Mitt Romney

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

Posted by on May 25, 2012 at 10:42 am. 7 Comments :

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.

Mitt Romney Still Trying To Kill Big Bird And PBS

Posted by on May 24, 2012 at 1:15 pm. NO Comments :

Big BirdIn Mitt Romney’s recent interview with Time’s Mark Halperin, he reprised his attack on one of his favorite targets: PBS. Romney listed public television as one of the first cuts that would come during a Romney administration. In his remarks he even managed to insinuate a commie angle to continued support for the network of Sesame Street.

“I like PBS. I’d like my grandkids to be able to watch PBS. But I’m not willing to borrow money from China, and make my kids have to pay the interest on that, and my grandkids, over generations, as opposed to saying to PBS, look, you’re going to have to raise more money from charitable contributions or from advertising.”

What Romney didn’t say is how that cut would impact the federal deficit. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is the agency that receives congressional funding for a variety of projects of which PBS is just a part. The entire allocation to the CPB represents about 0.00014 percent of the federal budget. That’s not going to make much a dent in the deficit. But it will have a severe impact on public broadcasting.

This is not the first time that Romney has taken swipes at PBS. Last year he said that he would stop all subsidies to PBS. Here is how I responded at the time:

When Romney says that he wants to “stop certain programs…even some you like,” he is referring to programs that are of significant value to average Americans, but that he can live without because his quarter of a billion dollar net worth enables him to acquire whatever he wants. Romney demonstrates how pitifully out of touch he is by proposing to eliminate funding for PBS, a network that provides educational programming that is not available anywhere else, certainly not in commercial television. He is explicit in what he plans to do:

“We subsidize PBS. Look, I’m gonna stop that. I’m gonna say that PBS is gonna have to have advertisements. We’re not gonna kill Big Bird, but Big Bird’s gonna have advertisements.”

Despite his denials, killing off Big Bird is precisely what his plan would accomplish. There is a reason that commercial TV does not produce the sort of programming seen on PBS. For-profit networks have to cater to advertisers in order to stay in business. By necessity they are more concerned with generating profit than with quality programming. Take a look at tonight’s primetime schedules of the cable nets that were supposed to compete with public television:

  • Bravo: 8:00pm Top Chef: Texas; 9:00pm Top Chef: Texas; 10:00pm Top Chef: Texas
  • Discovery: 8:00pm Sons of Guns; 9:00pm Sons of Guns; 10:00pm Moonshiners
  • Learning Channel: 8:00pm Toddlers & Tiaras; 9:00pm Cheapskates; 10:00pm Toddlers & Tiaras

That’s not exactly entertainment designed to enrich America’s children. It’s a jumble of insipid reality programs that repeat ad nauseum. It’s Real Housewives, Swamp Loggers, Hoarders, and info-mercials. If Big Bird were required to rely on advertisers for funding it would not be long before Sesame Street was just another avenue on the Jersey Shore.

That’s the free market model for public broadcasting that Romney and the right advocate. It’s a model that would replace Bert and Ernie with Kim and Chloe. Is that really the example we want to set for our kids?

And is that really the kind of leadership we want for America?

Most Hysterical Headline Of The Year: Palin Pulverizes Obama

Posted by on May 22, 2012 at 4:42 am. 18 Comments :

I know it’s only May, but this is going to be tough to beat:

Fox Nation

How anyone could take seriously the notion that Sarah Palin would provide any intellectual competition for President Obama is utterly unfathomable. This is the woman who thinks that a “gotcha” question is “What newspapers do you read?” This is the woman who thought that Africa was a country. This is the woman who thinks the vice-president is in charge of the Senate. And now Fox thinks that her nearly incoherent rambling on Sean Hannity’s program represents some sort of victory – and not just a victory, but a pulverization.

Fox Nation is fond of overextending itself with puerile hyperbole, but this is so far removed from reality that the guys with butterfly nets must not be far behind. The subject of the discussion was Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s remarks criticizing Obama for attacking Mitt Romney on his business resume, and specifically on Bain Capital. Booker was wrong on the substance of his criticism and went completely out of bounds when he conflated the right-wing’s obsession over Jeremiah Wright with the legitimate criticisms of Romney’s tenure at Bain. Booker later clarified what he meant and reiterated his support for Obama. Ignoring that, Palin referenced Booker as well as Democrats Harold Ford and Steve Rattner in an attempt to suggest that they were anti-Obama. She said…

“His surrogates there come from, in many respects the private sector, and each one of those individuals does have a lot of private sector experience, unlike their leader Barack Obama.”

Well, it was nice of her to praise these surrogates so highly. Indeed, they do have a lot of private sector experience. And what’s more, they all endorse Obama for reelection. So if we are to accept Palin’s commentary that these are intelligent, experienced people with insight into business and economics, then we should, therefore, be sure to vote for Obama in November.

Thanks for your support, Sarah. And thanks for a pulverizing so thorough that it whipped back around and transformed into an endorsement. Seriously, after seeing this I have to wonder if Palin would even know what pulverize means. Clearly the editors at Fox Nation don’t.

Romney Backers Say: Do The Wright Thing

Posted by on May 18, 2012 at 3:25 pm. 1 Comments :

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.

Pro-Romney SuperPAC Calls Obama A Metrosexual Black Abe Lincoln

Posted by on May 17, 2012 at 12:06 pm. 8 Comments :

I can hardly wait for this ad to hit the air. Joe Ricketts, A pro-Romney billionaire, is considering a new political attack on President Obama centered on his past association with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The campaign would be funded by $10 million of Ricketts fortune and produced by his SuperPAC, Ending Spending Action Fund.

In a document obtained by the New York Times, the group of “high-profile Republican strategists” is planning on revealing Wright’s “influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way.” Finally! The secret story of Rev. Wright that was suppressed by the liberal media four years ago will be exposed to a nation that has never heard of him and his power over our puppet-like president. Never mind the fact that 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.”

Metrosexual Abe LincolnNow Romney’s wealthy backers have determined that America was deprived of this highly pertinent information and they are promising to reach back to the past and dredge it all up again. The twist that they are proposing is to racialize this attack even more than previous attempts. The proposal refers to Obama as a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln” (whatever that is), and in order to to respond to any charges of racism, they plan to hire as a spokesman an “extremely literate conservative African-American.” I wonder if that’s anything like the IWSB (intelligent, well-socialized black) that noted racist John Derbyshire aspired to befriend.

The Romney campaign has issued a rather tepid response that merely stated their intention to focus on economic issues. That is in sharp contrast to the McCain campaign that decisively rejected these sort of character attacks, although some on his campaign (i.e. Sarah Palin) advocated for them. One of the strategists for the pro-Romney PAC, Fred Davis, is a former McCain adviser who pushed for more emphasis on Wright, but was shot down by McCain. Davis is also the genius behind the inadvertently hilarious “Demon Sheep” ad that so embarrassed Carly Fiorina in 2010.

The purpose of this project is clear. The extremists behind it have determined that they can’t beat Obama as long as he is regarded so favorably by a majority of the public. They note in their proposal that Americans “still aren’t ready to hate this president,” so they have taken it upon themselves to manufacture reasons to do so. It is a cynical and divisive strategy that concedes that Romney is so unlikeable that there is no positive argument to make for voting for him.

It didn’t work in 2008, and there is no rational reason to expect that it would work now. It would only serve to further embarrass those associated with such a repugnant effort to smear a president who is popular and well-liked. And that’s why I can’t wait see them follow through. Although there is already speculation that they are chickening out due to the publicity they are receiving. Too bad. But I have great confidence they’ll come up with something just as embarrassing before long. It’s what they do best.

[Update] Romney is now “repudiating” the Ricketts plan. However, his surrogates on the right are going all out in pushing the Rev. Wright theme. Sean Hannity is featuring the disreputable author Ed Klein on his program to discuss Wright. Glenn Beck has offered Wright $150,000 to tell him “the truth” about Obama. So Romney has merely stepped aside to let his comrades mount the attack.

Obama Surging Ahead Of Romney In Fox News Poll That Fox News Ignores

Posted by on May 17, 2012 at 3:35 am. 12 Comments :

For additional evidence that Fox News is the PR agency for the Republican Party, note the feverishly excited treatment that Fox News gives to polling when the results favor Mitt Romney:

Fox Nation Polls

In the past two months Fox Nation has posted at least seven articles on election polling and every single one of them reported the results of polls that put Romney in the lead over President Obama. There were, of course, polls that had Obama leading, but the “fair and balanced” Fox Nationalists didn’t bother to report on those. Here are a few of the headlines from just April and May of this year:

  • Rasmussen Poll: Romney 50%, Obama 42%
  • Poll: Romney Beating Obama Among Women Voters
  • Poll: Romney Up Double Digits With Swing State Independents
  • NBC-WSJ poll: On economy, Romney Opens Up Lead Over Obama
  • Rasmussen Poll: Romney 48%, Obama 44%
  • Fox News Poll: Romney Edges Obama as Approval of President Drops
  • Two National Polls Show Favor For Romney

What makes this particularly interesting is that Fox News just released its own poll that showed the President pulling away from Romney. Obama leads in the Fox poll by 46% to 39%. But there was no mention of it on Fox Nation, and barely a mention of it on Fox News. So even when the poll was commissioned and paid for by Fox they bury the results if it looks good for Obama.

And it looks pretty darn good for Obama. Other results include a widening gender gap with women supporting Obama 55% to Romney’s 33%. Obama voters are far more satisfied with their candidate (74%) than are the Romney voters (59%) with theirs. That disparity could be because Obama’s supporters are backing him due to his job performance and positions (38%). Only 11% say they support him because “he isn’t Romney.” On the other hand, 43% of Romney’s supporters say they back him because “he isn’t Obama.” That sort of negative incentive from the Republicans often translates into low voter turnout.

There can be only one reason that Fox would so blatantly suppress these poll results. They obviously don’t want the public to be informed of the broad-based positive impression of the President that exists in the country. They have no problem publishing negative information about Obama. In just the past two days Fox published two stories that portrayed the Obama camp as worried about their allegedly dismal prospects. One article said that “Alarm Grows Among Dems About Obama’s Chances.” The other declared that “Team Obama Panics, and It’s Only May.” Both of those articles were analyses of recent election polls. But now that Fox’s own poll paints an entirely different picture, there is no corresponding article about how the Obama team is celebrating or how the Romney camp is panicking.

This is the way a public relations firm behaves on behalf of their client. And that is the best description of the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party. It is 24/7 spin for GOP interests. And they aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. When Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends introduced a segment on the Fox poll, he comforted the Fox viewers, before giving them the news that Obama was out in front, by inserting this little ray of hope, “If the election were held today – don’t worry they aren’t going to be…” Wasn’t it thoughtful of Doocy to be so concerned about the worries of the Fox audience?

Bill O’Reilly Accuses Obama Of Political Terrorism

Posted by on May 15, 2012 at 2:09 am. 16 Comments :

Now that Glenn Beck has left Fox News and slithered off to the obscurity he so richly deserves, Bill O’Reilly is stepping up to fill the role of frothing lunatic that the network has missed since Beck’s departure.

Monday night’s program featured an interview with Frank VanderSloot, a wealthy businessman who is the finance chair of Mitt Romney’s campaign for president. VanderSloot has been the subject of a Murdoch Media blitz to defend him from what they have called a smear campaign. In fact, VanderSloot was merely identified factually as a major Romney supporter and his history of ultra-conservativism and anti-gay activism was truthfully reported. He has received the sort of attention that any prominent political operative might expect to receive.

However, in conservative circles that is regarded as something akin to McCarthyism. That’s the characterization that has been disseminated in Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, Fox News, Fox Business Network, and Fox Nation. And now O’Reilly is chiming in with the most absurd and irresponsible rhetoric to date. Here is the exchange between O’Reilly and VanderSloot:

O’Reilly: Some believe this is economic terrorism…not economic, political terrorism. That targeting a business man like you, running an honest business, because of your freedom to donate to who you want to donate to, but try to ruin you personally and professionally, that’s terrorism. Political terrorism. Do you see it that way?

VanderSloot: Well, I have these two questions, Bill, to President Obama. Why did you publish a list? […] Then the second question is, who is supposed to receive the message? Is it only the liberal press that’s supposed to go after these folks, or is it also the agencies that he runs, that he’s in charge of, and that report to him and want to please him? […]

O’Reilly: They want to intimidate you from giving any money to the campaign, and others like you who might be thinking of it. Business people go “I’m not gonna do that. They might put my name on the web and I’ll lose customers. So I’m not gonna do it.” But that’s terrorism.

VanderSloot: I suppose it is.

Just to be clear, what O’Reilly and VanderSloot are describing as terrorism is actually just disclosure. They believe that transparency in political donations by powerful corporations and wealthy individuals is an unwarranted burden. They would much prefer to be able to buy elections and influence politicians in complete secrecy. And even though donors to candidates of both parties are subject to the same disclosure rules, only Republicans consider such requirements the equivalent of terrorism.

Aside from the obvious absurdity of attacking open and honest political disclosures as terrorism, this sort of discussion also trivializes the very real horrors experienced by actual victims of violence perpetrated in the name of intimidation and fear. O’Reilly and VanderSloot should be ashamed of themselves, but instead used the occasion of this madness to solicit donations for Romney. They closed the segment by celebrating VanderSloot’s new donation of $100,000 to Romney’s SuperPAC.

Seriously, when is the Federal Elections Commission going to start monitoring Fox News for its in-kind contributions to Republicans? The network is a non-stop ad for the GOP.

Mitt Romney’s Impotent Response To Obama’s Campaign Ad

Posted by on May 14, 2012 at 2:19 pm. 4 Comments :

As I reported earlier today, the Obama campaign released an ad that criticized Mitt Romney’s failed record of job creation while at Bain Capital. Now Romeny’s camp has weighed in with their own ad that seeks to rehabilitate Romney’s reputation.

My earlier article noted the rapid response attack on Obama’s ad by Romney’s comrades at Fox News. I also noted that their attack was a pathetic effort that failed to make their case against the President. If they are interested in learning how a credible rebuttal is constructed, they should pay attention to the way ThinkProgress has responded to Romney’s ad. Firstly, ThinkProgress noted that the Romney ad…

“…implies that the plant would not have been built without Romney’s assistance. Steele Dynamics ‘almost never got started,’ the narrator says. ‘When others shied away, Mitt Romney’s private-sector leadership team stepped in.’

“But the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette reported at the time (via Nexis), that Bain was just one of eight financiers for the project — hardly the lone white knight.”

They went on to reveal that in addition to the numerous investors in the business, it also was not the free-market miracle that Romney implied. In fact, it received millions of dollars from local and state funding, including revenue generated specifically by raising taxes to support the new company. In other words, just about every point that Romney made was rendered moot by a recitation of the facts.

I would add to this analysis that, while the citizens featured in Obama’s ad were all identified, those in the Romney ad were all anonymous. For all we know they were actors, because there is no way to certify their identities or their glowing accounts. Which is further evidence that Obama’s ad team produces documented facts while Romney’s people pump out propaganda.

Fox Nation’s Impotent Attacks On Obama’s Campaign Ad

Posted by on May 14, 2012 at 12:13 pm. 3 Comments :

The Obama campaign released a new ad today that points out Mitt Romney’s failed record on job creation as the CEO of Bain Capital. It tells the story of former employees of a company that Bain drove into bankruptcy, destroying the jobs and dreams of the people who worked there for decades.

It didn’t take long for Fox to ramp up a rebuttal to the ad. In fact, they rushed two responses to their Fox Nation web site in the hopes of quickly diminishing the impact of the ad. Unfortunately, they neglected to insure that their rebuttals made any sense.

Fox Nation

In one of the articles the Fox Nationalists assert that the “Obama Camp Attacks Capitalism.” However, nowhere in their article do they support that assertion. It is just a dangling notion that appears to rest on the fact that the Obama ad criticizes Romney for presiding over the loss of thousands of jobs while he ran Bain Capital – which is unarguably true. In fact, Romney’s own response to the ad doesn’t argue with its truthfulness. It said simply that “We welcome the Obama campaign’s attempt to pivot back to jobs and a discussion of their failed record.” It never disputed the facts presented in the ad. However, it did make a laughable attempt to tie Obama to “wealthy campaign donors,” apparently forgetting that it is Romney who is most dependent of such support.

The other article makes an even more blatantly false claim that Obama’s ad had been debunked. The substance of the debunking consisted of presenting a timeline that supposedely absolves Romney of any responsibility: “Romney’s departure from Bain: 1999. GST Bankruptcy Filing and layoffs: 2001.”

That’s true, but it neglects to note that it was Romney’s actions while at Bain that resulted in the bankruptcy. As noted in the ad: (and at Obama’s RomneyEconomics web page) 1993: Romeny and his partners invest $8 million to acquire GST. 1995: Merger creates $378 million in debt. 2001: GST files for bankruptcy with $500 million in debt. With Romney at the helm, Bain had sucked the blood (and money) out of GST leaving it unable to meet its obligations. The profits Bain secured were all prior to his departure in 2001. The fact that the shell of the company didn’t collapse for a couple of years after Romney left is irrelevant.

So neither rebuttal to the ad hits home if all the facts are presented. And it’s notable that even Romney’s response did not dispute the facts in the ad. But none of that prevented Fox from posting not just one, but two lame rebuttals that will be devoured by their dimwitted audience.

The Wall Street Journal: Standing Up For Poor, Defenseless Billionaires

Posted by on May 12, 2012 at 11:18 am. 47 Comments :

When Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal there was anxious speculation about what would become of the respected financial clarion. Many critics (myself included) predicted that the paper would devolve into a partisan tool for the advancement of Murdoch’s uber-conservative agenda. Now we have confirmation of the worst of our reckoning.

A few weeks ago, the Journal’s Kimberley Strassel wrote a column complaining about an Obama campaign web page that identified a few of Mitt Romney’s wealthy donors and described their inherent interests in helping Romney to buy the presidency. Strassel’s take at the time was a departure from rational thought as she dredged up delusions about McCarthyism and enemies lists. She portrayed the introduction of Romney’s contributors as an attempt to intimidate them, as if being branded a Romney supporter was in itself an insult from which they must be shielded.

The truth is that Strassel was acting as a defender of the super-rich who prefer to operate in anonymity in order to achieve their self-serving ends. And while criticizing wealthy Republicans was tantamount to treason, she had no such sympathy for the likes of George Soros or George Clooney who somehow deserved the exposure and criticism they endured. Strassel is nothing but a mouthpiece for her boss, Murdoch, who is rushing to aid his aristocratic comrades. That explains how Strassel’s looney observations traveled so briskly from the Journal to Fox News and other right-wing media.

But apparently her article didn’t do the trick. So yesterday she followed up with another piece that sought to shelter one particular Romney supporter from the slings and arrows of outrageousness due to his vast fortune. Frank VanderSloot is the CEO of Melaleuca, an Amway-ish multi-level marketing enterprise. He has been described as an ultra-conservative and virulently anti-gay activist who generously spreads his wealth in pursuit of his politically narrow and socially constricting goals. [For a revealing look at VanderSloot see Glenn Greenwald’s excellent and in-depth essay in Salon].

The focus of Strassel’s new column is her dismay that VanderSloot is the subject of research by presumably Democratic operatives. Once again, the notion that wealthy power-players should be exempt from scrutiny is the core of her complaint. She even begins her article by saying…

“Here’s what happens when the president of the United States publicly targets a private citizen for the crime of supporting his opponent.”

First of all, VanderSloot is not what any objective person would describe as just a “private citizen.” He is a prominent, big-money backer of political issues and candidates and he is the national finance co-chair of the Romney campaign. That makes him a very public person whose activities are relevant. Strassel’s position is that he is off-limits for public discourse despite making himself a notoriously vociferous spokesperson for his conservative views. This is a common stance from the right wherein they assert that they can say anything they want about anyone, including slanderous attacks on the President, but if the targets of these attacks dare to respond they are guilty of intimidation and suppression of free speech.

Just as with her previous column, this one also made the journey from print to television. Fox News committed significant airtime to the story. Megyn Kelly interviewed Strassel in one segment of her program, then came back with another segment pitting a couple of political analysts against each other. Later, Neil Cavuto did a report on the subject for one segment, and returned to “interview” a couple of right-wing, Fox legal contributors. That’s a lot of airtime to devote to protecting a billionaire from having to be accountable for his political actions.

Poor Frank VanderSloot. What a burden it must be for him to have people discover what he’s up to with his campaign spending. And what a blow to his dignity that he should have to answer questions from the peasants he is seeking to control through disbursement of his wealth. It’s a good thing he has Rupert Murdoch, and the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News to cover for him because he surely doesn’t have any means of defending himself. He can now join the Koch brothers who were aided by the Murdoch Machine earlier this year when the Journal gave space to their attorney, Ted Olsen, to make largely the same arguments that Strassel is making about McCarthyism, just because they experienced some push-back for their right-wing advocacy.

It’s startling how thin-skinned these billionaires are. With all of their financial resources, media access, and Washington connections, they still cry like babies when confronted. And it’s pathetic what the Wall Street Journal has become as it seems to be destroying it’s reputation for the sake of a few wealthy patrons.