Cooperstown

Of the four major sports, baseball is the one most rooted and invested in its own history.  Yes, there are still four major sports, three makes no sense.  We just have to pick a new fourth with hockey off the map now.  I don't know what it is though.  MMA?  English soccer? Real world/road rules challenges?  I'm willing to try anything other than American soccer, minor league anything or tennis, but I honestly don't know what to choose. Anyway...

Baseball needs its history more than any other sport.  Without 120 years of history to bullshit about, how would anyone sit through an entire baseball game?  That's why baseball protects and highlights its history so much.  That's why, if a real sense of history is what you're looking for, the baseball Hall of Fame beats all the others hands down.  Sure, the hockey Hall of Fame is great...and in Canada!  But for history, you want Cooperstown over Toronto.  Trust me.

This is why the baseball Hall of Fame selection process takes on more importance than the process does in other sports.  The football Hall of Fame process is just silly nonsense, and the basketball Hall of Fame may or may not actually exist, but nobody cares either way.  The hockey Hall of Fame is fun, but I can't say I care that much about who's in there.  Baseball's different though.  Even as my interest in watching the sport slowly fades away, I still care about who goes in the Hall.

This year is a big year for Cooperstown.  Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Sammy Sosa are all on the ballot for the first time.  If we had never heard the word steroids, they'd all be first-ballot hall-of-famers.  But oh, have we heard the word steroids.  Constantly.  For like 10 years now.  I stopped being interested about 9 years and 11 months ago, but still we hear it.  Mark McGwire has been on the ballot for years now, and he's still not in.  It doesn't look like he's ever getting in, and I'm OK with that.  All he did was hit homeruns and be annoying.  If there's one thing that's perfectly fair to say about steroids era players, it's that 500 homeruns doesn't get you into the Hall anymore. 

I'm also OK with Sammy Sosa not getting in, for the same reason, and because he was almost as annoying as McGwire.  I'm perfectly comfortable walking into the Hall one day and not seeing any trace of McGwire and Sosa.  In fact, I'd prefer it. 

I'm sort of on the fence about Roger Clemens.  If you assume that Clemens started with the steroids when he got to Toronto, and I think that's a pretty fair assumption, I think he winds up being a close call.  If you just look at Clemens' career between 1984 and 1996, he accumulated 192 wins, 3 Cy Young awards and one MVP as a pitcher.  Without the steroids, he probably pitches until about 2001, gets somewhere in the 250 wins range and probably still signs with the Yankees at some point and gets his ring. 

That Roger Clemens is still a close call, right?  In 20 years, 250 wins will be the new 300 wins.  We'll look at 300 wins the same way we look at hitting .400.  Not totally impossible, but really really improbable.  Plus Clemens is the second best right-handed pitcher since Walter Johnson retired (clearly behind Greg Maddox and waaay ahead of the insanely overrated Nolan Ryan). 

On the other hand, Clemens clearly cheated and also seems like kind of a dick.  I feel the same way about Clemens as I do about Pete Rose.  Objectively, it seems like a glaring omission from baseball's Hall of Fame.  Subjectively, I sort of don't care.  If you were asking me as some sort of responsible baseball historian, I'd say you have to put him in.  If you're asking me as a fan, I'd say I won't miss him when I visit.

Then there's Barry Bonds.  Let says Bonds' first steroids aided year was 2000, which I think makes the most sense.  That was the height of the Sosa/McGwire circus and Bonds was coming off a year during which he missed about 60 games due to injury.  I've always fully believed the story that Bonds didn't start cheating until he saw the press and recognition the cheaters were getting and decided to get in on that action, so 2000 makes the most sense to me.

So, if you just look at Bonds from 1986 to 1999, here's what you get.  445 homeruns, 460 stolen bases, 3 MVPs (and four more top five finishes), 8 gold gloves and being single-handedly responsible for people actually caring about baseball in Pittsburgh for a few years.  There's five 30/30 seasons in there and one 40/40 season.  Bonds' speed and power combination so far surpassed anyone before him that, not only is he the only member of the 500/500 club, but he's the only member of the 400/400 club, something which he accomplished prior to 2000.  No one else has ever done that.  Not Mays, not Mantle, not Frank Robinson or Hank Aaron, not Griffey Jr. or anyone else from Bonds' own era, not even the cheaters. 

I know Bonds wasn't a great guy, and most of the hate that comes in his direction is his own fault.  I know he cheated and I know that the baseball Hall of Fame voters are some of the most sanctimonious people you'll ever find.  I also know Bonds never won a ring. 

But here are some other things I know.  I know baseball hasn't been relevant in Pittsburgh since Bonds left, and I know when he did leave, he rejuvenated baseball in San Francisco.  I know Bonds made Bobby Bonilla and Jeff Kent all-stars, and Mets fans can tell you that both of those guys sucked without him.  I really do believe that Bonds would have stayed clean if baseball had done its job when McGwire and Sosa suddenly turned into twin incredible hulks.  I think his career would have turned out a lot like Ken Griffey Jr.'s.  Maybe not quite as statistically eye-popping, but still amazing and clearly Hall worthy. 

Next time I go to Cooperstown, and I will be back someday, I need Barry Bonds to be there.  You can give him an asterisk or put up a weird sign about steroids if you want, but he needs to be in there somewhere.  The baseball Hall of Fame can go on without these other guys, but without Barry Bonds, it's just incomplete.

Election Night: Part 2

Welcome back to part 2!  If you don't know the difference between "too close to call" and "too early to call" just turn on your TV and people will explain it to you over and over again.

9:00PM: Obama wins New York, and also stuff happened in a bunch of other states nobody cares about.

9:01PM: Elizabeth Warren is "leading" but it's too early to call.  I'm not surprised it's taking a while to count the votes in Massachusetts considering I filled my ballot out with a pencil today.  Recently they invented these things called computers, I bet they could come in handy with voting.

9:03PM: MSNBC just called the overall majority in the House of Representatives for the Republicans. Not awesome news, but not surprising.

9:06PM: Florida looks really, really close.  Virginia still looks pretty good for Romney.  Still not a lot of votes in from Ohio.  I would still describe the mood at MSNBC as "optimistic", while the mood at Fox is much more "uh oh".  As always, the mood at CNN continues to be "hey look at these fucking graphics!"

9:11PM: Fox reporter describing the Virginia Senate race - "people either like George Allen, or they like Tim Kaine".  Just incredible analysis from Fox there.

9:20PM: Fox is already talking about what paths Mitt has to victory without winning Ohio.  I told you, uh oh.

9:21PM: Pennsylvania called for Obama a few minutes ago, and he won Michigan too.  Electoral map closing in quickly on Mitt Romney.

9:23PM: Whenever Anderson Cooper says "balance of power" CNN runs a balance of power graphic before he can keep talking.  It's like saying the secret word in Pee Wee's playhouse.  CNN also apparently has control over the lights at the top of the Empire State Building.

9:25PM: "Obama wins Wisconsin" - Fox's Brett Baier, while looking around for something to slit his wrists with.

9:28PM: Obama won New York, shouldn't that be it.  I don't understand why lesser states get a say, or at least an equal say.  New York should get at least 269 electoral votes.

9:31PM: For weeks Fox has been pushing the idea that Romney could win Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.  Now that those states are off the board, they're back to telling me that Florida, Ohio and Virginia were the only states we were ever really talking about.  Fox can't even accurately report on their own reporting.

9:35PM: Every time John King tries to make a point, Blitzer interrupts him to go to a reporter on the scene in whatever location he was talking about.  These guys are going to throw punches before the night ends.

9:39PM: On Fox, Karl Rove is desperately trying to call Florida for Mitt Romney.  I kind of feel bad for Karl.  Can we all just tell him Mitt won?  I know he doesn't deserve our kindness, but I think we need to take some pity on him.

9:44PM: Democrats are winning Senate seats left and right.  Ohio, Wisconsin, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Massachusetts.  Once again, they could have won most of these seats with even moderately useful candidates.

9:49PM: John Boehner on Fox - "I don't care what these fucking people voted for, we are not raising taxes ever.  You hear me?!?  EVER!!!"

9:51PM: If you ever see CNN's John King out in the real world, you'll notice that he always carries a giant touch screen around with him.  He's incapable of communicating without it.

9:54PM: They just called the Massachusetts Senate race for Elizabeth Warren.  I didn't always hate Scott Brown, but the campaign he ran this time around was really appalling.  He deserved to lose and he did.

10:02PM: Fox is now running dream scenarios for a Romney win.  One likely scenario, Barack Obama abducted by aliens.

10:06PM: Claire McCaskill kept her Senate seat over Todd "legitimate rape" Akin.  This Senate thing has really turned into a total mess for Republicans.  If only they could have anticipated that a majority of Americans don't like rape.

10:13PM: My current state has legalized medical marijuana.  "Ouch, my cataracts!" said every college student in Massachusetts.

10:15PM: Breaking news.  Mitt Romney just removed Linda McMahon from his binders full of women.

10:17PM: CNN appears to be circling around calling Florida for Obama.  Let's see if the Fox studio is on fire yet.

10:20PM: Things at Fox are looking grim as Megyn just somberly called New Mexico for the President.

10:24PM: NO quit in Karl Rove.  He is explaining the shit out of why Mitt Romney is going to win Ohio.  He's not mentioning that Ohio doesn't matter if Obama wins Florida.

10:26PM: Megyn Kelly on Fox - "Is this just math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better, or is it real?".  That pretty much sums it up.

10:27PM: Matthews in response to Rachel Maddow saying we're going to hear from Elizabeth Warren soon - "why are we hearing from these people before the concession speech?".  Um, how about because she's a Senator elect and she'll speak whenever the fuck she wants.

10:33PM: Interestingly, CNN still hasn't called Wisconsin.  Blitzer doesn't call anything until his beard says so.

10:44PM: Obama wins Minnesota, eh?

10:49PM: Arizona for Romney.  I wasn't sure if Romney's self-deportation policy was going to be tough enough for the show me your papers state, but I guess it was good enough.

10:51PM: Megyn Kelly is now just aimlessly wandering around the Fox set while giggling and touching stuff.

10:58PM: Quick note on Romney possibly winning the popular vote but losing the election.  The same thing happened to Al Gore in 2000.  I've always said Democrats need to suck it up and stop bitching about it, same message to Republicans.  That's how our system works.

11:00PM: California, Washington and Hawaii for the President.  This is the point in 2008 when Senator Obama officially became President Elect Obama.  It was a really great moment.  A win this year won't be quite as exciting, but it'll still be the better choice.  If Mitt Romney pulls out a surprising win, I honestly hope I'm wrong about him and he turns out to be an excellent President.

OK, I'm bailing now to watch the Daily Show and the Colbert Report.  They do the comedy for me.  As I check out, things look pretty good for the President in Ohio and Florida, and he really only needs one of those.  Both states are really close though, could be a while.

Election Night: Part 1

I'm trying to make up for the fact that I missed the late debate by documenting election night.  I'll be flipping back and forth between the three cable networks.  I don't know where I'll spend the most time, but I know that I want to be watching the losing side whenever they call an important state, because that's where it's the most fun (I mean, if you like despair, which I do).  Enjoy!

6:02PM: Every time I turned on Fox today, they were talking about voter fraud or the new black panthers.  I think it's very telling that every other channel spent the day occasionally telling you what you can do if your voting rights are being curtailed in some way while, conversely, Fox kept promoting their voter fraud email hotline.  You get the sense Republicans aren't too optimistic about tonight.  We'll see.

6:05PM: Matthews on MSNBC - "Mitch McConnell is the firewall against the crazies".  We may need a little more help than that.

6:09PM: Over on Fox Brett Baier is telling me about Virginia counties.  Who let him in the building tonight? He's an idiot.  And Megyn Kelly's here too.  Maybe they're saving the smart people for when the votes actually start coming in.

6:11PM: Well here's Chris Wallace anyway.  He just called Karl Rove "the architect of George W. Bush's Presidential victories".  Yes, congratulations Karl on building the most amazing shit sandwich we've ever seen.

6:17PM: CNN already has John King playing with a magic wall.  Anderson Cooper is also standing by what I'm going to call the wall sized TV screen of nonsense.  At least the dopes at Fox have a desk.

6:20PM: CNN's Erin Burnett is in Ohio.  Her and her pretty eyes say we might know who won Ohio around midnight.

6:22PM: CNN is reporting that Florida had a problem with about 35,000 ballots that were not printed correctly, so now volunteers have to transpose those faulty ballot results onto good ballots so they can be scanned and counted.  Really Florida? Twelve years later and you are still fucking awful at this?  Just understand that we all hate you.

6:24PM: CNN is hard to look away from.  Right now some guy is standing in the middle of what appears to be a virtual fake Senate chamber where they're using the individual fake virtual desks to display different issues that the next President will have an impact on.  I can't do it justice with words, you really had to see it.

6:28PM: While some MSNBC lady reports from what appears to be an empty Mitt Romney auditorium in Boston, someone in the background appears to be playing smooth jazz.  Rachel Maddow noticed too and called it the "we don't know yet jazz".

6:31PM: Steve Schmidt is on MSNBC sadly recounting being on the wrong side of the 2008 electoral beatdown dished out by the Obama campaign.  He's talking about the importance of Mitt Romney's impending concession speech.  He may not have put it exactly that way.  He added "winning is a lot more fun than losing".  Glad he's here.

6:35PM: Fox's Bill Hemmer is reporting from the "Bill"board.  Ohhhh, I see what they did there.  Hemmer eventually added "red is Republican, blue is Democrat".  That's super helpful, thanks.

6:38PM: Megyn Kelly just told me that they have Charles Krauthammer coming up.  I don't know if that was meant as a warning or a threat, but either way, thanks Megyn.  Let's see what CNN is up to.

6:44PM: Summary of analysis from all three networks so far.  If the people who would vote for (insert candidate here) actually come out to vote, (insert candidate here) will win the night.

6:48PM: Alex Wagner is covering Senate races for MSNBC.  She says a recent poll had Scott Brown leading Elizabeth Warren.  That makes me grumpy, but Alex is kind of adorable so it's OK.

6:52PM: CNN just ran a montage of soundbites from past elections.  You know, back when they were a news network.

6:54PM: I've been watching CNN for three minutes now and all I've seen is different montages.  Maybe they just gave up and went home.

6:57PM: MSNBC is reporting tonight from "Democracy Plaza".  That's right across the street from Fox's famous "Fascism Square".

6:58PM: By the way, I'm not calling CNN's magic wall a "magic wall" because I think it's funny or clever, I don't think that.  I'm calling it a "magic wall" because the people who work at CNN keep calling it that and I think they're morons.

6:59PM: I'm going to Fox for the 7:00PM results because I want to see how excited they get about Romney winning Kentucky (turned out, sadly, not very).

7:01PM: Romney won Kentucky and Indiana, Obama won Vermont.  There you go.  Fox is still sticking with Kelly and Baier.  Where's Shepherd Smith? Is he being held hostage somewhere?

7:07PM: CNN exit polls in Virginia look pretty craptastic for the President.  Good thing he doesn't really need it.

7:12PM: MSNBC has a magic wall too, but you don't hear them yapping about it the whole time, do you CNN?

7:18PM: Related note.  I didn't get my "I voted" sticker when I voted today.  What's up with that?  I heard the same thing on Twitter from other people in my area.  People in Massachusetts aren't getting our "I voted" stickers.  If that's not a good enough reason to vote Scott Brown out of office, I don't know what is.

7:21PM: I just hit the rare triple commercial situation.  What should I call that?  It's really the shittiest thing that could happen on my TV right now, so I'm going to call it a Gingrich.

7:24PM: MSNBC's election night anchor desk is so big Congress just granted it three electoral votes.  The Romney campaign has already dispatched Paul Ryan to give a speech, but I'm pretty sure it's Obama country.

7:29PM: Fox's Kirsten Powers says she would read something into the exit polls if the exit polls are right.  Wait, what?  Wouldn't everybody read something into the exit polls if we knew they were right?  She's lucky Kirsten is one of my favorite names.

7:31PM: Megyn Kelly called West Virginia for Romney and added "the President's stances on energy policy and social issues are very unpopular there".  Also, the President's continued insistence on being black is very unpopular there.

7:35PM: Fox is making Chris Wallace sit in a dimly lit room with Karl Rove and Joe Trippi all night.  He must have really pissed somebody off.

7:39PM: MSNBC's Chuck Todd - "the joke in Ohio is that it's five Ohios".  I'm pretty sure Chuck just made that joke up.

7:48PM: Bernie Sanders won another term in the Senate.  Fox added "that's right, a socialist in the Senate, that's Barack Obama's America".

7:50PM: Fox is now covering Twitter activity.  Fox viewers have no earthly idea what they're talking about.  Three million grandparents just called their grandkids and asked "what's a tweeter?"

7:54PM: Fox just called Georgia for Romney.  I never understand how Republicans do so well in Georgia.  I know it's got a lot of rednecks, but Atlanta's a pretty big city.  Shouldn't it at least be a swing state?

8:00PM: Obama wins Connecticut, Delaware, Washington DC, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Maine (3 of the 4 electoral votes...why do you have to be special Maine?) and Rhode Island.  Romney gets Oklahoma.

8:03PM: Alabama polls closed at 8, but they don't have internet there yet so we don't have official calls until they send a redneck in a pickup truck up to the CNN studio with the actual numbers.

8:08PM: Four crucial Senate races leaning Democrat.  Congratulations Republicans, you moroned your way right out of a Senate majority.

8:11PM: Ohhhhh, Shep Smith is on the actual Fox network, that's why the cable channel gets team dumbass.

8:15PM: O'Reilly just showed up on Fox.  Where did he come from?  Is he only allowed to start talking at 8PM?  He thinks if Obama wins it's because he's pandering to people who want the government to do stuff for them.  So true.  It was really unfair of the President to campaign on the idea that he might actually, ya know, help some people.

8:18PM: Sounds like O'Reilly's leaving already.  That was quick, and weird.  That's what she said.

8:20PM: Apparently Indiana voters are rejecting the idea that rape babies are a gift from god.  Better start re-working that platform before the next election.

8:22PM: Dave adds "instead of Hofstra, I wish I graduated from Electoral College".

8:23PM: CNN is doing a suspenseful countdown to when Arkansas polls close, because Arkansas is the only state that closes at 8:30.  How long before each state closes at a slightly different time so they all get their moment in the spotlight?  "ohhh, its 8:36, one more minute until Illinois polls close!"

8:28PM: I haven't checked in on MSNBC in a while.  It's always good to check back from time to time to make sure Matthews is still conscious.

8:31PM: Chris Murphy beat the wrestling lady in the Connecticut Senate race.  I feel a little better about my country just now.

8:33PM: Me, just now - "zombie JFK would do very well with Irish Catholics...and zombies".  How did that come up?  I don't have to explain myself to you.

8:37PM: On Fox, Huckleberry is talking about how Barack Obama's been trampling all over religious liberties for four years.  I wish I could go on TV and report things that only happen in my imagination as actual news.

8:40PM: Almost another Gingrich, but MSNBC saved the day.  I swear running a campaign which included Sarah Palin replaced every other emotion Steve Schmidt used to be able to feel with sadness.

8:46PM: Ken Blackwell on MSNBC - "nobody's out there trying to suppress the vote".  Everyone on MSNBC's panel took turns telling him how he was wrong about that.  He agreed that trying to reduce early voting was bad, but still somehow defended the current Ohio Secretary of State for doing it.

8:52PM: Do you think Linda McMahon will run for the Senate again someday?  I feel like she can't stop herself.

OK, end part one.  I'll start part two in a few minutes and post it whenever we have a winner or I have to go to sleep because I have work tomorrow.

Undecided

I was talking to a friend Saturday night and she made me realize that I am, in fact, an undecided voter.  If I lived in a swing state, I would vote for Barack Obama, because Mitt Romney is just awful.  But I live in Massachusetts.  Unless Mitt Romney has a photograph of Barack Obama pooping on Ted Williams' grave while wearing a Lakers jersey, Massachusetts is safe for the President.

I like the President, but I don't like everything he's done.  More importantly, I don't like that I only get two real choices.  Two choices that aren't as different as they and the media would have me believe.  Is Barack Obama a better President than Mitt Romney ever could be?  Of course he is.  But that doesn't make him the best possible President.  On the contrary, it could easily just make him the 2nd worst possible President.

So I'm torn.  Use my meaningless vote to cast one more drop into the ocean of Massachusetts Obama votes, or use it to at least make a point about third party candidates.  I'm looking at you Gary Johnson.  I don't know, I honestly don't think I'll decide until tomorrow when I get there.

Speaking of undecided voters, on the eve of Election Day (honestly one of my favorite days), I thought it would be fun to try and sum up some of the last minute campaign issues for anyone who's still mulling it over.

Senate Races

Senate races have become important nationally because the first rule of Republican Misogyny Club is you don't talk about Republican Misogyny Club, but Todd Akin and that Mourdock clown from Indiana didn't get the memo.  More than any other recent election, Republicans are making it clear to everyone that they think women should be second class citizens who have their rights dictated to them.  Even Mitt Romney tipped his hand a little.  I mean, he's OK if you ladies want to work a little, he thinks it's cute, but once 5PM rolls around, your ass better be in Mitt's kitchen making him a delicious dinner.  That beef isn't going to roast itself, and your lady work can wait until morning, we don't give you anything important to do anyway.

I have an idea for Republicans.  You obviously have no interest in growing up or moving into the current century, so how about this?  Whenever the word rape comes up at one of your press conferences, just walk away.  In fact, whenever anybody asks you anything about women, just slowly back away from the microphone.  It isn't the best strategy, but I think it's the best you can do based on your policies and beliefs and, honestly, it's better than your current strategy of looking like idiots all the time.

Speaking of Senate races, this is where reasonable Republicans really need to look at their own party and get angry.  Republicans have pissed away at least three easy wins in the Senate by nominating awful candidates.  Linda McMahon in Connecticut may not be anyone's fault, and maybe they couldn't have won that seat anyway, but Missouri and Indiana were easy Republican wins for even halfway decent candidates.  Democrats have the tea party to thank for keeping control of the Senate, plain and simple.

I disagree with Republicans a lot, but I understand we need at least two functioning parties for our system to work.  Please Republicans, chase these tea idiots back into whatever caves they crawled out of four years ago, they are killing your party.

Chris Christie

I may have made fun of Chris Christie once or twice, or almost every time he's opened his mouth in front of a camera, but let me tell you why independent voters like him.  Most normal people understand that you can't expect a political party or a candidate to agree with you on everything.  All I want is for politicians to tell the truth about what they believe so I know who to vote for.

I still think Chris Christie is mostly a bully and a dumbass, but I like that he's at least honest.  It's sad that I know that's all it takes to make him one of the most respectable politicians in the country right now, but here we are.

Benghazi

You know this pisses me off, but Fox won't stop talking about it so here we go.  I have a vague recollection of something like 3,000 Americans dying all at once in a terrorist attack the last time a Republican was in the White House.  I could swear I was supposed to never forget that.  I could also swear that it took years for us to find out what actually happened and that the Bush administration had good intelligence that could have prevented it more than a month in advance.

I remember these things, just a little, but I don't remember it being an issue in the 2004 campaign.  Actually I do, I remember that same Republican President using it as a rallying cry.  What I don't remember is John Kerry trying to use the deaths of thousands of people as a political tool in an effort to win an election.  That's not why John Kerry lost, he lost because he was awful, but at least he lost with a little integrity.

So, Republican voters who are parroting this nonsense, I'm begging you to be smarter than this.  And for a more direct message to every Republican candidate, surrogate and person at Fox trying to use the deaths of four Americans to win an election because you don't have anything else to try.  You are a terrible human being.  Please go fuck yourself, and have a nice day.

Jeeps

The only thing I have to say about Mitt Romney being a liar is that he seems to be a little better at it than the rest of us.  Nobody is ever 100% sure what Mitt believes and trying to pinpoint his real position on anything would require a sort of political quantum mechanics that I don't think anyone has invented yet (possibly because Republicans don't believe in quantum mechanics, I'm not sure).  Having said that, I don't understand why people are so surprised by the Romney campaign's totally false commercial about shipping Jeep jobs to China.  A political campaign lied while also putting winning ahead of the good of the voters.  People are acting like nobody's ever done that before.  Welcome to politics folks.

Climate Change

This huge, unprecedented storm that basically shut down New York City really has a lot of people in public office and in the media talking about the effects of climate change and energy policy and what we have to do to get our climate back under control.  Ha! No, that's not true, I'm just fucking with you.  Nobody cares about that shit.  Science is hard and confusing.  Let's get back to talking about campaign tactics and why I'm supposed to be interested in Ohio once every four years.

FEMA

There are enough stupid things that Mitt Romney actually said that Democrats really don't need to twist words and extrapolate things to make him look stupid.  All Romney said was that, in general, it's always better to give things back to the states, and it's even better to give them back to the private sector.  Take it from someone who watched every minute of every Republican primary debate, this wasn't anything.

This wasn't serious suggestion about getting rid of FEMA, it was just another expression of the Republican fantasy that the private sector does everything better.  It's stupid and not even a little bit true, but saying things that are stupid and not even a little bit true is how you win Republican primaries.

OK that's it.  Please go vote tomorrow.  Try to vote for somebody smart and reasonable, but even if you can't bring yourself to do that, you should still vote.

Marathon? Seriously?

If you've been following the news lately, you made have heard that the New York City marathon organizers are planning to go through with the marathon this Sunday even though 1) parts of the city have been underwater all week 2) thousands upon thousands of New Yorkers are still without heat or power and 3) any police, other public servants or volunteers that you might use for a marathon would be about a million times more useful in the Rockaways, on Staten Island or at any one of many many other hard hit locations.

At first I honestly thought this must be a joke or a miscommunication.  Maybe Mayor Bloomberg (who was actually doing really well with this until now) said something like "marathon?  are you fucking kidding me?  My city is underwater.  What kind of a stupid question is that?", but because people are stressed and probably weren't really paying attention, it somehow sounded like he said the marathon was actually still going to happen.  Apparently I was wrong.

Many of the people who read my blog already know me a little, but for those who don't, I grew up in Rockaway Park in Queens.  It was an amazing place to be a kid and really is a wonderful little town.  If you've never been there, you just wouldn't believe a place like it could exist within the borders of such a large and crowded city, but that's just one of the things that makes New York better than everywhere else.

I literally don't have a word for what Hurricane Sandy did to my home town.  Every picture and description I see is worse than the one before it.  It's worse than anything I could have imagined.  Now, the people there are tough and it's a great community and they'll rebuild, but in the mean time, it seems the city is going to have a marathon. 

Because it's really important, in this time of great tragedy, that a bunch of people run around the city for a few hours.  Who cares if people in the Rockaways and Staten Island and other parts of the city have no power and no heat?  Who cares if hundreds of homes were destroyed and thousands of people lost everything?  Fuck that shit!  That was like, five days ago.  I guess everybody just needs to get the fuck over it, right?

Listen, I understand that events bring money into the city, money that a recovering city needs, but that doesn't explain why they can't run a marathon on November 25th, or December 2nd.  Do it a month later and everybody still gets their money.  Too cold to run around outside that late in the year?  Really?  Do you remember last paragraph when I said people lost their houses?  If December 2nd is too cold for you to run, then you can run around the city by yourself sometime when the conditions suit you a little better. 

Now you can say I shouldn't be too hard on the actual runners.  They've trained for years and it isn't their decision.  I disagree.  Everybody makes a choice.  You can choose to not participate in this ridiculous farce.  You can choose to do something more productive with your time, like volunteer, or just donate to the Red Cross http://www.redcross.org/  See look, there's the link right there. 

I've seen some stories about people who are going to run the marathon and use it to raise money to donate to victims.  That's nice, but couldn't you just collect money for victims and not spend all day running around a decimated city?  Personally, I would much rather do that.  Running 26 miles is tiring and really hard.  When I was a kid my elementary school did a math-a-thon for St. Jude's hospital.  I suspect my grandma still would have given me a check for the sick kids even if I didn't bother actually doing the math.

And as for the mayor and the organizers of the marathon, I don't know enough different forms of the word fuck to properly address them.  The symbolism alone of the marathon starting by running away from devastated Staten Island should be enough to tell anyone with a brain what a bad idea it is to go through with it.  It's a good thing the rubble of my home town won't disrupt the marathon path, or they might have to run somewhere else.

You know, sometimes I get on here and rant about things that really bother me, but then I have to admit that there's no easy solution and it's not as simple as I'm making it sound.  Not this time.  Just do it later.  How hard is that?  Personally, I don't know why they can't just cancel it altogether and tell the people who would have spent money on the day of the marathon to just donate the money instead, but maybe that's asking too much.  I hope, at least, that this will convince everyone in New York that they can't ever vote for Bloomberg again.

Bad News

Sadly, tonight's final debate of the long campaign season will go off without my commentary, as I'll be at work for most if not all of it.  I may try to do something with Election Day, but seeing as this is the last debate, I wanted to say thank you.  For anyone who took the time to read and/or comment, I've enjoyed following all of these debates and I hope I gave you a laugh, and maybe even encouraged one or two more people to pay more attention.

It's probably for the best, I hate foreign policy debates.  Not because Mitt Romney will spend the night pandering to the simpletons in his party.  Not because Mitt Romney will say many many things that expose how little he knows about foreign policy only to have the media talk about how good he looked and how strong he sounded doing it.  Not even because I find it difficult to find any real difference between the two parties on many issues.

I hate foreign policy debates because I'm not sure they matter.  In my adult life, I've learned that we have no idea what foreign policy disasters the guy who wins this election is going to have to deal with. I'm not super interested in what these guys say they would do if something happens, because it's always the thing we don't expect that gets us.

What I want to know is who's smarter?  Who's more reasonable, who's more rational?  I don't care about canned answers on the issues we already know about.  I need to know which guy shows me that he's ready to handle the unexpected crisis?

And that's why I'm voting for Barack Obama.  Because he's just smarter.  He knows more and he's willing to learn more.  I honestly think Mitt Romney sees foreign policy as a campaign issue, not something he actually cares about.  And that's fine, but that's why he doesn't get my vote.

Binders Full of Women And (More) Things I Don't Care About

I've mentioned this before, but there are still a great many things in this world about which I do not care.  Now, to be fair, I'm not exactly the model for caring about stuff.  At any given time in my life, there are a few things and/or people that I care about very much, and everything else can pretty much go fuck itself.  So, I wouldn't suggest that everybody should not care about the same things I don't care about, but there are some things that make me wonder why anybody would care about them.  Like...

The superbowl halftime show.  I'm done with this, OK?  Beyonce is great, and maybe she'll bring her husband and that would be even better.  And maybe he'll bring some people he's worked with in the past.  I'm not saying I won't enjoy the Beyonce/Jay-Z/Rihanna/Eminem halftime show, I'm just saying I don't care.  My superbowl Sunday wouldn't really be any worse if they had just decided to dig up another bunch of fossils to throw on the stage. 

You know why?  Because you know what always sucks no matter how good the artist is?  A fifteen minute concert in front of a crowd that may or may not even like the performer because that's not what they came to see.  Especially since halftime is the best time for the crowd to go pee and get more beer and a nacho refill.  Even when The Who played it wasn't really that good, and they've been practicing ever since they played the halftime show at the Civil War (which was also terrible and caused President Lincoln to quickly declare "Christ this is awful, can we just get back to killing each other?").

Speaking of sports, I don't care about any summer sport once football starts.  Seriously.  Baseball, NASCAR, golf, whatever else i forced myself to watch all summer in the gap between hockey and football; please stop.  All of you need to have your championships in late August or on Labor Day weekend and then you need to shut up and watch football like the rest of us. 

If you don't care that nobody is watching, then just think about your poor athletes.  Baseball players have to spend three hours every Sunday in September playing baseball instead of watching football.  NASCAR drivers don't get to watch football until some time in November.  Don't those leagues feel bad about that?  They should.

I don't care if Lance Armstrong cheated.  First of all, seriously, who gives a shit?  He cheated in a French bicycle race.  Read that last sentence a few times and ask yourself what part of that should matter to anyone.  I never liked Lance Armstrong that much anyway, but hasn't he raised like eleventy billion dollars for cancer research?  But now fuck him because he was the one guy in cycling who was taking performance-enhancing drugs, except for, ya know, EVERY OTHER FUCKING PERSON IN THE SPORT!?! 

The chances of a Tour de France winner eventually getting stripped of the title for using performance enhancers are basically the same as the chances of everything that John Calipari does at Kentucky eventually being vacated for recruiting violations.  Like 98%.  Cycling is a perfect example of why sports really need to think twice and make sure they really want to know what's going on before they start with a testing program.  But somehow Lance Armstrong is now a big evil man.  I don't understand people sometimes.

I still don't care about reality TV.  I mentioned this last time http://somethingclever13.blogspot.com/2009/12/things-i-dont-care-about.html but it's only getting worse.  The Learning Channel used to air legit valuable television about science and stuff.  Now it's amish people in New York City and honey boo boo.  When I was a kid, the Real World San Francisco was the best thing I'd ever seen on TV, and it's been all downhill from there for reality TV.  Where's Puck when you need him? 

The bigger point is, by replacing actual, valuable, educational TV, reality shows on channels like TLC are, literally, making us dumber.  To paraphrase; honey boo boo, you are one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever seen. At no point in your rambling, incoherent nonsense are you ever close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this country is now dumber for having experienced you. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

Finally, I don't care about Mitt Romney's binder o' hoes, er, I mean, binders full of women.  Honestly, we all know what he was talking about and it wasn't anything offensive.  He just worded it a little strangely, which is kind of his thing.  Ginning up outrage over some stupid little comment is the Republicans' thing, and when the Democrats try it they pretty much always fail miserably. 

More importantly, wasn't the actually bad part when Romney suggested that a necessary part of hiring women is making sure you let them leave in time to go cook dinner?  I mean, you wouldn't want the hard working husbands of the women you hire out of pity to come home after a long day of working way past 5 just to find an empty table because you kept their wives at work too late.  Is it even possible for dinner to happen without a woman cooking it?  I don't know, and Mitt doesn't want to find out.

And what about all the other stupid things Mitt said Tuesday night?  He said his answer to gun violence in America involves 1) not ever considering any new gun legislation, but 2) telling people who have babies to get married.  This one statement alone should disqualify anyone from holding any kind of public office, but somehow binders full of women gets more press. 

Did you also notice how Mitt quickly threw in that the two parents had to be a mother and a father?  The only thing Republicans hate more than single moms is multiple homosexuals.  Ya know, as far as I know, Mitt had a mom and a dad, and he still turned out pretty useless.  Maybe it's time for the country to stop taking family planning advice from these idiots.

Round Two

This is very exciting.  Tonight's debate is being held at my alma mater, Hofstra University.  I assume the candidates will be expected to address important Hofstra issues like "can you still call it a unispan if there are three of them?" and "why didn't they have a Nathan's when I went to school there?" and "Is Hofstra red a real thing?". 

Tonight's debate is a town hall.  Yuck, these are always murder.  If professional grown-up journalists like Jim Lehrer can't even do a decent job of asking questions, what makes you think random people off the street (off the streets of Long Island, no less) can do it.  Maybe someone will get lucky and trip Mitt Romney up with a trick question like "Can you give us some specifics on your policy proposals?" or "I'm not wealthy, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much does that make you hate me?".

During the last debate, Dave suggested these things should be scored like boxing matches, and I couldn't agree more, so that's what I'll be trying to accomplish tonight.  Since I'm the only person left in the world who actually watches boxing, a quick review of boxing scoring is in order, so let's go to HBO's Harold Lederman...

"OK Jim, the Barack Obama/Mitt Romney fight is scheduled for 10 rounds using the unified rules of the association of boxing commissions.  There is no three knockdown rule and a fighter cannot be saved by the bell in any round, including the 10th and final round.  Scoring is based on four criteria; clean punching, effective aggression, defense and ring generalship, with an emphasis on clean punching."

9:00PM: Tonight's moderator is CNN's Candy Crowley.  This is a perfect match for a town hall style debate since CNN gave up on journalism years ago and now basically just re-tweets the "news".

9:00PM: Once again, CNN's John King provided some piercing pre-debate insight by pointing out that the candidates shouldn't insult the people asking the questions.  Good tip John.  Also, they should try not to set anything on fire and they should definitely not take their pants off.

9:03PM: Romney says he knows what it takes to create good jobs again.  He didn't tell us what it takes, so you're just going to have to take his word for it.

9:06PM: Obama comes out swinging, mentioning the 5 million jobs created since he took office and laying out three specific points on job creation.

9:09PM: Romney accused President Obama of "taking Detroit bankrupt".  Dave asks "can you take something bankrupt?".  Mitt Romney can.

9:10PM: Obama says Romney doesn't have a five point plan, he has a one point plan, to let people at the top of the economy play by different rules.  I'm going to call that clean punching and effective aggression.  Round 1: 10-9 Obama.

9:12PM: Some guy just asked the President if he agrees that it's not the job of the Energy Department to lower gas prices.  Sigh.  In what way do people think the government controls gas prices?  Are these guys running for President of OPEC?

9:15PM: Romney says that the rise in oil production under President Obama hasn't come from federal land.  Does oil from non-federal land not make my car go?  I don't understand this criticism.

9:16PM: Mitt Romney is in favor of the energy sources of the future, specifically, future coal.

9:17PM: Obama "very little of what Governor Romney just said is true".  Ha!  He followed up immediately by citing something Mitt Romney said a while back and pointing out how it's completely different from what he just said.

9:18PM: Romney says oil production is down on Federal lands, Obama swears it's not.  They can't both be telling the truth.  If only there was some kind of journalist around who knew stuff and could tell us who was lying.

9:20PM: Romney says he will fight for oil, coal and natural gas.  That sounds 100% true to me.  If that's the President you want, go ahead and vote for Mitt.

9:21PM: Obama makes the most important point about gas prices, which is that they were just about where they are now in early 2008, then Bush detonated the economy and gas prices were almost cut in half, then Obama took office.  Round 2: 10-9 Obama.

9:23PM: Candy Crowley has already lost all control.  This is going to be a mess.

9:24PM: Romney says the middle class has been buried over the last four years.  He means the last 32 years, but who's counting?  Then he, once again, claims that he can cut everyone's taxes without anyone having to pay for it because he's a wizard (OK, I made up the last part).

9:27PM: Romney promises to cut the capital gains tax to 0% for middle income families.  He seriously doesn't understand that regular people don't have capital gains.  I don't have a joke for that one, that statement is its own joke.

9:30PM: I don't know why Romney continues to claim that he doesn't want to cut taxes for wealthy people.  That's literally the only thing his party believes in that isn't named jesus.

9:32PM: Mitt Romney is not going to stop talking until you acknowledge his five point plan.  It has five points!  Why aren't you listening to Mitt?  Five points!

9:34PM: Obama just called Romney's tax plan "a sketchy deal".  Zing!  Round 3: 10-9 Obama.

9:36PM: Romney says 4 trillion dollars in deficits is math that doesn't add up.  Actually, it adds up to four trillion.

9:37PM: My reaction to the girl asking the question about equal pay for women was "oh, that girl's cute".  I think I probably feel bad about that, though I'm not 100% sure why.  I'm not saying I wouldn't give her equal pay for equal work, I'm just saying I also think she's pretty.

9:40PM: Romney on equal pay for women; "bitches be trippin".  OK, he didn't really say that.  He actually told a story about how he tried to hire some women when he was Governor of Massachusetts and how he worked with them on flexible hours so they could get home and take care of their lady problems while the men kept working.

9:42PM: Obama takes the equal pay question as an opportunity to talk about contraception.  I'm going to have to deduct a point for that.  Round 4: 10-8 Romney.

9:46PM: Mitt Romney is really concerned about the rules of the debate, not really a good look for him.

9:46PM: An Obama campaign staffer, er, I mean, an undecided voter, just asked Romney how he's different from George W. Bush.

9:47PM: Mitt says his plan is so much different that what George Bush would have done.  Yeah, I mean, for one thing, Mitt's plan doesn't have a goofy Texas accent.

9:49PM: "Pioneer of outsourcing" was actually Mitt's nickname in high school.

9:51PM: Obama just suggested that Romney is actually worse than George Bush.  Ouch.  I'm scoring round 5 9-9 after deducting a point from Obama for the low blow.

9:52PM: Obama says he passed the toughest Wall St. reform since the 1930's.  He added "the implementation of that whole thing has been a clusterfuck, but hey, we passed it".

9:54PM: Not to agree with Mitt's incessant whining about the debate rules, but Obama is dominating the time of possession here.

9:55PM: Romney; "we can't afford four more years like the last four years".  That's basically his only point, and that's OK, but we also can't afford four years of stupid Reagan economic policies, so I feel like we're kind of at an impasse here.

9:58PM: Romney is sternly lecturing Obama on what a terrible President he's been.  I thought he was leading up to firing him.  Round 6: 10-9 Romney.

9:58PM: Oh, they got a Latina lady to ask the immigration question #classy.

10:01PM: Me: "wouldn't it be fun if they got a white person to ask the immigration question for once?".  Dave: "what, like a Canadian?"

10:02PM: I stopped listening for like 10 seconds and all of a sudden Obama was talking about gang-bangers.  OK, OK, I'm awake.

10:04PM: Romney just answered Candy Crowley's question by saying "no" and then making up his own question to answer, which included him defending the fact that his blind trust has invested in companies in China.

10:05PM: Romney to the President "have you looked at your pension?" Obama "mine isn't as big as yours so it doesn't take as long".  He got a good laugh out of the audience for that one.  Round 7: 10-9 Obama.

10:09PM: Obama started the Libya question by pointing out that ambassadors aren't some political football for him, he actually knows these people.  Honestly, that's the only thing I wanted to hear on this question.  Round 8: 10-9 Obama.

10:11PM: Romney says he feels deep sympathy for the families impacted by the Libya attack.  That didn't stop him from trying (and failing) to use it to score political points.

10:14PM: Obama is legit angry about having to keep talking about this Libya thing.  I have to say I'm happy to see him not being afraid to seem a little angry when anger is called for.

10:16PM: Mitt said Obama didn't call the Libya thing terrorism for two weeks and Crowley actually corrected Mitt and pointed out that Obama called it terrorism the next day.  Look at someone from CNN acting like a real journalist!  Blitzer must be so proud!

10:18PM: Question about the 2nd amendment and assault weapons.  Obama failed to point out that the 2nd amendment was written long before assault weapons were invented, but he did talk about trying to re-introduce an assault weapons ban, so that's better than nothing I guess.

10:20PM: Mitt says he isn't in favor of making new legislation about guns or taking guns away.  Another moment of honesty from Mitt, but then he somehow jumped from gun control to talking about how we should encourage people to get married if they're going to have a kid.  I'm counting that as a knockdown for Obama.  Round 9: 10-8 Obama.

10:24PM: Obama points out that Romney was for an assault weapons ban before he was against it.  That line works better if you get him to say it about himself like John Kerry did.

10:25PM: Obama jumped from guns to education.  Well, that's closer I guess, but I still don't really get it.  Crowley, as she did with Romney, jumped in and pointed out that the question was guns.  The candidates do not care.

10:27PM: Romney says he's going to make America more attractive again.  I feel like Romney's idea of more attractive would be lots of make-up, new expensive clothes and maybe some fake boobs.  I'm really more into a jeans and t-shirt, comfortable, casual looking America.

10:29PM: Me: "is this debate going to run long?  Is that even allowed?".  Dave: "No, res life has the room reserved at 11 for an in-service training".  I wouldn't include that joke, but so many people who read my blog were RAs or RDs at some point that I feel like everyone will get it.

10:31PM: Obama says Romney's company invested in "pioneers of outsourcing".  He says that's not his phrase, reporters said it.  Well, if reporters say it, it must be true.

10:32PM: How would Mitt Romney convince a company like Apple to bring jobs back to the US?  Come on, you know this one.  That's right!  The magic power of tax cuts!

10:33PM: Obama; "Candy, there are some jobs that are not gonna come back."  That's 100% true, but I feel like he's going to regret saying it.  Round 10: 10-9 Romney

10:34PM: Some guy just asked Romney what the biggest misperception about him is.  That's the same question I ask graduate students when I interview them for a job.  I guess I'm saying that I should be allowed to moderate the next debate.

10:36PM: Mitt says he believes in god.  Good for you champ.

10:37PM: Mitt says we're all children of the same god.  He added "I mean, not homosexuals and immigrants, but, ya know, regular people".

10:38PM: Obama "I believe Mitt Romney is a good man".  That's not going to poll well.  I'm not sure Mitt Romney believes Mitt Romney is a good man.

OK then, no closing statements.  My final score card has it 95-92 Obama, and as arbitrary as my scoring system was, I feel like that's pretty close to the mark.  Obama was tougher and more active this time.  I honestly think being out from behind a podium and being able to walk around like a normal person was good for him.  Romney only came armed with his one talking point about how bad the economy still is, and it got old after a while.  I'd call it a solid win for Obama, which is good because the third fight is already scheduled and nobody wants to see a third fight if the same guy wins the first two.

Undercard

I think it's perfectly fair to ask why we even have Vice Presidential debates.  What kind of person would decide who they're voting for based on what the VP candidates have to say?  And why would we let that person vote?  Honestly, I know they take over if the President dies, but who would bother to assassinate Mitt Romney?  He's basically just a Republican spokes-model, like Reagan was.  A conservative mascot.  It would be like assassinating Ronald McDonald.

So, why watch the Vice Presidential debate?  Well, because something might actually happen, and not just because Joe Biden is a gaffe machine and Paul Ryan lies every time he talks.  These guys only get one shot at this, and after the insane reaction to the first Presidential debate, they both have to feel like there's a lot at stake.  And also, yes, Biden's crazy sometimes, so there's that.

9:00PM: Before the debate on CNN, John King called Paul Ryan a strong advocate for smaller government.  No, that's still a lie.  Then some other guy called Biden "middle class, beer drinking Joe Biden".  He's not some coal miner from West Virginia, he's been in the Senate since he was 30.

9:00PM: OK, I'm going to start by admitting that I don't know who Martha Raddatz is.  I'm not the leading authority on debate moderators or anything, but I feel like that's not a good sign.

9:03PM: On the question of who the fuck the moderator is, my buddy Dave adds "according to Fox News, she caught the bouquet at Obama's wedding or something like that".  Well there you go.

9:05PM: It took approximately 37 seconds for Biden to mention that time when Obama ordered Navy Seals to shoot bin laden in the face.  Good move since Obama never actually got around to that last week.

9:07PM: Ryan says the Obama administration is projecting weakness abroad.  Yeah, all this face shooting and drone attacking looks really weak.  President Romney would go to other countries himself and kill terrorists with his bare hands.

9:09PM: Biden after a three minute Ryan ramble.."with all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey".  Biden is bringing the zingers tonight.  He could also be a little drunk.  Either way, this should be pretty fun.

9:11PM: We're spending a lot of time arguing about the terrorist attack a couple of weeks ago.  The fact that this is a political argument is really a pox on both of their houses, and I really don't want to talk about it.

9:12PM: Ryan says we should not be apologizing for standing up for our values.  OK, well nobody's doing that, but we'll keep an eye out.

9:15PM: Biden cracks himself up.

9:16PM: Biden keeps calling Ryan "my friend".  Important note, in Delaware, "my friend" means "this douchebag over here".

9:17PM: Ryan on Iran working toward a nuclear weapon.."they're spinning the centrifuges faster".  Wait, is that how building nuclear weapons works?  I honestly don't know.

9:20PM: Biden just called what Ryan was saying "a bunch of stuff".  I think we need an HBO VP debate so Biden can speak freely.

9:21PM: Biden on Iran.."if we ever do have to take action the world will be behind us, and that matters".  Well, not to Republicans.

9:22PM: Biden keeps trying to interrupt every time Ryan talks.  It's really funny.

9:24PM: Stupid question "can you get unemployment under 6% and how long will it take?"  The correct answer is, no, and I have no idea how long it will take before everyone realizes that.

9:27PM: Ryan.."I think the Vice President knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way".  Zing!

9:29PM: We're in the middle of a who can tell the saddest car accident story contest.  Biden won, I think.

9:33PM: I'm starting to think Paul Ryan might not actually be Joe Biden's friend.

9:35PM: Ryan says there's an "Obamacare board" that will be in charge of taking money out of medicare.  There's nothing Republicans hate more than Obamacare boards.  Biden agrees with me saying "it seems that every four years I hear the same thing about these panels". Ha! Although, no matter what you think of Paul Ryan, comparing anyone to Sarah Palin is a low blow.

9:38PM: We're drowning in a horrible discussion about medicare and vouchers now.  I promise to vote for whoever stops talking about this first.

9:41PM: So far I'm still voting for nobody.

9:41PM: It couldn't be any more clear that these two guys can't fucking stand each other.  Biden's five minutes away from ripping his shirt off and challenging Ryan to a wrestling match.

9:45PM: Raddatz finally ended the medicare discussion, so I'm voting for her.  I'm a man of my word.

9:46PM: Are we calling the 2008 economic disaster "The Great Recession" now?  Is that a thing?

9:47PM: Ryan says we shouldn't tax wealthy people more because it won't pay for anything anyway.  I don't really know what to say about that except, so?  Can we just do it for fun?

9:51PM: I'm sorry, I got lost in Paul Ryan's eyes for a few minutes.

9:55PM: Just to be clear, by Paul Ryan's logic, we would never cut the defense budget or make any branch of the military smaller in any way, because it would always be a sign of weakness.

10:00PM: Simple distinction on Afghanistan policy.  Biden (and Obama): We're leaving in 2014, so get your shit together.  Ryan (and Romney): We're leaving when you decide to get your shit together, and we're hoping you do it by 2014.

10:01PM: When Paul Ryan turns on his television these days, he sees the absolute unraveling of the Obama foreign policy.  He needs to check out some other channels.  Has he seen honey boo boo?

10:05PM: Biden is literally yelling at the moderator now about when they pulled the surge troops out of Afghanistan.  If Obama did that he'd get hammered by everyone, but I feel like Biden gets away with it.

10:07PM: Paul Ryan can name any city in Afghanistan.  Just try him.

10:07PM: Biden cracks me up too.

10:10PM: Paul Ryan wants to arm the freedom fighters in Syria.  Right, because arming the rebels in the middle east always works out well and never backfires in any way.

10:14PM: Ryan says you only put troops on the ground for national security interests.  This from the party that invaded Iraq for shits and giggles.

10:15PM: We're talking about religion now.  BOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

10:16PM: I should be able to hit Paul Ryan with a shoe whenever he uses the word faith in the same sentence as the words science and reason, unless the sentence is something like "Faith is completely incompatible with science and reason".

10:18PM: Biden says he refuses to impose his religious beliefs on others.  Paul Ryan is baffled by that whole concept.

10:20PM: Republicans believe that reproductive rights (and marriage rights, for that matter) should be up for a majority vote.  I wonder if they'd feel the same way about freedom of religion if they suddenly found themselves in the minority.

Closing statements, mostly nonsense, but I really liked how Biden framed his demeanor.  After seeming kind of angry all night, Biden said, if he seemed a little frustrated, it's because of how Romney and Ryan see the American people.  I don't know if that's bullshit or not, but it was a hell of a way for him to wrap it up.

I'm not sure how to sum this debate up, except to say this.  Every time Paul Ryan was talking, Biden's face was saying "I hate you, I hate you, I'm gonna punch you, I hate you".  Every time Biden was talking, Ryan's face was saying "Oh crap, oh crap, he's telling people all the things I don't really want them to know about".  I would say that Biden was passionate, tough and didn't let Ryan get away with anything. I'd also say that Ryan came off as more affable and maybe more likable, although I think Biden helped himself out with likability at the end, and he's always kind of likable anyway.

I would have bet just about anything on the media saying Biden won tonight no matter what happened, so I assume that'll be the prevailing wisdom.  I kind of don't care because it's a Vice Presidential debate and it doesn't really matter.  See you Tuesday for the next real debate.

Recap

If you think about it, last night's debate shouldn't have been that much of a surprise.  Preparing to debate Mitt Romney is like preparing for a boxing match against a southpaw, only when you get to the match, instead of fighting a lefty, you're wrestling a bear.  George Costanza once famously said it's not a lie if you believe it.  Similarly, you can't really prepare to debate Mitt Romney if even Mitt Romney doesn't know what he'll be believing and saying on any given day.

As someone who's been paying attention this whole time, I have a hard time declaring Mitt the winner, because I know he spent much of the debate, um, getting creative with reality.  But I will say this, the strategy was brilliant.  Everyone thought Mitt was walking into a trap.  The President was going to ask Mitt to explain how he's going to pay for his $5 trillion tax cut and Mitt would have to either give an explanation people would hate or refuse to give an explanation again, which people would also hate.  There's no way anyone could have anticipated Mitt just saying "Tax cut! What tax cut?  What is this crazy man talking about?".  I may be paraphrasing. 

For the President's part, I'm not sure what he could have done.  I know people wanted him to fight back more and call Romney out on his bullshit, but how does that really go?  Do you think the President does better if he spends the whole night whining about how Romney is distorting things and lying?  I don't know.  I like condescending, arrogant, dismissive Barack Obama (honestly, he's my favorite Barack Obama), but I'm fairly confident the Obama campaign has polling that says most people hate that shit.  

There's a great West Wing episode about a Presidential debate.  The campaign team sees polling that says people will think President Bartlet is arrogant no matter what he does, so then they tell him to just go be himself and he crushes Rick Perry, er...Rob Ritchie.  That's a nice story, but that's not really how it works.  In reality, doing the thing that people expect you to do that they hate only makes more people hate you, and hate you more. 

I think the President's strategy, which he had to think of all on his own because, again, there's just no preparing for Mitt Romney, was to let Mitt punch himself out with nonsense and let the fact-checkers and the media kill him for it afterwards.  Obviously, there were a couple of flaws in the President's plan.  Number one, people don't care that much about facts.  Especially undecided voters.  They barely even know what country they live in.

Number two, trusting the media to actually do their job was a HUGE mistake.  HUUUUGGGEE!!  I hardly watched any of the post-debate coverage because I was too busy reading through my blog and pretending I care if things are spelled correctly, but the little pieces I heard were ridiculous, especially from a media that's supposed to be in the tank for Obama.  Here's what I heard from the media after the debate:

1) Mitt Romney's masterful and commanding performance.  Really?  All he did was lie and smirk.  I can do that anytime I want.  Can I be President now?

2) The President was looking down and writing a lot.  OK, I'll give the media that one.  What was he doing?  He was probably trying to figure out when Mitt would start with the zingers.  I can't blame him, I was too.

3) Mitt would cut Obamacare and PBS funding.  OK look, I know it's stupid to say you would cut PBS funding because it's such a small percentage of the budget, but I think he was just trying to make a joke.  Jim Lehrer was sitting right there.  If you've seen Mitt try to make jokes in the past, you know this is the best he's done so far.

So here's what I learned.  If you talk about Big Bird in a Presidential debate, people will talk about that shit.  They'll talk about that instead of, say, the job losses that cutting funding would create at local PBS stations that aren't funded by the Children's Television Workshop.

More importantly, I learned that if you win a Presidential debate by mostly being dishonest and misleading, the media will spend 99% of their reaction talking about the winning part and 1% of their reaction talking about the dishonest and misleading part (though I'm told MSNBC focused a little more on the lying, but that doesn't really count because they would have called Mitt a liar if his central argument was that the sky is blue...and no, I'm not saying MSNBC is the same as Fox, but they aren't neutral either).

The only important take-away is this.  If you're an undecided voter who plans to watch any of the remaining debates to decide who to vote for, just watch the debate and then turn it right off before those idiots on TV start telling you who you think won.  What happened to Keith Olbermann?  At least he was funny.

Willard's House of Zingers

If you haven't been following political news over the last few days, you may not be aware that Mitt Romney has spent the last couple of months memorizing zingers for the Presidential debates.  I guess they figured Mitt's own comedy stylings about how poor people are lazy and useless wouldn't play to a national audience.

I honestly can't think of a better example of how the Romney campaign is a total disaster.  First, they take a candidate who already seems wooden and robotic and try to pre-program him with witty one-liners, as if that will do anything other than make him sound more robotic and disingenuous.  And then, they leak the story before the debates.  So now, even if Mitt actually does think of something spontaneous and funny to say all on his own, nobody will believe it was spontaneous, or that Mitt thought of it.  Well done.

I grew up believing that Republicans were the grown-ups.  That maybe they didn't always have the best ideas, but they were always the best at running campaigns and winning political fights.  The McCain campaign was a three ring circus without a ring leader, and the Romney campaign is making the McCain campaign look like it was run by a highly skilled team of Nobel laureates.  This doesn't bode well for the party, is I guess what I'm saying.

Anyway, it's time for another debate.  Unfortunately, it's just Romney and Obama this time.  I don't know why they couldn't have invited some of the other Republican candidates just for fun.  I miss Herman Cain shouting random numbers at me, and Michele Bachmann staring me down with her crazy eyes, and Rick Santorum spewing hate from behind his comfy and safe sweater vest.  Actually, I don't really miss that last one. 

On a more serious note, why doesn't Gary Johnson get to play tonight?  He's on the ballot everywhere.  How did we wind up with such a rigged system?  I hope Gary Johnson charges the stage from the audience like an NBA draft pick who wasn't invited to the green room.  If it happens, Gary has my vote, even if the Secret Service kills him.

Here we go...fair warning, I expect this to be pretty boring and quite maddening.  Proceed with caution.

9:00PM: Tonight's moderator is PBS anchor Jim Lehrer, so each candidate will be leaving with a complimentary tote bag.  (I've been practicing my zingers too...Zing!)

9:01PM: I'm watching on CNN tonight because, well, because I feel sorry for CNN.  I might switch to Fox a few times just to see if they're doctoring the audio or digitally darkening Obama's side of the stage.

9:02PM: Lehrer's review of the rules was already PBS-caliber long and boring.  He says the crowd has promised to be silent.

9:04PM: We're starting with the economy.  Ohhhh!  The one thing neither of these guys wanted to talk about.

9:04PM: Obama just wished his wife a happy anniversary.  I couldn't be less interested in that, -1 point.

9:05PM: The first question was simply "what are the major differences between the two of you on how you'd create jobs?".  Obama went first and spent 0 seconds answering that question, finishing with "I'm looking forward to having that debate".  Psst...you're having it right now!

9:07PM: Romney's got a five point job plan.  #5 was about small businesses and, as far as I could tell, was the only one that actually sort of related to jobs.

9:09PM: Both of these guys have already talked about improving our education system.  I suspect neither of them have any idea how to do that.  I also have no idea, but I'm not running for President.

9:10PM: Obama keeps saying he agrees with Governor Romney on stuff.  He knows this is a debate, right?

9:11PM: Mitt Romney just said he doesn't have a tax cut in his economic plan.  I'm 100% positive that isn't even remotely true.  Also, did you know the President is personally responsible for gas prices?  I didn't know that either.

9:13PM: Three minutes later, Romney said he wants to lower tax rates.  My head hurts already.

9:13PM: Romney, "I like coal".  He added, "clean coal".  OK, but just to be clear, clean coal isn't a real thing.

9:16PM: Romney swears he doesn't want a 5 trillion dollar tax cut, and he won't "reduce the taxes paid by upper income Americans".  But then again said he wants to bring down rates.  I think Mitt's struggling with what words mean.

9:19PM: Obama is hammering Mitt with math.  Americans don't like math Mr. President...and, from the looks of it, neither does Mitt.

9:20PM: I just noticed that Mitt's American flag lapel pin is at least twice as big as Obama's.  Breaking news on Fox, Mitt is at least twice as American as the President.

9:21PM: According to the focus group response lines on CNN, the ladies love them some Obama.

9:22PM: Breaking news from Mitt, businesses don't want businesses to have to pay higher tax rates.  Important point about Mitt here, he looks at governing in terms of what businesses want, and what's good for businesses.  If you like that, you should probably vote for Mitt.  Me?  I'm not voting for Mitt.

9:23PM: Obama says he has math, common sense and our history on his side.  Yeah right, three things that all have a well known liberal bias.

9:27PM: Mitt promises to cut all government programs that aren't worth borrowing money from China to pay for, including "Obamacare" and PBS.  He said he likes Big Bird, but still no funding for PBS.

9:29PM: Mitt is smirking while Obama is talking about how the last Republican President burned down the economy and left it for Obama to clean up.  See, it's funny because Mitt wants to do the same thing again.

9:31PM: Romney thinks the President should have jumped on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan.  Mitt doesn't actually support Simpson-Bowles, but he thinks the President should have.  He probably thinks the President should have supported it a year ago and then changed his mind a few times.

9:33PM: Mitt is throwing a medium sized tantrum about raising taxes.  Another important distinction here.  Obama wants to get more revenue by collecting more revenue, Romney wants to get more revenue through the magic power of tax cuts.  One of those things sounds more plausible.

9:36PM: Apparently Obama met a stripper in Vegas with 42 kids, or, er, a teacher in Vegas with 42 kids in her class.  Whatever, I hate these stupid stories about random people candidates met.

9:37PM: Romney just got a text message from Rick Santorum, who is infuriated because Mitt hasn't yet mentioned how the gays are destroying America.

9:38PM: Romney just mocked the Obama administration for investing in alternative energy.  Yeah, fuck that shit!  Oil and coal are an infinite resource, we just have to keep digging.

9:40PM: It's very important to Lehrer that we understand which segment of the debate we're currently in.

9:43PM: Mitt just invited people over 60 to stop listening.  Don't worry Mitt, they're mostly asleep by now, along with pretty much everyone else.  Come on, Mitt!  What happened to the zingers?

9:44PM: They're talking about social security and medicare now.  This is basically just a competition to see who can do a better job of demonizing the other guy.

9:45PM: Mitt wants to be very clear that his terrible plan to turn medicare into a voucher program will only screw "future people".

9:46PM: I would describe Mitt Romney's performance tonight as smirktastic.

9:48PM: Important point here.  Romney claims his medicare idea will give people a choice between the current medicare model or private plans, but that's not really true because sucking money out of the current model and putting it into private insurance will weaken and ultimately kill the current model, leaving people with no choices, which is approximately when the prices go back up.

9:51PM: Romney says he would repeal and replace Dodd-Frank.  I mean, you know, he'd get around to replacing it, eventually.

9:53PM:  If Mitt's been practicing his zingers, Barack's been practicing his incredibly long, slightly exasperated pauses.

9:55PM: Blaming people who took out mortgages they couldn't really afford for the financial crisis is one of the stupider Republican talking points.  "Yeah!  How dare those poor people try to have a place to live!"

9:56PM: Mitt wants to repeal Obamacare because businesses can't afford it.  You hear this from Republicans a lot, and it's a scam.  Republicans are the ones who made sure the Affordable Care Act did nothing to lower costs, and now they're bitching because it didn't lower costs.

10:00PM: I predict Republicans will hammer the President after this debate for attacking profits.  It'll be a lie, but they'll do it anyway and it'll probably work.

10:01PM: How did it become the President's fault that he had to do everything without any Republican support?  "Yeah, it's that mean President, he turned us all into a bunch of crying toddlers!"  Doesn't the President actually deserve credit for doing things with the legislative equivalent of one arm tied behind his back?

10:04PM: Obama just said Cleveland Clinic is one of the best health care systems in the world.  I'm sorry, I refuse to believe anything associated with Cleveland is the best in the world at anything.

10:08PM: Nobody in the federal government is taking over health care you crazy idiot!

10:10PM: Obama just asked if Romney is keeping all of his plans secret because they're just so good.  I think I saw Mitt writing that one down.  Best line of the night.

10:12PM: Romney appears to be talking hypothetically about a number of possible things a President Romney could do about health care, but he's unwilling to actually pick one because he says he shouldn't go into office with a plan that he wants to ram through.  That's not a terrible approach as long as you have a Congress to work with that's useful and competent.  We have one of those, right?  Right?

10:13PM:  I'm pretty sure the camera just caught Mitt flirting with the audience, or Lehrer.

10:17PM: Mitt still hasn't mentioned how the gays are ruining everything, or how using birth control makes a woman a slut.  Does he know he's a Republican?

10:18PM: Romney. "it's time for a new path".  He added, "I mean, I'm proposing the same path we were on like four years ago, so it's more like a certified pre-owned path, but still".

10:22PM: I'm not 100% sure Mitt is familiar with his own platform.

10:23PM: My biggest take away from this debate is that Mitt Romney LOVES him some business.

10:27PM: Obama just used the word "principled".  Someone get Mitt a dictionary.

10:29PM: I didn't hear one zinger tonight, but maybe we just don't know what Mitt thinks a zinger is.

Final Thought: I don't understand how Romney can spend 18 months running as a fringe conservative and then show up tonight talking like some kind of bi-partisan moderate.  Sadly, I suspect people who weren't paying attention before now may fall for it.  But then again, you never really know who the real Mitt is.  Maybe it's the fringe conservatives that fell for it.  Mitt's a puzzle.

The media literally can't wait to tell me how Romney dominated this debate.  As someone who's been paying attention the whole time, I didn't really see it that way because I know Mitt lied a bunch of times, but I can see how someone who just starting paying attention would see this as a pretty solid Romney win.  Which leads me to ask, was the media not really paying attention before now?

Maybe I'll spend some time tomorrow night putting together some coherent thoughts about what I just saw, or maybe not, I don't know.  Either way, see you at the next debate.

Planet Mitt

I once had a job where I answered phones all day.  It was really fun and when we worked on weekends we'd play spades sometimes when the phones weren't busy.  If you get a bad hand in spades, you can bid nil and then instead of trying to win tricks you're trying to not win any.  There's a bonus if you succeed in not winning any and a penalty if you don't.

I'm wondering if maybe Mitt Romney bid nil on this election and forgot to tell us.  I've been thinking for weeks that people shouldn't rush to judgment so quickly every time Mitt does something stupid.  There's still so much time left, and three debates and all that.  But man, there's a limit to how much stupid you can make up for in debates, especially since the President is awesome at debating and Romney spent a year arguing with that clown car full of idiots (and Ron Paul). 

The other side of the argument is expectations for Mitt in the debates are so low that anything short of setting the building on fire or actually killing a poor person on live TV will be a win for him.  I don't know though, I think he needs some new ideas.  Romney campaign people, get ready to start writing (assuming you can read and write which, judging by the campaign you've run so far, may be a poor assumption).

Idea #1
Replacement Mitt.  Do you know how much I used to hate NFL referees?  If you had asked me, just last year, if I believed trained chimps could do a better job officiating games than the NFL referees, I would have said "of course!  They certainly couldn't be any worse!"

Now?  I mean, holy crap!  I was one of those people who thought I wouldn't miss the referees.  The last time I was that wrong about something I was telling you that Charlie Crist was going to be the next Senator from Florida.  Charlie Who?  Exactly!  How much better would Mitt look if he let Rick Santorum take his place for a couple of weeks?  Rick Santorum makes Mitt Romney look like Franklin Roosevelt.  How do you think Mitt got the nomination in the first place?  There may not be enough time left for Mitt to pull this strategy off successfully, but it couldn't hurt to try.

Idea #2
Helper monkey.  The best part about the helper monkey strategy is Mitt wouldn't have to change anything else.  Look, Mitt's biggest problem is still that nobody likes him.  Now imagine you're watching a Romney speech.  Everything is the same as always.  Mitt's spouting nonsense talking points, not really saying anything, wishing someone would come along and change him into a real boy.  All of that is still happening, but also, there's a little monkey running around getting Mitt juice and holding up his cue cards.  How much more would you like Mitt at that point?  A lot more, you say?  Exactly.

Idea #3
This is a little something I like to call "pulling a Sting".  Remember WCW in the mid 90's after they started the NWO.  Before the NWO, Sting was one of WCW's top stars.  Once the NWO came along, Sting stopped talking for like a year.  He just hung out in the rafters of the building pointing his baseball bat at Hulk Hogan. 

Wouldn't Mitt Romney be better off if he shut up until November and just hung around Obama events pointing a baseball bat at the President and looking menacing?  It certainly couldn't make things any worse.  Although, with Mitt, a regular wooden baseball bat wouldn't really be appropriate.  I'm thinking more like a cricket mallet made of solid gold.  No wait, cricket is a little Europeany for Mitt.  I've got it!  A lacrosse stick made entirely of diamond! Not diamonds.  Just one huge diamond, cut into the shape of a lacrosse stick.

Idea #4
Go to war with Iran right now.  I've watched as much election coverage as anybody who isn't paid to watch election coverage and I only know two things about a Romney administration.  First, he'll cut taxes for rich people.  He's been super clear about that.  Second, we're going to war with Iran.

But why wait?  Mitt's got tons of money.  He could easily put together his own army.  It wouldn't be as good as the US Army, but it'd be better than the Kiss army, and that's probably good enough to deal with Iran.  Or at least good enough to deal with Iran the way Mitt would, which would just be bombing them and waiting for good things to magically happen after.  And even if this doesn't get Mitt elected, he still did half of what he wanted to do.

Idea #5
Mystery candidate.  We'd have to be pretty stupid to fall for this, but luckily, we are pretty stupid.  Mitt drops out of the race and they replace him with a mystery candidate.  It would be just like old game shows where contestants had to choose between the perfectly adequate prize they could see or the mystery prize in the mystery box.

Which candidate do you want?  You want the one in the mystery box!  You know you do.  Nobody can resist the mystery box!  We'll be disappointed when we find out that it's still just Mitt in the mystery box, but by then it'll be too late and we'll be kind of relieved because at least it wasn't Newt Gingrich.

Idea #6
New ideas.  Mitt could start learning stuff and embracing policies and ideas that actually make sense.  He could start saying intelligent things and acting normal.  He could....I'm sorry...no...this definitely won't happen.

Idea #7
Free iphones.  Everyone who votes for Mitt gets a free new iphone.  It's just that simple.  I'm surprised he hasn't thought of this yet.  I'm pretty sure Karl Rove's super pac has enough money to buy everyone in America an iphone.

Idea #8
Bacon.  Did you hear about the upcoming bacon shortage?  I don't know if it's real or not, but I'm pretty sure millions of Americans are terrified.  If Mitt can present a comprehensive plan to save us from a baconless future, he'll win by 10 points.  Now, Mitt has yet to present a comprehensive plan about anything, but bacon is simpler and more delicious than the economy, so maybe he can pull it off.

Idea #9
The Republican party could engage in a long term strategy of voter suppression focusing on minority communities, young people and other core Democratic constituencies.  Maybe some kind of weird push for new voter ID laws based on completely false claims of voter fraud.  Something like this, if done effectively, could easily push states like Ohio and Pennsylvania over into Mitt's column.  I wonder why nobody in the Republican party has thought of this.  Hmmmm.

Idea #10
Planet Mitt.  This one is pretty self-explanatory.  Mitt can use his fortune to turn Mars into a habitable planet and then move all of his supporters there, where he can be president of them.  Actually, this might work out pretty well for everyone.  Let's go with this one.

Let Them Eat Tax Cuts

I'm supposed to be surprised, right? 

Mitt Romney doesn't care about poor people who "think they're entitled to food".  Mitt Romney knows that if starving people are just too lazy to ask their butler to go downstairs and tell their personal chef to fix them some breakfast, it's not the government's job to bail them out.  Get an intercom, jerks!  Or even better, just have a standing breakfast order with your personal chef and then you don't have to tell him to make you breakfast every day, he'll just bring it to you.  If starving people weren't so lazy and stupid, they'd be less starving, like Mitt.

But why am I supposed to be surprised by this?  This Presidential election has been going on since 1914.  Can you tell me one time when Mitt said something that made you believe that he thinks anything other than what we now have video of him saying?  I honestly can't.  There's no magical time before today when I can remember thinking Mitt Romney had any compassion for poor or working people, or any plans or ideas for how to help them. 

It's been a tough couple of weeks for Mitt.  His opportunistic and unbelievably stupid reaction to stuff being on fire and people being dead was a catastrophe, even for him.  It wasn't so much that he jumped on a national security crisis to try to score political points before it was even over.  It wasn't so much that he did it on September 11th (after all, Barack Obama didn't take a day off from emailing me and asking me for money on September 11th, which I thought was pretty stupid).  It was really two things.

First of all, Mitt failed so miserably at capitalizing on a national security crisis.  Nothing he said even made sense.  Listening to Mitt Romney talk about foreign policy is like listening to a four year old tell you where babies come from.  It's just rambling and incoherent and makes you wonder why his parents would bother telling him anything.

More importantly, Mitt doesn't have anything valuable to say about foreign policy at all.  That's what makes his little adventures into stupidity so infuriating.  Anybody can say something stupid, but when you don't have positions to fall back on that people can look at and say "well, he wasn't on his game today, but he's clearly not an actual moron", people start to wonder about you. 

Take Mitt's other comments about how maybe there's no peaceful solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  If someone smart said that, my reaction would be "shit, maybe they're right".  But when Mitt says it I just think "Middle East peace is hard, huh?  Thanks for the update captain dumbass."

But, again, I'm not surprised.  At no time during the 600 Republican primary debates did Mitt say anything that suggested his interest in foreign policy went beyond talking tough and promising not to apologize for things that nobody ever suggested apologizing for.  I just don't think he cares about it that much.

The same is true for Mitt's comments about 47% of Americans.  It wasn't that Mitt was saying things that were condescending and arrogant.  Barack Obama says condescending and arrogant things all the time, it's one of my favorite things about him.  The problem is that Mitt's actual economic policies square up with what he was saying so perfectly.  If your economic situation can't be significantly helped by tax cuts, then Mitt Romney doesn't really understand why you're bothering him. 

But again, there's just nothing surprising about this.  Mitt believes in the magic power of tax cuts.  If you're struggling to feed your family, Mitt's going to cut your boss' boss' taxes.  If you don't have a boss because you don't have a job, then Mitt's going to cut the taxes of some guy in your town who owns a business, and maybe he'll hire you...probably not though.  If your house is on fire, Mitt's going to put it out with tax cuts. 

And if that doesn't work, well, Mitt's pretty much out of ideas, and so is the rest of his party.  Well, except maybe jesus can help out too, that's always Republican plan B.  But he can't really help out, because he still isn't real.  I don't know if Mitt's mormon god, or gods, or whatever it is he believes in, are the kind of gods that are supposed to help with stuff, but unless Mitt's willing to lend you his magic underpants, I wouldn't hold my breath.

This is what Republicans believe in now.  Magic and fantasy.  If it can't be fixed by tax cuts or praying, then it can't be fixed by Republicans.  People are always whining about how Mitt doesn't give any specifics.  He doesn't have any!  It's like asking a magician to give you specifics about how he made the elephant appear out of nowhere.  He can't give you specifics, because that shit didn't actually happen.

And the people left in the Republican party with working brains are starting to chirp about the amazing lack of substance, common sense and basic competence from the Romney campaign.  Some of them have a right to complain, but most of them deserve to be blamed.  They embraced Sarah Palin.  They embraced the tea party.  How exactly did they think this story was going to end?

Last week, Rick Santorum said at their little apple pie and gay bashing rally that the "smart people" will never be on their side.  You said it, Rick.  

Big Government Conservatives

Mitt Romney is lying to you.  I know, I know...I'm going to need to be way more specific.  Mitt Romney would have you believe that you have a choice in November between small government conservatives (yeah!  look how small our government is!  Isn't it adorable?) and big government liberals (oh no! look how big that government is! It's going to get us! Run!), but I see almost no evidence for this being the case.

Republicans aren't for small government.  They're for super big intrusive government.  They just want their big government to do different things than the Democrats want the government to do.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of social issues.  That's why Republicans didn't want to talk about social issues in Tampa (well, that and because Republican positions on social issues are indefensible).

Take same-sex marriage.  Now, there are a dozen perfectly good arguments for marriage equality, and Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for opposing it.  But even if you don't agree with me on that, any impartial observer would agree that the Republican position on marriage is the big government position.  Republicans are the ones who want the government to tell you who you can marry.  Democrats are the ones saying marry whoever you want and try not to kill each other (well, most of them are saying that, some of them are still cowards).

Women's issues are the same way.  Republicans are the party that wants the government to restrict choice.  Republicans are the ones who want the government to limit access to birth control.  Republicans are the ones who introduced legislative language that would have put the government in the position of deciding between "forcible" rape and, I guess, the other kind of rape?  Republicans are the ones who want to require women to wear ankle-length dresses at all times including when they're sleeping.  OK, that last one is just Rick Santorum, but still.  Big, big, big government.

Sidenote:  I haven't really mentioned the whole Todd Akin thing because some things are just too stupid for words and I don't like to use the word fuck too much in any one post.  But seriously, what the fuck is wrong with that guy?  I've often said Republicans believe in magic, but I had no idea they believed in magic lady parts that protect themselves against rape semen (there's a word I never wanted to use in this blog, fuck you Todd Akin).  And don't tell me he misspoke.  He's a 65 year old man who said exactly what he's believed ever since some moron taught it to him and he didn't bother to find out if it was true or not.  He's an idiot, and he still might be a Senator.  Don't make me come over there Missouri!

Anyway, it isn't just social issues.  Mitt Romney wants to increase Defense spending by around 2 trillion dollars.  Trillion.  Now, I don't know if you know this, and I don't know if Mitt knows this, but the Defense department is a department of the government.  It's true, I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Mitt wants to make it 2 trillion dollars bigger.  Mitt also wants to make the Navy bigger, because you never know when the Spanish armada might show up.  The Navy works for the government too.

What about economics?  Well, the Republicans want to use the government to protect privilege.  Republican economic policies (tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating the estate tax, etc) are designed to use the Federal government as a tool to allow privileged people to stay that way and keep everyone else outside the gates where they belong.  Now, if you believe the Democrats want to use the government to create more economic equality, that's big government too.  But the point is, it's not a debate between big and small, it's a debate between what they want to use big government to do.

It's still a choice.  Voters need to listen to both sides and decide what they want their big government to do.  If you want your big government to protect privilege and enforce your religious beliefs, then you should vote Republican.  Really, you should.  But every time Mitt Romney tells you that a vote for him and Paul Ryan is a vote for small government, he's lying to you.