Mitt Romney tried to reassure Michigan voters he doesn't intend to cut spending by saying cutting spending is recessionary.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/21/10469786-romney-spending-cuts-slow-economic-growth?lite
Was this an endorsement of Keynesian economic theory? Of course not. It's just another attempt to deceive. In fact, Romney's fiscal goals call for cutting the entire government by close to 60%, other than the military and social security, including things such as Medicare, despite his claims that he wouldn't touch it for ten years.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3658
Romney has called for $8 trillion in spending cuts to go with his $2 trillion military expansion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-l-borosage/romney-peddling-the-indef_b_1310251.html
Despite his lies, we know a number of things about Romney's core beliefs. One is that he is a rigid ideologue. In Massachusetts, he vetoed adding any more liquor licenses. As a businessman and SLOC chair he engaged in "symbolic" cost cutting, fining people monetarily if they were late for staff meetings, and choosing what hotels they were allowed to stay at. He didn't save much money by all this, but it demonstrated his power and his ideology. His ideology is simple. He is better than you and so you must sacrifice and give more to him.
To pretend that he harbors some Keynesian ideas similar to Obama's is to misread him entirely. He managed to get through decades with Bain Capital without learning the difference between capitalism and white collar fraud. He is not a man who deserves a chance to run our economy.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Romney says he has clinched nomination
Romney today is claiming final victory in the Republican primary.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/29/politics/romney-delegates/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Other sources put him still 100-200 delegates off. Once again he received less than 70% of the popular vote, unopposed, in Texas. Granted there were more Republican votes than Democratic votes in the Texas primary, but Texas has long been the most politically uninvolved state in the nation. It's part of how the rich maintain control. In 2004, for example, only 33% of Texans voted for president, when a Texan was running, compared to 50% of Michiganders. Another possible cause may be inflated census numbers for Texas, since Florida with 7 million fewer residents always has a higher total vote than Texas, but that's an issue for another blog.
Romney's total votes for all primaries to date are hovering just under 8 million. There are just five states left with primaries. In 2008, John McCain reached 9,840,746 votes compared to Romney's 4.5 million. Will Romney be able to beat the McCain number? He may, but it will be close. California and New Jersey had about 2.6 million Republican votes in 2008, and if Romney wins two-thirds of them plus a big show in Utah, the final state, he might beat the McCain totals.
Meanwhile, Obama won 88% of the admittedly miserable Texan Democrat primary vote. You won't see any stories about this, although you did see them last week when 40% of Democratic voters did not vote for him.
Texas is as Southern as any of the previous "protesting" states, but Texas did not protest Obama yesterday.
As for how many total votes Obama received, you won't see that on Wikipedia, where they don't count any state where he received 100% of the votes in coming up with a 4.5 million total. In practice, he has received more votes than Romney despite no effort and no real race.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/05/29/politics/romney-delegates/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Other sources put him still 100-200 delegates off. Once again he received less than 70% of the popular vote, unopposed, in Texas. Granted there were more Republican votes than Democratic votes in the Texas primary, but Texas has long been the most politically uninvolved state in the nation. It's part of how the rich maintain control. In 2004, for example, only 33% of Texans voted for president, when a Texan was running, compared to 50% of Michiganders. Another possible cause may be inflated census numbers for Texas, since Florida with 7 million fewer residents always has a higher total vote than Texas, but that's an issue for another blog.
Romney's total votes for all primaries to date are hovering just under 8 million. There are just five states left with primaries. In 2008, John McCain reached 9,840,746 votes compared to Romney's 4.5 million. Will Romney be able to beat the McCain number? He may, but it will be close. California and New Jersey had about 2.6 million Republican votes in 2008, and if Romney wins two-thirds of them plus a big show in Utah, the final state, he might beat the McCain totals.
Meanwhile, Obama won 88% of the admittedly miserable Texan Democrat primary vote. You won't see any stories about this, although you did see them last week when 40% of Democratic voters did not vote for him.
Texas is as Southern as any of the previous "protesting" states, but Texas did not protest Obama yesterday.
As for how many total votes Obama received, you won't see that on Wikipedia, where they don't count any state where he received 100% of the votes in coming up with a 4.5 million total. In practice, he has received more votes than Romney despite no effort and no real race.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Romney can't close his enthusiasm gap, but Obama's widens. A Curious case of backstabbers appears
The Romney steamroller rolled on...and got worse results in Kentucky and Arkansas than he received last week, in both cases less than 70% of the Republican vote even though he is technically unopposed.
That wasn't the story the (biased Republican) Kentucky media wanted to sell, which was that Obama didn't get 40% of Democratic votes in Kentucky (and Arkansas; and also in West Virginia, which voted before the whole gay marriage flap). Before that his previous protest votes had rarely ranged as high as 20%. But these three states were the most violently pro-Hillary Clinton in 2008 and it is likely they retain some animus from that period. Why Romney has been unable to rally the Southern Conservatives is a more interesting question. It is difficult to believe they won't vote for him in the fall, but it is also difficult to believe there is any enthusiasm.
http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/Romney_wins_GOP_primary_Obama_gets_luke_warm_Democratic_nod_152775445.html?ref=445
The Obama campaign dealt with several very curious incidents this weekend, both where supposed allies tried to undermine his re-election candidacy. The first was a revival of the notorious and ridiculous birther controversy. The second was an attack by the African-American mayor of Newark on an Obama campaign ad.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/born-kenya-obamas-literary-agent-misidentified-birthplace-1991/story?id=16372566
http://newsone.com/2016560/cory-booker-meet-the-press/
Both these incidents are very curious because they highlight the differential treatment of Republicans and Democrats in the press.
In the first case conservative blog Breitbart uncovered a pamphlet from a no longer existing company that supposedly represented Obama as a literary agent when he was an unpublished author, and claimed he was born in Kenya, the son of a finance minister. Since I met Obama in 1983 and he told me he was born in Hawai'i, I know for a fact he was not claiming to be a Kenyan national at that time. The alleged author said it was a fact-checking mistake, but I'd be very surprised indeed if the whole incident isn't a forgery, both the pamphlet which somehow missed the light of day in 2004 when Obama was a keynote speaker, or when he ran for Senate in Illinois, or when he ran for president in 2008 against very capable opposition in his own party. If so, that would mean the woman who said she made the "error" would be lying.
The second was Cory Booker's defense of "private equity." The Newark mayor pretended to be "nauseated" by Obama's attacks on Bain Capital. It was not reported why, but the Obama campaign discovered the reason, namely that Bain had given big money to Booker in his mayor's race.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/21/488002/bain-financial-industy-gave-over-565000-to-newark-mayor-cory-booker-for-2002-campaign/
However, while the Obama campaign found that interesting tidbit, the "media" did not cover that story, nor did they find out what Bain expected to get for such a lot of money in such a small place with such inexpensive elections. In fact, to the extent they did cover the story, it was to imply that the White House "slapped down" Booker on the issue, as opposed to revealing the pertinent fact that Bain funded Booker.
The news companies handled these stories a little gingerly but with a raging bias. ABC merely noted that the publishing error "might have been the source" of the birther story, falsely implying the birthers were rational not crazy, when not a single birther ever brought it up before now. All the networks covered Booker's attempt to point a finger at Obama for "dirty campaigning" when Obama has not yet even scratched the surface of the Romney perfidy as we've seen on this blog. None of them questioned Booker's expertise in the matter of "private equity," which is something a New Jersey mayor would not normally be expected to know a lot about. I hope the Obama people fully understand now the extent of uphill battle they have with the media in such relentlessly hostile hands.
That wasn't the story the (biased Republican) Kentucky media wanted to sell, which was that Obama didn't get 40% of Democratic votes in Kentucky (and Arkansas; and also in West Virginia, which voted before the whole gay marriage flap). Before that his previous protest votes had rarely ranged as high as 20%. But these three states were the most violently pro-Hillary Clinton in 2008 and it is likely they retain some animus from that period. Why Romney has been unable to rally the Southern Conservatives is a more interesting question. It is difficult to believe they won't vote for him in the fall, but it is also difficult to believe there is any enthusiasm.
http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/Romney_wins_GOP_primary_Obama_gets_luke_warm_Democratic_nod_152775445.html?ref=445
The Obama campaign dealt with several very curious incidents this weekend, both where supposed allies tried to undermine his re-election candidacy. The first was a revival of the notorious and ridiculous birther controversy. The second was an attack by the African-American mayor of Newark on an Obama campaign ad.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/born-kenya-obamas-literary-agent-misidentified-birthplace-1991/story?id=16372566
http://newsone.com/2016560/cory-booker-meet-the-press/
Both these incidents are very curious because they highlight the differential treatment of Republicans and Democrats in the press.
In the first case conservative blog Breitbart uncovered a pamphlet from a no longer existing company that supposedly represented Obama as a literary agent when he was an unpublished author, and claimed he was born in Kenya, the son of a finance minister. Since I met Obama in 1983 and he told me he was born in Hawai'i, I know for a fact he was not claiming to be a Kenyan national at that time. The alleged author said it was a fact-checking mistake, but I'd be very surprised indeed if the whole incident isn't a forgery, both the pamphlet which somehow missed the light of day in 2004 when Obama was a keynote speaker, or when he ran for Senate in Illinois, or when he ran for president in 2008 against very capable opposition in his own party. If so, that would mean the woman who said she made the "error" would be lying.
The second was Cory Booker's defense of "private equity." The Newark mayor pretended to be "nauseated" by Obama's attacks on Bain Capital. It was not reported why, but the Obama campaign discovered the reason, namely that Bain had given big money to Booker in his mayor's race.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/05/21/488002/bain-financial-industy-gave-over-565000-to-newark-mayor-cory-booker-for-2002-campaign/
However, while the Obama campaign found that interesting tidbit, the "media" did not cover that story, nor did they find out what Bain expected to get for such a lot of money in such a small place with such inexpensive elections. In fact, to the extent they did cover the story, it was to imply that the White House "slapped down" Booker on the issue, as opposed to revealing the pertinent fact that Bain funded Booker.
The news companies handled these stories a little gingerly but with a raging bias. ABC merely noted that the publishing error "might have been the source" of the birther story, falsely implying the birthers were rational not crazy, when not a single birther ever brought it up before now. All the networks covered Booker's attempt to point a finger at Obama for "dirty campaigning" when Obama has not yet even scratched the surface of the Romney perfidy as we've seen on this blog. None of them questioned Booker's expertise in the matter of "private equity," which is something a New Jersey mayor would not normally be expected to know a lot about. I hope the Obama people fully understand now the extent of uphill battle they have with the media in such relentlessly hostile hands.
Monday, May 21, 2012
The Election will be about Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
It's no secret what this election will turn on: Jobs, jobs, job, jobs, jobs. The hardest hit group of people in the job market are the young, a third of whom are underemployed, and the older people who have lost jobs and not regained them. The former were big supporters of Obama in 2008 and he cannot win the election without them this year. This is pretty much the only opening Romney has to win the election, since he is a man without character and personality.
But what is the truth about jobs in America? How did it get to be a crisis, and why hasn't Obama done more?
As background, it is necessary to understand some of the history of US employment, separated from the noise of Republican propaganda. For instance, a Republican talking point is now taught in high schools, namely that when social security was started there were 7 people paying in for everyone withdrawing, whereas today the ratio is 3 to 1 and falling, and that can only be sustained because so many older people have such pitiful benefit levels. The implication is clear: we have become a nation of loafers. But the reality is different. In 1944 67 million people paid into social security out of a population of 132 million. In 2010 160 million paid into social security out of a population of 308 million. That is the ratio of "worker bees" to total population has actually slightly increased from 51% to 52%, as the elderly, students, and prisoners replaced children, orphans, mental patients, housewives, and sanitarium residents in the dependent column. It's just that more of today's dependents rely on social security and less on family support and charity. Remember when you hear someone complaining about social security tax, how they would have likely had family dependents to support in a previous generation.
Ultimately, the question of jobs is a question of facts and statistics. The public "feels" unemployment more in 2012 than it did in 2008 or 2009 because it optimistically thought the challenges of those years were temporary blips. Progressives said no, there was a structural problem of too much wealth concentration and a predatory and false global trade regime, and while Obama remained committed to the latter, he at least understood the problems posed by the former. Republicans do not. Mitt Romney sees no problem with concentrated wealth and his business partner Edward Conard thinks that the successful are underpaid! Moreover, Republicans made Obama's stimulus too small and refuse to consider a supplement. Republican governors dragged their feet about spending any of what was available (see high speed rail). Republican senators have filibustered the president an unprecedented 300 times, and then blame him for inaction! But they've done worse. A tea party group last fall asked employers not to hire anyone before the presidential election, so that economic sabotage would bring down the president, a scenario - a strike of sorts by employers - out of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/20/348168/tea-party-group-businesses-hurt-obama/
America's large industrials have boasted they are holding more than $1 trillion overseas, money they say they MIGHT return to America if their taxes were cut.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903927204576574720017009568.html
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/tax-policy-change-would-bring-cash-piles-abroad-back-home/
That second article is particularly amusing for saying that cash held overseas nonetheless "helps" the economy when it brings no dividends or interest home, so much so that the US has fallen into current account deficit, not just trade deficit and we are not benefiting from our overseas investments.
It is interesting that they were able to make such a treasonous boast without fear of retribution from the public, and it is certain that the latter claim is largely bombast. They keep a lot of money in China because China makes them, and has capital controls that the USA doesn't have. Yet these companies are eager to invest in Communism while blaming American workers for being too greedy, as did their (Chinese) labor secretary under George W. Bush.
Nonetheless, it is clear that Republicans advocate economic sabotage to achieve political ends, and that they have no love for the U.S. economy apart from it enriching them personally. Their continued existence in Washington makes the nation unable to fix employment problems.
For years, the only employment "statistic" that counted was the Unemployment Rate. This rate has always been misleading as an international comparison. We were told in the 1980s that unemployment was worse in Europe because the socialistic economies there are "sclerotic" and make it hard to fire people and have unions on the board of directors (Germany). Today Germany employs 5% more of its people than we do.
However, their "unemployment rate" is as high as ours because it is counted differently. Similarly, Canada employs 5% more of its people than we do but does not usually have lower unemployment. The unemployment rate, then, has been massaged in the USA to the point of being unbelievable. In the early Bush II years, for instance, they cut the labor force 2% in order to hold the unemployment rate down. Needless to say, they have not done this for Obama.
But the partisan "professionals" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have done even worse in their reporting of the employment rate. Here, for example, is their snapshot of nonfarm jobs in America.
The top table, their "official" results are shocking. They show a flat employment trend from 2002 to 2011, with very slight swings, yet we know the population increased 27 million during that time. That's 27 million people who had to be fed, clothed, and supported (22 million of them under Bush) with not a single extra body working. It was not done with productivity increases as much as it was not done at all, and has been reflected in the rapid increase of poverty. According to the chart, Obama actually has a net decline in jobs from his 2009 inaugural to the end of 2011, whereas Bush is showing a slight increase from 2002 to 2009 (because 2001, a year of heavy job losses, has been hidden). This is what Romney is running on. Add back the last year, however, and you see Obama looks like a giant of economic stimulation compared to Bush, whose Keynsian "stimulus" was in tax cuts and $300 checks to families and government employment, and bubbles in health care, banking, and real estate.
The BLS, it turns out though, is faking to support the Republican story too. Some of it is obvious. The top chart is their new number and right under it is a table of previous reports. You can see that the Obama employment totals have been consistently revised upwards after their initial reporting. But this doesn't seem to have happened under Bush....That means that news reports about employment are always not as positive as the final results apparently are.
Then you look into the methodology and realize that BLS has rather unprofessional data practices.
Thus we see that they send out employment surveys, which are indifferently processed by companies, but even though they recognize the data is garbage, the assume the month to month fluctuations in the garbage have some "real" validity. Someone evidently pointed out to them that states collect unemployment insurance data that is comparatively comprehensive and well-policed and better than a survey which is only returned occasionally and which can't follow the turnover in companies declining and starting that states are able to track. Therefore they take "primarily" state unemployment data and use it to "recenter" their survey results once a year (for unseasonally adjusted numbers) but a full five years for seasonally adjusted numbers. This makes no sense. If the states have better data, then junk the surveys and get monthly reports from the states!
Anyone who has taken a statistics class knows that you can't "recenter" bad data and treat it as though it gives an accurate time series. Bad data is bad data. Moreover, restating five years instead of leaving the individual benchmarks compounds the error trends in their survey data.
In short, the Republicans are using these numbers because they control them and have distorted them at the source. Even if you ignore their apparent sabotage, their record on jobs has been poor and their "story" on this issue has no substance.
Until late in George W. Bush's term, few people looked at the employment numbers.
But what is the truth about jobs in America? How did it get to be a crisis, and why hasn't Obama done more?
As background, it is necessary to understand some of the history of US employment, separated from the noise of Republican propaganda. For instance, a Republican talking point is now taught in high schools, namely that when social security was started there were 7 people paying in for everyone withdrawing, whereas today the ratio is 3 to 1 and falling, and that can only be sustained because so many older people have such pitiful benefit levels. The implication is clear: we have become a nation of loafers. But the reality is different. In 1944 67 million people paid into social security out of a population of 132 million. In 2010 160 million paid into social security out of a population of 308 million. That is the ratio of "worker bees" to total population has actually slightly increased from 51% to 52%, as the elderly, students, and prisoners replaced children, orphans, mental patients, housewives, and sanitarium residents in the dependent column. It's just that more of today's dependents rely on social security and less on family support and charity. Remember when you hear someone complaining about social security tax, how they would have likely had family dependents to support in a previous generation.
Ultimately, the question of jobs is a question of facts and statistics. The public "feels" unemployment more in 2012 than it did in 2008 or 2009 because it optimistically thought the challenges of those years were temporary blips. Progressives said no, there was a structural problem of too much wealth concentration and a predatory and false global trade regime, and while Obama remained committed to the latter, he at least understood the problems posed by the former. Republicans do not. Mitt Romney sees no problem with concentrated wealth and his business partner Edward Conard thinks that the successful are underpaid! Moreover, Republicans made Obama's stimulus too small and refuse to consider a supplement. Republican governors dragged their feet about spending any of what was available (see high speed rail). Republican senators have filibustered the president an unprecedented 300 times, and then blame him for inaction! But they've done worse. A tea party group last fall asked employers not to hire anyone before the presidential election, so that economic sabotage would bring down the president, a scenario - a strike of sorts by employers - out of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/20/348168/tea-party-group-businesses-hurt-obama/
America's large industrials have boasted they are holding more than $1 trillion overseas, money they say they MIGHT return to America if their taxes were cut.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903927204576574720017009568.html
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/tax-policy-change-would-bring-cash-piles-abroad-back-home/
That second article is particularly amusing for saying that cash held overseas nonetheless "helps" the economy when it brings no dividends or interest home, so much so that the US has fallen into current account deficit, not just trade deficit and we are not benefiting from our overseas investments.
It is interesting that they were able to make such a treasonous boast without fear of retribution from the public, and it is certain that the latter claim is largely bombast. They keep a lot of money in China because China makes them, and has capital controls that the USA doesn't have. Yet these companies are eager to invest in Communism while blaming American workers for being too greedy, as did their (Chinese) labor secretary under George W. Bush.
Nonetheless, it is clear that Republicans advocate economic sabotage to achieve political ends, and that they have no love for the U.S. economy apart from it enriching them personally. Their continued existence in Washington makes the nation unable to fix employment problems.
For years, the only employment "statistic" that counted was the Unemployment Rate. This rate has always been misleading as an international comparison. We were told in the 1980s that unemployment was worse in Europe because the socialistic economies there are "sclerotic" and make it hard to fire people and have unions on the board of directors (Germany). Today Germany employs 5% more of its people than we do.
However, their "unemployment rate" is as high as ours because it is counted differently. Similarly, Canada employs 5% more of its people than we do but does not usually have lower unemployment. The unemployment rate, then, has been massaged in the USA to the point of being unbelievable. In the early Bush II years, for instance, they cut the labor force 2% in order to hold the unemployment rate down. Needless to say, they have not done this for Obama.
But the partisan "professionals" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics have done even worse in their reporting of the employment rate. Here, for example, is their snapshot of nonfarm jobs in America.
The top table, their "official" results are shocking. They show a flat employment trend from 2002 to 2011, with very slight swings, yet we know the population increased 27 million during that time. That's 27 million people who had to be fed, clothed, and supported (22 million of them under Bush) with not a single extra body working. It was not done with productivity increases as much as it was not done at all, and has been reflected in the rapid increase of poverty. According to the chart, Obama actually has a net decline in jobs from his 2009 inaugural to the end of 2011, whereas Bush is showing a slight increase from 2002 to 2009 (because 2001, a year of heavy job losses, has been hidden). This is what Romney is running on. Add back the last year, however, and you see Obama looks like a giant of economic stimulation compared to Bush, whose Keynsian "stimulus" was in tax cuts and $300 checks to families and government employment, and bubbles in health care, banking, and real estate.
The BLS, it turns out though, is faking to support the Republican story too. Some of it is obvious. The top chart is their new number and right under it is a table of previous reports. You can see that the Obama employment totals have been consistently revised upwards after their initial reporting. But this doesn't seem to have happened under Bush....That means that news reports about employment are always not as positive as the final results apparently are.
Then you look into the methodology and realize that BLS has rather unprofessional data practices.
Thus we see that they send out employment surveys, which are indifferently processed by companies, but even though they recognize the data is garbage, the assume the month to month fluctuations in the garbage have some "real" validity. Someone evidently pointed out to them that states collect unemployment insurance data that is comparatively comprehensive and well-policed and better than a survey which is only returned occasionally and which can't follow the turnover in companies declining and starting that states are able to track. Therefore they take "primarily" state unemployment data and use it to "recenter" their survey results once a year (for unseasonally adjusted numbers) but a full five years for seasonally adjusted numbers. This makes no sense. If the states have better data, then junk the surveys and get monthly reports from the states!
Anyone who has taken a statistics class knows that you can't "recenter" bad data and treat it as though it gives an accurate time series. Bad data is bad data. Moreover, restating five years instead of leaving the individual benchmarks compounds the error trends in their survey data.
In short, the Republicans are using these numbers because they control them and have distorted them at the source. Even if you ignore their apparent sabotage, their record on jobs has been poor and their "story" on this issue has no substance.
Until late in George W. Bush's term, few people looked at the employment numbers.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Polls differ on Mitt the Hall Monitor
Nebraska and Oregon had primaries last week, but all you have heard is Romney won. Since Ron Paul has suspended his campaign and Romney was officially unopposed, they felt justified not letting you know that Romney received only 71% unopposed in these two Republican states. 29% of Republicans could not bring themselves to vote for their party's nominee. Meanwhile, Obama's foray into gay rights appears to have ended any protest vote against his candidacy on the left.
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&off=0&elect=2&fips=41&f=0
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&off=0&elect=2&fips=31&f=0
Still, Republican pollsters have not decided how to handle the situation. Fox News released a poll taken May 13-15 showing Obama with an eight point national lead.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/16/fox-news-poll-obama-pulls-ahead-romney-as-presidential-race-heats-up/?test=latestnews
Gallup had Romney even or even ahead, with improved likeability.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/election.aspx
These differences are too large to be reconciled. They cannot both be correct. Most likely, neither is correct. As a former employee in the market research industry, I know how far distant the effort and results are from the "statistical and scientific" basis they are claimed to have. Exit polls are the only polls which are truly accurate, and in modern America, they never match the reported election results. Survey results follow the needs of the buyer, suggesting a split in Republican strategy.
Some believe that showing a gain will improve Romney's shaky standing with the GOP faithful and get independent and undecideds to view a personally unpopular man as well within the "normal parameters" of electoral politics. This would be the Gallup crowd, probably tight with the campaign and receiving a belated tepid endorsement from George W. Bush this week. The Fox crowd, perhaps the only big conservative media player not in some way tethered to Bain Capital, see that as stupid. The theme that works best for them is Romney the underdog and victim of monumental Wall St. connected elitist intellectual Democrats.
Not for them the idea that Romney is pandering to gays because Wall St. is supporting Romney. Indeed, they are scrutinizing Obama's financial statements for evidence of Wall Street ties.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57434282/wall-street-execs-back-obama-with-more-than-$2m/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BuzzGames_Gamecore+%28TheShowbuzz%3A+Games+GameCore%29
In 2006, Romney's disclosure indicated ties to state run oil and gas companies in Russia and China that did business with Iran. If a conservative opponent hadn't highlighted these investments, the public would never have known.
http://www.politicolnews.com/mitt-romneys-iran-oil-investments/
What's really interesting is the blackout of news on Romney's 2010 investments.
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/mitt-romney-enjoys-rare-exemptions-in/
Certainly what he hasn't hidden doesn't show him as "independent" of Wall Street, including large holdings of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bonds.
http://www.americanbridgepac.org/2012/01/wire/response/on-fox-news-mitt-romney-lies-about-his-investments-in-fannie-mae-freddie-mac/
His Goldman Sachs funds are heavily invested in foreign markets in 2010 as in 2007.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/mitt-romney-goldman-sachs-investments
Republicans found that Romney continued to have investments in Chinese oil companies and companies doing business with Iran until he got rid of some of these in 2010.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Romney-invested-in-Chinese-and-Iranian-companies.html
The whole range and scope of Romney's investments will not be covered anywhere unless the Obama campaign does so. Indeed, the media campaign is already set. Anything negative Obama says about Romney will get free rebuttals to the issue from CBS, NBC, and ABC. Anything negative Romney says about Obama, Obama will have to pay for an ad for a response.
In the meantime, despite attempts by the media to squelch the bully story, evidence continues to roll in that Romney gets physical when opposed, and being opposed can be as little as refusing to put a seat upright on a plane. Romney views himself as a kind of National Hall Monitor, just as in high school, and he is not about to give up the Enforcer role. George W. Bush is also correct to be wary of a man who could easily seek his prosecution.
2012 hand on shoulder to stop Perry from talking. Romney's contractor hired the illegal, so his claim was disingenuous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZlKAVPCnA
2010 altercation
http://blog.chron.com/celebritybuzz/2010/02/rapper-sky-blu-and-romneys-plane-altercation/
2002 altercation
http://www.socialvibes.net/socialvi/2012/05/14/romney-roughouse/
.
1981 altercation
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865555346/The-story-behind-Mitt-Romneys-1981-arrest-for-disorderly-conduct.html
By threatening legal action, he managed to avoid trouble for all of this. But it all points to the Romney as bully theme being an accurate representation of his character.
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&off=0&elect=2&fips=41&f=0
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?year=2012&off=0&elect=2&fips=31&f=0
Still, Republican pollsters have not decided how to handle the situation. Fox News released a poll taken May 13-15 showing Obama with an eight point national lead.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/16/fox-news-poll-obama-pulls-ahead-romney-as-presidential-race-heats-up/?test=latestnews
Gallup had Romney even or even ahead, with improved likeability.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/election.aspx
These differences are too large to be reconciled. They cannot both be correct. Most likely, neither is correct. As a former employee in the market research industry, I know how far distant the effort and results are from the "statistical and scientific" basis they are claimed to have. Exit polls are the only polls which are truly accurate, and in modern America, they never match the reported election results. Survey results follow the needs of the buyer, suggesting a split in Republican strategy.
Some believe that showing a gain will improve Romney's shaky standing with the GOP faithful and get independent and undecideds to view a personally unpopular man as well within the "normal parameters" of electoral politics. This would be the Gallup crowd, probably tight with the campaign and receiving a belated tepid endorsement from George W. Bush this week. The Fox crowd, perhaps the only big conservative media player not in some way tethered to Bain Capital, see that as stupid. The theme that works best for them is Romney the underdog and victim of monumental Wall St. connected elitist intellectual Democrats.
Not for them the idea that Romney is pandering to gays because Wall St. is supporting Romney. Indeed, they are scrutinizing Obama's financial statements for evidence of Wall Street ties.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505267_162-57434282/wall-street-execs-back-obama-with-more-than-$2m/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BuzzGames_Gamecore+%28TheShowbuzz%3A+Games+GameCore%29
In 2006, Romney's disclosure indicated ties to state run oil and gas companies in Russia and China that did business with Iran. If a conservative opponent hadn't highlighted these investments, the public would never have known.
http://www.politicolnews.com/mitt-romneys-iran-oil-investments/
What's really interesting is the blackout of news on Romney's 2010 investments.
http://blogcritics.org/politics/article/mitt-romney-enjoys-rare-exemptions-in/
Certainly what he hasn't hidden doesn't show him as "independent" of Wall Street, including large holdings of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae bonds.
http://www.americanbridgepac.org/2012/01/wire/response/on-fox-news-mitt-romney-lies-about-his-investments-in-fannie-mae-freddie-mac/
His Goldman Sachs funds are heavily invested in foreign markets in 2010 as in 2007.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/mitt-romney-goldman-sachs-investments
Republicans found that Romney continued to have investments in Chinese oil companies and companies doing business with Iran until he got rid of some of these in 2010.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/Romney-invested-in-Chinese-and-Iranian-companies.html
The whole range and scope of Romney's investments will not be covered anywhere unless the Obama campaign does so. Indeed, the media campaign is already set. Anything negative Obama says about Romney will get free rebuttals to the issue from CBS, NBC, and ABC. Anything negative Romney says about Obama, Obama will have to pay for an ad for a response.
In the meantime, despite attempts by the media to squelch the bully story, evidence continues to roll in that Romney gets physical when opposed, and being opposed can be as little as refusing to put a seat upright on a plane. Romney views himself as a kind of National Hall Monitor, just as in high school, and he is not about to give up the Enforcer role. George W. Bush is also correct to be wary of a man who could easily seek his prosecution.
2012 hand on shoulder to stop Perry from talking. Romney's contractor hired the illegal, so his claim was disingenuous.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anZlKAVPCnA
2010 altercation
http://blog.chron.com/celebritybuzz/2010/02/rapper-sky-blu-and-romneys-plane-altercation/
2002 altercation
http://www.socialvibes.net/socialvi/2012/05/14/romney-roughouse/
.
1981 altercation
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865555346/The-story-behind-Mitt-Romneys-1981-arrest-for-disorderly-conduct.html
By threatening legal action, he managed to avoid trouble for all of this. But it all points to the Romney as bully theme being an accurate representation of his character.
Friday, May 11, 2012
Republican operative Diane Sawyer organizes the media response: the timing is suspicious!
If you need any more proof that the mainstream media is biased in favor of Mitt Romney, you can find no more outstanding example than Diane Sawyer's ugly, slanted response on ABC News to the "curveball" that Mitt Romney was a physical bully in high school, forcibly cutting a gay student's hair and leading a blind professor to walk into a door.
The daughter of a Republican county executive (the county that contains Louisville, Kentucky), Diane Sawyer rose to prominence working as a press officer for Richard Nixon's White House. This was the same Richard Nixon who was known for his dirty tricks and electoral games, and who had to resign for covering up campaign misconduct. After he resigned, Sawyer followed him to California, helping him write a memoir to whitewash his image. Then, she decided to go into journalism, where she was gratefully welcomed, being the right kind of woman, a rightist. Of course that has not prevented the right from accusing her of liberal bias on the apparent theory that ovaries are always suspect....and that could be true. Daughters of Republicans aren't always reliable (see Hillary Clinton).
Anyway, when rattled, Sawyer reverts to republicanism. The story about Mitt Romney's bullying, confirmed by five witnesses, four of them willing to share their names, apparently did rattle her. She did her Karl Rovian best to turn it into a story not about Mitt Romney, but about the Obama campaign and the Washington Post. "But we rarely go back to high school" in vetting candidates, she exclaimed, forgetting that they have done just that to Obama. A national magazine published interviews with his former girlfriends last week, and he was said to eat dog in Indonesia when he was under ten years old, a story ABC News reported. She also forgets that everything about Obama from his papers, to his grades, to his athletic record, to his professors and preachers, to the birth certificate he had no control over, has been minutely examined, while Romney has been bragging all the time about marrying his childhood sweetheart and presenting himself as a kind of goody two-shoes; whereas any discussion of his religion, when he was a preacher, is considered bigotry!
She covered the article by showing a few several second clips of one accuser (there were five) and then interviewing at greater length a Romney defender who wasn't there when the incidents happened, and who doubted the incidents were that serious. She questioned whether the five had a political motive, something that was not done to impugn the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, even though none of them had any first hand dirt on John Kerry. She even said the timing of the story "seems suspicious" in an effort to imply that the Obama campaign planted the story in the Washington Post to reinforce the president's declaration of support for gay marriage yesterday.
She had no evidence to back up an assertion like that, and the timing actually suggests the opposite. The story took time to uncover, whereas Obama's interview on gay marriage was not scheduled until yesterday morning and the subject was only brought up after Biden endorsed gay marriage a few days ago. Obama's team originally backpedaled after Biden's speech. There were rumors Obama wanted to support gay marriage earlier, but didn't want to be associated with the likely defeat of gay marriage in North Carolina. If so, then why not schedule the interview several days in advance? The whole thing doesn't add up. If anything, the likelihood runs the other way - that the Obama camp found out about the story first and decided to get their position out beforehand to reap maximum rewards.
It must be a brutal shock to conservatives that the Washington Post, which was so thoroughly fixed in their camp for years after Katherine Graham died, could run such a story. Conservatives have come to expect a right wing bias in the news. They offered nothing but standard assertions of "liberal bias" in the story when it was revealed that Romney had gotten twice as much positive coverage as Obama over these past few months. One story Diane Sawyer has not run is the fact that since 2008 Mitt Romney's Bain Capital has attempted to buy up much of America's media. But neither has anyone on the right, who are now accusing the Washington Post of being an arm of the Obama campaign. Chances are they would have had made these same claims of liberal press bias had the Washington Post compared Obama to Satan.
Bain Capital, Mitt Romney CEO, owns the largest network of radio stations in the country, Clear Channel of San Antonio; did own the second largest, Cumulus of Atlanta, and still has a major investment in it, and also owns many right wing talk show syndications, including Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck. I don't recall any of them mentioning they are employees of Mitt Romney. I don't remember Diane Sawyer investigating that either. Nor does ABC note that Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the land, has as its largest shareholder an investment company, which in turn is owned by a Romney money manager named Munder Capital. Lee Munder was Romney's Florida finance co-chair.
Will Diane Sawyer recuse herself because she worked for Nixon? Of course not. Will she mention that ABC is owned by Disney, that Disney's largest shareholder is Fidelity, and that Fidelity's largest share holder are the Johnson family, big Romney supporters? In this article, Woody Johnson attends Ann Romney's birthday party.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/04/18/inside-donald-trumps-1000-a-plate-birthday-party-for-ann-romney/
Is Diane Sawyer anything but an unofficial Romney campaign official?
The right was quick to take the hint. Breitbart, a conservative blog whose founder died recently, responded with entirely fallacious claim that the real story was the Washington Post's bias and claim the bullying story is "imploding." They claimed the original source of the Post story was "Stu White," who wasn't present, even though the Washington Post named four of their five witnesses as sources and they were not Stu White. Breitbart also had that the victim's "teary" sister is angry about how her brother had been portrayed, as if conservatives would have been nicer. A more lame response is hard to imagine, but that is the way Karl Rove worked, and Beth Myers, Romney's campaign manager, was his student. As with Dan Rather and George W. Bush's record as a deserter, they will suggest lies and forgery (which was never proved). Could the right have, in Machiavelli fashion, sold the Post a story they can later subvert as fake? Possibly, but highly unlikely in this case where four witnesses were willing to go on record. Nonetheless, the right thinks its readers will accept the claim this was a smear job.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/10/Washington-Post-Hit-Piece-Implodes
Most important of all, there was no denial from Romney. He said he "didn't remember," but if he really didn't remember, he would have simply denied it since it would be his word against theirs. He did it, he remembers, and as always, he is unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his actions. He does not have the maturity to be president.
His campaign, though, was quick to move to North Carolina to see if it could scrape up some votes.
That may be hard to do. Amendment One to ban gay marriage passed by 1.3 million to 800,000, but North Carolina will likely cast 4.3 - 5 million votes for president, meaning that only a little more than a quarter of its voters felt strong enough to get out and vote against gay marriage. Obama actually polled fewer than 800,000 votes in the primary, meaning more North Carolinians voted against banning gay marriage than voted for Obama. True, total Democratic votes in the presidential primary were 959,000 suggesting at least 130,000 Democrats voted against gay marriage. That is hardly a huge potential pickup for Romney. Romney's uphill struggle seems to be represented in that running with only the token opposition of Ron Paul, and the same number of primary voters as the Democrats, he won 100,000 fewer votes than Obama. It does seem peculiar, and perhaps a mark of fraud, that 200,000 more votes were recorded on Amendment One than on who should be President. Civil Rights groups say many people in liberal areas were given ballots without the Amendment on it, so if anything, the count should have been in favor of the Presidential race. One thing is certain, and that is the tide of people supporting gay marriage is rising rapidly, and Romney will not benefit from that.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/36596/80862/en/summary.html
The daughter of a Republican county executive (the county that contains Louisville, Kentucky), Diane Sawyer rose to prominence working as a press officer for Richard Nixon's White House. This was the same Richard Nixon who was known for his dirty tricks and electoral games, and who had to resign for covering up campaign misconduct. After he resigned, Sawyer followed him to California, helping him write a memoir to whitewash his image. Then, she decided to go into journalism, where she was gratefully welcomed, being the right kind of woman, a rightist. Of course that has not prevented the right from accusing her of liberal bias on the apparent theory that ovaries are always suspect....and that could be true. Daughters of Republicans aren't always reliable (see Hillary Clinton).
Anyway, when rattled, Sawyer reverts to republicanism. The story about Mitt Romney's bullying, confirmed by five witnesses, four of them willing to share their names, apparently did rattle her. She did her Karl Rovian best to turn it into a story not about Mitt Romney, but about the Obama campaign and the Washington Post. "But we rarely go back to high school" in vetting candidates, she exclaimed, forgetting that they have done just that to Obama. A national magazine published interviews with his former girlfriends last week, and he was said to eat dog in Indonesia when he was under ten years old, a story ABC News reported. She also forgets that everything about Obama from his papers, to his grades, to his athletic record, to his professors and preachers, to the birth certificate he had no control over, has been minutely examined, while Romney has been bragging all the time about marrying his childhood sweetheart and presenting himself as a kind of goody two-shoes; whereas any discussion of his religion, when he was a preacher, is considered bigotry!
She covered the article by showing a few several second clips of one accuser (there were five) and then interviewing at greater length a Romney defender who wasn't there when the incidents happened, and who doubted the incidents were that serious. She questioned whether the five had a political motive, something that was not done to impugn the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, even though none of them had any first hand dirt on John Kerry. She even said the timing of the story "seems suspicious" in an effort to imply that the Obama campaign planted the story in the Washington Post to reinforce the president's declaration of support for gay marriage yesterday.
She had no evidence to back up an assertion like that, and the timing actually suggests the opposite. The story took time to uncover, whereas Obama's interview on gay marriage was not scheduled until yesterday morning and the subject was only brought up after Biden endorsed gay marriage a few days ago. Obama's team originally backpedaled after Biden's speech. There were rumors Obama wanted to support gay marriage earlier, but didn't want to be associated with the likely defeat of gay marriage in North Carolina. If so, then why not schedule the interview several days in advance? The whole thing doesn't add up. If anything, the likelihood runs the other way - that the Obama camp found out about the story first and decided to get their position out beforehand to reap maximum rewards.
It must be a brutal shock to conservatives that the Washington Post, which was so thoroughly fixed in their camp for years after Katherine Graham died, could run such a story. Conservatives have come to expect a right wing bias in the news. They offered nothing but standard assertions of "liberal bias" in the story when it was revealed that Romney had gotten twice as much positive coverage as Obama over these past few months. One story Diane Sawyer has not run is the fact that since 2008 Mitt Romney's Bain Capital has attempted to buy up much of America's media. But neither has anyone on the right, who are now accusing the Washington Post of being an arm of the Obama campaign. Chances are they would have had made these same claims of liberal press bias had the Washington Post compared Obama to Satan.
Bain Capital, Mitt Romney CEO, owns the largest network of radio stations in the country, Clear Channel of San Antonio; did own the second largest, Cumulus of Atlanta, and still has a major investment in it, and also owns many right wing talk show syndications, including Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck. I don't recall any of them mentioning they are employees of Mitt Romney. I don't remember Diane Sawyer investigating that either. Nor does ABC note that Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the land, has as its largest shareholder an investment company, which in turn is owned by a Romney money manager named Munder Capital. Lee Munder was Romney's Florida finance co-chair.
Will Diane Sawyer recuse herself because she worked for Nixon? Of course not. Will she mention that ABC is owned by Disney, that Disney's largest shareholder is Fidelity, and that Fidelity's largest share holder are the Johnson family, big Romney supporters? In this article, Woody Johnson attends Ann Romney's birthday party.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2012/04/18/inside-donald-trumps-1000-a-plate-birthday-party-for-ann-romney/
Is Diane Sawyer anything but an unofficial Romney campaign official?
The right was quick to take the hint. Breitbart, a conservative blog whose founder died recently, responded with entirely fallacious claim that the real story was the Washington Post's bias and claim the bullying story is "imploding." They claimed the original source of the Post story was "Stu White," who wasn't present, even though the Washington Post named four of their five witnesses as sources and they were not Stu White. Breitbart also had that the victim's "teary" sister is angry about how her brother had been portrayed, as if conservatives would have been nicer. A more lame response is hard to imagine, but that is the way Karl Rove worked, and Beth Myers, Romney's campaign manager, was his student. As with Dan Rather and George W. Bush's record as a deserter, they will suggest lies and forgery (which was never proved). Could the right have, in Machiavelli fashion, sold the Post a story they can later subvert as fake? Possibly, but highly unlikely in this case where four witnesses were willing to go on record. Nonetheless, the right thinks its readers will accept the claim this was a smear job.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/05/10/Washington-Post-Hit-Piece-Implodes
Most important of all, there was no denial from Romney. He said he "didn't remember," but if he really didn't remember, he would have simply denied it since it would be his word against theirs. He did it, he remembers, and as always, he is unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his actions. He does not have the maturity to be president.
His campaign, though, was quick to move to North Carolina to see if it could scrape up some votes.
That may be hard to do. Amendment One to ban gay marriage passed by 1.3 million to 800,000, but North Carolina will likely cast 4.3 - 5 million votes for president, meaning that only a little more than a quarter of its voters felt strong enough to get out and vote against gay marriage. Obama actually polled fewer than 800,000 votes in the primary, meaning more North Carolinians voted against banning gay marriage than voted for Obama. True, total Democratic votes in the presidential primary were 959,000 suggesting at least 130,000 Democrats voted against gay marriage. That is hardly a huge potential pickup for Romney. Romney's uphill struggle seems to be represented in that running with only the token opposition of Ron Paul, and the same number of primary voters as the Democrats, he won 100,000 fewer votes than Obama. It does seem peculiar, and perhaps a mark of fraud, that 200,000 more votes were recorded on Amendment One than on who should be President. Civil Rights groups say many people in liberal areas were given ballots without the Amendment on it, so if anything, the count should have been in favor of the Presidential race. One thing is certain, and that is the tide of people supporting gay marriage is rising rapidly, and Romney will not benefit from that.
http://results.enr.clarityelections.com/NC/36596/80862/en/summary.html
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Romney apologizes for teenage bullying, pretends homophobia was not involved.
The news is buzzing with Romney's apology for teenage pranks. One involved holding a male classmate down who had bleached his hair and forcibly cutting the hair, and another involved calling another male classmate a girl.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-offers-apology-for-high-school-pranks-says-homosexuality-was-not-on-his-mind/
Romney gave the standard excuse for pre-Stonewall homophobia: I didn't even know what a homosexual was!
Of course they knew what a homosexual was. In over fifty years of hearing this excuse from my elders, I never met one who was telling the truth. And besides, says Romney, I don't remember! But I'm sorry if anyone was offended!
Romney should say that he was a spoiled youth with an inflated sense of worth because of his powerful father, and friends and enemies who evaluated him based on his father. He will never do that, however, because he still hasn't matured, nor can he speak honestly about his father. A simple acknowledgement that politicians and businessmen like his father left Detroit the smoking ruin it is today, would be nice. It will not be forthcoming.
Still, the media focus today is on his apology, not on the original article, which was not strictly about gays and included other "jokes" like when Romney purposely led a blind teacher into a door, when he disdained people from the wrong side of the tracks, and he would never "break up" with a girlfriend, but simply stop calling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html
The truth is Romney is not reformed. Just like George H.W. Bush, who resuscitated his teenage bullying as an adult by hiring Karl Rove to do it for him, at heart Romney is still a socially approved delinquent,
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-offers-apology-for-high-school-pranks-says-homosexuality-was-not-on-his-mind/
Romney gave the standard excuse for pre-Stonewall homophobia: I didn't even know what a homosexual was!
Of course they knew what a homosexual was. In over fifty years of hearing this excuse from my elders, I never met one who was telling the truth. And besides, says Romney, I don't remember! But I'm sorry if anyone was offended!
Romney should say that he was a spoiled youth with an inflated sense of worth because of his powerful father, and friends and enemies who evaluated him based on his father. He will never do that, however, because he still hasn't matured, nor can he speak honestly about his father. A simple acknowledgement that politicians and businessmen like his father left Detroit the smoking ruin it is today, would be nice. It will not be forthcoming.
Still, the media focus today is on his apology, not on the original article, which was not strictly about gays and included other "jokes" like when Romney purposely led a blind teacher into a door, when he disdained people from the wrong side of the tracks, and he would never "break up" with a girlfriend, but simply stop calling.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html
The truth is Romney is not reformed. Just like George H.W. Bush, who resuscitated his teenage bullying as an adult by hiring Karl Rove to do it for him, at heart Romney is still a socially approved delinquent,
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