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Author | Topic: The Even More Awesome Presidential Election Thread | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
The 47% figure that Romney was mangling is about households, not individuals. Since there is typically more than one person in a household, if 47% of households are going to block vote Democrat, the state will turn blue, guaranteed. But there is typically more than one person per household in the other 53% of households.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I think we need to drop the "47%" number if we're gonna discuss what he was really talking about. He was talking about people who he thinks don't take personal responsibility for themselves and instead rely on government assistance. And he said that that was 47% of people. If he'd said: "I think such people exist", then that would be fine. If he'd suggested that they tended to vote Democrat, one would merely ask him to produce his data. But he didn't, he said that was 47% of the electorate. That is what he was really talking about, which is why it would be a bad idea to drop it.
He equated that group with the "47% that don't pay taxes" and that's certainly wrong, but he wasn't really talking about the people in that 47% group that don't match his caricature. "He may have said: "All black people are lazy stupid criminals", and that's certainly wrong, but he wasn't really talking about the black people who don't match his caricature." All catholic scientists blow goats. If you don't blow goats, then I haven't slandered you --- because clearly if it's not true of you, then I wasn't really talking about you. Just about the ones who do. Indeed, my statement is completely accurate if no catholic scientists blow goats, because in that case, my remarks do apply to, and are true of, the empty subset of catholic scientists who blow goats. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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If you want to argue about what the words he said literally meant, then that's fine. I'd rather talk about what I think the point he was trying to make was. Well, you know, he expands on his point. It's not a single throwaway figure, it's a calculation on which he proposes to erect a political strategy.
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn't connect. And he'll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that's what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those peopleI'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to do is convince the 5 to 10 percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not, what it looks like. It's not just something he said, it's something that he thinks, which is why he's analyzing the political landscape within this framework and making his plans to become President given that as a basis. Now you seem to be suggesting that he can't really mean what he said because he'd have to be a damn fool to think it. Well, I'm open to the position that he is in fact a damn fool. This is, apparently what a whole lot of Republicans think and have said about people who don't pay federal income tax --- I've seen 'em do it, always condemning them en masse, and always using a percentage figure that includes retired people such as your granny. They can't all be suffering from slips of the tongue. Ideologues don't examine their talking points, if they did they wouldn't be ideologues.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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I guess that's why no-one round here is a Stalinist.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
This has what, exactly, to do with the presidential election? Don't you read the newspapers? Joseph Stalin's decaying corpse currently leads Obama by two points and Romney by six, and there's a very read danger that he'll win the White House for the Collective Farms And Mass Starvation ticket. Of course, this is not true, but the ten seconds you spent thinking about this bizarre otherworldly proposition was ten seconds you weren't thinking about any issue that could possibly be relevant to the real state of America in the twenty-first century. And for those ten seconds, my friend, you were a conservative. Coyote must have to do this sort of thing pretty much all the time. The strain on the poor chap must be almost unbearable.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Well, they're not official colors; the parties don't have official colors. (Because they'd both want red and blue ... and white). The convention was created by the media for use in electoral maps; obviously it makes it easier for viewers if every time they're looking at an electoral map it uses the same color code. As to why it's that way round, Wikipedia explains ... sorta.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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And, now Pawlenty is quitting the campaign to become a a lobbyist for Wall Street. So, he accepted a sleazy job working for a bunch of rich crooks devoted to promoting the interests of a rich, privileged and corrupt elite ... ... and then he became a Wall Street lobbyist.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Hmm, read the first chapter.
It is a claim the president has repeated in his books, on the speech-making circuit and in countless media interviews. By his account, he grew up in a broken home with a single mom, struggled for years as a child in an impoverished Third World country and then was raised by his grandparents in difficult circumstances. And then to the extent that they refute this "claim repeated in his books" they do so almost entirely by quotations and paraphrases and facts taken from Dreams From My Father! Wow, this is investigative journalism at its finest.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
While I regret he cannot continue as co-chair of my campaign, his new position advancing the integrity of our financial system is vital to the future of our country. Wait, what? Excuse me, what exactly is going to happen to our country if Tim Pawlenty doesn't become CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable? It'll sink into the sea? The Elder Gods will awaken and eat our souls? It is mentioned in the Mayan Calendar, and if so do the Mayans actually specify that Tim Pawlenty in particular will avert whatever-it-is, or would any former Governor of Minnesota do equally well? I think we should be told. In the meantime, I would like to thank Tim Pawlenty for nobly agreeing to save the US from whatever vague and nebulous horror would otherwise befall it.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
Since the writer apparently doesn't know what Obamacare is, I wouldn't trust her to tell me anything else.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined: |
I would --- if they were equally silly.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Strange, up 'til yesterday no-one had heard of "the Cairo Doctrine", whatever that is. And now suddenly overnight it's been "the centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy" for the last four years.
This is contrary to my ideas of how time usually works, but I suppose it all seems perfectly normal to people who can blame Obama for the recession. In another strange temporal anomaly, the collapse of this mysterious doctrine occurred "in the week following 9/11/12", and yet this represents "four years of failure", rather than, for example, four years of success followed by a failure. I wonder if Obama knows that the centerpiece of his foreign policy has collapsed? I bet he doesn't. I bet Charles Krauthammer hasn't even told him what it is yet. But now that Krauthammer has finally gotten around to inventing this "Cairo Doctrine", perhaps he should drop the Prez a line and let him know what his policy's been for the last four years. He must be dying to find out. If Krauthammer owns a time machine, better still. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given. Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 285 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Here.
When asked about the voter ID law’s disenfranchisement of the 750,000 Pennsylvanians who cannot get IDs, Metcalfe cited Romney’s offhand dismissal of the 47% of the country who will never take personal responsibility and care for their lives as proof that those people don’t deserve the right to vote:
HOST: Are you absolutely convincedthat the methods to implement this law are effective and will in fact make sure no legitimate voter will be disenfranchised? METCALFE: I don’t believe any legitimate voter that actually wants to exercise that right and takes on the according responsiblity that goes with that right to secure their photo ID will be disenfranchised. As Mitt Romney said, 47% of the people that are living off the public dole, living off their neighbors’ hard work, and we have a lot of people out there that are too lazy to get up and get out there and get the ID they need. If individuals are too lazy, the state can’t fix that. |
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