Hissyspit
Hissyspit's JournalRomney's "47 Percent" Remarks Damage His Image with Voters: Reuters/Ipsos Poll
Source: Reuters
Romney's "47 percent" remarks damage his image with voters: Reuters/Ipsos poll
By Patricia Zengerle
Wed Sep 19, 2012 5:31pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's dismissal of almost half the U.S. electorate in a secretly recorded video has hurt his image, although it may not determine how people vote on November 6.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Wednesday showed that more than two in five registered voters, or 43 percent, viewed Romney less favorably after an excerpt of the video was shown to them online.
In the video, Romney portrayed Democratic President Barack Obama's supporters - which he said was 47 percent of the electorate - as people who live off government handouts and do not "care for their lives."
Nearly six in ten, or 59 percent, in the poll said they felt Romney unfairly dismissed almost half of Americans as victims in his remarks made to donors in May at a private event at a luxury home in Florida.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE88I1E920120919?irpc=932
538: Obama’s Lead Looks Stronger in Polls That Include Cellphones
Source: New York Times
September 19, 2012, 5:24 PM
Obama’s Lead Looks Stronger in Polls That Include Cellphones
By NATE SILVER
As I observed on Tuesday, and as The New Republic’s Nate Cohn also found, Barack Obama seems to have received a much clearer bounce in some types of polls than others.
Although there are exceptions on either side, like the Gallup national tracking poll, for the most part Mr. Obama seems to be getting stronger results in polls that use live interviewers and that include cellphones in their samples — enough to suggest that he has a clear advantage in the race.
In the polls that use an automated dialing method (“robopolls”) or which exclude cellphones, Mr. Obama’s bounce has been much harder to discern, and the race looks considerably closer.
The difference seems especially pronounced at the state level. Mr. Obama got very strong results in a series of NBC News/Marist College polls last week in Ohio, Florida and Virginia, which included cellphones and used live interviewers. Likewise, Tuesday morning’s series of New York Times / CBS News / Quinnipiac polls had reasonably good news for Mr. Obama in Virginia and Wisconsin.
Read more: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/obamas-lead-looks-stronger-in-polls-that-include-cellphones
Italy Court Upholds "Rendition" Convictions on Ex-CIA Agents
Source: Reuters
Italy court upholds "rendition" convictions on ex-CIA agents
ROME | Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:12pm EDT
By Naomi O'Leary
ROME (Reuters) - Italy's highest court on Wednesday upheld guilty verdicts on 23 Americans for the kidnapping of an Egyptian Muslim cleric, in the first criminal convictions for CIA "rendition" flights during the U.S. 'war on terror'.
The Americans - 22 CIA agents and one Air Force pilot - who are believed to be in the United States and were tried in their absence - are unlikely to serve their sentences. But they will be unable to travel to Europe without risking arrest.
Italy has never requested their extradition.
All of the Americans were sentenced to seven years' jail by a lower court except former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, who was handed a nine-year sentence. The decision was given to journalists by a court official.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE88I13320120919
"None of Them Will Ever Know Hunger, or Financial Fear... Yet They Are Full of Resentment."
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2012093818/radical-rich-romney-re-occupyThe Radical Rich: Moving From Romney To Re-Occupy
By Richard (RJ) Eskow
September 19, 2012 - 12:00am ET
Two recent movements have transformed the political landscape. The Occupy movement literally operates in the light of day. The other movement operates in secrecy, with money as its "speech" rather than ... well, you know, speech.
The Romney video offers us a rare glimpse of the other movement. This movement of the extremely rich is full of rage, ruthless, and radical. And it's on the rise.
If you're not scared, you're not paying attention.
- snip -
The bile flows out of this unscripted Romney. He says of his father, the governor, presidential candidate and car company CEO: "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this." This kind of resentment, as absurd as it is, is a very real emotion for the Radical Rich.
- snip -
But that doesn't mean they're not enjoying life. They've acquired a level of wealth, power and luxury which ancient pharaohs and kings could never imagine: Their private jets will take them anywhere on the planet at a few minutes' notice. Rulers of nations flatter and court them. They even seem to be above the law. None of them will ever know hunger, or financial fear, or be denied medical care because they can't pay for it.
And yet they're filled with resentment.
MORE[p]
Borowitz Tweet - "Question: Is There...?"
@BorowitzReport: Question: is there a mercy rule that lets you cancel a presidential election? Asking for a friend.
Brad DeLong: "Then Romney's Voice Pivots to What He Actually Believes..." (The Con Artist Conned)
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2012/09/the-republican-noise-machine-and-mitt-romney-the-con-artist-conned.htmlThe Republican Noise Machine and Mitt Romney: The Con Artist Conned
- snip -
Then Romney gives what he thinks is the ultimate argument for why the rich-envying Democratic base will not vote for him:
These are people who pay no income tax. 47% of Americans pay no income taxes. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about "tax cuts for the rich". That's what they sell every four years.
Then Romney's brain is supposed to say: "I cannot get the Democratic base to vote for me: they won't. I need to focus on the swing voters". It begins to pivot:
And so my job is not to worry about those people.
But it doesn't succeed. When Romney's brain hits the phrase "those people", it goes off message. It switches tracks. It jumps from what it is supposed to say--"I can't worry about getting their votes: I need to focus on the undecideds"--to what it actually, deep down, believes: I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for for their lives. Then Romney realizes what his brain has done, and wrestles it back onto the message track:
What I have to do is convince the 5% to 10% in the center that are independents, that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon, in some cases emotion--whether they like the guy or not. What it looks like. When you ask those people--we do all these polls. I find it amazing. We poll all these people to see where you stand in the polls…
What Mitt Romney has just said is that 47% of Americans pay no taxes, subsist off of government benefits, take no responsibility for their lives, are moochers, and make up a solid Democratic Party base. He has just said that he cannot worry about them for two reasons: (i) they will never vote for him, and (i) they will never straighten up and fly right.
Now Romney was never supposed to say or think this.
- snip -
I am thinking that there were lots and lots of conversations over the years about "those people", and how they do not care about their lives, and about how they have no sense of personal responsibility, and about how they envy the rich. I am thinking of right-wing science fiction novels that preach about how by the middle of the 21st century the United States was divided into "citizens" and "taxpayers"--with the unproductive, lazy, uneducated masses of the first penned into their ghettoes and living off of the second. I am thinking that, as Ta-Nehisi Coates puts it: we are all welfare queens now. I am thinking that Romney and his speechwriters have spent much, much, much too much time at the American Enterprise Institute where, the General Theory of Moocherhood, as Mark Schmitt puts it, is being developed.
There should have been people to deprogram Mitt Romney when he began to fall victim to this AEI cult. Wall Street Journal editorialists should have warned him not to confuse the "prolefeed" they distribute with the way the world actually works.
MORE AT LINK[p]
A Mood of Gloom Afflicts the Romney Campaign
Source: New York Times
September 18, 2012, 7:34 PM1 Comment
A Mood of Gloom Afflicts the Romney Campaign
By MICHAEL BARBARO
- snip -
A palpably gloomy and openly frustrated mood has begun to envelop Mr. Romney’s campaign for president. Well practiced in the art of lurching from public relations crisis to public relations crisis, his team seemed to reach its limit as it digested a ubiquitous set of video clips that showed their boss candidly describing nearly half of the country’s population as government-dependent “victims,” and saying that he would “kick the ball down the road” on the biggest foreign policy challenge of the past few decades, the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.
Grim-faced aides acknowledged that it was an unusually dark moment, made worse by the self-inflicted, seemingly avoidable nature of the wound. In low-volume, out-of-the-way conversations, they are now wondering whether victory is still possible and whether they are entering McCain-Palin ticket territory.
A flustered adviser, describing the mood, said that the campaign was turning into a vulgar, unprintable phrase.
Aides did little to hide their annoyance: on Tuesday night, a Romney aide cursed loudly as he tried to corral reporters into an impromptu news conference in Costa Mesa, Calif.
Read more: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/a-mood-of-gloom-afflicts-the-romney-campaign/?smid=tw-thecaucus&seid=auto
The Theory of the Moocher Class
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/theory-moocher-classThe Theory of the Moocher Class
SEP 18, 2012
Mark Schmitt
The conservative narrative of the "entitlement society" ignores the fact that most Americans are both givers and takers.
As David Brooks points out, Mitt Romney's remarks describing 47 percent of the population as, in effect, moochers who would vote for Obama because they got government benefits were not “off the cuff,” as he described them today. There is a carefully developed theory behind his words, which has seen expression in previous Romney speeches, such as one last December in which he described Obama's vision as an “entitlement society” in which “everyone receives the same rewards,” but in which “we'll all be poor.”
The lab where this theory that we're headed toward a radical egalitarian state is being developed is the American Enterprise Institute, the oldest of the conservative think tanks and one that, much like Romney, has forsaken the traditional business-minded conservatism of, say, the first President Bush, for hard conservatism in which everything is a grand showdown of incompatible worldviews. The two recent books by the current AEI president, Arthur Brooks (The Battle and The Road to Freedom) embody this apocalyptic approach, as does a recent essay-with-graphs by longtime AEI scholar and accomplished demographer Nicholas Eberstadt, called “A Nation of Takers.”
- snip -
This dramatic reorientation of the safety net didn't just happen; most of these initiatives had significant bipartisan and cross-ideological support. Not only do they provide a ladder out of poverty and reward work, they also make possible the relatively low-wage, low-security labor market that gives employers enormous flexibility. Conservatives used to argue, for example, that raising the EITC was a better alternative to raising the minimum wage, and they mostly won that fight. The result is that low-wage employment is essentially subsidized, and businesses are able to hire at very low cost and low commitment, with none of the barriers to either hiring or firing that are common in Europe. Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney and others in the current wave of conservatism seem to have entirely forgotten the merits of these innovations, and in their promise to protect programs only for the very, very poor, they threaten to restore the hopeless poverty traps of the 1970s and 1980s.
- snip -
It's disappointing that Romney shows no interest in either drawing out the submerged state or in the bipartisan project (of which his health reform in Massachusetts was a part) of smoothing the path to economic success for families. Instead, he just sees half the country as people who can't be convinced “that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” That's a very strange view of this country and a tragic development in modern conservatism.
MORE AT LINK[p]
Robert Reich: The Real Romney Revealed... "Indignant"
http://robertreich.orgTUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2012
THE REAL MITT REVEALED
This video is significant in two ways.
- snip -
Romney also distorts reality by purposely mixing “entitlements” with “a sense of entitlement,” and lumps in all recipients of Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits into his 47 percent. Even though these programs are considered “entitlement” spending, their recipients are not undeserving; they don’t consider themselves entitled to handouts. They’ve paid into these insurance plans through their payroll taxes.
But the the most important revelation here isn’t Romney’s witting distortions. It’s his indignant condemnation of almost half the American electorate. A president is supposed to represent all of America, not just the 51 percent who elect him, and have a modicum of sympathy for the less fortunate among us.
Yet here is the real Mitt Romney — a fabulously wealthy financier, presumably speaking to other wealthy people (note the waiters scurrying about), with a passion we haven’t before seen in him — saying it isn’t his “job” to worry about Americans who he describes as “irresponsible,” who fail to take care of themselves, and whose neediness is presumably their own fault.
Some of us thought Romney was without core or principle, an empty suit that would say anything to be elected. But here, evidently, is the real Mitt — a man whose core principle is clearly on display, and articulated with deep conviction: social Darwinism — survival of the richest, the hell with those who need a helping hand.
MORE AT LINK[p]
Interesting 47% Graphic from Guardian...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/interactive/2012/sep/18/47-percent-us-percentages-mappedDo first: "The 1% of Tax Returns Over a Million"
Then do: "The 7% of Population Who Are Veterans."
Watch it go almost completely opposite.
"The 16% of Americans Without Medical Insurance" is also pretty interesting.
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