Reply With Quote
this bit deserves its own thread why, when there's an existing thread?
Four Little Words
Why the Obama campaign is suddenly so worried.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...s_opinion_main
What's the difference between a calm and cool Barack Obama, and a rattled and worried Barack Obama? Four words, it turns out.
"You didn't build that" is swelling to such heights that it has the president somewhere unprecedented: on defense. Mr. Obama has felt compelled—for the first time in this campaign—to cut an ad in which he directly responds to the criticisms of his now-infamous speech, complaining his opponents took his words "out of context."
That ad follows two separate ones from his campaign attempting damage control. His campaign appearances are now about backpedaling and proclaiming his love for small business. And the Democratic National Committee produced its own panicked memo, which vowed to "turn the page" on Mr. Romney's "out of context . . . BS"—thereby acknowledging that Chicago has lost control of the message.
The Obama campaign has elevated poll-testing and focus-grouping to near-clinical heights, and the results drive the president's every action: his policies, his campaign venues, his targeted demographics, his messaging. That Mr. Obama felt required—teeth-gritted—to address the "you didn't build that" meme means his vaunted focus groups are sounding alarms.
The obsession with tested messages is precisely why the president's rare moments of candor—on free enterprise, on those who "cling to their guns and religion," on the need to "spread the wealth around"—are so revealing. They are a look at the real man. It turns out Mr. Obama's dismissive words toward free enterprise closely mirror a speech that liberal Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren gave last August.
Ms. Warren's argument—that government is the real source of all business success—went viral and made a profound impression among the liberal elite, who have been pushing for its wider adoption. Mr. Obama chose to road-test it on the national stage, presumably thinking it would underline his argument for why the wealthy should pay more. It was a big political misstep, and now has the Obama team seriously worried.
And no wonder. The immediate effect was to suck away the president's momentum. Mr. Obama has little positive to brag about, and his campaign hinges on keeping negative attention on his opponent. For months, the president's team hammered on Mr. Romney's time at Bain, his Massachusetts tenure, his tax returns. "You didn't build that" shifted the focus to the president, and his decision to respond to the criticisms has only legitimized them and guaranteed they continue.
The Obama campaign's bigger problem, both sides are now realizing, is that his words go beyond politics and are more devastating than the Romney complaints that Mr. Obama is too big-government oriented or has mishandled the economy. They raise the far more potent issue of national iden y and feed the su ion that Mr. Obama is actively hostile to American ideals and aspirations. Republicans are doing their own voter surveys, and they note that Mr. Obama's problem is that his words cause an emotional response, and that they disturb voters in nearly every demographic.
It's why Mr. Obama's "out of context" complaints aren't getting traction. The Republican National Committee's response to that gripe was to run an ad that shows a full minute of Mr. Obama's rant at the Roanoke, Va., campaign event on July 13. In addition to "you didn't build that," the president also put down those who think they are "smarter" or "work harder" than others. Witness the first president to demean the bedrock American beliefs in industriousness and exceptionalism. The "context" only makes it worse.
This gets to the other reason the Obama campaign is rattled: "You didn't build that" threatens to undermine its own argument against Mr. Romney. Mr. Obama has been running on class warfare and the notion that Mr. Romney is a wealthy one-percenter out of touch with average Americans. Yet few things better symbolize the average American than a small-business owner. To the extent that Mr. Romney is positioning himself as champion of that little business guy and portraying Mr. Obama as something alien, he could flip the Obama narrative on its head.
It would be all the more potent were Mr. Romney to use "you didn't build that" to launch his own economic narrative. One unexpected side effect of "you didn't build that" is that it has emboldened the GOP to re-embrace and glory in free enterprise (so abused since the financial crash). And the president's disparaging attack on business has also made voters more open to a defense of it.
Meaning, it's a perfect time to marry emotion with some policy. Mr. Romney has explained why the president doesn't get it. The next step is to explain why his own tax policies, regulatory proposals, and en lement plans are the answer for those who actually do the building. The president is on defense. We'll see if Mr. Romney can keep him there.
this bit deserves its own thread why, when there's an existing thread?
cut -n- paste. Beats thinking!
but TB's smileys beat everything!
you're ankle biting alot today, boutons.
stop stalking me!
can you help me get my couch in the van?
It's that really seedy, plaid one. Right?
your skin looks so pretty in the moonlight.
Yes let's all pat ourselves on the back for once again being a soundbyte culture that is too collectively dumb to understand nuance.
Nice meaningless distraction from Willard's tax returns by the neocons, tbh.....
Wait a minute? Wasn't Nancy Pelosi calling the tax return issue a distraction?
Wait a minute... wasn't even the NATIONAL REVIEW calling on Willard to release his tax returns?
I will agree with one thing, Obama didn't have to be so long winded. His speech could have been said with 4 little words. "Expand your perspective, asshole"
Absolutely it came off as a foolish harangue. The fact that polls haven't really shifted on any of this or his other gaffes says either a lot about Obama or Romney.
Sully despairs:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast....s-gaining.html
So?
Look, the left took a straightforward, transparent, fully supported by all involved (including Democrats and Obama supports), explanation of Romney's departure from Bain Capital, in 1999, and turned it into a felony.
I can only imagine the fantasies they would conjure up over his tax returns.
Surprised he isn't leading, tbh... the economy really hasn't helped Barry..
Or his birth certificate!
Gecko Didn't Pay For That!
Mitt Romney's Pork Barrel Olympics
As Romney chastises the president for pointing out that successful business ventures benefit from a larger social compact and accuses critics of pining for "free stuff," Romney is simultaneously touting an Olympic effort that, more than any other in American history, succeeded thanks to public investment—some of it sunk into questionable projects of marginal value to the Salt Lake games. "The $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars that Congress is pouring into Utah is 1.5 times the amount spent by lawmakers to support all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904—combined," Donald Barlett and James Steele reported for Sports Illustrated in 2001. Those numbers were adjusted for inflation.
How the Salt Lake Games came to receive more money than any games in American history isn't much of a mystery. The organizers, including Romney, asked for it. In his 2004 book, Turnaround, Romney acknowledges the central role of the federal government in making the Olympics possible. "No matter how well we did cutting costs and raising revenue, we couldn't have Games without the support of the federal government," he wrote.
Romney emphasized cost-cutting at every step of the process, moving the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's DC office from a swank building next door to the White House, to a cheaper, comparatively Spartan flat next to a burrito shop. But the flow of federal cash continued unabated.
In 2000, with the opening ceremonies still more than a year away, Arizona Sen. John McCain called the Salt Lake price tag "a disgrace," and partnered with Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) to demand a Government Accountability Office investigation into how the games could cost so much. Romney's response was muted. As he explained in a letter to the GAO: "Recognizing that our government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred millions to promote peace."
The most damning aspect of the Salt Lake tab wasn't the final amount, but how it was being spent. In their exhaustively researched Sports Illustrated accounting, Barlett and Steele explain how many Olympics projects amounted to little more than slush funds for wealthy donors to the games. Wealthy Utahns used the games as an excuse to receive exemptions for projects that would otherwise never meet environmental standards, or to receive generous subsidies for improvements of questionable value to the games—but with serious value to future real estate developments. In one example, a wealthy developer received $3 million to build a three-mile stretch of road through his resort. Where'd he get the money? Federal funds that had been deposited in the Utah Permanent Community Impact Fund. Per the piece:
The U.S. Treasury collects royalties from mining and petroleum companies that prospect and drill on federal lands, and from individuals and businesses that buy and sell the related leases. The Treasury returns half the payments to the states where the lands are located. States generally distribute the money as grants or loans to those communities that have been socially or economically affected by prospecting or drilling. In Utah this money traditionally has gone to struggling counties to help with public needs, like purchasing a fire truck.
Now the state was going to give $2 million in federal royalties to Summit County—by far the state's richest county, and one in which a majority of the mines closed years ago—and the money would be in the form of an outright grant rather than a loan, even though the fund's rules state that grants can be made "only when the other financing mechanisms cannot be utilized, where no reasonable method of repayment can be identified, or in emergency situations regarding public health and/or safety." On top of that the grant was earmarked for construction of a road that would benefit a private developer.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/...ederal-funding
So Gecko is SO PROUD of his MormonLand Olympics that was in fact financed by federal dollars from the hated "too-big" govt and nothing but giveaway to 1%ers and corps.
After Stonewalling Obama’s Jobs Package, Republicans Complain About GDP Growth
Republicans, of course, leaped on the middling number, with Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) calling it “a troubling sign for the future of our economy.”
But GOP’ers neglect to mention that they repeatedly filibustered President Obama’s American Jobs Act in the Senate, after several independent economic analysts estimated that the bill would boost GDP by one to three percent.
– Goldman Sachs economists estimated that the AJA would increase GDP by 1.5 percent, before any multiplier effects.
– Thomas Lam, of the economic advisory firm OSK-DMG, estimated that the bill would boost GDP by 1.8 percent.
– Macroeconomic Advisers estimated that the boost would be 1.3 percent.
– Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Economy, put the boost at 2 percent of GDP.
– The Economic Policy Ins ute estimated that the new initiatives in the AJA would increase GDP by 1.9 percent, while policy extensions it included would increase GDP by another 1.4 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office also scored the bill as a net deficit reducer over a ten year budget window. As ThinkProgress has detailed, blocking the AJA is hardly the only thing that the GOP has done to sabotage economic growth and job creation.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201.../gdp-jobs-act/
Repugs continue to obstruct and deny the Dems ANY SUCCESS or PROGRESS on job and the economy, while offering nothing but anti-abortion stuff, witch hunting the WH, fabricating outrages and controversies, and of course proposals to the poor, sick, old, disabled hard and long while raising taxes on the 99% while cutting taxes on the 1% and corps, and protecting the defense budget.
McConnel said a couple year ago the Repug priority was to defeat the n!gg@, NOT stimulate jobs or the economy. He was tellling the truth.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
