The whitest turkey you've ever seen (other than Mitt Romney)

Gawker’s John Cook on the much discussed lunch between President Obama and Mitt Romney in an article titled ‘Barack Obama Ate Some White Turkey With a White Turkey Today‘:

On the menu was “Southwestern grilled chicken salad,” according to a readout released by the White House Press Office. Missing was “White Bread Sandwich With Mayonnaise” and “Braised Oxtail with Honkey Beans.” According to the White House, the two men “pledged to stay in touch, particularly if opportunities to work together on shared interests arise in the future.” Hit me up on Facebook!

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More about my thoughts on the Democratic convention last night later, but this was pretty funny. From the Twitter blog:

Among tonight’s keynotes, First Lady Michelle Obama’s (@MichelleObama) primetime speech peaked at 28,003 Tweets per minute (TPM) at its conclusion — nearly double Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s (@MittRomney) 14,289 peak. One line in her speech this evening — “we’ve got so much more to do” — saw 22,004 TPM.

Poor Romney. He’s so uncharismatic and off putting that even his opponent’s wife gets a better response from the public. Lucky he has so much money.

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by Ari Rutenberg

Editor’s Note: Ben Cohen is on vacation for a few days, so I’ll been posting in his stead.  If there are any topics of particular interest to readers that have not been covered, please let me know and I’ll do my best to get something going.  Also I love conversation and discussion, so please comment and engage!

Over the past few days, there have been two instances of what I would call accidental honesty on the part of the GOP.  The first was Todd Akin’s comment that women who have been legitimately raped rarely get pregnant (on which you can read more here from the great Oliver Willis).  The second is Ohio elections official Doug Priesse’s statement that “I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban — read African-American — voter-turnout machine” (more here from the Columbus Dispatch). Every politically active person in this country is aware that many on the right agree with Messrs. Akin and Priesse, even if the GOP won’t always come out so forthrightly a state these positions.

Aside from my fundamental disagreement, and no small amount of disgust at such blatantly discriminatory statements, what really bothers me about this is the media’s reaction to it, and to any other event where they are actually given the information they ask for.

For months, the media (in this case the MSM and left-wing press) have been talking about the awful voter discrimination that is taking place in states like Florida and Ohio.  They have been very accurately pointing out that its because many GOP voters and pols feel that  black people and other minorities are likely to commit voter fraud, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such statements.  Yet when these statements actually come out, rather that reacting seriously the media feigns surprise and starts freaking out.

Kind of like Romney’s tax return.  We all know that he’s paid very little taxes.  Whether its 5%, 3%, or 0% I don’t care, and I don’t think most voters really care.  Yet if he were actually to release the rest of them, rather than taking it as an opportunity to seriously examine the iniquity and insanity of our tax code (like why is income above $110,100 exempt from payroll taxes?), the media would spend a month going “holy shit Mitt Romney hasn’t paid any income taxes”, despite the fact that we all already know that and have already been discussing it for a year or more.

I’m really sick of stupid media game because none of it contributes to solving these problems.  Even from journalists I generally agree with.  I want to see a serious discussion of these issues.  Yes its a problem that Romney has been such a stingy bastard, but the problem is that the system allows him to do so.  In the same way, yes its an issue that the minor schmuck in Ohio doesn’t want to let black people have extended voting hours, but the real problem is that the GOP has a real problem with equal protection of the law when it come to people who disagree with them, and minorities in general.  Its not just voting law, and we need to have a serious discussion about why Republican’s don’t think equal protection means equal protection.

What do they think it means, and how can we educate them on sectors of the population they don’t understand and thus don’t trust?  Rather than just saying “ha! see you guys really are racist, sexist assholes” (which is true but irrelevant), we need to engage them and figure out how we’re going to live together.  If the great experiment that we all call home is to survive and flourish, we need to try engaging, discussing, learning, and educating rather than waiting for accidentally honest gotcha moments and shallow factual victories to give the MSM an excuse to feign shock and horror at things they already know to be true.

What do you think?

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Paul Ryan pick announced via twitter

The Daily Banter Headline Grab (via the Guardian):

Mitt Romney has confirmed his selection of Paul Ryan as his vice-presidential running mate, stating that he is “proud” to have the Wisconsin congressman on the Republican White House ticket.

In a tweet sent out ahead of a formal announcement Saturday, the presidential candidate said: “I am proud to announce @PaulRyanVP as my VP. Stand with us today.”

Via his newly created Twitter handle @PaulRyanVP, the vice-presidential candidate tweeted: “I’m honored to join @MittRomney on America’s Comeback Team. mi.tt/Romney-Ryan #RomneyRyan2012″

The surprise pick comes after months of speculation over who the former Massachusetts governor would pick as his running mate ahead of November’s election.

Ryan, a 42-year-old conservative who has become the leading Republican voice on spending cuts, was earlier confirmed by a Romney campaign app.

“Mitt’s choice for VP is Paul Ryan. Spread the word about America’s comeback team,” it stated.

It confirmed rumours that had been circulating since late Friday, when it was announced that Romney’s VP pick would be made public today.

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Romney: Serious problems with the truth

By Bob Cesca: Yesterday I wrote a column with the headline The Biggest Mitt Romney Lie (So Far). I specifically covered my ass with the parenthetical qualifier “so far” knowing that he’d one-up himself with another cynical whopper of a lie very, very soon. I had no idea it would be the same day.

To recap: over the weekend, Romney wrote on The Facebook that President Obama was trying to disenfranchise military voters in Ohio when, in fact, the president was actually trying to extend weekend early voting to all Ohio voters including members of the military. Romney flagrantly lied about the Justice Department’s lawsuit to overturn the Ohio Republican law that ended weekend voting.

No sooner could everyone scramble to debunk this nonsense, but a new Romney commercial was released on Tuesday that contained a grotesquely misleading statement. The video falsely claims the president tried to “gut” President Clinton’s welfare reform legislation from 1996.

Big-time lie. (You can watch the entire video on YouTube, but if you don’t want to torture yourself with the deluge of crackpot Rove-style lies and propaganda then stick with me here.)

The commercial narration, ostensibly approved by Romney himself, says, “On July 12th, President Obama quietly announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements.” Wrong, wrong, wrong. No gutting, no dropping of the work requirement. In fact, a long list of Republican governors wanted to do more than what the president and Health & Human Services has actually allowed. We’ll get back to that presently.

What did the administration do? HHS authorized state governments to experiment with new ways of expediting welfare recipients (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Program) back into the workforce; specifically, as the HHS website reports, to “test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families.”

Full stop. That’s all. Nothing more. Even the most bizarre left-field Orwellian use of the word “gut” wouldn’t apply here.

Furthermore, in 2005, a letter signed by 28 Republican governors requested far more extensive leeway with the program. 28 Republican governors, including conservative sacred cows like Rick Perry, Mark Sanford, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels and Mike Huckabee, requested “increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.”

And in keeping with everything we know about Mitt Romney and his ongoing strategy of attacking the president for things Romney himself once supported — yes, then-Governor Romney also signed the letter.

So no — the president hasn’t gutted welfare reform, at least if you go by the Republican standard, which was a request for considerably more leeway than anything the administration has done. Another massive Romney lie.

Are you noticing a pattern here? On various occasions, the president has acted like the grown-up in the room and acquiesced to several Republican policy demands and, again and again, the Republicans have attacked him for the policies that they themselves requested and, in some cases, invented. Do the list. The individual mandate for health insurance, cap and trade, all-of-the-above energy policy and now this.

See, the Romney campaign and GOP leadership understand the far-right Republican base. They know the base doesn’t care about (or can’t remember) anything that happened prior to January 20, 2009. They know that fact-checking will come too late. They know that right-wing voters will repeat any and all lies simply because they’re wildly desperate to get rid of the African-American liberal with the exotic non-presidential name in the White House.

Speaking of which, if you think the welfare line of attack is a racial dog-whistle, you’re goddamn right. Republicans only ever bring up perceived Democratic weakness on welfare when they’re trying to motivate the angry, resentful white base. So this particular commercial combines a whopper lie about the president’s record with some bonus Southern Strategy politics as the gravy.

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Mitt Romney: Worst GOP candidate ever?

By Chez Pazienza: Can we just finally admit that Mitt Romney is the worst candidate the GOP has offered up in, well, maybe ever? Is there anyone who still thinks Romney is anything more than one big walking punchline, an ongoing political disaster of Irwin Allen-esque proportions? Look, I get that if you’re a Republican there’s a pretty good chance that your ebullient hatred of Barack Obama runs so deep that you’d vote for a flaming paper bag full of dogshit if the party nominated it for president, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t have to hold your nose while you were doing it. You’re more than welcome to cast your ballot for Romney in November and to support his candidacy every second of every day until then, but there’s no way you can tell me you’re happy about it. Romney’s not simply the worst possible guy to trot out as your party’s figurehead and message-carrier at this particular point in our nation’s history — with the global economy having been gang-banged by untouchable aristocratic assholes just like him — he’s also thoroughly incapable of relating to anybody on anything approaching a human level without coming off like a creepy version of Jeff Bridges in Starman.

I get that all of this has been said before in one form or another; Romney’s aloofness and awkwardness are well-documented. I also get that I’m not breaking any new ground by pointing out that even the Republican establishment can’t muster up much enthusiasm for him; Cesca’s been chronicling for months what he jokingly calls “Romney Fever,” basically the instances when powerful Republicans have been asked about Romney and have come back with, shall we say, less-than-effusive endorsements. I also understand that despite Romney’s potential to be the next “FAIL” meme on the internet, he still has a chance of winning the presidency in a few months; counting on the intellect of the American electorate is generally a fool’s errand. Again, though, there’s just no way that Mitt Romney could be anyone’s first choice to take to the prom. Hell, the Republican Clown Car Primary all but proved it — and I seriously doubt that anyone’s really warmed to him now that he’s shown himself to at least be capable of being the last man standing among a crowd of idiots.

I bring this up because Romney’s coming off a particularly horrible week. It’s one that, as the usual suspects among the punditocracy are all lining up to intone, is not likely in and of itself to have any serious impact on his chances of becoming president. But everything that went wrong — and a lot went wrong — on Romney’s trip overseas didn’t happen in a vacuum; it’s part of an ongoing series of colossal fuck-ups that over the past several months have formed one giant Jenga tower of political liability.

Believe it or not, I laughed at but certainly wasn’t personally insulted by Romney’s idiotic, tone-deaf and entirely undiplomatic statement that London may not have been ready for the Olympics; the instant karma from that really dumb comment bit him on the ass in such a big way that I figured piling on would just be superfluous amid the sound and fury. I didn’t really stress too much, either, over the Romney Unit’s inability to address Ed Miliband by his actual name as opposed to the painfully artless “Mr. Leader” or his astonishingly ill-advised decision to violate strict protocol and even mention MI6. I also chuckled at his aide’s mildly profane and eminently entertaining temper tantrum aimed at reporters in Poland; if hearing a grown man representing a candidate for President of the United States angrily telling a bunch of people to kiss his ass doesn’t make you smile, you have no soul. I got through all of that and just kind of marveled along with everyone else how silly and bush-league — no pun intended — Romney was making himself look. Only the most delusional among the GOP faithful would really think he was ready for prime time.

No, in spite of all of the above proving that he can’t compete on the world stage, the real takeaway from Mitt Romney’s disastrous overseas adventure came during his time in Israel — when he basically slammed an entire nationality as being inferior by comparison to its neighbor due to the strength of that neighbor’s “culture.” Romney’s comment about the Palestinians quickly drew cries of racism — and those cries were pretty much on the money. His statement about Israel’s culture being the reason for its economic success and standard of civilization — the implication, no matter how you parse it, being that Palestinians are borderline savages — is reminiscent of what bigoted whites in this country used to say to justify the subjugation of blacks. To make matters worse, and this is the part that really twists the knife in the minds of those who understand that Mitt Romney is 100% full of shit, Romney quickly backtracked in an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron, saying that he “did not speak about the Palestinian culture or the decisions made in their economy.” In other words, he lied. Bald-faced. As he has over and over again since his campaign started.

But lest you think that Romney is merely a Pop Warner-level bullshit artist, he then — on the same day — published an op-ed in the National Review in which he doubled-down on the racist comment he had made in Israel then quickly denied. “During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it,” Romney says. “In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy. But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?” To use the vernacular leveled so effectively at John Kerry eight years ago, that’s two flip-flops in a period of about 48-hours.

The thing is, this is old hat for Mitt Romney by now. Steve Benen has spent the past few months keeping track of Romney’s lies — at some point you have to knock off the faux-fairness and call it what it is: lying — and I think his record is something like 21 in one week. 21 lies. In one week. An epically privileged, almost disquietingly detached former college bully and established, unapologetic corporate raider who seems incapable of actual empathy and who can’t go more than a week without telling at least a half-dozen flat-out lies.

Considering what the party has morphed into these days, Mitt Romney may be the perfect Republican.

But he’s a lousy candidate no matter how you try to convince everyone otherwise.

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In case you missed it here’s what we covered at The Daily Banter this week: After the awful events in Aurora, Colorado we looked at the complicated ways in which we make sense of tragedy, Bob argued that untreated mental illness pulled the trigger in Aurora, and Chez opined that despite the nature of the massacre, nothing will change in America. We looked at Republican attempts to make it harder to vote and easier to buy guns, and dismantled GOP claims of voter fraud. We asked why people hate liberals, and Chez talked about boycotting, and missing Chick-Fil-A.

Have a great weekend!

Ben, Editor

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This week on The Daily Banter, we looked at Mitt Romney’s deceptive use of racist language, and broke down why the ongoing Bain Capital story is so important. We looked at the ‘Money Honey’ Maria Bartiromo’s consistent disregard for the facts on Wall St scandals, and Chez asked whether Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ could actually make a difference to America’s news media. We analyzed ego maniac Anthony Weiner’s proposed comeback to politics. Bob ran an important series on the new voter ID laws that could hinder 5 million people from voting, and compared them to the Jim Crow laws.

Have a great weekend!

Ben, Editor.

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Romney's election tactics: Appeal to angry whites

By Ben Cohen: There’s a very creepy book called ‘The Game’ that every woman should read in order to protect herself from sleazy, desperate guys. Written by Neil Strauss, the book details the authors infiltration of a network of ‘pickup artists’ in Los Angeles who have dedicated their lives to manipulating women and sleeping with them. I read about half the book before I had to stop. While it was interesting, it was at the end of the day, depressing beyond belief given the levels of deceit the characters would go to in order to get themselves dates. Amongst other deceptive tactics, the major strategy centered around ‘Neurolinguistic Programming’, a method used by hypnotists and motivational speakers to ‘program’ listeners into doing things they otherwise wouldn’t or couldn’t.  The guys in ‘The Game’ would use manipulative and suggestive language with their targets that would create a subconscious impression that would (at least in theory) get women into bed.

The use of this type of suggestive programming is nothing new – speech writers have been using these tactics for centuries, and the art has been boiled down to fine art in the modern political era. Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, is a master of the buzz word and advises politicians on the language they need to use to create the best impression. Luntz encouraged his Republican clients not to say “oil drilling,” but “energy exploration”, and told them not to mention “inheritance tax.”  but the “death tax,” instead. On the environment, Luntz advised Republicans not to talk about “global warming,” but the more digestible “climate change,” and on healthcare, Luntz suggested “government takeover,” rather than “healthcare reform.”  The language creates an impression with voters that changes the way they feel about issues – either riling them up or calming them down depending on the desired effect.

Mitt Romney’s campaign has clearly been paying attention to the use of language and is rolling out its latest attack strategy against Barack Obama based on buzz words and innuendo. And true to Republican form, it’s actually incredibly xenophobic and racist playing on Obama’s ‘foreign’ sounding name and belief in the use of government to help people.

In Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Romney told an audience that Obama’s policies were anti success and innately un-American (via CNN):

“It is changing the nature of America, changing the nature of what Democrats have fought for and Republicans have fought for,” Romney said, adding: “celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating it makes America strong.”

“That’s the right course for this country,” Romney continued. “His course is extraordinarily foreign.”

It’s quite a telling couple of sentences. Romney is not directly stating that Obama is a foreign communist, but the language is clear. Obama is: “Attacking success”, “Changing the nature of America” and “Extraordinarily foreign”. Those are the impressions his audience will leave with, playing into the still prevalent myths that Obama was not born in America, is in fact a Muslim and wants to destroy capitalism.

This is clearly the strategy going forward – a nastier approach that does not rely on any particular vision for America, but one based on fear of the foreign and fear of the black man in the Oval Office. Of course the Romney campaign can always deny this – the language used isn’t explicitly calling Obama a Muslim Communist, and from a technical point of view, there’s nothing wrong with his speech. But anyone who understands the use of language knows otherwise.

As Bob Cesca commented in the wake of Romney’s bizarre speech at the NAACP that was clearly designed to appeal to his base rather than the African American community:

It was only a matter of time before Romney engaged in this kind of racist dogwhistle politics that’s intended to fire up the resentful white Republican base. Every election season, the party just can’t help itself: demonize minorities, pump up the angry whites and win.

John McCain and Sarah Palin adopted exactly the same strategy in 2008, using innuendo and suggestion to ensure as many angry white Republicans came out to vote as possible. It’s amazing that this type of thinly veiled racism still works, making it more depressing than ever. There is latent racism everywhere in America, most of which is a product of the country’s complex history,  but our politicians should attempt to rise above it for the sake of moving the country forward. But politics is a ruthless game and politicians will do pretty much anything to win, including good ol’ fashioned black hating.

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Another big week here at The Daily Banter (our biggest traffic so far!). In case you missed it, here’s what we covered. We looked at what Mitt Romney’s fundraiser at Dick Cheney’s house means for his campaign, and argued that Romney is now adopting the racist ‘Southern Strategy’. We begged CNN to get rid of the despicable Nancy Grace over another suicide provoked by her show, and discussed a scarily inhumane discussion on Obama’s drone policy on MSNBC. Chez Pazienza weighed in on the Tosh rape joke controversy, and ripped into Libertarian ‘reporter’ John Stossel. Finally, we argued that Americans need to adopt some British style anger over the new banking scandal, and Bob asked the nation to stop devouring hamburgers for the sake of the environment.

Have a great weekend!

Ben, Editor

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