Is there anyone on the Republican side running for President who is not overly religious? One of the things I like about Obama is that religion has no place in his policy decisions. At least none that I can see. Every Republican I see in the running sounds like an evangelical to me.
I'm still registered to vote as a Republican (no open primaries up here) but there is no one to vote FOR.
I wish I could vote Democratic in November but Hillary is not running and Obama reminds me too much of an arrogant dictator who just acts knowing that any court challenges will never catch up to him.
I will do what I did last time, probably. Vote for who I want to be President, and then write the Republican's name in for our local Coroner, who is also up for reelection.
Obama still does religion theater. He might not be overt about it on the job, but he's showy about it for public opinion.
Yeah, but that's just an unfortunate side-effect of living in a nation so backwards about its concepts of morality that the majority believes that if a person doesn't express faith in a deity, preferably through an organized religion involving Jesus Christ as the Son of God, then that person is most likely a completely amoral deviant.
It'll take at least until the death of the last Baby Boomer to start overcoming that line of thought.
What's the deal with Huntsman? I forgot about him until I just heard about him on NPR.
He's polling in single digits right now, but that could be because he hasn't launched into the campaign media blitz just yet. He called out the Iowa Caucus as a meaningless GOP echo chamber circlejerk, and declined to participate. It remains to be seen whether or not he'll bounce back, or if whatever his campaign is doing with their free time can push him forward towards Mr. Romney and Rick "Frothy" Santorum.
What's the deal with Huntsman? I forgot about him until I just heard about him on NPR.
He's polling in single digits right now, but that could be because he hasn't launched into the campaign media blitz just yet. He called out the Iowa Caucus as a meaningless GOP echo chamber circlejerk, and declined to participate. It remains to be seen whether or not he'll bounce back, or if whatever his campaign is doing with their free time can push him forward towards Mr. Romney and Rick "Frothy" Santorum.
I take comfort that Santorum's track record of bat-shit loco will catch up with him and prevent him from actually being electable. Romney has the best chance right now. If Huntsman is smart, he'll pull an Obama and wait until later in the game to start a media campaign.
Almost every problem in America today has arisen from the baby boomers not dying fast enough. The fake tough guy act that informs all of their opinions is them trying to live up to the memory of their parents from the greatest generation. They have deep-seated inferiority complexes from growing up with the legends of the great World War 2, and thinking all their lives that they could never measure up.
What's the deal with Huntsman? I forgot about him until I just heard about him on NPR.
He's polling in single digits right now, but that could be because he hasn't launched into the campaign media blitz just yet. He called out the Iowa Caucus as a meaningless GOP echo chamber circlejerk, and declined to participate. It remains to be seen whether or not he'll bounce back, or if whatever his campaign is doing with their free time can push him forward towards Mr. Romney and Rick "Frothy" Santorum.
I take comfort that Santorum's track record of bat-shit loco will catch up with him and prevent him from actually being electable. Romney has the best chance right now. If Huntsman is smart, he'll pull an Obama and wait until later in the game to start a media campaign.
But if they nominate him, they will have a chance of being ELECTABLE!
Was just checking Google news for Huntsman. The hot words under elections still have Cain and Bachmann but no Huntsman... unless he is the "postal worker" at the bottom of the list!
Romney doesn't understand that the left and Democrats do not resent success. Believing that corporations and the ludicrously wealthy should pay a bigger share of the taxes that they mostly dodge or find loopholes in is a resentment of people who achieve success by cheating the system.
Is there a website with details on all of the leveraged buyouts Bain was involved in while Romney worked there? I keep hearing "vulture capitalism" being bandied about but doesn't that imply that the companies in question were already dead?
I'm curious to see what state each company was in before they got involved and how it looked after.
It's funny, Tim Tebow came up on the sports talk radio station as I was in the car with my dad a couple days ago and I said something to the effect of "If Tim Tebow was a Muslim, people would be freaking out over him"
I'm less of a fan of Activist investors, my company got seriously screwed up in the last year, when we went to buy another company and some activist investors jumped in and killed the deal threatening to oust our CEO. They then said that they would interfere till the stock hit a certain amount and then sell. Soo instead of buying this other company and expanding, we had large layoffs. The stock went up enough from this that the activist investors jumped ship (haven't made their short term gains) and our company has been having issues ever since and has slowly recovered though a lot of good people lost their jobs. My CEO was lamenting to us that if he knew this was going to happen he would have never gone Public.
So 3 dudes jumped in played with a company and fucked up about 9,000 employees lives and lost about a 1,000 people their jobs.
I'm less of a fan of Activist investors, my company got seriously screwed up in the last year, when we went to buy another company and some activist investors jumped in and killed the deal threatening to oust our CEO. They then said that they would interfere till the stock hit a certain amount and then sell. Soo instead of buying this other company and expanding, we had large layoffs. The stock went up enough from this that the activist investors jumped ship (haven't made their short term gains) and our company has been having issues ever since and has slowly recovered though a lot of good people lost their jobs. My CEO was lamenting to us that if he knew this was going to happen he would have never gone Public.
So 3 dudes jumped in played with a company and fucked up about 9,000 employees lives and lost about a 1,000 people their jobs.
Many such people have convinced themselves, "if it's legal, it's not immoral". Capitalism is an economic system, but some had made it their whole ideology, if not their religion.
I heard a really, really good discussion about the entire Bain management thing on NPR this morning as I was doing things. I like the summary that one guy did:
Basically, when Romney was in Bain he wasn't in it to create jobs. If he did create jobs, that was completely coincidental to what he was doing. His primary goal was to make money for private investors. You can compare this to what Obama tried to do in saving the auto industry, where Obama's primary goal was to create decent paying jobs.
So really, Romney's record at Bain isn't really worth considering. It's not a good measurement of what the dude can do if he wants to create jobs, but is only useful at showing how he can make money. I don't really think someone's ability to make money is worth considering when they're trying to win the president's big fluffy chair.
Also, I'd be incredibly surprised if you can attribute job creation/destruction while at Bain to Romney. There are so many other factors going into whether a company makes it or fails that it's not even funny.
A better thing to concentrate on is his record while governor.
I listened to the same show on NPR this morning but I still want to know what companies he was involved in and what their status was before and after his involvement.
Think of it this way: Your rich uncle is in the hospital with some ailment. Who you call in depends on how sick he is. If he is not likely to survive you call in an estate planner, if he is likely to survive you call in medical specialists. In the case of Bain were they selling themselves as estate planners or medical specialists? Were they there to help put life back into the body (business) or to see who could best use the viable organs (assets) left in the body after death?
There is nothing wrong with being an estate planner. The problem is if he were selling his services as a medical specialist while insuring the patient dies so that he can then turn around and profit off of the organs.
Who do you blame? The asshole investors or your idiotic management?
I don't really blame any of the above people. Our system is made to work this way, we are just getting really good at exploiting the system for short term gain. I'd rather it not work this way but it does. I'm sure there are activist investors who work the opposite way, use their stock purchases to move a company in a more positive direction. It's really the mindset of "Get as much as you can, as quick without care of the consequences" that's really the problem. All of these other things are just tools that are misused.
Fair enough. I can see wanting to know his record, as it might better demonstrate some of his qualities or failings.
I do not have information on Bain further than what a quick Google search would turn up. From what I understand, the press has had a hard time finding concrete numbers.
While I'm thinking about it, what are everyone's thoughts on Romney's idea that you can fire a bad insurance company?
I read a counterpoint to that argument that basically said that you can't really know you have a terrible insurance company until something terrible happens to you and they deny coverage or some shit like that. Then you're stuck with that company because you'll have a pre-existing condition and no other insurance company will touch you. Also most of us get coverage from our employer and therefore cannot fire our insurance company, even if we wanted to.
I've been thinking about the "fire your insurance company" line (and the horrible out of context reaction to it) a lot lately. I'll need a half hour and a keyboard to answer. Not going to try answering that on my phone.
Comments
I'm still registered to vote as a Republican (no open primaries up here) but there is no one to vote FOR.
I wish I could vote Democratic in November but Hillary is not running and Obama reminds me too much of an arrogant dictator who just acts knowing that any court challenges will never catch up to him.
It'll take at least until the death of the last Baby Boomer to start overcoming that line of thought.
Almost every problem in America today has arisen from the baby boomers not dying fast enough. The fake tough guy act that informs all of their opinions is them trying to live up to the memory of their parents from the greatest generation. They have deep-seated inferiority complexes from growing up with the legends of the great World War 2, and thinking all their lives that they could never measure up.
Really, you just can't make this stuff up.
Does this mean that republicans are going to come out against smaller government? I mean this has been the tread for the last 3 years.
What if Tim Tebow were Muslim?
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/what_if_tim_tebow_were_muslim/singleton/
I'm curious to see what state each company was in before they got involved and how it looked after.
So 3 dudes jumped in played with a company and fucked up about 9,000 employees lives and lost about a 1,000 people their jobs.
Basically, when Romney was in Bain he wasn't in it to create jobs. If he did create jobs, that was completely coincidental to what he was doing. His primary goal was to make money for private investors. You can compare this to what Obama tried to do in saving the auto industry, where Obama's primary goal was to create decent paying jobs.
So really, Romney's record at Bain isn't really worth considering. It's not a good measurement of what the dude can do if he wants to create jobs, but is only useful at showing how he can make money. I don't really think someone's ability to make money is worth considering when they're trying to win the president's big fluffy chair.
Also, I'd be incredibly surprised if you can attribute job creation/destruction while at Bain to Romney. There are so many other factors going into whether a company makes it or fails that it's not even funny.
A better thing to concentrate on is his record while governor.
Think of it this way: Your rich uncle is in the hospital with some ailment. Who you call in depends on how sick he is. If he is not likely to survive you call in an estate planner, if he is likely to survive you call in medical specialists. In the case of Bain were they selling themselves as estate planners or medical specialists? Were they there to help put life back into the body (business) or to see who could best use the viable organs (assets) left in the body after death?
There is nothing wrong with being an estate planner. The problem is if he were selling his services as a medical specialist while insuring the patient dies so that he can then turn around and profit off of the organs.
I do not have information on Bain further than what a quick Google search would turn up. From what I understand, the press has had a hard time finding concrete numbers.
While I'm thinking about it, what are everyone's thoughts on Romney's idea that you can fire a bad insurance company?
I read a counterpoint to that argument that basically said that you can't really know you have a terrible insurance company until something terrible happens to you and they deny coverage or some shit like that. Then you're stuck with that company because you'll have a pre-existing condition and no other insurance company will touch you. Also most of us get coverage from our employer and therefore cannot fire our insurance company, even if we wanted to.