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 Jihadin wrote:
Also remember. Kerry threw his awards into the water near the memorial in DC because he was not proud for what he had done during the Vietnam War..

Yeah, which is taking his actual sentiment - 'that war was wrong and we should not have fought it' and twisting into some personal commentary on his own actions.

Which is exactly the nonsense the SBVT and the Bush campaign were playing throughout that whole dirty tricks campaign.

His own words that came back and haunted him. He just spent to much time towards the end dealing with Swiftboat.

Again... his mistake was in not directly and quickly dealing with the claims of the SBVT on the issue, and then quickly turning it to the Bush campaign on why they'd lie on the issue. He should have taken the old ploy of calling a press conference on the issue and telling the press he'd stay there answering questions on the issue as long long as they had any more to ask. Kill the issue, and then turn it back towards why the Bush campaign would lie about this.

It wasn't that he was spending too much time on the issue - he had to address it, it was killing the core claim of his campaign. It's that the methods he chose to use to address the issue were ineffective.

IIRC his campaign ignored/failed to respond to the Swiftboat smear job for about a month.

Part of that I think was a campaign funding problem, and part of it was an utterly mistaken idea that not dignifying them with a response would work. Which was like not dignifying a knife in your kidneys with a defense. Later, once they realized the dirty shot had scored, they responded, but it was ineffective and too late.

Mannahnin wrote:IIRC his campaign ignored/failed to respond to the Swiftboat smear job for about a month.

Part of that I think was a campaign funding problem, and part of it was an utterly mistaken idea that not dignifying them with a response would work. Which was like not dignifying a knife in your kidneys with a defense. Later, once they realized the dirty shot had scored, they responded, but it was ineffective and too late.

Pretty much this. Stiff upper lip & turn the other cheek only works if nobody is playing dirty. If one person is willing to capitalize, then those aformentioned concepts just turn you into a pinata.

 jordanis wrote:
He decided to not be lazy and earn some money (no, he didn't inherit it from his dad) what he does with his money is his own business, just like what Obama does with his money is his business. What happened to the America that celebrated wealth and prosperity?

Ah, so many stereotypes included in a few simple sentences.

Sure, we respect, or 'celebrate,' wealth, but we don't hand the wealthy and successful the keys to the castle just because they're wealthy and successful. I know this because I spent my summer watching the Republicans tell Warren Buffett, the richest man in America, to STFU.

We also should 'celebrate' the guy who works hard but doesn't get rich. The contention that everyone in America who doesn't have Romney's level of wealth has just been lazy is absurd, and you're probably going to want to rethink it. Not everyone can be an investment banker. Not everyone's born the son of a wealthy former governor and CEO.

 Kanluwen wrote:

GalacticDefender wrote:I know several people personally who aren't exactly dirt poor, but definitely don't make anywhere even close to 75,000 a year, who own horses. (well generally 1 horse) So my statement was most definitely not "bull crap".

If you say so.

Your example is still hyperbolic at best, outright garbage at worst.

The areas where you tend to have individuals with horses of their own(which are NOT used for anything more than show or as an avenue of income through breeding or supplementing an existing substantial income) are usually areas where farming is still a viable source of income and horses have a place in how they make their living.

This is absolutely false. I know plenty of people who own horses, all of them are recreational, some of them are on fixed incomes. The cost of horse ownership isn't cheap but you don't have to be well off or a farmer, the fact that you think those are the only people that own horses is what's garbage here.
I was at an auction (in Arizona) in May where horses went for $40, that's less than goats at the same auction. Real nice six and seven year olds that would have been great working horses. Alternatively in Montana in July you couldn't touch a horse for under a grand, in the penny saver you couldn't get near one for under 2. Because they are actually commodities in agricultural communities, not toys. The last time I checked the average cost per year of owning a horse was like 8 Gs a year, variable by location, feed, and the level of care you choose from your boarder. Basically the cost is dependent mostly on space, if you can stable them yourselves your cost is much lower.

But when we're talking about Romney and his show horse, we're not talking about that. We're talking about a show horse, an animal which is kept in peak physical condition and appearances so as to make the owner back money through the various shows and potential money to be had through breeding.

This, this is not garbage. I do think 75k is extravagant, absolutely. But honestly how a rich guy's wife chooses to spends her money could not interest me less. TOBA says the cost of a cheap racehorse is 10K plus, but 75K Jesus. If only someone had looked at the annual cost of being an Olympic athlete.
http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eddf45hikf/building-a-summer-olympian/#gallerycontent
Yeah 75K is way too much, even for an Olympic dancing horse.

 whembly wrote:
There are folks who are advocating that his successes (unsavory or not) could be an asset in the Whitehouse and its something worth discussing/debating over.

I think the concept of bringing business expertise to the White House is something worth debating. Exactly how business is and is not the same as politics and governance, and how lessons learned in business may or may not apply in the White House is a potentially interesting conversation.

Of course, there is exactly zero chance of that conversation ever happening. Instead we get 'Romney creates jobs (sort of, if we include only the businesses where he created jobs and ignored all the ones where he fired people)' and the response 'Romney owns a horse'.

Yeah, I can see that.

But from what I remember, he was hurt more by his actions at the protests (where he threw his medals) than the actual swiftboating stuff. When confronted, he did really poorly in his response.

Throwing the medals away is a situation given different context by the swiftboating. Consider this - a soldier performs admirably and bravely, then returns home and becomes disenfranchised with the war, and throws his medals away. Then consider a soldier given medals, but in which his worthiness for those medals and his overall military record is questioned, who throws those medals away.

By attacking Kerry's war record they changed the context in which we see Kerry's actions.


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 Seaward wrote:
We also should 'celebrate' the guy who works hard but doesn't get rich. The contention that everyone in America who doesn't have Romney's level of wealth has just been lazy is absurd, and you're probably going to want to rethink it. Not everyone can be an investment banker. Not everyone's born the son of a wealthy former governor and CEO.

Yep, definitely. I mean that rich guy has an 80" tv, and Audi, and also his wife is probably hotter than other people's. Why celebrate him, he's got everything he needs to justify having that kind of life.

But think of the nurse working 50 hours a week, and coming home to a two bedroom apartment with the growing mould problem. People doing that kind of work stop people from dying, and they don't get much material reward at all. Maybe they wouldn't do it anymore if they were being congratulated - afterall they do it right now when we show them feth all gratitude. But maybe we should celebrate them a little bit because it's the right thing to do?