all done

[detbuch]

An election based on personalities is by definition a joke. No candidate is perfect. And each voter has a different definition of perfect. And personality is more myth than reality. And different people have different perceptions of myth so view a given personality differently. All elections in the past have had this flaw. My myth versus your myth and so little paid attention to the principles of our government. This has led to a degradation of those principles so that most don't even know what they are. If there is a difference in governmental principle between our candidates, that is what matters and has always mattered regardless of the flaws of those candidates.

[Piscator]

I’d love to see the skeletons in the closet of the “perceived” best presidents (and leaders for that matter) in history. Talk about a side show……..

At least you can't knock Romney for managing his money well (maybe he can manage our tax money the same way). If I were him, I would do it too. If you had that money and financial advisers he has I bet every one of us would do it. Who was that guy that is a Senator from MA and registered his luxury yacht boat in another state......

I’m sick of all of it. The media too. All the media wants to do is uncover something bad and never spend any time on the good. Maybe there is no good or maybe our society gets a hard-on for dirt digging. Anyone who runs gets the witch-hunt and unfortunately the media decides what and who they want to hunt. Everyone (except me ) has dirt about something in their present or past.

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Piscator

All the media wants to do is uncover something bad and never spend any time on the good.

There's plenty of good out here, problem is reporting it won't
sell advertising space. $$$ are always the bottom line.

ABC proved it's liberal bias by breaking the Gingrich open marriage thing
the night before the final debate. So did King, making it his first question
in the debate.

Sensationalism????? tell me something I don't know.

[spence]

Originally Posted by justplugit

Sensationalism????? tell me something I don't know.

The problem isn't media bias, it's this process where we're having 4,000 debates and for the most part there's not much substance. The networks are looking for anything to stir the pot to keep the ratings up.

Originally Posted by rob

When it comes to fidelity in office i really don't care. Clinton did a good job and had his on the side, Newt on the side, JFK, lots on the side. When you are a person in power no matter what the job the opportunities with women present themselves. I don't care if you take advantage of the situation, it shouldn't come out in public. If it does just admit to it. Its not usually that big of a deal unless you are John Edwards, he really botched it up.

Clinton and Kennedy didn't leave their wives.

The Gingrich infidelity is much worse, showing a pattern not just of cheating but of leaving multiple wives in the process not to mention the stories of doing so with health issues at play.

This really gets to the heart of Newt's character which many believe to be extremely erratic and egotistical. Gingrich repeatedly states he's the most consistent Conservative, but his track record paints a different picture.

-spence

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by spence

The problem isn't media bias, it's this process where we're having 4,000 debates and for the most part there's not much substance. The networks are looking for anything to stir the pot to keep the ratings up.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yup, they are stirring the pot for ratings for advertising $$$$. Always comes
down to the buck. But Spence don't tell me they're not bias when sensationalizing
a 10 year old story the night before the debate.
__________________________________________________ ___________________

Clinton and Kennedy didn't leave their wives.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Talk about serial offenders,
Prolly would have been betta for their wives if they did.
__________________________________________________ ___________________

The Gingrich infidelity is much worse, showing a pattern not just of cheating but of leaving multiple wives in the process not to mention the stories of doing so with health issues at play.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Much better then swimming away from a helpless drowning woman?
Much better then President of the US defining what sex isn't as a role model
for the young, digracing the office and saying "it all depends upon what the word is, is?
What about the effect on a young Chelsea?


__________________________________________________ ___________________

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This really gets to the heart of Newt's character which many believe to be extremely erratic and egotistical. Gingrich repeatedly states he's the most consistent Conservative, but his track record paints a different picture-spence

__________________________________________________ ___________________


Sounds like Obama with his ego and lack of fulfilling his BS campaign promises.

[spence]

Originally Posted by justplugit

Yup, they are stirring the pot for ratings for advertising $$$$. Always comes down to the buck. But Spence don't tell me they're not bias when sensationalizing a 10 year old story the night before the debate.

The story was the interview which just happened this week.

Perhaps this says it better

-spence

[PaulS]

Newt helped take us from a time when pols. would drink together after sessions (think Reagan and Tip) to a time where if someone on the other side disagrees with you, they are evil and un-American.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by PaulS

Newt helped take us from a time when pols. would drink together after sessions (think Reagan and Tip) to a time where if someone on the other side disagrees with you, they are evil and un-American.

from Chris Matthews lips you your ears...icky

"There's something there I miss today," mused the former Democratic staffer and longtime talk-show host Chris Matthews in January about the relationship between Reagan and House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, the most powerful Democrat in Washington during Reagan's first term. Matthews dreamily evoked a time when Reagan and O'Neill had drinks together, swapped Irish stories, slapped backs, and, they say, cut deals with a minimum of personal rancor—as opposed to the ugly relations between the two parties today.

The Democratic Party maintained control of the House from 1954 until 1995.

Newt helped take us from a time when the Dems ran the House perpetually to a time when it has, now, changed hands a couple of times in 15 years .....a lot of people didn't like that....Washington and the goings on there have always been quite ugly, if you know anything about the history of American politics and elections you would know that nothing has changed since our founding in terms of the brutal rhetoric, the attacks and in many cases the complete lack of civility....politics has always brought this out in people and always will, Newt did not help make Washington a less friendly place....it has always been that, particularly at times when power is changing hands...it does make a nice talking point though "Newt ruined civility in Washington"

Didn't the Clintonistas refer to their paticular brand of politics as "BLOOD SPORTS"? The term refers to and traces back to 18th Century England when entertainment was provided in the village square for the masses by tethering a bear.... "bear baiting".... or a bull... "bull baiting" and sometimes even a bager "Newt Baiting?", to a stake and then unleashing mastiffs and bulldogs on the animal where they would then rip eachother apart....and then they'd go have drinks afterward



"In truth, this depiction of Reagan is entirely false, as is the contention that Reagan-era Washington was a kinder and gentler place than it is today. The hostilities between parties and ideologies in Washington during Reagan's presidency make the present day look tame by comparison. No president in modern times has ever been as reviled. And the hatred of Reagan was justified, to some degree, because his presidency, in the rueful words of the journalist Richard Reeves a decade ago, "damned near destroyed American liberalism."

Liberals hated Reagan in the 1980s. Pure and simple. They used language that would make the most fervid anti-Obama rhetoric of the Tea Party seem like, well, a tea party. Democratic Rep. William Clay of Missouri charged that Reagan was "trying to replace the Bill of Rights with fascist precepts lifted verbatim from Mein Kampf." The Los Angeles Times cartoonist Paul Conrad drew a panel depicting Reagan plotting a fascist putsch in a darkened Munich beer hall. Harry Stein (later a conservative convert) wrote in Esquire that the voters who supported Reagan were like the "good Germans" in "Hitler's Germany."

There was ample academic support for this theme. John Roth, a Holocaust scholar at Claremont College, wrote:

I could not help remembering how 40 years ago economic turmoil had conspired with Nazi nationalism and militarism—all intensified by Germany's defeat in World War I​—to send the world reeling into catastrophe. . . . It is not entirely mistaken to contemplate our postelection state with fear and trembling.

Eddie Williams, head of what the Washington Post described as "the respected black think tank, the Joint Center for Political Studies," reacted to Reagan's election thus: "When you consider that in the climate we're in—rising violence, the Ku Klux Klan—it is exceedingly frightening." (This was not far removed from Fidel Castro's opinion about Reagan, offered right before the election: "We sometimes have the feeling that we are living in the time preceding the election of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany.") In the Nation, Alan Wolfe​ wrote that "the United States has embarked on a course so deeply reactionary, so negative and mean-spirited, so chauvinistic and self-deceptive that our times may soon rival the McCarthy era."

"As for the supposed sweetness and light between Reagan and Tip O'Neill, it was mostly blarney. The two had numerous tense phone calls and meetings. In private they called each other's views "crap" on more than one occasion; as the budget talks in 1982 headed to a climax, Reagan told O'Neill, "you can get me to crap a pineapple, but you can't get me to crap a cactus." O'Neill publicly called Reagan "callous . . . a real Ebenezer Scrooge," whose program was "for the selfish, the greedy, and the affluent." In his diary, Reagan wrote: "Tip O'Neil [sic] is getting rough; saw him on TV telling the United Steelworkers U. that I am going to destroy the nation." He also told his diary that "Tip is a true pol. He can really like you personally & be a friend while politically trying to beat your head in." That was Reagan at his most charitable. He noted once that in a White House meeting where O'Neill "sounded off in a very partisan manner," "I almost let go the controls but I didn't," and on another occasion he described one of O'Neill's public claims as "the most vicious pack of lies I've ever seen."

'Reagan had in mind such O'Neill gems as his remarks in 1981 on ABC that Reagan "has no concern, no regard, no care for the little man in America. And I understand that. Because of his lifestyle, he never meets those people." This was a mere warm-up for O'Neill's blast at Reagan during the 1984 campaign:

The evil is in the White House at the present time. And that evil is a man who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations of America, and who likes to ride a horse. He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood.

bet they had a few beers after that one huh?...did he say "evil"....twice?????

[PaulS]

Newt and Lee Atwater - who on his death bed tried to make amends.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by PaulS

Newt and Lee Atwater - who on his death bed tried to make amends.

yeah, I'm not having much luck finding where either of them ever referred to other elected politicians as "evil"...let alone twice in one speech regarding a sitting American President maybe he said it with the best of intentions...being good friends and all

here's more Tip...

Tip O' Neill (the powerful Speaker of the House) said Reagan's mind was "an absolute and total disgrace" and that it was "sinful that this man is President of the United States."

probably like.... 3 beers and a shot for that...right??


the right's rhetoric never quite measures up to the left when you actually look at it...but the left sure have selective memories

[PaulS]

Seems like when news comes out on these candidates that most people would be embarrassed about they get more votes and donations go to record levels I always thought evangelicals had higher moral sandards.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by PaulS

Seems like when news comes out on these candidates that most people would be embarrassed about they get more votes and donations go to record levels I always thought evangelicals had higher moral sandards.

people tend to rally around those that they feel are being unfairly treated......Hillary always had her highest positives when she was playing the victim...remember the cry in NH? dems rallied around Bill despite being lied to and having his finger wagged in their faces...shouldn't be shocking...Evangelicals and others recognize that people can get on the right path...Newt has indicated and I guess shown that he has changed regarding the issue that you are talking about and I think most found the interview to be bitter, salacious and purpousfully politically timed rather than some great revelation

[zimmy]

I thought you guys were pissed that Obama was fulfilling campaign promises? WTH?

[RIJIMMY]

i dont think he is doing anything shady. I think the public will view him and his tax % as the problem and not the solution.

[spence]

Originally Posted by RIJIMMY

i dont think he is doing anything shady. I think the public will view him and his tax % as the problem and not the solution.

People know his net worth is estimated at $250 million. He's already stated his effective tax rate.

Romney said he didn't want to let his personal finances go drip, drip, drip yet that's exactly what he's doing.

Once they got wind that the other Republican nominees were going to go with a left wing attack he should have said eff you, released his 2010 returns and talk about how successful he's been because freedom rewards talent and hard work.

Probably would have won SC.

On a work call today I challenged a guy and as he was fumbling over the response I said "you sound like Romney and his taxes."

He's got to shut the door tonight.

-spence

[JohnnyD]

Originally Posted by RIJIMMY

i dont think he is doing anything shady. I think the public will view him and his tax % as the problem and not the solution.

He has 400x more net worth when compared to the average American household yet pays a lower tax rate. That is what *should* be the typical voter's biggest issue with him. He is completely disassociated from the average American and will never have any perspective on how the economy over the last 8 years has had an effect on the middle-class.

Lobbying and the homogeneous mix of corporate money and politicians is the fuel behind almost all legislation now-a-days - and Romney is the epitome of corporately-driven politics.

[scottw]

Originally Posted by JohnnyD

He has 400x more net worth when compared to the average American household yet pays a lower tax rate.

again, his tax rate is based on his investment income, he doesn't have earned income, he's paying the same rate as other Americans with investment income..if I am wrong please tell me but this doesn't seem complicated...


I think if I were Romney, I'd release the total $$$ figure for Federal Taxes that I'd paid during my working years and up through present, I imagine that's quite a tidy sum... and then ask if I'd paid "my fair share" and helped fund the Federal Government and all of its programs to an acceptable level through working my fair share of hours, creating my fair share of jobs, investing in my fair share of businesses and reinvesting my fair share of what was left after paying my fair share into the economy to create businesses and jobs and then ask the other candidates if their record of investment in America, in other Americans and the economy can compare..... Haven't heard anyone say what he's done illegally or unethically regarding his income or taxes or buisness ventures but for some reason he's guilty for being successful...I can't think of any major(or minor) scandals while he was governor or at any of the various ventures that he's been part of which all seem to have been highly successful....

also....he should release the total $$$ amount in charitable donations that he's been fortunate to be able to make during the same period as a result of his success

and then challenge the other candidates and the current occupant to show us how they've contributed to the same, how much...and how much as a result of private sector work and your own money vs. the perks of winning an election...I guess if it comes down to hiring someone that is going to invest your money wisely and make good decisions with it for the next 4 years...Mitt looks pretty attractive versus the others

Obama can't even produce a budget on time and thanks to the senate dems we haven't had one in a very long time

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by scottw

also....he should release the total $$$ amount in charitable donations that he's been fortunate to be able to make during the same period as a result of his success

Ya, Romney's charitable giving was $3 million on his 2010 return.

LMAO, the great liberal who's liberalism declares you "really care
about the have nots", Joe Biden's charitable giving when he released his tax return
was $350 dollars.

Good hearted Joe, last of the big givers.

[zimmy]

Originally Posted by justplugit

Ya, Romney's charitable giving was $3 million on his 2010 return.

LMAO, the great liberal who's liberalism declares you "really care
about the have nots", Joe Biden's charitable giving when he released his tax return
was $350 dollars.

Good hearted Joe, last of the big givers.

Romney is mormon. It was a tithe. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Nothing wrong either with questioning a tax system that taxes income from working at a higher rate than income from investments.