What a Colossal Dick

"Head Like a Hole" - Nine Inch Nails

Wow -- sorry to be slow in getting something posted, but I've been trying to absorb the Romney video and the media response to it.  One gets the sense that Mitt's foolish and contemptuous remarks about the 47% who don't pay income taxes -- the bulk of whom are elderly and probably support Romney -- is really going to have an impact on this race.  It's not like things were going terribly well for the Romney campaign, but reports about campaign bickering in the Politico are total inside baseball without a whole lot of resonance for the broader class of voters.  But this -- this naked exposition of the cold, soulless douchebag that is Mitt Romney is going to dominate the airwaves for the next 48-72 hours and is not likely to "humanize" the Mittster in the eyes of the public.  (It is amusing to see where those who don't pay income tax are concentrated -- and where the highest percentage of income tax payers reside.)

I was struck by how many people already have stories up about this.  I started with the blogosphere -- Pierce kills it -- but was more interested to see what the play was going to be like in the mainstream.  And it appears that the story is going to be huge tomorrow, absolutely huge.  The Times has a pretty devastating take on it.  The Post has four stories up already -- one tepid news story, a piece by Ezra Klein, a fact check by Glenn Kessler, and a description of a hastily called and panicky Romney press availability.  (The fact that Romney got trotted out at 10:00 PM EDT to answer -- awkwardly -- a handful of questions gives you the sense of how badly the Romney camp thinks this thing is going to hurt.) I can't believe I am saying this, but I cannot wait to see "Morning Joe" tomorrow -- heads will be exploding.

One is struck by a couple of things: first, that Romney appears fluid and completely at ease while speaking to his fellow plutocrats, qualities not much in evidence when he is out on the stump.  Two, the casual quality of his contempt -- this is a man who basically views half of the country as a bunch of free loaders and he presumes, completely erroneously, that this is the constituency for the Democratic Party. And three, that Romney's awkwardness on the stump appears to be largely the product of the difficulty associated with having to lie all of the time, to suppress this vein of contempt from shining through.

He confirms to me once again that he is a horrible human being and manifestly unfit for the highest office in the land.  I have a feeling more than 47% of voters are going to agree with me.

Pile on my friends, pile on.  And do not spare the schadenfreude. 

Update:  When you've lost David Brooks . . . . Of course Brooks, too, remains a dick, with his clueless remark that "federal disability payments and unemployment insurance" cultivate dependency.  Another asshole. 

 

Comments

[oddjob]

the bulk of whom are elderly and probably support Romney

Iglesias cites the breakdown. As it turns out the majority of those who don't pay income tax still pay payroll taxes, and the majority of those who pay neither are elderly (& thus probably more likely to vote for Romeny).

Talk about contempt for your fellow citizens whom you expect to vote for you...

(Hat tip, Sully.)

For myself, while I realize he seems to be speaking more at ease in the videos I'm not convinced that this is any more an authentic version of what Romney himself thinks than I am of anything else the man says while campaigning.

Don't forget that this is an audience to be used to gain political office just as much as any other, and this one wants to hear certain 35 year-old conservative tropes about freeloaders and welfare queens, more than likely. Since when has Candidate Romney ever not said what he thinks the audience in front of him at the moment wants him to say?

I don't assume this reveals anything more about what Romney actually thinks than anything else he says while campaigning.

The candidate's a shyster.

[kathy a.]

oddjob, that graph is all over the place. or at least, i also think i saw it on wonkblog, maybe twice.

so, the dude is bad with math. and bad with people. bad with that transparency thing -- there is a solemn promise we'll get his 2011 tax returns by election day, and that we'll see his economic plan after that date. bad with women. bad with jokes. bad bad with international matters. the canine contingent, not known for being picky, has issues also.

still, he is out-badding himself by saying he doesn't care about "those" people, when those people are most of us.

[kathy a.]

ouchy. skewered by the LATimes.

[oddjob]

Between this and his strikingly inappropriate remarks after the attack on the consulate in Libya I think we may have both this cycle's "Lehman moment" (when McCain made a fool of himself by temporarily stopping campaigning to meet with fellow senators and show them all he hadn't any idea about what to do about the sudden economic crisis), and its "Sarah Palin interview" (where she amply demonstrated how unfit she was for the vice presidency by showing how empty her head was).

[Lori]

It's a meme that's been in circulation in teaparty circles at least since last fall, or maybe longer. In short, he's kissing up to his base, while the Democrats' strategy still involves throwing their base under the bus. The long-haul pendulum swing back from the "Reagan revolution" is still not here, but perhaps in one more election cycle, conservative will be "the C word." At any rate, I sincerely hope it happens in my lifetime.

[low-tech cyclist]

Head like a hole, indeed! Good choice, SC.

Yeah, Romney's shown himself to be a total waste of oxygen and an insult to all higher life forms, let alone fit for the Presidency.

[oddjob]

CHAPTER 2: Romney trashes two-state solution for Palestine & Israel

Hat tip, Sully.

[oddjob]

Comedian Rob Delaney, Romney's "Twitter nemesis", had a serious reaction to Mitt's unplugged fundraiser comments, recognizing an unsettling similarity between his own alcoholism and the candidate's apparent duplicity....

Very cool insight.

[low-tech cyclist]

Indeed, oddjob - I thought that was very perceptive.

To me, the big takeaway from the Israel-Palestine part of the tape was the part I've bolded in the following quote:

On the other hand, I got a call from a former secretary of state. I won't mention which one it was, but this individual said to me, you know, I think there's a prospect for a settlement between the Palestinians and the Israelis after the Palestinian elections. I said, "Really?" And, you know, his answer was, "Yes, I think there's some prospect." And I didn't delve into it.

I mean, here's a guy who's been seeking the Presidency for a half-dozen years or so. And the President of the United States has a pretty big role in brokering relations between Israel and the Arab world in general, and Israel and the Palestinians in particular.

But when a former secretary of state thinks there's an upcoming opportunity to broker an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, instead of saying, "I'm all ears, tell me more," and either picking his/her brain on the spot or making arrangements to meet later, Romney lets it drop, doesn't pursue it further.

Sounds like a man who wants to be President, but has no interest in the job of being President.

[oddjob]

Exactly, ltc.

He was the same way as governor, although at the time I figured it was because he'd decided to run for president (as so many Massachusetts politicians are tempted to do - a very odd behavior to me having grown up in Pennsylvania which has the "honor" of having produced only one president, and arguably the country's worst ever: James Buchanan).

[low-tech cyclist]

oddjob - totally off topic, but I wonder which PA politician has come closest to the Presidency since, say, WWII? I'm thinking Scranton's run at the GOP nomination in 1964 as the 'anybody but Goldwater' candidate was probably it, even though he didn't come particularly close to even winning the nomination.

Of course, over the same span, PA's next-door neighbor and my current home, Maryland, has produced...Spiro T. Agnew. Though we may improve ourselves in the next cycle with Martin O'Malley.

[oddjob]

I was too little to remember Scranton's campaign (4 years old in '64) and am not enough of a PA history buff to answer for certain, however to the best of my recollection no Pennsylvania governor since then has run for president. Regarding the period between 1945 & 1964? I have no idea if any PA politician attempted a run for the White House or not. Obviously if any did so they weren't nominated.

Come to think of it, while I metaphorically cringe to write this I think perhaps the only other PA politician to come as close as Scranton would be:

Rick Santorum.

(Ewwwwwwww............)

[oddjob]

(I just remembered that Arlen Specter ran for president sometime in the late 1980's or 1990's, back when he could still make a (very weak) case for putting a moderate Republican in the White House, but he didn't last very long in that race.)

[oddjob]

Ah! I remember another who sorta kinda came close.

In 1976, when Reagan was making his insurgent bid to replace Gerald Ford on the Republican ticket he promised that if he was nominated his running mate would be Pennsylvania moderate Republican Senator Richard Schweiker. As it turned out, in 1981 President Reagan picked Schweiker to be his first Secretary of Health and Human Services.

There aren't any others besides those three.

[low-tech cyclist]

Don't ask me how I overlooked Santorum.

I shoulda remembered Schweiker, because of Doonesbury if nothing else: "How long does it take to renounce everything you've ever stood for, Senator?" "At least 36 hours - the paperwork's incredible!" (The wording's from memory, so it's not exact, but I bet it's pretty close.)

[Linkmeister]

The NYT editorial board did a pretty good job of slicing Mitt up into little bits too. He's getting it from both coasts!

[oddjob]

Oh my God......

Talk about must see political ad!! (It's just one frame - no video at all.)

[low-tech cyclist]

oddjob - that's hilarious!

Re Schweiker: I was pretty close!

And boy howdy, has this been a firestorm about the Romney tape, or what? It's a down payment on what he deserves, which is of course to be ridiculed by every human being he ever encounters, until he repents and gives his fortune to the poor.

He's such a despicable sleaze, he's making Nixon look good by comparison. Hell, it's a tough contest between him and GWB.

So it's been a sweet, sweet day. We can only hope that the fun lasts all week.

[kathy a.]

oddjob! that is brilliant!

linkmeister, i have abused my paltry limit of NYT stuff this month. maybe i'll try another computer and see if that helps. that's me, trying to get something for nuttin', but $9/week after a trial access? really? almost $500/year? sure, i'm rounding up, but that's a lotta bucks for a tax-paying working not-rich person who is responsible and yet, shit keeps happening.

[Sir Charles]

Lori,

Welcome aboard -- sorry to be so slow in saying hi. This is indeed a conservative favorite, but they are usually smart enough to keep among themselves.

oddjob,

It's amazing how little truly national talent Pennsylvania has produced. One of my favorite blog series in recent times was when one of the guys at LG&M would do the ten most influential political figures in each state. I am a homer I admit, but Massacusetts cup raneth over -- as did places like Ohio, New York, California, and Texas.

That ad is brilliant by the way.

l-t c,

It has been a sweet, sweet day -- and I don't think our fun is done.

kathy,

The Times is steep, but it is the only newspaper really worth reading. Even if they do have Brooks, Douthat, and Friedman there.

l-t c,

[nancy]

"Mitt in Wonderland"*. Succinct post- shock and awe- some Mitt analysis. Today's Ringside Seat: He's here to make sure we can all pay taxes! at TAP.

Was he accusing nearly half of Americans, including large numbers of veterans and seniors, of being “moochers?” Cavuto asked. "I do believe that we should have enough jobs and enough take-home pay such that people have the privilege of higher incomes that allow them to be paying taxes,” Romney replied, smiling all the way. “I think people would like to be paying taxes."

You heard that right, folks. The candidate with millions parked in tax-exempt zones around the world, the fellow whose economic plan revolves around tax cuts, tax cuts, and more tax cuts, the faithful representative of high-rolling Americans who fully expect him to preventthem from paying taxes—is now offering himself up as the champion of aspiring taxpayers. It is enough to leave a person speechless. If, that is, you weren’t already.

*Mitt as Humpty Dumpty -- seems apt.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - - that's all."

[big bad wolf]

my favorite, glimpsed as i walked into the gym (back entrance, they don't want people to know i go there) was a t.v showing bill kristol slamming mitt as out of touch. that's amusing.

i hate to be a party pooper, but i think that picture would have worked better if the states didn't have dotted lines. the dotted lines on discrete states allow both sides to imagine which states they would dump. solid lines would make the point that excising 47% is not so easy as lopping off the states one thinks of as saving too many people with the wrong views.

[oddjob]

Mitt in Wonderland

Romney bombed on Fox this afternoon??

[oddjob]

For those who remember Randy Newman's "Short People", this one's about as blunt (in that same way):

I'm Dreamin'

(I don't know how to post YouTube from this 'puter, so I've linked to Sully's post displaying it. The post is a quick summation of an excellent post from this afternoon by Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

[low-tech cyclist]

Lori - meant to respond to you earlier, but kept getting lost in the shuffle. I think there's a chance that the Dems may be changing on throwing their base under the bus. At the convention, it was clear that they'd gotten a clue that it was time to stop running away from Obamacare, abortion, and even gay marriage. Speaker after speaker took ownership of all these things. Bill Clinton stood up for Medicaid in a way that rallied Dems around this least popular of the major entitlement programs.

I'll admit it caught me completely by surprise, because we've put up with 20 years of Dems triangulating and backing away from the things they used to support. And it may be too soon to say it's going to last. But there's a real chance, I think, that this is where the party decided to stand and fight for the stuff that was going to get wrapped around their necks anyway.

[beckya57]

LTC, I was also encouraged by the convention. Also that the Dems seem finally to be fighting back against all of the GOP/Fox/Limbaugh crap instead of curling up in a fetal position on the floor and moaning.

I'm also an evil enough person to be enjoying all of the "Republicans in Disarray" stories; how many of those have we seen about the Dems over the years? I'm also beginning to hope that the mainstream is finally beginning to get what we libs have known for years: yes, there is a class war in this country, and it's being waged by the top 0.01% against the rest of us.

I work with a social worker who is the very picture of a "little old lady": soft-spoken, kindly, genteel. I asked her this morning about the Romney tape and her response included words I had never heard out of her mouth before, like "f****** a*******!"

[kathy a.]

wait wait wait -- one minute, half the nation is a bunch of freeloaders who are not worth thinking about; and the next, they are supposed to believe he just wants to get them all better-paying jobs? uh, huh.

BBW, i like the scored lines. everyone can pick states they hate, and adjust for population, and arrive at the conclusion that 47% is a buttload of the country.

becky -- yay for your little old lady!

[oddjob]

"I guess I'm one of the 47% that Romney rails about. I didn't know I was "lazy" when I was six years old picking strawberries, beans and cherries every summer until I was old enough to work on a farm with cattle, pigs, and spearmint. I didn't make enough in a summer to pay federal tax but my paycheck did include payroll taxes. Likewise, working through college and grad school I never made enough to pay fedeal (sic) taxes. But many jobs were paid "in kind", such as free meals at the Student Union in exchange for washing dishes or waiting tables at the fraternity for a place to sleep.

If I "mooched" on anyone it was those good people who helped me find jobs like babysitting a computer system all night (so no need to spend money on rent). Or it was my parents who held a single GED and worked four jobs between them but sent five children and four grandchildren to college and beyond. My computer experience led to a charmed career in international marketing of IT, where I traveled the world and got paid for it! Believe me I was not happy to pay A LOT of taxes of all kinds for over 30 years but I certainly understood why it was the right thing to do.

And when after five decades I had to stop working for health reasons, I am thrilled that Obama passed the stimulus, longer UI, subsidized COBRA, ObamaCare, etc. - and even brought my portfolio back to life. Thanks to those lifelines, my wife and I now run a vacation rental in such a way to bring joy to hundreds of our guests. But the business doesn't yet run a profit so we don't pay income taxes yet.

So my count is I paid federal income taxes in just 30 of 53 working years in my nearly six decades of life. Thanks to Mittens I'll remember that I'm a lazy, irresponsible 47-percenter when I clean the toilet bowl in the guesthouse tonight.

End of rant."

Couldn't resist sharing that. There are a couple more just as good.

[low-tech cyclist]

becky -- yay for your little old lady!

Seconded!

All of a sudden, a whole slew of polls of Virginia have come out, and Obama's kicking Romney's butt, I'm delighted to say.

WaPo/ABC has Obama 52-44, CBS/NYT/Quinnipiac has Obama up 50-46, and PPP has him up 51-46. These are all 'likely voters,' too, so we don't have to factor in the usual drop-off between registered and likely voters; it's already in there, and Obama's still doing good.

Romney can lose Virginia and still win, but he's got to run the rest of the table to do it. And it's not gonna happen.

[Linkmeister]

For those who occasionally go past the NYT's story limit, install NYCLean on your toolbar.

http://www.practicalhacks.com/2011/05/31/how-to-hack-the-new-york-times-paywall/

Then, when the article starts to gray out and cut off, just click NYClean and the javascript bookmarklet opens up access.

Note: I installed it a while back and it works fine for me. I see by Googling that someone claims it's stopped working. Not for me.

[big bad wolf]

information should be free. workers should be paid. quandary?

[jeanne marie]

Colbert is a national treasure! (via Bob Cesca)

[nancy]

bbw- I'm smiling at the notion of David Brooks, Tom Friedman, et al. as worker bees. While I object to the Times pay wall and would not subscribe on my own, the spouse did. However the site won't allow my also-routered computer unlimited access. What's with that? If we had the print form newspaper at the kitchen table, we'd be sharing it. So NYClean for our second floor computer it shall be. I'll live with it for now.

I think their editorial captured well the slow-burn that the "extremely conservative" offensive Mitt has ignited. I know the punditry thinks the tape won't ultimately harm the campaign. I disagree -- there's too much truth revealed and I suspect the longer people have to think about what he said and to whom, the angrier it will make them. Among others, he insults your kids, parents, neighbors, and people you encounter doing minimum wage work that tends to keep life tidier. He insults his own grandparents.

I assume all here have seen the interview with Lenore Romney conducted when George Romney was running for governor where she mentions his own struggling family having received vitally essential welfare aid when he was a youngster. I have to think she'd be horrified to see her son at work. As I commented somewhere, Mitt has taken the notion of noblesse oblige and turned it into oblige noblesse.

[Linkmeister]

bbw, I don't feel like I'm stealing access to the NYT particularly. The paper allows readers coming in from external links to read stories in full, so it's not exercising nearly the kind of obnoxious control the LA Times is (I think that's like five stories per month free). I don't overdo it; there are plenty of other sources for most of the articles I'm interested in.

[oddjob]

Thanks to Romney Senate GOP leaders were profiles in courage yesterday (NOT). :)

[low-tech cyclist]

I don't read the NYT much, so their online subscription rates (which are close to $200/year) are pretty steep for me. I'd be willing to pay something in the $20-$40 range: I'd pay $20/year for limited access that got me, say, 30 free stories a month rather than 10, and I'd pay $40/year for unlimited access.

I would like to pay *something*, because I feel it's worth paying to sustain decent journalism. For instance, I just forked over $100 to the Mother Jones Investigative Fund (I read MoJo a lot, and not just Kevin Drum, and I'd been thinking it was time to send them a few shekels even before this week, but the Romney tape sealed the deal) but the NYT has priced occasional readers like me right out of their market.

If the NYT were a nonprofit (and that may be the future of quality journalism), I'd send them a contribution, but you don't send a contribution to a for-profit company. Either you buy their product or you don't. And if their product's too expensive, you don't.

[big bad wolf]

linkmeister, i don't mean to impugn you. i think that these are tough questions. i fear, however, that our rhetoric of freedom and our sense that we should have availale what we want when we want it cut against our interests as workers and the 99%, and that our freedom and quickly-filled virtual desires make it difficult for us to even get a discussion going about what it means for information to be "free," not here, but in the larger world.

[kathy a.]

i'd like some other options for places like NYT and LATimes, along the lines of what l-tc suggests.

i just don't want to get married to a site for a high-end unlimited kind of subscription thing. i was mistaken about an online NYT subscription -- it is close to the $200/year rather than the nearly $500 that i estimated. i'm trying to figure out the LAT rate -- for some reason, i'm on my 5th article today, and i have not gotten the notice. maybe because they are showing Live!Coverage! of the space shuttle being flown down to LA. so -- today might be your day for LAT.

[kathy a.]

the shuttle is flying to northern california right now. there will be a flyover around the SF bay area tomorrow morning. but the shuttle is headed to the science museum in LA, so this is a big LA story.

[kathy a.]

correction! the shuttle is flying to edwards AFB in southern cal (inland). it will do a northern cal. swoop tomorrow.

[kathy a.]

http://boston.cbslocal.com/cbs-boston-live-stream/

LIVE debate: brown vs. elizabeth warren.

[nancy]

bbw -- I guess I don't think of these questions as quite so tough, since I tend to view the more corporate aspects of on-line publishing as though I'm a library patron. Libraries pay for subscriptions. I go to the library and share print material for *free* because my taxes pay for services. Those taxes are nowhere close to what I pay for all of the subscriptions I do pay for, at home, annually, but the sharing aspect benefits everyone within my community, library card or no. The pay wall thing is about insisting that each and every pair of eyes pay for "content" -- even when that content is automatically thrown up on my igoogle homepage when I open it up. I didn't select for that -- Google and NYT did.

A bigger quandry for me is how to support fine on-line work where bloggers do rely on the tip jar. I could bankrupt myself by overdoing it, yet it's money well-spent to hit those jars when I can. I do wish I had some idea of the expense of keeping a blogsite going. As in, is my measly x amount of dollars really of help, or is it insulting? [Hint, bloggers -- a suggested dollar amount helps me out here]

Hope that makes sense. Of course the eventual and worsening problem is keeping libraries open and public. Those budgets have been hard hit, yet the returns for kids, seniors and the 47% are undeniable. But, oh well. Who wants to hear from librarians and teachers. Or Ben Franklin for that matter. Sigh.

kathy, Brown sure knows how to push the sexist guy buttons. "you union guys..."

[oddjob]

Brown sure knows how to push the sexist guy buttons. "you union guys..."

That's because he's very much a member of the tribe in good standing.

[big bad wolf]

nancy, i didn't mean just the newspaper context was the difficult question. i mean to suggest that the information should be free (music too) (why not restaurant meals and service? all those beautiful bits of favor and color wanting to reach me) idea is linked to an economy that has less need for people and that convinces us that lessened need is kind of okay, so long as we get some stuff free or cheap. and i think there is a link to the blogs and their tip jars. i cannot help but feel that a lot of these people who might have once made a living at this are now reduced, in effect to busking on the internet. i am not sure that is a good thing. relatedly google puts that times material up to make money; google like us to believe they just want information to be free and it is those bad other people who want to be paid, but the google people are very very rich and part of their business model is to put up other people's work product without helping people earn a living. do no evil?

on the times example specifically i would say a couple of things. first, it is understandably annoying to not be able to read the electronic times on more than one computer in the house. and people really should urge them to make it available in some way to two people in the same household. still, having lived, when i was a teen, in a house in which all eight family members wanted to read the sunday paper at once, i know that waiting for the paper is not a new thing.

similarly, i think the library analogy is flawed. first, you have to go to the library. in a free information model, we want the worker not to be paid and we want it right now. second, when one goes to the library one is not guaranteed that the times will be there for one upon arrival. someone else is likely to have it, and there very well may be a waiting list. just as someone else may have the book that you would like to read. waiting is involved, perhaps weeks for a popular book, so there is a trade-off. you don't buy the book, but you wait. you pay a price of sorts for not paying for the book. the free information model wants us to pay no price and have it instantly upon demand. a wonderful idea if it didn't cost jobs. yes, too much money goes to the top, we all agree on that. but so far the free information model has not addressed that in any way (in fact it has created new fatcats at the top, if fatcats we "like" better because they are cooler than the romneys) and it has cost a lot of middle range jobs, jobs that when lost ripple through the economy.

i am probably just a luddite, but i think it is a shame we don't talk about this. it's worse, i think, than neil postman thought when he wrote amusing ourselves to death. we are now amusing ourselves right into poverty, and it ain't a newspaper subcription that is doing it.

[kathy a.]

BBW, you have some points about compensating people for their work. i remember railing at one of my kids for pirating music off the internet, for example.

with newspapers, i think the whole industry in in transition. traditionally, ads paid much or most of the cost and consumers paid some when they bought a paper. that may still be working for some papers, but in the digital age, it's not working well for all. and we want quality journalism to be out there.

perhaps it is a matter of changing my thinking; it has been glorious to get almost everything online for free. i do not mind paying for books, or to see movies. (although -- i am not made of money; i have to be careful to not go overboard. so, i wait for the paperback; i often see the movie later, on netflix.)

here is one thing about newspapers: if one hears of a good article, one can buy that one issue of a dead-tree newspaper. it's not an every-day or nothing deal. so as a consumer, i'd like more options. (on the other hand -- that's a lousy deal for newspapers, which need to maintain staff even on slow news days.)

on the third hand, newspapers and books get passed around -- as in your example of 8 people competing to read the family's copy of the sunday paper. my town has two free book exchanges; one is at the recycling center (leading to civic outrage and some civility rules because book re-sellers swoop in) and a private one that supports itself by re-selling the nicest donations. sharing information is actually a cultural tradition.

i'll probably break down and pay for a couple of subscriptions; and make that up in the budget by buying fewer books to add to my "should read" stacks. it does require looking at this in a different way than i have.

[big bad wolf]

i think the virtual world can be intellectually and even emotionally sustaining, but it can't be physically sustaining. and i think the information should be free idea fails to recognize this and fails to recognize that. it doesn't mean we all have to subscribe to or pay for everything. it does mean we should probably think about how we have a physically sustaining community if nothing replaces the jobs displaced to make things free or cheap.