Dallas Morning News:

"For all the talk about whether Mitt Romney should distance himself from George W. Bush -- and the policies of the last GOP White House -- a new survey shows that the former president actually has better favorability ratings than the Republican nominee."

The most recent Bloomberg poll shows Bush with a 46% to 49% favorable rating as compared to Romney's 43% to 50%.

Saturday night, during a fundraiser at the Beverly Hilton Hotel about 1,500 people paid up to $50,000 to see the Republican nominee for president speak. Guests were also entertained by comedian Dennis Miller, but it seems that the Romney campaign could've easily skipped that expense.

Via:

Romney’s wife, Ann, was in attendance, and the candidate spoke of the concern he had for her when her plane had to make an emergency landing Friday en route to Santa Monica because of an electrical malfunction.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney said. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no — and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous. And she was choking and rubbing her eyes. Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver. But she’s safe and sound.”

Didn't they have science class in that fancy private school?

Joe Ricketts, a billionaire whose family owns the Chicago Cubs, plans to shell out $12 million to support Republican candidates in the next week, with $10 million of that going to ads supporting presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The ads will run nationally, with more targeted spots appearing in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and Virginia. The move by the 71-year-old Ricketts puts him in the company of other election-year conservative backers like the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson, all of whom have been willing to pour millions into their pet causes. Ricketts has also started his own super PAC, the Ending Spending Action Fund.

Mike Huckabee really turned on the old Republican charisma --*cough*-- on Wednesday evening during the RNC:

"The only hitch in an otherwise perfect week was the awful noise coming from the hotel room next door to mine. Turns out that it was just Debbie Wasserman Schultz practicing her speech for the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte next week. Bless her heart!"

When a Southerner says bless your heart, or in this case her heart, that's not exactly what it means.

Southern ladies usually pull it off much better, Huckabee just sounded creepy.

H/T TalkingPointsMemo

Matt Taibbi is f*&^ing brilliant. This is today's "Must Read."

Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone:

Four years ago, the Mitt Romneys of the world nearly destroyed the global economy with their greed, shortsightedness and – most notably – wildly irresponsible use of debt in pursuit of personal profit. The sight was so disgusting that people everywhere were ready to drop an H-bomb on Lower Manhattan and bayonet the survivors. But today that same insane greed ethos, that same belief in the lunatic pursuit of instant borrowed millions – it's dusted itself off, it's had a shave and a shoeshine, and it's back out there running for president.

...

"But what most voters don't know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America's top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth."

"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions - placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place..."

"If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. It's almost enough to make you think he really is qualified for the White House."

This latest video released by Moveon.org hits Mitt Romney on his plan to lower taxes for the wealthy, and raise them for everyone else. The guy has to pay for his dancing horse some how.

With a creepy hand that tries to get to your wallet, searching for that $2,000 to pay for those tax breaks for his millionaire and billionaire friends, you'll be watching your back if Romney comes to your town. The message? Tell Mitt Romney: Get your hand out of my pocket!

I've been looking through videos this morning all mocking Mitt Romney's attempts to connect with regular Americans, but this one from David Letterman made me laugh out loud! This one comes by way of Chris Matthews earlier this week on Hardball. Enjoy!