Late Night Open Thread: Ann Romney Worries About Mitt’s “Mental Well Being”
Posted: September 28, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, open thread, U.S. Politics | Tags: Ann Romney, gaffes, Mental health, Mitt Romney, Reno NV 18 Comments
Ann Romney being interviewed by Wendy Damonte of KTVN, Reno, Nevada
I thought the Romney campaign had decided to give Ann Romney a time out after her meltdown last week in which she snapped at a radio interviewer:
“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”…
…“It’s nonsense and the chattering class…you hear it and then you just let it go right by,” she told Radio Iowa. “…Honestly, at this point, I’m not surprised by anything.”
But this latest one could be even more damaging. Today Ann told an interviewer that she is worried about her husband’s “mental well being.”
Here’s Ann Romney’s full quote (video at the link)
“I think my biggest worry would be for his mental well being. I have all the confidence in the world of his ability, his decisiveness, his leadership skills, his understand of the economy, his understanding of what’s missing right now. The pieces that are missing to get the jump started. So for me I think it would be the emotional part of it.”
WTF?! Is Mitt on the verge of a nervous breakdown or something? Is there something more we need to know? This man is running to be President of the U.S., Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, with control over nuclear weapons.
Honestly, I don’t know what to think about this. Mitt Romney faces his first presidential debate against President Barack Obama next Wednesday. Does Ann really think she’s helping?
Thursday Reads: Animal Psychology, Republican Race-Baiting, Obama’s Drone War, and More
Posted: September 27, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs, Media, Mitt Romney, morning reads, Newt Gingrich, Pakistan, psychology, racism, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Alec MacGillis, Animal Madness, Conor Friedersdorf, drones, European financial crisis, Gary Johnson, Joe Scarborough, John Sununu, Laurel Braitman, Paul Ryan 74 Comments
Good Morning!!
Before I get to political news, here’s an interesting story that has nothing to do with the upcoming 2012 elections: Suicidal dogs and bipolar wolves. It’s an interview with Laurel Braitman, a PhD candidate at MIT and the author of an upcoming book, Animal Madness. As someone who strongly believes that animals have personalities and strong emotions, I’m looking forward to check out her book. Here’s just a bit of the interview, conducted by Malcolm Harris of New Inquiry Magazine.
MH: How did you get involved in writing about mental illness in other animals in particular?
LB: I was doing something completely different but I had gone to graduate school for history of science at MIT. I had originally gone there to do research on the aquarium fishery in the Amazon basin. But I had a dog at the time, my partner and I had adopted a Burnese Mountain Dog. And he was fine for the first six months and then he went spectacularly crazy. He developed a debilitating case of separation anxiety. If we left him alone he would destroy himself, the house, anything in the way. He nearly killed himself at least once. So I had to take him to the vet hospital after he jumped out of our 4th floor apartment, and they said I had to take him to a veterinary behaviorist who would give him a prescription for Prozac and Valium. I was stopped in my tracks. I had heard there were some animals taking these drugs, but I never thought of myself as the kind of person who would put an animal on Prozac. But I found myself in a desperate situation with a 120 pound dog and I tried all these things and they didn’t work, so I became that person that puts her dog on antidepressants. Prozac didn’t work for him really, but the Valium did, at least in the short term. And I began to get curious about how these drugs got into vet clinics in the first place and if there was something to this. Was my dog responding to these drugs in the some of the same ways that people do?
I ended up switching what I was studying because I couldn’t find anything written about the history of this. My PhD research is now the story of what the last 150 years have to tell us about mental illness in other animals. Can they be crazy? Who says they’re crazy? How did the industry around animal mental health come to be? And how do we make other animals feel better? That’s the question that interests me most. Once you notice that another animal is disturbed or anxious– what do we do then? I’ve spent the last few years traveling all over the world to talk to people who are making it their life’s work to help these animals – whether they are elephants or dogs or birds.
What a brilliant idea!
And now, once again we move from the sublime to the ridiculous–and offensive. The Romney campaign is up to it’s old dirty tricks, sending their meanest surrogates out to race bait again. First up, Newt Gingrich says Obama is “not a real president.”
“[Obama] really is like the substitute [National Football League] referees in the sense that he’s not a real president,” Gingrich told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Tuesday night. “He doesn’t do anything that presidents do, he doesn’t worry about any of the things the presidents do, but he has the White House, he has enormous power, and he’ll go down in history as the president, and I suspect that he’s pretty contemptuous of the rest of us.”
Unbelievable! And there’s more:
“This is a man who in an age of false celebrity-hood is sort of the perfect president, because he’s a false president,” he said. “He’s a guy that doesn’t do the president’s job.” ….
“You have to wonder what he’s doing,” Gingrich continued. “I’m assuming that there’s some rhythm to Barack Obama that the rest of us don’t understand. Whether he needs large amounts of rest, whether he needs to go play basketball for a while or watch ESPN, I mean, I don’t quite know what his rhythm is, but this is a guy that is a brilliant performer as an orator, who may very well get reelected at the present date, and who, frankly, he happens to be a partial, part-time president.”
It kind of takes your breath away, doesn’t it? Next up, John Sununu: Obama Is “Absolutely Lazy And Detached From His Job”
“Look, let me tell you what the big problem with this president is in my opinion. He is absolutely lazy and detached from his job. When he doesn’t go and attended 60% of the detailed presidential daily briefings that come from the CIA and thinks he can just skim it, skim the summary paper on his iPad instead of sitting down and engaging in what — I was in the White House with George Herbert Walker Bush. He took that brief everyday. George W. Bush took it everyday and I believe that Bill Clinton took it everyday. This president thinks he’s smarter than those guys and he doesn’t have to engage in the discussion. That’s the most important half-hour of the day for a president who has to protect the security of the United States,” Romney surrogate John Sununu said on Hannity.
Watch the video at the link, if you can stand it. Read the rest of this entry »
Has Mitt Romney Been Exaggerating His Campaign Finances?
Posted: September 20, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, U.S. Politics | Tags: campaign advertising, campaign finances, fund-raising, media buys 33 Comments
I mentioned this in the morning post, but I may not have emphasized it enough. On Tuesday, there was a report that the Romney campaign is $11 million in debt. The campaign had borrowed $20 million before the Convention to tide them over until they could begin spending funds from the general election coffers. The campaign is choosing to hold onto the cash for now and try to pay it back with new fund-raising.
There have been many reports over the summer that Romney was taking in huge amounts of money, but last night The New York Times posted an article explaining why Romney has been spending more time fund-raising than on the stump in swing states and why his campaign hasn’t been running that many ads in the media. The fact is, that Romney’s campaign Isn’t really rolling in as much money as he’s been leading us to believe.
Despite what appears to be a plump bank account and an in-house production studio that cranks out multiple commercials a day, Mr. Romney’s campaign has been tightfisted with its advertising budget, leaving him at a disadvantage in several crucial states as President Obama blankets them with ads.
One major reason appears to be that Mr. Romney’s campaign finances have been significantly less robust than recent headlines would suggest. Much of the more than $300 million the campaign reported raising this summer is earmarked for the Republican National Committee, state Republican organizations and Congressional races, limiting the money Mr. Romney’s own campaign has to spend.
For each the past three months, the Romney campaign has been claiming contributions of more than $100,000, but it turns out not all of that money went into the campaign account.
Yet at the same time Romney aides worked hard to project the image of a fund-raising machine far outpacing the president’s.
Romney aides released informal dollar figures that lumped several pools of money — some available for his use, others not — into a single figure, providing a perception greater than reality: $106 million in June and $101 million in July, far more than Mr. Obama and the Democrats.
Yet those figures obscured the fact that most of the money Mr. Romney was raising was reserved for those other political entities like the Republican National Committee.
Only $22 million of the huge RNC windfall can be spent in combination with Romney’s presidential campaign. On the other hand, President Obama has more cash on hand.
A closer look at Mr. Romney’s own filings revealed that Mr. Obama, while trailing in overall party fund-raising, was pulling far more money than Mr. Romney into his campaign account, the most useful and flexible dollars a candidate has to spend, in part because of strong collection from small donors who could give again and again without hitting federal limits.
One reason for this is that this year Obama is getting most of his contributions from smaller donors, while Romney has fewer and wealthier donors, many of whom may have already maxed out. They can give unlimited amounts to superpacs, but with all the problems Romney has been having over the past three weeks, you have to wonder if the big guys will want to keep throwing away millions on a losing cause.
To show how the effect the lack of funds is having on Romney’s campaign, the Times compared his and Obama spending on ads in a number of states:
According to a review of spending figures provided by a group that tracks political advertising, from Sept. 10 through Sept. 24, Mr. Romney and his allies reserved $3.7 million in advertising time in Ohio. That compared with $5.2 million for Mr. Obama and his allies.
In Colorado, Mr. Romney is being outspent $2.2 million to $1.5 million during that same period. In New Hampshire, Mr. Obama is spending $1.2 million, compared with $380,000 to benefit Mr. Romney. The vast majority of that is coming not from the Romney campaign but from American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC.
The Times also notes that the Obama campaign has reserved $40 million worth of ad time through November 6, while the Romney campaign has been purchasing ad time day to day–a week ahead at most.
Now I admit that I’m a mathphobe, and I haven’t seen this discussed much around the blogosphere today, so maybe I’m totally nuts. But to me it looks like Romney is worried about money.
The campaigns have to report their spending for the past quarter tonight, and Romney released his report a short time ago. From Politico:
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign spent more than $66 million in August, ending the month with $50 million in the bank, new federal disclosure reports show….
The campaign took in nearly $67 million in August, doubling the $33 million the campaign in July.
That total doesn’t include a $20 million secured loan the campaign took out in August….The Romney campaign’s August figures do not include money raised by the Republican National Committee, which operates a joint fundraising operation with the Romney campaign.
Right now Romney has $50 million in his campaign account. It looks to me like he’s going to be dependent on outside groups to fund his advertising. I also heard today that Karl Rove’s Crossroads superpac is not going to have a stunning report–their donations were down in August.
No wonder Romney has been going to so many fund-raisers instead of campaigning. It doesn’t seem smart to me. Doesn’t he have other people who could collect donations for him? Maybe not. And who knows how much longer the big money guys will stick with him? Will he have to start writing his own checks for the campaign?
As I said, I’m terrible at math. Let me know if you think I’m right or wrong about this.
Thursday Reads
Posted: September 20, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: Century Mine, coal miners, George Romney, government relief, Lenore Romney, Murray Energy, Romney campaign funds 49 Comments
Good Morning!!
Is it over for Mitt Romney? I suppose something could still happen to turn things around for his campaign, but it would have to be something really really big. There are so many bizarre stories out there about the Romney implosion that I barely know where to begin. I’ll just select a few examples.
Republican candidates are already distancing themselves from the top of the ticket.
Usually, congressional candidates stick with their party’s presidential nominee until the last possible minute, when it appears their political fortunes are threatened. But not so with continuing fallout from Mitt Romney’s degrading comments that 47 percent of Americans don’t pay taxes and are overly dependant on federal subsidies.
New Mexico Gov. Susanna Martinez told reporters that New Mexico has a lot of people living at the poverty level. “They count just as much as anybody else,” she said, adding her state’s anti-poverty programs provide a “safety net [that] is a good thing.”
Then Connecticut’s GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon said, “I disagree with Governor Romney’s insinuation that 47 percent of Americans believe they are victims who must depend on the government for their care. I know that the vast majority of those who rely on government are not in that situation because they want to be.”
And then came North Carolina Republicam House candidate Mark Meadows, who told the press, “Mitt Romney didn’t call me before he made those comments.”
But by late afternoon the Romney retreat was still growing. In Nevada’s Senate race, Republican incumbert Sen. Dean Heller told reporters in Washington, “Keep in mind, I have five brothers and sisters. My father was an auto mechanic. My mother was a school cook. I have a very different view of the world. And as United States senator, I think I represent everyone, and every vote’s important… I don’t write off anybody.”
Even Mich McConnell, one of the most disagreeable, repulsive Republicans ever, doesn’t want to touch Romney with a ten foot pole.
The Senate’s GOP leaders refused to answer any questions at their weekly press conference. Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell left in the middle of the event. Majority Whip John Kyl dodged a reporter’s question afterwards and downplayed grousing that reportedly occurred in the Senate lunchroom earlier in the day.
Other Republican office holders are giving Romney unsolicited advice. For example,
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said the nominee should be spending more time campaigning in critical states and leave more of the fundraising to others.
“I think what Romney needs to do is get into Virginia and run for sheriff. This is not rocket science,” Mr. Graham said. “Being in Utah to raise money is necessary, but he doesn’t have to be there, in my view…If I were Mitt Romney, no person in Virginia could go very long without meeting me.”
Several Republicans, including Mr. Graham and Sen. Susan Collins (R., Maine), said Mr. Romney needs to clearly articulate why the economy is struggling and how he would fix it.
“To me, he needs to outline a clearer vision of where he wants to take America and have a very detailed economic plan that will contrast sharply with the dismal economic record of this president,” Ms. Collins said.
Good luck with that.
So why is Romney spending so much time fund-raising? On Tuesday there was a report that his campaign is in debt.
For the first time in this campaign, Mitt Romney’s campaign is $11 million in debt after borrowing $20 million in August.
The debt and borrowing sums were first reported by the National Review Online and confirmed by ABC News.
The campaign borrowed the money from the Bank of Georgetown, according to the report.The move came just before the Republican National Convention when aides had complained they had been running out of primary campaign dollars to compete with President Obama’s campaign. At the conclusion of the Republican convention, when Romney officially became the party’s nominee, Romney had access to general election funds it had raised.
While Romney campaign has debt, it also reports having $168.5 million on hand after August.
The New York Times has a piece about Romney’s sparse campaign appearances and limited TV advertising lately.
Despite what appears to be a plump bank account and an in-house production studio that cranks out multiple commercials a day, Mr. Romney’s campaign has been tightfisted with its advertising budget, leaving him at a disadvantage in several crucial states as President Obama blankets them with ads.
One major reason appears to be that Mr. Romney’s campaign finances have been significantly less robust than recent headlines would suggest. Much of the more than $300 million the campaign reported raising this summer is earmarked for the Republican National Committee, state Republican organizations and Congressional races, limiting the money Mr. Romney’s own campaign has to spend.
With polls showing President Obama widening his lead in some of these states and the race a dead heat in others, Mr. Romney’s lack of a full-throttle media campaign is risky, especially as he struggles to get his message out over the din of news about his campaign’s recent setbacks.
In some states the disparity is striking. Mr. Obama and his allies are handily outspending Mr. Romney and the conservative “super PACs” working on his behalf in Colorado, Ohio and New Hampshire.
And in states like Florida, Iowa, Nevada and Virginia, where the Romney and Obama forces are roughly matching their spending dollar for dollar, the super PACs are responsible for nearly half the advertising that is benefiting the Republican nominee.
Interesting, huh? No wonder Romney was in Utah raising money yesterday. He’s desperate–and the big money donors may not stick with him much longer. The Romney campaign did release a couple of ads yesterday though. The ads highlight Romney’s supposed support in the coal industry. Here’s one of them:
Do those coal miners look familiar? I wrote about them awhile back. Those miners were docked a day’s pay because the mine shut down for Romney’s rally–and then the boss made them show up for it instead of having the day off. From the LA Times:
On Wednesday, the Mitt Romney campaign released an ad spotlighting President Obama’s putative “War On Coal,” despite a controversy in Ohio about the coal miners’ rally featured in the spot. In the ad, Romney appears on a stage before rows of hard-hatted miners, their faces smudged with coal dust, as he says, “We have 250 years of coal. Why wouldn’t we use it?”
The rally was held last month in Beallsville, Ohio, thick with miners from the Century coal mine, owned by Murray Energy, a major donor to Republican causes. Within days of the rally, Murray employees contacted a nearby morning talk radio host, David Blomquist, to say they were forced to attend the Aug. 14 event at the mine.
Can you believe it? Romney and his gang can’t do anything right. Arianna Huffington thinks the problem maybe sleep deprivation. Maybe. I think it might be just plain stupidity.
Here in Massachusetts, the right wing Boston Herald reports that
Massachusetts voters have turned against Mitt Romney with a vengeance, leaving the former governor as a political pariah in his own home state, according to a new UMass Lowell/Boston Herald poll.
Sixty percent of Bay State voters now have an unfavorable view of Romney, and the GOP nominee is headed for a Bay State drubbing in the November election, the poll of 524 registered voters shows.
Just 35 percent of voters say they plan to vote for the Romney/Ryan ticket, while 60 percent say they are backing President Obama. That margin is roughly the same as the 2008 election, when Obama trounced Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Bwaaaahahahahahahaha!!
I loved this story. Romney was down in Miami at a Univision forum, trying to scrape together a few Latino voters, and Move on.org hired a plane to fly overhead with a banner reading “HEY MITT: WE’RE VOTERS, NOT VICTIMS.”
I do have some non-Romney news for you.
From The Nation: PA Supreme Court Doubts the State Can Comply With Its Own Voter ID Law
Yesterday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided to vacate a lower state court’s ruling that allowed Act 18, the photo voter ID law, to commence as planned. Problem being: the law as planned appears so burdensome that—putting voters aside for a moment—the state itself can’t comply with its own law. As stated in the Court’s order, “the Commonwealth parties have candidly conceded, that the Law is not being implemented according to its terms.”
The Supreme Court ordered per curiam—meaning unsigned by the six justices—that the Commonwealth Court must re-examine the implementation of certain provisions of the law. Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, who ruled in August in favor of the law, must decide if the way the state presently administers free photo voter ID cards to those who can’t get regular state-issued id cards is in compliance with the law—something the state already conceded in court that it doesn’t, and can’t for good reasons.
Another PA story from The Nation is truly shocking and heartbreaking: Will Pennsylvania Execute a Man Who Killed His Abusers? It’s the story of Terrance Williams, who was horrifically abused in his home from at least age 6 and later by men who were supposed to be helping him. He is now scheduled for execution. I’m not going to post an excerpt. It’s important to read the whole thing.
This is a fun one: The New Republic has a post on The Top Three Heresies in the Gnostic Gospels
Yesterday the world learned of a newly-discovered early Christian text that depicts Jesus as a married man. Jesus’ wife may be big news today, but striking and unusual variations on Christian faith have been around for a very long time. Whether you call them the gnostic gospels, the heretic gospels, the apocrypha, or Dan Brown’s raw material, early Christian texts can make for pretty interesting reading. Here are three particularly surprising heresies from outside the canon.
Check it out!
OK, I can’t resist–one more Romney item. Have you heard the one about Romney’s dad being on the government dole?
George Romney’s family fled from Mexico in 1912 to escape a revolution there, and benefited from a $100,000 fund established by Congress to help refugees who had lost their homes and most of their belongings.
That fund may have been what Lenore Romney, George Romney’s wife and Mitt Romney’s mother, was referring to in a video that was posted online earlier this month but has received renewed attention in the wake of Mitt Romney’s comments.
“[George Romney] was on welfare relief for the first years of his life. But this great country gave him opportunities,” Lenore Romney said in the video, which apparently dates back to George Romney’s 1962 run for governor of Michigan.
What would Lenore Romney think of her son now?
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