I am beginning to become scared that Romney/Ryan will win. Can smart people please post here and say reassuring things to convince me that he won't?

Dems taking the military stance formerly the wheelhouse of the Republicans is depressing, but Romney saying he'd bring back waterboarding etc and threatening Iran indicates to me that with him it would only get worse. Not to say that he'd go to war with Iran or Russia - the people don't want that and Mitt is only swayed by political expedience (see: abortion) - but the citizenry loves the living hell out of our warmongering and our military so as long as it's good politically both will continue to blow the hell out of whatever they can.

To say they would have essentially the same presidency is just idiotic though.

should be mentioned that obama has proposed defense cuts, not sure who the last candidate was to pull that out of their hat

though if the mekons kept claiming they were going to retire from the game and crawled back to the clubs every so many months i'd be pretty embarrassed for them

― da croupier, Saturday, September 8, 2012 7:55 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

<3

give me hope that one can age without turning into a kneejerk crank

croup, next time, "walk on by."

stick with your optics, kids, and no crocodile tears later on.

Glad you're in love again, Que.

leave me the fuck alone dude

looooooooooooooooooooooooooool

lol me the fuck alone dude

Morbs, did you really bring up the Mekons

I think imagining a Romney presidency is basically, take whatever issue, and imagine how it would be approached from a purely "Make as much profit as possible" perspective.

pretty sure he won't approach tax revenue from this perspective

― iatee, Saturday, September 8, 2012 2:46 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or defense spending

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Saturday, September 8, 2012 2:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Profit is not a concept in his or his party's vision of the government of America. Defense and taxes are the two main things Republicans have repeatedly stated are OFF THE TABLE in any approach towards debt reduction. Besides, there is a LOT of corporate profit to be made selling of the military to the highest bidder, and plenty of opportunity for very legal manipulation of the markets in order to help his friends. Obama has problems making friends, we are told. What kind of friends would he have if he were a corporate plunderer rather than a community organizer?

Every Republican has pledged to drown the government in a bathtub, and though Romney may be a flip-flopper, I don't see why he would jeopardize a position of global power to vote against this mindset.

romney will sign whatever a republican congress sends to him, obama will not, just to mention one completely obvious distinction

not that necessarily there will be a republican congress

even if the only difference between them was whether or not to repeal obamacare thatd be enough

yup

Obama may have hired the same financial idiots who ruined things in '08, but if Romney was in that position, would you really expect him to pick anyone less corrupt? Maybe having the same crooks in charge kept them under the gun, a bit more in the public spotlight.

I'm going to stfu before i go further in apologist mode, but damn the Republicans are doing a great job campaigning for Obama.

thats not a wholly accurate description of obama financial team fwiw

i mean im not sure how you blame academics for the financial collapse, im sure you could if you tried hard enough, but thats casting a p wide net

always confused w/ who adam bruneau is arguing w/

While politicians may be an unsavory lot on the whole, and while it may be true that any electable person who makes it to the Oval Office is likely to do some odious nonsense, I'm in no way prepared to support the notion that they're all just interchangeable sacks of shit and that it doesn't matter one way or another who you vote for because whoever's in charge is just as bad as the other guy who coulda been in charge, maaaaaan. If Bush II's presidency isn't the clearest sign that one person in particular can do more catastrophic damage in that office than another, I dunno what it could possibly take to convince you.

ftr, i'm not saying it's likely romney will govern the same as obama. i'm just saying that i can imagine a variety of scenarios where it's not significantly different. mind u, this assumes that romney will not feel beholden to his party and will govern differently than he has claimed he will. but that's not impossible being as how romney is an enormous liar. (and didn't govern like a tea partier in MA.)

Ho-lee shit. Was Mordy visited by an angel?

for sure the strangest thing about our conversations on ilx morbz is that despite having argued about political issues like a million times on here you still seem to have no clue about what i believe beyond your conviction that i'm the strawman obama groupie you think everyone on ilx is.

Mainly Geithner, Summers, and Bernanke.

Continuity for the markets.

bernanke has been horrible but he wasnt much of a player as far as ruining things in 08, giether and summers for sure have blood on their hands, tho its not like either of them was out there creating collateralized debt obligations or managing aig or w/e

Summers's role in the deregulation of derivatives contracts

On May 7, 1998, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a Concept Release soliciting input from regulators, academics, and practitioners to determine "how best to maintain adequate regulatory safeguards without impairing the ability of the OTC (Over-the-counter) derivatives market to grow and the ability of U.S. entities to remain competitive in the global financial marketplace." On July 30, 1998, then-Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Summers testified before the U.S. Congress that "the parties to these kinds of contract are largely sophisticated financial institutions that would appear to be eminently capable of protecting themselves from fraud and counterparty insolvencies." Summers, like Greenspan and Rubin who also opposed the concept release, offered no proof that the contracts would not be misused by financial institutions. Instead, Summers stated that "to date there has been no clear evidence of a need for additional regulation of the institutional OTC derivatives market, and we would submit that proponents of such regulation must bear the burden of demonstrating that need." In 1999 Summers endorsed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which removed the separation between investment and commercial banks, saying "With this bill, the American financial system takes a major step forward towards the 21st Century."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Summers#Summers.27s_role_in_the_deregulation_of_derivatives_contracts

giether and summers for sure have blood on their hands

romney is dumb, weird part one million http://presspass.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/08/13750865-romney-clinton-helped-elevate-democratic-convention

I don't get this. What's the upside to the Clinton love-fest for the Republicans? Clinton's still ya know alive and currently campaigning for Obama...

they can't help themselves

romney praising a speech in which the guy said he was going to do horrible things to special needs children

It's going to end Medicare as we know it. And a lot of that money is also spent to help people with disabilities, including a lot of middle-class families whose kids have Down's syndrome or autism or other severe conditions.

And, honestly, just think about it. If that happens, I don't know what those families are going to do. So I know what I'm going to do: I'm going to do everything I can to see that it doesn't happen. We can't let it happen. We can't.

lots of elected dems started praising reagan 10-15 years after he left office
think its diminish your opponent by talking about how the other side used to have heavy hitters back in the day, now they have this chump

They also can't really run on "all Dems are bad" when the last really good times the country had were presided over by Clinton. By accepting that he was good, they aren't drawing themselves as complete opposites to someone generally agreed to have been successful, at least for the economy and thus for the average punter.

but he srsly gave props to a speech which basically laid out the case for why he is a horrible person

Yeah that's pretty stupid.

He's basically not very good at executing the ideas.

you still seem to have no clue about what i believe beyond your conviction that i'm the strawman obama groupie you think everyone on ilx is
― Mordy, Saturday, September 8, 2012 4:56 PM (4 hours ago)

Hear, hear. Having been caricatured on here as a gossipy political horserace junkie, even though I seem to pay attention to the same things most everyone else does (and conceding that there's some truth in that, as there is in most caricatures), I know what a drag that can be.

Romney joined Republican Virginia Senate candidate George Allen in serving hotdogs to fans under a tent at the Richmond International Raceway, and hundreds passed through asking for autographs and offering Romney words of support.

Romney struggled to connect with blue-collar fans of NASCAR at the Daytona 500 event in February when he said he had "some friends who are NASCAR team owners."

The comment opened the former private equity executive to criticism that he was out of touch with ordinary voters.

On Saturday, a driving rain delayed the Federated Auto Parts 400 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race and sent most of the fans running for cover.

When asked who his favorite driver was, Romney responded: "There's a lot of drivers I like."

i think republicans think they're doing some sneaky 'divide and conquer' thing by talking about how much better Clinton clearly is than Obama as if, y'know, Clinton was capable of running again or as if him being on the outs with Obama again would effect anything

Ryan's slash and burn views on Medicare & will scare enough senior citizens to secure a win for Obama in FLA & the possibility of R/R picking up enough other swing states to compensate for that is highly unlikely.

er Medicare & Social Security

Lol at NASCAR anecdote

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/08/sept-8-conventions-may-put-obama-in-front-runners-position/

Mittens has to be sweating at this point. Countdown til some ill-starred "shakeup" of his campaign team/strategy...

fwiw clemenza, i find your horserace junkiedom endearing and only settled on those particular adjectives to describe u bc iirc u used them to describe yourself first

Fair enough. I do have a habit of trying to preempt potential criticsm by levelling it at myself first.

you are canadian after all

and a teacher

Obama up to 80.7% this morning on 538.

haha okay now that seems ridiculous to me

That's his "chance of winning," not his polling, note.

His polling is at 237.8%