Symmetry required it: 2012 american general election thread #2

Though I guess pastel already applies

Catching up, as I have been all week...I take it there's nothing especially noteworthy about whatever returns Romney released today. (I wonder if things have gotten to the point where trying to sneak something through on a Friday afternoon attracts attention more than deflects it. I'm sure the campaigns have conducted extensive research into this.)

I would imagine most of tithing goes for welfare (lol) for down and out mormons and buying all that fucking land the church owns all over the place.

religious institutions certainly imho stretch the popular definition of charity, theyre usually more like clubs serving their members regardless of need, rather than helping those in need particularly, i realize people have said basically this itt, im just adding an amen

educational institutions too fwiw

anyway i question their worthiness of tax exempt status

so instead of just not releasing the information - information at which point only harry reid was screaming loudly for - they decided to release the info despite the fact that he was stuck in a "damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" on his tax credits, either deferring them (despite claiming he shouldn't be president if he'd ever defer a tax credit) or taking them, which would make his tax rate even lower than the damn low rate he already claimed to have.

it's just insane.

and they didn't even release enough information to shut up harry reid anyway

when harry ried is just fucking w/you in the first place youre not going to get him to stop via partial capitulation

Nate Silver ‏@fivethirtyeight
We've been publishing our forecasts since June. The ONLY two states where the favorite has switched at any point are OH and FL.

they are kinda fucking themselves anyway, you can't have it both ways & affect a 'oh taxes who cares' attitude on one hand, then try to piecemeal placate yr critics on the other - okay how about if we show you THIS corner of his tax return. it's acknowledging people give a shit, which contradicts the idea that people shouldn't give a shit.

maybe mitt was bored with all the numerous semantic and technical distinctions he always to make, and thought it'd be fun to hem and haw if a journalist asks him WHY he deferred a tax credit when he basically said that would be unamerican.

talking about obamacare vs romneycare, ryan budget vs vp ryan, 47 percent vs 100 percent, it's all just so tired at this point

Jason Sudekis as Romney is killing me over here

me too

oh you dont have any arms... *high fives head*

Brian Beutler ‏@brianbeutler
http://twitter.com/brianbeutler/status/249231882858930177

Assuming Romney doesn't amend his returns after November, Harry Reid trolled him out of $265,615.80.

this seems like the right place to share this:

http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/october-surprises

too easy

Romney should just dig in, double down, and pledge to reduce his own tax rate to 0% by 2017.

Mormons are nice people, in my experience, but that church raises several red flag for me, not least the fact that it actively converts (something that, as a Jew, I've always found unseemly) but also that it uses its money to fund stuff like the Cali stuff, which is unforgivable, especially coming from a church with such a history of blatant discrimination. Factor in that Mitt's charitable donations to the church are actually an explicit tenet of his religion, and the bullshit alarm rings even louder on the charity front.

Virgil Goode will be on the Virginia ballot:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/virginia-politics/post/virgil-goode-will-stay-on-va-ballot-after-cuccinelli-finishes-probe/2012/09/21/6d3de50c-03fe-11e2-9b24-ff730c7f6312_blog.html

Man, forget the tan story!

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/how-romney-packed-the-univision-forum

you know what though, i don't really have a problem with that for some reason. kinda what elections are about. sounds like an aaron sorkin plot. get him to a tanning booth! fill a bus with supporters! balk at the intro! rush around furiously! just good old american horseplay.

Romney hardball, Obama grand bargain

Obama's campaign, meanwhile, stuck to the original parameters and allowed a large chunk of the tickets to be distributed to interested students on campus. The result was a quiet, well-behaved crowd — and a lot of no-shows. Minutes before Obama's forum was to begin, producers began frantically directing university staff and volunteers to sit in the empty seats.

xpost -- haha good points all.

Curious detail in the Chicago Tribune article about Mitt's tax:

President Barack Obama, Romney's foe in the November 6 election

Wonder how long the writer spent deciding between foe, nemesis, and sworn enemy.

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Lnusc9Rlx6w/0.jpg

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/palin-romney-ryan-go-rogue_652911.html

If you were to ask his handlers, I'm sure they'd tell you that Romney has gone rogue a number of times this campaign.

...and he went rouge on Univision, so...

I love that Palin, proud employee of FOX News, still insists that all news is filtered by the liberal media, so that none of "the truth" is reaching the public. Way to call your employer a liar, there, Sarah.

it's interesting how IF Romney did indeed do "brown face" it would be so shocking and incredible that no one is really going to even bother pursuing it as a story.

like if he wore an ugly sweater or something we'd have 200 stories on CNN about it

He is seriously benefiting from the first reaction pretty much anyone would have to that picture is "what? no, no one would be that stupid, there's no way"

The makeup artist, 25-year veteran Lazz Rodriguez, said the candidate simply sat down in his makeup chair with a deep, natural tan.
"What they [bloggers and commenters] have done is all a bit sad to me," Rodriguez told Univision.
"I also don't want this to jeopardize a career I've worked so hard to build in this field," he said. "He was tan from being out in the sun on the campaign trail -- that's the only possible explanation.”

well okay then. I guess that means Romney will look just like that during the debates. case settled.

so weird that the back of his neck and his ears didn't tan

More useful advice:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/22/gingrich-to-romney-do-to-obama-what-you-did-to-me/

“When he walks in to debate Obama, he’s got to be as tough with Obama as he was with me in Florida,” Gingrich said in an interview on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.” After all, Gingrich said, Romney “is not in a competition to be likeable.”

Be more unlikeable, Mitt--it's always worked for me.

was prob just poppin his collar on the yacht

^reasonable explanation

backwards baseball cap with a towel mullet

RNC chairman Rupert Pumpkin on This Week, keeping a straight face: "Last week was a good week for us."

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/undecided-voter/1418227/

That was a good spot. Also liked the "Why Did You Do That?" segment on Weekend Update: "If you put up a Facebook page, we'll like it--it's the least we can do. It's also the most we can do." (Wish there'd been more politics last night...I only watched the first half.)

Silver downplays the Now-Cast but it's showing O at 95.8% to win if the election were held today.

"Last week was a good week for us."

His claim was that they it was a good week because they were able to "frame the debate." Mitt Romney's private comments framed the debate well for them, apparently.

Only CPAP could have saved him:

http://gawker.com/5945643/rick-perry-was-a-terrible-candidate-because-he-had-a-sleep-disorder-says-new-book

Particularly loathsome remark from the Priebus interview: "He's got a disaster overseas in the Middle East and in Northern Africa that he said he could solve, which he didn't, and now they're whistling past the graveyard."

http://cdn2-b.examiner.com/sites/default/files/styles/image_content_width/hash/70/77/7077260751abb19283fcd454527e1a19.JPG

Hey if you see everything said as projection it all makes sense.

http://www.unskewedpolls.com/

wow this "unskewed" poll analysis is...impressive.

"No serious observer of American politics or pollster believes that Republicans make up only 24 percent of the population. Is it precisely this under-sampling of Republicans, and proportional over-sampling of Democrats, that skews this survey."

http://www.examiner.com/article/is-the-latest-washington-post-abc-poll-skewed-for-obama