The Trouble With Mitt

I don't mind Mitt Romney being rich, and I don't think voters do either.  Everyone who runs a serious Presidential campaign is pretty wealthy.  And I don't care what Mitt's tax returns say when he releases them tomorrow.  It isn't Mitt's fault that our economy values investment over work.

The trouble with Mitt is his claim that he's been "creating jobs in the real economy".  Mitt isn't a job creator anymore than criminals are job creators because we have to employ police to stop them.  The fact that what you do sometimes results in adding jobs doesn't make you a professional job creator. 

More importantly, Mitt made most of his money in a game he couldn't lose.  Bain invested in failing companies, when the companies recovered, Bain made money.  When the companies failed, Bain still made money. 

Imagine a casino in your town with only two games.  The casino is full of nickel slots.  Everybody in the town can play them, but nobody ever wins.  The casino tells them they can win, but they can't.  Meanwhile, around the edges of the casino, you've got roulette wheels.  The roulette wheels always pay off.  No matter where you put your money, you always win.  But the minimum bet is 10 million dollars.  So guys like Mitt come in and clean the place out whenever they want, and for a while they're just carrying out all the money the poor people keep putting into the slots, but eventually the casino goes out of business.  Of course, in the real world, the casino is our economy and Mitt is, well, still Mitt.

Maybe that's a crappy analogy, but the point is, Mitt isn't a bad guy for being rich.  Mitt's a bad guy because he got rich being selfish (not a problem by itself) and then tried to sell it to us as some sort of altruistic job creation scheme (and there's the problem). 

Debate time!  Tonight's host from NBC is Brian Williams.  I think it'll be harder for Newt to push Williams around, but then again, Newt wins with volume, not content. 

9:02PM: Newt just described himself as someone who "has the courage to stand up to the Washington establishment".  It's honestly like he can't even hear himself talk.

9:05PM: Mitt just used the phrase "resigned in disgrace" twice while talking about Newt.  Newt responded by saying Mitt just said at least four things that were false, but he doesn't really want to get into what they were.  This is a debate, right?

9:07PM: Romney on why rednecks don't like him: (paraphrasing) "I don't know, but New Hampshire seems to like me just fine".  I would have gone with "because nobody likes me".

9:09PM: Can Brian Williams see Ron Paul or Rick Santorum?  Are they invisible?

9:10PM: Newt may be medicated tonight, he hasn't yelled at Williams once yet.

9:12PM: Apparently Santorum's mic is working, too bad.  Still no news from Ron Paul's podium.

9:14PM: Santorum is proud that he was too stupid to change his message when nobody in Pennsylvania agreed with it and he lost by 18. 

9:15PM: Hey, Ron's awake!  Ron says Newt didn't voluntarily step down from being the Speaker in 1998, he just didn't have the votes.  It was weird because it took a while to find out if he was trying to attack Newt or trying to compliment him.  Fun moment.

9:18PM: Mitt says you won't see any surprises when his tax returns come out tomorrow.  I predict Mitt will be surprised by how easily Newt can exploit his tax returns for political gain.  Then Mitt claimed that people will be happy to see he didn't pay anymore taxes than he owes.  I'm pretty sure nobody will be saying that.

9:22PM: Mitt and Newt are nice enough to work together to remind us that both of them would love it if rich people didn't have to pay any taxes at all.  At least they're honest about it.

9:23PM: Mitt says he "earned" what he has "the old fashioned way".  Yeah!  Since the beginning of time people have earned their keep by raiding failing companies and selling off the tattered pieces for profit.

9:26PM: Newt insists that consulting isn't lobbying work just because you're consulting for lobbyists.  Yeah!  Wait, what?  Then he refers to Mitt's telling the truth about Newt's history as "defamatory" and way too personal. 

9:28PM: Mitt makes the point that Freddie Mac wouldn't hire Newt as a historian for $25,000 a month.  Who would hire Newt as a historian?  He's an idiot.  I wouldn't hire him as a historian for 25 cents a month.

9:30PM: Newt and Mitt are just openly arguing with each other right now.  Williams has apparently taken a quick pee break.

9:32PM: Romney is basically admonishing Newt for "influence peddling" when he worked for Freddie Mac.  Still no word from Williams.  Newt was legitimately rattled there, it's like Mitt finally learned enough about human emotions to exploit them.  This could be dangerous.

9:35PM:  Dear NBC, I am not watching Smash, I don't care how many commercials you show me.

9:37PM: I like how Republicans blame the collapse of the housing market entirely on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Nothing else went wrong in the economy, just those two things.

9:40PM: Wait, my bad.  Ron pointed out the whole mortgage derivatives thing.  He was still blaming it all on the government somehow, but even when Ron's wrong, he's sort of half right.

9:41PM: Williams gives each candidate 30 seconds on how to fix the economy.  I could give all of their answers in three seconds - "cut taxes...and some nonsense about regulations".  Well, all except Ron, who would say those things, but then go on four two minutes (or two days if you let him) about the gold standard and liquidating the debt and interest rates and whatever else he could think of.

9:44PM: Talking about Fidel Castro hypothetically dying (welcome to Florida politics), Mitt said he'd be happy that Castro had met his maker.  Newt immediately criticized Mitt for suggesting that Castro is going to heaven.  Neither one of them said anything that made sense, but here comes Ron.

9:46PM: Ron on Cuba "the cold war's over".  He went on to point out that our embargo just props Castro up and we should stop "living in the dark ages".  Boom!  That might be the most correct answer we've heard in any of these debates.  Of course, Santorum couldn't wait to completely disagree.

9:48PM: Santorum says jihadists are apparently infiltrating Cuba.  That doesn't sound right, but even if it is, you would think even an idiot like Santorum could see the connection between our enemies finding friends in Cuba and 50 years of us giving Cuba the "lalala we can't hear you" treatment.

9:50PM: Mitt's foreign policy seems to involve putting aircraft carriers everywhere.

9:50PM: Newt says the American people had "no interest" in going to war with Japan after Pearl Harbor.  I wasn't there, but I feel like we had some interest.  Remember, Newt's a historian.

9:51PM:  Ron should get a full one minute response to every answer given by every other candidate on foreign policy, just so he can continuously point out how stupid they all are.

9:53PM: Ron just kicked Mitt's ass on the Gulf of Hormuz and how it's hard to say Iran closing the Gulf of Hormuz is an act of war when they're doing it as a response to us blockading them.  Ron basically suggested that the blockade is an act of war already.  Probably a little over the top, but the point is, Mitt has no idea what he's talking about.

10:00PM: Santorum: "blah blah blah...bombing Iran...blah blah blah"

10:02PM: Rick Santorum believes that tourism in Florida wasn't adversely affected by BP filling the gulf of Mexico with oil, but by the high oil prices that followed.  Um, no that definitely isn't right.  Not even in the ballpark.

10:03PM: Newt is perfectly happy to pander for votes in Florida in Spanish, but if you want a ballot in Spanish, you can go straight to hell. 

10:05PM: Mitt says we want people to come here from other countries who speak other languages, but once they get here they'd better stop talking that gibberish and start speaking American.

10:07PM: Question to Mitt - he's not in favor of rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants, but he also thinks they need to go home.  How would he square that circle?  Apparently, President Romney would be so convincing that undocumented immigrants would "self-deport".  I'm not making that up.

10:11PM: Newt just gave an interesting one minute answer about sugar.  He seemed genuinely interested and almost amused by the whole sugar market thing, talking about a really interesting side story and agriculture special interests.  It was honestly sort of engaging, he actually looked like he was enjoying himself.

10:16PM: Nothing is worse than local news, especially once you've moved out of New York.

10:18PM: Santorum on why he wouldn't just let that lady in Florida die in peace in 2005.  I'd almost forgotten about that circus.  Just another in a long line of examples of how Republicans don't mind huge government overreaches when the government is doing things they like.

10:21PM: When Mitt Romney's in Florida, he is fully committed to space exploration and NASA.  Not so much for scientific reasons, but for commercial development and military development.  So, under President Romney, NASA's motto would be "Fuck science! We're gonna bomb Iran from space and sell the moon to the highest bidder". 

10:24PM: I don't know who this lady is, but she just asked "if tax cuts create jobs, then why didn't the Bush tax cuts work?"  It took 18 debates, but someone finally asked these idiots to explain that.  Newt says there were still too many regulations for the economy to grow.  That's total nonsense, but that's sort of Newt's comfort zone.

10:27PM: Seriously, I'm not watching Smash.  Not once, not ever. 

10:30PM: Williams looks legitimately bored.  It's like someone told him this debate would only be an hour and now he doesn't understand why he's still here.

10:32PM: Newt keeps talking about his involvement in the Reagan economic program and the development of supply side economics like they're good things.  That just reminds me how dumb he is.

10:34PM: Santorum just criticized Romney because he used to believe in global warming.  Then he criticized Ron Paul for believing that the Earth revolves around the Sun.  Ron said it's not the government's role to tell people what the Earth revolves around.

10:36PM: Ron - "what's wrong with having the government out of our personal lives?"  I wish Williams had gone to Santorum so we could hear him respond "Everything!"  I'm seriously a little concerned that President Santorum would make me start going to church again.

10:38PM: Williams asked Newt what scares him about the Presidency.  Newt completely ignored the question and just said whatever he wanted to say.

10:39PM: Williams asked Romney, if Mitt is running around campaigning on restoring America's greatness, when was America last great?  Mitt says it's still great now.  So, Mitt admits his campaign slogan is nonsense.  Good for him, I guess.

I guess we're done now.  These endings keep getting stranger and stranger.  We'll be back tomorrow for the State of the Union.  I don't know how much more of this I can take.  A person can only listen to Newt Gingrich talk for so long before he goes insane.