how successful they may be, must always act as if they mow their lawns and eat curly fries at diners on Friday nights. If not, the electorate will be deeply insulted.

This kind of rhetoric is nothing new for Republicans. During the 2008 primaries, Mike Huckabee noted that “Mitt Romney looks like the guy that fires you.” This assessment was backed up by then-candidate John McCain, who, we soon found out, understood as much about the economy as Meghan McCain.

If you get rich working in finance, there’s a good chance you did something wrong, right? And Mitt, well, Mitt is heartless. Mitt worked for Bain Capital. Mitt was part of the private equity firm that salvaged poorly run, bloated businesses — sometimes through “painful” cuts and firings. There are honorable ways of getting rich (peddling political influence and/or writing books), and then there’s the Wall Street way. Newt, no less of a flip-flopping careerist than Romney, sold his political connections for wealth rather than create any.

The only reason to criticize this moment is if one is trying to find a way to confirm what they already don’t like about Gov Romney.

If someone lies about you in public, you can only say “nuh uh” back and forth so many times until one side is willing to put something on the line to prove their case. Romney manned up and was right. Perry pussed out and was wrong.

There was nothing wrong with this debate moment.

Mitt Romney: The Zeppo Marx of the GOP primary?

David Brooks in the NY Times has an apt analogy on the presidential candidates that is right up my alley:

In the Marx Brothers movie that is the Republican presidential race, Mitt Romney is Zeppo. He doesn’t spin out one-liners. He’s not the rambunctious one. He’s just the earnest, good-looking guy who wants to be appreciated.

I became a Marx Brothers fan in middle school as part of a trend that my small group of friends fell into at the same time. Everyone wanted to think of themselves as Groucho, but we all knew the comedic values to the Italian wise cracker Chico and the silent miming of Harpo. Zeppo didn’t even really count in our minds, until one day when one of my friends said as much, noting that there is no reason for him to really even be there. Precocious little jerk that I was, I remember experiencing the “ah-ha” moment when I corrected them that Zeppo himself may not be important but “a” Zeppo is important. In fact – it’s crucial. I told them that for our purposes – everyone else is Zeppo. Meaning: because of the anchoring that the straight-man Zeppo provides, we have the liberty to run around being blunt to the point of rudeness (Chico), irresponsibly breaking things (Harpo) and making inappropriate sexual advances that are covered up by frank and stylized speech (Groucho).

For us – Zeppo was our teacher or parents or adults in general, slash, society at large.

For the Republican primary, it’s Zeppo takes the form of one Willard “Mitt” Romney.

But Romney continues to run an impressive presidential campaign. Last week, while the Twitterverse was entranced by Herman Cain, Romney delivered his most important speech yet. It was politically astute and substantively bold, a quality you don’t automatically associate with the Romney campaign. Romney grasped the toughest issue — how to reform entitlements to avoid a fiscal catastrophe — and he sketched out a sophisticated way to address it.

The speech was built around the theme that government should be simpler, smarter and smaller. First, he established his bona fides. Romney reminded his listeners that when he went to work at the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, he inherited a $370 million deficit. He left behind a $100 million surplus that went into an endowment fund.

Then he argued that over the decades government has become bloated and lethargic. In World War II, the Navy commissioned 1,000 ships a year and had 1,000 employees in the purchasing department. Today, Romney said, we commission nine ships a year but have 24,000 employees in the department.

Romney then laid out a measured fiscal strategy, starting with a promise to bring federal spending down to 20 percent of gross domestic product, which is about the precrisis average. He then turned to entitlements.

In other words: While the wacky brothers make their mischief – the one who doesn’t appear as important on the surface and doesn’t get the fans of the genre excited is actually the rock that stabilizes the chaos.

Mormons are less weird than you think

I liked the commercials from the 90s but then in high school i went right back to thinking they are culty freaks and weirdos. As I matured though, I came to realize Mormons are pretty awesome. I wish the Mormons and the Gays could just get along cuz they’re 2 of the most pleasant yet misunderstood groups ever.

Mormon.org is running commercials and for some reason this is news.
Oh, now I remember the “some reason”:
Is it all just a plot to get Mitt Romney elected? oy.

Chris Slick: total dick

Have you noticed that people are super sensitive about even the most courteous of correction on the stupid things they say or is it just me? I love it when people post political news stories and then freak the fudge out and delete you when you’re not on board because I don’t delete anyone ever so other peoples intolerance gives me the friend-cleansing I would otherwise be deprived of. The keywords though are “politely” and “disagree”, because such a response is justified if its in reply to you going overboard with the hate first.

Today I found this posted item on Facebook to be provocative and replied. You can’t see my replies here of course, because the fellow who posted them (Chris Slick) is a scared little girl who said some stupid things, got called on them, and then got embarrassed, so he bleached the record.

Luckily for you, dear reader, I have Chris’s replies saved and can easily reconstruct my own responses.

What I said that was “completely nuts” was that Romney has a stigma against him that will do damage off the bat and if he is to be a contender for 2012 he must combat his negative image more effectively than he did in 2008.

Super controversial, right? Chris replied:

Richard – the only person the Governor lost to was McCain. McCain will obviously not be in the race this time around.
Additionally, if you we were to follow your premise then Reagan and McCain would never have been GOP nominees. They both ran and lost before they came back the following cycle and won the nomination. So to answer your question – these are at least two reasons why I am so confident. Plus, as of now, Huck and Palin are his closest competitors. Both of them are easy to take out – they are literal fools in ever aspect of the word.

Chris misunderstood my observation that “Romney has image-problems” to mean “Romney can’t win because he lost a previous primary”. An understandable mistake, if you’re dyslexic and retarded.

I clarified by noting that if you take the pulse of prominent bloggers and pundits concerning Romney, you’ll find the dude has major problems with his political base. I even said that the charges are mostly smears (calling him liberal, unreliable, a flip-flopper, etc are all eye-rolling nonsense when you look at the meat behind the charges for instance). For some reason, this still wasn’t taken well and got this response:

CHRIS SLICK: Well, Richard, I would have to completely disagree with you on the Governor not being able to shake the criticisms you listed. He did so and he did it quite well. He would not have beat out the folks he did without shaking those criticisms. People can have their opinions but we can have our facts – and facts will carry the day in the end.

Terrible strategy because its not true at all. Facts don’t just win because they’re facts. Perception is everything and if you have a perception problem, you need to get those facts out there – not just sit back with confidence that the truth will carry you home.

This is important, which is obviously, why I’m posting it here now: because a lot of you think this wrong way and need to not be doing that. Especially since I like Romney a lot – I have no interest in lies about the dude being the prominent headlines.

I said that its a mistake to think Governor Romney combated those criticisms effectively by using “he lost, but ahead of other people” as evidence and that “having your facts” doesn’t equal a win unless you convey those facts articulately and often. I said that its entirely possible that I could end up supporting Romney in 2012, but that he would have to do a lot better at his weak points or I would have to jump ship.

CHRIS SLICK: Richard – you completely missed what I said. I am not talking about facts in the purest sense of the word. I was speaking about past history. Additionally, you should probably just jump ship now because you are a fair weather friend. You know, the kind no one likes.

Please never do this. Unless you’re trolling and trying to make the candidate you’re fake-supporting, Stephen Colbert style, look like a buffoon with only buffoonish supporters, never ever say something like “If you think the person I’m supporting has an unfair PR disadvantage then don’t support the person i’m supporting”.

I asked how I missed what he said about facts/history and how my response didn’t effectively reply to that point. “Additionally”, I said that its creepy to “make friends” with a politician because they’re not our friends, they’re our employees. You can’t be both without doing a crap job at one or both of those titles. Then I asked if he wrote Romneys name in on the 2008 ballot since that appears to be what he was saying with his whole “stick with your guy, even if he loses and is not a candidate anymore” policy — made especially weird given the fact that Governor Romney dropped out of the race for president at a time when many thought he could still pull the Republican nomination off, given the right circumstances – yet Romney halted and endorsed McCain “for the good of the country” and the party. so. erm. Romney was being a “fair weather friend; the kind no one likes” to himself?…

CHRIS SLICK: Richard, you do not know me – you obviously have some personal issues about what you believe and why you believe it that you need to deal with. I hope you find a good conservative to support in 2012. Best of luck.

I asked why he’s turning a political candidate strategy topic into a personal one and why, if he supports Governor Romney for president in 2012, does he keep encouraging me not to support Romney.

CHRIS SLICK: Richard – your comments are getting deleted – your completely nuts.

I asked what was so alarming about my comments that caused him to whitewash the record. I resisted temptation and did not mention his use of the wrong “your” the second time. I did ask though if he deleted his own comments as well as mine because he was conceding that what he said in them was, in hindsight, not exactly intelligent. He replied calmly and pleasantly, without resorting to personal attacks and crybaby ranting.
Just kidding:

CHRIS SLICK: Richard – what the hell is your problem? making accusations etc. I don’t have time for this shit. I deleted my comments because without your delusional thoughts processes it would not make sense for them to be here. Nor would it make sense for me to address a “Richard” when I have deleted your comments. Now, go take your medicine, smoke some crack, and try to keep your ADD under control.

Ryan – want to talk about splitting the nutty vote? Looks no further…”

I typed this response, again calmly explaining my words and his in an attempt to clarify what the dudes deal was or what he was even getting at:

Why are you asking what my problem is when I’ve stated each problem clearly and concisely? You said you deleted my comments and I asked why. That’s not an accusation, that’s repeating the fact that you had just told to me.

This is the 4th time I’ve asked what I’m allegedly “delusional” about (should i be asking “what the hell is your problem? making accusations etc.”? or is that right reserved only for you?). Thanks at least for answering why you deleted YOUR comments. so now: why did you delete MINE? what was so crack-user delusional about me saying that I hope Romney combats his critics more effectively?

You also never answered my question of whether you wrote Romneys name in on the ballot in 08. I asked since you attacked me and suggested that I not support Romney in 2012 if I planned to vote for someone else (possibly the Republican nominee) in the event Romney does not become a candidate.

I considered as an exit question: “why are you so personally offended by questions that ask for clarity on the positions you publicly espouse?” but it didn’t matter because Chrissy had deleted and blocked me on Facebook after delivering his last reply calling me a nutty delusional crack-addict with ADD for asking questions, so that reply could not be sent.

Well… I guess he sure told me.

Brb. Crack to smoke.