The Rachel Maddow Show - Romney's bane: Bain - YouTube
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I think he's Gordon Gekko.
He is.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimFusion
FBI Public Service Announcement with Michael Douglas on Insider Trading - YouTube
Gordon Gekko - "I create nothing, I own." - YouTube
Democrats and Bain
Executives at Romney's old private-equity firm have donated more to the Democratic Party than the GOP. Why?
http://www.salon.com/2012/05/21/demo...n_2/singleton/
An interesting film (documentary) about the heavily corrupt nature of Washington:
Casino Jack And The US of Money - Official Trailer [HD] - YouTube
Because they know Obama is going to win, silly! :dancing:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
Nah. Gekko only flip-flopped if it gave him an advantage.Quote:
Originally Posted by GrimFusion
Mitt, poor guy, just can't help it.
If money plays a significant role in buying electoral success, then an Obama win is less certain this time around. In 2008 the Democrats vastly outspent the Republicans.
Today's NYTimes reports that Romney and the GOP (since the Citizens First win at the Supreme Court) are now likely to match or outspend the Democrats with the growth of super PACS.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/us...sing-edge.html
In politics, the money tends to follow the likely winner. Do these guys know something that the rest of the world doesn't, or is this a case of political wishful thinking overwhelming logic?Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
Some of the coverae that Mr Romney has been getting in the UK Press.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...e-7778721.html
When Romney Messes Up and Tells the Truth About Austerity:
http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2...austerity.html
Good article Ben. Austerity is exactly what is exacerbating the recession in a lot of European countries. It depresses demand, resulting in layoffs and lower GDP. It will be interesting to see how Mitt Romney balances common sense about what fiscal policy we should use to get us out of a recession and the Republican hardline about balanced budgets. I don't know how we can balance the budget if we allow our economy to collapse.
......which is the downward spiral that the vulnerable Eurozone economies are in, because austerity as a single policy eliminates consumer confidence, reduces tax receipts and stifles growth. The US with its government driven stimulus is just about the only G8 country that has shown any worthwhile signs of recovery, no matter how weak and inconsistent they have been. I despair of the closed minds of our PM and his chancellor with their insistence that their way is the only way when all they are doing is driving us in the UK ever closer to a lengthy and uncertain recession.Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
And their approach is pretty much what Romney and the Republicans are recommending. You've been warned.
I agree with everything you say. And you touch on all the sound reasons that is the case. Yet it seems politically safer to do nothing. Our economic failures had everything to do with bad lending regulation, securitization of loans, irresponsible ratings agencies. The world is not in a recession because of sovereign debt, but rather that is the result of unsound banking practices.Quote:
Originally Posted by robertlouis
Yet I'm afraid it's tough to sell the neo-keynesian argument of how to deal with recession.
Broncofan, you should enjoy this:Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
The Business of Government is not Business - YouTube
Does Mitt Romney Understand Economics?
The GOP frontrunner's comments about Bain Capital suggest a shallow understanding of basic economics.
http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/3...tand-economics
Bilderberg 2012: were Mitt Romney and Bill Gates there?
Another conference over. Charlie Skelton talks to some of the 800 activists outside the gates to find out what they learned:
(This sorta borders on conspiracy kookiness but what the hell... ha ha! :))
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-n...?newsfeed=true
I was staying at the Bilderberg Hotel in Amsterdam around ten years ago when big guys in dark glasses and suits arrived and we were all moved immediately - almost like a forced evacuation - to other hotels nearby. The Bilderberg conference was in town. I don't know if it always happens like that, but I'll always remember the arrogance and fuck you attitude both of those attending and their minions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
It's what power does Robert. i was in Beijing and took time out from work to visit the Forbidden City. A Chinese VIP arrived with guys in dark suits and dark glasses and they literally pushed tourists out of the way to allow their VIP through.
He should maybe come out as a no tax guy -- :) Ya know, simply say: I believe in perfect capitalism. Meaning: no taxes.
That would completely change the discourse of the presidential campaign.
But he does believe in government. He believes in government that serves the interests of the top 0.01 percent.
A government that serves the super-rich is a government that works well. (And, too, a lot believe that government should run and operate like the so-called free market. Meaning: you should be able to buy your government. I mean, if you're a billionaire why can't you buy the government that you want? I mean, I thought America is a free market paradise. So, why should government be excluded from the free market. You know, elections and so-called democracy go AGAINST free market capitalist orthodoxy. It's absurd that the mega rich can't just buy their government.)
Harry Reid is Right to Question Mitt Romney's Taxes - YouTube
Great piece about Mormonism in the very latest New Yorker. Key point is what a perfect fit it is for the American right... with its uniquely American series of revelations. According to the Mormons Jesus even stopped off in America before heading home to be with God the father.
Reviving the 'Birther' controversy in Michigan; but has Romney proved he was born in the USA?
Romney says he was never asked about his birth certificate - YouTube
Not entirely sure if Mitt is a moderate anymore. He seems to have embraced the far right positions of his ol' Party....
Mitt Romney Flip Flops AGAIN on Birth Control & Abortion - YouTube
Romney and Trickle Down Economics:
Romney and Trickle Down Economics - YouTube
Glenn Hubbard, a key economic adviser to Romney, talks about economic growth....
As the Canadian scientist David Suzuki points out: "... this constant demand for growth is suicidal."
But corporations, because of their legal responsibilities, need to keep growing and growing and growing.
You simply cannot have INFINITE growth on a FINITE planet.
The End of the world! - YouTube
David Suzuki Talks Biodiversity - YouTube
Samething that happened to McCain in 08.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ben
no no no....don't touch me!!! he he
Ann Romney donated money to Planned Parenthood in the past, Romney believes whatever they tell him to believe.
Bain’s secret bailout
Rolling Stone reveals the government deal that saved Mitt Romney's career:
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/bain...nment_bailout/
If Romney Is Leading In 2 Weeks He'll Probably Win Election:
If Romney Is Leading In 2 Weeks He'll Probably Win Election - YouTube
Things are bad here in the UK with our austerity plan, it bogles my mind that some Americans want to follow suit. With Romneys views on Russia, WW3 doesn't look that far away......Quote:
Originally Posted by broncofan
How Mitt Dodged the Draft
by H. BRUCE FRANKLIN
May 1966. Mitt Romney is just finishing his first—and only—year at Stanford. I’m a 32-year-old ex-Strategic Air Command navigator and intelligence officer, now an associate professor in Stanford’s English Department and something of an anti-Vietnam War activist.
About a quarter of a million young American men are already being abducted each year to fight the rapidly-escalating Vietnam War. Many college students, however, are protected by their 2S student deferments, which blatantly discriminate against all those millions of other young men unable to afford college. As if this privileging of the relatively privileged were not sufficient, an outcry about “inequity” arises from administrations of some elite universities. Since the 2S deferment is contingent on relatively high class rank (meaning, of course, academic class rank), they argue that this unfairly discriminates against some of the “best” students, i. e., all those attending schools like Stanford. A man in the bottom quarter at an elite university might end up being drafted, even though he might be more “intelligent” than a man in the top quarter of some state college.
To address such claims of injustice, the Selective Service was rolling out that month the College Qualification Test, a.k.a. the Selective Service Examination, an “objective” assessment of each test taker’s verbal and mathematical skills, to be used by local draft boards, together with college grades and class rank, to determine who was entitled to that precious 2S deferment and who should be shipped off to Vietnam. But this deferment test actually spotlighted the true inequities of the draft. It also offered an opportunity for direct action against the war itself, right on the college campus.
One of the many myths that have buried the true history of the Vietnam War is that the anti-war movement was motivated by selfish desire, especially among college students, to avoid the draft (a view that conveniently ignores the movement’s throngs of female participants, whose gender automatically exempted them from the draft). Quite to the contrary, students demonstrating against the draft deferment tests were specifically undermining and targeting their own privileges and exemptions, which, as they passionately argued, came at the expense of poor and working class people. At Stanford, a number of people actually disrupted the test. The young men involved thus proved that their goal was not to avoid the draft but to end it, since they had been explicitly warned that their actions would jeopardize their own deferments. When students filed in to take the Selective Service test, other demonstrators handed them the SDS “alternative test” on the history of U.S.-Vietnam relations. About ninety students organized a sit-in in the President’s office. In a manifesto issued from the sit-in they denounced their own privileged status: “We oppose the administration of the Selective Service Examination . . . because it discriminates against those who by virtue of economic deprivation are at a severe disadvantage in taking such a test. . . . [The] less privileged, Negroes, Spanish-Americans, and poor whites, must fight a war in the name of principles such as freedom and equality of opportunity which their own nation has denied them.” “Conscription,” they declared, has throughout American history “invariably been biased in favor of the wealthy and privileged.”
Enter young Mitt Romney, right on cue, waving a sign denouncing the anti-war students. He, like his fellow almost all-male participants in this pro-war demonstration, fervently argued in support of the war and the draft. But not, of course, for himself.
When Mitt enrolled at Stanford back in the spring of 1965, the official and overt U.S. war (as distinct from the previous forms of proxy, clandestine, and “adviser” warfare waged in Vietnam for more than a decade) had just begun. Operation Rolling Thunder, the sustained U.S. bombing of the north, had started on March 2. The first officially acknowledged U.S. combat units were the Marines who went ashore at Da Nang on March 8 (joining the 24,000 U.S. military personnel already fighting in Vietnam). Draftees were not yet being used in combat. So Mitt and his dad clearly intended the fall of 1965 to be the beginning of a fine four-year career at Stanford for the young man. But Mitt’s last month as a Stanford student was May 1966. Why?
Although the Selective Service Exam radically reduced the chances of college men, especially those with the test-taking skills of most Stanford students, to be conscripted into the Vietnam War, it was no guarantee of long-lasting deferment. There were other, surer, escapes from the Vietnam nightmare. One of the very best was the ministry. In 1966, young men flooded into divinity schools, embarking on careers to be ministers, priests, and rabbis. The Mormons had an even better deal than most religions, because The Church of Latter-Day Saints required each and every one of its young men to become, for at least two years, a “minister of religion.” Thus all Mormon young men could claim deferments as ministers. When the inequity of this arrangement became too blatant, the Selective Service entered into an agreement with the LDS that required the church to specify just one “minister” for each geographical district. Since there were relatively few Mormons in Michigan, and Governor George Romney had considerable influence in the church, Mitt quickly received an official appointment as a Mormon “minister of religion,” consecrated by a draft deferment from the Selective Service. So instead of returning to Stanford, Mitt went off to become a Mormon missionary in France, where he would spend the next two and a half years—while Vietnam became a slaughterhouse for the Vietnamese and many Americans drafted to slaughter them.
So who says that Mitt Romney is inconsistent? After all, what may have been his first recorded public political act was supporting the draft for ordinary Americans, forcing them to participate in a war waged in the interest of his own class.
H. Bruce Franklin is the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University.
Is there really a difference between, say, Romney and Bill Clinton?
We demonize Romney for making boatloads of cash. But then seem to praise Clinton.
However, Billy Boy is makin' boatloads of cash for, um, speaking.... Actually, it's payments by bankers for a job well done as President. Ya know, put in place policies that harm the 99 percent... and really enrich the 0.01 percent. Much like Romney did when he was orchestrating corporate policies at Bain. So, is there a difference between these two:
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/07/03/po...ees/index.html
Kindness may be the measure of Humanity, but you can measure somebody's cash value down to point zero zero dollars.
Mitt's a good son, good husband, father, has lots of republican friends and does lots of work for the Mormon Church.
But as a politician he signs what Grover Norquist puts in front of him and says what Peggy Noonan writes for him. The only reason he's running is because Big GOP Money decided he was the least offensive of the Republican Stable.
The USA isn't number one because we're all sweethearts, the USA has the greatest economy because we flattened every city in Germany anf Japan and then made friends with them. Kinda.
THE law of nature says the big fish swallow the little fish. So does the law of money. There's another fixed Law of the Universe:
There are no janitors in the republican party.
Bill Clinton:
The Great Deregulator:
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/...ator_20120910/