Conservative, Republican David Brooks, on Mitt Romney, in case you missed it (guest post)

Because it's just too good to miss, really, proving that even rich, conservative, white Republicans don't like this rich, white, faux-conservative Republican:

The purpose of the Republican convention is to introduce America to the real Mitt Romney. Fortunately, I have spent hours researching this subject. I can provide you with the definitive biography and a unique look into the Byronic soul of the Republican nominee:

Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the Arrow shirt man.

Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words ("I like to fire people") at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.

Mitt grew up in a modest family. His father had an auto body shop called the American Motors Corporation, and his mother owned a small piece of land, Brazil. He had several boyhood friends, many of whom owned Nascar franchises, and excelled at school, where his fourth-grade project, "Inspiring Actuaries I Have Known," was widely admired.

The Romneys had a special family tradition. The most cherished member got to spend road trips on the roof of the car. Mitt spent many happy hours up there, applying face lotion to combat windburn.

The teenage years were more turbulent. He was sent to a private school, where he was saddened to find there are people in America who summer where they winter. He developed a lifelong concern for the second homeless, and organized bake sales with proceeds going to the moderately rich.

Some people say he retreated into himself during these years. He had a pet rock, which ran away from home because it was starved of affection. He bought a mood ring, but it remained permanently transparent. His ability to turn wine into water detracted from his popularity at parties.

There was, frankly, a period of wandering. After hearing Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," Romney decided to leave Mormonism and become Amish. He left the Amish faith because of its ban on hair product, and bounced around before settling back in college. There, he majored in music, rendering Mozart's entire oeuvre in PowerPoint.

His love affair with Ann Davies, the most impressive part of his life, restored his equilibrium. Always respectful, Mitt and Ann decided to elope with their parents. They went on a trip to Israel, where they tried and failed to introduce the concept of reticence. Romney also went on a mission to France. He spent two years knocking on doors, failing to win a single convert. This was a feat he would replicate during his 2008 presidential bid.

After his mission, he attended Harvard, studying business, law, classics and philosophy, though intellectually his first love was always tax avoidance. After Harvard, he took his jawline to Bain Consulting, a firm with very smart people with excessive personal hygiene. While at Bain, he helped rescue many outstanding companies, like Pan Am, Eastern Airlines, Atari and DeLorean.

Romney was extremely detail oriented in his business life. He once canceled a corporate retreat at which Abba had been hired to play, saying he found the band's music "too angry."

Romney is also a passionately devoted family man. After streamlining his wife's pregnancies down to six months each, Mitt helped Ann raise five perfect sons - Bip, Chip, Rip, Skip and Dip - who married identically tanned wives. Some have said that Romney's lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs.

After a successful stint at Bain, Romney was lured away to run the Winter Olympics, the second most Caucasian institution on earth, after the G.O.P. He then decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. His campaign slogan, "Vote Romney: More Impressive Than You'll Ever Be," was not a hit, but Romney won the race anyway on an environmental platform, promising to make the state safe for steeplechase.

After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month campaign, running unopposed. At the convention, where his Secret Service nickname is Mannequin, Romney will talk about his real-life record: successful business leader, superb family man, effective governor, devoted community leader and prudent decision-maker. If elected, he promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

Link: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/opinion/brooks-the-real-romney.xml

I think we can officially say the "auto bailout" officially worked now

Breaking news today: GM posts its highest profit ever: $7.6 billion GM earns its highest profit ever in 2011 with $7.6 billion; overseas losses cut 4Q profit So can we now, officially end the conversations and questions about the need, sense and logic of having "bailed out"--or invested in--GM, Detroit, Chrysler and the American auto workers? Please. Sure, we didn't want to do it and we didn't want to need to do it but the fact is, if we hadn't bailed them out, we would have lost that industry, for the most part, almost completely. Link to original story: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gQQyKL1zj8FAOWVfwO1Et4tc1VOA?docId=7878364211444f549d5c2356de1fdce9

Yeah! Let's cut the welfare rolls!

(Thanks and a hat tip to Radioman for the pic and link).

Link (go here):  http://leftwingconspiracy.com/

Roy Blunt needs to fail this time 'round

While I do object to the use of Roy Blunt's vote for the 700 billion dollar bailout, since it may have been important in keeping our entire financial system from collapsing last year--time and history will tell on that--I am absolutely committed to doing what I can to help Roy Blunt fail in his bid to be re-elected to his seat in Washington this Fall so here you go--the latest Roy Blunt ad, posted on You Tube by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, admittedly.

Quote for the day--on creating jobs

From "Five Washington Excuses for Ignoring the Jobs Crisis"--my favorite, what I think is the most important one: "We can't afford a job creation program -- it'll increase the deficit": It's certainly true that the deficit is growing rapidly as a result of the Wall Street crash and bailouts. But if we want the deficit to shrink, we'll have to put people back to work so that they start paying taxes again. We also need to place a significant windfall profits tax on the very financial elites who wrecked the economy. We wouldn't have a deficit problem if our politicians had the will to truly tax the super-rich -- those earning $3 million or more a year. Link to original post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/les-leopold/five-washington-excuses-f_b_687381.html

Who's zoomin' who?

Okay, word today of a couple of things.

One, we keep hearing how the Republicans in the Senate are going to keep pushing for "concessions" on the bill to bail out the car companies.

The first thing that comes to mind is that this is what those pussy Democrats in both houses of Congress should have done when Hank Paulson and the White House came screaming out for 700 billion dollars, of all things, to help save the banks.

What hooey.

If ever we could have had concessions, it was then.

How about lose the company jets, Citigroup?

How about put in a maximum still-obscene multi-million dollar salary range for the executives?

How about losing the "credit swap" tool?

How about jettisoning "hedge funds", eventually but absolutely, since they just weaken our financial system and are, as I've said, a virtual "bet on a bet", since they're conjecturing on the position of where stocks are headed in the future?

There were all kinds of things that Congress could--and should--have demanded, since they supposedly wanted and badly needed tax money--and lots of it--to save their hides?

Pussies.

As I quoted my friend Bryce, "Republicans are evil; Democrats are retarded."

(No offense to the retarded).

Anyway, who's kidding whom here or, as Aretha Franklin so aptly put it: "Who's zoomin' who?"

Does ANYONE really think the Repugs are going to let the auto industry go bankrupt?

They'd better not.

There would be between 2 to 3+ million additional people AUTOMATICALLY out of work and on the street.

You don't think there wouldn't be some "revolution goin' on"?

Besides, they don't want that on their tombstone.

They're already so far down on the US public's popularity list, it'd be curtains, for sure.

It kills me that they're pushing so far and so hard on this.

It also gets me that people like Richard Shelby, a Southerner who has some foreign auto manufacturers in his backyard, ladies and gentlemen, would be allowed to weigh in on this.

He should absolutely recuse himself from this.

As hard as it is to believe, even though he's an American, and a representative of at least some Americans here in the States, that he'd tempt the fate of ruining both this industry and, possibly, the country, by letting this whole industry fail.

I'm no big fan of the American auto industry but hey, jobs are jobs, and we need 'em all right now.

Just now, even the White House has come out, pushing the Repug Party to accept this 14 billion dollar "loan"--or whatever you want to call it--for the Big 3 car makers.

Hey, what's a few more billion dollars to this President, right? He hasn't met money he hasn't wanted to spend yet.

Anyway, let's get over this whole "you gotta' give more concessions", crap, Senators.

The country's in a heck of a mess and, regrettably, this is something that needs to happen.

Don't look here for your "warm and fuzzies" (read: reassurance)

More irony from the new land of Socalism, on top of our Fascism:

So the Europeans met this weekend, to deal with their problems of tight credit and guess what? Their land of Socialism thinks it's a bad idea to throw billions of dollars at their financial institutions, to shore up the problems.

So here we have the United States of America, home to Capitalism with a capital C, and our love of and preference for what we like to call and be "free markets" and which area throws three quarters of a trillion dollars at the problem--the US or Socialistic Europe?

Why, the United States, of course.

That "free market" stuff? We only mean that when things are going well.

Like it's been said, on the way up--in the good time--we're all "small government" and unregulated markets.

If it tanks?

Oh, yeah, then we're all for big government. THEN we want Uncle Sam to step in.

It all makes sense.

We gotta keep those wealthy people happy, right?

(While yer at it, throw in $140 more billion in tax deductions for these other areas, too, okay Senator?)

But the grossest insanity and hypocrisy and irony of all this is that now, the very people who created this mess--the banks themselves--and the people who helped create this mess--the Republican Party and, specifically, the current Presidenial Administration--are the very people we are entrusting to take this boondoggle of money and fix the problem.

Think about that. It's incredible.

The very people who HATE government and have made that clear are the ones we've given nearly a trillion dollars to, to clean up the very mess they themselves made.

It's like giving an alcoholic more alcohol to help him quit drinking.

Does this sound like a good idea to anyone?

All this on top of the facts that we are in completely new financial/economic territory where we aren't even sure what the rules are. Economists aren't even sure what is up and what is down.

What makes anyone think politicians, armed with billions of our tax dollars can straighten this mess out--quickly, as we need, or even slowly?

This bailout is going to make Hurricane Katrina look like a national picnic, instead of the travesty it was--and still is.

And, like "heckuva job" Brownie, regarding Katrina and Don Rumsfeld concerning Iraq and rendition and torture, and so many people in this administration, "W" is going to just walk away.

I don't recognize this country any longer.