More Republican racism (only closer to home); plus - did Mitt Romney make money from dead babies? And did David Koch buy the VP nomination?

Hot on the heels of the racist voter-suppression tactics of Republicans in Ohio, we learn of this recent episode in Vermont:

"A county Republican Party chairman in Vermont apologized Monday afternoon for a racist statement that had appeared on the county GOP's Facebook page. The apology came after Green Mountain Daily reported Sunday that the Rutland County GOP had posted the joke on their Facebook page, generating a series of negative comments. The post and comments have since been removed from the page.

The post read:

Just wanted to let you know -- today I received my 2012 Social Security Stimulus Package. It contained two tomato seeds, cornbread mix, a prayer rug, a machine to blow smoke up my butt, 2 discount coupons to KFC, an "Obama Hope & Change" bumper sticker, and a "Blame it on Bush" poster for the front yard. The directions were in Spanish. Watch for yours soon.

Green Mountain Daily also posted three comments that the Rutland County GOP had posted on the original Facebook post in response to comments opposing the joke -- which has been circulated on the internet. In one, the county GOP said "comedy is usually based in reality .... call it racist if you must ..... not too far off from the truth." The author of the comments for the Republican Party is not identified."

What a riot!


Meanwhile, though, some real funny business has begun to haunt the Republican ticket just prior to the Tampa convention.  Sites like Mother Jones, the Huffington Post, and Jezebel have been buzzing with the news that documents have recently come to light revealing that Mitt Romney was an active participant in the 1999 Bain Capital deal that funded the expansion of Stericycle, the country's leading medical waste firm, which disposes of waste from abortion clinics (among other medical institutions). Indeed, Romney is listed as the only Bain executive with voting power over $75 million worth of shares in the company. (Bain - and Romney - eventually sold their stake in the deal, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.)

Stericycle had a horrible safety record - it has had to reach settlements in several lawsuits with plaintiffs exposed to dangerous waste - but let's be honest, Republicans don't care about that; what they care about is abortion.  And it seems that Mitt Romney may have made money off it - or at the very least he helped underwrite the expansion of a very large company that made money off it, and walked away with a small fortune for his trouble.  Even if he was never involved in the business decisions at Stericycle, simply linking him to their business model would be utterly toxic to the Republican base (the company has recently been vilified by anti-abortion Republicans, who don't realize that the firm was largely funded by their nominee).

But that's not all.  Speculation has surfaced that David Koch, of the infamously evil Koch brothers, actually "bought" the Vice Presidential nomination for Paul Ryan with a donation of $100 million to a Romney Super PAC.  A vicious slur, you say?  Funny - the rumor's source is a Republican, long-time operative (read: dirty trickster) Roger Stone.  Hmmmm.  Stone details how the deal (probably?) went down at a Hamptons fund raiser on his blog.  Now perhaps he only has some sort of personal axe to grind against Ryan - or Koch.  But the story has already gained traction on the fringe - it has enormous resonance as the obvious end-game of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision - and of course even denying it would prove highly toxic to Romney.  So will it and the Stericycle story ever break into the mainstream news cycle? Will these obvious opportunities for investigative reporting receive even a fraction of the attention that Obama's birth certificate has?  All I can say is - wait and see.

This is like shooting fish in a barrel . . .

But here's another hilarious Romney lie making the rounds - a pink flyer handed out at 2002 Gay Pride, offering then-gubernatorial candidate Mitt Romney's wishes for a "Great Pride Weekend!" and asserting that "All citizens deserve equal rights, regardless of their sexual preference."

Ah, well!  That was then, this is now . . .

Okay, we now know that Mitt Romney has terrorized gay kids, blind people, and even his own dog

Why . . . so . . . serious?  Meet the Joker.

I'm not really sure what else we need to know about Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney's George Wallace moment

Mitt and his mentor

Ah, the "Southern strategy" returns for the GOP. That footprint gays and lesbians across Massachusetts feel on their backs these days is due to Mitt Romney using us as a stepping stone to his party's presidential nomination. The parallel is unmistakable. Just as George Wallace used racism as his presidential platform in 1968 (a position which Nixon adopted in a subtler, coded form), so Romney is using homophobia as his in 2008. Forty years have passed, but the playbook remains the same. Only ironically enough, Romney is passing the gubernatorial torch right now to a man who would have been a victim of the Wallace strategy back in '68 - Deval Patrick, the first African-American governor in Massachusetts history and only the second in U.S. history. Back in the day, Deval would have been prevented in many states from marrying the woman of his choice; today, Romney feels my freedom should be restricted in exactly the same way.

Or does he? In a 1994 letter to the Log Cabin Club, Romney wrote, "I am more convinced than ever before that as we seek to establish full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens, I will provide more effective leadership than my opponent." But then it doesn't actually matter that his newfound passion for the "sanctity of marriage" is utterly hypocritical - the homophobes don't care. After all, they currently stomach an expectant gay parent (who used to wear a wedding ring, no less) in the bosom of the Vice President's family, and the Foley scandal doesn't seem to have shaken their faith in the GOP one jot. No, what they want is hate with a Christian face, and they're willing to ignore any level of hypocrisy to move that project forward.

So what does this mean for local culture (to get back to the usual focus of this blog)? Well, more turmoil, more hate, perhaps even some violence - and all over nothing. But there are a few points of light in the sudden gloom. There's Patrick, for one, who has defied the bigotry of some African-Americans by supporting equal marriage (thank you, Deval - you had my vote last fall, and you'll have it again if you stick by my people!). There are heartening polls that show up to two-thirds of state residents see this fight now as about civil rights. There's also a sudden, widespread realization that our great state - for so long a harbinger of progress - might suddenly fall on the wrong side of history. All this may carry us through the battle ahead. The point, however, is that the battle didn't have to happen; it's largely the result of the personal ambition of a single man.


Mitt Romney defends the sanctity of - oops!
I mean George Wallace defends the University of Alabama!