Nice choice - I only turned on the debate at that exact moment and quickly turned it off right after, lest I lose my dinner all over the carpet. Romney is a prick, (well he's a Mormon so that goes without saying,) but he's and if he gets elected (0% chance) you gotta know the election was rigged. Hell if any Rethuglican gets elected it's been rigged.

HOLY FUCK. I had to watch that clip twice. i couldn't believe it.

That should be the clip that every republican airs to knock Romney out of the running.

"They're doing the work of the free market."

Holy fuck.

My take on the Dem debate. Edwards won. Obama held his ground. Hillary Lost.

http://bp0.blogger.com/_64bsDOKw22g/R4CEPI1-ncI/AAAAAAAAABI/8M6RzoFHJXI/s1600-h/Debate2.jpg

Listening to conservative rhetoric is not unlike getting a cold water enema.

Doug - I am opposed to Romney as you are, but my mother and sisters are Mormons and they are not pricks. Please avoid offensive generalizations in your haste to comment.

Wow, McCain had a brief moment of clarity! Who knew that ol' "maverick" wasn't totally dead, just torrutred into submission by the GOP. I'd still rather vote for the crack whore down the block than any of these SOB's though.

And Mitt Romney talks like a Muppet with about twenty CEO's hands jammed up his butt making his mouth flap about. For that matter, they all kinda resemble Muppets but in a scary "Meet The Feebles" kind of way.

Oh Stewf! If you have close family members in the LDS why on earth are you not a member? I know that you will be made one eventually, by those family or their heirs, but why not save them the trouble?

Seriously, I also have some (more distant) family who are Mormons and they are all very nice people, but being nice doesn't mean anything other than that they are nice.

• Heaven forbid that we make offensive generalizations of people who believe in Elohim.

• Speaking of suits, here is a piece from the past. Jerry Rubin interviewed by Phil Donahue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgeonR275aA

Romney is as much a company man and corporate hack apologist as we'll see, as much as Bush only he is willing to play the part more forcefully because, unlike Shrub, he can string sentences together. I'd say he'd be more damaging than Shrub and Vader.

McCain has a few decent bones in him, but he has sold his soul and mostly panders. Still, he'd be better than that sanctimonious Father Knows Best robot dude.

I realize that onegoodmove is where many of us gratefully come to laugh at and vent at right-wing idiocies, but don't dis Mormons as you have, Doug. It backfires, it's bigoted, and it's also untrue.

And the Democrats aren't suits? I don't follow your logic.

In my opinion, the mormon cult does not deserve polite respect. Anyone who holds this set of beliefs has something seriously wrong upstairs and should be kept out of the oval office.

Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon into English by divine inspiration from golden plates???

Garden of Eden in Missouri??

over a thousand years of the millennium, the world is reigned in two places, Jerusalem and Missouri??

Temple garments ?????? http://www.mormon-underwear.com/

Come on, such beliefs do not deserve polite respect. They are worthy of ridicule.

I like Hitchens' take on Romney: "[his] family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership of the mad cult invented by the convicted fraud Joseph Smith."

http://www.slate.com/id/2178568/

BTW, I hold the same opinion about "traditional" Christianity.

The cult of Mormonism doesn't deserve respect, but Mormons as individuals don't deserve bigotry - just as atheist individuals don't deserve offensive generalizations. Being a Mormon or a Christian as a disqualification for the oval office? Holding someone responsible for their beliefs is fair game, but practically speaking, it doesn't leave a lot of choices.

As for Mitt's horseshit, "They're doing the work of the free market..." - what a lying douchebag! Bush's drug plan, written by Pharma's lobbyists and pushed through with Pharma's money, guaranteed that they wouldn't have to do the work of the free market.

As a certain Mr Hicks might have said

"Because he's a company-man to the bitter fucking end!"

My co-writer at the blog, Terry McKenna, is a Republican (cost me a deal with BlogAds, Norm -- the MyDD guy demanded I axe the GOP guy or no dice, and I said no dice). There are, and have been, caring, intelligent, sensible elephants out there (McCain, in my opinion, is not one of them). One thing that's baffled me is that the GOP hasn't bowed to public opinion and brought a guy like Chuck the Phenomenologist into the ring (sorry, bad play on the name Hagel or Hegel). Those of us from NY will remember distinguished Republicans like Jake Javits and even Rocky, who created more FDR-style social programs than many of our Dem governors, before he died in the saddle (Rockefeller died in flagrante delicto with a cute young female aide).

I wonder if "free market" Romney will forgo those billions of dollars in subsidies, tax breaks, research dollars and tariff protections that the drug companies get?

We can't refer to the philosophy as "fascist" anymore because the term has become to loaded. The original defining characteristics of fascism included fervent nationalism, fear of liberalism and enthusiastic corporatism. You see all those traits passionately embraced on that stage.

Combine these with the accelerated tendencies towards authoritarianism, paranoia, torture, domestic surveillance, ethnic division and xenophobia and you recognize something very much like the Old Time Religion as it was practiced in the 1930's

Today the label has changed and we no longer use the "F" word, but it quacks like a duck even if it no longer goose-steps and we know where this path leads.

fp

If corporations rip off the government, it's the free market at work. If individuals do it, they're welfare queens.

"enthusiastic corporatism."

The corporatism practiced is fascism is very different from our corporatism. Our corporations influence the political system indivudually and in competition with one another, whereas in European corporatism (fascist and non-fascist), the "corporations" are large "peak organizations" where employers and workers meet to negotiate terms and wages colletively. In fascism these organizations are obligatory and are designed to control and suppress labor independence, whereas in democratic countriesthe aim is fairness for all parties.

The word that always came to my mind in connection with Romney is "tool". But "suit" is good too.

He's a creepy Stepford version of Ward Cleaver.

And I agree with FDP. Fascism has come to America, wrapped in religion and the flag. It does not wear a brown shirt... it is dressed in a business suit.

Stew, your appeal for civility towards Mormons is to invite more intellectually-dressed rationalizations in service of bigotry. Sad but true. It's time to take stock because that's the level of metastasized "discourse" we're at, which is setting up a dangerous pattern masquerading as rationalism (it's really a new low in emotionalism). Here's the rules: All religious people are essentially schizophrenic, as Bill Maher would have it and that's about as nice as it's going to get. The non-prick Mormon civilian, as in all wars, will be the first casualties, so forget about it. The war is on.

Having said that, Romney IS pretty embarrassing.

Did Romney just stick up for the pharmaceutical companies? Guess we know who is bank rolling him if he gets the nomination.

Big Pharmy is a business. It's objective is to make as much cash as possible.

It takes someone like Mitt Romney to make Bill Maher's rants on "western medicine" make sense.