Rob's House

If a squeaky clean mormon boyscout like Mitt Romney can be characterized as the devil incarnate what qualified successful Joe with the normal indiscretions of life in his background would ever subject himself to such scrutiny?

I want to make fun of the Lee Evans defenders, but I was one of them.

Acceptance is the first step to recovery. I didn't get it at first either, but I think he's saying that when he played ball, sometimes he'd run into **** talkers from other schools in public, he'd ask what their number was, and then lay them out on the field. But I could be wrong.

If enforced properly these laws are fine. They only pose a problem with overzealous and self-righteous cops decide to go above and beyond to make sure it's enforced. When I go to a public part of the river or go to a public play in the park, drinking is banned for minors and adults alike. When I pop a bottle of beer or pour a glass of wine discreetly with my wife and daughter no one cares. If I have my beer in a coozy so as not to advertise it, the cops at the river say nothing. It's good to have laws like that so that if people abuse it and act up the cops can dispense with them. Cops, however, have a responsibility to know their role when keeping the peace. Hey little fella, you ought to come over to PPP. You'll be forced to defend your political views, but they'll be far more welcome than they are here.

Read the whole article. Also, the problem with those systems is that they enable their leaders to have the power to execute such atrocities. Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. would have been stuck with thumbs up their asses if they tried to ship people to concentration camps. Let's get congress out of the way, consolidate power in a monarch, and see how long our individual liberties are respected. Remember, these ideologies that lead to genocide are almost always rooted in a "greater good" argument and usually start off as populist movements to help the poor or middle/working class.

Paul Ryan, who works with numbers, will eat your children and steal your thunder While heavy torsos that heave and hurl, will crunch like nuts in the mouths of squirrels.

Do you have an orange flag on your bike, kitty? Kidding, I'm kidding.

Speaking of Socialism: http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2012/08/08/liberals_progressives_and_socialists

1. The short version: Every mentor he can be traced back to is a socialist. Every piece of economic legislation he has supported involves more government in the economy. He has repeatedly told us who he is ("spread the wealth around", scoffs at those who are successful - classic Marxist rhetoric) and always comes out in favor of government taking greater control of the economy. He supports socialized medicine, basically socialized GM, wants the government to decide energy policy for businesses and individuals, wants more federal control over schools, wants more federal welfare, and the list goes on and on. Some of these things you may or may not agree with, but the consistent theme throughout is more government control. Contrast this with any evidence to support the theory that he's a free-market capitalist and you've got an uphill battle trying to argue that he's anything but a socialist. 2. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "turn the primary focus". If you mean from a campaign perspective, no, that's why he shuns the label and tries to play himself off as a moderate. I think he could absolutely increase government control over the economy exponentially over the next four years. It works as follows: Take a profitable industry; cripple it with taxes, regulations, etc.; come to the rescue by taking it over (in which case it should be thankful to beloved leader for showing the charity to bail them out and they should be happy to relinquish control.) 3. One branch shouldn't have that kind of power. However, this President has proven time and again that he is not constrained by the constitutional limits on his office. From making illegal recess appointments to issuing illegal waivers for welfare work requirements, he has shown he is happy to expand his own power. I forget the bill, but he was recently mulling acting by executive order on a bill that congress shut down. He seeks to eliminate the checks on the Presidency, which if successful could lead us effectively to monarchy. This was foreshaddowed by Obama complaining that Chinese leaders don't have to deal with the constraints he does.The denial of this is a scathing indictment of the media who seems to yawn at these abuses of power, the Democrat party, and rank and file Democrats who are all to happy to allow abuses of power and constitutional usurpation as long as it is their guy doing it. We should all be very afraid of this.

I get this, but I think he does want government controlling the economy to an extent that would undoubtedly be considered socialist, but the political reality is such that he can only push for that incrementally. The evidence supporting my assertion is vast (past associations, comments, proposed legislation) while the evidence suggesting he's a moderate free-enterprise capitalist is scarce to say the least. I agree that overstating someone's stance for effect (e.g. calling anyone you have a slight disagreement with Hitler) is both silly and counter-productive, but I don't get the case for giving someone vying for power the benefit of the doubt when no evidennce supports such a finding.

Why is it out of bounds to call him a socialist? And why do you say he is not socialist? His economic policy is largely modeled on European socialism. I don't get this idea that calling a duck a duck is somehow below the belt if the duck wants to be called a swan. Also, socialism isn't the same thing as totalitarian communism. Why is it you say (unequivocally, as it were) that he is not a socialist? And if socialism isn't inherently bad, why is it wrong to identify a socialist as such?

Oh yeah, missed that. My point still holds, I'm not sure how posting a link to tax returns and JFK quotes amounts to intellectual dishonesty. But then i never got how a man was responsible for the actions of his successors so I guess there's a lot I don't get.

:lol:

Well sure, both sides say it, but then we look to the evidence. Can you find evidence of Romeny's campaign stooping to the level of the cancer wife Romney killed, Harry Reid's baseless accusations, or being so petty as to harp on Romney's wife's horse? The only place I can see where the Obama camp can even attempt to cry foul is the "you didn't build that" statement. However, team Obama has far more blatantly taken Romney out of context with "I like to fire people" and a shameless ad that's running constantly in VA where a clip of Romney saying "...Planned Parenthood. We need to get rid of that" even though the "..." materially alters the rest of the sentence. At least in Obama's case he actually said what he said and in proper usage of the English language his words would be properly interpreted to mean you didn't build it. And the spirit of what he said wasn't far from it. In Romney's case, the words are taken out of context so as to betray the plain meaning of the words as they were stated. If you want to play the middle-of-the-road "both sides do it" game, that's certainly your prerogative, but I challenge you to objectively state the case that the Romeny camp has resorted to anywhere near the level of dishonesty the Obama camp has.

They could have probably gotten him with a promise of Obama's autograph. I'm sure he'd have come running with his tongue out and his tail wagging.

When things like this happen I wish I had a TV show so I could pull a Keith Olbermann on this ass hole and name him the biggest douche bag in the world. Congratulations to Mr. Soptic. This sad, sorry little man just pimped out the memory of his dead wife to try to score bogus political points for his favorite politician. When asked why he blatantly lied to the country about his wife's condition, this giant waste of skin mumbled some babble about Bain Capital and scurried off to hide under a rock. One is left to think that in a just world it would have been him, rather than his wife, who died early. To his credit, at least he didn't say that she would have wanted her death to be used in a pathetic attempt to deceive the American public; or at least that's not been reported.

I don't buy this whole "both sides" crap. Sure, both sides will engage in some hyperbole, but one side is far and away more dishonest this time around and one side has every word run under a microscope and any possible misinterpretation brought to the forefront by every other media outlet in the country while the other is given the benefit of the doubt.

I agree with you in principle but I fear conservatives lose ground by overstating this. Tax cuts can lead to higher revenues but that depends on how high the tax rate was to begin with and what it is reduced to. I think everyone should read up on the Laffer curve and Hauser's law (different theories, but they're not necessarily mutually exclusive) to get a better understanding of the relationship between tax rates and revenues.

His post was just a series of JFK quotes. After several days on the wall it's interesting how few Obama supporters have chimed in. We have one primarily conservative poster who is a one issue voter, One who says it doesn't much matter either way, one who says Obama will do ??? for the economy, and Conner who thinks Obama already fixed the economy. So let's look at the results: The Obama supporters can offer no substantial criticism of Romney and no substantial explanation for how Obama will alleviate our economic problems. I guess it really comes down to the letter next to the name. You're one of the few people who support Obama whose opinion I can respect because, although I don't believe his re-election will advance your interests the way you think they will, your answer is rooted in an actual policy reason. When Clinton ran against Dole I was dating a girl who was less than an intellectual heavy-weight, but despite her intellectual short-comings she was the only person who gave me a legitimate reason as to why she supported Clinton. Her mom was on public assistance and she didn't want that to end. Now, regardless of the fact that a Dole Presidency would hardly have taken food off her mom's table I respected her opinion because it was rooted in an actual policy reason as opposed to the mind-numbingly stupid response "Dole is old" that virtually everyone else was spouting. And my neck's doing better. Whenever it starts to bother me I hit the weights and that usually takes care of it.

It could swing wildly in either direction. For the Republicans I like it because it changes the strategy from a McCain approach of playing it safe to one about aggressively offering your philosophy and convincing others that it is the right one. I've never thought much of the don't rock the boat and hope you can squeak by with the moderate morons who vote for whoever makes them feel good at the moment. It's like being on a date and rather than engaging and having fun you try to make sure you don't say anything she'll disagree with and hope that by the end of the night she'll be content to have a warm body in her bed. They're going with a bold "here's our philosophy and here's why it works" strategy. Either way, this is more than a VP pick; it's also a fundamental change in campaign strategy. This could backfire. The press is already trying to paint Ryan as a right-wing extremist who wants to throw hungry orphans out in the streets and they have countless outlets (particularly entertainment media) to blast that message unchecked. And the Obama campaign and PACs can mischaracterize it at will without fear of being called out by any news media outside of Faux News. If it sticks (keep in mind, soccer moms don't typically break it down like we do here. They hear "extremist" and get scared away) the association could sink the ship. By countering the Obama strategy of throwing out vague platitudes about Republicans sticking it to the middle class (with no explanation of how this happens), with a policy based approach of spelling out their plan, the Republicans are rolling the dice and hoping logic trumps hype. It will be the true test to see if the bulk of our electorate are thinkers or mindless drones that float whatever way their TV tells them to.

Romney needs to put this line to rest. They're chanting this nonsensical bull **** in ad after ad telling people Romney's going to cut taxes at the top & raise them on the middle class. Sure, it's a bald-faced lie, but anyone still undecided is too simple or disinterested to know better. He needs to not only call it out for the lie it is but also shame Obama for his blatant dishonesty so as to put him back on the defensive.

Aww, cut him some slack, that was kind of funny.

If a bank goes under it sells its assets & its investors & creditors take a loss. What happens when the government goes under?

I wonder if this will pick up any steam. I'm not much for pointing out hypocritical double-standards between the sexes because (and don't tell anyone) men & women actually are different. But can you imagine how much differently this would be covered if this case involved a Republican man rather than a Democrat woman? Or even if it was a Republican woman?