![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
"The reason is quite simple. I have some depth to my ideas."
—Herman Cain, on why he would have a substantial lead if he were running against Barack Obama
I don't think so. But could he beat Romney? I have two fundamental problems with the RNC at the moment, ignoring all the little things like gay rights, women's reproductive rights, etc. Ignoring all of that. Romney keeps saying that he can fix the economy by closing loopholes and cutting taxes. But he won't say what he's gong to do. It's all "Trust me!" with a big smile on his face. 'Elect me and I'll fix everything, but IT'S A BIG SURPRISE! You don't want to have the surprise spoiled for you, do you? Of course not! So put me in the White House!'
I just don't understand how he could think he can run an election without revealing specifics. Ryan was a good pick because he adds a lot of charisma to the campaign, something that Mitt sorely lacks. Mitt is clinically unable to connect with common people, he's utterly lacking in empathy for those beneath his station. Ryan, he has a whole other set of problems, mainly his voting record past. Maybe Mitt's foot-in-mouth disease is contagious and Ryan caught it, or perhaps it's spread through the entire political system.
The second problem that I have with the RNC is they won't admit that for eight years they torpedoed the economy by letting Bush pay for two wars on the country's credit card, and now they stymie any attempt of Obama's to fix it and blame the continued slow growth on him. All traces of working across the aisle have gone away and nothing is going to get done until one party controls both Congress and the Presidency. I don't know if the Republicans in Congress are in denial or just afraid to admit that they're part of the problem, probably some measure of both.
Everyone talks about how Ronald Reagan would be called a RINO these days (Republican In Name Only). They don't talk about, or at least not often, the fact that he raised taxes eight times after cutting them. He had a plan: tax cuts along with spending cuts, and it potentially might have worked. But he got the carrot of tax cuts passed before the stick of spending cuts, and he had real problems that necessitated tax hikes. I am extremely confident that Romney didn't learn that lesson and tax cuts will pass but those pesky tax loopholes won't get closed and we'll go over the cliff with the foot all the way down on the peddle.
Absolutely there are tax loopholes that should be closed. But there are so many of them, and so many people benefit from different loopholes, that it's going to be a heck of a juggling act. Corporate taxes really need to be reformed so that companies like GE, HP, Microsoft, Google, etc., properly pay their taxes here. Just last week HP and Microsoft were slammed in Congress for using tax dodges to reduce their American tax burden. But wait -- doesn't Wall Street and the mechanisms of stocks and being publicly traded mean that the company must maximize shareholder returns? So doesn't minimizing tax burden dovetail nicely with maximized returns? There's a slight ethics problem there.
I am very thankful for that smartphone-owning bartender at Mitt's private fundraiser that documented that 47% gaff. It shows his disconnect and lack of qualification to be President, and shows the general public what his real opinions are.
Jon Huntsman repeatedly stressed that banks should be broken up, they fought for decades to defeat the Glass-Stegal Act and finally won, and now look where we are. The banks are so deeply tied in to the government that if the banks succeed at some risky venture, they win. If they fail at said risky venture, they get bailed out and the taxpayers lose. That is an incredibly sweet deal. And it's the absolute text-book definition of capitalism and market Darwinism where the failures get winnowed-out of the business gene pool. [/sarcasm]
I don't think a majority of Americans realize how deeply screwed this country is.
One last thing that I found quite interesting. There's a recent article in New york Magazine by Frank Rich called My Embed In Red. He spent a week getting all of his news from Republican news sources: Fox News, Rush, Savage, etc. And he did it during the RNC convention. And he noticed a big disconnect between Republicans at large and the coalition of Fox News and Romney's campaign. And I use the word coalition unreservedly: many of Romney's top people are also paid Fox employees. A lot of people don't think that Romney/Fox represent their viewpoints. They don't like Obama, but they also feel that their views were excluded from the RNC convention. Look at what the convention did to Ron Paul, then think about all the votes that he got. It looks like Romney is representing a minority of the Republican party, but because of Citizen's United, they have such a loud voice because of their money that the rest of the Republicans are being ignored. It's going to be interesting to see how many Republicans don't vote for Romney. Everyone says that the election boils down to the eight swing states, and that all the other states are locked for one candidate or the other. But what if enough Republicans are feeling disenfranchised enough to not vote for Romney that some of these states flip? Currently enough of those swing states are polling for Obama that Romney has lost the election, but we're still over a month out, so that could change. I think if Obama plays a conservative (as opposed to risky) strategy, he has it sewn up.
One last comment for this ridiculously-long blather. We didn't get to see the two party's conventions or highlights because we've been quasi-homeless for the last month: lightning struck a tree behind our house and drove a 25' chunk of pine through our roof, so we missed it. But one comment that I've heard is that based on the televised coverage of the conventions, the RNC was a white-washed meeting whereas the Democratic convention actually looked like a representation of the racial makeup of America. Non-Caucasian people are the reality of America, politicians had better get it through their heads. I lived in a city that Caucasians were a minority, and I have to say that overall, it was a nicer, more pleasant, place than the Caucasian-majority places that I've been.
—Herman Cain, on why he would have a substantial lead if he were running against Barack Obama
I don't think so. But could he beat Romney? I have two fundamental problems with the RNC at the moment, ignoring all the little things like gay rights, women's reproductive rights, etc. Ignoring all of that. Romney keeps saying that he can fix the economy by closing loopholes and cutting taxes. But he won't say what he's gong to do. It's all "Trust me!" with a big smile on his face. 'Elect me and I'll fix everything, but IT'S A BIG SURPRISE! You don't want to have the surprise spoiled for you, do you? Of course not! So put me in the White House!'
I just don't understand how he could think he can run an election without revealing specifics. Ryan was a good pick because he adds a lot of charisma to the campaign, something that Mitt sorely lacks. Mitt is clinically unable to connect with common people, he's utterly lacking in empathy for those beneath his station. Ryan, he has a whole other set of problems, mainly his voting record past. Maybe Mitt's foot-in-mouth disease is contagious and Ryan caught it, or perhaps it's spread through the entire political system.
The second problem that I have with the RNC is they won't admit that for eight years they torpedoed the economy by letting Bush pay for two wars on the country's credit card, and now they stymie any attempt of Obama's to fix it and blame the continued slow growth on him. All traces of working across the aisle have gone away and nothing is going to get done until one party controls both Congress and the Presidency. I don't know if the Republicans in Congress are in denial or just afraid to admit that they're part of the problem, probably some measure of both.
Everyone talks about how Ronald Reagan would be called a RINO these days (Republican In Name Only). They don't talk about, or at least not often, the fact that he raised taxes eight times after cutting them. He had a plan: tax cuts along with spending cuts, and it potentially might have worked. But he got the carrot of tax cuts passed before the stick of spending cuts, and he had real problems that necessitated tax hikes. I am extremely confident that Romney didn't learn that lesson and tax cuts will pass but those pesky tax loopholes won't get closed and we'll go over the cliff with the foot all the way down on the peddle.
Absolutely there are tax loopholes that should be closed. But there are so many of them, and so many people benefit from different loopholes, that it's going to be a heck of a juggling act. Corporate taxes really need to be reformed so that companies like GE, HP, Microsoft, Google, etc., properly pay their taxes here. Just last week HP and Microsoft were slammed in Congress for using tax dodges to reduce their American tax burden. But wait -- doesn't Wall Street and the mechanisms of stocks and being publicly traded mean that the company must maximize shareholder returns? So doesn't minimizing tax burden dovetail nicely with maximized returns? There's a slight ethics problem there.
I am very thankful for that smartphone-owning bartender at Mitt's private fundraiser that documented that 47% gaff. It shows his disconnect and lack of qualification to be President, and shows the general public what his real opinions are.
Jon Huntsman repeatedly stressed that banks should be broken up, they fought for decades to defeat the Glass-Stegal Act and finally won, and now look where we are. The banks are so deeply tied in to the government that if the banks succeed at some risky venture, they win. If they fail at said risky venture, they get bailed out and the taxpayers lose. That is an incredibly sweet deal. And it's the absolute text-book definition of capitalism and market Darwinism where the failures get winnowed-out of the business gene pool. [/sarcasm]
I don't think a majority of Americans realize how deeply screwed this country is.
One last thing that I found quite interesting. There's a recent article in New york Magazine by Frank Rich called My Embed In Red. He spent a week getting all of his news from Republican news sources: Fox News, Rush, Savage, etc. And he did it during the RNC convention. And he noticed a big disconnect between Republicans at large and the coalition of Fox News and Romney's campaign. And I use the word coalition unreservedly: many of Romney's top people are also paid Fox employees. A lot of people don't think that Romney/Fox represent their viewpoints. They don't like Obama, but they also feel that their views were excluded from the RNC convention. Look at what the convention did to Ron Paul, then think about all the votes that he got. It looks like Romney is representing a minority of the Republican party, but because of Citizen's United, they have such a loud voice because of their money that the rest of the Republicans are being ignored. It's going to be interesting to see how many Republicans don't vote for Romney. Everyone says that the election boils down to the eight swing states, and that all the other states are locked for one candidate or the other. But what if enough Republicans are feeling disenfranchised enough to not vote for Romney that some of these states flip? Currently enough of those swing states are polling for Obama that Romney has lost the election, but we're still over a month out, so that could change. I think if Obama plays a conservative (as opposed to risky) strategy, he has it sewn up.
One last comment for this ridiculously-long blather. We didn't get to see the two party's conventions or highlights because we've been quasi-homeless for the last month: lightning struck a tree behind our house and drove a 25' chunk of pine through our roof, so we missed it. But one comment that I've heard is that based on the televised coverage of the conventions, the RNC was a white-washed meeting whereas the Democratic convention actually looked like a representation of the racial makeup of America. Non-Caucasian people are the reality of America, politicians had better get it through their heads. I lived in a city that Caucasians were a minority, and I have to say that overall, it was a nicer, more pleasant, place than the Caucasian-majority places that I've been.
