Presidential Candidate Caught Raping Goat

[Ancient History]

I wish. It would make things so much easier. Instead we've got Romney and Obama in an election that has already exhausted my entire store of patience for the political process.

Romney!
Is a rich, twofaced asshole who will say anything to get elected and has a bunch of billionaires in his corner. His policies are laughably bad, but what really makes him standout is his supervillain banksta penchant for foreign tax havens for his vast fortune. Asked the Obama administration to apologize for questioning his leaving Bain Capital in 1999 to go oversee the Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Obama!
Refuses to apologize, because Romney's supervillainy is so supervillainy that honestly stating Romney's policies sounds like hyperbole and the people of the United States will roll to disbelieve. Attacks against Obama from the right are bizarre and confused - there's still people claiming he's a Muslim Socialist from Kenya, but the saner ones are trying to knock down his political accomplishments, like refusing to implement/trying to reppeal the new health care law, possibly because anything else would be an argument over issues they would lose.

The Media!
Are like six-year-olds playing soccer; the whole pack of kids including the goalies chase after the ball-of-the-moment like a pack of puppies on crack. Last week the reporters were all over Romney for being the rick, sneaky bastard. This week we're going to see damage control and pushback. The week after that it will probably be Obama's turn because...just because. Repeat, ad nauseum until election day. Fuck, if I drank I would need a drink.

The Truth!
Romney took a leave of absence from Bain in '99 to go plan the Olympics in Mormontopia. He was still the owner and boss-of-record while away, but there's no record left of whether he had any hand in day to day operations or even checked his email. So in '03 when he sold the place and signed the SEC documents and claimed he "retroactively retired" that might be an accurate statement of events. In the end, it doesn't REALLY fucking matter - there are far more egregious examples of Mitt being duplicitous.

Fascinating, Captain
I like how Mitt's response to this thing is to accuse Obama of saying anything to win, to get another term - and really, Mitt's whole campaign is about saying anything to win just to get elected. I think it really does say something about Mitt that he would just naturally jump to that conclusion first and foremost - assuming that Obama has the same objective as he does, and is willing to do the same things to get it.

Biden is a Tool
Nothing more to add here, really. Biden brings nothing to the ticket, and I think at this point he knows it. Obama is the face of the campaign, and Biden is only in a position to fuck up and say the wrong thing, so really he should say nothing at all.

Romney needs a Tool
I think Romney's pick of running mate is going to be critical to when the election bruhaha finally gets into full, rabies-frothing-at-the-mouth swing. I also don't think we're looking at anything as critical as a Palin 2.0. Whoever the running mate will be - and there are plenty of Republican governors licking Mitt's asshole at the moment in an effort to get the nomination - you're pretty much guaranteed that they'll be vetted to not saying anything too stupid, or be too controversial to divide the ticket further.

Paging Gary Trudeau
There seems to be a dire lack of political cartoons these days. I guess the American Public(TM) really does need constant and repeated updates on how horrible are elected-officials-to-be are, because I don't think it's really penetrated yet.

Honestly, it would be enormously refreshing for one of our presidential candidates to be caught fucking a goat, or punching a baby, or doing a line of coke off a Thai rent-boy's ass. It would seriously simplify, in a single act, why these people are unfit for government and probably polite company and even discussion. It saddens me that the world has not yet gotten to this level...and that when we do finally get there, probably no one will care.

[Koumei]

It would seriously simplify, in a single act, why these people are unfit for government and probably polite company and even discussion. It saddens me that the world has not yet gotten to this level...and that when we do finally get there, probably no one will care.

Can I remind you that in Ausfailia's last election, when given two shitty choices, the people of the country basically looked at each other and said "Can we have no-one?"

Seriously, we pretty much gave a vote of non-confidence. I wish we could see how many people just drew dicks on the ballot paper.

[Whatever]

I wish we could see how many people just drew dicks on the ballot paper.

You guys tried to elect George W Bush too?

[ishy]

Honestly, it would be enormously refreshing for one of our presidential candidates to be caught fucking a goat,(...) or doing a line of coke off a Thai rent-boy's ass. It would seriously simplify, in a single act, why these people are unfit for government and probably polite company and even discussion.

Why do these two acts show that they are unfit as presidents?
Shouldn't presidents be elected based on their political policies? Why do you care what they do in their time off? Other then it being illegal by law that is.

[Ancient History]

Because policies do not decide who gets the presidency, sadly. We'd like for that to be the case, but in large part we're down to people that vote for personal traits and actions. By any objective measure, Romney's economic policy is a packet of outright lies, but that's not going to sway voters. They will disbelieve. Reporters and politicians calling Romney out about it is not going to dissuade him that he is doomed to fail, he can and will lie with gusto in pursuit of the supreme office - and he already has.

So what you're really down to is a personal act that proves that the individual in question does not live up to their image - something they can't walk away from or ignore, something so perceivably bad that they can't hide behind empty rhetoric, something so bad that the public wants to believe it. Romney is rich and uses every tax-avoidance scheme in the book and a few the people wrote the book were surprised to find out about, him cheating on his taxes is status quo, there's no impact there. Romney the heteronormative straight-laced morally superior Christian family man getting caught mounting a nanny-goat in the living room on camcorder is a moment of perfect blissful hypocrisy that should be enshrined forever on his secret high definition digital sex cams, if for no other reason than it is so at odds with his projected image it would completely destroy him.

Or it should. Honestly, I think the Koch brothers would fund a Hitler clone running for office if it supported their policies.

[sabs]

What's going to decide this election (other than voter fraud)
Is how many sane people go out and vote to counter the Tea Party Death Cult.

[Josh_Kablack]

Have you ever watched a Biden speech or read his policy positions?

The man is a long term Washington insider, but the portrayal of him as the second coming of J. Danforth Quayle is really far off the mark.

[Ancient History]

He's not Quayle. He's not an idiot by any means. I don't always agree with his policies and votes, but throughout his career Biden has shown a willingness to play the politics game, compromising the absolute position of his stated principles to get laws passed. We need more Republicans with that kind of attitude. As a veep, though, the Republicans and the media pounce on anytime disagrees with Obama in the slightest, and he has little overt political weight on the ticket - no leadership position in Congress, or with a base in an important state like Florida or California or Texas.

I think in the right environment, where the Republicans weren't all in lock-step or rabid Tea Partiers, Biden would be the perfect dealmaker veep to complement Obama, talking with Republicans and making the private concessions necessary to get enough votes for major bills to be passed through Congress and approved by the President. In the current environment however, I think those talents are mostly wasted, because the Republicans won't come to the table.

[K]

The Truth!
Romney took a leave of absence from Bain in '99 to go plan the Olympics in Mormontopia. He was still the owner and boss-of-record while away, but there's no record left of whether he had any hand in day to day operations or even checked his email. So in '03 when he sold the place and signed the SEC documents and claimed he "retroactively retired" that might be an accurate statement of events. In the end, it doesn't REALLY fucking matter - there are far more egregious examples of Mitt being duplicitous.

The truth is that during his "retirement" while he was at the Olympics, he was drawing a six-figure salary from Bain for being their manager, signed all their legal documents, sat on the boards of several Bain companies, and was the listed sole owner of Bain.

If he's telling the truth, it means that he's incompetent, blind, and puts vicious and unethical people in charge of running his affairs. He's also a felon who lied to the federal government.

If he's lying, he was using a legal fiction to conceal the kinds of vulture capitalism that disgusts people right now and was also too stupid to pull it off.

Neither one is an appealing option for a President.

[Sashi]

Yeah, there's really no way this works in Romney's favor.

YouAreDumb.net is covering this issue Today. My two favorite quotes from the article:

I'm talking about Baingate, the scandal that should doom Romney's candidacy, but which we'll be lucky if it just wounds, given that the news media is depending on a close presidential horse race to drive ratings for the next three and a half months.

Retroactive retirement! You know what's best about that? It sounds totally fake, and is probably a real thing rich and powerful people do to get around the law. You know, like when corporate execs lie to Congress, get caught, and get to "revise their statements" with the correct info, or at least the lies they got caught on, to avoid a perjury charge. Either way, it's an awful thing to try to explain to the Common Man with limited access to fancy rule-breaking.

[hyzmarca]

At this point I really don't care, and I think that says a lot.

Back in 04 and 08 there were actually issues worth caring about. Now there isn't, except universal health care, which most people should agree is a good idea but isn't really something to get excited about.

Really, we need another war, preferably with space aliens, but ultra-nationalist revanchist Albania will work just as well at this point.

It's time like this I really miss the USSR. They were awesome for making you care about foreign policy.

[Taishan]

Shouldn't presidents be elected based on their political policies? Why do you care what they do in their time off? Other then it being illegal by law that is.

This may sound naive, but I'm not voting for a political policy. I'm voting for a person who espouses a particular political policy, but if that person has a proven track record of lying about things, even in their private life, I have reason to doubt they will carry through with that policy once elected.

Additionally, a campaign political policy only tells you what they're selling you. How do we know that when the shit hits the fan, the person won't just cave? Bush II had many isolation-ist quotes during the 2000 campaign that people feared would lead to a pull back of US presence in the world. He even stated he would not participate in nation building. While he sucked at it, he still committed the US to nation building in not one but two shitty regions of the world. I'm not saying an in-depth look at Bush II's history would have told us exactly what he would do, but it would be foolish to think that NOT looking is a meaningless endeavor. So what you do when the cameras are not looking is important cause the president can shut the cameras off in the White House anytime they want.

[Ikeren]

China and India taking over the global economy?

[npc310]

I'd like to have a candidate to vote for, instead of settling for someone who is not as bad as the other guy.

[Grek]

Vote for me. If elected, I promise to rape a goat on national television.

[Darth Rabbitt]

Because policies do not decide who gets the presidency, sadly. We'd like for that to be the case, but in large part we're down to people that vote for personal traits and actions

This is pretty much my experience.

If there's one thing Gary Hart and Bill Clinton taught us it's that the public doesn't give a shit what ideas you have if you have an affair.

Really, we need another war, preferably with space aliens

I've got the perfect candidate.

Vote for me. If elected, I promise to rape a goat on national television.

Welcome to my sig.

[Josh_Kablack]

Aaron Kablack: from one of my facebook friends:
(7/16/2012 9:54:17 PM) Aaron Kablack: "So as a response to documents that clearly prove Tricky Mitt was at Bain
after February 1999, he is now claiming that he "retired
retroactively." That sounds an awful lot like the Sidereal Charm in
Exalted where you can avoid taking damage from a blow by deciding you
weren't there after all. He's going to be getting a lot of pattern bite
for this one."
(7/16/2012 9:54:25 PM) Aaron Kablack: just thought you'd appreciate that

More seriously, the management of a company operates with the approval of their owner - especially when the company has only one owner. Sure, if it's an absentee owner, it's only implicit approval, but seeing as the owner has the power to come back and fire people whenever, those people are likely to be doing what they think the owner wants. The only alternative is that they are doing what they think they can get away with to line their own pockets -- and in that case Romney would have responded about how shocked he was to find gambling going on in this establishment while they brought him his winnings find how much of his fortune was due to outsourcing, offshoring and bankruptcies. That he responded as "Nuh-uh, I left before that" is disappointing.

Not nearly as disappointing as his policy positions are, but hey we've already decided that elections aren't about policy.

[Zinegata]

Meh, the only source I believe is Fact Check, and as far as they're concerned...

http://factcheck.org/2012/07/romneys-ba ... onclusion/

It's a lot of hot air. Yes, it shows that Romney is a rich bastard who played absentee owner, but we already knew he was a rich bastard.

Plus, they already called out Romney for claiming he created jobs when he was already apparently "not managing" Bain way before anyone else did.

[Username17]

The problem is that even Fact Check is caught in the bullshit media "both sides" crap. Romney got his retirement bonus in 2002 backdated to 1999, and in the meantime had been listed as CEO, President, and Sole Owner the entire time. To the extent that you can claim that a backdated retirement date is not a lie, you have to be bought in to the Centrism extremism so hard that you're willing to accept completely ridiculous things in the name of claiming that both sides are both right and wrong.

The new professional "fact-checking" class is, at its best, doing good, regular journalism under the pseudo-scientific banner, complete with made-up measurements. At their worst, they're doing opinion journalism under pseudo-scientific banners, something that's really corrosive to actual journalism, which if it's any good is about reported fact in the first place.

Politifact named their lie of the year a Democrat statement that a Republican plan to discontinue medicare and bring in a voucher system by which old people would have some of their private insurance premiums paid "ended medicare as we know it". Aside from being a 100% true characterization (medicare is an insurance program, and not a subsidy for people to buy private insurance with), how could that possibly be the "lie of the year"?

The sad reality is that the professional Fact Checkers feel that they need to be seen to be even handed more than they need to actually tell the truth. And that means that when you have a situation like we do right now, where Romney simply lies his head off constantly about everything and Obama simply cherry picks true statements that he thinks benefit him, that FactCheck and Politifact feel the need to give out Pinocchios to democrats and thumbs-ups to republicans when they are wholly unwarranted. The whole system is pretty much incapable of admitting that one candidate is basically telling the truth and the other candidate is lying his fool head off.

For fuck's sake, Romney's book is called "no apology", which is about how Romney wouldn't do the Obama world apology tour - an event that never happened and isn't going to! His entire campaign is based on a lie. How are the Centrists supposed to react to that? I'll tell you how, by "demanding" that Obama support policies he already supports!

Centrism is a morally bankrupt position that values "compromise" more than it values the rightness or wrongness (either morally or factually) of the "extremes" it is compromising between. Fifteen years ago we made fun of Centrists by saying that they would want to compromise between Flat Earthers and Round Earthers, but the truth is: they actually would if that was an election issue.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Uh, right. Frank Trollman devotes four paragraphs trashing PolitiFact when I'm quoting FactCheck.org, a completely different outlet.

Then he goes into some bullshit rant about "Centrism", when Fact Check is pointing out that the Obama Campaign made actual factual errors; none of which he actually addressed in favor of long-winded rant about how CENTRISTS ARE EVIL.

Stupid strawmanning at its dumbest.

Despite Trollman's vain attempts to present this as some kind of Centrist hackery (when he's just engaging in pointless anti-right-wing hackery), Fact Check is merely presenting the (gasp!) the facts, which are:

1) Romney had always been a rich bastard and absentee owner - a fact that Democrats confirmed way back in 1999.

2) The Obama administration is suddenly claiming he's a rich bastard and he's not an absentee owner in 2012.

Which is again why the issue is a lot of stupid hot air. The real issue is what Fact Check already reported on before - which is that Romney lied about "creating" jobs when Bain created jobs only starting 2002 onwards - after he had left the company.

So really, enough with the stupid hackery because your favorite politicians can't get their facts straight

[Zinegata]

By the way, since Frank Trollman can't be trusted to actually tell the truth about Politifact either, let's actually post their "Lie of the Year, 2011" article:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... ed-end-me/

Yeah, they are not contesting "ended medicare as we know it" (the Trollman lunacy). They are contesting the Democrat claim that the Republicans "ended medicare, period". And they do show statements where the Democrats use this hyperbole to scare voters.

But hey, apparently it's now okay to lie and scare seniors just to score political brownie points.

Pants on Fire for Trollman. No cookie for you.

[DSMatticus]

I dunno. FactCheck looks like they're stretching themselves pretty hard on that one, which I find incredibly disappointing. It helps when you ignore their conclusions, because that's editorial opinion, and read the, well, you know, facts they propose. And the facts are:
1) Romney managed the olympics from 1999 to 2002, the period which he claims to have not been involved.
2) There are documents from 2000 and 2001 where Romney describes himself as the managing director of Bain.
3) There are documents throughout the period filed by Bain with the SEC listing Romney as managing director.
Those are all facts that the FactCheck article openly acknowledges. And yet here's a quote from the article.

We see nothing to contradict the statement that a Bain spokesman issued in response to the Globe article:

Bain Capital, July 12: Due to the sudden nature of Mr. Romney’s departure, he remained the sole stockholder for a time while formal ownership was being documented and transferred to the group of partners who took over management of the firm in 1999. Accordingly, Mr. Romney was reported in various capacities on SEC filings during this period.

Yeah. That's right. FactCheck is willing to accept the entirely plausible excuse that it takes two years or more to transfer formal ownership.

Even if FactCheck rejects that Romney was an active managing director (entirely reasonable), there is every reason to look at that particular response from Bain Capital and say bullshit. Because that is obvious bullshit. The fact that it's bullshit doesn't make Romney an active managing director, but bullshit is still bullshit and when FactCheck nods along with such obvious bullshit you know their conclusions are not actually sound.

Now, if you want the reasonable take on the actual situation: Romney was calling himself the managing director until mid 2001. Bain Capital was calling him the managing director until mid 2001. He was receiving pay from Bain Capital until at least mid 2001. At that point, what more do you want? It's not the world's job to figure out if Romney really, really meant it when he signed his name next to "I like kicking toddlers to death". His name's right there, and either he meant it and he's terrible or he's so stupid he'll put his name next to anything for money and that's terrible.

The company did things. His name is all over the company while it's doing those things. He is receiving paychecks from the company while it does those things. The retroactive, "hahaha, sorry, joke's on you, I'm actually just incompetent," defense is not compelling, because it's not actually defense at all, it's just another (entirely believable but slightly different) way in which Romney could be terrible.

The truth is that no, Romney wasn't active in the company's affairs. He was calling himself managing director for two+ years so it wouldn't be weird that he was still being paid buttloads of cash. But that truth won't satisfy anyone, so they're hoping people will accept "I was calling myself managing director for two+ years for no reason at all, shut up let's talk about something else." He's using just enough of the truth to defend himself from the consequences of his own lie. It's really quite beautiful.

[Zinegata]

1) Romney managed the olympics from 1999 to 2002, the period which he claims to have not been involved.
2) There are documents from 2000 and 2001 where Romney describes himself as the managing director of Bain.
3) There are documents throughout the period filed by Bain with the SEC listing Romney as managing director.
Those are all facts that the FactCheck article openly acknowledges. And yet here's a quote from the article.

That's because you're cherry-picking. The article cites numerous other articles detailing all the evidence as the core of its argument; and yet somehow you manage to filter only these three?

If you'd actually read the article instead of engaging in partisan hackery, you missed the most important bit of evidence - which is the bipartisan investigation in 2002 on whether Romney can run for governor.

This was the basis for their original assertion that Romney didn't lie when he said he wasn't actively managing the company, because while there was plenty of evidence showing Romney going around MA visiting various places (i.e. Staples), he was never found to be in the offices of Bain.

The WaPo article (which analyzes the "Shocking new documents") even points out that Romney's 2001 paycheck calls him a former employee.

So when a Bain SEC document is found naming him a managing director - and it looks like someone had just lazily copied it off a previous memo and forgot to take out Romney's name - it's really very doubtful that Romney was lying about "not actively managing Bain".

Yeah. That's right. FactCheck is willing to accept the entirely plausible excuse that it takes two years or more to transfer formal ownership.

Actually, if you'd look at all the evidence they presented, it is quite clear that handing over ownership of an enormous company is not easily done. The WaPo even notes that there was also some question as to whether or not Romney may end up returning to Bain.

The truth is that no, Romney wasn't active in the company's affairs.

As Fact Check has already pointed out; the truth works both ways. If he wasn't active in the company's affairs, then he can't claim credit for "creating" the jobs they did in 1999-2002. That's a real lie.

But really, given the intense cherry-picking that's being done, let's go ahead and ignore the facts and let the Democrats have their revenge for the Swift Boat nonsense. Resort to lying in order to smear someone you don't like.

Instead of say, actually calling Romney out on real and substantive bullshit that he tried to pull - i.e. claiming how he "slashed" costs as Governor of MA when he actually increased spending.

[Username17]

The article cites numerous other articles detailing all the evidence as the core of its argument; and yet somehow you manage to filter only these three?

Those are the only ones that matter. Romney and Bain both described him has being the managing director, CEO, president, and owner of Bain in 2001. In 2002, he announced that he had retroactively retired in 1999. That claim is obviously bullshit. You can't decide one day that you retired three years before, that isn't what retirement is.

The Romney explanation is bullshit. Obvious, 100%, unadulterated, bullshit. And if FactCheck is willing to accept that amount of pure bullshit from a politician who is a known habitual liar, they can't be trusted to tell fact from bullshit. Sorry Zinegata, your idol has feet of clay.

-Username17

[ishy]

It's not the world's job to figure out if Romney really, really meant it when he signed his name next to "I like kicking toddlers to death". His name's right there, and either he meant it and he's terrible or he's so stupid he'll put his name next to anything for money and that's terrible.

If he signed his name for the killing of childeren between ages 1 and 5, that sounds like the difference between a muder charge and depraved indifference to me.
Then again, I know practically nothing about American law.