This may be a stupid question

but does Mitt Romney actually have health insurance? Did his assumption that you can just “fire” your insurance company when it fails to perform to your satisfaction derive from never having had to deal with one?

On average, health insurance is a bad deal for consumers, obviously, or insurance companies wouldn’t be making profits. We get it because our health care may suddenly become more expensive than that average and more expensive than we can afford. So if a Bill Gates or other mega-millionaire who can easily afford any health care they need for some reason didn’t have their insurance paid for their corporation, simple economic calculation might dictate that they scoff at the idea of forking over premiums to Blue Cross the way the rest of us airily dismiss the Best Buy employee’s query as to whether we’d care to get the extended warranty for that Blu-ray player, because what sort of rubes do they think we are?

I don’t know exactly how much money constitutes “fuck you, Blue Cross” money, but Mittens probably has it. So does he actually health insurance?

The rich are different from you and me. They do not think as we do; they don’t have to.

Today -100: January 11, 1912: Of scandals and fires

Not surprisingly, after the foreign minister resigned rather than lie that French Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux was telling the truth, the government has collapsed.

Didn’t mention it yesterday, but the Equitable Building in NYC burned down. Built in 1870, at 7½ stories it was the first skyscraper. Lots of pictures of the fire here on a blog devoted to pictures of this very building, because there’s a blog for everything, as well there should be.

Caption contest

From Gingrich’s tour of the Sturm, Ruger & Co. factory in New Hampshire last week. Caption the shit out of this puppy.


Bonus pic:

Actually, what he really meant to say was that he likes to set hobos on fire

There are jokes that some people shouldn’t tell, because of who they are. This is why Twitt Romney’s “I like to fire people” line is a problem, despite being basically taken out of context.

For example, George Bush once made a “there’s arsenic in your water glass” joke, ripped off from the movie Erin Brockavitch, evidently not realizing that that gag works when told by someone trying to take dangerous chemicals out of drinking water, like Julia Roberts in the movie, but not from someone who reduced standards on arsenic in drinking water.

In the same way, “I like to fire people” does not sound good when told by someone who has fired thousands of people to audiences that include people who have been on the wrong side of the desk when being fired by someone who looked very much like Mitt Romney and who they strongly suspected was not wearing any pants under that desk, because he really, really liked to fire people, if you know what I mean.

Another problematic Romney line, from one of the weekend debates, “I was happy that [Ted Kennedy] had to take a mortgage out on his house to ultimately defeat me.” It wasn’t just that he was bragging about using his candidacy as an economic weapon, combined with the story about the advice from his father that only rich people should run for office (which seems odder the more I think about it: why would George Romney say that to Mitt, who inherited so much money that he would always be rich, absent a George Bushian level of business incompetence?), it was the assumption that it is always money that wins elections (had to take out a mortgage to ultimately defeat me). How insulting is that to the voters of Massachusetts?

Discriminatory and unnecessary

The 10th Circuit upholds a lower court ruling suspending Oklahoma’s 2010 referendum which banned sharia law as discriminatory and unnecessary, adding, “You know, like Oklahoma itself.”

Today -100: January 10, 1912: Of “reluctant” candidates, resignations, and leather minorities

Theodore Roosevelt says that he will run for president – if the nomination is forced upon him. (Well, maybe: people at the event differ on exactly what he said.)

Since the French-German treaty over Morocco was signed there have been rumors in France that during the main negotiations and threats of war and whatnot, there were parallel secret negotiations between French and German financiers over business interests (railroad concessions in central Africa and Morocco). Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux gave his word of honor that there weren’t, but Foreign Minister Justin de Selves would not back him up when asked by Clemenceau in the Senate to do so, saying that he was caught between a duty to stick to the truth and a duty to the interests of the country. He has resigned.

For the first time, the rank of foreign diplomats in Germany will include a Jew, Sir Francis Oppenheimer, the new commercial attaché at the British Embassy in Berlin. The German court usually... discourages... countries from sending non-Christian diplomats.

Headline of the Day -100: “Leather Minority Restless.” I’ll bet they are, I’ll bet they are.

Underwear News of the Day

Zimbabwe outlaws the sale of used underwear, because ew.

The Zim finance minister says: “If you are a husband and you see your wife buying underwear from the flea market, you would have failed.” The key is in the word “flea.”

The Daily Telegraph has a 15-picture photo gallery, because of course they do, from No Pants Day (No Trousers Day in London, because they talk funny there), wherein people ride subways in their undies.

A town councillor in Vila Velha, Brazil proposes a law that brides be required to wear underwear under their wedding dresses. “The superstitious brides believe it will make their marriages last longer, he explained.”

Today -100: January 9, 1912: Of electric chairs, cocked hats, native reverence & complete submission, and Blease

NY County Sheriff Harburger has seen that execution and is now convinced that the electric chair is completely humane. So that settles that. One detail: they took the guy’s temperature after the execution, and it was 128 .

A letter Woodrow Wilson wrote in 1907 (before he entered politics) has come to light, and is being pushed by the Hearst papers, expressing the wish that Democrats could “do something, at once dignified and effective, to knock Mr. Bryan once and for all into a cocked hat.”

An article in the NYT on King George’s visit to India, objectively written by a British colonial administrator and headlined “India Reconciled By King’s Visit,” says that this alleged reconciliation with imperial rule is “the natural expression of native reverence and complete submission.”

South Carolina Gov. Coleman Blease issues his second State of the State address. He wants negro lodges (that is, the equivalent of Shriners, Rotary, that sort of thing) banned because they help members charged with crimes pay for lawyers. He wants white teachers barred from teaching black students. “We boast of the fact that we have no social equality in South Carolina, yet white people are teaching in negro schools, who are associating with the pupils and teaching them that they are as good as white people and are instilling into their heads ideas of social equality. Not long since a white woman (and a good looking one) was seen walking on a negro school ground with one arm around a negro boy and the other around a negro girl. What do you expect to be the outcome of this kind of conduct? Stop it, and stop it now.” He wants the state to buy an electric chair. He boasts that the state’s murder rate is down and that there was only one lynching last year, but he warns that lynchings are inevitable: “When a negro puts his hands on a white woman, he knows what is coming”.

Republican Debate: The failure to have any sense of cleverness

Meet the Press, and another Republican debate, just in case anyone’s changed their positions since last night’s Republican debate. They shoot horses, don’t they?

Transcript.

Gingrich again attacks Romney as a Massachusetts moderate (it’s alliterative, so you know it’s true), as “somebody who comes out of the Massachusetts culture”. You know, progressives only talk about the parts of the country they despise in private. It’s only polite.


Oh, I see what David Gregory’s doing now. He’s asking Gingrich whether Romney is unelectable (Gingrich says no) because Gingrich has a flyer that says “Romney is not electable.” This one:


Romney is very proud of enforcing English immersion in Mass. schools, it’s, ah, wicked awesome.

Santorum: Well, if his record was so great as governor of Massachusetts, why didn’t he run for re-election?

Romney says he didn’t run for reelection because not everyone wants to spend their entire life in politics. Dude, you’ve lost more elections than Santorum. [A minute later Gingrich points this out.]


He adds that he supports term limits in Washington, but if elected, he says he will definitely run for reelection.

He says his father “had good advice to me. He said, Mitt, never get involved in politics if you have to win an election to pay a mortgage.” Yes, only plutocrats and trust fund babies should be in politics.


Perry says the question is “Who is it that can invigorate the -- the Tea Party?” Yes, I’m sure Shooty McGoodhair can invigorate any party. “Who is it that can take the message of -- of smaller, outsider government that’s truly going to change that places [sic].” Outsider government? Is that like outsider art?


Huntsman & Romney got into a rather telling fight over whether H. is a traitor for having taken a job from Obama. Romney thinks that when the president is a Democrat, the highest form of patriotism is to work to make him fail (and to campaign for yourself to replace him, of course): “I think we serve our country first by standing for people who believe in conservative principles and doing everything in our power to promote an agenda that does not include President Obama’s agenda. I think the decision to go and work for President Obama is one which you took.” I guess he doesn’t plan on asking any Democrats for any help on anything if he becomes president.

Gingrich complains of “the failure of the political class to have any sense of cleverness.” For example, did you know that we could save $100 billion each year in Medicaid if we stopped “theft”?

Perry: “You know, the fact of the matter is that Americans want to have a job. That’s -- that’s the issue here. And the idea that -- that there are people clamoring for government to come and to give them assistance is just wrong-headed.”

LIKE THE ONE BETWEEN RICKY’S EARS: Santorum says Ron Paul would create “huge amounts of vacuums all over the place, and have folks like China and Iran and others.”

How are you going to make your own party uncomfortable? someone asks Rick Perry. By opening his pie hole? Perry says by supporting a balanced budget amendment and term limits.

Romney says he absolutely doesn’t discriminate against gay people and “if people are looking for someone who -- who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people -- that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me” – he adds that he opposes same-sex marriage, because I guess that’s not discrimination and lack of full rights at all.


Santorum says “you can be respectful” towards gay people (although he’s never tried it himself) while denying them the right to marriage or adoption, because that’s just “promot[ing] things that you think are best for society.” And gay people are worst for society, I guess. He says if one of his sons told him he was gay, he would still love him, although obviously he would have to stone him to death. (Update: someone on Twitter – sorry about my failure of attribution here – said, but that gay son would totally hate him.)

Perry: “I’m a right-to-work guy.”

What good can labor unions do? Romney & Santorum both say they can do training. So that corporations get the benefit without having to pay for it, they don’t add.

Gingrich says the EPA is “out of touch with reality” and planned to regulate farm dust in Iowa and Arizona. This is a lie.


Perry: “I make a very proud statement and, in fact that we have a president that’s a socialist. I don’t think our founding fathers wanted America to be a socialist country.”

Paul: “I in a way don’t like to use those terms, gay rights, woman’s rights, minority rights, religious rights. There’s only one type of right. It’s the right to your liberty.”

HE WAS FOR THEOCRACY BEFORE HE WAS AGAINST IT: Why can’t we live with a nuclear Iran? Santorum: because “they’re a theocracy. They’re a theocracy that has deeply embedded beliefs that -- that the afterlife is better than this life. President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said the principle virtue of the Islamic Republic of Iran is martyrdom.” See, they actually want to be nuked, so it’s not a deterrent.

Someday I’d like to hear Santorum explain the tenets of Buddhism.

Gingrich defends his attacks on Romney & Bain Capital: “Well, I think you have to look at the film, which I haven’t seen.”

Likewise, Romney claims not to have seen the ads put out by his SuperPAC (and then a minute later quotes “the ad that I saw.”)

Republican Debate: I’d rather be at the shooting range

Another debate, this time all rich white guys, like the Founding Fathers and Jesus intended.

Transcript. Pictures in this post illustrate the many arm positions of the Republican Party.

AND IF THERE’S ONE THING MITT ROMNEY KNOWS, IT’S TEPID: Romney says Obama deserves no credit for the 200,000 new jobs last month. “His policies have made the recession deeper, and his policies have made the recovery more tepid.”


OBAMA’S A COCK, IS WHAT MITT’S SAYING: “You know, it’s like the rooster taking responsibility for the sunrise.”

Sick Rantorum, as we shall be calling him today, says there’s no one who has more experience dealing with Iran than he does.

Gingrich keeps verbally hyperlinking to a NYT story about Bain Capital. Romney responds that the NYT is anti-free enterprise and then repeats that his claim that Bain created 100,000 jobs is net jobs, which it is not (and is a lie in other ways as well). Then he goes on some more about the importance of having presidents with business experience. Let’s see, the last president with business experience was George W. Bush, and the previous Republican with business experience was, if I’m not mistaken, Herbert Hoover. So how’d they work out?

Ron Paul says that Rantorum was corrupt as a congresscritter and then “became a high-powered lobbyist”. Sick tries to sound outraged by this, while being secretly pleased that someone called him “high-powered” for the first time in his life without it being immediately followed by “douche nozzle.”

Sick Rantorum: “I am a cause guy.”


Huntsman keeps talking about what a great job he did as governor, but interestingly never names the state of which he was the governor.

Gingrich is asked about Ron Paul calling him a chicken hawk. Gingrich says his father was in the Army for 27 years. I don’t think it works that way.

Ron Paul refuses to talk about the Ron Paul White Supremacist Newsletter and Jew-Hater Monthly, or whatever it was called. He says one of his heroes is Martin Luther King “because he practiced the libertarian principle of peaceful resistance and peaceful civil disobedience”. He says “true racism” (I guess as opposed to hotels putting up “No negroes” signs, which he thinks entirely their business) is in the enforcement of drug laws. Which it is, but so is opposition to the Civil Rights Acts, which his libertarian hero King supported.

Actually, now that I think about it, this is Ron Paul’s big move to get past the racist newsletter thing? I mean, on the one hand, he’s right about the drug war and its racist implementation, but on the other hand you can just hear him thinking, “What can I talk about that’ll get them off my back? I know! Those darkies really love their doobies!”


JUST LEAVE IT ALONE: Contraception comes up because Sick Rantorum has been making such a big deal about it lately. Asked whether states have the right to ban contraception, Twitt Romney acts like he’s never heard of such a thing, “can’t imagine” a state wanting to do so, has no idea if they have a right to do so, and it’s a silly question anyway. So basically he has no opinions on how the Constitution works or the right of privacy. Stephanopoulos points out that Romney went to Harvard Law School, whereupon Mittens pretends never to have heard of Griswold. But he adds that he wants to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, which was decided on the same right of privacy as Griswold. But “Contraception, it’s working just fine, just leave it alone.”

Asked about gay marriage, Gingrich keeps referring to the “sacrament” of marriage and even to “a historic sacrament” (he’s a historian, you know). Sacrament is, of course, a religious term. “The sacrament of marriage was based on a man and woman, has been for 3,000 years.” (He’s a historian, you know.)


Sick Rantorum says this is a federal issue because “we can’t have different laws with respect to marriage.” Somebody should tell him that every state has its own divorce laws. He says the Constitutional amendment he wants would not only ban future gay marriage, but abrogate existing ones (like the 1,800 in New Hampshire).

Romney says we should discriminate against gay couples because “for a society to say we want to encourage, through the benefits that we associate with marriage, people to form partnerships between men and women and then raise children, which we think will -- that will be the ideal setting for them to be raised.” No one asks them why that view doesn’t entail a sexist, antediluvian view of gender roles.

Gingrich says the real question is anti-Christian (especially anti-Catholic) bigotry.

Romney says “John Adams, who wrote the Constitution, would be surprised” that gay marriage is said to be a right. He would be especially surprised because he was in France at the time, not writing the Constitution, and pining for Laura Linney.

WARP DRIVE, ENGAGE! Perry “would send troops back into Iraq,” which is being taken over by Iran. In fact, “We’re going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light.”


Sick Rantorum: “The Iranian people love America because we stand up for the truth and say -- and call evil, which is what Ahmadinejad and the mullahs are, we call evil what it is.” Of course he also calls gay sex and abortion and birth control evil. Really, he calls a lot of things evil. Rather like Ahmadinejad and the mullahs, come to think of it. So what does he have against those guys?

BECAUSE YOU’RE MAKING UP NUMBERS AGAIN? Romney: “Our income per person in America is 50 percent higher than that of the average person in Europe. Why is that?” That’s probably just a metric thing.

AT WHICH POINT WE’LL BE FORCED TO MEASURE IN METRIC. AUTHORITARIAN, EUROPEAN SOCIALIST METRIC: Romney: “We’re only inches away from no longer being a free economy. ... But, really, this election is about the soul of America. ... We’re increasingly becoming like Europe. Europe isn’t working in Europe. It will never work here.” I think he’s saying that Europe doesn’t have a soul. Or at least that those damned Frogs didn’t convert to Mormonism when he gave them a chance.


Gingrich defends Obama from Romney: “A -- a little bit harsh on President Obama, who, I’m sure in his desperate efforts to create a radical European socialist model, is sincere.” See what he did there?

I DUB THEE A KNIGHT OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: Santorum attacks Romney for having used the term “middle class.” “There are no classes in America. We are a country that don’t [sic] allow for titles. We don’t put people in classes. ... That’s not the -- that’s not the language that I’ll use as president. I’ll use the language of bringing people together.”

SANTORUM WORKED IN THE METAPHORICAL COAL FIELDS OF K STREET: “I stood firm on those and worked, actually, in the coal fields, if you will, against this idea that we needed a cap and trade program.”

The killer question: if you weren’t here, what would you be doing on a Saturday night?

Perry would be at the shooting range, shooting off his guns at random and laughing maniacally.

Gingrich would be watching “watching the college championship basketball game.” (UNKNOWN): “Football game.” GINGRICH: “I mean, football game.”

Santorum would also be watching the basketball I mean football game, but he’d do it with his family, because he’s both manly and breeds like a rabbit. Mittens also loves him some football.

Ron Paul: “I’d be home with my family. But if they all went to bed, I’d probably read an economic textbook” (while masturbating furiously every time it mentioned the gold standard, I’m guessing).

Today -100: January 8, 1912: Of electricity

The sheriff of New York County, Julius Harburger, will attend an execution and then the autopsy to determine if the electric chair actually kills people. Some doctors think it merely stuns prisoners and it’s the autopsy that kills them.

Orthodox?

A man in a Santa Claus suit stabbed to death an Arab Christian in Jaffa during a procession for Orthodox Christmas.

Well, what could be more orthodox than religious violence in the Middle East committed by someone in a silly costume?

Today -100: January 7, 1912: 47

New Mexico is now the 47th state, after 62 years as a territory. It has 1 million cattle, 4 million sheep, and 327,396 people (1910). Its first governor is William Calhoun McDonald (D). Its first US senators are both Republican, Thomas Catron and Albert Fall, who will be President Harding’s Interior secretary and go to prison for his role in the Teapot Dome scandal.

Those 70 people who died in a Berlin homeless shelter did not succumb to bad herring or the Purple Death after all, but to bad schnapps.

The city of Paris has banned handbills. Shops have responded with... unsolicited phone calls. The invention of telemarketing?

German Reichstag elections are coming up. The Socialists are expected to win the one district in Berlin they didn’t capture last time, which is the district where the kaiser keeps his castles. He said in 1907 that if the district went SPD, he’d move to Potsdam. The Conservative party is accusing the Socialists of opposing the army and navy and “national obligations,” which people take to mean that the government is planning new taxes to pay for an increase in the size of the army and navy. The Conservatives are talking up the English Peril. Evidently Britain planned a sneak attack to invade Germany last summer.

Today -100: January 6, 1912: Of disfranchisements

The Maryland Senate passes a bill to disfranchise illiterates, on a party-line vote, the Democrats believing this will be a simpler method of excluding black voters than the previous attempts at “trick ballots” designed to fool semi-literate people into voting for fake candidates or invalidating their votes. The literacy tests would not be state-wide, but only in certain counties.

Ready for the full range of contingencies

Secretary of Drone War “Little Leon” Panetta issued a “strategic guidance” document thingy (pdf).

THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID: “we will ensure that our military is agile, flexible, and ready for the full range of contingencies.”

IS THAT WHY WE DID THAT: “Over the last decade, we have undertaken extended operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to bring stability to those countries and secure our interests.”

KILLER DRONES FOREVER! “For the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to take an active approach to countering these threats by monitoring the activities of non-state threats worldwide, working with allies and partners to establish control over ungoverned territories, and directly striking the most dangerous groups and individuals when necessary.”

Evidently the US military will “rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.”

WAKEY, WAKEY, EGGS AND... WELL PROBABLY NOT BACEY: “In the Middle East, the Arab Awakening presents both strategic opportunities and challenges.” Is that what we’re calling the Arab Spring now? On the one hand the term is an echo of the “Sunni Awakening” where the US bribed tribal leaders in Iraq, which may not be an image Arab protesters would appreciate, and on the other hand it entails an insulting suggestion that for decades the Arab people have been asleep rather than ruthlessly oppressed.

ALSO, CHEESE: “Most European countries are now producers of security rather than consumers of it.”

It reaffirmed the two-war strategy and plans to fight terrorists everywhere in the world with lots of toys.

A jury of his peers

The last Haditha Massacre court-martial, the last chance to put someone away for 24 murders, has begun.

From the LAT: “On Thursday, prospective jurors were questioned by opposing attorneys. All but one indicated that he had been in combat in Iraq when an order was given to ‘clear’ a house of insurgents; most had lost a Marine in combat. Asked by a defense attorney, none admitted having ‘strong’ feelings about the war in Iraq.”

So they’re all emotionless sociopaths, soul-less killing machines?

Today -100: January 5, 1912: Of Ulster, Sneezakaritchnekoff, and turkey trots

Ulster Unionist leader Sir Edward Carson says that the people of Ulster will refuse to recognize a Home Rule parliament in Dublin, and won’t pay taxes to it. He says the “essential question” is whether Britain would then send in troops to force them to do so.

Headline of the Day -100: “Hail! Sneezakaritchnekoff.” That’s a town in Siberia, 60 families, founded way back by Mennonites from Germany, which would like to move its entire population to the United States so they can see the sun again. A couple of scouts have been touring, and are thinking about Oklahoma or Texas.

Philadelphia high society, as led by Mrs. Frederick Thurston Mason, has banned the turkey trot and the grizzly bear. “It is understood that the two dances have all but caused several scandals in some of Philadelphia’s best families.”

Not a strong attitude to women’s rights

In Afghanistan, 14-year-old Sahar Gul was married to/bought by a 30-year-old soldier, who immediately tried to pimp her out; he & his family tortured and starved her for six months when she refused.

To be fair, now that it’s hit the world news, the central Afghan government is at least acting like it takes this seriously, as opposed to the local ones, who returned her for several months’ more torture after she escaped.

An Interior Ministry spokes... wait for it... man said, “It is a violent act that is unacceptable in the 21st century.” He did not say in which century it would have been acceptable.

An official in the public health ministry said, “We have several cases like this, especially in remote parts of the country where there is not a strong attitude to women’s rights.” Actually there is a very strong attitude to women’s rights, that’s the fucking problem.

Today -100: January 4, 1912: Of electric chairs and turkey trots

Wake County, NC, which contains the city of Raleigh, will hold an election for a school tax at which only three people are qualified to vote, for some unexplained reason. I’m assuming that only qualified voters are allowed to be election officials, so the three voters are also the register and the two judges of election.

The Newport, Rhode Island Animal Refuge will install an electric chair to euthanize unwanted animals.

A large debutante dance in NYC was attended by an inspector of the Committee on Amusements and Vacation Resources of Working Girls to determine how many of the couples engaged in such moral looseness as dancing the turkey trot or the grizzly bear, which the Committee wants banned from dance halls as “not dancing at all, but a series of indecent antics to the accompaniment of music,” and someone suggested they go bother the upper classes as well as the lower orders, so they did. The Committee warns against even the modified versions of the dance that are “taught to the unsuspecting. The positions and movements of the dance, no matter how slight they may be, are pernicious.”

Why that’s so crazy it just might work

Friday, Evangelical nutjob Bob Vander Plaats told McNeil-Lehrer: “We had six candidates at our Thanksgiving Family Forum. And I think it was my wife afterwards who said, ‘You know, Bob, if we could take those six and put them in a blender and just have the strengths come out and have one candidate.’”

This blog heartily seconds the notion of putting the Republican candidates in a blender. This blog recommends the “grind” or “liquefy” settings.