Charles Ferguson: Standing Behind Every Great Con Artist is Someone Like Glenn Hubbard. Mitt Romney has a credibility problem.
He changes his beliefs like laundry (abortion, medical insurance, whether Bin Laden was worth killing, attacking Iran), refuses to disclose his tax returns, and won't explain how he could possibly pay for the tax cuts he proposes. But there is another scandal in Romney's campaign -- namely Glenn Hubbard, Romney's chief economic advisor, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under George W. Bush, and is now Dean of Columbia Business School.I interviewed Hubbard for my documentary film Inside Job, and analyzed his record again for my book Predator Nation. The film interview became famous because Hubbard blew his cool after I interrogated him about his conflicts of interest: "This isn't a deposition, sir.
I was polite enough to give you time, foolishly I now see, but you have three more minutes. Former FDIC Chief Sheila Bair Calls Romney “Misinformed” on Dodd Frank. The Post-Truth Campaign. Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is living every social scientist's nightmare. Late at night, when your humble blogger is troubled in his sleep because of some crap argument he was making in his day job, some version of this Annie Hall scene plays out in his head: This is, far and away, my worst nightmare.
I bring this up because yesterday in the National Review, Mitt Romney doubled down on his "culture comments" he made in Israel: During my recent trip to Israel, I had suggested that the choices a society makes about its culture play a role in creating prosperity, and that the significant disparity between Israeli and Palestinian living standards was powerfully influenced by it. In some quarters, that comment became the subject of controversy. But what exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture? Romney’s Lead Economist Urges Policies that will Cause the Next Financial Crisis. Bill Black, the author of The Best Way to Rob a Bank is to Own One and an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City.
Cross posted from New Economic Perspectives. Presidential nominees of either U.S. party can secure economic advice from any economist in the world. This makes it all the more amazing and sad that they choose economists with track records of disastrous policy advice. Bill Clinton chose Robert Rubin, George W. Bush chose Gregory Mankiw, Obama chose Lawrence Summers, and Mitt Romney chose Mankiw. Mankiw Morality. Don't let Mitt Romney's anti-gay billionaire backer whitewash his intimidation of critics. Billionaire anti-gay campaigner and Mitt Romney campaign co-finance chair Frank VanderSloot is whitewashing his tarnished image with a public relations campaign.
After years of trying to silence journalists critical of him and his record, all that's left to do is dodge the difficult questions. After a recent scathing commentary from Salon's Glenn Greenwald, echoed nationwide on MSNBC by The Rachel Maddow Show, VanderSloot's history of threatening critics was exposed. The game changed. But his efforts only highlight a long record of local campaigning whose dirty tricks and litigious tactics now deserve national attention. The many companies run by VanderSloot, a Mormon family-values man on his fourth marriage, include Riverbend Communications, which operates a number of radio stations in his home state. Medvedev slams Romney for "Number one Enemy" Slur.
Below, the USG Open Source Center translates an article from Russian about President Dmitry Medvedev’s reaction to Mitt Romney calling Russia the “number one geopolitical foe” of the United States.
The Russian leader reminded Romney that the Cold War has been over for a while, suggested that he has seen too many Hollywood movies, and urged him to put some sort of filter between his random thoughts and the words that come out of his mouth. Medvedev seems for some strange reason to think that candidates for the presidential nomination need to “switch on sensible reasoning” when speaking in public. Ain’t it the truth. Romney had earlier pledged to take on China over currency valuation, warning that it is an American, not a Chinese century. (Bruce Ramsey sensibly wants to know why it can’t be both.)
Then Romney had written that [pdf] Iran is the biggest challenge since the Soviet Union and before that, Nazi Germany. Now the Russian Federation is the number one enemy. Not Mitting Around. Mitt Romney. Romney. Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney and the Fallacy of Political “Authenticity” I think all you pretty much need to know about the alternative directions Mitt Romney’s possible presidency might take can be distilled into four words: “Democratic party”, uttered in an interview with Fox’s Chris Wallace from December of last year, and “Democrat party” spoken just a couple of weeks ago on CNN to Soledad O’Brien as part of his already famous, “I’m not concerned about the very poor” episode.
More on those four words shortly. Meanwhile: most election observers aren’t like me. They don’t think that a few words can adequately reveal the totality of Mitt Romney. It seems as if they all want to know who he really is. The authenticity obsession about Romney has become a national, wasteful pursuit like the Iraq invasion and occupation without the laughs. Romney-geddon! Mitt’s Foreign Policy Team Run By Ultra-Neocon Loons & Failures Itching For Nuclear War With Iran - By Max Blumenthal.
This article is cross-posted from Al-Akhbar with permission from the author Max Blumenthal.
In 2005, a group of graduate students at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) participated in the school’s annual diplomatic simulation. The high-pressure scenario required the students to negotiate a resolution to a standoff with a nuclear-armed Republic of Pakistan. Mara Karlin, a student known for her hawkish politics on Israel and the Middle East, played President of the United States. Though most of the participants were confident they could head off a military conflict with diplomatic measures, Karlin jumped the gun. According to a former SAIS student, not only did Karlin order a nuclear strike on Pakistan, she also took the opportunity to nuke Iran.
Special report: Romney's steel skeleton in the Bain closet. Mitt Romney's $12 Million Mystery Man. Illustration: Andy Friedman Republican strategist Carl Forti has been described, variously, as "Karl Rove's Karl Rove" (Politico), "one of the smartest people in politics you've never heard of" (Karl Rove), and "the Alexander the Great of the Republican independent expenditure world" (Republican operative Bradley Blakeman). You can add one more to the list: President Obama and the Democrats' worst nightmare in 2012. A pioneer in the post-Citizens United world of super-PACs and dark money, Forti is one of the lead architects of the GOP's outside-spending strategy and an operative who has for years tested the boundaries of campaign finance law.
Forti first waded into the outside-money wars while working for the National Republican Congressional Committee. During the 2006 election cycle, he managed an $82 million independent-expenditure campaign—the largest in the committee's history.