Trash, don't pick it up

Mitt Romney, intimate & in person:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

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That's the part that's got people abuzz. What I found interesting was this:

They'll probably be looking at what the polls are saying. If it looks like I'm going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president's going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you're talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We'll see capital come back and we'll see—without actually doing anything—we'll actually get a boost in the economy. If the president gets reelected, I don't know what will happen. I can—I can never predict what the markets will do. Sometimes it does the exact opposite of what I would have expected. But my own view is that if we get a "Taxageddon," as they call it, January 1st, with this president, and with a Congress that can't work together, it's—it really is frightening.

Three things, reversed:

Third thing: Taxageddon, or the fiscal cliff,  the sequester, or whatever stupid term you want, is the result of GOP intransigence on taxes. They were bluffing that they would default on the debt, and Obama was willing to call their bluff. But they were also willing to play chicken with it in an absolutely unprecedented manner. The result was the sequester. An underlying theme of the Romney campaign, however, has been: give in to the blackmailers. Congress can't work with Obama, not because Obama has not reached out, been willing to cross pretty much every red line that any Democratic constituency has ever drawn (Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare... and even the insistence that deficit reduction have some taxes; the sequester had no tax increases, which was supposedly the red line for any budget deal--although in fairness, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts is a card in the Dems hand). No, Republicans in Congress have decided not to work with the President. Romney's argument is that this is frightening, and that accordingly, we should encourage this sort of reckless behavior.

Second thing: Gotta love me some magic. Given that the Romney forecast is for 12 million new jobs in his first term, which is the currently scheduled forecast, it strikes me that his plan is "no additional growth, no additional jobs, just additional tax and safety net cuts."

First thing: Markets are up in September, during which it's seemed as though Obama is pulling ahead. They went up considerably on the 6th, the day after Clinton's speech that so many apparently loved. And then they went up again in response to QE3, which Romney has criticized.

Here or there.

NYTimes article about India. Could read for U.S. as well.

Scandal Poses a Riddle: Will India Ever Be Able to Tackle Corruption? A brazen brand of crony capitalism has created huge fortunes for a few, at the expense of the nation as a whole, which is falling short in energy infrastructure.

Pockets of Prosperity

While the adviser apparently believes in a liberal media bias, they are absolutely right about the sociological insulation of the media.

But frustration is building behind the scenes, egged on by a conservative media and Twitter conversation that has blamed the media for accusing Romney of a premature response to the crises in Libya and Egypt.
The adviser, granted anonymity to criticize a press corps the campaign still relies on every day, went on to blame a "green room, green zone kind of divide," saying the national press, most of whom live in New York or DC, "pockets of prosperity," are isolated from the realities of the harsh economy — and therefore, unable to grasp Romney's message.
Instead, they are preoccupied by concerns akin to war reporters relaxing in the green zone: "Too much chlorine in the pool, the parties are going on too late, why can't we get the right flavors of Haagen Dazs? Most people aren't living in that world."

However, I do not care that this means they aren't sympathetic to Romney's campaign message. Because no one is more insulated in the pocket of prosperity than Romney himself, and certainly the entirety of their platform is absolutely indifferent to poverty and unemployment. That's at least suggested by the fact that under their 'plan' they project to create as many jobs as under the current baseline plan, meaning, they do nothing. But yes, reporters are insulated and that's why they have completely failed in keeping political attention on the jobs crisis.