This is a chart by Paul Krugman. We don't have those in {unintelligible}.

The transcript of the Romney talk at the Mark Leder fundraiser is up. It turns out that Mitt opened the floor for political advice from the assembled rich folk, and it would be hard to find a sillier group, at least until the next fund-raiser.

First up we get a dose of Rush Limbaugh on Elizabeth Warren and the Cherokee thing, which Mitt loves, because it backs up his tasteless joke that it would be helpful if he were a Latino. The next guy tells Romney how to handle the debate: say that a vote for Obama is a vote to bankrupt the United States. This guy doesn’t realize that the Ryan plan doesn’t balance the budget until the 2030s, if ever. I bet President Obama knows that.

Romney replies that he talked to this guy John Whitehead (that joke writes itself), who used to work for Goldman Sachs and was President of the New York Fed. Whitehead says that the Fed is buying up all the US Treasury debt, and when it quits buying, interest rates will go through the ceiling. Paul Krugman shows us charts. See how easy it is to show what a bunch of silly people we have running the country?

OMG, says the next guy, we are headed for fiscal disaster. Why don’t people get it? Romney thinks we are like Greece, and only a few elites get it. Maybe he can explain it to some of the people in the 53% who might vote for him. And those pesky Democrats distract people with social issues to draw in the young people. Completely unlike the Republicans, who wouldn’t think of exploiting social issues to draw in their single-issue voters. And as to Greece, what with all their rich people not paying taxes, I do see the comparison.

We then move into foreign policy.

I saw Dr. Kissinger; I said to him, “How are we perceived around the world?” And he said, “One word: VEAK!” [Audience laughs.]

Wicked Kissinger impression there, Mitt. And it’s great that you take foreign policy lessons from murderous thugs.

Eventually we get back to the political geniuses in the room. People have terrible misconceptions about you, Mitt, and when I talk to people they just don’t seem to like you until I browbeat them. What can we do? Mitt urges him to: “raise millions of dollars” for me so I can do ads. That will make people like me enough to vote for me.

Yeah, says the next political genius:

Why don’t you stick up for yourself? To me, you should be so proud of your wealth. That’s what we all aspire to be—we kill ourselves, we don’t work a nine to five. We’re away from our families five days a week. I’m away from my four girls five days a week and my wife. Why not stick up for yourself and say, “Why is it bad to be, to aspire to be wealthy and successful? You know, why is it bad to kill yourself?

All this guy wants is for Mitt to tell him it’s all right that he sucks as a husband and a father because he makes a lot of money. The rebooted Mittbot 3.? empathy subroutine misfires again, so only drivel comes out.

Here’s where the 47% comment comes in:

For the last three years, all everybody’s been told is, “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you.” How are you going to do it, in two months before the elections, to convince everybody you’ve got to take care of yourself?

So some guy in the audience was watching Fox News and fed Mitt the line that made him a laughingstock again. Great friends just do that kind of thing for you, don’t they?

And next up, we have a guy who is totally unaware of today’s Republican Party:

Fifty-four percent of American voters think China’s economy is bigger than the US. When I first met you four or five years ago, you did a diagram where you went very granular and you said, “Look, guys”—this was a small group—and you said, “this is it, this is what it is, tell it like it is.” How are you going to win if 54 percent of the voters think China’s economy is bigger than ours?

Really, that’s what’s bugging you? Not the fact that 30% of Republicans believe that the President is a Muslim? Not the fact that 65% of Americans believe that Obama would handle an alien invasion better than Mitt? So here’s this guy’s solution:

I want to see you take the gloves off and talk to people that actually read the paper and read the book and care about knowing the facts and acknowledges power. As opposed to people who are swayed by, you know, what sounds good at the moment. If you turned it into like, “Eat what you kill,” it’d be a landslide. In my humble opinion.

It was the w[h]ine talking. Moving on.

The next guy, who claims to be “the oldest Republican in [unintelligible]”, says that the Obama administration isn’t doing anything about crony capitalism. In [unintelligible] where this guy comes from, Romney is going to make the SEC and the CFTC enforce the laws against Wall Street criminals. If that were so, I might actually like [unintelligible]. Romney just wishes that the SEC and the CFTC weren’t unionized so he could fix things.

And we close with this great idea: let’s get Ann “you people” Romney to dance a horse onto a bunch of TV shows and say nice things about Mitt.

I guess when you want money badly enough, you’ll put up with a whole lot of silly people.