If the latest polls out of Florida turn out to be accurate then this will be over much quicker than I thought.
US Presidential Election: Tuesday November 6th, 2012
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I can't stand to watch politicians, reading you guys make fun of their quotes is as close as i want to get to them.
Newt "Knows" as perceived by the left and right:
Paul Krugman: Gingrich "is a stupid man's idea of what a smart man sounds like."
Joe Scarborough: "If Newt is the smartest guy in the room, leave that room".
No wonder he didn't want to release his tax returns.
US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney expects to pay about $6.2m (£4m) in taxes on income of $42.5m in the last two years.
That makes for a tax rate of 13.9% in 2010 and an expected rate of 15.4% in 2011, his campaign said.
US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney expects to pay about $6.2m (£4m) in taxes on income of $42.5m in the last two years.
That makes for a tax rate of 13.9% in 2010 and an expected rate of 15.4% in 2011, his campaign said.
He and his wife Ann reported income of $21.6m in 2010 and $20.9m last year, almost all it from investments. There were no declared wages on the 2011 estimate.
They gave $7m to charity in the same period, about half of it to the Mormon Church.
President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle released their 2010 tax return in April last year, showing an income of $1.7m. They paid about $450,000 in federal tax, a rate of about 26%.
They gave $7m to charity in the same period, about half of it to the Mormon Church.
President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle released their 2010 tax return in April last year, showing an income of $1.7m. They paid about $450,000 in federal tax, a rate of about 26%.
Not sure wanting a return to the gold standard makes him a nutjob in the same way the other examples you cite do.
This GOP race makes me hate people. How can "social conservatives aka family values voters" vote for the scumbag philanderer that is Newt Gingrich? We've already seen how seriously he takes his promises, so how is he going to keep ones to people he doesn't know?
About the long term rate on capital gains (15%). Ironically old Newt would have him pay 0% as he would abolish CGT.
Romney hitting Newt for lobbying or anything else wont hurt Newt....becuase all republicans know all about Newt.
But they will still vote for him because he hates Obama as much as they do...that is all that matters. Romney wants to take the 'middle ' path....that just makes him a 'moderate' which they dont want. they want a street fighter.
...and Newt fights dirty.
Why? He's no different than Obamas pal Warren Buffet. He paid what the law said he should pay. He also gave an enormous sum to charity. It's not his fault the law states he pays 15%. He didn't evade taxes like others have.
I can't remember for sure but was any of this a problem for John Kerry? I don't remember it to be. I know people made fun of his wife being the rich one but I don't remember people screaming about his taxes and I'd bet they were similar.
Its a problem because of his high earnings and low taxation. His earnings will alienate some voters, and the fact he legally pays such a low rate of tax is an issue. I know he is legal and above board but it taints his impartiality on lowing taxes when he has so much to gain/lose.
Kerry didn't stall when it came to releasing his tax returns.
I think what's causing the problem for Romney is that he hesitated, said "maybe" he would, said he'd do it in April, said he'd just do the current year, etc. His father released 12 years' worth voluntarily, stating that any one year could be a fluke.
Now everyone will be scouring it for what he didn't want them to find. Which will likely be a ton of cash parked in the Caymans ('Invest in America!'). Perfectly legal - but politically unhelpful: for a man paying a far lower rate than most of the middle class to be attacking the Dems for trying to raise taxes on the very wealthy doesn't sit well, and he knew it, which is why he tried to hide it.
He also gave more to the Mormon church than he did to the taxman, which the evangelicals may note.
On the emotional level (which is largely how we vote), people may not want to reward a man who makes more daily than most of them earn annually, and tends to look and sound rather pleased with himself about it, with the presidency.
Warren Buffet A) isn't running for office, and B) says the law should be changed so that he pays more.
Romney is, and is campaigning on proposals that would lower his taxes even more.
Gingrich was paying 31% or so wasn't he? Twice the tax of Mitt but with a significantly smaller fortune. And doesn't contribute to the Mormon church.
Mitt's team has got some serious damage control to be doing. Did this issue not come up at all in 2008?
Mitt's team has got some serious damage control to be doing. Did this issue not come up at all in 2008?
In all fairness to Romney is tax rate was actually over 20% when you deduct his charitable donations.
But most of those donations were to the Mormon church, and therefore, as I understand it, tithe, i.e. not voluntary.
Do other presidential candidates not tithe? If they do not, how "Christian" are they then? 
I dunno, I just read somewhere that it's obligatory for Mormons, might be wrong
Matt Steinglass in the Economist has a go at explaining why the ideology coming from the candidates is all over the place:
Incoherent Party, Incoherent Candidates
Matt Steinglass in the Economist has a go at explaining why the ideology coming from the candidates is all over the place:
Incoherent Party, Incoherent Candidates
Jan 24th 2012, 20:19 by M.S.
REPUBLICANS are clearly not too enthused about Mitt Romney. Nor are they wild for any of the alternatives. This week Ross Douthat wrote a column arguing that it's no surprise the current crop of Republican presidential candidates is no great shakes since, well, great presidential candidates are pretty rare animals. He then wrote a blog post arguing that the whole problem could have been avoided if the better Republican candidates, particularly Mitch Daniels, hadn't decided not to run this year. Daniel Larison ridicules this notion; the fantasy candidates, he says, look strong because they haven't been subjected to the withering attacks real candidates have to face. The ones Mr Douthat touts "don’t have the qualifications that Romney has, they all have their own weaknesses with conservatives and/or with the general electorate, and all of them decided for various reasons to save themselves the trouble, toil, and humiliation that a presidential bid would have entailed."
Jonathan Bernstein takes Mr Larison's point a step further and imagines what it would have taken to give Republicans a candidate they could get enthusiastic about.
What Republicans could have used both this cycle and last is a candidate who raised no suspicion from any important party faction and also had conventional credentials. Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, and perhaps Fred Thompson all came close, but none of them really achieved that. Given the GOP's wild pivots on so many issues over the last decade, perhaps no one can, and someone like Romney -- who holds orthodox views on all issues right now, but hasn't for long enough to build long-term trust -- is the best they can do.
This is an extremely important point to keep in mind. Mitt Romney looks like a weak phony in this election campaign because he has to pretend to believe with all his heart in orthodox tea-party conservative positions that he transparently doesn't really believe in. We know this because in the past, Mr Romney supported health-care reform including an individual mandate along the lines of the system he instituted in Massachusetts, essentially the same system as Obamacare. And in the past, he supported a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change. But at the time, both of those were orthodox Republican Party positions. The fact that they are anathema today is a legacy of the reactionary fury that has driven the party for the past three years. Conservative voters responded to their epic loss in 2008 with a partisan kulturkampf that labeled every major initiative launched by the Obama administration socialism, and declared the very existence of global warming to be some kind of Communist-scientist hoax. There were very few established Republican politicians who hadn't taken positions in the George W. Bush era (or the Newt Gingrich era!) that pose ideological problems for them in the tea-party era. Mr Gingrich himself can fleetingly outrun the problem because, like most voters, he has the long-term intellectual consistency of a goldfish. But YouTube never forgets.
Republicans' disenchantment with their current presidential candidates is not an incidental characteristic of this crop of candidates. It's a structural feature of a contemporary Republican Party whose pieces don't hang together. Pro-Iraq-war neoconservative Republicans cannot actually live with Ron Paul Republicans. Wall Street-hating anti-bail-out Republicans cannot actually live with Wall Street-working bail-out-receiving Republicans. Evangelical-conservative Republicans cannot actually live with libertarian, socially liberal Republicans. Deficit-slashing Republicans cannot live with tax-slashing Republicans. Medicare-cutting Republicans cannot live with Medicare-defending Republicans. These factions have been glued together over the past three years by the intensity of their partisan hatred for Barack Obama, and all of the underlying resentments that antipathy masks. Republicans have buried their differences by assaulting everything Mr Obama supports, and because Mr Obama is a pretty middle-of-the-road politician, that includes a whole lot of things that many Republicans used to support. They are disenchanted with their candidates because their candidates are incoherent, but their candidates are incoherent because the base is incoherent. If the GOP wins this election, the party's leaders are going to be confronted with that incoherence pretty quickly. Unfortunately, so will the rest of us.
REPUBLICANS are clearly not too enthused about Mitt Romney. Nor are they wild for any of the alternatives. This week Ross Douthat wrote a column arguing that it's no surprise the current crop of Republican presidential candidates is no great shakes since, well, great presidential candidates are pretty rare animals. He then wrote a blog post arguing that the whole problem could have been avoided if the better Republican candidates, particularly Mitch Daniels, hadn't decided not to run this year. Daniel Larison ridicules this notion; the fantasy candidates, he says, look strong because they haven't been subjected to the withering attacks real candidates have to face. The ones Mr Douthat touts "don’t have the qualifications that Romney has, they all have their own weaknesses with conservatives and/or with the general electorate, and all of them decided for various reasons to save themselves the trouble, toil, and humiliation that a presidential bid would have entailed."
Jonathan Bernstein takes Mr Larison's point a step further and imagines what it would have taken to give Republicans a candidate they could get enthusiastic about.
What Republicans could have used both this cycle and last is a candidate who raised no suspicion from any important party faction and also had conventional credentials. Rick Perry, Tim Pawlenty, and perhaps Fred Thompson all came close, but none of them really achieved that. Given the GOP's wild pivots on so many issues over the last decade, perhaps no one can, and someone like Romney -- who holds orthodox views on all issues right now, but hasn't for long enough to build long-term trust -- is the best they can do.
This is an extremely important point to keep in mind. Mitt Romney looks like a weak phony in this election campaign because he has to pretend to believe with all his heart in orthodox tea-party conservative positions that he transparently doesn't really believe in. We know this because in the past, Mr Romney supported health-care reform including an individual mandate along the lines of the system he instituted in Massachusetts, essentially the same system as Obamacare. And in the past, he supported a cap-and-trade system for limiting greenhouse-gas emissions to address climate change. But at the time, both of those were orthodox Republican Party positions. The fact that they are anathema today is a legacy of the reactionary fury that has driven the party for the past three years. Conservative voters responded to their epic loss in 2008 with a partisan kulturkampf that labeled every major initiative launched by the Obama administration socialism, and declared the very existence of global warming to be some kind of Communist-scientist hoax. There were very few established Republican politicians who hadn't taken positions in the George W. Bush era (or the Newt Gingrich era!) that pose ideological problems for them in the tea-party era. Mr Gingrich himself can fleetingly outrun the problem because, like most voters, he has the long-term intellectual consistency of a goldfish. But YouTube never forgets.
Republicans' disenchantment with their current presidential candidates is not an incidental characteristic of this crop of candidates. It's a structural feature of a contemporary Republican Party whose pieces don't hang together. Pro-Iraq-war neoconservative Republicans cannot actually live with Ron Paul Republicans. Wall Street-hating anti-bail-out Republicans cannot actually live with Wall Street-working bail-out-receiving Republicans. Evangelical-conservative Republicans cannot actually live with libertarian, socially liberal Republicans. Deficit-slashing Republicans cannot live with tax-slashing Republicans. Medicare-cutting Republicans cannot live with Medicare-defending Republicans. These factions have been glued together over the past three years by the intensity of their partisan hatred for Barack Obama, and all of the underlying resentments that antipathy masks. Republicans have buried their differences by assaulting everything Mr Obama supports, and because Mr Obama is a pretty middle-of-the-road politician, that includes a whole lot of things that many Republicans used to support. They are disenchanted with their candidates because their candidates are incoherent, but their candidates are incoherent because the base is incoherent. If the GOP wins this election, the party's leaders are going to be confronted with that incoherence pretty quickly. Unfortunately, so will the rest of us.
Newt Gingrich has apparently eaten Sara Palin or something
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/24/newt-gingrich-absorbs-palins-shtick
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/24/newt-gingrich-absorbs-palins-shtick
Gallup: Gingrich Takes Lead in National GOP Race
RealClearPolitics - Gallup: Gingrich Takes Lead in National GOP Race
RealClearPolitics - Gallup: Gingrich Takes Lead in National GOP Race
They're actually going to nominate Gingrich aren't they? They're actually going to do it. 
Go Newt Go! I am praying to Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha and a range of Hindu gods for you to win.
If Newt wins, it will sum-up up everything this is wrong with the Right or at least wake them up a bit.
They're actually going to nominate Gingrich aren't they? They're actually going to do it.
Careful what you wish for. The IMF is warning of a return to global recession on the back of the Euro crisis...
I still think they'll nominate Romney though. Gingrich will flame out, he doesn't have the discipline (or the money) for the long haul.
Gingrich is even more despicable than our Tony Abbott if that is at all possible.
Obama's State of the Union in 30 minutes. Apparently he's going to tell rich people to pay more taxes.
Islamic, commie lizard.
Racist.
We doing the State of the Union in here?
Indeed we are.
God, Michelle looks stunning
I hate these addresses, where every sentence is punctuated by applause. I wish he'd deliver it from his desk.
I hate these addresses, where every sentence is punctuated by applause. I wish he'd deliver it from his desk.
My Representative is on C-Span! He's the white guy, gray hair, glasses, and hitler stache. Difficulty: He's black or so he claims. Effin GK Butterfield.
GOP going to claim "Class Warfare" because we're always a nation of Haves...and soon-to-Haves... Great argument. You're not poor, you're just not rich yet.This is the closest thing we have to the Opening of Parliament and Queen's Speech, which is a pretty ridiculously awesome ceremony.
I like that between all the congressman greeting him and encouraging him on, one asks him what he will do on Iran.
I'm watching on C-Span so I don't get the audio until he starts speaking.
Edit: Aside from all the clapping.
Edit: Aside from all the clapping.
Obama is talkin' 'bout fachts!
What's that eloquent, handsome, intelligent black man doing in Congress?!
This is getting interesting.
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