Frankly, Mitt has shown his complete lack of cpassion and empathy already, by driving to Canada with a sick dog zOn top of his car and his high school "prank", but mostly by his reaction to those incidents. Every time I think about the dog thing, I think we are the dog in that situation, and I don't want a president who is going to tie me to the roof of the car while I shit myself in terror

I think all it really takes for a lot of fence sitters is one video of hungry children being fed healthy food with WIC/food stamps playing with Romney's voice saying, "they believe they're entitled to food" for a shitload of people to say THE FUCK? Lots of people on foodstamps, lots of people who are too poor to pay income tax actually do vote republican.

The difference is that Reagan's dog whistle of welfare queens was racist. It's easy to turn this into an attack on the working class red staters and hold up a mirror to them. "Yo, Mitt Monocle McTaxcheater is talking about YOU."

I think the key is that the people who have already been paying attention will be outraged and the people who haven't been paying attention will not notice.

This is what I think as well.

In other news, I am mostly packed!! And checked into our flight. Although suddenly the seats we picked months ago are now by the "WC" when I swear they were not on the plane map they displayed when I picked them. I tried to change them to comparable seats farther from a terlet but Virgin Atlantic's website is craptastic and I'm not sure I succeeded. Here's to liquor and getting up super early tomorrow letting us get some sleep on the flight. We can nap when we get to our friends' place in London but I don't want to miss most of a day. There is so much to See and Do!!

I think the key is that the people who have already been paying attention will be outraged and the people who haven't been paying attention will not notice.

Agreed! What's the percentage of voters that is estimated to have already decided? 96%?

But it's the independents that are up for grabs, right?

The cynic in me thinks that if gasoline prices are trending up in the first week of November, Romney wins. If trending down, Obama wins.

There are a fair number of low information voters out there. I suspect that they are at least proportionately represented among the undecided, perhaps more than proportionately. Unlike a lot of liberals, I use that as term for people on both the left and right. Many people simply don't pay attention to the news and current events. That does not make them stupid, but when it comes to elections it makes them ill-informed.

I agree with this; but for the most part, they're ill-informed because they're not interested. I don't see this as changing their opinion much simply because I don't think they'll hear much about it. To the extent that they do, I suspect they won't be moved much by it. The basic direction of his remarks is pretty much already part of his persona, and (this part I was dismayed to learn) apparently people simply don't believe Romney and the Republicans actually mean it when they go off the deep end.

That said, this election has an unusually small number of undecided voters. Closing the enthusiasm gap between supporters may be more profitable than trying to swing the swingers anyway. I could see this video having an impact there.

I didn't think he was quite so stupid as to say it so openly.

I may be wrong about this, but I was under the impression that he didn't say it openly, it was behind closed doors at a fund raiser with people in his own demographic. I guess it's no big shock that that's what "these people" think of "those people". You may have heard about the remarks from Gina Rinehart (world's richest woman), that people bitching about the rich should just work harder and drink less. (Actually, her remarks were somewhat more nuanced than that, but they were still predicated on... no, is too long. Allow Cracked to sum up: [link] Points 5, 3 and especially 4.) And then followed it up with complaining that Australia has a minimum wage while people in Africa are willing to work for $2 a day. Romney's remarks seem pretty much of a piece.

Dear Aussie INS- your website is opaque. Following instructions (literate web people) my SIL and I both got hit with the $115 visa fee offer. My clueless mother managed to get the right $20 one. You suck. At least the savvy ones know they've been fucked and cancel out ops.

Could you use any help with that?

It's not just a "I'm very rich" mindset. I hear it frequently here in Utah: What kind of lazy loser are you that you can't survive without a handout, ie, assistance you're entitled to. If you're on welfare, it must be because you're a drug addict or stupid or just too lazy to get a real job. Or you gamed the system so you can continue to live on a couch and play computer games and you use your food stamps to get booze (laws delineating proper use of food stamps regardless).

This is particularly hypocritical, because girls are told to go ahead and have kids right after they get married at 19 because there are all these programs to help kids, so it doesn't matter that you can't afford the kids.

Thanks again for the birthday wishes!

Count me in the cynical camp that doesn't think that video will make any difference.

It's not just a "I'm very rich" mindset. I hear it frequently here in Utah: What kind of lazy loser are you that you can't survive without a handout, ie, assistance you're entitled to. If you're on welfare, it must be because you're a drug addict or stupid or just too lazy to get a real job. Or you gamed the system so you can continue to live on a couch and play computer games and you use your food stamps to get booze (laws delineating proper use of food stamps regardless).

True, it's widespread. Which is silly, since IIRC, the primary driver of the rise in the proportion not paying tax etc is the continued greying of the populace. You know what really slashes your tax bill? Retiring.

What I'm so tired of is this insistence in everything on talking points that are simply lies, but they seem to think a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth. Just because people are not paying federal income taxes does not mean they're not paying any taxes. They're paying for Medicare and Social Security in payroll taxes; sales tax; state income tax; federal excise taxes; and property taxes. Counting these taxes, the poor generally pay a larger percentage of their income in taxes than the 1%, even without paying income tax.