Why the GOP's going nuts of attacks on Bain

The reason why the GOP is so terrified of Gingrich's attacks on Bain isn't because they're afraid it will stop Romney from winning the nomination (that's a certainty at this point), but rather that they're afraid of seeing Newt put Bain's way of doing business on the table for GOP base voters, in a way Democrats never could.

Bain crushes unions, strips away benefits and ships jobs overseas, buying companies out with hundreds of millions or billions in loans. They then ditches that debt on those stripped-down companies, who can't afford it, leaving many of them out of business or shells of their former selves.

It's bad for America and the elites of the GOP don't want people to hear it, especially their base. Why? Because the elites of the GOP know it, too, but they just don't care.

Walking over the little people to make money is an easy decision for those elites, but not for most Americans. Democrats are already open to the idea that there should be some restrictions on the way companies can do business, but most base GOP voters aren't. If people, especially the GOP's base, understand exactly what companies like Bain does, they'd no more support it than they'd support drug cartels.

Funny

Loved this. Baker is so pulling a Romney thus far, and looks every bit the part, complete with cardboard-style smiles and speeches.

I'm also anticipating the funny over this comment. Watch the fireworks fly at a gooper echo chamber near you. Thanks, Lindsey Graham.

Tax and Spend Liberals

Saw this graph and it was too awesome not to post. Click on the image to see it in full.



Hat tip goes to Math4Barack, over at dkos.

John Walsh at Tonight's Town Dem Meeting

Dem Party Chairman John Walsh made a visit to tonight's Town Dem meeting in Swampscott. He came chiefly to talk about transportation, an issue that's critical and, obviously, something the Governor is pushing. It was a pretty crowded room, so he had a pretty good sized audience. We usually get 30-40 people at our quarterly meetings - a few more actually showed up tonight.

His point was a great one. When this state was going through the Big Dig and how to fund it, who was over in the Corner Office? Walsh went back to 1998, when Paul Celluci was in charge, and talked about how Celluci pushed on the Pike, with Republican-appointed boards, a $1.9 billion bond loan the state needed to finish paying for the Big Dig. The Pike was then more than solvent and was easy pickings for Celluci. The bond was a 40 year bond -- the first 10 years of which the State had to pay nothing. The state also borrowed, under that leadership, on employee salaries -- so now the Pike is paying $130 million a year to fund the last 15 years' salaries.

It was a broken model by a group of Republican leaders who loved Government services, but refused to actually pay for them. Now, when the bill is due, Democrats are forced to pay for it. Governor Patrick wants to do it through a gas tax, an entirely reasonable way of doing it, which will cost the average citizen around $100 a year. That's the difference between Republicans and Democats: Democrats are the adults who clean up the mess, who understand values have costs and must actually be paid -- and that they make the state a far better and more prosperous (not to mention profitable) place.

Isn't it Cute

That PolitickerMA takes the Mass GOP seriously?

A Beatty Scam?

As someone who has a lot of experience working with direct mail in campaigns, Beatty's direct mail story is simply bizarre.

When a Massachusetts Republican raises nearly $2 million in a bid to unseat a Democratic US senator, it should be a good sign that the campaign wars are in full throttle in this notoriously one-sided state. But Jeff Beatty, the GOP's hope for unseating John F. Kerry, is struggling to register even a blip on the state's electoral landscape....

The reason for the deafening political silence: Beatty has been able to use only a fraction of his donations directly on his race. The rest, well over $1.7 million, has gone to Response America, a direct mail firm out of Arlington, Va., and its vendors.

Now, from what I understand, Beatty's received nearly $2 million in checks - mainly from small donors, as the article points out later on - but only a tiny fraction of that, less than $300,000, has been available to him due to the expenses of the direct mail firm. Furthermore, this firm, Response America, was suggested to Beatty by the National Republican Senate Committee, NRSC.

Given the facts, there's four possibilities:

1. Beatty was hoodwinked. This was a bad deal. The NRSC told him to do it anyway, and when they said jump, he jumped.
   
2. This company is crooked. In such a 'tough economic year' I wonder how much those Response America executives are raking in? I wonder which Republican Senators are friends with the owners of the company? I wonder how hard they're all laughing?
   
3. Beatty's not the brightest bulb. Direct mail, while not the worst way to raise money, is incredibly expensive and thus needs to be used wisely. Did someone bother telling him that? Mail should only go out to previous donors. Donor lists need to be created the hard way, through hundreds and hundreds of candidate phone calls, or at least good lists of people who would be interested in a Massachusetts long-shot senate race (and in that case, only as a start: the list should later be narrowed based on responses). Come to think of it, he had to have been at least partially hoodwinked if he thought blind direct mail all across the USA was going to magically fund his campaign.
   
4. All of the above.
   

First, let's all rejoice in how stupid the Republicans are in their campaigning this cycle. A strong Republican candidate could have given Kerry a run for his money, even if he has a lot of it.

Second, if Beatty ever criticized the Pike or any other mass highway organization with tolls, he should really just get out of this race right now. It's been Ryan's Take for a long while that the Turnpike Authority's sole purpose is to not to fund the Pike, but to employ people, since the overwhelming majority of its toll collections (75%+) goes straight back to the well-compensated employees. This is why Ryan's Take is to just get rid of the freaking tolls, merge the highways systems and raise the gas tax by 5-10 cents to compensate. Well, Beatty's beat those asinine margins by flying colors, paying 85% of what he raised right back into the costs of direct mail - which is just astounding, atrocious and hilarious all at the same time. He would have been better off wandering the streets of Carlisle begging for change. He may have earned a few votes at the same time!

Lastly, after such a dismal and uneventful campaign, Beatty should retire from politics. Talk about a disgrace!

Senator Stevens in Alaska

Thanks, Republicans. One Senate seat down, 8 more to go.

Where's the Republican Party Going?

With the Republicans about to tear themselves to shreds, I can't help but wonder what faction (or new faction) will emerge from the ashes.

Will the bulk of the national party decide that the reason why they lost is because they weren't nasty and vindictive enough?

Or will they realize their policies of the past 8 years were to blame for their loss - and try to come up with new ideas to lead the party in a different direction?

Of course, the answer is going to be a little bit of both, but as Bill's brother said in Kill Bill, it's going to be more of one than the other. So which one is it going to be?

The Power of the Netroots: Incredible

Anyone else hear the crazy, whacko congresswoman on TV today?

No?

She makes Palin look kind.



Like I said, crazy.

Well... as it turns out, it wasn't such a good idea for Buchmann to provide a window for the world into her inner crazy. Just a few hours after the interview aired on TV, her Democratic opponent has raised over $30,000 on ActBlue. [Update: a few more hours later and ActBlue's raised more than $68,000 for her opponent. Anyone want to take any bets that it'll be over $120k by Sunday night?]

This was a candidate who had only raised $2,500 on ActBlue before Bachmann made a complete ass out of herself. This was a candidate that wasn't even on the netroots radar. Now, she just provided her opponent with an entire new outlet to raise hundreds of thousands in the waning days of this election - all in an incredibly close (less than 5 point) race. Oops.

Well, she did say she was a fool in pretty much the craziest and most inappropriate video ever (h/t) - one that lead to a cease and desist letter by the IRS.



Update:

Here's an anti-Buchmann ad that I think is just genius - not to mention amusing.



H/T

Hate-Based Campaigning

It's not a far stretch to go from "that one" and "palling around with terrorists" to here:



I never thought I'd see another campaign that descended into something as nasty and bitter as Kerry Healey's in '06. I should have known better. With Republican campaign operatives, desperate times call for desperate measures. The wall's getting thumped with everything, what the Karl-Rove types don't realize is that in these economic times nothing is going to stick. Meanwhile, with this fear mongering and hatred, Republicans on the national level are digging themselves a deeper hole that it will take years to get out of. Unlike McCain, at least Bob Dole had the dignity to go down with honor.

Don't Trust the Republicans

Seriously, what over the past 8 years has the Republican Party done to inspire trust? Ruin the economy? Get this country into a foolish war that it was destined to lose? Double (yes, double) the national debt? Am I going crazy here?

Now, we're supposed to trust these very same people to fix the economy with a massive bad debt bailout? No thanks, the Republicans created the deregulations that have led to where we are today, they now own them. If some of their precious corporate friends lose everything - too damn bad. That's what millions of Americans have been losing under all of these policies for almost a decade now.

The fact is that this bailout that seems destined to happen won't even address the underlying problem: people losing their homes. If we're going to bail out anyone, why not the American people? These people were told by these banks that they could afford these loans when they couldn't, or that they could get out of their subprimes if they needed to - when they couldn't. This bailout won't stop people from losing their homes, it's just that now these banks won't be responsible for taking on risky debt. This is absurd!

This is an absolute betrayal of actual conservative economic policy - some of which now even most Democrats subscribe to. Pay as you go. Don't take overly risky debt. Be accountable for your actions. These are all policies that the bulk of the Democratic Party now subscribes to, yet the Republicans are more than willing to abandon.

So, let's get this all straight: The free-market Republicans bought the country's two largest mortgage firms, Freddie and Fanny, meaning we now own more than 50% of this country's mortgages. Then we buy 80% of one of the largest insurance companies in the world, the 18th largest company in existence - according to Bob at BMG. Now, we're going to take on the entire banking industry's bad debt? Isn't capitalism supposed to be about companies taking personal accountability for their actions? Since when should government take all the risk - and the corporations all the profit?

The truth is, I'm not opposed to a little government intervention to help the economy. But this bailout plan is absurd. If we're going to bail out anyone, bail out the people. If we bail them out - we save the companies anyway. Along with the economy. If we don't bail out the people, but bail out the companies... maybe the stocks will be saved, but millions more will lose their homes - devastating this country's real economy (the people who must live with it). Things will get worse, not better, as companies are told it's okay to take on bad debt - the government will be accountable for you. Politicies this government creates should make sense for the people who live in this country, not just the corporations. Otherwise, we're not just a welfare state, we're a corporate welfare state - and that should offend all American taxpayers, many of whom get screwed in the process.

I Found McCain's Palin Interview!

Update: For actual, real news...

While the Alaska State Troopers and most municipal police agencies have covered the cost of exams, which cost between $300 to $1,200 apiece, the Wasilla police department does charge the victims of sexual assault for the tests.

In Wasilla, smaller taxes are more important than rape victims. Compassionate conservatism in action.

McCain's Hackery, Bigotry &Stupidity

There's a reason why this is perhaps the first Presidential Election where the chief strategy has been to keep John McCain as far away from anyone - press or people - as possible. However, this has got to take the cake! It's not as if we didn't know McCain was anti-gay, but his most recent statement is about as ugly a statement as anyone could imagine.

"I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don’t believe in gay adoption."

Well, gee, John, when are you going to introduce legislation to remove the tens of millions of children in America who live with single parents? Apparently, just because a mother and a father worked in his family, that's the only model that can work. Oh, and clearly all mother-father families have worked wonders for their children; a mother and a father have never screwed up their kids' lives, at any point in time, in the history of mankind. It's only gay parents and single parents.

So, John, what about the million-plus people in this country who have been raised by at least one gay parent? I suppose none of those parents were worthy of their children...

To top it all off, was McCain's family model a success before or after the infidelity?

And Michelangelo Signorile discusses McCain's sham marriages, responding to an L.A. Times article over the weekend which reported on the fact that McCain had obtained a marriage license for Cindy while still married to his first wife: "Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife."

What an ass! Also, how stupid does he have to be to open himself to this line of attack? If the "family value" crowd wants to vote on the candidate who truly has a family reflective of good family values, the obvious choice is Obama. He's never been divorced, while he and his wife are in the midst of raising two absolutely adorable, well-adjusted kids.

Surprise, Surprise

This should shock no one.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is considering the withdrawal of additional combat forces from Iraq beginning in September, according to administration and military officials, raising the prospect of a far more ambitious plan than expected only months ago.

Such a withdrawal would be a striking reversal from the nadir of the war in 2006 and 2007.

Is it really striking that the Republicans would, in an election year, reduce the number of troops in Iraq, increasing the number in Afghanistan? It makes absolute sense for the Republicans to take a bite of out Obama's plan, to blunt his speech on the war. Count me as one of the people who didn't for one second think it was coincidence that the Iraqi Government is suddenly demanding some kind of loose time line, it'll give the Republicans political cover to backtrack on years of (failed) policy, just in time for the election. It was well worth the week or so of political heat they took, as they'll suddenly be able to talk what nearly every American wants to hear: a date of withdrawal, or at least that we should create one.

Don't believe it for a second. After all, no one wanted to leave Iraq more than Joe Lieberman, right? The Republicans will increasing talk some troop withdrawals and even time lines for the rest of the campaign, but it won't amount to much after the election, as they do everything they can to obstruct our soldiers' extrication from Iraq. We've seen this play book all before; it's important that the American people don't fall for it again.

Republican Advertising Genius!

Seriously, who needs SNL anyway?

EaBo's Prophesizing Again

Hooray! There's a whole 47 Republicans on the ballot in Massachusetts - RedMassGroup was ecstatic. I couldn't stop laughing. It's not as funny as this, though...

2010 will be a watershed year. think long term people. - EaBo Clipper

How many will there be, EaBo? 50? Maybe by 3010, you'll have a whole 55! I'm just thinking long term...

What Would We Do Without Republicans?

They really know how to work on the important issues. That Arlen Specter - making America better every day by wasting his time and your's.

Barack Obama: Practically Perfect in Every Way

When I was a kid, I absolutely, positively loved Mary Poppins. Along with Lady and the Tramp, Cinderella and a few other timeless classics, there was rarely a weekend that went by when I didn't watch one of those movies at least once or twice. However, at some point after my Step Mother actually had to buy a second copy of the movie, since the first wore out, I stopped watching it - until recently, when it was on TV. I figured, for old time's sake, I'd watch it again - and so I did. However, this time it wasn't nearly as good as I remembered it. It's funny, sometimes things can seem different than how you remembered it. For the first time ever, I realized that Mary Poppins may be nearly perfect in every way, but that doesn't mean I like her anymore for it. I'm beginning to feel that way about Barack Obama.

Like Mary Poppins, he's come out of nowhere, just without the talking, flying umbrella. Only a few years ago, he was a state legislator who couldn't get into the US Congress. He won an easy US Senate race, where his chief opponent was forced to leave the race early due to scandal. His eventual opponent, Alan Keyes, was no real opponent at all.

Like Mary Poppins, we barely know anything about him. Sure, Mary had Burt and Barack has Oprah, but does that really tell us anything about who they are? Barack's talking about change, but change for what? He says we need to unify the country, that we need Democrats and Republicans working together, but are these really problems? At least, are they problems we can solve? Barack Obama isn't going to be able to change conservatives - their inability to work for nonpartisan or bipartisan solutions is ingrained in their brains (and that's only the quickest link I could find). They strive for partisanship; working together is a sign of weakness to them.

The Democrats, on the other hand, haven't been partisan enough. Whether it's war funding or telecom immunity, too many Democrats have been willing to be 'bipartisan' and hand over all the loot - including this country's constitution - as if the Republicans were robbing a bank. Barack Obama thinks we haven't given away enough to that lot- as if the Republicans have given us any indication that they're capable of being reasonable in office. Obama either doesn't get it or is ignoring the problem, more interested in fancy slogans.

Either way, Barack Obama seems too perfect. He's proven to be too afraid to appeal to the real change this country needs (a true progressive vision), all in favor of capturing the low-information voters interested in an undefined "change," even if nothing Obama has advocated for represents anything revolutionary. When I was a kid who loved Mary Poppins, I fell in love with the message and spirit of things - and I still do. However, it's no longer enough to talk about change, there has to be something behind supercalifragelisticexpicalidocious, specifics that act as the change the campaign claims to represent. Otherwise, the whole campaign message sounds too much like a Spoonful of Sugar, forcing a most unnecessary medicine down.

Ron Paul's Bigotry

Suddenly Mitt Romney seems like a civil rights champion, compared to Ron Paul. At least Mitt "witnessed" his father "marching" with MLK, Jr - "metaphorically," of course.

Ron Paul in '92:

Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action.... Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the "criminal justice system," I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.

If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.

Bigotry - irrational, creepy and absolutely unnacceptable for anyone holding a public position. Ron Paul doesn't deserve to be elected President, he deserves to be unseated from his position in the House.

Oh, Geez. Huckawhat?

I don't think it's big news that the Republican Presidential field has expanded lately to include another top-tier candidate, largely replacing our former never-here, didn't-care Governor, but Mike Huckabee sure isn't bringing anything new to the table. Emphasis mine:

I don’t think the issue’s about being against gay marriage. It’s about being for traditional marriage and articulating the reason that’s important. You have to have a basic family structure. There’s never been a civilization that has rewritten what marriage and family means and survived. So there is a sense in which, you know, it’s one thing to say if people want to live a different way, that’s their business. But when you want to redefine what family means or what marriage means, then that’s an issue that should require some serious and significant debate in the public square.

Thankfully, the pillars of civilization seem to be holding in Massachusetts, despite all those new sets of two moms and two dads raising perfectly happy and healthy children of their own. Somehow, thankfully, I don't think anything would be different in Kansas.

Yet, Huckabee couldn't stop himself. He went on.

GQ: I just wonder what you’d say to the gay couple who says, “Well, we want to live this way, and my partner can’t come visit me in a nursing home.”
HUCKABEE: He can with a power of attorney. That’s the fallacy, that this requires some new definition of marriage. It’s simply not the case.

Did anyone ever bother to tell him how much that costs? After thousands of dollars, gay couples can have a tiny few of the same benefits of married couples, all the while "traditional" families merely need to pay for a marriage certificate. Furthermore, many states like Virginia have very onerous laws that prevent gay couples from creating legal agreements which could be construed, in any minute way, as being a couple. And let's not even get started on health care benefits!

So, in some states, for the wealthiest and most privileged of gay couples, they can maybe, sort of have the privilege of visiting their partner in the hospital, but not actually be the provider of insurance that could cover the surgery their partner needs. And that's supposed to be a good thing? Oh, that Mike Huckabee... what a swell guy!

Orignal Source: GQ.