Romney claims memory of Michigan event that happened before he was born

Does Mitt have a flux capacitor?

Shakin my head. The man is sick. Nobody normal lies like this guy.

DETROIT—When Mitt Romney regaled a Michigan audience this week with childhood memories of a landmark moment in Detroit history, it was a rare instance of emotional candour.

And, perhaps, an even rarer example of time travel.

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.

The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.

Mitt, Mitt…. C’mon. ya lie like a rug about contraception. Good thing the bishops don’t seem to notice.

a reader at Andrew Sullivan observes:

Here’s an interesting question re: exposing the partisanship of the Bishops. So, at the most recent debate, Romney stated that it was completely voluntary as to whether Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts had to provide emergency contraceptives to rape victims. Yet, it appears that it isn’t voluntary, that there is no conscience exemption. So, this raises two important questions that speak directly to the partisanship of the Bishops, and in this case, specifically of Cardinal O’Malley in Boston:

Why would O’Malley not express the same outrage toward Romney’s policy in Massachusetts as he has toward Obama’s policy at the national level? And why wouldn’t O’Malley feel required to correct the public record re: Romney’s statement, since that statement leaves the impression with voters that it is Cardinal O’Malley who is choosing to provide emergency contraceptives?
It appears that he has done neither to date. It seems that there’s no answer to these two questions except the political partisanship of the Cardinal.

then there’s this:

Mitt Romney misled a voter in Shelby Township, Michigan about President Obama’s rule requiring insurers and employers to provide contraception coverage to employees during a town hall Tuesday afternoon. Romney grossly misrepresented the measure, claiming that under the new requirement, “the Catholic Church had to provide for insurance that provided contraceptives, sterilization, morning after pills to the employees of the Church.” But as Romney himself has previously admitted, both the original provision and the modified language specifically excludes houses of worship and nonprofit organizations that primarily employ people of the same faith from providing birth control coverage.

Commander in chief material? I don’t think so.

Clarence Thomas for president!!

The Man with the Can

Adam Winkler is perhaps the first person to come up with this solution to the dismal field of GOP candidates for the presidential nomination. For the life of me, I don’t see why this was so long in coming. In contradistinction to his days as a sexual harasser, Thomas is famous for never saying anything while on the Supreme Court, so he can’t be accused of flipflopping on every single issue, like Mitt Romney. And, unlike Rick Santorum, his name is not synonymous with a gross concoction of bodily fluids (although, of course, he will always be associated with the image of the Coke can with pubic hair). Plus, being African American, he would undoubtedly appeal to the liberal section of the pubic, oops I mean public.

Importantly, Thomas seems willing. According to Winkler,

The idea of Thomas running for president was floated two years ago by two legal bloggers, David Lat and Kashmir Hill. They noted that when Thomas was first nominated to the bench, he expressed hesitation about the solitary, sedate environment that comes with the black robe. “I can’t see myself spending the rest of my life as a judge,” Thomas said.

I think a lot of Americans would agree with that sentiment.

Most importantly, Thomas comes cheap:

ThinkProgress uncovered three briefs that AEI filed in Thomas’ Court after Thomas received their $15,000 gift. Thomas recused from none of these three cases, and he either voted in favor of the result AEI favored or took a stance that was even further to the right in each case:

Riley v. Kennedy: AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision preventing a change in Alabama’s voting law from going into effect. Justice Thomas did not recuse, and he joined the Supreme Court’s decision reversing the lower court.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: AEI filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court decision upholding a local school district’s desegregation plan. Thomas joined the majority opinion reversing the lower court’s decision, and he filed a lengthy concurrence defending that result.

Whitman v. American Trucking Association: AEI joined a brief asking the Supreme Court to allow the EPA to consider the costs of implementing new air quality standards before it issued them. Thomas’ concurring opinion went much further than AEI asked him to go, suggesting that the law authorizing EPA to issue these standards is unconstitutional.

Turns out that was the tip of the cashberg:

Thomas appears to have “knowingly and willfully” filed falsified Financial Disclosure Forms which withheld disclosure of nearly $700,000 his wife received from the rightwing Heritage Foundation for the better part of the last 20 years. Only once it was pointed out publicly this year did Thomas bother to file “self-initiated amendments” to the forms he had signed just above the legal warning in bold and all caps which reads: “NOTE: ANY INDIVIDUAL WHO KNOWINGLY AND WILLFULLY FALSIFIES OR FAILS TO FILE THIS REPORT MAY BE SUBJECT TO CIVIL AND CRIMINAL SANCTIONS (5 U.S.C. app. § 104)”

In short, Clarence Thomas is the perfect GOP candidate for President of the United States.

Mitt Romney introduces new backward American flag at Comerica Park in Detroit.

click to enlarge

The trees in Michigan are just right for Mitt Romney, but the American flag…. well, not so much.

Maybe the backward flag represents the Republican wish to go back in time to the ’50′s, before the pill, the internet, civil rights, gays coming out, Hawaiian statehood, and George W. Bush. Maybe Romney just wanted to fire something, and the American flag was close at hand.

Anyway, I’m in favor of it. I like a man with ideas.

Tiny band of crazies choosing the GOP nominee for the Leader of the Free World.

Choosing a president, GOP-style

Timothy Egan points out the miniscule Republican primary turnout. This explains the “massive” surges, as one candidate after another rises up to challenge Mitt Romney: the numbers are so small that only a few thousand emotional extremists make or break a candidates momentum. Not to mention the power of the most expensive television propaganda campaigns in primary history, fueled by the Supreme Republican Court’s edict that corporations are people.

the small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large.

None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States. They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.

Given the level of media attention, we know an election of great significance is happening on the Republican side. But it’s occurring in a different place, guided by talk-radio extremists and religious zealots, with only a vague resemblance to the states where it has taken place. From this small world have emerged a host of nutty, retrograde positions, unpopular with the vast American majority.
…

So far, three million voters have participated in the Republican races, less than the population of Connecticut. This means that 89 percent of all registered voters in those states have not participated in what is, from a horse-race perspective, a very tight contest.

Yes, we know Republicans don’t like their choices; it’s a meh primary. But still, in some states, this election could be happening in a ghost town. Less than 1 percent of registered voters turned out for Maine’s caucus. In Nevada, where Republican turnout was down 25 percent from 2008, only 3 percent of total registered voters participated.

This is not majority rule by any measure; it barely qualifies as participatory democracy.

Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul

Aside from his antiwar stance, Paul is simply advocating corporate tyranny, with no recourse for the citizen. If you want to live in a world like the people in the film “Erin Brockovich,” if that’s your idea of freedom, vote for Ron Paul.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9502-focus-noam-chomsky-on-ron-paul