“I vetoed any bill that was in favor of choice”


Tomorrow, one long national nightmare, the election season, ends…and possibly another one begins. Not that I would want to influence your vote or anything*, but here’s an unrehearsed, unstaged moment from Mitt Romney.

How anyone can sit there in all seriousness and babble about prophecies of Jesus’ return and be taken seriously as a candidate is a mystery. No, Jesus is not going to reappear, split the Mount of Olives as a super-duper magic trick, and then rule the planet from Jerusalem and Missouri.

And then he declares that he is more conservative and authoritarian than the Mormon church requires, as a point of pride. It’s not enough for him to be bugfuck nuts, he’s got to proudly gloat that he buggers worms.

Please don’t elect this guy. Elect the other militaristic evangelical Christian who’s a little less demented.

*Heh. Right. Be assured, if you’re voting for anyone with Republican or Libertarian affiliations, you have my withering contempt. Which will dissuade you, right?

Comments

  1. F says

    Vote against the evil doom. The right is so very vomit-inducing, but I wish their power were limited to that.

  2. Ogvorbis: broken and cynical says

    Be assured, if you’re voting for anyone with Republican or Libertarian affiliations, you have my withering contempt. Which will dissuade you, right?

    WE ARE THE HIVEMIND. WE OBEY.

    Wait a minute. Why try to influence my vote? I thought we were all your sockpuppets?

    ==========

    It scares the fuck out of me to have someone in the White House, his hand figuratively on ‘the red button’ and able to unleash thermonuclear war when that person believes that biblical Armageddon is not only inevitable, but is a Good Thing! All this talk about supporting Israel from the radical religious right is just a hope that Israel unleashes a war that engulfs the Middle East so that 1% of 1% will get to live to see Jesus return.

    Excuse me now. I’m going to go curl up in a ball and whimper. For many reasons. But this asshat is definitely one of them.

  3. says

    Just out of curiosity, what is wrong with the Libertarian party? I’m Canadian so I thought the Libertarians were a pretty liberal and personal freedoms minded party.

  4. says

    Oggie:

    It scares the fuck out of me to have someone in the White House, his hand figuratively on ‘the red button’ and able to unleash thermonuclear war when that person believes that biblical Armageddon is not only inevitable, but is a Good Thing! All this talk about supporting Israel from the radical religious right is just a hope that Israel unleashes a war that engulfs the Middle East so that 1% of 1% will get to live to see Jesus return.

    Fuck, I wasn’t thinking about Romney like that– now I’m scared shitless, too. I had been worried about how far back women’s/ LGBT/ worker’s rights would be pushed with a Romney/Ryan administration. Now there’s a whole ‘nother layer to worry about.

    Like a rotten onion.

  5. Beatrice, anti-imperialist anti-racist Islamophobiaphobic leftist says

    I’m Canadian so I thought the Libertarians were a pretty liberal and personal freedoms minded party.

    I’m not American either, but I’ve taken a look at the libertarian platform. Carefully read the economic liberty part: link

  6. glodson says

    I live in Texas. My vote for president, since I cannot vote Republican having reached the Age of Reason, won’t count. Thanks Electoral College!

  7. otrame says

    An acquaintance asked me how I felt about a Romney yard sign next door. I shrugged, and said “When I see those signs I know they’re either stupid or racist or both. Unless it’s in front of a mansion. Then I know they are either greedy or racist or both.”

  8. nowimnothing says

    @Beatrice, You are thinking about the social policy wing of the libertarian party, which really is not too bad. Pro-choice, pro-homosexual marriage, anti-drug war, anti-war in general. But their economic policy wing would ensure a plutocracy.

  9. Amphiox says

    re @4;

    US Libertarians are liberal in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy.

    On the other hand, if there are any US libertarians listening out there, by all means, go and vote for the libertarian candidate.

  10. anteprepro says

    Oh nichrome. Still BOTH SIDING, I see.

    There is little, if any, difference between the two major candidates

    Here’s a tip, JUST AS BAD proponenets: SHOW YOUR FUCKING WORK. This is said all the time, and yet the only evidence is that the “two major candidates” are similar on a handful of big issues, completely ignoring the fucking chasms between them on other issues. Really, it is complaining that the two parties aren’t complete opposites, ergo voting is pointless. Fucking idiocy.

    And you know what the kicker is? The very next part of that sentence?

    voter suppression is at an all-time high

    Insofar as that is true, it is true because of the legislation of Republican politicians . Fucking ignorant mealy-mouthed “moderates”.

  11. Beatrice, anti-imperialist anti-racist Islamophobiaphobic leftist says

    nowimnothing,

    There was a misunderstanding here or you confused me with jenifercappello. I hold no illusions about libertarians. I linked to their party platform and emphasized the economic liberty part because that is the part where their harmful views are most obvious.

  12. Matt Penfold says

    Even when libertarians are actually liberal, in that they accurately diagnose the ills in society they seldom are able to offer meaningful solutions.

  13. Beatrice, anti-imperialist anti-racist Islamophobiaphobic leftist says

    Yeah, it’s nice that they (libertarians) are pro-choice, but that choice would only apply to women who can afford it, so I don’t really appreciate it all that much.

  14. davidct says

    His economic policies are batshit crazy unless you are a robber baron and have foreign income. Try not to forget foreign policy and his overseas trip when he managed to offend every country he visited. Obama has been a disappointment but that is a long way from a disaster.

  15. bradleybetts says

    I should preface this by saying that I am from the UK…

    Right. What the buggering hell is an electoral college, and why is it such an issue? All I’ve managed to glean so far is that it for some reason gives different states more influence over the Presidential vote. I do not understand how or why.

  16. raven says

    omorrow, one long national nightmare, the election season, ends…and possibly another one begins.

    Yeah, QFT.

    George Bush ended Bill Clinton’s and the USA’s long nightmare of peace and prosperity.

    Romney is already giving me nightmares and he hasn’t even been elected. And might not.

  17. raven says

    I do not understand how or why.

    It is a historical relict.

    The writers of the constitution didn’t quite trust the people to vote in the “right” people.

    We can’t easily change it. These days it would be impossible to even pass the constitution again.

  18. raven says

    I do not understand how or why.

    It is possible to lose the popular vote and win the election. It’s happened before.

    George Bush did it in 2000.

  19. says

    These days it would be impossible to even pass the constitution again.

    Yeah, that damn constitution gets in the way of Freedom.

  20. Sastra says

    I think this video supports a point made by philosopher Austin Dacey in his book The Secular Conscience: Why Belief Belongs in Public Life. The happy-clappy optimistic ideal of religious people keeping their religious beliefs private, conducting themselves in public like rational humanist, is an impossible ideal. It ends up protecting a viewpoint which can’t possibly be contained like that.

    You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have a religion which forms, inspires, and motivates who a person is and what they believe is right and wrong … AND still grant this some sort of compartmentalized immunity from what can rightly be criticized. It’s going to bleed from private belief to public life. It has to — if people take their religion as something other than dressed-up secular humanism, which most people do because dressed-up secular humanism is atheism and religion doesn’t do that. Religious beliefs need to be put out in the open so that they can be attacked.

    I mean, look at Romney contradicting himself all over the place here. Yes, his Mormonism directly informs his MORAL stance on abortion … but his POLITICAL stance on abortion isn’t connected to his being a Mormon so how dare you bring up my religion I don’t have to defend my faith.

    I think you do, Mittens. You all should have to do that, eventually. People who have religious reasons for being pro-choice have only flipped a coin in the right direction.

  21. raven says

    I’m Canadian so I thought the Libertarians were a pretty liberal and personal freedoms minded party.

    They are neither. Mostly they are christofascists or just plain fascists. Far right wing extremists.

  22. says

    I’m Canadian so I thought the Libertarians were a pretty liberal and personal freedoms minded party.

    Its for people who want to make sure that there is the technical possibility of freedom without the practical possibility of it for other people. That way they can say that their bigotry and apathy isn’t motivated by anything hateful. Some bullies really must convince themselves that their actions are fair, for whatever reason.

    I do find libertarians who just genuinely think things would work better for everyone under such a system, but they are almost always young men with little life experience. They also tend to get freaked out by the other people in their movement as time goes on and leave as a result.

  23. says

    I think some of Romney’s stiffness, robot demeanor, and smile-while-being-knifed look is the result of him trying to hide his true bugnuttiness. That must wearying, all that hiding, and so unnatural to him. He would really prefer to let his mormon freak flag fly.

    One of the proofs that Romney lives on the ragged edge of cultdom is his friendship with none other than Glenn Beck.

    Mr. Beck has emerged as an unlikely theological bridge between the first Mormon presidential nominee and a critical electorate…. Mr. Beck’s unique position as both a Mormon and a prominent voice among evangelicals has been too tempting for Mr. Romney’s campaign to pass up. Campaign officials have quietly courted Mr. Beck, according to a person briefed on his meetings with campaign surrogates who could not discuss private conversations publicly. […]

    Last month, Mr. Beck, along with former Vice President Dick Cheney and Mr. Romney’s son Josh, headlined a Dallas fund-raiser that brought in more than $250,000 for the Romney Victory committee, and on Friday Mr. Beck held a rally in Columbus, Ohio, intended to influence voters in that swing state. On Saturday, he attended Mr. Romney’s rally in Dubuque, Iowa.

    Beck as an effing “theological bridge” to evangelical voters!
    New York Times link.

    Although Mr. Beck’s national media profile has waned since he left Fox News last year, his support among his core audience remains strong. “The Glenn Beck Program” is typically the third-most-popular talk-news radio show, after “The Rush Limbaugh Show” and “The Sean Hannity Show.” In September, an agreement was reached with Dish Network to bring Mr. Beck’s online network, The Blaze, to traditional television.

    “I believe Mr. Romney prays on his knees every day,” Mr. Beck said recently on his radio program. “I believe he is being guided.” He has also said that a Romney victory would be “a sign from God.”

  24. Sastra says

    Heh. Right. Be assured, if you’re voting for anyone with Republican or Libertarian affiliations, you have my withering contempt. Which will dissuade you, right?

    Well, I decided a while back to vote for raven’s cat for a variety of good reasons, most of which I’ve now forgotten. But this contingency is dependent on ‘raven’s cat’ already being on the ballot.

    I suspect that is unlikely, though — so I will not earn your withering contempt. Which would not be enough to dissuade me if raven’s cat IS officially printed on the ballot. I mean … how cool would that be? It would almost be proof of God, or something.

  25. says

    A discussion running on a Recovery from Mormonism forum asks the interesting question, “How do I explain the typical male Mormon royalty mindset to a nevermo friend who can’t put her finger on why she finds Mitt weird?

    Here are a few of the answers:

    He’s an asshole trying to pretend he’s not an asshole.

    Tell her that she probably dislikes him because he plays by a different set of rules than she would ever consider playing by: lies to advance himself and doesn’t think he needs to answer for his past behaviors even when they (always) conflict with what he’s saying at the present. …

    BIC [Born in the Covenant] Mormon men are raised with a completely different value system than other men.

    Unlike other men, education, knowledge,accomplishment and being a great provider take a second or third seat to being a worthy priesthood holder.

    This is a very skewed set of values. Add to that being born a Mormon Prince. Your family is so revered by all other Mormon families. You are rich and you are handsome and you luckily fit the mormon mold. You have all four aces….

    This leaves ‘appearance’ paramount in the lives of Mormon Royalty….

    …Everything is about appearances. The Mormon church is concerned about appearances (polls, PR firms, surveys) and never misses a photo opportunity. Mitt stages a relief effort for Sandy by buying goods at Walmart and having people hand them to him like they brought them from home. Sounds exactly like what the Mormon church would do….

  26. says

    Mormonism’s social structure is so strong, not despite its frail basis in truth, but because of it – because it makes the price of admission to the club high. To say “Yes, I am a Mormon” is to say “Yes, I’m in the 2+2=5 club, are you?” This (along with expensive tithing) filters out casual participants. You need to be willing to compromise a normal sense of what’s reasonable and rational to be part of this group. It’s a strong commitment, which makes for a strong creed.

    The excerpt above is from Why I Don’t Think A Mormon Should Be President in the Business Insider.

  27. says

    Also from the Business Insider:

    “Romney’s idea of truth is not something discovered after hard-fought inquiry and testing, but instead is declared by a person with authority, often for unexamined reasons, and sanctioned by divine validation.”

  28. mikeyb says

    I am less worried about Mitt’s Mormon craziness, than the actual Mitt – Gordon Gekko meets Ayn Rand tossed in with a spineless cave to the Akin/ Mourdock like social policies on gays and reproductive rights to add a little spice – in other words – the dawning of an American corporatist theocracy.

  29. says

    After this video showed up on YouTube, Romney lied about being filmed without his knowledge. He lied about the camera being hidden.

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1112/83310.html

    “I became intense in confronting what he had said,” Romney said, according to a transcript from CBS. “And we went back and forth. Unbeknownst to me, he had a hidden camera on the console. So this then popped up on the Internet – as our exchange. And I was intense. I wasn’t angry. I wasn’t out of control. But I was intense.”

    A producer of the show told POLITICO that Romney made those remarks soon after being interviewed by Mickelson, but that the camera in question was in plain sight.

    “The next day when that aired, I think it’s a fair word to say that it stung us,” said Ross Peterson, the producer for Mickelson’s show. “We felt that it was dishonest…the camera was absolutely in plain sight, feet from where he was sitting.”

  30. Armored Scrum Object says

    I voted for a couple local Republicans. I did this because the only people running against them were with the Libertarian Party (ugh) or American Constitution Party (UGH).

    Yeah, I sort of live in a political cesspool.

  31. says

    Chrysler issued a press release about their donation to the Red Cross for Hurricane Sandy disaster relief, but other than the press release on their media website the company is not making a big deal out of it. http://media.chrysler.com/newsrelease.do?id=13432&mid=2

    Quite a contrast to Mitt Romney staging a “Storm Relief” rally in Ohio by having his staff buy $5000 worth of goods from Wal-Mart, and then giving those goods to rally attendees so that they could be photographed handing them to Mitt. Link.

    Chrysler’s donation of 20 Ram 1500 Tradesman trucks and $100,000 to the American Red Cross is also a well-played slap in Romney’s face to counter the stupidity of the speeches, TV ads, and radio ads Romney is running — ads that falsely claim Chrysler is moving Jeep production to China.

    Think Progress link to coverage noting that even Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, has had to join the crowds refuting Romney’s false claims.

    The Detroit Free Press provides details of GM and Chrysler telling Romney he’s wrong about Chinese jobs claim.

  32. says

    From the comments following Salon’s coverage of the Romney video:

    As I understand Mormon delusion, Jesus will split the Mount of Olives and give Sheldon Adelson half for his contributions to this nuttery.

  33. says

    It’s unfortunate that the only candidate with a relatively healthy view on military spending is also the one who will throw half the country under the bus via deregulation (Gary Johnson, Libertarian, who wants to cut the military spending by like 40%)

  34. Rodney Nelson says

    “I vetoed any bill that was in favor of choice”

    There’s an interesting thing about Romney’s vetos:

    But the GOP nominee consistently struggled to have his veto upheld during his tenure. Romney used his line-item veto 844 times, more than 700 of which were overturned by the Legislature, including every veto offered during his last year in office, according to an analysis by the Boston Globe.

    One major reason why Romney didn’t run for reelection as Massachusetts governor was during his last year in office his approval rating among Republicans was less than 30%.

  35. Olav says

    Amphiox, #10:

    US Libertarians are liberal in the same way that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is a democracy.

    Or even, you know, a republic.

    Most countries or parties that call themselves either “democratic” or “republican” aren’t.

  36. Ichthyic says

    Mittens exhibits his assholishness all too well in this clip.

    not a man I would wanna have a beer with.

    no sir.

  37. Amphiox says

    re #37;

    And the United States aren’t all that much. At least not recently.

    We here in the Dominion of Canada, though, do indeed have at least some dominion, over lots and lots of snow….

  38. Trebuchet says

    @Lynna:

    After this video showed up on YouTube, Romney lied about being filmed without his knowledge. He lied about the camera being hidden.

    To me, this is perhaps the most telling part of the story. He’s sitting in a radio studio, surrounded by microphones, and he’s shocked — SHOCKED — to find he’s being recorded. What a mor(m)on.

  39. ursamajor says

    So Romney stomps off because a fan does not grovel and agree enough.

    With that sort of contempt for others there is no way he can function at all outside a rigid authoritarian setting like the Mormon church or a vulture capitalist business.

    It might be amusing to see him elected then quickly turn on the Republican leadership in Congress, throw hissy fits over the Democrats and teach the average voter to hold the LDS church in complete fear and loathing. Though there is the little matter of the war, depression and loss of strategic allies we’d have before he was finally impeached or voted out.
    And to think I had not loathed the man enough before seeing that video.

  40. says

    I’ll be voting for Gary Johnson. I consider the withering contempt of PZ Myers and others here to be confirmation that I’m making the right choice. =)
    Although I agree with PZ on many things, I find his contempt of libertarians to be completely without merit.

  41. procyon says

    Now I’m confused…would it be smart or stupid to buy property in Missouri before Jesus returns?

  42. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    Although I agree with PZ on many things, I find his contempt of libertarians to be completely without merit.

    Whereas we find you love for the libertarian economic theology (no evidence it works in history) to be completely without merit…

  43. No One says

    Glad this was posted. Interesting to see Mitt’s reaction under stress. Saw a bit of it in debate # 2. The fast counter questions in rapid fire success, with no expectations of an answer. Fear instantly turning into almost blind aggression.

  44. anteprepro says

    I consider the withering contempt of PZ Myers and others here to be confirmation that I’m making the right choice. =)

    Congratulations, you are now officially like one of those Christians who think that “persecution” and criticism just make their faith harde..erm…stronger.

  45. carbonbasedlifeform says

    i Although I agree with PZ on many things, I find his contempt of libertarians to be completely without merit.

    I have contempt for anyone who does not have contempt for libertarians. After all, libertarians reject reality in favor of fantasy. Would you like some specific examples? How about just one, taken from the Platform of the New Jersey Libertarian Party:

    The individual’s right to privacy, property, and right to speak or not to speak should not be infringed by the government. The government should not use electronic or other means of covert surveillance of an individual’s actions or private property without the consent of the owner or occupant. Correspondence, bank and other financial transactions and records, doctors’ and lawyers’ communications, employment records, and the like should not be open to review by government without the consent of all parties involved in those actions./

    If they really mean what this seems to say, then seeking documentary evidence of criminal acts would be impossible, since a suspect would have absolute veto power over any searches. Apparently, the libertarian who wrote that has no problem with kleptocracy.

  46. Ichthyic says

    I find his contempt of libertarians to be completely without merit.

    which either means you are one of the “new” libertarians who really aren’t libertarian, but more like the old conservatives, or you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.

    or both.

  47. Ichthyic says

    Now I’m confused…would it be smart or stupid to buy property in Missouri before Jesus returns?

    it depends on which real estate agent you talk to.