Tag: Romney

Kicking Him When He’s Down

As if Mitt Romney didn’t have enough on his mind with losing the election after a grueling campaign, he might have to face prosecution, at least if the people who sent me this e-mail have their way.

Dear David Hoffman,

Mitt Romney just lost the election — and now, he’s about to become the first former candidate ever to be charged with violating federal ethics law.

United Automobile Workers (UAW) and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are preparing to launch an official lawsuit against Romney for hiding between 15.3 to 111.5 million dollarsfrom the auto industry bailout in his wife Anne’s “blind” trust to conceal the gain and reduce taxes on it.

“The American people have a right to know about Gov. Romney’s potential conflicts of interest, such as the profits his family made from the auto rescue,” the groups said in their official complaint. “It’s time for Gov. Romney to disclose or divest.”

It’s time to expose just how unscrupulous Romney is about making his fortune off the misfortunes of others. Please, support UAW and CREW by calling on Romney to reveal exactly how much he made and continues to make off the auto bailout!

PETITION TO MITT ROMNEY: It’s time to come clean. We demand to know how much money you hid in your wife’s supposed blind trust, and how much you continue to make thanks to the gutting of the auto industry.

Before, I got a petition to shut down Fox News, and now this. I doubt if anything will come of this, but I wonder what it says about the sort of people who make up these petitions. They seem to be a vindictive lot who don’t care for opposing viewpoints, in other words, Leftists.

 

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Third Time Pays for All

I watched the third debate last night, but I was tired and didn’t really pay much attention. I got the impression that Romney was a little less steady than he was in the other two debates. I noticed that Obama really gave the impression that he did not want to be there at all. He was more aggressive in attacking Romney but his face settled into a frown while Romney was talking.

I don’t think that Obama enjoys the political process all that much. He likes giving soaring speeches to cheering crowds but he doesn’t enjoy being questioned or challenged. Or maybe he feels he is somehow above working at campaigning for re-election, or that sharing a platform with Governor Romney is demeaning somehow. Whatever the case, he is not enjoying himself and it shows.

I am not sure how much these debates actually tell us about the candidates. The skills needed to do well in the debates are not much like the skills needed to be a successful president. It is really not necessary for a president to know all the policy details, that is what his staff is for. It is also not necessarily good for a president to make quick decisions. No president ever says anything in public that is not carefully considered. Obama has been ridiculed for his excessive use of the teleprompter, but considering that any stray comment the president makes might have profound implications all over the world, it is probably better if he doesn’t speak extemporaneously.

On the other hand, perhaps the debates do tell us something about each man’s character. We see the candidate unfiltered by the media and his protective staff. His debating style might tell us what kind of president he is likely to be. In a way, the debates are like a trial by single combat, only with words instead of weapons. We might just as well have the two candidates arm wrestle. That might be more entertaining. It would be a whole lot easier to determine who won.

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Romney, Ryan and Republicans are Racist!

I was going for a bit of alliteration there. Anyway that is the conclusion one must draw from this really offensive shirt at a Romney/Ryan event, as reported by Buzzfeed.

The Getty Images photo was taken at a Romney/Ryan campaign event in Lancaster, Ohio on Friday. A Romney spokesperson commented that the shirt was “reprehensible and has no place in this election.”

Of course, it is just barely possible that this man was a plant to make the Romney Campaign look like racists. Would the Democrats do something like that. Well, consider Mary Frances Berry‘s response on the question of whether branding the Tea Party as racist is effective.

Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats. There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.

I am not certain whether Ms. Berry approves if this strategy or not, but she believes it to be effective. Other Democrats with fewer qualms about this sort of thing would have no problem sending a man with this shirt in. On the other hand, every movement, party and candidate attracts their share of idiots, crazies and losers. I think he is a plant, though. It is odd how many Liberals have jumped on this lone example as proof of Conservative racism.

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Maureen Dowd is a Twit Too

Again, no surprises there. In her latest column, Dowd imagines a post-debate conversation between Barack Obama and The West Wings’s Josiah Bartlett.

The lights from the presidential motorcade illuminate a New Hampshire farmhouse at night in the sprawling New England landscape. JED BARTLET steps out onto his porch as the motorcade slows to a stop.

BARTLET(calling out) Don’t even get out of the car!

BARACK OBAMA(opening the door of his limo) Five minutes, that’s all I want.

BARTLET Were you sleepy?

OBAMA Jed —

BARTLET Was that the problem? Had you just taken allergy medication? General anesthesia?

OBAMA I had an off night.

BARTLET What makes you say that? The fact that the Cheesecake Factory is preparing an ad campaign boasting that it served Romney his pre-debate meal? Law school graduates all over America are preparing to take the bar exam by going to the freakin’ Cheesecake Factory!

OBAMA(following Bartlet inside) I can understand why you’re upset, Jed.

BARTLET Did your staff let you know the debate was gonna be on television?

OBAMA (looking in the other room) Is that Jeff Daniels?

BARTLET That’s Will McAvoy, he just looks like Jeff Daniels.

OBAMA Why’s he got Jim Lehrer in a hammerlock?

BARTLET That’s called an Apache Persuasion Hold. McAvoy thinks it’s the responsibility of the moderator to expose — what are they called? — lies.

WILL(shouting) Did Obama remove the work requirement from Welfare-to-Work?!

LEHRER No!

WILL And you didn’t want to ask Romney about that because? It would’ve been impolite?!

Again, we see the idea that Jim Lehrer should have been actively covering for Barack Obama instead of being a fair and unbiased moderator.

I have not watched a single episode of The West Wing, but I gather it tells the story of a Democratic President in a strange, alternate universe in which liberal ideas are actually popular in America and Democrats can win without pretending to be moderates. Also, Liberals in this world are intelligent and articulate and do not have to resort to name calling. I know it is an incredible premise but the show was on for seven years, so I suppose it offered some consolation for Liberals who found the real world too harsh.

But the main point here is that Dowd repeats the idea that will soon become the conventional wisdom on that first debate, that Romney defeated Obama not because he is a better debater, or that his ideas are superior, but because he kept lying and Obama was simply too astonished by his blatant prevarications to reply.

BARTLET All right! (back to OBAMA) And that was quite a display of hard-nosed, fiscal conservatism when he slashed one one-hundredth of 1 percent from the federal budget by canceling “Sesame Street” and “Downton Abbey.” I think we’re halfway home. Mr. President, your prep for the next debate need not consist of anything more than learning to pronounce three words: “Governor, you’re lying.” Let’s replay some of Wednesday night’s more jaw-dropping visits to the Land Where Facts Go to Die. “I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale you’re talking about.”

OBAMA The Tax Policy Center analysis of your proposal for a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut in all federal income tax rates, eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, the estate tax and other reductions, says it would be a $5 trillion tax cut.

BARTLET In other words …

OBAMA You’re lying, Governor.

BARTLET “I saw a study that came out today that said you’re going to raise taxes by $3,000 to $4,000 on middle-income families.”

OBAMA The American Enterprise Institute found my budget actually would reduce the share of taxes that each taxpayer pays to service the debt by $1,289.89 for taxpayers earning in the $100,000 to $200,000 range.

BARTLET Which is another way of saying …

OBAMA You’re lying, Governor.

I sincerely hope that President Obama does try something like this for the next debate. I have a feeling that Romney will have all the facts and figures he will need to verify his statements at hand and ready to use. Obama will only make a fool of himself if he keeps repeating, “You’re a liar”.

By the way, Maureen Dowd is probably the last person on earth who should be lecturing anyone on honesty, given her propensity to omit words from quotes to alter their meaning. This practice is called dowdification and in listed in the Urban Dictionary.

The omission of a word or a phrase in order to reframe a quote and alter its meaning. This is usually done to help an author portray a particular viewpoint and is very common amongst weblogs. The term is named after the New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

Her dowdification seriously mischaracterized his statement

That says enough.

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The First Debate

By now, the pundits all agree that Mitt Romney won the debate. This time they are absolutely right. I think that this has been the most one-sided debate that I have ever seen. Romney put on the best performance possible. He was confident, polished, articulate and knowledgeable. He seemed to have a detailed knowledge of policies and statistics and was able to use that knowledge to articulate a positive vision for the future. He even seemed to be enjoying himself.

Obama, by contrast, put on the worst debate performance that I have ever seen, with the exception of Al Gore’s outbreak of Tourette’s Syndrome in the first debate of 2000. He seemed as though he would rather be doing anything else. He seemed unprepared and his statements were mostly recycled from his campaign speeches. He would attack Romney with straw man representations of Romney’s positions and then Romney would correct him. Romney, for his part, aggressively attacked Obama and kept reminding him and the viewers that Obama has been President for the last four years, something that Obama wanted people to forget. I was afraid that Romney might be perceived as too aggressive by some voters, but I don’t think that is the case. He managed to attack Obama without seeming to be a jerk. Obama is not used to being questioned or opposed. He does not like it and it showed.

In fact, Obama spent much of the time looking down at his shoes while Romney was speaking. He looked up when he was talking, but I think he was trying to pretend Romney wasn’t standing a few feet away, across the stage. Romney looked directly at Obama when he made his attacks, a tactic made more effective when the two men were shown on a split screen. Put simply, Romney seemed to know what he was talking about and Obama didn’t. If I were hiring someone to run my business, or my country, there is no question who I would trust.

Is this the end of the election? Can Obama recover? Of course he can. We still have a month before the election and a lot can happen. There are two more debates between the two candidates and we can be certain that Obama will be better prepared next time. I think, though, that the first debate will be the most important one in that it was the first chance for most voters to see the two men together, head to head, as it were. First impressions are important and even if Obama does well in the next two debates, he is going to have a lot of work to do to overcome the bad impression he generated in this debate.

Will the debates make a difference? I don’t think that very many people will switch their votes on the basis of who did better at any of  these debates. A good performance cannot help but be beneficial to any candidate, while a bad performance has to hurt. People like to back a winner and are more likely to get out and vote for, and more importantly contribute money to, a candidate they think is likely to win. Romney’s excellent performance will help with voter turnout, if he can keep the momentum going.

I have to wonder why Obama gave such an unimpressive showing. His supporters have given a number of rather implausible reasons, the most incredible of which is Al Gore’s contention that Obama had not had enough time to become  acclimated to Denver’s high altitude. Some have noted that as a sitting President who run uncontested in the primaries, Obama has had far less recent experience with debating than Romney, who must have sat through at least ten thousand of them. There is something to that, but Obama still could have been better prepared.

I think, that the reason has to do with Obama’s personality. He is not really well suited for the job of President, at least not in temperament. I think that he likes the idea of being President more than he likes the real job. If Ed Klein is correct in his book The Amateur, Obama has never been one to apply himself to policy details. His colleagues in the Illinois State Senate and later in the Senate noted that he seemed uninterested in the actual process of legislation, preferring to give stirring speeches to working on bills. He also seems to lack the kind of back-slapping conviviality of a Clinton or a Johnson and really seems to be something of an introvert. I think then, that a debate against an opponent over policy details and programs is simply not something Obama is good at and not something he particularly wanted to do, especially against an opponent he probably doesn’t like at all. He was probably over confident as well and I do not doubt he seriously underestimated Mitt Romney.

By the way, the most interesting spin from the Left, I have seen so far is that Romney only won because he surprised Obama with his constant lying. They want Obama to be more confrontational in the next debate, especially in bringing up Romney’s remarks about the “47%”. Good luck with that. I suspect that Obama didn’t bring that up, because they knew perfectly well that Romney would be ready with an answer and perhaps a comment about dwelling on irrelevancies rather than the nation’s future. Then too, there is always Obama’s “bitter clingers” remark to throw right back at him.

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Landslide for Romney?

 

That is what two professors from the University of Colorado are saying. Here is the story in the Denver Post.

Two University of Colorado professors have devised a model to predict who will win the presidential election under current economic circumstances. The victor, they say, will be Republican Mitt Romney.

The model uses economic indicators from all 50 states to predict the race’s outcome. The forecast calls for Romney to win 320 electoral votes out of 538. It says Romney will also win virtually every state currently considered a swing state, including Colorado.

The professors who created the model, Ken Bickers from CU-Boulder and Michael Berry from CU-Denver, say it correctly forecast every winner of the electoral since 1980.

They warn the model does not account for sudden changes in the economy or unexpected developments in states split 50-50. Polls in many states, including Colorado, show a virtually deadlocked race.

Here is the map.

https://i0.wp.com/conservativebyte.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/9384562.png

I think that they are being far too optimistic and that they should be tied up, gagged, and taken to an undisclosed location until after the election. the last thing the Republicans need right now is to start being overconfident. Romney and Ryan should fight as though they are ten points behind Obama because goodness knows he’ll be as vicious as he has to be to win this election.

 

 

 

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Paul Ryan for Vice-President

 

 

I read the news this morning that Mitt Romney chose Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Mitt Romney announced Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday, selecting the Republican Party’s go-to man on budget issues in a decision that signals the campaign will make the nation’s spiraling debt a centerpiece of its attacks on President Obama.

Romney made the selection official during a campaign stop Saturday morning in Norfolk, Va., before launching a four-day bus tour.

The Republican presidential candidate called his new running mate a man of “steadiness” and “integrity.” Speaking Saturday morning, Romney praised Ryan as an “intellectual leader” of the party, one who understands the toll the debt is taking on the country but is optimistic about the future.

“He doesn’t demonize his opponents. He understands that honorable people can have honest differences and he appeals to the better angels of our nature,” Romney said. “He’s never been content to just curse the darkness. He’d rather light candles.”

To the backdrop of retired battleship USS Wisconsin, an energized Ryan then riled up the crowd with a feisty speech that promoted Romney as the solution to the problems under President Obama. Ryan, met with chants of “USA, USA,” gave a sweeping vision speech on free enterprise, one laced with attacks on the White House incumbent.

This is an interesting choice. Romney doesn’t seem to be interested in balancing the ticket. We have two white men from the north. I might have thought he would have selected a woman or a minority but it seems that highlighting economic/budgetary issues was foremost on Romney’s mind. Given that Rep. Ryan has been one of the few men in Congress who is serious about doing something about the looming entitlements crisis, this was a good pick.

Naturally, given his reputation, we can expect the Democrats to unleash their attack ads describing Ryan as a “Tea Party” extremist who wants to kick old people out on the street to pay for tax cuts to the evil millionaires and billionaires. These attacks won’t be honest or responsible but what does that matter to the Obama campaign?

I’m already getting Democratic emails about that fiend Ryan.

The news just broke: Mitt Romney has announced GOP Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate.

Ryan is best known for the extreme budget that bears his name — one that would end Medicare as we know it while giving huge tax breaks to billionaires and corporations. A Romney-Ryan ticket is a frightening prospect for the middle class and anyone who might one day need Medicare or Social Security.

The GOP has their team, and now it’s more important than ever that we stand behind ours. Will you sign our petition and stand with President Obama and Vice President Biden?

Sign the petition: http://dscc.org/obama-biden

Thanks,

Patty Murray

The thing that really bothers me about this is that the Democrats have done nothing to secure the future of Medicare or Social Security even though they have to know perfectly well that neither program is sustainable in the long, and not so long, term. If Medicare is not ended as we know it, it will not be there at all when I am old.

Paul Ryan will be Mitt Romney’s running mate.

What you need to know right now: This election is about values, and today Romney doubled down on his commitment to take our country back to the failed policies of the past.

Congressman Paul Ryan is best known as the author of a budget so radical The New York Times called it “the most extreme budget plan passed by a House of Congress in modern times.” With Mitt Romney’s support, Ryan would end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing — all while cutting taxes for those at the very top.

Over the next few days, Romney’s campaign and its allies will tell a very different story about Paul Ryan.

Our job is to make sure Americans know the truth about what Romney’s choice says about him as a candidate and leader, and to stand with President Obama and Vice President Biden at another major moment in this campaign.

Say you’re with them:

http://my.barackobama.com/Obama-Biden

Thanks for all you’re doing. More to come.

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Coming from the New York Times, that is a rousing endorsement of Ryan. Note the reference to the “failed policies of the past”. As opposed to the absolutely disastrous policies of the present?

 

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Romney’s Jerusalem Gaffe

I have heard it said that a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. By that standard, I am not sure that the comment that Mitt Romney made in Jerusalem regarding the economic disparity between Israel and the Palestinians really qualifies since I am certain he knew exactly what he was saying. But first, the story according to the Christian Science Monitor.

Governor Romney caused a stir when he said in a speech Sunday that “it is a deeply moving experience to be in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel.” That actually sounded milder than what then-Sen. Barack Obama said in June 2008, when he insisted that Jerusalem must “remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.”

Romney’s statement on Jerusalem was not well received by the Palestinians, but the candidate didn’t stop there, adding a comment Monday about culture and prosperity that elicited even more condemnation.

Aside from angering the Palestinians, the problem with referring to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel is that, officially, the United States – in line with most of the international community – does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Instead, it considers the city’s status an issue to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians, who claim East Jerusalem – seized by Israel in the 1967 war – as their capital.

As a result, the US keeps its embassy in Tel Aviv.

I think we should recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move our embassy there. Jerusalem has been the capital of every Jewish state since the time of King David and no one else has a claim on it, except the Jebusites, if any are still around.

At a breakfast fund-raising event in Jerusalem Monday, Romney said he couldn’t help but notice the “dramatically stark difference in economic vitality” between Israel and “the areas managed by the Palestinian Authority,” and he concluded, “Culture makes all the difference.”

No mention from the would-be US president of the trade and mobility restrictions that Israel maintains over the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza – restrictions that both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said for years are key factors in hampering Palestinian economic growth.

Palestinian leaders quickly blasted Romney’s “culture” comment as “racist” and added that he failed to take into account the impact of Israel’s tight grip on the Palestinian economy.

Somehow, I find myself not caring too much what  the Palestinians think. That culture makes the difference shouldn’t be a controversial statement at all. A country that educates its population in the latest in science and technology and allows freedom of speech and thought is always going to prosper far more than a country that trains their citizens in hatred and has a repressive and corrupt government. If it is a matter of geo-political considerations, than I would note that Israel has been a country under siege for its entire history and yet they have somehow managed to create a diverse and vibrant economy. And then too, Israel probably wouldn’t be imposing trade and mobility restrictions if the Palestinians had not been making it perfectly clear that they prefer war with Israel to peaceful economic development.

I have a feeling that the Palestinians would be a whole lot better off if they gave up on their death cult and learn to live in peace.

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Anti Mormons

Now that Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee for President, he faces an uphill struggle to win the election. I know that this has not been a good week for President Obama, and he is likely to have more bad weeks in the immediate future. Still, it is hard to unseat an incumbent president. One of the difficulties Romney is likely to have is overcoming prejudice against his Mormon faith. It seems that evangelical Christians, in their usual close-minded, intolerant way, are reluctant to vote for him and are becoming even more anti-Mormon in their attitudes.

Oh, wait. I read that wrong. Evangelicals are just fine with Romney’s Mormonism. It is the open-minded, tolerant Liberals who won’t vote for him based on his faith.

Americans’ aversion to voting for Mormons has spiked since Mitt Romney’s first presidential bid in 2007 — and that the people most wary of Mormon candidates are not Evangelicals, but rather political liberals and non-religious voters, according to new research from a leading scholar of anti-Mormon attitudes.

The overall increase in anti-Mormon attitudes among liberals may be an unanticipated consequence of the “the continuing candidacy of Mitt Romney and Mormon activism against same-sex marriage,” the study suggests. And its findings may be alarming to the Romney campaign because among the study’s other findings is that voters’ perceptions of Mormonism are closely tied to whether they’ll vote for him.

According to American National Election Studies, nearly 35 percent of national respondents said in February they were “less likely” to vote for a Mormon. That’s up nine points from 2007, when Pew found 26 percent of voters expressing concern about pulling the lever for a Latter-day Saint.

The uptick in anti-Mormon voter attitudes may come as a surprise to those who predicted Romney’s candidacy would have a mainstreaming effect on his faith. But as University of Sydney scholar David Smith, the paper’s author, writes, just as President Obama’s successful candidacy didn’t put an end to tense race relations in America, Romney’s political assent hasn’t cured the country of anti-Mormonism. In fact, as the data shows, Romney’s rise may have lead to increased anxiety about his religion among his natural political opponents.

According to the paper, concern about Mormonism has remained relatively stable among Evangelicals, with 36 percent expressing aversion to an LDS candidate in 2007 and 33 percent doing so in 2012. But among non-religious voters, that number shot up 20 points in the past five years, from 21 percent in 2007 to 41 percent in February. There were also substantial increases in Mormon-averse voters among liberals — 28 percent in 2007 and 43 percent in 2012 — as well as moderates, who went from 22 percent in 2007 to 32 percent this year.

“Aversion to Mormons is still an important force in American public opinion, and one that seriously affects Romney’s chances even if he ultimately overcomes it,” Smith writes in his paper, available online here.

Smith is the author of a detailed analysis on anti-Mormonism in the 2008 election, which suggested that the belief that Mormons aren’t Christian was tightly linked to opposition to Romney among Christian conservatives.

I don’t have much use for Mormon theology, but the fact is, that Mormonism, like the more conservative Protestant sects and Catholicism, at least in theory, is a religion that makes demands on its adherents. That is to say, it teaches that some actions are right and others are wrong, regardless of what might be popular or expedient. Liberals, whether Christian, Jewish, or nonreligious have long ago given up the worship of God for the worship of the State and the idea that there should be any standards above that of the state or of the whims of the moment is simply hateful to them.

There are some Conservatives who are wary of voting for a Mormon.

Perhaps most potentially distressing to Romney’s campaign is the study’s finding that conservatives who said they were less likely to vote for a Mormon were much more likely to say they were undecided or would not vote at all in a contest between Obama and Romney. Pundits have been predicting for months that anti-Mormon Republicans would stay home in November; this study reaffirms that idea.

The paper comes with an important caveat: the survey data was collected in late February and early March — in the heat of the Republican primaries. At that point, Romney was the clear frontrunner, but far from the presumed nominee. Since his opponents dropped out, Romney has earned plaudits from Republican operatives and activists for uniting the right behind him with his combative campaign style.

I hope they will come around. As I said, I have little use for Mormon theology and don’t really consider them Christians. But, as Martin Luther is supposed to have said, “I would rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian”. Whatever you might think of Romney’s religion, he has to be a better ruler than that fool we have in the White House now.

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