Generally Horrible

Mitt Romney, just doing some normal campaign bellowing last Thursday in Virgina. [via]
Here's some of the latest election news! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

McKay Coppins for BuzzFeed—Romney's New Strategy Turns Right: "Mitt Romney's campaign has concluded that the 2012 election will not be decided by elusive, much-targeted undecided voters—but by the motivated partisans of the Republican base. This shifting campaign calculus has produced a split in Romney's message. His talk show interviews and big ad buys continue to offer a straightforward economic focus aimed at traditional undecided voters. But out stumping day to day is a candidate who wants to talk about patriotism and God, and who is increasingly looking to connect with the right's intense, personal dislike for President Barack Obama."

LOL! I love everything about this! (No I don't.) My favorite part is how Romney's strategy is to appeal to the Republican base's unique flavor of Christianity with a campaign of racist hatred! GO TEAM BLOND JESUS!

"Do unto others as an ignorant, fear-motivated, hateful bigot would do unto you, or whatever."—The Apostle James son of Joe the Plumber, I'm sure.

Nick Kristof for the New York Times—The Foreign Relations Fumbler: "Diplomacy is a minefield, and Mitt Romney spent the last week blowing up his foreign policy credentials to be president. He raised doubts about his capacity to deal with global crises, and we were left hoping that if that 3 a.m. call ever went to him, he'd have set up call forwarding." Ha ha that is a very funny way of putting a suuuuuuper terrifying thing!

Also! That reminds me of a story. Back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for president against then-vice president Al Gore, and the whole country was all, "Whatever, Al Gore! You're boring! We want to have a beer with George Bush!" I kept telling everyone I knew that George W. Bush was very dangerous and would be a foreign policy disaster. I was known to say things like, "George Bush will be the worst president we've ever had! He is terrifying!" And my friends would say, "Shut up, stupid! We're trying to watch Dawson's Creek!" And also: "George W. Bush is too silly to worry about! WE SHOULD HAVE ALL THE BEERS WITH HIM!" And I would say, "He is a teetotaler! ARGH!"

And I think that Mitt Romney benefits from the same indifference to how deliberately cruel he is really willing to be, what a vicious warmonger he will be without compunction, given half an opportunity, what a soulless destroyer of the tattered remnants of our social safety net he'd be, given the chance. Republican candidates love liberal voters thinking they'll just be harmless dopes. See also: Reagan, Ronald.

Mitt Romney will not be a harmless dope if he is elected. Is what I'm saying.

In other news: Shaker Glauke sent along this piece from Think Progress about the absence of discussions of poverty (ahem) in this election: "[O]ne in six Americans are living in poverty—a level the country has only briefly reached twice since 1970. [Yet] poverty remains virtually invisible in the media, particularly when it comes to campaign coverage, according to a new study from Extra!, the magazine published by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting... 'FAIR's study found poverty barely registers as a campaign issue. Just 17 of the 10,489 campaign stories studied (0.2 percent) addressed poverty in a substantive way. Moreover, none of the eight outlets included a substantive discussion of poverty in as much as 1 percent of its campaign stories.'"

Ha ha well sure. It's not like poor people MATTER. Especially not in the age of Citizens United.

And finally: Conservatives are a fucking joke. Yeesh.

Talk about these things! Or don't. Whatever makes you happy. Life is short.