July 18, 2012

Pennsylvania Voting ID spelled out..

http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/voter/voteridlaw.shtml

they do not accept cash
apparently they do not make appointments (like we do in CA)


Here is the "work-around affirmation" for people without ID.

http://www.dmv.state.pa.us/pdotforms/voterid/VoterAffirmationNoProofofID.pdf

July 18, 2012

Hate to say it, but Mitt & Ann are "Don Draper & Betty"

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/16/us/politics/16romney.html?pagewanted=all

They have "play-acted/reenacted" the 50's" for their whole lives.

This article from 2007 when he was running against McCain spells it out.

he's attractive like Don
he's super-secretive like Don
he's driven to succeed at any cost like Don
he demands complete fealty from his woman

she's Betty to a tee (except for the drinking)
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

The Stay-at-Home Woman Travels Well

By JODI KANTOR
Published: December 16, 2007

MOUNT Pleasant, S.C.
Elise Amendola/Associated Press

TEAM ROMNEY Competition runs in the family, which holds a “Romlympics” each summer.

AT a recent shrimp dinner here for Republican women, Ann Romney seemed less like a campaign spouse trawling for votes than like visiting nobility. She was probably the wealthiest person in the room and, according to the crowd, the prettiest, too. “You are so beautiful!” one woman gushed. Another presented her with flowers. But when the visitor in the regal red jacket spoke, she turned out to be an informal, just-us-girls type. She introduced the House of Romney by whipping out poster-size photos of her five sons and 10 (now 11) grandchildren, and she confided how multiple sclerosis once left her unable to walk. She talked about the time a manicurist doing her nails back in Boston dissolved in tears of gratitude over an education program that her husband had introduced as governor of Massachusetts. So chatty was her approach, she never actually asked the audience for their votes. The crowd adored it. In explaining why, they listed the reasons that Mitt Romney has put his wife front and center in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination — in contrast to Rudolph Giuliani, whose politically inexperienced, thrice-married wife, Judith, has remained largely silent, and Mike Huckabee, whose wife, Janet, has only recently begun to campaign on her own. Mrs. Romney, 58, is young-looking but long-married, they noted. The word “classy” came up, as did the name Laura Bush.

snip

HER husband was running unsuccessfully for a United States Senate seat in Massachusetts in 1994, and Mrs. Romney was derided as superficial, pampered and too deferential to him. In a Boston Globe interview, she talked about slimming down to her high school weight (117 pounds), the investments she and Mr. Romney lived off as students, and the number of times the couple had ever argued: once.

snip


She spent the first decades of her marriage raising five sons. She taught 6 a.m. Mormon scripture classes five days a week for her sons and other children, and put sesame-seed chicken on the table for her boys at 5:30 p.m., hours before Mr. Romney returned home to Belmont, Mass., a suburb of Boston, from his work in consulting and then private equity. She even went to bed surrounded by her kids, who held searching late-night talks in their parents’ bedroom. Mr. Romney is so devoted to his wife, said Laraine Wright, an old friend, that when he had to spend a few days in another city for work, he would sometimes fly home at night, just so they could see each other. And once, when a Romney son insulted his mother, Mr. Romney sped home at midday to set him straight. The seeming perfection of the Romney’s union has led to some eye-rolling, but their claim of total harmony is a bit easier to understand in light of their religious beliefs. When Mormons wed, there’s no “till death do us part.” Couples are actually “sealed” in a ceremony meant to bond them for eternity. One result is that the church emphasizes perfecting, marriages — talking out problems, getting help. “It’s like constant marriage counseling,” said Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, a religion professor at the University of North Carolina.

snip

“A real education,” Mrs. Romney called it as she nestled last month, wearing jeans and pearls, on a couch in the Boston campaign office she decorated for her husband.

snip

Though she used steroids to combat her initial attack, today Mrs. Romney takes no medicine for her disease, instead relying on alternative therapies such as horseback riding — she calls it “joy therapy”— to keep herself well. But doctors say that only medication, which patients often resist because of unpleasant side effects, slows the long-term progress of the disease. In an interview, Mrs. Romney talked about her decision to forgo medication haltingly, even asking that this article not address it. “I would recommend no one to do what I did because it was such a leap of faith,” she said. She called the medicines effective, but added: “A lot of people get really sick from the drugs and they feel like they’re not helping them anyway. That was kind of my case.”

snip

During her rehabilitation from her initial attack, she took up dressage, going from a novice so weak that she could barely sit in the saddle to a winner of top amateur medals. She sometimes enters professional-level contests, against the advice of her trainer, Jan Ebeling. “She wants to measure herself against the best,” he said. Dressage is a sport of seven-figure horses and four-figure saddles. The monthly boarding costs are more than most people’s rent. Asked how many dressage horses she owns, Mrs. Romney laughed. “Mitt doesn’t even know the answer to that,” she said. “I’m not going to tell you!”

snip

July 18, 2012

Sewers leased as tax shelters.. How Romney-esque

Makes me more interested than ever to see what shelters Romney employed.. THIS is why he's reluctant..

Enjoy this blast from the past..

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/tax/etc/synopsis.html





Introduction: Feb. 19, 2003

It was one of corporate America's biggest hidden profit centers in the past decade -- the tax shelter -- and it became so lucrative that last year it helped major U.S. companies cut their tax rate to just half of what they had historically paid, leaving individual taxpayers to make up the difference.

The General Accounting Office estimates that illegitimate tax shelters cost the government more than $85 billion in recent years. "Anything that's not being paid that should be paid, that's basically what the honest taxpayer is making up," asserts Charles Rossotti, a Republican businessman who became commissioner of Internal Revenue in 1997 and spent five years battling bogus shelters. Rossotti estimates that because the government is not collecting all that is owed -- the biggest piece of which is illegitimate tax shelters -- everyone else is paying 15 percent more than they should.



How investigating "Tax Me If You Can" led producer Rick Young into the sewers of Bochum, Germany. In "Tax Me If You Can," FRONTLINE correspondent Hedrick Smith investigates the rampant abuse of tax shelters since the late 1990s. Through interviews with government officials, tax experts, and industry insiders, Smith uncovers an avalanche of bogus transactions -- created by some of America's biggest and most-respected accounting firms, law firms, and investment banks -- that were then aggressively marketed to big corporations and wealthy individuals.

"These were close to sham transactions -- some were clearly sham transactions, [that] had nothing to do with investment," says John "Buck" Chapoton, former treasury department policymaker in the Reagan administration. "They simply were financial mechanisms for creating losses -- tax losses, not economic losses."

FRONTLINE's Smith notes, "Chasing bogus tax shelters for the IRS was like a game of cat and mouse. The IRS had a terrible time finding them because they were hidden deep in tax returns. Once the IRS spotted one type of shelter and issued a regulation to block it, the shelter promoters had designed a new one. The IRS was forever playing catch-up."

snip for more deliciousness

July 18, 2012

Found an interesting discussion of how republicans handled debt limit in 2005

hypocrites

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message19858/pg1

Needs to go over 8 TRILLION!!!

I love it!!

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration announced Wednesday that it will run out of maneuvering room to manage the government´s massive borrowing needs in two weeks, putting more pressure on Congress to raise the debt ceiling when it convenes for a special post-election session.


snip


"Due to debt limit constraints, we currently do not have the capacity to settle our four-week bill auction scheduled to settle on Nov. 18," Timothy Bitsberger, acting assistant Treasury secretary for financial markets, said in a statement.

snip

The Republican-controlled Congress put off dealing with the debt ceiling before adjourning in October, preferring not to force members to vote on the politically sensitive issue of adding to the national debt before the November elections. The government hit the current debt ceiling of $7.384 trillion on Oct. 14, forcing Treasury to begin a series of bookkeeping maneuvers to keep financing the government´s normal operations without breaching the debt ceiling. But Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that those special measures would last only until mid-November. The Treasury Department´s actions have included reducing the amount of debt in government trust funds to free up room for further borrowing from the public. The nonpublic debt is then replaced in the trust funds once the debt ceiling is increased along with any lost interest payments. Republicans have proposed that the debt ceiling be raised by $690 billion to $8.074 trillion, an amount that would get the government through next September, when the 2005 budget year ends.


The need to raise the debt ceiling reflects the record budget deficits of the past two years. The deficit for the 2004 budget year, which ended Sept. 30, was an all-time high of $413 billion, surpassing the old mark, in dollar terms, of $377 billion in 2003. Democrats blame the surging deficits on Bush´s tax cuts, while the administration contends the tax cuts provided critical economic stimulus to help lift the economy out of the 2001 recession. The administration says the president has a plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009, but critics contend that the real problems will come in later years as retiring baby boomers put unprecedented strains on Social Security (news - web sites) and Medicare.

snip

July 17, 2012

Rare bird sighting.. The Scarlet Regent Vulturine Mitt

apologies to:

Vulturine Guineafowl
Scarlet Ibis
Regent Parrot

July 17, 2012

Politically hip? "Morning Joe" not living up to the hype (Ouch !)

http://www.depauliaonline.com/opinions/politically-hip-morning-joe-not-living-up-to-the-hype-1.2880811#.UAVorZGG5ad

Politically hip? "Morning Joe" not living up to the hype

By Timothy Lydon

Published: Monday, July 16, 2012


In the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine there is a full page spread for the MSNBC talk show "Morning Joe." The ad features co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski walking down a Manhattan street in the fall. They are dressed in black, in contrast with the pink glow on the concrete from Radio City Music Hall. In the image below, Willie Geist, the show’s pop culture authority is on set checking his smart phone. The images are coupled with laudatory pronouncements: "...unlike anything else on morning television," writes The New York Times; "An important wake-up call for political and media leaders," says the Associated Press; "Appallingly Entertaining" reads the capstone endorsement from The New Yorker.

This glossy advertisement is an appropriate representation of the show: a well-honed, appealing image, butultimately facile . Viewers get only as much analysis as can fit between commercial breaks, but hardly enough to awaken any sort of political consciousness.

Brzezinski has celebrity fever (as evident by her puckered lips in the magazine spread), Scarborough plays his classic rock, Geist has his irony - winking at all 20-somethings out there watching - and all the guests on the show know it’s going to be a good time in the morning, void of anything substantial like corporate malfeasance, executive pay, financial deregulation, and inequalities in education and healthcare for children of color.

snip

And how can the “Morning Joe” newscasters criticize the financial institutions responsible for the 2008 recession when these very same institutions pay for commercials on MSNBC’s sister channel CNBC?

snip

July 16, 2012

Milken went to prison for 22 months...Mittens? Not so much

Mitt and the junk bond king
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2012/06/24/the_story_behind_mitt_romneys_work_with_michael_milken_it_was_fun_while_it_lasted/


By Michael Kranish and Beth Healy
Globe Staff / June 24, 2012

It was at the height of the 1980s buyout boom when Mitt Romney went in search of $300 million to finance one of the most lucrative deals he would ever manage. The man who would help provide the money was none other than the famed junk-bond king Michael Milken. What transpired would become not just one of the most profitable leveraged buyouts of the era, but also one of the most revealing stories of Romney’s Bain Capital career. It showed how he pivoted from being a relatively cautious investor to risking his reputation for a big payoff. It is one that Romney has rarely, if ever, mentioned in his two bids for the presidency, perhaps because the Houston-based department store chain that Bain assembled later went into bankruptcy. But what distinguishes this deal from the nearly 100 others that Romney did over a 15-year period was his close work with Milken’s firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At the time of the deal, it was widely known that Milken and his company were under federal investigation, yet Romney decided to go ahead with the deal because Drexel had a unique ability to sell high-risk, high-yield debt instruments, known as “junk bonds.”

The Obama campaign has criticized the deal as showing Romney’s eagerness to make a “profit at any cost,” because workers lost jobs, and challenged Romney’s assertion that his business background best prepares him for the presidency. Romney, meanwhile, once referred to the deal as emanating from “the glorious days of Drexel Burnham,” saying, “it was fun while it lasted,” in a little-noticed interview with American Banker magazine. The “glorious” part, for Romney at least, was that he used junk-bond financing to turn a $10 million investment into a $175 million profit for himself, his partners, and his investors. It marked a turning point for Romney, according to Marc Wolpow, a former Drexel employee who was involved in the deal and later was hired by Romney to work at Bain Capital.

“Mitt, I think, spent his life balanced between fear and greed,” Wolpow said. “He knew that he had to make a lot of money to launch his political career. It’s very hard to make a lot of money without taking some kind of reputational risk along the way. It’s just hard to do. It doesn’t mean you have to do anything illegal or immoral, but you often have to take reputational risk to make money.”

snip

July 16, 2012

Mitt's Resume

Mitt Romney
address:

Belmont, Massachusetts
Wolfeboro, New Hampshire Lakehouse
La Jolla, California Beach house with 4-car elevator
Park City, Utah Compound (Nothing like "Big Love", so stop saying that)

http://www.celebrityhousepictures.com/mitt-romney.php

Email: [email protected]

Summary of Qualifications

I am an expert at making money
I say JUMP, the employees say "How High, Sir?"

Work Experience

2/1999 - Present*


1985 - 2/1999
Bain
Started the company, was 100% stockholder, CEO, Chairman of the Board, Head Honcho, THE BOSS, El Supremo, El Jefe

Education

Harvard
Private Academy in Detroit*
While at the Academy I excelled at the extreme sport of Running with Scissors.

* There was a time when I "retreated" from Bain to take over an event of "sport"..and another time when I had a high-powered job in another state..a job /state that cannot be spoken about.

While a young man, I did protest during the Viet Nam War, and to show how dedicated I was to the fact that the dirty hippies against the war were all wrong, I went to France for 30 months on a (rare) solo Mormon mission. France was marvelous.


In summary:

I am adamant about the fact that my last day of "work" was in February of 1999.

I like trees that are the right height, cookies that do not come from 7-11, chocolate goodies (Aka as donuts, to the common people).

I like dogs (as long as they do not crap all over the car roof on long trips)

When handed a cool beverage, I am wont to muse "Lemon-wet-good".

July 15, 2012

(newspapers, the day after election) Office Space for Rent

FOR RENT CHEAP


He's sure getting ahead of himself, isn't he?

.....................................................................................................................

Romney victory office opens in Westwood


Greensburg Victory Office Grand Opening! | Mitt Romney for President
www.mittromney.com/.../greensburg-victory-office-grand-opening
16 hours ago – 23 N. Maple Ave., Greensburg, PA 15691;

Romney victory office opens in Westwood | Politics | Westside News
westside.fox19.com/.../93992-romney-victory-office-opens-westwoo...
2 days ago – The Westwood Victory Office for the Romney for President and Republican Victory operations in Hamilton County is located on Montana ...


Romney 'Victory Office' opens in Clermont County | News | Clermont ...
clermontcounty.fox19.com/.../93711-romney-victory-office-opens-c...

Romney 'Victory Office' to open in Stratham | SeacoastOnline.com
www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20120706-NEWS-207060342

Romney Victory Office Opens in Centerville - YouTube
► 0:42► 0:42

24, 2012 - 42 sec - Uploaded by WKEFandWRGT

Mitt Romney Campaign, Pensacola Victory Office is on Facebook. To connect with Mitt Romney Campaign, Pensacola Victory Office, sign up for Facebook today.

Adams County Romney Victory Office is OPEN! | North Suburban ...

Romney/Victory Office Opening in Wolfeboro

etc.

July 15, 2012

Romney on his faith (from 2007..with video)

Found this at
http://www.davidicke.com/forum/showthread.php?t=2152
the guy seems quite odd, but the info below is from CNN..




http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/06/romney.speech/index.html
By Kristi Keck
CNN
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(CNN) -- White House hopeful Mitt Romney on Thursday articulated his position on the role of religion in America, but avoided details about his personal faith. Romney, who hopes to become the first Mormon president, said "religious tolerance would be a shallow principle, indeed, if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree."

"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution," the former Massachusetts governor said. "No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes president he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths."

CNN contributor Bill Bennett said he wasn't sure Romney addressed the concerns voters might have with Mormonism, but, he added, "I don't think he had to." "I can see this speech he just gave being given by any of the Republican candidates and most of the Democratic candidates, frankly. I'm not sure he was responding to the concern 'what about this Mormon thing?' " Bennett said. "I think he will probably get more questions on it, not fewer."

Another CNN contributor, Roland Martin, said the setting for the speech was a good one -- "in the heart of the Bible Belt." Video Watch Bennett and Martin debate the effectiveness of Romney's speech »


snip

videos... http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/06/romney.speech/index.html#cnnSTCVideo