Geography is not a Bain specialty

2. Romney said "Syria is Iran's path to the sea." and so, here is an excellent song explaining how Syria, which does not border Iran, is Iran's path to the sea...
   #romney #election 2012 #iran #debate #foreign policies
3. slave2f8
   

   WAS ANYONE ELSE THINKING OF THIS???
   
   
   #romney #obama #SECRET TUNNEL #to the sea #just go home romney you're embarrassing your kids
4. sarahburris
   

   Helpful geography lesson for Mitt Romney tonight
   
   #debate #election 2012 #mitt romney #barack obama #politics
5. yeahbitchheisenburg
   

   mittens most likely failed world geography.
   
   #romney #obama #debate 2012
6. serial-cereal-eater
   mittens wants to be friends with syria and pakistan but not iran.
   WE ONLY WEAR PINK ON WEDNESDAYS, IRAN.
   
   #election 2012 #iran #pakistan #debate 2012 #presidential debate #mitt romney #cnn debate #mean girls #regina george
7. renkris
   Syria is Iran's route to the sea like Bohemia has a coast.
   #debate 2012 #mitt romney #iran #bohemia
8. upanatm
   On what fucking map is Syria a path to the Sea for Iran #Romneyisstupid #debate
   
   #president #obama #debate #2012 #iran
9. iwantthelifeyouthinkihave
   

   This is a very disturbing video. What should we do about it? i seriously don’t know.
   
   #vice #civil war
10. phantasmagoria46
    
    #presidential debate #mitt romney #romney style

Pretty sure Mittens can't do this

Aw, Mittens, we missed you!

"Nuclear non-proliferation is a 'straight down the middle' liberal position."

Fiscal responsibility

How much money did Romney spend?

Bling bling

Mitt's the one!

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Mitt Romney, whose 1950s manner and celebratory drink of choice call to mind a milkshake man more than a rap singer, gave a shout out Monday that left no doubt that he had spent little time listening to hip-hop.

Mr. Romney, the Republican candidate from Massachusetts by way of Michigan and Utah who enjoys a milkshake at the end of a long day, stopped by a staging area for a Martin Luther King Birthday parade here. In his dress shirt and tie, and with his unwavering smile, he walked over and posed for photographs with a group of black youngsters. Putting his arm around a teenage girl, he waved to the cameras and offered, “Who let the dogs out?” He added a tepid “woof woof.”

Somewhere, the Baha Men, the Bahamian group whose 2000 song the candidate was referencing, must have been shuddering.

Kevin Madden, one of Mr. Romney’s campaign boyz on the bus, said the candidate had been joking around and had responded to someone who asked, “Who let you out?”

Later, Mr. Romney admired a child’s gold necklace and said, “Oh, you’ve got some bling-bling here.”

He spoke of Dr. King at an earlier appearance in Jacksonville, calling him “an individual who showed in many respects how to bring down some of the barriers to fulfill the promise of the Declaration of Independence.”

Monday dog blogging

Well, I couldn't make it through the whole video, but is it me, or is there a conspicuous absence of a family dog?

It's Mitt!

Gosh, Mitt, do you think your spectacular finish in New Hampshire might have a little to do with your habit of trashing the neighbor state bolsheviks for whom you used to be governor?

Just asking. Good luck in Detroit, dude!

The grinding and the posting up

Obama gets it exactly right.

Meanwhile, Romney can't resist the basketball analogies.

Imaginary friends

Romney defended himself against attacks that the Church of Latter Day Saints is a racist organization by making shit up.

Indeed, the coalition would be ripped asunder

Seeing the cover was hilarious enough. Reading the text is side-splitting:

Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.

The last seven years have surely proven that.

They go on to talk about some kind of moist field of candiates.

Davey?

I was looking forward to the mash note David Brooks would write Mitt this morning. Starting the column, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be disappointed.

Jon Meacham is the editor of Newsweek and the author of “American Gospel,” which describes the history of religious liberty in the United States. Richard John Neuhaus is the editor in chief of First Things and the author of “The Naked Public Square,” which is about efforts to banish religion from public conversation.

Yesterday, Mitt Romney delivered a speech that artfully blended the centrist Meacham and the conservative Neuhaus.

But then my eye widened.

Before yesterday, most pundits thought Romney was making a mistake in giving the speech now. But in retrospect, it clearly was not a mistake. Romney didn’t say anything that the Baptist minister Mike Huckabee couldn’t say, and so this one address will not hold off the Huckabee surge in Iowa. But Romney underlined the values he shares with social conservatives, and will have eased their concerns. Among Mormons, the speech may go down as a historic event.

And yet, I confess my own reaction is more muted.

When this country was founded, James Madison envisioned a noisy public square with different religious denominations arguing, competing and balancing each other’s passions. But now the landscape of religious life has changed. Now its most prominent feature is the supposed war between the faithful and the faithless. Mitt Romney didn’t start this war, but speeches like his both exploit and solidify this divide in people’s minds. The supposed war between the faithful and the faithless has exacted casualties.

The first casualty is the national community. Romney described a community yesterday. Observant Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Jews and Muslims are inside that community. The nonobservant are not. There was not even a perfunctory sentence showing respect for the nonreligious. I’m assuming that Romney left that out in order to generate howls of outrage in the liberal press.

The second casualty of the faith war is theology itself. In rallying the armies of faith against their supposed enemies, Romney waved away any theological distinctions among them with the brush of his hand. In this calculus, the faithful become a tribe, marked by ethnic pride, a shared sense of victimization and all the other markers of identity politics.

In Romney’s account, faith ends up as wishy-washy as the most New Age-y secularism. In arguing that the faithful are brothers in a common struggle, Romney insisted that all religions share an equal devotion to all good things. Really? Then why not choose the one with the prettiest buildings?

He goes on in the same vein. I concur, Mr. Brooks.

I heard a radio host on WNYC this morning nail it perfectly, saying, "I expected someone to say, 'Mr. Romney, I knew Jack Kennedy..'"

No secular humanists need apply

Shorter Mitt Romney: I believe America should be tolerant...except when it comes to SECULARISM.

"We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion. But in recent years, the notion of the separation of church and state has been taken by some well beyond its original meaning. They seek to remove from the public domain any acknowledgment of God. Religion is seen as merely a private affair with no place in public life. It is as if they are intent on establishing a new religion in America – the religion of secularism. They are wrong.

Scary. Romney sure can define "challenges" down, can't he?

"Mr. President, your generation rose to the occasion, first to defeat Fascism and then to vanquish the Soviet Union. You left us, your children, a free and strong America. It is why we call yours the greatest generation. It is now my generation's turn. How we respond to today's challenges will define our generation. And it will determine what kind of America we will leave our children, and theirs.

"America faces a new generation of challenges. Radical violent Islam seeks to destroy us. An emerging China endeavors to surpass our economic leadership. And we are troubled at home by government overspending, overuse of foreign oil, and the breakdown of the family.

Right, the fight against fascism and the Cold War are the equivalent of "government overspending" and Osama bin Laden? Uh oh. As for me, I was unaware the "family" was "breaking down." Must be all that stupid family leave the Democrats have saddle us with.

Hoping to lock in policies backed by a pro-business administration, poultry farmers are seeking an exemption for the smelly fumes produced by tons of chicken manure. Businesses are lobbying the Bush administration to roll back rules that let employees take time off for family needs and medical problems. And electric power companies are pushing the government to relax pollution-control requirements.

But that was the old compassionate conservative, Romney brings All. New. Compassion.

"These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. I saw my parents provide compassionate care to others, in personal ways to people nearby, and in just as consequential ways in leading national volunteer movements. I am moved by the Lord's words: 'For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me...' [sic]

Unless, that is they work for his landscaper.

May 20, 2007

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- The crowd at South Carolina's Republican convention cheered yesterday when former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney criticized a new immigration proposal and booed a key ally of US Senator John McCain when he defended it.

The immigration compromise between key senators and the White House played strongly at the convention as more than 1,000 delegates and Republican activists gathered. Many in the crowd wore stickers with "Senate amnesty bill" crossed out.

They cheered as Romney, a presidential candidate, told them: "One simple rule: No amnesty."

During his speech and before his remarks, Romney said a proposed new visa for immigrants amounts to amnesty if it can be renewed indefinitely.

"If that's not a form of amnesty, I don't know what is," Romney said.

And what a humanitarian.

"It was in Philadelphia that our founding fathers defined a revolutionary vision of liberty, grounded on self evident truths about the equality of all, and the inalienable rights with which each is endowed by his Creator.

They at least have the right to an orange jumpsuit.

"You said the person is going to be in Guantanamo. I'm glad they're at Guantanamo. I don't want them on our soil. I want them in Guantanamo where they don't get the access to lawyers they get when they're on our soil. I don't want them in our prisons. I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is, we ought to double Guantanamo," Romney said.

In other words, Romney is, consistently...how would Mr. Wu put it?...a cocksucker.

"Collapsing freedom-loving democracies like us"

Steve Benen calls this the "Dumbest. Ad. Ever" and writes

Glenn Greenwald recently explained that some portions of the conservative movement are genuinely convinced that we're this close to a global Islamic theocracy. It's absurd -- as Yglesias noted, "The idea that we should be laying awake at night afraid that a group of at most several thousand people who control almost no territory or valuable military equipment might establish a universal caliphate or 'collapse freedom loving nations like us' is ridiculous." And yet, that's the basis for a campaign ad from a top-tier Republican candidate.

It is certainly a grammatical nightmare.

And it is certainly disturbing that a "top tier" candidate for president spent a lot of (his own) money to spout such puerile nonsense, but it is in no way surprising. Romney has read the polls and he knows that that 30% who still support preznit believe this stuff. And they're the base of the Republican party primary voters. So it is quite natural for Romney to invoke these scimitar wielding jihadists and Iranians, and claim that he'll keep us safe in our beds with an even bigger army and wiretapping every call coming from any place east of New Hampshire. With Rudy! cuing the towers collapsing footage every time he opens his mouth, Romney has to prove his credentials as a "leader" who understands the threat from brown skinned people who pray towards Mecca several times a day.