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MICHELE BACHMANN has been one of the loons who has repeatedly criticized and mocked President Obama about using teleprompters. So this happened:

At a campaign stop in Creston, Iowa Wednesday, the candidate read her campaign speech directly from an iPad tablet computer.

“I have a statement I would like to read before I open up and take a few of your questions,” the candidate told the crowd, only pausing from her prepared remarks to yell “Good morning!” at a passing train.

Is there a major difference from which type of electrical device one reads one’s speech, Michele? I really want to know your thoughts on that.

Because of falling poll numbers, NEWT GINGRICH is now feeling SO desperate that he’s actually considering the half-term former governor / one-season reality TV star as a running mate:

“She is certainly one of the people you would look at. I am a great admirer of hers and she was a remarkable reform governor of Alaska, she’s somebody who I think brings a great deal to the possibility of helping in government and that would be one of the possibilities.

There are also some very important Cabinet positions that she could fill very, very well. I can’t imagine anybody who would do a better job of driving us to an energy solution than Gov. Palin, for example. Tell her that she would certainly be on the list of one of the people we would consider.”

Newt’s current fragrance? Flop Sweat.

Shit RICK PERRY says:

To a voter:

“I wish I could tell you I knew every Supreme Court case. I don’t, I’m not even going to try to go through every Supreme Court case, that would be — I’m not a lawyer. We can sit here and you know play I gotcha questions on what about this Supreme Court case or whatever, but let me tell you, you know and I know that the problem in this country is spending in Washington, D.C., it’s not some Supreme Court case.”

To a reporter:

“I’m not taking the bar exam…I don’t know what a lot of legal cases involve.”

These responses were in reference to Lawrence v. Texas — a Supreme Court case which struck down the Texas sodomy law. Perry referenced the case in his 2010 book Fed Up!, calling it one of the court cases in which “Texans have a different view of the world than do the nine oligarchs in robes.”

Stormfront founder and prominent white supremacist Don Black thought RON PAUL was “One of us”:

“Everybody, all of us back in the 80′s and 90′s, felt Ron Paul was, you know, unusual in that he had actually been a Congressman, that he was one of us and now, of course, that he has this broad demographic–broad base of support.”

And Black’s thoughts on the newsletters:

“It was written in the first person frequently and, you know, a normal person would have thought that Ron Paul must have written this, or at least whoever wrote it must have did so with the approval of Ron Paul, but things change. So, now that he has this new base of support of course, he’s having–frantically trying to disavow himself from the newsletters, and I agree the newsletters were a little over the top.”

Wow. You know things are bad when the founder of Stormfront thinks Paul’s newsletters were “a little over the top“!

image: bobcesca

Finally, WHY won’t MITT ROMNEY release his tax returns?

Despite his famous demand in the 1994 Senate race that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns to show he has “nothing to hide,” Romney last week reiterated his own paperwork would not be forthcoming. “We don’t have any current plans to release tax returns, but never say never,” Romney said, adding:

“I can tell you we follow the tax laws, and if there’s an opportunity to save taxes, we like anybody else in this country will follow that opportunity.”

Truer words were never spoken.

In October, Citizens for Tax Justice estimated that the Romneys paid only 14 percent of their income in taxes. (It’s no wonder Mitt opposes the “Buffett Rule.”) As Time reported…

[...] Two weeks ago, the New York Times shed light on that “$5.5 million to $37.3 million from dividends and capital gains” that represents most of Romney’s income. Though Mitt left Bain Capital in 1999, 13 years later his windfall continues uninterrupted:

In what would be the final deal of his private equity career, he negotiated a retirement agreement with his former partners that has paid him a share of Bain’s profits ever since, bringing the Romney family millions of dollars in income each year and bolstering the fortune that has helped finance Mr. Romney’s political aspirations…

[...] And that creates what Steve Benen aptly called “Romney’s ‘carried interest’ problem.”

In case anyone needs a refresher, there’s a tax loophole on “carried interest” — sometimes called “the carry” — that taxes private equity and venture capital income at a lower, 15% rate, as compared to 35% on ordinary income. Hedge-fund managers and the Wall Street have fought tooth and nail to protect this loophole — even after the Obama White House tried to eliminate it — and so far, they’ve been successful.

Which is why Mitt Romney has thus far refused to join his fellow GOP White House hopefuls in proposing the elimination of the 15 percent capital gains tax.

Read it all…

Of course he doesn’t want to tell us how much he paid in taxes on his vast Bain Capital wealth! GOP candidate Mitt Romney is looking out for his own, ever-growing, fortune while he secretly expects the rest of us to continue to subsidize it with austerity measures and GREAT ideas like this. Vote for the Republican candidate no matter what, wingnuts!