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Tag: Mitt Romney

  • Trump to meet Mitt Romney

    United States President-elect, Donald Trump, is to meet one of his severest critics, Mitt Romney, as he continues to build his transitional team.

    Media have speculated the post of secretary of state could be discussed.

    During the election campaign, Mr. Romney called Mr. Trump a “fraud” and “phony,” while Mr. Trump said Mr. Romney’s unsuccessful campaign against Barack Obama in 2012 was “the worst ever.”

    Mr. Trump has settled several posts so far, a number of them controversial.

    The nominee for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, was rejected from becoming a federal judge in 1986 because of alleged racist remarks, the BBC reports.

    Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the new national security adviser, has drawn concern over his strident views on Islam.

    Separately on Friday, Mr. Trump settled three lawsuits for fraud brought against him over his Trump University.

    He will be at his golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey, all weekend to conduct more meetings with potential appointees.

    Mr. Trump tweeted: “Will be working all weekend in choosing the great men and women who will be helping to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

    Asked about the Romney meeting, Sean Spicer, a spokesman for the presidential transition, told reporters, “The president-elect wants the best and brightest people to put this country forward: people who supported him, people who didn’t support him.”

    He said Mr. Trump usually started conversations by soliciting opinions and thoughts, and then deciding if a candidate warranted appointment.

    “The conversation with Mitt Romney is just that: an opportunity to hear his ideas and his thoughts,” Mr. Spicer said.

  • Class Wars of 2012

    ON Election Day, The Boston Globe reported, Logan International Airport in Boston was running short of parking spaces. Not for cars — for private jets. Big donors were flooding into the city to attend Mitt Romney’s victory party.

    They were, it turned out, misinformed about political reality. But the disappointed plutocrats weren’t wrong about who was on their side. This was very much an election pitting the interests of the very rich against those of the middle class and the poor.

    And the Obama campaign won largely by disregarding the warnings of squeamish “centrists” and embracing that reality, stressing the class-war aspect of the confrontation. This ensured not only that President Obama won by huge margins among lower-income voters, but that those voters turned out in large numbers, sealing his victory.

    The important thing to understand now is that while the election is over, the class war isn’t. The same people who bet big on Mr. Romney, and lost, are now trying to win by stealth — in the name of fiscal responsibility — the ground they failed to gain in an open election.

    Before I get there, a word about the actual vote. Obviously, narrow economic self-interest doesn’t explain everything about how individuals, or even broad demographic groups, cast their ballots. Asian-Americans are a relatively affluent group, yet they went for President Obama by 3 to 1. Whites in Mississippi, on the other hand, aren’t especially well off, yet Mr. Obama received only 10 percent of their votes.

    These anomalies, however, weren’t enough to change the overall pattern. Meanwhile, Democrats seem to have neutralized the traditional G.O.P. advantage on social issues, so that the election really was a referendum on economic policy. And what voters said, clearly, was no to tax cuts for the rich, no to benefit cuts for the middle class and the poor. So what’s a top-down class warrior to do?

    The answer, as I have already suggested, is to rely on stealth — to smuggle in plutocrat-friendly policies under the pretense that they’re just sensible responses to the budget deficit.

    Consider, as a prime example, the push to raise the retirement age, the age of eligibility for Medicare, or both. This is only reasonable, we’re told — after all, life expectancy has risen, so shouldn’t we all retire later? In reality, however, it would be a hugely regressive policy change, imposing severe burdens on lower- and middle-income Americans while barely affecting the wealthy. Why? First of all, the increase in life expectancy is concentrated among the affluent; why should janitors have to retire later because lawyers are living longer? Second, both Social Security and Medicare are much more important, relative to income, to less-affluent Americans, so delaying their availability would be a far more severe hit to ordinary families than to the top 1 percent.

    Or take a subtler example, the insistence that any revenue increases should come from limiting deductions rather than from higher tax rates. The key thing to realize here is that the math just doesn’t work; there is, in fact, no way limits on deductions can raise as much revenue from the wealthy as you can get simply by letting the relevant parts of the Bush-era tax cuts expire. So any proposal to avoid a rate increase is, whatever its proponents may say, a proposal that we let the 1 percent off the hook and shift the burden, one way or another, to the middle class or the poor.

    The point is that the class war is still on, this time with an added dose of deception. And this, in turn, means that you need to look very closely at any proposals coming from the usual suspects, even — or rather especially — if the proposal is being represented as a bipartisan, common-sense solution. In particular, whenever some deficit-scold group talks about “shared sacrifice,” you need to ask, sacrifice relative to what?

    As regular readers may know, I’m not a fan of the Bowles-Simpson report on deficit reduction that laid out a poorly designed plan that for some reason has achieved near-sacred status among the Beltway elite. Still, at least you can say this for Bowles-Simpson: When it talked about shared sacrifice, it started from a “baseline” that already assumed the end of the high-end Bush tax cuts. At this point, however, just about all the deficit scolds seem to want us to count the expiration of those cuts — which were sold on false pretenses, and were never affordable — as some kind of big giveback by the rich. It isn’t.

    So keep your eyes open as the fiscal game of chicken continues. It’s an uncomfortable but real truth that we are not all in this together; America’s top-down class warriors lost big in the election, but now they’re trying to use the pretense of concern about the deficit to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Let’s not let them pull it off.

     

    •Culled from New York Times

     

  • Obama’s acceptance speech

    Obama’s acceptance speech

    President Obama’s acceptance speech (Full transcript)

    OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.
    Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: I want to thank every American who participated in this election…
    (APPLAUSE)
    … whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time.
    (APPLAUSE)
    By the way, we have to fix that.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Whether you pounded the pavement or picked up the phone…
    (APPLAUSE)
    … whether you held an Obama sign or a Romney sign, you made your voice heard and you made a difference.
    I just spoke with Governor Romney and I congratulated him and Paul Ryan on a hard-fought campaign.
    (APPLAUSE)

    We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future. From George to Lenore to their son Mitt, the Romney family has chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the legacy that we honor and applaud tonight.
    (APPLAUSE)
    In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I want to thank my friend and partner of the last four years, America’s happy warrior, the best vice president anybody could ever hope for, Joe Biden.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: And I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the woman who agreed to marry me 20 years ago.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Let me say this publicly: Michelle, I have never loved you more. I have never been prouder to watch the rest of America fall in love with you, too, as our nation’s first lady.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Sasha and Malia, before our very eyes you’re growing up to become two strong, smart beautiful young women, just like your mom.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: And I’m so proud of you guys. But I will say that for now one dog’s probably enough.
    (LAUGHTER)
    To the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics…
    (APPLAUSE)
    The best. The best ever. Some of you were new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the very beginning.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

    Tonight, more than 200 years after a former colony won the right to determine its own destiny, the task of perfecting our union moves forward.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: It moves forward because of you. It moves forward because you reaffirmed the spirit that has triumphed over war and depression, the spirit that has lifted this country from the depths of despair to the great heights of hope, the belief that while each of us will pursue our own individual dreams, we are an American family and we rise or fall together as one nation and as one people.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Tonight, in this election, you, the American people, reminded us that while our road has been hard, while our journey has been long, we have picked ourselves up, we have fought our way back, and we know in our hearts that for the United States of America the best is yet to come.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: I want to thank every American who participated in this election…
    (APPLAUSE)
    … whether you voted for the very first time or waited in line for a very long time.
    (APPLAUSE)
    By the way, we have to fix that.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Whether you pounded the pavement or picked up the phone…
    (APPLAUSE)
    … whether you held an Obama sign or a Romney sign, you made your voice heard and you made a difference.
    I just spoke with Governor Romney and I congratulated him and Paul Ryan on a hard-fought campaign.
    (APPLAUSE)
    We may have battled fiercely, but it’s only because we love this country deeply and we care so strongly about its future. From George to Lenore to their son Mitt, the Romney family has chosen to give back to America through public service and that is the legacy that we honor and applaud tonight.
    (APPLAUSE)

    In the weeks ahead, I also look forward to sitting down with Governor Romney to talk about where we can work together to move this country forward.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I want to thank my friend and partner of the last four years, America’s happy warrior, the best vice president anybody could ever hope for, Joe Biden.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: And I wouldn’t be the man I am today without the woman who agreed to marry me 20 years ago.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Let me say this publicly: Michelle, I have never loved you more. I have never been prouder to watch the rest of America fall in love with you, too, as our nation’s first lady.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Sasha and Malia, before our very eyes you’re growing up to become two strong, smart beautiful young women, just like your mom.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: And I’m so proud of you guys. But I will say that for now one dog’s probably enough.
    (LAUGHTER)
    To the best campaign team and volunteers in the history of politics…
    (APPLAUSE)
    The best. The best ever. Some of you were new this time around, and some of you have been at my side since the very beginning.
    (APPLAUSE)
    But all of you are family. No matter what you do or where you go from here, you will carry the memory of the history we made together and you will have the life-long appreciation of a grateful president. Thank you for believing all the way, through every hill, through every valley.
    But all of you are family. No matter what you do or where you go from here, you will carry the memory of the history we made together and you will have the life-long appreciation of a grateful president. Thank you for believing all the way, through every hill, through every valley.
    (APPLAUSE)
    You lifted me up the whole way and I will always be grateful for everything that you’ve done and all the incredible work that you put in.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I know that political campaigns can sometimes seem small, even silly. And that provides plenty of fodder for the cynics that tell us that politics is nothing more than a contest of egos or the domain of special interests. But if you ever get the chance to talk to folks who turned out at our rallies and crowded along a rope line in a high school gym, or saw folks working late in a campaign office in some tiny county far away from home, you’ll discover something else.
    OBAMA: You’ll hear the determination in the voice of a young field organizer who’s working his way through college and wants to make sure every child has that same opportunity.
    (APPLAUSE)
    You’ll hear the pride in the voice of a volunteer who’s going door to door because her brother was finally hired when the local auto plant added another shift.
    (APPLAUSE)
    You’ll hear the deep patriotism in the voice of a military spouse whose working the phones late at night to make sure that no one who fights for this country ever has to fight for a job or a roof over their head when they come home.
    (APPLAUSE)
    That’s why we do this. That’s what politics can be. That’s why elections matter. It’s not small, it’s big. It’s important. Democracy in a nation of 300 million can be noisy and messy and complicated. We have our own opinions. Each of us has deeply held beliefs. And when we go through tough times, when we make big decisions as a country, it necessarily stirs passions, stirs up controversy.
    That won’t change after tonight, and it shouldn’t. These arguments we have are a mark of our liberty. We can never forget that as we speak people in distant nations are risking their lives right now just for a chance to argue about the issues that matter, the chance to cast their ballots like we did today.
    (APPLAUSE)
    But despite all our differences, most of us share certain hopes for America’s future. We want our kids to grow up in a country where they have access to the best schools and the best teachers.

    (APPLAUSE)
    A country that lives up to its legacy as the global leader in technology and discovery and innovation, with all the good jobs and new businesses that follow.
    OBAMA: We want our children to live in an America that isn’t burdened by debt, that isn’t weakened by inequality, that isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.
    (APPLAUSE)
    We want to pass on a country that’s safe and respected and admired around the world, a nation that is defended by the strongest military on earth and the best troops this — this world has ever known.
    (APPLAUSE)
    But also a country that moves with confidence beyond this time of war, to shape a peace that is built on the promise of freedom and dignity for every human being. We believe in a generous America, in a compassionate America, in a tolerant America, open to the dreams of an immigrant’s daughter who studies in our schools and pledges to our flag.
    To the young boy on the south side of Chicago who sees a life beyond the nearest street corner.
    (APPLAUSE)
    To the furniture worker’s child in North Carolina who wants to become a doctor or a scientist, an engineer or an entrepreneur, a diplomat or even a president — that’s the future we hope for. That’s the vision we share. That’s where we need to go — forward.
    (APPLAUSE)
    That’s where we need to go.
    Now, we will disagree, sometimes fiercely, about how to get there. As it has for more than two centuries, progress will come in fits and starts. It’s not always a straight line. It’s not always a smooth path.
    By itself, the recognition that we have common hopes and dreams won’t end all the gridlock or solve all our problems or substitute for the painstaking work of building consensus and making the difficult compromises needed to move this country forward. But that common bond is where we must begin. Our economy is recovering. A decade of war is ending. A long campaign is now over.
    (APPLAUSE)

    And whether I earned your vote or not, I have listened to you, I have learned from you, and you’ve made me a better president. And with your stories and your struggles, I return to the White House more determined and more inspired than ever about the work there is to do and the future that lies ahead.
    (APPLAUSE)
    Tonight you voted for action, not politics as usual.
    (APPLAUSE)
    You elected us to focus on your jobs, not ours. And in the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together. Reducing our deficit. Reforming our tax code. Fixing our immigration system. Freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We’ve got more work to do.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: But that doesn’t mean your work is done. The role of citizens in our Democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.
    (APPLAUSE)
    This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.
    What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.
    OBAMA: The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for come with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I am hopeful tonight because I’ve seen the spirit at work in America. I’ve seen it in the family business whose owners would rather cut their own pay than lay off their neighbors, and in the workers who would rather cut back their hours than see a friend lose a job.
    I’ve seen it in the soldiers who reenlist after losing a limb and in those SEALs who charged up the stairs into darkness and danger because they knew there was a buddy behind them watching their back.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I’ve seen it on the shores of New Jersey and New York, where leaders from every party and level of government have swept aside their differences to help a community rebuild from the wreckage of a terrible storm.
    (APPLAUSE)
    And I saw just the other day, in Mentor, Ohio, where a father told the story of his 8-year-old daughter, whose long battle with leukemia nearly cost their family everything had it not been for health care reform passing just a few months before the insurance company was about to stop paying for her care.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I had an opportunity to not just talk to the father, but meet this incredible daughter of his. And when he spoke to the crowd listening to that father’s story, every parent in that room had tears in their eyes, because we knew that little girl could be our own.
    And I know that every American wants her future to be just as bright. That’s who we are. That’s the country I’m so proud to lead as your president.
    (APPLAUSE)
    OBAMA: And tonight, despite all the hardship we’ve been through, despite all the frustrations of Washington, I’ve never been more hopeful about our future.
    (APPLAUSE)
    I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.
    I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.
    (APPLAUSE)
    America, I believe we can build on the progress we’ve made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.
    (APPLAUSE)

    I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.
    (APPLAUSE)
    And together with your help and God’s grace we will continue our journey forward and remind the world just why it is that we live in the greatest nation on Earth.
    Thank you, America. God bless you. God bless these United States.
    (APPLAUSE)

     

    Culled from www.washingtonpost.com

  • What Aung San Suu Kyi could teach President Obama and Mitt Romney

    What Aung San Suu Kyi could teach President Obama and Mitt Romney

    SOMETIMES IT IS more difficult to learn to work together than to suffer individually,” Aung San Suu Kyi observed to a Washington audience last week.

    Coming from a woman who has spent most of the past two decades in isolation, under house arrest, it was a striking statement. The Nobel Peace Prize winner from Burma was seeking support in Washington as her country, also known as Myanmar, emerges from a half-century of dictatorship. What seemed uppermost on her mind were the practical, human difficulties of making democracy work.

    She talked about how people in her country, a Southeast Asian nation of 50 million or so, don’t really know how to ask questions of their leaders, a practice that hasn’t been much encouraged in recent decades. Similarly, she said, politicians aren’t used to the notion that they have “a duty to explain their policies.” She fretted that the Burmese fear of losing face makes it difficult for politicians to compromise.

    All of which made us wonder whether Washington might not have more to learn from Aung San Suu Kyi than the other way around. No doubt Burma, like every nation, has challenges specific to its history and culture. But the allergy to compromise, the failure of leaders to explain their intentions — much of it sounded drearily familiar.

    Here we have a presidential campaign in which both candidates are more eager to tear the other down than explain what he would do if elected. Since Republican nominee Mitt Romney has been on both sides of so many issues, the problem is particularly acute in his case. He offers platitudes about lowering taxes but refuses to say how he could make the numbers add up. He faults President Obama for having failed to achieve compromise with Congress, yet his dismissal of the half of the country that does not support him hardly seems the basis for a unifying presidency.

    Having occupied the White House for nearly four years, Mr. Obama presents less of a mystery. But it is disappointing that he offers no second-term agenda beyond defending and completing the work of his first. He accepts no responsibility for the worsening gridlock that he had promised to alleviate; his only fault, he says, was to trust naively in the good faith of the other side. His takeaway is that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.”

    There’s nothing wrong with a president going outside Washington to mobilize support; that’s what the bully pulpit is for. But Mr. Obama’s version of the past four years is incomplete. Republicans were often more intent on thwarting him than helping the country, even reversing long-held positions to do so. But at key moments, when compromise might have been possible, Mr. Obama lost his nerve or failed to lead.

    More important than arguing over history is the oft-postponed challenge of repairing the nation’s finances. Even before Inauguration Day, the country, if its politicians cannot find a compromise, will slide over a fiscal cliff of tax hikes and spending cuts that will endanger national security and send the country reeling back into recession. What would President Obama do in a lame-duck session to head this off? What would a President-elect Romney counsel? We have no idea.

    Aung San Suu Kyi, who won election to parliament in April, said her party refused to make “easy promises” that it could not fulfill. “Some people tell me this means I’m not a real politician,” she joked.

    “Cut taxes.” “Preserve Medicare.” Those are easy promises. Righting this country will require more difficult measures — including Democrats and Republicans working together.

    –Washinton Post