Romney: 47% of Americans are losers, don't care about 'em

[CountDeMoney]

Whoops. Guess that's it for Romney.

Not so fast, my friend.  There's a negro in the White House that 47% of Americans want to kick out come hell or high water.

[Legbiter]

Not so fast, my friend.  There's a negro in the White House that 47% of Americans want to kick out come hell or high water.

Still, what a shit thing to utter. Reagan would never have even hinted at something like this.

[FunkMonk]

Whoops. Guess that's it for Romney.

Not so fast, my friend.  There's a negro in the White House that 47% of Americans want to kick out come hell or high water.

Oops.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I call bullshit on this reasoning. As you said yourself, he did not pick mormonism, he was raised in it. I don't think people who are atheists but pretend to be religious convert for show - this would require learning all the new tenets that you already believe to be bullshit - it's much easier to stay in your "birth religion" and just lapse secretly.

Maybe, I believe, unless I'm mistaken Cal's point was Romney was just being religious to get votes. Such a calculated position would certainly have lead Romney to at least consider a more mainstream religion, like Catholicism, especially when he was running for the Senate in Massachusetts back in the early 90s.

His wife also was not Mormon when they married, if Romney was an atheist it'd make a lot more sense for him to just go with the flow and start practicing in her religion, but instead he converted her to Mormonism.

It's entirely possible he doesn't buy into his religion and has just stayed in it for community / inertia reasons, but that doesn't jive with the claim it's a cynical act designed to be electable.

[CountDeMoney]

Yeah, I can't buy the faux Mormonism angle.  It's simply too high maintenance.
And he's a bishop or some sort of Grand Moff or something in the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes Lodge No. 26.  That's simply too much work.

[Neil]

Which elites, though?  Are you defining them strictly along economic lines?  There isn't as much cross-pollination between economic elites and the ivory tower elites.

A property qualification would take care of that, since so many academics live in their mom's basement.

It's hard out there in Academia.

[CountDeMoney]

Which elites, though?  Are you defining them strictly along economic lines?  There isn't as much cross-pollination between economic elites and the ivory tower elites.

A property qualification would take care of that, since so many academics live in their mom's basement.

It's hard out there in Academia.

Maybe in Canada, but Dr. Kissinger has quite a few pads.

[Neil]

It's you, not us, who have hangs ups on religion. Poland, the most catholic country in the world, had an openly atheistic president and a couple of prime ministers.

In one hundred years, when your first black quadruplegic lesbian President crawls onto the podium, she is going to claim that God made her in His image, because an atheist could never get elected there.

Being a communist dictatorship will have that effect.

Besides, given the damage that atheism inflicts on the body politic, it's a good idea to keep it quiet.

[Valmy]

You really think the Obama campaign doesn't say things like this internally/to large donors? I imagine Obama is smart enough not to get caught (again) saying something like this himself, but that's the only real difference I see.

In today's day and age of camera phones and the like he would be a fucking idiot to.  So yeah, probably.  As a Politician, especially as a Presidential candidate, you cannot ever speak openly.

[Valmy]

Jesus H Chocolate Covered Christ on a stick, people.

Sometimes people go to church, not out of "intellectual curiosity" or "nominal religiosity" or any of the other bullshit reasons you fucking noodleheads are overthinking, as fucking usual.

Sometimes people go to church because it's a goddamned community thing, it's usually the largest collective activity in the community particularly in the urban environment, and they have some wicked fried chicken dinners afterwards.  Fuck.

It could be the reason why Europeans dislike religion - we never get dinners in church.

What?  Well that is outrageous.

[Grey Fox]

It's true, especially when it comes to regular old roman catholics.

I went to my in-laws church, some protestant group, I understand the appeal & it was very entertaining. Lunch was very good.

[Valmy]

It's true, especially when it comes to regular old roman catholics.

I went to my in-laws church, some protestant group, I understand the appeal & it was very entertaining. Lunch was very good.

Well hell half the reason you go to church is for the food and the parties.  My church does alot of AA stuff though so sometimes the parties have no booze.  I bet that woud not be true if Catholics had them.

I guess for some reason I thought your in-laws were old school Catholics.  If they went Protty I guess that explains the existance of fundy Quebeckers.

[Grey Fox]

It's true, especially when it comes to regular old roman catholics.

I went to my in-laws church, some protestant group, I understand the appeal & it was very entertaining. Lunch was very good.

Well hell half the reason you go to church is for the food and the parties.  My church does alot of AA stuff though so sometimes the parties have no booze.  I bet that woud not be true if Catholics had them.

I guess for some reason I thought your in-laws were old school Catholics.  If they went Protty I guess that explains the existance of fundy Quebeckers.

Might be because most of us are born Catholics, like my in-laws they converted.

This is their church : http://www.labibleparle.com/ (All in French).

They think stupid shit, they praise god too often but they still are good people. I have a pretty good relationship with them, especially my father in law.

[garbon]

It's true, especially when it comes to regular old roman catholics.

I went to my in-laws church, some protestant group, I understand the appeal & it was very entertaining. Lunch was very good.

Well hell half the reason you go to church is for the food and the parties.  My church does alot of AA stuff though so sometimes the parties have no booze.  I bet that woud not be true if Catholics had them.

I guess for some reason I thought your in-laws were old school Catholics.  If they went Protty I guess that explains the existance of fundy Quebeckers.

Might be because most of us are born Catholics, like my in-laws they converted.

This is their church : http://www.labibleparle.com/ (All in French).

They think stupid shit, they praise god too often but they still are good people. I have a pretty good relationship with them, especially my father in law.

They need someone to volunteer to build them a website.

[DGuller]

Curiously enough, Intrade market didn't move on the news.  I guess even crappy predictive markets know enough to price in the possibility of a major Romney gaffe.

Or maybe it wasn't a major gaffe. The 47% number could be accurate, but do you think those 47% of people would realize Romney was talking about them? This is just an updated version of bitching about welfare queens, with some hysteria regarding America approaching a tipping point.

The problem is that he didn't attack the 47% of non-payers, he attacked the 47% of solid Obama voters.  Only then did he equate those two 47% blocks as if they were perfectly correlated.  The biggest of very many problems with Romney statement wasn't that he spoke the truth he shouldn't have said, but rather that he revealed a deranged worldview that used to be attributed to trash like Limbaugh.  He basically implied that the only reason to be a solid Obama voter is to be a loser dependent on government.