Despite the GOP nomination contest being all but over, there is still some entertainment value to the sports team contests that are the seemingly never ending debates. What follows is a few miscellaneous thoughts on the most recent South Carolina debate. Attacking Romney’s Bain Record: Following a couple weeks of attacks
Continue readingTag: mitt romney
Red Tory v.3.0.3: Mitt The Ripper
The unaffiliated (definitely not co-ordinating with Stephen Colbert) SuperPAC “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow” has just released the following advertisement, which logically proposes that if “corporations are people” then Mitt Romney should be regarded as a serial killer… The way Colbert has methodically gone about illustrating on his show
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The SuperPAC charade is getting tiresome
Can we please drop this SuperPAC ruse already? It is the first election season post Citizens United and so these new political groups are allowed to collect unlimited, undisclosed amounts of money from people and corporations alike and spend it in the elections. Only there is a technical catch: they
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: On Obama’s rich vs poor framing
Since 2010, Obama has made a very deliberate shift to increase the rhetoric and policies with regards to a rich vs poor framing. It has always been a part of his message, but it really ramped up in intensity starting with the deal to extent the Bush Tax cuts for
Continue readingNorthern Reflections: Presidents and Busineesmen
Mitt Romney, whose reported net worth is somewhere north of $200 million, argues that he knows how to make all Americans wealthier. In what is perhaps the deepest irony of this presidential season, Newt Gingrich echoes William Jennings Bryan — who declared, “No one can earn a million dollars honestly.”
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The appeal, and vacuousness, of sports team politics
Last Tuesday, the second game of the playoffs took place in New Hampshire with front runner Massachusetts Mitt leading the pack going into game three in South Carolina. For six months of the regular season the candidates squares off again and again and again, jostling for position in the rankings going into the playoffs. It
Continue reading“When Mitt Romney Came to Town”
This is a devastating ad by Newt Gingrich. It is a brutal attack on Mitt Romney. No, it’s actually a slap across the face of capitalism unbound. Right wingers are shocked, disappointed and plain livid. Their outlaw hero Newt has gone Occupier. No Democrat would have dared been so nakedly
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: The Bain Capital Debate in a Nutshell
More than 20 years ago, the Norman Jewison film Other People’s Money quite neatly described the fundamental contours of the debate that may be about to unfold in the GOP race concerning the nature of Mitt Romney’s dubious yet highly profitable endevours as a vulture capitalist: The question now is
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: Would a Romney Victory Mean the End of the Conservative Movement?
Mitt Romney won the New Hampshire primary with 40% of the vote and appears to be heading toward winning the Republican nomination. Unlike most of his opponents, he has not “surged” but just plodded along, attacking when he needed to attack, and standing up to the blows from his tag-teamed conservative
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Mitt-Sock Wins! (again)
It took all of 10 minutes after the polls closed for Willard “Mitt” Romney to be declared the winner of the New Hampshire primary election. Meanwhile, there will be four hours of “live” coverage on all the cable news networks analyzing the results and pretending there is some significance to
Continue readingCorporate Raiders of the Lost Ark
I feel a little sorry for the Democratic Party’s ad agency. By the time the Republican candidate is chosen and advertising for the presidential election campaign starts in earnest, they’ll be like the Maytag Repairmen of the Marketing World if the GOP keeps supplying moments like this: Woot! Probably not
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: Mitt Romney: “Job Creator”
Interesting discussion from this weekend’s “Up w/ Chris Hayes” program about the true nature of Mitt Romney’s dubious wealth-extracting endevours in the “free market” as a private equity investor (the polite term for “corporate vampire”). Oblivious to ironic contradiction on multiple levels, the anonymous SuperPAC backing Newt Gingrich has released
Continue readingRed Tory v.3.0.3: The Evolution of Negative Advertising
The absurdly hypocritical “Pot v. Kettle” sniping towards the end of yesterday’s MTP debate between Newt Gringrich and Mitt Romney over the legitimacy and moral superiority of the viciously negative ad campaigns being waged by their respective Super-PACs reminded me of this classic bit of satire from the wonderful HBO
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Brian Jones writes that we’re well on our way to an only slightly-sanitized version of feudalism: According to news reports this week, the average annual income of the Top 100 CEOs is $8.4 million. That’s less than is paid to superstar puckster Sidney
Continue readingProgressive Proselytizing: The biggest loser in Iowa: the Tea Party
Among the Iowa winners were Mitt Romney (establishment candidate), with Rick Santorum (Evangelical candidate) trailing by 8 votes, then Ron Paul (Libertarian candidate). Trailing significantly was Newt Gingrich, an old guard brand all to himself. Where then was the Tea Party candidate? For several decades, there has been an establishment
Continue readingDrive-by Planet: Mitt Romney: Lies and lies-about-lies
Mitt Romney has been accused by his detractors, Democrat and Republican alike, of being a flip flopper. I’m not sure if the term “flip flopper” adequately describes the chameleon-like transformations-of-convenience that mark Romney’s political history. Issue shifting and volte face switcheroos that would embarrass many a candidate seem natural for
Continue readingPolitics and its Discontents: American ‘Rocket Scientist’ Pronounces on The Electric Car
[Sigh,] and some say this is the best the Republicans have to offer in the next election. Recommend this Post
Continue readinggay persons of color: The Great American Republican Bully Movement
Sometimes the complexity of the American Republican circus can be more readily understood by clearing the pollution of campaign rhetoric and seeing a consistent strategy present in most Republican candidates currently hoping to lead the party into victory at the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. This approach, at its rudimentary level,
Continue readingPushed to the Left and Loving It: I Think I Can Answer the Question on This Week’s Cover of Time
“In Gallup’s poll of the Republican faithful at the start of 1966, Nixon was ahead by twenty-three points. Michigan governor George Romney sat fourth. But Romney was the one all the pundits were picking …” Nixonland, By Rick Perlstein, 2008 George Romney was of course, Mitt’s father. But why did the
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