Trump just said in New Hampshire that he's going to unleash competition on U.S. healthcare after he repeals Obamacare, specifically by allowing Americans to buy health insurance across state lines.
Trump said the insurance companies are making a killing on Obamacare. The fact is, insurance companies are taking about 3 cents of every healthcare dollar in profit.
The problem is that U.S. medical care is too damn expensive. Insurance companies chip away at the edges and screw us in the process, through recission, yes, but they aren't the real problem.
Buying a cracker-jack health policy from a rinky-dink insurance provider in Rhode Island isn't going to do a thing for the cost of your care at home; it's only going to hit you when you actually need it that your insurance policy doesn't cover s**t.
Showing posts with label 2012 Presidential campaign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2012 Presidential campaign. Show all posts
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Sunday, June 2, 2013
I gotta post this right-wing forward
I usually delete these right wing e-mail forwards as soon as I get them. Sometimes I read them, sometimes I don't. Some return to me again and again, like strange old acquaintances.
But this forward that originated after the 2012 election is so over the top, it reads like a liberal trying to mimic the oldest, grumpiest, whitest Tea Paryter you could find. I couldn't have done a better job stereotyping "the other side" if I tried. So I have to forward this one myself... with a few of my sarcastic comments inserted in brackets, for fun.
Some versions of this forward say it's from a USMC vet, others don't. Some conclude, "John Galt has left the building," this one doesn't. That's typical of right-wing forwards: they tweak the authors and insert made-up quotes, hoping it will make the message more convincing. This is one reason why I always say that conservatives form their political views from anecdotes and personal experience; to them the messenger is just as important as the message.
You can find a version of this archived at MyRightWingDad.net, which leads to a tip for you right-wing serial e-mail forwarders: just go to this site, copy and send all these mails yourself and be the first, instead of waiting months for your buddies to forward them to you. You'll be the coolest guy on your conservative e-mail list, and a veritable Klondike of right-wing crapolla!)
So here 'tis. Enjoy:
Written by a USMC Vet
[Who appears to be sleeping on the beach. That's an angry, fed-up pose if I've ever seen one! - J]
( I can't argue with any of it. Passing it along as it was received. )
He wrote:
The American Dream ended (on November 6th) in Ohio. The second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history of mankind.
[White Christian women, take no offense. You were just sitting on the ship/wagon/horse behind the men, so technically you did not discover or pioneer anything. - J]
A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government Workers, Union Members, Environmental Extremists, the Media, Hollywood, uninformed young people, the "forever needy," the chronically unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow travelers" have ended Norman Rockwell's America.
[You gotta hand it to us liberals though, that's a pretty big coalition. But he forgot to include Academics, Artists, the Fashion Industry, Professional Athletes and Muslims.
And about Norman Rockwell's America... let me remind you what it was with a few illustrations...
[... that show even Norman Rockwell wasn't white enough for some people. - J]
The Cocker Spaniel is off the front porch... The Pit Bull is in the back yard.
[At least the Pit Bull is not on the front porch! ... But all that will change after Hillary is elected. - J]
The American Constitution has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and Chicago shyster, David Axelrod, along with international Socialist George Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to Bring us Act 2 of the New World Order.
[My conservative friends don't believe me, but I keep telling them that no liberal outside Chicago knew who Saul Alinsky was until Glenn Beck, et al, discovered him. So even if they are right, and liberals love Alinsky's ideas, what they have done for Alinsky's fame is like those guys who brought ebola out of the jungle. They should shut up and stop mentioning him or I swear, one of these days I'm actually going to read "Rules for Radicals"...!
David Axelrod is now gone from the White House, by the way. And George Soros is the richest socialist forex trader you will ever see. - J]
Our side ran two candidates who couldn't even win their own home states, and the circus fattster Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing
"post Sandy" tribute that elevated the "Commander-in-Chief" to Mother Teresa status. (Aside: with the way the polls were run, he didn't need any help!)
[Lay off Christie's weight already! Why don't Republicans make any fat jokes about Rush Limbaugh? He's been publicly fat way longer. Anyway, Christie looks like your average American. In a few decades, at the rate we're growing, we'll be making fun of slim politicians like Obama.... - J]
People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our traditions without a shot being fired.
[Aw, come on, cheer up! You white Tea Partyers are not "completely politically irrelevant." You can still affect Republican primaries. You can still rock a town hall meeting on the latest city zoning plans. A.M. radio is still your uncontested political playground. And you can still move the markets for chicken sandwiches and gold coins in response to political events. - J]
You will never again out vote these people. It will take individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take Zealots, not moderates--not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.
[Acts like sending threatening letters laced with ricin to President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg?
[And I don't know about you, but I haven't noticed any RINOs reachin' across the aisle the past few years. - J]
Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this generation has timidly frittered away due to "white guilt" and political correctness..... I'm done.
[Here's a suggestion: Viagra. I mean, while you still can, with a little help from modern pharmacology, go out and find a white, Christian woman and make some more white Christian babies. And you old white guys have all the money so you can definitely afford to raise them. (OK, granted, there's a 10 percent chance those kids will be gay no matter what you do, but 9 out of 10 ain't bad).
In politics and war, birthrate wins -- not "individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil disobedience." - J]
Saturday, November 17, 2012
Will Republicans pop their media bubble?
Call me a pinko, damned liberal, whatever you want, but I ain't no bubble boy. I read Fox News and Rush Limbaugh more often than the NYT or Wash Post -- not because these are real or worthy sources of information, but rather, because I want to know what the bubble boys are thinking and what gets them mad. Eighty percent of the time, I find that it takes no effort at all to refute their self-serving logic and selective use of evidence. And the remaining 20 percent of the time, well, it just forces me to flex my intellectual muscles a bit, making me stronger and more secure in my left-wing beliefs.
As for my dear Republican friends... I can't tell you how many times they have reacted to something I post with, "Look at the source! Pffft!" as if that is all that needs to be said.
We saw how far bubbles, echo chambers and groupthink got them on November 6. Now all sorts of post-mortems are coming out about what went wrong and how the GOP should reform itself. I don't care, frankly. America would be better off without the GOP. Moreover, I don't think they have it in them to change. The older ones -- the core of the party nowadays with all the money for donations -- are too crotchety and stuck in their ways. By gum, they like the way they are. They like the GOP being nativist, mean and anti-poor. The party as it is suits them just fine... it's just losing at the polls that bothers them.
But here's the worst part: they are addicted to their anger. And the pushers who feed their anger habit -- Fox, Beck, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Drudge, et al -- know their ratings depend on liberal villains to keep the whole racket going. Take away their anger and the energy of the GOP evaporates. It's kind of like -- and I know this is a bit over the top, but... -- the dark side of the Force: Siths and Republicans alike draw their strength from fear, anger and hatred.
By Jonathan Martin
November 12, 2012 | Politico
A long-simmering generational battle in the conservative movement is boiling over after last week’s shellacking, with younger operatives and ideologues going public with calls that Republicans break free from a political-media cocoon that has become intellectually suffocating and self-defeating.
GOP officials have chalked up their electoral thumping to everything from the country’s changing demographics to an ill-timed hurricane and failed voter turn-out system, but a cadre of Republicans under 50 believes the party’s problem is even more fundamental.
The party is suffering from Pauline Kaelism.
Kael was The New Yorker movie critic who famously said in the wake of Richard M. Nixon’s 49-state landslide in 1972 that she knew only one person who voted for Nixon.
Now, many young Republicans worry, they are the ones in the hermetically sealed bubble — except it’s not confined to geography but rather a self-selected media universe in which only their own views are reinforced and an alternate reality is reflected.
Hence the initial denial and subsequent shock on the right that the country would not only reelect President Barack Obama — but do so with 332 electoral votes.
“What Republicans did so successfully, starting with critiquing the media and then creating our own outlets, became a bubble onto itself,” said Ross Douthat, the 32-year-old New York Times columnist.
“The right is suffering from an era of on-demand reality,” is how 30-year-old think tanker and writer Ben Domenech put it.
Citing Kael, one of the most prominent Republicans in the George W. Bush era complained: “We have become what the left was in the ’70s — insular.”
In this reassuring conservative pocket universe, Rasmussen polls are gospel, the Benghazi controversy is worse than Watergate, “Fair and Balanced” isn’t just marketing and Dick Morris is a political seer.
Even this past weekend, days after a convincing Obama win, it wasn’t hard to find fringes of the right who are convinced he did so only because of mass voter fraud and mysteriously missing military ballots. Like a political version of “Thelma and Louise,” some far-right conservatives are in such denial that they’d just as soon keep on driving off the cliff than face up to a reality they’d rather not confront.
But if the Fox News-talk radio-Drudge Report axis is the most powerful force in the conservative cocoon, technology has rendered even those outlets as merely the most popular destinations in the choose-your-own-adventure news world in which consumers are more empowered than ever.
Facebook and Twitter feeds along with email in-boxes have taken the place of the old newspaper front page, except that the consumer is now entirely in charge of what he or she sees each day and can largely shut out dissenting voices. It’s the great irony of the Internet era: People have more access than ever to an array of viewpoints, but also the technological ability to screen out anything that doesn’t reinforce their views.
“The Internet amplifies talk radio and cable news, and provides distribution for other sources like Newsmax,” said Trey Grayson, 40, the former Kentucky secretary of state and the current head of Harvard’s Institute of Politics. “Then your friends, who usually agree with you, disseminate the same stories on Facebook and Twitter. And you assume that everyone agrees with you!”
Grayson continued: “It’s very striking for me living in Cambridge now. My Facebook feed, which is full of mostly conservatives from Kentucky, contains very different links to articles or topics than what I see in Cambridge. It is sort of the reverse up here. They don’t understand how anyone would eat Chick-fil-A, watch college sports or hold pro-life views.”
“Social media has made it easier to self-select,” added 45-year-old GOP strategist Bruce Haynes. “Who do you follow on Twitter, who do you friend on Facebook? Do they all look the same and say the same things? If so, you’ve created a universe for yourself that is wedded to its own self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Like Grayson, Haynes and many of the approximately two-dozen young Republicans interviewed for this story noted that Democrats have their own self-reassuring echo chambers.
What worries Republicans, though, is that their Kaelism may be harder to overcome in the short term.
“Unfortunately, for us Republicans who want to rebuild this party, the echo chamber [now] is louder and more difficult to overcome,” said Grayson.
That’s partly because of the difference between the two cocoons in the two parties.
First, the Al Sharptons and Rachel Maddows of the left don’t have the same influence as their counterparts on the right. There are as many, if not more, NPR-oriented liberals as MSNBC devotees on the left; the Democratic media ecosystem is larger and more diverse.
Further, and more importantly, the Democratic Party has a leader in Obama who for over four years has sought to appeal to a majority of Americans for the obvious political reasons.
“Being a Democrat means being identified with Barack Obama, not Ed Schultz and Martin Bashir,” said Douthat, citing two liberal MSNBC hosts.
Conversely, for nearly six years, since President Bush’s second term went south, Republicans have been effectively without a leader. And into that vacuum has stepped a series of conservative figures whose incentives in most cases are not to win votes but to make money and score ratings by being provocative and even outlandish.
“Their bottom line is their main goal, but that doesn’t mean they’re serving the population that buys their books,” said Domenech.
And this, say next-generation Republicans, is where cocoonism has been detrimental to the cause.
The tension between the profit- and ratings-driven right — call them entertainment-based conservatives — and conservatives focused on ideas (the thinkers) and winning (the operatives) has never been more evident.
The latter group worries that too many on the right are credulous about the former.
“Dick Morris is a joke to every smart conservative in Washington and most every smart conservative under the age of 40 in America,” said Douthat. “The problem is that most of the people watching Dick Morris don’t know that.”
The egghead-hack coalition believes that the entertainment-based conservatives create an atmosphere that enables flawed down-ballot candidates, creates a cartoonish presidential primary and blocks needed policy reforms, and generally leave an odor on the party that turns off swing voters.
It even fosters an atmosphere in which there’s a disconnect with the ostensible party leaders.
Consider: In the fall of the past two presidential campaigns, those in the conservative cocoon were talking about, respectively, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Obama as a black radical, and the seemingly impeachment-worthy scandal surrounding the deaths of U.S. officials in Libya. Meanwhile, on the actual campaign trail, John McCain and Mitt Romney showed little interest in even mentioning either topic.
And the entertainers’ power isn’t just with gullible grass-roots activists who are likely to believe whatever nefarious rumor about Obama is forwarded to them in an e-mail chain — it’s with donors, too.
Outside of Washington, New York and state capitals, the big conservative givers are as likely to have read Ed Klein’s Obama book and seen Dinesh D’Souza’s documentary “2016,” and generally parrot whatever they just heard on Fox News as the old lady stuffing envelopes at county GOP headquarters.
“One of the reasons the entertainment complex has the influence they do is because the people who are supposed to be responsible figures in the party, those who fund the campaigns, have bought into this apocalyptic world view,” said Douthat.
More than a few Republicans said it was such donors whom Romney was trying to impress when he infamously riffed about the “47 percent,” a variation of the makers-versus-takers world view that has become popular in the conservative cocoon (Rush Limbaugh has called Obama “Santa Claus” since Election Day).
The tension between entertainers and operatives-thinkers may have come into sharpest relief in the prolonged, and for many Republicans, painful 2012 GOP primary. The thinkers and the operatives cringed at the umpteen debates and carnival-like procession of candidates with little chance of landing in the Oval Office.
“Look at Newt Inc., [Herman] Cain and [Michele] Bachmann,” sighed Haynes. “What’s the purpose of entering a presidential primary anymore?”
Suggesting the incentives for getting in the race now owe as much to fame as to winning the job, Haynes added: “If that market didn’t exist, what would our primary look like?”
The sexual harassment scandal around Cain offered a vivid example of the different goals of the two groups. To the entertainment-based right, it was a great opportunity to rally the faithful against a purportedly liberal media targeting a black conservative. It touched almost every erogenous zone for the likes of Rush Limbaugh. But for the operatives and thinkers, the story threatened to tarnish the GOP with a sex scandal and make a martyr out of a marginal figure they were already cringing over before POLITICO reported the harassment charges.
Long after the primary ended, the entertainment-based right was still promoting figures that many in the GOP believe are harmful to the party’s brand. Take Donald Trump, who made regular appearances on “Fox & Friends” all year and delighted in pushing the discredited idea that Obama wasn’t born in America. Why energize black voters and turn off moderates broadly by elevating a buffoonish figure questioning the president’s legitimacy? Because it’s good box office. (To be sure, other nonpartisan outlets, including POLITICO, not to mention Romney himself, did their share of enabling Trump).
“It’s like a weird version of identity politics for people who like trash culture and reality TV,” said Douthat of Trump.
This same financial-political tension also arose two years ago in one of the most high-profile GOP Senate primaries in the country between Grayson and Rand Paul. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, worried that his hand-picked candidate wasn’t getting equal time on Fox to make his case, called Fox President Roger Ailes to ask that Grayson get similar treatment as the oft-interviewed Paul, according to a source familiar with the call. Ailes, who consulted on McConnell’s first Senate race, had tough news for his old friend: Paul was just a better draw.
Some younger conservatives worry that the effects of cocoonism are just as evident after the race as before — and not only in the disbelief that Obama won. The knee-jerk reaction by some on the right to Romney’s poor performance with Hispanics has been to simply say that all will be well with the party if they pass an immigration bill and elevate Cuban-American Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).
But to many next-generation Republicans, this smacks of tokenism and is more than a tad patronizing.
“They just want to put a sombrero on the Republican elephant,” said one Latino GOP operative, who didn’t want to be identified discussing such a sensitive topic.
Similarly, Haynes fretted that “the mistake Republicans are going to make is thinking this is a demographic and political problem and not a social and cultural problem. You can’t fix this with Orca (the Romney campaign’s ill-fated GOTV software) or iPad apps or to some extent even running Hispanic candidates.”
To young Republican strategists and writers, a fundamental shift of how the party communicates is required. That doesn’t mean delegitimizing hugely popular and powerful outlets on the right, but rather transcending them.
“Communicating to the country’s changing demographics and outside of the Fox News echo chamber is a strategic imperative,” said GOP operative Phil Musser, 40.
“The rise of conservative media has been one of the best things to ever happen to the conservative movement. It has helped us reach new voters, has helped with voter persuasion and even motivation,” said GOP strategist Todd Harris, 41. “But with all the positives, there is this fact: If all you did was watch and read the conservative media, you were probably pretty shocked at what happened Tuesday. There’s a huge and ever-growing segment of the vote that Republicans just aren’t talking to and in some cases didn’t even know existed.”
The good news, say the young Republicans, is that there’s hope for them to appeal more widely. They look no further than to 2004, when liberals were in disbelief that America had reelected George W. Bush. “Jesusland” was the name of the famous map of the country showing where Bush had won.
But instead of inveighing against the purported theocracy the country had become, Obama and his aides began to plot how they could appeal to a broad coalition of voters.
Younger Republicans are confident that they, too, will take over the party and reorient it to accommodate a more tolerant country.
“I expect that in the years to come, a class of young and up-and-coming Republican practitioners will exert a greater degree of influence on how the party’s outreach to key groups is handled and ensure that the tone and tenor of our message is reflective of today’s society,” said Jon Downs, 35, a Republican media consultant.
But these Republicans know a degree of self-examination is required.
“In some communities, like with African-Americans, it’s simply unacceptable to be a Republican. This is a cultural phenomenon,” said Haynes. “Who do you go to church with, who do you send your kids to school with? Are enough Republicans socially and culturally engaged with folks who don’t look like themselves?”
Or, as Domenech put it: “Conservatives may be content to stay in a bubble and yell about Benghazi, but it doesn’t help the cause in the long term.”
What’s needed, he said, is to develop new institutions that will engage conservatives on the issues that the broader country is focused on.
He cited the much-buzzed-about piece in The Atlantic earlier this year about whether women can have successful careers and devote ample attention to child-rearing as a conversation conservatives should have gotten in on.
“We need to play the long game on how people engage in culture and society,” Domenech said. “Conservatives and the right generally have a lot to say, but it’s going to require more than a place to discuss the latest campaign or the New Black Panthers.”
Monday, November 12, 2012
Pro-Romney CEO lays off workers with a prayer -- BARF!
What a jerk! If coal magnate Robert E. Murray wanted to lay off his workers he should lay them off, but don't blame President Obama for it, much less hide behind God! Here's his self-serving pink slip "prayer:"
Dear Lord:The American people have made their choice. They have decided that America must change its course, away from the principals of our Founders. And, away from the idea of individual freedom and individual responsibility. Away from capitalism, economic responsibility, and personal acceptance.We are a Country in favor of redistribution, national weakness and reduced standard of living and lower and lower levels of personal freedom.My regret, Lord, is that our young people, including those in my own family, never will know what America was like or might have been. They will pay the price in their reduced standard of living and, most especially, reduced freedom.The takers outvoted the producers. In response to this, I have turned to my Bible and in II Peter, Chapter 1, verses 4-9 it says, “To faith we are to add goodness; to goodness, knowledge; to knowledge, self control; to self control, perseverance; to perseverance, godliness; to godliness, kindness; to brotherly kindness, love.”Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.Amen.
Yet nothing changed on November 9 in the mining industry. And since Murray Energy is privately owned, we have no idea how well it's doing, or will do, we just have to take old Bob's word for it that he's in "survival mode" now.
In fact, Murray just wanted to make a political point against President Obama -- and he used the Lord's name and 156 workers and their families to make it. (Gee, do you think it'll work if they pray to God to get their old jobs back; or will their prayers just cancel each other out?)
And let's not forget the complaint to the Federal Election Commission in October that alleges Murray threatened employees with reprisals, including the loss of their jobs, to coerce them to make contributions to the company's PAC.
Self-made millionaires like Robert E. Murray can be the most insufferable egotists. They figure if they made it big then everybody else should be able to as well. People like Murray discount luck and chalk up all their success to themselves (and maybe "God," in the abstract.) He's probably too dumb to realize his father and himself probably could have avoided their terrible mining accidents if Big Government had been allowed to ensure adequate mine safety.
So anyway, now Murray says he's in "survival mode," trying to generate all the cash he can. I wonder what survival mode means for a rich CEO like Robert Murray? I bet it's not the same, quantitatively or qualitatively, as survival mode for his laid-off workers.
By Kim Geiger
November 10, 2012 | Tribune Washington Bureau
Sunday, November 11, 2012
West: 'We end up with a Republican in blackface'
Here's what brother Cornel West had to say about President Obama:
CORNEL WEST: Well, one, I think that it’s morally obscene and spiritually profane to spend $6 billion on an election, $2 billion on a presidential election, and not have any serious discussion—poverty, trade unions being pushed against the wall dealing with stagnating and declining wages when profits are still up and the 1 percent are doing very well, no talk about drones dropping bombs on innocent people. So we end up with such a narrow, truncated political discourse, as the major problems—ecological catastrophe, climate change, global warming. So it’s very sad. I mean, I’m glad there was not a right-wing takeover, but we end up with a Republican, a Rockefeller Republican in blackface, with Barack Obama, so that our struggle with regard to poverty intensifies.
My Republicans friends will read that and think West is just nuts. There's nobody to the left of Obama, many of them have been led to believe. But as I've been saying, and will continue to say, Obama's real problems is that he's either not liberal enough at heart, or he doesn't have the courage of his liberal convictions. It doesn't really matter which, the result is the same: a Third Way, bankster-trusting, safety-net cutting, austerity-imposing, forget-labor Democrat.
As Michael Moore said, we liberals hope that Republicans are right about Obama's being a crypto-socialist. We hope that now he doesn't have to worry about re-election, he'll grow some spine and fight on issues like the banking reform, mortgage relief, the environment, and protecting labor unions. We hope, but we're not stupid. History doesn't give us much grounds for hope. We realize Obama probably won't "come to Jesus" on his own. He has to be pushed.
By Amy Goodman
November 10, 2012 | Democracy Now!
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Taibbi: GOP's attitude, not policies, is screwing them
Like me, Taibbi has been checking out Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing outlets to see how they're reacting to Obama's re-election. BTW, yesterday there was a good summary at HuffPo of the 11 excuses Republicans are giving for Romney's defeat.
Post-election, finally Republicans are addressing the elephant in the room: that only white men vote GOP. They're "soul-searching" what to do about it. Folks like Limbaugh ask rhetorically if the GOP should just give in and throw tokens at minorities and women to get their votes. Rush even coined a new term: "Hispandering." Yeah, that's gonna help, Rush. Please, for us Democrats, keep it up.
His dismissive attitude echoes that of conservative pundit Edward Klein, who complained on FOX that, "[David] Axelrod and his team had already succeeded in pandering to special interest groups, such as Hispanics, gays, and women." It was such an unconscious, perfect giveaway of the GOP mindset: anybody who is not a straight white guy is a "special interest group" to them! Here's how Taibbi put it:
[T]he fact that so many Republicans this week think that all Hispanics care about is amnesty, all women want is abortions (and lots of them) and all teenagers want is to sit on their couches and smoke tons of weed legally, that tells you everything you need to know about the hopeless, anachronistic cluelessness of the modern Republican Party. A lot of these people, believe it or not, would respond positively, or at least with genuine curiosity, to the traditional conservative message of self-reliance and fiscal responsibility.But modern Republicans will never be able to spread that message effectively, because they have so much of their own collective identity wrapped up in the belief that they're surrounded by free-loading, job-averse parasites who not only want to smoke weed and have recreational abortions all day long, but want hardworking white Christians like them to pay the tab. Their whole belief system, which is really an endless effort at congratulating themselves for how hard they work compared to everyone else (by the way, the average "illegal," as Rush calls them, does more real work in 24 hours than people like Rush and me do in a year), is inherently insulting to everyone outside the tent – and you can't win votes when you're calling people lazy, stoned moochers.
It's hard to say whether it's good or bad that the Rushes of the world are too clueless to realize that it's their attitude, not their policies, that is screwing them most with minority voters. If they were self-aware at all, Mitt Romney would probably be president right now. So I guess we should be grateful that the light doesn't look like it will ever go on. But wow, is their angst tough to listen to.
Not all Democrats are smart, but you don't have to be smart to sense it when somebody despises you and looks down on you. Republicans can't even begin to start persuading people that their policies are right when the best they can do is faking genuine concern and respect for others. Repeat: faking it is the best the GOP can do. On an ordinary day the GOP is downright hostile to them.
By Matt Taibbi
November 8, 2012 | Rolling Stone
Monday, November 5, 2012
Ohio Romney supporters in their own words - YIKES
Like I said before, perhaps the best "tactic" of the Left is simply to give committed right-wingers a microphone and enough rope to hang themselves with.
Wait till you get to the part on when the correspondent asks what is Romney's plan?
And finally, we have an answer to the question that inquiring minds want to know: is Obama a communist, an atheist, or a Muslim? "He's all three."
Even worse, we can't even go outside with somebody watching us.
Meanwhile, those damn Buddhists are taking away our freedom of religion.
Watch the whole thing, seriously. Then ask yourself, if you're a Romney supporter: Can you do any better than these morons in explaining yourself?
By NewLeftMedia
November 1, 2012 | YouTube
Bennett: Why vote for Romney - WHY NOT!
I'll repeat myself a little here but it seems warranted, because Romney's main backer, Bill "The Gambler" Bennett, makes the case for Romney trotting out qual's that are actually disqualifications.
First, he holds up Romney's experience at Bain Capital as the primary reason that Romney could turn around the ailing U.S. economy (that has posted 25 straight months of job growth and 13 straight quarters of GDP growth, incidentally, after losing jobs for 25 straight months from February 2008.) In October, Ronald Reagan's budget director, a private equity guy himself, destroyed Romney's Bain qual's better than anybody. As he described in meticulous detail, deal by deal, Romney's experience at Bain of buying ailing companies, loading them up with debt, laying off workers and/or exporting jobs overseas, and making questionable mergers to achieve questionable "synergies" that never panned out but temporarily pumped up stock prices, all the while collecting huge fees for himself and his buddies before this businesses went bust, is the exact opposite of what America's economy needs right now.
Here's how David Stockman summed up his analysis:
The Bain Capital investments here reviewed accounted for $1.4 billion or 60 percent of the fund’s profits over 15 years, by my calculations. Four of them ended in bankruptcy; one was an inside job and fast flip; one was essentially a massive M&A brokerage fee; and the seventh and largest gain—the Italian Job—amounted to a veritable freak of financial nature.
Only trouble is, there is nobody to whom Romney can pawn off this hot potato we call America in 4 years. We can't take a 57 percent chance that America won't be a going concern post-Romney.
Next, Bill Bennett cites Romney's experience turning around the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. OK, sure, he deserves some credit for that. But so does Big Government, which bailed out Salt Lake City at Romney's request:
"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.
But let's give Romney credit -- back then -- for giving Big Government credit where credit was due:
In his own 2004 book, Turnaround, Romney acknowledged 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."
Next, Bennett cites Romney's success as governor of Massachusetts. Yet he curiously leaves out Romney's signature accomplishment: Romneycare. That he alternately praises and disowns. A health care plan based on plans by the Heritage Foundation and endorsed by Newt Gingrinch no less -- twice. Can you say, "Media bias?"
Next, Bennett cites Romney's moral character. I don't need to dispute whether Romney cares about his friends and family, or humanity in the abstract. He's not a monster. But then again, neither is Obama, who is by all indications an extremely nice person with a lovely family, a guy who -- to his own detriment -- refuses to say bad things about his political opponents.
Finally, Bennett cites Romney's "plans" if he is elected. This gets back to the moral character issue. How can we trust anything Romney says if he has flip-flopped so many times, from his $5 trillion tax cut plan (that he publicly disowned in the first 15 minutes of the first presidential debate when Obama challenged him on it) to Obama's saving the U.S. auto industry? The guy simply cannot be honest about his own record. "Etch A Sketch" will forever be etched into our political discourse thanks to Romney. Some moral character!
So this is the best Romney's most eloquent spokesman could come up with. Too bad.
In conclusion, I leave you with some of my favorite lines from Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim, something I remember when I'm hiring somebody:
However. I think you'll do the job all right, Dixon. It's not that you've got the qualifications, for this or any other work, but there are plenty who have. You haven't got the disqualifications, though, and that's much rarer.
You may find that truth insufficiently inspiring. I don't. Any number of Democrats would make a better POTUS than Obama. But those guys didn't make it this far. Romney and Obama did. Obama ain't perfect, not by a long shot. He's not nearly liberal enough; or, at least, he doesn't have the courage of his liberal convictions. But his lack of disqualifications makes him the clear choice.
(I suppose this quote could be turned on Obama if you think caring about the general welfare and believing "we're all in this together" is a disqualification. Vote your conscience.)
By William J. Bennett
November 5, 2012 | CNN
Sunday, November 4, 2012
Romney's hopes rest in 'contempt for the electorate'
Romney really has been hoping that nobody would care to dig into any of his statements or arguments, like his plan to cut taxes by $5 trillion and increase military spending by $2 trillion and yet (somehow) cut the deficit:
The important thing to remember here is that the GOP argument for a Romney victory rests explicitly on the hope that those who turned out to vote for Obama last time won’t be quite as engaged this time around. Republicans are hoping the electorate is not as diverse as it was in 2008, and they are arguing that the GOP base’s enthusiasm is much higher than that of core Dem constituencies. The Romney camp seems to think it will help whip GOP base voters into a frenzy — and perhaps boost turnout — if Romney casts the way Obama is urging Democratic base voters to get more involved in the process as something sinister and threatening. This is beyond idiotic; it is insulting to people’s intelligence.The Post editorial board, in a widely cited piece, has claimed that the one constant about the Romney campaign has been that it is driven by “contempt for the electorate.” To make this case, the editorial cites Romney’s nonstop flip flops, his evasions about his own proposals, his refusal to share basic information about his finances and bundlers, and his monumental Jeep falsehood and all his other big lies. It’s fitting that Romney’s closing argument rests heavily on one last sustained expression of that contempt for the electorate — one focused squarely on a call for more engagement in the political process, i.e., on something that is fundamental to democracy itself.
Call me a conspiracy nut, but I think many smart Republicans realize Romney's plans are pie-in-the-sky. It's just that they hate Obama so deeply, so viscerally, that they will vote for anyone running against him. And those Republicans are mostly white people, mostly white men, mostly white older men. It's really as simple as that. This isn't a campaign about ideas for them.
By Greg Sargent
November 4, 2012 | Washington Post
Today's racial parallels to Reconstruction era
This is worth reading, especially if you are a white Republican. The 1865 parallel to Obamacare is especially interesting. It's absurd and sad at the same time that freed blacks were accused of relying on handouts only a year after their emancipation: the 19th century version of Reagan's "welfare queen" myth.
The more things change....
By John Blake
November 1, 2012 | CNN
Friday, November 2, 2012
Tea Party to cost GOP the Senate (again)
Here's how public affairs blogger Mark Kogan sums up the Tea Party's weighing down the GOP in its race to control the Senate:
If the numbers continue trending the way they are, the Tea Party will be responsible for single-handedly delivering five Senate seats to the Democrats in two election cycles. Beyond that 10 vote swing, 2012’s Tea Party Senate candidates have also all but ensured that the Democrats will retain their 51 seat majority in the Senate. Even in the unlikely case that all six “toss-up” races go in favor of Republicans on Tuesday, the Democrats would still hold a majority thanks to Tea Party supported candidates. In short, Republican dreams of retaking the Senate in 2012 have again been demolished by a kooky cadre of Tea Party nominees that seem to specialize in little more than torpedoing their own campaigns and their party’s hopes for congressional control.
Indeed, let's recall these famous Tea Party casualties in 2010 Senate races: Christine O'Donnell in Delaware; Joe Miller in Alaska; Sharron Angle in Nevada; and Ken Buck in Colorado.
And several Tea Party freshman are in trouble this November: Reps. Allen West (R-Fla.), Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), Chip Cravaack (R-Minn.) and Frank Guinta (R-N.H.) are all likely losers. Personally, I'll be glad that Allen West will have more time at home to spend with his beloved wife in exactly the way he wants.
Regardless of the outcome in the presidential race, I'll be eager to see the (negative) results next week for the GOP thanks to the Tea Party.
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