Even Windsocks are more consistent than Mitt Romney (VIDEO)

Do not, REPEAT, do not try to follow Mitt Romney's positions on anything. It just produces migraines.

"MassCare is a model for the nation". "I'd repeal Health Care Reform". "It's great for Massachusetts, where I got healthcare for all". "But it's a bad idea for the Nation as a whole". "It's a part of my plan in 2008". "It's bad now that President Obama has passed it".

Black is white. Up is down. Dogs and cats living together...Mitt Hysteria!

Gee, maybe Mitt Romney hasn't changed that much. Maybe he's always been a brain dead-- (VIDEO)

Great catch by Steve Benen:

In February 2008, Romney delivered a speech announcing his withdrawal from the presidential race. He explained his rationale for quitting this way:

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and frankly I’d be making it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.”

For those who may have forgotten it, Jon Stewart had a compelling reaction to the remarks at the time.

But more than three years later, I’m curious: does Romney think he was right? Barack Obama became president, and has proven far more successful in combating terrorism than his Republican predecessor. Does Romney stand by his belief that electing Obama president was part of “a surrender to terror”?

Or does Romney regret making the charge in 2008, and realize now he was wrong?

Since Steve didn't post it in his blog, and since Jon Stewart's still on Vacation, I figured I'd put up the whole video.

The Daily Show - Mitt Drops Out
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And for the record, Jon's response is just (ahem) two words, and it's still deserved.

Racism still exists, America. It's just gotten very subtle.

One of the things White folks need to get through their heads is that African-Americans do listen, do pay attention, and do know all the code words and behaviors.

Why? It's a matter of survival for us. We have lived in a world, a world that existed as recently as 50 years ago, within my Father's lifetime, where an African-American saying the wrong thing, or merely looking at someone the wrong way could get them killed.

Don't believe me? Ask Emmett Till. To esoteric a reference for you, then why don't you try Amadou Diallo or Abner Louima?

Of course, they represent the most extreme form of racism.  Today, it's form is far more supple, downright invisible until it strikes.

The election of an African-American President is a historical step forward for us as a society and a nation, it does not mean America has moved past its at times very racist self.

No, we don't have crosses burned on our lawns.  We're not called every name but a child of god.  That's the past.  Now, we just have our authenticity questioned.  If you're like me, you have extra eyes following you around the store when you shop, or you see the bag get clutched a little tighter when you're on the elevator.  (Or you're told over and over again that the movie that offends you shouldn't offend you).

If you're the President, you're hounded (repeatedly) for your birth certificate.  If you're his wife, you're right to complain is cut off.

Consider what Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry says in this piece, and what it says about the view that fundamentally, there's a certain part in the lizard-brain of American that simply will never view me as a "real" American.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

What should scare you (Lord knows it scares me) is that I've found these lizard-brain reactions not just in Conservatives, but Liberals as well.

TPM: Remembering McCain and Clinton, slamming then Senator Obama over trying to kill OBL... (VIDEO)

Hell, somebody got it right. Any guesses as to who?



I guess he meant what he said.

Then again, one of the people that should be labeled as "wrong" in this video is, errr...ummm...the current Secretary of State. She'd be the one gasping in that famous photo.

Apparently, Christiane Amanpour pretty much nailed OBL's location back in 2008 (VIDEO)

Maximum credit where credit's due.

Andrew Sullivan can never, EVER be trusted on the Debt: Any sacrifice you're willing to make is good enough for him.

One of the difficult things in reading a lot of political writing is the amount of information you have to save in your mental rolodex about people.  One of the things I do when I read Paul Krugman is that I know going in that his numbers will always on target.  (He is, after all, a Nobel Laureate in Economics).  Does he know what he's talking about when it comes to Politics?  Ehhh, not so much.

In fact, look at today.  He said this:

The failure of the stimulus that never happened has become conventional wisdom — which is what I feared would happen, two years ago, when I was tearing my hair out over the inadequacy of the original plan. 

Yes, I know, it’s argued that Obama couldn’t have gotten anything more. I don’t really want to revisit all of that; my point here is simply that everyone is drawing the wrong lesson. Fiscal policy didn’t fail; it wasn’t tried.

Again, is Dr. Krugman right? Was the Stimulus too small? Yeah. (These would be the numbers of which I spoke.)

Dr. Krugman is also right to acknowledge that nothing higher in price could have passed the Congress, yet he doesn't want to talk about that...or any possible solutions to that massive roadblock. No, it's always the same: Obama should lead more.

Andrew Sullivan is no different in this regard.  I believe he's a genuine Conservative, unlike the breed we have now in the Republican Party.  But like most conservatives, he's got a serious debt fetish, bordering on obsessive.  He is genuinely correct that the long term debt is a problem, but seems to be willing to engage in a fiscal scorched earth policy in order to do it.  I find this particularly easy for a man who wasn't born here, or raised here to say give up the things you associate with making your country great in order to satisfy my demand for debt control

Mr. Sullivan.  Go @#$% yourself.

It's real easy to send America into another Depression when you're secure in your job, and don't have to worry about the rent getting paid at all.  But hey, any sacrifice you're willing to make is good enough for him.  We're going to grow our way out of this hole, unless I start hearing what sacrifices you're willing to make to your bottom line to get it done?  Willing to give up you and lover's Mortgage Interest Deduction?  Didn't think so.

He speaks on the debt with the zealotry of the newly converted. He hates the Social Safety net.  He's convinced that it did in his native England, and is convinced it will happen here:

To all those under 30 who worked so hard to get this man elected, know this: he just screwed you over. He thinks you're fools. Either the US will go into default because of Obama's cowardice, or you will be paying far far more for far far less because this president has no courage when it counts. He let you down. On the critical issue of America's fiscal crisis, he represents no hope and no change. Just the same old Washington politics he once promised to end.

Honestly, go @#$% yourself Andrew.

I actually found that paragraph more than a little offensive. I feel quite capable in my own political judgments and don't need to be called a dupe or stupid in the process. It may be at times I don't agree with you, is the line I remember most from Page 11 of Audacity of Hope. Apparently, Andrew hasn't read it either. If he has that admonition wasn't good enough for him.

Forunately, we have people like Jonathan Chait to smack him around:

Andrew Sullivan is back from his absence and in incredibly high dudgeon over the Obama administration's failure to propose a more austere budget. Andrew concedes that any such proposal would fail and exact huge political damage upon Obama but somehow thinks it's unconscionable Obama didn't do it anyway.

...

Why would proposing something that gets shot down not be not only useful but an absolute moral obligation? I don't really get it. It seems like the smart play is to first win the budget showdown and try to beat some sanity into the Republicans, who can't possibly compromise right now, and then either cut a deal or (preferably) just let the GOP kill the entire Bush tax cuts for you, which would more or less take care of the medium-term deficit problem.

No, Jonathan. Don't you understand? It's the standard problem people have with this President. Either he does it the way they want him to do it, word for word, line by line, or he's a completely and utter failure, fraud, cynic or liar. Pick your poison.

When I say the Tea Party is speaking in racist code, this is what I mean

This is from another Andrew Sullivan piece (I'm still tired from last night, so I'm not reading as far and wide as I usually do), featuring George Packer talking to the GOP "base":

“I’m a constitutional conservative and I do not ever approve of distribution of wealth, and I am not a socialist, this country is not socialist, we are founded on Judeo-Christian principles. I will riot in the street if I have to. I have never been so ashamed of the way Obama has diminished the Presidency. He calls certain people enemies. He doesn’t dress properly. He talks about certain networks. He is just what he is — a Chicago agitator.”

Like I said...

Another reason I could care less about Senate Democrats, Part 939

Despite the fact, the Obama Administration has lifted the moratorium she objects to so much, Sen. Mary Landrieu still refuses to give up her hold on incoming Budget Jacob Lew.

This is why I never give one stinkin' dime to the DSCC.

Rand Paul doubles down on trying to lose the Kentucky Senate Election

I'm not fooled, I know that Jack Conway may be a Ben Nelson in Democratic Clothing as well, but so far, he hasn't gone completely bat@#$% crazy like Joe Manchin, and he is a hundred times saner than his mega-Libertarian opponent Rand Paul.

Recently, he's been getting his a$$ kicked for suggesting there should be a $2000 dollar deductible on Medicare (i.e., Joe and Jane Taxpayer should be responsible for the first two grand of Medical expenses before the Medicare you paid for kicks in).

Today, Rand Paul doubled-down on that idea:

Obfuscation being the nature of things in political ads, you might expect that when given a chance to talk about the $2,000 deductible scheme, Paul would rattle off the ways Conway took his words out of context or practiced 'gotcha' selective editing in the clip.

You'd be wrong.

On Neil Cavuto's Fox News show today, Paul not only stood by the position Conway said he took on a $2,000 deductible for Medicare, he actually threw gasoline on the fire by suggesting that the deductible should apply to all future beneficiaries 55 years old or younger.

He did wiggle out of it a little bit by suggesting voters like my Dad not have to pay this deductible, while voters like me (and virtually anyone else who has heard of blogging) will get hit with it.

Mr. "the next six more months in Iraq are critical" has spoken again.

In addition to the likes of Arianna Huffington, Glenn Greenwald, Robert Kuttner, and many others, I've always held a soft spot for Thomas "six more months" Friedman...

Actually, I've always held a soft spot for trying to kick him when he's down, whenever possible.

It's not just the smarmy attitude, the cocksure "I know what's best for you" attitude, it's that he was dead-ass wrong on the Iraq War, and I don't think has admitted it yet...to this day.

To be sure, I'd love to spend some more time ripping apart his annual "If only we had a party as reasonable as me" column, but apparently, Jonathan Bernstein beat me to it.

And so did Steve Benen...

...and Dave Weigel...

...and whole mess of others. (Like Erza Klein, and Ta-Neishi Coates...)

So how do you really feel about Illegal Immigration, Mrs. Whitman???

My guess? Meg Whitman's had better days.

Oh, so that's why Rand Paul is getting his @$$ kicked (VIDEO)

Remember what I said about the polling in Kentucky? Wanna bet that this may be a reason why?



Maybe not such a good time to pull off the air in Kentucky, eh GOP?

Where exactly is this Republican surge coming from??

From NBC News:

A majority of the country still believes that President Obama isn't responsible for the state of the U.S. economy, but the number has steadily declined since his presidency began.

According to the brand-new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 56 percent think Obama inherited the economic situation, versus 32 percent who say his policies are responsible for it.

That's a drop from January of this year (when 65 percent said Obama inherited the economy), and from Feb. 2009 (when 84 percent said that).

"It is becoming Obama’s economy -- slowly but surely," said Democratic pollster Jay Campbell of Hart Research Associates, the Democratic half of the NBC/WSJ survey.

Also in the poll, a whopping 70 percent believe the nation is still in a recession, despite the National Bureau of Economic Research's determination that the recession officially ended last year.

The National GOP has pulled off the air in Kentucky?

Via Greg Sargent at the Plumline:

Are Republicans confident in a Rand Paul win? National GOPers have pulled their advertising in Kentucky, which Dems say is a sign of worry, but Republicans say they're doing it because they don't believe the public polling showing it close.

Since the signing of the Small Business bill won't make the Networks, might as well see it here (VIDEO)

Might as well post the video since odds are this isn't going to get covered on any of the major news networks:



President Obama signs a bill that will allow small businesses to grow and hire new workers by providing tax breaks, better access to credit and other incentives.

I say again, are we within striking distance in Kentucky? Are we past it??

Courtesy TPM.  A second poll, this one conducted by the Louisville Courier-Journal shows Attorney General Jack Conway down only two points to Rand Paul in Kentucky, following up on a DSCC Poll conducted late last week.

The closely-watched race for Senate in Kentucky is now "a statistical dead heat," according to a new poll sponsored by one of the the state's largest papers. The Bluegrass Poll was conducted by automated phone call pollster SurveyUSA for the Louisville Courier-Journal last week and shows Republican nominee Rand Paul leading Democratic nominee Jack Conway 49-47.

The last Bluegrass Poll, conducted in late August showed Paul ahead 55-40. In the ensuing weeks, the Courier-Journal reports, Conway has built momentum among women and those wary of Paul's extreme conservative views.

"The poll shows that Conway, the state's attorney general, is now appealing to voters who say they are neutral on the tea party -- Paul's base of support," the paper reports. "And Conway is building a significant lead among women, who earlier were almost evenly split between the two candidates."

More good news for the Democrats (in a season of slim pickins) from Nevada

By the way, I find it ironic that I ripped people for not voting Democratic after saying I could care less if a Democrat was re-elected.  Wow.  How very hypocritical of me.

While I am disappointed in myselves, I would go with this morning's admonition as opposed to my late Landrieu bashing.  Even that corporate Oil

Anyway, we got a little more sunshine coming out of the desert as a GOP backed firm shows Harry Reid beating Sharron "Austism doesn't exist" Angle by 5 points, 45-40.

Colbert Question Time, because you sorta asked for it! (VIDEO)

I got an email a little while ago from frequent reader...let's see, I didn't catch his name is...oh yes, Dad, who writes in regard to Stephen Colbert:

I watched it and he pulled off the trick of being funny, and serious about the issue under consideration. I hate to think what question time was like.

Well, "Dad" (if that is your real name)...because you--...sorta kinda...asked for it, I have found the video of all two hours and ten minutes of the House Hearing. Enjoy!

Are we within striking distance in Kentucky? Are we past it??

Maybe just a little bit more than striking distance??

From TPM:

According to a new poll of the Kentucky Senate race commissioned by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Democratic nominee Jack Conway is nipping at the heels of Republican nominee Rand Paul, down only 45%-42%.

The latest survey, conducted by Democratic-pollster Benenson Strategy Group, finds the race's point-spread within the poll's ±3.7% margin of error. In an early-September Conway internal poll, the firm found the Democrat behind two, 47%-45%. Recent polls have not been as friendly to Conway as these internals -- a September 12 PPP poll saw Paul on top 49%-42% and a Rasmussen poll earlier this month produced a 15-point advantage for the Republican.

Colbert: "I yield the balance of my time. USA, number one." (VIDEO)

"This is America. I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American. Then sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan in a spa where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian."