How Many Trumpf Fans Believe He Wrote Any Of "His" Books? Meet The Crook Who Thinks He Can Buy The GOP Convention

Mark Bowden hung out with the then-50 year old Herr Trumpf in 1996, on assignment for Playboy and just wrote about the awkward experience for Vanity Fair. "Trump," he wrote, "struck me as adolescent, hilariously ostentatious, arbitrary, unkind, profane, dishonest, loudly opinionated, and consistently wrong. He remains the most vain man I have ever met. And he was trying to make a good impression. Who could have predicted that those very traits, now on prominent daily display, would turn him into the leading G.O.P. candidate for president of the United States?" Well... probably people who have relatives who immerse themselves in Fox News and Hate Talk Radio could have predicted it. That, after all, is Trumpf's base. "He has no coherent political philosophy," Bowden continued, "so comparisons with Fascist leaders miss the mark. He just reacts. Trump lives in a fantasy of perfection, with himself as its animating force."

I was prepared to like him as I boarded his black 727 at La Guardia for the flight to Mar-a-Lago, his Florida home—prepared to discover that his over-the-top public persona was a clever pose. That underneath was an ironic wit, an ordinary but clever guy. But no. With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see . . . what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. “Worth $10 million,” he told me. Time after time the stories he told me didn’t check out, from Michael Jackson’s romantic weekend at Mar-a-Lago with his then wife Lisa Marie Presley (they stayed at opposite ends of the estate) to the rug in one bedroom he said was designed by Walt Disney when he was 18 (it wasn’t) to the strength of his marriage to [Marla] Maples (they would split months later).

It was hard to watch the way he treated those around him, issuing peremptory orders-- “Polish this, Tony. Today.” He met with the lady who selected his drapery for the Florida estate-- “The best! The best! She’s a genius!”-- who had selected a sampling of fabrics for him to choose from, all different shades of gold. He left the choice to her, saying only, “I want it really rich. Rich, rich, elegant, incredible.” Then, “Don’t disappoint me.” It was a pattern. Trump did not make decisions. He surrounded himself with “geniuses” and delegated. So long as you did not “disappoint” him-- and it was never clear how to avoid doing so-- you were gold.

What was clear was how fast and far one could fall from favor. The trip from “genius” to “idiot” was a flash. The former pilots who flew his plane were geniuses, until they made one too many bumpy landings and became “fucking idiots.” The gold carpeting selected in his absence for the locker rooms in the spa at Mar-a-Lago? “What kind of fucking idiot . . . ?” I watched as Trump strutted around the beautifully groomed clay tennis courts on his estate, managed by noted tennis pro Anthony Boulle. The courts had been prepped meticulously for a full day of scheduled matches. Trump took exception to the design of the spaces between courts. In particular, he didn’t like a small metal box-- a pump and cooler for the water fountain alongside-- which he thought looked ugly. He first questioned its placement, then crudely disparaged it, then kicked the box, which didn’t budge, and then stooped-- red-faced and fuming-- to tear it loose from its moorings, rupturing a water line and sending a geyser to soak the courts. Boulle looked horrified, a weekend of tennis abruptly drowned. Catching a glimpse of me watching, Trump grimaced.

“I guess that’ll have to be in your story,” he said.

“Pretty much,” I told him.

This apparently worried him, because on the flight home a day later he had a proposition.

“I’m looking for somebody to write my next book,” he told me.

I told him that I would not be interested.

“Why not?” he asked. “All my books become best-sellers.”

The import was clear. There was money in it for me. Trump remains the only person I have ever written about who tried to bribe me.

As I’ve watched his improbable political rise, it is clear that he hasn’t changed. The very things that made him so unappealing apparently now translate into wide popular support. Apart from the comical ego, the errors, and the self-serving bluster, what you get from Trump are commonplace ideas pronounced as received wisdom. Begin registering all Muslims in America? Round up the families of suspected terrorists? Ban all Muslims from entering the country? Carpet-bomb ISIS-held territories in Iraq (killing the 98-plus percent of civilians who are, in effect, being held hostage there by the terror group and turning a war against a tiny fraction of the world’s Muslims into a global religious crusade)? Using nuclear weapons? The ideas that pop into his head are the same ones that occur to any teenager angry about terror attacks. They appeal to anyone who can’t be bothered to think them through-- can’t be bothered to ask not just the moral questions but the all-important practical one: Will doing this makes things better or worse? When you believe in your own genius, you don’t question your own flashes of inspiration.

I got a call from his office some days after my profile of him appeared in the May 1997 issue of Playboy. I had already heard how he’d blown his stack to Christie Hefner. I was traveling at the time, working on my book Black Hawk Down. The call came to me in a motel room in Colorado, from his trusty assistant, the late Norma Foerderer.

“Mr. Trump would like to talk to you,” she said.

I waited, sitting on the edge of the bed, bracing myself.

Foerderer came back on the line. She said:

“He’s too livid to speak.”

Ron Paul hasn't done much for his son's spectacularly failed presidential campaign but yesterday he was warning fellow Republicans that if the outlandish Trumpf wins the GOP nomination, "the Republican Party would be severed in two pieces." He did say that "Hillary, when it comes to taxes, is just a little bit worse." He didn't address the prospect of a Bernie Sanders candidacy. And he seems to have predicted that if Trumpf is the official GOP candidate, a more mainstream conservative will run as an "independent." Referring to McConnell and other Republican power-mongers, he said that "If they can’t push [Trump] out, somebody else will run, somebody else will enter.

Earlier Robert Costa and Tom Hamburger were speculating for Washington Post readers that the Establishment hopes to beat Trumpf through a partially brokered convention, which McConnell is hysterically trying to cover-up. 20 of the Grand Old Men of the GOP met secretly Monday at the Source, an upscale Asian fusion restaurant, where they could be sure none of the Tortilla Flats crowd would be eavesdropping, for an anti-Trumpf dinner convened by RNC Chair Reince Priebus.

Several longtime power brokers argued that if the controversial billionaire storms through the primaries, the party’s establishment must lay the groundwork for a floor fight, in which the GOP’s mainstream wing could coalesce around an alternative, the people said.

Because of the sensitivity of the topic-- and wary of saying something that, if leaked, would provoke Trump to bolt the party and mount an independent bid-- Priebus and McConnell were mostly quiet during the back and forth. They did not signal support an overt anti-Trump effort.

But near the end, McConnell and Priebus did acknowledge to the group that a deadlocked convention is indeed something the party should prepare for, both institutionally at the RNC and politically at all levels in the coming months.

Upon leaving, several attendees said they would soon share with one another memos about delegate allocation in each state as well as research about the 1976 convention, the last time the GOP gathered without a clear nominee.

...Attendees included Ward Baker, executive director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee; Rob Simms, his counterpart at the National Republican Congressional Committee; Ron Kaufman, an RNC committeeman and Mitt Romney confidant; and pollster Linda DiVall. Whit Ayres, an adviser to Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), and Vin Weber, an ally of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, also were there, among others.

Trumpf told Costa he can win a brokered convention because of "the deal-making." He's made it perfectly clear that all the politicians are for sale-- and that he's a buyer. Meanwhile, as you can see just above, rapidly fading Republican hopeful Dr. Ben doesn't like brokered conventions. That's the letter he issued this morning. Someone opened it, read it and passed it along. He's since said he'll leave the GOP if they try a brokered convention. And Sunday, Fox will air a Chris Wallace interview with Herr Trumpf in which the New York bully rubs the faces of the GOP establishment in shit, telling them that they're "kidding themselves" if they think he'll allow a brokered convention to steal the nomination from him. "I say, folks, you know, I’m sorry I did this to you, but you’ve got to get used to it. It’s one of those little problems in life. I’m going to win. ... You know, I’m not one of these other guys that goes down. I don’t go down. I go up."

End The Empire-- Jeb Bush Really Is George W. Bush, But Rand Paul Is Not Ron Paul

Sabrina Siddiqui is a reporter for The Guardian covering the presidential primaries. Writing from Plymouth, New Hampshire, over the weekend, she tried finding out what each presidential candidate wants the U.S. to do about the refugee crisis in Europe. Just two, she reported, Martin O'Malley and John Kasich, talked about taking in more refugees. She was unable to get comments from Hillary, Bernie, Jeb or Rubio (although Rubio, the self-proclaimed Republican foreign policy expert, babbled some typical GOP nonsense about al-Nusra and ISIS, then added, "It’s not just solely the United States’ responsibility, but it most certainly is in our national security interest that parts of Europe are now being destabilized because of this migratory crisis").

[E]ven Trump, the GOP frontrunner who has positioned himself as the face of the conservative movement against illegal immigration, said the US should “possibly” accept more refugees.

“The answer is possibly yes, possibly yes,” Trump told MSNBC last week. “So horrible on a humanitarian basis when you see that. It’s incredible what’s going on.”

He added, nonetheless, that the US has no shortage of its own problems – particularly at the border. “It is a huge problem and we should help as much as possible, but we do have to fix our own country,” Trump said.

Other Republicans have raised national security concerns over opening up the US to more refugees. On Sunday, Carly Fiorina said the US cannot relax its criteria for letting refugees in and warned against those who might be affiliated with terrorist activity.

“The United States, I believe, has done its fair share in terms of humanitarian aid,” the former Hewlett Packard CEO said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

“We are having to be very careful about who we let enter this country from these war-torn regions to ensure that terrorists are not coming here.”

The Kentucky senator Rand Paul sounded similar alarms, citing the US government’s acceptance of refugees from Iraq and Somalia-- some of whom he said now wished to harm the country.

“We are a welcoming nation, and we have accepted a lot of refugees, and I think we will continue to do so. But we also can’t accept the whole world, so I think there are some limits,” Paul told CNN.

366,402 migrants-- mostly refugees from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya-- have flooded into Europe. Germany has pledged $6.6 billion and is on the road to accepting 800,000 people. Greece is overwhelmed with a quarter-million migrants, although most are on their way north. 120,000 are in Italy. Sweden is taking in 74,000. François Hollande says France will accept 24,000, and David Cameron says Britain will take 20,000. Austria has already accepted 12,000. Holland is dealing with 24,535 asylum applications, Belgium with 22,850 and Denmark with 14,715. 

The U.S. has only accepted 1,500 Syrian refugees, and Ron Paul took note. Now, his son Rand Paul is no Ron Paul-- not on the best of days, and surely not while he's struggling to be taken seriously in a presidential campaign. The senior Paul writes a weekly column for the Ron Paul Institute website. This week he tackled the horrific refugee crisis his son punted on.

Last week Europe saw one of its worst crises in decades. Tens of thousands of migrants entered the European Union via Hungary, demanding passage to their hoped-for final destination, Germany.

While the media focuses on the human tragedy of so many people uprooted and traveling in dangerous circumstances, there is very little attention given to the events that led them to leave their countries. Certainly we all feel for the displaced people, especially the children, but let’s not forget that this is a man-made crisis and it is a government-made crisis.

The reason so many are fleeing places like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq is that US and European interventionist foreign policy has left these countries destabilized with no hopes of economic recovery. This mass migration from the Middle East and beyond is a direct result of the neocon foreign policy of regime change, invasion, and pushing “democracy” at the barrel of a gun.

Even when they successfully change the regime, as in Iraq, what is left behind is an almost uninhabitable country. It reminds me of the saying attributed to a US major in the Vietnam War, discussing the bombing of Ben Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”

The Europeans share a good deal of blame as well. France and the UK were enthusiastic supporters of the attack on Libya and they were early backers of the “Assad must go” policy. Assad may not be a nice guy, but the forces that have been unleashed to overthrow him seem to be much worse and far more dangerous. No wonder people are so desperate to leave Syria.

Most of us have seen the heartbreaking photo of the young Syrian boy lying drowned on a Turkish beach. While the interventionists are exploiting this tragedy to call for direct US attacks on the Syrian government, in fact the little boy was from a Kurdish family fleeing ISIS in Kobane. And as we know there was no ISIS in either Iraq or Syria before the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

As often happens when there is blowback from bad foreign policy, the same people who created the problem think they have a right to tell us how to fix it-- while never admitting their fault in the first place.

Thus we see the disgraced General David Petraeus in the news last week offering his solution to the problem in Syria: make an alliance with al-Qaeda against ISIS! Petraeus was head of the CIA when the US launched its covert regime-change policy in Syria, and he was in charge of the “surge” in Iraq that contributed to the creation of al-Qaeda and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. The idea that the US can salvage its disastrous Syria policy by making an alliance with al-Qaeda is horrific. Does anyone think the refugee problem in Syria will not be worse if either al-Qaeda or ISIS takes over the country?

Here is the real solution to the refugee problem: stop meddling in the affairs of other countries. Embrace the prosperity that comes with a peaceful foreign policy, not the poverty that goes with running an empire. End the Empire!

And, in case you haven't seen it yet, here's the video the White House released today on the utter, serial "wrongness" of Dick Cheney, who, today, is the face of the opposition to the Iran nuclear deal, as he was the face of starting wars wherever he could when he controlled the White House himself. It was never Ron Paul's vision of foreign policy that drove the Republican Party foreign policy agenda; it has long been Dick Cheney's. And it still is. Cheney certainly articulates the GOP agenda for Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and most of the rest of the ridiculous clown car Fox News calls their "deep bench."

Who Are The Bad Guys In Ukraine?

Russians have occupied more than a few NATO capitals including Warsaw, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Berlin and even Paris. No one wants to see that happen again. And yet the West seems to be pushing Russia up against a wall right now with devastating sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy and roiling the country's politics. And nuclear-armed Russia is a lot stronger militarily than the U.K. Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Turkey and the rest of the European NATO allies combined.

After I broke a couple of ribs and punctured a lung, I had to have physical therapy to get back in some semblance of shape. Following a debilitating two week hospital stay I've been having a physical therapist come over twice a week to help with balance and strengthening exercises. He's an American, originally from Ukraine, and speaks fluent Ukrainian and Russian. He also listens to the radio and reads reports on what's going on there in both languages. "It's been," he told me a couple weeks ago, "a brilliant move by the CIA to destabilize Russia at no cost to America." That's certainly not the perspective you get from U.S. media. The mainstream media in the U.S., for example, doesn't let on how hated the Kiev regime is in the eastern parts of the country, nor even attempt to provide any historical context. Most American media consumers probably think Ukraine was once a country. It never was. Is Ukrainian a real language? We'll... Ukrainian is to Russian kind of like what California English is to Australian English.

Last last year we looked at the mounting evidence that the whole mess in Ukraine started with a CIA coup on behalf of a claque of anti-Russian fascists and oligarchs. Eric Zuesse: "How many Americans know that the current regime in Ukraine was installed in a very bloody February 2014 coup d'etat, that was planned in the U.S. White House, and overseen by an Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and run by the CIA, and carried out for the White House by one of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, whose founder and leader still controls Ukraine though not officially, even these many months after his coup, and which nazi party has been up to their elbows since then in a genocidal policy to exterminate the people in the region of Ukraine that had voted approximately 90% for the man whom Obama and those nazis overthrew in February?"

The video up top is former Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX) voicing his own distrust of the American role in Ukraine. "I'm not pro-Russia, I'm not pro-Putin," he said. "I'm pro-facts." Unlike the CIA-- or a large bipartisan contingent of irresponsible saber-rattling Members of Congress, who are demanding that Obama arm the crumbling Ukrainian army.

My physical therapist told me some of the Russian political analysts are absolutely brilliant and that it's a shame we don't get to hear them here in English. In October, though, The Guardian published a Russian perspective on the conflict with an interview of former Russian spy chief Nikolai Patrushev by Ivan Egorov for Rossiyskaya Gazeta. Egorov starts with a question: "The last few months have witnessed a coup d’état in Ukraine, military operations by the Ukrainian authorities against the people of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts and rabidly anti-Russian policies on the part of Kiev. Was it possible to predict this turn of events just a year ago?"

Nikolai Patrushev: Our experts warned that a worsening of the situation in Ukraine was likely under conditions of political and economic instability, particularly in the case of outside influence. But I have to admit that the possibility of a sudden seizure of power in Kiev, relying on armed units of self-proclaimed Nazis, hadn’t then been considered. It’s worth remembering that until that coup, Moscow fulfilled all its obligations to Kiev in full.

Without the material and financial help that we constantly supplied, Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to deal with its economic problems, which had become chronic. To help our neighbour, we marshalled material and financial resources worth tens of millions of dollars. For many people in Ukraine, this help came to seem so routine that they simply forgot how important it was for the survival of the country.

But if you’re talking about longer-term predictions, the Ukraine crisis was a totally predictable outcome of the actions of the US and its closest allies.

For the last quarter of a century, these actions were designed to wrest Ukraine and other former Soviet republics away from Russia and to redesign the post-Soviet space in America’s interests. The US created the conditions and pretexts for the coloured revolutions and financed them lavishly.

Victoria Nuland, the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, has said that her country spent $5bn between 1991 and 2013 “supporting the aspirations of the people of Ukraine for a stronger, more democratic government.” Even open sources, such as congressional documents, show that government spent no less than $2.4bn on various American “aid” programmes to Ukraine between 2001 and 2012. That’s comparable to the annual budget of some small states. The US Agency for International Development spent around half a billion dollars, the State Department nearly half a million and the Pentagon more than $370m.

...[Egorov:] Some experts believe that the Ukraine crisis served simply as a pretext for the west to escalate relations with Russia. Is that true?

Nikolai Patrushev: Yes, if the catastrophe in Ukraine had not occurred, another pretext would have been found to activate the policy of “containment” towards our country. This policy has been followed religiously for many decades: only the forms and tactics by which it has been realised have changed.

It is well known that after the second world war, the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the west, headed by the US, took the form of a cold war. The military-political element of this conflict rested with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), which was established on 4 April 1949 at the initiative of the US. An analysis of Nato’s actions shows that, having created the alliance, the US pursued two main goals.

First, a military bloc formed under American leadership, aimed against the USSR.

Victoria Nuland-- a bridge too far

Second, Washington pre-empted the emergence in western Europe of an independent group of states that could have competed with the US. It is worth remembering that although, essentially, the US exerted unilateral control over its allies, its territory was not included in Nato’s sphere of responsibility.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, which united the socialist countries of Europe and whose very existence was regarded by Nato as a grave danger, the bloc was not only not dissolved, it grew further, both numerically and militarily.

...The coup in Kiev, which was clearly carried out with the help of the US, conformed to a classical model worked out in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. But never before had such a coup impinged on Russia’s interests so directly.

Analysis shows that by provoking Russia into retaliatory measures, the Americans are pursuing the very same goals as in the 1980s vis-a-vis the USSR. Just like back then, they are trying to define our country’s “weak points.” At the same time, of course, they are neutralising economic competitors in Europe who have grown too close to Moscow, as they see it.

It’s worth remembering that Washington always strived to exert leverage over Russia. In 1974, the well-known Jackson Vanik amendment was passed, limiting trade with our country. To all appearances, it became obsolete the moment the USSR fell but it nevertheless remained in force right up until 2012, when it was replaced by the so-called Magnitsky list.



The current sanctions are part of the same trend. The actions of the American administration during the Ukraine crisis are part of a new current in White House foreign policy designed to preserve America’s position of leadership in the world by containing the growing power of Russia and other centres of power. What is more, Washington is actively using the possibilities that Nato offers to exert political and economic pressure on its allies and partners and thereby prevent them from wavering.

[Egorov:] Why is the American elite pursuing the right to control foreign (countries’) raw materials so tenaciously at a time when experts in the west are stressing the importance of developing alternative sources of energy that are supposedly capable of replacing oil and gas in double quick time?

Nikolai Patrushev: Specialists are convinced, in fact, that a real alternative to fossil fuels as the basis of energy production won’t appear in the next few decades. What is more, the dominant belief in the west is that the combined power generated by nuclear, hydro, wind and solar can satisfy no more than a fifth of world demand.

Don’t forget another important point. In the world today, there is a growing shortage of food and drinking water for the planet’s rising population. Lacking the most basic means of survival, desperate people turn to extremism, terrorism, piracy and criminality. This accounts, in part, for the sharp disparities between countries and regions, as well as for mass migration.

A shortage of water and irrigable land often causes discord, not least between the republics of Central Asia. Water represents an acute problem for a range of other countries in Asia and, especially, in Africa.

Many American experts, including the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, claim that Moscow ended up with such vast swathes of territory that it is incapable of exploiting it all: this territory does not, therefore, “serve the interests of humanity as a whole.” We continue to hear claims that (the world’s) natural resources were divided up “unfairly” and that (Russia) must grant foreign states “free access” to them.

The Americans are convinced that many other people reason in the same way, especially in the states bordering Russia, which are already banding together to support such claims on our country and will continue to do so in future. As in the case of Ukraine, they propose to solve problems at Russia’s expense and without taking its interests into account.

Even during periods of relative détente between Russia/USSR and the US, such statements always held true.

That is why, whatever the nuances of American behaviour, or that of its allies, this challenge will remain forever present before Russia’s leaders: to guarantee the territorial integrity and sovereignty of the homeland, to protect and multiply its wealth and to dispose of that wealth sensibly in the interests of the multinational people of the Russian Federation.

People ask how it's possible that so many Jews are in top positions in a Ukrainian government dominated by nationalists (and fascists) whose slogan is that they will drown Russians in Polish and Jewish blood.That they are Jewish or half Jewish takes a back seat to the corruption of oligarchy-- and the ability to loot the country-- which is what this whole mess, tragically, is really all about.




UPDATE: Victoria Nuland, A Dangerous Embarrassment To America

The Cold War throwback driving America's messed up policies in Ukraine is Victoria Nuland, Kerry's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. Her husband is notorious neocon Robert Kagan. In her glory days she was principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney. Lately she's been in the news again for this phone call. CNN bleeped out "Fuck," as in "Fuck the E.U."

Who's This Benton Bribery Character Miss McConnell Just Fired?

The day after Rachel's report (above), McConnell fired Jesse Benton as his campaign manager. BOOM! Out! McConnell didn't like him much anyway, since Benton has been quoted and requoted telling Kentucky libertarians that he was "sort of holding my nose for two years because what we're doing here is going to be a big benefit for Rand in 2016." Benton, a longtime Paul family retainer, is married to Ron Paul's granddaughter, Valori Pyeatt (Rand's niece). Before remaking himself into a Paulista, though, he worked for Louisiana sleaze bag David "Diapers" Vitter. He was Rand Paul's campaign manager-- and tenant, living in Rand's basement-- when he ran for Senate against McConnell's handpicked candidate. And then he was Ron Paul's very well-compensated presidential campaign manager two years later.

It has been widely known since the summer of 2012-- including by McConnell himself-- that Benton had bribed at least one Iowa Republican to come over to the Ron Paul campaign. At the time the Sorenson bribe was first exposed, the NY Times reported that "[a]nother top McConnell aide, Josh Holmes, said Mr. Benton would "absolutely" keep his job. He declined to say if Mr. Benton had apologized to Mr. McConnell" over the "holding my nose" comments. However, now that McConnell has won his anti-Tea Party primary battle against Matt Bevin, he no longer really needs Benton and as soon as it started becoming clear that Benton is likely to be arrested and indicted at some point, McConnell fired his ass, which was called, in typically dishonest political jargon, "reluctantly accepting his resignation." Kentucky political scientist Stephen Voss: "The problem with the scandal is the negative attention it brings to the McConnell campaign, which will come regardless of whether it turns out Benton really did anything wrong. Any whiff of scandal within a campaign organization can bring criticism, because opponents suggest that it reflects on the judgment of the candidate who appointed the individual."

Now that "distraction" is out of the way, McConnell can go back to vowing to block a minimum wage hike on behalf of America's anti-democracy plutocrats for whom his entire political career is dedicated to. Voss added that the revelation of the recordings of McConnell sucking up to the billionaires won't help him among Kentucky working families any more than the Benton scandal. "Both revolve around big money in campaigns, so they threaten to reinforce each other. Even worse, both events reinforce a longstanding Grimes campaign theme that McConnell is too tied into the world of lavish election spending to represent Kentucky."

Do You Favor Sending Troops Into Iraq Again? Put A Sock In It

Although the TV networks seem certain that lots of war talk from the unprosecuted war criminals who lied us into the Iraq War on their networks last time, is good for ad revenue, the American people are unconvinced by the same old arguments being trotted out by the same out neocons and drooling spokesmen for the war profiteers.

And it isn't just Fox. CNN and even MSNBC have been a cavalcade of warmongers who should have been lined up against walls and shot years ago-- Paul Bremer, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol, Rove, McCain, Lindsey Graham... I think even Mitt Romney chirped in somewhere. Americans, however don't feel the same way these losers do. Not even Republicans. PPP released an extensive survey on Iraq this morning showing that "Americans strongly prefer President Obama’s approach to handling the situation in Iraq over that of NeoCon Republicans like John McCain, and that voters across party lines continue to be strongly opposed to sending combat troops to Iraq."

• Only 20% of Americans think that the renewed fighting in Iraq is due to the United States withdrawing troops from the country before the job was done, whereas 67% think it’s more rooted in centuries of internal conflict that was exacerbated by the US invasion during the Bush administration.
• Only 16% of Americans would support sending combat troops to help deal with the crisis in Iraq, compared to 74% who are opposed. There’s a bipartisan consensus on that issue with with Republicans (28/57), Democrats (10/86), and independents (9/86) all strongly opposed to sending combat troops.
• Asked specifically whose vision they agreed with more about having US troops in Iraq between Obama (no troops under any circumstances) and John McCain (troops should have remained in Iraq after 2011), voters side with Obama by a 54/28 spread. In addition to Democrats strongly siding with Obama’s perspective, independents (53/28) and Republicans (49/30) do as well.
• What a majority of Americans do support doing in Iraq is providing intelligence to the Iraqi government (56/30) and a major diplomatic initiative aimed at mobilizing the international community to stabilize the situation there (52/30). Both of those courses of action have support across party lines.

And speaking of impeachment, Ron Paul has a different president in mind when relating this story:

In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war “the greatest strategic disaster in American history," and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General’s assessment absolutely correct.

  In September, 2002, arguing against a US attack on Iraq, I said the following on the House Floor:

No credible evidence has been produced that Iraq has or is close to having nuclear weapons. No evidence exists to show that Iraq harbors al Qaeda terrorists. Quite to the contrary, experts on this region recognize Hussein as an enemy of the al Qaeda and a foe to Islamic fundamentalism.

Unfortunately, Congress did not listen.

As we know, last week the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, fell to the al-Qaeda allied Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Last week an al-Qaeda that had not been in Iraq before our 2003 invasion threatened to move on the capitol, Baghdad, after it easily over-ran tens of thousands of Iraqi military troops.

The same foreign policy “experts” who lied us into the Iraq war are now telling us we must re-invade Iraq to deal with the disaster caused by their invasion! They cannot admit they were wrong about the invasion being a “cakewalk” that would pay for itself, so they want to blame last week’s events on the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq. But the trouble started with the 2003 invasion itself, not the 2011 troop withdrawal. Anyone who understands cause and effect should understand this.

The Obama administration has said no option except for ground troops is off the table to help the Iraqi government in this crisis. We should not forget, however, that the administration does not consider Special Forces or the CIA to be “boots on the ground.” So we may well see Americans fighting in Iraq again.

It is also likely that the administration will begin shipping more weapons and other military equipment to the Iraqi army, in the hopes that they might be able to address the ISIS invasion themselves. After years of US training, costing as much as $20 billion, it is unlikely the Iraqi army is up to the task. Judging from the performance of the Iraqi military as the ISIS attacked, much of that money was wasted or stolen.

A big US government weapons transfer to Iraq will no doubt be favored by the US military-industrial complex, which stands to profit further from the Iraq meltdown. This move will also be favored by those in Washington who realize how politically unpopular a third US invasion of Iraq would be at home, but who want to “do something” in the face of the crisis. Shipping weapons may be an action short of war, but it usually leads to war. And as we have already seen in Iraq and Syria, very often these weapons fall into the hands of the al-Qaeda we are supposed to be fighting!

Because of the government’s foolish policy of foreign interventionism, the US is faced with two equally stupid choices: either pour in resources to prop up an Iraqi government that is a close ally with Iran, or throw our support in with al-Qaida in Iraq (as we have done in Syria). I say we must follow a third choice: ally with the American people and spend not one more dollar or one more life attempting to re-make the Middle East. Haven’t we have already done enough damage?

Welcome To The Ron Paul Institute... No, Really

We won't have to argue about Ron Paul's anti-Choice fanaticism or his weird religious beliefs or his sympathy for militant fringe right-wing groups. His new eponymous institute is something any red-blooded American can get behind. Here's the media advisory he sent out last week (and posted on his Facebook page):

Ron Paul to Launch New Policy Institute

The neo-conservative era is dead.

Former Congressman Ron Paul will hold a press conference this Wednesday to launch his next big project: the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. After decades in and out of the US House of Representatives leading the call for a non-interventionist foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties, Dr. Paul is launching a revolutionary new vehicle to expand his efforts. The Institute will serve as the focal point of a new coalition that crosses political, ideological, and party lines.

The Ron Paul Institute will focus on the two issues most important to Dr. Paul, education and coming generations. It will fill the growing demand for information on foreign affairs from a non-interventionist perspective through a lively and diverse website, and will provide unique educational opportunities to university students and others.

The neo-conservative era is dead. The ill-advised policies pushed by the neo-cons have everywhere led to chaos and destruction, and to a hatred of the United States and its people. Multi-trillion dollar wars have not made the world a safer place; they have only bankrupted our economic future. The Ron Paul Institute will provide the tools and the education to chart a new course with the understanding that only through a peaceful foreign policy can we hope for a prosperous tomorrow.

Founder and Chairman, and CEO Dr. Paul has invited the Institute’s board of advisors to speak at the conference, including Rep. Walter Jones, Jr. (NC), Rep. John Duncan, Jr. (TN), former Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH), Judge Andrew Napolitano, Ambassador Faith Whittlesey, and Llewellyn Rockwell, Jr.

What: Press Conference to Inaugurate the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

When: Wednesday, April 17th, 3:00 PM

Where: Capitol Hill Club, 300 1st St SE Washington, DC. (California Room)

Join Dr. Paul and his friends Wednesday to hear more about the Ron Paul Institute!

I suspect they won't be sharing a space-- or anything else-- with AIPAC. It should be interesting to watch the coalition-building here, libertarian Republicans and peace-oriented Democrats. I can't wait to hear how they plan to deal with Buck McKeon's initiative to fill the American skies with drones. I suspect the work Ron Paul takes on with this new institute isn't likely to be popular with either party Establishment, both of which firmly embrace the Military Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower so presciently warned us about in 1961.

Ron Paul Thinks The Russian Mafia Got Its Billions Safely Out Of Cyprus

As you already know, Tuesday, as rumors have predicted, Cyprus' right-wing finance minister, Austerity backer and former chairman of Laiki, the country's second largest bank, Michael Sarris quit the government. Monday evening we looked at the stench of corruption pervading Cyprus' right-wing government and how the new conservative president's family made out like bandits days before Anastasiades shut down the banks. It looks like the Russian criminal oligarchs, like Dmitry Rybolovlev, who helped finance his rise to power, also made out just fine, at least according to Ron Paul's Texas Straight Talk.

The dramatic recent events in Cyprus have highlighted the fundamental weakness in the European banking system and the extreme fragility of fractional reserve banking. Cypriot banks invested heavily in Greek sovereign debt, and last summer's Greek debt restructuring resulted in losses equivalent to more than 25 percent of Cyprus' GDP. These banks then took their bad investments to the government, demanding a bailout from an already beleaguered Cypriot treasury. The government of Cyprus then turned to the European Union (EU) for a bailout.

The terms insisted upon by the troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund) before funding the bailout were nothing short of highway robbery. While bank depositors have traditionally been protected in the event of bankruptcy or liquidation, the troika insisted that all bank depositors pay a tax of between 6.75 and 10 percent of their total deposits to help fund the bailout.

While one can sympathize with EU taxpayers not wanting to fund yet another bailout of a poorly-managed banking system, forcing the Cypriot people to pay for the foolish risks taken by their government and bankers is also criminal. In their desire to punish a “tax haven” catering supposedly to Russian oligarchs, the EU elites ensured that ordinary citizens would suffer just as much as foreign depositors. Imagine the reaction if in September 2008, the US government had financed its $700 billion bank bailout by directly looting American taxpayers' bank accounts!

While the Cypriot parliament rejected that first proposal, they will have no say in the final proposal delivered by the EU and IMF: deposits over 100,000 euros are likely to see losses of at least 40 percent and possibly as much as 80 percent. “Temporary” capital controls that were supposed to last for days will now last at least a month and might remain in effect for years.

Especially affected have been the elderly, who were unable to use ATMs or to transfer money electronically. Despite the fact that ATMs severely limited the size of withdrawals during the two week-long bank closure, reports indicated that account holders who had access to Cypriot bank branches in London and Athens were able to withdraw most of their funds, leading to speculation that there would be no money available when banks finally opened up again. In other words, the supposed Russian oligarch money may well be already gone.

Remember that under a fractional reserve banking system only a small percentage of deposits is kept on hand for dispersal to depositors. The rest of the money is loaned out. Not only are many of the loans made by these banks going bad, but the reserve requirement in Euro-system countries is only one percent! If just one euro out of every hundred is withdrawn from banks, the bank reserves would be completely exhausted and the whole system would collapse. Is it any wonder, then, that the EU fears a major bank run and has shipped billions of euros to Cyprus?

The elites in the EU and IMF failed to learn their lesson from the popular backlash to these tax proposals, and have openly talked about using Cyprus as a template for future bank bailouts. This raises the prospect of raids on bank accounts, pension funds, and any investments the government can get its hands on. In other words, no one's money is safe in any financial institution in Europe. Bank runs are now a certainty in future crises, as the people realize that they do not really own the money in their accounts. How long before bureaucrat and banker try that here?

Unfortunately, all of this is the predictable result of a fiat paper money system combined with fractional reserve banking. When governments and banks collude to monopolize the monetary system so that they can create money out of thin air, the result is a business cycle that wreaks havoc on the economy. Pyramiding more and more loans on top of a tiny base of money will create an economic house of cards just waiting to collapse. The situation in Cyprus should be both a lesson and a warning to the United States. We need to end the Federal Reserve, stay away from propping up the euro, and return to a sound monetary system.

The Republican Party And The Dangerous Cult Of Gun Worshippers

Should this convicted murdered have had a gun to use against fire fighters?

By now you've probably read that the NRA's spokesloon, Wayne LaPierre, made an embarrassing and crazy statement about gun violence on Meet the Press that helped further turn the tide away from his group's advocacy of the gun manufacturers' agenda. Even before the senseless murder of firefighters in Rochester, New York, by another insane gun nut on Christmas Eve, libertarian icon Ron Paul turned against the NRA's demand that schools become armed camps, calling government security "just another kind of violence."

Let’s not forget that our own government policies often undermine civil society, cheapen life, and encourage immorality.  The president and other government officials denounce school violence, yet still advocate for endless undeclared wars abroad and easy abortion at home.  U.S. drone strikes kill thousands, but nobody in America holds vigils or devotes much news coverage to those victims, many of which are children, albeit, of a different color.

Obviously I don’t want to conflate complex issues of foreign policy and war with the Sandy Hook shooting, but it is important to make the broader point that our federal government has zero moral authority to legislate against violence.

Furthermore, do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, metal detectors, X-ray scanners, and warrantless physical searches?  We see this culture in our airports: witness the shabby spectacle of once proud, happy Americans shuffling through long lines while uniformed TSA agents bark orders.  This is the world of government provided "security," a world far too many Americans now seem to accept or even endorse.  School shootings, no matter how horrific, do not justify creating an Orwellian surveillance state in America.

Do we really believe government can provide total security?  Do we want to involuntarily commit every disaffected, disturbed, or alienated person who fantasizes about violence?  Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security? Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place.  Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives.  We shouldn’t settle for substituting one type of violence for another. Government role is to protect liberty, not to pursue unobtainable safety.

Paul is retiring from Congress in a few weeks, as is Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who agrees with him, and neither is afraid the get in the NRA's face. The rest of the GOP congressional delegation is... terrified, in fact. None of them have followed public opinion enough to distance themselves from the NRA's self-serving support of violence and mayhem. With Obama urging Congress to take action and progressives coming right out and roundly condemning the NRA call for armed guards in schools, the Republican Party is sort of stuck in the middle holding its pecker and looking foolish and frightened. Believe me there are no Republicans-- not even one-- in Congress who would think of buying into a sensible statement like this one from Jerry Nadler (D-NY):

“The NRA’s response to the Newtown massacre is both ludicrous and insulting, and they are fundamentally out of step with the American people on the issue of gun violence.  Instead of making a sincere and good faith concession toward gun control reform-- like enhanced, universal background checks, which the vast majority of its members support-- the NRA has offered a fantasy suggestion for congressional action on a massive federal spending increase, backed by a disingenuous offer of NRA-funded training premised on that fantasy being actualized.

“What happened to their promise for a ‘meaningful contribution?’  To argue that kids are not safe because too few ‘good guys’ have guns is to ignore every fact on the ground.  The armed personnel at Columbine and Fort Hood, tragically, could not prevent the shooters from committing mass murder.

“And, beyond the cost of providing armed guards for each school-- $5.4 billion a year just for salaries, in some estimates-- this remedy does nothing to provide checks on ‘bad guys’ gaining access to guns or to remove the most dangerous and unnecessary types of firearms from circulation.  What we need is NOT more guns but sensible gun control legislation, including a ban on assault weapons and a comprehensive buyback program, a robust and centralized system of background checks, and a reassessment of our mental health services.”

Republicans are paralyzed with fear-- too scared to get behind LaPierre's demands for guns in schools and too scared to go up against the NRA. Silly little closet case, Lindsey Graham, desperate to appeal to the worst elements of the Know-Nothing GOP base in South Carolina, ran to the TV cameras to brag how he owns a semi-automatic weapon. “I own an AR-15. I've got it at my house. The question is, if you deny me the right to buy another one, have you made America safer? My belief is that this is a problem where you try to get mass murderers off the street before they act, by better mental-health detection. You try to find ways to understand what makes them who they are. But I don't suggest we ban every movie with a gun in it, and every video that's violent. And I don't suggest you take my right to buy an AR-15 away from me, because I don't think it will work. And I do believe better security in schools is a good place to start."

Graham is very used to standing around holding his pecker and looking foolish; he's made a whole career out of it. And when he reads polls that says Americans support banning assault weapons outright, he knows that means actual Americans, not unreconstructed wingnuts in South Carolina, the GOP base. But Republicans haven't always been so completely under the control of the NRA and the gun manufacturers they front. A few years ago Richard Poe did a post for the pro-gun, right-wing website, Newsmax, Don't Blame Liberals For Gun Control, which looks at how Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Nixon tried to solve the problem of gun violence in America. "Republicans, in recent years," he asserts, "have managed to do nearly as much damage to the Second Amendment as Democrats." Poe wrote because he was worried that Bush II might be another anti-gun Republican or that "the monolithic commitment America’s 'ruling classes' have shown toward gun control makes one wonder whether even a president is free to buck the current."

In 1969, journalist William Safire asked Richard Nixon what he thought about gun control. "Guns are an abomination," Nixon replied. According to Safire, Nixon went on to confess that, "Free from fear of gun owners' retaliation at the polls, he favored making handguns illegal and requiring licenses for hunting rifles."

It was President George Bush, Sr. who banned the import of "assault weapons" in 1989, and promoted the view that Americans should only be allowed to own weapons suitable for "sporting purposes."

It was Governor Ronald Reagan of California who signed the Mulford Act in 1967, "prohibiting the carrying of firearms on one's person or in a vehicle, in any public place or on any public street." The law was aimed at stopping the Black Panthers, but affected all gun owners.

Twenty-four years later, Reagan was still pushing gun control. "I support the Brady Bill," he said in a March 28, 1991 speech, "and I urge the Congress to enact it without further delay."

One of the most aggressive gun control advocates today is Republican mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York City, whose administration sued 26 gun manufacturers in June 2000, and whose police commissioner, Howard Safir, proposed a nationwide plan for gun licensing, complete with yearly "safety" inspections.

Another Republican, New York State Governor George Pataki, on August 10, 2000, signed into law what the New York Times called "the nation’s strictest gun controls," a radical program mandating trigger locks, background checks at gun shows and "ballistic fingerprinting" of guns sold in the state. It also raised the legal age to buy a handgun to 21 and banned "assault weapons," the sale or possession of which would now be punishable by seven years in prison.

I have no faith whatsoever that Obama has the ability to stand up to Republican opposition and I'm guessing his attempt to get Congress to ban the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition will turn into some kind of pathetic compromise with the dedicated enemies of civil society and that any change will be more change for the worse, the only change Obama ever brings.

How Many IQ Points Will You Lose If You Smoke Pot And Read Ayn Rand Books At The Same Time?

Yesterday all the English papers carried news stories about how long term pot use by teenagers can permanently lower their IQs. Take it from me, DMT is much worse. I haven't used any in over 4 decades and I'm still suffering from having spent a semester smoking it in a redoubt in the woods behind a cluster of dorms when I was pretending to be "a student." I haven't smoked pot for almost as long. The desire just disappeared but I have no regrets I ever smoked it. (DMT, on the other hand... stay the hell away from that!)

The link above is to the BBC story. This one comes from a fella named Leaf writing for The Guardian and commenting on the same report and the same conclusion, namely that "cannabis has a deleterious effect on intelligence, attention span and memory for youngsters under 18 who use the drug." The study followed pot smokers starting in 1972. Leaf's experience was something like mine, except I started when I was 16 instead of 18. I did it intensely for a few years and quit permanently a couple months before my 21st birthday. Leaf started in 1967 and quit last year. He says he "enjoyed the experience-- it seemed to heighten my sense of aesthetic appreciation and stimulate my creative juices. He found the governmental warning about pot hypocritical because society condones tobacco and alcohol and, like everybody, he ignored them.

I believe that my long-term use of cannabis, while being bad for my lungs, has had no adverse effect on my mind, but two factors have made me consider again the potential problems of cannabis. I was an adult when I began smoking hash and grass and so were the friends I smoked with. Cannabis at this time was little known outside the Jamaican community in the UK and was not a drug taken by children or youngsters. That changed with time.

The other change is the wider availability of high-strength varieties of cannabis, known as skunk. These produce a range of effects which vary from the psychedelic to the catatonic. It is difficult to think, let alone talk, under the influence of many of these powerful substances. Even so, experienced adult users can generally handle and enjoy the mind-bending effects of skunk. It's a different matter with neophytes and youngsters.

I smoked openly in front of my daughter, but never encouraged her to follow my example, thinking that she would be able to make up her own mind when she was an adult. She did, deciding it wasn't for her. At that stage I had no scientific basis for my decision, it just seemed right.

All parents know that teenage brains don't work in the same way as adult brains. If you accept the findings of this study-- as I do-- it would appear that the best thing you can do for your children is to explain to them why premature use of these psychoactive substances could have a negative effect on their future prospects.

That's what the study-- which included around 1,000 New Zealand potheads-- finds that the risk of "significant and irreversible reduction in their IQ" is very real-- and the more one smokes and the younger one starts, "the greater the loss of IQ." Average IQ drop for long-term pot smokers who started in adolescence was 8 IQ points and stopping doesn't bring the points back. The study seems to indicate that pot smoking after 18 doesn't do any harm to the brain.

The researchers, writing in the US journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that: "Persistent cannabis use over 20 years was associated with neuropsychological decline, and greater decline was evident for more persistent users."

"Collectively, these findings are consistent with speculation that cannabis use in adolescence, when the brain is undergoing critical development, may have neurotoxic effects."

..."It is such a special study that I'm fairly confident that cannabis is safe for over-18 brains, but risky for under-18 brains."

Robin Murray, professor of psychiatric research [explained] "There are a lot of clinical and educational anecdotal reports that cannabis users tend to be less successful in their educational achievement, marriages and occupations.

"It is of course part of folk-lore among young people that some heavy users of cannabis-- my daughter calls them stoners-- seem to gradually lose their abilities and end up achieving much less than one would have anticipated. This study provides one explanation as to why this might be the case.

Not all Ron Paul supporters started smoking weed as young as I did, and Newark Star Ledger political columnist Paul Mulshine, a Paulite himself, suggests that it's Paul and his followers who are stopping the conservative movement from completely falling off the cliff into idiocy. He seems to be implying that without the Paulistas, the whole movement could wind up as dumb and irrelevant as Sean Hannity.

Where is the fresh thinking and intellectual direction? This guy's gotta be kidding. The Ron Paul candidacy has half the college kids in America talking about ideas that were unknown on campuses just a few years ago.

There's the entire attack on crony capitalism, for example. Both the Democrats and Republicans love making deals with the ethanol interests, the energy industry and so forth. Only the Ron Paul crowd criticizes this rent-seeking and all the other ways in which businesses collude with politicians to defraud the public.

The intellectual ferment's never been stronger among conservatives-- though you certainly won't hear it from mainstream Republicans and the mainstream media. Both did their best to bury the Paul candidacy. 

But there's no excuse for a writer not to know about this. Where could John Cassidy learn about that sort of thing?

He could click the link right next to his piece and read Amy Davidson's write-up of Ron Paul's speech to the faithful in Tampa:

They listened attentively while he talked about novels (“I remember one line in there, when Lara was talking to Zhivago…”); cheered when he said our troops shouldn’t be “the policemen of the world” (including in Syria), chanting in unison, “Bring them home!”; seemed amused when he talked about “the zinc standard”; booed on cue when he said “what about 1913?”; and applauded both when he attacked F.D.R.’s monetary policies and when he promised that, with the victory of “personal liberty,” “once again, you’ll be able to drink raw milk.” (Raw milk came up a couple of times; so did drug legalization.) There was praise for Bradley Manning and Steve Jobs, which the crowd welcomed, and, notably, none for Mitt Romney, which no one seemed to miss. But some of the loudest roars came when Paul talked about how the leadership of the Republican Party-- at whose convention many of his followers will be delegates—could not be trusted.

So there is your conservative intelligentsia. The problem is that liberals don't want to acknowledge its existence. If they did, they'd have to acknowledge they have a lot more in common with the neocons like Bush and Lieberman than we genuine conservatives do.

I bet this yacht flying the Cayman flag-- or the Bermudan flag-- on which Romney fundraisers had an exclusive blast off the coast of Florida today, only smuggles cash out of America, not drugs. Well... maybe I wouldn't bet on that, now that I think about it.

Even Without A Direct Hit From Isaac, Romney Has His Hands Full

This thing doesn't look like the Unity Convention Romney desperately needs it to be. Last night's David Brooks column in the NY Times-- he's their conservative guy-- was like a harbinger of bad tidings for Romney. The fake bio is probably not Romney's idea of a joke-- not like asking for Obama's passport.

Mitt Romney was born on March 12, 1947, in Ohio, Florida, Michigan, Virginia and several other swing states. He emerged, hair first, believing in America, and especially its national parks. He was given the name Mitt, after the Roman god of mutual funds, and launched into the world with the lofty expectation that he would someday become the Arrow shirt man.

Romney was a precocious and gifted child. He uttered his first words (“I like to fire people”) at age 14 months, made his first gaffe at 15 months and purchased his first nursery school at 24 months. The school, highly leveraged, went under, but Romney made 24 million Jujubes on the deal.

Mitt grew up in a modest family. His father had an auto body shop called the American Motors Corporation, and his mother owned a small piece of land, Brazil. He had several boyhood friends, many of whom owned Nascar franchises, and excelled at school, where his fourth-grade project, “Inspiring Actuaries I Have Known,” was widely admired.

...Romney is also a passionately devoted family man. After streamlining his wife’s pregnancies down to six months each, Mitt helped Ann raise five perfect sons-- Bip, Chip, Rip, Skip and Dip-- who married identically tanned wives. Some have said that Romney’s lifestyle is overly privileged, pointing to the fact that he has an elevator for his cars in the garage of his San Diego home. This is not entirely fair. Romney owns many homes without garage elevators and the cars have to take the stairs.

After a successful stint at Bain, Romney was lured away to run the Winter Olympics, the second most Caucasian institution on earth, after the G.O.P. He then decided to run for governor of Massachusetts. His campaign slogan, “Vote Romney: More Impressive Than You’ll Ever Be,” was not a hit, but Romney won the race anyway on an environmental platform, promising to make the state safe for steeplechase.

After his governorship, Romney suffered through a midlife crisis, during which he became a social conservative. This prepared the way for his presidential run. He barely won the 2012 Republican primaries after a grueling nine-month campaign, running unopposed. At the convention, where his Secret Service nickname is Mannequin, Romney will talk about his real-life record: successful business leader, superb family man, effective governor, devoted community leader and prudent decision-maker. If elected, he promises to bring all Americans together and make them feel inferior.

At least no one expects Mike Huckabee to use his prime time speaking slot tomorrow right before Condoleeza Rice for a Mount Carmel Moment on behalf of Todd Akin, who he feels has been wronged. He wouldn't dare cast the Mormon in the role of Baal... would he? Well, he did tell a coven of radical right Baptist preachers that “I’ve never seen an effort like what I’ve seen this week with party leaders coming together expressly for the purpose of taking one of their own wounded soldiers on the battlefield-- and instead of coming to get him off the field and to the hospital-- basically opening up rounds and rounds of fire on him, and then running over him with the tanks of the trucks, leaving him to be ravaged by the wolves of the other side.” He was talking about, among others Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, NRSC Chair John Cornyn, RNC Chair Reince Priebus and Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, among others.

But I sense Huckabee is trying to calm the waters a little. I don't know if he still can, especially not with the other side-- the Country Club Establishment-- still working hard to undermine Akin and force him out of the race. Over the weekend Mary Matalin told ABC News that the Establishment would run a write-in candidate of their own and screw Akin over completely. "We are going to win Missouri and Wagner is going to be our candidate," the former Cheney flack told George Stephanapolous. "The party is going to get Ann Wagner in... Or we’ll run a third party, we’ll run a write-in. We can do it. We have the money to do it. We are going to transfer the money. It’s not as easy. But it’s a good state for Romney and we will get it back." Can Huckabee defuse that kind of derangement?

“Today, the rhetoric was dramatically dialed back,” he said. “You did not see the NRSC, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, coming out with the kind of harsh statements because they’ve dialed it back. They’ve assured me that they will no longer be threatening the business of some of the vendors in politics and telling them that if they do anything to help Todd, they’d be blackballed and not get any business.

“That kind of stuff’s been going on, and I told these people yesterday that I talked to: That’s got to stop. It can’t continue. That’s what union goons do: breaking people’s kneecaps when you cross a line. And Todd Akin has done nothing but make a mistake for which he has roundly repudiated the comment and apologized. There’s nothing else he can do.”

The NRSC went on record to say Huckabee made up the whole thing and that "no one at the NRSC has even spoken with the governor this week.” Huckabee later admitted he lied but excused lying because his lies were "on my own forums of radio and to the people who choose to receive communications from me." OK. I think he'll make believe there's no such thing as Todd Akin on Wednesday night.

Another one of the kooks, John Yeats, said if David Vitter could survive his multiple prostitution scandals, Akin could weather his problems too. “David had been exposed for going places he shouldn’t have been going. And there were calls for him to step out, but he stayed by his campaign and restored his relationship with his wife. As I think about Congressman Akin, his quote, ‘transgression,’ was not nearly as vile as Vitter’s. So I think this thing is survivable. And beyond survivable, I still think he has a real shot at winning the race here in Missouri. One of the things we have to remind ourselves of and remind our people of is that Congressman Akin represents the mainstream of our values. He is the mainstream of our values.” A fellow Baptist preacher, David Baker, agreed that Akin had to stay in and fight: “We have a responsibility as prophets to speak out. One thing I know about Missouri Baptists is that we don’t like to be told what to do.” Akin is also a Baptist preacher.

So while the Romney folks deal with this insanity on the extreme right of the party-- a nasty fight Romney and Ryan have personally weighed in on-- and in a way that doesn't please the base-- on the more mainstream end of the party they already have a major defection. We're not talking about some desperate publicity hound like Artur Davis looking to get wingnut welfare... we're talking about former Republican Governor Charlie Crist. He endorsed Barack Obama... the day before the convention was due to start in his hometown. And he didn't just endorse Obama; he savaged his old party.

As Republicans gather in Tampa to nominate Mitt Romney, Americans can expect to hear tales of how President Obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around.

But an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they've proven incapable of governing for the people. Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.

The truth is that the party has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership or seriousness voters deserve.

And then beyond the realm of right or left, there's the Ron Paul problem. Maine Governor Paul LePage is boycotting the convention-- some say because Romney laughed when he demanded a speaking slot, but he claims because of the shabby way Ron Paul is being treated. Romney wouldn't let him speak-- not even at his own video tribute Wednesday night!-- unless he endorsed the ticket... and allowed them to edit his speech. He refused both demands, saying he can't endorse Romney until he sees what he's hiding in his tax returns. As for letting the Romneybots have veto-power over what he says... “It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”