This is the final 31 minutes or so of the Boca Raton, FL, fundraiser, surreptitiously recorded on May 17, 2012, released September 17 an 18. Thanks to Mother Jones and David Corn for their steadfast work on this story. Part I is here.
Last night, in Mitt’s hastily arranged press conference–where for the first time ever, I noticed his hair looking quite mussed–he tried to leave people w/the impression that his already-notorious words disparaging Obama voters may have been taken out context. He weirdly, to me, sounded as if he were begging David Corn for mercy. It put him very much in the position of the supplicant. And that’s where he started today, with Corn and Mother Jones going with revelation of his two-faced attitude about Israelis and Palestinians.
Now, however, Corn has just posted this:
He claimed his comments where merely a “snippet” and not the “full response.” That was not true; his comments were shown in full. He added, “I hope the person who has the video would put out the full material.” Romney is not the only one who has called for the release of the full 49-minute video. And we’re more than happy to oblige. The complete video demonstrates that Romney was not snippetized and that he was captured raw and uncut. Here it is, in two parts:
I’ll also get their video up soon on this site. For now, please use the link above Here’s Part I:
For Part II of the video, please visit this separate post of mine.
As if Mitt’s 47% remarks weren’t already totally revealing of his disdain for people less well-off than himself, another part of the same leaked tape includes this doozy, where he claims he wishes he’d been born a Latino.
What does Mitt mean–that had he been born Latino, he could somehow have taken advantage of affirmative action? There are some other lines that slay me , referring to his father, whose own father had chosen to leave the United States so he could continue practicing polygamous Mormonism,
“Had he been born of Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico.. . . .it would be helpful to be Latino.”
I scarcely know how to write about such idiotic words.
Late Monday Update: This link is to the entire Mother Jones piece by David Corn that unearthed the video of Mitt Romney disparaging Obama voters. Corn’s piece is excellent reporting, and goes well beyond the video that has so quickly become notorious, and emblematic of Romney’s disdain for close to half the country.
—
This afternoon Taegan Goddard’s PoliticalWire.com has posted shocking audio and video of Mitt Romney, at a fundraiser, characterizing Obama voters in a most denigrating way. The whole clip runs about 2 minutes. Here’s an excerpt quote from PoliticalWire.com:
Said Romney: “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”
He adds: “My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
Here’s the clip:
This feels like a kind of bombshell.
Sometime after it appeared on politicalwire.com, the Obama Campaign sent out these remarks:
STATEMENT ON ROMNEY’S BEHIND CLOSED DOORS REMARKS
CHICAGO – “It’s shocking that a candidate for President of the United States would go behind closed doors and declare to a group of wealthy donors that half the American people view themselves as ‘victims,’ entitled to handouts, and are unwilling to take ‘personal responsibility’ for their lives. It’s hard to serve as president for all Americans when you’ve disdainfully written off half the nation.” – Jim Messina, Obama for America Campaign Manager
Fascinating Q&A with novelist Richard Ford in the “Books” section of the Boston Globe over the weekend. I was mesmerized by his latest novel Canada, which I blogged about several times (1, 2, and 3) while caught up in the reading of it last May and June. These are two of the most interesting bits from Ford’s discussion with Amy Sutherland:
BOOKS: Are you a slow or fast reader?
FORD: Slow. I’m dyslexic. If you can reconcile yourself to not being able to burn through books, which you shouldn’t any way, you can slow the whole process down. Then, because of my disability, there is more for me in imaginative literature than there is for other people. . .
BOOKS: What was your reading like before this?
FORD: Dutiful. Remember when you were kid in school and the teacher was always telling you there’s more here than you see. There’s a line of Henry Moore’s, “Never think of the surface except as an extension of a volume.” I was thinking there was a volume but where the hell was it?
My belated #FridayReads is for the new book, Rust Belt Chic: A Cleveland Anthology, edited by Richey Piiparinen and Anne Trubek, to which I’ve contributed “Remembering Mr. Stress, Live at the Euclid Tavern,” an essay on the bluesman I followed devotedly for the many years I lived in Cleveland. I just got my own copy of the book yesterday and have begun reading my way through the more than 50 other entries in it, with pieces on legendary rock n’ roll scribe Jane Scott, poet hart Crane, graphic novelist Harvey Pekar, urban decay and renewal, and many other topics. It’s a thrill to be in this book with so many other terrific writers.
Before Rust Belt Chic‘s arrival in the mail yesterday I was reading one of John D. MacDoanld’s gripping Travis McGee novel’s The Scarlet Ruse, which I’m continuing to enjoy this weekend. If you too enjoy MacDonald’s work, please note I’ve blogged about his novels a number of times, and I learned this week there’s a Facebook group page in his honor, which I invite you to check out and consider joining. It’s always fun to have such great nonfiction and fiction on the boil.
Surprisingly candid put downs of the Romney campaign and their day of campaigning on Friday, from named and unnamed Repubs in this Washington Post article headlined “Romney’s Campaign Day Lacks Focus,” by Philip Rucker and Karen Tumulty:
“Coming at a moment of international crisis, as U.S. embassies in the Middle East were being beset by anti-American protests, the interview [on “Live” with Kelly Ripa] brought shudders from some Republicans who fear the Romney campaign is running aground in its final stretch.
‘Deaver is turning over in his grave,’ said one prominent Republican strategist, referring to Michael Deaver, the late image-maker for Ronald Reagan. The Republican asked for anonymity, because he did not want to go public with his growing despair over the GOP ticket’s prospects for winning this fall.
‘I can’t get my head around this,’ said John Weaver, a former strategist on Republican John McCain’s presidential campaigns. ‘What is their message? What is going on here?'”
Helpful article by Dan Froomkin at HuffPost on the Pennsyvlania Supreme Court hearing today, about the state’s voter ID law. With a deadlocked head count of three Repubs and three DEMS, the fear has been that a tie vote will allow a lower court ruling to stand that upheld the onerous law (Froomkin points out that the lower court decision stood on racist precedent from the 19th century). However, he also reports there may be some hope for a bipartisan, fair judgment:
There are some hints that at least one Republican justice could break ranks. At the hearing, Justice Thomas Saylor, a Republican, asked the state’s lawyers whether the law guarantees every registered voter can cast a vote — a question they could only answer in the negative. The Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board raised the possibility that Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ron Castille might ultimately side with the Democrats on this issue.
“[W]hile his brethren might rule along party lines, Castille has a history of flexing his independence,” the paper wrote. “Just eight months ago, it was Castille who distinguished himself in an otherwise partisan 4-3 ruling when the state Supreme Court threw out a redistricted legislative map designed to benefit the GOP.”
I’ve picked up and shared Froomkin‘s excellent reporting before. As I wrote about him in July,
“Dan has long been one of my favorite news aggregators and commentators. I first got to know his work in the early 2000s, when he wrote and edited the must-read, “White House Watch” at washingtonpost.com. WHW was a daily news digest entirely made up of news about the Bush White House, with Dan’s pithy commentaries about the stories he selected for his readers. I used to wait avidly each day until mid-morning when each new column would appear online. If I had a lunch date I had run to, I would print out the pages and take them with me on the subway. This is Dan’s awesome archive of all the WHW columns he did, a valuable record for history in this age of amnesia–plus all the live chats he did–before his employment at the Post was ended in January 2009, one of the worst decisions, among many bad calls, that that newspaper made in the 2000s.
From the lede of Dan’s story today:
“The legal team fighting Pennsylvania’s restrictive new voter identification law asked the state’s Supreme Court on Thursday to at least postpone until after November the measure that could disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters, many of them minorities. ‘There’s too little time, there’s too many people affected and there’s no place in the statute that guarantees that qualified electors can get the ID they need to vote,’ said David P. Gersch, representing the American Civil Liberties Union and other public interest groups.”