Mitt's Tax Returns are a "Bleep."

One of my favorite scenes from the late, lamented Arrested Development, is this one, in which Buster rants about his mother, saying things so offensive that he has to be bleeped for about 10-15 seconds, while his siblings stand slack-jawed in horror:




Of course, he didn't really say anything that vile, but the producers of A.D. knew that a bleep is always funnier/more shocking than any four-letter word can ever be. What word, or combination of words, could someone say that you haven't already heard a million times?  "Bleep you" always sounds funny because you just think the person must have said something shockingly vulgar. But if you remove the bleep, oh yeah, it's just "fuck." You hear that a million times a day, it has no power to shock.


Mitt's tax returns are like a four-letter word. And his refusal to release them is like bleeping that word. Now the whole political world is wondering what could possibly be so shockingly horrible in those tax returns that he won't let anyone see them? But if he did release them, what could they possibly contain that would actually shock anybody?

He uses offshore accounts to dodge his tax obligations? We already know that.

He was running BAIN when he claims to have not been running BAIN?  Duh!

Big donations to hateful groups like N.O.M.? That's to be expected. If anything, it might help him with the malevolent base of his party, while anyone concerned with equality and human decency was already not going to vote for him.

His tax rate is lower than yours? A lot lower? Doesn't everyone already know that? Even without exploiting all kinds of loopholes, Mitt's income is all "carried interest" and capital gains and whatnot and everyone knows that un-earned income is taxed at a much lower rate than the money you earn by the sweat of your brow.

If he ever does release his tax returns, everyone's going to be mighty disappointed. There can't possibly be anything in there as damning as what people are imagining.

Oh, and this ain't helping:

Ann Romney: We've Given 'All You People Need To Know' About Family Finances

AP/The Huffington Post  |  Posted: 07/19/2012 8:54 am Updated: 07/19/2012 3:07 pm

Steve King is proud of his contribution to animal cruelty.

Steve King (R-IA) is a teabagging right-wing nut. So of course, he loooooves states' rights! According to Think Progress, he loves them so much that he apparently thinks that states maybe have the right to disregard Supreme Court decisions?

KING: Why should I care about the conclusions that have been brought forward by the Supreme Court if we can race from 1965, Connecticut having a Tenth Amendment right to establish a policy, a Supreme Court that creates a right to privacy that’s the foundation for mandated abortion, and here were are discussing whether we’re going to mandate everybody in America fund and provide that contraceptives. … Why should I care?

At least I think that's what he's trying to say. Either that or he thinks that Griswold v. Connecticu says the opposite of what it actually says. Anyway, he's a big old tenther.

Which made this news story pretty surprising:

(LA TIMES)

WASHINGTON — Taking aim at California's pioneering efforts to bolster animal safety, the House Agriculture Committee has moved to block states from imposing their own standards for agriculture products on producers from other states.

Rep. Steve King, an Iowa Republican who represents the country's leading egg-producing state, said he introduced the amendment because the California law and others like it "scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations."
"If California wants to regulate eggs that come into the state, fine," King said. "But don't be telling the states that are producing a product that's already approved by the USDA or the FDA how to produce that product."
He said that the California requirement violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce issues.

Because if there's one thing right-wing Republicans love even more than states' rights, it's the commerce clause!  King's amendment is even called the “Protect Interstate Commerce Act”

 So this amendment must be all about protecting Interstate Commerce, right?

King released a statement Thursday night promising that his amendment “will ensure that radical organizations like the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) and PETA are prohibited from establishing a patchwork of restrictive state laws aimed at slowly suffocating production agriculture out of existence."

Ooooh, that makes more sense. Of course, it's a bill to defend against an imaginary threat from relatively weak organizations like PETA against the super-powerful agricultural industry. Now that's the Steve King we've come to know and despise.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read all about King gloating about how his bill will stop animals from getting halfway-decent treatment in the loathsome "Daily Caller" here.