Barack Obama attempting to intimidate Romney contributors?

[dorminWS]

You know, if tricky Dick Nixon had done this, there would have been a media feeding frenzy. That any POTUS or his campaign would do it is bone chilling. This is what you'd expect in Nazi Germany; not the United States of America.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... hp_opinion

[scott9050]

I donated to Newt''s campaign, and yesterday the RNC called and I will be donating to them as well.
To be called out by Obama means you must be doing something right.

[ratherfish]

Just wish I could donate enough to make "the list"....LOL!

[Kreutz]

Keeping in mind who owns the WSJ (sigh), political contributions are all public domain information, and anyone making donations should know that.

I did find this funny:

These are people like Paul Schorr and Sam and Jeffrey Fox, investors who the site outed for the crime of having "outsourced" jobs. T. Martin Fiorentino is scored for his work for a firm that forecloses on homes. Louis Bacon (a hedge-fund manager), Kent Burton (a "lobbyist") and Thomas O'Malley (an energy CEO) stand accused of profiting from oil. Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of a home-products firm, is slimed as a "bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

They're mad they got called out for being scumbags?

It's all good though, if the Republicans take WH back in 2016 I'm sure they'll be using this. Hell, probably mad they didnt think of it first.

[dorminWS]

So people who have "outsourced" jobs, foreclose on homes, manage hedge-funds, work as lobbyists, and are energy CEO and therefore stand accused of "profiting from oil", or oppose the agenda of the gay rights movement are "scumbags" in your view?

Kreutz, everybody can't milk a living out of the government's health care mess like you. Is there ANY way to make a living you approve of?

[Kreutz]

So people who have "outsourced" jobs, foreclose on homes, manage hedge-funds, work as lobbyists, and are energy CEO and therefore stand accused of "profiting from oil", or oppose the agenda of the gay rights movement are "scumbags" in your view?

Kreutz, everybody can't milk a living out of the government's health care mess like you. Is there ANY way to make a living you approve of?

You don't think the bolded occupations have "scumbag" as a job requirement? Much of the economic problems of this and the last century can be rightly lain at their feet.

Whatever.

[FiremanBob]

Of course, nobody in Holder's "Justice" Department will take action against slanderous website accusations of law-abiding citizens on a candidate's website.

[ratherfish]

Kreutz has probably reported us all already.

[dorminWS]

So people who have "outsourced" jobs, foreclose on homes, manage hedge-funds, work as lobbyists, and are energy CEO and therefore stand accused of "profiting from oil", or oppose the agenda of the gay rights movement are "scumbags" in your view?

Kreutz, everybody can't milk a living out of the government's health care mess like you. Is there ANY way to make a living you approve of?

You don't think the bolded occupations have "scumbag" as a job requirement? Much of the economic problems of this and the last century can be rightly lain at their feet.

Whatever.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Kreutz, are you really that naïve, or are you just hard-headedly bullsh!tting your way through to keep from conceding a point? I know you’re one of them fellers who’d argue with a milepost, but I have always given you credit for some critical thinking skills. But on this one, you’re just throwing liberal/socialist epithets around. Having a bad day, are we?

Outsourcing jobs is done to reduce costs; which must be done to compete to compete as an American-owned company. There are two choices, here: (1) outsource the jobs and continue to compete as an American-owned company against your foreign-owned competitors, or (2) keep the jobs here and either go out of business or get acquired by the foreign-owned competitor who has a vast cost advantage over you. How does waking up one morning and finding yourself in a global economy make you a “scumbag”?

Foreclosing on homes is what happens when someone borrows money against a home and doesn't pay it back. The borrower signs a note as evidence of the funds loaned and a “Deed of Trust” to secure the loan. The Deed of trust basically gives a third-party Trustee authority to sell the property and pay the proceeds over to the lender to satisfy the loan if the borrower fails to pay. If the property brings more than the loan amount, the borrower gets what’s left. If it brings less, the borrower still owes the difference. How else could Joe Lunchbucket borrow several times his yearly income to buy a home? Looks to me like the “scumbag” is the guy who borrowed money he couldn't afford to pay back.

Managing hedge-funds is a toughie. I happen to disapprove of hedge funds, because they are, in my view, pretty much pure speculators who are siphoning off wealth and contributing little or no value. But is the solution to outlaw the activity? Nope. That will only drive a lot of economic activity to financial markets in other parts of the world. And it will impact our markets anyway. They’re just like you liberals: a pain in the @ss that people like me think the world could do without, but nonetheless entitled to do what they do.

Working as a lobbyist likewise doesn't make one a “scumbag”, either. The lobbyists are admittedly partisan on issues, but they are also almost always the people who know more by far about the subject matter of the legislation being considered. If you think most Congressmen know the gory details well enough to write the legislation you've got a lot to learn. Congressional staffers are all either professional bureaucrats or fresh-out-of-college KIDS who only THINK they learned it all from their hothouse-liberal college professors. Almost none of them have any hands-on real world experience. Fact is, honest citizens NEED lobbyists to watch and guide those idiots in Washington. Just like we in the VGOF community need the NRA to do that same dirty work for us.

Energy CEOs aren’t automatically scumbags any more than any other manager of any kind of enterprise. We need the energy companies; and they MUST generate sufficient earnings to attract the VAST amounts of capital required to keep the energy supply coming. It is true they make LOTS of profit in terms of the number of dollars they earn. But take those earnings and divide that number by their total revenue and their total capital. Last time I checked on Exxon Mobile, they were earning about 10% on their total revenue. That’s about the same as WalMart. They are Very, very large companies. They HAVE to be that large to be able to shoulder the vast levels of risk and investment of capital required to find and exploit sufficient energy to keep our global economy going. Politicians and others who despise and berate them for that remind me of the parent who “spanks” the table when a small child bumps his head on it. It may make the ignorant, naïve child feel a little better, but the adult ought to know better. So try not to be the ignorant, naïve child, here.

Opposing the agenda of the gay rights movement doesn’t make you a scumbag, either. A lot of persons of conscience do. That, as I see it, is NOT the same thing as being homophobic; because the agenda of the gay rights movement is extreme and offensive to the values even of many gay people. To label anyone who does oppose this agenda a “scumbag” is just one more instance of the liberal left’s tactic, born of their hateful intolerance for opposing viewpoints, of attempting to intimidate anyone who opposes THEIR agenda with scorn, derision, and what I see as unmitigated hate speech.

I’m rather disappointed to see you going down that road, Kreutz. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

[FiremanBob]

Kreutz has probably reported us all already.

No need. The fact that we are on this forum has put all of us on a list. The real question is, is Kreutz a paid operative of the DNC?

[ratherfish]

That would splain a lot...

wouldn't it!

Although as he has said he gets an Obama money check!

[Kreutz]

I'm not quoting that (you been taking Gunderwood writing workshop lessons? ) to save space, but lemme respond briefly:

1) Outsourcing is so cost effective because lobbyists have made it so. The working class was gutted as a result of this, and our economy shows this in high unemployment and more and more people on food stamps or such. Entire manufacturing cities have keeled over and now rely on welfare post NAFTA and widespread outsourcing. We all pay for the increased profits of a few; remember, externalizing costs.

2) Its not socialist-babble. We both know voodoo economics like hedge funds and credit default swaps create nothing of value, in fact, many times they place bets on things of value, such as housing to fail.

3) The foreclosure mess is half the fault of Wall Street and half the fault of the homeowners who bought, but lets not kid ourselves. I remember how aggressively the mortgage lenders were pushing people into buying homes they clearly couldn't afford. Hell, I was bombarded with mortgage offers in the mail while in college without a pot to piss in. All I had to was show up with ID and sign papers, no other documentation required. I knew better, but obviously many did not.

4) Lobbyists? Whores who spread their disease onto all of us. Enough said.

5 and 6) You may notice I didn't bold energy company CEO's or gay marriage denier-people, not sure why you went into detail on those. I don't think either are scumbags by default like the first four. Those are case by case like any other person, I presume them decent until proven otherwise.

I also notice the Obama campaign left out the hedge fund douches and such that contribute to his campaign(like the Goldman Sachs CEO).

Politics as usual.

[Kreutz]

No need. The fact that we are on this forum has put all of us on a list. The real question is, is Kreutz a paid operative of the DNC?

We are legion for we are many.

[ratherfish]

That's how Obummer was elected....

[dorminWS]

I'm not quoting that (you been taking Gunderwood writing workshop lessons? ) to save space, but lemme respond briefly:

1) Outsourcing is so cost effective because lobbyists have made it so.

In a way, you’re right. But it wasn’t the Lobbyists you think it was. It was the lobbyists for the liberal, redistributive politics YOU embrace that made it so.
2)

The working class was gutted as a result of this, and our economy shows this in high unemployment and more and more people on food stamps or such. Entire manufacturing cities have keeled over and now rely on welfare post NAFTA and widespread outsourcing. We all pay for the increased profits of a few; remember, externalizing costs.

The American working class is mostly a victim of its own prosperity. US manufacturers find themselves competing with offshore companies whose workforce consider themselves fortunate to earn a small fraction of what US workers do. When you go to WallyWorld, you don’t give a damn whether the guy who made your new lawnmower was making $50k a year in Illinois or $50 a week in India, do you? You just want the best price you can get. So you walk past the $1,000 mower built in Illinois and buy the $200 mower from India. So does everybody else. (I admit this is a rather strained example, because WallyWorld would not even STOCK the $1,000 mower – that’s why the guy in Illinois doesn’t bother to build it) What do YOU think is going to happen to the factory in Illinois?

If that wasn’t enough of a disadvantage, government regulation makes every employee a walking lawsuit in dozens of ways: There are so many federally-created “remedies” for workers that are so easy for an employee to exploit in bad faith and for a lawyer to exploit just to recover legal fees provided for in those federal laws (or for a federal agency to “crucify an employer over just to set an example) that NOBODY hires an employee if there is any way to avoid it. NAFTA didn’t really do anything but (1) hasten what global market forces were going to do anyway, and (2) make cheaper foreign-produced goods and services available to the “working class” you are so concerned about.

And, by the way, how is it that you assume that the employees would be any better off if the employer went broke before they lost their jobs? What you label as “externalizing costs” is really allowing market equilibrium to operate. It is the movement of income (and eventually, wealth) from our more highly-compensated (“rich”, by third-world standards) workers to those in the third world. That should make you socialist/liberals HAPPY.

2) Its not socialist-babble. We both know voodoo economics like hedge funds and credit default swaps create nothing of value, in fact, many times they place bets on things of value, such as housing to fail.

There’s no such thing as “voodoo economics. Just voodoo practicioners. The witch-doctors, if you will, of the financial markets. But, in a free country and a global economy what do you propose to do to stop it that won’t cause more harm than good? It’s like the “free rider” problem with so-called “entitlements. You should be sympathetic to THAT.

3) The foreclosure mess is half the fault of Wall Street and half the fault of the homeowners who bought, but lets not kid ourselves. I remember how aggressively the mortgage lenders were pushing people into buying homes they clearly couldn't afford. Hell, I was bombarded with mortgage offers in the mail while in college without a pot to piss in. All I had to was show up with ID and sign papers, no other documentation required. I knew better, but obviously many did not.

Ok, here we go again with the victim mentality horsesh!t. And of course, a victim requires a villain. And business must ALWAYS be the villain. Did any of those mortgage lenders hold a gun on you and try to force you to borrow? I guess it escaped your notice that it was the federal regulators and their policies concerning “community investment” that FORCED financial institutions to engage in what came to be called “sub-prime lending”. And it no doubt also escaped your notice that by using Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae to in effect create a market for these obligations, actually created a lucrative market in them using the (at least perceived) “full faith and credit” of the USA. Yes, unscrupulous people exploited this unbelievably stupid policy and course of action by our friends (Like Barney Frank) in the federal government. But what enabled the whole thing was ill-advised meddling in the financial markets by the people with our government who always “show up to help” – usually after they make the mess to begin with.

4) Lobbyists? Whores who spread their disease onto all of us. Enough said.

Nonsense, Kreutz. Now you’re just throwing pejorative epithets. They’re no more whores than any of the rest of us who sell their services to the highest bidder; and much less so than the REAL whores that hold elected office and appointed bureaucratic positions.

5 and 6) You may notice I didn't bold energy company CEO's or gay marriage denier-people, not sure why you went into detail on those. I don't think either are scumbags by default like the first four. Those are case by case like any other person, I presume them decent until proven otherwise.

I didn’t know that the convention was that if it wasn’t bolded, it was so tenuous that not even you would attempt to defend it. My bad.

I also notice the Obama campaign left out the hedge fund douches and such that contribute to his campaign(like the Goldman Sachs CEO).

Politics as usual.

You noticed that, did you? Good for you!

[Kreutz]

You're awfully verbose lately lol.

1) Outsourcing. So we all have to race to the bottom (while the top gets more and more and more) because of what someone in India is willing to work for? Nah, no thanks. If companies wish to remain under the very generous protections and tax rates of the US, they can be forced to pay to play the outsource game. For instance, we can nationalize Apple like the Chinese government would do if it were based in China instead of just outsourcing its manufacturing there.

Also, f#ck the third world.

2) Financial markets. Its worth noting the "free global economy" mitigates risk to the risk takers. Private profits, public losses. Nothing is free.

3) Forcelosure profiteers. Blame the government all ya want, but since when are the ever avaricious bankers not averse to any chance to making a buck(or trillion)?

Especially when assured they had no risk? Yeah, I'm sure the government had to strong-arm them into this.

And no, no "victim mentality". I think the people that bought without being able to afford should get the same bailouts the banks should ave gotten-zilch.

The point was the banks were very aggressive in getting people to take these loans out and are culpable.


4) Lobbyists. For all your talk of untouched by the hand of government virginal markets you're cool with lobbyists influencing the government to influence the markets(like you know, subsidies, tariffs, etc.-typical lobbyist stuff) to do what profits the lobbyists?

Inconsistent much?

[dorminWS]

<sigh> There are none so blind as those who will not see.

It is the sheer futility of attempting your edification that causes my periodic laspses into silence.

[CCFan]

Methinks Mr Krootz has worked in Mr O's utopian healthcare-reffic society for so long that when you put forth the facts of how the world really works, he just can't possibly place any of the blame on those folks he votes for...

[ Post made via Mobile Device ]

[ratherfish]

Its the Obamamoney.

[Kreutz]

<sigh> There are none so blind as those who will not see.

It is the sheer futility of attempting your edification that causes my periodic laspses into silence.

My edification?

Your ideal nation (no taxes to weaken the noble producers, totally free markets, a weak central government, and no evil socialist healthcare-and look! no gun laws!):




Hope you like Somalia!

One of us is out of touch with how our ideals work in reality.

Hint: Its you.