Republicans say he quit a month ago, but it's all over the place today. Moral: Wingnut Republicans are wingnut Republicans, and normal people are normal people, and never the twain shall meet. This guy turned his back on a high-paid, high-profile job and burned his bridges. That's how bad these people are:

When Republicans appointed Pablo Pantoja to State Director of Florida Hispanic Outreach for the Republican National Committee, they hoped he would be able to bridge the sizable gap that only expanded during the 2012 elections, when the state’s 4.7 million Hispanic voters supported Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a 20 percent margin.

But after months of inaction by Congressional Republicans on comprehensive immigration reform and stiff resistance by Republican-leaning groups like the Heritage Foundation, Pantoja has had enough; on Monday, he announced via email that he was leaving the party and registering as a Democrat:

Friend,
Yes, I have changed my political affiliation to the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t take much to see the culture of intolerance surrounding the Republican Party today. I have wondered before about the seemingly harsh undertones about immigrants and others. Look no further; a well-known organization recently confirms the intolerance of that which seems different or strange to them.

Pantoja goes on to specifically cite last week’s revelation — that an author of Heritage’s false report on the cost of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill wrote a dissertation in which he suggested that Hispanics are at a permanent disadvantage because they have lower IQs — as the final straw in his political evolution.

Prior to assuming the role of state director, Pantoja served in the National Guard, doing multiple tours abroad in Kuwait and Iraq before returning to the states and getting involved in Republican politics. In 2010 he served as a field director in Florida during the midterm elections.

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After Reince Priebus was re-elected as RNC Chair at their annual meeting Friday afternoon in Charlotte, NC, he painted a vision of the future for Republicans. Okay, he really didn't paint a new vision. He just whitewashed their old one and promised that they'd deliver the same crummy policy ideas -- this time, with a smile on their faces and a song in their heart.

After faintly congratulating him for winning the election, Preibus then scolded Obama, claiming that "[Obama] made your party into one of the most outrageous, government-dependent parties that we've ever seen in modern time." Preibus went on to claim that the president has "delivered less and less from our economy, particularly for Hispanics and African Americans, who have struggled disproportionately in the Obama economy."

Gosh, I think he just called Democrats a bunch of moochers. Again. This came right on the heels of his claim that Republicans would stand on principle but smile while they were serving up those policies, in order to win back disaffected Republicans and welcome newcomers.

How is what Priebus said any different than Paul Ryan calling 60 percent of the nation "takers"? Or Romney's claim that 47 percent of us are dependent on government and unwilling to take responsibility for ourselves?

As if to put an exclamation point on things, the next order of business after Priebus' speech was re-electing Sharon Day as co-chair of the RNC. Because Republicans love women, dontcha know? I won't mention that Sharon Day has been co-chair alongside Priebus since 2011 when he was elected, because then you'd know that her presence makes no difference to women whatsoever. It's pure window-dressing.

Gather, ye moochers, and celebrate! Republicans are going to save us by making sure we don't mooch and we don't have anything, either. Privatize everything, and life expectancies won't be a problem anymore, right?

This is a new RNC ad. According to them, the ad is lighthearted and funny and so what if the featured speaker isn't really a disheartened 2008 Obama supporter but is a long-time RNC staffer? Why does that matter. It is, after all, an ad. It's not dishonest, so they say. Via TPM:

The RNC says its ad, which first appeared on television Thursday is not dishonest.

“It’s a lighthearted ad to show how millions of Americans feel about President Obama — he’s not the person we thought he was and it’s time to break up with him,” an RNC official told TPM. “But let’s be clear, it is an ad.”

Well, yeah. It is dishonest, because it presents a young Latina as someone who is disappointed and ready to vote for Romney, but really it's just a staffer reading a script and doesn't represent anyone I was able to find with similar attitudes, though I'm certain some are out there. And because there may be some out there, it seems to me the campaign should have maybe found one, or else put a disclaimer in their ad that actors/staffers portrayed the speakers.

An honest ad would have disclosed that the speaker wasn't really who they portrayed her to be. She was just reading a script.

So yes, RNC. Your ad is dishonest, not that it comes as a surprise. When you decided fact-checkers had no role in your campaign, you wrapped your arms around Mitt Romney's lying ways and gave it a big wet kiss.

Awesome.

Among the things largely absent from the 2012 Republican National Convention has been any mention of Bain Capital and any fidelity to the truth. After the first two days, the GOP's twin frauds about welfare and "we built that" were once again demolished, prompting Team Romney to protest that "we're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers." Adding to the embarrassment was a prime-time presentation on how to build your small business by selling to the government.

As it turns out, the silence about Mitt Romney's old company (which only ended on the ceonvention's last night) and the Republican sham that "you didn't build it" are related. Because when it comes to Bain Capital, in a very real sense you did build it. After all, your United States tax code doesn't merely allow the "carried interest exemption" that enables the likes of Mitt Romney to pay a lower rate than many middle class families. Without the public subsidy that is the corporate debt interest deduction, there might not be a Bain Capital--or a private equity industry as we know it--at all.

As the history shows, on his road to becoming a $250 million captain of private equity at Bain Capital, Mitt Romney had a lot of help from his uncle. Uncle Sam, that is. Writing in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explained how:

Essentially, Romney got rich in a business that couldn't exist without a perverse tax break, and he got to keep double his earnings because of another loophole - a pair of bureaucratic accidents that have not only teamed up to threaten us with a Mitt Romney presidency but that make future Romneys far more likely. "Those two tax rules distort the economics of private equity investments, making them much more lucrative than they should be," says Rebecca Wilkins, senior counsel at the Center for Tax Justice. "So we get more of that activity than the market would support on its own."

Then-Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney concluded as much when he acknowledged, "There's a lot greater risk in a startup than there is in acquiring an existing company." So he fatefully redirected his firm from venture investments in new companies like Staples and instead became a leveraged buyout king. To understand both why he did that and how all American taxpayers helped make it possible, a little background is in order.

Private equity owes its success in no small part to that uniquely American provision of the corporate tax code. The New York Times recently helped explain why:

Companies can finance investment from either debt or equity. Companies can finance investment from either debt or equity. But profit on an investment financed with equity -- stock issued by the company -- is taxed. In contrast, if the project is financed with debt, then only the profit after interest payments are made is taxed. This means debt-financed investments are cheaper than equity.

And not just a little cheaper. As the Treasury Department recently explained, "The effective corporate marginal tax rate on new equity-financed investment in equipment is 37 percent in the United States. At the same time, the effective marginal tax rate on the same investment made with debt financing is minus 60 percent--a gap of 97 percentage points." The result:

This creates a bias by corporations toward debt.

Or, for the likes of Mitt Romney, a business model.

Continue reading »

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush hoped to use his Republican National Convention appearance to rehabilitate his brother's shattered reputation. After claiming on Sunday that it was "unbecoming" for Barack Obama to continue to "blame others" for the economic calamity he inherited from George W. Bush, on Thursday Jeb suggested the President should be "spanked" for pointing the finger at Dubya.

Now, there are only a few problems with this approach, not the least of which is that most Americans agree with Obama. In 2004, then Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney defended President Bush from John Kerry by protesting that "The people of America recognize that the slowdown in jobs that occurred during the early years of the Bush administration were the result of a perfect storm." Worse still, even now Team Mitt whines that "Governor Romney inherited an economy that was losing jobs each month" back in the Bay State. As it turns out, President George W. Bush and his acolytes have never stopped blaming Bill Clinton for the GOP's lost decade.

Jeb's brother made that point during his final press conference on January 12, 2009. During a month in which Americans would only later learn that the U.S. economy shed a staggering 820,000 jobs, President Bush passed the buck forwards--and backwards:

"In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. And I defended tax cuts when I campaigned, I helped implement tax cuts when I was President, and I will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action. And there's a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts. Who best can spend your money, the government or you? And I have always sided with the people on that issue."

But while that fundamental philosophical question is still the subject of heated debate, the facts should not be.

Continue reading »

This was truly one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen on live television, and it just got worse as it went on. No one will be talking about Mittens' speech -- they'll be talking about this one, in which Clint Eastwood veered from left, to right, to libertarian, to old man with Lipitor brain fog who was up past his naptime.

(Nicole): It was truly bizarre and cameras caught Paul Ryan cringing in the audience, a reaction shared by many of us watching. The Romney campaign said it was unscripted, but think about it, someone had to know enough about the shtick to put that empty chair there for Eastwood to talk to. So the Romney campaign knew what would happen at some level and thought that this would be a good lead up to the candidate taking the stage. That's hard to wrap my brain around.

As to the empty chair, the Obama administration wins Twitter last night with this response.
Watch and read the whole sad thing:

Here's the full transcript of Eastwood's remarks:

EASTWOOD: Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Save a little for Mitt.

(APPLAUSE) I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, what’s a movie tradesman doing out here? You know they are all left wingers out there, left of Lenin. At least that is what people think. That is not really the case. There are a lot of conservative people, a lot of moderate people, Republicans, Democrats, in Hollywood. It is just that the conservative people by the nature of the word itself play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it.

(APPLAUSE)

So -- but they are there, believe me, they are there. I just think, in fact, some of them around town, I saw Jon Voight, a lot of people around...

(APPLAUSE)

Jon’s here, an academy award winner. A terrific guy. These people are all like-minded, like all of us.

So I -- so I’ve got Mr. Obama sitting here. And he’s -- I was going to ask him a couple of questions. But -- you know about -- I remember three and a half years ago, when Mr. Obama won the election. And though I was not a big supporter, I was watching that night when he was having that thing and they were talking about hope and change and they were talking about, yes we can, and it was dark outdoors, and it was nice, and people were lighting candles.

They were saying, I just thought, this was great. Everybody is trying, Oprah was crying.

(LAUGHTER)

EASTWOOD: I was even crying. And then finally -- and I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there is 23 million unemployed people in this country.

(APPLAUSE)

Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough, obviously -- this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that. Whenever interest they have is not strong enough, and I think possibly now it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.

(APPLAUSE)

So, Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them?

I mean, what do you say to people? Do you just -- you know -- I know -- people were wondering -- you don’t -- handle that OK. Well, I know even people in your own party were very disappointed when you didn’t close Gitmo. And I thought, well closing Gitmo -- why close that, we spent so much money on it. But, I thought maybe as an excuse -- what do you mean shut up?

(LAUGHTER)

OK, I thought maybe it was just because somebody had the stupid idea of trying terrorists in downtown New York City.

(APPLAUSE)

I’ve got to to hand it to you. I have to give credit where credit is due. You did finally overrule that finally. And that’s -- now we are moving onward. I know you were against the war in Iraq, and that’s okay. But you thought the war in Afghanistan was OK. You know, I mean -- you thought that was something worth doing. We didn’t check with the Russians to see how did it -- they did there for 10 years.

(APPLAUSE)

But we did it, and it is something to be thought about, and I think that, when we get to maybe -- I think you’ve mentioned something about having a target date for bringing everybody home. You gave that target date, and I think Mr. Romney asked the only sensible question, you know, he says, “Why are you giving the date out now? Why don’t you just bring them home tomorrow morning?”

(APPLAUSE)

And I thought -- I thought, yeah -- I am not going to shut up, it is my turn.

(LAUGHTER)

So anyway, we’re going to have -- we’re going to have to have a little chat about that. And then, I just wondered, all these promises -- I wondered about when the -- what do you want me to tell Romney? I can’t tell him to do that. I can’t tell him to do that to himself.

(APPLAUSE)

You’re crazy, you’re absolutely crazy. You’re getting as bad as Biden.

(APPLAUSE)

Of course we all now Biden is the intellect of the Democratic party.

(LAUGHTER)

Kind of a grin with a body behind it.

(LAUGHTER)

Continue reading »

[Cover it Live seems to have issues with allowing people to actually read the live blog. Meet us in the comment section.]

Join us tonight as we live blog (and fact check) Mitt Romney's acceptance of the Republican nomination for President.

Here are your Romney Fact Check Resources. Keep them close. You will definitely need them.

• ThinkProgress: Facts Matter
• MediaMatters: Mitt Romney's tax plan for the middle class
• FactCheck.org: Romney files

I recommend the ThinkProgress site as most comprehensive for Mitt errors and the Media Matters site for Fox News errors lies.

C&L Staff will be liveblogging and watching your comments too! It should be fun.

But the GOP is a big tent party that isn't at all racist, I swear.

An attendee at the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday allegedly threw nuts at a black camerawoman working for CNN and said “This is how we feed animals” before being removed from the convention, a network official confirmed to TPM.

Keep it classy, Republicans.

So perfect. And big congrats to Bill Hader for his Emmy nomination for "Stefon."

Open thread below....

Is it too late for Debbie Wasserman-Schultz to write a check so Palin can parachute into the Republican National Convention, just like the Queen? Cuz the Democrats should pay for that.

Open thread below...