The All New, Super Nice, Obama/Romney 2012 Thread

[moi621]

The All New, Super Nice, Obama/Romney 2012 Thread
No, not the No Obamney 2012 Thread.
The All New, Super Nice, Obama/Romney 2012 Thread


Of all the 2012 Electoral College links offering forecasts, this is my fav.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/...-electoral-map
It is easy to research a State's most current polls.
Ooops it is Huffington Post. Can I trust it or is it the Rasmussen link of the Left

What I find interesting is how Minnesota sits there as a Blue state amidst Red States to the West and tossup States all around. Recently Wisconsin moved from the leaning Obama light Blue to toss-up Gold.
A Romney win is dependent on the old Rust Belt in the Toss-Up category.
We have an interesting Republican convention coming up which may attract viewers and converts too.

Please, discuss in a Super Nice fashion. Maybe a State by State approach. Like:
"My State is California and it will undoubtedly vote its' 55 Electoral Votes for Obama.
So for me, voting a Third Party won't effect how California goes.
Regardless of my vote, my State will represent me for Obama"

Your State? Someone else's State and how & why might it swing.
Or anything else, Super Nice about the 2012 Obama/Romney event.

Moi
FREEDOM

[devi]

It all depends how much the serpentine Bible Belt sticks behind Romney (a Mormon). It kind of looks like the belt will run north of Colorado without taking it in this year.

[A-1]

What's NICE about Mitt Romney, besides his RICH-ASSED background?...and this only IF you are rich yourself...

HARROP: Where they play, rich conservatives like zoning

July 10, 2012 12:00 am • By FROMA HARROP

The weekend's memorable photo is of Mitt Romney driving his massive powerboat past a privately built castle, not unlike his own, on New Hampshire's Lake Winnipesaukee.

On Sunday, he moseyed across the Long Island Sound to the beachy pleasure dome of billionaire conservative David Koch, in Southampton, N.Y. ---- for a $75,000-a-couple dinner to raise money from like-minded Republicans. N

Not far away, Koch's brother Bill, a fellow funder of conservative causes, holds court in the exclusive waterfront enclave of Osterville, on Cape Cod.

The brothers' family business, based far away in Wichita, Kan., is a notoriously careless emitter of toxic wastes. The Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts ranks Koch Industries as America's 10th worst air polluter.

Thus, not a few eyes roll as Bill continues to lead the long fight against a planned wind farm off Osterville's shore.

You understand, it would mar the alleged environmental perfection of the waters in which he sails.

The region's choice corners are chock-a-block with rich Democrats, too, but it is politically their natural habitat. Why do conservatives from elsewhere hang out in places that tax and regulate and do all kinds of other mean things to rich people like themselves?

The reason is that these are nice places, and they are that way precisely because they tax and regulate. And these guys know it. If cooler summers were all they craved, they'd be partying in Upper Wisconsin.

A libertarian friend, a journalist from Texas, once told me she'd like to live in a nice, preserved New England village, but no one there would buy her politics.

I told her that if the region bought her politics, the village wouldn't be nice and preserved. Google the words "McDonald's" and "Osterville," and the first link is "Places for McDonald's near Osterville," not "in Osterville."

The West's libertarian ethic is a beautiful thing when it comes to letting folks get fat, smoke pot or otherwise conduct their lives in peace. But the belief that a man can do anything he wants on his land often leads to destroyed environments.

New England had a piece of environmental good luck when America's boundaries started expanding. The land was useless from an extractive-industry point of view. Little gas, little coal. Ditto gold, silver and other metals. At the first opportunity, even farmers fled the rocky soil for the fertile Midwest.

And so the Yankees had to switch to Plan B. They built factories, using river power, until put out of business by cheaper energy and labor elsewhere. This was at bottom a knowledge economy that continues to this day. The modern version relies on universities to churn out computer, biotech and other inventors of new businesses. Another part of Plan B was to become financiers to the national economy.

As investors, New Englanders fanned across the country extracting riches from other regions. They did mining, oil drilling, railroad building.

How their activities harmed these other environments was, in most cases, the last thing on their minds. They made sure that their kids attended prized schools back East and that they themselves would not spend their summers near an open-pit mine in southern Arizona. They came home to the fresher breezes and charming villages of the Northeast.

And the rich from other regions joined them for the summer party.

It's one thing to pollute other areas. It's another to despoil where one goes for recreation. It's animal nature not to dirty one's own nest. Wherever the well-heeled ---- no matter how freedom-loving they profess to be ---- go to play, you can be sure of one thing: The place will be zoned to its teeth.

SOURCE...

CAN YOU SAY "DOUBLE STANDARDS?"

Mitt and the Chickenhawk Problem

Mitt Romney has five strapping sons, and not one of them has ever served in the military. When asked about this in Bettendorf, Iowa, the Republican presidential hopeful said that "one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected." He noted that his boy Josh had driven a Winnebago to all of Iowa's 99 counties — all 99 of them!

There's been a lot of back-and-forth over this tactless comment. Jim Geraghty wrote on National Review Online that he's "tired" of the "chickenhawk line of attack." These are the accusations, usually from the left, that politicians who cheerlead for neo-con wars, but always leave the fighting to other people and their children, are hypocrites. Though unhappy with Romney's response, Geraghty characterized the question as "rude" and the candidate's answer as merely "off-key."

Lisa De Pasquale of the American Conservative Union avoided the question and instead went after the questioner. She dismissed Rachel Griffiths as an "antiwar Daily Kos diarist," which is a bad thing in her circle. Griffiths is that, and she is also the sister of an Army major who had served in Iraq.

Let's pin down the real problem. We know that the armed forces are all-volunteer ("the good news," Mitt said) and that few children of the rich have much to do with it. If military service were a prerequisite for becoming president, most of the current contenders would be out of the running. The only candidates making the cut would be Arizona Sen. John McCain, California Rep. Duncan Hunter and Texan Rep. Ron Paul on the Republican side, and Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd and former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel on the Democratic.

What's crashingly offensive about Romney's response isn't a small set of ill-chosen words but the entire universe of assumptions behind them.
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Throughout the campaign, Romney has showcased his athletic boys, ages 26 to 37, as all that is good about America and himself. It apparently never occurred to him that anyone in the audience would place his five princes in the same thought as Sadr City.

The official Romney Website even features a "Five Brothers" blog — a youthful jaunt across a cloudless America that seems solar systems away from the Sunni Triangle. Son Craig talks about how he and brothers Josh and Matt participated in the Annual Great Bicycle Ride across Iowa. (Two them had trained on a hotel's stationary bikes, we are told.) Photos show the clan boating in New Hampshire, bonding after a volleyball match and enjoying a game at Boston's Fenway Park.

And the boys' day jobs? Ben attends medical school in Boston, Craig works for an ad agency in New York, Josh develops real estate in Salt Lake City, and Matt manages commercial properties in San Diego.

Tagg helps run his father's campaign and gets a bit political on his blog. He writes that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate, wants to "raise taxes, grow government, take over health care and run away from Iraq."

So while the "chickenhawk" label could stick to most of the candidates, there's something especially jarring about the Romney family portrait: six hunky males, all untouched by military service. (During the Vietnam War, Mitt obtained a draft deferment to do missionary work in France.)

As part of his answer to the "rude" question, Romney called for a "surge of support" for the troops. A more politically astute response would have been to propose a national program requiring everyone's children, including his own, to serve their country in some fashion.

It's a good bet that the idea never crossed his mind.

Remember, only poor people are in the infantry fighting RICH MEN'S WARS...


GREEDY IS AS GREEDY DOES!!!

Froma Harrop: Romney’s ruthlessness makes him bad fit

Froma Harrop

We recently saluted Leslie Sabo for giving his life to save fellow soldiers in Vietnam 40 years ago. Injured after shielding a comrade with his body, the Pennsylvanian grabbed his grenade and stormed the foe’s bunker. He died in the explosion. For his selflessness, America awarded Sabo the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Weird how we pay tribute to heroes who make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield but absolutely worship those who make fortunes wresting every last penny from other members of their company. As many see it: If you’re rich, you’re automatically a great American. Criticize how someone got rich, and you’re a “socialist.”

President Barack Obama has been pummeling Mitt Romney over the marauding activities of his former investment company, Bain Capital. Some liberals do go overboard defacing all private equity investing with the same paint sprayer. And Obama’s ads portraying Bain’s victims employ too many violins for my taste. The problem is not the profession. It’s what one does in the course of business.

But even among those intent on making it big, people with a conscience will not cross certain lines. Bain blew across them. There seemed little it wouldn’t do for a buck. That makes the prospect of a President Romney overseeing the laws that keep destructive “investing” practices legal and incredibly lucrative worrisome.

I don’t see how buying a company, piling on $420 million of extra debt, immediately pulling tens of millions out of the business to pay off investors – all the while slashing the workers’ pay – and then leaving the wounded patient to die in liquidation nine years later can be deemed honorable. This is what Bain did to American Pad & Paper as it turned a $5 million investment into a $100 million take.

Bain also stiffed Ampad’s unsecured creditors, including a pension fund for some of its workers. These lenders got back two-tenths of a penny for every dollar Bain owed them.

Bain used a similar strategy at GS Technologies, a steel maker. There it parlayed an $8 million investment into $16 million. When the company went bankrupt, the federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp. had to spend $44 million bailing out its underfunded pension plan. And workers saw their pensions slashed by up to $400 a month.

Let’s talk about capitalism. Granted, self-interest fuels the “animal spirits” that create our great business enterprises. Because the benefits of capitalism flow down to society at large, we are often at pains to divide ethical behavior from the other kind. Sometimes labor costs must be cut to stay competitive. Not every factory can be saved. And Bain apologists argue with some merit that the companies acquired were in trouble to begin with.

OK, but if a company is in trouble, do you multiply its debt by a factor of 22 and immediately take out millions for yourselves? That’s what Bain did at Ampad, and, sorry, “looting” is the word.

And here’s another question. What kind of people would walk away from a company with their money doubled but break a promise to workers for severance pay and health coverage if it went bankrupt? This was the case at GS Technologies. You answer that.

After World War II, American culture embraced a belief that labor and management should share in the fruits of capitalism. Those norms have been obliterated to the point that many don’t remember they existed. Meanwhile, the worshippers of Mammon hail the corporate destroyers as heroes. A financial elite that prospers by turning workers upside down for the change in their pockets should not be overseeing economic and tax policies for the country. Mitt Romney seems awfully comfortable with the way things are.

Source

HOW IN THE HELL CAN YOU SAY ANYTHING NICE ABOUT MITT ROMNEY AND KEEP A STRAIGHT FACE?

[Riverwind]

Yep, give Romney Utah and Idaho, that is Mormon country, then again they always vote republican and they will never be battle ground states. As long as we have an electoral college this will be a problem. It might be time to do away with it for a general popular vote. Small states hate this idea big states love it. Go figure.

River

[Dave]

the Romney-Bain connection is creeping out of the woodwork in public filings and declarations that are public, signed by Romney and on video.

Romney lied about quitting Bain for the Olympics and stayed on until 2002.
This is going to be big for a week or so.

Romney is desperate to get it out of the news, SO DESPERATE that he might select Condoleeza Rice as VP and announce it this week.
What a wanker and a bald-faced liar.

[moi621]

It seems Obama is making Electoral College headway.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/...-electoral-map
Wisconsin and Ohio and Colorado have gone from toss-up gold to lite blue.
On further study, including the lite Blue, Obama is over the top.

The Bain thing could back fire. The complicity of Democrats that allowed favorable circumstances for outsourcing. Such as Free Trade.

Moi


No Obamney 2012
Gary Johnson to make a noise.

[Dave]

It seems Obama is making Electoral College headway.
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/...-electoral-map
Wisconsin and Ohio and Colorado have gone from toss-up gold to lite blue.
On further study, including the lite Blue, Obama is over the top.

The Bain thing could back fire. The complicity of Democrats that allowed favorable circumstances for outsourcing. Such as Free Trade.
Moi.

Seriously? What did the Democrats do? Did they hold a cattle prod to Mitt Romneys quivering ass lips and force him to lie?
NO!
Romney lied all on his own.

[moi621]

Seriously? What did the Democrats do? Did they hold a cattle prod to Mitt Romneys quivering ass lips and force him to lie?
NO!
Romney lied all on his own.

It was lawful!
Ever hear of Free Trade?
Supported by Democrats too. The rich ones.

Like the mortgage fiasco, the Democrats did not protect the people.
The Fed has not followed California's lead, or led itself, mortgage reform.
Instead my friend gets 2K for being dual tracked. Get it?
One arm of the bank said his papers were in order while another continued the foreclosure.
Economic terrorism. And your Democrats behave like "Good Germans".

Moi

[Riverwind]

Moi, question.

Who caused the melt down, Republicans or Democrats?

To hear you tell it, republicans are saints and the dem have done nothing but evil. I am going to guess that the truth lies somewhere in between.

River

[moi621]

Moi, question.

Who caused the melt down, Republicans or Democrats?

To hear you tell it, republicans are saints and the dem have done nothing but evil. I am going to guess that the truth lies somewhere in between.

River

Bi Partisan Corporationist Politics.
The Progressive/Populist/Peoples Wing of the Democratic Party no longer is recognized.
So the major failure is the Democrats to protect the people they claim more prone to protect.
Minor failure, Republicans behaving as Republicans.
You see, too many Republican-lite Democrats who never get around to real financial reform.
Okay.
Discuss.
Moi

[Dave]

Bi Partisan Corporationist Politics.[/SIZE]
The Progressive/Populist/Peoples Wing of the Democratic Party no longer is recognized.
So the major failure is the Democrats to protect the people they claim more prone to protect.
Minor failure, Republicans behaving as Republicans.
You see, too many Republican-lite Democrats who never get around to real financial reform.
Okay.
Discuss.
Moi

And of course your solution is to turn the entire economy over to the HIGHLY PARTISAN CORPORATIONIST PARTY?

[Eunuchorn]

Instead of a Corperationist party, lets form a Corpulent party! Thin People need not apply!

[moi621]

And of course your solution is to turn the entire economy over to the HIGHLY PARTISAN CORPORATIONIST PARTY?

Since 1960 and the Regressive JFK Tax cuts, we have a Bi-Partisan Corporationist Party. Don'tyasee?
The French and Greeks had a choice. Our choice is Corporationist vs Corporationist.
I believe in Percolate Up. Trickle Down never seems to Trickle Down.
Really, don't you see that Dave?

Moi
Progressive Tax Advocate
Spread The Pain of Tax.

[Riverwind]

OK Moi, we see it, so who do you suggest we vote for?

River

[moi621]

OK Moi, we see it, so who do you suggest we vote for?

River

Gary Johnson.
Not for a Win, but to make a sound that one of the big two needs to pay attention to the Progressive/Occupy sorts.
This, as an investment in the Progressive voice for 2016.

Obama and the Democratic Party tried to pretend the Occupy episodes never happened even while they were. Obama and the Democratic Party has failed to directly address the concerns of those who label themselves the 99% yet assume their support in November.
The Republicans produced three anti-Big Money candidates, Paul, Roemer and Johnson.
And the Democrats, , , , Yup, more solidly bought and paid for! Pelosi, Obama, too rich.
Somehow the columns no longer line up as we defined them.

Per River, "we see it",
if "it" is the "it" I suspect it to be
And if you do see "it" your belief is, I believe, NeoCon-lite is better then NeoCon-regular?

"Loyalty" aside. I really would like to understand how you see the fix for "it", River.
My fix is above, per your request. 2012, invest in 2016. NeoCon-lite is not the fix, by me.
Gary Johnson for President
No Obamney.

Gracia & Ole

Moi
Please PM me if I went into annoying style.
Hey, I was asked.