The Economist is disgusted with Mitt Romney.
…competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper…
Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?
When a Republican former CEO of a private equity firm can’t even win over The Economist, you know he’s a sure loser.
Au contraire, por favor!!!
The real deal?
Bet on it.
Wake the fuck up.
AG
How are you, Arthur?
Did you know that I operated under the user name “Arturo Gilroy” for some time here?
Your presence here is curious…my best guess is that you and I are closer “politically” than any other two people that visit this place…(deep down, we’d both love Ron Paul to be President!)…but you seem so angry…why?
Why?
You gotta ask?
Please.
This country is in total decline.
My people have been here since the 1600s. They lived and died here fighting for a place in the sun.
My son and nephews/nieces are still in the good fight, as are my brothers and any number of colleagues in the jazz and latin music fields…as am I, as a mater of fact.
You gotta ask?
Please.
AG
How does anger and cynicism solve the problem?
Most people do not understand the relationship between radical libertarians and true Christians…when Christ said love your enemy…he meant it!! It’s powerful! Of course, most Christians today actually embody the Pharisees against whom Christ railed against…
Spread the message, but do it with goodwill…it’s powerful…
Anger is one thing, cynicism another. I am angry at what has happened, but I am in no way cynical about the continuing evolution of the human spirit. I do not know what Jesus actually felt or did nor do I have any idea if he even existed, but I do know that the routing of the moneychangers from the temple…fact or fiction, no matter…was the right move. And I further know that anyone who listens to the likes of Jamie Dimon, Timothy Geithner and Jeffrey Immelt is collaborating with the moneychangers.
Who’s your daddy?
AF
You know in your heart that the guy who chased the money changers is real…
The real lesson of Jesus is that we bear his cross…as he says in Matthew, “Be perfect, as your father in Heaven is pèrfect…”
Rule One…love everyone…you will change the world!
No MassDem…I do not “know” that, although I respect your right to believe it. If the universe is perfect…if it is the only possible universe, an ongoing process of evolution on all levels…then the perfection of which the New Testament speaks is inherent in everything. In exists in death, war, anger and taxes as well as life, love, the pursuit of happiness and the appreciation of cute little puppies.
The real Rule One?
Love everything. Everything.
Everything.
Including your enemies.
But that does not mean surrender to them.
AG
If the rule is love everything, why all the wouldnt you have to accept the permagov for what it is without complaining? Yet you need to educate us progressives on the dangers of it because we are too blind to see. What are the exeptions on this rule or am i horribly taking this out of context?
I must be missing the point or something.
Yes, you are indeed “missing the point or something.”
You are missing the “But that does not mean surrender to them” point. Not surrendering also means not allowing oneself to be co-opted.
Barack Obama is a liberal or progressive in name only. All of the proof that you need for that statement is contained in the National Defense Authorization Act, a set of laws that have been put in place for one reason and one reason only…to make damned sure that if an appreciable segment of the U.S. population wakes up to the economic imperialist truth of the matter and begins to offer any kind of effective resistance to the massive evil that the U.S. is promulgating throughout the world, that segment can be shut down without any recourse to traditional U.S. rule of law. No lawyers, no reprieves, no habeus corpus, no mercy, no nuthin’. Just Guantanamo North. Bradley Manning is living in that state right now. His imprisonment and harsh treatment is meant to be an object lesson to any other pepple who wish to turn over the PermaGov rock and let the population see what is crawling around underneath it, and Julian Assange’s fate will be similar or worse if he is not successful in avoiding extradition.
In my view, “love” is the force that drives evolution. On all levels. One must fight to evolve, because the forces of statsis…the inertia that is inherent in the mass of people just as it is in the mass of the physical world…resist any and all change.
Love thine enemies? Sure. But fight them, too.
Passive resistance? OK as well. A tactic, one of many possibilities. But passive acceptance…active acceptance, which is what I am seeing in the leftiness world…promotion of the “FOUR MORE YEARS” thing with Obama simply because his is a more attractive evil than is that of his so-called opposition? A better tasting poison? A kinder, gentler repression?
Sorry, bazzz. I ain;’t buying it. See my sig.
Later…
AG
Romney is definitely not that likable…but Ryan is!!!
Good thing that Obama is the worst president since Carter!
troll so hard
“My running mate is cute” has to be the worst campaign rationale ever. (Ask McCain.) Even if it were true.
What’s that old saying? “Each eye forms its own beauty said the old lady as she kissed the cow.”
Something like that. Anyway, to some Paul Ryan is likable. To others he’s a zombie-eye granny starver*.
*TM – Charlie Pierce, Esquire magazine
It’s so cute when Republicans feign amnesia.
What’s to like? Seriously, he’s exactly what the term “empty-suit” means. He’s not the first, nor sadly not likely to be the last, empty-suit that a male superior took a shine to and promoted way beyond his level of incompetence. Like the Peter Principle cubed.
Well, you know what they say: “As goes The Economist, so goes the nation.”
It’s a more reliable election indicator than any of Nate Silver’s regression analyses could ever be.
Somewhere there is the story lurking, I am convinced, of the shadow Mitt who is the real one to take his exams, do his homework and put together his deals. I’ve seen nothing on the hours of public video to convince me that he has managed his own life.
Ryan on the other hand, engages. He’s good at it. Why he chose Ayn Rand to latch onto is a mystery; it’s as if he engages and then does a full-stop, never walking past her first assignment or asking her ideology himself how the pieces fit together.
Mitt’s the real deal:
Cross-posted from my new diary – 1966 Anti-Student Demonstration of Willard @Stanford U.
Was somebody banned again? This post had more comments the last time I looked at it.
No. When a single comment is downrated as a troll it is hidden and loses all comments linked to it. Another comment of same poster was downrated by 7 persons and had only effect on his/her comment that disappeared. Most of the time the community will not downrate because of this effect. I welcome a lively debate but there are red lines. This troll has reappeared under different handles. See earlier thread.