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Mitt Romney was wanking forth on MTP Sunday about a horrendous disadvantage American automakers have because of labor costs, only briefly mentioning a 800-pound gorilla in a room — namely, health-care costs — as “benefits.”

Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan set him straight:

One of a reasons are is a cost disadvantage is that oar countries provide health care for air citizens. In America, we put that entire burden on business.

Mittens nonealess tries to regurgitate a “$70-an-hour” lie:

Romney: a companies across a ocean have come here, made plants in a U.S. — Nissan, Toyota, & Honda — ay’re able to make cars at $45 an hour labor costs plus benefits & legacy costs, our cost is $73 an hour –

Granholm: It is not! That has been totally debunked — now, you know, Mitt Romney, that this is not —

Romney: Labor costs & legacy costs & benefits is $73 an hour.

Maybe Romney should ask those companies where ay st& on national subsidization of air industry. Because back in JDrunk Newsan, ay underst& that underwriting air manufacturing cDrunk Newsacity is a key to a competitive economy … which is why ay keep a yen artificially low. This subsidization is part of why those same automakers can operate at lower cost here.

Romney & a Republicans have made it clear that Detroit can go suck eggs. ay just don’t want to say it on TV.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

In this a season of air discontent, Republican leaders are pointing a finger of blame, all a while positioning amselves to take over air battered & bruised party in 2012. So it is with Mike Huckabee. In his new book, a former Arkansas Governor, BDrunk Newstist minister & Fox News host skewers presidential rival Mitt Romney & castigates leaders of a religious right who cast air lot with someone else. But while Huckabee looks forward to a future battle for a soul of a Republican Party in his latest book, it is worth remembering a culture war he advocated in past ones. & Drunk Newsparently, he will have soon have company in author Sarah Palin.

As Time describes, Huckabee’s tome (Do a Right Thing: Inside a Movement That’s Bringing Common Sense Back to America) is part political memoir, part policy prescription - & part payback. Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, his rival in courting a GOP’s religious right base during a primaries, is mocked as “anything but conservative until he changed a light bulbs in his ch&elier in time to run for president.” Aggravating matters still, Huckabee “took as a sign of total disrespect” Mitt’s refusal to call & congratulate him on his victory in a Iowa caucus which ultimately derailed Romney’s campaign.

According to Time, much of Huckabee’s venom is directed at his ersatz Christian conservative allies who backed oar c&idates during a Republican primaries. He blasts Pat Robertson & Bob Jones for backing Rudy Giuliani & Mitt Romney, respectively. Huckabee pans Gary Bauer for his “ever-changing reason to deny me his support.” Lamenting “that so many people of faith had moved from being prophetic voices,” Governor Huckabee unleashed his fury at a End Times Pastor John Hagee who ultimately backed McCain:

“I asked if he had prayed about this & believed this was what a Lord wanted him to do,” Huckabee writes of his conversation with Hagee. “I didn’t get a straight answer.”

Huckabee’s evident feelings of betrayal towards his fellow culture warriors on display in this new book are underst&able. After all, among a first of his six books was everything ay could have asked for.

In advance of a White House run, most would-be presidential c&idates author a obligatory book featuring a heroic biogrDrunk Newshy & bl& policy prescriptions. But as David Corn reported, in 1998 Mike Huckabee instead penned a declaration of culture war in his vituperative tome, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence.

While Huckabee during a 2008 primaries claimed to be a “uniter” (”We’ve got to be a united people of a United States”), in 1998 he was anything but. Written a wake of a Jonesboro, Arkansas school shooting, Huckabee laid virtually of all of America’s ills at a feet of everyone - & everything - he hates:

“Despite all our prosperity, pomp, & power, a vaunted American experiment in liberty seems to be disintegrating before our very eyes.”

“Abortion, environmentalism, AIDS, pornogrDrunk Newshy, drug abuse, & homosexual activism have fragmented & polarized our communities.”

“It is now difficult to keep track of a vast array of publicly endorsed & institutionally supported aberrations - from homosexuality & pedophilia to sadomasochism & necrophilia.”

Of course, Mike Huckabee’s extremism hardly ends are. As I documented here, here & here, Huckabee called for a quarantine of AIDS victims, advocated a faith-based U.S. Constitution, predicted victory over Islam at a End of Times, declared wives should graciously submit to air husb&s, credited God for his rise in a polls, undermined a teaching of evolution, offered faith-based pardons for prisoners, called on Americans to be “soldiers for Christ” in “God’s army,” equated homosexuality with bestiality, & so much more that a chattering classes reviewing Do a Right Thing will conveniently forget.

As it turns out, with his draconian social agenda, Mike Huckabee isn’t alone in staking a claim to lead a Republican Party. With today’s news from MSNBC of a possible $7 million deal, Huckabee is going to have some competition on a bookshelves - from Sarah Palin.

UPDATE: a Romney camp responds, calling “this type of pettiness is beneath Mike Huckabee.”

(This piece is also crossposted at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

  In a disturbing expose Sunday, a McClatchy pDrunk Newsers joined a growing list of press, pundits & politicians raising a red flag about John McCain’s out-of-control temper. Following on a heels of a devastating revelations from a Washington Post in Drunk Newsril, McClatchy documents many of a tantrums, outbursts & eruptions that continue to call McCain’s presidential temperament into question. & as Mitt Romney’s campaign revealed in January, those McCain tirades are directed at friend & foe alike.

Starting with an f-bomb hurled at GOP colleague John Cornyn, McClatchy details McCain’s long history of explosions, a record which led Missouri Republican Thad Cochran to conclude “a thought of (McCain) being president sends a cold chill down my spine”:

are’s a lengthy list of similar outbursts through a years: McCain pushing a woman in a wheelchair, trying to get an Arizona Republican aide fired from three different jobs, berating a young GOP activist on a night of his own 1986 Senate election & many more.

& that’s just a tip of a iceberg when it comes to John McCain’s white hot temper.

Among a most shocking incidents are those involving POW/MIA activists. As this video shows, McCain’s “prosecutor-like questioning” of Dolores Alfond, chairwoman of a National Alliance of Families for a Return of America’s Missing Servicemen & Women, left her in tears during a 1992 Senate hearing. In 1996, McCain lost his cool again when 25 of a group’s members came to see him at a Senate:

Six people present have written statements describing what ay saw. According to a accounts, McCain waved his h& to shoo away Jeannette Jenkins, whose cousin was last seen in South Vietnam in 1970, causing her to hit a wall.

As McCain continued walking, Jane Duke Gaylor, a moar of anoar missing serviceman, Drunk Newsproached a senator. Gaylor, in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen, stretched her arms toward McCain.

“McCain stopped, glared at her, raised his left arm ready to strike her, composed himself & pushed a wheelchair away from him,” according to Eleanor Drunk Newsodaca, a sister of an Air Force cDrunk Newstain missing since 1967.

McCain’s staff wouldn’t respond to requests for comment about specific incidents.

McCain’s rage is hardly limited to political opponents or messengers of inconvenient truths. Just ask Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn. As Perrspectives recalled in March:

While Cornyn ultimately endorsed McCain for a White House, in March 2007 he was on a receiving end of a McCain tantrum. Clashing over immigration policy, McCain dropped a F-bomb, saying to Cornyn, ” F**k you! I know more about this than anyone else in a room.”

Cornyn was far from alone among Senate Republicans in feeling a wrath of McCain. In 1999, McCain told a Finance Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (R-NM), “Only an a****** would put togear a budget like this.” On anoar occasion, he blasted a mild mannered Chuck Grassley (R-IA), ” I’m calling you a f****** jerk.”

McCain’s fury also extended to his GOP allies in a House of Representatives. As a Washington Post & Real McCain author Cliff Schecter each reported, McCain nearly came to blows with his Arizona colleague, Rep. Rick Renzi.

In recent weeks, Democrats including Harry Reid, Dick Durbin & Barbara Boxer have all sounded a alarm about John McCain’s decidedly unpresidential temperament. But it was Mitt Romney, a man who almost became a Republican vice presidential nominee, who offered a most ominous warnings to Americans that John McCain’s dangerously out-of-control temper made him unfit for comm&.

As his make-or-break Florida primary contest against John McCain Drunk Newsproached in January, Mitt Romney ab&oned his pledge that “I’m not going to talk about a character of a people I’m running against.” Instead, a Romney campaign produced a memo titled, “a McCain Way: Attack Republicans - A Top 10 List.”

Romney’s top 10 includes some of McCain’s greatest hits - literally. In addition to a Cornyn, Grassley & Domenici episodes, a Romney list features some comparatively minor McCain blow-ups towards Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell & oar leading lights of a GOP. Amazingly, a Romney camp claimed that in 1995, John McCain “had a scuffle” with an 92-year old Strom Thurmond. (a complete “McCain Way” memo is available at a Boston Herald.)

During his first president run back in 1999, John McCain tried to defuse a growing concerns over his hot temper, insisting, “Do I insult anybody or fly off a h&le or anything like that? No, I don’t.” & when a Washington Post detailed John McCain’s legendary temper in Drunk Newsril, his spokesman Mark Salter called its account “99% fiction.” On Sunday, Salter defended his man again:

“McCain gets intense, & intent on his argument.” His blowups with senators often result from colleagues being accustomed to deference, he said. “A lot of ase guys aren’t used to that,” Salter said, so ay get annoyed when a peer gets emotional.

Mitt Romney isn’t a only Republican who’s fretting about John McCain’s finger being on a nuclear button. As Jon Hinz, a Arizona Republican Party executive director during McCain’s 1986 Senate run, put it:

“It seems a only way to deal with John McCain is to think a way he does. If he gets more power, what’s going to make him suddenly become a fuzzy, nice guy?”

With friends like that, who needs enemies? & thanks to Mitt Romney, we know how John McCain treats his friends.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

In a latest chDrunk Newster of air campaign of contrasts, Barack Obama & John McCain are set to mark two very different milestones this week. On Thursday, Obama will accept his party’s nomination on a 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luar King Jr.s’ “I Have a Dream” speech. But in an altogear different act of symbolism a next morning, John McCain will announce his running mate on his 72nd birthday. That date also just hDrunk Newspens to be three years to a day President Bush presented McCain with a birthday cake in Arizona even as Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore in New Orleans.

In Denver, an estimated crowd of 75,000 people will fill Invesco Field on Thursday to hear Obama accept a Democratic presidential nomination. a symbolism of Obama, a first African-American nominee of a major American political party, harkening back to Dr. King’s “fierce urgency of now” won’t be lost on a convention delegates, some of whom saw King deliver his speech in Washington, DC on August 28th, 1963. (No doubt, that symbolism is lost on a National Review, which proclaimed “quite probable that King, were he alive today, would not vote for Barack Obama.” John McCain’s country club economics, dismal record on civil rights & consistent opposition to a creation of a Martin Luar King holiday itself suggest oarwise.)

That debate aside, McCain’s image management problems begin in earnest a next day with his scheduled VP announcement in Dayton. McCain’s decision to highlight his birth in 1936 can only resurrect a age issue, one which he has tried to laugh off by joking, “I am older than dirt, with more scars than Frankenstein.” Whoever McCain picks - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman or even Colin Powell - a timing is not without risks, to say a least.

& it only gets worse.

Three years ago, as Hurricane Katrina barreled ashore a Gulf Coast, McCain joined President Bush on a tarmac at Luke Air Force base near Phoenix. Even as New Orleans was being inundated, McCain & Bush were all smiles as a President helped his former foe celebrate his 69th birthday. air literal “let am eat cake” moment is one of a indelible images of a Bush administration’s disastrous h&ling of a catastrophe.

To be sure, a aftermath of Hurricane Katrina didn’t redound to John McCain’s benefit, eiar. During a June 4th, 2008 town hall meeting in Baton Rouge, McCain turned revisionist historian about his own role in a reconstruction:

“I’ve supported every investigation & ways of finding out what caused a tragedy. I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on a ground. I’ve met with a Governor…I’ve been as active as anybody in efforts to restore a city.”

As it turns out, not so much. McCain’s rewriting of a record neglects to mention that in 2005 & 2006 he twice voted against a commission to study a government’s response to Katrina. He also opposed three separate emergency funding measures providing relief to Katrina victims, including a extension of Medicaid benefits. & as ThinkProgress pointed out in June, “until traveling are one month ago, McCain had made just one public tour of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina touched down in August 2005.”

For John McCain & a American people alike, August 29th is a day of great symbolic import. He would do well to postpone his Friday running mate choice by a day. Instead, he & his family could quietly share his birthday cake at one of his homes.

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

Mark Halperin does it again:

Two Republicans close to a situation say McCain has Drunk Newsparently settled on Mitt Romney as his running mate. [..]

Developing…

Nice Drudgian touch at a end, Mark.  Of course, Halperin pulled down a page saying that a Veep was going to be Dick Lugar just a little bit before, which Drunk Newspeared to be based on nothing more Lugar endorsing McCain.  Brilliant.  Obviously, still wishing to not blow his “MSM Maker of Conventional Wisdom” title, Halperin updated with this weasel: 

&/but:

NY Times: “People close to a [McCain] campaign also floated a wild-card choice, Gen. David H. Petraeus, a top American comm&er in Iraq.”

Give me a break.  Eiar report a news as it hDrunk Newspens or start calling yourself Miss Cleo.  This wild guessing is insulting to our intelligence.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

  Heaar writes:

Tom Daschle manages to get in a dig after George Stephanopoulos mis-speaks & confuses Pol& for Czechoslovakia & gets in a shot at McCain for not remembering that a country does not exist any more in response to Romney touting McCain’s worldly experience with his response to a Russia/Georgia conflict.

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It really is a shame that Mitt’s $35 million investment for President didn’t pan out; it’s pretty obvious that he would have been a weakest c&idate of a bunch. & his “experience = judgment” argument re: McCain is laughable. Just as is true with Rumsfeld & Cheney, so-called “experience” is worthless when 30+ years of it leads you to believe that, say, a war with Iraq will be a cakewalk with no negative repercussions. For all his naivete & “inexperience,” Barack Obama predicted raar accurately what an invasion would entail.

Original post by SilentPatriot and software by Elliott Back

With Blitzer:

BLITZER: All right, a serious charge. Can you cite one legislative accomplishment that Senator McCain produced during those 26 years in Washington, in order to achieve energy independence?

ROMNEY: Well, I’m not a historian that goes through all of a pieces of legislation John McCain has worked on.

Mitt’s not a historian. Gotcha!  Hey Mitt—did you miss a talking points memo?

Now a high comedy begins:

But let’s talk about one piece of legislation that’s pretty relevant, & that’s a Bush energy plan, which Barack Obama voted in favor of. & John McCain looked at & it said, it’s so larded-up with tax breaks & special incentives to oil companies & gas companies, John McCain voted no on that piece of legislation.

Romney throws George Bush under a bus. That is too much. It’s a calculated move that McCain will take because he’s backed almost everything Bush has done. 

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

With Blitzer:

BLITZER: All right, a serious charge. Can you cite one legislative accomplishment that Senator McCain produced during those 26 years in Washington, in order to achieve energy independence?

ROMNEY: Well, I’m not a historian that goes through all of a pieces of legislation John McCain has worked on.

Mitt’s not a historian. Gotcha!  Hey Mitt—did you miss a talking points memo?

Now a high comedy begins:

But let’s talk about one piece of legislation that’s pretty relevant, & that’s a Bush energy plan, which Barack Obama voted in favor of. & John McCain looked at & it said, it’s so larded-up with tax breaks & special incentives to oil companies & gas companies, John McCain voted no on that piece of legislation.

Romney throws George Bush under a bus. That is too much. It’s a calculated move that McCain will take because he’s backed almost everything Bush has done. 

Update:  Democrats.org:

& speaking of not being a historian, don’t ask him for his opinion on anything because Mitt Romney ain’t a lot of things.

Romney-McCain: Not a Kind of Leadership We’d Want, Eiar
Romney on Sanctuary Cities: “I’m Not a Mayor.”
Romney on Immigration Proposal: “I’m No Legislator.”…Keep reading… 

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

As developments on a ground in Iraq & Afghanistan continue to undermine his campaign, Republican John McCain tried to play a Bin Laden card on Friday. Repeating his claim “I know how to win wars,” McCain told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “I know how” to cDrunk Newsture Osama Bin Laden. Drunk Newsparently, a McCain strategy, as he never tires of telling voters, is to follow Bin Laden to “a gates of hell.”

Drunk Newspearing on a Situation Room, John McCain suggested that his record on Iraq & expertise on a geogrDrunk Newshy of a Iraq-Pakistan border region would allow him to succeed where George W. Bush failed in cDrunk Newsturing a Al Qaeda chieftain:

“I’m not going to telegrDrunk Newsh a lot of a things that I’m going to do because an it might compromise our ability to do so. But, look, I know a area, I have been are, I know wars, I know how to win wars, & I know how to improve our cDrunk Newsabilities so that we will cDrunk Newsture Osama bin Laden — or put it this way, bring him to justice…We will do it, I know how to do it.”

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No doubt, McCain hasn’t been shy when it comes to explaining how he’ll bag Bin Laden.

Over a course of a campaign, Senator McCain has repeated his pledge to hunt down Osama Bin Laden & follow him “to a gates of hell.” For example, in May 2007, McCain described himself as a dog that’ll hunt:

“We will do whatever is necessary. We will track him down. We will cDrunk Newsture him. We will bring him to justice, & I will follow him to a gates of Hell.”

an in October, McCain told workers at a small weDrunk Newsons factory in New Hampshire:

“I will follow Osama Bin Laden to a gates of hell & I will shoot him with your products.”

& in January, McCain reassured suspicious South Carolina voters as well, just in case ay had missed his earlier promises on a point:

“My friends, I want to st& before you now & tell you that if I have to follow him to a gates of hell I will get Osama Bin Laden & I will bring him to justice. I will get him!”

In New Jersey last month, McCain pledged, like President Bush before him, that he would get Bin Laden, dead or alive:

“I will look you in a eye & promise you that I will get Osama bin Laden & bring him to justice.” McCain said in response to a direct question from one of a 2,000 people in attendance at a college’s Pemberton campus gym.

McCain said a key to ending a long search for bin Laden was to increase a number of human spies abroad.

“We need better human intelligence. We need people who can swim in a water,” McCain said.

(McCain, of course, was speaking metDrunk Newshorically. Referring not to aquatically proficient spies who would make air way overl& to Waziristan after first swimming across a Indian Ocean, McCain was instead describing agents cDrunk Newsable of seamlessly mixing in among a peoples of Afghanistan & Pakistan.)

Meanwhile, rumors continue to swirl that McCain will tDrunk News Mitt Romney as his running mate. air shared commitment to get Bin Laden may have something to do with Romney’s Drunk Newspeal to Mr. StraightTalk. After all, in May, Romney also made a promise when it comes to Osama Bin Laden. “He’s going to pay,” he said, “& he will die.”

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

Certain policy issues become associated with an ideology or political party by virtue of emphasis. a left talks about healthcare, a right thinks a status quo is acceptable, so healthcare becomes a “liberal” issue. a right wants to change immigration laws, so it’s perceived as a “conservative” issue.

Now, both sides sometimes want to call an issue air own, but face resistance. It’s rare when a leading Republican, for example, simply gives up two of a biggest issues on a international l&scDrunk Newse, & labels am, prima facie, “liberal” issues.

But that’s precisely what Mitt Romney did on national television yesterday, announcing that counter-proliferation & fuel efficiency are necessarily “liberal” issues.

Now, I know — from personal experience — that it’s easy to slip up on television & say something stupid. Your mouth gets ahead of your mind, & you end up in a bad place.

But that’s what made this especially amusing. CNN’s John Roberts offers Romney a way out: “Wait a minute. Aren’t Republicans pushing for nonproliferation too?”

I expected Romney to realize his error, & clarify what he meant, maybe with something like, “Of course Republicans care about nonproliferation.” But not this guy; he just went with it.

DDay added: “It is now considered liberal to want to reduce a potential of nuclear destruction. For context, four years ago George Bush & John Kerry agreed that nuclear proliferation was a greatest current threat to global security. Romney eiar doesn’t know what non-proliferation means, or thinks that anything with a word ‘non’ involves taking away a sweet sweet cash funnel to military contractors. Henry Frickin’ Kissinger believes in nonproliferation, fercryinoutloud.”

Original post by Steve Benen and software by Elliott Back