WilliamPitt
WilliamPitt's Journal
Keith Olbermann's EPIC Special Comment on Romney's videotape disaster
I showed a Romney supporter the video of his remarks, and videotaped their reaction.
Yup.
This is THE BEST article I've read on the Romney video fiasco
Nails it. To. The. Wall.
The Real Romney Captured on Tape Turns Out to Be a Sneering Plutocrat
By Jonathan Chait
New York Magazine
Presidential campaigns wallow so tediously in pseudo-events and manufactured outrage that our senses can be numbed to the appearance of something genuinely momentous. Mitt Romney’s secretly recorded comments at a fund-raiser are such an event — they reveal something vital about Romney, and they disqualify his claim to the presidency.
To think of Romney’s leaked discourse as a “gaffe” grossly misdescribes its importance. Indeed the comments’ direct impact on the outcome of the election will probably be small. Romney repeated the wildly misleading but increasingly popular conservative talking point that 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes. The federal income tax is, by design, one of the most progressive elements of the American tax system, but well over 80 percent of non-retired adults pay federal taxes. But most people hear “income taxes” and think “taxes,” which is why the trick of using one phrase to make audiences think of the other is a standard GOP trick when discussing taxes. For that very reason, it won’t strike many voters as an insult: Most people who don’t pay income taxes do pay other taxes, and fail to distinguish between them, and thus don’t consider themselves among the 47 percent scorned by Romney.
Instead the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)
(snip)
The revelations in this video come to me as a genuine shock. I have never hated Romney. I presumed his ideological makeover since he set out to run for president was largely phony, even if he was now committed to carry through with it, and to whatever extent he’d come to believe his own lines, he was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick, and vulnerable. It seems unavoidable now to conclude that Romney’s embrace of Paul Ryanism is born of actual contempt for the looters and moochers, a class war on behalf of his own class.
The rest: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/real-romney-is-a-sneering-plutocrat.html
Read the whole thing. It is perfect. Says it all, and has a bunch of helpful links that blow Mitt's "47% moocher" argument straight over the fucking moon.
I Will Occupy
I Will OccupyBy William Rivers Pitt
Truthout | Op-Ed
Monday 17 September 2012
When the history of this age is written - if there are people left to write it, and if there is technology left to hold it - it will speak of a generation on the brink. Financial calamity combined with economic collapse combined with endless warfare and bottomless greed united to create a beast with hot breath and blood-red eyes that stares us dead in the face. It is an age on the edge of doom, and yet we persist in the suicidal madness of deliberate ignorance. If that history is written, the first line will be, "They were fools."
That history will remember Occupy, and a year when a chance was held forth to seize on the idea that this looming collective calamity can be sidestepped. History will remember Occupy as having offered one last, best chance to be more than we are, to see the beast for what it is, and to slay it once and for all.
(snip)
Occupy is not about parties, or politics, or leaders. Occupy is about people, and their individual power to create change. The camps were a means to an end, a way to grab the news media by the throat and demand attention. Most of the camps are gone now, but the people remain, and within them lives the knowledge that they do not need to follow parties or leaders, but can act on their own to collectively drag this old, dying, deceitful way of things back from the precipice to create a better world.
One year ago, Occupy began. One year from now, I will be a father for the first time. My child will be six months old, and living in a world fraught with peril. It does not have to be how it has been, and for my child, I will Occupy. I will Occupy for an end to greed, for an end to war, for an end to savage inequality, for clean air and water, for safe food and fair work, for the new day that awaits my child if we all, right here, right now, come together and put an end to this madness before it puts an end to us.
Our history is not yet written.
Write it.
Occupy.
The rest: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11573-i-will-occupy
First trimester accomplished, two more to go. Yes, I'm going to be a father.
Mom and baby are as healthy as healthy can be.
So there's that.
The 2012 election became a litmus test for me today.
The 2012 election has become, for me, a litmus test for the American people at large. This test is presented on two levels:
1. For the so-called "average American voter," it is a test of how much raw, stinking, fly-riddled bullshit can be swallowed before saying, "No." What Romney has presented of himself to date - and perhaps more importantly, what he hasn't presented - should do more than give one a moment of pause. It should deliver, in Technicolor, a huge double-underscored statement on the simple fact that the man is not fit to hold the office he seeks. This was more than "bad campaigning." This was a humiliation delivered not only upon the Romney campaign, but upon us all, because we all live in a country that saw fit to elevate this blithering idiot to a place where he could concievably become the leader of the nation.
2. For the "Both Parties Are The Same" crowd, I have crossed a personal Rubicon. At this point, making that claim is, to me, not only disingenuous but flatly dangerous. You will get no argument from me that Mr. Obama is no prize, but from here on out, anyone who dares to claim that no difference exists between the two main candidates will immediately qualify for "Hopelessly Addled Shithead" status. Mitt Romney is actively dangerous - not only to Americans, but to the world entire - and if you can't see far enough past your own spasms of self-righteousness to acknowledge this self-evident truth, you are a train wreck, a dumpster fire, a Comprehensive Fail that bends the very light with its mass and gravity. Peddle those papers elsewhere; the entire planet knows better now.
Very rough transcript of Romney's statement just now
I Skyped the gist of the presser to my co-workers. The quoted portions are accurate.
P.S. Romney looked terrible, stammered a lot...and did this only to get out ahead of Obama's statement. He had four flags behind him, trying to be presidential...but the real president is about to speak, and Romney setting up the comparison could prove to be lethal...and never mind the fact that Romney is going all-political while they're still hosing blood off the sidewalk. Ugh.
Transcript as best as I could manage.
===
William Pitt: We're sad we're sad, freedom...and doubling down on saying the administration "sympathized" with the attackers.
William Pitt: "Mixed signals they're sending to the world."
William Pitt: "American leadership is necessary to ensure that events in the region do not spin out of control."
William Pitt: He's taking questions. Brace yourselves.
William Pitt: First question is about that. He's stammering.
William Pitt: "It's a terrible course to apologize for our values."
William Pitt: "An apology for America's values is never the right course."
William Pitt: All the questions are about his statement
William Pitt: "It's their administration. Their administration spoke."
William Pitt: "The embassy is their administration."
William Pitt: "The statement that came from the administration is akin to an apology."
William Pitt: Lots of stammering in that last one. Lots of stammering in general.
William Pitt: Question: did you jump the gun on the statement?
William Pitt: "I'm not going to take hypotheticals on what might have happened," in response to question of would you have made that statement if you knew the ambassador was dead.
William Pitt: HA. "President Obama has shown a lack of clarity on foreign policy."
William Pitt: The questions are all about the timing of his statement. The press isn't buying it. MSNBC just cut away.
The shit hits the fan in Libya: US ambassador dead, Romney attacks Obama for siding with attackers
US ambassador, three staffers killed in Libya: http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/2012/09/12/american-killed-libya-protest-over-film/2EQzJyTOC9gbv3PtnixjsK/story.html
...apparently by protesters who are protesting Terry Jones' new anti-Islam movie: http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/state-dept-confirms-death-in-libya-romney-attacks-disgraceful-white-house.php?ref=fpb
From that second link:
In a previous incident tied to Jones, a riot at a U.N. mission in Afghanistan killed 12 people in 2011, including three United Nations workers and four security guards, after mullahs urged followers to protest the Florida pastor’s burning of a Koran. More were killed in additional protests elsewhere in the country.
Earlier today, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt issued a statement that “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” The embassy said the statement was drafted and released before the protests. But the succession of events drew widespread criticism in the United States after violence broke out for appearing weak in the face of threats.
That statement was not vetted by the State Department when it was released, so SecState Clinton sought to roll it back: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
Romney's response: “I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Reince Priebus tweet: "Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic."
Obama campaign response: "We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack."
Profile Information
Name: William Rivers PittGender: Male
Hometown: Boston
Member since: 2001
Number of posts: 58,179
