Stuff that stands out from this nasty-ass campaign:
• The Carmona Woman: Jeff Flake’s campaign dug up some woman who was Richard Carmona’s superior while Carmona was surgeon general. That’s weird, because I would think that being surgeon general would put you at the top of that particular food chain. But the political appointee, Dr. Cristina Beato (who never did get confirmed by the Senate), was indeed Carmona’s boss, which, to me, makes him more like the surgeon second lieutenant.
Anyway, she claims that he once knocked on her door late at night, and from that, she concludes that he has issues with anger and with women. I’m not usually that big on gossip, but I’d love to know what really happened. Mostly, I’d like to know how she does that freakin’ zombie thing into the camera. Watch the commercial, and you’ll see that she blinks exactly 1 1/2 times in 30 seconds. That’s not human.
I didn’t have time to decorate the house for Halloween this year, so I just put a laptop out in the front yard and played the Cristina Beato commercial over and over. Scared the crap out of the neighborhood kids.
•The Re-taking of America: Over the past few weeks, I have asked 37 Republicans, many (but not all) of whom have uttered the phrase “take back America,” exactly from whom they want to take back the country. A solid plurality (16 of them) answered with, “Well, you know.”
Yeah, I do know. The Darkie.
•The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats, Part 1: When Mitt Romney clearly out-dueled President Obama in the first debate, the Democrats were the first to admit it. The folks on MSNBC were devastated, and Chris Matthews was livid with the president’s lackluster performance. While the people over at Fox were partying like it was 1959, the Dems were saying, “Our guy had better pull his head out and win the final two debates.”
So, when the president came back and won the final two debates (the second one by a relatively close margin, and the third one in a blowout), Democrats said, “It’s about damn time,” while Republicans incredibly claimed that Romney had prevailed. For example, columnist Charles Krauthammer ruined what little credibility he had left when he claimed that Romney won the final debate.
I hate that. It’s like playing tennis with a guy who cheats when he calls lines. The people who occupy that insular world of Fox News and Sean Hannity need to poke their head out into the real world every now and then. They may not like what they see, but it will be good for them in the long run.
There was a great political cartoon in The Salt Lake Tribune. In one panel, under the words, “When Democrats Lose a Debate,” is a woman saying, “Obama blew it!” In the next panel, under, “When Republicans Lose a Debate,” is a guy doing his best impression of John Belushi in The Blues Brothers: “The questions weren’t fair! It’s the moderator’s fault! It’s the pollsters’ fault! Obama cast a Muslim curse! We won the debate!”
•Time Waster: One of the worst political ads is one that said, “Ron Barber was supposed to fix Washington …”
Really?! In the week-and-a-half that he was actually there? He got elected in mid-June, and Congress has been in recess just about ever since. He didn’t have time to fix anything. Heck, he didn’t even have time to break anything.
•The Looming Electoral College Mess: There is a very real chance that for the second time in 12 years, we might have one presidential candidate win the popular vote, while the other guy becomes president. The Electoral College is beyond a joke.
There is also the possibility that the Electoral College vote will end in a 269-269 tie. In that case, the House of Representatives would vote to make Mitt Romney president, making come true the wish of the guy I saw at a Romney rally wearing a shirt that read, “Put the white back in the White House.”
What a lot of Americans don’t know is that, in such a case, the Senate picks the vice president. Since the Dems will likely control the Senate, that would make for a Romney-Biden team. One talking head on Fox said that, in such a case, he would expect Biden to step aside for Paul Ryan.
Oh, hell no!
•The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats, Part 2: I was tutoring a kid the other day, and he asked, with all sincerity, what the difference was between Republicans and Democrats. I responded that while everybody will pay lip service to the welfare of the country as a whole, generally, a Republican will look at a presidential candidate and ask, “What can this guy do for me?” while a Democrat will look at the same person and say, “What can this guy do for other people?”
That pretty much sums up the stark difference between the two guys who are looking to get elected come Tuesday.
This article appears in Nov 1-7, 2012.
The House of Representatives decides in the case of an Electoral College tie.
Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Spoken like a true “useful idiot”.
I’m starting to worry about you, Tom. How does not agreeing with a president’s policies make someone a racist ?
A Democrat will give you a fish so you can eat for a day.
A Republican will teach you to fish so you can feed yourself without some Democrat’s help.
I think it’s high time we deport all Republicans, as I wrote in TW during my Green party presidential campaign and as I am advocating in my Americans Elect party candidacy this week for Congress in Arizona’s Fourth Congressional District, consisting largely of voters who are ignorant morons who will be the first ones to be deported in a time machine to the 18th century, so they can be in the country they truly love, not the one we have now that they hate so much.
On the other hand, most of these people will die within the next few decades. Every time an old Republican in Arizona dies, I throw a party.
Lets see the way it really goes. A Democrat will give you a fish so you can eat for a day. A Republican will show you the internet so you will go away for a day, a week, or years
showing we don’t need fish, or government–until Sandy comes along..
The electoral college was a brilliant and necessary idea to provide balanced among the states of different populations. It is no longer effective, but the basic idea is too good to toss out. The solution is to award electoral votes by CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS, with two to state-wide majorities in every case. This is now the case without challenge in Nebraska and Maine. Before throwing out this brilliant idea, let’s fix it. Imagine the result: Romney would campaign in the Republican districts in California and Obama would spend time in Tucson!
Tom gets the difference between Rs and Ds wrong. Ds ask, “What will ___ do for my coalition (black, hispanic, unions, government employees, welfare recipients, etc.)?” Rs ask, “What will work best for EVERYBODY?”
The D approach is problematic because invariably when you satisfy one group it is at the expense of another. The R approach works because, properly done, it seeks equal opportunity, equal reward, and, yes, equal sacrifice.
Great description on one of the Republican women featured on the anti Carmona political pitch. How about the sniveling female veteran beating the drum for demonstrably anti veteran party hack Jeff Flake. I’m waiting for them to show the addendum where she finally bursts into tears. What does the party pay/promise these beauties for their endorsement?
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country!” What happened to us? This was what the President of my youth asked America.
House chooses the President, the Senate the VP, as Mr Danehy said. From Amendment XII, “and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice.”
To the 18 folks who disliked my comment, 1 question. What the Hell is so wrong with a person being self-suffient ? Hmmmm?
CW13 It’s that your comment was way off base (no teaching them to fish, its more like let the children starve, who cares of they get an education or not, etc.). actually your commet was pretty much a lie.
If a person is self-sufficient, great! Does that mean there is something wrong with someone who is not self-sufficient? Only to someone who sees the world in a very peculiar version of black and white. Someone may not be able to be self-sufficient for reasons out of his or her control: being laid off in an industry that is currently tanking; having no access to education beyond an underfunded and overcrowded urban school system; having been discharged after military service in the mideast and receiving inadequate treatment for PTSD; and many many other examples I could think of.
So concentrate on teaching your man to fish, so he can become self-sufficient; but if needs assistance or time to learn to fish, be prepared to give him fish to eat till he’s capable of getting back on his feet, unlike the republican method of letting him fend for himself.
A Democrat will give you a fish. A Republican will teach you how to fish, so he can take 99% of what you catch, and pay 15% 0n his investment.
when the basket of food washes up on the desert island shore, the democrat sez thank god, we can eat, the republican sez thank god i can eat and there’s enough so i can sell some to that other guy
Thank you for this column, especially the take back America sentiment. I’m not a fan of Obama, in fact I voted for Jill Stein, but the right’s pathological hatred for President Obama and the ad hominem attacks on him I’ve found are just euphemisms used so they can avoid calling him a n—-r.
I love it. you people are so sad it’s almost comical. I have no problem with people who need assistance getting help to get back on their feet. It’s the least the government of the world’s greatest nation can do. It’s the ones who expect the government to carry them womb to tomb that annoy me. People that are more than capable of supporting themselves that milk the system are taking food out of the mouths of people who truly deserve it. I’ll have more to say on Wednesday. Thank you God for making me a Right ( as in coirrect ) winger.
As a liberal, I’d be thrilled if voters really asked “What can this guy do for me?” instead of what Republican voters seem to ask, which is “What can this guy do for me if I win the lottery and end up stinking rich because that’s who I prefer to identify with?” If people really voted their interests, there would be far fewer Republicans in office.
“It’s the ones who expect the government to carry them womb to tomb that annoy me. People that are more than capable of supporting themselves that milk the system are taking food out of the mouths of people who truly deserve it. “
You’re describing a lot of right wingers and corporate interests, the ones who benefit from the infrastructure and workforce in this country but keep their massive profits in offshore accounts that they don’t pay tax on. Who bribe government officials through campaign donations and through 501c3s like ALEC to support pro-corporate, anti-worker and anti-environment legislation favorable to them. How about Wall Street bankers like Bank of America which made bad mortgages, overleveraged themselves, got a government bailout and continued to pay executives high salaries while refusing to extend credit to customers or renegotiate mortgages even when it was in both parties’ best interests, while also borrowing from the Federal Reserve at near 0 interest rates while charging customers 10-30% APRs on credit accounts. Or how about defense contractors who have money thrown at them to build hugely expensive weapons systems we don’t need, and then get more cash to dismantle them. And how about the attempts to privatize Social Security so the oh so reliable bankers can get their hands on a big pot of money. It seems that milking the system to increase corporate profit and personal gain is to be encouraged, but milking the system to survive and stay under a roof is contemptible, in the Conservative line of thinking.
After seeing a war on Catholics, energy, coal, oil and today, CBS covering for the Prez over Benghazi ….AGAIN, AZ poll watchers better look for every Dem cheating fraud that they can do it. Pubs are going to have lawyers in every polling booth. In Phila. already, the Black Panthers are at polling booths. Yikes. Yet, the media keeps telling us that we should vote for the most radical Prez and Congress over and over and over…..
My post is a little late but I just got around to it…. You’re on point as usual Tom…..
The sad fact is that racism is alive and well in America and the kooks on the Right want to keep it that way. Since we now know the outcome of the election I do feel better today knowing Obama did win the popular vote as well as the EC. It doesn’t change the fact though that the old guard Republican party will still try to block the work of the President. It is however abundantly clear that their evil ways MAY be wearing thin with the changing demographics of the electorate. At least I HOPE so!!!