StarDestroyer.Net BBS

CaptHawkeye wrote:"and to heal the planet". Implicit acknowledgement of global warming. Any more on that and he'd get boo'ed probably.

CaptHawkeye wrote:The bit about foreign policy pissed me off. If anything Obama has been abnormally aggressive and hardline to foreign powers and potential enemies. Then again even many left-wing Americans still really believe the Ayatollah sits at his home twiddling his mustache plotting the destruction of those plucky freedom loving heretics!

Mr Bean wrote:Okay a few questions
Did he ever mention Iraq or Afghanistan?
Did he ever mention Bush?
Did he ever mention this 12 million dollar job thing before?

General Mung Beans wrote:

CaptHawkeye wrote:The bit about foreign policy pissed me off. If anything Obama has been abnormally aggressive and hardline to foreign powers and potential enemies. Then again even many left-wing Americans still really believe the Ayatollah sits at his home twiddling his mustache plotting the destruction of those plucky freedom loving heretics!

The part that personally annoys me is the GOP's automatic oppositon to any military spending cuts.

Patrick Degan wrote:Clint Eastwood, the symbol of today's Republican Party: an angry, confused old white man screeching at the kids to get off his lawn.

August 31, 2012
Before Eastwood’s Talk With a Chair, Clearance From the Top
By MICHAEL BARBARO and MICHAEL D. SHEAR

TAMPA, Fla. — For all the finger-pointing about Clint Eastwood’s rambling conversation with an empty chair on Thursday night, the most bizarre, head-scratching 12 minutes in recent political convention history were set in motion by Mitt Romney himself and made possible by his aides, who had shrouded the actor’s appearance in secrecy.

Mr. Romney privately invited Mr. Eastwood, of “Dirty Harry” fame, to speak after the actor had given him a gravelly, full-throated endorsement at a star-studded fund-raiser at the Sun Valley Resort Lodge in Idaho this summer. “He just made my day. What a guy,” Mr. Romney joked with his donors that night, flanked by the fake log columns of the lodge.

Thus began an effort by Mr. Romney’s campaign over several weeks to inject a Hollywood-style surprise into the highly scripted, tightly controlled convention where Mr. Romney would formally accept the nomination of the Republican Party to be president.

Behind the scenes, Mr. Eastwood’s convention cameo was cleared by Mr. Romney’s top message mavens, Russ Schriefer and Stuart Stevens, who drew up talking points that Mr. Eastwood included, in his own way. They gave him a time limit and flashed a blinking red light that told him his time was up. He ignored both. The actor’s decision to use a chair as a prop was last-minute, and his own.

“The prop person probably thought he was going to sit in it,” a baffled senior aide said on Thursday night.

Mr. Eastwood’s rambling and off-color appearance just moments before the biggest speech of Mr. Romney’s life instantly became a Twitter and cable-news sensation, which drowned out much of the usual postconvention analysis that his campaign had hoped to bask in.

It also startled and unsettled Mr. Romney’s top advisers and prompted a blame game among them. “Not me,” an exasperated-looking senior adviser said when asked who was responsible for Mr. Eastwood’s speech. In interviews, aides called the speech “strange” and “weird.” One described it as “theater of the absurd.”

Ann Romney, who made the rounds of the three network morning shows, hardly pretended that she was happy as she was repeatedly asked about the speech. “I was thrilled for his support,” she said on NBC, trying to be positive. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin said on MSNBC that he “cringed” as he sat in the hall during Mr. Eastwood’s performance.

The speech was a reminder of how fleeting a successful political moment can be, and how carefully staged events can be upset by an unpredictable turn. And it suggested a slip-up inside the button-down, corporate-style headquarters of the Romney campaign in Boston.

Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks. For Mr. Eastwood, the convention speech was a bit part in a career that has had its political moments. Angered by zoning laws he did not like, he served one two-year term as mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea in California. In 1988, George Bush briefly considered choosing him as his running mate; he picked Dan Quayle instead.

During the weeks after Mr. Romney extended the invitation in Idaho, the actor’s role in the convention lineup was kept secret. On the public schedule, his slot was listed as “to be announced.”

As the last night of the convention approached, planners tried to keep a lid on the story even as Mr. Eastwood’s name leaked out on the Internet, hoping his appearance would be the good kind of a surprise, not the bad kind.

“If we announced it, it wouldn’t be a mystery anymore,” Mr. Schriefer told reporters, playfully.

Another adviser said that several top aides had reviewed the talking points given to Mr. Eastwood just a few hours before his appearance. They included a request to mention the millions of people who remain unemployed — something Mr. Eastwood did, though he misstated the number.

As actors sometimes do, he improvised.

Instead of reading off a teleprompter — something Mr. Eastwood is said to despise — he pretended to have a sarcasm-filled conversation with President Obama, seated by his side.

“What do you mean, shut up?” Mr. Eastwood said, mumbling to a befuddled audience. A moment later, he stopped again, saying, “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?”

“I can’t tell him that. He can’t do that to himself,” Mr. Eastwood said. “You’re getting as bad as Biden.”

Initially, there were no plans for Mr. Eastwood to take a chair onstage. But at the last minute, the actor asked the production staff backstage if he could use one but did not explain why.

Had Mr. Eastwood appeared earlier, many fewer people might have noticed. The networks began their hour of convention coverage at 10 p.m. Eastern time, which meant that Mr. Eastwood was the first act of the night for their millions of viewers.

He was scheduled to speak for about five minutes but stayed onstage for more than twice as long, throwing off the schedule for Mr. Romney.

Mr. Stevens, in an interview, said he would not discuss internal decision making, but he said that Mr. Romney was backstage during Mr. Eastwood’s remarks.

“He spoke from the heart with a classic improv sketch which everyone at the convention loved,” Mr. Stevens said, calling it “an honor that a great American icon would come and talk about the failure of the current president.”

Rush Limbaugh called Mr. Eastwood’s performance “bold.” But other members of the party faithful were not so sure. As they flew home from Tampa on Friday, some delegates grumbled that Mr. Eastwood was a waste of a prime-time slot that might have been better used to feature other speakers or the biographical video of Mr. Romney’s life.

Mr. Eastwood is generally liked and respected in Hollywood, where his colleagues often do not agree with his politics. Leonard Hirshan, Mr. Eastwood’s manager, said the actor was traveling and would not be available for interviews.

Mr. Hirshan said he had heard a chorus of response since the speech, divided evenly between those supportive and those critical. Mr. Eastwood’s next film, “Trouble With the Curve,” is set for release on Sept. 21.

“He does these things for himself,” Mr. Hirshan said. “It’s his private life. He believes in what he’s doing.”

Jeremy W. Peters contributed reporting from Kenner, La., and Michael Cieply from Los Angeles.

Breitbart.com editor-at-large John Nolte was more positive in his review, stating that the performance was "funnier, fresher, edgier, and braver than anything those comedy cowards Chris Rock, Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert have done in 15 years."

CaptHawkeye wrote:Like I said, it's too bad Romney decided to throw in his lot with a bunch as unsavory as the Republicans.

CaptHawkeye wrote:He's also made occasional quips and historically taken stances on issues that are surprisingly left wing. He's often had to back down from publicly stating these views after Limbatron turned the reactionary hate machine on him. Admittedly we don't know if he's turned into a hardcore Tea Partying Republican hate machine, but his history has indicated stances certainly no more right-wing than Obama's. I don't blame people for not liking him, i'm just willing to give the man more credit than most. He might very well be much more progressive than anyone has him pinned for, he's just using the Republicans as a stepping stone. Though i'm not asking anyone to accept that as fact.

I won't be voting for him, consorting with the current trend in Republicanism is a no-no for now. I just think it's worth pointing out that he's not that much different from Obama, and he's far, far superior to narcissistic wackos like Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, and Rick Perry. Things could have been much worse.

Patrick Degan wrote:I'm sorry, but there's just no justifying Mittens. Since he's now publicly rejecting all his earlier moderate and liberal stances, and has accepted as his running mate a dedicated rightwing hate machine eager to destroy what's left of the New Deal, it means one of two things: either he's fully converted into a culture warrior, or he's saying anything —anything at all (as evidenced by the outright lies both Romney and Ryan have uttered during and since the convention)— just to gain power. Either way, this is a man who is not to be trusted with power.

Especially as Romney has as one of his advisers on constitutional and judicial policy one Robert Bork. No, I'm sorry, but Romney's earlier words and stances count for nothing now. He's the front man for every retrograde element in the body politic who want to remake this country into worse than what it was during the Robber Baron era and would try to cut back civil liberties —particularly for women and the LGBT community— as far back to the 50s and past that point as they can get away with.

This same crew are also just itching to ram this country into another war and that's what we'll get with a Romney presidency. Things are much worse than if Ron Paul or Rick Perry had won the nomination —Romney has a better chance of winning election because he looks more reasonable than they do.

CaptHawkeye wrote:Arguably this same complaint is applicable to Obama. Even worse as claims such ending the Bush Tax Cuts and shutting down Guantanamo Bay never happened.

CaptHawkeye wrote:As for Paul Ryan, he's as bad as Sarah Palin. But his position as VP makes any of his proposals and plans little more than paper theory. Unless Romney dies in office he wouldn't be in the position to do anything too stupid.