US election 2012

[savoloysam]

Surely they couldn't elect Mitt Romney could they? Oh shit yes they could

A decent group on facebook worth following...

https://www.facebook.com/StopMitt

 

[N_igma]

Does it really matter who wins? They say the UK is bad but in the US it really is two cheeks of the same arse.

Whoever controls Congress is more important.

 

[Belushi]

Isn't Obama still polling ahead of Romney?

 

[N_igma]

Isn't Obama still polling ahead of Romney?

Yes but some polls have Romney ahead which is strange considering he's a relatively weak candidate.

 

[marty21]

Romney has a few weaknesses - the Christian Right being a major one - they don't see Romney as Christian. He has proved a bit clueless at Foreign policy - but that isn't necessarily a weakness for American voters - there is also his NHS style scheme when he was a Governor, which is Socialist in American eyes, plus his record as a business man when he outsourced jobs to foreigns - he has a lot to overcome -

but George Dubya won, so maybe he can too.

 

[Badgers]

Romney is a hopeless, stupid cunt. I see the Bush comparison but Bush Junior had daddy and daddies team pulling the strings all the way.....

Mr. Romney’s troubles began in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom he presented gifts of a HoneyBaked ham and a wheel of cheddar cheese.

After Mr. Netanyahu ordered both gifts removed from his residence and destroyed, Mr. Romney went on to address the Knesset, where he congratulated the Jewish people on building the pyramids.

 

[Badgers]

Worth following @Wylieknowords on twitter.

Also worth googling 'romney baptizing jews' for a laugh. Seriously, Anne Frank is laughing from her grave.

“Remarkably, under this president’s administration, there is an assault on religion,” Romney told a Colorado crowd, “an assault on the conviction and the religious beliefs of members of our society.”

 

[binka]

Romney has a few weaknesses - the Christian Right being a major one - they don't see Romney as Christian. He has proved a bit clueless at Foreign policy - but that isn't necessarily a weakness for American voters - there is also his NHS style scheme when he was a Governor, which is Socialist in American eyes, plus his record as a business man when he outsourced jobs to foreigns - he has a lot to overcome -

but George Dubya won, so maybe he can too.

tbf a lot of the christian right may have made an issue of his mormonism during the primaries but i don't think he's going to struggle to get their support in the election (rather a mormon than a muslim)

what i think is interesting is the way harry reid made the claim (with no evidence offered what so ever) that someone from bain capital told him romney had paid no taxes for ten years. i think its pretty standard for most candidates to release quite a lot of their tax records but so far romney has only done two years and since he's known he's going to run for the last two years he'd have made sure they at least look half way respectable.

i cant see any way romney can win but his campaign is probably going to spend the best part of a billion dollars and i reckon it will get very very dirty/desperate

 

[Badgers]

You know you are a good conservative when Rush Limbaugh thinks you are a 'fine guy' but not a conservative...

Now, as for Romney -- and you should know, by the way, that I've met Romney. I've not played golf with him but I've met him, and I like all of these people. This isn't personal, not with what country faces and so forth. I like him very much. I've spent some social time with him. He's a fine guy. He's very nice gentleman. He is a gentleman. But he's not a conservative -- and if you disagree, I'm open.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/10/12/rush_limbaugh_romney_is_not_a_conservative.html

 

[camouflage]

Surely they couldn't elect Mitt Romney could they? Oh shit yes they could

A decent group on facebook worth following...

https://www.facebook.com/StopMitt

Unfortunately, a victory for either candidate will result in yet another United States Potus, which always means death for some poor thousands of shmucks in the global south.

 

[Yossarian]

Mr. Romney’s troubles began in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom he presented gifts of a HoneyBaked ham and a wheel of cheddar cheese.

"Seeking to dispel accusations of flip-flopping, Romney unveiled plans to use a time machine to kill earlier versions of himself who believed in universal health care and gay rights."

http://www.theonion.com/section/mitt-romney/

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

i cant see any way romney can win but his campaign is probably going to spend the best part of a billion dollars and i reckon it will get very very dirty/desperate

I think its going to be more like $2.6 B. With Citizen's United they can spend unlimited amounts and don't even have to disclose the source of the money. It could be foreign governments for all we know.

 

[binka]

I think its going to be more like $2.6 B. With Citizen's United they can spend unlimited amounts and don't even have to disclose the source of the money. It could be foreign governments for all we know.

i was going to say 'billions' but i thought that might be a slight exageration but a quick google shows romney raised a hundred million dollars in july alone!

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

We have the best government money can buy.

 

[Pickman's model]

I think its going to be more like $2.6 B. With Citizen's United they can spend unlimited amounts and don't even have to disclose the source of the money. It could be foreign governments for all we know.

it is foreign governments. namely, the ones he's not going to attack.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

it is foreign governments. namely, the ones he's not going to attack.

Protection racket, eh? Pay me enough and I won't bomb you. Want a big weapons deal? Drop a little in the till....

 

[Karim]

A US president is often just a frontman for a particluar lobby in his party.
Romney will surely be appealing to right-wing Republicans. Now he has to be endorsed by AIPAC.
But unseating the man in office is a tough job, unless he has committed some dreadful blunders.
Obama hasn't done that yet.

 

[free spirit]

Romney is a hopeless, stupid cunt. I see the Bush comparison but Bush Junior had daddy and daddies team pulling the strings all the way.....

surely that's not true is it?

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital With Money From Families Tied To Death Squads

.....

"I owe a great deal to Americans of Latin American descent," he said at a dinner in Miami in 2007. "When I was starting my business, I came to Miami to find partners that would believe in me and that would finance my enterprise. My partners were Ricardo Poma, Miguel Dueñas, Pancho Soler, Frank Kardonski, and Diego Ribadeneira."

Romney could also have thanked investors from two other wealthy and powerful Central American clans -- the de Sola and Salaverria families, who the Los Angeles Times and Boston Globe have reported were founding investors in Bain Capital.

While they were on the lookout for investments in the United States, members of some of these prominent families -- including the Salaverria, Poma, de Sola and Dueñas clans -- were also at the time financing, either directly or through political parties, death squads in El Salvador. The ruling classes were deploying the death squads to beat back left-wing guerrillas and reformers during El Salvador's civil war.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/08/mitt-romney-death-squads-bain_n_1710133.html

 

[agricola]

All the US media outlets seem to be suggesting Paul Ryan will be Romney's running mate.

 

[Badgers]

All the US media outlets seem to be suggesting Paul Ryan will be Romney's running mate.

I know

 

[agricola]

I know

Its an odd choice - not sure what he brings to the ticket for people who arent right-wing, and all the right-wing people will be hoping Romney shuffles off PDQ so they can have a Ryan presidency.

 

[TomUS]

It's Ryan....
I think it's a bad choice. His budget proposes huge cuts to social programs the middle & below class depends upon. He'll whip up the base but they've got to get the swing voters & this guy doesn't connect with them. And, nobody's heard of this guy except political nerds. Good news for Obama.

 

[binka]

they're probably banking on all those new voter id laws stopping the poor from voting anyway

 

[butchersapron]

Stupid politics from a stupid campaign - what's the point of ensuring you get the vote that you were going get anyway (tea party/fiscal conservatives/party libertarians etc) and sending the far more more numerous and far more crucial swing voters terrified of that madness as far from the republicans as possible.

New Yorker profile on Ryan:

“I just did lots of reading, lots of introspection. I read everything I could get my hands on.” Like many conservatives, he claims to have been profoundly affected by Ayn Rand. After reading “Atlas Shrugged,” he told me, “I said, ‘Wow, I’ve got to check out this economics thing.’ What I liked about her novels was their devastating indictment of the fatal conceit of socialism, of too much government.” He dived into Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Milton Friedman.
In a 2005 speech to a group of Rand devotees called the Atlas Society, Ryan said that Rand was required reading for his office staff and interns. “The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand,” he told the group. “The fight we are in here, make no mistake about it, is a fight of individualism versus collectivism.” To me he was careful to point out that he rejects Rand’s atheism.

 

[binka]

since they could only get a series of clowns and oddballs to run for the nomination i imagine they struggled to get anyone decent to take the vp as well?

 

[YouSir]

Stupid politics from a stupid campaign - what's the point of ensuring you get the vote that you were going get anyway (tea party/fiscal conservatives/party libertarians etc) and sending the far more more numerous and far more crucial swing voters terrified of that madness as far from the republicans as possible.

New Yorker profile on Ryan:

Generally I credit at least some Republicans and their ilk with at least a measure of intelligence, just enough to survive the sinister world of politics if nothing else, but anyone who can read Atlas Shrugged and emerge thinking 'that's a cracking idea' really is a fucking idiot. Such a badly written, poorly thought out, slightly deranged book written by a woman with serious issues and people actually take it seriously, fucksake.

 

[agricola]

Generally I credit at least some Republicans and their ilk with at least a measure of intelligence, just enough to survive the sinister world of politics if nothing else, but anyone who can read Atlas Shrugged and emerge thinking 'that's a cracking idea' really is a fucking idiot. Such a badly written, poorly thought out, slightly deranged book written by a woman with serious issues and people actually take it seriously, fucksake.

If it helps, I doubt Ryan actually does believe any of that rot - if he did, you would think he wouldnt have spent his entire career in the Washington bubble.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

All the US media outlets seem to be suggesting Paul Ryan will be Romney's running mate.

You should have seen the royal rollout ABC gave him. They played music for the announcement reminicent of a coronation, complete with 3-D foldout graphics and a battleship in the background.

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

If it helps, I doubt Ryan actually does believe any of that rot - if he did, you would think he wouldnt have spent his entire career in the Washington bubble.

I hope he doesn't. If he tries to actually roll-out that budget plan you can guarantee a world-wide recession that'll make the last one look tame. They claim to have the lock on economics, but every time they put their policies in place its a disaster.