Tag: Romney

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Election Eve

Election Eve

Turn off the TV, and read your voter guide

 

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson

November 3rd 2012

 

There’s an election next week. You may have heard mention of it on your TV. Obama versus Romney, which is mediocre versus horrible. Neville Chamberlain versus Hitler.

OK, Romney probably doesn’t deserve to be compared to Hitler, although the comparison might be apt with some of the people supporting him. You have the teabagger crowd looking for ways to legitimize rape. Others want to toss the American people to the tender mercies of large multinational corporations. His own VP candidate champions a libertarian dystopia where the existence of every working American is at the whim of his boss, and if you don’t work, you can’t expect much in the way of an existence. One Republican candidate even called for executing children who disobey their children.

Four years ago, we made “Hey you kids get off my lawn!” jokes about McCain. I don’t think it occurred to anyone that there might be a candidate crazy enough to suggest that it would be alright for McCain to enforce the sanctity of his lawn with an AK-47. That was then. This is now.

The two party system sucks. The electoral college sucks, as anyone trapped in the avalanche of ads in any of the “battlefield states” can attest. I’m guessing most of my readers don’t feel represented in any meaningful way by either party, or either candidate, and are basing your votes on the one least likely to turn your life to shit.

Continue reading “Election Eve”

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Debate II

Debate II

The gloves come off, so do the Mittens

 © Bryan Zepp Jamieson

October 16th 2012

 Well, at least Obama showed up for this debate. And he called out Romney on several of his lies.

The funniest moment came when both Obama and the moderator, Candy Crowley, were both trying to get Romney to explain how his tax plan works. You remember that? Cut taxes for everyone, increase spending, and, using players to be named later, balance the budget. Obama even parenthetically mentioned the “six studies” that supposedly supported Romney’s claim, a claim that has been roundly debunked. Nobody in the GOP or out of it can give a coherent explanation of how this Five-point plan of his would work. And Romney kept dancing away from anything that might look like a specific.

Romney was again doing his not-Romney, Mr. Etch-a-Sketch, making all kinds of moderate noises. He’s now in favor of the free contraception it seems. Oh, and doesn’t want to round up and deport undocumented aliens.

At one point during the immigration question, Romney falsely claimed that the Democrats had a super-majority in both Houses. It’s a favorite claim of the GOP in general, but it’s just not true. The Dems at the outset had 57 seats in the Senate. After ten months, they got a 58th, the result of Senator Al Franken finally being seated following a protracted fight by the sore loser. By then, both Senators Kennedy and Byrd were extremely ill, and Kennedy died just a few months later. There was never a “super majority”. The Senate requires 60 votes against the filibuster.

Continue reading “Debate II”

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Debate the First

Obama versus not-Romney

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
October 4th 2012

 

The first debate is fairly easy to sum up: notRomney painted Obama as ineffectual and wedded to policies that hurt the middle class. Obama painted notRomney as vague and more than a bit scary. In short, both were playing trope-versus-trope for all they were worth, and neither had anything substantive to say. Romney decided he was debating as notRomney, the Unrepublican.

It was fun watching notRomney kind of pretend that he wasn’t sure who this “Paul Ryan” was, or why people should be afraid of him. Three times he said that his plan was not a five trillion dollar tax cut without acknowledging that he had supported the Ryan plan—which would do exactly that—continuously over the past two years. It’s strange to see a Republican repudiate the notion that his plan would cause a large tax cut.

He doubled down on the false claim that Obamacare would cut Medicare by $716 billion. Obama refuted it the first time he claimed it, noting that it saved that amount, but without cutting any benefits for anyone. Continue reading “Debate the First”

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Are They Serious?

Laughter at the GOP trails off to stunned silence

January 6th 2012

 Santorum and Romney effectively finished in a dead tie in the meaningless Iowa caucuses this week, which means that People are taking Santorum Seriously.

This isn’t entirely a surprise. Every other candidate for the GOP except Huntsman and Johnson enjoyed similar surges at one point or another. Given the quality of the GOP field, it became a joke. No candidate was too stupid or too crazy to be dismissed by frantic GOP voters. In fact, the only ones who were dismissed were the ones who were too sane or too intelligent.

But Santorum’s sudden lurch to the top brought about a couple of interesting things this week that show that the people are getting tired of this.

Continue reading “Are They Serious?”

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