Promises, promises. That's all he has.

That is all well and good. However, collecting tax revenue is not the real problem. The real problem is how that revenue is spent (or wasted).

He's also criticized Obama's foreign policy without proposing alternatives, or has proposed alternatives that are pretty much indistinguishable from Obama's policies.

Mark, I don't think anyone knows what Obama;s foreign policy is. His words do not correspond with actions.

When Obama was a candidate in 2008, no one could figure out his foreign policy either.

To say Romneycare speaks in generalities is the understatement of the year. He is very careful to not get into specifics on anything.

The only thing we do know about him is that he is NOT Obama, and there are about 268,000,000 more that also are NOT Obama. Hardly qualification for the Presidency.

Starderup, That is preferably than what Obama did, In 2008, he said many things that never were followed through on.

Promising all sort of things before one is in office may not be smart.

The heck he does'nt. He his going to cut the highest coporate tax on the planet from %35 to %15. He is going to stop the horrible job killing Obamacare. He is going to stop the Roman Legion EPA in enforcing outrageous and redundant regulation and have them actually work with business. He will stop Obama's attempt to kill small business owners with his %30 punish for those in the $250K, to $1 Million THI range who file individually. These people are alot more than %1 and represent %90 of all small businesses registered with the ABA.

That is a just some of Romney's plans, sound fair? Reasonable?

I don't know who this p*ssed off person is, but Romneycare has not publicly disclosed details of his 'plans' yet. Obamacare could not possibly be killing jobs because it hasn't even kicked in yet.

This total lack of critical thinking by Romneycare supporters is the only reason the election is still going to happen. Otherwise, it would be called because Romneycare would have to forfeit.

Not only would it be priceless but it would the right answer. But this will never happen because Americans are locked into the 2 party system and are too stupid to think outside the box even if it does mean saving our country. I get so sick of hearing college aged people saying "Oh my vote is definately for Obama" and when I ask why they really have no idea or they might say because he is better than Romney because Romney is rich. I want to grab them and shake them and say that is what you are going to school for isn't it--so you can have a career and become rich. I really feel sorry for the young people today because they have grown up in basically good times and have had everything given to them because parents could afford it and now the whole thing is shifting. Will these people get a job or will they become slaves to an out of control government??? I hope there are some heros in college today who will not be afraid to kick some butts and make some changes to take America back in to the control of the people and the first thing will be to get rid of the 2 party system and all the crooks in DC.

I will be voting independent and know several others that are planning to as well. Might not make any kind of impact right now but as more and more people start realizing how bad the democrat and republican party's really suck, more people will finally start pulling their heads out of their a$$es.

It's the repubs fault, no it's the dems fault. No dummies it is both party's fault.

I am not aware of any independent candidate. Is there one?

Blindly choosing somebody in an alternative party is a little like saying "anybody but...", isn't it?

Well, I'm actually still counting on Ron Paul to be running as Libertarian or Independent and even though so many people out there do not believe he is the man for the job, he is still the only one that I have agreed with almost every position he has publicly stated. Like I said earlier, I know it will not matter right now but hopefully more and more people will start coming around after the next bunch of yahoos screw us over again.

And, I know we haven't been hearing much from Ron Paul anymore but I believe that is just due to the fact that he is not campaigning. I might be wrong but I am so sick of politics right now I just don't care enough to do the research.

I think Obama gets his propaganda stuff from his partisan politics advisers. I doubt he thinks them all up by himself.

Nobody needs to doctor Willard's statements. He doesn't need any help sounding incompetent.

Most all media is bad, But I agree completely that MSNBC is by far the most biased.

I don't know about that, Bill Clinton seemed to think highly of him stating of Romney "he had a sterling career".

Not one of your listed "failures" is even in the same ballpark as the Iraq was horror show, the disastrous Bush tax cuts or medicare part D. These were all unfunded and have been driving massive deficit spending for years and will continue to, long into the future - oh and guess what - none were supported by Barack Obama. Care to re-think who has been the failure for this country?

Pifft, Like those 82 democrats in the Congress had nothing to with Iraq. Here is some news, Obama is not running against Bush.

Get educated and chew on this:

2001: +1.3% (9/11) (Deficit as % GDP)
2002: -1.5% (invasion of Afghanistan)
2003: -3.5% (invasion of Iraq)
2004: -3.6% (Bush tax cuts)
2005: -2.6% DEFICIT REDUCTION (Hurricane Katrina)
2006: -1.9% DEFICIT REDUCTION (Democrats win elections)
2007: -1.2% DEFICIT REDUCTION (democrats assume power/write budget)
2008: -3.2% deficit triples
2009: -9.9% deficit triples again (worst deficit in 65 years)
2010: - 9.5% (second worst deficit in 65 years)
*Note - Federal income also increased in EVERY year between the tax cuts and the first Pelosi budget.
SOURCE : US Government statistical Abstract (Table 469)
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I love those, upset, who keep laying the blame on Bush for the wars. Well have the wars ceased or escalated since Obama was made Commander and Chief??????????? These wars are as much about lining dems pockets as they are about lining repubs so if your fearless, or should I say clueless, leader wants to get credit for anything except increasing the output of money for wars he had better do something quick. Blaming Bush was fine before Obama took office but anything occurring after regarding the wars is all on his head. If a prez can send troops and start a war then a prez can end a war and bring home troops if he wants. So as far as saying Obama supported none of the war---you better guess again---he is as much of the cause as anyone else.

Yes Bob, Obama ended the Iraq war, never supported it in the first place and yes, has to deal with all the fallout from it, including the massive health care costs of tens of thousands of Americans warriors with massive injuries. But thanks for your mis-guided input.

Are you really not aware Obama ended the Iraq war? Wow!

Pissed off - If you really believe the deficit spending went down for three consecutive years under Dubya, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you for a great price.

Dubya policy exploded the deficit spending. There is no debate about this fact, outside mis-informed right wing extremist whack-jobs that is.

We will be dealing with GW policy related deficit spending for decades. Just like we never paid off Reagan's deficit spending. But remember "Ronald Reagan proved deficits don't matter".

I'll tell you one of the biggest problems this country has to go through now after George Bush Jr., is the amount of government that he created and the over reaching powers he allowed those certain government entities to have.

And his record as governor shows his state to be 47th of 50 in job creation. Not much of a record is it?

But he claims to have added 100,000 jobs while at Bain. He can't back it up, but he is willing to repeatedly make the claim.

90,000 at Staples alone.

Here are some of Romney and Bain successes
Gee, how many Americans are woking here? Dah, dah, your as dense as depleted Uranium.

AMC Entertainment
Home DFepot
Aspen Education Group
Brookstone
Burger King
Burlington Coat Factory
Clear Channel Communications
Domino's Pizza
DoubleClick
Dunkin' Donuts
D&M Holdings
Guitar Center
Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)
Sealy
The Sports Authority
Staples
Toys "R" Us
Warner Music Group
The Weather Channel

Pissed on -

If you think Willard Romney created 90,000 jobs anywhere, you are sadly mis-informed. Even the Romney campaign will not go out on that limb. It simply is not true. But you think what you want.

Many of these might have gone bankrupt if not rescued by Bain.

Willard comes to town again

(Reuters) - It was funny at first.

The young men in business suits, gingerly picking their way among the millwrights, machinists and pipefitters at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill. Gaping up at the cranes that swung 10-foot cast iron buckets through the air. Jumping at the thunder from the melt shop's electric-arc furnace as it turned scrap metal into lava.

"They looked like a bunch of high school kids to me. A bunch of Wall Street preppies," says Jim Linson, an electronics repairman who worked at the plant for 40 years. "They came in, they were in awe."

Apparently they liked what they saw. Soon after, in October 1993, Bain Capital, co-founded by Mitt Romney, became majority shareholder in a steel mill that had been operating since 1888.

It was a gamble. The old mill, renamed GS Technologies, needed expensive updating, and demand for its products was susceptible to cycles in the mining industry and commodities markets.

Less than a decade later, the mill was padlocked and some 750 people lost their jobs. Workers were denied the severance pay and health insurance they'd been promised, and their pension benefits were cut by as much as $400 a month.

What's more, a federal government insurance agency had to pony up $44 million to bail out the company's underfunded pension plan. Nevertheless, Bain profited on the deal, receiving $12 million on its $8 million initial investment and at least $4.5 million in consulting fees.

PROFITABLE FAILURES

In his campaign for president, Romney has championed free markets and vowed to shrink the role of government. The Republican has argued that his business acumen makes him the best candidate to fix the nation's economy and bring down the stubbornly high unemployment rate. Romney's opponents point to his business career as evidence that he is willing to cut jobs and benefits.

The story of Bain's failed investment in the Kansas City mill offers a perspective on a largely overlooked chapter in Romney's business record: His firm's brush with a U.S. bailout.

His supporters say the pension gap at the Kansas City mill was an unforeseen consequence of a falling stock market and adverse market conditions. But records show that the mill's Bain-backed management was confronted several times about the fund's shortfall, which, in the end, required an infusion of funds from the federal Pension Benefits Guarantee Corp.

Romney's career at Bain included both successes and failures. That is not unusual in the private equity business, where investors buy troubled companies and try to turn them around, often through aggressive use of debt.

"Bain Capital invested in many businesses," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a written statement. "While not every business was successful, the firm had an excellent overall track record and created jobs with well-known companies like Staples, Dominos Pizza and Sports Authority."

Bain showed a remarkable knack for turning a profit. A prospectus from the year 2000 obtained by the Los Angeles Times shows that the buyout firm delivered an average annual return on investment of 88 percent between its founding in 1984 and the end of 1999.

Romney headed the firm for that entire period, except for a hiatus in 1990 to 1992, when he returned to Bain Capital's sister consulting firm, Bain & Co. In 1999 he left the business to run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

The steel company declared bankruptcy in 2001. Romney continued receiving dividends from Bain after his departure. He accumulated a personal fortune of between $190 million and $250 million, according to campaign disclosure forms.

Steven Kaplan, a University of Chicago professor of entrepreneurship and finance, describes Bain's track record under Romney as "fantastic," even if some ventures ended in failure.

"You don't do this by just squeezing out costs. Those kinds of returns only come from growth," he said. "Yes, they had some bad investments, I guess in the same way presidents make some bad calls."

CASHING IN

Overall, Bain made at least $12 million on the steel company it created by merging the Kansas City mill with another in South Carolina before the new entity declared bankruptcy in 2001. Bain also collected an additional $900,000 a year through 1999 for management consulting services, public filings show.

Some analysts say Bain should not be blamed for the company's failure, noting that a wave of cheap imports forced nearly half of the U.S. steel industry into bankruptcy during that period. Another company set up around the same time, in which Bain took a minority stake, Steel Dynamics in Fort Wayne, Indiana, thrived.

"GS and Steel Dynamics were about as different as it gets," industry analyst Michelle Applebaum said. GS's core products were vulnerable to competition while Steel Dynamics became "one of the country's lowest-cost manufacturers of steel sheet," a product with more staying power. Steel Dynamics was also a non-union shop.

Former company executives say they were generally satisfied with Bain's leadership, but they say the firm would have been better equipped to weather tough times had it not been saddled with such a heavy debt load.

They also fault Bain for putting inexperienced managers in place and spurning a buyout offer from a competitor. Workers say efforts to cut corners often backfired, driving costs higher.

The Kansas City millworkers, meanwhile, are still fuming, after being left with no health benefits and a reduced pension check.

"Romney cost me lots and lots of sleepless nights and lots and lots of money," said Ed Stanger, who worked at the plant for nearly 30 years.

A GOOD LIVING

Since opening in 1888 as The Kansas City Bolt and Nut Co., the steelworks that sprawl along the Blue River valley in the city's northeast corner provided a steady and prestigious living for thousands of men. It was hard, dirty, dangerous work. The plant kept two surgeons on site in case of accidents, and death on the job was not unknown.

When summer temperatures would top 100 degrees, workers wore long johns under their protective suits so their sweat could offer some relief.

Still, it wasn't easy to get a job at the mill. The pay was good, lifting countless families into the middle class. Workers bought houses and cars and sent their kids to college.

"Hard work is supposed to pay off," said John Cottrell, who spent decades working with molten metal. White burn marks crisscross his massive forearms, and years of asbestos exposure have left him short of breath. Sitting at his kitchen table in the working class suburb of Independence, he looks a decade older than his 64 years.

At its peak in 1970, the Kansas City plant, then owned by Armco Steel Corp, employed 4,500 people. Poor market conditions forced a wave of layoffs in the early 1980s and led the company to prune its product line. By the early 1990s, the plant focused on two items: wire for products such as mattress springs and tires; and high-carbon balls and rods used by the mining industry to pulverize rocks.

It was around that time that the mill workers started noticing the kids in suits.

Armco wanted to sell its Kansas City plant to concentrate on other aspects of its business. Jack Stutz and a few of the other Armco managers were looking for backers to help them buy it. They spoke to GE Capital, which, in turn, contacted Bain Capital because it had earned a sterling reputation for turning companies around.

The risks were obvious. The mill's equipment was out of date and it faced stiff competition from Nucor Corp, which also made grinding balls.

Nevertheless, Bain and its partners decided to buy the mill for $75 million. Bain put up about $8 million to gain majority control of the company, renamed GS Technologies Inc. GE Capital, former Armco executives and Leggett & Platt, a major customer for the mill's wire rods, chipped in the rest of the equity.

As part of the deal, Armco agreed to cover employee pension obligations if the plant closed within five years -- a $120 million liability, according to the Kansas City Business Journal.

THE BIG DIVIDEND

Bain got its money back quickly. The new company issued $125 million in bonds and paid Bain a $36.1 million dividend in 1994.

"Paying distributions with debt is not uncommon," said Campbell Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University. "The only thing that strikes me as a bit unusual is the size of the dividend. There would be logic in them saving some cash for a downturn."

Looking back on the dividend payout, Stutz and another former GS Technologies officer, Mario Concha, believe it weakened the mill's financial position.

"At the time they paid that dividend, they felt that the financials justified it," Stutz said.

GS announced plans for a $98 million plant modernization and Kansas City officials agreed to a tax break worth about $3 million, according to press accounts.

In 1995 Bain merged GS with another wire rod maker in Georgetown, South Carolina, to form one of the largest mini-mill steel producers in the U.S. The new company issued another $125 million in bonds to pay for the merger. Bain doubled down, reinvesting $16.5 million of its earlier dividend.

The new company, dubbed GS Industries Inc., would have annual revenues of $1 billion and employ 3,800 people.

Already, though, there were warning signs that the company was not on a sustainable course. Concerned about the level of debt, which totaled $378 million in 1995 on operating income less than a tenth of that amount, the merged company's new CEO, Roger Regelbrugge, negotiated a clause in his contract that would allow him to retire at the end of 1997.

Regelbrugge said he was concerned that the company would have to go through a painful restructuring if it had not sold shares through an initial public offering (IPO) by then.

Regelbrugge had done one restructuring in the 1980s at the South Carolina mill, laying off workers and haggling with creditors. He did not want to go through that painful process again.

"Unless we had plans to go public at that time, I did not want to carry that debt load ad infinitum," he said.

Over the next two years, GS Industries completed its upgrade of the Kansas City plant and laid the groundwork for an IPO to pay down some of the debt.

Meanwhile, managers struggled to forge a cohesive whole from two companies that made similar products but had different corporate cultures, different manufacturing processes and different labor contracts.

"I guess the two cultures never really got together," Stutz said.

ON STRIKE

In 1997, with Armco's pension guarantees set to expire in one year, the United Steelworkers local at the Kansas City plant was worried that GS was not setting aside enough money to cover pension obligations and other benefits in the event of a shutdown.

David Foster, the negotiator for the union, said labor talks were typically more tense at companies owned by private equity firms because the high level of debt left managers with less flexibility.

Contract talks foundered and the union went on strike in April 1997. The first standoff since 1959 quickly turned nasty. Workers shot bottle rockets at security guards, tossed nails in the roadways to flatten the tires of nonunion trucks and pounded on the windows of vehicles as they left the plant.

After 10 weeks, the two sides reached a deal that boosted pensions and ensured that workers would get health and life insurance in the event of a shutdown.

The workers put down their picket signs, but the equipment upgrades weren't delivering productivity gains as quickly as hoped. At the end of 1997, Regelbrugge decided to retire rather than stick around for an IPO that wasn't going to materialize.

Shortly after that, an industry competitor offered "a whole lot of money" to buy GS, according to Regelbrugge, but Bain turned it down. A company insider said the suitor was the global behemoth Mittal Steel Company, but added that no formal offer was ever made.

As GS Industries sought to cut costs, it hired line managers with no experience in the steel industry, workers said. One had worked at Walmart; many others came straight out of the military.

"He would come up with some of the stupidest damn ideas that you ever seen," the former steelworker Linson said of one supervisor, a retired Air Force colonel.

Paperwork proliferated. Cost-cutting efforts backfired. Managers skimped on purchases of everything from earplugs to spare motors and scaled back routine maintenance. Machines began to break down more often, and with parts no longer in stock a replacement could take days to arrive.

Labor costs spiked as managers revamped work schedules with little understanding of how the plant actually operated. Linson says he picked up an entire shift of overtime each week because his managers didn't realize that a furnace needed a full eight hours to heat up to operating temperature.

"That didn't work to their advantage," he said. "I made a lot of money."

Daily life at the plant was also growing more dangerous. Veteran crane operator Ed Mossman says he was ordered to pick up a load of steel that was 50 percent above the recommended weight limit - a prospect that could have toppled the crane and sent Mossman plunging to his death. When he refused, he says, he was fired after putting in 29 years at the mill.

"The first 15 years, I had the best job in the United States, as far as I was concerned," Mossman said. "The last five years down there got to be pure hell."

Meanwhile, a wave of cheap imports from Asia drove steel prices down sharply, while costs for natural gas and electricity rose. The Asian financial crisis lowered demand for mined metals, which hit the company's grinding-ball business.

The company, along with other steelmakers, successfully petitioned the U.S. International Trade Commission for tariff rate quotas on imported wire rods and also entered the federal loan guarantee program for troubled steel companies -- two remedies at odds with a free-market stance. Romney now says it was a mistake for the government to try to protect the steel industry.

Nevertheless, net losses at the company grew to $52.9 million in 1999 from $16.1 million in 1997, while operating income dropped to $9.6 million from $37.9 million over the same period -- not enough to sustain the firm's debt and obligations for long.

THE BLAME GAME

Charles Bradford, an analyst at Bradford Research, blames the union, in part, for the failure of GS Industries to survive in the new global marketplace.

"If you look at the steel companies that went under at the time, all of them were unionized," he said. "I'm not saying this was the only factor -- these firms faced other headwinds such as cheap labor and a strong dollar ... but the unions held them back."

Union officials blame the Bain managers for saddling the company with too much debt for a capital-intensive, cyclical industry such as steel. "They look at ways to try to leverage the financial resources of the company during an uptick in the markets, stream money out of it and leave wreckage behind them," said the union's Foster.

Regelbrugge blames his successor, Mark Essig, for installing senior managers who did not know the business. "I have no question that the company would have survived under different management," he said. Essig did not return calls seeking comment.

A spokesman for Bain Capital said: "Over $100 million and many thousands of hours were invested in GSI to upgrade its facilities and make the company more competitive during a 7-year period when the industry came under enormous pressure and 44 U.S. steel companies went into bankruptcy. In the same period, we worked to turn around GSI, we helped launch and grow an innovative business called Steel Dynamics that is today a $6 billion global leader.... Our focus remains on building great companies and improving their operations."

GS Industries declared bankruptcy on February 7, 2001, and said it would shut down the Kansas City plant, eliminating 750 jobs. In a press release, the company said the bankruptcy was triggered in part by "the critical need to restructure the company's liabilities."

Workers soon found out what that meant. In April, GS said it was shedding the guarantees it had promised its workers in the event of a plant closure - the severance pay, health insurance, life insurance and pension supplements that had been negotiated during the 1997 strike.

Workers could buy health insurance through the company's plan, but the company would no longer share its costs. For many who were struggling with asbestosis or other ailments contracted during their years of work, the cost was prohibitive.

"The wife and I, we just held our breath and prayed a lot," said Stanger, the ex-millworker. He was quoted a price of $1,800 per month - more than his pension payment.

FEDERAL AID

The U.S. Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp, which insures company retirement plans, determined in 2002 that GS had underfunded its pension by $44 million. The federal agency, funded by corporate levies, stepped in to cover the basic pension payments, but not the supplement the union had negotiated as a hedge against the plant's closure.

For Joe Soptic, who worked at the plant for 28 years, that meant a loss of $283 per month, about 22 percent of his pension. Others lost up to $400 per month, according to documents supplied by the union.

Comparatively, the GS bailout was one of the pension guarantor's smaller hits. The federal fund swung from a $7.7 billion surplus to a $3.6 billion deficit that year as it struggled to cover bankruptcies in the steel and transportation industries. The failure of LTV Steel, for example, cost the agency $1.9 billion.

The agency's woes prompted Congress in 2006 to require companies to contribute more toward their pensions. Press accounts said this change accelerated the shift away from pension plans toward 401(k)s and other defined-contribution retirement plans that offer less security for workers.

Many of the older workers at the Kansas City mill were just a few years away from Social Security and Medicare, but younger workers didn't have that safety net. Even with $600,000 earmarked by the U.S. Labor Department for job retraining, many had trouble finding work.

"They give you a year's worth of training, you're 50-something years old, nobody wants to hire you," said Steve Morrow, who retrained in the field of heating and air conditioning.

After nearly 30 years as a steelworker, Joe Soptic found a job as a school custodian. The $24,000 salary was roughly one-third of his former pay, and the health plan did not cover his wife, Ranae.

When Ranae started losing weight, "I tried to get her to the doctor and she wouldn't go," Soptic said. She ended up in the county hospital with pneumonia, where doctors discovered her advanced lung cancer. She died two weeks later.

Soptic was left with nearly $30,000 in medical bills. He drained a $12,000 savings account and the hospital wrote off the balance.

"I worked hard all my life and played by the rules, and they allowed this to happen," Soptic said.

(Additional reporting by Tom Hals; Editing by Lee Aitken)

Most of these are low paying service jobs, just like the way he left Mass. Destroy good paying manufacturing and replace them with low paying service jobs, no thank you.

How about the profitable GST Steel Company that Bain loaded with $124 Million in debt, of which they paid themselves around $40 million, then started slashing jobs and pensions until it went bankrupt. What you folks seem to chose to ignore is that Bain had no incentive to make companies profitable. That potential was a ancillary to their main goal of making money at the expense of worker's careers and pensions.

Go to Romneyeconomics.com for a real treat on Bain Capital's business model.

Seriously? Blaming Romney for a steel mill that closed in 2001 and had left Bain in 1999 to become while the President and CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games?

That shop closed along woth five others because of cheap foreign steel flooded the market and because that company could not keep with the Union negotiated pension demands on their over-head? Geez, who make that one run, nobody.

Unions are the industry killer,

Surely, you can find something better that might stick,

If you think Romney would do a better job with his tax ideas then Obama, then vote for him. If you are not in the upper 10% of the earners, good luck with that. I really have a problem with NOT having more taxes on the millionaires. Go back to before the Bush rates. There was nothing wrong with the deficit then. Most likely Bush's wars (which we were told would pay for themselves) is contributing to the deficit more then we know. I can't believe how many middle class people feel that Obama's tax ideas would be bad. WAKE UP!

Pissed-on has been taking his marching orders from Sean Hannity and Rush Limpbaugh. He has no idea what he is even talking about. Classic example of the ill-informed, angry right wing voter.

And, um, China would have nothing to do with a Circuit Board Producer in the U.S.?

Here is some news, all high tech firms from Apple to Dell have transferred all their subcon PCB work to China thanks to over regulation, taxes, and cost over-head here in the U.S.
And these 16 failed companies you say Bain Profited from? You say "We know of" then. Then you should be able to list them. Pleaser provide that list.

Meanwhile here are just SOME Bain and Romney's sucessess. They have provided jobs for Millions of Americans

Now, here are just some Bain Capital successes:
AMC Entertainment
Aspen Education Group
Brookstone
Burger King
Burlington Coat Factory
Clear Channel Communications
Domino's Pizza
DoubleClick
Dunkin' Donuts
D&M Holdings
Guitar Center
Hospital Corporation of America (HCA)
Sealy
The Sports Authority
Staples
Toys "R" Us
Warner Music Group
The Weather Channel

"Mitt Romney Kills Jobs". The mantra of the "creative-destruction", preached best by Charles G. Koch, is that increasing productivity per worker decreases the number of employees required to make more profits. If your goal is to increase profits, then you have to destroy jobs -- it is the core of that religion.

Yes, people would like to have life be a bit better, to have some nicer things, to have more choices and more freedom to get what they want -- pursuit of happiness is the purpose of life for lots of people. Destroying others happiness just because you can is satanic. Most people do not envy satanic people. Mitt Romney has cloistered himself with satanic people too long. 96% of the public is not satanic and not sociopathic, anti-social. Only 4% are antisocial personality disordered whom thinks others envy them.

I am not in the upper 10%. I don't care about millionaires tax but it is just a wedge issue partisan politics thing that gives squat.

Going back to before Bush rates involves big increases to all brackets and % wise , would hurt the poor the most.

I think Obama will in the end be way more damaging than you realize to middle class. Some feel if you are not in the bottom 20%, you are nuts to vote for Obama.

"Without question, we need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime ... He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation ... And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction ... So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real ..." - Sen. John F. Kerry (D, MA), Jan. 23. 2003.

Don - Obama extended the bush tax cuts on the middle class to save whats left of it. Get a clue

I believe he extended them for politics. Tax cuts wont save the middle class. Foreign competition is driving down prices and destroying middle class jobs. The tax cuts might temporarily help them out, but won't save them.

I honestly don't believe that he cares about middle class in spite of all the PR.

Don please don't baffle the libbers with a pack of facts like that you could upset their whole day. People need to realize both parties lie. Both parties are crooks. Both parties are only in it for the money and the power. Both parties only goal once they get elected is to line their pockets with special interest monies and to work hard on getting re-elected. Neither party cares about the average American citizens because we mean nothing to them and they can not relate to our problems of living from pay check to paycheck because being the professional politicians they are they have never known anything but wealth and power. Vote them all out and send a message to government. People think that can't be done but I say why not. If you are complaining about the government now you are unhappy with their performance why not put in someone new and see how they do---it can't be any worse. Eventually they will figure out if they don't do the taxpayer and voters bidding they will be voted out of their cushy job until someone looks out for the United States and it's citizens.

With Obama, I believe his goal is the power more than the money from what I see. His political career seems to be top priority.

Don - I don't care about John Kerry. I was perfectly clear in what I posted:

Barack Obama was NEVER in support of the Iraq war. Twist that however you want, it's true.

I can never remember one before like Obama, I don't know about you. I remember both Clinton and Bush were way more bipartisan.

That last Republican president was not divisive at all. He was equally hated by everyone.

Not true. Most of his legislation was bipartisan.

His approval rating when he left was 22%. That is about as low as it gets, even Nixon had a higher approval rating when he resigned.

Don, it's curious that most of Bush's legislation was bipartisan (which fact I accept at face value) but Obama can't get even one inch of help from GOP congress.

Obama is not separate from Congress. He has veto power, and I believe Democrats will not pass legislation that Obama would veto. Obama makes proposals to Congress loaded with partisan politics and wedge issues. If he really wanted things to pass, he would let Congress write bipartisan legislation.

There is partisan politics from both parties, But Obama is not the innocent angel getting harassed by big bad republicans as many believe.

I really believe Hillary Clinton could get things passed much better than Obama.

The Senate is not innocent either. They won't vote on legislation the House passes.

So Obama is one that can be trusted???????? So anyone in DC right now can be trusted??????

You will come up on the short side of the stick if you ever trust a politician or a lawyer.

Hob, valid point but do we really want to make the poor even poorer so that billionaires can be even richer?

It is probably because taxing the lower class wouldn't even make a dent in government revenue. Besides less money for the poor means more government spending on things such as medicaid

Sacred, taxing billionaires more won't make anywhere near the dent that Democrats imply and cannot save the poor class.

And what do you propose?

I did not say I have any silver bullet solutions as things are way more complex. We need to start looking at all spending and taxes and Americans need to realize things probably will be painful for us all. I believe we have been living over our heads for decades.

We cannot expect a few rich folks can bail us out of everything.

Ah, I see Don. You just like to bitch and moan. No solutions, no ideas... just like Willard Romney.

True. But taxes on the wealthy are the lowest they have ever been. Not only that but anytime the United States has been in economic crisis or war, taxes have INCREASED! Now spending has already gone down although it needs to more. Now you don't want tax increases and that's fine. But don't complain when bridges start falling, infrastructure becomes poor, national defense weakens, or the standard of living decreases and etc. Because the government won't have the revenue to fund those things.

You should study IRS data on that. You probably do not want to pay the effective rates they do.

genini - Not sure what your game is, but I have reviewed several of your recent comments and they do not hold up to scrutiny. In a May 2011 testimony before the Senate Committee on Finance, the Tax Foundation presented data that showed that the top 10% of taxpayers paid around 70% of total income tax in the 2006 - 2007 period before dropping back to the mid-60% thereafter. 47% of all taxpayers paid ZERO income tax. What is fair in your mind?

Romney wants to run on the "I'm not Obama" platform.

That works in the primaries but not in a general election.

Eventually people will want some specifics.

He has not fleshed out ANY position as of yet. A total leap of faith for those who support him. He is white and he is not Obama. Other than that?

Obama is running on the "i am not Bush" platform. I actually prefer a politician that is honest and not make promises like Obama did that he cannot follow through on anyway.

Einsterin, what is Obama's foreign policy ? YOu seem to be concerned about these things.

Don, I'd say Obama's foreign policy is to work with the international community as a partner and not as the "we're America and you'd better get behind us" approach that Bush had.

By most accounts, Obama's foreign policy has been extremely effective. If you can't figure out what he's done or is currently doing, nothing we post will help.

But I'll give you a hint: The bad guys have had a really, really bad 3 years.

Upset , that's not what I asked. I asked what is it . Many people cannot figure it out, that why I asked .

mark, we are accusing Romney for not being specific it seems. Then we describe Obama in generalities.

When does he feel we should use American military for instance ?

The reason I am asking is it seems Obama made many promises campaigning that he never kept. Probably the biggest I feel is that he promised to unite America and change the culture in Washington and I have not noticed any effort on his part to do these.

Don, I'm not sure that's a fair question. Obviously tactics change with circumstances. But he certainly seems much more a partner in world events than Bush, and he doesn't seem to think he can change the world as Bush seemed to think.

I have observed a great deal of things to support my positions. I am not making things up or repeating anybody.

Don, Romney has repeatedly criticized Obama's foreign policy but whne asked what he'd do differently he doesn't have an answer. You can't very well decry someone's policy is you can't say that you'd do any differently.

That is what I am referring to. And I also beleive that any president uses the military when he thinks it's appropriate. It's impossible to think you can get answers to hypothetical situations because there are so many variables. Witness the difference in approach as between Libya and Syria.

My point is they all do this. Obama criticized Bush for things and then after he became president did the same things.

With Libya, I saw no point in using the military and spending billions on air strikes when there was no benefit to Americans. He can claim it was for humanitarian reasons, but I doubt it. There was no reason to assume things would be better with the leader dead.

Not exactly. Obama was explicitly against the surge and he was for the Afghan war. He also demonstrated a greater willingness to be a partner in world affairs. below is one quick link I found.

http://www.michigandaily.com/content/obama-foreign-policy-adviser-lays-out-candidates-platform-contrasts-mccain

With regards to Libya, you are right there is no immediate benefit to us but putting forward our policy that we will help depose dictators (not invade soveriegn countries) with the concurence with the concurence of th einternational community, especially after what we did in Iraq, shows we are a partner not a cowboy country.