commentaries

And, it wasn't a gaffe anymore than obama telling business people that they didn't build their businesses. It was a light hearted joke kinda like Biden telling blacks that Romney wants to put them all in chains.

Re: "Mitt Romney's joke and Todd Akin's garbled biology have more in common than one might think." True dat, Jonathan Bernstein: both are incendiary, both are intended to arouse the worst passions in the audience, and neither is amusing.

Hahaha Mitt, but has anyone asked to see your magic underwear, family photos of your polygamist roots, the book you call a bible, your old highway patrolman’s uniform, inside your temple, your foreign bank statements, your federal tax returns - just for laughs of course!

Micromanaging is when someone is judged by the minutia and not their overall effectiveness in a position. This commentary is micro-analyzing, taking the minutia of a campaign speech to somehow make a comment on the whole of a campaign. This writer is a democrat, I get that, who seems intent on showing how politically correct and biased he is. Nothing of substance here, what purpose does the Tribune even have running this?

Re: "Micromanaging is when someone is judged by the minutia and not their overall effectiveness in a position." Isn't that the point, smlion? That the Electorate is better served when candidates address issues instead of igniting passions with "jokes"?

A slogan is a great organizing principle as long as a candidate supports the slogan with detailed plans. Compare candidate Obama's "Hope and Change" and all the specific promises he made to Romney/Ryan's alliterative litany of malaise "Decline, debt, doubt and despair." How does the self-proclaimed turn-around expert propose to turn-around the decline, debt, doubt and despair he blames on President Obama??? What he's selling is returning to the very policies which caused and/or exacerbated the decline, debt, doubt and despair he sees all around!!!

The headline should read Obama bither joke. Why isn't the messiah asked why his literary agent used Kenya as his birthplace for 16 years. Typo? I guess Kenya and Honolulu are pretty close on the key board.

LOL. No one cares except for people who want to use it for the false outrage. He referenced his own birth certificate, and if people want to make the stretch, they will. Romney's job is not to defend Obama from birth doubters, and it doesn't mean that Romney can't tout his own citizenship and upbringing. If obama has to defend his own, that is his problem. The outrage is completely phony, since obama's own campaign website asked for birther jokes: http://www.redstate.com/aglanon/2012/08/24/obama-campaign-requested-birther-jokes/ they don't own exclusive comedy rights to it. Quit crying, nobody cares.

What's Mitt Romney thinking??? "Women won't find out that Paul Ryan co-sponsored the national Personhood Bill, and if they do find out, they won't care"? "Women won't find out that Paul Ryan supported the so-called "Let Women Die" Bill which permits ER personnel to deny emergency life-saving abortion to a dying woman and if they do find out, they won't care"? "My sons and daughters-in-law won't find out that Paul Ryan thinks IVF should be banned, and if they do find out, they won't care? And if Ann finds out she won't care?" "Nobody'll believe Rep Ryan's as ignorant about sex and gender as Todd Akin"?

Or maybe Romney's thinking, "No matter. Ohio and Florida will put up more barriers to voting, and our Super Pacs will discourage more folks from voting."

RE: "And, it wasn't a gaffe anymore than obama telling business people that they didn't build their businesses. It was a light hearted joke kinda like Biden telling blacks that Romney wants to put them all in chains."*************Obama's comment was intentionally lifted out of the context in which he used it, then spun beyond recognition. He was wholly correct that even the most successful business had a lot of societal help to become successful and it's moronic to believe otherwise. Likewise, Biden's comment was twisted by the GOP to mean other than what it was in context - for political purposes at that. His audience was as white as it was black and he was referring to the Wall Street casino being dangerously unregulated; that this puts us ALL in chains. GOPers have repeatedly used the term "schackles" themselves. As to Romney's birther "joke", it's called a "dog whistle to racism" as any thinking adult knows that the birther conspiracy nuts have been in force since the beginning to paint the president as "other than us; other than a real American". This insidious, relentless strategy reveals the dark underbelly of American history come alive because we have a black president as a lightening rod for such ugliness. It is not merely a "joke" at all. It is despicable that Romney would be this tone-deaf.

This man continues to be a one-man, open mouth, insert foot, comedy skit! Does he ever engage his brain before he opens his mouth?