Then, today’s news came out. Holy crap. Apparently Romney, while in Prep School, was one of those bullies that today are known to be responsible for driving young gay kids to suicide. Check this out.

A fellow student remembers Romney saying that a kid didn’t look right with his blond-died long hair draped over one eye. “[He] can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” Romney did not let this stand, and hatched a plot that is rather alarming.

A few days later, [Romney’s friend] entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

“It happened very quickly, and to this day it troubles me,” said Buford, the school’s wrestling champion, who said he joined Romney in restraining Lauber. Buford subsequently apologized to Lauber, who was “terrified,” he said. “What a senseless, stupid, idiotic thing to do.”

“It was a hack job,” recalled Maxwell, a childhood friend of Romney who was in the dorm room when the incident occurred. “It was vicious.”

“He was just easy pickins,” said Friedemann, then the student prefect, or student authority leader of Stevens Hall, expressing remorse about his failure to stop it.

The incident transpired in a flash, and Friedemann said Romney then led his cheering schoolmates back to his bay-windowed room in Stevens Hall.

Romney today says he does not remember the incident, which was recalled with vivid detail by a large number of eye witnesses. Now the Romney campaign is digging in and refusing to talk about what might well have been a gay-bashing event. The event haunted Lauber, the victim, for his entire life, which ended in 2004.

Now, there are open questions here. Was Lauber gay? Does it matter? Is an event that happens at this time in one’s life, so long ago, important now?

My purpose here is not to address any of those issues, but rather to make one simple suggestion: Maybe the Biden-Obama issue-evolution timing is not as random as I first thought. Maybe there was a tip-off that this story was coming out (such tip-offs are routine) and this was seen as a chance to make a much more clear distinction, without having to say much out loud about it, between a pro-diversity evolving Democratic administration and a radical gay-hating and, perhaps even gay-bashing Republican challenger.

The source of the above quotes is this piece in the Washington Post.

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

Read the whole story here.

Then, click here.

OK, that’s all funny and everything, but I’m very disappointed in both the producers of this piece and in some of the attitudes associated with it.

First, where the hell is Michele Bachmann? Michele produces a “Greatest Moment” every time she opens her mouth! Has Bachmann’s ever flowing river of crazy become the new normal, so that it isn’t even noticed by political satirists anymore? That, my friends, is exactly what I warned about when she first started running. Well, I said that mainly in my own head, but I’m sure you figured it out too. Bedtime for Bonzo isn’t just a think you say when it is bed time. Its a movie starring the man considered by the majority of Americans to be the greatest president who ever existed in the United States of America.

The second thing that is somewhat disappointing is, of course, the polarization. The woman commenting on Gingrich’s child labor remark expressed my feelings exactly. Gingrich’s suggestion to enslave the poor children of the inner cities to clean toilets is a bad idea, but one that can be transformed into a good one. A youth jobs program is a great idea. They used to be more common, and have often been part economic stimulus. But not like Gingrich says. More like the lady in the video says.

And finally, since Michele Bachmann was left out of this video, here’s a makeup video, with Sarah Palin:

I love the Boston Accent on Paul.

The Republican presidential contender says he learned about expanding employment during his time heading a private equity firm. But under his leadership, Bain Capital often maximized profits in part by firing workers.

..

Now a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney says his Bain experience shows he knows how to create jobs. He often cites Bain’s investment in a little-known office supply store called Staples, which now employs more than 90,000 worldwide.

But …. Under Romney’s leadership, Bain became one of the nation’s top leveraged-buyout firms, helping lead a trend in which companies were acquired using debt often pledged against their own assets or earnings.

Details here at the LA Times

Hat Tip RT

With bonus footage: