the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAk7Hrf2joU

He's been quiet this cycle, but I don't think you can completely discount him.

Is that zombie reagan?

obama's new line of attack against romney - he doesn't love coal enough

to hell with both of them

I'm not sure if it's the real Zombie Reagan, or if The Onion just hired an actor to play Zombie Reagan.

I have a 2XL story. I bought one at a garage sale when I was about 13 just because I thought it was silly, I guess. But then I was messing around with it and intentionally answering questions wrong or even pushing buttons than were not an answer option and at one point - I kid you not - it said, "You are a little dummy."

Romney may not love coal enough, but he also hates the wind!

there's no way he's going to win Iowa.

I think supporting wind energy flies in the face of 1 of the 2 main planks of his platform - 1. do the bidding of oil companies at all cost and 2. do the bidding of rich people at all cost

half of the population has wisely written obamney off

cmon, gooney, you know where i live.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, August 7, 2012 5:00 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on, a lot of them have written him off very dumbly

haha wow. have we done this new Priorities USA (Obama superpac) ad?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj70XqOxptU&feature=player_embedded

they should do an ad about a millionaire who got a tax cut & then bought a jetski & the jetski crashed & they died

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F4LtTlktm0

"They just send you your welfare check"--testing the waters.

is mitt capable of making an ad thats not total lies

half of the population has wisely written obamney off

oh come on, a lot of them have written him off very dumbly

uh, it's a "them." Get it?

wocka wocka

is mitt capable of making an ad thats not total lies

It's worse than even that when they start dredging up welfare. I'm surprised it's a Romney ad--both sides tend to farm out their more scurrilous ads to Super Pacs. (Don't think the Democrats have anything as bad as this, though.)

wocka wocka

^ the sound of a liberal's brain trying to convince itself that O is "moving in the right direction"

obvs its not usual for politicians to lie and mislead in their advertising its just weird the last few romney ads ive seen have been obvious easily refutable lies, need to mix things up a lil mitt

http://0.tqn.com/d/movies/1/0/p/R/Y/the-muppets-fozzie-bear.jpg

I've seen this before - you're only supposed to put the quote marks around soemthing someone has said. No need to thank me!

ghost rider and silver rider both say 'portman' and 'who cares'

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/06/romneys_running_mate_distraction_campaign_reaches_its_zenith

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/how-romneys-pick-of-a-running-mate-could-sway-the-outcome

"Feckless" is now barely sufficient to describe the Romney campaign.

A Mitt Romney spokesperson offered an unusual counterattack Wednesday to an ad in which a laid-off steelworker blames the presumptive GOP nominee for his family losing health care: If that family had lived in Massachusetts, it would have been covered by the former governor’s universal health care law.

“To that point, if people had been in Massachusetts, under Governor Romney’s health care plan, they would have had health care,” Andrea Saul, Romney’s campaign press secretary, said during an appearance on Fox News. “There are a lot of people losing their jobs and losing their health care in President [Barack] Obama’s economy.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79482.html#ixzz22yj2SiFA

haha wtf

That's funny--having just spent some time in the car listening to Limbaugh (didn't realize the Buffalo station carried him in the morning), I was going to post about the same thing. He was railing about Saul's response to the ad, and railing about the Romney campaign in general; a caller went on about how Gingrich wouldn't have let them do this, and how they should have known what they were getting in Romney. Obviously a reaction to the latest polls.

As Limbaugh went down a laundry list of the ways in which W's record is continually being distorted, he mentioned how Bush left office with unemployment "around five percent." So I checked: it was 7.4% the day Obama was inaugurated. The last time unemployment was around 5.0% would have been either the spring or summer of '08, depending upon how much you round down.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2009/feb/wk2/art02.gif

7.4 rounds down to 5 nbd

whole campaign is incompetently lolzy "look! over there!"-style attempts at distraction

goes for the O campaign too, they're just better at it

of all the infuriating things that limbaugh does, it's his tendency to purely make shit up that bugs me the most. not just being an ideologue, or spinning a fact, or leaving out something critical with an intention to mislead, but just totally, completely making shit up.

a caller went on about how Gingrich wouldn't have let them do this

Newt is an even worse politician than Romney!

whole campaign is incompetently lolzy "look! over there!"-style attempts at distraction

― Harvey Cartel (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 8, 2012 2:07 PM (5 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

goes for the O campaign too, they're just better at it

― Harvey Cartel (Shakey Mo Collier), Wednesday, August 8, 2012 2:07 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

romney campaign down to his appearance epitomizes the simpleminded-cynical view of what campaigns are like, just get a square jawed fellow and have him lie, these sheeple will eat it up

pretty much

sry just sitting here waiting for the "Andrea Saul released from Romney campaign staff" headline.

Really weird: Limbaugh runs a commercial from a dentist's group advertising themselves as "ultra-conservative" because they only do what's absolutely necessary and avoid anything "invasive." I'd likely feel differently if I didn't have coverage, but as is, I'm quite content with my dentist erring on the side of invasiveness.

you wouldn't believe what my dentist did to me today! he...he...he looked BEHIND my teeth with a tiny mirror!! stay the hell out of my mouth, you damned liberal!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOnHrAGKwJ4

Isaac Anthony is a conservative six-year-old who knows where he stands on political issues and the upcoming Presidential election.

this kid knows what hes talking about im going to listen

That's fantastic! Outtakes even...it seems to be a legit right-wing spot, but you could just as easily take it as inspired parody.

Black jeans, brown shoes, wraparound shades, how can I NOT listen?

the outtakes, kid really seems to be enjoying himself, not being pushed into it by his parents at all

Kids doing funny things for a camera are always pushed into it by their parents--they either do them well or they don't. This kid's deadpan is perfect--I'm really the only who laughed?

Meanwhile Kevin Drum calls Harry Reid's remarks "contemptible stuff."

eagerly awaiting GOP push to lower the voting age to 6

http://www.motherjones.com/files/imagecache/author-thumb-small/photo/drum_kevin80x95.jpg contemptible stuff

Kevin Drum is apparently unable to distinguish between fact and rumor

Emailing the local bullies Isaac Anthony's details and mugshot right now.

A letter writer to TPM:

I think you’re missing a key nuance from Romney’s denials and indignation here. Note that the response always appears to be “I paid a lot of taxes” and not “I paid a lot of income taxes.”

Anyone making $10 to $20 million per year will pay a lot of taxes in absolute dollars — state taxes, property taxes, city taxes, sales taxes, etc. But the distinction you’re missing is whether or not these taxes were income taxes.

From my initial understanding (and I am no tax professional, but have 10 years experience in private equity and am familiar with how the senior professionals manage their finances), there’s a possibility that Romney paid very little (i.e. less than 10%) income taxes during the 2002 to 2009 period in many of those years. It is quite possible that some of those years could have approached zero. There’s a lot of different ways to make that happen, through standard structuring/gifting, offshore planning, charitable contributions, and favorable recent tax laws for carried interest and capital gains. I think you should try and pivot the discussion around “were these income taxes that Romney paid” and not “did Romney pay taxes.”

Just a thought from looking at the nuances behind Romney’s replies to Reid — he appears to be very careful not to say “income taxes even when the initial claim by Reid was specifically around income taxes.”

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/08/missing_the_key_issue.php?ref=fpblg

Kevin Drum and the Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore are both more obsessed with criticizing Harry Reid's ethics than with those of anyone else. Usually these two follow a centrist Dem approach and both rarely criticize the Obama White House, so their fixation and misinterpretations here stand out even more.

I paid alot of taxes just today, when i bought a coffee and some cigarettes.

I happened to flip past the Sunday morning shows and there was Ann Coulter, Jonathan Karl, and George Acidopolous debating the "ethics" of Reid's comments. Ann Coulter. On national tee-vee.

Romney is just setting an example, it's part of his being rich. Republican voters would like to be rich like him, and they also would like to not pay income taxes!

Coulter was frothing rabidly on Sunday.

He absolutely should not release any more tax returns. He has released two years. Bill Clinton wouldn’t release his medical records. You know, people kind of wondered about that. We know after the JFK presidency, you could have an issue with a drug addict president, but he just dug in his heels.

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/ann-coulter-on-this-week-romney-tax-return-debate-is-just-dirty-politics-from-obama-campaign/