Usa Thread

[BelgianBoy]

Sarah Silverman | Election 2012 - Voter Fraud

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRW5qoraTw

she's funny, and oh.... right

[robaus]

Sarah Silverman | Election 2012 - Voter Fraud

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypRW5qoraTw

 

Disturbing stuff. How could anyone support such conmen who disingenuously would cheat their own citizens out of their right to vote?

 

It just shows more contempt for the 47%.

[Steve]

Stats say that voter fraud in America is as likely as getting hit by lightening. Its that rare and in the vast majority of cases it isn't even true intentional fraud. Its things such as moving from one state to another and not properly securing the new state's citizenship, etc.

 

So we wonder why Blacks vote almost exclusively for the Democratic party. The Dems are far from perfect, some of the ideology is not good. However, the Republicans by far do the most odious things. Several key swing states which Romney needs and have a Republican secretary of state, are attempting to remove Johnson from the ballot because the Libertarian party will take votes from Romney moreso than Obama.

 

Where is the national Republican leadership? Why aren't they threatening and telling these officials to cut that shit out? Why not? Because these are the same leaders who have told the same state officials ways of making it hard for Ron Paul to win the state during the primary to ensure Romney won. Paul won Iowa and other states but was cheated out out of the win by the state Republican leadership.

 

Where is the religious right, fundamentals in all this. As we Christians like to say 'what would Jesus do?'. The religious part is silent. Hypocrites to the core. Call themselves Christians. Furthermore, they were willling to vote against Obama if they thought he was a moslem because he wouldn't have been a Christian but have no problem voting for a Mormon over a "fellow" Christian. These were the same pharisees Jesus drove out of the synagogues in his day.

 

I would be ashamed to be a member of the party these days. Truly rotten at the core.

[Flashermac]

Romney Can Still Overcome Obama's Dishonest, Divisive Campaign

 

 

The problem for Mitt Romney right now is that he has put his entire candidacy at risk to the point where he may not even qualify for the dismissive equation of Barack Obama that Marco Rubio formulated for the Republican faithful: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. Our problem is that he's a bad president." Is Romney also "not a bad person, just a bad candidate"? With his "47 percent" remarks at a Republican fundraiser in May, he has given his opponent evidence to initiate a new line of attack.

 

Voters can forgive a candidate who stumbles in the heat of an election, trapped by "gotcha" questions from journalists, being quoted out of context in cunning TV attack commercials, and in the Twitter age, failing to appreciate that nothing that is said is secret anymore. We all know the game, and Romney has demonstrated that he is not perfect at this game.

 

The same can be said of President Obama. As a candidate, he ran a brilliantly smooth and targeted campaign four years ago, but even he misspoke, as they say, in what he thought was a private meeting of San Francisco liberals. When the polls suggested he wasn't appealing to rural voters, his response was to blame them for not seeing how different he was from the likes of Bill Clinton and George Bush, who had let them down. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," he said. "It's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustration."

 

This week, Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, dismissed the condescension as something from the mythic past, not to be compared to the furor over Romney's "47 percent" remark. Yet even now, fully armored and protected by four years of 24/7 press scrutiny and an army of verbal bodyguards, the president stumbles. "You didn't build that" still rankles the millions of taxpayers who have concluded that in making their way they've not had much help from the government and a lot of hindrance.

 

The trouble with Romney—and for Romney—is that he has etched an unappealing sketch of himself. For independent voters, he made too many flip-flops in policy to appease the right. Indeed, he had an uncanny knack for offering an easy target for his opposition: "I like being able to fire people," "I'm also unemployed," "I'm not concerned about the very poor," and "Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs." He seems to be living in another world, referring to middle income as being in the range of "$200,000 to $250,000," when the median income is more like $50,000. By the way, after four years of Obama's economic stewardship, that figure represents a dramatic decline of 10 percent and, in fact, is a strong point to Romney's case against the administration.

 

Such careless remarks have made it easy for the Obama campaign to get away with a program that pits "the millionaires and billionaires" against the people. It is a dishonest, divisive campaign. It's discouraging of enterprise. It does the opposite of uniting the country to deal with the current economic crisis. The argument on taxes is not just about whether the super-rich should pay more, a reasonable position which I support in a country where income and equality disparities have become more glaring than they already were. It is about whether individuals, households, and small businesses should now be seen to cross the threshold into a plutocracy when earnings reach $250,000 a year—which buys much less in metropolitan areas than in the heartland. It is outrageous to infer that aspiring to reach such a level is somehow un-American, and the Obama campaign surely must know that. Shame on them if they don't!

 

Instead of making this part of his own case, Romney has exposed himself to the charge that he is out of touch, out of sympathy, and clueless about the lives of the mass of Americans. But there is this to be said for him: His gaffes until this bad week have not been policy gaffes. They are embarrassments rather than indications of incompetence.

He risks being portrayed as an unfeeling venture capitalist willing to overlook the poor, who are struggling in the dark of the Great Recession. Not to mention that someone so admiring of Israel may imperil his ability to help forge a durable Middle East settlement. Neither is true. In fairness, on peace in the Middle East, Romney just frankly recognizes how much Obama has made the Palestinians more obdurate and less willing to compromise than they have been. A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has Obama up by 50 to 45 percent among likely voters, suggesting that Romney's careless talk and the headlines that exacerbated his comment may have cost him support that he can't afford to lose.

 

The fact is that while there are a number of things wrong with his remarks, there are also a number of things right in his convictions about the economy and the Middle East (more on that on another occasion). Properly framed, he should keep on making them. First Romney has to acknowledge that yes, he did blunder by implying the 47 percent whom he saw as inclined to vote against him are just people who don't pay taxes or moochers who see themselves as victims, who think "government has a responsibility to care for them" and thus have no appetite for accepting their individual responsibilities. There is no way to duck this. Waffling will just make it worse.

 

Romney surely didn't mean to insult all those people who don't earn enough to be hit by federal income taxes but who take their responsibilities seriously, such as the elderly, the military, the disabled, and the millions devastated by the Great Recession, who month after month go on the heartbreaking search for work that is not there. It also is an insult to the vast majority of the 46 million people on food stamps, the 10.6 million drawing Social Security benefits, and the millions who are on disability.

 

He cannot hope to win the election if he leaves any doubt about this commitment to a safety net. It is fair to point out that when previously he said he was not concerned about the poor, he did point out that this was because of the Social Security safety net.

 

What Romney must do from now on with more conviction, more specifics, and more clarity is to outline just how he will get America back to work after four years of a demoralizing economy that, in American politics, is held to be the responsibility of the incumbent president. It is not enough to talk about creating 12 million new jobs in his first term, which is the common prediction of the likely course anyway. It's still "the economy, stupid" that matters, and Romney has time to spell out how he would hope to do much better than an administration fixated on government, deficits, and regulations. In a New York Times/CBS poll of likely voters surveyed from September 11-17 in Colorado, Virginia, and Wisconsin, respondents were asked, "Which comes closer to your opinion? The United States is more successful when the government emphasizes self-reliance and individual responsibility, or the United States is more successful when the government emphasizes community and shared responsibility?" Self-reliance was preferred by a few points in Colorado and in Wisconsin, and by 25 percentage points or more among Republicans. But—and here's the key—in all three states the majority of independents voted "self-reliance."

 

Romney's new language talks about appealing to the 100 percent. He will be doing well to reach 50 percent. But he still has a chance at reversing the weak position if he will go all out on the economy, discourage personal attacks on the president (who is well liked anyway), and always remember the injunction the British were faced with every day when World War II started, "Loose talk costs lives. Think before you talk."

 

My link

[Flashermac]

Biden on cheerleaders

 

Vice President Joe Biden may have stuck his foot in his mouth again on Friday, using an awkward off-the-cuff phrase to compliment high school cheerleaders during a campaign stop.

 

According to a pool report from Biden’s stop at Newport High School in Newport, N.H., the vice president arrived to talk to “about 100 students in their sports uniforms waiting for him in a semi-circle.â€

 

“He cradled a football under his arm as he spoke,†the pool report, written by The New York Times’ Trip Gabriel, reads. “He began by asking which teams were represented — football, soccer, lacrosse and cross-country. Any others? He asked. ‘Cheerleaders,’ a group of girls shouted.â€

 

“Guess what, the cheerleaders in college are the best athletes in college,†Biden said. “You think, I’m joking, they’re almost all gymnasts, the stuff they do on hard wood, it blows my mind.â€

 

My link

[Flashermac]

What happened to America's community spirit?

 

 

The secretly filmed video in which Mitt Romney appeared to disparage the 47% of Americans who do not pay income tax, was nothing compared to the harsh, divisive language used by some US politicians, radio hosts and bloggers. How did US politics become so polarised?

 

It was day one of our new life in America. I had arrived to take up my BBC reporting job and my wife and I were bringing our bags from the car. Our new neighbours showed up with cakes and soda. And a warning: "You'll want to re-park your car."

 

Eh? We had parked outside our picket-fenced new home and thought no more about it. But we had parked facing the opposite direction of traffic. This, in the capital city of the land of the free, is a violation. In Washington, you must park facing the same way as the cars are heading. It is safer, they reason, because you don't have cars nosing out into oncoming stream of vehicles. And my freedom? Fuggedaboutit.

 

America, a nation we associate with rugged individualism, is actually - at least in its suburban guise - a nation of rules and conformity, a nation of community spirit, enforced where necessary by law. You may not say and do what you like in America, whatever the constitution says. You are expected to play nice. And you are all - every American - "in this together".

So what on earth has gone wrong? Why did Mitt Romney tell those wealthy donors, in the secretly filmed interaction that leaked out this week, that nearly half the nation were of little interest to him?

 

Never mind the poor politics - how can that be American? It feels so utterly wrong. But Mr Romney was being pretty mild when you look at the totality of the hatred - and that is not too strong a word - that the political classes in modern America throw at each other.

 

A miserable example comes on my car radio. We are somewhere in the middle of Florida, driving through a tropical rainstorm and a voice is booming out telling me that his opponent in their local congressional race "has benefited personally" from the bank bailout scheme set up in the wake of the financial crisis, "and so has his family!" Basically he's accusing his opponent of being a thief.

 

And this bile matters. It has real consequences. It leads, in Congress, to deadlock. A nation beset with urgent issues to confront - of which the size of the national debt is probably the most serious - cannot find the cross-party consensus necessary to act.

 

So here is the big question - a bigger question, frankly, than who is going to win this presidential election... What went wrong? And how can it be fixed?

 

I have been hearing three theories from Americans from across the political spectrum.

 

At the end of that rain-soaked journey, I landed at the coastal home of the Florida-based writer and newspaper columnist Carl Hiaasen. He made an interesting point about the sheer number of sources of information on offer to the average American in the digital age. The TV of course, and the radio, but also from the net the blogs and the YouTube video and the snippets of half noticed opinion on Twitter and Facebook. A maelstrom of fact and opinion and sheer nonsense. All mixed up.

 

Hiaasen feels for his fellow citizens.

 

"The ability to twist and fabricate makes it so much more difficult to sort through what's true and not true. You need to dig twice as hard."

 

In these circumstances, no wonder many people defend themselves with the obvious human psychological defence mechanism - they believe what backs up what they already think and disregard the rest!

 

And more than that, they get angry that with all this so-called information that seems to them to back up their own views, how annoying is it that other folks do not see things the same way? The crush of "facts" actually reduces people's ability to see the other point of view.

 

Michael Slote, Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami, agrees. But he wonders as well if there is not a deeper issue - an issue that goes to the heart of what it really means to be an American.

 

He sees that community spirit I identified at the start of this piece as a diminishing quality of American-ness. In fact, he believes it was a recent aberration. The real America is a tougher place, a place where bullying politics is part of the scenery.

 

He is depressed by what he sees as a nation reverting to type after a period of gentleness - brought on originally by the Depression and the New Deal politics that came after it - which suggested to Americans that in good economic times they could afford to help each other out.

 

"There is less to go around now. Less room for compromise," he says. "But the hatreds are ideological as well. Some Americans don't see us as having basic obligations to our fellow citizens."

 

I hope they sort it out. When you talk to individuals here you meet so many who are public-spirited.

 

The conservative talk show host Joyce Kaufman - who has been in trouble before for incendiary comments about immigration and guns - claims, I think with real justification, to be a backer of all Americans at heart. Even if it went socialist? "Yep," she says. "I don't have to stay if I don't like it here."

 

And she has a sense of humour. As we were leaving after interviewing her she takes me to one side; "I want to be banned from Britain, then I will feel I have arrived!"

 

Now that is proper American talk.

 

My link

[unit731]

Romney Can Still Overcome Obama's Dishonest, Divisive Campaign

 

 

The problem for Mitt Romney right now is that he has put his entire candidacy at risk to the point where he may not even qualify for the dismissive equation of Barack Obama that Marco Rubio formulated for the Republican faithful: "Our problem is not that he's a bad person. Our problem is that he's a bad president." Is Romney also "not a bad person, just a bad candidate"? With his "47 percent" remarks at a Republican fundraiser in May, he has given his opponent evidence to initiate a new line of attack.

 

 

My link

 

 

Flawed analysis.

 

Well written. Some valid points. But the real reason that these middle roaders these so called undecided is not candidate Romney but the complete Republican format the complete Republican programs the complete Republican philosiphy and the complete Republican Convention Platform - it all flawed - it is completely out of touch - it is completely negative - a poorly laid out vision of America.

 

A philosophy that promotes a high distain for the poor, the disabled, the veterans, the underemployed.

 

A philosophy that promotes a high disdain for any that are on any type of government assistance whether fuel assistance for the poor or food stamps for those of low income. A view of these that insinuates "welfare cheats".

 

A philosopy that promotes a massive US military whose sole purpose is to guard US business interests and US commerce.

 

A philosopy that promotes zero government regulations on anything. A philosophy that states let business regulate itself.

 

A philosophy that promotes a Republican version of God

 

A philosophy mainly targeted for Caucasians with lip service for any others.

 

A flawed philosophy as to who or what is to pay for the services that the US government does provide.

 

All a flawed philosopy that those middle roaders - those undecided - are rejecting in larger numbers.

 

It is not the person but the entire Republican vision of America that is being rejected.

[Flashermac]

[kamui]

 

I have never heard of the this so 'German' proverb... Nevertheless it might be correct.

[Steve]

What gets me about the Republican party is the hypocracy. A social safety net is wrong for the poor or someone who has a run of bad luck but a corporation can file for bankruptcy protection and even be exonerated from legally binding agreements like a union contract and that is not a safety net? That isn't a government program by another name?

 

The fundamentals are another head scratcher. The Republican platform they embrace totally contradicts biblical teaching. Totally.

 

I am as disgusted by people abusing the social welfare system, etc. as anyone else. I am also no big fan of illegal immigration but the demonization is over the top. By that I mean, we're lied to that the reason we can't find a job or we pay higher taxes is because it goes to pay for these folks. Its PROVEN that corporate welfare costs far, far more than social welfare. I don't think I've ever lost a job to some latino illegal alien either.

 

Someone summed it up succintly once. Democrats are against certain institutions (big oil, etc.), Republicans are against cerain Americans. The party seems to want to only appeal to white males. I believe in a lot of the old Republican values but I don't feel like I would be accepted. Were I a 22yo again, poor but full of ambition and a willingness to work hard for whatever I got without asking for anything and I saw the present incarnation of the Republican party I wouldn't feel wanted. I know others who are the same. There is just this atmosphere of us against them. Also the blatant hypocracy. There is plenty not to like the Democratic party about. However, they seem like saints these days in comparison.