Whew!

(Note: I wrote this the day after the election but haven't gotten to post it 'till today because the hurricane knocked out my access to the World Wide Tubes. That's all fixed now so I'm back to surfing the tubes like it wasn't shit!)

I tend to be a pessimist and a worrier. The thought of the Republicons gaining more power and control of government made me feel ill. At times during the campaign season it seemed possible that the Recons could actually take control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House and thus, the Supreme Court. Even after the results of the election, just writing those words fills me with dread.
I never felt confident about how things would turn out even when Obama had what seemed like a comfortable lead.

Like most pessimist/worriers I tend not to be a gloater. But after the results of the election began to sink in, I just couldn’t help the feeling of satisfaction that began to dominate my mood as I thought about all those pompous blowhards on the right who were telling us how the pollsters were purposely manipulating the data in order to discourage Republicons from going to the polls.
It is an obvious and accepted fact among most conservatives that all polling organizations (just like the media and every other institution that has the ability to present information that displeases conservatives) are liberal hacks that will do anything in order to get Obama elected. The only exceptions to this rule are the Rasmussen polls and Fox News. Conservatives know that they can trust these two organizations because they consistently report the news that supports conservatives’ emotional biases.

These pompous blowhards were telling us that the methodology these polling organizations were using was wrong because they weren’t producing the kind of data that conservatives wanted to hear. They were absolutely certain that more people wanted to vote for Romney and that fact would be proven on Election Day. So, at the same time they were hysterically accusing the pollsters of making Obama win the election, they were guaranteeing that the pollsters were wrong and Romney would win. Some of these obnoxious jerks, like Dickhead Morris, were so sure of themselves that they predicted with absolute certitude that Romney would win by a landslide.

No one promotes the idea that polls are always fixed in favor of Democrats as much as right-wing radio windbag, Rush Dimbulb. One of his very favorite and often used conspiracy theories is that the pollsters, who are always liberal (except for Rasmussen), purposely alter the data in order to make things look good for Dems and bad for Recons in order to discourage Republiconservative voters. This theory is very useful whenever Recons are down in the polls. This is why, every election cycle, he tells his audience not to believe the polls if they don’t favor Recons.

As conservatives were feeling the angst from seeing Romney’s temporary lead melt away just before the election, Rush was telling his audience not only to disbelieve the polls (after saying ‘I told you so’ when Romney pulled ahead) but not to listen to any of the other bad news that had been coming out and that the only information they could trust was from him and Fox News. Mr. Dimbulb said this within minutes of telling his audience that one of the many, many things wrong with liberals is how they live in an information bubble. Really. He actually said that. On his Nov. 6 show.
How does that saying go? None are so blind as those who will not see?

Rush never explained why having Romney down wouldn’t motivate conservatives more, not less, or why having Obama comfortably ahead wouldn’t make Dems and libs complacent and less likely to bother to vote, thus benefiting Romney. He also never explained why the pollsters suddenly put Romney ahead after the first debate, thus validating what the entire ‘liberal media’ was saying relentlessly about Obama’s ‘terrible’ and ‘pathetic’ performance. That must have been discouraging to Dems and libs. Then Gallup had Romney up by 7 points with just a few weeks left, allowing the pundits to point out that no presidential candidate had ever lost after being up by that much that close to the election. You’d think that would devastate Obama supporters’ motivation.
Why would the ‘in the tank for Obama,’ liberally biased pollsters do such a thing?

Another question: why would a polling organization, which is in the business of predicting polls and competes against all the other Polls, not want to be the most accurate organization?
Rush’s answer: __________________________________ .
Hmmmm.

Also left unexplained was how Rush could be telling his audience that the pollsters were fixing the election for Obama by dampening conservative enthusiasm while at the same time telling them that conservative voters were much more enthusiastic about voting than libs because they knew they were right about everything and would never allow a socialist like Obama to take away their freedoms by forcing his malignant liberal policies on the American people (who, by the way, just voted Obama in for his second term.)

Interesting thing about that Gallup poll. I was reading an article in the New York Times about how Gallup (seemingly in response to the conservative critics) had changed their methodology to give more weight to the factors that conservatives wanted. In the end, Gallup and Rasmussen, the only polls that Rush said could be trusted, were off by the most.

Also, right before the election, all the polls had it practically tied (at least within the margin of error.) So you’d think that would make it a fair fight, wouldn’t you, Rush? How do you explain the results now, Rush?

Well, I listened to Rush’s show today and he suggested voter fraud.
Ah, ha ha ha.
Did Limbag just call that army of patriotic poll watchers a bunch of incompetent boobs?

So, as loathe as I am to gloat, I just can’t help myself with these jerks.

Romney: The Most Ridiculous Presidential Candidate Ever?

Has there ever been a more ridiculous presidential candidate in American history than Mitt Romney?

Maybe Pat Paulson? What about Lyndon LaRouche? There was that time some party ran a pig.

But if you think about it, Pat Paulson, like most satirists, was a pretty sharp guy. Plus, despite the farcical nature of his ‘campaign’, everyone knew what he really meant and he was much more trustworthy at telling the truth than Mitt.

LaRouche was pretty damn wacky but consider this: remember Romney’s ‘private’ fundraising dinner where he slandered 47% of the American people, the one where he thought that only his real base (rich white people) was listening? That’s when we saw and heard a much different Mitt than the one we’re used to seeing and hearing. Rather than the stiff, forced, robotic, phony bullshit artist Mitt, we saw an amazingly relaxed and natural seeming Mitt. Almost as if he was saying what he really thought.

Well, at one point during that very informative ‘talk,’ he said, regarding his plan to improve the economy,  that he wouldn’t have to do anything at all. He said that just his winning the election would be enough to create more jobs. (Mitt was referring to what Paul Krugman calls the ‘confidence fairy’) You know, instant job creation.  That’s what happens whenever a conservative-Republican, pro-business, pro-growth, tax-cutting supply-sider with a hawkish foreign policy comes into office. Just like it did when the Bush/Cheney administration got elected. Remember?

So, I can see a strong argument that LaRouche is less ridiculous than Mitt.

But what about that pig? The big fat stupid smelly fucking pig?

Ok, you got me. Mitt Romney was the most ridiculous presidential candidate in American history, except for Rush Limbag – I mean the pig. (I don’t know why I thought of Rush Limbag. My apologies to the pig.)

Has any other candidate ever changed positions so drastically so often and on so many issues as Mitt? How many times have we seen the tapes of Mitt issuing a clear and unambiguous position only to see another tape where he states the exact opposite position?  The only thing I can think of which surpasses Mitt's penchant for contradicting himself would be his complete willingness to make false statements.

All politicians bullshit and Obama is no exception, but I would love for someone to tabulate all the false statements Mitt has made during his political career and see if anyone else has even come close. I'd wager that his world record total would be as untouchable as DiMaggio's 56 game hitting streak. He's the Lance Armstrong of political bullshit.

He's incorporated every off the wall, completely wrong, right-wing talking point in the book as part of his political rhetoric. In one of the most amazing ironies in political history, the Republicon Party nominated a former Governor who is the first politician to implement the very healthcare plan that practically all of his fellow Republiconservatives describe as an oppressive, overreaching big-government takeover of healthcare that violates the Constitution. .

Here's a more accurate description of Romney/Obamacare from a previous post of mine:

“So the Dems gave up and decided to settle for a piece of garbage (a wasteful taxpayer subsidy to a seriously flawed private health insurance system) that is based on a plan devised by the Heritage Foundation, a longstanding bastion of Conservatism.
That's right; Obamacare is the brainchild of Conservatism.
This plan, including the individual mandate, was used by Republicans in the 90's as a counter to Hillarycare.
It was endorsed by numerous conservatives including Gingrich.
And of course Romney adopted it for Massachusetts.”

Click here: How the Heritage Foundation, a Conservative Think Tank, Promoted the Individual Mandate - Forbes

So, what was originally an honest attempt by conservatives to address the problem of millions of uninsured Americans (while preserving a free market model of insurance by introducing the Individual Mandate) is now vilified by the crazies on the right as Obama’s ultimate act of totalitarian liberal-socialism.

Oh, hey, did you notice that Romney is now proposing the public option for Medicare?                  
According to conservatives, the public option was supposed to result in the end of life as we know it.

But what does this say about the Republicons who nominated this guy in the first place? And what about all those Republiconservative nuts who see Obamacare as a Stalinesque act of big-government freedom-crushing oppression, even though it was concocted by conservatives and supported by Republicons in the past? 
How are they able to brush these facts aside? How are they unable to recognize the idiocy of this thinking?

Well, idiotic thinking is one of the primary symptoms of Obama Derangement Syndrome.

Then there’s Mitt the ‘job creator.’ Have you read David Stockman’s brilliant article on Romney, Bain Capital and job creation in the Oct 22 issue of Newsweek? Stockman was Reagan’s budget director and as a private equity investor himself, knows this business well. Here’s how he summed up Romney’s tenure at Bain:

“Bain did considerably better, of course, but the reason wasn’t business acumen. The secret was leverage, luck, inside baseball, and the peculiar asymmetrical dynamics of the leveraged gambling carried on by private equity shops... Needless to say, having a trader’s facility for knowing when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em has virtually nothing to do with rectifying the massive fiscal hemorrhage and debt burdened private economy that are the real issues before the American electorate. Indeed, the next President’s overriding task is restoring national solvency—an undertaking that will involve immense society-wide pain, sacrifice, and denial, and that will therefore require ‘fairness’… And that’s why heralding Romney’s record at Bain is so completely perverse. The record is actually all about the utter unfairness of windfall riches obtained under our anti-free market regime of bubble finance.”

Isn't that lovely? And if you think that these kinds of "job creators" pay too much in taxes, don't worry because if Romney gets elected the Republicons will drop the capital gains rate to zero! Yeah!