Dog Whistling: The Meanstream Media Forecasting Of Election Results

There may be just one day to go, but that is no reason for the right-wing media to relax their incessant campaign of unhinged babbling and racial insults.

No one should be surprised by Fox News hammering away at their fervent anti-Obama diatribes. This morning they have ramped up their attacks on Obama for everything from Benghazi (which they compare to Watergate) to Hurricane Sandy (which they compare to Katrina). Needless to say, their comparisons only make sense to people who have had their frontal lobes removed.

In addition to this fictionalization of the news, much of the conservative press is rushing to publish their predictions of tomorrow’s election results. In this area they are just as delusional as they are in their so-called “journalism.” The big, all-cap headline at Fox News is that “ROMNEY WILL WIN.”

Fox Nation Romney Will Win

These prognostications emanate from a group of pundits who hold the Olympic record for being wrong. Karl Rove, Michael Barone, Dick Morris, and George Will, all claim that, not only will Romney prevail, but he will win by a landslide. If I were Rove, Barone, or Will, I would change my prediction just because prostitute toe-sucker, Dick Morris, agreed with me. But the general sense of over-confidence on the part of these pundits proves that they are more interested in trying to produce a result than in honestly forecasting one.

On the other side, the conservative U.S. News and World Report consulted their own pundit for a considered analysis and prediction for this historically significant election:

US News Kenyan Witch Doctor

So there you have it. USNews went all the way to Kenya to find someone they could quote with a prediction calling for Obama to win. Of course, there are hundreds of domestic political analysts they could have consulted for the same response, but apparently it was more important to blow that birther dog whistle and associate Obama with a foreign and pagan philosophy.

By the way, that’s also what Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan is doing in his recent statement about the path Obama is leading America down:

“It’s a dangerous path. It’s a path that grows government, restricts freedom and liberty, and compromises those values, those Judeo-Christian, western civilization values that made us such a great and exceptional nation in the first place.”

This sounds exactly like the late campaign desperation rhetoric of Sarah Palin when she started yammering about Obama “palling around with terrorists.” It’s the rhetoric of a campaign that knows it is going to lose.

The Top Eight Fox News Election Lies In Just The Last Eight Weeks

Mitt Romney - Original BanksterWith the election season fully in bloom, the aroma of deceit and desperation is growing more pungent by the hour. Mitt Romney, The Original Bankster, continues to be evasive about his international business affairs, and he refuses to release more than a single year of tax returns in order to quell speculation. His electoral prospects have not been noticeably enhanced with the addition of Wisconsin congressman, and extremist right-winger, Paul Ryan to the ticket. Consequently, the GOP PR machine (aka Fox News) has swung into action to attempt to cauterize the wounds and manufacture some positive spin on behalf of the struggling Republican standard bearers.

The most effective contribution of the Fox spinners is their expertise in disseminating brazenly dishonest propaganda without shame or fear of reprisal. They construct fabrications that benefit their patrons and broadcast them to an audience that is so undiscriminating that they’ll watch Sean Hannity more than once. And since the majority of rational news consumers will never see much of what Fox works so hard to invent, we have complied a list of some of the most dishonest moments so far in the 2012 election cycle. [Note: in order to pare this list down to a manageable length, it has been limited to just just the last eight weeks. There’s only so much bandwidth on the Internet]

1) President Obama Did Not Call Mitt Romney A Felon
Mitt Romney claims that he had ceased to be involved with Bain Capital in 1999, although his signature on SEC documents affirms that he was the sole shareholder and CEO as late as 2002. Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter, pointed out that Romney had to have lied on either the SEC forms or his public statements that contradict them. Fox News turned that into an accusation by Obama that Romney is a felon. However, there is a big difference between calling someone a felon and simply noting that if one were to commit a felony they would be a felon, which is all that Cutter had done. But Fox is not inclined to miss an opportunity to invent a controversy where none actually exists.

2) Fox News Built That
In a speech to supporters in Virginia, Obama praised the hard work of individuals and businesses while also noting the collective value of American investment in economic prosperity. So Fox News plucked an out-of-context soundbite from the speech that said “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” What Fox deliberately left out was that Obama was referring to public services like teachers and police, and to infrastructure like roads and bridges that contribute to the success of all businesses. It’s a position that Romney himself has taken. However, Fox News blew this distortion up into such a frenzy that the Romney campaign adopted it and now have made the Fox-built fallacy the theme for the GOP convention in Tampa. [Note: The GOP convention is being held in the Tampa Bay Forum, a facility that was built with mostly public funds]

The tactic of taking quotes out of context has been a favorite of the Fox News gang this year. They did precisely the same thing with remarks Obama made about the economy (the private sector is doing fine) and his record in office (we tried our plan and it worked). In both cases Fox left out critical language surrounding these remarks that revealed just how purposefully dishonest the Fox News team is.

3) The Swift-Boating Of President Obama
Fox News has proudly announced the commencement of a Swiftboat campaign against President Obama. The organization set up to carry out the assault is described as “A group of former U.S. intelligence and Special Forces operatives,” but in reality is a partisan assembly of Republicans and professional Obama haters. The Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund (SOOEF) plans to produce and distribute videos and advertisements that will criticize Obama for “taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden.” This is an archetypical implementation of Swiftboating whose purpose is to spread lies about a key achievement of Obama’s leadership as Commander-in-Chief.

The assertions by the SOOEF that Obama has improperly heralded himself for the demise of Bin Laden are demonstrably false. Their video features gross misrepresentations of Obama’s statements on the subject that loop portions of his speech referencing himself, but leaves out his abundant praise for the military and intelligence operatives who carried out the mission. The opening line of the President’s address to the nation announcing that Bin Laden was dead explicitly and unselfishly stated that “the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden.” He went on to thank “the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who’ve worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome,” and he praised “the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism, and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country.”

None of that was in the SOOEF video which Fox has featured in numerous broadcasts. What’s more, Fox actually uses the term “Swiftboating” to describe the anti-Obama campaign. Either they have completely given up on trying to pretend that they are a “fair and balanced” news enterprise (which no one believes anyway), or they don’t know that Swiftboating means lying.

4) Fox Nation Ignores Polls By CNN, Reuters, And — Fox News
Virtually every time a new poll on presidential politics is released Fox News will make a point to publish the results – so long as the poll shows Obama losing. In a particularly egregious example of this bias earlier this month, Fox prominently reported on a poll by the right-wing Rasmussen operation that placed Mitt Romney in the lead 47-43. What Fox neglected to report was that there were three other polls released at the same time that all put Obama ahead. And the most striking part of this omission was that one of the polls that Fox declined to cover was conducted by Fox News itself and put Obama ahead of Romney by nine points.

Fox couldn’t even bring themselves to report on their own poll conducted by their own pollsters. That’s the sort of biased cherry-picking that is the hallmark of Fox’s “news” charade. And it’s a crystal clear message to pollsters from Fox: If you want to be covered, you better say what we like. And that goes for Fox’s pollsters as well.

5) Welfare-To-Work Rules Were Not Weakened By the Obama Administration
The Romney campaign recently accused Obama of directing his administration to relax the welfare-to-work provisions of Bill Clinton’s welfare reform bill. That accusation is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts. Nevertheless, Fox News picked up the accusation and ran with it. In every segment on the subject they portrayed the issue precisely as Romney had framed it despite every fact-checking operation concluding that Romney’s charges were entirely false.

And speaking of fact-checking, Romney has been rated untruthful 67 times by PolitiFact, and 14 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies (including the welfare lie). In fact, 43% of PolitiFact’s findings on statements by Romney are rated as untruthful. He’s downright pathological, but Fox has not yet reported that fact.

6) Obama Did Not Sell Amnesty For $465.00
After Obama issued a directive to the Department of Homeland Security not to advance the deportation of young immigrants who had been brought to this country by their parents and who had demonstrated achievement in school or the military, there was a rush of dishonest reporting from Fox News that Obama was placating law breakers and opening our borders to criminals, drug traffickers, and terrorists. Of course, none of that was true. News reports from more objective sources correctly noted that the beneficiaries of the program had broken no laws and that the public overwhelmingly supported the President’s plan.

After the initial drama subsided, Fox News decided to take another stab at promoting their false narrative. They began running reports alleging that Obama was “selling amnesty” to illegal aliens. What Fox was grossly misrepresenting was that the program had an application fee to help offset its costs. One would think that deficit minded conservatives would have approved of that fiscal responsibility. But Fox chose to present it as the purchase price for amnesty even though no one in the program would receive amnesty.

7) Soldiers Were Not Prevented From Voting In Ohio
The issue of voter suppression has been a major factor in this years election contests. In states across the country Republicans have been working strenuously to reduce early voting availability and impose unreasonable identification requirements that serve to disenfranchise mostly voters who are minorities, seniors, students, and low income. But perhaps the worst example of distorting the issue occurred when Fox News accused the Obama administration of seeking to trample on the voting rights of people in the military.

The actual story is that the Republicans in the state of Ohio passed a bill that reduced early voting for everyone in the state except the military. The Obama Justice Department contested the move arguing that the same early voting privileges should be available to all Ohio voters. So the Obama administration was actually advocating for expanding voting rights for everyone, including veterans who would have been excluded under the GOP bill. The characterization by Fox News was 180% opposite of the truth.

8) Fox News Reports Obama Birth Certificate “Definitely Fraudulent”
In a stunning piece of journalistic malpractice, Fox News reported assertions that Obama’s birth certificate was “definitely fraudulent.” The remarks were from Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, and while they were correctly attributed, nowhere in the article did Fox note that the birth certificate had been authenticated and that every credible source agrees that it is valid. The only references to the birth certificate’s authenticity were framed as merely “claims.” And Fox being “fair and balanced” regards all claims as having equal weight, even those without any substance to back them up.

Pray for Fox NewsThis is a necessarily abridged collection of Fox falsehoods. There are far too many more to list here. But in the last eight weeks Fox News has disseminated some glaring whoppers in an attempt to prop up the flailing Romney campaign. Expect this to continue through the upcoming conventions and straight through to November. Because when you are supporting a candidate who refuses to reveal his taxes, his business history, or even his proposed policies, all you have left is what you can make up.

Mexican Anchor Baby Mitt Romney: No One’s Ever Asked To See My Birth Certificate

In keeping with his promise to change the tone of the campaign, Mitt Romney just dove head first into birtherism in a speech to supporters in Michigan:

“Now I love being home in this place where Ann and I were raised, where both of us were born. Ann was born in Henry Ford Hospital. I was born in Harper Hospital. No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.”

First of all, I need to point out that Romney is factually wrong. I have asked to see his birth certificate and he has yet to comply. There have also been numerous others who have called on Romney to produce the document. He did release a “certificate of live birth” last May that is obviously a fake. We know that it’s a fake because when President Obama released a similar document the birthers uniformly denounced as an outright fraud.

Mitt Romney's Fake Birth Certificate

By asserting that nobody has asked to see his birth certificate, Romney is illustrating the undisguised racism that has fueled the birther movement. Of course no one asked a wealthy white man to prove his citizenship. Why would they? That’s only a question for foreign looking people who differ from the majority.

In the past week Romney has been complaining that much of the campaign has been about trivial matters that are distractions from issues like the economy and jobs that Romney says he wants to focus on. He whined about having to respond to questions about his tax returns, abortion, and Medicare. So apparently he is taking the initiative to raise the tenor of the campaign by reminding people that President Obama has been accused of being a Kenyan agent sent to deliver America into the hands of godless Muslims and socialists. That is the sort of substantive subject that Romney thinks the nation should be talking about.

Perhaps Romney is just offering a preview of the Republican National Convention Etch-a-Sketch that begins next week and will feature speeches by notorious birthers Donald Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The theme of the GOP event is “We Built That,” a dishonest, out-of-context reference to remarks Obama made in praise of the American system that has helped so many people to prosper. It is unlikely, however, that Romney will acknowledge that the Tampa Bay Forum where the GOP convention will be held, was built by mostly government funding.

GOP Convention

Judging by Romney’s latest attempt at humor, next week should be a barrel of laughs.

Fox News Reports: Obama Birth Certificate ‘Definitely Fraudulent’

Here we go again, people. If you thought the birther conspiracy was over, or at least confined to the dementia-addled fanatics at WorldNetDaily, you will be sorry to hear that Fox News is continuing to flail this rotting corpse of a long-expired horse.

Fox News Birther Arpaio

The highly non-anticipated investigation by Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff, Joe Arpaio, into President Obama’s place of birth has yielded indisputable new evidence that the birth certificate Obama presented to the media is a forgery. Correction: …indisputable new evidence that Arpaio is a screaming, shit-faced lunatic.

The ground-breaking new information apparently consists of the testimony of a 95 year old former clerk at the Hawaiian registrar’s office who claims to have deciphered secret codes embedded into the certificate. Neither the clerk, nor her allegedly recorded conversation, nor any documentation of the code was revealed at Arpaio’s press conference. However, the Hawaii Attorney General’s Office issued a statement affirming that the certificate is valid. Of course the registrar’s office, the hospital, doctors at the hospital, local newspapers, and family friends, have all said the same thing. Nevertheless, holdouts like Arpaio and Donald Trump continue to have faith in their delusions.

Arpaio may have an ulterior motive in releasing this phantom evidence at this time. Later this week he will be in court defending himself against allegations that his department engaged in rampant racial profiling of Latinos. This is just the latest stain on Arpaio’s record. He is also being investigated by federal authorities for having neglected hundreds of sexual abuse cases while he has been otherwise occupied with his birther obsession.

The fact that this story appears prominently on the Fox News web site, however, is evidence of something significant. It proves how devoted Fox News is to slandering the President and to helping Mitt Romney to change the subject from his business and personal corruption. Even Fox Nation hasn’t posted an article on this (yet). No doubt this non-event will likely pass into the ether in a matter of hours. Arpaio has neither evidence nor credibility. But Fox’s participation in promoting such obvious silliness should not be so quickly dismissed.

Mitt Romney – Mexican Anchor Baby – Releases Fake Birth Certificate

For the past week Donald Trump has been bringing new verve to the birther babble as only he can. His revival of this nonsense corresponded to an upswing in his duties as a surrogate for Mitt Romney. For his part, Romney has pretended to distance himself from Trump’s birtherism even as he embraced Trump personally and leaned on his ability to pander to the mental deficients who still think that President Obama is a Manchurian alien sent from Kenya to hand America over to godless Muslim socialists.

Today, even though Romney has been fiercely denying that birtherism will play any role in his campaign, Romney released a copy of his own birth certificate:

Romney Birth Certificate

The question is, why would Romney do this at this time? Has anyone asked him for his birth certificate (well, besides me)? If he isn’t interested in the issue, why would he raise it again by doing this? And clearly he has had time to consider the matter. Note that the certificate has a “date issued” on it of January 18, 2012. So Romney has been sitting on this for five months waiting for the right time – which must have come today as Trump was still beating the drums of this conspiracy.

However, it needs to be noted that the document that Romney provided is not an authentic birth certificate. It is a “certificate of live birth.” When Obama released a similar document it was dismissed by birthers as insufficient and evidence that he was trying to hide something. So what is Romney trying to hide? Could it have something to do with his father’s citizenship. This document states that Mitt’s father was born in Mexico making Mitt an anchor baby at best. Therefore, Mitt cannot be eligible to be president because, according to birthers, he is not a natural born citizen of two citizen parents.

Amidst this foolishness there is a far more serious matter that also concerns the release of documents. That’s because Romney still refuses to release more than a single year of his tax returns. Obama has already released twelve years of his tax returns. Romney’s father, George, also released twelve years of returns when he ran for president in 1968. Romney has plenty to hide because many of those years will contain information about his investments and potential conflicts of interest.

It would be nice if the media would devote some of the time they waste on Trump to asking why Romney fears being more forthcoming with regard to his finances – an issue that he has placed at the top of his justifications for being president.

Non-News Of The Week: Donald Trump Makes Ass Of Himself

Perhaps the most insignificant news on this or any day is that Donald Trump made an ass of himself. It would be like reporting that the sun came up. But Trump’s appearance today on CNN is notable mainly for its comedy value. In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, Trump revealed himself to be an arrogant, ignorant, egotistical, moron with delusions of grandeur. Again, that’s not exactly news – except for the part that it was Wolf Blitzer, CNN’s resident potted plant and icon of blandness who exposed Trump. It doesn’t really take much.

The interview began with Blitzer welcoming Trump to the program. That led to Trump launching into a defensive rant without even saying hello.

Trump: I thought your reporter was very inaccurate in his description. And I thought the introduction was totally inappropriate and was actually very dishonest.

Blitzer then gave Trump an opportunity to explain specifically what troubled him about the report that preceded the interview. Trump declined and just repeated that he thought the reporter was “wrong” and was shilling for President Obama. Blitzer gave Trump another chance to explain himself, and Trump weaved and dodged and finally failed to describe a single thing that was wrong with the report.

From there the conversation devolved into name calling. Blitzer observed that Trump’s defensiveness and evasion was making him sound ridiculous. So Trump responded with a very literal “I know you are but what am I?” Trump repeatedly commented on Blitzer’s ratings, as if that had anything to do with the substance of his reporting. He rattled off some false assertions that Obama had told a former publisher that he was born in Kenya. And several times he dismissed the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate saying that “a lot of people don’t agree with that birth certificate.” That’s true – a lot of really stupid people. But when Blitzer asked him to provide a single name, Trump harrumphed that “I don’t give names.”

I have been waiting for someone to ask Trump what became of the investigators that he had sent to Hawaii and Blitzer finally did so. Blitzer played video of Trump saying that “I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they’re finding.” So Blitzer asked Trump to reveal what they had found. Trump’s response: “We don’t have to go into old news.” Except that Trump has NEVER revealed what his alleged investigators found, and didn’t do so today either. The truth is most likely that he never had any investigators. This was another stunt from a reality show clown.

Fox NationContributing to the hilarity is Fox Nation who posted an item about Trump’s visit with Blitzer with this headline: “Trump Knocks Wolf Blitzer Into Next Week.” For the Fox Nationalists it literally doesn’t matter what happens in the real world. They will just slap their headline to the top of it and pretend that everything went their way. It doesn’t matter that Trump couldn’t answer a single question and acted like a jerk while desperately trying to avoid any substantive responses. Fox knows that their audience will devour whole whatever Fox tells them. By making up phony headlines they can comfort their glassy-eyed audience who simply can’t handle the truth.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Reviving Trump Birther Charges To Attack Romney

Talk about desperate…

Fox Nation - Trump

The Fox Nationalists have posted this article asserting that a desperate Obama campaign is “Reviving Trump’s Birther Charges.” And it is a devious strategy that Obama is plotting by somehow managing to get Donald Trump to reiterate his lunatic position on Obama’s citizenship. Last week, without any noticeable provocation from the Obama camp, Trump volunteered that “It’s very simple. He said [Obama] was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia.” Imagine the sophistication of the Obama Machine that can revive the Trump Birther charges straight from the mouth of Trump without anyone, including Trump, catching on.

And now that the charges have been revived, Obama can use Trump’s delusional extremism to attack Mitt Romney. This is also evidence of just how complex the Obama strategy is. After successfully manipulating Trump into making idiotic statements, Obama’s team has somehow maneuvered Romney into embracing Trump and forcefully declining to repudiate Trump as his chief surrogate. Romney responded to criticism of his association with Trump by saying…

“You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me and my guess is they don’t all agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1% or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.” [Note that Fox Nation excised the part in bold from their article]

How on earth did Obama get Romney to say publicly that he is willing to abandon his principles in order to get a majority and win the election? Then again, perhaps that wasn’t the hardest part of the plan since Romney’s principles are fairly malleable to begin with. It’s true that Romney may not agree with all of his supporters. On most issues he has taken positions in stark disagreement with himself.

Trump, it should be noted, has not been cowed by this controversy. He tweeted today that…

“@BarackObama is practically begging @MittRomney to disavow the place of birth movement, he is afraid of it and for good reason. He keeps using @SenJohnMcCain as an example, however, @SenJohnMcCain lost the election. Don’t let it happen again.”

Jeremiah WrightIf directing criticism at Romney for his connection to the birther movement is evidence that Obama is afraid of it, then Romney’s criticism of Obama’s campaign for raising Bain Capital as an issue is evidence that Romney is scared Mittless of that. The difference is that Bain Capital is real and birtherism is a manifestation of acute mental decay. And that makes it all the more remarkable that Trump believes the reason McCain lost in 2008 was that he didn’t latch onto birtherism. While everyone else knows that the real reason Mccain lost was because he wouldn’t hit harder on Rev. Wright.

Only Fox Nation could look at this situation and come to the conclusion that it was Obama’s campaign that revived Trump’s inane attack. But that’s the purpose of Fox Nation – twisting reality into unrecognizable pretzel bits in order to to keep their audience as ignorant as possible. How else could their candidates win?

Donald Trump Is A Bloviating Ignoramus Says George Will

Just in time for the Memorial Day premiere of the History Channel’s Hatfields & McCoys, right-wing Nutlandia is erupting into their own epic feud.

Donald Trump

Today on ABC’s This Week, the conversation turned to the upcoming meeting of the remedial minds in New York between Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. When the panel came around to their most staunchly conservative member, George Will, there was a moment of honesty in political punditry that is rarely seen. Here is what Will had to say about Romney and his top surrogate Trump:

“I do not understand the cost benefit here. The costs are clear. The benefit — what voter is gonna vote for him because he is seen with Donald Trump? The cost of appearing with this bloviating ignoramus is obvious it seems to me.

“Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics. Again, I don’t understand the benefit. What is Romney seeking?”

Actually, it’s obvious what Romney is seeking. He’s seeking to pander to the mental deficients who still think that President Obama is a Manchurian alien sent from Kenya to hand America over to godless Muslim socialists. He’s seeking to bask in the reflected glow of a television reality show celebrity to raise his abysmal favorability ratings. He’s seeking to bond with another member of the out-of-touch elitists who like to fire people. And he’s seeking campaign contributions from high income, low IQ donors.

Will’s slap at Trump is not the first shot fired in this feud. Last year Trump hit Will as “third rate,” and a couple of months ago Trump called the Pulitzer prize winning Will a hack and worse…

“I think he’s a totally overrated fool. I think this guy is so overrated. I don’t think he’s very smart. He looks smart with the little glasses and the hair slicked to the side.”

Trump made those statements to the overrated fools at Fox and Friends. It was typical of the Trump style of verbal assault that relies mainly on juvenile insults. Trump has previously directed his childish taunts at fellow Fox contributors Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove, who he also called hacks.

Some of Trump’s ire may have been in response to the near universal dismissal of Trump’s aborted attempt to produce and moderate a Republican presidential primary debate. The debate, which Trump promised would get record ratings, never took place because the only candidates that agreed to participate were Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum. Romney, the man Trump has now endorsed, was one of those who declined to play in Trump’s sandbox. Will addressed the matter calling Trump an “entrepreneurial charlatan” and saying that…

“Now we have a December 27th debate proposed that would be moderated by Donald Trump. Surely it is time for these candidates to do something presidential. Stand up and say, we’re not going to be hijacked and participate in this.”

Last April, when Trump was still pretending to be considering running for president, Will fired off some brutal rounds at him and his alleged candidacy:

He can make a shambles of the Republican debates. Just by being there, he can hurt the Republican party. He is what’s called a ‘blatherskite’… that’s someone who blathers promiscuously.

And a month later, when asked what Trump’s political future would be. Will Responded that Trump “has no future in politics. He’s a buffoon, he’s a political sociopath.”

Trump’s response to the latest broadside from Will has yet to be published, but you can expect that it is forthcoming. Trump is as predictable as Old Faithful, particularly where his ego is involved. And when he is punched he punches back, though usually with far less force or intellect.

Where’s The Birth Certificate? Mitt Romney’s, That Is.

Next month Mitt Romney will host a fundraiser with his “most significant surrogate,” Donald Trump. The event will be held in Manhattan at one of Trump’s luxurious hotels, an environment in which Romney will feel right at home. And one lucky donor to Romney’s campaign will be selected by lottery to join the pair of upper-crusters for dinner.

Trumpney

The close association between Romney and Trump ought to be raising questions about Trump’s relentless promotion of Birtherism. Trump has been a persistent skeptic of President Obama’s citizenship for months. His most recent foray into this delusional nonsense occurred today in an interview with the Daily Beast where he said that…

“A book publisher came out three days ago and said that in his written synopsis of his book … he said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia.”

Not one to bother with pesky trivialities like truth, Trump invented the assertion that Obama told his publisher that he was born in Kenya. In a twenty year old promotional pamphlet that Obama never saw, an erroneous entry made reference to Obama as having been born in Kenya. The person responsible for the error issued a statement saying that…

“This was nothing more than a fact checking error by me — an agency assistant at the time. There was never any information given to us by Obama in any of his correspondence or other communications suggesting in any way that he was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.”

The fact that Romney continues to cling to Trump without making any statement about Trump’s idiotic embrace of the Birther conspiracy says a great deal about Romney’s character (or lack thereof) and his desperation for latching onto whatever support he can scrape off the barrel’s slimy bottom. Trump is cartoon quack who hosts a goofy reality show where he gets to fire people – which happens to be something that Romney likes to do as well.

Last year Trump said that he had sent a team of investigators to Hawaii to get to the bottom of the controversy and that their report would be shocking. No report was ever issued. Where’s the report, Donald? What’s more, why hasn’t Trump, or anyone else, ever asked Romney to produce his birth certificate? We know that Romney’s family fled the United States for Mexico when laws against polygamy prevented them from collecting numerous wives. But apparently only black candidates for president are required to show documentation of their citizenship.

Romney Backers Say: Do The Wright Thing

The pro-Romney SuperPAC that had proposed a $10 million campaign reprising the battle over President Obama’s association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright is now distancing itself from the plan. Mitt Romney personally made a statement on the proposal saying “I want to make it very clear: I repudiate that effort. I think it’s the wrong course for a PAC or a campaign.” But that hasn’t stopped the extremist regulars of the GOP from continuing to advocate for hammering on Obama with the four year old Wright story.

Do The Wright Thing

Fox Anchor Chris Wallace: As far as Rev. Wright is concerned, I think it had a lot of relevance, and I think McCain was crazy not to bring it up.

Radio Talker Mark Levin: Why would you take any issue off the table, particularly issues that give us a look into this man’s character?

Fox Anchor Sean Hannity: I believe that the president’s relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a man that influenced him for over 20 years, inspired him, is a very important campaign issue.

Fox Host Kimberly Guilfoyle: I don’t think [rejecting the Wright issue] is the right thing to do. I think he should try to get after it.

Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft: [Rejecting the Wright issue] is certainly disappointing.

Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff: I think there may be value in talking about the Obama-Wright connection.

National Review’s Michael Walsh: Even by Stupid Party standards, [tabling Wright] was an impressive display of preemptive surrender.

Fox Contributor Charles Krauthammer: [I]n principle, if you want to [bring up Wright], it would be completely legitimate.

Herman Cain: I think it is fair if someone wants to highlight the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his relationship with Barack Obama because, quite frankly, it wasn’t highlighted enough in 2008 when he was running for president the first time.

I’m not sure where Cain was in 2008, but he obviously wasn’t paying any attention to the presidential race. According to the PEW Research Center, the controversy generated by Wright “made more news than both Hillary Clinton and John McCain” in the spring of 2008 at the height of the presidential primaries. By summer PEW’s analysis showed that…

“The story-line or event that has received the most coverage so far is Obama’s relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which accounted for 6% of all stories and dwarfed all of the other episodes or storyline of the campaign that didn’t have to do with the horse race itself.”

From Fox News anchors to former GOP presidential candidates, the far-right is drooling at the prospect of reigniting the Wright controversy. Many are infuriated that Romney will not “stand up” and take a more aggressive stance. They are reminded of what they regard as the impotent strategy of John McCain in 2008. And many have a point when they note that Romney was brutally negative in his campaign for the GOP nomination against his fellow Republicans, but now presents himself as a more sensitive candidate who eschews negative attacks when it comes to Obama.

Romney is currently enjoying the benefit of this debate and the renewed focus on Wright, while getting to wash his hands of any of it by virtue of his statement of repudiation. But in the end in will scare off the moderate voters that he needs to win, so I can’t help but get excited about seeing the ads these yokels will produce.