The Daily Sausage – Monday Edition

Happy (belated) Birthday Mr. President, Sandy Weill is sandy (with good reason), Harry Reid has giant brass ones, a big pile of Mitt, Gabby Douglas and flag lapel pins redux, government (un)employment, and all thing in moderation (except in Congress).

Welcome to the Daily Sasuage.

First up, happy belated 51st birthday to President Obama. To celebrate the President’s birthday, the RNC, headed by Obvious Anagram Reince Priebus, sent him a cake that said “You Didn’t Bake This”, which the White House promptly returned with a copy of the President’s Tax Plan. What’s next, pooping in a bag, lighting it on fire, and leaving it at the door of the White House? TPing the Rose Garden? Forking the South Lawn?

Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi has written an excellent article exploring why Sandy Weill changed his mind on Too Big To Fail and the repeal of Glass-Steagal: the crash turned his $792 million fortune in 2003 to “only” $43 million today. So you see, it’s not that Sandy Weill had some great revelation that his life’s work up to that point was the cause of tremendous human suffering; he just lost a ton of money and was pissed off about it.

In other news, Harry Reid has giant brass balls. Seriously. They’re huge and clanking. Top Republicans, including Obvious Anagram Reince Preibus, crossed the rhetorical Rubicon and called Reid “a dirty liar”. Reid’s Chief of Staff called them “a bunch of cowards” and “henchmen for Romney”. Nancy Pelosi backed Reid up, saying “Harry Reid made a statement that is true,” and “Somebody told him. It is a fact.” As previously mentioned, Harry Reid is the Honey Badger. He does not give a shit.

And now for today’s Obvious Mitt Romney Poop Joke: a big pile of Mitt.

The Romney campaign continues lying out their collective asses, claiming that President Obama’s campaign opposes special treatment for military voters in Ohio. The Obama campaign wants the Ohio state legislature to restore the three day early voting period it had prior to 2010, claiming that denying that right to the regular citizenry but maintaining it for military voters creates separate and unequal classes of voters under the 14th Amendment. To be clear: President Obama’s lawsuit does not have anything to do with military voting. Rather, it would restore the rights to regular citizens that are enjoyed by service members that all citizens had prior to 2010.

GOP Strategist Ed Rollins, notable for his work on the Michele Bachmann campaign, has come out and said that “two years is not enough, obviously”, in regards to Mitt Romney’s taxes. This is literally the worst case scenario from the Romney campaign. He can win a debate about the economy because people blame the President personally for the economy, which isn’t even remotely accurate. Mitt Romney can’t beat President Obama if the debate is about his taxes, or lack thereof, because taxes speak to the core of who we are as Americans. It is the universal thing that binds us all together, and if it turns out that Harry Reid is right and Mitt hasn’t paid taxes in ten years, the American people are going to turn on him like we’re a starving wolverine and Mitt’s made of steak. Not only that, but if Mitt fails at the top of the ticket, it’s going to have major downticket repercussions for GOP candidates in the House and Senate, driving down conservative turnout and forcing Congressional candidates to distance themselves from their standard bearer.

Of course, Mitt could alleviate this whole thing in two ways. The first is, obviously, release the last ten years of his tax returns. That’s not gonna happen, because Mitt probably has good accountants that know how to hide his money and get good deductions, so he’s probably paid 10-15% in taxes which would get him killed in the press.

The second is he could release some actual policy that would allow him to debate the President on something other than his taxes. As of right now, Mitt Romney doesn’t have any policies. He has platitudes. He has assumptions and guesses. He has “frameworks”. But he has no policies. There is no detail in any of his published policies to compare them to what President Obama has offered, so they can’t be compared. Mitt Romney has promised a large tax cut that will be revenue-neutral by broadening the tax base. Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that this statement is utter crap, and ask “Okay, how would you do that?” Mitt would need to release details on what deductions he’d cap or close, what he’d tax or not tax, etc. Mitt can’t, because Mitt doesn’t have those details. The best he can do is wave his fingers and go “Magic!” when someone asks him how this will all work.

In non-Mitt news, the same people that called President Obama unpatriotic for not wearing an American flag lapel pin are now going after 16-year old Olympic Gold Medalist Gabby Douglas and other Olympians for failing to show enough “patriotism” at the Olympic Games, by virtue of not swathing themselves in uniforms made exclusively from American flags flown over military bases. Yes, because a young person dedicating their life to achieving athletic excellence and then competing at the Olympics on behalf of their country, and in the process of doing so winning Gold medals, isn’t suitably patriotic for Fox News and their commenters.

Government employment has now dropped to the lowest point since 1968. I think we’re all waiting for the private sector to rush in and flood the market with high paying, stable jobs to take care of the glut of qualified individuals now out of work because conservatives have decided that the government must be smaller, lest the Republic As We Know It surely end.

And finally, Wonkblog’s Suzy Khimm asks “Where did dissenting voices go in Congress?”

Well Suzy, I’ll tell you.

You see, about fifty years ago, the Democratic party, headed by then President Lyndon B. Johnson, decided that the Southern racists opposing racial integration had to go, and kicked their collective asses out of the Democratic party and signed the Civil Rights Act. The Southern Former Democrats were righteously pissed about this, and Dick Nixon and Lee Atwater saw this as an opportunity to give the GOP major voting gains, pretty much overnight. So, they hitched the Southern Former Democrat racist train car to the GOP engine, and won some elections. Then Ronald Reagan came along, and he reached out to evangelicals with extreme social views, and hitched their crazy train car to the GOP engine, and won some elections. Over the years, an increasing number of looney fringe organizations from militiamen and gun nuts to libertarian gold bugs have hitched their train cars to the GOP engine, because it was the only way for their crazy ass ideas to be heard in public. As the GOP crazy train has rolled on down the tracks, it keeps getting longer and longer with more and more crazy ass train cars, to the point where it’s now pretty much off the rails.

In the midst of all this happening, the Democratic party lost some elections with liberal candidates, and decided that if they were going to win elections, they needed moderate candidates to do it. So, as the Democratic party has gradually moved from liberal to centrist, the GOP has gone from conservative to extremist, which is reflected in the way their members vote. The GOP conducts “purity tests” on candidates in the form of primaries, to ensure that only those that believe the combined fifty years of crazy train cars can get elected, to which normal people in Congress, namely Democrats and a thimblefull of Republicans, go “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”. And that, Suzy is where the dissenting voices went in Congress. Now go outside and play, and try not to eat any paste on the way.

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