Romney will be the GOP nominee

[boutons_deux]

Mitt Romney Abandons His Father's Civil Rights Legacy

The Republican Party, founded by militant abolitionists and once the political home of civil rights champions such as George Romney, has since the late 1960s been degenerating toward the crude politics of “Southern strategies” and what former Republican National Committee chairman Lee Atwater referred to as the “coded” language of complaints about “forced busing,” legal-services programs, welfare and food stamps. But the 2012 campaign has seen this degeneration accelerate, as the candidates have repeatedly played on stereotypes about race, class and “entitlements.”

On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum told a crowd of supporters, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Around the same time, Texas Congressman Ron Paul was scrambling to explain away old newsletters that went out under his name with sections suggesting that “95 percent of the black males in that city [Washington] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal” and describing the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as “Hate Whitey Day.” Order was restored in riot-torn Los Angeles, the newsletters suggested, only when welfare checks arrived.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who spent the fall talking about eliminating child-labor laws so that school janitors could be replaced with poor kids, and who regularly refers to Barack Obama as the “best food stamp president in American history,” arrived in the first-primary state of New Hampshire and announced: “I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

All these remarks and revelations drew consternation. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People leaders rebuked Gingrich and Santorum, with NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous saying of Gingrich: “It is a shame that the former Speaker feels that these types of inaccurate, divisive statements are in any way helpful to our country. The majority of people using food stamps are not African-American, and most people using food stamps have a job.”

Now, as the Republican race heads for South Carolina, a state that has seen more than its share of racially charged campaigning, there is every reason to fear that things could get uglier. As recently as 2000, the Republican presidential primary campaign witnessed race-baiting phone calls that attacked John McCain for fathering a “black child” out of wedlock. (In fact, he and his wife had adopted a girl from Bangladesh.)

http://www.thenation.com/blog/165647...-rights-legacy

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Repugs' racism in undeniable.

[boutons_deux]

Romney’s Bain Job Count Goes From 100,000 to ‘Thousands’ in Six Days

Faced with attacks from the left, right, leftish, righter and center forward, Mitt Romney has spent his days in South Carolina focusing on trying to make people forget about Bain by talking about it constantly. After Sarah Palin and the rest of the world called out Romney, or at least called on him to get more specific about the alleged 100,000 jobs his work at Bain created, Romney decided to say Thursday that there was “proof” of those jobs on the websites of the companies that he didn’t bankrupt. But for the most part, the “100,000″ is being dropped from the playbook. In fact, in a matter of six days, it looks like the Romney camp has gone from saying “over a hundred thousand jobs” to “tens of thousands of jobs” to rolls-off-the-tongue “thousands of jobs.” Happy Friday to you.

http://wonkette.com/460264/romneys-b...ds-in-six-days

[Winehole23]

I know something was done

I have no freeking idea what you're referring to, but in a broad way it makes sense. That Bush laid the infrastructure for immigration enforcement goes without question, classic big government Bush, and so in some sense Bush does does deserve --what? -- a tip of the cap or something like that, from Mr. Obama.

[Winehole23]

Immigration personnel grew by like a factor of three under Bush, or something like that.

[Winehole23]

a lot

[Winehole23]

we all lost our minds after nineeleven. I don't believe we've recovered our wits yet.

[Winehole23]

the disorientation is just beginning to set in. disillusionment will be tardy, as ever.

[Wild Cobra]

I have no freeking idea what you're referring to, but in a broad way it makes sense. That Bush laid the infrastructure for immigration enforcement goes without question, classic big government Bush, and so in some sense Bush does does deserve --what? -- a tip of the cap or something like that, from Mr. Obama.

Most changes that any administration makes will not produce immediate results. Most changes take time. you don't just get double the enforcement if you double the manpower funds for it, for example. It takes time to train individuals for example. Quite often, policy changes don't take effect until some future date too. they are seldom immediate.

Imaginary example:

What if a policy change enacted in June '08 provided funding to train another 500 individual starting September '08, but only 100 per quarter, and the training takes three quarter.

Just a simple example. I don't know what the actual policy changes provided, but to give Obama such credit within his first year like he has been given credit for is almost certainly from policy changes before him. For him to still receive credit is also most likely from policy changes before him. Unless someone can show me differently, that's just how things pan out, and I will stick to my opinion that Obama's policy ideas have so far had no effect.

[Wild Cobra]

Immigration personnel grew by like a factor of three under Bush, or something like that.

I should have read all the recent posts before posting my last one.

I knew it grew, but I thought it was only double. Would you agree that by a factor of three cannot be immediate, and the full effects take some time to see?

[Winehole23]

I agree to nothing, but please, feel free to elaborate...

[Wild Cobra]

I agree to nothing, but please, feel free to elaborate...

Fine.

Still, you say it was tripled. I will contend it had an effect.

[Winehole23]

Fine.

Still, you say it was tripled. I will contend it had an effect.

In the comment before the previous, I took pains to agree with you. Didn't you notice?

[boutons_deux]

Will Romney Lie His Way to the White House?



In his standard stump speech, he tells audiences that President Obama wants, "to replace our merit-based society with an entitlement society." According to Romney, this means a European-style welfare state that redistributes wealth and creates equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success.

It seems the substance of Romney's complaint involves President Obama's occasional references to "fat cats," his plans to restore the Clinton-era tax rates and his national health care plan.

the staple of the Romney argument is that President Obama wants to raise the tax rate on high income taxpayers back to the level of the Clinton years. Calling this sort of tax increase a redistribution that leads to equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success is just nonsense.

Of course, having everyone covered by health care, which the plan will not actually accomplish, is not quite the same as ending the differences between rich and poor.

And the way in which the plan extended coverage ensures that Mr. Romney's friends in the health insurance, pharmaceutical and medical supply industries can continue to make great fortunes in the health care industry.

when Romney makes a comment about President Obama wanting to have equal outcomes regardless of individual effort and success, he is just speaking nonsense. This is a gaffe, sort of like when then Senator Obama referred to working-class whites clinging to guns and religion before the Pennsylvania primary in 2008.

Serious reporters would grill Romney and his staff to determine whether Romney actually believes anything like this or whether he just makes things up out of the blue in order to advance his political ambition.

it would be helpful for the media to tell the public that the Republicans have nominated a candidate who doesn't think that he can win the presidency without creating complete fantasies to advance his campaign.

http://www.truth-out.org/will-romney...use/1326122881

[Mitt Romney]

I so got this in the bag and the POTUS is guaranteed.

[boutons_deux]

Romney Screams "Pampered Elite": How Toxic Will His 1% Image Be in the Election?

Romney's nomination could be problematic for the GOP for a very unique reason that is now coming into focus: He exudes top 1 percent-ness.

That Romney’s career in venture capital could cause general election headaches was established long before this campaign. It’s one of the major reasons his first campaign for office, a 1994 bid for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, crumbled apart. But his private equity past is a particularly sensitive subject in post-meltdown/OWS America, where decades of rising income inequality are suddenly a big part of the national conversation, witheven working-class Republicans concluding that Wall Street and big corporations have gotten rich on their backs.

What’s worse for Romney, as Joan Walsh pointed out yesterday, is that he seems incapable of talking about these issues without drawing attention to his own privileged life. And the more closely he’s identified with the top 1 percent in the public’s mind, the greater the risk there is for Romney of playing to type in unintentionally damning ways. Would a photograph like this — which is actually a TSA security screening but looks like a shoeshine at first glance — be troublesome for a candidate without Romney’s money and business background?

http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/153764

[boutons_deux]

....

[Winehole23]

I think we knew that already. Indeed, thousands of such articles have already been written and thousands more will be written in that vein precisely, until November.





(The article's not so great you had to post it twice; my initial reaction was to ignore it twice.)

[boutons_deux]

I think we knew that already. Indeed, thousands of such articles have already been written and thousands more will be written in that vein precisely, until November.


(The article's not so great you had to post it twice; my initial reaction was to ignore it twice.)

GFY, dickless

[boutons_deux]

Theological Differences Behind Evangelical Unease With Romney

In South Carolina, where about 60 percent of Republican voters are evangelical Christians, Mr. Romney, a devout Mormon and a former bishop in the church, faces an electorate that has been exposed over the years to preachers like Mr. Roberts who teach that the Mormon faith is apostasy.

“I don’t have any concerns about Mitt Romney using his position as either a candidate or as president of the United States to push Mormonism,” said Mr. Roberts, an author of “Mormonism Unmasked” and president of the Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said he had no plans to travel to South Carolina before the voting. “The concern among evangelicals is that the Mormon Church will use his position around the world as a calling card for legitimizing their church and proselytizing people.”

Mormons consider themselves Christians — as denoted in the church’s name, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Yet the theological differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity are so fundamental, experts in both say, that they encompass the very understanding of God and Jesus, what counts as Scripture and what happens when people die.

“Mormonism is a distinctive religion,” David Campbell, a Mormon and an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in religion and politics. “It’s not the same as Presbyterianism or Methodism. But at the same time, there have been efforts on the part of the church to emphasize the commonality with other Christian faiths, and that’s a tricky balance to strike for the church.”

On the most fundamental issue, traditional Christians believe in the Trinity: that God is the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit all rolled into one.

Mormons reject this as a non-biblical creed that emerged in the fourth and fifth centuries. They believe that God the Father and Jesus are separate physical beings, that God has a wife whom they call Heavenly Mother, and that God and Jesus once dwelt on earth as men.

It is not only evangelical Christians who object to these ideas.

“That’s just not Christian,” said the Rev. Serene Jones, president of Union Theological Seminary, a liberal Protestant seminary in New York City. “God and Jesus are not separate physical beings. That would be anathema. At the end of the day, all the other stuff doesn’t matter except the divinity of Jesus.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/15/us...1&ref=politics

[Winehole23]

GFY, dickless

It's not anything grand, but on the whole, I'm pleased with what I got.

[Winehole23]

btw, thx boutons_deux, for editing the double post. not everyone's so tidy.

[boutons_deux]

GFY, self-proclaimed forum cop

[Winehole23]

actually, I'm a self-declared jackass. the forum cop moniker was bestowed by nice posters like you.

[Winehole23]

who cannot take thanks for an answer

[boutons_deux]

GFY

What the GOP Doesn't Want to Talk About

Republicans are indeed in growing trouble as more voters begin to realize how much the party's policies - dismantling regulations, slashing taxes for the rich, weakening unions - have contributed to inequality and the yawning distance between the middle class and the top end.

makes Mr. Romney and his party vulnerable, as he clearly knows. He said on Wednesday that issues of wealth distribution should be discussed only "in quiet rooms." And he accused the president of using an "envy-oriented, attack-oriented" approach, "entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God."

that it is un-American to talk about rising populist resentment is self-serving and hypocritical. Republicans, in particular, have eagerly stoked such resentments against minorities and the poor.

( eg: WC parroting the "envy", and class warfare against the rich, and defending the unprecedented accumulation, concentration of wealth and power because the 1% deserves it )

the essence of the "Southern strategy" that Republicans, beginning with Richard Nixon, used to urge white voters to defect from a Democratic Party that supported civil rights. It continued for decades with attacks on busing, affirmative action, immigration and welfare, and was sounded most recently by Mr. Gingrich, with his attacks on Mr. Obama as "the food stamp president."

Fanning resentment of the poor - and deflecting attention from the relentless Republican defense of the rich - is also central to the party's current political strategy. That's why so many Republican candidates and lawmakers keep talking so angrily about poor people not paying federal income taxes. That's how the Tea Party got started in 2009, when Mr. Obama proposed lowering interest rates for homeowners who were behind on their mortgages and conservative activists saw an opportunity to pit the affluent against their struggling neighbors. And that's why Mr. Romney constantly accuses the president of trying to create "an entitlement society," which is simply a variant on Ronald Reagan's welfare-queen anecdotes.

if Democrats dare to point out that the income gains of the top 1 percent have dwarfed everyone else's in the last few decades, they are accused of whipping up class envy.

Anyone who criticizes Mr. Romney's business practices now faces the absurd charge of putting free-market capitalism on trial. No one is trying to end capitalism, but President Obama is calling for more effective regulation to protect consumers. While Republicans attack a supposed "entitlement culture," Mr. Obama is calling for strengthening a desperately needed safety net. And he is calling for raising taxes on the wealthy, particularly for those on Wall Street and in private equity, to protect that safety net and reduce the deficit.

http://readersupportednews.org/opini...-to-talk-about

[Winehole23]

Gfy!

[Winehole23]

[boutons_deux]

When Romney ran Bain Capital, his word was not his bond

, there is another version of the Bain way that I experienced personally during my 17 years as a deal-adviser on Wall Street: Seemingly alone among private-equity firms, Romney’s Bain Capital was a master at bait-and-switching Wall Street bankers to get its hands on the companies that provided the raw material for its financial alchemy. Other private-equity firms I worked with extensively over the years — Forstmann Little, KKR, TPG and the Carlyle Group, among them — never dared attempt the audacious strategy that Bain partners employed with great alacrity and little shame. Call it the real Bain way.

Here’s how it worked. Private-equity firms are always eager to find companies to buy, allowing them to invest chunks of the billions of dollars entrusted to them and from which they earn hundreds of millions in fees. One ready source of these businesses is Wall Street bankers hired to sell companies through private auctions. The good news is that when a banker puts together a detailed selling memorandum about a company, chances are very high that company will be sold; the bad news is that these private auctions tend to be very competitive, and the winning bidder, by definition, is most often the one willing to pay the most. By paying the highest price, you win the company, but you also may reduce the returns you can generate for your investors.

I never negotiated directly with Romney; he was too high-level for any interaction with me. Rather, I dealt often with other Bain senior partners, who were very much in his mold. In my experience, Bain Capital did all that it could to game the system by consistently offering the highest prices during the early rounds of bidding — only to try to low-ball the price after it had weeded out competitors.

By bidding high early, Bain would win a coveted spot in the later rounds of the auction, when greater information about the company for sale is shared and the number of competitors is reduced. (A banker and his client generally allow only the potential buyers with the highest bids into the later rounds; after all, you can’t have an endless procession of Savile Row-suited businessmen traipsing through a manufacturing plant if you want to keep a possible sale under wraps.)

For buyers, the goal in these auctions is to be one of the few selected to inspect the company’s facilities and books on-site, in order to make a final and supposedly binding bid. Generally, the prospective buyer with the highest bid after the on-site due-diligence visit is selected by the client — in consultation with his or her banker — to negotiate a final agreement to buy the company.

This is the moment when Bain Capital would become especially crafty. In my experience — which I heard echoed often by my colleagues around Wall Street — Bain would seek to be the highest bidder at the end of the formal process in order to be the firm selected to negotiate alone with the seller, putting itself in the exclusive, competition-free zone. Then, when all other competitors had been essentially vanquished and the purchase contract was under negotiation, Bain would suddenly begin finding all sorts of warts, bruises and faults with the company being sold. Soon enough, that near-final Bain bid — the one that got the firm into its exclusive negotiating position — would begin to fall, often significantly.

Of course, some haggling over price is typical in any sale, and not everything represented by sellers and their bankers is found to be accurate under close examination. But Bain Capital took the art of negotiation over price into the scientific realm. Once the competitive dynamics had shifted definitively in its favor, the firm’s genuine views about what it was willing to pay — often far lower than first indicated — would be revealed.

At such a late date, of course, the seller is more than a little pregnant with the buyer. Attempting to pivot and find a new buyer — which knew it had not been selected in the first place, but was now being called back — would be devastating to the carefully constructed process designed to generate the highest price. Once Bain’s real thoughts about the price were revealed, the seller either had to suck it up and accept the lower price, or negotiate with a new buyer, but with far less leverage.

Needless to say, this does not make for a very happy client (or a happy banker). By the end of my days on Wall Street in 2004, I found the real Bain way so counterproductive that I no longer included Bain Capital on my buyer’s lists of private-equity firms for a company I was selling.

The real Bain way may be nothing more than a clever tactic to eliminate competition from a heated auction in order to buy a business at an attractive price. After all, Bain Capital is seeking the highest returns for its investors. But Bain’s behavior also reveals something about the values it brings to bear in a process that requires honor and character to work properly. If a firm’s word is not worth the paper it is printed on, then its reputation for bad behavior will impair its ability to function in an honorable and productive way.

I don’t know if Bain Capital still uses the bait-and-switch technique when it competes in auctions these days (I’m told that it doesn’t). But that was the way the firm’s partners competed when Romney ran the place. This win-at-any-cost approach makes me wonder how a President Romney would negotiate with Congress, or with China, or with anyone else — and what a promise, pledge or endorsement from him would actually mean.

Would a President Romney, along with a Republican Congress, cut taxes for the wealthy even more than he has pledged to do? Would he not try to balance the federal budget, even though he has said he would? Would he protect defense spending, as he has indicated he would?

I have no idea how Romney might behave in office. I do believe, however, that when he was running Bain Capital, his word was not his bond.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...xwP_print.html

=========

More evidence that Willard Gecko is true, predatory 1% scumbag, will do and say anything to get screw the other guy.

[boutons_deux]

.........

[Winehole23]

double tap