The Watering Hole, Thursday, September 20th, 2012: Veterans for Romney?

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So far, the one and only yard sign for Mitt Romney that I’ve seen read “Veterans for Romney.” Since I cannot imagine any reason why any veterans would support Romney, I started looking for further information.

The website vetsforromney.com only leads to more confusion: it consists of a photo of Romney with some people dressed in military garb, and a section entitled “Our Platform”; here’s a few bits of said “platform”:

A Responsive Department of Veteran Affairs (VA): As with most government agencies, the VA is growing to become a behemoth…

[sigh - Mitt, keep ignoring those eight years increase in the size of the government under George W. Bush, and keep ignoring the provable fact that President Barack Obama cut several hundred thousand government jobs.]

National Defense: The strength of this nation is built on the bedrock of a strong national defense. They call it low hanging fruit. It’s easy to target defense spending as the first area of cuts. unchecked spending threatens the sovereignty of our nation. Excessive levels of debt disrupt all financial units – whether it be a family, a business or a local, state or federal government. But, the knee jerk reaction can not be to axe away at defense spending while the current administration is unwilling to even mention, let alone seriously consider, reductions in entitlement programs. The strength of this nation is built on the bedrock of a strong national defense.

[Okay, yeah, yeah, strength, bedrock, defense, enough! Mitt, quick question: how do you reconcile this sentence with the one that immediately follows? "It’s easy to target defense spending as the first area of cuts. unchecked spending threatens the sovereignty of our nation."

However, that site led me to some interesting places. Clicking on “ISSUES” at the top brought me directly to…a page on Mitt Romney’s website. There is not one single word on this page regarding veterans, nor in the available links to a variety of “issues” (including “Human Capital”, a disgusting and degrading term.) So, Mitt, what about those veterans and military families?

Next…at the bottom of the “Issues” page is a box that says “Paid for by Romney for President, Inc.” I tried looking into “Romney for President, Inc” and found two sites: one which, oddly, lists Romney’s campaign staff along with brief bios of each; the second appears to be a business search site, simply listing the corporation, its address and a little contact info. Nothing there about veterans and their families, either.

One of the other tabs on the Romney site was labeled “COMMUNITIES”, which was where I found “Veterans and Military Families for Romney.” Aha! I thought: now I’ll find something about why veterans would support Mitt Romney. However, the page does not seem to have any actual Veterans and/or Military Families writing or speaking in support of Mitt Romney. Aside the usual requests for donations, and offers to purchase “Veterans for Romney” merchandise, the only mention of the military is a story about “National Military Voter Readiness Day”, which apparently occurred this past Saturday, September 15th.

The “NEWS/BLOG”, linked from the ‘Veterans for Romney’ website, appears to be a work that’s not in progress. Underneath its amateurish appearance, it at least gives a sort of time-capsule, there are some gems of information about Romney’s reign in Massachusetts, such as a 2007 report by the Gun Owners’ Action League (GOAL). Here’s an excerpt:

General Comments:
In the first months of the Romney administration the Governor isolated himself to all but a handful of close advisors most of whom came from the business community. This caused the Governor to make some rather serious political missteps that could have been avoided through better communications. However, relations dramatically improved and in the end, GOAL had more access to this administration than any other since the days of Governor Ed King in 1979.

Okay, STILL no mention of veterans and their families, jobs, the V.A., etc.

Either Mitt Romney doesn’t have a plan for America’s veterans and military families, or it is extremely well hidden.

I want someone to ask Mitt Romney to tell America’s veterans whether he approves of the Senate Republicans’ filibuster of the bipartisan Veterans Jobs Corps Bill killing it until next year. I want someone to ask Mitt Romney why he refuses to cut a dime from the bloated Defense budget, yet will be happy to cut “entitlements” and the “behemoth” V.A., which benefit veterans and active military personnel.

Again I ask, why “Veterans for Romney”?

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200 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Thursday, September 20th, 2012: Veterans for Romney?”

    • Okay, That got screwed up.

      There’s a vets for Romney sign at 1:09 on Mitts Bad Lip Reading video.

  4. Thanks Ebb! The Ratheads at Comcast had my internet down so I haven’t seen this yet! My phone won’t display it.

  8. Seen on the Intergoogles this morning:

    How dead Is Mitt Romney’s campaign?

    The Mormons just baptized it.

    • Heh. Yesterday’s polls seem to be tossing shovelfuls of dirt on the rotting corpse of WillardRat’s campaign.

  11. Happy entrancetotheblindinglight day House!
    As for WIllardRat and Veterans, he’s fine with using them as cannon fodder, since they too are /were sucking at the federal teat. Sponging goddamned freeloaders.

  12. Nate Silver tries to make sense of conflicting polls:

    “Roughly one third of American households rely solely on mobile phones and do not have landlines, meaning they will simply be excluded by polls that call landlines only. Potential voters who rely on cellphones belong to more Democratic-leaning demographic groups than those which don’t, and there is reasonably strong empirical evidence that the failure to include them in polls can bias the results against Democrats, even after demographic weightings are applied.”

    Duh.

    • Srsly, duh.

      We still can’t assume that this will be a blowout for Obama — although I think it will be — because if Rove et al can steal it, they will.

      • KKKarl and the Kochsuckers (sounds like a band …eh?) will no doubt have so last minute nasties up their sleeves.

        • For starters, I expect there will be swarms of poll checkers in every Dem leaning voting site in the country, followed by long long lines, due to insufficient numbers of voting booths in those same sites.

    • Over at a friend’s blog, there is more discussion on the topic. When I asked a co-worker about this topic awhile back, she gave me a vaguely wishy-washy response about how good polling takes all this into account… I think the point is that a lot of polling isn’t good. I’m pretty sure Rasmussen relies on very short-lived robocalling exclusively in many (most?) of their polling. We don’t use any robocalls at all here in surveys, which I think colors her response.

      • I tend to think that it is my duty to mess up phone polls… I never answer how I really think.

    • an interesting blogger post from that article:

      ~”Looks like the only states where Romney still has solid support is in the southern welfare states…the ones where the majority of voters don’t pay income taxes, are victims who feel they are entitled to food, housing and healthcare.”~

  14. Tim Pawlenty quit the Romney campaign so he could go lobby for the banksters. Big loss. Still love to see the rats jumping ship.

  15. A bad week gets worse for Willard as the rats ditch him. His campaign co-chair. Timmah Pawlenty, just resigned.

  16. I think the problem Republicans have is they don’t have any leaders that their base can actually feel good about and rally behind. They’ve made a science of being against the Democrat (whomever that is at the time), but that’s not the same as being for their own candidate.

    I’m tempted to engage a rightie next time I see a post about how they’re against Obama. I just want to ask the simple question. “Are you actually for Mitt Romney?” I expect the canned response of “anything will be better than Obama.” To which I reply, “You didn’t answer my question. Are you actually for Romney? Is he the person you really want to be president?”

    • Tell them to Google “Republicans for Obama.” Maybe they will feel better about themselves.

  19. If you take a look at the top (or bottom) of the ‘Veterans and Military Families’ page, it appears that 7.1 million people ‘liked’ it on Facebook? Is that possible? Am I misreading something?

  21. The wingnuttia are coming completely unglued.
    One of my co-workers at a business meeting yesterday began ranting about
    ‘a billion rounds of hollowpoint ammo the gummint is buying for the upcoming civil war’…!!!
    He went on (he’s the leader of the group we were meeting with) for about fifteen minutes, before one of the people on the conference call brought up Snopes and debunked his dumb ass.
    He still insisted we should figure out our ‘security plan’ for when mobs are trying to loot our stores, and tried to tie it into the freaking work we were attempting to do.
    So, I googled ‘a billion rounds of hollowpoint ammo’ and found
    This
    and a bunch of utube whacko videos. Here
    The scary part is, these idiots believe this stuff…

    • Remember kids, always take as the Gospel truth from internet sites that misspell the president’s name.

  24. Tod Kelly searches for a historical parallel for Romney’s net favorability negatives (the ONLY candidate in the last 24 years with higher UNfavorables with his own party) at this point in a campaign:

    “Has a major-party Presidential candidate ever had to focus so much energy on getting his own party to be willing to vote for him? Last November, I would have bet you many rounds of top-shelf scotch that by now the GOP’s candidate would have been tacking to the center so hard and fast he or she would be breaking all kinds of land-speed records. But ironically, the only electable candidate of that entire bunch may turn out to be the least electable of all, because his party’s base doesn’t trust him enough to let him tack anywhere but further right. (And trust me on this – after attending last weekend’s Values Voter Summit I can assure you that the base does not like Mitt Romney, and they do not trust him – at all.)”

    http://www.people-press.org/2012/09/19/section-3-views-of-the-candidates/

  25. A Couple of debates going on today…

    Tim Kaine is debating Macaca Allen and Elizabeth Warren is debating Scott Brown today…

    Stay tuned.

  26. Happy B’Day House. As one of the leaders (Virgo) of the Universe, and therefore it’s your due, there are 70 Jennifer’s and Danica’s awaiting your word. Go Jolly and Enjoy!

  27. You can never go home again:

    Romney is currently losing in Michigan, Massachusetts, California and New Hampshire, four states he calls home.

  30. Happy Houseday birthofroberts, I hope you’re enjoying the day as much as I am enjoying a few moments of sister freedom!

  33. Amy Goodman covers the fracking debate.

    I recall Paul ‘Voucher’ Ryan in Colorado saying that the government needs to get out of the way of the oil and gas industry as they frack for gas all over the country and let Coloradans decide how to regulate their environment. Curiously he said that the EPA, shouldn’t be in the business of regulating the environment being drilled by fracking companies..??
    http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/articles/use-all-energy-sources-ryan-tells-colo.-crowd/

    • The Colorandans should as their neighboring Montanans how they like cleaning up after all the mining companies went bankrupt and left their rivers contaminated with acidic tailings and byproduct slag.

      • Seems like, thanks to Dick Cheney and the Halliburton Loophole (2005), the EPA has no jurisdiction over the fracking industry’s drilling fluids and what is in them or where they go. So… Ryan says there should be no government regulation, he says the people should regulate the industry, but the people got the government to create the EPA to regulate industry, but Ryan says….

        … next thing you know the people are concreting themselves to barrels in the road…. its the only option left to them.

  34. Here’s a longer, and less safe for work, version of Jon Stewart’s “Chaos on Bullshit Mountain” episode. I really wish that a “real” news source would hire him as their managing editor in charge of calling out bullshit. He displays more integrity with every “bullshit” than the vast majority of newscasters and commentators.

    http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/jon-stewart-takes-down-fox-and-their-chaos

    BTW. Has anyone heard why he wasn’t bleeped? I would expect that the Reichwhiners would be assploding all over the place because the children might have heard him say “bullshit” numerous times. Did he get special dispensation ala the “shit” episode of South Park?

    • Not only did he get away with “bullshit”, he used another great line without getting censored: “Asshole Cove”…classic!

    • She’s too frikkin busy running for High Priestess to vote or meet with her constituents, but she can’t take time for half as many debates as she attended nationally.
      She must have a huge flock of FoxSheep behind her.

      • She does have FoxSheep. She also has a network of preachers who campaign for her from the pulpit to congregations who think FAUX”News” is too “librul”.

    • My personal favorite is the Washington quote. Especially the part about it being a time of enlightened and liberal policy. Gahrownteed to make bagger and fundy heads explode.

    • Nice find. Gotta wonder who Apu is voting for. Oh, wait, he’s an undocumented KwikeeMart operator…

  42. Heh! Prick Prayery must be feeling starved for attention. So? He was compelled to say something even more stupid than Mittens can cook up. According to Prayery the separation of church and state began with all those hippies in the 1960s and President Obama is trying to force people of faith out of public office. I’m a good deal more hostile to religion than President Obama and even I don’t pursue that goal. I just want elected officials to base their legislation on real things like the constitution rather than the ravings of mad men.

    http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/rick_perry_satan_church_state.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+tpm-news+%28TPMNews%29

    • That’s right – contemplate as many chickens’ entrails as you like in private, just please don’t use them to decide if you are going to bomb Iran or not – I’d prefer an ‘Age of Reason’ approach – thanks.

    • From Cats earlier link…

      “Religious controversies are always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those which spring from any other cause. Of all the animosities which have existed among mankind, those which are caused by the difference of sentiments in religion appear to be the most inveterate and distressing, and ought most to be depreciated. I was in hopes that the enlightened and liberal policy, which has marked the present age, would at least have reconciled Christians of every denomination so far that we should never again see the religious disputes carried to such a pitch as to endanger the peace of society.”- George Washington

  44. Filed under ‘We’re already skrewd’. Apologies for the length, but it’s all germain.

    Arctic summer icepack shrinks to record low
    Excerpt of interest…
    “The scientific community realizes that we have a planetary emergency: It’s hard for the public to recognize this because they stick their head out the window and don’t see that much going on,” Dr. James Hansen, the NASA climate scientist, told a Greenpeace-sponsored panel in New York.

    Led by the National Association of Manufacturers, major U.S. industries have repeatedly tried to block the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from setting limits on emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, while acknowledging climate change, opposes the EPA working to regulate its causes. Romney was cheered wildly when he made a joke about rising ocean levels in his Republican Convention acceptance speech.

    Scientists had forecast that the Arctic ice pack will disappear in summer by the year 2050.

    With this year’s rapid melt, they see it happening sooner.”

    Yuk it up, Rmoney. Just know this. All your millions of wealth won’t help your grandchildren find food to eat when the farmland has desertified in fifty years.
    Asshole.

    • That’s what’s so maddening when they Reichwhiners claim “the science isn’t settled” or “we can’t trust predictions” or “the models are incomplete”. The fact is that the observed effects of global warming are meeting or exceeding the most dire predictions of the 80s and 90s.

      Then you get the total scumbags like Jimmy Inhofe and inSeannity who will stare straight at the camera and say “we’ve actually been cooling for the last 10 years”! They seem to think that they are immune to the effects but will be whining louder than ever when a loaf od bread costs $20.00 if one can even find bread.

      • A pandering s.o.b…
        thinks he’a a knight in shining armor — “fights” for women (voted against equal pay; voted against the ACA reproductive health)

      • The republicans are showing their true faces. this election… I hope they keep it up. If they do, they might just turn alot of Americans away from voting for them for a long time.

        • I think it is coming to that. The religious right is wearing out their welcome. Unfortunately, it may not happen as quick as this election. Let’s see what happens with 4 more years of obstruction of Obama, and how the Dems frame it over the next four years. In the case of a Romney win… I don’t want to think about it.

  49. Twitter comment:

    “Shorter debate: privileged white male talks down to educated woman while nervously laughing & repeating lies in between.”

  51. Joy Behar has found a way to make me watch her show! She took the night off and enlisted super-sub John Fugelsang to host her show. :D

  53. OMG, I just heard on Ed that Scott Brown tried to weasel out of the debate with Elizabeth Warren by saying he couldn’t miss some votes in the Senate. Harry Reid kicked his feet out from under him by canceling today’s votes and telling him to GIT.

    Y’all are prolly talking about it already. :oops:

  58. Hey Wayne you twittering out there? Just watched Peter King lying his ass off about the DoJ planning release the Blind Sheik (1993 trade centre bombing) as goodwill to Egypt. Here ya go.

    Peter King, apologist for terrorists, so pro-IRA Ronald Reagan put him on an FBI watch list, making up stuff again about the DoJ and ‘rumors’ they will release the Blind Sheik as a gift.

  60. “Y’all are prolly talking about it already.”

    Now you know how I feel when I’m trying to find a topic for a Watering Hole – everyone here seems to find so much interesting and important news and topics before I get home from work!

    • Yup, and when he raises his eyebrows, his forehead wrinkles are like dark brown stripes.

      Who’s running Mitt’s campaign – or, to phrase it differently, who’s the next rat to leave the sinking ship?

    • Oh I coated my screen with coffee again !

      I loved the comments – the sombrero and Pancho Villa mustache and the “I am Juan Percent”….. oh god, tears down my face.

    • “chickification”
      lol
      I’ve heard some noise of this for a few years, and a likely culprit is the wash of synthetic hormones getting into the food and water chains. “The Pill” has been around for a long time now, and could be having this unusual side effect.

  64. This is important stuff … Dexter Filkins, who has written extensively on Afghanistan, says that it’s “difficult to overstate just how calamitous the decision, announced Tuesday, to suspend most joint combat patrols between Afghan soldiers and their American and NATO mentors is.” An important point:

    “In some ways, it would be comforting if the Afghans who were doing these killings were Taliban agents who’d slipped inside American training camps. There is some truth to this notion, but not much. When I was in Afghanistan this spring, a senior Afghan defense official told me that he and his fellow officials had little knowledge of the loyalties—or even the nationalities—of many of the new recruits. Many, he said, were presumed to have been sent by Pakistani intelligence officials from across the border. An American official told me that “several hundred” Afghan recruits, including some officers, had been identified as loyal either to the Taliban or to the Pakistanis.”

    As bad as that sounds, though, the reality is much worse.

    “By the Americans’ own accounting, only ten per cent of the green-on-blue attacks have been carried out by Taliban infiltrators. The overwhelming majority of green-on-blue attacks are coming from ordinary Afghans signing up for the military. The very people we are trying to help fight the Taliban are turning their guns on us.”

    http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/09/the-definition-of-a-quagmire.html#ixzz272imoh3j

    • Brown was too busy being smug and attempting to one-up Warren, which of course he did not.
      Mittens seems to be a poison pill for his party.

  68. TERRY! Did that sonofabitch say to Beth…”look at her, does she look Native American?” Are you fricken kidding me? He said, I look at this human being and I can tell you what her ethnic background is. What the fuck is wrong about being Native American? This is as bad as anything Mittwart said in the ‘secret’ tape. Jesus as my witness, I want to take this asshole out back, and teach him the errors of his ways, and piss on this roadkill. *seething*

    • another white ass bigoted punk who “represents” the commonweath of Mass, and who feels he’s entitled to determine who’s “right”, who’s ethnic background is proper to exist in the rareified air of his lower intestine’s emmissions. To quote Malloy, and Pete, “Have I told you how much I hate these people.”

    • I heard about that. He’d better not come to my town.

      Guess he threw away the Cherokee vote in Mass there.

    • As she explained her grandparents didn’t want her parents to get married because one of them had native American blood.

    • Being President means being able to ‘run this country’ ? Really Ann? Failed high school civics did we? Or maybe that’s your brownshirt showing?

    • She should have to go through half of what the Obamas went through in 2008 and since. The Romneys aren’t smart enough to handle the pressure.

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