Or possibly of the year. Long-time BMGer centralmassdad tells it like it is. Some language NSFW.
This is a good reason
why, over the last 9 years or so, I have gone from being a Republican-leaning independent to an independent that has nothing at all but contempt for Republicans.
It is your collective ability to stick your head so very far up your ass, as is nicely demonstrated by this little vignette.
Bush started the GM bailouts, and got some short term loans through the lame duck Congress. Then, once Republicans realized that Obama would benefit from the program, they opposed it, which meant a closer call for the companies, which all did some rather major cost-cutting as a result, and eventually wound up using the bankruptcy system because the Republicans deadlocked the government. Indeed, these very two guys
Now, Republicans want to support the bailouts, but blame the administration for not getting more? They want to cut Medicare, unless Democrats can be seen to have made a cut, and then they support it? They support Medicare, absolutely and unconditionally, for people who are 66, but if someone who is 65 gets those benefits, it would be a Stalinist gulag?
It is as if I borrowed your car, and promised not to crash it, and you took it back and crashed it, deliberately, and then said: well, you said it would crash. Words mean things..
Horseshit.
In 2012 Republicans are either stupid or utterly unscrupulous liars. They certainly are no longer “conservative” except to the extent that conservative means “thinks hurricanes are God’s punishment for gay marriage.”
You can buy all the bullshit you want from the Limbaugh show, if you are stupid enough to eat that shit. But don’t come here and pretend it is a “conservative” viewpoint. It isn’t. It is idiocy, and idiocy is not a viewpoint. Idiocy is market share for Limbaugh, and little more.
centralmassdad @ Thu 30 Aug 5:48 PM
Donald Green says
Last night Mr. Romney tried their best to put a good face on their intentions. Mr. Romney peered into the audience and camera and promised jobs, a strong America, and a decent life. But for whom? The answer showed up in the “secret guest,” Clint Eastwood. Steve Schmidt on MSNBC tried to wipe it away by reminding the TV viewers that the movie star was 82 years old. We know better than that. Mr. Romney’s oath to revive America does not extend to everyone. Even those who sung his praises as a business person or as a humane person belonged only to certain tribes. You had to be a member of the Church of LDS and not deviate form its dogma, you were struggling and not poor, top associates in his business world, a community member traveling in similar circles. No evidence that there is help coming if you are poor, struggle with behavioral issues, or if you are female that you get any recognition of needed rights. In short his tolerance only goes so far. As a more global scale his jingoistic talk should disturb anyone. There is a complete lack of responsibility of what caused this nation’s economic and social woes and as part of the problem he rejects that his business world had anything to do with it. He was successful and made lots of money, that’s what counts. He is the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.
JHM says
there is much to be said for Citizen Clint.
Just to establish that Paddy McTammany has utterly no gift for idols and icons and a’ that graphics guff, here’s me own idea of the poster:
(( Click image for additional eye-glazing McDetails ))
Happy days.
tblade says
Have this man address the DNC; bump John Kerry or Charlie Christ.
Remember that time when CMD was absent from BMG for like 8 months? Yeah, that kind of sucked.
I like having this guy around because we do disagree on some things but I never feel that he is full of shit and his positions are consistently well defended in an articulate way that a forces me to re-evaluate my own opinion. CMD is one of the few commenters that I may avoid debating because even if I am 100% correct, I still may lose.
centralmassdad says
I get almost as fed up with Democratic BS as Republican BS. I have more patience with Democrats because they at least have some principles that underlie their positions, even if I think they are often misguided. Republicans will embrace any principle, or none, or many contradictory ones at the same time, if they think they can score a point off it right away.
tblade says
And sometimes hearing things you don’t want to hear is the best medicine.
oceandreams says
given the jobs-creation and labor-force record while he was governor.
danfromwaltham says
during his final year as governor. It’s called moving the needle.
HR's Kevin says
He was hardly in the state at all his final year in office because he had already abandoned his post to pursue the presidency. No one would seriously give him credit for anything that happened that year.
Anyway, as you well know, Governors don’t have all that much to do with the economic performance in their state in any case.
oceandreams says
accountability and responsibility, OK, the guy is coming in for a job interview. He says he’s going to create jobs for us, because he’s got so much experience creating jobs. As one of the managers involved in the hiring decision, I want to know more. What do I hear?
Details of his main experience, that of Bain Capital, are off limits for discussion, so I can’t actually determine if he’s a net creator or destroyer/outsourcer of jobs; and lackluster performance when he was governor aren’t his fault.
Meanwhile, he assures us he’s very much against the deficit, although his main private-sector experience involves, um, running up the debt of his private-sector acquisitions.
Not to mention, both he and his assistant appear to be somewhat, um, fact-challenged. I’m supposed to hire this guy?
danfromwaltham says
“It is your collective ability to stick your head so very far up your ass, as is nicely demonstrated by this little vignette”
Yet, I get the warning email about some posts. Not that they had a personal attack like the quote above, instead they were “off topic”
To centralmassdad, problem with the auto bailouts was how Obama screwed the bond holders and coddled the UAW. The UAW retiree medical benefits trust was owed billion and should have been wiped out just as the bond holders investments, but the trust now owes part of GM. Crony capitalism at its worse, I see why you left the Republican Party and and found a new home.
HR's Kevin says
Hey Dan, what do you think is hiding in Mitt’s hidden tax returns?
Bob Neer says
Perhaps. Or he committed some crimes that the IRS missed but that the hive mind will not. Whatever it is, he is frightened by the impact that releasing the information would have, or else he would release it. He is a lesser man than his father, and even his father didn’t get elected president.
centralmassdad says
His income was via a fund, which means that he is a beneficiary of the carried interest rule. So his effective tax rate would be quite low, even if there isn’t some Cayman Islands-style shenanigans in there. Making the carried interest rule a big campaign issue would be a fillip for the other guy.
David says
from the Republican perspective is that they worked, and therefore made it harder to argue that Obama has done a bad job. Simple as that.
centralmassdad says
because yesterday you and your party were complaining that the bailout was insufficient to save a plant in Wisconsin. So now you’re opposed to the entire program again?
“The food is terrible, and the portions aren’t big enough.” The GOP position on this has been reduced to a borscht belt joke.
The bankruptcy was a Plan B, used because the GOP scotched Plan A, the loans begun by the Bush administration, once they realized that loans might benefit the new President. I was, and am, unthrilled by the favors given to the UAW by the buyer of GM’s assets. I was, and am, unthrilled that this buyer is in significant measure, a public entity.
At the same time, I acknowledge that the present state of affairs is probably preferable to another 2-3 points of unemployment in the upper midwest for the last two years. The process has been at least a short-term success, if a very expensive one, and it is this, and this only, that has this John Birch Society of a party foaming at the mouth.
danfromwaltham says
So to get on here and say the Republicans caused the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler is mind boggling. As Romney said, you give them a bailout and they will go bankrupt. Talk about Nostradamus, Mitt called it EXACTLY!!!!
Both GN and Chrysler should have gone through the normal BK procedures, not with Obamamwith his thumb on the scale, protecting his buddies and shafting a grat many other workers and bond holders.
You say GM has come back? You must know their financing arm is buying crap paper, sub-prime credit, in order to move the units. You know this, right? Their sales to credit criminals has climbed to almost 10% of their auto sales. So GM who stills owes tend of billions to the taxpayers, is lending our money to people who show they can’t pay their bills. That’s the Obama recovery??????
centralmassdad says
Democrats had 50 seats in the Senate, and that is if you include Sanders and Lieberman as Democrats. They had 49 effective seats in January, since the Minnesota seat was vacant until June.
Do you even know what “supermajority” means?
Is English, for you, a newly acquired skill? I did not say “GM has come back.” I said it has been “at least, a short-term success.” And relative to shuttering the company, which apparently would have been a better way to salvage a plant in Janesville, WI, it has.
Normal bankruptcy procedures? I very strongly doubt that you have the foggiest notion what these are. The assets of the companies were sold using the normal bankruptcy process. You can look at the relevant statute . What you don’t like is that the government funded the buyer. But if I have to explain to you why you are opposed to what happened with the auto companies, for those moments in which you don’t support the program, then I think it is is fair to say you are talking out of your posterior.
As for “repaying the taxpayers” I would have expected the pro-business party to understand the difference between debt and equity; the taxpayer has an equity position, not debt. It remains to be seen if the equity positions can yield enough to break even; that is why I wrote neither that the program is a “long term success” nor that “GM is back.”
It is a fair position to oppose direct government investment in private enterprise? Why, yes, it would be. Indeed, that would be a coherent conservative position. I remain skeptical of the long-term prospects of GM specifically because of the problems associated with a direct public investment. I opposed it at the time on these grounds. However, given the scale of the recession caused by the financial crisis, I have concluded that it was probably better than allowing the companies to collapse, which would have added a few points to an already large unemployment numbers
That is why I found it surprising yesterday to note that the new Republican position is now that the government didn’t invest enough to prevent the closure of a plant in Janesville, WI. Which is the position that began this discussion. That’s the Republican position??????
danfromwaltham says
I don’t buy it, neither do most Americans. 20,000 non union workers lost their pensions, but not the UAW!!!! Puhleeze. The UAW drove GM into BK,iChat like public unions are bankrupting cities across the nation. Again, u fail to see GM purchased Americredit for a few billion so they can push out the units to credit criminals. It’s another bomb waiting to explode.
Obama promised that the workers at the WI plant would have a job, but why hold Obama to his words, intentions and optics are all most here care about.
centralmassdad says
It is common for business assets to be sold in bankruptcy, regardless of whether you buy it. Pretending otherwise is like pretending rain doesn’t make you wet.
GM purchased Americredit, which provides the financing for people to buy their automobiles. Providing financing is necessary for businesses that sell products that, by definition, cannot be purchased by most people without financing. Seems like a good move to me.
High-risk automobile lending is, and always has been, a rather low-risk business because your collateral is quite easy to recover (no years-long foreclosure) and generally must be insured in order to be used. That is why auto lending never had anything like the failure rate of residential real estate lending. So why you consider it to be a “bomb waiting to explode” is beyond me; there isn’t any business reason to conclude that.
And, just to note one more time, in a single post:
1. You oppose the bailout
2. Criticize Obama for not creating a bigger bailout
3. Oppose the public equity position in the reorganized company; and
4. criticise the government for not exerting political interference in business operations.
Honestly, I don’t think you have the slightest idea what you are talking about. And, it seems, neither do any of the people who have been marching across the stage in Tampa for the last four days, nor any of the woofing nitwits in the elephant hats who paid to watch them.
danfromwaltham says
Vehicles are a depreciating asset, believe it or not, you can lose money on the transaction. Please note cars have wheels, unlike homes on a foundation. OMG, could the asset go missing?????
Most banks don’t lend to credit criminals, at least not at the level of GM. Banks eat too much of that crap, the portfolio will explode. But you think that’s normal but to use your own words, you don’t know what you are talking about.
I didn’t oppose the bailout, just who and what got screwed. So it’s normal for bond holders to get the shaft but not the union health care medical trust fund which held billions in liabilities? Normal right? A lifeline was the appropriate after emerging from BK.
centralmassdad says
Have you actually ever bought a car? I thought Republicans were supposed to understand business. You don’t.
Cars depreciate at a predictable rate, because age of the vehicle is a bigger factor than divergence from “average” miles driven/year. The loan is set up so that the balance runs ahead of the depreciation, so that the car is worth roughly the balance of the loan. The vehicle depreciates much faster when the car is new than when the car is a few years old, while payments early in the loan don’t reduce the balance much because they are mostly interest. Lenders fix most of this risk by requiring a “down payment.” The remaining risk is pure credit risk: you have to hope the borrower makes their payments for the early part of the loan.
Americredit focuses on the higher-risk or “sub-prime” portion of the market. (Are high risk borrowers what you mean by “credit criminal”?) You may not be surprised to learn, then, that most of Americredit’s loans are for used cars. That is because they won’t take the risk of an early default on a new car, when they would be most likely to cause a loss. This is why the automobile finance industry is both stable and profitable.
So you didn’t oppose the bailout, but you just oppose how effective reorganization of a failing business works. OK, then.
And yes, it is commonplace for “junior” creditors to get more than “senior” creditors from a buyer if the buyer needs the junior creditor to make things work. And in business reorganizations, the bondholders nearly ALWAYS take a beating because they don’t bring much value to business, going forward. So they get whacked.
If the junior has something valuable, the junior will get more. To a company that manufactures cars, the people who manufacture cars are more valuable than bondholders, so they get more in the end. That is kind of how markets are supposed to work; maybe Republicans aren’t in favor of them anymore.
danfromwaltham says
Instead of a regular bankruptcy proceeding, the Obama administration, working with the automakers, patched together a process without precedent — a bankruptcy combined with a bailout, incorporating the worst elements of both.
Of the two proceedings, Chrysler’s was clearly the more egregious. In the years leading up to the economic crisis, Chrysler had been unable to acquire routine financing and so had been forced to turn to so-called secured debt in order to fund its operations. Secured debt takes first priority in payment; it is also typically preserved during bankruptcy under what is referred to as the “absolute priority” rule — since the lender of secured debt offers a loan to a troubled borrower only because he is guaranteed first repayment when the loan is up. In the Chrysler case, however, creditors who held the company’s secured bonds were steamrolled into accepting 29 cents on the dollar for their loans. Meanwhile, the underfunded pension plans of the United Auto Workers — unsecured creditors, but possessed of better political connections — received more than 40 cents on the dollar.
Moreover, in a typical bankruptcy case in which a secured creditor is not paid in full, he is entitled to a “deficiency claim” — the terms of which keep the bankrupt company liable for a portion of the unpaid debt. In both the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies, however, no deficiency claims were awarded to the wronged creditors. Were bankruptcy experts to comb through American history, they would be hard-pressed to identify any bankruptcy case with similar terms.
Crony capitalism that CMD claims is normal. Please read link for more information.
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/the-auto-bailout-and-the-rule-of-law
As to if I ever purchased a new car, absolutely not. Never buy a depreciating asset, I always lease my cars. If you read my posts more carefully, GM is pushing NEW car purchases with crap credit paper. Not used, but NEW!!!! You sound like Barney Frank back in 2006 when he said Fannie and Freddie are sound.
This is my last post on this topic, very tedious as you can see. I will go look for a Bob Ross video and watch him paint a happy little tree. I wonder if Mr. Ross was still alive drawing his nature scenes, would he put a turbine next to his trees and mountains??? Nah, why ruin it.
mike_cote says
You are. Too bad as well, because I am under the impression that foreclosure is the position of last resort, so how keeping GM and Chrysler open screws the creditors is baffling to me.
My guess is you were cheering on the failure and would have celebrated all the lost jobs, because you can’t accept any success for this president, you would much rather troll this site and leave your troll droppings on every topic, because a “scorched earth” policy is better than a strong country to the crippled pathetic little minds of the Republican mob.
centralmassdad says
Because they didn’t keep GM “open.” Indeed, the whole point was to sell that portion of GM’s assets that could be used to operate a business, and leave other assets behind.
Old GM went out of business; a new corporation– a new “person” –bought the assets, including the name and trademarks. NewCo needed people to build cars; UAW got a deal. NewCo doesn’t owe the creditors of OldCo one thin dime.
NewCo’s deal with the workers is what seems to have the Republicans upset–at least until tomorrow. They would have preferred a shutdown and “straight” liquidation, and the extra few points of unemployment and attendant economic distress. But this is merely in keeping with an overall policy of loyalty only to their own perfidious political party, even at the expense of the nation they claim to love and serve.
The rate at which the entire GOP seems to mix and swap positions on this, to assert as “fact” things that are plainly, obviously false, all depending on the exigencies of the last three seconds, is enough to boggle the mind.
centralmassdad says
I made that up, but that;s no worse than this BS you post. How does one continue to insist that the sum rises in the west when you can see it, in the east, and you have a compass tight in your hand?
They were “ordinary” bankruptcy cases. You can see it: GM was Chapter 11 Case No. 09-50026 in the Southern District of NY, Judge Gerber presiding.
Secured credit isn’t “last resort;” it is how commercial financing works. Because of the reduced risk, it generally yields lower interest rates, which makes it attractive to borrowers with cash flow issues, which is/was the auto industry’s problem.
On liquidation, a secured creditor isn’t “awarded” a deficiency claim, it has a deficiency claim. A defeciency claim is everything that isn’t paid after the collateral is sold. The assets were sold– for far. far more than their market value, but for far less than the outstanding debt. Some assets were left, and the creditors will spend the next decade trying to squeeze something out of them, But that’s it. Once the company has no assets, there is noting to satisfy the deficiency claim,
The buyer of the assets made the deal with the people who build the cars so that it could have an operating business. But you, and other republcians pretend that there was no liquidation– they just screwed the bondholders!!– even though this is patently, obviously demonstrably untrue to anyone who knows about credit markets and business restructuring.
But they figure most people aren’t, so they can lie about it. And hope to find people like you who are foolish enough or gullible enough to swallow their crap whole, You will forgive me if I decline the invitation.
danfromwaltham says
Bondholders at GM were owed $30 billion, too. A legitimate bankruptcy would have sold or liquidated the company’s assets and split the proceeds between the two major claimants, the bondholders and the unions. GM had roughly $20 billion in tangible assets, plus probably another $10 billion in intellectual property. These sums could have either been liquidated or put into a new company, with the equity split between bondholders and unions.
The purpose of bankruptcy is to free productive assets from the burden of debts that can’t be repaid or refinanced. We do this because it’s good for society, not because it’s good for creditors. Had the bankruptcy been handled legitimately, GM’s assets would have ended up in the hands of better entrepreneurs. Its workers could have found new, productive jobs at a rate the market would bear. (Other carmakers are paying $47 per hour – these aren’t bad jobs.)
Yes, GM’s retirees, its pension program, and its bondholders would have taken a hit. But they wouldn’t have walked away empty-handed. They would have been the owners of a profitable company, operating debt-free and without the burden of almost endless obligations to a pension fund.
But that’s not what happened. Instead, the government injected an amazing $50 billion into the company and, at last count, has lost roughly half of it.
In short, the unions got paid 93% of what they were owed and will likely continue to have a legal claim to virtually all of GM’s cash flow. The bondholders got a few pennies. The taxpayers lost $25 billion. And GM still can’t make a real profit.
Another nugget found by me. To get on here and say the auto bailout was kosher is absurd. Then again, you swallow the whole “Hope and Change” and “Together We Can” slogans. What is it for 2012, ” It could be worse”? Open wide CMD, it’s feeding time.
http://www.dailywealth.com/2125/The-Story-No-One-Tells-About-One-of-America-s-Biggest-Bankruptcies
danfromwaltham says
Everyone knows the plant shut down in 2009, right? We all know that?
http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/30/politics/pol-fact-check-ryan-gm/index.html
John Tehan says
…in December of 2008 – see this article in Ryan’s hometown newspaper:
http://gazettextra.com/photos/galleries/last-day-gm/3120/
The decision to close the plant was made in June of 2008, and Paul Ryan himself put out a press release about the closure in October of 2008:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/30/1126062/-Paul-Ryan-s-Press-Release-Announcing-GM-Plant-Closure-10-23-08
Lastly, your own link rates the story as technically true, but incomplete – here’s the money quote:
Why do you do this Dan? Are you still claiming to be an independent? If you truly card about truth, you wouldn’t be supporting any of this nonsense.
johnk says
you want to relive Bush’s presidency and the aftermath? Really? Ryan’s speech brought it back front and center. Bone-headed.
kbusch says
It helps to read your links and it’s clear CNN was being extra generous to Ryan
Mark L. Bail says
Read and evaluate your sources. Don’t just link to them.
There’s no fact checkers of the fact checkers at this point. That’s why Politifact is less than perfect, but right on Ryan. Fact Check.org says the same thing.
Mr. Lynne says
… wasn’t much better. It just wasn’t as blatant because it wasn’t focused on one guy and for many of them we just didn’t have the intel to know better.
Think about how monumentally stupid and craven the Iraq war was. Think about the consequences. Even when W was running for 2000, Krugman was putting up alarm bells about how the economic platform was a lie – it had to be because the math was impossible. The GOP saw how far they could get with this and doubled down – the base will always believe and motivating them with lies that resonate with them get them out too the polls. Obama gave them the chance to channel it all into one giant straw man they could create – culminating in the ultimate straw man of an empty chair that could embody anything you happen to be mad about at the time.
The thing Orwell missed was that it wasn’t necessary for a ‘state’ to create a dystopian reality – tribes do just as well if not better.
I give great credit to CMD for seeing through it, but I also am a little disappointed that 9 or so years ago he wasn’t. The signs were there.
centralmassdad says
I think there was a genuinely conservative party up though that time. They had their kooks, but so did Democrats; politics attracts crazy people.
Even when they went overboard, as in the impeachment, they weren’t relying on things purely fabricated. Clinton did, in my opinion, commit a very serious crime against our justice system. (He shouldn’t have been impeached, he should have been indicted.)
Nor do I think that the the bases for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were fabricated; I think they made a mistake. I differ from Democrats in that I do not blame them for the decision to invade, so much as I blame them for doing without a strategy for what they wanted to accomplish, and how to accomplish it.
It was at that point, I think, that the worm turned completely, and the party as a whole began its departure from reality. This was the point at which it became obvious that there was a policy decision to embrace tactics repugnant to our national values as an alternative to fully supporting the invasion in a strategic manner. And when those tactics came to light, the party decided, nearly as a whole, that water-boarding etc. weren’t “torture” simply because “we don’t torture.”
And embraced the John Yoo theory of an absolute monarch in the White House, but only for Republican administrations.
And, and, and… It has been a steady acceleration into the dark void of Glen Beck and John Birch since then, which has either paralyzed the government when the GOP had the ability to do so, and deprived the government of actual conservative input on anything when they don’t.
Mr. Lynne says
First, “…as in the impeachment, they weren’t relying on things purely fabricated. ”
The deposition that resulted in the testimony that was the basis for the impeachment had it’s origins on a completely fabricated set of inquiries (that only started because previously fabricated inquires didn’t yield anything). They fabricated as much as they could and spent whatever tax money they could get away with until they found something – and the thing they found wouldn’t even have existed but for their witch hunt based on fabrications.
That basis for the Iraq invasions were completely fabricated – it just happened deep inside the intelligence community rather than in the public sphere. And it did happen because conservatives steered it that way. Certainly this wasn’t easy to detect except after the fact, but we know now.
As I see it, the embrace of lying to get ahead is a logical consequence of two main points: 1) The desire of the party to win rather than govern, and 2) the realization with the W’s election that lying could get them elected to satisfy point 1.
Not worrying about governing so much as being in charge is plainly evident as far back as 94. They completely reworked the internal workings of the legislature to enhance control of the caucus in an effort to bypass normal checks. W’s election was based on complete math lies. Policy wonks on the right let it slide and then when it worked it opened up a whole new world for them. A world in which the ‘fabrication house’ didn’t have to be hidden deep inside the policy machine – it could be brought out in the open. Having an Obama out there to personify whatever they want to fabricate makes it even more tempting, and so now you have the culmination of the empty chair. A vehicle to embody whatever you want to make up to get the base motivated. The problem of course is that their base can get motivated with some very ugly things. Ugly things that used to be impolite to even bring up but are now commonplace on misspelled signs across the country. The fabrication technique was always there, it just smells more because they’re using it to attract flies.
I guess my main point is this: The idea that their tactics are based on complete fabrication is not new and wasn’t new 9 years ago – it just smells worse now because they happen to be using fabrications that visibly bring out the birchers and other ugly supporting factions of the right. That smell might mean this stuff is new to many independents, but their perception of it being new doesn’t make it so.
centralmassdad says
The Clinton inquiry was within the purview of the independent counsel, whose purview was not limited in any way. The statute was a Democratic creation, and Starr’s was not the first investigation to take on a life of its own. It was just the first to catch the president lying under oath in such an obvious way. It is probably a good thing that the statute was not renewed. In any event, it was perjury. He should have been indicted.
I will disagree that the Iraq intelligence was fabricated. I think, rather, that it received insufficient skepticism. And, as I have long made clear, my position is not the liberal Dem one: I regret not that there was an invasion, but rather how it was carried out.
The ’94 Congress replaced a system with Potemkin “checks” on what was by that point a corrupt majority with a system of no checks on the majority. Wash.
As far as budget positions go, I am not sure there has ever been a political candidate in the history of the republic whose position isn’t 99% BS. Andrew Jackson, maybe. He actually did what he said he would do. But that is about it. Your own party wants to dramatically expand Medicare–a program that already has problems– and pretend that this will “save” money; it pretends that a small-dollars tax hike on the wealthy is crucial to the financial health of the nation, while supporting a far, far larger tax cut for others.
jconway says
I cant believe the Democrats don’t support, on policy grounds anyway (obviously the politics are terrible) rolling back ALL the Bush tax cuts, Simpson-Bowles budget and entitlement reforms, and significantly cutting Pentagon spending. Your a center-right independent, JohnD and Porcupine (where’d she disappear to?) are Republicans-all agree in significant tax increases AND budget cuts to balance the budget. No candidate is taking this common sense position.
Ryancare, which Romney has adopted, would increase the deficit for the sole ideological goal of wiping out the deficit and the press is too insulated from the masses, too lazy or too stupid to realize there is nothing ‘serious’ about this. The greatest tragedy of the collapse of the conservative movement is that we can’t have these kind of ideas and debates-the very kind of debates that produced a good idea like Obamacare that should’ve been adopted years ago by Bush I or Clinton when it reached their desks. Perversely the voters do not seem to reward compromise and get the divided partisan gridlock they deserve. I would say though that the radical positions of the Republicans have left the Dems with little choice but the scorched Earth politics they are stuck with. The Republicans had absolutely no desire to compromise on day one, and Obama is right that his endorsement would’ve been a kiss of death for Simpson-Bowles, but his failure to fight for it-like Clinton would have fought for it-prevents him from hording the ‘adult in the room’ credit entirely. Also he is running George HW Bush’s foreign policy which should make you very happy.
jconway says
should read wiping out the safety net not the deficit
johnd says
you guys need to vent your bad energy and feel good about yourselves, I get that. Let’s all take a breadth and answer a simple question… could Mitt Romney have said ANYTHING in his speech last night that would have moved you a mm closer to voting for him? Really?
I think we all know the answer is not just NO but probable more like NFW! That’s ok, we have plenty of low-information voters in the US who seem to like what they hear from Mitt/Ryan.
I share CMD’s feelings about all politicians and have said so here a lot lately, they are all full of shit. The sad part is the system almost makes them be full of shit. The story is not new of nominees going hard left/right during their primaries and then going to the middle for the general election. This is not a great example of the flip-flopping but it is the essence of why it happens, they need to lie to get elected and the ones who tell the truth usually don’t make it. EW is more “left” than she alludes to and SB is more right, but they would not get elected if they were completely honest.
CMD is blaming the GOP for being more flagrant and “all in” about it and I agree to a point, but I think the Dems are just as bad but they waver and are no where near as “cohesive” as the GOP is. Our primary showed a lot of sub groups within our party but we now are united against Obama and the DEM Senate is a big way. Look for Newt and others to be out pressing the flesh and attacking Obama. We are raising uber quantities of money and the ad blitz will be incredible.
I do wish they half truths would stop. It may be an effective campaign tactic (Obama closed plant, Ryan doesn’t want equal pay for women…) but it is so insulting. Maybe it always was like this or maybe it’s a recent occurrence, but it would be refreshing if they could all tell the truth and not have to rely on “fact check”…
Donald Green says
The positions he took in 1994 as opposed to now.
oceandreams says
… I am just as suspicious of “both sides are absolutely equal” as I am of “one side is 100% blameless.” The probability that either of those statements are true is pretty low.
I disagree with the equivalency you claim between Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown (she’s more left; he’s more right). Warren is running as a consumer advocate who will fight to regulate the financial industry and level the playing field for the middle class. Does anyone really doubt that’s who she is and that’s what she wants to do? She’s got a pretty clear track record on that; and the fact that her opponent is the number-one recipient of financial industry money makes it fairly obvious that her opponents as well as her supporters believe that essence of Warren’s campaign.
As for Scott Brown, yes, his supporters are buying into the “bipartisan, one of us” claim. But looking at some of his votes (yes on the Blunt amendment, working to give $19 billion in tax breaks for the financial industry, working to weaken Dodd-Frank, voting against Elana Kagan — even Lindsey Graham voted yes on that one) and the data showing that he was quite solidly Republican until Elizabeth Warren got into the race, when he then got all bipartisan-y, is enough data to question the fundamental essence of his campaign.
I’m an independent, and while I’ve always leaned Democrat, I’ve occasionally voted for Republicans in the past. But there is no way I could vote for a Republican in 2012, period. I won’t rehash all the policies find objectionable. But when it comes to what you call “half truths,” the Democrats simply are not as bad. I mean, come on, Ryan criticizing Obama for not implementing Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction proposals when Ryan himself voted against it (effectively killing it)? SERIOUSLY? That’s just galling.
petr says
Sure, that is a point of view. Of course if what Romney/Ryan are saying is reactive and fungible they’ll eventually light upon something that somebody likes to hear.
The accusation, or “half truth”, that Obama failed to rescue the Wisconsin plant doesn’t hold up to even the most cursory scrutiny. It’s not even a one-tenth truth. On the other hand, the accusation that Ryan doesn’t want equal pay for women is well supported by HIS REPEATED VOTES against legislation that provides for equal pay for women… That’s more like a four-fifths truth. As ‘lies’ there is no equivalence: one’s an out and out whopper and the other is mere imprecision. It doesn’t even occur to you to think that, yes, perhaps Paul Ryan really doesn’t want equal pay for women…. It doesn’t occur to you that it’s an entirely valid accusation supported by readily accessible facts. You say you want to hear the truth… but apparently you don’t wish to hear any truths that reflect poorly on your side.
What’s insulting, and I’m being heart attack serious here, is your insistence on a passive aggressive partisanship: you decry incivility and cheating and yet you automatically choose sides, often in a most uncivil manner, never once considering the bad behaviour of your side in the absolute: you dismiss egregious and outright mendacity from your side, and embellish and enlarge imprecision from the other side so as to be able to say it’s “just as bad” when it is clearly not even close to being “just as bad.” If Mitt Romney tells a lie, it is a lie. No lie by any Democrat makes it more or less of a lie. It is a lie. But you want the Demcrats to lie so that you can feel better about swallowing the Republicans lies.
You say you don’t like it when politicians are uncivil but your particular brand of passive-aggressive behaviour can’t exist outside the nastiness: you decry it and then turn around and use it as cover to both score points on the other side and, perhaps more importantly, throw up your hands and do nothing. And you want the nastiness, and the clear lies of the Republicans, so that you can dismiss any painful truths told by the Democrats.
You decry the nastiness but you never once, at least here, entertained the notion that it might be, however nasty, true.
The truth might just be that YOUR PARTY just nominated two clearly sociopathic individuals (again) who cannot, under most any circumstance, tell the straight truth about anything. Sure that’s nasty to say. Sure that’s uncivil of me. But from where I sit it’s a straight up fact. It’s YOUR Republican party. It’s not mine. You think you can get something outta two sociopaths on the ticket and so you minimize their problems and maximize any poor behaviour on the part of Democrat… but do you think you are immune if, in fact, they are sociopaths? Do you think you’ll get the straight truth from them even if they cannot give it to me and/or others? I don’t see you crowing about the success of the Bush/Cheney years, the last time your party nominated two sociopaths. How’d that work out for ya?
Mark L. Bail says
have possibly said anything to move us closer to voting for him? It’s a practical impossibility. We are diametrically opposed on the issues. What could he have possibly said that would attract us and not jeopardized Republican support? You make it seem like a moral failure that BMGers couldn’t “move closer” to voting for Romney. Quite honestly, that crap. If Romney had suddenly changed–particularly given his love-it-and-leave-it attitude toward the truth–how could we have believed him? Politically, he couldn’t have said anything that would attract us. That’s not his fault either.
You’re right when you say it’s the system. But you’re falling into the Independent voter fallacy that reasonable people are only those that can vote for both parties. That’s crap too. It’s a version of the Middle Ground Fallacy.
Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Act. Is he against equal pay for equal work? Maybe not. Did he vote against a remedy to the situation? Yes. That’s a far cry from the serial lies of Romney and Ryan, e.g. Obama apologized for America, Obama let Janesville close.
centralmassdad says
That’s another way of saying they aren’t as bad.
Which is why they will have my vote, even though I disagree with them on so many things.
There was nothing Romney could have said that would “persuade” me because, as I have taken some pains to point out, his entire party has spent nearly 10 years persuading me that they are thoroughly unprincipled and irresponsible.
There is the additional consideration that I believed Romney when I voted for him in 1994 and 2002, but no longer recognize that candidate. “Were you lying then or are you lying now?” is a poor place to begin persuading me of anything.
jconway says
Had Romney actually run on his record as a moderate Governor of a blue state, run in favor of a Romneycare model for the nation, and not cravenly pandered to the religious fanatics in his party he could have been a much more successful candidate. I still would not vote for Romney but I’d respect him more of he ran as his true self and didn’t pretend to be dumber than he is. On foreign policy he is worse than Kerry-whose war policy kept shifting with the polls, but Romney doesn’t even pretend to have a foreign policy. He has articulated no position on Afghanistan which is morally and intellectually unconscionable, and a dovish position is favored even by most Republicans. His foreign and economic advisers have starkly conflicting views-even amongst themselves.
He could have stolen Huntsmens market based approach to Wall Street reform that might actually have more teeth than Dodd-Frank. He could run front and center on the currency manipulator charge against China-the one position where I support him over Obama, and critiqued Obama’s lackluster defense of human rights. He could have articulated libetarian positions on the Patriot Act, Guantanamo and drones (again issues his own base are polling in favor of). Instead he is trying to be everything to everyone. At least give Obama and Hillary credit for offending different Democratic constituencies when they ran, Mitt has run the most cautious risk averse candidacy in modern memory and has no compelling reason why he wants to be President-only negations of Obama’s record.
He could have actually lead his party in an electable and principled direction, and that does not mean being more ‘left’ but actually more of a traditional conservative on a host of issues. You can’t possibly think that such a weak kneed, unprincipled, pandering, Kerry esque follower of men could ever be a good leader. You must know that if he wins he will be a one term President since he has predisposed himself to either govern so far to the right he cant get re-elected or welcome a Tea Party primary challenger.
I think if I were a Republican I would hope for Romney to lose for a real leader like a Rubio (bucking the party on immigration and appealing to the only growing demographic that might be remotely attracted to the GOP) or Christie (moderate on gay issues, very pro-Muslim rights and a surprisingly good record of accomplishments and bipartisan cooperation). I suspect much like the Democrats in the 80s, the GOP will need to lose three elections in a row before it changes. Romney coulda been a contenda, and he could very well still win, but he will not be the ideologically transformative leader like Reagan or even a good caretaker like Bush I. He will be a Republican Carter-opposed by his own party in Congress at every turn and drawing a primary challenger.
dave-from-hvad says
actually commit against our justice sytem? Lying about an affair? The impeachment process all came down to this because Ken Starr had reached dead-ends with Whitewater and everything else he was trying to nail the Clintons with.
Lying is wrong, yes, but lying about an affair? What did that have to do with his presidency to make it an indictable or impeachable offense? (Sorry, the direct reply button to comments doesn’t seem to work on my computer.)
centralmassdad says
I believe perjury to be a crime against the justice system, which relies in very significant part on testimony given under penalty of perjury.
I don’t necessarily think that this was an impeachable offense; but it was pretty plainly perjury. He should have been indicted.
dave-from-hvad says
but like any crime, there are degrees of seriousness and prosecutors obviously have discretion whether to bring charges. I’m not a lawyer, but I think that in cases of lying in civil lawsuits over charges of adultury, which was what the Paula Jones lawsuit was partly about, prosecutors rarely bring perjury charges. But this was different. Here was a chance to bag the president of the United States. No, he shouldn’t have been indicted and he shouldn’t have been impeached over this issue.
kbusch says
Not sure at all what outcome I would have wanted to see because Bill Clinton has been an undeniable force for good for a while, but I’d take perjury very seriously, too, and our system of justice would not survive if we give much quasi-relativistic wiggle room when it comes to perjury.
centralmassdad says
has long since run. As for his doings in recent years, that’s what redemption means.
centralmassdad says
I think it might be rarely charged because it is rarely easy to get the necessary standard of proof. His case had it, though. I think it is more likely that he escaped prosecution because he was a big shot.
I have always been a little uncomfortable with the dismissive attitude taken by Democrats– self-described defenders of womens’ rights against the depredations of crazy right wingers– toward that whole case. It wasn’t a case about adultery; it was a Title VII sexual harassment case. When it comes to Clinton, Democrats suddenly toss Title VII, one of the single most important pieces of civil rights legislation of the 20th century, aside and revert to Don Draper, cruising the secretaries to see which one might put out to keep her job.
John Tehan says
Jones’ lawsuit was backed by a crew of conservative heavyweights hell-bent on embarrassing Clinton politically – this was nothing but a political witch hunt, which is why Dems are willing to dismiss it out of hand.