Politics aside, Romney comes across as such an inauthentic douche to me that I never could vote for him. Every word out of his mouth sounds like a self-serving lie.
I can't imagine rewarding the Repubs after their debt ceiling stunt last year. Holding the nation hostage until their rabidly ideological demands are met deserves electoral disdain, not reward. I'm sure the American electorate agrees after our liberal media so thoroughly excoriated the party for its amoral behavior.
American electorate: "What debt limit stunt?"
That's a good point. Some polls had suggested that people were not responding well to Obama's attack ads, that it didn't fit his whole "hope and change" upbeat persona that got him into office, so I notice he has started some ads in which he simply lays out, here's your choice - this is the opponent's plan, this is mine, what my opponent wants to do got us in this mess to begin with, but you have to decide. All in a very calm, "professional" voice. Don't know if those will resonate better, I guess his internal polls will tell him. But he's also airing a very defensive ad on his comments about you didn't build your business. Once you're on the defensive, you're losing.Originally Posted by John Reynolds
But I do think that somehow pointing out, People, we had our debt rating reduced for the first time in history due to the irresponsible antics of the GOP, who basically held all of you, the American people, hostage by saying do what we want or we will force the nation to default on its debt. Are these the people on which you want to pin your hopes for a better America? - I'd find a way to get that into the fray.
Romney's campaign folks make friends everywhere they go.
CNN: "Governor Romney just a few questions sir, you haven't taken but three questions on this trip from the press!
Gorka: "Show some respect"
NYT: "We haven't had another chance to ask a question..."
Gorka: "Kiss my ass. This is a Holy site for the Polish people. Show some respect."
Moments later, Gorka told Jonathan Martin, a reporter for Politico, to "shove it." About a half-hour later, the aide called reporters to apologize.
Why?
Honestly, why? He has no foreign policy chops whatsoever. His economic plan is bullshit. He clearly will say anything at all that's politically expedient at the moment and has no core values. He's also clearly an asshole (really Romney is the worst sort of bully, the guy who has no idea he's a bully and just cluelessly treats people like shit for funsies because he's been so privileged all his life he's never had to be empathetic or reflective).
Aside from being decently handsome and not actively batshit insane in the Bachmann/Santorum vein, why in the world would anyone besides rich folks looking forward to more tax breaks want to vote for him?
Note, I'm not saying you should vote for Obama, I'm just baffled as to what positive/affirmative qualities any voter could possibly see Romney to vote for him rather than just staying home. He's a shining example of what a shambles the Republican party has become intellectually and philosphically.
Romney doesn't strike me as any more self serving as any other politician. I can't remember the last time I heard any politician talk, from Obama to the local dogcatcher, who didn't strike me that way.
At least the politicians on the far right and far left seem to have some sort of ideology that they stick to, even if they are nuts.
Try to convince a public living from pay check to pay check, assuming they still had a job, that going farther into debt is somehow a "good thing".
He'll probably make rich people more rich. If I were rich, that'd probably be enough for me.
Couldn't we instead educate them on the fact that raising the debt ceiling is just allowing us to pay debts that have already been incurred?
People tried that. The message got drowned in the shrill screams of "OBAMA WANTS TO RAISE THE NATIONAL DEBT AND TANK THE ECONOMY MORE!"
C'mon - you know the answer to this! ;) Two other blocs support Romney:
1) One-issue voters (folks who fear gays or women having reproductive choices)
2) Low information voters (people who learned from Fox news that Obama is a socialist, secret muslim terrorist who hates America and, especially, white people)
Those are the vast majority of his supporters. Theocrats, bigots and cretins.
Couldn't we instead educate them on the fact that raising the debt ceiling is just allowing us to pay debts that have already been incurred?
Like paying off the credit card balance on one card by using another credit card? You forget the ability of the average voter to understand anything.
Your credit card analogy is probably what the average voter would come up with, but of course it's flawed. The average person using a credit card doesn't have the power to tax a whole bunch of others, nor does that person have the power to create units of currency pretty much at will (which our federal government can, because it's the monopoly provider of it).
"But what of our poor children who are left to pay off that huge debt"....
I think most thinking people understand that America's debt will never be fully paid off. Never.
Nor does it have to be paid off. Nor would it make sense to pay it off. It is the most made up imaginary non-issue ever.
Where does the cult of the debt come from though? I remember people trying to make a big deal of it through the nineties with stuff like the Debt Clock. Somebody must have decided to make it an issue at some point, so was it just misunderstanding or political opportunism when it started?
If the electorate as a whole was educable, we wouldn't really be in this mess in the first place would we?
Opportunism to exploit people's ignorance and sell them entitlement cuts.
Or as an argument to shrink the defense budget.
Bingo, sir (nice handle BTW). The plan is to create a moral panic by likening the situation of the US federal government to the situation of literally every other person and institution private and public with a lot of accumulating debt in USD, despite the fact that their situations are in no way alike. Then when you've got everyone good and freaked out, you get them to agree to reductions in entitlement payments so that they'll be so desperate that they'll be even more dependent on and diffident to rich people and corporations than they are already. Somehow those parties don't think the world is quite their oyster enough yet: it can always be more so.
Problem is, the defense budget always has very well-heeled defenders who will bribe ^H^H^H I mean contribute all necessary funds to make sure that non-trivial defense cuts never happen. Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries not so much.
HAHA, yeah right.
It's really hard to tell who has led a more privileged/charmed life between Romney or Obama. Not that it really matters anyway. Bush was worse than both of them. And Clinton was far better than both of them in that department.
Frankly, if I didn't spend so much time talking to liberals, I wouldn't have any idea as to how any sane person could support Obama. But through hanging out on various forums, I'm able to get a better understanding of his appeal - even if I disagree.
I find his foreign "policy", such as it is, is a mess. His primary economic plan seems to revolve around raising taxes on rich people. He has no plan to reduce the deficit (And no, ending the Bush tax cuts on rich people won't do anything, we have a spending problem).
I won't even touch on Obamacare which would in itself be enough to get me to vote for someone willing to get rid of it. I'm not going to jump into the details on this yet again, it's all been said countless times and those for it and those against it just aren't going to see things the same way.
I don't have a particular positive feeling about Romney. It's more of an utter disdain for Obama's policies.
Obama and his kind (like Elizabeth Warren) have made it clear what they think of entrepreneurs and business people (And as I made clear earlier, yes, people understand that the "that" in "you didn't build that" was referring to roads. But the overall quote in context is still illuminating and offensive beyond belief to people who have built their own businesses and demonstrates that people like Obama have no idea what is involved).
Obama is the kind of guy who is anxious to increase taxes on "the rich" and then attributes the resulting layoffs to "Greed" while his supporters do their best google-fu to "prove" that raising taxes doesn't cost jobs when anyone running an LLC or S-corp of any real size can tell you that yea, it's toxic to raise taxes when times are tough -- like they are now. If we're having a boom (like we were in the mid 90s) then fine.
I don't expect to change any minds here. I am aware that Qt3 is pretty far left in general. I hang out here and debate this stuff because you're my friends and I like you guys and appreciate intelligent conversation with people who don't share my views.
But please understand, because it's often clear on this forum that some of you aren't talking to a lot of so-called "right-wingers". Those on the other side are just as informed, educated and intelligent as their ideological opponents. They disagree on these issues not because they're uninformed or stupid (just as the people here aren't uniformed or stupid) but because they have different ideas on what is best for society as a whole.
The debt, actually, is a problem because it ends up pushing Libor artificially low because the Fed ends up lowering its rate as much as possible in order to keep the interest on the debt payments from drowning the budget.
Indefinitely low interest rates is not a good thing for society. It discourages savings and creates a culture of mindless consumerism which, I think, most of you agree is where we've arrived.
Interest rates should ebb and flow naturally with the government's influence being as little as possible.
So specifically, debt as a % of GDP matters. A lot. The debt can't/shouldn't ever be totally paid off. Even "Rich people" should always have some debt (your credit rating actually will drop if you go totally debt free).
I'm not qualified to say what the perfect % of GDP debt is. But I think we're well into the area where the fed feels pressure to keep the interest rates as low as possible in order to decrease the interest on the debt portion of the budget.
What policies make you think this?
Going into everything I don't like about Obama would be the ultimate thread derailer and really, not something I want to get into. I do blog on http://draginol.joeuser.com on occasion so you can read there some of my thoughts from time to time.
Your own post implies that liberals - at the very least - are uninformed about how hard it is to run a business (or other economic principles), and at worst you're calling them uneducated and stupid. It's impossible to discuss politics without implying that the other side is dumb (because they obviously can't see how the policies they support are the incorrect way to handle situation x), so trying to do so is a complete waste of time.
Credit ratings/scores are a problem in themselves- they're used way too widely, for things that have minimal correlation to what they're being used for. As for mindless consumerism- I think an increased emphasis on consumer rights (and Obama has done wonders here with the CFPB)- will help. Free markets require an equilibrium of power between all parties, including the parties impacted by externalities (which is a primary role of the government in commerce)
A large part of the reason you're seeing the Obama/Warren rhetoric is a combination of unions getting nerfed to hell this generation, and an increase in power of large multinationals. Government is pretty much the only counter to this.
It's not business that liberals oppose, or capitalism, it's market power inequality.
Part of the reason the fed is putting downward pressure on the interest rate (the main reason) is to stimulate growth. Typically, Americans worry more about growth, Europeans inflation (this is a legacy from the 1930s, the fall of Weimar was blamed on inflation)
Last edited by Alstein; 07-31-2012 at 03:35 PM.
I agree credit ratings are too widely used. The same complaints (well similar anyway) people have about say Metacritic can be applied to any type of rating system. But it is what it is. People, particularly Americans it seems, like everything quantified.
So increase the size of the GDP by abandoning austerity entirely by either reducing taxes (mostly on the people who will spend it, because otherwise it mostly goes directly into the savings pool and puts downward pressure on interest rates, which, Brad, you acknowledge is not a good thing) or increasing federal spending significantly until we're back at full employment (traditionally considered 4% or so). If you go that route, to start, many states are hurting badly: they should get cash infusions from the federal government to rehire all the cops, teachers and health care workers that have been laid off, not to mention work on non-federal public infrastructure, which is falling apart in many places (particularly in the East).
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote