Forbes’s Edwin Durgy did the number crunching on the Bain of our existence:

Mitt Romney isn’t the richest person to ever run for President – Ross Perot had him beat by a factor of ten. And if he’s elected, inflation adjustments might favor sprawling plantation owners like Washington and Jefferson, or Kennedy if family assets counted. But there’s no denying that in terms of total dollars a President Romney would be the wealthiest White House occupant ever, and would be even wealthier had he not set aside a trust, now worth $100 million, for his 5 boys. So just how rich is he?

Forbes spent the past month trying to answer that question definitively. The core basis for our valuation comes from Romney himself – specifically, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics disclosure forms, which he filed in August 2007 and August 2011, plus discussions with high-level Romney officials familiar with specific changes to his holdings since that last report. Of course, those disclosures, taken at face value, are about as concrete as a campaign promise, with vague asset ranges (“$1 million to $5 million”) and definitions.

Seeking to remove as much guesswork as possible, we assigned a value to every single asset Mitt and Ann Romney own – 184 in all across the couple’s two blind trusts, IRAs and outright holdings. Our core method: noting the shift in ranges between the 2007 filing, the 2011 filing and now (much of his wealth has been consistently held over the whole period). Comparing which assets changed brackets – or didn’t – with their underlying price fluctuation (or in some cases, a good comparable) over that period, we were able to get better estimates of where each fell in the range. Supplemented by a dozen interviews – from local real estate experts to private equity partners – we get a detailed look at the current state of Mitt’s money, pinpointing his net worth at $230 million, split between 9 different asset classes. Highlights include the sale of nearly all of his individual equities – he sold 71 stocks since his last disclosure – and a big move into cash. He now holds $16 million, up from $1 million in August.

I guess the loot in the off-shore bank accounts and in Switzerland can only be guessed at…

The amazing—even amusing—thing to me is that somewhere north of 40% of likely US voters think that putting a man in charge of the American economy who got obscenely—not to mention ludicrously—wealthy by being one of the most successful corporate raiders and job destroyers in recent memory, is a good idea!

Mitt Romney certainly created a lot of wealth, that’s for sure. FOR HIMSELF.

And $20 million for each of his kids! Think the richest man who would ever be the POTUS is going to advocate raising taxes on his own family’s fortune?

Not a fucking chance that option would be on the table, is there?

We DO live in Idiocracy. How else to parse the notion that 40% of the people who vote would pull the lever for Thurston fucking Howell the IVth???

I realize that it sounds perverse—not to mention terribly, terribly UN-patriotic—but there is a small part of me that hopes for a Romney and GOP victory this year.

Why? Because the man and his party would nail the coffin SHUT on capitalism, that’s why.

Given another four years, the Republicans WILL wreck the place, but good. Bush nearly accomplished it, Romney and crew—for it WILL BE former Bush administration members who would staff a Romney White House—would be sure to finish it off.

What would come next would be… interesting. Not necessary good, but interesting and perhaps necessary.

More details on Romney’s net worth and where he invests: What Mitt Romney Is Really Worth: An Exclusive Analysis Of His Latest Finances (Forbes)
 

Polygamists for Romney

Mitt Romney, who added “teenage gay basher” to his distinguished resume of fucking people over yesterday, unwisely decided to speak out about President Obama’s support for marriage equality.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

“[Below], Romney says that we should not discard 3,000 years of history of one-man-one-woman marriage. Ahem. His own family were ardent polygamists only a century ago - and went to Mexican colonies to escape US federal oppression of their version of marriage (which also goes back a long, long way and still exists across the world). Romney’s great-grandparents were polygamists; one of his his great-great-grandfathers had twelve wives and was murdered by the husband of the twelfth.

For Romney to say that the definition of marriage has remained the same for 3,000 years is disproved by his own family. It’s untrue. False. A lie.

Big love, Mr. Sullivan. This hits it right squarely on the bulls-eye, doesn’t it?

Memo to Mittens: This isn’t going to be an argument that you—you IN PARTICULAR—are going to win.

What’s that epigram from Wittgenstein that’s appropriate here? Ah yes:

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

In other words, zip it, dumbass, before you make a fucking fool of yourself.

Again.

(Are the Republicans deliberately trying to throw the election? If so, WHY?)
 

 
Want to like Mitt Romney even less than you already do? Read on:

Well, it looks like the rich white guy who strapped a shit-scared dog onto the roof of his car and who brags about how he likes to “fire people” has always been that way.

This may have happened when future ruler of men Mitt Romney was just a kid, true, but it’s still really fucking disturbing. If the child is the father to the man, after you read this, ask yourself how many degrees away from being a “Dexter” this Mormon Little Lord Fauntleroy was!

And if you think that’s taking it too far, at the very least, Mitt Romney is a grown-up version of the nastiest, most obnoxious snobby rich kid characters that James Spader played in the 1980s (The millionaire Republican governor’s son who bullies Duckie. Tell me that young Mittens is not straight out of a John Hughes film).

Now he wants to be the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth!

Five eye witnesses, four of them on record here. This isn’t a hit job, it’s Mitt Romney’s actual biography. Looking at how Romney’s predatory Bain Capital made its money by sucking prosperous businesses dry, firing workers and selling off the assets, I don’ think this over-privileged fuck has changed all that much.

Be prepared to fucking barf.

Via The Washington Post:

Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections.

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Friedemann, guilt ridden, made a point of not talking about it with his friend and waited to see what form of discipline would befall Romney at the famously strict institution. Nothing happened.

Romney is now the presumed Republican presidential nominee. His campaign spokeswoman said the former Massachusetts governor has no recollection of the incident.

I guess he’s got an Etch-A-Sketch memory, too!

Who the fuck forgets an incident like this?

Of course there’s also the matter of how the biggest homophobes often turn out to be repressed closet-cases themselves… Just sayin’.

Jon Stewart, Rachel Maddow, and Stephen Colbert are going to have a field day with this, to say nothing of Bill Maher. Cue the vicious SNL skits and Funny or Die videos about THIS INCIDENT and, I hope, one of those great Taiwanese computer animations, too.

This is just the first page of four. Read the rest at The Washington Post, if you can stomach more.
 

 

 
There’s an absolutely hilarious plan afoot to royally fuck with Mitt Romney that’s rapidly gaining traction on the popular social content aggregator site reddit. Has the reddit community figured out a surefire way to defeat Mitt Romney, even in red states?

Maybe so!

Democrats should pay close attention here. The Republicans may have the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove in their corner, but this is surely more deviously creative than anything a reichwinger could ever come up with.

Even more powerful than money? Well, you tell me.

It goes something like this: Presumed Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, responding to a survey earlier this year from the Morality in Media group’s “War on Illegal Pornography” campaign, indicated that as president, he would call for “strict enforcement of our nation’s obscenity laws.”

Now the merry pranksters of reddit /r/politics want to organize banner campaigns across various online porn sites to advertise Romney’s stance on pornography.

What better way to turn off potential Republican male voters in pr0n-crazy red states. Even the 20-something males who are the most impervious to politics might decide to register to vote over this issue. Hit ‘em where they live…ten plus hours a day!

Here’s a representative sampling of the reddit community’s reaction to the proposed stunt:

This November, don’t let Romney kill your boner forever.

These ads would be going against “The one little trick to get a 9 inch dick”, it doesn’t really matter how easy to pick apart it is.

Taking out ads on porn sites is a marvelous idea - it would likely result in subconsciously associating an orgasm with whatever the message of the ad is.

I seriously LOL’d at this. My room mates had to ask what was so funny. They think it’s awesome, too.

I’m going to start stockpiling porn.

Nobody votes for a boner killer.

I’d think that porn websites would be advertising this freely on their own.

Hi, I run fastjizz.com—if somebody wants to design us a 300x250 i’ll throw it on our homepage for a week!

Where do I donate?

‘Romney can take my porn from my warm sticky hand…’

Nice try, Obama. That said, I’d pitch in a few bucks.

“This November,when you go to the polls, think of your pole.”

This must be done

I work at an ad:tech company, specifically in the business of placing banner ads across the web. If someone is seriously interested in getting these run, I can help.

So he wasn’t happy just pissing off women huh? This is going to be the biggest landslide in the last 50 years.

The hypocritical, angry, white males who feed the tea party have finally painted themselves into a corner. They have to appear to disdain porn for their morally prudish wives, when in fact the porn industry caters almost exclusively to (such) men.

The Republicans have already lost the female voters. This could cleave quite a few males from the GOP fold, too!

Available at Typotees

Too, too good.

In the last few sentences, Stewart connects the dots in a way that even logic-leaping Glenn Beck himself (remember him?) would admire… and perhaps wholeheartedly agree with!
 

 
Fox News’ Shep Smith reacts to Mitt Romney’s reaction to Newt’s departure from the race the way a sane person should…

Dangerous Minds pal Taylor Jessen writes:

“A clip that needs no context, really. Soon to be a shirt, a dance remix, and possibly a new political party. Shep Smith is, for a moment, a bona fide deer in the mind-numbingest of headlights.”

Genius.
 

 
AS IF they needed any encouragement, Mitt Romney’s cynical hiring of openly gay Richard Grenell to sharpen his foreign policy message (and provide some cover for all of the anti-gay stuff Mittens has pledged to support) has “let the dogs out” of the Christian Right.

With Grenell stepping down before he even got started, now anti-gay rights activists like the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and hateful jackass Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association are crowing about their success in pressuring Romney to get rid of him.

You can, of course, easily make the argument that Republicans, on the whole, are hardly a bunch you could describe as “gay-friendly,” so there becomes the secondary side-issue of why tin-earred pol Romney felt that stirring up a hornet’s nest like this—the prominent hiring of an openly gay man—would benefit him politically with the mouth-breathing GOP base. It’s fucking ridiculous on the face of it, but in doing so, Romney has inadvertently exposed the men behind the curtain who are REALLY pulling his strings: Some of the most extreme Christianist bigots in America!

Last week Bryan Fischer declared that if Mitt Romney wants to win in November, he’d “better start listening to me.” Most of the rest of the week, Fischer discussed firing Grenell and lashed Romney repeatedly for having the audacity to hire an openly gay man as his foreign policy and national security spokesman. Coincidence that Grenell stepped down? I should think not.

Andrew Sullivan writes at The Daily Beast

“It’s sometimes hard to explain to outsiders what level of principle is required to withstand the personal cost of being an out gay Republican. I’ve only ever been a gay conservative (never a Republican), and back in the 1990s, it was brutal living in the gay world and challenging liberal assumptions. I cannot imagine the social isolation of Grenell in Los Angeles today, doing what he did. And his reward for such loyalty, sincerity and pugnacity? Vilification. I mean: what do Republicans call a gay man with neoconservative passion, a committed relationship and personal courage? A faggot.”

The Stonewall Democrats had this to say:

Mitt Romney sat silently and let the bigoted wing of his party control his personnel choices. Either Mitt Romney is a coward who is afraid to stand up to the anti-LGBT bullies in his party, or he is fine with an America where LGBT people can have a career only if they’re willing to work quietly from the confines of the closet. Gay Republicans should be outraged and must demand that the organizations that represent them refuse to support Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations in any way.”

The Human Rights Campaign’s statement:

From the moment Richard Grennell signed on as Mitt Romney’s Foreign Policy and National Security Spokesman, he faced a torrent of unfounded criticism from the far right. Not once did the Romney campaign condemn these attacks and support Grennell. Mitt Romney capitulating to the demands of extremist anti-gay groups is nothing new. He has donated to the rabidly anti-gay National Organization for Marriage and the Massachusetts Family Institute. He has even signed a NOM vow that binds him to appoint only anti-gay judges and establish a McCarthy-era commission to investigate the activities of those who support LGBT equality. The fact that Grennell is gone so quickly after a right-wing uproar is a troubling harbinger of the kind of power that anti-gay forces would have in a Romney White House.

Michelangelo Signorile makes an important point on Huffington Post:

Actually, I believe this is a big win for progressives and for gay journalists and commentators as well. We drew out the conservative leaders in addition to Fischer, like Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and other commentators on National Review and Daily Caller, by bringing forth and continually highlighting the true facts about Grenell, which, to most Americans, are completely acceptable, but which, in the eyes of the evangelical right, make him a radical homosexual. As I wrote in a post last week, Grenell isn’t just gay, like some other gay Republicans who stay quiet about their homosexuality. He’s a gay man who very publicly expressed that he wants to get married to another man and who believes President Obama isn’t adequate on LGBT rights.

Why is it this a win? Because Grenell was being used for cover by a candidate with abhorrently anti-gay positions, a man who has promised to “propose and promote” a federal marriage amendment if elected president. I don’t buy the argument made by some that it was a measure of progress that Romney hired a gay man as his foreign policy spokesperson when he’s using that gay man to make himself appear moderate to independents while he’s promising the GOP base that he’ll make gay people into second class citizens. Actual progress in the GOP will come when their presidential candidates stop bowing to bigots and refuse to sign their extremist pledges. Otherwise, it’s all window dressing.

He’s 100% correct on this matter. During the second hour of Fischer’s radio show yesterday, the news broke about Grenell’s resignation from the Romney campaign. Watch as a gleeful Fischer declares it a “huge win” for Christian conservatives because A) they forced Romney’s hand to get rid of Grenell and B) they taught him what his boundaries are!

Elect Mitt Romney and get THIS GUY, too:
 

 
Via Joe.My.God./Right Wing Watch

 
How did this not exactly subtle wingnut dog whistle escape national attention and widespread mockery? It’s been around since the end of February!

Unfucking believable. I won’t describe this, you just have to hit play and let it wash all over you. The cynicism is epic. Breath-taking, even.

Wow! Just.. wow. If this isn’t a flat -out admission by Romney and the Republicans that they are courting the DUMBEST SHITHEADS IN AMERICA to vote for him, I don’t know what would be…

An endorsement from Ted Nugent, perhaps?

He’s Mitt Romney and he EVEN ADMITS to paying for this paranoid fantasy…

Who the fuck came up with this? Alex Jones?
 

 
Via Daily Kos

 
Former Labor secretary Robert Reich explains why the “magic” of private equity is really a magic trick and one that’s being played on you and me.

The top YouTube comment, from “tapolna,” sums it up quite nicely:

The irony of all this is that Romney made his millions exploiting a system that fired workers, and reduced benefits for the remaining workers, all at the expense of taxpayers, us!

Then he wants us to vote for him!

But the tragedy is that some us will ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HIM.

 
Republican loud-mouth, attention-seeking buffoon and draft dodging he-man man’s man, rocker Ted Nugent, has given his manly men men men seal o’ fuckin’ approval to Mitt Romney. The Motor City Madman gave the son of popular Michigan governor, George Romney, his blessing via Twitter:

“after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney today I concluded this goodman will properly represent we the people & I endorsed him”

That a serious presidential candidate can be reduced to kissing the ring of a twat like Ted Nugent in order to garner the votes of morons says much about the decline of the Grand Old Party. Imagine the indignity of having to buddy up to the likes of Ted Nugent, Kid Rock and Sheriff Joe Arpaio! And when all is said and done, Romney’s still gonna lose.

In honor of this historic and important political endorsement, I dredged up the text of an October 1977 High Times interview with Nugent that I remembered from when I was a kid (I’d have not even turned twelve yet when this issue—which had Johnny Rotten on the cover—came out. Why did I have a copy of High Times when I was eleven??? What sort of degenerate sold it to me? It shows what kind of child I was, already visiting the local head shop when I was in the 6th grade)

High Times:How did you get out of the draft?

Ted Nugent: Ted was a young boy, appearing to be a hippie but quite opposite in fact, working hard and playing hard, playing rock and roll like a deviant. People would question my sanity, I played so much. So I got my notice to be in the draft. Do you think I was gonna lay down my guitar and go play army? Give me a break! I was busy doin’ it to it. I had a career Jack. If I was walkin’ around, hippying down, getting’ loaded and pickin’ my ass like your common curs, I’d say “Hey yeah, go in the army. Beats the poop out of scuffin’ around in the gutters.” But I wasn’t a gutter dog. I was a hard workin’, motherfuckin’ rock and roll musician.

I got my physical notice 30 days prior to. Well, on that day I ceased cleansing my body. No more brushing my teeth, no more washing my hair, no baths, no soap, no water. Thirty days of debris build. I stopped shavin’ and I was 18, had a little scraggly beard, really looked like a hippie. I had long hair, and it started gettin’ kinky, matted up. Then two weeks before, I stopped eating any food with nutritional value. I just had chips, Pepsi, beer-stuff I never touched-buttered poop, little jars of Polish sausages, and I’d drink the syrup, I was this side of death, Then a week before, I stopped going to the bathroom. I did it in my pants. poop, piss the whole shot. My pants got crusted up.

See, I approached the whole thing like, Ted Nugent, cool hard-workin’ dude, is gonna wreak havoc on these imbeciles in the armed forces. I’m gonna play their own game, and I’m gonna destroy ‘em. Now my whole body is crusted in poop and piss. I was ill. And three or four days before, I started stayin’ awake. I was close to death, but I was in control. I was extremely antidrug as I’ve always been, but I snorted some crystal methedrine. Talk about one wounded motherfucker. A guy put up four lines, and it was for all four of us, but I didn’t know and I’m vacuuming that poop right up. I was a walking, talking hunk of human poop. I was six-foot-three of sin. So the guys took me down to the physical, and my nerves, my emotions were distraught. I was not a good person. I was wounded. But as painful and nauseous as it was – ‘cause I was really into bein’ clean and on the ball – I made gutter swine hippies look like football players. I was deviano.

So I went in, and those guys in uniform couldn’t believe the smell. They were ridiculin’ me and pushin’ me around and I was cryin’, but all the time I was laughin’ to myself. When they stuck the needle in my arm for the blood test I passed out, and when I came to they were kicking me into the wall. Then they made everybody take off their pants, and I did, and this sergeant says, “Oh my God, put those back on! You fucking swine you!” Then they had a urine test and I couldn’t piss, But my poop was just like ooze, man, so I poop in the cup and put it on the counter. I had poop on my hand and my arm. The guy almost puked. I was so proud. I knew I had these chumps beat. The last thing I remember was wakin’ up in the ear test booth and they were sweepin’ up. So I went home and cleaned up.

They took a putty knife to me. I got the street rats out of my hair, ate some good steaks, beans, potatoes, cottage cheese, milk. A couple of days and I was ready to kick ass. And in the mail I got this big juicy 4-F. They’d call dead people before they’d call my ass. But you know the funny thing about it? I’d make an incredible army man. I’d be a colonel before you knew what hit you, and I’d have the baddest bunch of motherfuckin’ killers you’d ever seen in my platoon. But I just wasn’t into it. I was too busy doin’ my own thing, you know?

Yeah, man, lay off, the Nuge was just doing his own thing!

(Full disclosure: When I was eleven, I thought this was the funniest thing I’d ever heard.)

Below, a preposterous fucking idiot in an Indian headdress plays “The Star Spangled Banner” on his gee-tar for an audience of Neanderthals:
 

 
As ABC News reported, it would appear that Mitt Romney has gotten his campaigning “groove” back, starting with a well-received speech to Michigan Tea partiers last week:

Much of his speech to Tea Party groups here Thursday night was standard stump, but he related two stories about his father and boyhood in Michigan, and another about the Olympics, hosted in the wake of 9/11, that had audience members nodding approvingly– even wiping away tears.

There was only one problem: The tale that had the olds weeping for a Detroit that will never return was a bit of a tall tale, as Mitch Potter relayed in The Star yesterday:

When Mitt Romney regaled a Michigan audience this week with childhood memories of a landmark moment in Detroit history, it was a rare instance of emotional candour.

And, perhaps, an even rarer example of time travel.

Romney recalled he was “probably 4 or something like that” the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile.

“My dad had a job being the grandmaster. They painted Woodward Ave. with gold paint,” Romney told a rapt Tea Party audience in the village of Milford Thursday night, reliving a moment of American industrial glory.The Golden Jubilee described so vividly by Romney was indeed an epic moment in automotive lore. The parade included one of the last public appearances by an elderly Henry Ford.

And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.

He’d have been but a fertilized egg in his mother’s womb at the time, IF he is in fact, even a human being in the first place!

The Tea partiers still want to see Obama’s long form, but why is no one clamoring to see Romney’s birth certificate? Might it be because his papers prove he was created in a robot factory (owned by the Koch brothers, no doubt) and implanted with memories?

 
Next time, the Romney campaign can probably hire a smaller auditorium! We’ve heard Detroit is supposed to be a ghost town, but this is ridiculous.

If a picture paints a thousand words, this short video clip rather nicely sums up the tremendous “enthusiasm gap” problem facing Mitt Romney. In a state where his farther was once a popular governor, I doubt that he was able to fill even 1% of the 65,000 seats in Ford Field.
 

 
Take a look at “Rombo,” the Rick Santorum campaign’s weak effort to counter the heavy, heavy deluge of negative advertising currently seen across the state of Michigan in anticipation of the GOP primaries there on the 28th.

What’s that shitty smelling frothy brown mixture this gun is loaded with, anyway?

Guys! That was just too easy!!!

UPDATE: Operation Hilarity At Daily Kos there’s an effort being organized to keep the Republican clown contest going as long as possible before Mitt Romney is decreed? crowned? this elections sacrificial lamb: If you live in the open primary and caucus states of Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont and Tennessee, all which have contests coming up in the next three weeks—then head out and cast a vote for Rick Santorum. So far the races have been tight, often with razor sharp margins. If Santorum gains “big mo” from wins in these states, it’ll be good for… “the country.” Yeah, that’s right, GOOD FOR AMERICA!
 

 
Thank you kindly, James Daniel Mabe

 
It’s fantastic to see how “the dog story” (or “Crate Gate” as it is becoming known) is beginning to crush Mitt Romney, as well it should. Anyone who would strap a dog to the top of the family car for a TWELVE HOUR road trip has something wrong with them, something wrong in their head, like, say a pathologically severe lack of empathy (apparently a notable psychological trait of the wealthy and privileged, that they just don’t “get it”).

After the dog shit all over the car, Romney pulled over someplace, hosed the car (and the dog) down and drove on with the obviously scared-shitless pooch still atop the car. Emotion-free crisis management or what? Something that is becoming increasingly obvious about Mitt Romney: He’s the calm, cruel father.  The scarier question… is he a high-functioning psychopath?

On the Dogs Against Romney website they decided to embrace the Dan Savage approach:

romney (rom-ney) v. 1. To defecate in terror.

Of all places, Fox News has brought up this story repeatedly. Even the white supremacist crowd at Stormfront are hating on Romney for this one. Cruelty to animals will even piss off neo-Nazis!

And yesterday, at the Westminster Dog Show in New York, dog lovers really let Romney have it. From Boston.com:

A protest outside the Westminster dog show aimed at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney drew about a dozen demonstrators Tuesday, plus a few pooches.

The half-hour lunchtime demonstration in front of Madison Square Garden took issue with Romney’s oft-told story of traveling with his Irish setter, Seamus, on a family vacation in 1983. Romney has said he put the dog inside a crate and strapped it to the roof rack for a 12-hour drive from Boston to Canada.

Protest spokeswoman Kitty Hendrix said the Dogs Against Romney website that organized the demonstration has about 25,000 members. The protesters held signs that said “Mitt is Mean’’ and “Dogs Aren’t Luggage’’ and “I Ride Inside.’’

One of the protesters, Al Alvarez, who picketed with his pit bull, Petey, said “I think Romney’s attitude toward dogs was indicative of his attitude toward the most vulnerable in our society.”

I’m inclined to agree. As someone who owns and spoils two tiny mutts rotten, I would never vote for a weirdo who thought it was okay to strap a defenseless dog to the top of their car for TWELVE HOURS. He’s either an idiot, a sociopath or BOTH. Fuck Mitt Romney. This is the sole piece of information I would need to make up my mind about how unfit this asshole is to be POTUS. Lisa Peterson, the spokeswoman for the American Kennel Club got in a wonderful dig at Mittens yesterday:

“The AKC promotes responsible dog ownership. Putting a dog in a crate for car travel is the first step toward responsible dog ownership,’’ she said. “The second step would be to put that crate in a car.’’

 
Mitt Romney gets his message out.
 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Newt skullfucks Mitt Romney (and Capitalism itself)

Mitt Romney: Disgusting human being

 
Via Democratic Underground