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

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/

lol Bill Clinton will be trolling righties from beyond the grave for centuries after he's gone

they cannot accept that he was the most successful Reaganite ever

that's what makes it so special

Speaking of which:

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/08/bubba_and_blowback/

lol Bill Clinton will be trolling righties from beyond the grave for centuries after he's gone

he'll be doing drugs in heaven with addict JFK.

http://www.xtimeline.com/__UserPic_Large/3737/ELT200712072030037240455.JPG

rip bangin the staff somewhere way up there

need zs to animate kennedy moving bill's hand crotchwards

you seem like an ambitious young man

Meanwhile, in a turn of events designed to give Morbs an aneurism, Dave Eggers launches http://90days90reasons.com/ feat. Ben Gibbard on gay marriage

lol
let me show you how this is gonna work
xp

This is great:

http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/08/gingrich-no-proof-of-claims-in-romney-ad/?hpt=ac_t1

"We have no proof today"--stop by tomorrow. The best part is where Gingrich says, quite honestly, it'd be a much more insanely paranoiac...a much tougher ad if it were him.

silby, I skipped Dave Eggers

I can't really remember who Ben Gibbard is either, so see, no aneurysm

well thank goodness for that

This one's even better than Gingrich's wall of fog:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/09/marsha-blackburn-romneycare_n_1759618.html

http://www.tnr.com/blog/electionate/105912/obama-has-the-advantage-90-days-go

One thing people hate about the media (hate cliches, but let's narrow that to mainstream media) is the way they bend over backwards to give the appearance of objectivity. That's one side, and there's validity to that. The other extreme, though, is that the second they sense implosion, they'll pile on. I think you're seeing some of that with the coverage of Romney the past couple of days.

so you're saying Willard is the robot version of Howard Dean

I guess so--I wasn't paying that close attention to Dean's meltdown (didn't follow 2004 closely till the election itself), but I assume the media went crazy. In general, they love nothing more than a train wreck. If the polls suddenly turned around for Romney, they'd be all over Obama. (Not the Tomaskys and Sullivans--I mean CNN and the like.)

there's nobody the neutered power worshippers who comprise the DC press corps love more than an apparent winner

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-papa-johns-healthcare-cheapskate-20120808,0,6290027.story

the papa john price increase came up on the health care thread, but I love this Romney quote from the funder Papa John threw

“Who would’ve imagined pizza could build this. This is really something. Don’t you love this country? What a home this is, what grounds these are, the pool, the golf course…. This is a real tribute to America, to entrepreneurship."

You didn't build that--pizza built that.

What a wonderful country, where a man can have his own golf course just for running a chain of pizza shops. Really is a shame we're going to make him pay his employees health care.

This is a real tribute to America, to entrepreneurship paying your shift managers $9.29 an hour.

What a piece of work is a pizza, how noble in flavor, how infinite in toppings, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an autopsied calzone

The Republicans desperately wanted Eddie Albert; whether it's trees or pizza, they ended up with Charles Grodin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqYlm3xc9ww

(Substitute "the presidency" for "Kelly"--and if Romney were to win, I envision him just as drifting-off-into-his-thoughts as Grodin in the film's final scene.)

I'm not a business, man

tell us more about how you won't release your tax returns Mitt! Genius strategy there!

people are corporations, my friend

hmmm, corporations are people, but people are not corporations

so this is like the a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not a square thing, i see

i know it's obvious and it doesn't really add anything here, but mitt romney really is a despicable asshole

he is obvious and he doesn't really add anything

he shows it more unconsciously than....