Leadership
Jag off douchery
But everyone lives off the government teat to some degree – even (one might even say especially) the very rich who have been the core supporters of both the Bush presidency and Romney's campaign. Many are industrial leaders who would revolt tomorrow if their giant free R&D program known as the federal military budget were to be scaled back even a few percentage points. Mitt's buddies on Wall Street would cry without their bailouts and dozens of lucrative little-known subsidies (like the preposterous ability of certain banks to act as middlemen in transactions when the government lends money to itself).
On September 14th, the Congressional Research Service published their long anticipated study on the correlation between the tax rates and economic growth from 1945 to today. If you go to their website today, however, the report is mysteriously missing.
Before it vanished, the New York Times downloaded a copy, which they now offer on their website. When you read the report, the reason for the pull might be as simple as what the report discovered.
As Doktor Zoom explainered with an assist from Harper’s, the GOPpies are ready and able to steal every precinct that doesn’t count paper ballots by hand. As Your Editrix explained a week or whatever ago, one of only six voting machine vendors is owned by former Bain employees. (The others, per Dok’s Harper’s article, are pretty much all owned by the Koch Brothers and run by actual felons, except for the ones that are owned by Tagg Romney.) And as some former NSA analyst explained (but we didn’t post on it, because “depressed”), the way they steal your votes is by siphoning them from the largest precincts.I hate this shit.
4. Ended the War in Iraq: Ordered all U.S. military forces out of the country. Last troops left on December 18, 2011.
But the last-minute nature of the call for donations left some in the campaign concerned that they would end up with an empty truck. So the night before the event, campaign aides went to a local Wal Mart and spent $5,000 on granola bars, canned food, and diapers to put on display while they waited for donations to come in, according to one staffer. (The campaign confirmed that it “did donate supplies to the relief effort,” but would not specify how much it spent.)
Empty-handed supporters pled for entrance, with one woman asking, “What if we dropped off our donations up front?”The volunteer gestured toward a pile of groceries conveniently stacked near the candidate. “Just grab something,” he said.
Two teenage boys retrieved a jar of peanut butter each, and got in line. When it was their turn, they handed their “donations” to Romney. He took them, smiled, and offered an earnest “Thank you.”If you took maybe three minutes to go the the Red Cross website on your iPhone, you'd know what was going to go wrong with your attempt to look helpful. Three lousy minutes, and you might've learned something, and you wouldn't leave yourself open to the massive ridicule being dumped on your over-gelled head. You wanted a good photo op? You just gave everybody a good look at just how out of touch you are.
5. Began Drawdown of War in Afghanistan: From a peak of 101,000 troops in June 2011, U.S. forces are now down to 91,000, with 23,000 slated to leave by the end of summer 2012. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, the combat mission there will be over by next year.