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.

75 Reasons I'm Still Single

Whenever I talk to my mom, she either asks me if I'm seeing anyone, or I can tell she wants to but she doesn't because she already knows the answer.  I often joke about why I'm still single, and then I thought, is there a blog in there?  And then I thought, of course there fucking is, because I don't get paid for this and whether 0 or 1,000 people read this has no impact on anything else in my life and I can write about whatever the fuck I want.  So there.

75 Reasons I'm Still Single
1) I'm given to understand, from movies and such, that women like a sense a humor.  That has yet to be my experience.
2) Maybe my sense of humor is more of an acquired taste.
3) Maybe me just telling people I'm funny doesn't make it so.
4) I'm not that good-looking.
5) I think I'd look better with a beard, but
6) Something from my vague memories of childhood tells me that growing a beard would make my mom a little too happy.
7) The rational part of my brain is mostly sitting this one out, because it doesn't really care why I'm still single, but it chimed in here to suggest that perhaps my refusal to grow a beard for that reason should shed a little more light on this whole topic, #waytoofuckingstubborn.
8) Yeah, my brain uses hash tags now, we're trying a new thing.
9) Shut up brain, nobody asked you!
10) Sleeping when there's somebody else in the bed is damn near impossible for me.
11) Seriously, who in history decided that couples have to share a bed?  I'd like a word with her (or him, but not really).
12) Speaking of sharing, I suck at that.
13) Maybe #10 would be less of a problem if my body hadn't decided that the best time for me to sleep is between 5AM and Noon.
14) I can't really stop myself from making a face at anybody who tells me they believe in god.
15) Turns out, lots of people believe in god.
16) When I was a kid, I was naturally good at a number of things.
17) school...
18) sports...
19) being awesomely rational.
20) For example, I wanted to play guitar, so I picked up a guitar...
21) I wasn't immediately awesome at playing the guitar...
22) I never picked up the guitar again.
23) Same thing happened with my keyboard.
24) There's a lesson in here somewhere about not being willing to try at things that aren't immediately perfect.
25) Also, some people aren't wild about #19.
26) I'm told that I always need to be right.
27) Apparently that's annoying.
28) I don't always need to be right, I just am right.
29) It's not my fault, I don't make the facts.
30) Rational brain wants to make another editorial comment.
31) I'm not allowing it.
32) My friend Sadie says I may or may not be a sociopath.
33) I might have made up the "may not" part of #32.
34) You can't grow the economy and cut the deficit by cutting taxes again...
35) Because you don't actually have magic powers.
36) OK, #34 and #35 don't have anything to do with me, but...
37) I feel obligated to mention that in every blog entry until people stop believing it.
38) I have at least 6 fantasy football teams.
39) It seems like people like to talk about books.
40) Unless Ernest Hemingway wrote it, there's about a 102% chance I haven't read it.
41) If I did have a girlfriend right now, she'd have to listen to me complain incessantly about those new Maker's Mark commercials with James Carville and his awful wife.
42) Seriously, I've never seen a worse ad campaign.
43) It's like they want me to hate their product.
44) It also makes me want to punch James Carville in the face...
45) Because I feel like he knows better.
46) I wanted to do 100 reasons why I'm still single...
47) But I'm only up to 47 and now I'm pretty bored...
48) I get bored really easily...
49) Probably another lesson in there...
50) Shut up, rational brain!
51) Online dating still seems weird and unnatural to me
52) No offense, but...
53) The people in those eHarmony commercials seem like the kind of couples that would do eHarmony commercials.
54) I don't want to be in that kind of couple.
55) Rational brain says maybe if I wasn't so fucking judgmental...
56) I said be quiet, brain!
57) The Yankees look pretty much done.
58) #57 isn't about me either...
59) but I'm pretty sure I'm right about it.
60) There's a very small chance that I'm going to find you interesting.
61) The fact that you don't find me interesting either doesn't change that.
62) If you're reading this, there's a decent chance you now know more about me than several people with whom I'm been in actual relationships.
63) Hmmmmm
64) I'm a pathological liar.
65) No wait, that's Paul Ryan.
66) My bad.
67) People think I'm quiet...
68) Because I can't make fun of you in my head and talk to you at the same time.
69) Eventually people find that out...
70) They don't love it.
71) #68 is a lie...
72) I absolutely can do that.
73) I spent two hours on a Saturday doing this.
74) Because it seemed like a good idea two hours ago...
75) See #7

The Cult of Personality

Tonight, Comrade Obama will speak at the DNC and, if crowd reaction from the first two nights is any indication, the democrats will riot and burn Charlotte to the ground.  So, before this impending tragedy takes all the funny out of the Democratic convention, I've got a point to make about why I don't think the Republicans can win this election.

First of all, did you see the audiences for each convention?  The Republican convention looked like the state of Florida's AARP convention.  No wonder they all liked Paul Ryan so much.  He was ten years younger than anyone else there, they all wanted to eat him and steal his life force.

I don't even know what to say about the Democratic convention audience.  It's like they rounded up a bunch of people in Penn Station at 3AM on a Wednesday, but honestly that doesn't even begin to cover it.  I've seen (and heard) babies in the audience at the DNC.  Honestly, babies.  One was crying while some lady was talking about how Republicans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act, thereby allowing insurance companies to deny people with pre-existing conditions, including sick babies.  Seriously, that happened, right there on my TV.

Who brings a baby to a political convention?  And people wonder why I refuse to register as a Democrat.  Diversity aside, I give the advantage on audience to the Republicans in terms of which crowd I'd rather be standing in.  Old boring people are exactly who should be at a political convention.  If you're under 30, you should be outside chanting things and throwing stuff and getting arrested. And if you're under 18 months, you should be nowhere near anything like a convention, and you shouldn't be on my TV.

Having said that, in a voting contest between "boring old white people" and "everyone else", I'd still put my money everyone else.  I think.  Old white people do like to vote.  No, I'm sticking with everyone else.

Then there's the actual talking.  I'll give the Republicans this, their message was certainly more simple.  Barack Obama is destroying America, and we're going to save it with tax cuts, because tax cuts are magic.  That's three days of Republican bloviating summed up in 19 words. 

Instead of spending three days calling the Republicans stupid (which is probably the way I would have gone), Democrats have decided to fight fire with fire by spending three days talking about how Barack Obama is actually the most awesome person in the history of awesomeness.  During Bill Clinton's speech last night, I lost count of the number of jobs he said the President saved or created somewhere around eleventy billion. 

Now, on the surface, the Democrats may seem to be at a disadvantage, what with getting bogged down with all their "facts" and "numbers" and "things that actually happened".  But I think, in the long run, the whole "telling the truth" and "not just making shit up" strategy is going to pay off.

Most important, I think, is the tone.  If the Republicans are the cult of tax cuts (and they absolutely are), then the Democrats are the cult of personality.  They believe in Barack Obama.  The speakers all talked about it, the talking points all echoed it, the pundits all noticed it; they believe.  In contrast, you'd barely know if any of the Republican speakers other than his wife had ever met Mitt Romney.

The RNC was fueled by hate.  Hate for the President, hate for certain types of people they don't like, hate for government.  The DNC has been fueled by belief.  Believe in Barack Obama, belief in what he can do, believe in what good government can do.  I'm not making a value judgment on who's right here, just stating the facts.  And I'm not blaming the Republicans for going negative, they can do what they want.

What I'm saying is, I don't think they can win with negativity against all the positivity and optimism we've seen in Charlotte.  I don't think you can be as successful getting your base out to vote for hate as you can be getting your base out to vote for hope.  I just don't think it can be done.  I guess we'll see.