Big Fish Ink

“The reason for all the dust that’s being thrown up is that, every time he talks about foreign policy, Romney is a blindfolded man in a yard full of rakes. He wrote a Washington Post op-ed about arms control that proved Romney didn’t know enough about the subject to feed to his fish. He flirted with advocating a trade war with China, and he and his advisors occasionally slip and call Russia ‘the Soviet Union.’ Of course, he did make the bobsleds run on time, so there’s that.”
— Charles P. Pierce, “Obama 2012, Bin Laden, and Willard’s 3 A.M. Phone Call,” Esquire, April 30, 2012.

“For Romney, however, there is no great change on the horizon. His economic plan is more tax cuts for the rich. His education plan is privatization. His foreign policy plan is to bomb countries. All his plans, in fact, are just jacked-up versions of the same plans the GOP has given us for decades. It’s not a platform a Presidential candidate can loudly trumpet in this day and age.
“But Romney will trumpet Obama’s errors, occasionally real but mostly conceived. Unfortunately for Romney, Obama’s real [Achilles heel] with Democrats and independents – civil liberties – won’t be included in the barrage. The GOP will see to it that Civil liberties are a verboten subject.
“As time goes on, Obama’s lead over Romney will grow. Because Mitt Romney has nothing to offer outside of attacks on Obama. And too many people are already sold on Obama for this to have meaningful effect on the election.
“Voters across the U.S. are already seeing Romney and the GOP in one light – they want Obama out. And if it means supporting a candidate that half the conservative base loathes, then so be it.
“So while Obama will run on Change again, Romney and the GOP will run on an ‘Obama Sucks’ platform. And that’s just not smart campaigning. And it won’t be nearly enough to keep Obama from winning a second term.”
— William K. Wolfrum, “’Obama Sucks’ Won’t Be Enough,” April 24, 2012.

“…if the media was actually doing their job, they’d start calling Mitt and Ann Romney the liars they are. They lie about everything from important policy choices to minor things like the dog on the roof. They lie about what they said, they lie about what they believe, and they do it knowing full well a record is out there contradicting their position of the day.
“They can be this cynical because the mainstream media lets them be. They don’t actually use the word ‘lie.’ They use other, kinder forms to describe what Romney does. I am not talking about things that are at all vague. These are lies like ‘I never said that the economy got worse under Barack Obama’ when he had just said it the day before. The shifting sands under his feet kind of lies that change depending on who his audience is. Those kinds of lies, which get reported as ‘Did Mitt Romney Misspeak?’ or something equally full of milquetoast.
“Yet no one in the media, critic or otherwise, will actually step up and call a lie a lie. In fact, US News & World Report claimed the ‘Etch a Sketch’ story was proof positive of bias against Romney, despite the fact that it confirmed the cynical lies this campaign feels comfortable shooting into the mainstream.”
— Karoli, “Mitt Romney Whines About “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” In Media; Howie Kurtz Sympathizes,” Crooks and Liars, April 22, 2012.

“I guess some of this mad right-wing love [for the rich] comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.”
— Stephen King, from the story excerpted below.