Romney and Mormons think he is Preordained to be President

As a Christian I personally believe that religion and government should be separate from each other. I also think that the U.S. government would function much better if it consisted of more Atheist because then all of the religious dogma would be gone, leaving or elected officials to actually make some sound policy decisions, not shit based on their “ religious “ views. Have you noticed how well our “ Christian “ government has done?  That being said, we most certsainly do not need a Mormon in the White House. Why not?

By azrefugee Mon Aug 13, 2012               Original

I was raised a Mormon. By old time Mormons who taught me real Mormonism. The church tends to gloss over a lot of the old teachings these days, they want to be relevant and some of the teachings are downright bizarre. But yes, Mormons believed (and still do I presume) in the White Horse Prophecy
. However, there is much more to the story.

The first thing I should attempt to explain is PreOrdination. Mormons believe that we were alive in heaven before we came to earth. We come to get bodies and learn and prove ourselves. They also believe that before we come we are given tasks that we will need to fulfill. This makes one "PreOrdained". As I explained in a comment this differs from Predestination. Mormons believe completely in free will. Predestination would remove free will. So thus, Mormons are instead preordained. It is entirely possible, and I would even say probable that Romney believes he is preordained to be President.And so do most Mormons.

One cannot know what Mormons believe and dismiss the probability that they are connecting the dots between the White Horse Prophecy and Romney's run for the White House.

But wait! There's more.

Let's go back to the Book of Daniel in the Bible. Book 2, verses 28 through 45 concern a dream that King Nebuchadnezzar had. He saw an image in the form of a man who had body parts in different materials, the feet being of clay. Daniel starts explaining the dream and then prophecies:

44 And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever.

Mormons believe that their church is the Kingdom of God spoken of by Daniel. See Doctrine and Covenants Section 65 verse 2.

See any similarities? Daniel 2:45

45 Forasmuch as thou sawest that the stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it brake in pieces the iron, the brass, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God hath made known to the king what shall come to pass hereafter: and the dream is certain, and the interpretation thereof sure.

D & C Section 65 verse 2:

The keys of the kingdom of God are committed unto man on the earth, and from thence shall the gospel roll forth unto the ends of the earth, as the stone which is cut out of the mountain without hands shall roll forth, until it has filled the whole earth.

Now a reasonable person would assume that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young plagiarized shamelessly from the Bible. But Mormons believe that their scriptures are further revelations, from the same author (God). So they don't think that. Instead it reinforces their beliefs.

So let's recap. The Kingdom of God is the Mormon church, which will come forward in the end times and save the constitution, and establish a Theodemocracy .

I don't have a problem personally with what Mormons believe privately. Or any other religion. But if Romney who is steeped in Mormon culture and lore even halfway believes any of this, yeah, it starts to be a problem.

Such a person in a position of power, who has a completely different vision of America, who cannot but help listen to the dictates of the Prophet and Quorum of 12 Apostles, well, I can't even begin to imagine the possibilities. Can you?

Technorati Tags: Mormon,Mitt Romney,LDS,Religion,Current Events,2012 Elections

Mitt Romney Says 'Big Business Is Doing Fine' Thanks To 'Offshore Tax Havens'

The Jed Report on Fri Aug 24, 2012

This guy just can't make it through a day without shoving his foot right in his mouth, can he?

"Big business is doing fine in many places," Romney said during a campaign fundraiser Thursday. "They get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses."

I know "big business is doing fine" sounds like "the private sector is doing fine," but it's not exactly the same thing—though Mitt Romney would probably justify removing the "big" from his quote, because who cares about what words actually mean. Still, I'll read the quote like a normal person instead of a Romney hack and cut him some slack on hypocrisy there. But here's the thing: I honestly don't know if he's praising or condemning offshore tax havens.

I mean, with a normal politician you'd assume Romney was condemning them. And you'd assume he wasn't speaking highly of big business. But Mitt is a guy who says that anyone who dares criticize business hates America, and that anything other than unadulterated love for free enterprise is akin* to Stalinism—so he couldn't be criticizing big business. And given that he says offshore tax havens are part of the reason that big business is doing fine, you have to assume that he's in favor of them, right?

And no, I'm not being entirely serious here. After all, it's really hard to take anything Mitt Romney says very seriously. That being said, have you heard him say anything specific about getting rid of any of those tax havens? No? Neither have I. And we all know that he's taken extensive advantage of them at Bain and in his personal life. So as weird as it would be, maybe he really was praising offshore tax havens. I mean, job creators love them, right? And Mitt Romney is nothing if not a job creator.

*I'll bet you thought I'd be able get through this post without mentioning Mitt's favorite GOP senate nominee. Nope. On message, baby!

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Taxes,2012 Elections,Current Events,Paul Ryan

Romney Energy Plan Means More Costs For Taxpayers, More Profits For Big Business

August 25, 2012   By Nathaniel Downes  Creative Commons License                           Addicting Info

The Romney/Ryan team has at long last released their energy plan. What is inside is disturbing, not just for their gross negligence in making wildly inaccurate claims about the Wright brothers to even failing to grasp when fiscal years begin (a very bad sign for someone running on their business experience). It is clear from reading the document that whomever put it together is attempting to hoodwink the American people with buzzwords and catch phrases, hoping that people don’t actually read the document to understand it.

The first catch phrase he throws around is “Energy Independence.” This is a common Republican refrain, so it comes as no surprise to see it here. What is surprising, however, is that it is now part of a much larger phrase, “North American Energy Independence.” For his plan to work, the US will need to tap the oil from Canada, Mexico, and Central America, without restriction. This of course means the US takes all the oil from them, willing or not. Is Romney planning on a war with our bordering neighbors?

He then talks about eliminating federal controls on federal lands, handing mineral and resource rights over to the states. Of course, when has air or water stopped at state borders? How many people in Florida would be happy when Georgia starts dumping coal ash into the tributaries which flow into the states agricultural basin? Romney is right in that this would grow something, but that would be federal lawsuits and injunctions, causing an already slow permitting process to effectively grind to a complete halt.

He then goes to length in discussing opening up offshore areas for drilling. Not some areas, all areas. Oil rigs off of Virginia’s scenic beaches, within eyesight of the residents of the nation’s capital when they go to the beach. And Virginia is first on Romney’s list for oil exploitation. Oh and the state control of permits would be only for onshore exploitation, all offshore would stay federally controlled, but be fast-tracked for rapid decisions.

One interesting bit of the plan however is that the federal government would “Ensure accurate assessment of energy resources.” The government’s job now would be to find these oil fields, survey them, detail it all out, for the oil companies to profit from. Socializing the costs while privatizing the wealth. This would further increase oil company profits while leaving the US taxpayer the bill.

Of course, new energy is not left out in the cold. Oh wait, yes it is, with the complete elimination of government subsidies and development for anything other than fossil fuel technologies. Bye bye solar, hello coal gas. And cut those clean air standards while we’re at it, cannot do anything to hurt the drive to make a buck.

To back up his positions he turns to energy experts…. no, wait, he turns to banks and investment brokers. With the lions share of his positions backed up not by energy firms, or by experts in the field, we find Bloomberg, Citigroup, Raymond James… not a single piece of industry inside information. He then compared years he called the George Bush years to Barack Obama years to compare permit rates, but then messes those up, giving Obama the last Bush year. Of course the year being given Obama is the Fiscal Year 2009, running from October 2008-September 2009, the last year of the Bush administration’s budget. It also puts the entire economic downturn, with the reduction in permit applications, solidly into an administration which did not even take office for months after the fiscal year began.

Or did he mess up at all, and it is intentionally done that way, lying about Obama’s record in order to make his case to the American people? Considering his earlier declaration of energy independence only if we become economic slaves to Canada and Mexico, or otherwise invade them or annex them to become part of some grand North American Union, I suspect that it is in fact intentional.

Dates do seem to be a problem for the Romney plan, however. At one part he proclaims that “Utah Has Regulated Fracking For Over 50 Years Without A Single Reported Case Of Water Contamination” while neglecting to notice that the page he is citing is referring to limestone deposits, not the oil shale gas fracking which is what the current issues are about. He also talks about the “past four years of Obama’s energy policy” when Obama has not been in office for that long.

The report goes to great length in discussing the natural gas reserves, ignoring that natural gas expansion has been due in large part to Obama’s embrace of the resource since taking office. If you read the Romney plan, it sounded like natural gas exploration was run by private enterprise without any government oversight, then in fact without the governments investment in R&D into gas extraction technologies in the 1970′s and 1980′s, we would not have a natural gas industry today.

And of course, the real enemy for Romney comes out, when he blames environmentalists for all of the woes of the nation. The plan blames them for blocking anything and everything, but even then the examples he cites fails to meet the grade. He cited the Antelope Valley Solar Ranch for being blocked by environmentalists, but doing even quick research revealed that the permitting issue had to do with construction permits due to earthquake codes. Last time I checked earthquakes were not a high level environmentalist issue.

Once we have expanded our resource exploitation, of course, it means energy independence, right? Wrong. In his plan it talks at length about exporting these resources. We’d not even be using them ourselves, but shipping them to India and China, both mentioned by name in the report. All of make more money for the 1%.

In the end, the entire Romney energy plan looks to be little more than big government handouts to big energy, with the US taxpayer put on the line to pay for it all. His plan is short sighted, foolish and most of all demonstrates no loyalty to the United States, making us ever more enslaved to the world market. This is a plan for third world status, identical to a plan you would find for Nigeria. And we all know how well that worked out.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan,Energy Plan,Oil Subsidies,Current Events,2012 Election,Trickle-Up Economics

Bain Files: Tax Experts Find Shady, Possibly Illegal, Dealings In Documents Related To Romney's Bain Investments

Tax experts poring over leaked confidential documents from Boston-based Bain Capital in which Mitt Romney and his wife have invested millions of dollars have found the private equity firm used some head-shaking but perfectly legal tax-avoidance techniques as well as at least one that probably is outside the law. Bain manages $65 billion in assets.

Romney, who founded Bain in 1984 and remained with the firm until 1999 or 2001 or 2002, depending on whom you talk to, receives significant income from Bain as part of his retirement package. Some of the investments that are part of this package were created after he left the firm. His financial advisers have also invested additional money from his personal fortune, estimated at a quarter-billion dollars, in the Bain's highly complex instruments.

The 950 pages of documents were posted on line Thursday by the website Gawker.com. They include audited financial statements, investor correspondence and other material that outsiders were not supposed to see. A Bain spokesman lamented their disclosure. The documents also contain some new details of Romney's investments. While some of Bain's investments are publicly known, others are not, and Romney has refused to discuss the underlying assets on his federally required public disclosure forms. Gawker did not say where or how it obtained the documents. It asked readers with expertise for help in decoding them.

One of those experts who stepped forward, according to the New York Times, is Victor Fleischer, a law professor at the University of Colorado. On his A Taxing Blog late Thursday, Fleischer wrote about the conversion of management fees into "carried interest" as a means of sharply reducing tax liabilities. That is something Romney did in at least one of the funds included in the documents, Bain Capital Fund VII. Romney has more than $1 million in Fund VII.

Private-equity firm managers get paid two ways, with fees and carried interest. The fees are what the firm charges companies it acquires for overhead, salaries and the like, usually two percent. These are taxed as regular income. When you make what these guys do, that's at the 35 percent rate. Carried interest, however, is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15 percent. So partners sometimes waive the fee, expecting to benefit from future profits. Fleischer:

There are many variations on the theme, but here’s how many deals worked: each year, before the annual management fee comes due, the fund manager waives the management fee in exchange for a priority allocation of future profits.  There is minimal economic risk involved; as long as the fund, at some point, has a profitable quarter, the managers get paid.  (If the managers don’t foresee any future profits, they won’t waive the fees, and they will take cash instead.)   In exchange for a minimal amount of economic risk, the tax benefit is enormous: the compensation is transformed from ordinary income (taxed at 35%) into capital gain (taxed at 15%).  Because the management fees for a large private equity fund can be ten or twenty million per year, the tax dodge can literally save millions in taxes every year. [...]

Unlike carried interest, which is unseemly but perfectly legal, Bain’s management fee conversions are not legal.  If challenged in court, Bain would lose. The Bain partners, in my opinion, misreported their income if they reported these converted fees as capital gain instead of ordinary income.

Bloomberg reported that "the documents also show how deeply embedded Bain has become in the offshore tax-haven world with funds organized in the Cayman Islands."

The entire purpose behind the offshore operations is to allow foreign investors to avoid paying taxes on profits produced by the companies Bain and other private-equity operations manage. During the 15 years Romney claims he was at Bain, the firm took $6.75 billion in return on $1.91 billion invested in some 150 companies, according to Thomson Reuters Corp.’s PeHUB.

A spokesman for the Romney campaign said the candidate and his wife have no control over where their assets are invested because they are held in a blind trust.

However, as Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post reported, if Bain "used improper tax-avoidance techniques, the Romneys would be required to amend their returns regardless of the blind nature of the investments."

That might include amendments because of another questionable technique:

[...] owning U.S. dividend-paying stocks in an offshore account and pretending, for accounting purposes, not to own the stock. Instead, the taxpayer tells the Internal Revenue Service that he owns a derivative product that is identical in every way to the stock—except it isn't the stock, so therefore no U.S. taxes are owed. It's called a "total return equity swap," because the buyer still gets the benefit—the "total return"—of owning the stock, or equity.

"This use of total return equity swaps, such as to avoid the U.S. dividend withholding tax, was very widespread for more than a decade, and may not be dead yet, although the IRS issued a shot-across-the-bow Notice concerning the practice in 2010," writes Daniel Shaviro, the Wayne Perry Professor of Taxation at New York University School of Law. "But taxpayers who engaged in it to avoid the dividend withholding tax were coming perilously close to committing tax fraud, in cases where the economic equivalence to direct ownership was too great."

As if there weren't enough reason to demand that Romney show us his tax returns, the Bain documents show the kinds of things that such disclosure might shed some light on. And these are, of course, just what one website has been able to get its hands on.

Originally posted to Meteor Blades on Fri Aug 24, 2012

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,S.E.C.,Bain Capital,Tax Loop-Holes,2012 Elections,Current Events

The Know Nothings Gather In Tampa

When Jack Kennedy was president, he hosted a state dinner for all of the living Nobel Prize winners. His toast to the guests, one of the best ever uttered at such an event, proclaimed, "This is the greatest collection of intellect ever to dine under this roof at one time, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Just the opposite could be said now of the Republican Party delegates racing to Tampa before "Isaac" blows into town.

When the GOP convention is gaveled to order, America will see the largest collection of anti-knowledge know-nothings to gather under one roof since Pope Urban VIII and his Inquisition minions met to condemn Galilei Galileo for writing that the earth revolved around the sun.

The platform that Republicans will endorse, and the Gekko-Galt - wait, I mean the Romney-Ryan ticket will campaign on, may well be the most regressive in American politics since before the Civil War. It doesn't like uppity women, anything backed by science, Moslems of any sort, immigrants, investigating right wing terrorists and hate groups, students, anyone poor, children, the elderly, people who aren't in perfect health, and working stiffs.

It is as if a new Age of Unreason has consumed a once noble political party. Truly disturbing is that at least 40-percent of Americans who vote in November actually agree with what passes for bold ideas in the party that started with Lincoln and was given a voice by Teddy Roosevelt.

Worst Platform Ever?

On one page after another, the Republican platform is breathtaking not just in denying everything from science to common sense but in its entire dismissal of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Its desire to prohibit any pregnancy terminations for any reason, even to save the life or health of the mother, or because a woman was victimized by rape or incest, doesn't mean the party likes anyone talking about it. The party wants Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin out of the race not because of his comment about "legitimate rape" but because Akin spoke publicly in favor of the party's position To the GOP, the issue isn't that Akin is an idiot with a Neanderthal view of women's rights; it is that he is alienating women voters in Missouri, endangering Republican chances to take back control of the Senate.

In other words, the GOP doesn't want anyone to know what it will do once it gets 51 Senate seats: Overturn the Affordable Care Act, denying health care to nearly 50-million Americans.

The GOP platform also denies science, including well-established facts such as evolution, climate change and – for all anyone knows – gravity, because Republicans do not understand what the word "theory" means in scientific circles. In particular, the Republican Party is in favor of teaching creationism even though it is nonsense. Denying evolution is a throwback to the Scopes monkey trial. Republican legislators in Kentucky are aghast that to pass the College Boards and SAT tests, the state's students need to know about evolution.

The know-nothings also want to block the Dept. of Homeland Security from investigating right wing hate groups, even though these kooks have spawned more acts of domestic terrorism in the US over the last decade than all of the Moslems on earth.

This fact – which the GOP isn't fond of because "facts" have a liberal bias – doesn't stop the party from worrying about finding a Moslem hiding under every bed in America, just waiting to leap out and impose Sharia law on unsuspecting yokels. The party is now a refuge for politicians indulging in hate speech, from Mitt Romney's dog whistle comments to Michelle Bachmann and Joe Walsh's outright odious bigotry. (LINK www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/10/joe-walsh-muslims-in-amer_n_1764034.html?utm_hp_ref=chicago)

Tell Your Kids

When the convention takes over prime time television, have your kids watch. They should know what happened if Republicans are elected this fall – from Romney on down the ticket – and understand why the country they inherit once they're adults is in such rough shape.

People will be denied health care. The elderly will be seen begging on the streets because Medicare was eliminated and Social Security was handed over to Wall St. Climate change will be raging in full tilt boogey with everything from massive storms and major coastal erosion to the decline of agriculture and the rise of diseases such as West Nile virus. The air will be a mess because of America's unchecked carbon emissions and the water undrinkable as a result of wholesale fracking. Government takeover by moneyed and corporate interests – often the same thing – means that tomorrow's adults have rights and liberty in name only.

Hopefully, enough people who watch the GOP convention will see it as, to use Churchill's phrase, America's gathering storm.

Originally posted to Charley James on Thu Aug 23, 2012

Technorati Tags: Affordable Care Act,Joe Walsh,Medicare,Michelle Bachmann,Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan,Republican Party,Republican PArty Platform,Tampa,Current Events,2012 Election Social Security

Friday Funnies: Todd Akin, Mitt Romney, Republicans- So Much Stupid, So Little Time Edition

   Most of you probably think that I'm one of those Liberal assholes by the way that I constantly bash the Republican Party. I can bash that sorry assed group all day long because I was once an actual breathing member of the Republican Party. I bailed out when the younger George Bush was nominated to run for President, and I am glad that I did. When the best that the GOP can offer is George Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, and now Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan, the party is in trouble.The Republican Party has been on a steady decline ever since and it will only get worse with no-nothing tag-al-longs such as the Tea Party and their stupid ideas.  That being said:

Jay Leno: "Akin announced that he is staying in the race. Is that a surprise? A guy who that so little about a woman's body doesn't know when it's time to pull out."

At a campaign stop in Ohio, a group of senior citizens greeted Republican Vice President nominee Paul Ryan and yelled 'Good luck!' It’s good to see the cast of 'The Expendables 2' is everywhere this week."

"Welcome to "The Tonight Show" — or as Comcast calls us, "The Expendables." As you may have heard, our parent company has downsized "The Tonight Show." We've consistently been number one in the ratings, and if you know anything about our network, NBC, that kind of thing is frowned upon. And more bad news. It turns out now we've been taken over by Bain Capital."

Paul Ryan just released his tax returns for the last two years, and it turns out he and his wife had a combined income of over $323,000 last year. To which Mitt Romney said, 'See, I do reach out to poor people."

Jimmy Fallon: "It’s National Senior Citizen’s Day, which is not to be confused with National Senior Citizen’s Week — the Republican Convention in Florida."

Copyright © 2012 Universal Press Syndicate

Cagle Cartoons

Copyright © 2012 Creators Syndicate

Cagle Cartoons

Technorati Tags: Todd Akin,Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan,Late Night Talk,Political Humor,Jay Leno,Current Events

 

Meg Whitman: Mitt's Protege Having A Rough Day (And Year) At Hewlett Packard

    By  cassandracarolina                                     Source

Back in May, we learned that

A day after Mitt Romney aligned himself with the toxic Donald Trump in Las Vegas, the presidential hopeful is campaigning in California today — with a CEO who just announced plans to lay off 27,000 people.

Meg Whitman, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, is a longtime friend and political ally of Romney, whose ties to her date back to their time at Bain & Co.

Meg Whitman is more than just a "longtime friend and political ally"; she's Mitt's protege. Her high-end fundraiser in California raised some eyebrows, as your intrepid diarist described at the time.

Hewlett Packard's back in the news today as their stock price is tanking, big time. The morning business journals are describing this as a "historic loss".

Bloomberg noted that

Almost a year into her tenure at the helm of the largest personal computer maker, Whitman is boosting investment in research and development and revamping the PC, printer and enterprise-services units. Hewlett-Packard, which will discuss its 2013 outlook at an analyst meeting in October, is under pressure from rivals such as Apple Inc. in computing devices and International Business Machines Corp. among corporate clients.

“HP seems to have lost share in all of the key enterprise segments,” Abhey Lamba, an analyst at Mizuho Securities USA Inc. in New York, wrote in a research note after the results.

Meg's nearly-a-year tenure at the helm of Hewlett Packard has brought few smiles to the faces of their shareholders. Here's the sad little chart of HPQ's stock performance for the past year:

Lest you think that Meg is simply swept up on a sea of bad economics, here's the chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average over the same period of time:

Ouch. That's going to be tough to explain. But don't worry. Like any halfway decent CEO, Meg has a plan:

Whitman is cutting 27,000 jobs over two years and plans to invest in areas including security, cloud computing and data- analysis software. She’s also dismantling the acquisitions of Electronic Data Systems Corp. and Palm Inc., which were made by Mark Hurd, who was CEO from 2005 to 2010.

Like any good corporate plan, Meg's scheme involves (1) throwing a bunch of people into the volcano and (2) undoing the efforts of one's predecessor. Where do you suppose that Meg learned these killer strategies? Follow along below the corporate death spiral for the rest of the story...

Meg Whitman's biography suggests that she was destined for success:

Confident and bright, Whitman didn't shy away from her intelligence, and in 1974 she graduated from high school after just three years. Whitman then enrolled at Princeton University, where she earned a bachelor's degree in economics. She then took on the MBA program at Harvard Business School, graduating in 1979.

Sometime, though, it's not what you know, but where you land in your journey to the top:

Whitman's job search eventually landed her at Bain & Company, a wildly successful business-consulting firm, where she worked with future Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

And the rest, as they say, is history. From Bain & Company, Meg went on to great things. It all started with meeting Mitt. As The Daily Beast described it in September of 2010, Mitt and Meg had that special chemistry right from the start:

Their relationship started in 1981 when Whitman went to work at the Romney co-founded management consulting firm, Bain & Co. She was a consultant and senior vice president and it was Romney who did the recruiting in those days. He actually interviewed her and it’s a story he likes to share when boasting about his former employee.

A campaign staffer for Romney and current Whitman aide recalls the story, “When he was interviewing Meg at Bain...they pride themselves on really putting the interviewee through a very difficult situation and making them rock back on their heels a little bit and Romney told this story ...when Meg came in...halfway through the interview he realized he was the one back on his heels and she was interviewing him.”

Meg did a great job wheeling and dealing at Bain & Company, enriching her mentor, Mitt Romney, and when she later ran for Governor of California, he supported her campaign with appearance, and in the favored mode of all Bainiacs, with large sums of
money

Back in the 1980s at Boston’s Bain & Co. business consulting firm, partner Mitt Romney mentored a promising young executive named Meg Whitman.

More than two decades later, when Whitman ran for governor of California, Romney and Bain gave her significant support.

Romney donated $25,900 – the maximum allowed by state law – and Bain executives pumped an additional $216,000 into Whitman’s losing campaign against Democrat Jerry Brown.

Now that the $500 Gucci loafer is on the other foot, Meg and other "Bain alumni" are returning the favor. Where the Bainiacs are concerned, money is the universal language of love, and nothing says devotion and gratitude like a six- or seven-figure check.

Still, you do have to wonder, what's Mitt thinking when his protege's business has become the poster child for massive layoffs? It doesn't look good, does it? Here's your wunderkind BFF, tossing 27,000 people into the volcano at the same time you're telling America that your private sector business experience qualifies you to lead the country out of a recession by creating millions of new jobs.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, Mitt. I know you're a busy guy what with all that Ryan-Akin-abortion stuff and a gathering storm headed for your convention in Tampa, so I've taken the liberty of drafting some suggestions on how you can get this Meg Whitman story off the front pages of the business section.

With your vast wealth, you might want to buy up some of that HPQ stock at this bargain-basement price. Or all of it. What the heck. Take them private. You and Meg have enough between you to do it, and that gets all those pesky Wall Street analysts off Hewlitt Packard's case. Then you can quietly carve up the company and sell it off to foreign investors.

Sure, there might be more job cuts, but really, they're more like job "transfers". Those HPQ people are always complaining about the cost of living in the Bay Area. There are plenty of nice countries in Asia and Latin America where the cost of living is much more reasonable.

Then again, since you're pressed for time (and since you don't really need any more scrutiny on your finances), you could do to Meg what you've done to your father and grandfather. Throw her under the bus. She's served her purpose, and now she's just an albatross around your neck. I'm sure women voters will understand. It's nothing personal... just business.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Meg Whitman,Bain Capital,Hewlett Packard,Wall Street,The Economy,Current Events,Layoffs

90 Million Voters Will Not Vote: 18 Reasons They Should, Part 2

By cwsmoke on Wednesday, August 22,2012    Original

    In my previous posting, 9 of the 18 reasons that you should get off of your ass and vote were covered. we complete this with the remaining 9 reasons to not let the Republican Party ( Romney/Ryan) and their Tea Party friends get in to the White House, the Senate, or the House.

10. The EPA will be disabled, removing carbon dioxide from its regulatory purview, effectively crippling the agency to regulate the root cause of global warming, and the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts will be undone so that Romney and Ryan's big parasitic corporate contributors will get what they paid for to extract fossil fuels at the expense of everyone's health. The government, through the EPA has done numerous studies, reflecting the added health costs related to relaxing and/or eliminating the clean air and water restrictions which is probably the main reason that the big polluters (i.e. Koch Industries, one of the top ten polluters in the country) want to dismantle it.

11. Greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere will increase, not decrease, causing global warming to reach an irreversible tipping point. The Keystone X/L pipeline will be built, causing what leading climate scientist, James Hansen calls, 'game over' with regard to man's efforts to halt or ameliorate climate change due to the negative effects of developing, transporting, and refining the tar sands oil.

12. Wall Street 'too large to fail' banks will be completely deregulated (Dodd - Frank repealed - Glass - Stegall only a distant memory), opening the 'grand casino' to use investors' money (i.e. ultimately taxpayers money) for gambling on derivatives and other contrived investment instruments that will inevitably cause the economy to fail as it did in 2007-09.

13. Unemployment will increase by roughly 4.1 million Americans in the first two years that the Romney/Ryan budget is implemented, according to Ethan Pollack at The Economic Policy Institute. Romney's claim that his budget will provide 12 million new jobs and cut the unemployment rate to 6.2% have been labelled “a fantasy” and “a mathematical impossibility” by Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman and Ezra Klein (with similar comments regarding Paul Ryan's budget).

14. Social Security will be privatized, implementing David Koch's plan when he ran for Vice President in 1980 of which Willard Romney and Paul Ryan are major proponents (as was G.W. Bush in 2005), giving the Wall Street casino control of YOUR retirement savings. Hat tip to cc  ( previous link) for his excellent diary.

15. More minorities, poor people and undocumented immigrants will be locked up, as they currently are in many red states, using the phony war on drugs as a Republican rationalization to support their 'prisons for profit' agenda.

16. Groups like ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) will be reinvigorated, writing legislation without transparency, in secret, directly by corporations for corporations, circumventing the democratic, legislative process.

17. Everything that isn't nailed down (and many things that are) will be 'profitized/privatized.' What many people don't understand is that, in general, public work projects cost more and are of higher quality than private sector projects due to higher construction standards. So, when special interests 'privatize' public projects, they are buying 'on the cheap.' In Wisconsin, for example, the Koch brothers with Governor Walker's help are taking advantage of a bad economy to line their own pockets.

18. Voter suppression and new Jim Crow laws will be passed to keep minorities from voting and thereby 'threatening' white folks.

If even half of the 90 million recalcitrant voters simply vote, there will be an end to ALL this Republican BS. Your vote DOES count because the Republicans are counting on you not to vote. I have intentionally left off comparisons between the parties, focusing instead on Republican policies because I consider them the most aggregious (my personal bias). These are just a few of the negative consequences of electing Romney and Ryan.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan,Wall Street,2012 Election,Corporate Welfare,Social Security,Medicare,The Supreme Court,Current Events

90M Registered Voters Will Not Vote: 18 Reasons They Should

   This is a long read so it will be presented in two parts. This first part will list the first 9 reasons that you should vote,

    By cwsmoke on Wednesday, August 22,2012    Original

There are 90 million registered voters, who are not going to vote in this November's national elections for one reason or another. Some are fed up with the current two party system. Some think that politics has become too dirty, and they don't want to be involved. Some say that all the candidates are the same, some say that their vote doesn't mean anything, and some think that politics doesn't concern or affect them. This diary is for all of you because your vote does count, and the political party that gains power in this, perhaps the most important election in your lifetimes, will influence YOUR life for decades to come. The list that I compiled demonstrates in detail exactly how each of your lives will be changed if the Republicans, and Willard Romney gain power.

But first a bit of background.

For those of you who think that politics doesn't matter in your lives I have one point to make. We all get old. There is currently no way around it. If you live in America, and you get old, there are two government programs that will affect your life in ways that you can't yet imagine, particularly if you are under 40, unless, of course, you have relatives who are getting old. The first program is Medicare, and this program is currently fiscally sound until 2024 thanks in large part to the recent passage of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). By implementing about $716 billion in cost savings (over a ten year period) and redistributing the money to cover free preventive care and to close the donut hole, where seniors paid premium prices out of pocket for their prescriptions, the Obama administration has extended the solvency of Medicare until the year 2024. Without the Affordable Care Act Medicare will be insolvent by 2016 during Romney's first term. Both political parties agree that Medicare needs to be 'strengthened', but the method of 'strengthening' the program is in dispute (quotes for 'strengthening' because the Republican idea of 'strengthening' is synonymous with 'destroying.').

The second large government program that will affect your lives is Social Security, a contract between the people and their government whereby you pay into your retirement account (with your employer matching your contribution), and the government guarantees that your retirement income is secure (with interest). Social Security is the most successful government program ever, and it does not contribute one penny to the national debt. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund currently has a surplus of $2.7 trillion. The program just celebrated its 77th anniversary, and with very minor tweaking (raising the salary cap from $106,000 to $250,000) will be solvent for another 75 years.

When I was thirty years old, I simply knew that I would make so much money that Social Security wouldn't affect my life, one way or the other. Well, I did make a ton of money, and I also lost a ton of money. And guess what!?! That Social Security check every month like clockwork makes a much bigger difference than I ever thought it would. As for Medicare, I am extremely healthy. I eat super foods and avoid processed foods and refined sugar. I surf and mountain trail run every day, weather permitting, and the weather generally does cooperate here in sunny Hawaii. I haven't been sick one day since I began the alkaline diet six year ago (crosses fingers), so I haven't had to utilize my Medicare, yet. Social Security makes an automatic deduction each month to cover my Medicare insurance, so I am covered if I ever need it, and I know that I will at some point because I have watched my family age, some gracefully, some not. The point that I am making is that my healthcare is assured for the rest of my life without my doing anything except to (attempt to) stay healthy.

Which brings me to why your vote this November is the most important vote in your life...Republicans since Ronald Reagan have been pushing the country to the right, and now the party of Eisenhower serves the rich and powerful exclusively, leaving the poor and middle class to fend for themselves. That's their philosophy. They're proud of it. And this election cycle they are attempting to consolidate the impressive gains that they made under G.W. Bush, making America a corporatocracy, a functioning oligarchy, where the rich rule to the detriment of everyone else.

Disclaimer: Romney has said that he and Ryan agree nearly 100% on their respective budgets, but the Romney/Ryan budget intentionally lacks specifics, so I have extrapolated the findings of reputable, mostly non-partisan organizations to compose this list. If we wait for Romney to 'explain' or fill out the details of his budget plan, it will be November, and we, the voters will still be waiting...

Most of the time the damage done by Republicans isn't readily apparent, but this election is different. Republican policies will change your life dramatically. Your vote does count. Please use it, so that the following does NOT happen:

Some unpleasant things to contemplate if Romney/Ryan win in November:

1. If you are currently under 55, when you apply for Medicare, you will be given a voucher that will be insufficient to cover YOUR health insurance costs. YOUR out of pocket expenses for health insurance will cost up to an additional $6400 in your first year (as opposed to the roughly $1200 paid by current seniors). YOU will also be shopping for health insurance in the private insurance market each and every year until the year that you die. How many octagenarians (80 year olds) and older do you know who can handle everyday finances?

2. When the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is repealed, you will be subject to the whims and avarice of the health insurance industry when you encounter pre-existing conditions, lifetime coverage caps, and unwarranted price increases. Your children over 18 will no longer be covered on your health insurance. If you are currently on Medicare, the donut hole for prescription drugs will return, and your free preventive care (colonoscopies, mamograms, and annual checkups) will be discontinued, causing more expense for seniors already on Medicare. In addition, Federal Medicaid funds will be cut by 40% (or more), when the Romney/Ryan budget is enacted, curtailing care to the poor AND seniors, who are receiving hospice care. (MEDICARE DOES NOT PAY FOR NURSING HOME CARE, except as applied to your annual deductible.). Did you know that good nursing home care costs roughly $15,000 per month?

3. Roe v Wade will be overturned by an ultra-conservative Supreme Court, outlawing abortions and most likely also contraception because Romney/Ryan and the Republicans will continue moving our courts further to the right, and the current Republican controlled House has passed numerous bills to that effect. The religious right (an integral part of the Republican base) will emerge (with government sanction, wink, wink) to (attempt to) force their brand of pseudo-Christianity on the rest of us, including our military where they are already firmly entrenched. Our children's textbooks will be rewritten to revise history and demonize science, substituting creationism for Darwin's theory of evolution. (See the Texas textbook controversy where the religious right took over the school boards.) Also thanks to blue aardvark for this excellent diary further expanding our knowledge of the anti-abortion sentiment demonstrated by Paul Ryan and the 112th Congress.

4. The Supreme Court will almost assuredly become ultra-conservative for the forseeable future, inevitably granting corporations more rights (Citizens United v FEC) while they take away YOURS. (Did you know that on the political spectrum, there is Communism on the far left and fascism on the far right, where corporations become the government and run the show? - The definition of fascism.) Visualize a horizontal line with Communism at the far left and fascism at the far right. In the current political climate what we currently call liberal and progressive is at the center of the line, while Democrats and 'moderates' are right of center about one quarter of the way toward fascism. The current Republican Party leadership is right of center about three quarters of the way toward fascism with the radical fringe already well entrenched at the right end of the line in fascism. During the 1950s and 1960s, on a similar horizontal line Democrats, liberals and progressives were left of center about one quarter to one third toward Communism, moderates from both parties were at the center, and Republicans like Barry Goldwater were right of center about one quarter to one third toward fascism with the discredited ultra right wing John Birch Society at the far right end of the line, seeing Communist conspiracies behind every door while straddling fascism. With the current horizontal line today there is no balance. Everyone is either at the center or to the right of center. The American people rejected The John Birch Society in the sixties, partly because the last war against fascism was still visible in our rearview mirror, and partly because the J.B.S. were bat shit crazy, but now the J.B.S. is in charge of the Republican Party. Consider which direction the country will move if these people take control.

5. If you earn less than $200,000 annually, your Federal taxes will inevitably increase between $1000-2000 when the Romney/Ryan budget is implemented.

6. Corporate welfare (currently at $92 billion annually) will increase while the social safety net (currently at $59 billion annually) will be demolished to pay for the additional tax breaks for the rich. Food stamps that currently support 47 million Americans, federal aid to education, and food programs to feed poor children will be severely cut (if not eliminated altogether). Imagine what it would be like if government used tax revenue to benefit the people, not the corporations.

7.  There will be another war, probably in the Middle East and probably with Iran (because Romney's neocon foreign policy advisors like John Bolton, who was the U.N. Ambassador during the G.W. Bush administration, are pressing for action in support of Israel as this is being written).

8. The Defense Budget that is already larger than the next seventeen countries combined will be increased to support Defense Contractors and war profiteers like Halliburton and Xe.

9. You will commute and travel on crumbling highways and unsafe bridges because infrastructure expenditures have been cut to the bone so that millionaires and billionaires (like Romney, Ryan, members of Congress, and their billionaire 'dark money' contributors) can have more tax cuts.

Technorati Tags: 2012 Election,Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Politics,Paul Ryan,Paul Ryan Budget,Social Security,Medicare,Current Events

With Ryan Pick, GOP Watches Congressional Hopes Go Up In Flames

August 13, 2012  By Deborah Montesano        AddictingInfo.org

Republicans have been pretty cocky about their chances of gaining control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives this election cycle–until Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate, that is.

Republican strategists are speaking out about the danger posed by his pick, as long as they aren’t quoted by name. One anonymously told The Hill, “There are a lot races that are close to the line we’re not going to win now because they’re going to battle out who’s going to kill grandma first, ObamaCare or Paul Ryan’s budget. It could put the Senate out of reach. In the House, it puts a bunch of races in play that would have otherwise been safe.”

Democrats, however, aren’t shy about attaching their names to very similar predictions. Rep. Steve Israel of New York said, “Congressman Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are a match made in millionaires’ heaven, but they’ll be a nightmare for seniors who’ve earned their Medicare benefits.” The President also lost no time in stating his own perspective: “[Ryan's plan] would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health-care costs to seniors.”

How serious a problem is this for the GOP?  Polls consistently show that Americans are resistant to major cuts or alterations to Medicare, as well as to Social Security. If there are changes to be made, most want them as modest as possible. Republicans are now trying to reframe the proposals contained within the Ryan budget, which would drastically overhaul the programs. In introducing Ryan as his pick, Mitt Romney literally told the crowd, “We will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security.”

But Democrats aren’t going to let them get away with that lie. When the GOP initially voted on Ryan’s budget, nonpartisan analyst Charlie Cook wrote, “From a political standpoint, Medicare reform is very dangerous territory. House Republicans are not just pushing the envelope–they are soaking it with lighter fluid and waving a match at it.” Now’s the time for Democrats to flick the match out of GOP hands and let the public see how quickly their envelope bursts into flames.

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,The House,The Republican Party,Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,Current Events

God-fearing America? Not So Much

    A recent poll of an international audience by Gallop International says that the United States doesn’t make the top 10 of the largest religious populations.

   Gallop asked one question to 51,927 people in 57 countries:

    “ Irrespective of whether you attend a place of worship or not, would you say you are a religious person, not a religious person or a convinced atheist?”

    Worldwide results:

  59% of the world thinks of themselves as religious;

  23% say that they are not religious;

  13% think of themselves as convinced atheist, and 5% did not know or would not answer.

   The United States ranked only at 34th as a very religious country.

   60% think of themselves as religious compared to 73% in 2005;

   30% say they are not religious;

   5% say they are convinced atheist compared to only 1% in 2005;

   5% did not know or would not answer.

    ( The Godless and the God-fearing )

      Tampa Bay Times

Technorati Tags: Religion,Christians,Atheist,Gallop International,Current Events

              

Saturday Satire: Ryan Edition

   I am having problems with my Internet after one of Florida’s lightening storms, so I’m having to post from a public location until the problem is resolved, so, needless to say, I am not in a good mood.

"In college Paul Ryan drove the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. So he and Romney have something in common. Both have the experience of driving a car with a dog on the roof." -David Letterman
"Mitt Romney is hoping to energize conservatives with his choice of Paul Ryan as running mate. That's like trying to spice up a bowl of oatmeal with more oatmeal." -Jimmy Fallon
"Mitt Romney kept his selection of Ryan as his VP nominee secret for more than a week. You know how he was able to keep it secret? He had it hidden next to his tax returns." -Jay Leno
"A new poll actually found that 42 percent of Americans do not approve of Mitt Romney's running mate, which isn't too bad considering most Americans don't approve of Paul Ryan's running mate." -Jimmy Fallon
"Paul Ryan is full of excitement, he's drawing big crowds. The only thing holding Paul Ryan back now according to political experts is Mitt Romney." -David Letterman
"Tell me one area where Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin would disagree? I cannot find one area. So somehow he's the smartest guy in the party and she's the stupidest woman on earth, but they agree on everything." -Bill Maher

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Political Humor,Late Night Talk,Current Events

NYT Disembowels Ryan Budget Plan

You didn't really think I was going to say eviscerate again did you? :)  The Times has had a string of hard hitting editorials on Romney's VP pick of Ryan, and they have another today.

Romney-Ryan Plan for America

I love the way they immediately, and rightfully, link Ryan's budget proposal to Romney.  Romney is going to have to do a lot of squirming to distance himself from the Ryan plan.  Of course, Romney has had a lot of experience lately in the squirming department, and if there were an Olympic event of squirming, Romney would win gold by a long shot.

Below the fold are excerpts from the editorial.

...
It’s no wonder that Mr. Romney does not want to take full responsibility for his running mate’s ideas. Mr. Romney hasn’t issued a real budget plan and appears to have no interest in doing so before the election, perhaps for fear that voters might realize how little they would like it.

...

Even less familiar to voters are Mr. Ryan’s plans for the rest of the federal budget, which if anything are worse than his Medicare proposal. By cutting $6 trillion from federal spending over the next 10 years, he would eliminate or slash so many programs that the federal government would be unrecognizable. That has long been a goal of the Tea Party ideologues who support Mr. Ryan fervently, but it is not one shared by anywhere near a majority of Americans.

...

The federal government simply would not be there to help the unemployed who need job training, or struggling students who seek college educations. Washington would be unable to respond when a city cannot properly treat its sewage, or when the poor and uninsured overload emergency rooms as clinics close.

...

These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops protested the proposal as failing to meet society’s moral obligations, saying the plans “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors.”

...

Mr. Ryan’s budget would not reach a surplus for 30 years, according to the C.B.O., because he would cut taxes, largely for the rich and for corporations, by $4 trillion.

...

Whatever his political considerations were, Mr. Romney made a clear statement in choosing the most extreme of the vice-presidential possibilities, both in Mr. Ryan’s economic views and his positions on social issues, like his opposition to contraception coverage under the health care reform law for employees of religiously affiliated institutions, repeal of the military’s don’t ask, don’t tell policy, and sensible gun control.

What was Rmoney thinking?  Did he really think he was going to be able to avoid all the mean spirited wing nut crap that Ryan has proposed.  He literally is talking about dismantling the federal government, sending us and the world into a deep economic depression, and making the United States a 3rd world country.

The Republican party has morphed into a group of cultists who are completely out of touch with reality, and who's greed and selfishness would end the America we've built over the past 200+ years.  If the rest of the media will step up to what the New York Times has been editorializing over the past couple of days, maybe the American public will wake up to the threat the Republican party actually presents to the worlds future.

Originally posted to pollwatcher on Mon Aug 13, 2012

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,Mitt Romney,Ryan's Budget,2012 Elections,Current Events,Politico

Romney Can’t Get His Medicare Right, He’s Wearing his Flip-Flops Again

Mitt's Medicare Muddle

  By Jed Lewison   Tue Aug 14, 2012

If you want proof that the Romney campaign still hasn't figured out how to handle the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan, just check out what they've been saying over the past 72 hours:

• Romney had barely walked off stage after announcing he'd picked Paul Ryan when his campaign said Romney would not be running on the Ryan plan.
• In an interview with 60 Minutes, Romney said the election wouldn't be a referendum on the Ryan plan and that his plan wasn't the Ryan plan.
• On Monday morning, Romney avoided talking about either his plan or the Ryan plan, instead attacking Obama for achieving $700 billion in Medicare savings ... even though Ryan supports those savings.
• On Monday afternoon, Mitt Romney claimed the Romney-Ryan plan would expand Medicare, even though it would actually end it.
• At the same press conference, Romney said he couldn't think of any differences between his plan and Ryan's plan.
• On Tuesday Morning, Romney surrogate John Sununu claimed the Ryan and Romney plans were "very different."
• Two hours later, a senior Romney adviser said Ryan and Romney were "100 percent on the same path" on Medicare.

• If you know what they're going to say next, you've got a better imagination than me.

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,Mitt Romney,Medicare Reform,2012 Elections,Current Events

Donald Trump Weighs In On Romney’s Pick Of Ryan…Twice

   Leave it to the Donald to jump in to the flip-flop circus.

   Back in May of this year, Trump said:

On Tuesday morning, that bluntness was on full display as Trump spent several minutes plainly questioning the political chops of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and declaring, with characteristic conviction, that the Ryan budget would be an abject disaster for Romney.

"It is catastrophic what he's done," Trump told CNBC. "If they lose, it will be the single biggest reason why the Republicans lost: the Ryan plan." [...]

"I think the worst thing [Romney] can do is strongly embrace that budget if he wants to get elected," he said. "This will be the single worst move in the Republican Party for many years. This is going to be catastrophic."

   Trump now:

    The @PaulRyanVP choice was a bold pick by @MittRomney. Energizes the base and changes the trajectory of the race. #RomneyRyan2012
— @realDonaldTrump via web

    Donald Trump was correct the first time.

Technorati Tags: Donald Trump,Paul Ryan,The Ryan Budget,2012 Elections,Current Events

Romney Flip-flops on Ryan Budget Plan

    On Saturday Mitt Romney’s campaign team said:

Gov. Romney applauds Paul Ryan for going in the right direction with his budget, and as president he will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance.

   I guess that he had not yet gotten the memo from Ryan’s backers at that time, because that story has now changed to this on Sunday:

TOP ROMNEY ADVISER ED GILLESPIE: Well, as Governor Romney has made clear, if the Romney, sorry, if the Ryan budget had come to his desk as a budget, he would have signed it, of course, and one of the reasons that he chose Congressman Ryan is his willingness to put forward innovative solutions in the budget.

RNC CHAIRMAN REINCE PREIBUS: First of all, he did embrace the Ryan budget. He embraced it.

   That Rush idiot and the Fox News people must have been ringing Romney’s phone off of the hook, or else someone told him that his tax rate would be almost non-existent under the Ryan budget plan.

    Romney can certainly embrace that.

    I said it on Saturday, these two are another Cheney/Bush team, and Ryan would be calling the shots in the White House.

   We cannot allow that to happen in November.

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,Ryan Budget Plan,Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,Current Events

 

Paul Ryan, Ayn Rand, and the Political Contradiction of Christianity

Mitt Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate Saturday morning. In the process, he increased #AynRand Twitter tags to previously unseen levels. The Romney choice set off a national discussion on Ryan's fascination with the philosopher and put Ryan's ideological foundation on display.

What few pundits have mentioned is the way in which Paul Ryan  - and conservative politicians in general - is willing to employ a detached version of Christianity for political purposes, leaving the policy-making to be guided by some other moral foundation.

Ryan's thoughts on Ayn Rand are clear. He has stated that Ayn Rand was the single most influential thinker in his choice to enter politics. He has stated support for Rand's moral justifications of capitalism. He even stated that Ayn Rand's philosophies shaped him as a person. If that wasn't enough, Ryan burdens his family members with Rand's unbearable literature through painfully uncreative Christmas presents. In the office, he attempts to shape other young political minds in the name of selfishness by strongly suggesting that his staffers read Rand's writings.

You can find quotes from Ryan on Rand dating back a decade and as recently as a couple of years ago. In fact, Rand featured prominently in Ryan's 2009 campaign, as he quoted her philosophy in a widely distributed video. Enter April 2012, when Paul Ryan's political star had risen to the point where being linked to militant atheism was toxic. This development led to an interesting Ryan quote:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan said this year. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas…Don’t give me Ayn Rand.”

That brings into play a number of questions. Chief among them - how does a person's core guiding principle change so quickly and without an apparent traumatic experience? Why are Rand supporters overjoyed at the selection of a candidate who rejects Ayn Rand's philosophy? Why does Ryan's budget plan incorporate the rugged and soul-less principles that Rand championed?

Ryan stated repeatedly that Rand shaped his thinking and provided justification for his own adherence to brutal, unbridled capitalism. If one were to undergo a dramatic shift in philosophy, rejecting the principles of Ayn Rand, wouldn't there be some evidence? Wouldn't there be some policy change that might enable us to do more than just take Paul Ryan at his word?

The problem for Ryan is one shared by many conservative politicians. Namely, their actions don't match their beliefs. For these individuals, embracing Christian morality means upholding convenient parts of the Bible while quietly ignoring others. 

How could a politician driven by Christian morality propose a budget that establishes a country where producing wealth is rewarded at the expense of the demonized poor? How could one support increased government spending on war-gaming while decreasing support for the sick and disenfranchised?

Whether you believe the tenets of Christianity is irrelevant. For politicians who claim to live by the creed, many conservatives are doing a terrible job of, you know, actually following the demands of Jesus:

“But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received your comfort.”

“In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.”

"Then I will turn to those on my left and say, 'Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.  For I was hungry and you wouldn't feed me; thirsty, and you wouldn't give me anything to drink; a stranger, and you refused me hospitality; naked, and you wouldn't clothe me; sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me.' 'Then they will reply, 'Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and not help you?' 'And I will answer, 'When you refused to help the least of these my brothers, you were refusing help to me.'"

"'If you have two coats,' he replied, 'give one to the poor. If you have extra food, give it away to those who are hungry.'"

"Sell what you have and give to those in need. This will fatten your purses in heaven!"

It is no secret that politicians use religion as a tool to drive the electorate to vote against their financial interests. The fact that they do it with such a straight face is difficult to swallow. There is no way to reconcile a Christian-claiming political platform that rejects the moral duty of men to take care of those in need. Many are quick to adhere to the Bible's teachings on a host of subsidiary issues. From abortion to gay marriage to gun rights, conservatives pound the Bible at every turn. What, though, is more central to an American life than issues of fiscal policy? On arguably the most relevant issue, conservative politicians run from their Bible, opting instead to use another system of morality to explain and defend their capitalistic greed.

A proper definition of the Christian's duty, drawn from the words of the guy who Christians follow, leave no wiggle room. The religion is not one that allows a check the box choice on certain life choices. It is about dedication and sacrifice. That flies directly in the face of a new conservative ideology that puts Jesus Christ in the closet until we want to use the words of the Apostle Paul to shame someone out of the closet.

Even if we take Paul Ryan on his word, believing the absurd supposition that he now rejects the moral philosophy that shaped his past and drove his policy, there's a huge problem in approving his request to be linked to St. Thomas Aquinas. Paul Ryan, a rugged objectivist more than willing to exalt individual achievement over the collective good, takes his cues for the guy who said this?

“Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need.” — St. Thomas Aquinas

There it is, Congressperson Ryan. The words of Thomas Aquinas, the man whose "epistemology" you claim shaped you. The implications of Ryan's actions and beliefs should be clear. He is, in practice, no more a Christian than he is a member of the postal worker's union. He is another in a long line of conservative politicians willing to use Christianity in their policy making, except where it poses an inconvenient challenge to the real religion of their party - the religion of personal wealth accumulation. Unfortunately for the nation, this distorted view of the basics of Christianity seems to reflect the real inclinations of the electorate.

Originally posted to Grizzard on Sat Aug 11, 2012

Technorati Tags: Paul Ryan,Ayn Rand,Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,Christianity,Current Events

OBAMA CAMPAIGN STATEMENT ON ROMNEY VICE PRESIDENTIAL PICK

CHICAGO – Obama for America Campaign Manager Jim Messina released the following statement in response to Mitt Romney picking Congressman Paul Ryan to be his presumptive nominee for vice president:

“In naming Congressman Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has chosen a leader of the House Republicans who shares his commitment to the flawed theory that new budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy, while placing greater burdens on the middle class and seniors, will somehow deliver a stronger economy. The architect of the radical Republican House budget, Ryan, like Romney, proposed an additional $250,000 tax cut for millionaires, and deep cuts in education from Head Start to college aid. His plan also would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in health care costs to seniors. As a member of Congress, Ryan rubber-stamped the reckless Bush economic policies that exploded our deficit and crashed our economy. Now the Romney-Ryan ticket would take us back by repeating the same, catastrophic mistakes.”

Source

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Paul Ryan,Medicare Vouchers,2012 Elections,The Republican Party,Current Events