Bring Back The Boston Rag

Mitt Romney, taking a swipe at Bill Clinton to prop up his tottering fortunes on the campaign trail:

...I think kids watch the White House and there have been failures in the past in the White House — if you go back to the Clinton years and recognize that — that I think had an enormous impact on the culture of our country," Romney said.

Funny how those hounds baying at the Big Dog's heels in the long-ago-and-far-away-and-not-terribly-relevant-
to-the-current-political-climate seem to be laboring under some moral turpitude of their own at the time and then after, hmmm?

Say, a 'Let's clean up the nest of malfeasants in our own midst' type of approach might be a wee bit more resonant with those members of the voting populace who wouldn't vote for a pet rock, just so long as it promised to ban teh gay connubs, and mandate enforced recreational school prayer.

Just sayin', Mitt...I know primpin' ain't easy.

Gotta dance!

;>)

Oh, if I'd only seen, that the joke was on me

Republican Presidential candidate and Pat Robertson sycophant Mitt (ya know, that name still makes me laugh) Romney gets smacked by the Orange County Register:

During the most recent Republican candidates' forum in New Hampshire, Mr. Romney made the following statement: "The question [about whether going to war in Iraq was the right decision]is, kind of, a non sequitur ... . If you're saying, let's turn back the clock and Saddam Hussein had opened up his country to IAEA inspectors and they'd come in and they'd found that there were no weapons of mass destruction, had Saddam Hussein therefore not violated United Nations resolutions, we wouldn't be in the conflict we're in. But he didn't do those things, and we knew what we knew at the point we made the decision to get in. I supported the President's decision based on what we knew at the time."

That statement suggests that Gov. Romney didn't know or had forgotten that prior to the war Saddam Hussein did allow UN weapons inspectors in, that the inspectors were able to visit most of the sites they wanted to, that they asked U.S. intelligence agencies for more information on specific sites where weapons were expected to be and inspected them, finding no weapons of mass destruction.

So we asked Mr. Romney Monday whether he wanted to correct this impression.

Mr. Romney reacted somewhat indignantly. What he meant, in context, he said, was that Saddam didn't allow completely unfettered inspections, that he stonewalled and evaded the inspectors. His campaign later sent an e-mail to buttress this conclusion, including quotes from Condoleezza Rice, deputy secretary of defense Richard Armitage, and the Iraq Study Group. We then got a phone call from a campaign operative seeking to clarify his position further.

We'll accept that clarification. It is certainly true that there was evasion and deception on the part of Saddam's regime even during the inspections just prior to the war. It is also true, however, that the inspectors found no weapons of mass destruction, nor were any found later, and that it was President Bush, not Saddam Hussein, who informed the IAEA that it would be prudent to end the inspections, since, as we soon discovered, the United States had already decided to invade Iraq.

Read the rest, it's actually pretty good.

The OCRegister is frustrating. Sometimes they faithfully follow Republican talking points, but other times, like now, they seem to have some, oh, I don't know, independence, about them.

Still, it's gratifying to see them actually speak truth to . . . , well, not power. Maybe the phrase should be "Truth to Plastic". I'm just saying, because Romney is . . . well, you know.

Dream yourself a dream come true

The Right-wing pundits sure know how to pour gas onto their own funeral pyre:

Of course, the big difference is that the Democrats don’t have a Ronald Reagan to take advantage of the situation. Nobody will ever confuse Hilliary’s (sic) shrill denunciations with the twinkle in the Gipper’s eye when he zinged an opponent. Nor will anyone fail to see the difference between the inspirational yet empty platitudes of Obama with Reagan’s soaring rhetoric that touched something so American in people’s souls.

Hillary is shrill. Dude, how do you react when your wife asks you to take out the garbage, do you call her shrill?

And the twinkle in the . . . dammit! Stop calling Reagan that movie name! He was an actor, a bad one at that. He did absolutely nothing to connect himself with anyone tough or brave, he was a f***ing actor!

The twinkle was acting, reading words written by Peggy Noonan, while he tried to feed school kids ketchup and erect a big umbrella to prevent the awful Ruskies from sending missles to attack us. Stop it, just stop it! Soaring rhetoric my ass.

I don't know about Obama yet, but he has a college education, has written books, and actually has thoughts that are deeper than "tear down this wall".

Look here at Democracy Now for some insight into Reagan's effect on California and working people while he was Governor, but that's not important right now.

Seriously, the Right's pining for another Reagan is just sad; a fantasy about a guy who can bankrupt the country, raise taxes with no benefit to the middle class, and spout slogans written by the woman who wrote this crap about poor Elian Gonzales:

a miracle that when he tired and began to slip, the dolphins who surrounded him like a contingent of angels pushed him upward;

There's Reagan's brain: a science-fiction fantasy that has the Righties yearning for Jack Bauer to take over their world and save them, and take away their Constitutional rights at the same time.

After all, they weren't using them.

And our pundit ends with this:

A Guiliani or Romney candidacy would alter the face of the party at least temporarily and give hope to some of the more moderate elements in the GOP.

From your mouth to God's ears. But not for the reasons you believe.