[www.cnn.com]

The smart thing would have been if the Mittster had released his taxes when he was being pounded by his own party during the primaries. It would have been water under he bridge by now. Not sure what political genius thought that the issue was not going to rise again during the general election when members of his own party are telling him that he needs to. The next smartest thing would be for the Romney campaign to quit talking about it. Just when the flame starts to die, they go on TV and blow on the embers with a "no you shut up!" What a bunch of morans. Anyway it will give us something to talk about .... until November.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 01:00PM by lafinfil.

While it's nice to agree with a life long Democrat who is remorseful over Senator Reid's behavior, where were the remorseful Republicans when Max Cleland, a disabled Silver and Bronze Star recipient, an ACTUAL American hero, was branded the best friend of Osama bin Laden? I don't think it is hard to imagine Senator Cleland telling right wingers to take your crocodile tears and shove them straight up your a$$.

So should the Obama election team cede such tactics to the Romney camp? The reason this stuff is happening is because there hasn't been a negative enough consequence for doing so. I think you can trace the beginnings of the especially deceitful tactics in this election cycle way back to the primary days when Romney's campaign put out an ad where they quoted Obama quoting McCain but made it appear that these were Obama's own words. When asked about it, Romney's campaign chairman essentially said, "so what". There was a little push-back from Democrats but the press and the electorate pretty much just yawned about it. It's really the lack of sufficient negative consequences that have encouraged the campaigns to do this kind of stuff and the lack of sufficient negative consequences is the fault of the media and electorate.

It does occur to me though that the Obama campaign may deliberately trying to drive where the campaigns are currently into such mendacity that the media and the electorate will cause there to be sufficiently negative consequences that it will cause such deceptive tactics to abate. Why would they do that? Because they know Romney really wants this kind of campaign: the economy sucks so give me a try, stay in stealth mode as much as possible in many policy areas - especially economic policy - because a lot of what Romney wants to do isn't popular and he doesn't want people to know about it, and smear the crap out of Obama to help keep the focus off what he doesn't want to talk about and drive Obama's approval ratings down, especially amongst undecided voters. By forcing the mendacity quotient way high early on maybe the Obama campaign wants to force the narrative away from such mendacity toward a discussion of the issues that Romney doesn't want to talk about in any detail. That is probably too Machiavellian to be what's happening, but it's not an absurd speculation.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 01:41PM by Ted King.

Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

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Lemon Drop
Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

I also think there is a good chance that there is a least a germ of truth to what Reid is saying - somebody who seems to have been in a position to have such information telling him something along the lines of what Reid said. But it still isn't kosher. It may not be mendacious, but it isn't up to the norms of fairness - it just isn't right to claim something so incendiary and then go, "Oh, but I can't reveal who told me that."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 01:46PM by Ted King.

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lafinfil
The smart thing would have been if the Mittster had released his taxes when he was being pounded by his own party during the primaries.

That depends on what's in the income tax returns, doesn't it?

[gis.washington.edu]


"His wife was a thespian before their marriage and even performed the act in front of paying customers
And his own mother had to resign from a women's organization in her later years because she was an admitted sexagenarian
"

Always a classic.

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Ted King

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lafinfil
The smart thing would have been if the Mittster had released his taxes when he was being pounded by his own party during the primaries.

That depends on what's in the income tax returns, doesn't it?

Well there is that

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Ted King

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Lemon Drop
Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

I also think there is a good chance that there is a least a germ of truth to what Reid is saying - somebody who seems to have been in a position to have such information telling him something along the lines of what Reid said. But it still isn't kosher. It may not be mendacious, but it isn't up to the norms of fairness - it just isn't right to claim something so incendiary and then go, "Oh, but I can't reveal who told me that."

Reid calls it like he sees it, something we as "polite" Americans tend to feel really uncomfortable about. He has a long history of calling out and some would say insulting Mitt Romney, and a number of other prominent Republicans including Pres. Bush, whom he called a loser and liar.
So this current thing shouldn't surprise anyone. And his prior assessments of character, no matter how biting, have been spot on.
[www.nytimes.com]

I'd like to say more about the media's role in this. The major media outlets - other than Fox "News" - seem to have accepted the notion that to be fair and unbiased they must almost always present both parties as equally bad no matter what the issue or circumstances is. Given that standard it is almost inevitable that campaigns are going to do more and more outrageous stuff - no matter how awful it is they know that those reporting on it will find some kind of something the other side has done and present it as equivalent in awfulness. IOW, they can't be hurt very much by such tactics because they can count on the media to produce a narrative of false equivalency.

I was watching a CNN report this morning about the Romney's claim that Obama is trying to undo Bill Clinton's work on getting people on welfare to work. First they showed Romney saying it and the response of his campaigns to questions about the claim, then they presented the findings of a fact checker that it is "pants on fire" lie and Bill Clinton refuting the claim - and then news anchor and a reporter discussed how both sides are doing this kind of thing and ended the segment with a wistful disgruntlement about the state of affairs of the campaigns. All nice and balanced. Why can't they just have a segment on this lie and call it what it clearly is - a big fat lie and leave it at that. And then when the Obama campaign does something that is questionable then do a segment analyzing that and if there's a big fat lie in what the Obama campaign is saying then call it what it is. There is no need to make nearly every report artificially balanced - that just encourages the campaigns to get worse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 02:14PM by Ted King.

I think by now everyone knows how I feel about this. The GOP thought this style of campaigning was just great as long as the Democrats were too "noble" (read: befuddled) to utilize it themselves. Now the Democrats have come out swinging and the GOP is acting like the bully who finally gets punched back: crying like a baby.

Can I just say: WHY can't we just see the motherfrackin' tax returns already ???

Whatever is on there, it's being made MUCH worse by Mitt's stonewalling & hemming and hawing.

At this point, I don't care what the heck he's got on there, I'm more bothered by his trying to hide it. The longer this goes on, the more I'm convinced he has MANY things to hide, and not just the tax returns.

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

All I can guess is that either they really do contain some land mines for Romney OR that he's been convinced that this is his chance to stand tall and seem macho for not giving in.

---

"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

Reid's tactics have earned him 4 Pinocchios - well deserved!. This looks so much like McCarthy's, "I have here in my hand a list of names..." - it's repulsive! It's pure @#$%& - and just EXACTLY what the dems need to be doing in order to win the election.

I almost get the idea that Reid fabricated the whole thing just to put the dems in a strong position. What does he have to lose? The next election? So what! He's not gonna run again anyway... He'll be 76 when his current term is over. BUT he will have the undying appreciation of the most powerful man in the world and he might consider THIS to be his most important contribution to the betterment of the world of his entire career.

That's my theory...

It's what the people listen to and repeat. Why waste your time with intelligent debate when your audience is asleep.

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hal
Reid's tactics have earned him 4 Pinocchios - well deserved!. .

Not deserved at all. You can't say with certainty that someone is lying simply because you can't verify whether or not what they are saying is true. If the media can neither confirm nor refute his story, then that's all they can say..."we don't know if this is true or not."
And Romney's only recourse is to call Reid a liar, which means nothing if Romney doesn't show the returns.
That's the brilliance of Reid's play.

So the general consensus is this is a wonderful tactic, and semi-Slander and near-Libel should be how political campaigns are conducted henceforth ?

Blech. Count me out.

Henceforth?

As if.


This is ALWAYS the way American politics has been played. It's never been a clean, refereed sport. Never.
At least we're not shooting each other in duels on the house floor any longer.

People claim they don't like attack/negative politics but it works year in and year out. If it didn't work it wouldn't happen. Every person who repeated that Al Gore thought he invented the internet and/or that John McCain was going to go postal one day is proof that this stuff not only works but the public in fact loves it, despite their claims to the contrary.

I do agree that Reid hasn't much to lose in terms of re-election. But I think he knows what he's doing because I find it hard to believe he wants to go down in flames.

---

"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

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cbelt3
So the general consensus is this is a wonderful tactic, and semi-Slander and near-Libel should be how political campaigns are conducted henceforth ?

Blech. Count me out.

That's certainly not how I feel, but the step-down from this crap has to come from both sides together. Neither side can afford to cede this kind of tactic to the other side as long as the media and electorate make it worthwhile to do that kind of tactic.

I'm confident that it is primarily the Romney campaign that pushed the extreme of this dynamic to which the Obama campaign felt compelled to respond in like kind. The Obama campaign didn't go to this low a level of stuff when running against McCain and I am sure that if someone were to objectively chart the degree to which each campaign used duplicity in a deliberate way what you would see on the chart is that Romney led the way into these dark waters.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 04:22PM by Ted King.

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So the general consensus is this is a wonderful tactic, and semi-Slander and near-Libel should be how political campaigns are conducted henceforth ?

Doesn't Senator McCain have an out of wedlock, black child? Or is that just presidential politics at its finest I am remembering?

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Lemon Drop

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hal
Reid's tactics have earned him 4 Pinocchios - well deserved!. .

Not deserved at all. You can't say with certainty that someone is lying simply because you can't verify whether or not what they are saying is true. If the media can neither confirm nor refute his story, then that's all they can say..."we don't know if this is true or not."
And Romney's only recourse is to call Reid a liar, which means nothing if Romney doesn't show the returns.
That's the brilliance of Reid's play.

Read the post story and tell me it's not deserved: [www.washingtonpost.com]

I'm sure you'll find a way, but given what we know about his finances (from the 2010/11 returns) it simply isn't possible that he paid no taxes at all for all of the previous 10 years...

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hal

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Lemon Drop

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hal
Reid's tactics have earned him 4 Pinocchios - well deserved!. .

Not deserved at all. You can't say with certainty that someone is lying simply because you can't verify whether or not what they are saying is true. If the media can neither confirm nor refute his story, then that's all they can say..."we don't know if this is true or not."
And Romney's only recourse is to call Reid a liar, which means nothing if Romney doesn't show the returns.
That's the brilliance of Reid's play.

Read the post story and tell me it's not deserved: [www.washingtonpost.com]

I'm sure you'll find a way, but given what we know about his finances (from the 2010/11 returns) it simply isn't possible that he paid no taxes at all for all of the previous 10 years...

The Post is passing moral judgement on Harry Reid, as did the writer of the piece linked in the OP. That appears to be what you're doing as well. Fine, go for it.
Reid did not refer to "the previous 10 years." He said "for 10 years."

ALSO: Glenn Kessler is a Romney hack. This latest isn't his most apologetic stance in favor of Mitt Romney.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 04:45PM by Lemon Drop.

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Ted King

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Lemon Drop
Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

I also think there is a good chance that there is a least a germ of truth to what Reid is saying - somebody who seems to have been in a position to have such information telling him something along the lines of what Reid said. But it still isn't kosher. It may not be mendacious, but it isn't up to the norms of fairness - it just isn't right to claim something so incendiary and then go, "Oh, but I can't reveal who told me that."

I'd agree if Reid had stated something that couldn't be proven true or false very easily by the accused. If he'd said Romney hates babies/blacks/gays/or cats with 6 toes, that'd be one thing. Romney can't defend that. He has absolute power to prove or disprove the accusation that Reid made so as far as I'm concerned, it was fair play.

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$tevie
I think by now everyone knows how I feel about this. The GOP thought this style of campaigning was just great as long as the Democrats were too "noble" (read: befuddled) to utilize it themselves. Now the Democrats have come out swinging and the GOP is acting like the bully who finally gets punched back: crying like a baby.

This, times a million.

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(vikm)

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Ted King

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Lemon Drop
Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

I also think there is a good chance that there is a least a germ of truth to what Reid is saying - somebody who seems to have been in a position to have such information telling him something along the lines of what Reid said. But it still isn't kosher. It may not be mendacious, but it isn't up to the norms of fairness - it just isn't right to claim something so incendiary and then go, "Oh, but I can't reveal who told me that."

I'd agree if Reid had stated something that couldn't be proven true or false very easily by the accused. If he'd said Romney hates babies/blacks/gays/or cats with 6 toes, that'd be one thing. Romney can't defend that. He has absolute power to prove or disprove the accusation that Reid made so as far as I'm concerned, it was fair play.

So someone can claim that Obama has venereal disease and since Obama could release his personal medical files to disprove the claim, Obama should be expected to release his personal medical files?

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...since Obama could release his personal medical files...

I'm not sure there is an apt comparison between medical files and financial records in the domain of "proven true of false very easily." but it does require further consideration.

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Ted King

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(vikm)

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Ted King

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Lemon Drop
Except I don't think Harry Reid is lying. No win for him in lying about this, none at all. And he's not Senate majority leader for nothing. He barely flinched in the face of absurd attacks from Sharon Angle (remember her?) during their campaign, and he won out.
He's not smearing just because he can, he as a point about Mitt Romney. A good point.

I also think there is a good chance that there is a least a germ of truth to what Reid is saying - somebody who seems to have been in a position to have such information telling him something along the lines of what Reid said. But it still isn't kosher. It may not be mendacious, but it isn't up to the norms of fairness - it just isn't right to claim something so incendiary and then go, "Oh, but I can't reveal who told me that."

I'd agree if Reid had stated something that couldn't be proven true or false very easily by the accused. If he'd said Romney hates babies/blacks/gays/or cats with 6 toes, that'd be one thing. Romney can't defend that. He has absolute power to prove or disprove the accusation that Reid made so as far as I'm concerned, it was fair play.

So someone can claim that Obama has venereal disease and since Obama could release his personal medical files to disprove the claim, Obama should be expected to release his personal medical files?

He already does, as president. As a candidate he released a health summary as well. Here's his info from 2010 [blogs.suntimes.com]. Romney should release his lipid panel NOW!

You see the difference between sex and taxes, right? I do seem to remember presidential sex lives mattering A LOT to a certain branch of the body politic a few years ago.




Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 05:15PM by p8712.

Yeah, I'm not sure the comparison is valid either. What I am sure of is that one is far more pertinent to the electability of a candidate than the other.

Meanwhile, as a testament to how dedicated the Romney camp is to truth in advertising, they keep hammering away at the "Obama is destroying welfare reform" theme – a claim which takes like one minute of research to disprove.

---

"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

Mitt dislikes six toed cats?

THE CAD!!!


Love that movie $tevie...

I am thankful to live in a state that is getting little of the political advertising dollar. It must wear on those living in "swing" states, my sympathies.

=wr=

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Lemon Drop

ALSO: Glenn Kessler is a Romney hack. This latest isn't his most apologetic stance in favor of Mitt Romney.

I'd be interested in hearing what it is the leads you to the conclusion that he is a Romney hack. That's not a challenge to the veracity of the statement, just curiosity since I didn't find anything in a cursory Google search.

Unfortunately, it's at least obvious that the fact checkers have a spotty history with respect to their judgments. They are pretty good when it comes to claims that can be verified true or not with a fairly straightforward examination of the evidence. But when things get less straightforward, then they don't seem to do as well and probably should just refrain from pronouncing judgment at all. This Reid thing is a good example. He said Reid was a big liar about this, but the most justification he could come up with is that it seems likely to him based on conversations with a couple of economists that Romney probably would have paid some income taxes during any ten year period. He leaps over the fact that Reid claimed that someone else told him this information and leaps onto a probability statement based on not very in-depth research to say that Reid is a big liar. So what is he really saying - that Reid made this up? No. Then how can he claim that Reid is a liar?

At most what he should have said is that it is not probable that Romney hadn't paid any income taxes over some ten year span and left it at that. I think that the notion of a scoring system is part of the problem. On the surface it seems to make sense to sort of score a claim on a continuum from totally true to outright lie with a lot of claims falling somewhere in-between and for simple and straightforward claims it probably works pretty well. In practice what I think happens is that the fact checking writer feels like they HAVE to distill any claim down to a formulation that fits into the format of the length of Pinocchio's nose or some such contrivance. Sometimes there just isn't enough information to justifiably fit the claim into that formulation - as I think is the case with this Reid claim about Romney's income taxes - but the writer felt compelled to do so anyway.

Sometimes there are other problems with the judgment of fact checkers. I'm too lazy to look up the details but the Obama campaign made a claim about Romney that a fact checker decided to check out. The fact checker asked the Obama campaign to produce documents to show that what they were saying was true. When he got documents from them, he decided that those weren't sufficient to make the case. In the meantime a New York Times or Washington Post reporter dug up the evidence that the claim was true. But the fact checker (who oddly enough also works for the same paper as the reporter) decided that in spite of the claim actually being true that he was going to label it a lie - because he made the judgment that even though the claim was true, the campaign couldn't have known that it was true so he labeled the claim as a lie. If he hadn't felt compelled to distill the whole thing down to a simple formulation, he could have just stated the facts he knew about the claim and left it at that.

Okay, so Obama has released an executive summary of his health records - but that is something he chose to do. He could have decided to keep that part of his life private - just as Romney has decided to keep the income tax part of his life private. If Obama had decided to keep his health records private, would it have been okay for someone who decided that he must be wanting to do that because he has something to hide claim that the reason Obama wanted his health records private is because that someone was told by someone else, who they say who would be likely to know, that Obama is suffering from syphilis that has gone untreated. Since it is untreated it could easily cause him mental problems that could effect his judgment.

Remember, this was vikm's point: "I'd agree if Reid had stated something that couldn't be proven true or false very easily by the accused." This suggests that "proven true or false very easily" is the standard on which to say whether or not it behooves the accused to release the easily released information. If we didn't have the executive summary of Obama's health and the likelihood of the claim didn't matter as to whether or not the accused should have to respond with the easily released information, then by vikm's standard Obama would be expected to release the information even though it was unlikely and personally insulting to him. Though it is possible that Romney wouldn't have paid any income taxes for some ten year span, it isn't that likely - just as it would be possible that Obama had had untreated syphilis but that would be unlikely.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 06:10PM by Ted King.

Why I think Glenn Kessler is a hack:
He makes excuses for Romney, such as regarding his history at Bain, particularly that 1999-2002 period that has been called into question. He found it perfectly normal that a person would list himself on SEC forms as CEO and other roles, but also claim to be "retired." When challenged he could not name a single other CEO who had done that, ever.

I think questions about Romney's personal finances are fair game, for reasons covered here already, exhaustively.
If someone is concerned about Obama's health and that it may negatively impact his ability to lead the country, they can certainly raise that. But because he's young and fit, unlike several other recent Presidents, I don't think the public is questioning his health much. There are always questions about whether he smokes, but apparently nobody has caught him doing that since he took office.
We likely won't get any health reports from the much older Romney either. I'm personally not concerned about that.

Ted - what level of of privacy should a president, or candidate for president have? I'd rather have someone well vetted in all areas. Also, if Obama were a ladies man, or had been on welfare for years, etc. and the right suspected, do you really think they'd have the self control not to mention it for privacy's sake? Maybe he deserves a little payback for years of birtherism nonsense.

To put it another way, if a job candidate wanted to work around children, but refused a complete background check, and was shakily rumored to be a pedophile, would you still hire him? He has a right to privacy, after all. Putting Romney in charge of banking/the economy/welfare/etc. is a similar situation.

It's an interesting race for control of America's nuclear arsenal - an insane syphilitic man vs one who may have blinkered his dressage horse.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2012 07:14PM by p8712.

The double standard is remarkable. Romney has demonstrated again and again that he is a liar's liar, somebody who treats the truth in a completely amoral manner. His political party has participated in a never-ending campaign of smears and racist attacks, using "dog whistle" arguments -- everything from the birth certificate to the claim that Obama cannot speak without using a teleprompter. When shown to be wrong again and again, they just double down on the lies. The latest example may be the Romney attacks on Obama's welfare policy, but it isn't the first and it won't be the last.

And we have the press to blame for allowing this outrageous system to continue. My guess is that most newspapers and broadcast networks are owned by wealthy people or by large corporations, so it isn't likely that they will go after their own kind of people.

So now a member of the establishment is pointing out that it would be useful for the presidential candidates to have substantive arguments over issues of importance. The problem with this approach is that you have to assume that each side will be acting and speaking in good faith, at least to a nominal extent. We cannot assume this of Romney, who appears to be making stuff up as he goes along. If the Washington Post and the St Louis Dispatch were to headline the fact that Romney is a liar, this would go a long way towards bringing the system back into some sort of balance.

The amusing part of this story is that by stonewalling on the income tax story, Romney is now vulnerable to all manner of attacks, no matter whether they are true or questionable. If he is hit by something crazy that he can respond to and then he responds to it, it just will go to underscore the fact that he won't respond to the income tax claims. He's hurt either way.

Perhaps this is Reid's attempt to bring a little karmic balance into the race -- dishing out a little bit of Romney's own medicine to Romney, and watching him whine and squirm. When the Republicans and their lap dogs apologize for the swift boating (a term that has come into the language now) of Kerry, I will be a little more understanding of them as moral actors.

By the way, in reply to those of my colleagues here who are finding fault with the ethics and morality of Reid's actions -- I think you have a point, but the counterargument is that when the opposition makes the big lie (or in this case, lies) its major strategy, then the wise opponent has little recourse but to do a little bit of bloodying itself.

Curiously, I'm not all that thrilled with the precedent that candidates are supposed to release tax returns. It does seem a bit of an imposition on personal privacy. Of course this is not required by law, it's just a habit that has become ingrained in our electoral culture.

Mormon on Mormon mud slinging, this is almost as much fun to watch as female mud wrestling.

Romney went into this campaign for the presidency using his accumulated success in business and at government as a basis for competency. He quickly decided the government success claim could would deny him the right wing Republican nomination so he dropped it.

He then used his business and personal success as a qualification only to stop talking about and then denying the Bain years really meant anything. That brings us to his claim of personal success, a claim he refuses to back-up due to his belief in personal privacy rights.

It's all logically hilarious.

Seems to me the Obama people are adhering to the campaign dictum of "running scared" and doing it quite well.

I bet Romney would like to go back in time and tell his father NOT to release 12 years of returns. It always did kind of seem like overkill.
[www.buzzfeed.com]


I'm confused about the references to Obama's physical health. Is there some point I'm missing here? Because all of my life, the President of the United States has gotten a physical and the doctors release the results.

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

What seems to be missing here is, exactly as Obama has stated, that if you make your platform on being a successful businessman (as Romney has now done), it stands to reason that your financial background should come under scrutiny.

That means that anything involving Bain, tax returns, offshore accounts, how you made your millions, etc., is fair game. What exactly is unfair about that?

Yes, you can point to Reid's behavior as being underhanded-- but would he have any argument to make, if Romney had already released the returns?

---

Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

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p8712
Ted - what level of of privacy should a president, or candidate for president have? I'd rather have someone well vetted in all areas. Also, if Obama were a ladies man, or had been on welfare for years, etc. and the right suspected, do you really think they'd have the self control not to mention it for privacy's sake? Maybe he deserves a little payback for years of birtherism nonsense.

To put it another way, if a job candidate wanted to work around children, but refused a complete background check, and was shakily rumored to be a pedophile, would you still hire him? He has a right to privacy, after all. Putting Romney in charge of banking/the economy/welfare/etc. is a similar situation.

It's an interesting race for control of America's nuclear arsenal - an insane syphilitic man vs one who may have blinkered his dressage horse.

I agree that there are a lot of good reasons why a presidential candidate should reveal their income tax returns - I wasn't arguing that there aren't such good reasons. I was arguing that someone making a claim from an anonymous source that a presidential candidate did something that would hurt their campaign if it were true but that the claim is unlikely, that is not one of those reasons.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2012 09:56AM by Ted King.

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$tevie

I'm confused about the references to Obama's physical health. Is there some point I'm missing here? Because all of my life, the President of the United States has gotten a physical and the doctors release the results.

The reference to Obama's health was just my effort to make a point with a concrete example. I can reframe it in generic terms: Are we going to have a standard that anytime a presidential candidate is confronted with an anonymous claim of some unlikely occurrence, the candidate is expected to produce otherwise private information? I think that is an unreasonable standard.

Like I said in my post to p8712, I think there are good reasons to expect candidates to reveal their income tax records (actually I should have said reveal their income tax records for several years), but what Reid is doing isn't one of them.

As usually is the case, I agree with much of what Ca Bob said in his post. I don't expect politicians to be particularly virtuous and I don't expect that there won't be all kinds of shaving and stretching of the truth and an occasional bald-faced lie from most politicians, but Romney is operating at a level of mendacity that I don't recall in my experience with presidential politics happening before - with the possible exception of Richard Nixon (not great company to be in). As more time goes by, I am getting to dislike Romney on a personal level more and more (if you think that's just typical partisan reaction I don't agree - I actually got to like Reagan more on a personal level as time went on even though I was disliking his policies more and more). If Romney gets elected I think that what many people have said will happen - the more the American people in general get to know Romney the less they'll like him. If he is elected I think the only thing that will save him from becoming a one term president is that the economy is poised to do much better no matter who is elected so he will benefit from that. Even then I have a strong suspicion that he will do such a poor job of so many things and his personality is so yuck that he easily still could become a one term president.

I would like to comment on this:

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Ca Bob

By the way, in reply to those of my colleagues here who are finding fault with the ethics and morality of Reid's actions -- I think you have a point, but the counterargument is that when the opposition makes the big lie (or in this case, lies) its major strategy, then the wise opponent has little recourse but to do a little bit of bloodying itself.

As much as it bothers me to agree with having to stoop to a lower level than you'd like because the other guy is doing it and isn't paying enough of a price for it like they should, I do agree in general terms. I think, though, that what Reid is doing is a bit too much and I'm not convinced that it is even strategically worthwhile.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2012 10:27AM by Ted King.

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While Reid is surely @#$%& into murky waters, an analogy from the intelligence community helps explain how he's correct. I worked for the Defense Department as an intelligence specialist, and I immediately thought that I would have described Reid's assertion -- that someone told him Romney hasn't paid taxes -- as akin to a "SIGINT fact," or "signals intelligence fact."

"Signals intelligence" refers to any electronic transmission plucked from the air by a spy satellite or other device. Cell phone conversations between suspected terrorist operatives, for example, are recorded, transcribed, and disseminated throughout the IC. Reports often contain brief, vague, but potentially juicy nuggets, along the lines of "Known suspected terrorist A in Islamabad called known suspected terrorist B to discuss the plot in America."

In this example, it's a "SIGINT fact" that the suspected operatives had this conversation, nothing more. The conversation's contents regarding the existence of "a plot in America" are not confirmed. These types of reports arrive at a clip of hundreds per week, yet few are ever linked to verified operations for any number of reasons -- human beings lie, brag, exaggerate, and speak in code all the time. A handful turn out to be true, of course, but the only way to verify the existence of "a plot in America" is to task intelligence assets to collect more about the very specific operatives, sources, and allegations in question.

Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) have been careful to stand behind only the occurrence of a conversation in which Reid discussed Romney's tax avoidance, rather than the charge's validity. Reid defended himself saying, "I have had a number of people tell me that," and he clearly states in the original Huffington Post interview that he's "not certain" the allegation is true. Pelosi rushed to his aid saying, "Harry Reid made a statement that is true. Somebody told him. It's a fact." "It" refers to the existence of the conversation, not its contents. Reid and Pelosi are asserting SIGINT fact here, and are on rock solid ground.

[www.theatlantic.com]

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

Yep. Anybody who thinks Reid's game is casual, poorly thought out, or carelessly executed simply doesn't know the man.

Fair? Well, love and war, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2012 10:53AM by Lemon Drop.