No, not because he’s releasing his tax returns, but the reason for it THIS TIME is a doozy. Now the reason is his religion. And tithing. You know, that thing him and Ann have been going on endlessly about. Now that’s the reason. At least this week. That will likely change when it doesn’t work.
Bain isn’t going away either, for that matter.
Shorter Question Everything
• Romney now hiding behind his religion for the reason he doesn’t want to disclose his taxes, despite the fact that he’s been saying all along that he tithes 10%. What’s to hide? If it’s so private, why have both Mitt and Ann been blabbing about it to anyone that would listen? “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”
• You know what, asshole? If you didn’t intend for your contributions to be known, you shouldn’t have run for president. And by the way? You can’t send your wife out to talk about how super awesome and honest you are, and have her gush about how you give ten percent of your income to the LDS Church and then two weeks later claim that you want to keep the amount you donate to the church private because of Jesus. Come on, bro. You cannot be serious.
• As a rule, when an explanation evolves over time, and a candidate struggles to keep his story straight, it’s a bad sign, but this is especially foolish. Romney can’t say — or at least he can’t be expected to be taken seriously when he says — his tithing is “a very personal thing” that he “never intended … to be known.” He does realize Google exists, right? Romney understands that it’s easy to document countless examples of him boasting, not only about his tithing, but the specific percentage of his income he turns over to his church every year, doesn’t he? Indeed, Romney has already made some tax returns available, and they show how much he gave to his church. The release of more tax returns would only confirm what we already know.
Bain:
• The Bain Files: Gawker has obtained a large cache of confidential internal financial documents from more than 20 secretive hedge funds and other investment vehicles in which Mitt Romney has stashed his considerable wealth.
More right wing buffoonery on reproductive rights:
• Mitt Romney met Todd Akin doctor John Willke during 2012 campaign. Mitt Romney met John Willke, the doctor credited with popularising Todd Akin’s controversial views on rape and abortion, during the current election campaign and told him they agreed on “almost everything,” Dr Willke said.
The 87-year-old endorsed Mr Romney’s bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination and was one of his official campaign surrogates. ”I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement,” Mr Romney said at the time.
Mr Romney and Paul Ryan, his running mate, have denounced Mr Akin’s remarks. Dr Willke has been given no role in Mr Romney’s 2012 campaign and aides stress that the candidate disagrees with his theory on rape.
However, Dr Willke told The Daily Telegraph that he did meet Mr Romney during a presidential primary campaign stop in the doctor’s home city of Cincinnati, Ohio, in October last year. Local news reports at the time noted that the candidate held “private meetings” during the visit.
“He told me ‘thank you for your support – we agree on almost everything, and if I am elected President I will make some major pro-life pronouncements’,” Dr Willke said in a telephone interview on Tuesday.
[telegraph]
• The Republican presidential ticket’s Todd Akin tragedy has now entered the third stage, bargaining. In a comical effort to wish the Akin story out of existence, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney forced Denver CBS reporter Shaun Boyd to agree not to ask any questions about the Todd Akin controversy, or the issue of abortion.
• What’s puzzling is that Romney and the others aren’t criticizing the substance of Akin’s remarks. They’re just really angry that he’s making them look bad. It’s strange, but you almost have to admire the right-wingers who are standing up for Akin. At least they’re being honest about what their real position is.
• When some rape victims do choose to give birth to a child conceived through sexual assault, they find that the legal door is left wide open for their victimization to continue. It sounds unfathomable, but in many states the law makes it possible for rapists to assert their parental rights and use custody proceedings as a weapon against their victims.
• Mike Huckabee – who is speaking at the Republican Convention next week – has written a letter not just standing up for Rep. Todd Akin but slamming his fellow Republicans for trying to run him out of the Missouri Senate race. I’m waiting for the apology from whoever the genius was on the high pedestals of our party who thought it wise to not only shoot our wounded, but run over him with tanks and trucks and then feed his body to the liberal wolves.
• Hurricane Isaac? Or Hurricane Ron Paul?: Mitt Romney’s quest to formally win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination is coming two days earlier than expected. Mr. Romney will be elevated as the party’s standard bearer on Monday – not Wednesday as previously expected – to keep the official business of the roll call delegate vote from competing with broader themes of introducing Mr. Romney. Officials also are keeping an eye on a potential threat from Tropical Storm Isaac and considering concerns about a possible disruption from Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention next week.
• Dan Senor, Jeb Bush and Condi Rice, and the addition of Ryan saying his foreign policy experience is summed up by voting to send people to war – that’s how the Rep convention plans to roll out Paul Ryan.
• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is scheduled to speak to delegates from western states on Aug. 30 during the Republican National Convention, the Arizona Republican Party said in a press release.
• Vice Presidential pick Paul Ryan was put in an awkward position on Thursday when one of the speakers at his own campaign event bragged about getting government funding to help build his business. Scott Perry is President of the Partnership for Defense Innovation, which recieved $7.5 million in earmarks over three years — under both Presidents Bush and Obama. Perry’s praise for government funding was odd, considering low public opinion of earmarks generally, and the Romney-Ryan campaign’s persistent focus on the fact that people build businesses themselves, not with the help of government. Still, at Thursday’s event, Perry said, “this building that you are sitting in is an example, a success story, of federal appropriations that worked.”
• Canada: The federal government will spend more than $142 million over the next six years to design and build a research centre in the High Arctic, finally putting a price tag on the two-year-old project.
• Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador is set to move for the first time since its multimillion-dollar rebuild began two years ago. The provincial government says workers are beginning to shift the Bluenose II into a position for its relaunch on the Lunenburg waterfront, another step towards its return to the water.
Middle East:
• Lebanon: A sniper killed a Sunni sheikh in the north Lebanon city of Tripoli on Friday, sparking new clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian factions that dashed a tenuous truce, a security official told AFP. The death of Sheikh Khaled al-Baradei, 28, brought to 12 the number of people killed in fighting in the city over the past five days and stoked fears of a spillover of major violence from the conflict inneighbouring Syria. A further 86 people have been wounded.
• Syria: US military planners are studying contingency plans for a potential mission in Syria without precedent — securing the regime’s chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war, officials and experts said. No military action is imminent at the moment.
F.D.Brightly
Romney puts taxes on the front burner again
No, not because he’s releasing his tax returns, but the reason for it THIS TIME is a doozy. Now the reason is his religion. And tithing. You know, that thing him and Ann have been going on endlessly about. Now that’s the reason. At least this week. That will likely change when it doesn’t work.
Bain isn’t going away either, for that matter.
Shorter Question Everything
• Romney now hiding behind his religion for the reason he doesn’t want to disclose his taxes, despite the fact that he’s been saying all along that he tithes 10%. What’s to hide? If it’s so private, why have both Mitt and Ann been blabbing about it to anyone that would listen? “Our church doesn’t publish how much people have given,” Romney tells Parade magazine in an edition due out Sunday. “This is done entirely privately. One of the downsides of releasing one’s financial information is that this is now all public, but we had never intended our contributions to be known. It’s a very personal thing between ourselves and our commitment to our God and to our church.”
• You know what, asshole? If you didn’t intend for your contributions to be known, you shouldn’t have run for president. And by the way? You can’t send your wife out to talk about how super awesome and honest you are, and have her gush about how you give ten percent of your income to the LDS Church and then two weeks later claim that you want to keep the amount you donate to the church private because of Jesus. Come on, bro. You cannot be serious.
• As a rule, when an explanation evolves over time, and a candidate struggles to keep his story straight, it’s a bad sign, but this is especially foolish. Romney can’t say — or at least he can’t be expected to be taken seriously when he says — his tithing is “a very personal thing” that he “never intended … to be known.” He does realize Google exists, right? Romney understands that it’s easy to document countless examples of him boasting, not only about his tithing, but the specific percentage of his income he turns over to his church every year, doesn’t he? Indeed, Romney has already made some tax returns available, and they show how much he gave to his church. The release of more tax returns would only confirm what we already know.
Bain:
• The Bain Files: Gawker has obtained a large cache of confidential internal financial documents from more than 20 secretive hedge funds and other investment vehicles in which Mitt Romney has stashed his considerable wealth.
More right wing buffoonery on reproductive rights:
• Mitt Romney met Todd Akin doctor John Willke during 2012 campaign. Mitt Romney met John Willke, the doctor credited with popularising Todd Akin’s controversial views on rape and abortion, during the current election campaign and told him they agreed on “almost everything,” Dr Willke said.
• The Republican presidential ticket’s Todd Akin tragedy has now entered the third stage, bargaining. In a comical effort to wish the Akin story out of existence, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney forced Denver CBS reporter Shaun Boyd to agree not to ask any questions about the Todd Akin controversy, or the issue of abortion.
• What’s puzzling is that Romney and the others aren’t criticizing the substance of Akin’s remarks. They’re just really angry that he’s making them look bad. It’s strange, but you almost have to admire the right-wingers who are standing up for Akin. At least they’re being honest about what their real position is.
• When some rape victims do choose to give birth to a child conceived through sexual assault, they find that the legal door is left wide open for their victimization to continue. It sounds unfathomable, but in many states the law makes it possible for rapists to assert their parental rights and use custody proceedings as a weapon against their victims.
• Paul Ryan on pregnancy from rape: “the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”
RNC Convention:
• Mike Huckabee – who is speaking at the Republican Convention next week – has written a letter not just standing up for Rep. Todd Akin but slamming his fellow Republicans for trying to run him out of the Missouri Senate race. I’m waiting for the apology from whoever the genius was on the high pedestals of our party who thought it wise to not only shoot our wounded, but run over him with tanks and trucks and then feed his body to the liberal wolves.
• Hurricane Isaac? Or Hurricane Ron Paul?: Mitt Romney’s quest to formally win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination is coming two days earlier than expected. Mr. Romney will be elevated as the party’s standard bearer on Monday – not Wednesday as previously expected – to keep the official business of the roll call delegate vote from competing with broader themes of introducing Mr. Romney. Officials also are keeping an eye on a potential threat from Tropical Storm Isaac and considering concerns about a possible disruption from Ron Paul supporters at the Republican National Convention next week.
• Dan Senor, Jeb Bush and Condi Rice, and the addition of Ryan saying his foreign policy experience is summed up by voting to send people to war – that’s how the Rep convention plans to roll out Paul Ryan.
• Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is scheduled to speak to delegates from western states on Aug. 30 during the Republican National Convention, the Arizona Republican Party said in a press release.
US Politics Bits and Pieces:
• Martin Bashir blasts Republican strategist for ‘demeaning’ General Dempsey:
• Vice Presidential pick Paul Ryan was put in an awkward position on Thursday when one of the speakers at his own campaign event bragged about getting government funding to help build his business. Scott Perry is President of the Partnership for Defense Innovation, which recieved $7.5 million in earmarks over three years — under both Presidents Bush and Obama. Perry’s praise for government funding was odd, considering low public opinion of earmarks generally, and the Romney-Ryan campaign’s persistent focus on the fact that people build businesses themselves, not with the help of government. Still, at Thursday’s event, Perry said, “this building that you are sitting in is an example, a success story, of federal appropriations that worked.”
• Romney campaign has admitted that their energy policy was written by the oil and gas industry.
Canada:
• Canada: The federal government will spend more than $142 million over the next six years to design and build a research centre in the High Arctic, finally putting a price tag on the two-year-old project.
• Nova Scotia’s sailing ambassador is set to move for the first time since its multimillion-dollar rebuild began two years ago. The provincial government says workers are beginning to shift the Bluenose II into a position for its relaunch on the Lunenburg waterfront, another step towards its return to the water.
Middle East:
• Lebanon: A sniper killed a Sunni sheikh in the north Lebanon city of Tripoli on Friday, sparking new clashes between pro- and anti-Syrian factions that dashed a tenuous truce, a security official told AFP. The death of Sheikh Khaled al-Baradei, 28, brought to 12 the number of people killed in fighting in the city over the past five days and stoked fears of a spillover of major violence from the conflict inneighbouring Syria. A further 86 people have been wounded.
• Syria: US military planners are studying contingency plans for a potential mission in Syria without precedent — securing the regime’s chemical weapons in the midst of a raging civil war, officials and experts said. No military action is imminent at the moment.