Fierce Bob

I was just watching an episode of the Daily Show where Jon Stewart pulls up some very interesting video about Willard “Corporations-are-people” Romney and his position on taxes.

As those of us who don’t live under rocks know, Romney has finally released his 2010 tax return and an estimate for 2011. The numbers show that he pays an effective tax rate of 13.9% on his income of more than twenty million dollars a year. He says he pays the full amount of tax owed and not a penny more. “I don’t think you want a person as candidate for President who pays more taxes than he owes,” he said, during a recent GOP debate.

No. Of course not. Such a person would be a fool.

But Romney evidently doesn’t feel that everyone who is paying only what the law requires should be allowed to get away with it. On October 10, 2011, he spoke about the terrible unfairness of our tax code. “Forty seven percent of Americans paying no income tax, that’s a heck of a big number.” And it’s true. People making less in a year than Romney makes every single day don’t have any income tax liability under our present laws.

They’re paying just what the law requires, in other words. But evidently, as far as Willard is concerned, paying only they have to legally is wrong when poor people do it. It’s only right for him and his friends.

And not just for them, either. General Electric paid no Federal income taxes in 2010. In fact, a number of the largest companies in America pay no federal income taxes. Somehow, though, this is not a problem for Willard Romney.

And as Stewart points out, it’s not as if the tax code is that way due to circumstances completely beyond Romney’s control.

In 2007, a bi-partisan bill was introduced in the Senate to eliminate the carried interest loophole that allows Willard to pay so little. That bill died because of heavy lobbying financed by firms including Romney’s own Bain Capital. At the time, Romney himself said he opposed the bill.

I’m sure Romney is comforted by the fact that most middle-class families pay higher taxes than he does, on a percentage basis. Sometimes a lot higher. That probably dulls the pain of knowing about all those impoverished freeloaders.

Now that Governor Rick Perry has dropped out of the GOP nomination race, presumably to take a course in remedial counting, we are left with only Willard “Mitt” Romney and the Three Stooges, Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul. Depending on how things go in the South Carolina Primary on Saturday, we may be able to keep all three of them around until August. Or at least two of them, since we know Paul will never have the sense to quit.

According to the latest polls, Fib Newton is surging again, and may end up with respectable numbers in the end. Well, nobody ever said you couldn’t fool a lot of the people much of the time. Almost certainly, this means that the Newtster will stay with us for a while. Plus, he hasn’t found his next wife among his campaign staff, yet.

Rick Santorum, bon vivant, fashion plate, and a sure winner for Miss Congeniality, has the most to fear from a mediocre performance. But he still has the support of those evangelicals who met in Texas to settle on an anti-Romney. I hope that means he won’t drop out right away. He’s just so dang sincere it tickles me. Especially when he talks about how gay marriage and polygamy are the same thing, and his little face gets all screwed up while he tries to make that make sense. It’s adorable.

Really, I want the whole gang to stick around. I need the laughs.

For those who might not remember, the above is the title of a song from “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway,” by Genesis when Peter Gabriel was still with them. Performed live, here:

Genesis, live, 1975

It also seems an appropriate label for the current GOP presidential nomination race, though I’ll admit that while it works on at least one level, watching this process unfold, so far, has for some reason reminded me more of this tune:

Ozzie, live, 2007

Some of the crazy that was enlivening the campaign has been put back in the box, now, with Michelle “I have no idea my husband is gay” Bachmann finally getting a clue about one thing and dropping out. As if, Michelle. You could never replace Sarah, who by the way made a great comment about Bachmann’s withdrawal from the race. She said that Bachmann was going back to Congress, and that we’d all be happy she was there.

I guess Palin hasn’t been keeping up, because Bachmann is not running for a third term in the House. She gave that up when she decided to run for President. Oops. But hey, Sarah, a wink is a good as a nod to a blithering idiot, right?

By the way, do you ever get the feeling that Marcus Bachmann is basing his entire life on what is essentially a practical joke on his wife? I mean, while she was getting trounced in the Iowa caucuses, he was buying sunglasses for the family dog. It’s like he’s taunting her. “Ignore this!”

And the Cain campaign was a hoot from beginning to end. If you wanted goofy on your pizza, the Hermanator would deliver. With a slow, smoldering smile. Ultimately, his product proved too rich for daily consumption.

Of course, Newt Gingrich remains in the race, so the nut job constituency is still represented. As Andy Borowitz reported, when asked whether his poor showing in Iowa would cause him to consider leaving the race, Gingrich said “Not unless it gets cancer.”* What can one say, after that?

Perry continues to delude himself into thinking he has some kind of shot, and he can be counted on to bend reality now and then. But I think the electorate will continue to side with me on this issue: No new Texans.

I’m not going to talk about Ron Paul, who believes that things like mine safety should be regulated by the free market. Or is that his lunatic son?

Paul isn’t wrong about everything, of course. On some subjects he even makes sense. It’s just that when he fails to do so, he goes big with it, which brings his average way down.

And don’t get me started about Santorum, whose argument against gay marriage appears to be based on opposition to polygamy and polyandry, despite the fact that these things have nothing to do with each other. Santorum’s weak performance in a recent “debate” with some college students displayed his fundamental intellectual inadequacy. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

Santorum

Huntsman, of course, is far too rational to be anything but a footnote in this circus.

Which leads us to the man I was thinking of when I chose that title. No one exemplifies Lifeless Packaging like Willard “Mitt” Romney. Just to drive the point home about what a manly nickname he has, he named two of his sons Matt and Tagg. What is it with conservatives and these names? I’m surprised one of them doesn’t have twins named Bolt and Trigger. Maybe the Mittster could change the names of his other two sons, Josh and Craig, who may as well be girls since they have no macho double consonants.

Romney’s status as a haircut that talks is well established. Though he tries to come off as a “regular guy,” his attempts to be funny in a self-deprecating way are doomed by his evidently unshakeable belief that he is God’s anointed one. And when he tries to explain something embarrassing, he tends to gum it up pretty badly. Like saying in a debate that he had told his gardening contractor “I can’t have illegals working here. I’m running for President!” A rare glimpse of the truth about what really matters to Willard Romney.

From all the available evidence, his belief in his own entitlement to the Presidency allows Romney to confidently express wildly diverging opinions at different times, pandering shamelessly to whatever audience he happens to be in front of, without feeling the slightest pang of conscience. The truth, to Mitt, should not be an obstacle when power is the goal.

As just one example, his already long-debunked claim of creating 100,000 jobs at Bain capital continues to be a staple of his campaign. Steve Benen takes it apart nicely. With graphs.

Romney’s Job Creation Claims Debunked (Again)

Or maybe I’m wrong. It’s possible that Hair Man might lie awake night after night, racked with guilt. But if he does, at least he probably has very nice sheets.

Now that I think about it, I see that I was needlessly worried about the dwindling prospects for further nuttery in this campaign. In fact, I’ll bet the rest of the fight will be one big Nutbar Statement of the Week contest. I live in hope that it will last all the way through the convention.

* I believe Mr. Borowitz was making what they refer to as a “joke.” Gingrich may have thought that, but he probably didn’t say it. Oh, and the rest of that Borowitz piece is well worth the minute it will take you to read it. And the five minutes you’ll spend ROTFLYAO. Check it out.

Obama got Osama, and of course, everybody has a comment. Republicans have a real problem with Obama for accomplishing in a bit over two years something Bush failed to accomplish in nearly eight. It was, after all, the signature failure of the Bush Administration, which given all its other failures is really saying something.

More embarrassing even than the failure itself, however, was the way Bush went from being the mighty avenger who wouldn’t rest until OBL was captured or killed, to the smirking jokester who mockingly looked behind the curtains at a press briefing. “Is he back here? [snicker, snicker]”

Bush went from this -

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
- G.W. Bush, 9/13/01

to this -

“I don’t know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don’t care. It’s not that important. It’s not our priority.”
- G.W. Bush, 3/13/02

in just six short months.

And now Republicans want to give him some or all of the credit for the raid that killed Osama. Well, forget it. Bush didn’t just de-prioritize the search for bin Laden, he actually called it off in 2006. The credit belongs to the Commander in Chief who provided sufficient leadership to see that the job was done, and was done thoughtfully.

Though l will quibble with one thing. Did they have to use “Geronimo” as bin Laden’s codename? Having one of their heroes associated with the worst kind of evil might make indigenous Americans, especially those of Apache heritage, just a bit uncomfortable, I thought, when I first heard the story of the dramatic raid. And indeed, American Indian groups are pretty pissed off.

Now, some people will say that no matter what you do, somebody is always going to be offended. Well, that’s probably true. But it’s more likely to be true when you don’t display even the slightest sensitivity in choosing big-time codenames.

So the Obama Administration gets only an A from me. They could have had the A plus, but no. If they had used the codename “Donald” I would have given them an A++.

The violation of Pakistani sovereignty issue is over, at this point, as Pakistan has given its approval for the operation retroactively. No foul, no harm.

I imagine the conversation went something like this:

Obama: We didn’t tell you guys because every second member of your government and military is probably getting paid by Al Qaeda, and they would have shot their duplicitous mouths off and blown the whole deal. Sorry.

Zardari: Fair enough. We’re cool. Nice job, by the way. Thanks for not carpet bombing the entire fucking neighborhood like that nutcase Rumsfeld would have done.

I wasn’t there, of course, but I’ll bet that’s a good approximation.

Another scene I would like to have witnessed – Osama calls the Front Desk in Hell to find out what the mixup is about.

“I expressly reserved the deluxe, Mecca-view suite, with virgins, not a pool of fire up to my ass. Do I have to call Expedia?”

Residents of Gobbler’s Knob, the greater Gobbler’s Knob metropolitan area, and the rest of the world were stunned today by the results of a routine veterinary examination of Punxatawney Phil, the shadow-consulting prognosticator of winter weather. Shockingly, the animal, though he has “charisma to burn” in the words of Veterinarian Floyd Sneed, is completely blind. Even more shocking was the revelation that he always has been.

Yes, Punxatawney Phil, who is among the world’s most famous groundhogs, has never seen his own shadow. Not once.

Meteorologists were left scrambling for some other means of explaining and predicting weather events that occur after February 2nd each year.

“We always noticed how he bumped into things a lot,” said Bill Cooper, Past President of the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. “But we just thought he was stupid.”

As of press time, there was no word about what other woodland creature might replace P-Phil (his rap name). A source close to the ICPGC, who asked to remain anonymous, said “It’s obvious we need to find a sighted animal for the position. It might seem cruel, but the groundhog does need to be able to see his shadow. It’s part of the job description. Of course, that stipulation was in the contract Punxatawney Phil signed when he was hired. But now we know he couldn’t see it.”

[Editor's note: Bill Cooper is a real person, and a former President of the Inner Circle of the Punxatawney Groundhog Club.  He was not actually contacted by Fierce Bob, and his statements are a fabrication.  Floyd Sneed was consulted for the story, but he is fictitious.]