Gimleteye: Romney and Bush, Chaos on Bullshit Mountain

When Mitt Romney's vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was at Versailles Restaurant yesterday, insisting to his audience of Miami Cuban Republicans that his three votes in Congress to end the embargo weren't really what he meant to support in the future perfect, Jeb! Bush nodded in the background in the same declension of idiocy that holds US foreign policy captive to GOP insiders determined to control Cuba for themselves. Ryan was right, as a Congressman, to vote against the embargo. But the pandering to whatever logic binds Republican Cubans was on full display. "We will not keep practicing this policy of appeasement," Ryan said, appeasing his Cuba policy critics fast and furiously. Ryan, according to the Miami Herald, declaimed, "We will be tough on this brutal dictator". My God, man! You can't pander better than that! It gives Optimism reason for hope! J/K.

Jeb! read my mind even before the thought sprang from my head, "I'm sick and tired of an America that has a cloud of pessimism hanging over it." Showing he wouldn't be upstaged as a prospective panderer-in-chief, the former governor of Florida also forgot to note that it was his policies and programs and those of his brother and father as presidents that substantially contributed to both the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and persists as dead-weight against an economic recovery. What do we need, Jeb? Something optimistic like "The Ownership Society"? That worked out well, didn't it, providing all the gasoline the economy needed to self-immolate. Karl Rove forgets about that one, too.

There must be something like "forgetfullness dust" that the GOP hands out in little packets to sprinkle over crowds at Versailles and gin up enthusiasm for its candidates' pandering. Fox News hypnotizes with its news anchors and "experts" who can't remember apparently much past who put on their pancake makeup in the dressing room. That's uncharitable: what they can remember is the cheat sheet with talking points they regurgitate in unison. (Thanks to Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes for turning the concept of news into faux entertainment.)

I'm reading Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets", recounting the disinformation campaigns related to the Bush dynasty (and strongly encourage you to read it too.) Now if you only have a few minutes, the Daily Show's the Daily Show's "Chaos on Bullshit Mountain" is a reliable guide why Republicans should withhold their vote in November.