Sarah Palin Ready To Help….

…. screw up the Republican Party if they cannot decide on a nominee during their August convention in Tampa, Florida. A brokered convention? That’s President Obama’s and the rest of the Democrat Party’s wet dream/ Sarah Palin as a nominee?  the only votes that she would receive would be coming from her family/extended family members as well as a few from the morons who visit such sites as RedState.com and FreeRepublic.com. 

    Palin's Fox Business interview...

“If one of the nominees, one of the GOPers, doesn’t get enough delegates, it could go to a brokered convention,” said Fox Business Network’s Eric Bolling in an interview. “If it does get to that, and someone said, ‘Governor, would you be interested,’ would you be interested?”

“For one, I think that it could get to that. … If it had to be closed up today, the whole nominating process, then we could be looking at a brokered convention. … Nobody is quite there yet, so I think that months from now, if that is the case, all bets are off as to who it will be, willing to offer up themselves up in their name in service to their country.”

“I would do whatever I could to help,” she added, her voice rising.

    The half-wit half-term governor still thinks that she can become a half-term President of the United States. I sometime wonder just exactly what it is that her cooks are putting into her meals when they cook them.

   From Hunter at Daily Kos

I want this. No—I demand it. A brokered convention, mass chaos, but then America's Favorite Quitter leaps into the spotlight, ready to do her civic duty, ringin' those bells and warning, um, whoever needs warning. We've had Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain, and Rick Perry (Lord, that was a fun one), and professional historian Newt Three-Wives, and now even poor Rick Santorum is getting a turn in the spotlight, but none of them can hold a candle to Palin. She combines Bachmann's conspiracy-theorizing, Cain's penchant for the bizarre, Rick Perry's eloquence and Newt's oblivious sense of personal entitlement.

The only possibility for a "brokered" convention is if the not-Romney's hang on. Specifically, Rick Santorum, at this point. The odds are still pretty remote that it'd really come to that. The odds are even more remote that some new GOP savior (like Palin! Sarah Palin!) would waltz in and be officially appointed Republican Savior in Chief, but hey—stranger things have happened. Dare we dream?

Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin,Republican Party,2012 Elections,Current Events,An American Gothic,Politics,Political Humor

Mitt Romney: Purchased By The Lobbyist

 Mitt Romney is the lobbyists' candidate

by Hunter for Daily Kos    Wed Feb 15, 2012     Original

When you think of Mitt Romney, you probably think of a tall, robotic fellow with no discernible strong beliefs or stances (at least, none that can survive longer than a week at a time). That's terribly unfair, and you should be ashamed for thinking it. He may have started out as an empty husk devoid of strong personal beliefs, but thanks to a crack team of industry insiders, he now is quite filled with opinions. Coincidentally, they happen to be the opinions of an army of top lobbyists in Washington, and the companies they lobby for. Funny how that works.

[Mitt Romney's] kitchen cabinet includes some of the most prominent Republican lobbyists in Washington, including Charles R. Black Jr., the chairman of Prime Policy Group and a lobbyist for Walmart and AT&T; Wayne L. Berman, who is chairman of Ogilvy Government Relations and represents Pfizer, the drug manufacturer; and Vin Weber, the managing partner for Clark & Weinstock. [...]

Other lobbyists serve on one of Mr. Romney’s policy advisory teams, have hosted fund-raisers for his campaign or have joined the many influential Republicans whose endorsements Mr. Romney’s campaign has hailed.

Want to know what Mitt Romney's true policies are? Well, you should have attended Mitt Romney's $10,000-and-up policy round table, where industry lobbyists led "discussions" on what his policies towards those industries should be:

Mr. Romney’s campaign held an elaborate “policy round table” fund-raiser at a Washington hotel, featuring panel discussions run by lobbyists and former cabinet officials or members of Congress.

James Talent, a former senator who runs the lobbying and public affairs firm Mercury Public Affairs, led a panel on infrastructure, according to an invitation. William Hansen, a former deputy secretary of education who is president of the lobbying firm Chartwell Education Group, led the education panel.

Wow. I can't imagine why anyone would be cynical about American politics these days, can you?

The entertaining thing about this story is just how many large companies are represented. Among those specifically mentioned (and kudos to the three reporters for linking the lobbyists with actual clients, which is rather important information for readers) are Walmart, AT&T, Pfizer (drugs), Microsoft, Altria (tobacco), General Dynamics, Dominion (power), Barclays (finance), Allegheny (steel) and Peabody Energy (coal). Lobbyists are cutting the checks; lobbyists are bundling other people's checks; lobbyists are holding the panel discussions about how the candidate can best serve the specific industries they represent; lobbyists make up the inner circle of "policy makers," advising the candidate as to what his own core positions should be.

As for the candidate himself, he's almost irrelevant at this point. You might as well nominate a bunny named Mr. Buttons: If you surround it with the exact same lobbyist-advisors, you'll end up with the exact same policies. Sigh, if only we could teach that bunny to hold a pen—but for now we'll have to settle for our current crop of Republican candidates, all of whom have near-identical policy prescriptions, all of which favor the exact same subset of people and the exact same handful of industries. Go figure.

I've given up on the notion that we can keep lobbyists from capturing our politics. I've also given up on the notion that we can prevent interests like the oil sector or our current handful of top financial companies from tailoring the American government specifically to serve their needs. Want more profits? Want less environmental protections? Want to crush some emerging industry that threatens to make yours less profitable? Just buy a few congressman, or a senator, or a president. At a few million here and there, it's cheaper than advertising, and the results are far more secure.

So I'm in the Bill Maher camp on this one. Lobbyists and industries want to buy our politicians? Fine, I give up, let them. Just pass a law saying the candidate has to wear those corporate logos on their jackets whenever they appear on the campaign trail or when they are in office. The more money is contributed, the bigger the logo has to be. Top presidential candidates will look like military dictators-in-training, with badges and medals and ribbons sticking out from them in every direction, and just from looking at them we'll be able to tell who they serve, and in what proportions. That would certainly be more educational than any rhetoric coming from the candidates themselves.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,Political Corruption,Republican Party,Wall Street,Current Events,An American Gothic,Charles R. Black Jr.,Wal-Mart,ATT,Microsoft