July 26, 2012

Romney on England: "It is a small island . . doesn't make things. . the world wants to buy".

On edit: Just for fun I emailed this to the Guardian writer who wrote about Romney's other gaffes.




As reported by the Political Wire





I made a prediction that the President's campaign would be leaking little tid bits, and wonder if this is one of them.

Remember Mitt, No Apologies now.

July 23, 2012

Interesting little drive by on CNBC

Don't stop by the stock channel very often but happened to click through while they were playing a clip of Romney speaking to their reporters with a business on the back ground.

It was the best I have ever seen Romney. He wasn't giving the President an 'F' on the economics, nor was he blaming the President for the downturn, here is what he said (roughly);

"The President made a number of missteps when he first took over the Presidency which stunted the recovery. They were more concerned about passing a bunch of liberal legislation than getting people back to work and that's why the jobs recovery has been so bad".

It was thoughtful, reasonable, and articulate.

Of course it was also 100% wrong. Under the President the stock market doubled its value and created more capital paper wealth than any 4 years or 8 years of other Presidents. Moreover Romney's alternative would have crippled the car industry and there would have been more stimulus.

So it was surrealistic seeing Romney talking in an effective and articulate way.

That wasn't the interesting part.

The interesting part was that when they played the clip they then asked the 5 financial analysts to respond.

None agreed with him, even at his best.

One guy noted that he thought the President was wrong in that he should have doubled the size of the stimulus but then said that Romney wouldn't have done anything. The next guy said that he didn't think that more stimulus would have had much of an impact because jobs are a lagging indicator. The third guy appeared to be a Republican who generally supported Romney's comments but he said that Romney's arguments were never based on the known facts but on the facts now known, and he said that if President Obama had known that the jobs market was going to be this slow to recover he believed that the President would have taken other actions.


Romney at his best.

In his wheel house, capitalist traders and market guys.

None of them were buying Romney, they didn't hate the guy but nobody was asking to get on the dance card.

There may be people who will vote for this guy but nobody really likes him. He has to be the most disliked guy to run for the President since Nixon, and this was after he gave what I thought was his best most reasonable effort.

July 20, 2012

The other freedom.

Many people who are focused on their '2nd amendment rights' are focused on the ability to responsibly own and use a firearm.

When I was younger I was 100% against it and joined the anti-gun lobbies at the time, which in retrospect only helped the NRA get millions more single issue voters and contributors.

Here at DU and other places I have met many very responsible gun owners and am frankly quite impressed with how responsible most of them are. In my work I have daily contact with law enforcement officers who also are very responsible about securing their weapons.

I lived overseas for 2 decades and lived and visited almost all of the main countries in Asia and Western Europe. In these countries individuals generally don't have guns and if they do they are never visible and virtually never apart of the daily life of the average citizen. In many countries even the police don't always carry fire arms.

Americans are consumed with their litany of freedoms but it blinds them to other freedoms.

In this case the ability to walk around Tokyo, Singapore, Berlin or London, or most of the other cities of the world at 2 in the morning and simply not have to worry about violence, especially about guns.

Very very few Americans can ever experience this because we carry around a blanket of apprehension that is always with us. If you are in a foreign country for a few days you can't shed this blanket, but Americans who have lived overseas for prolonged periods of time know what I am talking about. Frankly it feels great. You can go anywhere any hour of the day and never have to look over your shoulder and worry about walking up the wrong street.

I have grown somewhat more sympathetic to the responsible gun owner. I know that there are too many people who have made this their only political issue to change it and I even suspect that when the NRA suggests that the current laws are not being enforced well and that if they were (which a fully functional database would assist) then a lot of gun violence would be eliminated. I also have traveled to see relatives that live in remote areas and pass by isolated farm houses in the country that have no neighbors for miles around and I think that if I lived in one of these houses I would want a weapon because no law authority is ever going to arrive in time.

But the bottom line is that having the right for everyone to have a gun is not an expansion of freedom, it is a trade off. You lose the freedom to go anywhere at anytime and not have to worry about someone showing up with a gun. If you haven't lived in one of those countries for an extended period of time you can never experience how liberating that is, and some Americans who do live in those countries never are able to experience the feeling of being able to walk around without any tinge of fear.

The 2nd amendment isn't a one way street to greater freedom, its a two way street and we lose that other freedom. For those of us that have experienced the freedom to walk around not have to worry about meeting up with the wrong guy who happens to have a gun, we know that it is a very high price to pay to give up that other freedom.

May 21, 2012

Paul forces hand Romney another massive defeat in Minnesota GOP convention.

How many states has this happened in already? How many other states have stealth Paul delegates masquerading as Romney delegates? If Paul can control 5 state delegations he can get things on the floor. I don't know if Romney has any idea of the chaos that is coming to the convention.

May 20, 2012

Shocking results of Vanderbilt U. poll must be giving Romney nightmares.

News item:

McCain won Tennessee by 12 points.

Republicans reacted by saying that the poll was unreliable but a careful examination of the results show that all of the other results were quite unremarkable.

The Republican Governor is popular, a majority disapprove of Obama as President, and so on.

There are two factors that are having an impact on Tennessee voters;

1) The radical agenda of Republican legislators is turning off the public.

2) It appears that with Romney at the head of the ticket that a lot of right leaning voters are not planning on voting. The President is 7 points behind Romney among registered voters but tied among people who have said that they are likely to vote.

With all of the other results showing that the poll accurately represents the Tennessee electorate's tendency to vote right of center the fact that Romney is running in a tie with the President shows, with the other results, that the radical Republican agenda in state legislatures isn't just turning people off its suppressing interest in the election among the right but energizing the left. And if they were feeling a little less inclined to go to the polls the Romney nomination, which had high negatives in the poll, is further depressing the right and energizing the left.

Now the likelihood that Tennessee will be this close a month ahead of the election is not great, but if the trend in this poll also reflects what is happening in other states like Ohio and Missouri then Romney is in bigger trouble than expected. Even if Obama doesn't win Tennessee but Romney has to spend time and resources to defend it, it is a tactical loss for Romney.

The Romney campaign now, it appears, not only has to fight a successful Presidency a charismatic and energetic campaigner, a vacuous platform, a duplicitous record and a terrible campaigner, it now also has to fight against the negative effect that all of the radical Republican state legislatures are having on the electorate.

May 16, 2012

Romney issues new ad. Problems of the unemployed. Featured guy with a long rap sheet

One of the big differences between Obama and Romney is the professional character of the campaigns.

If he can't get a video done right how is he going to lead a country.

What a putz.

May 10, 2012

Romney's backstory is disassembling. Friend says Romney was like "Lord of the Flies".

Romney's classmates from Cranbook are not rushing to his defense.

The guy who introduced Mitt and Ann is passing on rushing to Romney's defense.
quote
White, in an interview with ABC News, said that he is “still debating” whether he will help the campaign, remarking, “It’s been a long time since we’ve been pals.”
unquote

One of the things that I pointed out at the beginning of Romney's campaign that he didn't really have a lot of close friends, either from the past or in the Republican Party. Alot of Republicans are going to enjoy letting him strangle in the wind because he while he has been writing big checks to the Mormon Church he hasn't been writing checks to help get Congressman and Senators elected, and he hasn't been running around the past 4 years getting people elected.

May 10, 2012

Dogs, Esteemed Blind Teacher, Vulnerable Gay Student

The Romney Trifecta.


Letterman and the rest of them will be hammering the shit out of Romney all the way to November.


What does Romney have?


Obama is a Superstar Celebrity.

May 8, 2012

Prediction: in the next 72 hours Romney will make a scripted courageous statement at a town hall mtg

Romney is the guy who never stood up an challenged anything. Not his Church, his country, his party.

Now a two bit radio jockey and addle brained Republican nutjob have exposed Romney for the truly shallow gutless ass he really is.

McCain didn't just stand up to a few nutjobs at a town hall meeting he refused to leave the Hanoi Hilton ahead of the others even though his health was ebbing and he might not have meant it. When Cindy came home with a Bangladeshi daughter McCain adopted her sight unseen.

You cannot imagine Romney doing anything like that. The unremarked strange part of the Seamus story actually was the mentality of a father that would plan only 2 pit stops for 5 boys for a 12 hour drive.

So as the country is beginning to see that Romney may be Nominee in modern history most unsuited to be Commander in Chief because he is completely and totally gutless I predict that the campaign will:

Within the next three days expect to see somebody at a town hall event say something not just beyond the pale but completely insane. Ideally it won't even mention the President's name but be an assault on Democrats in general. Something along the lines of "Don't you agree that all Democrats are Communists?"

Then by script Romney will put his palms up and do his best Ronald Reagen impression "Whoa there, let's just hold up there for a minute. We may disagree with them and their policies may be 100% wrong for this great American but not ALL Democrats are communists."

Then cue the idiot squad of Romney surrogates praising the brave courage of Romney, his 'Sister Souljah' movement and a wave of nauseous contrived bullshit about how Romney defends Democrats and will bring this country together.

The MSM will slap him on the back, David Gregory will pronounce him vetted and ready to command the United States Armed Forces.

You know they are writing the script and finding a patsy for the town hall. There will be a few run thrus and then it will be coming to a town hall meeting in the next few days.

May 4, 2012

Well time finally ran out.

She had an iron constitution and entered her last year of life 10 years ago at the age of 86.

She was one of those strong willed women from the depression that wasn't going to let her body tell her when she was going to come or go.

A few years ago when she agonized about her condition (blind and bed ridden and in constant pain) her conscious mind joined her body in wanting to end the ordeal.

Her iron constitution wasn't going to let either her body or her mind tell her when she was going to come or go either and she continued on eating a few bites of ice cream a day and a couple of months ago she entered into her last "24 hours".

The doctors however never knew her like we did. When she stopped eating a week ago and they told us to start making final arrangements we knew that we still had plenty of time.

A month ago we took our Golden Retriever and put him to sleep. It took 2 minutes and it was so gentle.

I can still hear my mother coming home from visiting a cousin who lingered the same way she did. This was 40 years ago.

She made us all promise to never let her linger like that.

She hated it. We all agreed and we all promised but there was nothing we could do.

If there was it was doubtful that anyone would have done anything, we learned in childhood that you never argued with her constitution.

She was a stern and distant mother and yet to her friends was a great and supportive friend. We could never understand the dichotomy and all of her friends thought she was the model mother. She proved it by ouliving all of her friends. Even her care giver grew old and needed a care giver.

It was a different time and they just don't make them like that anymore.