The Wartering Hole, Wednesday, February 1, 2012: Money Wins in Florida Primary!

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“Do you know what I intend? I intend to be a king in a big palace and when I go out in my coach, all the people will wave and I will shout at them, and…and…in the summertime I will go to my summer palace and I’ll wear my crown in swimming and everything, and all the people will cheer and I will shout at them… What do you mean I can’t be king? Nobody should be kept from being a king if he wants to be one. It’s usually just a matter of knowing the right people.. ..well…. if I can’t be a king, then I’ll be very rich then I will buy myself a kingdom. Yes, I will buy myself a kingdom and then I’ll kick out the old king and take over the whole operation myself. I will be head king.” Mitt Romney, age 5.

(with apologies to Charles Schultz)

This Be the Open Thread O’The Day.

198 thoughts on “The Wartering Hole, Wednesday, February 1, 2012: Money Wins in Florida Primary!”

  4. Thanks, BnF for putting words to one of the reasons that makes Romney so unlikeable. He is a wooden man. Romney has no animation except when expressing his anger. His plastic smile is cold. In his heart, he believes that the presidency is his destiny and this clouds his vision so that he doesn’t see the real world around. That’s why he shouts, “Corporations are people” at the working poor. And he shouts, “I like firing people”, at the unemployed. Still he is convinced that his time has come to wear the crown and when he does, he will hand over the final stash of cash, Social Security, to his friends on Wall Street.

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  6. Smart Bullets have arrived and the implications are a bit frightening:

    “The U.S. military has been after self-guided bullets for years. Now, government researchers have finally made it happen: a bullet that can navigate itself a full mile before successfully nailing its target. … Even with an ace marksman, researchers found that a typical unguided bullet — operating in real world conditions that might include crosswinds or changes in air density — would miss a target that was a half-mile away by nine meters. A guided bullet, however, could get within eight inches of that same target.”

    https://share.sandia.gov/news/resources/news_releases/bullet/

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    • Self-guiding bullets are old hat. Lee Harvey Oswald used one that made a U-turn in mid-flight; he shot it from behind and still managed to hit JFK in the forehead just like if he was shot from the front. Gotta be true, too; the Warren Commission Report said so.

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  9. The worst part of this election cycle is that the five radical Supreme Court buffoons who violated their oaths of office by ruling on matters not before them have no remorse about the damage they’ve done to our democracy and electoral processes.
    FumbDucks should be impeached.

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      • Looks like Romney’s side spent $15 million to get 46% of the vote from 2.6 million voters.

        That works out to a little over $12/vote.

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        • At that rate I go voting 10 times a day, 20 times a month. Mitt wouldn’t even realize he was paying me, at any rate some 300’000 is not that much you know. And I’d be happy for 10% of it.

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  10. Love that description of Romney. Dead on! Why people can’t see through him I don’t get. He’s so wooden, he couldn’t hide if he is trying. I hear it all over the net this morning, “if you make less than 150,000 you have no business voting Republican.” Well if you make less than a mil, you shouldn’t even look Romney’s way.

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  11. From TP:

    ROMNEY: I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America. [..]

    He also says the very rich are doing fine, thank you. That must be why they need more tax cuts.

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  15. Money usually wins in Florida.
    Looking hearty and healthy with lots of money and the notion of a kingdom or three awaiting in heaven is important to a lot of Florida Republicans.

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  16. QOTD:

    “I think that when Newt Gingrich parades around the country saying Mitt Romney is a liar and Mitt Romney parades around country saying Newt Gingrich is a liar, the conclusion most people draw is they’re both liars,” – former Democratic congressman Alan Grayson.

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  17. Gummitch is now midway through the fiscal year and hell-bent on completing a $230,000 project by June 30. Gummitch is not fond of projects that require a lot of other people in other departments over whom he has no authority to consider the project a priority (or not actively sabotage the whole effort). My apologies if there is some virtual damage when I hurl all over my keyboard.

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  20. I sometimes read comments on rightie sites when I feel evil enough to laugh at others. When discussing Mittens’ comment about the poor, these folks always assume that poor equals black. Don’t they ever leave their homes? Given the educational level indicated by many of the comments, I can’t believe they don’t have any poor relatives. Heck, I’m literate and I have poor relatives.

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  21. The closer Romney gets to becoming real to a voter, the more his likeability declines.

    “Mitt Romney came into the 2012 presidential race with a reputation as a stiff, humanoid robot. Consequently, he’s been making a concerted effort to seem more warm and friendly when interacting with voters on the campaign trail. But there’s a happy middle ground between “robotic” and “maniac on ecstasy” — a middle ground that seems to elude Romney on a regular basis.”

    Romney overdoing it:

    http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/mitt-romney-overdoing-it.html?mid=twitter_dailyintel

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  27. The Repugs, across the nation, are desperate..

    Condi To Campaign For Lugar In Indiana
    More evidence that Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) could be in for a dogfight of a primary as former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will reportedly be campaigning in the Hooser State this weekend on his behalf.

    According to a tweet from Chuck Todd, Rice will be campaigning “for and with” Lugar this weekend. The senior Indiana senator is facing a stiff primary challenge from state Treasurer Richard Mourdock.

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  28. The fundies have won another round. The folks who bring us the “Race for the Cure” and pink accents on football uniforms have pulled their grant from Planned Parenthood.

    http://www.latimes.com/health/la-he-planned-parenthood-komen-20120201,0,4104682.story

    Just in case you have any doubt that this was a political/religious decision I’ll provide a link to the bio of the woman who implemented the new policy.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Handel

    And this is the guy who initiated the investigation Ms. Handel used as justification.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliff_Stearns

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    • They are the lowest of the low!
      Start the (very bogus waste of time) investigation so the lowest of the even lower (Handel) has the excuse she’s looked for to de-fund. (spit. double spit)

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    • The Koman group has also sued other charities for using the words “for the cure,” and bullied other charities using the color pink in their materials.

      They’ve been pissing me off for a while, and this is the final straw. I will not support SGK ever again, even if they restore the funding to PP.

      This was my mom’s favorite charity, as she was an 8 year breast cancer survivor.

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      • Mike Malloy, despite being so worked up that he was pretty hard to take, had all kinds of info on them. One bit that stuck is that Handel’s salary is almost exactly the same as the size of the grant. When a “charity” is paying a right-wing politician over half a million a year it’s time to let said “charity” die on the vine and find other groups performing the same service.

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  30. Two statistics heard on the Norman Goldman show yesterday afternoon.
    15% of American households at or below poverty line.
    Additionaly, 28% of American families on the border, defined as – Remove their income for 3 months and they are in the poverty zone.

    Top 400 control 60% of the wealth…

    Not the America I grew up in….

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    • Only the most ignorant and brainwashed of the right wing buy into the picture of the president Romney is selling. It must be sad to want something so badly that you allow yourself to be drained of everything that might even resemble integrity.

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        • You know the Dick Cheney link here, right?

          The bill he arm-twisted through Congress in 2005, where the EPA was specifically told it could not test or regulate the shit that the drilling companies pumped into the ground? Thanks Dick.

          So we have absolutely no idea what kind of shit they are pumping into the ground and why is anyone surprised that all kinds of toxic shit is coming out of people’s faucets in their houses now…?

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          • We don’t need any regulations – the companies can be trusted to “police themselves”. They wouldn’t want us to get sick and blame them..///

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          • It’s not at all surprising, Turtle.

            We’re just supposed to trust them when they say they aren’t pumping toxic waste into the earth. Well, fuck that shit.

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      • This big Dick:

        On his 10th day as vice president, Dick Cheney established a secret “Energy Task Force,” formally known as the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), for the purpose of making recommendations to President Bush on energy policy. In formulating a new energy strategy for America, the task force met secretly with lobbyists and representatives of the petroleum, coal, nuclear, natural gas, and electricity industries. Many of these individuals work for energy companies which gave large campaign contributions to Bush/Cheney 2000. Environmental groups were mostly excluded from the task force.

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        • Cheney fought hard and as far as I know never was forced to reveal who was on that task force. We can also assume this played large in the drumbeating to the Iraq war; dividing the spoils as it were, ahead of time.

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  36. I’ve about reached my gag limit. Women couldn’t vote because God said no. Black people weren’t people because God said so. Gay people can’t marry because God says so. Teachers have to be underpaid because God says so. Women can’t choose their health because God says so. Rape and spousal abuse is ok cuz God says so. Our entire environment can go to hell cuz God says so. And so on and so on.

    Sorry, this God dude is a royal asshole.

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      • It seems that every time there is a conflict over citizen rights the side doing the denying is doing it cuz God says so.

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    • The mythical sky fairy, the fetus, and money are worshiped by stupid people, all in order to keep the boot on the necks of women.

      The thing that pisses me off most — and the above pisses me off to no end — is that a large number of women go along with it.

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    • I don’t understand how you can believe that God thoughtfully created every living thing on this planet and still be okay with wiping out vast swaths of His creation. If He made a species of lizard on purpose, shouldn’t we assume that He wants it to be here?

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        • Religion was invented to explain things that logic had not yet made clear.
          Logic and reason is the enduring human trait.
          Religions come and go.
          Odin! Odin! Odin! Odin!

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        • Sad part is, dyker, that really isn’t true. It depends on if you take the teachings to heart. Then logic says as Outstanding stated…God placed every living thing on this planet for a reason and it is up to humans as the thinking ones to figure out why, not exterminate as convenient. !,500 years of power playing negates logic by putting man before God.

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          • ” It depends on if you take the teachings to heart. ”

            True but it also depends on if the ‘teachings’ are based on the ‘correct’ ‘teachings’!

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      • They just figure that God wanted that little bit of His creation gone but got lazy and decided to let some puny humans take care of it. These are the same people who will deny we puny humans can make any changes to the environment.

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      • The notion that Creation happened all at once (in a week!) was a construct invented for human societies who for the most part did not read, write or have a concept of broad reaches of time.
        By necessity that would infer that as man learned more, and as a whole became more aware (educated); this time frame would have to be modified to understand that god’s creation is still happening (evolving).
        Religion as a human construct is not about knowing god, it is a means of controlling humans and keeping them dumb.

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        • So when does spirituality become religion? Would you make the same statement about Hopi creation stories? Or kachinas?

          I’m not sure it would have applied to the Irish Church before the Romans came along and fucked it all up.

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          • Good questions. I think spirituality is a continual quest for knowledge of the cosmos, no matter how large or small the notion is, and the place consciousness has in that cosmos. Spirituality is a means of developing guidelines to foster that pursuit, understanding that there will always be a mystery, and that survival of the human consciousness is necessary.
            I believe spirituality devolves into religion when greed steps in.
            Spirituality is god’s way (light, knowing), religion is the “devil’s” (dark, ignorance).

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  37. Thanks to Christianity, Western civilization has listened to the voice of men interpreting the supposed word of God for over 1.500 years. And over that same period we have been visited with horror every time it gains supremacy. The Black Death heralded an era of change because it broke the death lock of the Church.

    And we are in another period where the voice of man interpreting the word of the divine is again working to lock us into a time of anger, war and bigotry. World civilization has spent the last 2,000 years trying to establish man as the supreme owner of the planet and we are at a place where the planet is about to tell us what it thinks about that.

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    • Christianity has been corrupted into a belief that life on earth does not matter. Put up and shut up and wait for your mansion, your harps and crowns, your streets of gold and your very own kingdom on another planet.
      Somewhere out there. Maybe. If you’re good. If you do what you’re told and put money in the collection plate.

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      • The greatest evil of Christianity (and Islam) is that it separates man from the world he lives in. The earth doesn’t matter because you are going to Heaven or Paradise. Bad idea.

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    • The really frustrating part is that we are, on occasion, smart enough to mitigate if not fix our mistakes. The Great Lakes are a prime example. Overfishing, pollution, and invasive species had turned them into cesspools by the time we were young. If one had suggested, back in 1970, that one could ever catch an edible fish from Lake Erie they would have locked you up. Now? All the lakes have sustained fisheries despite the drastic changes.

      Many native species haven’t returned but many have made startling recoveries despite having to compete with invasive species whether introduced accidentally or on purpose. The lakes will never be returned to their original state but, between EPA regulations and planned introductions of predatory trout and salmon to control invasive forage fish, they have largely reached a new balance that has seen some truly amazing recoveries.

      When I was young I don’t think anyone had caught a smallmouth bass along the North Shore of Lake Superior in 20 years. The last time I hit my favorite little spot just south of Grand Marais I incidentally caught about a dozen while fishing for splake. We can fix things but the fools don’t even want to try. Unfortunately I’m afraid that it will take the complete collapse of an ocean basin or keystone species like Arctic Krill for them to get the message. Even so horrific a thought as a North Atlantic or Southwest Pacific basin resembling Lake Erie in 1970 has an element of hope. Despite the vast difference in scale there is still a chance that we can fix a singular disaster on that scale.

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      • I hear dat, pete. I grew up on the Wisconsin River. As a kid, all we ever caught were bullhead and carp. The water tended to resemble a root beer float made with rotten eggs. Today, thanks to the EPA, it has smallies, musky, northern and you can actually swim in it.

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      • I remember the Great Lakes and the rivers of New England as they were in the 60’s and 70’s. Nasty.
        The problem is that many of my generation have forgotten, and the upcoming generations have no clue what green sludgy foamy water that you can’t swim in looks like. And the Lords of Commerce want to keep them all with their noses buried in little handheld devices batting banalities back and forth.

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        • I lived in Albion, New York in the very early 60s and we considered Lake Ontario to be relatively pristine — that’s because the town drew its water from the Erie Canal and that was some seriously vile shit. I doubt there was a home in town that didn’t sport carboys of spring water.

          Lake Huron, at least the Georgian Bay region, was quite beautiful and we had no hesitation swimming and frolicking up there. Of course, that’s a long way from any kind of civilization.

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          • I spent the 60’s first on the Atlantic seaboard in Connecticut, and later in Vermont near Lake Champlain. The major rivers of Connecticut and Massachusetts were variously brown and foamy or covered with green algae. Effluent was dumped raw into them in places. In Vermont, there were still clear streams, but one had to go up into the mountains to find them. Any waters near urban centers were obviously polluted. Moving to lower Michigan in 1969, the lower Great Lakes (again, near urban centers) were murky with suspended organic sediments, and there were always chunks of tar and a black/brown stain in the sand from the dumping of used oil from the freighters. In the 70’s and into the 80’s upper Lake Michigan and especially Huron developed a skin of grey/brown organic slime on the bottom rocks, which miraculously cleared up with the invasion of the zebra mussel. Now the water was exceptionally clear again, but most of the native fish were gone. The zebra mussels filtered all the microorganisms at the bottom of the food chain, leaving fry and larvae to starve.

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            • Zebra muscles are indeed disturbing but there’s been something interesting in the smaller lakes. Just like most invasive species they go through an explosion and do a lot of harm but then they have a die off once they use their own resources and then the ecosystem has a chance to limit the infestation. Some native fish, with drum and yellow perch as two examples, start to eat them. Or the organisms best able to compete come back in greater numbers. Even if we have to find a more direct method of eradication they are removing as many pollutants and nutrients. I also saw an article promoting using them in commercial filtration ponds. One would grow a big population then keep them from breeding by controlling the water temp and PH so that you could run the water through just like any filter system. Then when they are nice and big and fat one would just shut down the water flow, Dispose of the collected muscles, and restart the process. But I digress.

              The same type of thing has happened with eurasian millfoil. It apparently killed every native plant in some of the Mississippi River backwaters but, after it got so thick that it died back, the currents, the fish, and the turtles opened up passages of various sizes and now the wild rice and water lilies and water lotus are back.

    • Looking around the web it appears that a whole lot of charities are seeing an increase in donations because of this story. It sounds like several local groups that offer free preventive care have seen a spike. Who knows? It’s entirely possible that this whole thing will turn into a learning experience instead of a fiasco. They could reverse themselves or devote the pulled grant to others who actually provide preventive care. They could always fire Handel and end their PR nightmare because I guarantee you that they are seeing a hit in donations that’s at least as big as the spikes others are seeing.

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      • Everywhere I go on the web, people are talking about this, and people are pretty polarized on the topic. Surprise!!

        Is there anything we aren’t polarized on anymore?

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        • It’s heartening that so many are voting with their charity dollars. It demonstrates that a bunch of religious nutjobs won’t keep good people from helping other good people and it shows that the economy must be a tiny bit better if so many feel comfortable sending out a small check they would not have sent out this time last year.

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    • Now wait. What do you expect? These are really serious thugs, that’s violence, lady. Pretty serious violence, too. Noone pays us for that!! We’re trained and paid to do crowd control, dragging screaming women down the road, firing live and rubber coated bullets at unarmed people. Heh! /sarc

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  41. Romney doubles down on his lack of knowledge about poor people and the safety net.

    “No no no no. No no. You’ve got to take the whole sentence, all right, as opposed to saying, and then change it just a little bit, because then it sounds very different. I’ve said throughout the campaign my focus, my concern, my energy is gonna be devoted to helping middle income people, all right? We have a safety net for the poor in, and if there are holes in it, I will work to repair that. And if there are people that are falling through the cracks I want to fix that,” Romney said.

    By giving tax cuts to the rich, no doubt.

    Mittens doesn’t even know that people are suffering out here — “if there are holes in [the safety net],” give me a fucking break.

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  44. Holy crap! Batscat Bachmann doesn’t even bother pretending any more. She admitted that she’s running for reelection because it’s the only way to recover her debt from her presidential run. And the rubes will come arunnin’, with their checkbooks, at the mere mention of her name.

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  45. Is this too long for a bumper sticker?

    Vote for Romney if you have no heart.
    Vote for Santorum if you have no brain.
    Vote for Gingrich if you have no soul.
    Vote for Paul if you have no pot.

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  47. Eliot Spitzer Guest Hosting ‘Countdown’ on CurrentTV

    With Keith Olbermann suffering from bronchitis, a familiar face will be hosting “Countdown” on CurrentTV this week: former CNN anchor Eliot Spitzer.

    I’ve been wondering what had happened to Keith lately, as he hadn’t done his show since the South Carolina primary. Tonight it was David Shuster back in the studio after his Florida reports Tuesday night.

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    • Personally, I think Keith’s absences more eerie by the day. MSNBC seems to have taken over his slot and is running with it. If Keith wants to regain a semblance of loyalty with his audience, he needs to get off his high horse and address his viewers as equals. The “Ed Show” looks more and more like Cronkite and Keith more like Clarabell more and more each passing day.

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  48. Still crazy after all these years. Bill0 still blowing a gasket over Al Franken’s pawning him. It must just eat Bill0 alive that Al Franken has moved on to be a U.S. Senator while Bill0 couldn’t get elected as a sewer administrator because he can’t act like an adult and hide his vile nature. Still, in this case, Bill0 might have understated his role. It’s entirely possible that Al Franken would not have run, much less been elected, if Bill0 had just taken his whuppin’ like a man. Instead? The completely insane efforts to “destroy” Franken encouraged him to run.

    http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201202010013

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