In my previous post Scott Brown Finds Trouble In Sturbridge, I explained that I was having trouble with lawn sign thieves.
I have taken steps to make sure that my freedom to express my political preference shall not be abridged in Sturbridge.
You can see the following photo album at Large Elizabeth Warren Sign.
Hours before the debate, I had predicted to a group of people that Romney would come out as the peace and love candidate in the debate. I had also predicted that Obama would be so surprised by this turn of events, that he would be completely flummoxed.
This morning, I found this response in an email from CarolG to me.
You were right, Steve!
What I find fascinating about these debate tactics that Romney uses is the tacit admission that his own policies are not acceptable to the majority of the voters, and that Obama’s policies are the ones to promote. The sad part is, that in last night’s debate, Romney put forward a stronger explanation of Obama’s vision than Obama did. (I suppose Obama could have responded, “Yeah, that’s right. Everything you said.” Or maybe, “I am so glad you have come around to seeing my point of view. Your description of my ideas is pretty accurate for one who opposed them so vigorously before.”)
Perhaps Obama rallied in the second part of the debate. We were too disheartened by the first part, that we just could not watch anymore.
Given my past history in predicting the public reaction to these debates, Obama must have won handily, because I thought his performance sucked.
As Sharon has just explained to me, perhaps Obama is just so worn down by the need for constant battle with the Republicans, that he’d just as soon turn the mess over to them and let them take the blame. Of course Obama has no foresight this time either. The Republicans can spend four years blaming Obama for everything that has gone wrong or will go wrong.
What do you make of the article Employees of Romney Family’s Secret Bank Tied to Fraud, Money Laundering and Drug Cartels on truth-out.org?
As previously reported in by the Columbus Free Press, the Romney family, namely Mitt, Ann, G Scott and Tagg Romney, along with Mitt’s “6th son” and campaign finance chair have a secretive private equity firm called Solamere Capital Partners. This firms ties to Romney’s campaign and bundlers is already well documented, along with its connection to the manufacture and distribution of voting machines. What is not as well documented is a subsidiary of that private equity firm hiring employees of a failed firm tied to a Ponzi scheme that has a long history of money laundering for Latin American drug cartels and to the Iran-Contra scandal.
Is this just a tawdry attempt at guilt by association, or is this something to concern the voters who are thinking of voting for Mitt Romney?
Al Franken came to our area in support of Elizabeth Warren. We saw him in Worcester where this video was shot, and we saw him in Southbridge.
For all of you how are dying to see details of how Romney is going to cut the deficit while increasing tax cuts by $5 trillion, have I got the link for you 🙂
Don’t forget to look at the bottom of the page for an additional link.
Don’t ever say that I don’t give you equal access to both sides even though I make no claims to balance. 🙂
Thanks to RogerS for bringing this to my attention.
A thoughtful but conservative friend sent me an email in which he said:
Romney talked about “the 47%” essentially being a waste of his time. Obama referred to the death of four Americans in Libya as “not optimal.” Without either of us offering further qualification or context to those remarks, could we agree that both statements were outrageous?
Responding as he requested with no context, I said:
Taken without context, referring to the death of four Americans in Libya as “not optimal” is so insensitive that I must believe there is some context around those remarks that is essential to understanding what he was saying. (My bullshit alarm goes off when you pose the question the way you did. Do you have a bullshit alarm?)
That is my first reaction, before looking up the quote. I will now go over to Google to find out what he really said.
I, mean, I cannot understand why you would want to react to someone’s remarks without understanding what he intended. That is how I always get in trouble with interpreting many of your remarks before I find out what is behind them.
Follow the link
listen to the video with an open mind and tell me again why it is that you have taken such a dislike to President Obama.
I took a chance by stating the beginning before I did the research. I think that the result of my research shows that my bullshit detector is working just fine.
I later remarked to this friend:
Before your email, I had been unaware that this piece of crap was causing a stir. With your help, we may be able to nip this in the bud before Faux Noise turns this into an issue.
I find it rather silly that Jon Stewart could try to make such a big deal out of the fact that Obama was open enough to the American people to let the information out as it was being gathered. If he had been more political, he would have tried to suppress the information until he had all the facts. Of course, if he had been more Republican he would be out declaring war before he knew the facts.
Do you like politicians who react before they have the facts? I am not saying you do, I am asking a serious question.
The way Obama describes how he works, is exactly how I described an engineering approach to politics. Find out what happened, and then if something is broken, figure out how to fix it. Do you do your engineering some other way?
This could be the most frightening ad that has run in this campaign so far.
How would you rate this compared to the Lyndon Johnson Daisy ad?
With new technology that is at your fingertips, you have much more political power than you may have realized. You ought to use it if you think the upcoming election is important.
In response to the fact that I had a previous post, Facebook Boosts Voter Turnout, I received an email about an interesting info-graphic.
I am part of a team of designers and researcher that put together an infographic showing how social media has affected elections in the past and how it will affect the US presidential election next month.
Here is the introduction that went along with the image Provided by: open-site.org.
Anyone with a Facebook or Twitter account has probably noticed an increase in the number of political postings over the past few years. This is due, in part, to the explosive rise in social media outlets and users. But voters are not the only people who use social media; among politicians, 9 out of 10 Senators and Representatives have Twitter accounts. However, many are starting to wonder if social media is becoming less a reporter of political races and more of a predictor of the results. In Senate races, the candidate with more Facebook friends than his or her opponent has won 81% of the time. And one email sent to 60 million Facebook users prompted an additional 340,000 people to vote in the 2010 election. This infographic illustrates just how politics and social media are affecting each other.
The legal briefs are all available for Scott Brown to read. He claims to be a lawyer. How could he look at the briefs and misinterpret them so badly as he has been doing before he even made his disparaging remarks? He had no reason to believe the people in her ads were actors.
Scott Brown has dug himself such a deep hole that you’d think he would know enough to stop digging.
When the country is several trillion dollars behind in the upkeep of its infrastructure, costs are low, business in the construction industry is slow, interest rates are at historic lows, why isn’t now the best time of all to invest in the work we will need to do sometime in the future anyway? Should we wait until business is very busy and the costs will be higher and delays longer? Can anyone explain the logic to me?
Is the Republican strategy to do the work when it will cost the most and compete with private sector work that needs to be done? Are Republicans in favor of inflation and bubbles? It would seem so by the timing they choose to do things like infrastructure investing and deficit financing.