Cookiegate: Mitt Romney’s Latest Foot-in-Mouth Episode

Posted: April 18, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, education, Republican presidential politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 12 Comments

Turtle Thumbprint cookies from the Bethel Bakery

On Tuesday, Mitt Romney met with several preselected middle-class couples. They sat around a picnic table in Bethel Park, PA and discussed taxes. “over a table of lemonade, pretzels, chips and cookies from Bethel Bakery.” The Bakery is beloved by the community and is considered a local “landmark.”

The meeting got off to a rocky start, however, when the governor sat down at a picnic table set with food and made an apparent attempt at humor.

“I’m not sure about these cookies,” Mr. Romney said. “They don’t look like you made them,” he said turning to one of the women at the table. “Did you make those cookies? You didn’t, did you? No. No. They came from the local 7-Eleven bakery or wherever.”

The cookies, in fact, were donated from the popular Bethel Bakery around the corner from the community center, and once Mr. Romney’s comment was broadcast on local airwaves offended residents took to Facebook and Twitter to complain.

Next, the locals attempted to explain to the oblivious and smirking Mr. Romney the need for community services like teachers and good schools.

One woman at the gathering said she was scared about the fate of her public schools, given deep cuts to the state budget (incidentally, the man who pushed those cuts, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett, endorsed Romney today). “I don’t like to see cuts made in anything in education,” she said, citing her daughter’s experience. Another man chimed in, noting that “the fat” had already been trimmed and now important education programs were being hit.

A man then told Romney,

“None of us like to pay more taxes, but sometimes that’s necessary.” Another woman added, “It’s a necessary evil.” “Right, right,” a third person said as everyone in the group nodded.

Later, the Bethel Bakery offered a “Cookiegate special.”

Julie Lytle, the bakery’s sales and marketing assistant, said the popular local fixture since 1955 “turned a negative into a positive” by printing a sign offering customers a “CookieGate Special!” — a free half dozen cookies with the purchase of a dozen cookies today and Thursday.

“I was a little shocked,” Ms. Lytle said. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time, and I didn’t think it would blow up like it has. We decided to have fun with it and not to get offended.”

Late Night: What Really Happened to Seamus Romney?

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Seamus Romney and Friends

This morning I watched part of Diane Sawyer’s interview with Ann and Mitt Romney. Sawyer had asked viewers what questions they’d like to ask the Romneys, and the subject most asked about was why they had taken a 12-hour road trip with their Irish Setter Seamus in a “crate” (Ann’s word) on the roof of their station wagon. (Here’s a post I wrote about this awful episode last year.)

“Honestly, would you do it again?” Sawyer asked. Both Romneys laughed heartily in their condescending, entitled way. “Certainly not with the attention it’s received,” Mitt replied, still laughing.

Mitt Romney told Sawyer that the Seamus attacks were the most wounding of the campaign “so far,” but Anne Romney insisted the dog loved traveling that way and looked forward to trips.

“The dog loved it,” Ann Romney said. “He would see that crate and, you know, he would, like, go crazy because he was going with us on vacation. It was to me a kinder thing to bring him along than to leave him in the kennel for two weeks.”

Adding to the left’s narrative that Romney had little compassion for the animal is a detail from the 1983 trip that Ann Romney confirmed to Sawyer. The dog became sick, defecating all over itself and the windshield of the car, leading Romney to hose them both off before they continued on the drive to Canada.

“Once, he — we traveled all the time — and he ate the turkey on the counter. I mean, he had the runs,” Ann Romney said, laughing as she explained how the dog got diarrhea.

Ha ha ha ha. So funny. Ann said that for Seamus it was like riding a motorcycle or a roller coaster. He enjoyed it, both Romney have said. Now who here thinks it would be fun to ride a roller coaster for 12 hours straight? As reminder, here’s an expert opinion about what it was really like for Seamus that I linked to in my post a year ago.

And when the contents of Seamus’ bowels streamed down the car windows, Mitt pulled into a gas station, hosed down the dog, the crate, and the car; put Seamus back in the crate (still soaking wet, presumably), and drove blithely onward to Ontario and his family’s ritzy summer retreat.

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got; and I ended up surfing around for hours searching for more information. I learned that Mitt’s sister, Jane claimed to have cared for Seamus for a time after the trip to Canada in 1983. Jane told The Boston Globe that Seamus loved to wander around town:

[He] was such a social dog that he often left Mitt Romney’s Belmont home to visit his “dog friends” around town. “He kept ending up at the pound,” she says. “They were worried about him getting hit crossing the street.” So a few years after Seamus’s ride to Canada, Mitt sent Seamus to live for a time with Jane and her family in California. “We had more space, so he could roam more freely,” she says.

I had to wonder if Seamus was actually trying to escape his overbearing master, the Mittster. Then finally, I came across an article from this past January at Politiker that raised the possibility that Seamus never returned from the 1983 trip to Canada.

Mitt Romney may not have told the whole truth about the scandalous tale of his Irish Setter, Seamus, being strapped to the roof of his car during a 12-hour family road trip to Canada. According to a trusted Politicker tipster, two of Mr. Romney’s sons had an off-record conversation with reporters where they revealed the dog ran away when they reached their destination on that infamous journey in 1983.

Mr. Romney’s wife, Ann, has previously said Seamus survived the trip and went on to live to a “ripe old age.” As of this writing, Mr. Romney’s campaign has not responded to multiple requests for comment on this story.

Aha! The plot thickens. And then, what do you know? Just today, the Politicker landed another scoop. Jane Romney’s ex-husband, Bruce H. Robinson, spilled the beans on his former wife and brother-in-law. It seems that the couple divorced in 1980–three years before the fateful trip–and Seamus stayed with them before they broke up.

Mr. Robinson, a doctor and nephew of the late president of the Mormon Church Gordon Hinckley, married

Jane Romney in 1958. In 1968, he flew to France to care for Mr. Romney after the future White House hopeful was nearly killed in a car crash while working as a Mormon missionary. Mr. Robinson told us he and Jane Romney did indeed take Seamus to live with them in California, but that it was before 1980 (the vacation in question happened in 1983), and they gave the dog back prior to the notorious rooftop road trip.

Mr. Robinson said Mitt and Ann Romney gave Seamus away because they “couldn’t handle” the dog, which Mr. Robinson described as “a wanderer” who had a propensity for running away.

“They had a couple of their little boys at that point,” Mr. Robinson said. “So they gave him to us.”

He thinks this was in the late 1970s–it had to be before 1980, after which time the couple no longer lived together.

“We were living in the Sacramento area, and so, Jane and I, in the 70′s, I’d say ’78 or so, but I’m not 100 percent sure about that,” Mr. Robinson said. “So, we took care of Seamus, a beautiful, magnificent dog. We had three other dogs of our own, but we had an acre of property overlooking the American River, so we had lots of land to take care of these dogs and for them to roam around in.”

Mr. Robinson said he’s certain they gave the dog back to the Romneys when he and Jane got divorced in 1980. At that point, Jane went to live in Southern California, and Mr. Robinson said she was unable to “handle the dog” on her own.

Mr. Robinson told Polticker that Seamus ran away a lot when he was staying with them, just as he had in Belmont.

So what really happened to Seamus? Did he run away in Canada and seek asylum with a more loving, supportive family? Or did he expire from the stress of riding mile after torturous mile on the roof of a car. Did he die in that “crate” that Ann Romney claims he loved so much? What really happened to Seamus?

The Romneys must be pressed for truthful answers. They cannot be permitted to continue laughing this off in their usual high-handed, dismissive manner. Americans want the truth!

Paul Ryan Claims Jesus Supported Small Government; Catholic Bishops Disagree

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: hunger, poverty, religion, Republican politics, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics, voodoo economics | Tags: , , | 10 Comments

Paul Ryan's God?

Yesterday, NPR’s Morning Edition reported on a “debate among Christians” about whether Jesus believed in helping the poor.

After the House passed its budget last month, liberal religious leaders said the Republican plan, which lowered taxes and cut services to the poor, was an affront to the Gospel — and particularly Jesus’ command to care for the poor.

Not so, says Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, who chairs the House Budget Committee. He told Christian Broadcasting Network last week that it was his Catholic faith that helped shape the budget plan. In his view, the Catholic principle of subsidiarity suggests the government should have little role in helping the poor.

“Through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities — through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community — that’s how we advance the common good,” Ryan said.

The best thing that government can do, he said, is get out of the way.

Can you believe NPR’s religion reporter actually pretended there is a legitimate “debate” about this?

Today the Catholic Bishops indicated they think Jesus believed in helping actual living people–not just zygotes, embryos, and fetuses.

The Hill reports that the Bishops have so far sent letters to the House Agriculture and Ways and Means Committees and they also plan to send letters to other House committees as well, because they believe the budget “disproportionately cut[s] programs that ‘serve poor and vulnerable people.'”

The Bishops are particularly concerned about the budget’s draconian cuts in food stamps and child tax credits for immigrants–programs that help needy families stave off starvation. According to The Hill, the letters appear to be in response to recent comments made by Paul Ryan, who claims to be a Catholic.

“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, told the Christian Broadcasting Network.

“So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person,” Ryan said.

Ryan made a moral case for his budget, saying that the government shouldn’t be responsible for lifting its citizens out of poverty — rather, that it’s the obligation of the citizens themselves to be society’s caretakers.
 


“Those principles are very, very important,” Ryan said. “And the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenants of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty, out into a life of independence.”

Maybe Ryan should try reading the New Testament instead of Atlas Shrugged. Here’s one quote from Jesus:

Luke 6:20-21 Then he looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

‘Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. ‘Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

I couldn’t find any quotes from Jesus about small government and pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Anyone know any of those?

ALEC Announces It Will No Longer Focus on Social Issues

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, fundamentalist Christians, Human Rights, legislation, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , | 27 Comments

ALEC has sent out a press release announcing a very significant change in its organizational structure and goals. The headline: ALEC Sharpens Focus on Jobs, Free Markets and Growth — Announces the End of the Task Force that Dealt with Non-Economic Issues. Here’s the gist:

“We are refocusing our commitment to free-market, limited government and pro-growth principles, and have made changes internally to reflect this renewed focus.

“We are eliminating the ALEC Public Safety and Elections task force that dealt with non-economic issues, and reinvesting these resources in the task forces that focus on the economy. The remaining budgetary and economic issues will be reassigned….

“Our free-market, limited government, pro-growth policies are the reason ALEC enjoys the support of legislators on both sides of the aisle and in all 50 states. ALEC members are interested in solutions that put the American economy back on track. This is our mission, and it is what distinguishes us.”

Except those really aren’t the reasons ALEC was founded. The brains behind ALEC were Paul Weyrich, who also founded the Heritage Foundation and joined with Jerry Falwell to found Moral Majority, and other right wing legislators focused on social issues like Henry Hyde.

One of the first to envision fusing the conservative movement with evangelicals, he and the Rev. Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority as well. In fact, Weyrich coined the phrase the “moral majority”. No believer in majority rule, he said: “I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” His statement was a harbinger to ALEC’s later very dogged voter suppression activities. “Recently Voter ID legislation based on ALEC’s template was introduced in states across the country and passed in at least fourteen states,” under the guise of preventing election fraud.

So voter suppression was part of the organization’s charter, apparently.

ALEC’s model legislation has been instrumental in the explosive growth of the prison population. It helped pioneer “three strikes” laws, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and “truth in sentencing” laws, which serve to abolish or curb parole so converts are made to serve the entire length of their sentence. “Because of truth-in-sentencing and other tough sentencing measures, state prison populations grew by half a million inmates in the 1990s even while crime rates fell dramatically.” In fact, one of ALEC’s benefactors, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), made an offer to cash- strapped states to buy up their prison populations at a cost savings as long as the state kept their prisons 90 percent filled to capacity.

And of course ALEC was behind the Stand Your Ground laws that have become such a big issue since the Trayvon Martin shooting.

And now ALEC is dropping this part of their agenda. This is a huge victory for anyone who care about human rights.

Tuesday Morning Reads

Posted: April 17, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads, Reproductive Rights, Republican presidential politics, the internet, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women | Tags: , , , | 33 Comments

Good Morning!!

The Villagers have returned from their two-week Easter vacation, so there’s a bit more news today than we have had recently.

First up, I want to call attention to an important series of articles the UK Guardian will be running all week on the “Battle for the Internet.” There will be a major story every day this week:

Over seven days

The Guardian is taking stock of the new battlegrounds for the internet. From states stifling dissent to the new cyberwar front line, we look at the challenges facing the dream of an open internet

Day 1: the new cold war
China may have the world’s most internet-savvy government but Beijing has been struggling to keep a lid on bold social networks, writes Tania Branigan

Day two: the militarisation of cyberspace
Internet attacks on sovereign targets are no longer a fear for the future, but a daily threat. We ask: will the next big war be fought online?

Day three: the new walled gardens
For many, the internet is now essentially Facebook. Others find much of their online experience is mediated by Apple or Amazon. Why are the walls going up around the web garden, and does it matter?

Day four: IP wars
Intellectual property, from copyrights to patents, have been an internet battlefield from the start. We look at what Sopa, Pipa and Acta really mean, and explain how this battle is not over. Plus, Clay Shirky will be discussing the issues in a live Q&A

Day five: ‘civilising’ the web
In the UK, the ancient law of defamation is increasingly looking obsolete in the Twitter era. Meanwhile, in France, President Sarkozy believes the state can tame the web

Day six: the open resistance
Meet the activists and entrepreneurs who are working to keep the internet open

Day seven: the end of privacy
Hundreds of websites know vast amounts about their users’ behaviour, personal lives and connections with each other. Find out who knows what about you, and what they use the information for

Be sure to check out this interview with one of Google’s founders: Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin

Next up, lots of news coming out of Columbia, where President Obama participated in the Summit of the Americas. It didn’t go well. Reuters:

President Barack Obama sat patiently through diatribes, interruptions and even the occasional eye-ball roll at the weekend Summit of the Americas in an effort to win over Latin American leaders fed up with U.S. policies.

He failed.

The United States instead emerged from the summit in Colombia increasingly isolated as nearly 30 regional heads of state refused to sign a joint declaration in protest against the continued exclusion of communist-led Cuba from the event.

The rare show of unity highlights the steady decline of Washington’s influence in a region that has become less dependent on U.S. trade and investment thanks economic growth rates that are the envy of the developed world and new opportunities with China.

Obama also certified the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement which will take effect on May 15, despite Colombia’s continuing human rights violations including the murder of labor leaders. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka called the decision “deeply disappointing and troubling.

Leaders of national labor organizations in Colombia joined Trumka in opposing today’s announcement, saying:

[T]he underlying trade agreement perpetuates a destructive economic model that expands the rights and privileges of big business and multinational corporations at the expense of workers, consumers, and the environment. The agreement uses a model that has historically benefitted a small minority of business interests, while leaving workers, families, and communities behind.

In April 2011, the U.S. and Colombia agreed to an Action Plan on Labor Rights intended to “protect internationally recognized labor rights, prevent violence against labor leaders, and prosecute the perpetrators of such violence” in Colombia. Although the Action Plan includes some measures that Colombian unions and the AFL-CIO have been demanding for years, its scope was too limited: it resolved neither the grave violations of union freedoms or human rights.

Some two dozen Colombian trade union leaders were killed last year alone, and an AFL-CIO report released last fall found that the Action Plan, which was billed as a major step to ending violence against trade unionists and protecting the right of workers to come together in unions “has failed to achieve improvements on the ground for Colombia’s working families.”

And then there was the Secret Service scandal, which keeps on getting worse. The latest from the WaPo:

A probe into the alleged misconduct of nearly a dozen U.S. Secret Service agents has expanded to include more than five military personnel, Defense Department officials said Monday, as the scandal that erupted during President Obama’s trip to Colombia last week put high-level officials on the defensive.

A preliminary investigation by the Defense Department, which included a review of video from hotel security cameras, found that more military personnel than initially thought might have been involved with the Secret Service in the carousing at the center of the probe. Already, 11 Secret Service agents have been placed on leave amid allegations they entertained prostitutes, potentially one of the most serious lapses at the organization in years.

The charges are triggering scrutiny of the culture of the Secret Service — where married agents have been heard to joke during aircraft takeoff that their motto is “wheels up, rings off” — and raising new questions at both the agency and the Pentagon about institutional oversight at the highest levels of the president’s security apparatus.

There’s a lot more detail in that article. Ron Kessler, who used to work for the WaPo and now writes for NewsMax (is that a comedown or a horizontal move?) says the head of the Secret Service should be fired.

Ron Kessler, the author who broke the Secret Service prostitution story in the Washington Post over the weekend, has been making the morning talk-show rounds, saying the director of the agency should be fired after agents were alleged to have solicited local prostitutes ahead of President Obama’s trip to Colombia.

“This is the worst scandal in the history of the Secret Service,” Kessler said on NBC’s “Today” show on Monday. “The Secret Service, under Mark Sullivan, has gone from one debacle to another.”

The only scandal that comes close to this one, Kessler said on CNN, was in 2009, when Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed the state dinner at the White House.

“It goes back to a culture of laxness in the Secret Service,” Kessler said. “Corner cutting. Just a lax attitude which contributes to this kind of thing.”

Funny, I would have thought that Secret Service agents getting drunk the night before the JFK assassination and then not doing much to protect him would have been the worst scandal, but what do I know?

Now that Congress is back in session, the Senate didn’t waste any time dumping the President’s proposed “Buffet Rule” that would have made millionaires pay something resembling a fair share of taxes.

By a near party-line 51-45 tally, senators voted to keep the bill alive but fell nine votes short of the 60 needed to continue debating the measure. The anti-climactic outcome was no surprise to anyone in a vote that was designed more to win over voters and embarrass senators in close races than to push legislation into law.

At the White House, Obama denounced the vote, saying Republicans chose “once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class.” In a statement issued after the vote, he said he would keep pressing Congress to help the middle class.

Another victory on the road to serfdom.

And of course there’s the new media meme: because of a poorly worded remark by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen, the Republican War on Women is over and the Democrats have declared a War on Motherhood.

Never mind that the War on Women is real–based on horrible Republican anti-abortion, anti-family planning, anti-Planned Parenthood policies that have been implemented in state legislatures around the country. Never mind that the “War on Motherhood” is based on hysterical pearl-clutching by cynical Romney campaign strategists. The media has swallowed the fairly tale bait hook, line, and sinker.

And so the horrendous insult to poor little Ann Romney was a prime topic on the Sunday news shows. Meet the Press’s idiot host David Gregory had a whole panel discussion on it. Naturally Charlie Pierce had a great writeup on that yesterday.

the panel, which included my man Chuck Todd and complete political failure Harold Ford, Jr., was talking about Hilary Rosen and hookers. Savannah Guthrie said that the Obama administration moved so quickly to distance themselves from Hilary Rosen, Warrior Queen Of All Liberals:

In some ways it had the equal and opposite effect. They worked so hard to disown Hilary Rosen that you almost felt, well, they must own her, they must be allied with her. It didn’t betray a lot of confidence about their position with women.

See that rock at your feet? Pick it up. Throw it as far as you can. Remember, though, the farther you throw it away, the closer it is to hitting you in the head. Savannah Guthrie, Theoretical Physicist. (Later, she talked about how the administration wanted to draw a line in the sand so that “six months from now,” if somebody said something about Michelle Obama etc. etc. Six months from now? Has Guthrie been on Tuvalu for three years?) My head was descending rapidly toward my desk when Harold Ford chimed in, and it accelerated downward faster than it ever has before. Harold liked very much what his nutty former colleague said about how stay-at-home moms are more attuned to the economy than they are the attempts by a bunch of white men to make sure there’s a little more mommin’ to be done while they stay at home. It’s truly hard to believe that, in a Democratic wave election, the people of Tennessee rejected this titan….

“I thought Michele Bachmann, whom I don’t often agree with, made some pretty valid points. This issue here is more powerful in some ways that the conversation about contraception… No one goes around talking about that. People go around talking about raising their kids. Wome are insulted if you say if they stay at home instead of working then something’s different about them.

It is important to remember that these people wouldn’t even be discussing a whopping 19-point gender gap if it weren’t for Republican attempts to control the unauthorized use of ladyparts, the Dildos Mandating Dildos legislation in the various states, and all that other stuff that Harold Ford, Jr. says women don’t talk about.

Sorry about the long quote, but I just had to use that whole section. It’s perfect!

Anyway, as everyone knows by now, the Romneys blew it bigtime by talking too loud at a $50,000-a-plate fund raiser in Palm Beach. They didn’t realize the press could hear them when they gloated about what a great “gift” Hilary Rosen had given them.

Mrs. Romney acknowledged Republicans’ deficit at present with female voters, and urged the women in attendance to talk to their friends, particularly about the economy. She also discussed the criticism she faced this week, and her pride in her role as a mother.

“It was my early birthday present for someone to be critical of me as a mother, and that was really a defining moment, and I loved it,” Mrs. Romney said.

Gov. Romney went further in engaging the so-called “war on moms” that followed in the media — upon which his campaign has been aggressively fundraising — calling it a “gift” that allowed his campaign to show contrast with Democrats in the general election’s first week.

Um…no one was critical of you as a mother, Ann.

But maybe it wasn’t such a “gift” after all, because women voters are apparently not as stupid as the Romneys think they are. According to a CNN poll taken two days after Rosen dropped her bomblet and the the Republicans took to the fainting couch, Obama still leads among women by 16 points and he is even ahead among men by 3 points.

But the Romneys still think they won something, and they’re using it to raise money with a new video in which Romney waxes as poetic as a robot can about his beloved wife Ann. For the brave souls among us, here’s the Romney campaign’s “Happy Birthday, Mom” video. Don’t watch it unless you have a strong stomach and normal blood sugar levels.

As an antidote, please read this NYT op-ed by Nancy Folbre, an economist from U. Mass. Amherst on the real meaning of the gender gap.

Those are my suggested reads for today. What are yours?

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