Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

June 26, 2012 By Fausta

Creepy

The latest raffle-for-Obama stunt is this Dinner with Barack and Michelle video,

The whole contrived mess sounds like a composite as it explains that they “spent the whole day together” on their first date and capped it by seeing Do the Right Thing, the Spike Lee movie about a racial riot, because it’s all about being “hip, cutting edge, cultural, sensitive”. All to get you to enter the raffle (yet another one!) for dinner with the First Couple,

The winners will each receive round-trip tickets for them and a guest from within the fifty U.S. States, DC, or Puerto Rico to a destination to be determined by the sponsor.

Whoever the sponsor is?

They will stay in a hotel and have dinner with the president and his wife at an undisclosed location – the competition states that the package is worth about $4,800.

Parts of it might even be cute, if it didn’t come off as contrived, and if it wasn’t yet another case of creepy Cult of Personality messaging.

Bonus: All winners are really losers, as they’ll be subject to $560 in taxes. Payable to Mr. Obama’s Treasury Secretary.

In case you didn’t win dinner with SJP, Anna Wintour & the Obamas, here’s your chance.

Oh goody.

John Hinderaker’s getting Obama fundraising emails that sound even more desperate than the raffles. And let’s not forget O’s Event Registry; Suzette has a few suggestions on that.

Meanwhile, Buzzfeed’s busy CGI’ing Ann Romney into Viagra ads, in the hopes of attracting “the youth vote” by undercutting her – since that’s worked so well.

The youth vote may, on the other hand, have time to spend on Buzzfeed since we’re seeing the lowest employment rate for Americans ages 18 to 24 since the government began keeping track in 1948.

But, when you have an incumbent who desperately wants to get re-elected with the official unemployment rate at 8.2% (more likely at 11%), the lowest workforce participation rate in this century, and $3.50 gas, you know you’ll be seeing more creepy ads.

And yet… unintended consequences…
Who knows? Maybe showing the father of five sons (oh, yes, there are a lot of people in in America from cultural backgrounds* where that’s considered the apex of masculinity and potency) will boost Pfizer’s sales even more.

*Speaking of which…

Linked by MOTUS. Thank you!

UPDATE, via Drudge,
Democrats canceled a political convention kick-off event at the Charlotte Motor Speedway

The move comes as party planners are grappling with a fundraising deficit of roughly $27 million


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Filed Under: Barack Obama, elections, Mitt Romney, politics Tagged With: Ann Romney, Fausta's blog

June 22, 2012 By Fausta

Politico suspends their White House correspondent…

you’re not going to believe this, for making penis jokes about Ann Romney:
POLITICO REPORTER TWEETS ANN ROMNEY PENIS JOKE His Twitter account is protected, but here’s the tweet,

Williams just isn’t any Politico reporter, by the way, he’s their White House Correspondent, but one who regularly shills for Obama on Twitter — furthering the Obama campaign’s talking points on race and Romney’s wealth.

Politico must have been recruiting middle-schoolers when they hired him, but “Following discussion of this matter with editors, Joe has been suspended while we review the matter,” they wrote.

CORRECTION,
Williams was suspended over this, and his tweets.

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Filed Under: elections, Mitt Romney, politics, Republicans Tagged With: Ann Romney, Fausta's blog, Joe Williams, Politico

June 20, 2012 By Fausta

Lawrence O’Donnell, horse’s a**

Lawrence O’Donnell Mocks Ann Romney for Riding Horses to Combat Multiple Sclerosis. Transcript:

LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, HOST: In tonight’s Rewrite, Mitt Romney rewrites the definition of an Olympic athlete.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST OF “FACE THE NATION”: I hear you’ve got an Olympic athlete in the family.

MITT ROMNEY: Isn’t that something? Yeah, it’s not me. It’s my wife, of course. She’s the athlete, but in this case, it’s not her personally, but she along with two other people purchased a horse and have trained it up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’DONNELL: She’s the athlete. That’s what Mitt Romney just said. She’s the athlete.

Betsy links to the story of how Ann Romney got involved in dressage

In Utah, Romney worked to develop a routine. Josh Romney, the third of the Romney sons, was living in Salt Lake City at the time, and mother and son met regularly for lunch, often at a bagel shop near Josh. “We spent a lot of time just trying to talk things through,” he recalls. Mitt Romney juggled the household chores and running the Olympics. On his drive home, he would sometimes stop at Albertson’s, a grocery store in Park City, to pick up dinner. One favorite meal was rotisserie chicken, accompanied by side dishes of broccoli and pita bread.

Through all this, Ann Romney wondered how long her ability to walk, even with difficulty, would last. She recalls thinking, “I’m pretty sure I’m going to end up in a wheelchair, pretty sure I’m going to be really bad.” She resolved to take action and made a decision: “I want to do things that I love so much in life before I can’t do them anymore.”

So Romney bought a horse, Buddy. Romney is quick to tell me that Buddy wasn’t an “expensive” horse. “Having him,” she says, “was like the coolest thing in the world.” Buddy was a trail and first-level dressage horse, and he was Romney’s companion in those days. “I was pretty lonely,” she admits.

Buddy’s stable was a 35-minute drive from the Romneys’ Utah home. Once at the stable, Romney would spend hours and hours with Buddy, grooming him and cleaning out his stall. Still very weak, she could barely ride the horse: “I could only ride, like really ride, for like five minutes” before getting too worn out.

But Romney’s affection for Buddy transformed her outlook on life and gave her a reason to push herself to climb out of bed each morning. “I noticed that I had this euphoria afterwards — it kind of got me out of that fatigue place for a little bit, just for a little time,” she says of her riding. Slowly, she began to feel slightly stronger.

Time passed. And then Mitt Romney nominated his wife — without telling her — to carry the Olympic torch, citing her as his personal hero. It would be an arduous task for her: Those who carry the Olympic torch run for a quarter-mile before relaying the torch to the next person. For weeks beforehand, Romney practiced, building up her strength.

“She was able to jog the whole thing,” remembers Josh Romney, who was there with her, running alongside his mom.

“I literally ran,” Romney says, describing how she carried the torch, with friends and some of her sons present. “My kids were all surrounding me,” she says. “And they were all crying because they knew what a miracle it was that I came [to Utah] barely able to walk and now [here] I was, three years later, torch in hand, the Olympics were a success, I was back on track, I was regaining my strength, and off I ran with this torch into the city.”

O’Donnell’s fussing about Mitt’s tax deduction for the Olympic horse as a business expense, which is fully allowed under current tax law. Let’s remind Larry that MSNBC deducts Larry’s make-up, hair, and most probably on-camera wardobe – his dressage – as a business expense, too.

And, as an update,
Which End Of The Horse Is Lawrence O’Donnell?

It is bad enough that MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell mocks Ann Romney for riding horses to treat her multiple sclerosis. But then shows what an ignoramus he is by saying that “dressage (competitive horse riding) does not appear in any of the more traditional courses of treatment” for MS.

Actually, for many illnesses riding horses is a legitimate therapy technique. It’s called “hippotherapy.” Wikipedia has a nice description of it, and there’s even an group called the American Hippotherapy Association.

Type in “hippotherapy” into the search engine PubMed, and you get back dozens of peer-reviewed studies showing the benefits of hippotherapy. There are even four medical journal articles showing the benefits of hippotherapy for multiple sclerosis patients. One of the articles explains how hippotherapy works:

Multiple sclerosis (MS) leads to changes in balance due to the breakdown of a number of neurological processes. Hippotherapy utilizes the movement of the horse to provide sensory feedback and has been used as a therapeutic intervention for different neurological conditions.

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Filed Under: Mitt Romney, politics, Republicans, TV Tagged With: Ann Romney, dressage, Fausta's blog, Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC

April 13, 2012 By Fausta

Mitt on a roll

Having insulted Ann Romney, now the Dems are Draperizing Mitt Romney.

About the only things Don Draper, a fictional character, and Mitt Romney have in common is that they are both handsome men.

How nuts is this latest strategy? Don Surber counts the ways:

Here is what is wrong with this personal attack (besides being a personal attack on a nice guy) Don Draper is a TV character. A popular TV character who, despite all his flaws, is liked by viewers. If they did not like him, people would watch something else. There are 500 channels today.

Those who know who Don Draper is like him, but most Americans don’t know who he is because most Americans don’t watch the show. Hollywood gives the show a bunch of awards so the people in the White House assume everyone is watching it. But that is not happening.

So Barack Obama’s strategy is to portray his opponent as someone whom most people don’t know and those who do know like.

And people do not watch “Mad Men” because the 1960s were not an interesting time to them. To try to portray Romney as a throwback to the 1950s (which for the mathematically challenged pre-date the setting for the show by a decade) is doomed to even worse failure. Most younger voters don’t know what the heck is meant by the 1950s and baby boomers liked the 1950s. Sure. What is not to like? We were kids. The 1950s were a time of Buffalo Bob and Howdy Doody, of Davey Crockett and coonskin caps, and of rock ‘n’ roll and Dick Clark. Give me the 1950s any day of the week. Cars had fins. Cereal had more sugar than cereal. You could smoke and not get cancer. It’s true. I saw it on TV.

So yes, turn back the clock to the 1950s and remind today’s core audiences of when they were kids and anything was possible.

Makes you wonder who “lacks life experience” and “imagination” to relate to most Americans, doesn’t it?

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Filed Under: Democrats, Republicans Tagged With: Ann Romney, Fausta's blog, Mad Men

April 12, 2012 By Fausta

The O’s latest gaffe: Pick on Ann Romney

Ann Romney raises five sons, battles cancer and multiple sclerosis, goes on the campaign trail, and yet, gets no respect from the Dems, because “she’s never worked a day in her life,”

Having insulted his wife and every stay-home mom, Hilary Rosen claims Mitt “doesn’t see women as equals,” because in Rosen’s book only women who work outside the home are “equals”.

Ah, the finesse, the subtlety of the Obama advisors. BTW, Rosen has visited the White House thirty-five times during the Obama administration.

Jennifer Rubin beats Rosen with the big stick,

No, this really happened. Honest. But it didn’t stop. Rosen took to Twitter to dig her hole deeper and deeper, never apologizing.

Then Rubin counts the ways,

Needless to say, the “war on women” has taken on a whole new tone. Let’s count the ways this is just awful for Obama and/or Democrats more generally. There are a few, so find a comfortable seat.

First, Obama, as a conservative pundit put it, just went a long way toward solidifying Romney’s base, especially among social conservatives who loathe elites who look down on stay-at-home moms.

Second, it feeds into the cliche that liberals love humanity but hate people. In this case they love womanhood but treat their own employees and conservative women like dirt.

Third, the “war on women” just became Romney’s vehicle for narrowing the gender gap, especially among women with children.

Fourth, this points to the absurdity of Obama’s approach to the campaign — nonstop negativity and gimmicks.When one goes awry, what’s he got to say?

Fifth, there will be a new term in politics: A Rosen. That is a gaffe of epic proportions that is magnified by the gaffer’s own stubbornness and insistence on digging deeper.

Sixth, Hilary Rosen, who makes her living in PR (irony alert), better find other work. She’s really terrible at her job, if this is any indication.

There’s more, much more at her post. Go read every word.

You can follow @AnnDRomney on twitter.

UPDATE,
Tree Hugging Sister released the Kraken on Rosen.


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Filed Under: Democrats, feminism, Mitt Romney, Republicans Tagged With: Ann Romney, Fausta's blog

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