Romney

I ought to thank Romney for his speech last night, because it reminded me why I despise him. In part it was the sheer hypocrisy of it all. The son of a wealthy-businessman liberal Republican governor, the graduate of Harvard Law, the long time Bostonian, the liberal Republican governor of MASSACHUSETTS-- railing against East Coast Elites? Then there is the pejorative use of the term "liberal", about which Sullivan has a great post this morning. And of course, the frightening chants of USA! USA! But of any moment in the speech, the one which most completley demonstrates why I hate Romney is when he addressed energy policy. He addresses that old bugaboo known as "dependence on foreign oil" and tells us that our buying oil from overseas represents "the largest transfer of wealth in history."

Mitt makes it sounds like we are simply shipping off billions of dollars to the Middle East. He doesn't mention that we are getting something very valuable in return: oil. Obviously we value oil more than the money we use to pay for it, or else we would not make the purchase. It's called a market, Mitt. Adam Smith, the invisible hand, capitalism? Now, if Huckabee said the same thing I could forgive him, 'cause you don't get the sense that Huck cares much for economics. Romney, however, is a gifted venture capitalist. He gets it. Which means he's just playing politics. Whatever problems I have with Palin, I still would prefer her at the bottom of the ticket.

Another One for the "Words Mean Things" File

Apparently words mean quite a lot to the American Family Association, so much that they have computers that scrub their way through AP stories before posting them swapping out the word Democratic Party and renaming it the Democrat Party. Interestingly, yesterday, a different scrubber went awry, changing an athlete competing for the Olympics' name from Tyson Gay to Tyson Homosexual. Hmm... that's interesting. Seems Mr. Homosexual "eased into" this year's Olympics, so perhaps we'll hear more about his exploits in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, coverage and a screen capture of the erroneous and bizarre event was posted at hte Salon.com war room here.