Mitt Romney-Birther

It was meant as a joke, but it's strangely similar to a joke where you pin down a gay classmate and shave the guy's head. 
The problem with Mitt stooping to making the birther joke about no one asking him to see his birth certificate is that it betrays his spectacular lack of diplomacy and sense of nuance in a manner consistent with his disastrous trip to Europe and Israel.   This is a guy who lacks the skill to run a country.  In the business world, if you manage to offend a major client in this way, you get fired.

Speaking of fired, one reason the joke isn't such a good joke is that Romney's never actually repudiated the birthers.  He even pals around with Donald Trump.

If you remember, Obama made a joke about Seamus recently and the Romney campaign took offense.  One significant difference, the Seamus story was true and it came from Mitt's son. 

D-Day

This story about a widow trying to find out if her husband was killed at D-Day is fascinating all by itself. 

The really interesting thing is that as much lip service as gets paid to how much they value the military, her congressman lied about having checked into the story with the National Archives.  They simply made up an answer and told her that they had. 

I looked up the party affiliation for Congressman Mac Thornberry and naturally he's a very conservative Republican.  All Congressional staffs make mistakes, but sometimes those mistakes are telling. What's it suggest about the Congressman's actual patriotism?

So much has been written about Todd Akin's "legitimate rape" comment and what it meant, I just thought I'd give the blogosphere a break :} and share this story about how one congressional office treated a military widow.

Interesting article on right wing terror issues

link to Johnston article

The Republicans politicized it, but the Obama administration also backed down in the wake of the right wing furor over the suggestion that right wing terrorists needed to be investigated.  It sums up where we are in a nutshell.  Sometimes, data doesn't have a political affiliation or, at least, it shouldn't.  I would rather have an administration that would take a principled stand in matters like this.  That, however, does not mean I think we should elect the people who made the trouble in the first place instead.  As a political judgment, Secretary Napolitano was probably making an accurate assessment of what could and couldn't be done.  In the meantime, we can't run around teaching history and science based on the way we want things to be or interpreting weather and other environmental data based on what's good for business.  We need to figure out what the available facts say and make judgments based on that. 

On the other side, there was the Family Research Council shooting.  One difference though is that Lesbian and gay groups quickly condemned the shooting.  I've still never seen a comment from Michelle Bachmann or those saying similar things about non-Christian groups about the Sikh temple killings in the state right next to hers. 

Rafalca

Was Caligula the Roman Emperor who appointed his horse consul? I'm not saying that anything similar will happen for the Romney family's horse-tax deduction source, Rafalca who recently competed in the Olympics in dressage (btw Rafalca finished 28th, if only his owner will do the same in November). It did get me interested in Ann Romney and, thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that she converted to Mormonism for Mitt which meant that her family weren't members of the church.

 At first, I was shocked to learn that her own parents didn't get to go to the wedding, because only Mormons can attend weddings in a Mormon temple (not to be confused with the meeting house where they attend services on Sunday). I then learned that the Romneys had a civil ceremony at Ann's parents' home first that was attended by the members of her family. They then flew to Salt Lake City for a Mormon service in the temple there. Ann's family attended a reception breakfast in Salt Lake City the next morning. After that various members of Ann Romney's family did convert to Mormonism.

It suggests strongly that the couple understands the difference between a civil marriage and a religious wedding ceremony well. It's little wonder that Mitt once appeared to support civil marriage for gay couples. I'm curious why someone who so thoughtfully made this distinction in his own life, suddenly changed his mind.

 I did have the chance to interview Mitt's little known younger brother, Flop, about this and he explained that Mormon marriages don't have an until death do you part clause. A Mormon family stays a family after everyone dies, something that I have to say is quite touching. Through my connections as a writer for the vast right wing conspiracy (VRWC), I had the good fortune to interview Flop Romney, Rafalca, and Seamus (the family's deceased Irish Setter who's currently living in heaven in the Romney house in the after-life complete with an elevator for Seamus's station wagon). Apparently, they were impressed with the fact that I'd gotten access to Meth Palin's secret diary and its entry about the magic clothes (as opposed to special underwear) four years ago. I'll be posting excerpts from that interview soon. Seamus had just come in from another Romney family vacation and had a little accident all over my notes.

Michelle Bachmann and Wisconsin

I've been googling for comments by Michelle Bachmann in response to the Sikh Temple Shootings. I can't find them. Does that mean that no one's asking her about it or that she's not answering the question? If someone turns up her response, let me know.