Romney’s tax rate, mixed messages, lying liars and the lies they tell, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal, the Tea Party roundup, “We haven’t run the numbers”, the student loan crisis continues, Judges for sale, endangered WASPs, the FRC shooting and the conservative response, Generation X and Paul Ryan, and Bankers Gone Wild. Also appearing: Dana Milbank and E.J. Dionne Jr.!
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, Mitt Romney has said that he never paid less than a 13% tax rate during the 10 years for which he will not release his tax returns. Now, I don’t know about all of you, but my personal tax rate is between 20-25%, or at least that’s what my lawyer tells me. When I was unemployed, it was 16%.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Mitt Romney, for the ten years he refuses to release tax returns for, paid a lower tax rate than I did when I was unemployed.
The GOP has no idea what to do with President Obama, alternately portraying him as both a nice guy in over his head and some kind of evil mastermind. See, the GOP’s base doesn’t want to “like” Obama. They want to see him tarred and feathered in the public square. Independents, however, like the guy personally, so they can’t be quite as aggressive about it.
The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta has a great article on what the media should do when confronted with really obvious campaign lies. I have an idea: do what Soledad O’Brien did to John Sununu and call them out on their obvious fakery.
Here’s how bad it is: GOP operatives can’t even go on non-Fox News networks and not get tripped up, because as soon as someone that’s not completely in the tank for the GOP raises a question they lose their shit because they can’t respond. Hell, Ryan and Romney can’t go on non-Fox News networks because there’s an off chance some reporter might go rogue and ask them an honest to God question.
Charles P. Pierce has an immensely entertaining roundup of this year’s crop of Tea Party candidates. Much like the crops everywhere else, they appear to be mostly dead on the vine.
With the first of three hat-tips to Ross, Paul Ryan admitted on Fox News that “[They] haven’t run the numbers” on the Romney budget plan and how it would balance the budget. There’s a line between “policy disagreements” and “just making shit up”, and the Romney/Ryan campaign is no longer pushing policy disagreements. They’re literally just making shit up.
In the second of three articles from Ross, Reuters talks about the student loan crisis. This is a bubble that’s going to pop exactly like the housing bubble did, except worse, because you can’t foreclose on an education. These loans can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and they’re giving 18 year olds tens of thousands of dollars that they will spend decades repaying, assuming they repay them at all. It’s a time bomb, pure and simple.
And in our final of three contributions from Ross, an article from The New Yorker on the rise in spending in Judicial races. A million dollars doesn’t buy you much in terms of a President. A million dollars might buy you a Congressman. A million dollars can probably buy you an entire state’s worth of jurisprudence.
Next up: the disappearing WASP and voter fraud. The sooner the demographic tide turns and buries the GOP in the sand of history, the better.
The FRC shooting has raised some hackles on the conservative side of the aisle. Yes, because when you actively promote a hateful agenda, it’s hard to believe that some people might be deeply offended and fight back. It’s not really so much fun when it’s liberals doing it to conservatives, now is it?
The Daily Beast’s Kirsten Powers fellates Paul Ryan in print on behalf of Generation X, under the mistaken belief that the most extreme Vice Presidential nominee in history is somehow going to bring in a huge swath of the 30-55 crowd that is already squeezed between the Boomers and Millennials. Good luck with that, let me know how it works out for you.
Charles P. Pierce leads off today’s Bankers Gone Wild with MF Global not being charged with criminal activity, and the head of MF Global, John Corzine, saying that he’d like to start a hedge fund. The fact that MF Global won’t be charged with criminal activity due to “chaos and porous risk controls at the firm” is six tons of bullshit. A BILLION DOLLARS of customer money just DISAPPEARED. I can’t get an authorization to spend a grand here without ten people signing off on the paperwork. Corzine and MF Global lost a million times that amount of money and it just “disappeared”. Not only that, but he says he wants to start a hedge fund. Who the fuck would invest with John “I lost a billion dollars of customer money because it “disappeared”” Corzine? I need a drink.
Matt Taibbi piles on with the non-prosecution of Goldman Sachs by AG Eric Holder. Taibbi says Holder has no balls. I concur.
And finally, the Washington Posts’ peanut gallery: Dana Milbank and E.J. Dionne Jr.!
First up, from Dana Milbank, we discuss how the Democrats are doing to Republicans what the Republicans have been doing to Democrats for years. The fact that noted hack Dana Milbank notes that the Romney campaign is completely full of shit is a really, really bad sign. Like, the media is about to declare all out war on the Romney campaign bad.
And finally, E.J. Dionne Jr. covers why Paul Ryan has the potential to be electoral Kryptonite. Nothing new here, but still a good read.
