Pretend President Romney heads to Louisiana to tour Isaac damage

As of late Thursday night, nearly three-quarters of New Orleans had no power. Given that Louisiana is still in the middle of its recovery effort from Hurricane Isaac and that Mitt Romney has no role to play whatsoever in that effort, this seems like an odd and self-centered distraction:

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will head to Louisiana to tour damage from Hurricane Isaac.

Romney has scheduled a last-minute visit Friday to Lafitte, La., where he will tour damage with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. The storm canceled the first day of Romney's Republican convention, and his campaign has been considering a visit for several days. [...]

In Louisiana, Romney will thank emergency first responders for their work.

As he thanks those first responders, I hope Mr. Romney will reconsider his words from just two months ago, when he mocked President Obama for seeking more funding for first responders.

"He [President Obama] says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers," Romney said on June 8 of this year. "Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people."

Maybe with his tour today, Romney will realize just how wrong he was to mock President Obama for wanting to hire more first responders. But of course this really isn't about them, it's about the photo-op, and while Romney will make a big show of thanking them for their service, all the thank yous in the world don't make up for a pink slip. And if Mitt Romney gets his way in November, that's exactly what a lot of the people he sees today will get.

Joe Garcia takes big lead against criminal congressman

Joe Garcia. The one on the right.

Beneson Strategy Group for Joe Garcia (D). 8/20-22. Registered voters. No trend lines.

David Rivera (R) 40
Joe Garcia (D) 49

What's amazing about this poll is that the numbers suggest that voters aren't aware of Rep. David Rivera's incompetently criminal behavior. Garcia's numbers track Pres. Barack Obama's 50-40, and a generic ballot generated a 45-37 advantage for the Democratic candidate.

The caution: Obama and John McCain split this district 50-50 in 2008, so the sample might be optimistic. But worst-case scenario, it's a tied game. And that's before the DCCC and Garcia campaign start blasting the airwaves with news about Rivera's ethics.

We won't bump the Orange One without winning this district, so give $3 to get us one seat closer to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and one good Democrat closer to a real progressive majority.

The Love-Me-Mitt Doll!

Remember to follow @DailyKosComics !

Deep thoughts from Mitt Romney

He's trying to sound human, he really, really is:

Romney in Louisiana, per pool: "Did the water come from the sky, or the rivers, or the ocean?"
' @elisefoley via TweetDeck Yes. Yes it did.

Giving him a bit of credit, he's probably just trying to catch people in insurance loopholes. Sky-water, land-water and sea-water are three separate clauses. Oh well, I hope at least Mini-Mitt is doing better today at bonding with the commoners ...

Ryan was just asked about abortion. Answer dealt with voter ID.
' @ZekeJMiller via Tweetbot for iOS
Sigh.

We've still got over two months to go, huh? I think I'm gonna need more aspirin.

Ann Romney is a terrible person, part eleventy billion

Good freakin' God, woman, just stop:

BRIAN KILMEADE (HOST): The report is after Mitt Romney lost to John McCain for the nomination, he got an offer from a fund, $30 million a year, go back into the financial world, have all types of success. How hard was the decision not to do that?

ROMNEY: Well, we're used to kind of passing offers up like that. For us, our life is not about making money. We've been very blessed financially. Our life is now about giving back. I always trust that Mitt can always make another dollar. Poor guy, he took no pay when he did the Olympics for three years and no pay when he was governor for four years.

Of course their life isn't about making money. They already have all the money! Europe isn't big enough to store all the money they have; that's why they have to spread it around to various exotic islands too.

This, from the same woman who said:

We can be poor in spirit, and I don't even consider myself wealthy, which is an interesting thing, it can be here today and gone tomorrow.

Sure, that money may evaporate tomorrow'but then, Mitt's used to getting offers for $30 million-a-year jobs, so it's not like they need to worry. They did all their worrying back when they were a young couple, just starting out, really struggling in those "not easy years," as Ann said, trying to make ends meet with nothing more than the investment portfolio Mitt's daddy gave him, "living on the edge, not entertaining." Oh, the hardship!

This, from the woman who, when explaining how warm and fuzzy it makes her feel to donate her required tithing to her church, said:

I know this money is an indication of how much we trust God and love the principle of sacrifice. And it teaches us not to be too, too tied to the things of the world. And it is a very good reminder of how blessed we really are, and most of those blessings do not come from a financial source, but from the power above.

Guess God really loves them so much to keep sending them those offers of $30 million-a-year salaries they keep turning down because, hey, another one will come along tomorrow. But at least it's taught them not to be tied to things of the world'like Ann's couple of Cadillacs, or their vacation homes in every swing state in America, or the car elevator in their tear-down beach mansion. Does this woman ever listen to herself? EVER?

I'm guessing not, because this really takes the cake:

Poor guy, he took no pay when he did the Olympics for three years and no pay when he was governor for four years.

Poor guy? Poor guy? Poor guy who's constantly turning down tens of millions of dollars? Poor guy who cries when he donates money to his church? Poor guy?

Stay tuned for part eleventy billion and one ...

Ann Romney thinks lady voters are pretty dumb most of the time

This woman is truly awful:

I'm hearing from so many women that may not have considered voting for a Republican before, but said, "It's time for the grown-up to come, the man that's going to take this seriously, that's going to take the future of our children very, very seriously."

It's funny how anonymous women keep reporting things to Ann (that she can then report to Mitt so he doesn't have to talk to women directly) that seem, at best, unlikely, and more likely, pulled straight out of her pampered two-Cadillac-driving ass. These women keep telling Ann things that they're not telling anyone else'certainly not the pollsters out there who keep reporting back that women like President Obama much more than they like Mitt Romney; that women trust Obama more than they trust Romney; and that Romney kinda sorta scares the daylights out of them.

But Ann's not talking to those women. She's talking to the ones who think President Obama's not a "grown up"'which, according to my Dogwhistle-to-English dictionary, is a more subtle way of calling a grown black man "boy"'and that the not-grown-up Obama believes the "future of our children" is some laughing matter. If only the pollsters could find those women, Romney's chances might look better than they do.

As Mitt Romney's chief adviser on lady things, she's been reporting back to Mitt on what lady voters supposedly tell her they think, and she's so thrilled and delighted that he listens to her. But Ann doesn't really know what she's talking about, because when the Romney campaign is asked for comment on, say, women'well, gosh, they just cannot find a single "appropriate spokesperson." Suddenly, the nation's foremost confidante of lady voters doesn't have a thing to say.

But here's where Ann once again reveals herself to be just as mean and awkward and insulting as her husband:

I very much believe, Candy, that it's going to be an economic election, and I think a lot of women may be voting, this cycle around, in a different way than they usually are: that is, thinking about the economy, thinking about their own jobs, thinking about their husbands' jobs, but also thinking about the future.

Usually, we lady voters try not to hurt our ladybrains with serious things like the economy or our jobs or the future. We're far more likely to vote based on where we are in our menstrual cycle or whether we're having a good hair day. Sometimes, we just flip a stiletto: heel facing north, we vote Democrat; heel facing south, we vote Republican. After we find a big strong "grown up" man to tell us which way is which because you know how we ladies are with directions.

101 of Mitt Romney's loudest convention speech lip smacks

Dear Mitt: Please, please, please. Please, stop smacking your lips so much.

Seriously, though, congratulations to Mr. Romney for becoming the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. And for winning the first annual Daily Kos lip smacking world championship at the very same time. What an honor.

p.s.: Every single one of the 101 lip smacks in this video is unique.

Reid calls out hypocrisy of Romney's Louisiana tour

Harry Reid While Pretend-President Romney was touring Louisiana, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid reminded reporters of the profound hypocrisy of that trip.

'It is the height of hypocrisy for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to make a pretense of showing sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Isaac when their policies would leave those affected by this disaster stranded and on their own,' Reid said.

'If Paul Ryan and his fellow House Republicans had succeeded in blocking disaster relief last fall, there would have been no aid for the victims of Isaac today. And Paul Ryan's budget would gut disaster funding, making it much harder to get aid to our fellow Americans in their time of need,' he added.

All of which is perfectly true. Last year, House Republicans created yet another crisis over the budget, with emergency disaster funding as their hostage. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was the ringleader in that debacle, backed up by his loyal budget committee chair, Paul Ryan.

More to the point, Ryan's major culpability is in his efforts to gut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency and FEMA in his budgets. Even more to the point of this disaster, he tried to abolish a new fund agreed to by Congress and President Obama that is providing relief in this disaster. He was overruled by his leadership.

Ryan's House leadership was smart enough to recognize that gutting emergency funding ended up being a disaster for them and shut Ryan down. Mitt Romney (the guy who turned rising ocean levels into a joke in his acceptance speech) seems to be fine with the idea.

Romney campaign struggles to move past the Clint Eastwood debacle, while everyone else just laughs

The smiles are a little more strained this morning. It's a toss-up whether the funnier part of Clint Eastwood's speech last night was the part where he mumbled at an empty chair, or the part where the Romney campaign bumped its well-produced, reasonably effective bio video off network television to show Clint mumbling. But whichever it is, here we are the next morning, still laughing about it. Twitter was, of course, a steady stream of mockery, and still is. But just as entertaining was watching traditional media types who feel they need to be dignified and neutral trying to contain their shock and come up with ways to describe what they'd just seen.

Brian Williams and Andrea Mitchell were a delight, of course. Then there's New York Times' Michael Shear and Michael Barbaro:

The actor, in one of the more unusual moments in Republican convention history, offered a speech in which he pretended to have an off-color conversation with an imaginary President Obama sitting by his side in an empty chair.

That is actually a masterful sentence and, no joke, I can see why you might need two writers to get to it. Conveying how bizarre Eastwood's appearance was to people who didn't see it is a tall order.

Then you've got the responses from the political world, with Obama's campaign practically dancing in glee and Romney's campaign struggling to be upbeat about the whole thing'"His ad libbing was a break from all the political speeches, and the crowd enjoyed it" is the best they could do, really? Obama campaign press secretary Ben LaBolt said he was "Referring all questions on this to Salvador Dali." David Axelrod looked at it as a strategist:

'I'm sure in retrospect they would have rather run the film [bio video on Romney] than the filmmaker, but that is their business and we will handle ours a different way,' said Axelrod, referring to the Democratic convention.

Ann Romney, too, admitted her husband's campaign might have been better off showing the video or really almost anything else:

I think it's important that people do see that side of Mitt. We appreciated Clint's support, of course, but it's so hard to really get a sense of who this person is in such a short amount of time, but yes, I do wish more people had seen those touching moments.

In short, Clint Eastwood put David Axelrod and Ann Romney on the same page, only the latter had to strain for gratitude with lines like "He's a unique guy, and he did a unique thing last night" while the former could just laugh about it. Ann apparently had a little more trouble being poised and diplomatic in the moment, though:

Watching Ann Romney during the Eastwood address, according to NPR political correspondent Mara Liasson, was like watching 'the mother of the bride listening to a drunken wedding toast.'

I don't know about you, but that thought doesn't make me stop laughing.

Federal judge restores three days of early voting in Ohio

Rick Hasen says the federal district court decision today restoring Ohio's early voting in the three days right before the November election may not survive an appeal to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. For now, however, there is a preliminary injunction in Obama for America v. Husted forbidding the state from eliminating those three days. The meat of the decision:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that in-person early voting IS RESTORED on the three days immediately preceding Election Day for all eligible Ohio voters. And specifically, for the purposes of the 2012 General Election, this Order restores in-person early voting to all eligible Ohio voters on Saturday, November 3, 2012; Sunday, November 4, 2012; and Monday, November 5, 2012. This Court anticipates that Defendant Secretary of State will direct all Ohio elections boards to maintain a specific, consistent schedule on those three days, in keeping with his earlier directive that only by doing so can he ensure that Ohio's election process is 'uniform, accessible for all, fair, and secure.'

In 2004, long queues at the polling stations in urban centers may have turned away as many as 174,000 voters, according to one report. Consequently, the state established 35 days of early voting for the 2008 election. It worked. Turnout was substantially increased. Especially on the three early-voting days right before the election and particularly on that Sunday. Tens of thousands of voters turned out that day, many of them African Americans on their way home from church.

Ohio Republicans hated the results, which included Barack Obama's win and the Democratic capture of two additional congressional seats from the GOP. Consequently, the GOP-dominated legislature decided to cut back on the number of days available for early voting. The weekend and Monday before the election were their chief target for the ax. The only exceptions were Ohioans covered by the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act.

One problem, the court ruled, was that the details of the change don't guarantee that UOCAVA citizens would actually get a chance to vote. Hasen notes that the court's ruling stated that removing early voting privileges for all voters except (possibly) the UOCAVA voters violated the Constitution's equal protection clause:

From the onset of this litigation, Defendants have pointed to special concerns for the military'concerns all parties share'and the military's need to maintain additional access to in-person early voting. But for UOCAVA voters, what is left is, potentially, one day: Monday. Defendants have presented no evidence to sustain the inference that in-person early voting on Monday'one day'will burden county boards of elections to the extent that the injury to Plaintiffs is justified. Moreover, Defendants undercut the virtue of their support of military voters by failing to protect any significant measure of UOCAVA voting. Unless a serviceperson is 'suddenly deployed' at exactly the right time'enabling in-person voting on Monday'he or she will likely be unable to vote, depending on the local elections board's 'discretion.' That the State cannot justify its interest in foreclosing Ohio voters for one day emphasizes the arbitrary nature of its action.

Finally, this Court notes that restoring in-person early voting to all Ohio voters through the Monday before Election Day does not deprive UOCAVA voters from early voting. Instead, and more importantly, it places all Ohio voters on equal standing.

If the case is appealed, Hasen believes that the bitter division over voting issues in the Sixth Circuit Court where it would be heard makes predicting the probable outcome no  simple matter:

There are reasonable arguments over whether the Court picked the right level of scrutiny to apply, and whether the judge applied the scrutiny he said he was applying. Further, there is a major debate about what Bush v. Gore requires, and the Sixth Circuit may have to go en banc to resolve the meaning of the case: does it in fact require (1) equal treatment of all voters in terms of opportunities to vote; and (2) a kind of 'non-retrogression' principle, whereby the state may not remove a method of easier voting once it has used it in a past election?

For the moment, however, Ohioans get to chalk up a victory in a week that also saw victories for voters in Texas and Florida.

Romney aides: We were surprised by Eastwood. But pleasantly, because everything else was so boring.

Rumor has it that Mitt loved Clint's empty chair routine so much that now he wants to do it in the Caymans During Mitt Romney's speech last night, the Romney campaign sent out a statement tsk-tsking reporters asking questions about Clint Eastwood's bizarre empty chair routine. "Judging an American icon like Clint Eastwood through a typical political lens doesn't work," the statement read. "His ad libbing was a break from all the political speeches, and the crowd enjoyed it."

But later in the night, one Romney campaign aide admitted to the New York Times that Eastwood's routine wasn't what Romneyland had expected:

One Romney aide said that Mr. Eastwood had been booked months ago and that the expectation was that he would deliver a more standard endorsement, as he did earlier this year.

But another aide said that wasn't a bad thing:

Another aide tried gamely to find an upside, saying that the Eastwood appearance offered a moment of unpredictability in a convention that was otherwise surprise-free.

So, sure, we had no clue what the hell Eastwood was up to. But at least he wasn't boring and political like everyone else!