Left overnight on the windshield of a vehicle parked in a driveway in a residential neighborhood in a small town in west central Missouri.

This is what passes these days for a republican presidential campaign GOTV operation in Missouri.

Hi Friend,

I just wanted to let you know that some knucklehead vandalized your car by slapping an Obama sticker on it. The last thing you want is to be driving around all day looking like an idiot.

Take care,

A Good Samaritan

Gee, it’s not even an original idea:

LETTER: Reply to supermarket note-leaver (July 10, 2012)

Right wingnuts are doing this all over the country.

This is why Mitt Romney (r) will lose the election.

Instead of knocking on doors and engaging voters directly, or working a phone bank, or doing a literature drop a whole bunch of people have spent time implementing this and placing it on vehicles.

Remind me now, who’s the fucking idiot?

According to Talking Points Memo, Todd Akin’s got a super PAC – a real one – behind him and they’re ponying up $800,000 to place ads asking folks to vote for Akin because he’ll help tip Senate support to a potential Romney administration. Guess they haven’t seen the latest polls or else they wouldn’t be counting their chickens before they’re hatched. It doesn’t necessarily  look like there’s going to be a President Romney.

Be that as it may, the Now or Never Pac, which supported Sarah Steelman in the primary contest, is, to put it gently, kind of holding its metaphorical nose and sneering at old Todd as it tosses money in his direction:

Todd Akin may have not been our first choice for Republican nominee in the race to replace Claire McCaskill,” said Tyler Harber, the group’s spokesman. “But, Congressman Akin plays an important role in securing the Senate chamber.”

Respectable GOP contempt aside, it might be just what Akin needs. Missourians have definitely gone rampaging off the reservation into wild, red territory in the past couple of years – it’s hard to believe that Akin polls as high as he does without positing some sort of mass insanity. Add to that fact that no matter what his overall chances are, Romney is likely to take Missouri (although we’ve still got to work our tails off to get out the vote and gin up Obama’s share of the popular vote), and he could possibly pull Akin along with him. A last minute money boost with a “take your medicine for Romney and the GOP” message might be just what the GOP doctor ordered.

UPDATE:  The Missouri Republican Party wants to get in on the act. Per Politico, a “a stunning reversal by Texas Sen. John Cornyn and other Senate GOP leaders”:

Rep. Todd Akin and the Missouri Republican Party are launching a nearly $700,000 TV ad blitz in the closing days of his challenge to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, but the source of the funds for the effort is unclear.

These are the first ads run by the Missouri GOP in conjunction with Akin’s campaign. Of the total, $386,000 will come from the Missouri GOP to pay for the ad run, with the remaining supplied by Akin’s committee.

Politico adds:

Democrats would undoubtedly pounce on such a move as a sign of Republican hypocrisy.

Yup. But, hey, who ever expected anything else? We watched the GOP batten down the hatches when Mourdock jumped overboard – and understood that they learned their lesson. Times are hard and nobody can afford scruples anymore.

Kevin Horrigan in his Sunday column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch brought up a study (pdf) by a couple of academics that question the practice of “peer benchmarking” CEO salaries in order to keep them from moving on to more lucrative jobs. The idea is that companies have to pay more in order to keep talented CEOs in place. The two researchers, Charles M. Elson and Craig K. Ferrere, question the wisdom of that practice:

…  Scholars have long recognized a distinction between firm-specific and general skills. It is quite apparent that successful CEOs leverage not only their intrinsic talents but also, and more importantly, a vast accumulation of firm-specific knowledge developed over a multi-year career. Whether it is deep knowledge of an organization’s personnel or the processes specific to a particular operation, this skill set is learned carefully over a long tenure with a company and not easily capable of quick replication at other firms. In fact, when “superstar” executives change companies, the result is usually disappointing.

Horrigan was interested in the issue of CEO compensation, particularly as it involves Robert R. Archibald, the embattled director of the Missouri Historical Museum. It strikes me, though, that the point is just as apt when applied to businessmen who claim that their business success will allow them to shine as government leaders.

My thoughts went immediately to two GOP candidates for high elective office who want us to believe that they are qualified for those positions because of their past business careers: Missouri gubernatorial candidate Dave Spence, and ex-financial mogul and current presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. However, the Elson and Ferrere study suggests that there is nothing in the background of a successful financier and a plastics manufacturer that would necessarily translate to success in government.

Certainly history suggests that businessmen in government are rarely effective leaders. According to journalist Daniel Akst who consulted with Historian Barbara Perry about the relationship between the success of twentieth century presidents and their earlier careers:

It’s important to know whether a president has worked in business. It’s important because having worked in business is associated with being a lousy president, at least in the modern era.

Recollect that while Mitt Romney was successful in the highly specialized financial realm, he was also by many measures a failure as governor of Massachusetts. The performance of the Massachusetts economy under Romney wasn’t that great to say the least – there’s a reason few in the state support his presidential bid. Although Romney has tried to claim that the fault lay with the Democratic legislature, the current Democratic governor, Patrick Duval together with a largely Democratic legislature has been able to  rescue the state from the Bush recession twice as fact as other states. Massachusetts currently ranks in the top 10 states in job growth. So much for Romney’s vaunted claims to understand what makes an economy successful.

Nor, by the measures that Elson and Ferrere suggest, should we assume that Mr. Spence’s success in a very specialized plastics business would translate into the skill set that would allow him to take the reins of a complex state government. As for his more generalized management skills, we have only to examine his to-date feckless, largely self-financed campaign, to get an idea of his ability to run entities that are not organized around a specific body of manufacturing knowledge.

None of this is surprising, of course. Think of successful businessman and colossally failed president Herbert Hoover. Or, to take a more recent example, think back to the hilarious spectacle of real estate tycoon Donald Trump contemplating a run for President and it’s easy to conclude that instead of a savy manager, successful businessmen transplanted to government are apt to prove either inept as in Hoover’s case, or total clowns, as would surely be the case were Trump to ever win office.  

Here’s a stormy, relevant and current reason to not vote for Mitt Romney. He wants to decentralize America’s disaster management and throw senior responsibilities to the states.

Essentially, he wants to gut FEMA-which of course worked so well for President Bush.

Bush neglected FEMA, put a horse-guy in charge and then Hurricane Katrina happened. In the words of another Republican from Texas-oops.

So now we have Mitt Romney attempting to backpedal from comments he made during one of those numerous Republican primary debates this year.

Here’s what he said:

“Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” ~ Gov. Mitt Romney

This is like a child talking. And it shows a completely sophomoric understanding of what real governing entails. Successful governing involves reacting to specific conditions each problem and/or opportunity presents-not using a one-size fits all, I got a hammer-and-the-world’s-full-of-nails approach. This inflexible ideological attitude toward things, like “always cut taxes,” or, “always deregulate”, is what brought to you other things, like the Great Recession.

Eugene Robinson in a Washington Post op-ed shared how Romney further explained his position on disaster management to CNN’s John King:

“King gave him a chance to back off: “Including disaster relief, though?”

Romney didn’t blink. “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” he said, adding that “it is simply immoral . . . to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.”

If Romney got his way, FEMA would be gone, or at least drowning in a bathtub somewhere. Social Security would be ravaged by the recession having been privatized during Bush. The American auto industry would have been totally parted out… but wait-a-sec, he’s the son of a car-guy, right?

Yeah, he might be, but as secret tax returns prove, Mitt R is not your father’s George R.

And that being the case, Mitt wanted to part-out Detroit. So he’s not the kind of car guy that builds cars, he’s more like the junkyard car-guy.

Kind of like outsourcing-he sees-no, he knows- the financial benefits to be accrued at the top when breaking apart something into small pieces, selling them off. So now he’s affixed this one-size-fits-all philosophy onto his political palette.

White canvass, one color; splash goes the economy. Trickle-down.

Everything gets parted-out to the states, or “even better,” to the private sector.

Problem is, national disasters are exactly that-national. So breaking FEMA down into individual state programs would invite a logistics catastrophe while our nation attempts to metabolize a multi-state superstorm like Sandy, or Katrina. It’s ridiculous thinking to privatize emergency management, or part-out FEMA. But this kind of moronic, elitist B.S. has come from his mouth and mind before, hasn’t it?

“Let Detroit Go Bankrupt”

Romney is desperately trying to distance himself from the New York Times op-ed he wrote in 2008, entitled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” His campaign has Google ads in place ready to capture any online reconnoiter about what he meant. His campaign would like you to know he didn’t actually say that in the body of the article and that the Times had purposely conjured an inartful rubric and slapped it on his sage business advice for the hemorrhaging U.S. auto industry.

But what he did say was totally wrong:

“IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.”

Oops. But bottom line, even if the Times wrote the “Detroit Go Bankrupt” headline, Romney agreed to put his name on it. Just like the President agrees to put his name on the product of many of the administration’s collaborators-the buck stops there.

And here’s the point, regardless of the detail in the op-ed, allowing that kind of message to go out as representative of a former Presidential candidate’s (Romney’s 2008 run) position shows how completely tone-deaf, callous and irresponsible the man really is. It also foreshadows his political ineptitude and naiveté with several other campaign-road debacles. Like when he went to London and insulted their Olympics. Or the things he said about the irresponsible 47% (half of America) or how Republicans should be very worried that Latinos and African-Americans are gaining more political power with each progressing day. He said something like, “that would be bad for our nation and party.” Un-huh.

As Colin Powell intimated in his recent endorsement for President Obama, Romney is unstable, inconsistent and has zee-row political core or backbone. He’s a wind-sock. Don’t vote for a wind-sock. Vote for the skinny guy with the weird name.

So why was Romney nicer to Bob Schieffer than he was to Candy Crowley? No talking over the moderator tonight, no efforts to steam-roll everyone in earshot? The worst we got was lots of wandering, seemingly pointless, but, I have to admit, very high-speed yammering.

Could Romney’s earlier behavior been been due to the fact that Crowley’s a woman?  In my past life in management, I encountered lots of men who consistently tried to talk over female colleagues, and Romney seems to be the type. It was great watching Crowley shoot him down.

But, but, you stammer, he was just as rude to Jim Lehrer, another white male. But, of course, Lehrer is a retired (hence, non-threatening) broadcaster from PBS which Romney’s supporters revile as the lair of the liberal media they fantasize about interminably. Wipe the floor with Lehrer, they all cheer.

Speculation aside, I’m guessing Romney’s gentle stammering and pleading glances were simply an awkward effort to steal himself some undecided or wavering voters, particularly women. There are some indications that the mutual aggression on display in the last debate wasn’t going over well with that particular group. Too bad most of us are just as turned off by would-be leaders who give the impression they’re cringing in the corner while daddy tells them to take a time out and promise not to ever, ever fib again.

“…Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed…”

The republican meme reared its stupid head again.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): comparing apples to navel oranges (February 16, 2012)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): still obsessed with those navel oranges (July 24, 2012)

Vice Presidential Debate: refighting WW I with Dreadnaughts (October 11, 2012)

[from a rush transcript]

Mitt Romney (r): Our Navy is smaller now than anytime since 1917. The Navy said they need 313 ships to carry out their mission. We are now down to 285. We are headed to the low 200’s if we go through a Sequestration that is unacceptable to me. I want to make sure we have the ships required by our Navy. Our Air Force is older and smaller than anytime since it was founded in 1947. We have changed for the first time since FDR. Since FDR we have always had the strategy of saying we can fight in two conflicts at once. Now we’re changing to one conflict. Look, this in my view is the highest responsibility of the President of the United States which is to maintain the safety of the American people, and I will not cut our military budget by a trillion dollars, which is the combination of the budget cuts the President has as well as the sequestration cuts. That in my view is making our future less certain and less secure.

American defense procurement policy by talking point for idiots.

President Obama’s response:

President Obama (D): ….It [sequestration] will not happen. The budget that we’re talking about is not reducing our military spending it’s maintaining it, but, eh, I think Governor Romney maybe, uh, hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works. You, you mention the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in nineteen sixteen.  Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets [audience noise] because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them [audience noise], we have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines, and so the question is not, uh, a game of battleship where we’re counting ships, it’s, it’s what are our capabilities. And so when I sit down with the Secretary of the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff we determine how are we going to be best able to meet all of our defense needs in a way that also keeps faith with our troops, that also makes sure that our veterans have, uh, the kind of support that they need when they come home, and that is not reflected in the kind of budget that you’re putting forward because it just doesn’t work. [Moderator: “All right.”] And, you know, we visited the web site quite a bit, and it still doesn’t work.

Bob Schieffer: A lot to cover. I’d like [audience noise], I’d like to move to the, uh, next segment. Red lines. Israel and Iran. Would either of you, and you’ll have two minutes….

We’ve been saying the same thing for months.

Madeleine Albright has a few observations on Mitt Romney and foreign policy. Suffice it to say it’s pretty brutal:

Keep this in mind when you watch tonight. Some other good prep:

Think Progress: “5 Facts To Commit To Memory Before Tonight’s Foreign Policy Debate.”

Ezra Klein’s Wonkblog: “Five facts you need to know about China’s currency manipulation.”

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones: “The Benghazi Controversy, Explained.”

And, finally, keep your fingers crossed. The consequences of a Romney “win” don’t bear thinking abut.

Romnesia [Rom-nee-zhuh] Noun – a condition affecting Mitt Romney…conveniently forgetting the conservative promises he’s made over the past six years that he’s been running for president.

Today, in Virginia:

President Obama (D): ….The choice between going backward and moving forward has never been so clear. But now that we’re eighteen days out from the election Mr. Severely Conservative wants you to think he was severely kidding [laughter] about everything he’s said over the last year. He told folks he, he was the ideal candidate for the Tea Party, now suddenly he’s saying, what, who, me? [laughter] He, he’s forgetting what his own positions are, and he’s betting that you will too. I mean he, he’s changing up so much, and backtracking and sidestepping.  We’ve gotta we, we’ve gotta name this condition that he’s going through. [laughter] I think, I, I, I think it’s called Romnesia. [cheers, applause] That’s what it’s called. I think that’s what he’s going through.

Now, I’m not, I’m not a medical doctor but I, but 1 do want to go over some of the symptoms with you because I want to make sure nobody else catches it. [laughter]

If, you know, if you say, if you say you’re for equal pay for equal work, but you keep refusing to say whether or not you’d sign a bill that protects equal pay for equal work, you might have Romnesia. [cheers]

If you say women should have access to contraceptive care, but you support legislation that would let your employer deny you contraceptive care, you might have a case of Romnesia. [cheers]

If you say you’ll protect a woman’s right to choose, but you stand up at a primary debate and said that you’d be delighted to sign a law outlying, outlawing that right to choose in all cases, man, you’ve definitely got Romnesia. [applause, cheers]

Ah, ah, now, this extends to other issues. If, if you, if you say earlier in the year I’m going to give a tax cut to the top one percent and then in a debate you say, I, I don’t know anything about giving tax cuts to rich folks, that, that, you, you need to, yeah, you, you need to get a, a, athermometer, take a temperature, ’cause you probably got Romnesia. [cheers]

If, if, if you say that you’re, you’re, you’re a champion of the coal industry when while you were Governor you stood in front of a coal plant and said, this plant will kill you [pause][crowd noise], that’s some Romnesia.

So, so, I, I think you’re being able, you’re beginning to be able to identify these symptoms. And, and if you come down with a case of Romnesia [laugh], and you can’t seem to remember the policies that are still on your website [laughter], or the promises you’ve made over the six years you’ve been running for President, here’s the good news, Obamacare covers preexisting [cheers] conditions.

We can fix you up. We’ve got a cure. We can make you well, Virginia. This is a curable disease.

[laugh] Women, men, all of you. These, these are family issues. These are economic issues. I want my daughters to have the same opportunities as anybody’s sons. I believe America does better, the economy grows more, we create more jobs when everybody participates, when everyone’s getting a fair shot, everybody’s getting a fair shake, everybody’s playing by the same  rules, everybody’s doing their fair share. That’s why I’m running for a second term for President of the United States. I need you to help me finish the job. [cheers]

We’re talking black helicopter territory here. A mail piece from a paranoid right wingnut gun advocacy group (no, not that one) arrived in our mailbox yesterday:

Hey, wait a minute, who is that guy on the mailer?

Doesn’t look like quite the same as the person we photographed in Iowa this summer:

Why, he looks like he’s having a good time.

Then there’s this, from the second presidential debate this week (excerpt from a rush transcript):

….Candy Crowley:  Governor, if I could, the question was about these assault weapons that once were banned and are no longer banned.  I know that you signed an assault weapons ban when you were in Massachusetts.  Obviously with this question you no longer do support that.  Why is that, given the kind of violence that we see sometimes with these mass killings?  Why is it that you’ve changed your mind?  

Mitt Romney (r):  Well, Candy, actually in my state, the pro-gun folks and the anti-gun folks came together and put together a piece of legislation, and it’s referred to as an assault weapon ban, but it had, at the signing of the bill, both the pro-gun and the anti-gun people came together because it provided opportunities that both wanted.  There were hunting opportunities that hadn’t previously been available.  It was a mutually agreed upon piece of legislation.  That’s what we need more of, Candy.  What we have now in Washington is a place that’s gridlocked.  

Candy Crowley: If you could get people to agree to it, you would be for it?

Mitt Romney (r): We haven’t worked on a bipartisan basis.  I was able to do that in my state and bring these two together.

Candy Crowley:  Mr. President?

President Obama (D):  First of all, I think Governor Romney was for an assault weapons ban before he was against it. He said the reason he changed his mind was in part because he was seeking the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.  So that’s on the record. But I think that one area we agree on is the importance of parents and the importance of schools because I do believe that if our young people have opportunity, then they’re less likely to engage in these kind of violent acts. We’re not going to eliminate everybody who is mentally disturbed, and we’ve got to make sure they don’t get weapons, but we can make a difference in terms of ensuring that every young person in America, regardless of where they come from, what they look like, have a chance to succeed.  And, Candy, we haven’t had a chance to talk about education much, but I think it is very important to understand that the reforms we put in place working with 46 governors around the country are seeing schools that are some of the ones that are the toughest for kids starting to succeed.  We’re starting to see gains in math and science.  When it comes to community colleges, we are setting up programs including with NASSAU community college to retrain workers, including young people who may have dropped out of school but now are getting another chance, training them for the jobs that exist right now, and in fact employers are looking for skilled workers, and so we’re matching them up. Giving them access to higher education.  As I said, we have made sure that millions of young people are able to get an education that they weren’t able to get before….

[emphasis added]

Mitt Romney (r) was for an assault weapons ban before he was against it? Oopsie, it looks like somebody backed the wrong presidential candidate.

“…I’m the President, and I’m always responsible…”

Previously:

Presidential Debate: Benghazi, Libya was an act of terror (October 16, 2012)

Note that President Obama turned to Mitt Romney (r) during his response. Blistering.

The exchange:

….President Obama (D):  Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job, but she works for me. I’m the President, and I’m always responsible. And that’s why nobody is more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do. The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden, and I told the American people and the world that we were going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror, and I also said that we’re gonna hunt down those who committed this crime. And then a few days later I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families, and the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as President, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief.

Candy Crowley: Governor, if you want to reply [crosstalk] quickly to this please.

Mitt Romney (r): Yeah, I, I certainly do, I certainly do. I, I think it’s interesting the President just said something which, which is that on the day after the attack he went in the  Rose gar, Garden and said this was an act of terror.

President Obama (D): That’s what I said. [not audible in video]

Mitt Romney (r): You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack it was an attack of terror, [pause] it was not a [crosstalk] spontaneous demonstration?

President Obama (D): Please proceed.

Mitt Romney (r): Is that what you’re saying?

President Obama (D): Please proceed, governor.

Mitt Romney (r): I, I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the President fourteen days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

President Obama (D): Get the transcript.

Candy Crowley:  It, it, he did in, in fact, sir. So let me, let me call it an [crosstalk] act of terror. He used the word.

President Obama (D): Can you say that a little louder, Candy?

[applause]

Candy Crowley:  He did call it an act of terror….

“…and the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as President, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief…”