Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>I firmly believe the percentage of voters who fall into that particular group is shrinking.<< I do, too. If they were as powerful as they are noisy, Glenn Beck would still be on the air, and VP Sarah Palin would be in office. Or at least Michele Bachmann would still be a viable candidate. I think there's a quiet but sizable number of Republicans flat embarrassed by these circus performers, wondering when the real candidates will arrive.
Originally Posted By SingleParkPassholder Speaking as a still-registered member of the GOP who voted for Obama because Palin was on the GOP ticket, I haven't been all that enamored by Obama's performance in office (although he does a mean Al Green apparently), but there's no way on God's green earth I'm voting for any currently running GOP candidate. The GOP did not learn any lessons from the Palin debacle.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan I did get a chuckle out of Palin saying that "We did have a candidate who wasn't fully vetted in 2008 and look how THAT turned out!" It unfortunately wasn't a moment of candor. Just an iceberg-sized heap of irony.
Originally Posted By fkurucz <<So, what did he do wrong?>> He was a corporate raider. He has a lot of nerve talking about creating jobs. He made his fortune by DESTROYING jobs.
Originally Posted By Princessjenn5795 I have no problem with anyone making millions of dollars, but I do have a problem with someone making millions of dollars and only paying 15% taxes on them, as my husband's and my tax rate is higher than that and we make no where near that much money. And I am sorry, but how big of an idiot is Mitt Romney for not realizing that bragging about paying 15% on his millions when most people pay more would make him look like a moron and piss people off?
Originally Posted By ecdc Bill Maher made an interesting point on his show. He showed pictures of wealthy, famous Americans and how they got their money. Henry Ford with the Model-T, Walt Disney with animation cels, Steve Jobs with the Apple computer, etc. Then he showed the picture of Mitt Romney holding money. Mitt hasn't created anything. He hasn't invented anything. I don't think anyone has a problem with rich people being rich, if A) They earned it, and B) They pay their fair share. Mitt is one of those people middle-class Americans look at and are resentful of because he's one of the "elites" who already has a ton of money and he just gets more by making that money magically multiply into more money. I certainly don't have that option. He doesn't contribute anything, he doesn't create jobs, he doesn't open another store or another factory or make another movie or product. He shuffles his money around and it grows. I don't blame anyone for being suspicious of that, even if it's all technically legal.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 This morning Chris Christie said that Romney would release two years of this tax returns. The most recent two years (when all he's been doing, essentially, is running for the white house). This is a complete head-scratcher to me in its sheer political tone-deafness. Does he not realize that by releasing two years, it only instantly raises the question of why he's NOT releasing more than that? Pols typically release 6-10 years worth; Romney's own father set the standard by releasing 12 years in 1968. The years prior to the most recent are done. They're finished. They've been submitted to the government. They're ready. He shouldn't need "time" to do anything to them. He just needs to release them. By not doing so, he puts out a big, embossed, calligraphy-laden, perfume-scented invitation to ask what he's hiding by not releasing the others. And not just by Obama; his GOP rivals will almost certainly seize on it as well. Why NOT release them all? That's the obvious questinon. There's no more work to do on them (and if there is - if there's some suspicion that he needs time to alter them somehow - that's a whole OTHER can of worms). It only creates a big neon sign saying "there's something in there I don't want you to see."
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Agreed, Dabob. The tax records that he should be releasing are the ones from his time at Bain, during the late eighties and nineties. Here's why: <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/06/us-campaign-romney-bailout-idUSTRE8050LL20120106" target="_blank">http://www.reuters.com/article...20120106</a> <> SPECIAL REPORT: ROMNEY'S STEEL SKELETON IN THE BAIN CLOSET It was funny at first. The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava. "They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe." Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888. It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, needed expensive updating, and demand for its products was susceptible to cycles in the mining industry and commodities markets. Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month. What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees. PROFITABLE FAILURES In his campaign for president, Romney has championed free markets and vowed to shrink the role of government. The Republican has argued that his business acumen makes him the best candidate to fix the nation's economy and bring down the stubbornly high unemployment rate. Romney's opponents point to his business career as evidence that he is willing to cut jobs and benefits. The story of Bain's failed investment in the Kansas City mill offers a perspective on a largely overlooked chapter in Romney's business record: His firm's brush with a U.S. bailout. His supporters say the pension gap at the Kansas City mill was an unforeseen consequence of a falling stock market and adverse market conditions. But records show that the mill's Bain-backed management was confronted several times about the fund's shortfall, which, in the end, required an infusion of funds from the federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp. Romney's career at Bain included both successes and failures. That is not unusual in the private equity business, where investors buy troubled companies and try to turn them around, often through aggressive use of debt. "Bain Capital invested in many businesses," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a written statement. "While not every business was successful, the firm had an excellent overall track record and created jobs with well-known companies like Staples, Dominos Pizza and Sports Authority." Bain showed a remarkable knack for turning a profit. A prospectus from the year 2000 obtained by the Los Angeles Times shows that the buyout firm delivered an average annual return on investment of 88 percent between its founding in 1984 and the end of 1999. Romney headed the firm for that entire period, except for a hiatus in 1990 to 1992, when he returned to Bain Capital's sister consulting firm, Bain & Co. In 1999 he left the business to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The steel company declared bankruptcy in 2001. Romney continued receiving dividends from Bain after his departure. He accumulated a personal fortune of between $190 million and $250 million, according to campaign disclosure forms. Steven Kaplan, a University of Chicago professor of entrepreneurship and finance, describes Bain's track record under Romney as "fantastic," even if some ventures ended in failure. "You don't do this by just squeezing out costs. Those kinds of returns only come from growth," he said. "Yes, they had some bad investments, I guess in the same way presidents make some bad calls." CASHING IN Overall, Bain made at least $12 million on the steel company it created by merging the Kansas City mill with another in South Carolina before the new entity declared bankruptcy in 2001. Bain also collected an additional $900,000 a year through 1999 for management consulting services, public filings show. Some analysts say Bain should not be blamed for the company's failure, noting that a wave of cheap imports forced nearly half of the U.S. steel industry into bankruptcy during that period. Another company set up around the same time, in which Bain took a minority stake, Steel Dynamics in Fort Wayne, Indiana, thrived. "GS and Steel Dynamics were about as different as it gets," industry analyst Michelle Applebaum said. GS's core products were vulnerable to competition while Steel Dynamics became "one of the country's lowest-cost manufacturers of steel sheet," a product with more staying power. Steel Dynamics was also a non-union shop. Former company executives say they were generally satisfied with Bain's leadership, but they say the firm would have been better equipped to weather tough times had it not been saddled with such a heavy debt load. They also fault Bain for putting inexperienced managers in place and spurning a buyout offer from a competitor. Workers say efforts to cut corners often backfired, driving costs higher. The Kansas City millworkers, meanwhile, are still fuming, after being left with no health benefits and a reduced pension check. "Romney cost me lots and lots of sleepless nights and lots and lots of money," said Ed Stanger, who worked at the plant for nearly 30 years. <> More of the story at the link. Looking at this story on its face, Romney sounds like some kind of business genius. But when you stop to read between the lines, you'll see glaring evidence that he didn't actually know how to run a business at all. The merging of the steel mills might have been a good idea at the time, but there was no follow-through. Experienced managers were not put in place, because Bain had zero interest in the mill's longevity. So when hard times fell on the industry overall, the Bain managers couldn't keep the company going, not with the heavy debt that Bain stuck them with as a result of the merger. Bain simply wanted to make as much cash as possible in the short term. Romney and his team reduced the workers' benefits and stripmined their pension fund, while simultaneously cutting production costs so drastically that the realized savings were lost to other costs that rose as a result. The steel mill was in no position to turnaround and survive, once the cheap foreign steel became competitive. Bain actually worsened their financial standing by taking out the assets for themselves and leaving the steel mill strapped with huge debt. And Romney and his team at Bain did this to other companies, over and over and over again. For those of you playing at home, this is precisely what the teabagging Republican governors have been doing to state governments: reducing revenue through huge tax breaks and subsidies to big corporations while stripmining social programs and public employee pensions in order to balance the budget. W and his GOP flying monkeys in Congress did the same thing at the Federal level, by starting two wars and passing Medicare Part D, keeping them off the budget, while simultaneously reducing revenue through huge tax breaks to corporations and the top 1%. Clinton handed him a surplus, but then W handed Obama a huge deficit. Who in their right mind would want Romney to bring this exact same mindset of 'privatizing profits and socializing losses' back to Washington? What he did at Bain Capital is precisely what W and his fellow Republicans did during Bush's first six years in office. Seriously... why would anyone want another President like W again? Haven't we finally learned our lessons? Or is the scary black man in the White House blinding the supporters of Romney and the other GOP candidates with too much hate?
Originally Posted By utahjosh I think it would be great to have a President with experience of turning failed businesses into successes. And great at successfully managing huge financial matters.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox But Romney has done neither, Josh. Too many of the businesses that Bain acquired and stripped of their assets ended up failing down the road, mostly because Bain left them saddled with too much debt. And of the companies that did ultimately turn around, Romney had little to do with their success. That was achieved long after he was gone. You're buying into the political spin of what a great financial wizard Romney is, Josh. Most of what you're reading or hearing is revised history, deliberately tailored to make Romney appear better as a finance guy than he actually is. If you really want a good idea of how Romney would be as President, take a look at his track record as Massachusetts Governor. His state was 47th out of 50 for job creation during his administration. Romney had only a 35% approval rating when he left office. That's lower than what Obama currently has as POTUS. If Mitt was doing such a fabulous job as Governor, why didn't more citizens approve? Truth is, Josh, you want Mitt to be better than he actually is. In order to feel comfortable with voting for Romney, you need him to be better than he actually is. You only care because you want someone as the GOP nominee who has a chance to defeat Obama. That's it. You don't care if the replacement for Obama turns out to be far worse for the country and a total incompetent who only cares about his very rich corporate buddies. You just want the scary black guy out of the White House. Don't you, Josh? It's not really about Romney being better than Obama. It's about Romney beating Obama. And that's a really dumb reason to vote for him.
Originally Posted By utahjosh "You just want the scary black guy out of the White House. Don't you, Josh?" Nope, and it's racist and offensive of you to accuse me of thinking that way.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox It's only offensive, Josh, if you could give truthful and honest and factual information about why Obama is such a terrible and awful President. But the truth is, none of you Republicans can do that. You keep believing lies being fed to you by right wing media such as Fox News, or the stuff you're spoonfed at temple by your LDS leaders. The progressives here on WE have asked you Republicans to give us examples, solid factual examples of what Obama has done that's so wretched, that you're willing to vote him out of office and replace him with someone of questionable ethics and morals. Which, of course, you conveniently ignore in your Republican candidates because you hate Obama so much. If Romney were a Democrat, you'd be ripping this man to shreds. You wouldn't be overlooking his sleazy ethics or his flip-flopping on every single major issue of importance to the voters. You'd be just like those Republican delegates at the 2004 Convention, holding up their 'flip flop' sandals and cheering excitedly over Kerry's so-called flip-flop on war, even though the man genuinely had a change of heart over this one single issue. Romney has changed his mind time and time again on more than a dozen different issues as it has suited his political needs at that time. And he continues to deny changing his mind, even though the proof is forever captured on video. Obama isn't to your liking, even though he's one of the most Republican-like moderate Dems we've ever elected. Yet, you like Romney for reasons that don't hold up to scrutiny. It's not so far off base to suggest that your strong dislike of Obama goes beyond politics. And I firmly believe that this is true for anyone who supports any one of the Republican candidates this year. They are all unethical and immoral scumbags who only care about themselves. They are the worst field of candidates we have ever seen. The Republican Party is now officially morally bankrupt. And the only people I see supporting them are a bunch of greedy rich white people and/or ignorant and bigoted white people. All of the reasonable moderates and voters of color have left the building. So which one are you, Josh? Greedy Rich? Or ignorant and bigoted? Your call.
Originally Posted By utahjosh And again I'm offended that you'd boil it down to that simplistic approach using only your biased opinion. I shouldn't even dignify that question with a response.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 <I firmly believe the percentage of voters who fall into that particular group is shrinking. Most moderates have left the GOP, precisely because they no longer 'believe anything.' They've wised up and realized that their party has been hijacked by greedy corporate-owned politicians who no longer speak for them. They probably won't vote for Obama, but they won't vote for any of these clowns, either. They'll just stay home or leave the Presidential candidate column blank.< sadly, I can speak from personal experience- you are correct. However let me add this, many of us are now closer to being independents than anything else. For people like me and most everyone I know, it's not that we don't like Obama ( he's a personable and intelligent guy), or any prejudice or stupid sentiment like that, it's just that we think he is ineffective- and always has been, he's NOT a politician. While that is a good thing in many ways, it is also going to keep him from accomplishing a lot in DC. Most of us would ( and do) vote democratic when the candidate is better and local- and isn't too far left on their national platform. No different than we won't vote for tea party people and those far right either. There is a large middle ground that could be settled into- but it's not happening for 2012 and likely won't happen any time soon. Third party candidates have so little chance the way the game is set up I an not sure that is a viable way to go either. It's quite the mess and yes people like myself feel like we have no party at this point, and that's very sad.
Originally Posted By wahooskipper Well said vbdad. I actually like Obama and admire his relationship with his wife and family. And, to be frank, it is nice to have a man in office that I'm not embarassed about as an American. (See Bush, Clinton.) But, I do think the President clearly sold out and became the Washington insider he claimed he would not. That is probably due, in large part, to the people around him who don't know any other way but I wish he were strong enough to avoid sinking to the lowest common denominator. And, I agree with others who say the Republicans have made it nearly impossible to get anything done. Of course, the Democrats will do likewise when given the chance because that is the nature of politics today. I'm just tired of the entire system. The idea of voting this year is nearly repugnant to me and it is a shame to have to feel this way.
Originally Posted By skinnerbox <<And again I'm offended that you'd boil it down to that simplistic approach using only your biased opinion. I shouldn't even dignify that question with a response.>> It actually is that simple. Really. The vast overwhelming majority of registered Republicans who haven't left the party and who are supporting this clown car of candidates are either greedy rich or ignorant and bigoted. The moderates are pretty much gone. Only the far right supporters are left. Look at this field! Over 90% of the SC voters who picked Romney were earning $200K or more annually. $200,000 or more in annual income! That's the 1%! And look at the rhetoric coming out of Newt and Santorum. Racist and misogynistic. So no surprise who's voting for those guys. It ain't rocket science. Anyone with any sense of ethics would never support these jerks. Sorry, Josh, but it's true. If any of these clowns were Democrats running on the other side, it would be a 24/7 bash fest from Fox News, Rush, Beck, and all the other conservative media heads. Non-stop criticism of their lack of ethics and morals. And you know it, Josh. The only reason -- the ONLY reason -- these candidates get a pass on this crap is because they're conservative, and the majority of media in this country is owned and operated by conservative business leaders. Period. End of story. And anyone who supports and defends a candidate who has Swiss bank accounts while running for Congress or the Presidency should seriously consider their *own* morals and ethics. Including you, Josh. Including you.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 ""You just want the scary black guy out of the White House. Don't you, Josh?" really sick of this card being played over and over-- talk about some GOP followers being brainwashed..using this comment shows brainwashing the opposit way. Except for a few morons left in the country this has nothing to do with it for voters - and repeating it opver and over only turns people who are trying to find the best candidate off of being part of the same 'follower' mentality we see in the stupid tea party. commnents like this hurt Obama's chances with people thinking things through, far more than helping the cause. I am glad Obama himself doesn't use any of this nonsense - nor do his 'peeps'- and there is a reason for that. muchlike SPP- I am leaning towards Obama ( even with the leadership issues I have with him) because I see nothing better in line on the GOP side right now....and I am hopeful maybe more will get done the next four years. But I also don't want to be associated with people who play the race card at every turn as well-- for the vast majority of voters, especially the independent vote Obama needs- that is simply wrong and embarassing just my 2 cents
Originally Posted By vbdad55 If you want to focus on a prejudice, I'd like to know why it seems more of this country was ready for a black person to be elected than they were for a woman. That to me is a real head scratcher.. ( and I mean any woman, not just someone like Palin -- Hillary would be the best example. And any woman who gets into the race early in either party gets crucified..why is that ? as the parent of two daughters, that one worries me more
