by Benjamin J. Kirby
Did Mitt Romney douse himself in fake tanning stuff for an event with Latino voters in order to appear more... I don't know, more brown? Because that's what appeals to Latino voters of all political persuasions.
Frankly, I'm reluctant to trust a website with the word "gossip" in the URL, but there it is nonetheless.
If it is true -- and even the inept Romney Campaign has to be smart enough to know they can't confirm this, true or not -- then that would actually be the end of the Romney Campaign. It would be the end of this presidential election. All over. Done. Wrap it up.
See you in 2016.
Because you can't do that and have this audio released in the same two-week period and not be cooked, politically speaking.
In one of a series of clips from a secretly recorded campaign fundraiser, Mitt Romney makes a joking reference to his family's complicated history in Mexico, guessing that if his father George had been "born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot at winning this."
The comments mark a rare moment of levity on immigration for Romney, and they're a somewhat unusual reference to his family's complicated history in Mexico. "I mean, I say that jokingly," he adds, "but it would be helpful to be Latino."
Yes, he should be done based on that "joke" alone. He's not, mostly because there has to be some alternative out there...
If the skin-darkening thing is real, then I'd expect the early defections we're seeing now will multiply greatly, and be profoundly uglier in their skewering of the nominee.
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Chris Bowers at DailyKos has another, more in-depth take on Democrats and Congress, something I explored a bit yesterday.
An analysis by Daily Kos Elections has identified 152 Democratic House incumbents who are not listed as vulnerable by any major election prognosticator and who are also not running for higher office. According to their most recent FEC reports, these 152 Democrats have just over $87,500,000 in their campaign bank accounts, combined.
Now, these Democrats are neither deadbeats nor hoarders. In almost every case, they have already given sizable sums to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (which coordinates Democratic House election efforts nationwide) and/or directly to Democratic candidates in competitive House races. Still, even a small percentage of the $87,500,000 would go a long way toward helping Democrats win the two or three dozen toss-up seats that will decide control of the House of Representatives. This is especially the case with the tidal wave of Republican Super PAC money covering a larger portion of the horizon every day.
Nothing pisses me off more than reading the post-election stories of how candidates or fundraising operations sat on a shit-ton of cash when it could have been spent in competitive districts.
It's not there yet, but this election could tilt heavily towards Democrats. Let's not waste the opportunity.
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Poverty levels in America have risen.
Though fresh data from the Census Bureau show that the number of Americans living in poverty edged higher in 2011, its latest American Community Survey also signals that after a Great Recession and a painfully slow recovery the U.S. economy may finally be bottoming out.
That, combined with Tom Zeller's piece in HuffingtonPost about the plight of rural minorities makes for some stark, depressing reading.
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The finest two minutes and five seconds of FOX News you'll ever see.
Three words for you: hand roasted marshmallows.
Exactly what it sounds like.
That is all.
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...And that's not to say FOX and Drudge and the gang aren't trying. They are.
It's just not working out very well for them.
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An update on the kiddos.
Via my mother, here is everything you need to know about toddlers. Well, not everything, but I'm having a hard time, out of 19 things, finding one that is not true.
Here's the thing about having young children I didn't know or didn't expect: that life would be so profoundly different from life without kids -- life before -- that I would literally not remember what I did before I had children. What did I do with all that time? Could I really have wasted it watching TV and playing video games? Apparently, the tragic answer is "yes."
Emmy and Finn are awesome. Finn is big, healthy and a very happy baby. His favorite past-time is watching whatever his sister is doing at that exact moment. He smiles and laughs at whatever she does. And I think he's starting to get a little frustrated that he can't fully participate yet.
Emeline, of course, is all too willing to ham it up for her brother. She is a great big sister, and a lot fun in her own right.
That Jezebel link is kind of right. My thing with having a toddler is it's alternately ecstasy and joy interrupted by moments of extreme terror and undiluted frustration. She is a genuinely sweet little girl. She is as caring a young person as I've ever seen. Emeline is a happy girl, and she wants you to be happy, too.
The flip side is, she's two and-a-half. She's going to have her moments. I walk around the corner, and she's hanging off the side of the couch, ready to fall directly onto her head. I mean, you can't describe that kind of horror. She has taken to testing her limits, too, running away from me and her mommy and not stopping when we scream "STOP!" It's scary as hell when she's headed towards the road, and more than once I've broken out some of my old moves from high school track (which I pay for later, thanks to an out-of-shape forty-one year-old body).
The kids are great and life is very good.
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It's almost Friday.
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