Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitt Romney. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Post Election Commentary: Winners and Losers
Some of us don't see the 2012 election as being so much for Obama but rather so much against Romney. I voted for a 3rd (or 4th or 5th) party candidate because I do not live in a battle ground state (which is about to change soon...yay!). But this election wasn't a rubber-stamp of approval for Obama's schizophrenic policies, most of which he campaigned against in 2008. It was a complete rejection of whatever Mitt Romney threw against the wall and hoped would stick which seemed to change on a daily basis. The man stood for one thing and one thing only: He really wanted to be president. His reasons are every bit as suspect as the policies he championed one day and reversed his opinion on the next. Mitt Romney stood for "Mitt Romney for President." And the electorate, for once, saw right through him.- The Republicans underestimated that visible aspect of an obviously pandering campaign. What doesn't change is the fact that the two major parties are not ruled by conscience or ideology, but something more sinister and dangerous: corporate money. So, we are not out of the woods yet...-jef
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Mitt Romney reveals a bit too much about his Mormon faith
The more people who see this, the bigger the bullet to the head of Romney's campaign. He has been actively denying some of the things he says he believes in on this video. It's very damning in that it's more proof that Romney WILL say ANYTHING to get elected. Even the major players of the GOP can't stand him--one of the FOX News spinners even says Romney seems like he was built in a lab by German scientists. Even though there are stacks of proof (like the following videos) showing him outright LYING, he still denies it, over and over. Is he being told to do that? Or is it his own idea to just deny everything he says if it contradicts what he's saying today? In one case, he says the opposite of what he had just said 2 minutes prior. It's unreal that this is all the Republicans could come up with. It's a joke!
A Not-So-Simple, Pretty Funny Question for the 73% of White Evangelicals Who Will Apparently Be Voting for Romney
A question that deserves an answer before election day.
October 31, 2012 |
According to polls 73 percent of WHITE evangelicals will be voting for Mitt Romney.
If the polls are correct here’s the question I'd like to ask evangelicals using their own style of language/concerns/theological thinking as applied to their choice:
What’s the explanation for the fact that white American Evangelicals made the allegedly philandering lying ignorant braggart, lapsed Roman Catholic, Dinesh D'Souza,
their anti-Obama hero, but are embracing a pro-choice Mormon bishop who promoted abortion and Planned Parenthood in MA, and are working to elect that same job-destroying tax-avoiding lying flip-flopping-tell-anyone-anything-they-want-to-hear Swiss bank account collecting draft dodger running with a disciple of the God-hating, Jesus-mocking hater-of-the-poor Ayn Rand, for their presidential candidate and look the other way as a crazed ultra-Zionist many Israeli Jews fear billionaire casino owner who is being investigated for allegedly making billions off the dirtiest Chinese gambling Communist Party-controlled outfit in the world funds the enterprise, at the very same time as Franklin Graham sold his ailing father Billy’s soul and denied core evangelical theology by taking Mormonism off the Billy Graham organization’s list of cults in order to help the Mormon pagan-ritual-performing, Trinity-denying, casino-money-grubbing billionaire-coddling, earth-destroying global-warming denying Mormon bishop win respectability for his dead-Jews-baptizing-polygamy-rooted-reality-denying-interplanetary Masonic lodge-embracing faith in an election against Obama, who is none of those things?
Go figure.
If the polls are correct here’s the question I'd like to ask evangelicals using their own style of language/concerns/theological thinking as applied to their choice:
What’s the explanation for the fact that white American Evangelicals made the allegedly philandering lying ignorant braggart, lapsed Roman Catholic, Dinesh D'Souza,
their anti-Obama hero, but are embracing a pro-choice Mormon bishop who promoted abortion and Planned Parenthood in MA, and are working to elect that same job-destroying tax-avoiding lying flip-flopping-tell-anyone-anything-they-want-to-hear Swiss bank account collecting draft dodger running with a disciple of the God-hating, Jesus-mocking hater-of-the-poor Ayn Rand, for their presidential candidate and look the other way as a crazed ultra-Zionist many Israeli Jews fear billionaire casino owner who is being investigated for allegedly making billions off the dirtiest Chinese gambling Communist Party-controlled outfit in the world funds the enterprise, at the very same time as Franklin Graham sold his ailing father Billy’s soul and denied core evangelical theology by taking Mormonism off the Billy Graham organization’s list of cults in order to help the Mormon pagan-ritual-performing, Trinity-denying, casino-money-grubbing billionaire-coddling, earth-destroying global-warming denying Mormon bishop win respectability for his dead-Jews-baptizing-polygamy-rooted-reality-denying-interplanetary Masonic lodge-embracing faith in an election against Obama, who is none of those things?
Go figure.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
When Corporations Bankroll Politics, We All Pay the Price
Tuesday, October 30, 2012 by The Guardian/UK
‘Despite attempts to reform it, US campaign finance is more corrupt and corrupting than it has been for decades.' It's a revolting spectacle: the two presidential candidates engaged in a frantic and demeaning scramble for money. By 6 November, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will each have raised more than $1bn. Other groups have already spent a further billion. Every election costs more than the one before; every election, as a result, drags the United States deeper into cronyism and corruption. Whichever candidate takes the most votes, it's the money that wins.
Is it conceivable, for instance, that Romney, whose top five donors are all Wall Street banks, would put the financial sector back in its cage? Or that Obama, who has received $700,000 from both Microsoft and Google, would challenge their monopolistic powers? Or, in the Senate, that the leading climate change denier James Inhofe, whose biggest donors are fossil fuel companies, could change his views, even when confronted by an overwhelming weight of evidence? The US feeding frenzy shows how the safeguards and structures of a nominal democracy can remain in place while the system they define mutates into plutocracy.
Despite perpetual attempts to reform it, US campaign finance is now more corrupt and corrupting than it has been for decades. It is hard to see how it can be redeemed. If the corporate cronies and billionaires' bootlickers who currently hold office were to vote to change the system, they'd commit political suicide. What else, apart from the money they spend, would recommend them to the American people?
But we should see this system as a ghastly warning of what happens if a nation fails to purge the big money from politics. The British system, by comparison to the US one, looks almost cute. Total campaign spending in the last general election – by the parties, the candidates and independent groups – was £58m: about one sixtieth of the cost of the current presidential race. There's a cap on overall spending and tough restrictions on political advertising.
But it's still rotten. There is no limit on individual donations. In a system with low total budgets, this grants tremendous leverage to the richest donors. The political parties know that if they do anything that offends the interests of corporate power they jeopardise their prospects.
The solutions proposed by parliament would make our system a little less rotten. At the end of last year, the committee on standards in public life proposed that donations should be capped at an annual £10,000, the limits on campaign spending should be reduced, and public funding for political parties should be raised. Parties, it says, should receive a state subsidy based on the size of their vote at the last election.
The political process would still be dominated by people with plenty of disposable income. In the course of a five-year election cycle, a husband and wife would be allowed to donate, from the same bank account, £100,000. State funding pegged to votes at the last election favours the incumbent parties. It means that even when public support for a party has collapsed (think of the Liberal Democrats), it still receives a popularity bonus.
Even so, and despite their manifesto pledges, the three major parties have refused to accept the committee's findings. The excuse all of them use is that the state cannot afford more funding for political parties. This is a ridiculous objection. The money required is scarcely a rounding error in national accounts. It probably represents less than we pay every day for the crony capitalism the present system encourages: the unnecessary spending on private finance initiative projects, on roads to nowhere, on the Trident programme and all the rest, whose primary purpose is to keep the 1% sweet. The overall cost of our suborned political process is incalculable: a corrupt and inefficient economy, and a political system engineered to meet not the needs of the electorate, but the demands of big business and billionaires.
I would go much further than the parliamentary committee. This, I think, is what a democratic funding system would look like: each party would be able to charge the same, modest fee for membership (perhaps £50). It would then receive matching funding from the state, as a multiple of its membership receipts. There would be no other sources of income. (This formula would make brokerage by trade unions redundant.)
This system, I believe, would not only clean up politics, it would also force parties to re-engage with the public. It would oblige them to be more entrepreneurial in raising their membership, and therefore their democratic legitimacy. It creates an incentive for voters to join a party and to begin, once more, to participate in politics.
The cost to the public would be perhaps £50m a year, or a little more than £1 per elector: three times the price of a telephone vote on The X Factor. This, on the scale of state expenditure, is microscopic.
Politicians and the tabloid press would complain bitterly about this system, claiming, as they already do, that taxpayers cannot afford to fund politics. But when you look at how the appeasement of the banking sector has ruined the economy, at how corporate muscle prevents action from being taken on climate change, at the economic and political distortions caused by the system of crony capitalism, and at the hideous example on the other side of the Atlantic, you discover that we can't afford not to.
Letting taxpayers fund parties directly could revive our rotten system – and at $1 per elector, it would be cheaper too
‘Despite attempts to reform it, US campaign finance is more corrupt and corrupting than it has been for decades.' It's a revolting spectacle: the two presidential candidates engaged in a frantic and demeaning scramble for money. By 6 November, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney will each have raised more than $1bn. Other groups have already spent a further billion. Every election costs more than the one before; every election, as a result, drags the United States deeper into cronyism and corruption. Whichever candidate takes the most votes, it's the money that wins.
Is it conceivable, for instance, that Romney, whose top five donors are all Wall Street banks, would put the financial sector back in its cage? Or that Obama, who has received $700,000 from both Microsoft and Google, would challenge their monopolistic powers? Or, in the Senate, that the leading climate change denier James Inhofe, whose biggest donors are fossil fuel companies, could change his views, even when confronted by an overwhelming weight of evidence? The US feeding frenzy shows how the safeguards and structures of a nominal democracy can remain in place while the system they define mutates into plutocracy.
Despite perpetual attempts to reform it, US campaign finance is now more corrupt and corrupting than it has been for decades. It is hard to see how it can be redeemed. If the corporate cronies and billionaires' bootlickers who currently hold office were to vote to change the system, they'd commit political suicide. What else, apart from the money they spend, would recommend them to the American people?
But we should see this system as a ghastly warning of what happens if a nation fails to purge the big money from politics. The British system, by comparison to the US one, looks almost cute. Total campaign spending in the last general election – by the parties, the candidates and independent groups – was £58m: about one sixtieth of the cost of the current presidential race. There's a cap on overall spending and tough restrictions on political advertising.
But it's still rotten. There is no limit on individual donations. In a system with low total budgets, this grants tremendous leverage to the richest donors. The political parties know that if they do anything that offends the interests of corporate power they jeopardise their prospects.
The solutions proposed by parliament would make our system a little less rotten. At the end of last year, the committee on standards in public life proposed that donations should be capped at an annual £10,000, the limits on campaign spending should be reduced, and public funding for political parties should be raised. Parties, it says, should receive a state subsidy based on the size of their vote at the last election.
The political process would still be dominated by people with plenty of disposable income. In the course of a five-year election cycle, a husband and wife would be allowed to donate, from the same bank account, £100,000. State funding pegged to votes at the last election favours the incumbent parties. It means that even when public support for a party has collapsed (think of the Liberal Democrats), it still receives a popularity bonus.
Even so, and despite their manifesto pledges, the three major parties have refused to accept the committee's findings. The excuse all of them use is that the state cannot afford more funding for political parties. This is a ridiculous objection. The money required is scarcely a rounding error in national accounts. It probably represents less than we pay every day for the crony capitalism the present system encourages: the unnecessary spending on private finance initiative projects, on roads to nowhere, on the Trident programme and all the rest, whose primary purpose is to keep the 1% sweet. The overall cost of our suborned political process is incalculable: a corrupt and inefficient economy, and a political system engineered to meet not the needs of the electorate, but the demands of big business and billionaires.
I would go much further than the parliamentary committee. This, I think, is what a democratic funding system would look like: each party would be able to charge the same, modest fee for membership (perhaps £50). It would then receive matching funding from the state, as a multiple of its membership receipts. There would be no other sources of income. (This formula would make brokerage by trade unions redundant.)
This system, I believe, would not only clean up politics, it would also force parties to re-engage with the public. It would oblige them to be more entrepreneurial in raising their membership, and therefore their democratic legitimacy. It creates an incentive for voters to join a party and to begin, once more, to participate in politics.
The cost to the public would be perhaps £50m a year, or a little more than £1 per elector: three times the price of a telephone vote on The X Factor. This, on the scale of state expenditure, is microscopic.
Politicians and the tabloid press would complain bitterly about this system, claiming, as they already do, that taxpayers cannot afford to fund politics. But when you look at how the appeasement of the banking sector has ruined the economy, at how corporate muscle prevents action from being taken on climate change, at the economic and political distortions caused by the system of crony capitalism, and at the hideous example on the other side of the Atlantic, you discover that we can't afford not to.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Saturday, October 27, 2012
Friday, October 26, 2012
Obama Uncensored: Rightwing Centrist Tax Cut Plan?
I get a right chuckle whenever I hear someone say Obama is a socialist. He's barely a democrat, more conservative than Saint Ronny ever was, and the real truth about this election? Obama and Romney are the same. They play up their supposed differences in these "debates" but when it comes down to policy and which group they'll fuck the hardest, it will always be the group that has historically been fucked the hardest: the poor. Both parties do the bidding of their corporate masters, neither is progressive, it's all about the great big sellout. You'll be ok as long as you remain silent...or until you have something or do something that calls their attention to you. Regardless, you don't get a say in your future. You are a statistical subroutine.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Leaked Audio Captures Romney Asking Employers To Tell Their Employees How To Vote
By Annie-Rose Strasser on Oct 17, 2012
Newly-discovered audio from a conference call in June captures Mitt Romney asking business owners to urge their employees to vote for him.
Romney, speaking on a call to the very conservative National Federation of Independent Business, tells a group of business owners that they should “make it very clear” how they feel about the candidates. The audio, discovered by In These Times, also captures Romney telling the business owners to “pass… along to your employees” how their jobs might be effected by who wins in November:
There have already been some reports of employers suggesting how their employees should cast their ballots. A CEO of a Florida resort company threatened to fire his employees if Obama won. The CEO of a timeshare company did the same. And the famous right-wing Koch brothers warned of “consequences” of not voting for Romney.
Newly-discovered audio from a conference call in June captures Mitt Romney asking business owners to urge their employees to vote for him.
Romney, speaking on a call to the very conservative National Federation of Independent Business, tells a group of business owners that they should “make it very clear” how they feel about the candidates. The audio, discovered by In These Times, also captures Romney telling the business owners to “pass… along to your employees” how their jobs might be effected by who wins in November:
I hope you make it very clear to your employees what you believe is in the best interest of your enterprise and therefore their job and their future in the upcoming elections. And whether you agree with me or you agree with President Obama, or whatever your political view, I hope — I hope you pass those along to your employees. Nothing illegal about you talking to your employees about what you believe is best for the business, because I think that will figure into their election decision, their voting decision and of course doing that with your family and your kids as well.Listen at 26:44:
There have already been some reports of employers suggesting how their employees should cast their ballots. A CEO of a Florida resort company threatened to fire his employees if Obama won. The CEO of a timeshare company did the same. And the famous right-wing Koch brothers warned of “consequences” of not voting for Romney.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Koch Industries Warns 45,000 Employees Of ‘Consequences’ If They Don’t Vote For Republicans
What bastards!
The Koch brothers’ $60 million pledge to defeat President Obama — along with their political network’s $400 million spending — make them two of the most influential conservatives this election.
Not content with their unprecedented influence in politics, the Kochs have also taken to influencing the votes of their employees. According to In These Times, Koch Industries sent 45,000 mailers to employees at Koch subsidiary Georgia Pacific, urging votes for Romney and other conservative candidates. The letter warns ominously of “consequences” for the workers if Republicans lose.
The Koch mailer is one of several recent examples of executives warning that employees may lose their jobs if Republicans do not win in November. Here is an excerpt of the letter:
In These Times also reports that employees are restricted in their political free speech on social media outlets.
“It’s just they can intimidate people this way and they can make life miserable for you. The law would be strong enough to protect them probably, but you could be looking at being without your job for nearly a year,” said one Georgia Pacific employee.
One of the most absurd parts of the letter is its hypocritical charges of “cronyism.” The Kochs use their money and political clout to influence elections. Charles Koch once penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed, included in the employee packet, that attacked “partisan rhetoric” and rewards for “politically connected friends.” At the time, we listed the various ways the Kochs personally profit from subsidies and government contracts and attempt to influence the political process through every means possible. Koch Industries has also played a speculative role in hiking oil prices higher for profit. And that “delay” in “important new construction projects,” mentioned in the letter refers to projects the Kochs would profit from, like the Keystone XL pipeline for shipping tar sands.
The Kochs are not the only ones attempting to influence employee votes. Two CEOs recently issued threats to employees about their jobs if Obama wins. And Murray Energy’s CEO allegedly coerced donations to Republican candidates after forcing coal miners to attend a pro-Romney rally without pay.
Charles and David Koch
Not content with their unprecedented influence in politics, the Kochs have also taken to influencing the votes of their employees. According to In These Times, Koch Industries sent 45,000 mailers to employees at Koch subsidiary Georgia Pacific, urging votes for Romney and other conservative candidates. The letter warns ominously of “consequences” for the workers if Republicans lose.
The Koch mailer is one of several recent examples of executives warning that employees may lose their jobs if Republicans do not win in November. Here is an excerpt of the letter:
...While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.
If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills....
In These Times also reports that employees are restricted in their political free speech on social media outlets.
“It’s just they can intimidate people this way and they can make life miserable for you. The law would be strong enough to protect them probably, but you could be looking at being without your job for nearly a year,” said one Georgia Pacific employee.
One of the most absurd parts of the letter is its hypocritical charges of “cronyism.” The Kochs use their money and political clout to influence elections. Charles Koch once penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed, included in the employee packet, that attacked “partisan rhetoric” and rewards for “politically connected friends.” At the time, we listed the various ways the Kochs personally profit from subsidies and government contracts and attempt to influence the political process through every means possible. Koch Industries has also played a speculative role in hiking oil prices higher for profit. And that “delay” in “important new construction projects,” mentioned in the letter refers to projects the Kochs would profit from, like the Keystone XL pipeline for shipping tar sands.
The Kochs are not the only ones attempting to influence employee votes. Two CEOs recently issued threats to employees about their jobs if Obama wins. And Murray Energy’s CEO allegedly coerced donations to Republican candidates after forcing coal miners to attend a pro-Romney rally without pay.
Friday, October 12, 2012
On Wasting Your Vote
A disturbing number of Americans are going to end up wasting their
votes in this next election. They’re unhappy with the status quo, but
instead of changing it, they’re only going to reinforce it. I’m not
talking about democrats who are so unhappy with Obama that they’re
planning to vote third-party. I’m talking about democrats who are
unhappy with Obama, but who are so afraid of Romney that they’re going
to vote for Obama anyway and justify that vote by invoking “the lesser
of the two evils” argument. It’s about time someone pointed out that
it’s the invocation of that argument to defend otherwise indefensible
political choices that has driven us relentlessly into our current
position between a rock and a hard place.
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that the greatest invention in human history was compound interest. I beg to differ. I think it’s the “lesser of two evils” argument. It’s brilliant.
Give people two options, neither of which they find appealing, convince them that a third option, a genuinely attractive one, is just not practicable and that they must thus choose between the bad and the worse, and you’ll be able to get them to choose something they would never otherwise choose.
You can get people to do anything that way. You start by offering them a choice between something that is just marginally unpleasant and something that is really repellent. Once you’ve gotten them to choose the marginally unpleasant, you raise the bar (just a little mind you, you don’t want them to catch on to what you’re doing). Now you offer them a choice between something to which they have really strong objections and something that is deeply offensive. Most people, of course, will choose the former, if they think it’s either that or the latter. Now you offer people who’ve become inured to living under objectionable conditions a choice between even worse conditions and something that is truly unthinkable. It’s not mystery what they will choose.
There’s been a lot of angry posturing from Americans who think of themselves as progressive about how the purported political center in this country has been moving inexorably to the right, yet it’s these very people who are directly responsible for the shift. If you vote for a candidate whose farther right than you would prefer, well, then you’re shifting the political “center” to the right. Republicans aren’t responsible for the increasingly conservative face of the democratic party. Democrats are responsible for it. Democrats keep racing to the polls like lemmings being chased by the boogeyman.
“This is not the election to vote for real change” runs the democratic refrain. We’re in a crisis! We must do whatever it takes to ensure that the republicans don’t get in office even if that means voting for a democrat whose policies we don’t really like and which are only marginally distinguishable from those of the republican candidate. That “margin” is important, we’re reminded again and again. That little difference is going to make all the difference.
Even if that were true, which it ought to be clear by now it is not (see Bart Gruzalski’s “Jill Stein and the 99 Percent”), it would still offer a very poor justification for voting for a candidate one doesn’t really like. Why? Because it is an expression of short-term thinking. Thomas Hobbes argued that privileging short-term over long-term goals was irrational, and yet that’s what we’ve been doing in this country for as long as I can remember. Americans are notoriously short-term oriented. As Luc Sante noted in a piece in the New York Review of Books, America is “the country of the perpetual present tense.” Perhaps that’s part of the anti-intellectualism that Richard Hofstadter wrote about. “Just keep the republicans out of office for this election!” we’re always commanded. “We can worry about real change later!”
Of course anyone who stopped to think about it ought to realize that that mythical “later” is never going to come. Our choices are getting worse not better, and if we keep invoking the “lesser of the two evils” to justify them, we are in effect, digging our own graves.
God is not going to deliver to us from the clouds the candidate of our dreams, the candidate who despite his (or perhaps her) wildly populist views somehow manages to win over the corporate powers we have allowed, through our own incorrigible stupidity, to control the political process in this country. If we are ever going to see real political change of the sort progressives purport to want, then we are going to have to be brave enough to risk losing an election. Which shouldn’t require all that much bravery when one thinks about it, because real progressives have been losing elections for as long as anyone can remember in that the democrats haven’t been genuinely progressive for as long as anyone can remember.
If you vote for a democrat because you think of yourself as progressive you are wasting your vote because what you are actually saying is that you are willing to support a candidate who is not really progressive, that the democrats can continue their relentless march to the right and that you will back them all the way. That is, if you vote for a democrat because you say you are progressive, you are saying one thing and doing another. But actions, as everyone knows, speak louder than words. You can go on posturing about how progressive you are, but if you vote for a democrat that posturing is empty.
If we are ever going to see real progressive political change in this country we have to brave enough to openly risk defeat, and we have to have faith that our fellow progressives will be similarly brave. William James makes this point very eloquently in his essay “The Will to Believe.” “A social organism,” he wrote, of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even be attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming.
Progressive political change will never be a fact unless we have faith in its coming, unless we have faith that others will back us up when we refuse to be forced to vote yet again for a candidate we do not like.
I, for one, abhor cowardice. I’m not going to be intimidated into voting for a candidate I don’t like by threats of the “greater evil.” I do not expect that my candidate will win the election. I expect, however, that my vote will count for something and not merely in the sense that it will allow me to preserve my self respect. I’m not afraid of being condemned as naively optimistic.
Without such optimism we’d never have had democracy in the first place. Democracy, one of the crowning achievements of human history, is precisely the product of the courage to act on one’s conscience and that faith that others will do so as well. If we’ve lost those things, then we will get the president we deserve.
Albert Einstein is reputed to have said that the greatest invention in human history was compound interest. I beg to differ. I think it’s the “lesser of two evils” argument. It’s brilliant.
Give people two options, neither of which they find appealing, convince them that a third option, a genuinely attractive one, is just not practicable and that they must thus choose between the bad and the worse, and you’ll be able to get them to choose something they would never otherwise choose.
You can get people to do anything that way. You start by offering them a choice between something that is just marginally unpleasant and something that is really repellent. Once you’ve gotten them to choose the marginally unpleasant, you raise the bar (just a little mind you, you don’t want them to catch on to what you’re doing). Now you offer them a choice between something to which they have really strong objections and something that is deeply offensive. Most people, of course, will choose the former, if they think it’s either that or the latter. Now you offer people who’ve become inured to living under objectionable conditions a choice between even worse conditions and something that is truly unthinkable. It’s not mystery what they will choose.
There’s been a lot of angry posturing from Americans who think of themselves as progressive about how the purported political center in this country has been moving inexorably to the right, yet it’s these very people who are directly responsible for the shift. If you vote for a candidate whose farther right than you would prefer, well, then you’re shifting the political “center” to the right. Republicans aren’t responsible for the increasingly conservative face of the democratic party. Democrats are responsible for it. Democrats keep racing to the polls like lemmings being chased by the boogeyman.
“This is not the election to vote for real change” runs the democratic refrain. We’re in a crisis! We must do whatever it takes to ensure that the republicans don’t get in office even if that means voting for a democrat whose policies we don’t really like and which are only marginally distinguishable from those of the republican candidate. That “margin” is important, we’re reminded again and again. That little difference is going to make all the difference.
Even if that were true, which it ought to be clear by now it is not (see Bart Gruzalski’s “Jill Stein and the 99 Percent”), it would still offer a very poor justification for voting for a candidate one doesn’t really like. Why? Because it is an expression of short-term thinking. Thomas Hobbes argued that privileging short-term over long-term goals was irrational, and yet that’s what we’ve been doing in this country for as long as I can remember. Americans are notoriously short-term oriented. As Luc Sante noted in a piece in the New York Review of Books, America is “the country of the perpetual present tense.” Perhaps that’s part of the anti-intellectualism that Richard Hofstadter wrote about. “Just keep the republicans out of office for this election!” we’re always commanded. “We can worry about real change later!”
Of course anyone who stopped to think about it ought to realize that that mythical “later” is never going to come. Our choices are getting worse not better, and if we keep invoking the “lesser of the two evils” to justify them, we are in effect, digging our own graves.
God is not going to deliver to us from the clouds the candidate of our dreams, the candidate who despite his (or perhaps her) wildly populist views somehow manages to win over the corporate powers we have allowed, through our own incorrigible stupidity, to control the political process in this country. If we are ever going to see real political change of the sort progressives purport to want, then we are going to have to be brave enough to risk losing an election. Which shouldn’t require all that much bravery when one thinks about it, because real progressives have been losing elections for as long as anyone can remember in that the democrats haven’t been genuinely progressive for as long as anyone can remember.
If you vote for a democrat because you think of yourself as progressive you are wasting your vote because what you are actually saying is that you are willing to support a candidate who is not really progressive, that the democrats can continue their relentless march to the right and that you will back them all the way. That is, if you vote for a democrat because you say you are progressive, you are saying one thing and doing another. But actions, as everyone knows, speak louder than words. You can go on posturing about how progressive you are, but if you vote for a democrat that posturing is empty.
If we are ever going to see real progressive political change in this country we have to brave enough to openly risk defeat, and we have to have faith that our fellow progressives will be similarly brave. William James makes this point very eloquently in his essay “The Will to Believe.” “A social organism,” he wrote, of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. A whole train of passengers (individually brave enough) will be looted by a few highwaymen, simply because the latter can count on one another, while each passenger fears that if he makes a movement of resistance, he will be shot before any one else backs him up. If we believed that the whole car-full would rise at once with us, we should each severally rise, and train-robbing would never even be attempted. There are, then, cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming.
Progressive political change will never be a fact unless we have faith in its coming, unless we have faith that others will back us up when we refuse to be forced to vote yet again for a candidate we do not like.
I, for one, abhor cowardice. I’m not going to be intimidated into voting for a candidate I don’t like by threats of the “greater evil.” I do not expect that my candidate will win the election. I expect, however, that my vote will count for something and not merely in the sense that it will allow me to preserve my self respect. I’m not afraid of being condemned as naively optimistic.
Without such optimism we’d never have had democracy in the first place. Democracy, one of the crowning achievements of human history, is precisely the product of the courage to act on one’s conscience and that faith that others will do so as well. If we’ve lost those things, then we will get the president we deserve.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Why Romney’s Mormonism Matters
Secrecy, Deception and Bigotry
by RENATO WARDLE
It came as no surprise that Mitt Romney secured the GOP nomination for the 2012 elections. The current Republican Party is dominated by right-wing extremists hell-bent on galvanizing the United States into a militant Christian hegemony. Because of this fanatical atmosphere, it is completely natural that a Mormon would not only be running for president, but would also win the GOP nomination.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons), with its history of religious severity, appears to be a perfect fit for the über-orthodoxy of the Tea Party-controlled GOP. Despite misgivings that many non-Mormon Republicans may have (most Christian groups don’t consider the Mormons to be Christians), the history and doctrine of the Mormon faith seem to go hand in hand with the kind of derelict bigotry and racism that the current GOP espouses.
Mitt Romney is a lifetime member of the Mormon Church, with deep roots that stretch back to the earliest days of Mormonism. Romney’s great grandfather practiced polygamy in Mexico in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, where many Mormon polygamists fled to evade the Edmunds Act of 1882. Romney has served in leadership positions in the church throughout his life, including being a bishop (the pastor of a church) as well as spending 30 months proselytizing in France as missionary from 1966-1969. These are all well-known facts that can be found through a variety sources, as well as from statements made by Romney himself. However, many facets of his involvement with the notoriously enigmatic sect remain completely unknown not only to most Americans but to many Mormons as well.
Mormonism has an extensive history of secretiveness, deception, and malfeasance. The clandestine nature of this religion is as prevalent as ever, as much with its extra-religious business affairs, as with its secretive religious practices. The Mormons have two distinctly different buildings that they use in the observance of their religious practices, namely, chapels and temples. Chapels are open to all members of the congregation plus visitors, and are the location of normal Sunday services such as “sacrament meeting” (Sunday mass) as well as Sunday school. Temples are only open to those members who adhere completely to the strict standards of Mormonism, including unwavering loyalty to the president of the church, regular church attendance, and, of course, paying full tithes (10 per cent of gross income, as well as monthly donations known as “fast offerings”).
Within the temples, various liturgies known as “temple ordinances” are carried out. These rites derive from Masonic rituals (Mormon founder Joseph Smith was a Mason) and include “baptism for the dead,” the so-called endowment (for living and dead), and “temple sealings” (temple marriages for living and dead). The level of secretiveness surrounding the temples is extraordinary, so much so that members of the Mormon Church who have not been to the temple have virtually no idea as to what they entail. Several details regarding these ordinances not only make Mitt Romney incapable of upholding the First Amendment, but also call into question where his true allegiances really are.
Before Mormons are allowed to enter a temple (there are well over 130 temples in operation today, and more being built), they must be interviewed by two separate tiers of ecclesiastical leadership to determine their worthiness to enter these edifices. These temple recommend interviews are the first issue of concern regarding Mitt Romney. Among the various questions asked of a member, one particular question goes as follows: “Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?” The very nature of this question, coupled with several others regarding complete obedience to the president of the church (or “prophet”), put into question the overall allegiance of Mitt Romney (and, indeed, all Mormons).
If members are found to be in violation of this question (or any other from the list of questions), they will not be allowed to enter the temple. Being blocked from entering the temple is tantamount to being blocked from Heaven, albeit temporarily (they can always repent). The divisive nature of that particular question, coupled with its inherent ambiguity, provides the ecclesiastical leaders with carte blanche to blackmail members into complete obedience. The church leadership has proven to be quite draconian in the enforcement of member fealty (just put this question to Mormons in California relative to Prop 8).
Among the various ordinances performed in the temples, none are more divisive than the Law of Consecration. This rite requires members to pledge all their time, money, and abilities to the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth (the Mormon kingdom). Couple this with the demand to sustain the president of the church as the only prophet seer and revelator on earth and a particularly troubling form of absolute obedience emerges. Mormons are devoted to their faith on an extraordinary level. Shackled with the spiritual tyranny espoused by the Mormon faith, members literally must do what they are told by the prophet, and dissent only results in excommunication.
Another interesting facet of Mormonism that has seen some light recently is the White Horse Prophecy. The basis of this prophecy comes from a diary entry made by John Roberts who related that Joseph Smith had prophesied in 1840 regarding the uncertain future of the United States and that, at a certain point, the Constitution would “hang by a thread” and the leaders of the LDS Church would come forth to protect and restore the Constitution. Despite the continued controversy regarding the authenticity of this account, the White Horse Prophecy has been embraced by Mormon culture. Mitt Romney has denied that it is part of his own beliefs, despite his father’s own stance on the subject (he felt that Mormons would, in fact, save the Constitution). Glenn Beck has referred to this in his own crazed rants over and over. The White Horse prophecy is embedded into the very fabric of Mormonism.
Mitt Romney has said that he feels that voters do not need be concerned as to where he goes to church on Sunday. This is an incredible statement, given the secretive nature of Mormonism. With this secretiveness, it is impossible for voters to recognize the deception inherent in Romney’s statement. Voters may not be concerned if the church in question doesn’t demand absolute fealty, or employ various coercive means to control its members, or even place loyalty to the leaders of that church above allegiance to the United States. Unfortunately for Romney and for the U.S. Constitution, if he becomes the president, the Mormon faith is all those things and more.
by RENATO WARDLE
It came as no surprise that Mitt Romney secured the GOP nomination for the 2012 elections. The current Republican Party is dominated by right-wing extremists hell-bent on galvanizing the United States into a militant Christian hegemony. Because of this fanatical atmosphere, it is completely natural that a Mormon would not only be running for president, but would also win the GOP nomination.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (aka the Mormons), with its history of religious severity, appears to be a perfect fit for the über-orthodoxy of the Tea Party-controlled GOP. Despite misgivings that many non-Mormon Republicans may have (most Christian groups don’t consider the Mormons to be Christians), the history and doctrine of the Mormon faith seem to go hand in hand with the kind of derelict bigotry and racism that the current GOP espouses.
Mitt Romney is a lifetime member of the Mormon Church, with deep roots that stretch back to the earliest days of Mormonism. Romney’s great grandfather practiced polygamy in Mexico in Colonia Juarez, Chihuahua, where many Mormon polygamists fled to evade the Edmunds Act of 1882. Romney has served in leadership positions in the church throughout his life, including being a bishop (the pastor of a church) as well as spending 30 months proselytizing in France as missionary from 1966-1969. These are all well-known facts that can be found through a variety sources, as well as from statements made by Romney himself. However, many facets of his involvement with the notoriously enigmatic sect remain completely unknown not only to most Americans but to many Mormons as well.
Mormonism has an extensive history of secretiveness, deception, and malfeasance. The clandestine nature of this religion is as prevalent as ever, as much with its extra-religious business affairs, as with its secretive religious practices. The Mormons have two distinctly different buildings that they use in the observance of their religious practices, namely, chapels and temples. Chapels are open to all members of the congregation plus visitors, and are the location of normal Sunday services such as “sacrament meeting” (Sunday mass) as well as Sunday school. Temples are only open to those members who adhere completely to the strict standards of Mormonism, including unwavering loyalty to the president of the church, regular church attendance, and, of course, paying full tithes (10 per cent of gross income, as well as monthly donations known as “fast offerings”).
Within the temples, various liturgies known as “temple ordinances” are carried out. These rites derive from Masonic rituals (Mormon founder Joseph Smith was a Mason) and include “baptism for the dead,” the so-called endowment (for living and dead), and “temple sealings” (temple marriages for living and dead). The level of secretiveness surrounding the temples is extraordinary, so much so that members of the Mormon Church who have not been to the temple have virtually no idea as to what they entail. Several details regarding these ordinances not only make Mitt Romney incapable of upholding the First Amendment, but also call into question where his true allegiances really are.
Before Mormons are allowed to enter a temple (there are well over 130 temples in operation today, and more being built), they must be interviewed by two separate tiers of ecclesiastical leadership to determine their worthiness to enter these edifices. These temple recommend interviews are the first issue of concern regarding Mitt Romney. Among the various questions asked of a member, one particular question goes as follows: “Do you support, affiliate with, or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?” The very nature of this question, coupled with several others regarding complete obedience to the president of the church (or “prophet”), put into question the overall allegiance of Mitt Romney (and, indeed, all Mormons).
If members are found to be in violation of this question (or any other from the list of questions), they will not be allowed to enter the temple. Being blocked from entering the temple is tantamount to being blocked from Heaven, albeit temporarily (they can always repent). The divisive nature of that particular question, coupled with its inherent ambiguity, provides the ecclesiastical leaders with carte blanche to blackmail members into complete obedience. The church leadership has proven to be quite draconian in the enforcement of member fealty (just put this question to Mormons in California relative to Prop 8).
Among the various ordinances performed in the temples, none are more divisive than the Law of Consecration. This rite requires members to pledge all their time, money, and abilities to the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth (the Mormon kingdom). Couple this with the demand to sustain the president of the church as the only prophet seer and revelator on earth and a particularly troubling form of absolute obedience emerges. Mormons are devoted to their faith on an extraordinary level. Shackled with the spiritual tyranny espoused by the Mormon faith, members literally must do what they are told by the prophet, and dissent only results in excommunication.
Another interesting facet of Mormonism that has seen some light recently is the White Horse Prophecy. The basis of this prophecy comes from a diary entry made by John Roberts who related that Joseph Smith had prophesied in 1840 regarding the uncertain future of the United States and that, at a certain point, the Constitution would “hang by a thread” and the leaders of the LDS Church would come forth to protect and restore the Constitution. Despite the continued controversy regarding the authenticity of this account, the White Horse Prophecy has been embraced by Mormon culture. Mitt Romney has denied that it is part of his own beliefs, despite his father’s own stance on the subject (he felt that Mormons would, in fact, save the Constitution). Glenn Beck has referred to this in his own crazed rants over and over. The White Horse prophecy is embedded into the very fabric of Mormonism.
Mitt Romney has said that he feels that voters do not need be concerned as to where he goes to church on Sunday. This is an incredible statement, given the secretive nature of Mormonism. With this secretiveness, it is impossible for voters to recognize the deception inherent in Romney’s statement. Voters may not be concerned if the church in question doesn’t demand absolute fealty, or employ various coercive means to control its members, or even place loyalty to the leaders of that church above allegiance to the United States. Unfortunately for Romney and for the U.S. Constitution, if he becomes the president, the Mormon faith is all those things and more.
Monday, October 1, 2012
GOP forced to cease voter registration efforts in five of the swingiest swing states (2 stories)
And this is the party so concerned with voter fraud? And they're the ones committing voter fraud? Again, it would be funny if it weren't so hypocritical and wrong...--jef
By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Monday, October 1, 2012
On her show Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained why the Republican Party had halted its voter registration efforts in five major swing states.
Republicans had hired Strategic Allied Consulting to run voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada. But RNC severed ties with Strategic Allied Consulting last week after Florida officials traced possibly fake registration forms back to the company. The firm has also been accused of tearing up Democratic registration forms.
“The actually worrying thing in voter registration fraud is if you do get real people to fill out real voter registration forms and they therefore believe they are registered and then because you don’t like their party affiliation, you tear it up and then that real person thinks they have registered,” Maddow explained. “They show up on election day only to find out they are not on the rolls and not allowed to vote.”
Strategic Allied Consulting was the only firm hired to run voter registration drives in those states. With many voter registration deadlines quickly approaching, Republicans have little chance to restart the registration drives.
“And the collapse of the Republicans’ voter registration scheme has resulted in the Republican Party ceasing all voter registration efforts in five of the swingiest swing states in the country with another week and a half left to register voters,” Maddow said.
Maddow’s guest, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, noted that conservatives were furious after the organization ACORN was accused of registering fake voters.
“ACORN itself, by the way, had called the attention of voter registrars to the fraud themselves, they disciplined themselves. And yet this was a big scandal and ACORN lost a lot of money and had to go out of business. Why isn’t this the same thing for conservatives?” he wondered.
Florida Congressman Demands Bipartisan Investigation Of GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal
By Josh Israel on Oct 1, 2012
In the wake of revelations that Strategic Allied Consulting, a controversial voter registration firm that has worked for the Republican National Committee, the Florida Republican Party, and the Romney campaign, is under investigation for turning in fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida, a Florida Congressman is calling for a bipartisan probe.
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) wrote Monday in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R):
Deutch observes that Scott’s silence and inaction on the scandal, to date, are “shocking and hypocritical” in light of Scott’s Ahab-like attempts to purge suspected non-citizen voters from the state’s voting rolls.
Scott has expressed a great deal of concern about potential voter fraud in Florida elections — even though state records indicate show Floridians are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. But voter registration fraud apparently does exist in Florida.
Scott signed an unconstitutional 2011 suppression law which put major new restrictions on groups who work to register new voters, requiring third-party voter registration groups like Strategic Allied Consulting to turn in completed registration forms 48 hours — to the minute — after completion, or face fines.
Scott’s communications office did not immediately have any comment on the letter or the scandal.
By Eric W. Dolan - RAW Story
Monday, October 1, 2012
On her show Monday night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow explained why the Republican Party had halted its voter registration efforts in five major swing states.
Republicans had hired Strategic Allied Consulting to run voter registration drives in Florida, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina and Nevada. But RNC severed ties with Strategic Allied Consulting last week after Florida officials traced possibly fake registration forms back to the company. The firm has also been accused of tearing up Democratic registration forms.
“The actually worrying thing in voter registration fraud is if you do get real people to fill out real voter registration forms and they therefore believe they are registered and then because you don’t like their party affiliation, you tear it up and then that real person thinks they have registered,” Maddow explained. “They show up on election day only to find out they are not on the rolls and not allowed to vote.”
Strategic Allied Consulting was the only firm hired to run voter registration drives in those states. With many voter registration deadlines quickly approaching, Republicans have little chance to restart the registration drives.
“And the collapse of the Republicans’ voter registration scheme has resulted in the Republican Party ceasing all voter registration efforts in five of the swingiest swing states in the country with another week and a half left to register voters,” Maddow said.
Maddow’s guest, Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, noted that conservatives were furious after the organization ACORN was accused of registering fake voters.
“ACORN itself, by the way, had called the attention of voter registrars to the fraud themselves, they disciplined themselves. And yet this was a big scandal and ACORN lost a lot of money and had to go out of business. Why isn’t this the same thing for conservatives?” he wondered.
+++++++
Florida Congressman Demands Bipartisan Investigation Of GOP Voter Registration Fraud Scandal
By Josh Israel on Oct 1, 2012
In the wake of revelations that Strategic Allied Consulting, a controversial voter registration firm that has worked for the Republican National Committee, the Florida Republican Party, and the Romney campaign, is under investigation for turning in fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida, a Florida Congressman is calling for a bipartisan probe.
Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) wrote Monday in a letter to Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R):
In light of the large and apparently growing voter fraud scandal engulfing the Republican Party of Florida, I urge you to immediately appoint a bipartisan task force to investigate the accusations and ensure that the integrity of our voting rolls will not be compromised by Strategic Allied Consulting’s deliberately fraudulent voter registration operations. I also urge you to ensure that that false registrations submitted by Strategic Allied Consulting do not remain on our rolls, and that you immediately investigative whether any employees involved in this scandal are still working for the Republican Party to register voters in Florida.
Deutch observes that Scott’s silence and inaction on the scandal, to date, are “shocking and hypocritical” in light of Scott’s Ahab-like attempts to purge suspected non-citizen voters from the state’s voting rolls.
Scott has expressed a great deal of concern about potential voter fraud in Florida elections — even though state records indicate show Floridians are more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit voter fraud. But voter registration fraud apparently does exist in Florida.
Scott signed an unconstitutional 2011 suppression law which put major new restrictions on groups who work to register new voters, requiring third-party voter registration groups like Strategic Allied Consulting to turn in completed registration forms 48 hours — to the minute — after completion, or face fines.
Scott’s communications office did not immediately have any comment on the letter or the scandal.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Who you side with by issue...
So, I took this quiz about issues and which candidate I matched closest with. Turned out that I matched Jill Stein 89%, Rocky Anderson 80% and Gary Johnson 74%. I knew I agreed with Johnson, but I'll be honest: until I took the quiz, I had no idea who Jill Stein was and had never heard of her. So, my friends, educate yourselves on ALL the candidates who are running. You will probably find you identify more closely with a candidate other than Obama or Romney.--jef
Here is the breakdown per grouping of issues:
Most important to Least Important to me (top to bottom)
Healthcare
I side the most with Rocky Anderson on healthcare issues.
the Economy
I side the most with Rocky Anderson on economic issues.
the Environment
I side the most with Jill Stein on environmental issues.
Immigration
I side the most with Jill Stein on immigration issues.
So, the scorecard is:
Gary Johnson on Domestic and Foreign Policy. (2.0)
Jill Stein on Environment and Immigration. (2.0)
Rocky Anderson on Economic, Healthcare, and Social issues. (2.5)
Barack Obama on Science and Social issues. (1.5)
Mitt Romney on Nothing.(0)
Virgil Goode on Nothing (0)
Jill Stein Green Party
89% on foreign policy, environmental, domestic policy, economic, science, healthcare, social, and immigration issues
Rocky Anderson Justice Party
80% on foreign policy, economic, domestic policy, environmental, healthcare, social, and immigration issues
Gary Johnson Libertarian Party
74% on foreign policy, domestic policy, science, social, and immigration issues
____________________________________________________________
Barack Obama Democrat Party*
68%* on environmental, science, social, and immigration issues
Mitt Romney Republican Party*
7%* on no major issues
* doesn't matter how much or little I agree with these two parties, I won't ever vote for their candidates because they are corporate commodities, unable to choose the interests of the people ahead of those of their corporate masters.
Of all the people who took the quiz in my state:
Texas sides with Gary Johnson on most issues of the 2012 Presidential Election.
Johnson 49%
Obama 48%
Romney 43%
and me 50%, as far as the answers I chose. Maybe I should run for president--just in Texas. ;-)
Thursday, September 27, 2012
This Presidential Race Should Never Have Been This Close
Wednesday, September 26, 2012 by Rolling Stone
The press everywhere is buzzing this week with premature obituaries of the Romney campaign.
New polls are out suggesting that Mitt Romney's electoral path to the presidency is all but blocked. Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up – Obama's widening leads in three battleground states, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, seem to have sealed the deal.
That's left the media to speculate, with a palpable air of sadness, over where the system went wrong. Whatever you believe, many of these articles say, wherever you rest on the ideological spectrum, you should be disappointed that Obama ultimately had to run against such an incompetent challenger. Weirdly, there seems to be an expectation that presidential races should be closer, and that if one doesn't come down to the wire in an exciting photo finish, we've all missed out somehow.
Frank Bruni of The New York Times wrote a thoughtful, insightful editorial today that blames the painful, repetitive and vacuous campaign process for thinning the electoral herd and leaving us with only automatons and demented narcissists willing to climb the mountain:
All of these points of view have merit, I guess, but to me they're mostly irrelevant. The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.
Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world's wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.
These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don't oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
They've relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that "capital gains" and "carried interest" are somehow not the same as "income."
The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.
If this race had even one guy running in it who didn't take money from all the usual quarters and actually represented the economic interests of ordinary people, it wouldn't be close. It shouldn't be close.
That last thing I would say is probably appropriate, except for the fact that hundreds of thousands of poor (and mostly black and Hispanic) kids get tossed by cops every year (would you believe 684,000 street stops in New York alone in 2011?) in the same city where Wall Street's finest work, and those kids do real time for possession of anything from a marijuana stem to an empty vial. How many Wall Street guys would you think would fill the jails if the police spent even one day doing aggressive, no-leniency stop-and-frisk checks outside the bars in lower Manhattan? How many Lortabs and Adderalls and little foil-wraps of coke or E would pop out of those briefcases?
For all this, when it came time to nominate a candidate for the presidency four years after the crash, the Republicans chose a man who in almost every respect perfectly represents this class of people. Mitt Romney is a rich-from-birth Ivy League product who not only has never done a hard day of work in his life – he never even saw a bad neighborhood in America until 1996, when he was 49 years old, when he went into some seedy sections of New York in search of a colleague's missing daughter ("It was a shocker," Mitt said. "The number of lost souls was astounding").
He has a $250 million fortune, but he appears to pay well under half the maximum tax rate, thanks to those absurd semantic distinctions that even Ronald Reagan dismissed as meaningless and counterproductive. He has used offshore tax havens for himself and his wife, and his company, Bain Capital, has both eliminated jobs in the name of efficiency (often using these cuts to pay for payments to his own company) and moved American jobs overseas.
The point is, Mitt Romney's natural constituency should be about 1% of the population. If you restrict that pool to "likely voters," he might naturally appeal to 2%. Maybe 3%.
If the clichés are true and the presidential race always comes down to which candidate the American people "wants to have a beer with," how many Americans will choose to sit at the bar with the coiffed Wall Street multimillionaire who fires your sister, unapologetically pays half your tax rate, keeps his money stashed in Cayman Islands partnerships or Swiss accounts in his wife's name, cheerfully encourages finance-industry bailouts while bashing "entitlements" like Medicare, waves a pom-pom while your kids go fight and die in hell-holes like Afghanistan and Iraq and generally speaking has never even visited the country that most of the rest of us call the United States, except to make sure that it's paying its bills to him on time?
Romney is an almost perfect amalgam of all the great out-of-touch douchebags of our national cinema: he's Gregg Marmalaard from Animal House mixed with Billy Zane's sneering, tux-wearing Cal character in Titanic to pussy-ass Prince Humperdinck to Roy Stalin to Gordon Gekko (he's literally Gordon Gekko). He's everything we've been trained to despise, the guy who had everything handed to him, doesn't fight his own battles and insists there's only room in the lifeboat for himself – and yet the Democrats, for some reason, have had terrible trouble beating him in a popularity contest.
The fact that Barack Obama needed a Himalayan mountain range of cash and some rather extreme last-minute incompetence on Romney's part to pull safely ahead in this race is what really speaks to the brokenness of this system. Bruni of the Times is right that the process scares away qualified candidates who could have given Obama a better run for all that money. But what he misses is that the brutal campaign process, with its two years of nearly constant media abuse and "gotcha" watch-dogging, serves mainly to select out any candidate who is considered anything like a threat to the corrupt political establishment – and that selection process is the only thing that has kept this race close.
Barack Obama is hardly a complete Wall Street stooge. The country's most powerful bankers seem genuinely to hate his guts, mainly because they're delusional and are sincerely offended by anyone who dares to even generally criticize them for being greedy or ethically suspect, as Obama has with his occasional broadsides against "fat cat bankers" and so on.
On the other hand, Obama's policy choices in the last four years have made it impossible for him to run aggressively against the corruption and greed and generally self-obsessed, almost cinematic douchiness that Romney represents.
With 300 million possible entrants in the race, how did we end up with two guys who would both refuse to bring a single case against a Wall Street bank during a period of epic corruption? How did we end up with two guys who refuse to repeal the carried-interest tax break? How did we end with two guys who supported a vast program of bailouts with virtually no conditions attached to them? Citigroup has had so many people running policy in the Obama White House, they should open a branch in the Roosevelt Room. It's not as bad as it would be in a Romney presidency, but it comes close.
If this race had even one guy running in it who didn't take money from all the usual quarters and actually represented the economic interests of ordinary people, it wouldn't be close. It shouldn't be close. If one percent of the country controls forty percent of the country's wealth – and that trend is moving rapidly in the direction of more inequality with each successive year – what kind of split should we have, given that at least one of the candidates enthusiastically and unapologetically represents the interests of that one percent?
To me the biggest reason the split isn't bigger is the news media, which wants a close race mainly for selfish commercial reasons – it's better theater and sells more ads. Most people in the news business have been conditioned to believe that national elections should be close.
This conditioning leads to all sorts of problems and journalistic mischief, like a tendency of pundits to give equal weight to opposing views in situations where one of those views is actually completely moronic and illegitimate, a similar tendency to overlook or downplay glaring flaws in a candidate just because one of the two major parties has blessed him or her with its support (Sarah Palin is a classic example), and the more subtly dangerous tendency to describe races as "hotly contested" or "neck and neck" in nearly all situations regardless of reality, which not only has the effect of legitimizing both candidates but leaves people with the mistaken impression that the candidates are fierce ideological opposites, when in fact they aren't, or at least aren't always. This last media habit is the biggest reason that we don't hear about the areas where candidates like Romney and Obama agree, which come mostly in the hardcore economic issues.
It's obviously simplistic to say that in a country where the wealth divide is as big as it is in America, elections should always be landslide victories for the candidate who represents the broke-and-struggling sector of the population. All sorts of non-economic factors, from social issues to the personal magnetism of the candidates, can tighten the races. And just because someone happens to represent the very rich, well, that doesn't automatically disqualify him or her from higher office; he or she might have a vision for the whole country that is captivating (such a candidacy, however, would be more feasible during a time when the very rich were less completely besotted with corruption).
But when one of the candidates is Mitt Romney, the race shouldn't be close. You'll hear differently in the coming weeks from the news media, which will spend a lot of time scratching its figurative beard while it argues that a 54-46 split, or however this thing ends up (and they'll call anything above 53% for Obama a rout, I would guess), is evidence that the system is broken. But what we probably should be wondering is why it was ever close at all.
New polls are out suggesting that Mitt Romney's electoral path to the presidency is all but blocked. Unless someone snags an iPhone video of Obama taking a leak on Ohio State mascot Brutus Buckeye, or stealing pain meds from a Tampa retiree and sharing them with a bunch of Japanese carmakers, the game looks pretty much up – Obama's widening leads in three battleground states, Virginia, Ohio and Florida, seem to have sealed the deal.
That's left the media to speculate, with a palpable air of sadness, over where the system went wrong. Whatever you believe, many of these articles say, wherever you rest on the ideological spectrum, you should be disappointed that Obama ultimately had to run against such an incompetent challenger. Weirdly, there seems to be an expectation that presidential races should be closer, and that if one doesn't come down to the wire in an exciting photo finish, we've all missed out somehow.
Frank Bruni of The New York Times wrote a thoughtful, insightful editorial today that blames the painful, repetitive and vacuous campaign process for thinning the electoral herd and leaving us with only automatons and demented narcissists willing to climb the mountain:
Romney's bleeding has plenty to do with his intrinsic shortcomings and his shortsightedness: how does a man who has harbored presidential ambitions almost since he was a zygote create a paper trail of offshore accounts and tax returns like his?
But I wonder if we're not seeing the worst possible version of him, and if it isn't the ugly flower of the process itself. I wonder, too, what the politicians mulling 2016 make of it, and whether, God help us, we'll be looking at an even worse crop of candidates then.The Times, meanwhile, ran a house editorial blaming Romney's general obliqueness, his willingness to stretch the truth and his inability to connect with ordinary people for his fall. David Brooks ran a column suggesting that Romney's overreliance on a message of strict market conservatism, ignoring the values message of "traditional" conservatism, was what killed him in the end.
All of these points of view have merit, I guess, but to me they're mostly irrelevant. The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.
Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world's wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.
These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don't oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
They've relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that "capital gains" and "carried interest" are somehow not the same as "income."
The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.
If this race had even one guy running in it who didn't take money from all the usual quarters and actually represented the economic interests of ordinary people, it wouldn't be close. It shouldn't be close.
That last thing I would say is probably appropriate, except for the fact that hundreds of thousands of poor (and mostly black and Hispanic) kids get tossed by cops every year (would you believe 684,000 street stops in New York alone in 2011?) in the same city where Wall Street's finest work, and those kids do real time for possession of anything from a marijuana stem to an empty vial. How many Wall Street guys would you think would fill the jails if the police spent even one day doing aggressive, no-leniency stop-and-frisk checks outside the bars in lower Manhattan? How many Lortabs and Adderalls and little foil-wraps of coke or E would pop out of those briefcases?
For all this, when it came time to nominate a candidate for the presidency four years after the crash, the Republicans chose a man who in almost every respect perfectly represents this class of people. Mitt Romney is a rich-from-birth Ivy League product who not only has never done a hard day of work in his life – he never even saw a bad neighborhood in America until 1996, when he was 49 years old, when he went into some seedy sections of New York in search of a colleague's missing daughter ("It was a shocker," Mitt said. "The number of lost souls was astounding").
He has a $250 million fortune, but he appears to pay well under half the maximum tax rate, thanks to those absurd semantic distinctions that even Ronald Reagan dismissed as meaningless and counterproductive. He has used offshore tax havens for himself and his wife, and his company, Bain Capital, has both eliminated jobs in the name of efficiency (often using these cuts to pay for payments to his own company) and moved American jobs overseas.
The point is, Mitt Romney's natural constituency should be about 1% of the population. If you restrict that pool to "likely voters," he might naturally appeal to 2%. Maybe 3%.
If the clichés are true and the presidential race always comes down to which candidate the American people "wants to have a beer with," how many Americans will choose to sit at the bar with the coiffed Wall Street multimillionaire who fires your sister, unapologetically pays half your tax rate, keeps his money stashed in Cayman Islands partnerships or Swiss accounts in his wife's name, cheerfully encourages finance-industry bailouts while bashing "entitlements" like Medicare, waves a pom-pom while your kids go fight and die in hell-holes like Afghanistan and Iraq and generally speaking has never even visited the country that most of the rest of us call the United States, except to make sure that it's paying its bills to him on time?
Romney is an almost perfect amalgam of all the great out-of-touch douchebags of our national cinema: he's Gregg Marmalaard from Animal House mixed with Billy Zane's sneering, tux-wearing Cal character in Titanic to pussy-ass Prince Humperdinck to Roy Stalin to Gordon Gekko (he's literally Gordon Gekko). He's everything we've been trained to despise, the guy who had everything handed to him, doesn't fight his own battles and insists there's only room in the lifeboat for himself – and yet the Democrats, for some reason, have had terrible trouble beating him in a popularity contest.
The fact that Barack Obama needed a Himalayan mountain range of cash and some rather extreme last-minute incompetence on Romney's part to pull safely ahead in this race is what really speaks to the brokenness of this system. Bruni of the Times is right that the process scares away qualified candidates who could have given Obama a better run for all that money. But what he misses is that the brutal campaign process, with its two years of nearly constant media abuse and "gotcha" watch-dogging, serves mainly to select out any candidate who is considered anything like a threat to the corrupt political establishment – and that selection process is the only thing that has kept this race close.
Barack Obama is hardly a complete Wall Street stooge. The country's most powerful bankers seem genuinely to hate his guts, mainly because they're delusional and are sincerely offended by anyone who dares to even generally criticize them for being greedy or ethically suspect, as Obama has with his occasional broadsides against "fat cat bankers" and so on.
On the other hand, Obama's policy choices in the last four years have made it impossible for him to run aggressively against the corruption and greed and generally self-obsessed, almost cinematic douchiness that Romney represents.
With 300 million possible entrants in the race, how did we end up with two guys who would both refuse to bring a single case against a Wall Street bank during a period of epic corruption? How did we end up with two guys who refuse to repeal the carried-interest tax break? How did we end with two guys who supported a vast program of bailouts with virtually no conditions attached to them? Citigroup has had so many people running policy in the Obama White House, they should open a branch in the Roosevelt Room. It's not as bad as it would be in a Romney presidency, but it comes close.
If this race had even one guy running in it who didn't take money from all the usual quarters and actually represented the economic interests of ordinary people, it wouldn't be close. It shouldn't be close. If one percent of the country controls forty percent of the country's wealth – and that trend is moving rapidly in the direction of more inequality with each successive year – what kind of split should we have, given that at least one of the candidates enthusiastically and unapologetically represents the interests of that one percent?
To me the biggest reason the split isn't bigger is the news media, which wants a close race mainly for selfish commercial reasons – it's better theater and sells more ads. Most people in the news business have been conditioned to believe that national elections should be close.
This conditioning leads to all sorts of problems and journalistic mischief, like a tendency of pundits to give equal weight to opposing views in situations where one of those views is actually completely moronic and illegitimate, a similar tendency to overlook or downplay glaring flaws in a candidate just because one of the two major parties has blessed him or her with its support (Sarah Palin is a classic example), and the more subtly dangerous tendency to describe races as "hotly contested" or "neck and neck" in nearly all situations regardless of reality, which not only has the effect of legitimizing both candidates but leaves people with the mistaken impression that the candidates are fierce ideological opposites, when in fact they aren't, or at least aren't always. This last media habit is the biggest reason that we don't hear about the areas where candidates like Romney and Obama agree, which come mostly in the hardcore economic issues.
It's obviously simplistic to say that in a country where the wealth divide is as big as it is in America, elections should always be landslide victories for the candidate who represents the broke-and-struggling sector of the population. All sorts of non-economic factors, from social issues to the personal magnetism of the candidates, can tighten the races. And just because someone happens to represent the very rich, well, that doesn't automatically disqualify him or her from higher office; he or she might have a vision for the whole country that is captivating (such a candidacy, however, would be more feasible during a time when the very rich were less completely besotted with corruption).
But when one of the candidates is Mitt Romney, the race shouldn't be close. You'll hear differently in the coming weeks from the news media, which will spend a lot of time scratching its figurative beard while it argues that a 54-46 split, or however this thing ends up (and they'll call anything above 53% for Obama a rout, I would guess), is evidence that the system is broken. But what we probably should be wondering is why it was ever close at all.
Romney Has a Jobs Plan ... for China
Thursday, September 27, 2012 by TruthDig.com
by Amy Goodman
Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.
A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.
You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney. When they learned this, close to a dozen Sensata employees decided to put up a fight, to challenge Romney to put into practice his very campaign slogans to save American jobs. They traveled to Tampa, Fla., joining in a poor people’s campaign at a temporary camp called Romneyville (after the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression). They organized a petition drive, getting 35,000 people to join their demand for Romney to call on his former colleagues to save their jobs. Since Freeport is close to two swing states, Iowa and Wisconsin, they traveled to a Romney rally and appealed directly to him there (Ironically, for appealing to Romney to save their jobs from being sent to China, the Sensata workers were jeered as communists at the rally, and removed by U.S. Secret Service).
Then the workers established Bainport. Set up at the Stephenson County Fairgrounds, with the full support of the community, the workers have spent more than two weeks camped out, with a dozen tents, a large circus-style tent serving as a covered gathering space and command center, and an outdoor kitchen. They built a stage with a banner reading, “Mitt Romney: Come to Freeport” and signs like “Romney does have a jobs plan ... too bad it’s for China.” Behind the stage they have built a small bridge that carries the workers across a gully to and from their remaining shifts at the plant.
One night last week, we arrived at Bainport at 10:30. A group of workers and their supporters were sitting around the campfire. I talked to them, one by one, before they made their way to their tents. Dot Turner had to be at work at 5 a.m. I asked her how long she’d been at the plant. “For 43 years. I started in 1969. I was 18 at the time,” she told me. Her message to Romney was clear: “If he was really concerned about the American people and if he was concerned about creating jobs, the 12 million jobs that he always uses as his stump speech, he could create this job by leaving it here."
While Romney has yet to visit Freeport, a campaign spokesman addressed the issue of Sensata, turning the issue around onto President Barack Obama: “Despite the president being invested in Sensata through his personal pension fund, and the government owning a major Sensata customer in GM, President Obama has not used his powers to help this situation in any way.”
Obama didn’t respond to the specific charge, but on the campaign trail, he hits Romney hard on Bain outsourcing jobs to China: “When you see these ads he’s running, promising to get tough on China, it feels a lot like that fox saying, “You know, we need more secure chicken coops.”
Freeport Mayor George Gaulrapp visited Bainport on the morning that we broadcast our “Democracy Now!” news hour from the camp. He told me about his hopes for the workers, reflecting on his hometown’s long history: “Freeport is the home of the Lincoln-Douglas debate site. We’ve invited both campaigns, President Obama and Governor Romney, to come to Freeport and debate in an old-style campaign. It would be a perfect opportunity for him, the architect who mastered how to send jobs over offshore, to come back here and reverse the trend. We’re 65 miles from Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. It’s a perfect location to come, have your feet on the ground and meet a cross-section of America.”
by Amy Goodman
Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.
A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.
You may never have heard of Sensata Technologies, but in this election season, you’ve probably heard the name of its owner, Bain Capital, the company co-founded and formerly run by Mitt Romney. When they learned this, close to a dozen Sensata employees decided to put up a fight, to challenge Romney to put into practice his very campaign slogans to save American jobs. They traveled to Tampa, Fla., joining in a poor people’s campaign at a temporary camp called Romneyville (after the Hoovervilles of the Great Depression). They organized a petition drive, getting 35,000 people to join their demand for Romney to call on his former colleagues to save their jobs. Since Freeport is close to two swing states, Iowa and Wisconsin, they traveled to a Romney rally and appealed directly to him there (Ironically, for appealing to Romney to save their jobs from being sent to China, the Sensata workers were jeered as communists at the rally, and removed by U.S. Secret Service).
Then the workers established Bainport. Set up at the Stephenson County Fairgrounds, with the full support of the community, the workers have spent more than two weeks camped out, with a dozen tents, a large circus-style tent serving as a covered gathering space and command center, and an outdoor kitchen. They built a stage with a banner reading, “Mitt Romney: Come to Freeport” and signs like “Romney does have a jobs plan ... too bad it’s for China.” Behind the stage they have built a small bridge that carries the workers across a gully to and from their remaining shifts at the plant.
One night last week, we arrived at Bainport at 10:30. A group of workers and their supporters were sitting around the campfire. I talked to them, one by one, before they made their way to their tents. Dot Turner had to be at work at 5 a.m. I asked her how long she’d been at the plant. “For 43 years. I started in 1969. I was 18 at the time,” she told me. Her message to Romney was clear: “If he was really concerned about the American people and if he was concerned about creating jobs, the 12 million jobs that he always uses as his stump speech, he could create this job by leaving it here."
While Romney has yet to visit Freeport, a campaign spokesman addressed the issue of Sensata, turning the issue around onto President Barack Obama: “Despite the president being invested in Sensata through his personal pension fund, and the government owning a major Sensata customer in GM, President Obama has not used his powers to help this situation in any way.”
Obama didn’t respond to the specific charge, but on the campaign trail, he hits Romney hard on Bain outsourcing jobs to China: “When you see these ads he’s running, promising to get tough on China, it feels a lot like that fox saying, “You know, we need more secure chicken coops.”
Freeport Mayor George Gaulrapp visited Bainport on the morning that we broadcast our “Democracy Now!” news hour from the camp. He told me about his hopes for the workers, reflecting on his hometown’s long history: “Freeport is the home of the Lincoln-Douglas debate site. We’ve invited both campaigns, President Obama and Governor Romney, to come to Freeport and debate in an old-style campaign. It would be a perfect opportunity for him, the architect who mastered how to send jobs over offshore, to come back here and reverse the trend. We’re 65 miles from Paul Ryan’s hometown of Janesville. It’s a perfect location to come, have your feet on the ground and meet a cross-section of America.”
Wall St. Loses Faith in Their Man Romney
6 Really Bad New Signs for the GOP Candidate
Several recent developments that must cause the Romney campaign extreme consternation
September 27, 2012 | AlterNet / By Lauren Kelley
Several recent developments that must cause the Romney campaign extreme consternation
September 27, 2012 | AlterNet / By Lauren Kelley
Though the election is far from over, Team Romney has had some tough times recently. The now infamous “ 47 percent” video [3] may have been the worst of it, but it certainly wasn’t the last of it; the bad news just keeps on coming for the Romney campaign. Below are several recent developments that must contribute to Romney and his handlers shaking in their boots.
1. Wall Street is giving up hope for a Romney win.
Wall Street executives have obviously been rooting for a Romney victory. However, “now many masters of the universe concede they may not get their man,” Politico reports [4].
2. He keeps alienating poor voters, a.k.a. “them.”
After the 47 percent debacle, you’d think Romney would step up his game in courting low- and middle-income voters. In his new campaign ad [5], he does try to woo those voters -- but he fails by reinforcing the notion that poor Americans are not like him. Garance Franke-Rute at The Atlantic [6] on Romney’s “them” problem:
3. Romney’s backed himself into a corner by saying good things about RomneyCare.
Romney’s presidential campaign has relied in large part on Romney denying and/or ignoring the similiarities between ObamaCare and the Massachusetts health care plan he pushed through as Governor. Well, the Republican candidate is starting to slip up on that front. As Salon’s Steve Kornacki [7] reports, Romney has bragged about his RomneyCare legacy a few times of late, and it’s put him in a tight spot.
Romney’s robot-like charisma can’t be winning him many votes. In this clip (hat-tip Raw Story [8]), Romney can’t get the whole name-chant thing down with the crowd at a recent campaign event. Even right-winger Joe Scarborough (MSNBC) had to cover his eyes and cry, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Here’s the cringe-worthy moment:
5. He’s not backing down from some of his worst ideas.
As Sahil Kapur at TPM reports [12], Romney’s tax plan has few supporters, on the left or the right -- a Tax Policy Center study even said it was “not mathematically possible” – but that’s not stopping him from going full steam ahead. One of Romney’s spokespeople told TPM, “The governor’s plan calls for a 20% rate cut for all brackets, revenue neutrality, while ensuring that high-income earners continue to pay at least the same share of taxes. All of these goals are achievable, and the governor will work with Congress to enact tax reform that meets each of the goals he has proposed.”
6. And finally, he doesn’t have the all-important Samuel L. Jackson endorsement.
Samuel L. Jackson has recorded a hilarious, F-word-packed pro-Obama ad [13] for the Jewish Council on Research and Education. If I were Romney, I wouldn’t want to be on Sam Jackson's bad side.
1. Wall Street is giving up hope for a Romney win.
Wall Street executives have obviously been rooting for a Romney victory. However, “now many masters of the universe concede they may not get their man,” Politico reports [4].
Across Wall Street and the broader landscape of corporate America, even strong supporters of Romney acknowledge that swing state polling numbers and the direction of economic data and markets suggest it’s time to brace for a second Obama term.Though money from Wall Street donors doesn't appear to be drying up for the Romney campaign, "the business community tend to follow data and play percentages. And right now they favor the president." That does not inspire confidence.
2. He keeps alienating poor voters, a.k.a. “them.”
After the 47 percent debacle, you’d think Romney would step up his game in courting low- and middle-income voters. In his new campaign ad [5], he does try to woo those voters -- but he fails by reinforcing the notion that poor Americans are not like him. Garance Franke-Rute at The Atlantic [6] on Romney’s “them” problem:
In the 47 percent video, it was "those people."
"I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives," Romney said.
But presidential elections are always about the grand national us. They are about we, the people. And when it come to a candidate, they are about me and you.Garance Franke-Rute [6] points out that instead of an "us" Romney makes poor and middle class voters a "them":
"President Obama and I both care about poor and middle-class families. The difference is my policies will make things better for them."
3. Romney’s backed himself into a corner by saying good things about RomneyCare.
Romney’s presidential campaign has relied in large part on Romney denying and/or ignoring the similiarities between ObamaCare and the Massachusetts health care plan he pushed through as Governor. Well, the Republican candidate is starting to slip up on that front. As Salon’s Steve Kornacki [7] reports, Romney has bragged about his RomneyCare legacy a few times of late, and it’s put him in a tight spot.
[W]hen Obama embraced RomneyCare and the GOP embraced reflexive opposition, it left Romney with nothing to say. The best he can do is occasionally invoke his main gubernatorial feat in interviews like he did with Allen and hope there’s not any immediate backlash from his base. And even if there isn’t, it just reinforces his plight, with the media covering not the content of his remarks but the oddity of it all.4. He just keeps embarrassing himself.
Romney’s robot-like charisma can’t be winning him many votes. In this clip (hat-tip Raw Story [8]), Romney can’t get the whole name-chant thing down with the crowd at a recent campaign event. Even right-winger Joe Scarborough (MSNBC) had to cover his eyes and cry, “Oh, sweet Jesus.” Here’s the cringe-worthy moment:
5. He’s not backing down from some of his worst ideas.
As Sahil Kapur at TPM reports [12], Romney’s tax plan has few supporters, on the left or the right -- a Tax Policy Center study even said it was “not mathematically possible” – but that’s not stopping him from going full steam ahead. One of Romney’s spokespeople told TPM, “The governor’s plan calls for a 20% rate cut for all brackets, revenue neutrality, while ensuring that high-income earners continue to pay at least the same share of taxes. All of these goals are achievable, and the governor will work with Congress to enact tax reform that meets each of the goals he has proposed.”
6. And finally, he doesn’t have the all-important Samuel L. Jackson endorsement.
Samuel L. Jackson has recorded a hilarious, F-word-packed pro-Obama ad [13] for the Jewish Council on Research and Education. If I were Romney, I wouldn’t want to be on Sam Jackson's bad side.
Links:
[3] http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/big-fat-lie-behind-romneys-absurd-47-argument
[4] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0912/81738.html?hp=t2_3
[5] http://youtu.be/_HjDCHbtXHQ
[6] http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/mitt-romneys-them-problem/262890/
[7] http://www.salon.com/2012/09/27/what_mitt_was_supposed_to_be/
[8] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/09/26/scarborough-cries-oh-sweet-jesus-as-romney-fails-to-lead-chant/
[9] http://www.nbcnews.com
[10] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032507
[11] http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032072
[12] http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/09/mitt-romney-not-backing-off-tax-plan.php
[13] http://www.businessinsider.com/samuel-l-jackson-ad-obama-romney-wake-up-2012-9
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