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Our little place in the debate

Massachusetts sure came up a lot in the debate tonight. Some history to go with the references:

When Romney got his binder full of women (and why he had nothing to do with it).

When Romney got tough on a coal plant in Salem.

When Romney opposed a wind project.

When Romney signed a permanent ban on assault weapons.

Why Romney balanced the state budget: Under the state constitution, he had to (even Mike Dukakis balanced the budget!).

Slate: Why Mitt Romney's Massachusetts Education Plan Backfired.

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Comments

Trying to post an unbiased biased review! Maybe you could have also mentioned that wind turbine being installed in the north shore you previously posted about. You know, seeing how Obama keeps talking about manufacturing jobs being brought home, and the fact it was built by a German co..

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What would give you the idea that this website is "unbiased"?

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When I was in middle school, I volunteered for George McGovern's campaign (where I learned how to get into large apartment buildings - just keep ringing apartments because sooner or later, somebody will just buzz you in). I wore a leather peace symbol. I had long hair!

There, I said it! Feels good to get it off my chest!

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I still don't understand why conservatives have the reputation for being whiners ;-) It's as if liberals are violating some imaginary code when they express themselves on one topic or another.

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But it didn't (was surprised Romney didn't bring up A123).

At one point, Romney said he just loved wind farms to pieces. In fact, he doesn't, and I'm sure it has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact his old pal Bill Koch has a house in Osterville and helped bankroll the fight against Cape Wind.

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Didn't come up? I must have been watching a different debate, sorry!

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Why, yes, they did.

What didn't come up, however, was that new wind turbine up in Gloucester.

Tea partiers love to fixate on very specific, and ultimately trivial, examples of why Obama is a hypocrite or traitor or something, in this case the fact that a small city in Massachusetts bought a wind turbine from Germany, rather than the fact that, under Obama, the US share of the US wind-turbine business has increased something like threefold, so I was feeling peevish and responded in kind.

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Challenges Obama is a tea bagger? You're very open minded!

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Is Gloucester not part of the US?

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But again, while both candidates discussed lots of specifics about lots of things, including a power plant in Salem, neither specifically mentioned the new turbine being built in the city of Gloucester.

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The huge ones are made in the EU because they are already making huge turbines and ship them by sea - these are FAR TOO BIG to go via land from, say, Texas. If there was a seaport manufacturing them on the east coast of the US, it might make sense for Gloucester to buy one. Otherwise, shipping by ocean - whatever the size - makes the most sense for an ocean-side installation.

The smaller ones that can go in pieces by truck over land can be shipped anywhere the roads will accomodate the sometimes long or wide loads. These are the turbines you see in places like Vermont or Eastern Oregon or California at in-land but windy locations.

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4 Years ago (Correct me if I’m wrong) Obama campaigned on creating jobs, green jobs in particular. 4 years have pasted will little change in the job market; he hasn’t created jobs! The US has approx. 5000 miles of coastline in the lower 48, all of which are closer and more accessible that Germany.
I love how the far left justifies their candidate and parties shortfalls/misrepresentations/failure (Call it what you will) with skewed rationales. It’s Simple; Obama has had ample time to fund manufacturing jobs in the US, specifically “green” jobs but hasn’t!
It reminds me of an old expression that my father told me; Excuses are like assh*les, everyone has one and YOURS fu*king stinks!
P.S. sorry for the explicit language

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Mitch McConnell went on record in 2010 saying that the major goal of the GOP was to get rid of Obama in 2012.

Even if that meant you get to spend another year or two in mommy's basement because low level employment would be hard to find.

Even if that meant effing over America - because they only care about their Kochs.

Obama is the president, not the king. Romney seems similarly confused as you.

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Come on, John. Obama doesn't create green jobs by signing a piece of paper that makes a company open a new We-Build-Gigantic-Coastal-Turbines plant in Myrtle Beach. The company has to see the value in doing it and get grants or tax deference from the federal government to encourage it to be financially beneficial for them to do it.

The infrastructure and design of a plant that makes these turbines must be enormous. That's a huge entry to market cost that no tax incentive is going to overwrite and with large European players already in the door with well-tested products, you'd be insane to try and compete against them instead of just buying from them. Instead, we have rightly focused on technologies that don't have the high cost of entry like rechargeable battery efficiency. We can afford to make 100 of those for every 1 of the Gigantic Turbine Factories and even have a high percentage of them fail overall. Yet, we'll *still* make out on the proposition if even one of them succeeds and becomes the biggest battery provider in the world for electric vehicles, power storage systems for solar/wind technologies, etc.

Also, the number of jobs between 2009 and now may be getting close to the same finally...but you're being naive (or completely assheadedly disingenuous) to think that it's been a straight line between those two data points. We were still LOSING hundreds of thousands of jobs when Obama took office because of the damage done by Bush's economic policies. The fact that we're anywhere close to having finally dug ourselves out of that ditch is nothing short of incredible. To claim that we've had "little change" in the number of jobs is just mind-bendingly stupid. Does this look like "little change" occurred over the past 3+ years to you?

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I think the reason the Mittster didn't mention A123 is because it's a little too close to home - his campaign staff probably hasn't completed the evaluation of whether his administration (or surviving appointees) was ever involved in giving them a tax break, or whether he has a direct connection to anyone involved in the management of the firm, its board or backers. [I have to believe that given the amount of VC capital that A123 initially attracted, there is going to be at least some connection to Romney - it is the proximity of that connection that will matter, however.]

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Ripping his bullshit to shreds is not just for Republicans!

From the Village Voice;

Last month, Mitt Romney traveled to Iowa, where wind energy has become an economic force, responsible for 7,000 jobs and 20 percent of the state's electricity.

He announced that, as president, he would kill the $3.3 billion in tax incentives that now go to this nascent form of electricity. In Romney's eyes, the industry has had more than enough time to stand on its own two feet.

"He will allow the wind credit to expire, end the stimulus boondoggles, and create a level playing field on which all sources of energy can compete on their merits," Romney spokesman Shawn McCoy told The Des Moines Register.

Now how stupid do you have to be to go to a state and tell them he's going to shitcan 7000 of it's citizens?

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if he's telling the truth then that will actually be a very good thing for green energy: http://www.eli.org/pdf/Energy_Subsidies_Black_Not_...

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Does he intend to let wind farms go in on Federal lands like he plans to drill baby drill?

What about those subsidies to oil companies ... or do those level the playing field for his wealthy buddies somehow ...

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that's exactly what i'm saying..... "black" or "brown" energy is much more subsidized than "green", so if he is truly going to lift all energy subsidies that will work in green energy's favor.

Key word being "truth", which obviously he's having difficulty with these days

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Why, yes, of course there's now a Tumblr site.

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You know very well that he was referring to resumes. But hey you can't blame a moonbat for trying. Making comments like that put you on par with the likes of howie car

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See the binder link in the original post. A group of women's groups handed him an actual binder with recommendations of specific women for top positions in state government (which, to his credit, he seems to have actually used, even if, as the Phoenix notes, it was for departments he didn't care about, rather than anything important).

So, we both win! It was a binder! With resumes! Or are you thinking there are people out there who really are too stupid to realize Romney was referring to binders with resumes and not binders with actual women in them? Because that would be almost as insane as blaming our epidemic of mass murders on single mothers.

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To imply otherwise makes you the moonbat, sir.

But it hardly matters, he wasn't the one who went to the women's groups, as noted above. The groups came to him with the aforementioned devices designed to hold a medium-sized collection of documents in a navigable form. They asked *him* to hire women. To claim the credit for doing so now is disingenuous and dishonest, but hey, that's Romney for you.

Look, I'm disappointed by Obama. There are some things he's done very well, and some things that he's been kept from doing by Congress, and some things that I wish he wouldn't have done.

I can't think of anything in particular that Romney wants to do which doesn't displease me. Of course, knowing what he wants to do is rather difficult since it's a different story every time he opens his mouth. I read a comment made by someone on Slashdot which drives it home - you can tell it's all an act, all the speeches and the posturing. Everyone says Mitt looks like a robot and has weird facial expressions and figures of speech at his rallies and events. When you watch the 47% video - it's natural. He is far more human and candid there, you can tell he's being himself.

His natural state is to be a dick.

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"The groups came to him with the aforementioned devices designed to hold a medium-sized collection of documents in a navigable form", Well put!

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I should have known better than to pick "Massachusetts" as my drinking word.

Ow ... my head.

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1.) It's always entertaining when the Herald commenters stop by for a visit.

2.) Has Mitt Romney forgotten then name of the state where he was a one-term governor? He used the phrase "my state" or "in my state" repeatedly, but I don't recall him actually saying the word Massachusetts in the context of any accomplishment he made as a one-term governor.

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ANYONE who isn’t part of the "Fringe Left"? Because i for one don’t like Romney but realize that being in a stagnant economy for another four years is not an option.

But i guess you cant expect anything less than name calling from the far left now a days!

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You say "fringe left" like it's a bad thing. Some people are proud of things like science, education, caring for those in lesser situations, infrastructure, peace.

And for the record, the economy is not stagnant. Steady growth can be smaller than you like, but it's not stagnant.

Cripes

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How many decades now has the word "leftie" or "liberal" been considered a slur in American politics?

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1st Red Scare, so maybe the 1920's? But also, William Jennings Bryant was thought of as a weirdo populist, and Debs ran in 1900 (socialist). Haters gon' hate. But I was talking to my girlfriend after the debate and realized that whenever you ask a liberal who they are voting for, they are proud to tell you who and what they stand for. Ask a repub the same question, and you get a lot of defensive answers and stuttering and subject changing. Jussayin'.

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My experience has generally been the opposite of yours, I'm afraid.

I always wondered why conservatives are so worried about "the liberal agenda". I mean, even with a brief majority in both houses, the Democrats couldn't agree on what they wanted and Obama had to knock some skulls to get them all in line on Dramacare.

Republicans wall together so well, you'd think they had a conference call every morning to discuss what they were going to wear while doing it.

If liberals are so good at defeating themselves, then why should conservatives be so scared of them?

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I agree with you. I was basically explaining how/when liberal became disparaging, and "liberal" has now morphed into "intellectual", which Brown is using against Warren, "the professor" and by Romney earlier on in his campaign trying to paint Obama as a smug and pompous guy because of his Harvard degree (Mittens has two to Obama's one). If the R's want to be known as the party of dunces, so be it, it's fine by me. I'm happy being a pompous liberal democrat who likes facts and discourse. And to clarity my point even further: http://articles.nydailynews.com/2012-09-17/news/33...

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This will be my first time EVER voting Republican!

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Voting for the guy whose only reason for wanting to be President is to satisfy his own ego. Just listen to those stories he tries to sell about his encounters with "real" people struggling with the economy that his Bush era advisers left us with.

In other words, let's hand the country over to the same assholes who got us into this mess. You see, they're so proud of the Bush era, that's the reason GWB was such a visible figure at the RNC.

Good luck with that.

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This is because you didn't turn 18 before Ron Paul was weeded off the ballot.

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Patrick Bateman as one of the First Sons....

IMAGE(http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c317/econeywaaa/joshRomney2.jpg)

Josh Romney scowling like a crazy person last night as he watches Barack Obama bitch slapping his father.

UPDATE: Tagg Romney quoted as saying he "wanted to take a swing at Obama" at last night's debate.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/tagg-romney-says-he...

You stay classy, Belmont!

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You people don't know hard it is to be a plutocrat.

A recent poll in greater Boston has Obama 79%-20% for Mitt. I love Boston.

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Tagg Romney quoted as saying he "wanted to take a swing at Obama" at last night's debate.

Ooh ooh! Incoming Secret Service investigation in 3...2...never.

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This will be my first time EVER voting Republican!

Well you sure sound regretful and upset about it! Not excited or eager in the least!

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