The Romney Campaign is Imploding

[Prospero]

Another view....

[buttslinger]

[QUOTE=onmyknees;120382Yet none of these facts deter you all from your blind loyality...which by the way is fine.....you'll vote for Barry if the unemployment is 15% (which in reality it is) because he's black, because he's smooth, because he's generational, because he's entertaining on Letterman, and hip.....again that's all fine, it's your prerogative as an American voter. What I find utterly disingenuous and downright intellectually dishonest when you come on here and try to defy facts and real life evidence that he's done a good job, or that the hill suddenly has been just to hard to climb. Judge him by his own promises and assurances, by his own words ....but Just be honest about your reasons for voting and I might have some respect for you. Slick Willie has proven to be a bit of a political sage when it comes to Barry. He is in fact a rank "Amateur". Deal with it....vote for him by all means, but don't bullshit me about the reasons.... It's comical in light of all the facts and the misery we're enduring on a daily basis.[/QUOTE]

Attacking your opponent for your own weaknesses is straight out of the Rove handbook, it brings the fight down to a schoolyard level, My Dad is better than your Dad.
But the porcine Karl isn't in the White House, He's doing color commentary over on Fox with Sarah Palin and Liz Cheney.
The smart money has already bailed on Romney. The true conservative journalists are skewering him. The Republicans in tight Senate races are dis-avowing him. You never hear anyone say what a fantastic President Williard would be, Not even on Fox. He's REALLY the best guy you could come up with!!?????? ha ha ha ha ha
If you really want to convince someone that Romney is The ONE, maybe you better go over to the Nascar site and not a Transgender site. Maybe you should just ignore the 47%ers over here.
Knees- admit what your buddies are thinking - Romney is a JOKE!!!!
He lost the Election when he wouldn't release his tax returns.

Romney is a convincing Debater, but he's got a handicap. He has to please the Fat Cats AND the White Trash. It's not going to be a rehearsed edited Sean Hannity interview. They're coaching him to answer questions about Women, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, George Bush, secret $50,000/plate dinners, Bain, Massachusetts, 14% taxes, Medicare, Romneycare, and all those other Lamestream Media Lies. I can hardly wait.

[BluegrassCat]

The facts are that Obama has a positive, though not stellar, record to run on. Brought the economy out of a tailspin and got the private sector growing, saved the American auto industry, ended the Iraq War, ended DADT, stopped enforcing DOMA, got Osama Bin Laden and vastly improved America's standing in the world. Has he fallen short in some areas? Of course, but in every case the failure was to be too conservative. The stimulus was too small, the bailout too one-sided in favor of big banks, his economic advisors too close to Wall St. So with Romney you get all the failures of Obama and none of the successes. Sounds like a great plan.

[Stavros]

From the Chicago Sun Times.. ( not Fox News, not the Wall Street Journal)



Media cover for Obama’s failures

Each new day seems to bring further evidence of the unremitting failure of President Barack Obama’s economic and foreign policies. Yet the presidential contest remains even, due in large part to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s failure to articulate a specific economic reform agenda and to the mainstream media’s obsession with what Obama-friendly commentators see as Romney’s gaffes.

The media narrative is Romney has had a bad couple of weeks with less-than-artful or ill-timed remarks about the growth of government dependency and Obama’s failed foreign policy. Still, Obama has had his own bad couple of weeks, on the economic front as well as abroad — though the media haven’t spotlighted it as they have with Romney.
New Census Bureau figures show median household income fell or was flat last year in 37 states — mirroring data released a week ago showing national median household income is down to mid-1990s levels. This drop came amid the Obama recovery, the weakest rebound from a recession in modern history.
Another report filled in details behind the nation’s persistently high unemployment, 43 months above 8 percent. Small businesses are a prime generator of jobs, yet fewer new firms are being established. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of startups peaked at 667,000 in 2006 and has declined ever since, reaching 548,000 in 2009 and dropping again to 505,000 in 2010, the first full year of the recovery.
“The state of entrepreneurship in the United States is, sadly, weaker than ever,” observes Tim Kane of the Hudson Institute who analyzed the numbers. He cites “anecdotal evidence that the U.S. policy environment has become inadvertently hostile to entrepreneurial employment.” That includes uncertainty over taxes and regulations, among them the looming new taxes and rules from ObamaCare.
Further fallout from ObamaCare: It will raise taxes on 6 million Americans for failing to meet its insurance mandate, reports the Congressional Budget Office. That’s 50 percent higher than the previous estimate. Most of that tax hike will fall on the middle class.
More evidence of the failure of Obama’s economic policies was the Federal Reserve’s announcement of a third round of “quantitative easing” — Fedspeak for printing money to boost Wall Street trading in hopes that will trickle down to more jobs. How effective it will be remains to be seen, but it will keep interest rates at near zero, a disheartening blow to seniors trying to live off their life savings. The Fed policy also will likely fuel commodity prices, meaning higher food and energy costs further eroding household budgets. That is, unless a possibly looming global downturn — meaning more unemployment — depresses oil prices.
The news is no better on foreign policy. Even the administration is backing away from U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s farcical claim that the wave of anti-American riots were a spontaneous reaction to an obscure Internet video. And Obama’s “reset” with Russia is faring no better than his outreach to the Muslim world. Moscow kicked out the U.S. Agency for International Development, which promotes democracy and human rights, claiming it meddles in Russian politics.
From the American kitchen table to the U.S. business environment to the unemployment line to the Arab street to Russian diplomacy, Obama’s policies have been a failure. Who wants four more years of that?


Yet none of these facts deter you all from your blind loyality...which by the way is fine.....you'll vote for Barry if the unemployment is 15% (which in reality it is) because he's black, because he's smooth, because he's generational, because he's entertaining on Letterman, and hip.....again that's all fine, it's your
prerogative as an American voter. What I find utterly disingenuous and downright intellectually dishonest when you come on here and try to defy facts and real life evidence that he's done a good job, or that the hill suddenly has been just to hard to climb. Judge him by his own promises and assurances, by his own words ....but Just be honest about your reasons for voting and I might have some respect for you. Slick Willie has proven to be a bit of a political sage when it comes to Barry. He is in fact a rank "Amateur". Deal with it....vote for him by all means, but don't bullshit me about the reasons.... It's comical in light of all the facts and the misery we're enduring on a daily basis.

I am not an American citizen so obviously I don't have a vote. I also don't have a problem with the opinion piece above, but think it could have been more objective in its assessment of Obama's record.

For example, median household income was falling before Obama came into office, and is part of a downward trend across the western industrialised world as it tries to compete with substantially lower labour costs in Asia. The low rate of small business start-ups may well be due to additional burdens on potential employers other than basic tax rates and wage commitments -but are Federal policies on tax and issues like environmental regulation, health and safety reimges, the only issues that make entrepreneurs nervous? The article doesn't say.

The article critices quantitative easing, but this is the policy that is being followed by the politically different British government, admittedly a coalition of Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats, but as the Chancellor is a Conservative with a big C, it would seem the policy of printing more money and holding interest rates low is not exclusive to the Obama administration -how different would it be under Romney?

A reminder again of the dire situation in 2008 when nobody knew if their bank was going to collapse taking their savings with it. In the UK when the Labour Government left office, the Chief Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne, left a note on his desk for his new replacement, Vince Cable. It read: Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there's no money left. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam.

Was it so different in the US when the Obama administration took office?

The policies followed by the Obama administation, not so different from the UK's, had the effect of stemming a tide of bank closures -the policy worked. If the US has not experienced stunning economic growth since then, and it is has performed better than the UK, the article could have mentioned the overall slow down in the world economy, especially in China.
Some things are not in control of the Federal government.

On Foreign Policy, the article could have looked deeper into what has been happening in Russia, where there are contradictory messages. On the one hand, the Russians still want foreign capital and technical expertise in industry to overhaul existing and create new industries, but on the other hand Putin clearly thinks the holiday from regulation that enabled the Oligarchs to become billionaires at the expense of the Russian people has ended. I think Putin wants a more controlled economy, but not a centrally planned one -as for human rights, the US lost its moral right to lecture other countries on human rights a long time ago. If history shows anything, it is that no foreign state gets very far when trying to impose itself on Russia. I wonder what would happen if Vladimir Putin started lecturing the US about human rights, interest rates, employment law, and its support for states it doesn't like?

Yes, Obama's administration has looked feeble and incoherent on the Middle East, but so has everyone else, including the Arabs who live there! The Arab Spring when it began seemed limited to Tunisia and Egypt, when it began to spread to Libya, the Yemen, Bahrain and now Syria, people began to realise we might be living through the most important phase of change in the region since -depending on your perspective- the 1950s nationalist revolutions, or even the creation of the modern Middle East after 1918. In which case there is much more left to come. Obama is in the same position as everyone else.

The single most important facet of US policy in the Middle East is to remain the principal agency for external change that the Arab states rely on: it is the US that has brokered the treaties between Israel and its Arab neighbours, in both cases through Democrat Presidents; it is the US that (like it or not) retains good relations with the key states of the region: Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Emirates; its relations with Egypt remain solid, notwithstanding the kind of vox populi that erupts with fury at a moment's notice; I don't know precisely how its relations with Iraq feel, but the hostility of earlier years has lessened, but is complicated by the influence of Iran in some areas of Iraqi politics. Syria's rejection front, established by Hafez al-Asad has produced absolutely nothing in real terms in 40 years -he was in command of he air force in 1967 when Israel annexed the Golan Heights (Jebel al-Awlan), and failed in his time in office as President to get back a single inch of it. Rejection, no compromise, call it what you want, has failed. The US is still preferred over other powers as an honest broker, in spite of all that has happened. I think that in view of the changes taking place in the region, that is an achievement.

As for the Arab Street erupting to the now infamous 'film' which turns out to be the incoherent rage of a partisan voice, none of that was in the control of the Federal government, or should the Fed have the right to veto everything a US citizen posts on YouTube? If you have the right of free speech, and it includes the right to abuse and insult people in as deliberate a manner as you can, does that make Obama responsible for what happens on the streets of Pakistan when they react accordingly?

Thus, the summary which reads:
From the American kitchen table to the U.S. business environment to the unemployment line to the Arab street to Russian diplomacy, Obama’s policies have been a failure. Who wants four more years of that?

Does not offer a meaningful context for the problems that the US economy has, symptomatic of the problems we have in the UK, and can be found across many parts of the world; it does not offer alternative policies; it also makes no serious mention of the Affordable American Health Care Act which may yet be ranked as legislation as profound as the Civil Rights Act.

Plus the insghts in Bluegrass Cat's more succinct defence above this post

[BluegrassCat]

#Winning

[robertlouis]

#Winning

Strikes me that the only women likely to vote for Romney are Stepford Barbies like his own wife.

It's partly GOP policy, but more their rhetoric, which is violently misogynistic and could take back the advances of sexual equality to the early years of the 20th century and the battle for women's suffrage.

Surely no thinking woman with any sense of self-worth could seriously contemplate voting for them.

[Ben]

I'm not entirely sure where Howard Stern stands politically.... Well, he's socially ultra liberal --

[Dino Velvet]

I'm not entirely sure where Howard Stern stands politically.... Well, he's socially ultra liberal --

Didn't he run for Governor as a Libertarian?

[Ben]

Didn't he run for Governor as a Libertarian?

Dino, you're right.... He did run under the Libertarian banner.

[Ben]

Reagan Warned Us About Mitt Romney: