Florida State Seminoles

[Bklyn]

Debates are the most scripted things going on, outside of convention speeches, for candidates. This is in Romney's wheel house to win. But, hedge is right, Obama does not have to win a single debate, he just has to not lose big...and the scripted nature of the Presidential debates makes the latter highly unlikely.

[eCat]

Romney's biggest issue is that he flusters himself trying to be all things to all people.

I'm betting its about a 70% chance he'll contradict himself in the debates and get called on it by the moderator.

How can Romney, for example, get up there and talk about Obamacare and say he'll leave some stuff in it - particularly the stuff that requires a mandate in order to have any chance at solvency/revenue growth for insurance companies?

I also don't see how he is going to get the 47% speech to ever go away. Obama is hammering that home as much as Romney did with the "you didn't build that", but Obama doesn't even have to Romney's comments out of context.

Its very frustrating for me to see the GOP so incompetent but they have brought it on themselves. This country would be better served if the GOP just imploded and something else (clearly I'm biased toward Libertarians) rise up to replace it.

[hedge]

Yep, if the debates go as scripted, with both candidates delivering bland boilerplate platitudes, I don't see how that helps Romney or hurts Obama at this point. In fact, it seems to me that it will only help Obama if they both just stay on message, b/c the message from both guys is so bland and well-known at this point that if they stick to that, it's going to come down to who appears most comfortable and in command of their message (or, as they say, more "presidential"). And to me Romney is by far the more wooden and bland of the two. As I said, the message of both guys is going to be bland, but now I'm talking about how they come across as a person. And at the very least, Obama can deliver a bland message in a dynamic way, whereas Mitt is going to be delivering a bland message in a bland way. It's not a good combination...

[eCat]

I still think Mitt's biggest advantage is to drive home the point that congress will simply not work with Obama and then scare the shit out of everyone with sequestration, credit ratings, the debt ceiling, and even how Obama failed on Obamacare.

I think that would resonate with undecideds and even democrats. He could really drive home a point of asking Americans if they really want that kind of ineffective gridlock when America needs decisive actions.

Basically "elect me and the stock market will stay above 11K for the next 4 years"

[Jungle Rat]

Mitt is gonna make a fool of himself. Just watch.

[Bklyn]

I doubt it, but just in case watch Fox and you'll never know if anything actually goes wrong with W. Mitt Romney's performance.

[10ac]

And what is Fox's viewership compared to the other jock sniffers?

[Bklyn]

It's #1...but the overall numbers are still small. I think Fox pulls in a max of 2M veiwers during their Prime Time run. MSNBC is less than half that, iirc.

[Bklyn]

Ah, so better off 4 years ago...

It was almost exactly four years ago that Mitt Romney watched up close as John McCain agonized over how he should respond to America’s spiraling financial crisis. What McCain ultimately chose to do, six weeks before the election, was to suspend his campaign and return to Washington to meet with President Bush and Congressional leaders. But that strategic gamble — which now takes its place in the annals of political misfires — came as a result of a somber meeting earlier that day with his economic team at a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan. The attendees included several of the candidate’s big donors in the finance industry, a few political advisers and Romney.

“It was an unrelentingly bleak discussion, with the financial guys talking about the world as we know it ending,” recalls Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was McCain’s senior economic adviser at the time. Another McCain senior staff member, who, like many people I spoke with, would speak only under the condition of anonymity, told me: “At the time, there wasn’t a person on the political team who understood what a credit-default swap was or toxic mortgages or subprime bundling. At one point I asked, ‘What do you mean by economic collapse?’ And one of them answered, ‘It means you won’t be able to get a 20-dollar bill out of an A.T.M.’ Right after the meeting I called my wife and said, ‘Get $30,000 in cash out of the bank today.’ It was terrifying and surreal.”

(the article is not as much about that meeting as much as it is about Mitt and his way of doing things. Interesting read, but I zeroed in on this anecdote because Mitt knows how we were 4 years ago and we are definitely better)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/magaz ... times&_r=0

[eCat]

in fairness to Romney - who would have known what to do? who today knows what to do?

The short term answer was to prop up failed business models with fiat money. There is a day of reckoning coming for that decision at some point in the future.

To me the issue is - are things better temporarily? have we built our future on a foundation of sand? I understand its rhetoric by Romney to say things are worse off now, but its all relative.

[aTm]

Was Logan one of McCains advisors?

[eCat]

My mom came in to visit two weeks ago and during that time we went to a store that was having a sale on canned vegetables. We bought several cases to donate to a food pantry and I remember her saying "Its a shame we live in a country so wealthy and yet we can't feed the people that need it"


Of course I love my mother but she is a Fox News disciple, has a bumper sticker that says "don't believe the liberal media" and is going to vote for Romney (and expects all her children to do it as well).

Now I'm not saying that if you want to feed the poor you should vote for Obama, but clearly to me, voting for Romney is an endorsement to cut social programs and while increasing our military spending. Yet she doesn't see it that way - and neither do alot of other people. Of course she didn't clarify that she thought the government should feed the poor, but clearly she was annoyed at the idea that she should foot the bill for the food pantry ( even though we were doing it unsolicited and as an act of altruism)

[Bklyn]

It is the conundrum of people wanting the government out of the nanny business, feel bad about the state of the helpless and deserving but don't have any compunction or ability to provide assistance themselves.

[eCat]

I am a big believer in charity begins at home,but not if the government is taxing you and providing a safety net.

I can see a situation where the safety net was taken away or greatly reduced AND taxes noticeably lowered to where the 30K to 120K people have more money in their pocket - not some token tax credit that once is filtered into the tax tables gives them $200 but something to the order of 50% would greatly enhance Americans desire to provide for and do charity work.

and yes, part of that would be to reduce regulation to the point that opening up child care, elderly care or whatever in a desire to help people still focuses on their safety but not hurdles to collect tax revenues and permits.

[Owlman]

I can see a situation where the safety net was taken away or greatly reduced AND taxes noticeably lowered to where the 30K to 120K people have more money in their pocket - not some token tax credit that once is filtered into the tax tables gives them $200 but something to the order of 50% would greatly enhance Americans desire to provide for and do charity work.

Possible. But I can also see the situation where people don't give more to charity because they want more things that they feel they "need" to have with the result that the amount of charitable giving will stay the same.

[eCat]

I can see a situation where the safety net was taken away or greatly reduced AND taxes noticeably lowered to where the 30K to 120K people have more money in their pocket - not some token tax credit that once is filtered into the tax tables gives them $200 but something to the order of 50% would greatly enhance Americans desire to provide for and do charity work.

Possible. But I can also see the situation where people don't give more to charity because they want more things that they feel they "need" to have with the result that the amount of charitable giving will stay the same.

as long as there is a government safety net , that might be a realistic scenario. I'm not promoting just taking everything away - but I think there needs to be a change to get away from having a cushioned fall so to speak as an American.


two things I fully support to help address Americas ongoing costs.

1. tie the retirement age to the average life expectancy of an American born 50 years prior . For example I may not able to retire until 70, whereas a person born 12 years after me cannot retire until the age of 72.
2. tie the minimum wage full time employment to being $1K above the poverty line. Whatever that would equate to so that a married couple working full time with 2 kids does not qualify for government assistance in regards to income security.

[Owlman]

I'm not sure our safety net has anything to do with it. By that presumption, charitable giving would have been higher (n percentage) in 1900 to 1920. Don't know whether that was the case or not.

And wondering about the great depression?

[Owlman]

also, for retirement age, would you distinguish between men and women, and when would you look at this number? For example, for a 65 year old, would you determine the whatever it was when he was 15?

[Owlman]

[flash=]http://www.businesspundit.com/wp-conten ... ession.jpg[/flash]

http://www.businesspundit.com/6-steps-t ... -scenario/

[Bklyn]

The difficult issue with the age for government retirement benefits is that the higher that age goes, it doesn't necessarily mean a job is available to that person. It may just mean that an individual has to wait that much longer to get social security...and, depending on their personal retirement savings, may wind up on government assistance until that kicks in.

Capitalist forces will always hunger for the younger and cheaper workforce. That 64 years old guy/woman may be staring at almost a decade before benefits come their way.