We Mean it Maan - Mitt's Waterloo Sunset

 

"God Save the Queen" - Sex Pistols

They made you a moron . . . "

To say that I am enjoying Mitt's miserable no good day in London is really an understatement of remarkable magnitude.  I am doubtful that it will have any long term significance on the election -- people who will vote for Romney won't give a shit what a bunch of snooty foreigners have to say.  Although I think having the next few days be about Mitt's ineptitude among his fellow Anglo-Saxons is going to hurt his efforts to damage Obama, which I think remains his strongest hope of winning.

Ultimately, Romney's gaffe will be significant more for what is says about the man -- and his likely problems as a candidate.  This is an arrogant isolated prick.  I don't think we have ever seen anyone receive a nomination for president who was less in touch with normal life -- his wealth, his privileged background, his religion -- yes, I'm going there -- his abstemiousness, his bullying prep school background, his vulture capitalist CEO life-style, and his complete lack of demonstrable empathy make him the oddest duck I've ever seen in the chase for the White House.  He makes Richard Nixon seem like the guy next door.  Obama -- despite his color, his name, and his seemingly exotic upbringing seems, in the end, far more normal than Romney.  And yes, you can't really imagine having a beer with him.  Or a coke.

(Still, the election remains close.  But I will take our candidate any day of the week.) 

Comments

[big bad wolf]

we are the village green preservation society. god save donald duck, vaudeville, and variety. we object on behalf of ray, terry, julie, and many others to having mitt romney connected with the beauty of waterloo sunset and politely suggest that the word sunset be deleted from the title of this post.

[Sir Charles]

bbw,

Your point is well taken, but then I feel like I would be invoking ABBA, which I prefer to avoid. Although they did note that "It's a Rich Man's World." Or as the Boston Phoenix described it in concert "A Reech Man's Swirl."

I believe Ray is supposed to close out the games by playing Waterloo Sunset by the way.

[oddjob]

I read the Tim Noah column you linked to, Sir C. I will add this link to a column from today's Boston Globe:

Mitt Romney, lost in translation

Brian McGrory has had plenty of prior exposure to Romney.

[oddjob]

I also wish the US press (outside of conservative tabloids like the Boston Herald) was as willing to savagely ridicule the swells as the British press is.

[oddjob]

Must-read British tweets about Mitt's disastrous time in Britain

:)

[Paula B]

Thanks for the laugh and cringe, oj. I guess when Gov Mitt said, "You know how your town used to get $5,000,000 from the state for your schools, roads and public services? This year you'll get $5.95," he meant to say, "Good luck!"

[Eric Wilde]

And yes, you can't really imagine having a beer with him. Or a coke.

Funny; but, I can imagine doing coke with him (even though I've never tried the stuff.)

[oddjob]

"You have to shake your head."
- Karl Rove's take on Mitt's fiasco

[oddjob]

Mitt's horse heads to the Olympics

Hat tip, Sully. :)

[kathy a.]

ok, oddjob brought the dressage. kind of funny photo, but really, do you expect a horse like this to ride in steerage like, say, the space shuttle?

i'm sure this is a patriotic horse, and it will represent the country well. but i'm having trouble choking down the $77,000 tax deduction on the horse as a medical expense.

want to let them eat cake much, mitt?

[oddjob]

(FWIW when I was a teenager I knew a boy with cerebral palsy who could only get around on crutches, but I also heard from someone who would have known that as part of his physical therapy he took riding lessons, and when he was on the horse his legs moved absolutely normally. There was something about the stimulation of the horse's body movements that freed up legs that otherwise only had very limited motion.

Nonetheless, it must be nice to able to afford to spend $77G on therapy and deduct it.)

[kathy a.]

yeah, i am not really dissing what works. but yeah, nice fat deduction. what kinda pushed me over the edge was combining the medical deduction and the same horse competing in the olympics. seems a lot like an overlap of hobby horse and maybe some therapy on the side.

[Sir Charles]

Maybe I can take Stanley's dog food as a kind of mental health therapy expense.

[oddjob]

Consult your tax attorney first. ;)

[Grung_e_Gene]

"I'm not concerned with the very poor."

"I like to be able to fire people who provide me services."

Those lines are telling. Mitt is so removed he's royalty the Dauphin of the Plutocracy

[nancy]

Another roundup as long as we're having fun.

And Mitt's not permitted to have a Coke. I've always been curious about root beer.

[Linkmeister]

From the Boston Globe article oddjob linked above: ". . . he has the common touch of a freshly-groomed poodle — the kind with carved fur balls down along his perfectly manicured feet."

Yer Honor, I rise to the defense of poodles!

[Linkmeister]

This is the one that really astonishes me: Mitt says he won't be attending the dressage event in which his wife's horse is entered. Nay, he won't even be watching!

Pretty sure that fails Basic Spousal Support 101.

[kathy a.]

nancy, you have put a grin on my face. :)

the romney horse lives in a nicer-looking place than my house, and it has staff. i understand that there are therapies not covered by insurance. but really? $77,000 deduction for a horse that happens to also be going to the olympics??

and this from a candidate who thinks he is "self-made," who thinks he is more devoted to the economy, who is trying to pass as more in touch? health care for poor sick kids is not something we can afford, but a show horse is?

[kathy a.]

well, see, it's not about the horse. or the tax deduction. and he hardly even knows his wife or the horse, he's there to show his foreign policy skills, even if it kinda pisses off our allies. and also to support the olympics, but in a neutral way, a way that expresses mistrust of the organizers' competence, because that my friend is real leadership.

[oddjob]

And kathy a. has summed up Mitt in a sentence (of bobbing and weaving evasiveness).

[oddjob]

And TPM prepares its readers for the possibility of a Romney gaffe of rather more significance than what's happened so far:

On the possibility of candidate Romney declaring his support for naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel while visiting there.

[Sir Charles]

odddjob,

I don't think that one can be characterized as a gaffe. It will be the culmination of a party that has been thoroughly taken over by Likudniks and that has no conception of the best interest of the United States.

[kathy a.]

dear lordy, oddjob. i had not even thought about the israel trip. the man with the tin ear does have the potential to lunge into a complex situation and say something inflammatory. the dude is already talking about military strikes against iran.

i have a real problem with a candidate going overseas to blither about making more war, and launch foreign policy attacks on our current president. i mean, wtf? there are ways things could go seriously bad.

[beckya57]

Best stuff on Romney's not-excellent misadventure is on Andrew Sullivan's site.

The opening ceremonies of the Olympics are truly, utterly weird.

That's a good point about the trip to Israel. Mitt's endless desire to pander to the insane GOP base could have some really bad repercussions there.

[Sir Charles]

Testing, testing, testing.

Chicky check microphone.

[kathy a.]

ok. wapo piece on the NRA being a total shill for gun manufacturers.

[Crissa]

Cog blog's posts are showing up empty, or not completing loading. Something is screwy before it loads the text.

[kathy a.]

feinstein calls for assault weapons ban.

[Sir Charles]

Crissa,

I am finding that it takes a minute or two but it is loading -- but really slowly. Not sure why.

[Linkmeister]

Sir C, It's taking a long time to get to sitemeter. Once it gets that the site opens as per usual.

[low-tech cyclist]

Linkmeister - I think what Mitt's decision to distance himself from Rafalca is that he's willing to throw his own wife under the bus in order to infinitesimally increase his chances of being President.

Needless to say, the rest of us shouldn't expect any better treatment from him if he wins. (Not that that matters much, since he'll be a rubber stamp for Boehner anyway, but still.)

[oddjob]

he'll be a rubber stamp for Boehner anyway

An intriguing way of describing a man who is himself a rubber stamp.

[oddjob]

"Mitt Romney offered up a curious assessment of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at a fundraiser in Jerusalem on Sunday, suggesting that Palestinian suffering — rather than an obstacle to peace — was actually an encouraging sign of Israel’s greatness.

...

Romney attributed the gap in success in part to Israel’s “culture.”

... [and to] “the hand of providence.”...

Wow.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

What.An.Asshole.

[oddjob]

It reads like he's an Afrikaaner talking to other Afrikaaners about why the negroes are chosen by God to be servants.

[Sir Charles]

oddjob,

Wow, it's even worse that the blurb. This guy is so completely out of touch, it's amazing. As someone put it over at TPM, if he gets elected we will be pining for the days of GWB.

[oddjob]

"...Mitt has been a $250 million virtual dictator in his own bubble for decades. He isn't used to asking people, he is used to telling them. So he told the Brits they were unprepared for the Olympics and he told the Palestinians that their culture is inferior to Israel's. He's a like a Bain consultant arriving at a new company each times he visits a new country. Generally speaking, the arrival of a consultant is not a source of great joy among a company's employees. Ditto countries and people."

[kathy a.]

oh, he did not just go to the middle east and tout the cultural superiority of israelis by comparing incomes of israelis and palestinians (occupied by israelis). while promising war against iran.

as oddjob's later link suggests, there are very disturbing implications for how he thinks of the great unwashed (those lacking all his groovy wealth and connections) in the U.S.

get sick? if you were culturally correct, you'd have insurance; so if you don't, god doesn't love you, and you are hurting "job creation." (this is the new creationism: only rich people who can hire/fire, depending on their whims, are worthy. that leaves a lot of unworthy.) get old? if you were culturally superior, you would have socked away enough to manage.

[nancy]

Mitt has always made clear he believes the accumulation of wealth equates to superiority. The man appears rotten from within. Sheldon Adelson accumulated probably more wealth than anyone in that room aside from Mitt himself -- how Mitt's dear church views the gains accumulated by his special brand of business.

Beyond the pale doesn't quite say it. Cole called all of it "distasteful." I'd choose stronger words.

Tagg's Sunday school lesson as inspiration? Really?

[kathy a.]

thanks for that cole link, nancy. i saw it, then forgot where i saw it. a person does tend to run out of properly descriptive words.

but in any event, mitt's own actions and words reveal his foreign policy instincts to be dangerously uninformed, off-mark, lacking in thoughtfulness or nuance. i assume he is not in a position to receive formal foreign policy briefings -- as sitting senators, for example, might -- but he does not have the basic common sense to know that he needs expert, qualified, objective help before he goes blundering around overseas. his deep-pocket major donor does not count as expert, qualified, or objective.

[paula b]

Kathy, that's why God made think tanks. He, or the GOP certainly could afford consultants. No excuses.

[oddjob]

The problem is the consultants he's using. They're all Shrub-era neoconservatives who haven't ever learned a single lesson from all their previous blunders.

[kathy a.]

yeah, somebody's talking to him. but i did mention "qualified" and "objective."

there is some delicious commentary on wapo today. gaffepalooza, says eugene robinson. noting that words fail, matt miller tries to come up with a new one, but the gem of his piece is this:

(“It’s unbelievable, it’s beyond human understanding, it’s incomprehensible,” said my Post colleague Charles Krauthammer on Fox News, before adding, “I’m out of adjectives.”)

seriously, when krauthammer is left speechless by the GOP presumptive nominee, mittens has a bit of a problem.

[oddjob]

Were it not for the behavior of the Senate GOP and the damage that's caused the economy Romney would be looking at a landslide loss.

[nancy]

Shouldn't that have been "kiss my ass you people " ?

Yup, Mitticulous.

[kathy a.]

the senate GOP, holding its nose until everybody else gets oxygen deprived.

[Paula B]

About this Get the Name of Mitt's VP phone app -- doesn't it seem to be aimed at exactly the wrong demographic? Most captains of industry (presumably, his constituency) I know, can't even do email. They and their money may have moved into this century, but their habits have not. Phone apps and other digital doodads are in the province of worker bees and assistants. Young ones, at that.
Why would his three young voters care enough about his choice of VP to install a one-time-use app on their precious smart phones?

[Paula B]

Romney's duplicity is accepted as fact:

The tone and frequency of Mr. Romney’s verbal jabs at that Europe, made in speeches in places like Florida and Ohio, has caught some of the Continent’s leaders by surprise. Several of Mr. Romney’s aides said they had heard from European diplomats and leaders who felt slighted by his words. The advisers have told foreign officials that they should not read too much into statements made for a domestic political audience.

From a story in today's NYT about his recent Grand Tour.

[Paula B]

If the Dems don't make some gains ripping apart Romney's tax plan, they are hopeless. According to Brookings and other think tanks, Romney will help the richest 5% gain and the rest of us lose, giving up all or part of deductions for mortgage interest, college tuition, medical expenses, child care, state and local taxes. If this election is all about the economy and saving the average taxpayer some $$$, this tax plan makes no sense at all. http://wapo.st/Mj112I
Take it and run with it, Obama!

[kathy a.]

paula -- isn't that something? here's a link.

there is also a rumor out that romney paid no taxes for 10 years. reported by huffpo, so it's a little breathless and rumorish, but harry reid says he got this call from someone from bain who would know. i dunno, if we saw the tax returns we could maybe see if it's true.

[Paula B]

Le grand tour, the missing tax returns, the rapid backlash to the GOP's War Against Women, the $77,000 tax deduction for a horse, the dog-on-the-roof fiasco, the lousy tax plan as the best the GOP could come up with -- it's all starting to implode, Mitt. You don't want to be standing nearby when this wobbly skyscraper comes down. (And,, your party might not want to be standing next to you, either.) Tim. Burr!