2012 US Presidential Race Catch All

Demosthenes wrote:
Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.

You didn't build that. God did apparently. *rolls eyes* This guy is a tool. Not even waiting to see what the economy does, just fires them immediately. Hopefully next on the chopping block for this PR nightmare is him.

Yeah, what kills me is when people drink their own political fantasy land kool-aid. And, hilariously in this case, become the cause of the problems they're convinced the other guy is causing right this minute. He'll fire those people today and no matter what happens to the economy down the line, he'll blame Obama for it. Hope those blinders are worth the cost of the impact on all those families.

It's the business-world equivalent of "b*tch wouldn't of gotten herself slapped if she'd just gotten me that beer sooner."

My guess, assuming he isn't a horrible businessman, was that he was doing the layoffs regardless. Either way he was probably going to blame it on Obama. I doubt he woke up and decided to alter his business based on dogma. More likely is that he needed to make wrenching layoffs and decided to wait after the election because he could do one of the following.

A) Claim Obama caused it and that it probably wouldn't get better fast enough because of the "devastation" caused by Obama's policies or....

B) Say a prayer and blame it on the reelection.

Bloo Driver wrote:
Demosthenes wrote:
Lord, please forgive me and anyone with me in Murray Energy Corp. for the decisions that we are now forced to make to preserve the very existence of any of the enterprises that you have helped us build. We ask for your guidance in this drastic time with the drastic decisions that will be made to have any hope of our survival as an American business enterprise.

You didn't build that. God did apparently. *rolls eyes* This guy is a tool. Not even waiting to see what the economy does, just fires them immediately. Hopefully next on the chopping block for this PR nightmare is him.

Yeah, what kills me is when people drink their own political fantasy land kool-aid. And, hilariously in this case, become the cause of the problems they're convinced the other guy is causing right this minute. He'll fire those people today and no matter what happens to the economy down the line, he'll blame Obama for it. Hope those blinders are worth the cost of the impact on all those families.

Yeah, I wish those people the very best, as they are being made to suffer so one man (or an executive board, or whatever) can make a political point.

He's really making it very badly and doing it in the same way I would expect a 6-year-old to do so too. "You say I can't play with this toy right now? Then I'm going to throw it against the wall."

DSGamer wrote:

My guess, assuming he isn't a horrible businessman, was that he was doing the layoffs regardless. Either way he was probably going to blame it on Obama. I doubt he woke up and decided to alter his business based on dogma. More likely is that he needed to make wrenching layoffs and decided to wait after the election because he could do one of the following.

A) Claim Obama caused it and that it probably wouldn't get better fast enough because of the "devastation" caused by Obama's policies or....

B) Say a prayer and blame it on the reelection.

Considering Murray executives have given $1.4 million to Republican candidates for federal positions since 2007, it's a safe bet that it's A.

NormanTheIntern wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

Here is a bit about demographics.

Let's get something straight. Romney didn't win white males. He won poorly-educated, older white males. Nate Cohn's New Republic piece is indispensable for us now. Obama actually won, albeit narrowly, among highly educated white males, and won handily among younger highly educated white males. Oh, and his whites have to be Christian. Jews--who are white but typically highly educated--went for Obama 70-30%, though pro-Bibi Jewish plutocrats, who endow Jewish organizations, sent a strong pro-Romney message.

The point is, the more voters were accustomed to processing complex arguments about how the economy works, how we got into trouble, how history might be made, and how political institutions share power, the more they embraced Obama. The more they were motivated by fears and flocking, the more they went for Romney's witless syllogisms: the president is responsible for everything, things are bad, therefore Obama is to blame; recovery requires business investment, I am a businessman, therefore I should be president. (Incidentally, my daughter Ellie just sent me this: for what its worth, biological research into the fear centers that are typically activated in the brains of "conservatives." Intriguing.)

The first paragraph is about demographics, correct.

The second is self-indulgent tripe.

Or it was a reasonable analysis based on the demographics of the first paragraph.

This holding people's livelihood hostage based on voting specific ways garbage feels like the new tyranny coming on.

OG_slinger wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

My guess, assuming he isn't a horrible businessman, was that he was doing the layoffs regardless. Either way he was probably going to blame it on Obama. I doubt he woke up and decided to alter his business based on dogma. More likely is that he needed to make wrenching layoffs and decided to wait after the election because he could do one of the following.

A) Claim Obama caused it and that it probably wouldn't get better fast enough because of the "devastation" caused by Obama's policies or....

B) Say a prayer and blame it on the reelection.

Considering Murray executives have given $1.4 million to Republican candidates for federal positions since 2007, it's a safe bet that it's A.

My point is that he was going to do A if Romney won and B if Obama won. In other words he probably made the business decision he needed to make, but did it like a crybaby.

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney was so confident of victory against President Barack Obama that he spent $25,000 for victory fireworks, had already drawn up a list of White House appointments and took it easy on election day when his opponents were still working hard to get out the vote.

I have never heard of this site before, it showed up via a link on my Facebook page.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/45630

I'm back from the land of volcanoes and pineapple, sorry I missed the election night IRC discussion. In honor of everyone's favorite coal executive, here's a story of one man's personal meltdown over the election.

[url wrote:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11... family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

It's from a few pages back but if where tossing out 2016 candidates I'd love to see Brian Schweitzer run on the Democrat side. Just based on his record he might even have a chance of peeling away some of the more moderate members of the Republican party.

Kraint wrote:

I'm back from the land of volcanoes and pineapple, sorry I missed the election night IRC discussion. In honor of everyone's favorite coal executive, here's a story of one man's personal meltdown over the election.

[url wrote:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11... family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

I like this:

Let's say you lose your dog, and a neighbor, who is a Democrat, finds it and brings it back to you. Do you thank him or spit on the ground in front of him?
Tell him to give me my dog, and to get off of my property. And the next time he sees my dog to just let her be. As he's walking away I might yell out "Obama sucks" a couple times.
Kraint wrote:

I'm back from the land of volcanoes and pineapple, sorry I missed the election night IRC discussion. In honor of everyone's favorite coal executive, here's a story of one man's personal meltdown over the election.

[url wrote:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11... family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

Wow. That was a whole heapload of crazy.

SallyNasty wrote:
Kraint wrote:

I'm back from the land of volcanoes and pineapple, sorry I missed the election night IRC discussion. In honor of everyone's favorite coal executive, here's a story of one man's personal meltdown over the election.

[url wrote:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11... family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

Wow. That was a whole heapload of crazy.

I have a hard time believing that he could possibly be that far gone, and am more inclined to think he's intentionally trolling a bit there.

Kraint wrote:

I'm back from the land of volcanoes and pineapple, sorry I missed the election night IRC discussion. In honor of everyone's favorite coal executive, here's a story of one man's personal meltdown over the election.

[url wrote:

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/11... family and friends, even close family and friends, who I know to be Democrats are hereby dead to me. I vow never to speak to them again for the rest of my life, or have any communications with them. They are in short, the enemies of liberty. They deserve nothing less than hatred and utter contempt.

After reading the article the biggest thing that stuck out to me is that you'd think that he'd know that Harrison wrote Taxman, not Lennon.

Edwin wrote:

Romney voters, are more likely (not saying they are) to be less educated and more religious. Obama voters are more likely to be more educated and less religious but at a lower rate than the Romney voters are in their respective adjectives. This could explain the wave of anti-intellectualism we have been seeing in the last decade and a half as it seems to be a possible threat to people's faith, culture and identity.

Feel free to poke holes all over my interpretation since I wrote this at 2 AM.

That's the core of why I really don't like Republican power. The other half of the Republican party are guys just like Romney (AKA lots of money). Somehow they get the less educated to vote for candidates who screw them over economically. This is not to say that money doesn't influence Democrats either, far from it. Corporations in general write legislation, not people.

Sounds like republicans are pro feudalism.

Farscry wrote:

I have a hard time believing that he could possibly be that far gone, and am more inclined to think he's intentionally trolling a bit there.

Nope. His website is chock full o' crazy.

OG_slinger wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I have a hard time believing that he could possibly be that far gone, and am more inclined to think he's intentionally trolling a bit there.

Nope. His website is Chuck full o' crazy.

OG_slinger wrote:
Farscry wrote:

I have a hard time believing that he could possibly be that far gone, and am more inclined to think he's intentionally trolling a bit there.

Nope. His website is chock full o' crazy.

Well ok then.

So with Glenn Beck's List. Is there one company on there that has not been shrinking hard in the past 10 years? The Harley Dealership in particular took my eye as even before Chrysler and GM were bailed out, they had a major restructuring and are still recovering. Dealers were hit hard. Same with that K-Mart. K-mart was doing a great job failing out of existence for the past 15 years.

KingGorilla wrote:

So with Glenn Beck's List. Is there one company on there that has not been shrinking hard in the past 10 years? The Harley Dealership in particular took my eye as even before Chrysler and GM were bailed out, they had a major restructuring and are still recovering. Dealers were hit hard. Same with that K-Mart. K-mart was doing a great job failing out of existence for the past 15 years.

Just Googling the first company, Catepillar, I found this article in less than 30 seconds:

The Telegraph[/url]]Caterpillar says it plans to close its plant in southern Minnesota and shift work to Wisconsin and Georgia.

The plant in the Steele County community of Owatonna (oh-wah-TON'-ah) employs about 100 and will close in March 2013.

Caterpillar spokeswoman Rachel Potts says the forest products plant will "ramp down" production between now and the targeted closing date. She says Owatonna production will be shifted to plants in Prentice, Wis., and LaGrange, Ga.

And the second company, Mount Pleasant’s Albrecht Sentry Foods:

The Journal Times[/url]]According to (Albrecht Foods General Manager Greg) Schilz, the 5740 Washington Ave. Sentry has struggled since it first opened in April 2007, competing with the Pick ‘n Save, GFS Marketplace and Piggly Wiggly all located near the same Highway 20 and 31 intersection.

“It’s a business decision,” Schilz said of the closure. “Things weren’t improving, and certainly won’t improve with a new competitor.”

That new competitor is a 41,000-square-foot Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, a combination grocery store and pharmacy planned for 5625 Washington Ave. and set to break ground in the coming months.

Walmart’s impending arrival dealt Sentry a death blow, convincing co-owners Jim Albrecht and daughter Michelle Harrington to close for good, Schilz said.

My first job out of college was essentially to do what Glen Beck's website is kind of attempting. Except I was doing it for an executive recruiter and it was during the recession of the early 90s when corporations really got into the whole mass layoff thing. I'd comb through the business sections of about 20 different newspapers a day looking for any article about a layoff, clip the article (it was before the Internet, now get off my lawn, damnit!), and compile all the info into a very crude spreadsheet.

That experience taught me that businesses fire (and hire) people all the time. Even in months when there's actual job growth, that just means that more people where hired than fired, so hundreds of thousands of people could actually be fired in month when there's net job creation.

What Beck is trying to do is skeezy and deceptive, which means it's perfectly in line with conservative media. Rather than admit that our economy is actually creating net new jobs (and has been for 31 months now), Beck's simply reinforcing the fear that our economy is in the sh*tter (and that it's all Obama's fault). The list also bolsters the conservative fantasy idea bandied about that there are "consequences" to this election by straight out implying that every company on that list laid off people because Obama got reelected.

The only thing that's sadder than that is that there's people that regularly visit the Libertarian Republican's and The Blaze's web site and eagerly lap that sh*t up.

So what you are saying is that Glenn Beck's speech does not hold up against rational thought?

Fun part is I guess that we are still at business as usual. Anything bad, the far right will blame on Obama. Romney and the Republicans still have us on the path to austerity, which the Senate and Obama need to save us from. It is unnecessary, we are growing (albeit slowly). In the world scheme the US, once again, suffers the collapse more acutely, sooner, but with less lasting major affects than our European and Asian peers. Much of Europe's issue is that rather than admit that the main power is Germans, feared a 4th Reich built through economic means, and will suffer the consequences.

As it stands now, with House gridlock, we revert to 2000's tax policies, and I do not see that as really a bad thing. It is incumbent on Obama to complete our withdrawls from Iraq and Afghanistan on schedule. This is truly one of the top economic policies that needs to happen. Longer term stabilization of healthcare costs needs to be addressed as well, and I would hope single payer is back on the table at some point. Healthcare costs are still outstripping economic growth, by more than double, just as they have been the past 20 years.

Thanks Paleo. Great read.

Very good read.

I just don't see the GOP changing course anytime soon. It took them more than three decades to reach this point and there's just far too much inertia behind them. The GOP leadership and strategists might recognize the need to change, but their base simply won't allow it to happen nor will they allow any moderate Republican candidate to survive the primary process, let alone the vote.

No, the GOP base won't recognize the need to change until they've gotten drubbed in several election cycles. And that's scary because they are just going to get angrier and more desperate with each loss, especially when they're literally being told that their souls and the souls of all Americans are on the line if the GOP doesn't win.

Yeah. After my morning Rotary meeting someone brought up the whole silly county map thing to try to illustrate how "most of the country voted for Romney" to which I replied with "and when we change the Constitution so we vote by the square foot, that might mean something important"

Paleocon wrote:

This is particularly good, truthful and, as a result, to some uncomfortable.

Doh. Monthly traffic exceeded. Guess that got shared around a bit.

The strong worry between my wife and I is that some nutjob, dissatisfied with the election, will make an attempt on President Obama's life. Reading the hate on facebook (and other places) it isn't hard to imagine someone making the attempt.