Romney's Big Bird Comment During Debate Sets Social Media On Fire

[erynthered]

This is what we took out of the debates? I seriously hate my generation...

Me too.LOL

[3rdnlng]

Myth could have had a 10% tax rate. He had his accountants fudged the numbers (more than usual) so that his proclamation of 14% tax rate came true.

 

 

Obama paid at a tax rate of 20%. The middle Class about the same.

 

Romney could have had a 1% rate if he chose to give more to charity. Should he have given less to charity in order to raise his effective tax rate? The way your posts keep getting dumber and dumber one would think you are in competition for the most ignorant PPP poster award. Take it easy, it's in the bag. You can rest on your laurels.

[MARCELL DAREUS POWER]

Romney could have had a 1% rate if he chose to give more to charity. Should he have given less to charity in order to raise his effective tax rate? The way your posts keep getting dumber and dumber one would think you are in competition for the most ignorant PPP poster award. Take it easy, it's in the bag. You can rest on your laurels.

 

i didnt vote to help the mormon church... thats not the point of taxes..... ugh

[Buff_bills4ever]

I blame cell phones. They've melted peoples brains...

I blame the rap music and the brightly colored fruit snacks myself....

[3rdnlng]

 

 

i didnt vote to help the mormon church... thats not the point of taxes..... ugh

 

Are you for eliminating all religious deductions on federal income taxes? How about eliminating all charitable deductions? Should the government fund NPR?

[meazza]

i didnt vote to help the mormon church... thats not the point of taxes..... ugh

 

So only charities you agree with?

 

You realize how stupid that sounds?

[Just Jack]

Now the kids are responding...

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/mitt-romney-big-bird_n_1940400.html

[Chef Jim]

i didnt vote to help the mormon church... thats not the point of taxes..... ugh

 

And do you have any idea what the Mormon church does with their charity money?

 

He had his accountants fudged the numbers (more than usual) so that his proclamation of 14% tax rate came true.

 

 

So you were in on that conference call? Wow, you're more important than I ever imagined.

[Just Jack]

I wonder how many of the people complaining about Romneys PBS comment, have made a contribution to PBS during a pledge drive recently.

[/dev/null]

I wonder how many of the people complaining about Romneys PBS comment, have made a contribution to PBS during a pledge drive recently.

But...but...but...They pay taxes so that's like contributing to PBS!

 

Free The Hypnotoad!!!

Free Crayonz!

Free MDP!

Free Hat!

Free Obamafone!

Edited October 6, 2012 by /dev/null

[Captain Hindsight]

This has been an issue for some time. It's all in the picture for belt-tightening for how public $ are spent.

 

Look, I love PBS. I cut the cable 15 years ago and put up an antenna (I've posted in the consumer forum on this and given advice to several posters here about antenna / OTA / digital switch stuff) and PBS provides a lot of great viewing as networks have mostly churned out crap. I love FRONTLINE, Masterpiece, NOVA, Antiques Roadshow, cooking shows... even Bob Ross as a way to zone out every now and then. My niece loves Curious George and Cat in the Hat and I'll encourage her to watch Cyberchase as she grows up. In other words, they're the go-to stations (I get Boston, Providence and Hartford markets in this overlapping Venn diagram of a location.)

 

But do I think PBS ought to get public tax money? No.

 

And there's some at PBS who feel the same way and are taking the steps with sponsorships to phase out this small part of their budget. IIRC, it's ~ 5% of the PBS budget. There's a woman named Linda Merrilll who just posted on the WGBH (Boston, the flagship PBS station) Facebook page that she used to work at WGBH and loves NPR... but still believes that everything in the federal budget should be up for a haircut, that there's a lot of merch sales (Elmo dolls, anyone?) and corporate and private funding (CPB, Children's Television Workshop, etc.), that it would create more of an incentive for people to pledge when they know it's fully on them the viewers to support what they want to watch and that "Big Bird isn't going to be in the figurative bread line anytime soon." The idea that defunding would break the back of PBS and NPR is coming from someone who doesn't know jack stevestojan.

 

This may have been a great idea back when there were four channels, as a means of encouraging variety and educational shows. But we have the Internet now, we have New Media, we're moving into a different age. Masterpiece just recently partnered with Ralph Lauren. They can do more of this. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is set up to handle defunding or phasing out funding very well. It is, and should be, funded by the people watch it with large donations from major funders, large donations from private people, small donations, donations of old cars where the auction proceeds go to PBS, etc. (I've donated several old cars over the years.)

 

There's actually some cogent arguments that defunding PBS would be the best thing for it : http://www.scribd.co...Analysis-No-697

 

And, as noted, this doesn't just come from the Right.

 

For a small drop, they can get out of the shadow of government and a vague public impression that tax dollars are enough to keep PBS going (when that's very much not the case) and make viewers more aware that if they don't contribute.... The government shouldn't have to subsidize commercial-free teevee. As said, this is a new age. This is an age of iPad subscriptions and the NYT and the Buffalo News and countless other media sources finally phasing in 'we'll give you X amount for free,' but pay-for-full-access.

 

Again, I HEART PBS. It doesn't need training wheels anymore.

Intresting take.

[Nanker]

Yeah, it's like without PBS the Muppets would disappear.

[OCinBuffalo]

What's wrong with OC's statement is implication that Reagan cared about waste in military spending -- in fact, it was the opposite. Reagan's philosophy was that defense was NOT a budgetary issue. He made this clear in public addresses, speeches and his own papers after he left office. The military was given carte blanche to spend whatever they deemed necessary to keep the United States safe. His strategy to defeat the soviets was to outspend them. And it worked.

 

To imply that there was no waste in Reagan's military budgets is batsh*t crazy. To imply that Reagan ran the military like a business is hilariously inaccurate. It was the exact opposite. Military spending nearly doubled under Reagan with countless scraped weapons programs that wound up being black holes of waste (see Aurora, SDI etc etc). The black budget nearly TRIPLED under Reagan -- and that budget doesn't have congressional oversight, or oversight of any kind, so to imply that Reagan was monitoring it for waste is just a failure in understanding the man's battle plan against the USSR. He knew we could out spend and out produce the Soviets and drive them into insolvency. He drove up military and intelligence spending to force a reaction -- not to be mindful of waste. It was the exact opposite of what OC is saying in that statement.

 

It's revisionist history at best, flat out idiocy at its worst.

No. What you just wrote here is revisionist history.

 

The facts are that Reagan did call in his senior flag officers and make it abundantly clear that he was about to spend a lot of $ on the military, but that it had to be run like a business, and that waste would get you fired.

 

Any attempt to deviate from these facts by you, is by definition, "revision". Now, are you going to keep trying to tell us this didn't happen exactly the way I have described? (Please, please do it.... )

 

Yes, that awful black budget....that won the war in Afghanistan....and bankrupted the USSR, which won the damn cold war? You mean that black budget?

 

The fact is that the wins for Reagan are now historical fact...and liberals don't like it. Because, going forward, every time a new foreign policy question arises, opposing Reagan...with buffoonery...hangs around their neck, and stinks to high heaven.

 

Hence, the revisers of history most certainly are liberals. Why would a conservative/libertarian want to change a record of their ideas triumphing so soundly?

 

Reagan spent a boatload of money on the military, covert, and overt, he both cut tax rates and closed loopholes, he fired up the entire country with optimism, and then backed it up with results....and it worked. We all won the cold war, because reasonable Democrats and Republicans worked together under Reagan's leadership. The far-left was put outside of the equation and ignored. All fact.

 

Liberals look at a war(cold war), won, and refuse to admit they were completely wrong about it, strategically, tactically and operationally, 95% of the time. (Iran/Contra was one operation...how many operations like that were there in the Cold War? Were there 100s? Ks? 10K? Do you know enough to even be in the city, never mind the ballpark?) Instead, they try to tell us that 1 failed new DOD weapons system out of 50....means that there wasn't severe punishment for those involved, and that the other 49 don't exist.

 

Hey Tgreg? Educate yourself: go and figure out the waste vs. effective systems, both in terms of total $ spent, and in terms of ratio.

 

Right now, you are using a tired, old, proven inaccurate revision of history, and arguing against what, in your mind, is actually a stick-figure representation of reality.

 

Let's see if you are as lazy as your candidate, or if you want to actually prepare yourself to debate this topic effectively. If you choose the former, you will get the same results here.

[CosmicBills]

No. What you just wrote here is revisionist history.

 

The facts are that Reagan did call in his senior flag officers and make it abundantly clear that he was about to spend a lot of $ on the military, but that it had to be run like a business, and that waste would get you fired.

 

Any attempt to deviate from these facts by you, is by definition, "revision". Now, are you going to keep trying to tell us this didn't happen exactly the way I have described? (Please, please do it.... )

 

Yes, that awful black budget....that won the war in Afghanistan....and bankrupted the USSR, which won the damn cold war? You mean that black budget?

 

The fact is that the wins for Reagan are now historical fact...and liberals don't like it. Because, going forward, every time a new foreign policy question arises, opposing Reagan...with buffoonery...hangs around their neck, and stinks to high heaven.

 

Hence, the revisers of history most certainly are liberals. Why would a conservative/libertarian want to change a record of their ideas triumphing so soundly?

 

Reagan spent a boatload of money on the military, covert, and overt, he both cut tax rates and closed loopholes, he fired up the entire country with optimism, and then backed it up with results....and it worked. We all won the cold war, because reasonable Democrats and Republicans worked together under Reagan's leadership. The far-left was put outside of the equation and ignored. All fact.

 

Liberals look at a war(cold war), won, and refuse to admit they were completely wrong about it, strategically, tactically and operationally, 95% of the time. (Iran/Contra was one operation...how many operations like that were there in the Cold War? Were there 100s? Ks? 10K? Do you know enough to even be in the city, never mind the ballpark?) Instead, they try to tell us that 1 failed new DOD weapons system out of 50....means that there wasn't severe punishment for those involved, and that the other 49 don't exist.

 

Hey Tgreg? Educate yourself: go and figure out the waste vs. effective systems, both in terms of total $ spent, and in terms of ratio.

 

Right now, you are using a tired, old, proven inaccurate revision of history, and arguing against what, in your mind, is actually a stick-figure representation of reality.

 

Let's see if you are as lazy as your candidate, or if you want to actually prepare yourself to debate this topic effectively. If you choose the former, you will get the same results here.

Okay, so I've known for some time you can't write but now I know you can't read.

 

Reagan's philosophy was that military spending was NOT a budgetary issue. To say otherwise, as you tried to in your original post (before sidestepping and changing the issue in this new post) is false. He did not care about waste in military spending because spending more than the soviets, regardless of the success of the military program, was the plan.

 

Thanks for keeping it real.

[3rdnlng]

Okay, so I've known for some time you can't write but now I know you can't read.

 

Reagan's philosophy was that military spending was NOT a budgetary issue. To say otherwise, as you tried to in your original post (before sidestepping and changing the issue in this new post) is false. He did not care about waste in military spending because spending more than the soviets, regardless of the success of the military program, was the plan.

 

Thanks for keeping it real.

 

You can't actually believe that Reagan felt that way, can you? They could have paid $500 a hammer and outspent the Soviets and that still wouldn't have caused the Soviets to say no mas. Common sense would be on OC's side here.

[CosmicBills]

You can't actually believe that Reagan felt that way, can you? They could have paid $500 a hammer and outspent the Soviets and that still wouldn't have caused the Soviets to say no mas. Common sense would be on OC's side here.

A hammer? This isn't MDP's defense budget, it's Reagan's.

 

In this case it doesn't matter what I believe or OC believes. It matters what Reagan believed. And he did not believe that military spending was a budgetary concern. If it wasn't a budgetary concern then how was it run like a business? Crazy partisans like OC like to believe that Reagan was this strict financial conservative -- but he wasn't when it came to the military and intelligence. Any attempt to argue otherwise is just straight up false. But partisan hacks have to find a way to spin Reagan's military spending. How else can they explain how a fiscal conservative could adopt a big government policy to defeat a communist empire? The truth is the world is not black and white. There are many shades of gray.

 

Military spending doubled under Reagan. But there's congressional oversight on that budget and thus some accountability. However the black budget tripled under Reagan -- all without oversight. The black budget dwarfed that of the regular defense budget, meaning the majority of defense spending under Reagan was done without any oversight whatsoever. Not any from the executive and certainly not any from congress. There isn't one CEO in America that would triple his budget without any oversight and expect to keep his job. You think Jack Welch would just hand the R&D department at GE a blank check and take them at their word when they promised not to waste it? Of course not.

 

If what OC said was true, that Reagan ran the military like a business, then Reagan is the WORST business man in the history of bad business men.

 

But that's the thing, what OC is saying is just untrue. Reagan NEVER saw defense as a budgetary issue. He had to talk the talk (for the Soviets and his own base) about reducing waste in the military -- but he certainly did not walk the walk nor have any intention to. He believed defeating the soviet threat was the most important thing his presidency could do, regardless of his fiscally conservative nature. Reagan sought to defeat the Soviets by making them run a sprint rather than a marathon.

 

And he won.

Edited October 8, 2012 by tgreg99

[OCinBuffalo]

Okay, so I've known for some time you can't write but now I know you can't read.

 

Reagan's philosophy was that military spending was NOT a budgetary issue. To say otherwise, as you tried to in your original post (before sidestepping and changing the issue in this new post) is false. He did not care about waste in military spending because spending more than the soviets, regardless of the success of the military program, was the plan.

 

Thanks for keeping it real.

What the hell are you talking about? Seriously. Please explain the method you've used to determine variance in meaning between the posts. By all means, feel free to show your work.

 

I have said the same thing 2 times now. Do you need a 3rd?

 

That, and you have an awful understanding of what "the plan" was, starting with you thinking "the plan" was only about the military.

 

The fact is that Reagan's plan included a comprehensive approach, and involved a wide range of people w/ widely different skill sets. The military was just one part, albeit a big part in terms of total $ spent, but that was due to the plan being shaped for, and directed at the mentality of the USSR. Military build-up was the tactic, not the strategy. And, massive waste in that build-up would undermine, not assist, the strategy.

 

If you actually understood "the plan", because you actually were familiar with the material, you'd know that "the plan" could not have been predicated solely on military spending, for it's own sake. In fact, you'd also understand that military spending is the effect, not the cause.

 

But you don't know any of this, because your conception of the entire thing...is based on stick figures drawn in crayon.

You can't actually believe that Reagan felt that way, can you? They could have paid $500 a hammer and outspent the Soviets and that still wouldn't have caused the Soviets to say no mas. Common sense would be on OC's side here.

It's always on my side. The only variable is time. How long will it take for people to familiarize themselves with the material, and realize that I'm right, or, for events to overtake them, and make it undeniable, and their past opinion irrelevant.

Edited October 8, 2012 by OCinBuffalo

[CosmicBills]

What the hell are you talking about? Seriously. Please explain the method you've used to determine variance in meaning between the posts. By all means, feel free to show your work.

 

I have said the same thing 2 times now. Do you need a 3rd?

 

That, and you have an awful understanding of what "the plan" was, starting with you thinking "the plan" was only about the military.

 

The fact is that Reagan's plan included a comprehensive approach, and involved a wide range of people w/ widely different skill sets. The military was just one part, albeit a big part in terms of total $ spent, but that was due to the plan being shaped for, and directed at the mentality of the USSR. Military build-up was the tactic, not the strategy. And, massive waste in that build-up would undermine, not assist, the strategy.

 

If you actually understood "the plan", because you actually were familiar with the material, you'd know that "the plan" could not have been predicated solely on military spending, for it's own sake. In fact, you'd also understand that military spending is the effect, not the cause.

 

But you don't know any of this, because you're conception of the entire thing...is based on stick figures drawn in crayon.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Avoid what I'm talking about and try to change the argument to what you want. That's your whole shtick.

 

Let's stay focused on the issue here. Your argument was Reagan ran the military like a business man where, and I quote, "waste would not be tolerated". So, let's stay on that point.

 

How do you monitor waste in a budget that has no oversight?

[IDBillzFan]

Jesus, is there ANYONE who didn't get a piece of the "stimulus" pie?

 

http://washingtonexa...18#.UHMlxpiHJ8F

 

"Sesame Street received $1 mil stimulus bill grant – created “1.47″ jobs"

 

 

This grant was brought to you by the letters “A” and “R” — as in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the “stimulus bill.”

 

Sesame Workshop, the independent nonprofit corporation that produces the popular childrens’ program Sesame Street, received a $1,067,532 stimulus bill grant in August 2010, via the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The funding was to promote healthy eating according to the federal Recovery.gov website:

SW [i.e., Sesame Workshop] will carry out an expansion of its highly successful Healthy Habits for Life initiative, which promotes improved nutrition and increased physical activity, targeting low-income preschool-aged children and their families and care providers.

 

The projected created “1.47″ new jobs, the website reported. How they could calculate this to a hundredth of a percent is anybody’s guess. In any event, that comes out to about $726,000 per job created.

[OCinBuffalo]

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. Avoid what I'm talking about and try to change the argument to what you want. That's your whole shtick.

 

Let's stay focused on the issue here. Your argument was Reagan ran the military like a business man where, and I quote, "waste would not be tolerated". So, let's stay on that point.

 

How do you monitor waste in a budget that has no oversight?

3rd time:

 

Reagan, prior to embarking on a huge military buildup called all senior flag officers, literally on the carpet, and told them waste would not be tolerated. Where's the "wiggle"? This is a matter of historical fact. What is also a matter of historical fact: anybody who broke with that was RIFfed.

 

Now, in the face of these historical, matters of public record(take the hint, moron), you are arguing what exactly? That they don't exist?

 

Oversight, was the responsibility of the House Democrats...who were in charge at the time. Are you saying that they don't deserve any credit...and that they were fighting Reagan on this the whole way? Tip O'Neill, and Charlie Wilson for that matter, were the guys who went along with, and in some cases lead, parts of Reagan's strategy. No. The only people who were fighting it, were the Joe Bidens and the John Kerrys(check the record...do some of your own work for Christ's sake)....who were put outside and ignored, like I said.

 

So, where in the world...are you getting that this was somehow, some unaccountable thing? The whole point of the plan was to make every part of it highly effective, and that the sum of the parts would drive the hell out of the whole....thus making the USSR's argument to the rest of the world untenable, and, to take away their time tested military strategy....by demonstrating that we had weapons that would make it ineffective.

 

Every piece of the plan had to be accountable, or the whole thing wouldn't work.

 

The real marvel here is that, given the government's track record for getting things done, it worked at all.

 

The only way. The ONLY WAY it worked, is because a whole lot of people agreed to trust each other, and work together, and if there was mass fraud waste and abuse, it would have died in the first year.

 

Again, you don't understand the strategy, partially due to your misconception that one tactic is the strategy, and partially due to your lack of understanding of the history of these events, or the 286 years of history leading up to them. There's a starting point for you: why 286? Reagan's plan began in earnest in 1984...what happened in 1698?

Edited October 8, 2012 by OCinBuffalo