Tag Mitt Romney

Election Night Woot!

As I write this — and maybe I shouldn’t be writing this while I’m in no state to operate Internet machinery — a number of things have happened in the 2012 US election.

Obama has won reelection. Mittens is about to concede. Looks like Obama has won not only the Electoral Vote, but also the popular vote. So I guess the moral of the story is that you can’t buy an election without showing your tax returns or adopting a consistent policy on something.

Elizabeth Warren has won. Richard Mourdock has lost. Todd Akin has lost. According to various sources, Democrats have picked up a Senate seat or two.

Recreational marijuana will now be legal in Washington state.

Oh, and gay marriage will be legal in Maryland, Washington, and Maine. And Minnesota has rejected a constitutional amendment to ban it. So the homophobes can suck it. For years they’ve been using “every time gay marriage has been put to a vote, it has lost”, and now they won’t have that anymore. I’m not sure what they’re going to do now. I suspect they’ll blame electoral activism by unelected voters.

From what I’ve seen, Fox News’s spin is that most counties voted for Romney, so shenanigans. Or something. Also, Republicans might’ve done better if they’d deigned to adopt a platform reflecting 21st-century values. Like maybe that women and black people are humans too.

Anyway, thank you, America, and thank you Maryland. You done good tonight.

NPR Almost Uses the L Word

From this morning’s NPR news podcast (starting at the 1:28 mark, if the link isn’t stale by the time you read this):

[Romney is]continuing to hammer at the president for allowing some exemptions to the work requirement in the welfare law.

Romney: “It is wrong to make any change that would make America more of a nation of government dependency”.

And that’s Romney in Iowa yesterday. Independent analysis shows the president’s changes simply could allow states exemptions when they can show that their own processes would place more people into jobs than by meeting the welfare law’s requirements.

(emphasis added)

So basically, <quote Romney saying X>; but actually, not-X.

NPR doesn’t actually use the word “liar”, but this comes pretty close. And given the current state of American news media—where if one person says that kittens should be killed with giant mallets, and another person says they shouldn’t, the average news outlet will treat both as equally-respectable opinions and that the truth lies somewhere halfway between (you should get a permit to kill kittens with mallets, after proving that you’re not some sort of weirdo, perhaps?)—I’m grateful for any advance in the direction of letting people know what’s going on.

So thank you, NPR.

Classy, Mitt. Real Classy.

Mitt Romney, bowing out of the race:

Now, if I fight on, in my campaign, all the way to the convention … I want you to know, I’ve given this a lot of thought – I’d forestall the launch of a national campaign and, frankly, I’d make it easier for Senator Clinton or Obama to win.

Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

Asshat. Is fearmongering really all the Republicans have left?

Atheism-Friendly Editorial in the Post

In the wake of Mitt Romney’s speech, the Washington Post has an editorial that makes some of the same points that I did.

Where Mr. Romney most fell short, though, was in his failure to recognize that America is composed of citizens not only of different faiths but of no faith at all and that the genius of America is to treat them all with equal dignity. “Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom,” Mr. Romney said. But societies can be both secular and free. The magnificent cathedrals of Europe may be empty, as Mr. Romney said, but the democracies of Europe are thriving.