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 A er 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 “en lements.”

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

==========

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 y, 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 en lement 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, less

[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, less

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 ac ulation, 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 en lement 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 "en lement 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