Goes against what I would have thought. The below seem to indicate it was because of Obama's likability but could it be because either (1) current HBS don't understand Romney's tax policies are personally best for them long term (2) they do understand but they believe and are okay with Obama's redistribution or (3) just still a bunch of kids in a liberal institution.

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/20...s+(Top+Stories)

Article is about Cuomo vs possibly Hillary in 2016. I picked up on Hillary leaving if Obama wins second term. Not sure who would be good replacement but always thought that Obama should have used Bill as a special envoy more around the world. Maybe with a second term Obama would feel less threatened or overshadowed ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/22/ny...-way.html?_r=0

That's very disappointing as Clinton has done such a good job as Secretary of State

SI

I've worked in IT in the private (mainly) and now public (less than a year) sector. Every evaluation I've ever had was at the sole discretion of my manager with possibly some input from other managers I've worked with. As a field engineer, I guess I had tangible metrics in terms of tickets closed but I about middle of my team in terms of speed but excellent in quality. Metrics were, at most, a small part of the evaluation. The next two jobs I was in had even fewer metrics and the one I'm in now has none.

On a grander scale, it seems like this has some elements of "we want to evaluate the government on a higher standard than any of the rest of us" under the guise of "because it's our money".

SI

There's no question it's #3. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Disagree. Not all HBS students are "fresh out of undergrad" - in fact the minority probably are.

Write it off all you want, but it's a bit surprising. Might be that it's more generational like the person quoted said.

About those 2011 returns from Mitt Romney...

Romney's 2011 tax return shows manipulations to keep his tax rate high - Denver Grassroots Politics | Examiner.com


Well, I guess it's nice that he decided to put in more than he technically owed even though he'd said it's something he wouldn't do.

Divine Comedy: Romney Releases His 2011 Tax Return And An SNL Skit Is Born - Forbes


Oh. I'm sure he wouldn't do something like that though.

Romeny at a GOP debate.

Keep in mind that there's nothing to stop him from filing an amendment after the election to fix the fact that he "overpaid."

The only reason the amount he paid is relevant is if he's going to run around saying our tax system is unfair because the wealthy pay too much and that stifles growth blah blah blah, he loses credibility on that argument if he's only paying 13%.

And now I'm convinced that what he doesn't want us to see in his earlier returns is a deduction for donating to some unethical or unpopular group. If his rate is really no lower than 13% in any of the years, there's no other reason not to release the returns.

I don't think its unethical or unpopular group. My guess is tax shelters or tax avoidance strategies that will raise eyebrow from the common folk.

Damn, that's pretty awesome.

I have a unicorn in my backyard that shits $100 bills.

(Absent any evidence the two statements are just as likely to be true).

Oh snap, I thought he actually paid out 30% in charity. Didn't realize that was falsely reported.

With Biden not likely in 2016, I think its Hillary's to lose if she wants it. Probably best if she did step away if Obama does win 2nd term so she doesn't get caught up in any failures and scandals. Don't know if I would vote for her as Obamacare will (hopefully) be sealed and delivered by then.

Bill Clinton Says He's Unsure of Wife's 2016 Plans - NYTimes.com

Geithner leaving also.

Robert Kuttner: Filling Geithner's (Small) Shoes

But that's pretty much been a foregone conclusion from Day One, hasn't it? Never mind any future aspirations, the job takes a certain toll on just about anybody & everybody who has it.

Have you seen the woman lately? I can't particularly stand her but I almost feel sorry for her at times, the strain of the job is extremely visible. (and that's not a shot at her looks, she just looks completely exhausted to me)

I think we're overselling any importance to her stepping down. If she wants to be President (which, duh) then she cannot begin mounting a campaign while Sec of State. And since Pres campaigns start immediately after the previous one ended these days (and in some cases even sooner as it's pretty clear that Romney never actually suspended his campaign), she'll need to step down as soon as possible. I don't doubt that it's a tough, stressful job, but nothing compared to the one she's been seeking for a very long time now, and she knows that.

I'd say "because it's our children." You don't see these kind of metrics desired to evaluate other government workers, just teachers.

Like they say in the Dating World...desperation is a huge turn off.

Republicans look for voter fraud, find little - Yahoo! News

I hate to say it, but this whole voter fraud thing smacks of voter suppression with just a tinge of racism.

I mean, geez: "In North Carolina, the nonpartisan state elections board last year sent letters to 637 suspected noncitizens after checking driver's license data. Of those, 223 responded showing proof they were citizens, and 79 acknowledged they weren't citizens and were removed from the rolls along with another 331 who didn't respond to repeated letters, said Veronica Degraffenreid, an elections liaison for the board.

She said the board did not find evidence of widespread fraud, noting there were only 12 instances in which a noncitizen had voted. North Carolina has 6.4 million voters."

12 confirmed cases and a possible 400 in a state of 6.4 million? If I were concerned with fiscal irresponsibility and and waste, I know that this would be a problem I'd tackle with a massive nation-wide campaign.

SI

A wonderful look at an Obama hater.

lol

Keep your government hands off my Medicare?

SI

Oh it reeks of racism, no doubt. It's typical late 20th/early 21st century GOP strategy of inventing a boogeyman to rally up the massive amount of their uninformed voters instead of actually tackling, you know, real issues and actually practicing what they preach...fiscal responsibility.

I'm not saying that the democrats are the darlings of the political arena. They leave a lot to be desired in all honesty. It's just that I don't hear about this kind of thing coming from them. Usually it's more about redrawing of districts.

Friends you do not need. Good thing no one really takes her too seriously nowadays.

Madonna calls Obama a 'Black Muslim' at Washington D.C. tour stop - NBC News Entertainment

HHHHHHHMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmm........

I posted in The Onion thread a story about a news site in Iran publishing it as a real story. Can't blame them too much for thinking quotes like, “He takes national defense seriously, and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does," are real.

I wonder what they thought about having a beer with him, though.

It works on immigration too!

Party Labels Rule Rural Opinions On Immigration | Daily Yonder | Keep It Rural

Ah crap. I very rarely look in that thread, sorry. :)

I thought pretty much the same thing you did. The Onion article probably hit the nail on the head on several of the things it mentioned, so I can see they would go for it.

Obama seems to be doing very well. Anyone here believe the polls are not truly reflective or that short of a big Obama stumble that Romney can win it?

First Thoughts: After nine battleground polls - First Read

With zero metrics, in the current job, how are people evaluated and how are they responsible for their performance?

It's all project-based work. It's more about whether projects get completed and with what efficacy. But there's no hard and fast metrics. It's not as if someone who works on 5 is worse than someone who works on 10, particularly if the 5 are much larger. Similarly, there's no rating as to how one does on a particular project. So it's much more on the manager to see how people are doing.

In most of the IT world I've worked in, it's been like that. There were 3 of us at a data center and the only metric you could have used was number of tickets done. But that wasn't the deciding criteria- it was more about ability to do the job and somewhat about seniority (tho more because the better people had been there longer).

SI

Never thought about the highlighted below much, but it makes sense to me. He's a capitalist, a moderate republican pretending to be more right wing than he really is (e.g. healthcare).

Bob Burnett: Why Is Romney Losing?

He's a shitty campaigner that nobody likes trying to run on ideas people hate.

It's amazing he's doing as well as he is.

So if Romney was even a decent campaigner he'd be the next president. That's kind of crazy to me.

Isn't part of the reason for the lead that Romney is basically stockpiling vast wadges of cash for advertising in the final run in to the election - I'm expecting a carpet bombing of wall to wall anti-Obama adverts ...

It'll be too late by then. He needs to start now and win those swing states, he's behind in all of them by most polls.

Romney made the same mistake as Kerry. He let the opposition define him without a significant pushback.

Would have been the same for Kerry in '04, and probably a good number of many 2-termers. Clinton was vulnerable in '95, and if the Rs had a decent front runner, his approval possibly doesn't steadily increase in '96 on the way to a fairly easy win.

George H.W. Bush was beat trying for #2.

Reagan was vulnerable in '83, but his approval rating steadily increased from '83-'84.

Carter was beat trying for his 2nd term

Ford was beat trying for his 2nd term

Nixon easily won his 2nd term

LBJ probably would have lost in his 2nd election but he didn't run (possibly wouldn't have even won his party's nomination)

Kennedy assassinated

Eisenhower was safe, but then again, the Democratic nominee in 1956 was the same guy Ike easily beat in '52, so it's not like they were even trying.

Truman - the 22nd Amendment was ratified during his presidency, but he was exempt, so he could have run for another term (which would have been his 2nd presidential election), but he lost a few primary races so he dropped out.


Historically, it seems very difficult to win a 2nd term for President unless 1) Things are going really well (or at least much better than 4 years prior) and/or 2) The other side pretty much just runs a token guy so they can run their strong candidate(s) 4 years later.

And also, I think the days of a sitting President not winning his party's nomination are over, aside from a massive disaster of a scandal occurring where the party knows the President can not win reelection.

Last time I read about it, Romney was way behind Obama in dedicated campaign money. The rest is money he's got to split with the House and Senate races. If the GOP (and the Dems for that matter) decide this race is a lock, then look for party money (The RNC has the edge) and super PAC money (RNC winning by a landslide here) to go to fighting for controll of congress. There won't be a massive spenditure of bad money after a lost cause that some are suggesting will happen. There really is no point...unless something dramatic happens in the next 50 days or so.

I don't remember where I read it but it was basically like this.

Dedicated Campaign Money: Obama $90M; Romney $50M
Party Campaign Money: Romney $170M; Obama $110M
super PAC: Right-wing $BILLIONS; Left-wing $47.50 in loose change

The Dedicated money I believe has to be spent...
The Party money is spent on ALL campaigns and can be moved to Senate and Republican battles if the Presidency stays out of reach.
super PAC can do whatever they want as well.

Basically, their is potential for a TON of cash to be dropped on the race, but only if it's realistic to do so, because quite frankly, it's looking like working on the Senate and House is the safer play with those dollars.

Funny, I have always looked at it slightly different. I see it as very likely one party wins two terms, but very hard to win three.

Eisenhower - GOP - 2 terms

Kennedy/LBJ - Dem - 2 terms

Nixon/Ford - GOP - 2 terms

Carter - Dem - 1 term

Reagan/Bush - GOP - 3 terms

Clinton - Dem - 2 terms

Bush - GOP - 2 terms

Obama - Dem - 2 terms?

Romney had the problem of having spent his primary money against other GOPers. Then he couldn't spend his general money until after the convention. Obama was able to spend primary money against Romney and then start again with general money after the convention.

It's the same problem Kerry had against Bush.

Latest information on food stamps show that number of recipients has more than doubled from 1.9M to 3.9M people since requirement to work at least 20 hours a week was removed in the first Stimulus package.

CRS Memo ABAWD

Hmmm. I wonder what might have happened that kept people from finding jobs. Clearly this is a socialist plot.

edit: Read the memo.

Percent of participants with earnings


The percentage of Able-bodied Adults Without Dependents(those subject to the work rule) -

Read the fine print. There was no complete removal of the work requirement with the stimulus. States could apply for a waiver, granted they submitted an alternate plan to the work requirement.

Wasn't it an option for the states if they came up with an alternate plan and something that had been requested by Republican governors, including Mitt Romney?

My reading is that the state waiver ability was written in the nineties, but the stimulus waived the rule for all states for FY 2009 and 2010.

Not only that, bit if I understand it right in order to get the waiver they had to actually exceed the federal govt. requirements

This really isn't an Obama thing, not best I can tell anyway. But darned if I know of another thread to put it in & I don't really think it warrants a thread of its own.

As I read the story -- about the inefficiencies in the anti-terrorist "fusion centers" set up to allow authorities at levels from local to national share info more easily -- there were issues from day one under Bush, those problems continued through the current administration and that neither side of the aisle in Congress seems likely to do much (or anything) about the whole mess.

My Way News - Intelligence effort named citizens, not terrorists

FWIW, the headline is a bit misleading IMO, that's just one tidbit from a broader report. The financial end of it was considerably more interesting to me, at least interesting enough to pass along for those who might not have seen it.

Mo. Rep. Akin failed to report state pension - Yahoo! News

Why bother even trying if you know your party is going to end up supporting you anyway?

I think at this point he could come out as gay and the party would still support him just because they need the seat to flip.

Exactly. He's pretty much scott free at this point. He could kill a truck load of puppies being driven by nuns while he was drunk and he'd still be backed by the GOP.

That'd be a great Law & Order episode.

Haha! Who do I need to send the script to?

Republicans out Democrat in 'World of Warcraft' witch hunt - InGame on NBCNews.com

Seriously, if this is all we have to worry about from a candidate, then we need more candidates like her.

What next GOP? Harry Potter readers are satan worshipers?

New noncitizen voter purge has its own problems, county elections officials say - Tampa Bay Times

Keep chasing down those fraudulent voters, GOP, like Don Quixote slaying windmills. Keep up the good fight!!

With friends (dictators) like this, who needs friends.

http://times247.com/articles/obama-r...hree-dictators

Well, according to the GOP propaganda, he probably will be able to vote.

Globe view of the candidates. Its interesting why France is so pro-Obama. I suspect its more they view Romney as second coming of Reagan.

Obama Has Massive Lead in Global Poll | The Weekly Standard

I think this is as much a name recognition thing. Generally positive view + known candidate = winner over unknown challenger.

SI

For the people who think that people collecting unemployment are a drain on the 'system', looks like (if the data is correct) that's not really the case.

Percentage of claims that were fraudulent from 1989 to 2011 is less than 3%. Fraud is bad, but, a percentage that low is a good thing.

More People Eschew Jobless Benefits Than Scam System - Yahoo! Finance

In England at least Romney made such a prat of himself on his visit thats likely the reason he's viewed as a well .... prat .....

Romney in London Olympics Blunder

My personal favorite was Mitt Romney addressing Ed Miliband as 'Mr Leader'.

If I remember right his tour wasn't particularly great publicity for him where-ever he went ..

After gaffe filled foreign tour Europe asks is Romney a loser?

3%?!? That's even more efficient than I would have thought. It would cost more to go after the offenders than you would recoup.

SI

You mean like how drug testing people receiving welfare benefits was supposed to root out fraud, but has ended up costing more than has been saved?

Or some parallel about rooting out voter fraud?

SI

You forget in Florida at least that wasn't the intent of the drug testing at all - the fact that the company doing the testing was heavily linked to the congressman involved was purely coincidental and I'm sure he didn't benefit from it at all (cough).

One of the firms set to do drug testing had been owned by Governor Rick Scott, but there was no conflict of interest because ownership had been transferred to his wife.

I was surprised by that number as well. Plus, if you add in the amount that people don't claim (which the article said was 7 times more than how many are committing fraud), the program is making money. :)

I presume that was said with sarcasm?

(because obviously any money that my wife might earn wouldn't ever be to my advantage .... well in my case it probably wouldn't be as she's undoubtably spend it on bits of tat for the house ... or 'decorations' as she calls them ;) )

For some reason this sounded a whole lot more interesting before you translated it.

:)

This is not the Onion, although it would fit right in there.

Ex-FEMA director Michael Brown criticizes Obama for reacting too quickly to storm | The Lookout - Yahoo! News

Is the next article on the page Uwe Boll complaining about how James Cameron makes too much money with his movies?

SI

Brown complaining about how Obama handled this is like a child molester giving parenting advice.

Win.

QOTDecade

To put it in a bit of perspective, it was at about this point, two days after Katrina hit, that Brown sent the email stating he, quote, "felt trapped as head of FEMA. Please rescue me."

This is from another thread but I think the topic fits better here.

I suspect the assassination threat and rhetoric will really ramp up over the next 6 months if Obama wins re-election.

Over the last year and a half the "vote 'em out" option was on the table. But if he wins, that's not on the table any more.

SI

I wish that someone could chronicle the amount of racist texts sent in the last 48 months. I'm sure we leveled off some time in mid 2010, but I imagine we're up for all manner of inappropriate jokes and hack racial comedy as early as tonight.

Zero in my neck of the woods, though I imagine all of us here live in different worlds. Out here, I'm looking to see if I can find a Romney / Ryan sticker on any car, ever.

We're almost 375 pages into this thread...if we do end up with 4 more years are we going to see this become an ~800 page thread?

Or we could just create a second term thread. But I think we're getting a bit ahead of things

SI

You mean, if he doesn't get to destroy the country as soon as the election is over....right?

I don't know, I've been reading all week on facebook that Romney will destroy the country pretty much right away too. Clearly either outcome will result in the end of the United States.

Well, we've had a good run

SI

Pretty sure Mormons are just re-incarnated Mayans.

Does that mean we get a new calendar soon and the world won't end in December?

SI

Here we go ... hopefully we get a decision tonight.

Two term presidency or regulated to the lower half of presidents.

FWIW - I like this thread, it shows continuity and allows easy reference.

Duh, guys the world is going to end in December no matter who wins.

For entertainment purposes only, if Romney wins Obama should pull a Palin & just resign. Then we get a few months of President Biden!

I think both are still very possible.

Those are not mutually exclusive.

43 is living proof.

This.

How many posts will this thread have by 2016? 30,000? 35,000?

Unless there's a new FOF game, I'd guess term 2 will get way fewer posts than term 1. We're losing posters but not gaining any.

Well, I got what I wanted and Healthcare Reform is saved and will continue. I get I will be paying more taxes but I'm okay with it, a fair trade in my mind.

Congratulations to Obama and the Democratic party.