Florida Primaries

If Mitt payed more taxes than he should have within tax code would he be labeled incompetent or dunce or hayseed?

 

Mitt's also running into trouble in Florida, and will in a few states out west, over his previous stance that the way to solve the mortgage crisis is to let the housing market hit bottom on his own. He has come up with some platitudes to soften that stance for the next week, but he really hasn't materially changed his opinion.

I will note that I agree with him on the point. However, it will not do a whole lot to help him with voters in the "Sand States" that were overbuilt (Florida, Arizona, Nevada and California).

 

Doesn't matter. In an election year in which people are beginning to ask very fair and basic questions about the growing disparity in wealth/income distribution, Mitt is an easy candidate to portray as the representative of the wealthy interests which have exploited our political-economic system to enrich themselves at the expense of the middle class.

 

Oh that'll go over just great with homeowners trying to figure out what to do with underwater mortgages.

But "let the middle class take it up the ass" of course is the Uberclass solution to everything.

But none of the other GOP clowns can rip him on this, since they all subscribe to precisely the same plan -- or worse.

 

Indeed. No one should object to his playing the game according to the rules, and there's no evidence that he hasn't done so. But the issue is that many people are beginning to consider those rules to be inherently unfair. And although no one should expect anything to change no matter who's in charge, you can't even pretend that they would under Mitt. He would see as his mandate the maintenance of the status quo.

And I don't care who you are, running to uphold the status quo ain't the way to go, not this year.

 

Capital gains rates scheduled to go up in 2013 to 20 %. Will that make everyone feel better?

 

. . . not to mention the bald impracticality of some one-third of his general blandishments. The other two-thirds is pretty appealing, but in many cases, the horses have left the barn, and you can't turn back the clock eighty years.

On most of the social issues, Sanctimonious has a similar problem.

 

Working people don't have enough money to invest to get 15 percent on their capital gains. Working people's money is going towards keeping the lights on and food on the table.

 

Bush was in the press box at a baseball game in 1998 or 1999 and he worked that room like a world fucking champion. He did a lap, shaking every hand and then came back around and remembered everybody's name before he left.

I know it's a skill that the best salesmen have and shouldn't be a basis for electing a president, but if you think that wasn't a factor in how he became a two-term president (among other things...) you're kidding yourself.

And that's something that has hurt guys like Gore and Kerry and Romney.

W. was not a man of the people, but he sure knew how to act like he was.

 

Not if they're old enough to remember when it was 39%.

 

The fucker snuck up on me at a baseball game and this was AFTER he became president. He was sort of making the rounds and before we knew he was even in the building, he was standing over the shoulder of me and another writer while we were in our seats, complaining about how hard it was to get into the ballpark that day because the president was there and security was through the roof (this was in June 2001, so pre-9/11 by about three months). He smiled and told us we had the greatest jobs in the world and the guy next to me said "yours ain't so bad either."

About six years later, I don't think either would be saying the other's job was anything desirable

How the POTUS just walked up to us with you noticeable secret service around him (they were in the back of the press box) I'll never know. What if I was Nicholas Brody from "Homeland?"

 

You would be fucking Claire Danes, and not just Claire Danes but crazy off-her-meds Claire Danes, and you would also be fucking that wild-eyed chick you married. So the world would be completely baffled as to why you'd want to kill yourself.