Ann Romney's Tales of Woe

Episode 1: The Lean Years.







When Mitt and I were first married, we lived in a tiny basement apartment, eating tuna and pasta while Mitt attended Harvard. Our only source of income was the huge stock portfolio that Mitt's father had given him that we were able to sell of a little at a time. Why, at one point, things looked so bleak that we thought one of us might have to go out and get a job! A job, can you imagine?

 

Of course, I was no stranger to hardship, being the daughter of immigrants. By which I mean my grandfather came from Wales. It still pains me to remember how people would sometimes have trouble understanding something he said, or would comment on how he had a "cool accent." Many a time people mistook him for Tom Jones! 

Being the daughter of immigrants was sure tough! The town we lived in was only the fifth most affluent town in the United States.  Do you know that over 50 percent of the homes there are worth less than one million dollars? Thank God we made it out of that slum!

Well, that's all the time we have for tonight. Join me next time for Ann Romney's Tales of Woe when I tell the heartbreaking story "I Married a Robot."

Some Observations on the RNC

I have not watched a minute of the Republican Convention. I just can't put myself through that, no matter how many potential laughs there are.

I assume it looks a little something like this:

 

But from what I'm hearing, some weird shit is going on there. For one thing, none of the speeches are about Mitt Romney. The speeches could all have been written before they chose the nominee. Mitt Romney is the Johnny Bravo of politics. They had the songs, they just needed a guy who fit the suit.

 

The one speech that was about Mitt was delivered by Ann Romney who was then completely punked by Chris Christie

  

I want to talk to you about LOVE!

Love is for sissies, we want respect!

Also Ann Romney is weird. For one thing, when she shouts "I Love you Women!" she sounds like Lyle the effeminate heterosexual stating his dedication to heterosexuality.

 

I love Vagiiiiiiinas!!!

And what she loves so much about women is that "we are the mothers, the daughters, the sisters, the grandmothers. . ." Yes, being related to other people, that's quite a fucking accomplishment.  That's really the best you could come up with? You do know that women do actual things, right? Oh, I guess you probably didn't know that.

And now she's out talking to Latina women, I wonder how that's going?

 

Artist's rendition

 

Ann Romney Woos Hispanic Voters,

 Urging They Get Past ‘Their Biases’ 

Really, Ann?

"You’d better really look at your future and figure out who’s going to be the guy that’s going to make it better for you and your children. . . 

Because Latinas just love being lectured to by condescending rich white ladies!

“It really is a message that would resonate well if they could just get past some of their biases that have been there from the Democratic machines that have made us look like we don’t care about this community,” Romney said. “And that is not true. We very much care about you and your families and the opportunities that are there for you and your families.”

We just want those opportunities to be in Mexico or Guatemawhatsitcalled, wherever you people are from. Why are you so biased against us?

She stressed her immigrant roots, mentioning that her grandfather was Welsh.

“I know what it’s like to be the daughter of immigrants,” she said

Um, yeah, daughter and granddaughter are not the same thing. You are the granddaughter of an immigrant who, by the way, came from an English-speaking country and was white, so it's a little different experience from what a Juanita Torres might have.

And we all know you grew up rich, so don't act like you have anything in common with first-generation Mexican-Americans.

Romney praised the first lady of Puerto Rico, Luce Fortuno, who introduced her last night, calling them “kindred spirits.”

“What she and her husband are doing on that little island is quite remarkable. You should be so proud,”

Well, it's just adorable how you folks on that precious little island are just really doing so great and all!

And lastly, are the Republicans seriously going with a convention theme based around an intentional misconstruing of something that the president said? There is really no low to which these people will not sink.

Bobby Jindal is horrible. Really, just completely horrible.

I saw a Bobby Jindal bumper sticker today. Bobby Jindal! And the car had Georgia plates, so I can only assume that this driver is envious of Louisiana and wishes we had a dead-eyed dimwitted dullard in our state house instead of whatever it is we do have.

 Probably.

Anyway, so I wondered what Bobby Jindal was up to now. More exorcisms? More disastrous public speaking? Not quite.

(via The Hill)

Jindal wants more help from Obama with storm

By Jonathan Easley - 08/28/12 09:54 AM ET 

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) on Monday sent a letter to President Obama saying the federal government was not doing enough to help Louisiana cover the expenses it’s taking on in preparation for Tropical Storm Isaac.
“Unfortunately, your limited declaration does not provide for reimbursement of expenses that the state is taking to prepare for the storm,” Jindal said in his letter.

 Wow! That is just a stunning level of hypocrisy, especially considering that Jindal is best known for mocking the Federal government's spending on volcano monitoring. I guess that if you live in a stste that is threatened by hurricanes, Big Brother should step in and help you, but if the threat in your state is a volcano, then suck it up, ya wuss, try being self-reliant for once!

President Obama on Monday declared a state of emergency for Louisiana, which is expected to be in the path of Tropical Storm Isaac.  


The action by Obama makes federal funding to the state available immediately, but Jindal said it “only provides for direct federal assistance” and doesn’t “provide for reimbursement of expenses that the state is taking to prepare for the storm.”

Also, Waaaah!!! Waaaahhhh!!!

Oh, no! The big bad federal government is not spending enough money for this bitchy little teabagger? Funny how all of a sudden, maybe government spending isn't so bad after all?

Also, you're supposed to spend money preparing for storms. Why would you complain about not being reimbursed for money that your state is spending to protect the residents of your state? Why would someone else pay for that? That's why you're supposed to collect taxes, genius.

Jindal said Monday that he would not attend the Republican National Convention this week. He had been expected to speak on Tuesday night in the middle of a program dominated by popular Republican governors, leading up to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's keynote address.


Let me guess what the subject of Jindal's speech was going to be.  Um, "Federal government bad, me no like?" or  "Government spend too much, me cut size of government?" or " Federal government stay out of states' business?" Or maybe "Ugh, Oop, Fire Bad!"

Kind of hard to play the austere fiscal deficit hawk while demanding more federal money at the same time.

 Also, Jindal's been a little busy lately handing taxpayer money to private voucher schools that teach things like the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution and the Klan wasn't really all that bad. (seriously!)

Mother Jones has a list of 14 wacky "facts" these schools are teaching, using textbooks from Bob Jones University Press and other right-wing bullshit publishers. A couple of examples:

Slave masters were nice guys: "A few slave holders were undeniably cruel. Examples of slaves beaten to death were not common, neither were they unknown. The majority of slave holders treated their slaves well."—United States History for Christian Schools, 2nd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 1991

GIFSoup

As if that were even possible. You by definition can not be treating well someone you are enslaving. 

The KKK was A-OK: "[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

GIFSoup

In some communities it achieved a certain respectability because those communities were made up of racist assholes.

The Great Depression wasn't as bad as the liberals made it sound: "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath…Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots and exaggerated statistics representing the number of unemployed and homeless people in America."—United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996

 Rumors of things that were actually happening all the time all over the place? How propagandistic! (is that a word? Probably not)

This one's a Beka Book. I hadn't ever heard of Beka Books, so I looked them up.

For one thing, it's not "a Beka Book." It's an "A Beka Book," for whatever that's worth.

Anyway, here's their mission statement:

A Beka Book provides Christian schools and homeschools with outstanding curriculum and textbooks built on a foundation of academic excellence and Christian character training. Schools and homeschools benefit from our treasury of textbooks and teaching materials that reflect the very best in traditional education, comprehensive curriculum, and eternal truths.

Like the eternal truth that great depressions aren't really all that bad.


 Here's their take on Mathematics:

The text presents a Scriptural view of working, tithing, saving, paying taxes, and budgeting time and money and gives a positive introduction to the American free-enterprise system. 

Because what better source of mathematics than the Bible, a book which never mentions anything about math!
Here's a blurb about one of their history texts:

Land I Love presents the history of America from the 1490s to the present with special emphasis on the personalities and events that shaped the American character. A variety of illustrations, maps, and photographs invite students to explore the past as they read this fascinating narrative account of U.S. history. Through the story of America’s rise to greatness, students will learn to recognize the hand of God in history and to appreciate the influence of Christianity in government, economics, and society.

So, will students learn to see the hand of God in our overthrow of Allende and installation of the man for whom the phrase "death squad" was coined? Or maybe they'll see the hand of God in the Trail of Tears, or the slave trade. Or maybe the hand of God will be evident in the section about the bombing of Cambodia, or the Contra war. It all seems so very godly.


Anyway, you can pretty much expect to see this sort of thing coming soon to a school near you, because if you don't think that the Louisiana model isn't going to be used as a template by the Moral Majority types who have been taking over local school boards for the last 30 years, you are more of an optimist than I.

 

Just Horrible.

Andrew Napolitano Just Called God a Nazi

Horrible bag of turds Andrew Napolitano recently weighed in on the whole "legitimate rape" thing. In his defense of Todd Akin, he included this gem:

When rape results in pregnancy, the baby has the same right to life as any child born by mutually loving parents. Only the Nazis would punish a child for the crimes of his or her father.

Only the Nazis, hmm?

.....................................................................................................................................................................
Numbers 14:18 -- 

¹⁸ The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

 Exodus 20:5 --

for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

Exodus 34:7 --

⁷ Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

So, yeah, according to Judge Andrew Napolitano, God is a Nazi. If you find yourself in the vicinity of Judge Napolitano, watch out for lightning.

Food for thought, Gun Nuts

Whenever there is a mass shooting on the news, like the recent one in Colorado, or the Virginia Tech shooting or whatever, the gun nuts always come out with their "if only those people had been armed, they could have stopped it," or "if I'd a been there, I'd a shot that sumbitch" kind of nonsense. If only there were more gun-toting rednecks in that theater, or on that campus or wherever, this tragedy could have been avoided.

 

I know I'd feel safer with this guy around!

So, let's look at the most recent gun-related tragedy, the Empire State Building shooting:

Police: All Empire State shooting victims were wounded by officers

By David Ariosto, CNN

 

New York (CNN) -- On a busy Friday morning in Manhattan, nine pedestrians suffered bullet or fragment wounds after police unleashed a hail of gunfire at a man wielding a .45 caliber pistol who had just killed a former co-worker.

The officers unloaded 16 rounds in the shadow of the Empire State Building at a disgruntled former apparel designer, killing him after he engaged in a gunbattle with police, authorities said.

Three passersby sustained direct gunshot wounds, while the remaining six were hit by fragments, according to New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All injuries were caused by police, he said Saturday.

 Okay, these were cops. These two guys were highly trained in the use of firearms. And they were used to encountering scary, life-or-death situations because they were NYPD cops. And they succeeded in wounding 9 innocent bystanders while killing the shooter. These were New York City police officers, the best possible people to be involved in this sort of thing,

 

and they managed to shoot 9 innocent bystanders. How well do you think Cletus from the gun club might do? 

  

Sorry, wrong Gun Club.

The guys you want sitting next to you at Batman.

 

 Do you really think, now think seriously for a minute, do you really think that a bunch of moviegoers in a dark theater blinded by tear gas would have been able to get off a kill shot without accidentally shooting, oh, I don't know, maybe every other audience member?

Do you really think that a bunch of college kids, completely unprepared to engage in a firefight, would shoot the right guy in a moment of panic? Because if you do, I don't see how you explain trained police officers missing their target 8 different times. 

Just something to think about.