Itinerant Air-Cooled

Think this will help Romney? The country? Obama?
Colin
(will check in later. Must do appointment here in Utah then what the heck, get to Minnesota in 48 hours)

The Koch brothers are buying themselves a country.


neal

I was only mildly interested in this race until about a month ago, when Romney really started tripping up. The whole tax records thing is fascinating, specifically the way so many Americans don't seem to care. Now, between Paul Ryan and Romney, even George W. Bush looks to have been a squeaky clean candidate by comparison.

Romney will fail at distancing himself from Paul Ryan's budget plan, which will hurt Romney with voters who can tolerate discussions about budgets and numbers. But how many Americans are there like that?

David Stockman, remember him? A trickle-down conservative under Reagan. This piece should be read carefully because it's a thoughtful contribution to the upcoming discussion. The stakes are very high.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opini ... d=fb-share

I would be interested in reading the thoughtful, reasonable, informed, devoid-of-ad-hom rebuttal to Stockman's assessment, but somehow I doubt there is one.

Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits.

yeah, the mis-alocations of decades of free money has finally come knocking at the door. I dont think there is a politician alive who wants to open that door...

No one cares about policy. It's a personality race. Judging by the NPR story on All Things Considered yesterday, Ryan's presence will help fill in the "average guy" gaps in the Romney humanoid programming.

Speaking of tax records, why did Romney release the financial statements? There isn't a number on any of them (well, I actually only looked at three, but I assume that they're all the same form) so it just makes him look even shadier.

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/14/paul_ry ... singleton/

When Paul Ryan took to the stage in Mooresville, North Carolina, as Mitt Romney’s running mate, he attacked President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” remark about the role of government in supporting private innovation. But while Republicans have been clamoring to make this election a false dichotomy between the private sector and the public sector, Paul Ryan — heir to a private fortune made by building public highways — is a gaping pothole in that plan. Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.

Oh oh oh oh oh Velokid1. You mean government welfare for corporations. I get it.

Ooo, let me try out this word. Ballyhooed. Much ballyhoo over the Ryan anointment as VP. Sheesh, a Koch stronghold with Scottie Walker last year's flavor, chump, the Koch money is on Ryan, the new chump. Wave that flag Ryan.

And suddenly Romney has a platform, Ryan's.



neal

dingo wrote:

Similarly, there can be no hope of a return to vibrant capitalism unless there is a sweeping housecleaning at the Federal Reserve and a thorough renunciation of its interest-rate fixing, bond buying and recurring bailouts of Wall Street speculators. The Greenspan-Bernanke campaigns to repress interest rates have crushed savers, mocked thrift and fueled enormous overconsumption and trade deficits.

yeah, the mis-alocations of decades of free money has finally come knocking at the door. I dont think there is a politician alive who wants to open that door...

Thanks for the article, Velo. Stockman is singing my tune. The difference between Obama/Romney is stylistic and nuanced as long as they are both for war and the FED. Gary Johnson 2012.

See, that's where I disagree. And it's sort of the point I was trying to make about there being no rebuttal to Stockman that is measured, reasonable, practical, devoid of ad-hom and hyperbole. If we want to make headway, conversations need to sound the way Stockman's words do. [edit: meaning that Stockman discusses the issue without insulting anyone, and he supports taking a good hard look at the harm we know the Fed is doing, but he doesn't resort to emotional appeals and the sort of emotion-farming that you'd hear at a Tea Party rally. Measured, reasonable, informed instead.]

Which is to say, I disagree that Obama and Romney are the same as long as they both refuse to dismantle the Fed, or overhaul it somehow, and won't stop waging wars. Those two things are hugely important IMO, but there are other things going on in our world, our country and our lives that are also important. In fact, some would argue that a woman's right to her own body, for instance, is even MORE important than the Fed/the US economy. It's just a matter of perspective.

And now if I may diverge from making that point and entertain my ADHD side...

One truth that Romney's campaign SHOULD be really driving home for people is that we must be practical and solution-oriented. Romney is all about ideology and these sort of overblown, zealous principles supposedly grounded in the concepts of liberty and freedom and morality and personal responsibility. Which, again depending on perspective, may be noble principles to have, but we won't get where we need to be based solely on yelling about principle and ideology that isn't backed by practical, workable solutions.

Romney's "plan" isn't really a plan at all. Yesterday Paul Ryan even said that he'll talk about actual policies once Romney is elected, not now. Their "plan" ignores numbers and reality... their numbers have been shot down over and over by just about every person or group that has reviewed them. The Ryan budget is no better than a senior in high school would come up with.

Obama/democrats always want to solve the problem from the opposite direction of trickle-downers, but jeez, at least they appear to be actually doing mathematics. This anti-government, pro-corporate tax breaks pie-in-the-sky stuff is so emotionally-based and hollow inside, IMO. It reminds me of a teenage boy yelling at his parents, "cuz you're not the boss of me anymore and I can do what I want!"

The Romney/ Ryan plan is simple
Break up USA into its productive parts and sell the off the rest.
Of course they can't talk about that.

Reid wrote:No one cares about policy. It's a personality race.

Of course. "Romney just looks more presidential"

somebody, somewhere.

Maybe I've spent too much time in Alabama, but it still seems to me that the race issue is the driving factor for the partisan behavior, and poor candidate choice by the Republican party. I think that people will overlook the fact that these guys (Ryan/Romney) have nothing to offer almost all, except the wealthiest of Americans, just to get the black guy out of the White House. The wealthiest Americans know that they will benefit, and the zealots see something in Ryan to relate to. I really think that if people would just be honest and admit that they're uncomfortable with someone that looks a little different, we could drop the whole fake outrage Socialist/Muslim/whatever tag from Obama. Then, maybe people would put both sides under the microscope to really determine whose interests would benefit. We have some real work to do in this country, but it will never get accomplished if people avoid the elephant in the room and run to the extreme opposites.
I don't mean to take the conversation back fifty years, or two years, or down fifteen intellectual levels. There is part of me that hopes that I am just influenced by my immediate surroundings.

You've lost me Reid. Leaps of logic out of the gate that near as I can tell is a call to boil it down to an unemotionally tainted hard look at policy and impacts of policy on the people, because what is a nation but it's people.


neal

glasseye wrote:

Reid wrote:No one cares about policy. It's a personality race.

Of course. "Romney just looks more presidential"

somebody, somewhere.

He just gives me the willies. Stepford candidate. Obama strikes me as much less befuddled by the real world.


neal