The Truth About Governor Willard and Education – “President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses and unwilling to stand up for our kids,” Romney charged, citing hundreds of millions of dollars contributed by teachers unions to Democratic campaigns as the cause. “We have to stop putting campaign cash ahead of our kids,” he said to applause. First of all, ourkids? You mean Tagg and Bagg and Bogg and Quagg and whoever, who already have $100 miilion trust funds to send their kids to prep schools? Whatchoo mean “our,” extremely white man? But, the point here is that, while he was governor, he didn’t let cash of any kind get ahead of the “kids” in the public schools of the state where public education was pretty much invented. In 2006, he cut $37.8 million from the state’s higher education budget. Fees skyrocketed, as they did generally throughout the state. In 2003, he tried to cut $100 milion from that same budget while raising tuition by $50 million at state colleges and universities. He also wanted to slash job training initiatives and workforce training funding. Things were rather worse at the primary and secondary level, where Romney passed down budget cuts and left cities and towns holding the bag. And that’s the way it was. – Charles P. Pierce
MITT AND MRS. MITT meet the wingnuts, allow their rings to be kissed:
The attendees came from numerous conservative sites and right-of-center publications, including National Review, Daily Caller, American Spectator,Washington Examiner, Human Events, RedState, Right Wing News, Powerline, Townhall, Ace of Spades, RiehlWorldView, White House Dossier and PJ Media. RNC chairman Reince Preibus also attended. — HuffPo
- HOW DYSFUNCTIONAL is the Republican party that their nominee needs to get the approval of a guy who says vaginas remind him of play-doh and a guy who is afraid of imaginary black people. Ladies and gentlemen, the GOP Base. — John Cole
- I CAN SEE him having to meet with the crew from NRO or even Human Events. But, god help us, this guy? Or this guy? Corndog and Buttmissile from Minnesota? These are the people you have to charm to be the Republican nominee? If this meeting wasn’t held in a belfry, I’m going to be the most disappointed guy in town. – Charles P. Pierce
…
John Heilemann wrote a really good piece for NYMag about how the GOP is currently tearing itself apart:
How the 2012 Primary Has Revealed a GOP on the Verge of Collapse
…All of which is to say that when Santorum takes the podium to address a Michigan Faith & Freedom Coalition rally in Shelby Charter Township, the 1,500 souls he sees before him are his kind of people—and soon enough he is speaking their language. To explain how America has always differed from other nations, Santorum invokes the Almighty: “We believe … we are children of a loving God.” To elucidate the evils of Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and cap-and-trade, he inveighs against liberal elites: “They want to control you, because like the kings of old, they believe they know better than you.” To highlight what’s at stake in 2012, he unfurls a grand (and entirely farkakte) historical flourish: “This decision will be starker than at any time since the election of 1860”—you know, the one featuring Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas on the eve of the Civil War.
Read more:
The Teaparty’s gift to the GOP base: only two choices in 2012 — Plutocracy or Theocracy
![These four have been out there for nearly two months now, debating by proxy with each other. They’ve been hollering at themselves through their ad men, and bagmen, and sugar daddies. Now, at least, they’ll get to look each other in the eye and say what they’ve been out there otherwise saying to the wind.
[…] It’s hard to remember how they actually react to one another, much less what they might say to each other. Rick Santorum has been talking like a religious nut for two weeks now, but that’s unlikely to come up, since both Willard Romney and N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civilization’s Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces, have been rendered by their own rhetoric — and by the length and breadth of the demented political party in which they are running — incapable of making an issue out of the fact that Santorum is such an incredible dick, and have I mentioned that recently? The debate’s in Arizona, so I suspect we’re going to get a real workout on immigration, and the fence, and arming the border, and the Hezbollah training camps on the Mexican border. It’s entirely possible that Willard’s old gardeners may come up again. As best I can recall, Santorum’s worried about Arab terrorists sneaking across the border, Willard’s worried about “amnesty,” and Newt wants to set up an immigration board in every city and town to pass on the eligibility of people’s gardeners to stay in this country. At which point, Ron Paul will say something about the federal reserve, and everybody will bolt awake again. Then they’ll all thank Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for being a crackpot.
CNN Republican Debate Arizona 2012 - Debate Preview: The Headless Horsemen Go Riding By](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzt3kfxejS1qf10tro1_500.jpg)
These four have been out there for nearly two months now, debating by proxy with each other. They’ve been hollering at themselves through their ad men, and bagmen, and sugar daddies. Now, at least, they’ll get to look each other in the eye and say what they’ve been out there otherwise saying to the wind.
[…] It’s hard to remember how they actually react to one another, much less what they might say to each other. Rick Santorum has been talking like a religious nut for two weeks now, but that’s unlikely to come up, since both Willard Romney and N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer Of Civilization’s Rules And Leader (Perhaps) Of The Civilizing Forces, have been rendered by their own rhetoric — and by the length and breadth of the demented political party in which they are running — incapable of making an issue out of the fact that Santorum is such an incredible dick, and have I mentioned that recently? The debate’s in Arizona, so I suspect we’re going to get a real workout on immigration, and the fence, and arming the border, and the Hezbollah training camps on the Mexican border. It’s entirely possible that Willard’s old gardeners may come up again. As best I can recall, Santorum’s worried about Arab terrorists sneaking across the border, Willard’s worried about “amnesty,” and Newt wants to set up an immigration board in every city and town to pass on the eligibility of people’s gardeners to stay in this country. At which point, Ron Paul will say something about the federal reserve, and everybody will bolt awake again. Then they’ll all thank Arizona Governor Jan Brewer for being a crackpot.
CNN Republican Debate Arizona 2012 - Debate Preview: The Headless Horsemen Go Riding By
…
Theology For Dummies - The Republican party is about a half-step away from handing its presidential nomination to an out-and-out religious fanatic whose views, as expressed to allegedly evolved primates on the campaign trail, are not dissimilar to those that some people listen to on their short-wave sets in survivalist camps in upper Michigan, or those that other people hear transmitted to them from St. Michael The Archangel through the fillings in their teeth. There were a number of reasons why the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania decided six years ago that they no longer wanted to be represented in the U.S. Senate by fetus-fondling Torquemada. Over the past few days, we have seen only a few of them.
The wanktastic enterprise we’ll fondly remember as the supercommittee
Charles P. Pierce over at Esquire has a talent for clarity:
“Already, we are being inundated with dire predictions and gloomy speculation about what the “failure” of this wanktastic enterprise will “mean.” Trust me on this: To the great majority of Americans who are just trying to stay afloat in what’s left of the national economy, now that 30 years of conservative economics and a decade-or-so of Wall Street depredations have had their way, the fact that this group of people in Washington failed to come to an agreement on how best to hose the rest of us will not matter a damn.
[…] So the Republicans propose “revenue increases” that include whacking the mortgage-interest deduction for middle-class homeowners at a time when foreclosures are still at high tide, but oppose actual tax increases, which they have sworn with their hands on Grover Norquist’s dick to resist to their last breaths. Meanwhile, the Democrats beg for tax increases at the top end while offering to take several bites out of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. A half-bright, blind zoo animal could write the attack ads. And, at the end of it, John Kerry starts calling people making half-a-mil “middle class.””
— Why the SuperCommitee Needs to Fail
And from another post:
“The Republican party is no longer a political organization. It is a last-ditch therapy group for people allergic to Thorazine.”
Already, we are being inundated with dire predictions and gloomy speculation about what the “failure” of this wanktastic enterprise will “mean.” Trust me on this: To the great majority of Americans who are just trying to stay afloat in what’s left of the national economy, now that 30 years of conservative economics and a decade-or-so of Wall Street depredations have had their way, the fact that this group of people in Washington failed to come to an agreement on how best to hose the rest of us will not matter a damn.
[…] So the Republicans propose “revenue increases” that include whacking the mortgage-interest deduction for middle-class homeowners at a time when foreclosures are still at high tide, but oppose actual tax increases, which they have sworn with their hands on Grover Norquist’s dick to resist to their last breaths. Meanwhile, the Democrats beg for tax increases at the top end while offering to take several bites out of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. A half-bright, blind zoo animal could write the attack ads. And, at the end of it, John Kerry starts calling people making half-a-mil “middle class.”
Dear Karma: I think you’ve missed a GOP congressman named Paul Ryan…
Piggybacking off of that last post about rich people and Paul Ryan’s tax cuts for rich people (and telling college students to work 3 jobs), here’s a delightful reminder of what lies beneath Ryan’s (oil) slick exterior of Randian wealth worship and Eddie-Munster-like good looks, courtesy of Charles P. Pierce at Esquire:
…Tell us, congressman, when you were skating for a couple of years on your Social Security survivor’s benefits, and when your family stayed on the government dole for longer that that, “taking” from, among other people, my parents and me, how did you manage not to be “lulled” into a life of “complacency” and “dependency”? How were you not “drained” of your “incentive”? How was your “will to make the most of your life” not drained, as well. What’s the magic number? Two years on the dole? Three? Five? Let us know so we can stop pestering you and find our bootstraps.
I suspect it was because, after you left the family earth-moving business, you eventually went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Bob Kasten, and then you went to work on a government paycheck for Senator Sam Brownback, and then you went briefly into the private sector — as a speechwriter for the late Jack Kemp — before going back on a government paycheck when you were elected to the House, 13 years ago. At which point, you became the pet Big Thinker and point man for a bunch of rich people, including many — Was the wine to your liking, by the way? — of the same folks that crashed the economy in 2008, thereby creating the conditions that, much to your obvious pain and chagrin, are turning so many of your fellow citizens into dependent, complacent, will-lacking slobs, because they’re taking unemployment benefits. That pretty much guaranteed you wouldn’t be paying for your own dinners much any more.
Oh, snap.
