Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Howard Fineman— Mitt Romney GOP Convention Rule Change Gives More Power To His Campaign


GOP Establishment reasserts control through rule change.
"All we want is to make sure that the popular vote in a primary is what controls the outcome in delegates," Ginsberg told me.
But the result will make state and local conventions irrelevant. And soon enough, the big convention will be irrelevant, too.
It'll all be big money.
The Huffington Post
Mitt Romney GOP Convention Rule Change Gives More Power To His Campaign
Howard Fineman

12 comments:

Trixie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom Hickey said...

No time for nonsense.

Tom Hickey said...

Actually I should probably have said low tolerance for fools and liars.

Matt Franko said...

Trixie,

IMO it's the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing that this Iran thing goes back to...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

"Some analysts believe the Islamic Republic of Iran was heavily involved and that a major factor leading it to participate in the attacks on the barracks was America's support for Iraq in the Iran-Iraq War and its extending of $2.5 billion in trade credit to Iraq while halting the shipments of arms to Iran.[16] A few weeks before the bombing, Iran warned that providing armaments to Iran's enemies would provoke retaliatory punishment."

This and other provocations over the years, ie "Death to the west", US is the "Great Satan", Iran's provocative statements against Israel, 9-11, etc... these are not good things to be doing and saying if you do not want large amounts of ordinance coming down on your country eventually.

There is a tradition of Persian conflict with the west going back 1000s of years...

The 'Warriors' have a big score to settle there... if Romney (an 'acquisitor', much evangelism in Mormonism and Bain) wins this will probably happen imo. "acquisitor' placating the 'warriors' for a while longer... keeps the warriors facing external.

A question will be the exact tactics... ie will they employ a new 21st century model drone warfare and precision to a much greater extent than previous warfare (less death)...

rsp

Tom Hickey said...

A question will be the exact tactics... ie will they employ a new 21st century model drone warfare and precision to a much greater extent than previous warfare (less death)...

The blowback will be an intensive and sustained terrorist attacks on Sunni Islamic governments that are US allies in MENA, Western nationals and property abroad, Israel, Europe, UK, and the US. Iran will also seek to disrupt the flow of oil, crashing the global economy. These plans have been laid for a long time and can be executed at a moments notice. War with Iran will not be at all like war with Vietnam or Iraq. Western senior military staff know this and they are the only hope of blocking military adventure with far-reaching consequences.

McCain is fool militarily, and it looks like Romney could very well be taken in by this foolery. The West should remember that they themselves exacted Dresden — Germany's cultural jewel — as payback for Berlin in a sheer act of terrorism and revenge rather than out of any military necessity.

It will essentially be the beginning of the world war that Osama bin Laden aimed to produce. The big question is whether Russia and China would tilt toward East or West. Russia and China being Eastern powers the likelihood is east. Southeast Asia would also be involved in the turmoil of essentially religious-cultural war sooner or later, since is already simmering there.

This would involve at minimum a further loss of "American freedoms" in the words of George W. Bush as the West locks its entire population down and seals its borders. At worst it could result in total catastrophe. A very dubious risk-reward ratio to starting a war with no clear objective involving a resolution. It would be an open-ended venture into vast uncertainty, the only certainly being creating a legacy of extending the Crusades that would reverberate throughout Islam for a thousand years and invite revanchism lasting for generations.

Nutty, unless the West and Israel are willing to mount an offensive against Iran on a sufficiently large scale to be ultimately decisive and that would threaten the entrance of Russian and China into the fray. So the West will not do this purposely, but could stumble into it.

Trixie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Tom Hickey said...

The history of black-ops US foreign policy has been overthrowing nascent democratically elected governments in favor of tin-pot dictators. And Americans are amazed at the blowback when it comes. Doh.

Matt Franko said...

Trix & Tom,

But why after the Allies just won WW2, would the Iranians not seek to "do business" with the west???

Why the rebellion?

Because they wanted to renege on the oil deal? Just like Quadaffi just did? And before him the guy in Venezuela Chavez?

Oil sells for $10 and they love the deal. Oil goes up and they want to renege on the original deal?

That's not the way it works...

When will these thick heads learn?

If the west ever moves off of oil, what are they going to do then????

That could be really tragic if the whole region melts down economically...

rsp,

Tom Hickey said...

1953 Iranian coup d'état

In 1951, Iran's oil industry was nationalized with near-unanimous support of Iran's parliament in a bill introduced by Mossadegh who led the nationalist parliamentarian faction. Iran's oil had been controlled by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), now known as BP.[6

Same-o, same-o.

Matt Franko said...

"When will these thick heads learn?"

Then again when will our thickheads learn not to get into deals with these people who always end up reneging?

Then our morons routinely get burned and then pull the political levers to send in our young warriors to enforce the deal...

All of this is based on the falsehood that TINA to petroleum.... I hope our military soon hurries up and comes up with an alternative liquid fuels system to petroleum and then starts to balk at being used to at some level enforce intl. commercial agreements pertaining to petroleum...

rsp

Tom Hickey said...

Looks like there's a problem with replacing liquid fuel on the scale necessary to support the currency lifestyle.

Battery Performance Deficit Disorder by Fred Schlachter, recently retired as a physicist at the Advanced Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is co-author of the 2008 APS report Energy Future: Think Efficiency, for which he wrote the chapter on transportation.

The real point is that batteries fall pathetically short of our customary fossil fuel energy storage medium. When we wake up to a declining global availability of petroleum, we won’t just switch over to electric cars. We may not be able to collectively afford such a transition, given the huge up-front costs in both money and energy. Where will the prosperity come from? If oil shortages drive recession in the usual fashion, expensive options may be off the table.

The affordability problem is two-fold. First lack of availability of sufficient resources on the planet given existing technology. Secondly, it would involve much higher prices for vehicles, basically pricing many people out of the market without a massive subsidy.

paul meli said...

Oil reserves are nature's batteries.

Our lifestyles can become simpler without massive consumption of useless products without everyone starving (I hope).

Trouble is, the Masters of the Universe won't be able to exploit us as easily (more wishful thinking).

Anyway, I'm pretty sure that if we can't learn to live more simply nature will reduce the human population to a sustainable level.

No biggie, I got my money's worth out of life, everything else is gravy for me.

The younger folks not so much.