Sometimes I get too mad to play nice on the internet (In reference to "Romney's Hidden Video")...

• H:
  J, I know you well enough to know that you don't feel entitled. Romney wasn't really given a chance to differentiate between every unique scenario because he was taped without him knowing it. I know a lot of the things I say to people who I know understand where I'm coming from in private I would want a chance to expound on if it was going to be shared publicly to multiple demographics.
• Me:
  I think that the way we carry ourselves should not change because of the group of people we happen to be addressing at the time. I especially do not think that demographics should become a platform (race, income, gender) for significant change (i.e. talking to wealthy people in a private conference vs. the public en masse) because this perpetuates classism. I do however believe that lumping almost half of the people that you are campaigning to represent in a group as being contemptuous free-loaders is a platform that is basically announcing that you have zero intention of upholding democratic principles. I don't want or need a president that shirks his responsibility to his people in favor of bipartisan sensationalism.
• H:
  Are you really saying that dependence on government programs is not a problem? Have you been to Nampa? I think Romney's numbers are off, but the entitlement he is talking about is a huge issue and I understand his discouragement with that particular group of people and their lack of political awareness. As I've said many times... My frustration with this video isn't because I am a huge fan of Romney. It's the same as the Obama speech that all the republicans pounced on and then wouldn't stop saying "yes I did build it!"
• It's an inability to look at things objectively and logically regardless of party.
• M:
  I never said that. What I did say is blatantly attacking and misrepresenting a large group of people based upon their voting alignment is unethical. Idaho is one of the most republican states in this country, and according to your testimony, Nampa has a large population of people that are utilizing government funds as they are available to them currently. I think it would be safe to say that most of those people actually view themselves as being republican, just based on voting statistics. So tell me how this statement that 47% of people are victims because they are voting for Barack Obama is not misrepresentation and sensationalist political babble?
• H:
  I don't think it would be safe to say at all. I disagree with your stereotype and furthermore (once again) this isn't about party for me.
• Me:
  But it was for Mitt Romney, and that is the whole point of the public outrage. Also, I wasn't stereotyping I was quoting what you had said. If you mean Idaho being republican, that also isn't my stereotype because voter data is there to back it up.
• H:
  No I think saying that most people utilizing government funds are republican is not factual and this is a countywide problem... Nampa is just where it hit close to home for me personally.
• Me:
  I didn't say that. In fact I was making a statement based entirely off of statistical likelihood. I also was only using Nampa as a specific example because you yourself were utilizing a group of people in Nampa as an example. I recognize that it is a countrywide problem, but Mitt Romney said that people that were voting for Obama were victims and dependent upon government handouts. The Nampa example works on that level because it is likely that a lot of those people that you classify as "depending upon government handouts" are actually going to vote for Mitt Romney. This was only to try and illustrate the ridiculousness of those claims in the first place (that who you're voting for determines economic and social class). Not to mention the fact that we are continuously condemning a group of people that have legitimate claims to governmental welfare because of a connotation that systems to take care of citizens are bad for our country in some way. I agree that there are problems, the only thing that I, and so many others, have been trying to illustrate is that demonizing people is not ever going to be a solution to a problem--alienating half of the population by calling them names and associating them with a negative idea is not something that a candidate for president should do.