Santa's Mailbag 2016

Opinion | thepilot.com

Dear Santa: I swallowed my pride. I grinned and laughed at that Cheeto-haired baboon’s stupid jokes and “locker room” talk. I did everything but get on my knees and beg for the secretary of state job. But — well, we know how that turned out. So all I really want for Christmas this year, Santa, is my pride and my dignity back. I’d like to be able to look at myself in the mirror again. — Mitt, Salt Lake City

(Note to staff: You know how I hate disappointing little Mitty, but once you throw that dignity away, it’s gone. Maybe get him a Kindle and an Amazon gift certificate. He’s going to have a lot of time on his hands to read. Again. — S)

Note from staff: OK. You should know we got the same letter from Chris Christie. We’ll give him the same. — Hermie the Elf

Dear Santa: Before the election, I was telling people on Twitter that I was ready to “grab my musket” if Hillary Clinton won. I was telling everyone on my radio show that I was looking forward to Trump “draining the swamp.” Now, I find out that the Russians influenced the elections and Trump’s putting all these Goldman Sachs people and insiders from that very swamp in his administration. I’m really ticked off. But I don’t want any kind of do-over. In fact … well, I’m not sure what I want. What do I want, Santa? Help me! — Joe Walsh, Chicago

Note to staff: Joe Walsh? That goofy guitar player for the Eagles and the James Gang? Did all that life in the fast lane make him lose his mind? — S

Note from staff: No, boss, this guy’s a former Republican congressman who has a right-wing radio show now. We don’t know what happened to his mind, but it ain’t pretty. He’s the first one to jump ship, but he won’t be the last. — Hermie

Dear Santa: I know people love you, but I’m gonna say, no one is as loved as me. I’m the greatest musical artist of all time. You feel me? Of all time! Beethoven? Mozart? Couple of (censored) (censored). But when I visited Trump Tower today to meet with the Prez-elect, I realized that want I really want is to be part of Mr. Trump’s Cabinet. Maybe minister of music. Or secretary of awesome. Something that fits my genius. Oh, and Kim wants a pony. — Kanye, Los Angeles

Note to staff: Wait, this Trump guy doesn’t have time for intelligence briefings, but he’s got time to meet with Kanye West? — S

Note to Santa: Yep. Amazing, ain’t it? — Hermie

Note to staff: Well, Kanye’s totally unqualified and bat-spit crazy. I’m surprised Trump didn’t make him ambassador to Great Britain. — S

Note to Santa: Give it time, boss. — Hermie

Dear Santa: Remember how in 2011, I was talking about the three government agencies I’d abolish, but I couldn’t remember the third one? Well, it’s a funny story, actually, but I’m now nominated to be the head of it. Problem is, I still can’t remember what it is. Can you help me? And maybe give me a map to wherever it’s located so I can find my way to work on the first day? Thanks, amigo. — Rick, Austin, Texas

Note to staff: What’s that herb that’s supposed to increase memory? Kinko something? — S

Note to Santa: Gingko Biloba, boss. And we’ll make sure the missus gets some for you, too. — Hermie

Dear Santa: Greetings from Moscow! President Putin is sending best wishes and wants to reassure our neighbor to the North that planes and icebreaking ships you and elves are seeing in northern waters are mere scientific expeditions. Or are there for fishing. Whatever. Also, is no need to get President Putin anything this year. He has everything he needs with the American president so much in his debt, in so many ways. In fact, President Putin wishes to give gift to all American people: copy of Russian language lessons from, how do you say, Rosetta Stone. Will make things easier later. —Yorgi Dmitriovitch Danilov, secretary to Mr. Putin

Note to staff: I don’t like the sound of this, guys. — S

Note to Santa: We don’t either. Merry Christmas anyway, boss.

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Murdered Party (Part Two)

Opinion | thepilot.com

(In our last installment, Sluice Tundra, Private Eye, was pulled out of retirement by a mysterious woman and hired to find out who killed the Republican Party.)

I decided to start right at the top, with the chairman. I found him in his office, looking as nervous as a cat at the Westminster Dog Show.

“Thanks for seeing me, Mr. Prius,” I said.

His expression changed from anxious to annoyed.

“It’s Priebus,” he said. “Reince Priebus.”

“Right,” I said. “So tell me, Raunch …”

“Reince,” he corrected me.

“OK, Rinse. I was seeing if you knew anything about who might have killed your party.”

“Killed?” he said, sweat breaking on his brow. “It’s not dead.” He took out a hankie and wiped his face. “It’s fine. Everything’s going to be fine. Really.” His right eye started to twitch. “We’re going to unite behind the nominee. Mr. … Mr. …”

“Trump,” I said.

He visibly flinched. “Yeah. Him.”

I could tell I was getting nowhere with this guy. He was deeper in denial than a Sanders supporter looking at the delegate count. “You have a nice day, Mr. Peebles.”

He stopped shaking and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Are you doing that on purpose, or are you just an idiot?” he said.

“You’ll never know,” I said.

Next, I decided to pay a visit to the governor. He was seated on the veranda at his palatial Massachusetts mansion. I was startled to see a short, balding guy standing behind him, running a comb through his perfect hair.

“William Kristol?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Kristol gave me a contemptuous look and whispered something in the governor’s ear.

“Bill here is talking to me about running as a protest candidate,” the governor said.

“You know he’s always wrong, don’t you?” I said. “I mean, like, always.”

Kristol whispered again. “He says you’re one of the takers. The 47 percent. Why should I talk to you when you’ll never vote for me anyway?”

“Whatever,” I said. “If you want to run, all I can say is what another guy said to you last time.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“Please proceed, governor.”

“Get out!” he bellowed. I did.

Next, I headed down to Texas to talk to The Cowboy. I found him hard at work on his ranch, engaged in his favorite pastime: clearing brush.

“Wow,” I said. “I would have thought you’d have cleared away all the brush after this many years.”

“No problemo, amigo,” he said. “I have new brush trucked in every night.”

“Amazing. So, what do you know about who might have killed the Republican Party?”

He stopped clearing for a moment and eyed me suspiciously. “That sounds like the kind of traitoristical talk that risks emboldenating our enemies.”

“What?”

“Remember, muchacho, you’re either with us or with the terrorists. Hey, would you like to see one of my paintings? I have a new self-portrait of me in the bathtub.”

“Um … thanks, but no thanks.”

I got out of there as quickly as I could. I felt like I was running out of options. I had one more visit to make.

Suddenly, everything clicked into place. I had the answer. I dialed the woman who’d hired me, who I knew only as “dollface,” “kitten” or “precious” — at least until now. I got her voice mail.

“Meet me at my old office,” I said. “I have the answer.”

She arrived just as I was pulling the dust covers off the furniture. “Take a seat, angel,” I said. “Or should I call you … Gov. Palin?”

She hesitated, then pulled the mask off, revealing the face of the half-term governor of Alaska. “Guess you think you’re pretty smart, doncha, big fella?” she sneered. “Well, smart don’t feed the bulldog there sonny, not in the real America where we’re gun-clingin’, Bible-slingin’…”

“Can it, sister,” I said. “I know you did it. But you didn’t do it alone.”

She looked confused. Maybe she always looked like that. “I didn’t?”

“No. All of you did. You pretended to be pushing low taxes and limited government, but all you were really selling was fear. Fear and resentment. Fear of Scary Brown People, and resentment of anyone you could convince people was getting something they weren’t. You also promised people things you couldn’t deliver. You were going to ‘deport all the illegals’ and repeal ‘every word of Obamacare.’ But you couldn’t. And after a while, someone came along who did fear and resentment better than anyone. You all created this monster, and now he’s going to eat your party alive while he takes it over a cliff.”

“Wow,” Palin said. “I thought I was bad about mixing metaphors.”

I got up and showed her to the door.

“I got a million of ’em, toots. Now scram.”

If I hurried, I could still make the Early Bird Special at the Retirement Home for Private Eyes.

The Return Of Lord Mitt

 Opinion | thepilot.com

It seems that Lord Mitt the Earl of Romney, that clumsily programmed candidate-droid who led his party to crushing defeat and cruelly denied Mitch McConnell his dream of making Barack Obama a one-term president, is now volunteering to save the Republicans from their rapidly escalating civil war.

First, Lord Mitt called upon front-runner Donald Trump to release his tax returns, suggesting there would be some sort of “bombshell” in there that would doom the Trump candidacy.

Ponder that for a moment. Mitt Romney, who fought tooth-and-nail to avoid releasing his own tax returns, is now demanding, apparently with a straight face, that Donald Trump release his. Irony isn’t just dead, it threw itself off a seaside cliff in despair.

The Earl then gave a scathing anti-Trump speech in Salt Lake City.

“Donald Trump,” Lord Mitt said, “is a phony, a fraud. His promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University. He’s playing members of the American public for suckers.”

All completely true, of course, but again, Mitt Romney is charging someone else with being a phony? Upon hearing this, Irony raised its broken body from the rocks upon which it had thrown itself and dragged itself sobbing into the sea to drown.

Trump, for his part, immediately found the video of Romney thanking Trump for his endorsement and began declaring that Romney would have “gone down on his knees” if The Donald had demanded it as the price of his backing. 

That Donald. So classy. My Republican friends (and I do have some) are just so very proud that this man is the face of their party right now.

Actually, it should surprise no one that Romney has changed his position, both on Trump and on the issue of tax returns.

This is, after all, a man who, in 2012, demonstrated his ability to change his position on an issue literally within minutes, a man whose communication director said that a campaign was “almost like an Etch A Sketch. You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again,” a man whose chief pollster said, “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.”

Then came the news that “Romney for President Inc.” had filed paperwork with the FEC in February of this year. The Internet exploded with speculation, as the Internet is prone to do. Was Romney keeping his hand in with an eye toward stepping in to save the party from Trump at a so-called “brokered” or “open” convention?

After all, that kind of convention is looking more and more likely as Young Marco Robotto, Sen. Green Eggs and Ham and — oh, yeah, that Kasich guy — scrape together a few delegates here, a few there, and maybe enough to deny Trump a first-ballot victory, after which delegates will be free to vote for whomever they wish.

As always, if something on the Internet looks too perfect to be true, it most likely is.

Bradley Crate, the deputy CEO of the Romney for President campaign, went on Twitter to inform the curious that it was just a required change-of-address form filed by his company, Red Curve Solutions.

Romney himself says he has no plans to don the red nose, strap on the big shoes, and join the denizens of the Republican Clown Car in their Carnival of Buffoonery. Or so he says now. See “Etch A Sketch,” above.

Mitt has, however, recorded robo-calls for both Kasich and Rubio, which is sure to make him even more adored among the Republican electorate. Because, after all, who doesn’t love being robo-called at dinnertime by the guy who got his butt kicked last time?

To tell the truth, I don’t think a Romney Rescue will happen. For one thing, I don’t think the Lord loves the Democrats enough to give them Mitt Romney to run against again. If Mitt Romney is going to be the savior of the GOP, then they just ain’t making saviors like they used to.

Still, at the chaos that would be certain to ensue at a brokered convention, all bets will be off. Will we see elderly Republican delegates in funny state-themed hats brawling in the aisles of the Quicken Loans Center in Cleveland? Will there be a mass walkout of Angry Trumpistas as the desperate Republican Establishment tells the voters what’s good for them?

 Well, we live in hope.

Letters From Santa's Mailbag

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Once again, we bring you another beloved holiday tradition: selections from Santa's mailbag.

Dear Santa: OK, so I went on Fox News predicting a 325-electoral-vote Romney landslide. And yeah, I did it over and over, with complete confidence. As you probably heard, that didn't exactly pan out. But is it fair that the TV network that's more of a home to me than my own living room says that they're going to stop having me on? I mean, Bill Kristol's wrong all the time too, and he gets his phone calls returned.

I  need work, Santa, and fast. The hookers say they're going to start charging me double if I'm not on TV.

- Dick Morris, somewhere in hiding

(Note to staff: Send Dick a copy of "Polling For Dummies.")

Dear Santa: I have to say, I've had a pretty good year. I won the election by a comfortable margin. We kept the Senate and made gains in the House. The Republicans are in disarray and starting to turn on each other.

I've got the upper hand in these budget negotiations, since all I have to do is wait for all the tax cuts to expire, then ask the House to introduce a cut that only includes the middle class and dare the Republicans to vote against it. The economy continues to get better. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm good for this year, and I don't really need anything for myself. Well, maybe some socks.

- Barack Obama, Washington, D.C.

(Note to staff: Get the guy some socks. It's the least we can do.)

Dear Santa, you socialist piece of [censored]: The soulless fools who voted for economic and spiritual suicide this past November may want stuff from you, like support for their obesity booze cellphones birth control abortions. But let me tell you something, you commie pinko [censored]!

I'm a free American, and I don't want any [censored] handouts from anyone, especially some [censored] who dresses up in red and sneaks into people's houses at night. So stay the [censored] away from my house, you got that, fatso? I mean it. I've got guns. Lots of them.

- Ted Nugent, Michigan

(Note to staff: Goodness. This is one angry fellow. Can we maybe bring him some nice warm milk or some meds or something to calm him down?)

(Note to Santa: No can do, boss. The reindeer refuse to go near his place after Dasher nearly took a crossbow bolt in the haunch.)

Dearest Father Christmas: Warm regards from her Royal Highness, the Duchess of Cambridge. I trust you have been made aware of the recent good news regarding Her Royal Highness' delicate condition.

Her only wishes for this Christmas season are that the people of the British Isles enjoy greater peace and prosperity, and that, if possible, you could provide something to ensure she is not, as I believe the Americans put it, blowing chunks every 10 minutes. With best wishes for the holidays and for the New Year, I am, very truly yours,

- Percy Uppington-Smythe, Personal Assistant.

(Note to staff: Poor kid. Hard enough being pregnant and sick, but I can't imagine having to deal with those ghastly in-laws of hers. Send her a keg of ginger ale to settle her stomach.)

Dear Santa: Who is this guy in the White House? We'd gotten used to a president who started his negotiating from the center-right and just kept giving us what we wanted so we could demand more.

This guy, this so-called "second-term" Obama, acts like he's actually got a backbone. He's demanding that we agree to the things he ran on and that people voted for! You'd think he'd won the election or something! We want the old, pliable, easily bullied Barack Obama back! If we don't get it, I might start crying again. I'm warning you.

-John Boehner, Washington, D.C.

(Note to staff: Sorry, looks like that model's been discontinued.)

Dear Santa: Please bring me a new iPad. And an Xbox360. And a Play Station3. And a Wii. And a bunch of movies, books and games, all rated "G" or "PG". And hurry. Mitt Romney, La Jolla, Calif.

(Note to staff: Looks like someone suddenly has a lot of time on his hands.)

(Note from staff: Good thing he doesn't drink, huh?)

(Note to staff: I don't even want to think about it.)

Hope you all get what you want under your tree.

Benghazi: No Magic Bullet

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You know, there are a lot of legitimate concerns that could be raised about what happened on Sept. 11, 2012, in Benghazi, Libya, when our popular ambassador, Chris Stevens, and three other Americans were killed by a group that attacked and sacked the U.S. consulate there.

Was it a mistake to have so much of the consulate's security provided by local forces and a nearby group of CIA employees, rather than, say, the U.S. Marines? Should we have had a military response force located close enough to get there more quickly?

Republicans, however, seem to be determined to ignore these very real questions. This may be because "since gaining the majority in 2011, House Republicans have voted to reduce embassy security funding by approximately half a billion dollars below the amounts requested by the Obama administration."

That language comes from a report issued by the very committee investigating the attacks and the U.S. response to them. "You have to prioritize things," shrugged Utah Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, one of the lawmakers who voted to cut funds for embassy security - and who's now helping to lead the committee.

Well, that's true, and it's become crystal clear what the Republican priorities are: not getting at the truth, but desperately trying to find their "magic bullet," the scandal that will bring down the man they love to hate.

All of their previous attempts - Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the DOJ's settlement of a Bush-era civil action against the New Black Panther Party - none of these have managed to gain any traction. But this! This, they thought, was going to be the one.

Mitt Romney got the ball rolling. Before the bodies were cold, he was releasing critical statements in the mendacious and fact-free style that characterized the entire campaign. He accused Obama of expressing "sympathy" for the attackers and for responding to the attacks by "apologizing for our values." The fact that the president had done no such thing didn't matter to Lord Romney, whose disdain for the President was only exceeded by his disdain for the truth.

In the days leading up to the election, Benghazi became the right-wing obsession. Mention anything, anything at all, and they'd start yelling at the top of their lungs that "Obama lied about Benghazi."

"Obama is leading in the swing states ..."

"HE'S LYING ABOUT BENGHAZI!"

"The heads of the car companies say Romney's lying about moving auto jobs to China ..."

"THAT'S NOT AS BAD AS OBAMA LYING ABOUT BENGHAZI!"

"Would you like another piece of toast?"

"I BET OUR AMBASSADOR IN BENGHAZI WOULD HAVE LIKED TOAST, BUT OBAMA MURDERED HIM, THEN LIED TO COVER IT UP!"

And so on.

But as hearings ramped up and people who actually knew things began to speak, it became more and more obvious that there really was no scandal there. No one, as the conspiracy theorists claimed at first, had told U.S. forces to "stand down" rather than help the beleaguered ambassador. President Obama had immediately referred to the attacks as an act of terror, despite Romney's brazen attempt to lie about it at the second debate.

Then things just got silly. Sen. John McCain skipped a closed-door briefing about Benghazi to hold a press conference demanding more information about Benghazi. He threatened to hold up a hypothetical nomination for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, because, he said, Rice "lied" about the motives behind the attack.

As it turns out, however, the "lies" Ambassador Rice were supposedly telling were actually information given to her by the CIA and vetted by "seven, eight, nine different agencies" before being approved in final form, again by the CIA. At least that's what Rep. Peter King described as the testimony from scandal-plagued former CIA director Gen. David Petraeus.

This led to some rumblings that Petraeus' recent sex scandal arose out of some attempt by the administration to blackmail him. That line of attack went nowhere, probably because it made no sense. Then there was a claim that the White House had changed the ambassador's "talking points" to take out references to al-Qaida and make themselves look better.

This was immediately shot down by the office of the director of national intelligence in an interview with CNN, leaving poor Honorable John nothing left to gripe about but the fact that he had to see his hoped-for scandal shot to pieces on CNN.

As this scandal-that-isn't fades away, to become just another one of the Zombie Lies the right trots out again and again no matter how many times it's debunked, what's next?

Will President Obama be blamed for the death of the Twinkie? Will some small detail of the White House Christmas tree lead to outraged calls for his impeachment?

Stay tuned.

Life Of Illusion (The Director's Cut)

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[Note: this is the unedited version. The one in the paper eliminates the first paragraphs because the editor was afraid the Party of Love might firebomb the newspaper office.] 

So now, at long last, the election is over, and President Barack Obama will have his second term. Before we get to our discussion of what happened and why, let me just take the time to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!

Ahem. On to the post-election analysis.

I’ve said before that Mitt Romney was destined to be the John Kerry of the Republican Party. Each man was a rich, entitled Massachusetts moderate trying to convince his party's skeptical base he was one of them, despite having once supported the thing that that base purported to despise most (the Iraq War in Kerry's case, the individual mandate in Romney's). Both Kerry and Romney ran against controversial incumbents, with a central message that amounted to “I’m not him.” And both fell short. But Mitt Romney fell much shorter than Kerry. Why? Perhaps because the “him” Romney was running against didn’t exist.

The imaginary Barack Obama that the Republicans were running against bore little or no resemblance to the actual man in the White House. Imaginary Obama was a scowling, far-left radical, a socialist, a fascist or a communist, depending on who was yelling into the mike at the time. Imaginary Obama was simultaneously an evil schemer who was plotting 24/7 to destroy America and a guy who was too dumb to get into college without affirmative action or to speak without a teleprompter. Imaginary Obama was a divisive, harshly partisan figure, hated by all, even his former supporters. Worst of all, he was an incompetent, a miserable failure at absolutely everything he touched.

The problem with this strategy is that the actual Barack Obama that non-delusional people could see was a smart, calm, moderate with good likability ratings who’d brought the unemployment numbers down at a steady if sometimes maddeningly slow pace, saved the auto industry, and brought Osama bin Laden to justice. People heard the Right dismissing every bit of good news, crying doom and gloom, and insisting “everything’s getting worse,” looked around, and went, “hmmm, it really isn’t.”

Then along came Sandy. The quick Presidential response to the hurricane and the grateful reaction of Republican New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who only a few weeks before had been savaging Obama at the GOP convention, blew away any lingering doubts non-delusional voters may have had about both the President’s competence and his ability to work with Republicans.

As the polls showed the President pulling further and further ahead in crucial swing states, Republicans began pulling the blanket of delusion over their heads. Pundits like Dick Morris, Karl Rove, Michael Barone and even the usually sane George W. Will predicted a Romney landslide, with Will predicting 321 EVs for Romney.

 One expects this sort of thing from hacks like Morris, Barone and Rove, but Will really should have known better. The polls were “skewed,” they insisted, because they assumed that Democratic voter turnout would be the same in 2012 as it was in 2008. That wasn’t going to happen this year, they asserted with the all the misguided and uninformed bravado of a latter-day George Armstrong Custer.

Actually, had you asked earlier in the year, I might have said you had a point. There were a lot of disaffected Democrats, particularly on the Left. (Anyone who says liberals all think the same has clearly never been around any). But that was before the GOP, some of its prominent supporters, and its candidates began taking extreme radical positions on things like abortion, contraception, gay rights, and immigration, and saying things that frightened, offended or ticked off Latinos, LGBT people, African-Americans, and especially women. That fired up the very constituencies the GOP had told themselves would stay home.

So thanks, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachmann, Todd Akin, Rick Santorum, John Koster, Richard Mourdock, etc.! You fired liberals up and damaged the GOP brand with moderates, probably for years. And right wingers, dwelling as they do in their tightly woven cocoons where only Fox News and talk radio can penetrate, never even saw it. They still don’t. But numbers really don’t lie.

Now that the Republican leadership has failed in their stated number one goal of making Barack Obama a “one term president,” what will they do? Will they actually start pushing bills other than futile grandstanding attempts to “repeal Obamacare”? Will they actually deal in good faith on the budget?

Well, we live in hope. But first they’re going to have to do is stop deluding themselves that everyone hates the President and the Democrats as much as they think they do and that they’ll be rewarded for obstructionism. Reality, it’s said, has a well-known liberal bias, but it’s still reality. 

Bring Me Binders Full Of Women!

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It’s odd sometimes how the things you think are going to end up being a big deal aren’t, and the things that end up being a big deal are the ones you wouldn’t have suspected.

This was recently illustrated in the aftermath of the latest debate between President Barack Obama and Lord Mitt Romney, the Earl of Etch A Sketchington, and how a comment by His Lordship made “binders full of women” an Internet sensation.

When asked by a member of the audience how the candidates would deal with the issue of gender inequality in the workplace, in particular pay inequality between men and women, Obama noted that the first bill he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which increases the ability of women to seek recourse against discriminatory pay practices.

He mentioned education, particularly Pell grants, which allow both men and women better access to education. He promised enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.

When it was Lord Mitt’s turn, he began with a recollection of how he’d hired a bunch of women for Cabinet positions when he became governor of Massachusetts:

“Well, gosh,” he said, “can’t we — can’t we find some — some women that are also qualified?” He went on to relate: “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks,’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”

Now, I confess, I didn’t pay much attention to that phrase when Romney said it. It went right by me, probably because I was too busy griping that Romney hadn’t done squat to answer the actual question. But hoo-boy, did some people, mainly women, notice it.

“Minutes after” the fateful phrase was uttered, it was “lighting up Twitter and had already spawned a new website,” according to the L.A. Times. The website  mocked Romney’s phrasing in typical online fashion, with references to various other Internet memes and sarcastic pictures.

It didn’t end there. Someone created a Facebook page that immediately garnered more than 200,000 positive votes (“Likes,” in Facebook parlance). USA Today dubbed “binders” its “Obama-Romney Word of the Day.” It seems a lot of people found the image of Mittens paging through “binders full of women” more than a little creepy.

You knew the phrase was really taking hold when conservative pundits started whining that the Obama campaign was “trivializing” the issue by bringing up the words their candidate actually used. Pro tip: When they’re whining, you’re winning.

Then people who were actually around in Massachusetts at the time Romney took office began to speak up, and — surprise! — it turns out that he was playing fast and loose with the truth. Again.

Romney’s former lieutenant governor noted that the “binders” were prepared by a group called the Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, through a program they called MassGAP. In a statement from that group released Wednesday, spokesman Liz Levin noted that Romney hadn’t come to them after the election; they’d come to both him and his opponent, Shannon O’Brien, before the election even took place, and that “both campaigns made a commitment” to work with them on hiring more women.

And while they applauded Romney’s initial commitment, which resulted in women filling “42 percent of the new appointments made by the Romney administration,” they noted that “from 2004-2006 the percentage of newly appointed women in these senior appointed positions dropped to 25 percent.”

But the initial question, and the big issue, wasn’t about whether Romney’s a good guy for perusing “binders full of women” to find candidates for Cabinet posts. It was about gender inequality in the workplace. So what did Lord Romney or his campaign have to say about the Lilly Ledbetter Act, which, as noted above, increases the ability of women to seek redress for income discrimination in the workplace?

Well, according to Romney spokesman Ed Gillespie, Romney opposed the passage of the bill, but would not repeal it.

Then, the very next day, Gillespie performed one of the flip-flops that have become such a regular part of the Romney campaign that no one in the mainstream media even seems to comment on them anymore: Romney, Gillespie told the political blog Talking Points Memo, “never weighed in on [the Act]. As president, he would not seek to repeal it.”

Once again, Mittens displays the breathtaking ability to take up to three positions on a single issue within the space of 24 hours: He doesn’t support it, takes no position on it, but won’t repeal it.

Awkward, out-of-touch, and condescending remarks, lies and shameless flip-flops, followed by whining about what people are quoting what the candidate actually said. Just another day on the campaign trail for His Lordship.

Sluice Tundra, Private Eye In: The Case of the Bothered Bird

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The street was clean, colorful, brightly lit. The doors were painted a vivid, friendly green, and cheerful red curtains hung in the windows. The place looked welcoming and warm, a neighborhood anyone would want to live in.

It gave me the creeps.

My name is Sluice Tundra. I'm a private eye. I usually make my living on meaner streets, where the only thing hotter than the dames is the lead that flies when the bad guys meet the badder guys, where the only thing darker than the night is the evil that lurks in every alleyway, where men's lives are often measured out in intervals shorter than this monologue.

But it wasn't the contrast between this street and the ones where I ply my usual trade that sent a shiver of warning up my backbone. It was the fact that the street, which you'd expect to be full of happy people doing happy things, was empty. I knew there were people behind those doors and windows, but no one moved. No one made a sound.

Something was seriously wrong on Sesame Street. And I was here to get to the bottom of it.

"Hey, buddy," a growly voice said behind me. I looked around.

The guy addressing me from the trash can was covered in green fur, with a bushy unibrow over wide, bulging eyes. He looked a lot like my brother-in-law from my first marriage. Or my sister-in-law from my second.

"My name's Tundra, not buddy," I said.

"What's your business here?" he demanded.

"My business is my business," I said. "And it's not with you."

"Awright," he said. "You had your chance to play nice."

I felt a sudden sharp pain in the back of my leg. I looked down. Another little furry guy, this one covered in what looked like crimson shag carpeting, was whacking the back of my leg with a lead pipe.

"Hey!" I snapped. "Cut that out!"

He ignored me, just kept waling away, as if he was trying to chop me down like a tree. I reached down and picked him up by the scruff of the neck.

"I said -" I began, before I realized my mistake. I'd raised him to head level. He nailed me right on the forehead, and everything went black.

I awoke on a hard concrete floor. As I sat up and rubbed my head, I noticed the guy who'd hit me a few feet away. But it was the figure next to him I'd come to see. Eight feet tall, covered with bright yellow feathers, and sporting an absurdly long beak.

"Big Bird, I presume," I said.

The little guy spoke first. "Elmo's really sorry, Mister," he said. "But Elmo can't be too careful."

"That's OK," I said. "Elmo was just doing his job." Dang, now he had me doing it.

"Sorry," Big Bird said. "But with you-know-who gunning for us, me in particular ... well, we're all a little jumpy."

"I get it," I said.

"Well, I don't," said the bird. "What did I ever do to him? We take up less than one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget."

"He's trying to make an example of you," I said.

"Why?" he said bitterly. "To scare other puppets?"

"No," I said, "because he won't be specific about any other things he wants to cut, except ones that don't add up. He said he wants to save money by repealing Obamacare, but the Congressional Budget Office says that while that would reduce spending by $890 billion, it'd cut revenues by $1 trillion and increase the deficit.

"He says he wants to cut taxes, raise military spending, and maintain Medicare and Social Security at the current levels for people 55 and older. To do that, he'd have to cut all other government spending by at least 53 percent. On everything. Student loans, national parks, cancer research, food and drug inspection, environmental protection, small business loans, highways, the State Department ..."

I was running out of breath. When I recovered, I went on. "If he talks about the rest of the stuff he'll need to do to make his promises come true, he'd be about as popular as stomach flu. So he name-checks you."

"This doesn't make me feel any better," Big Bird said.

I shrugged. "Cheer up. The way this guy flip-flops, tomorrow he may be claiming he'll nominate you for secretary of education."

"So what can we do?"

"One, hope the president's on his game enough to try and pin you-know-who down on his claims. Two, get out the vote."

"We can't vote," he said. "We're Muppets."

"What, no photo ID?"

He shook his giant head. "You're really not from around here, are you?"

A Night Of Blown Chances

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For Obama supporters, Wednesday's debate was a frustrating exercise as we watched the president let one easy pitch after another go by him without taking a swing that could have let him hit the ball out of the park.

For instance, during the debate over taxes, Mitt Romney continued to make his absurd assertion that he could make his plan to lower tax rates "revenue neutral" by eliminating unspecified "loopholes and deductions." Obama could have turned to him and simply asked, "So which of these deductions and loopholes do you plan to close, governor?"

In the past, Romney has tried to weasel his way out of answering this question, saying only that he'll have to "negotiate with Congress on that" (in other words, we have to elect him and pass his tax reform bill to see what's in it). But nonpartisan tax policy analysts have stated that the only way to make up the revenue would be to eliminate popular tax breaks like the deduction for home mortgages and the child care tax credit.

President Obama did bring up that study, and made a reference that the "arithmetic" didn't add up, but when Romney intimated that his "plan" didn't include eliminating those middle-class tax breaks, he failed to press him to be specific. Romney hates being specific, largely because the more specific he and Ryan get about what they really want to do, the more horrified voters become.

Likewise, the president missed an opportunity to point out Romney's hypocrisy on the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan. "The president should have grabbed that," Romney said. But Obama could have easily pointed out that Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, voted against sending the final proposal of the Simpson-Bowles commission to Congress. "Their proposal is a serious and credible plan, but I cannot support it," Ryan said at the time. Obama just let that one go by.

On health care, President Obama forgot the wise words of Sun Tzu that the best policy in waging warfare is to "attack the enemy's strategy." Mitt Romney's strategy is based entirely on lying through his teeth.

Remember, this is the campaign that said they weren't going to let the fact checkers dictate to them, and Obama let him get away with some whoppers.

For instance, Romney hearkened back to Sarah Palin's mythical "death panels" when he talked about "an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have."

But as fact checkers, including The Associated Press, have pointed out, the health care law "explicitly prohibits" the Independent Payment Advisory Board "from rationing care, shifting costs to retirees, restricting benefits or raising the Medicare eligibility age." So the board doesn't have the power to dictate to doctors what treatments they can prescribe.

Romney also continued to double down on the thoroughly discredited claim that Obama is "cutting $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare." As the fact-checking site Politifact points out, Obamacare "does not literally cut funding from the Medicare program's budget." They go on to say that "the cuts are from future spending, not the program's current budget" and that 'the spending reductions were mainly aimed at insurance companies and hospitals, not beneficiaries."

This has been debunked so many times by so many fact checkers that for Romney to keep bringing it up is an act of sheer outrageous chutzpah, but I can't imagine that, as commentator David Gergen put it, Obama was caught by surprise by Romney telling a bald-faced lie. And that is exactly what it was.

Romney wasn't expressing opinions upon which reasonable people can disagree. He said things that were factually untrue, and the president let him get away with it.

I don't know what this was all about. Maybe Obama went into this debate assuming he could coast on the lead he has in the swing states. Maybe he thought going for Romney's throat (metaphorically, of course) would look "unpresidential."

He may have thought Romney would do the job for him by saying something egregiously stupid, like dismissing half of the American people again (another thing he inexplicably failed to mention). Maybe he was just unhappy because he was having to do this on his anniversary.

But Obama needs to get his head back in the game here. You give Mr. Etch A Sketch the chance to weasel and lie, he'll take it. Please, Mr. President, don't let it happen again. Next time Mittens serves up a slow pitch, you need to pound it over the left-field wall, then go upside his head with the bat.

Metaphorically, of course.