Pew: Romney Leads By 4 In Post-Debate Survey

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During more robust times, the 4 percent were people who had quit or had been fired from one job and looking for another. There is often a lag between leaving one job and finding another. Also people who were forced to leave their jobs because of illness or accident. If they are still looking to work when they recover, they are counted as unemployed.

This is far different from the steady stater 8 percent (that is the "official figure") unemployment. If you count discouraged workers who have stopped looking the unemployment rate is more like 15 percent.

ruveyn

^^^ Yeah, I'm pretty sure I heard Romney say he wanted to get that number up to 47%.... You know how much he likes to fire people.

Yes the real unemployment numbers are and have always been higher than 10%. We don't count the 2.8 million Americans in prison as unemployed. We don't count students who have graduated and couldn't find jobs as unemployed. We also aren't accounting for underemployment--people with advanced degrees who are flipping burgers 3 days a week because they can't find real jobs.

Our country has always cooked its unemployment numbers.



Obama did better this round than he did in the last. In terms of presentation, his eye contact, body posture, and "uhms" and "ahs" were corrected, and he was more assertive in addressing Romney, and responded (pretty well I think) to Romney's accusations instead of sitting there with a dumb look on his face. There were a few points where Romney was visibly frustrated.

There were exchanges Romney clearly lost. If you had asked me before the debate to bet if the Libya questions were going to hurt Obama, I surely would've thought so. Instead, if anything, it gave him the best chance to humanize himself. Romney walked into a bear trap with "he didn't refer to it as an act of terror", to which the moderator corrected immediately, and the audience applauded.

Personally, I don't feel like the first round was the shut out people complain about it being. I think that the media's interpretation of a debate matters more than the content of the actual debate. The candidates are really selling themselves to the media, not the voters. Obama made no major errors, no major gaffes. He let Romney control the pace and content of the debate, but Romney never had any "Aha!" moments. Both of them basically recited talking points.

This debate was not much different. All Obama changed was his delivery, and just like that the media perception went from him losing to winning. Both of them basically went through their talking points. Romney seems to think liking coal will get him votes. Obama seems to think cutting corporate tax rates will do anything for the economy (Canada already tried that. It didn't work).

Last time, I said that Romney lost but Obama lost more...
This time I think Obama lost, and Romney lost more. Neither of them changed my mind on any issues, and technically I am an "independent voter". Romney was still completely full of it. He suggested dropping the Capital Gains tax for individuals making less than $250,000 a year. I feel that Obama could have simply won the election right there by pointing out it would bring Romney's tax rate to 0%, as he himself makes no income and relies on investment earnings to maintain his wealth.

I felt that the Biden/Ryan debate was the best and most one-sided so far (with Biden dominating, even if he was a bit of an ass). One of the few enjoyable debates I've ever seen.

You do realize that Romney gives more of his income to charity (talking about percentage) than Biden and Obama combined, hell there are quite a few people that make significantly less money than Biden and still give more money (in raw dollar amount) than Biden.

The real person that doesn't care about the poor is Joe Biden.

Charity shouldn't exist anyway. If the economy worked we wouldn't need it. Charity has become a red herring that enables any terrible organization or individual to claim sainthood, "because they donated more in charity than you did". What a useless metric to measure someone's righteousness.

Someone who dedicates their life toward changing the economic system to not f**k the poor has done far more, in my mind, than someone who's worked their hardest to prevent those reforms, and donated to cover his ass.

thank you for that

From what I've heard, most of those "charitable" donations from Romney are to the Mormon church, not to charities specifically targeting the poor.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It isn't simply his money, it is his time. If you had watched the Republican Convention, you would realize that you and a few others not only look foolish, but you look like complete well you get the idea.

Former Medford residents Ted and Pat Oparowski, members of Romney’s Mormon church, shared a story about how Romney helped their teenage son, David, write his own will during the last days of his battle with cancer. Knowing Romney had gone to law school, David asked him for assistance, the Oparowskis said.

“The next time Mitt went to the hospital, he was equipped with his yellow legal pad and pen. Together, they made David’s will. That is a task that no child should ever have to do. But it gave David peace of mind,” Pat Oparowski said to a rapt audience.

Pam Finlayson, whose family also attended the Mormon church in Belmont when Romney was a leader there, talked about his dedication to her family during a difficult period many years ago. Finlayson said that Romney prayed over her daughter, Kate, after she was born prematurely.

“I will never forget that when he looked down tenderly at my daughter, his eyes filled with tears, and he reached out gently and stroked her tiny back,’’ Finlayson said. “I could tell immediately that he didn’t just see a tangle of plastic and tubes; he saw our beautiful little girl.’’

Kate Finlayson suffered from hydrocephalus — “water on the brain” — and died in 2010 at age 26.

On Thanksgiving Day in 1984, when Kate Finlayson was still hospitalized as an infant, Romney showed up, unannounced, at the family’s home with a dinner he had prepared himself.

“I opened my door to find Mitt and his boys, arms loaded with a Thanksgiving feast,” Pam Finlayson said. “When I called to thank Ann, she sweetly confessed it had been Mitt’s idea, that most of the cooking and chopping had been done by him.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politic ... story.html

Robert Gay's 14-year-old daughter, Melissa, had gone missing after taking a train into New York City, Gay told Romney. Gay said he and his wife, Lynette, had contacted the police and were desperately trying to track down Melissa.

She might have become lost in an underworld rave party scene after attending a party on Randall's Island on the city's East River. Rave parties were typically all-night affairs punctuated by the use of the drug Ecstasy, which can induce euphoria or hallucinations. The Gays feared their daughter might be unable to contact home.

Romney stepped in and committed Bain's resources to help with the search.

"I said let's close the firm, let's close the company – we were in Boston – and let's all of us fly down to New York and try to find her," Romney recalled recently when ask about the incident at a rally in Ohio this month. "So we closed the business, we went home and packed our things."

The search ultimately led to a home in New Jersey where Melissa was found safe. Soon she was back with her family.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/1 ... 55317.html

So are you still going to carry on about him being some heartless monster?

Well, the guy who did all those good works should have been in that secret fund raiser, instead of that schmuck using his name and face who denigrated half the country, and promised to give the super wealthy tax cuts.
Yes, I know they're the same person. It seems Mitt only has a heart when it comes to people who he knows, and who attends his church.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Why should Romney apologize for telling the truth, quite frankly I think a lot of what he said was accurate...

He said he wasn't going to represent the poorest and most vulnerable Americans. You actually agree with that? Both you and Romney need a heart transplant.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

You know, it's not even really about having a heart.... I mean even if we ignore all the moral and ethical reasons to help poor folks, smart economics demand that we help the poor.

Business, currently high on the economic crack of Asian near-slave labor, has forgotten that a consumer driven economy won't work if consumers don't have the money to buy things.

Right now we have record corporate profits, huge income disparity between the rich and poor and puny growth. The "job creators" need to face facts--unless consumers get some money to consume the system will fail.

There are two ways to get money to consumers. Give them good, decent paying jobs so they can spend more. This will mean less profits for business. Or continue to pay low wages and cut benefits and let government subsidies to the working poor make up the difference and prop up consumption. This is what we've done for decades now. This is what has caused the deficit to explode. This is an option we can no longer exercise unless we raise more revenue with higher taxes. Since the poor don't have any money, being poor, the rich will have to foot the bill....

One way or another, we need to get money back into the hands of consumers.

I'll say it again:

The two most efficient ways to do this are higher wages or increased government subsidies to the poor. Since deficit spending is rapidly becoming no longer an option, it means business/the rich are going to have to accept lower profits or higher taxes to get the economy growing again. That's the bottom line.

One way or another, all that money that's pooled at the top has to get flushed back into the economy or we're doomed.

Right now, the real problem is, the rich are too damn rich, and too damn greedy, and too damn dumb to reinvest in the markets (and consumers) that give them their money.

The rich don't need a heart transplant--they need a brain transplant.

You're preaching to the choir, brother Goon!

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

That's not what he said, he said 47% of people wouldn't vote for him no matter what.

There are some people whom posted here that are perfect examples of how what Romney said was entirely accurate Kraichgauer, I'm sorry you find the truth to be offensive.

And he said he wasn't going to represent them.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

It only makes sense that advanced economies become inherently fragile when they're too damn efficient for their own good. The supply for basic living necessities comprises such a small fraction of the economy. A ton of jobs are predicated on discretionary spending, i.e. luxury spending. It only makes sense that luxury spending will be highly sensitive to income loss.