Talk Elections

I smell the Obama campaign behind this story's timing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-prep-school-classmates-recall-pranks-but-also-troubling-incidents/2012/05/10/gIQA3WOKFU_print.html)

"Mitt Romney returned from a three-week spring break in 1965 to resume his studies as a high school senior at the prestigious Cranbrook School. Back on the handsome campus, studded with Tudor brick buildings and manicured fields, he spotted something he thought did not belong at a school where the boys wore ties and carried briefcases. John Lauber, a soft-spoken new student one year behind Romney, was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality. Now he was walking around the all-boys school with bleached-blond hair that draped over one eye, and Romney wasn’t having it.

“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled.

A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.

The incident was recalled similarly by five students, who gave their accounts independently of one another. Four of them — Friedemann, now a dentist; Phillip Maxwell, a lawyer; Thomas Buford, a retired prosecutor; and David Seed, a retired principal — spoke on the record. Another former student who witnessed the incident asked not to be named. The men have differing political affiliations, although they mostly lean Democratic. Buford volunteered for Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008. Seed, a registered independent, has served as a Republican county chairman in Michigan. All of them said that politics in no way colored their recollections."




And Romney's usual mealy-mouthed apology.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/226653-romney-on-prank-back-in-high-school-i-did-some-dumb-things (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/226653-romney-on-prank-back-in-high-school-i-did-some-dumb-things)

Mitt Romney said Thursday that “back in high school I did some dumb things” but insisted that the prep school pranks chronicled in a news story were never intended to target gay students specifically.

“They talked about the fact that I played a lot of pranks in high school, and they described some that, boy, you just say to yourself, 'Back in high school,' you know, 'I did some dumb things.' If anyone was hurt by that or offended by that, obviously, I apologize. But overall, high school years were a long time ago,” Romney said on the “Kilmeade & Friends” radio program.

Stop spamming.

Stick a fork in Romney. He's done.

Yeah, because posting a Washington Post article that is currently the first or second story on most political sites is obviously spamming.

Go get a life (and a dictionary) kid. 

Wow, f**ck that guy. What a dick.

That will keep Romney in a negative light. It's things like this that really add up into poor favorable ratings. That's a seriously disturbing story.

This is even worse than the dog story. What the f[inks].

Well, it's no news that Romney is a pretty horrible person.

^Exactly.

"The Washington Post can’t be bothered to worry about Barack Obama’s college years, college transcripts, communist friends, cocaine use, or cop-killing plotters in whose living room he first launched his major political career, but they can get in the really way back machine to 1965 and Mitt Romney’s high school years.

Mitt Romney cut a hippy’s hair at his preparatory high school. A day after Barack Obama caved on gay marriage, the Washington Post “coincidentally” says Mitt Romney cut the hair of a boy who “was perpetually teased for his nonconformity and presumed homosexuality.”

Let’s leave out the fact that the kid who got his haircut was subsequently thrown out of school for smoking one cigarette, but we’re to believe that the assailants of his hair, witnessed by many, were ignored. Oh, and the guy who got is hair cut never, ever, ever mentioned it, including to family, and died in 2004 so it can’t be verified. But a handful of students who now probably support Barack Obama have a crystal clear memory of events from 50 years ago. The people who were adults at the time of the incident and still alive have no memory of it, but remember Romney and said he was never a disciplinary problem."

what a joke of a story

While I generally don't give much importance to revelations regarding a candidate's past or private issues, being a bully is one of the few things I consider as absolutely unforgivable.

Not that I liked Romney before, but this makes him definitively an asshole in my book.

I agree with AmericanNation- this is a story from nearly half a century ago that is impossible to verify and questionable parts of Obama's past get glossed over...

That will not change perception.

It wasn't "cutting a hippy's hair", you awful little person, it was a hate-crime assault. It's disgusting, and the fact that you're brushing this off and attacking the victim is just as disgusting. And you clearly didn't read the article at all, because the story is corroborated by four different sources, all on the record, some of whom are Republicans.

Anyway, there are more really troubling anecdotes in the article, but as has been pointed out, this behavior isn't really surprising. Romney is clearly a hateful, miserable coward, who's spent his entire life sheltered from real people and protected by his family's wealth. Maybe now people will stop believing this nonsense that Romney is at his heart a responsible moderate, who would love to come out for gay rights and what not, if only those darn conservatives weren't forcing him to spew right-wing hate.

"In an English class, Gary Hummel, who was a closeted gay student at the time, recalled that his efforts to speak out in class were punctuated with Romney shouting, “Atta girl!” In the culture of that time and place, that was not entirely out of the norm. Hummel recalled some teachers using similar language."

"Lou Vierling, a scholarship student who boarded at Cranbrook for the 1960 and 1961 academic years, was struck by a question Romney asked them when they first met. “He wanted to know what my father did for a living,” Vierling recalled. “He wanted to know if my mother worked. He wanted to know what town I lived in.” As Vierling explained that his father taught school, that he commuted from east Detroit, he noticed a souring of Romney’s demeanor."

And here's the section about the story's veracity, so that people can stop playing the "there's no way we can believe this" card:

Well, those bits of Obama's past did get a pretty considerable airing in the 2008 primary and general election campaign, not to mention in some cases in a best-selling book authored by the candidate himself. Not to mention the ridiculous level of attention paid to completely groundless concerns about Obama (birth certificate? closet Muslim?). So I think it's a bit premature to complain about media bias here.
All that said, I doubt this story will have much impact. Voters tend to cut candidates quite a bit of slack for things they did when they were young.

In addition to everything Lief said, I don't see how the media's supposed lack of coverage of Barack Obama's past is in any way a valid defense of Romney's actions here.

(Also the idea that the media has glossed over Obama's past is absurd - were you people under a rock in 2007/2008?)

I'd believe this occurred...but to say it is a hate crime is an incredible leap
Also- and I'm sure I'll get flack for this- bullying is normal behavior...it's wrong and should be punished, but doesn't make one "sick" or  a "psycopatch" if they bully others at a young age

"What are you talking about? Of course the media isn't in bed with Barack Obama!"

Holding down someone and cutting their hair is not normal behavior.

After watching his pro-Vietnam protest video, this definitely seems like something Young Mitt would do.

I've witnessed it countless times

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/content-of-romneys-character.html

No one rises to the top of the corporate world without being a dick. I wouldn't be surprised if Mitt is a sociopathic creep. He is a nerd and was probably bullied himself, and is taking it out on the world.

More to the point, it's not acceptable behavior.

I would feel a lot better about it if it wasn't an obvious hit piece strategically deployed the day after Obama's evolution.  Also it would be nice if the "victim" was alive not dead or if he mentioned it to a single person over a 40 year period.  Where was this story 20 years ago?  It's a stretch to call touching hair an assault and "hate-crime" is ludicrous.        

"After four years of ignoring Barack Obama’s bullying of religious groups and others from inside the White House, it’s fair game to go after Mitt Romney as a supposed high school bully.

I guess we won’t hear the left whining any more when we mention Barack Obama eating a dog since, as they are quick to point out, he was a kid when it happened."

Just a miscellaneous comment - exactly why was a blind man allowed to drive? ???

The way gays are perceived nowadays is a far cry from that time...we all believed gays were simply rebelling- part of the 60s counterculture like hippies and potheads. As far as we were concerned- they were deviants who recruited others into their lifestyle

It was wrong- and is one of the reasons I am proud to support gay rights today. But it is important to understand this...what Romney did- if he did it- wasn' tunusual

In fact bullying does make you a mentally ill person, Clarence.  Just because our society encourages and thrives upon abuse, violence, and human degradation doesn't mean we have to accept it.  Sure, Mitt Romney will always be a rich aristocrat, and will never be called to account for all the people he has harmed (and may even be president), but there's nobody here stopping us from calling him what he is - the perpetrator of a hate crime.  (Well I suppose there is, but we'll see if they consider this a 'personal attack' on Romney).

Correct, hate crime was commonplace then. Is this a reason to absolve it? No.

Of course it shouldn't be absolved...neither should Lincoln's comments on the inferiority of blacks...both are wrong now and were wrong then- but this must be looked at thru a 1965 lens, not a 2012 lens

It certainly would be a stretch, I agree.  However, pinning somebody down and cutting their hair off is quite clearly assault.  Seriously, how on earth do you read through this story and conclude that his hair was merely "touched"?


Obama would have been aged 6-10 when that incident happened.  Romney was 18 when this happened.  Are you really that dishonest to equate the two?

And tell me, these blocks of text in quote marks:  are they copied from FreeRepublic or something?

RedState, actually.

The key difference here is that Lincoln is no longer alive, and therefore not seeking office. Romney is alive, and seeking office, today, and as a result does need to be judged by the standards of 2012. Presuming this story is true, he should probably offer a more heartfelt apology than simply saying that some pranks got out of hand.

I think you liberals are just trigger-happy that this has been a good week for Obama.

Hate crime? Really? That's insulting. What happened to Matthew Shepard was a hate crime. Getting tortured and murdered is a hate crime. Equating some high school bullying (which happens every day amongst teenagers who haven't developed the best judgement) with the vicious murder of a gay boy is nauseating. It totally devalues the severity of crimes that have been committed against people like Mr. Shepard.

Howbout, instead of jumping to conclusions that can't be verified, we use a bit of common sense, hm?

My music teacher has pinned me down on the floor and cut my hair because it was "a mop." Who cares? This sort of hypersensitivity is probably my biggest pet peeve in the world.

(and besides... if Mitt Romney was a bully, I'm sure he was an equal opportunity one :P)

In the old days, a lot of states didn't require vision tests for licenses (and even today, there are nine states where you don't have to get a vision test when renewing your license, no matter how old you are). It was pretty much someone's own decision entirely whether they could still see enough to drive.

...If candidate A is better than candidate B on an issue, you shouldn't go ballistic on A and support B(ignoring B's worse record) because you would be committing an illogical and fallacious act.  Comparison of an apple to an apple is fair game.  

The fact that people know more about Sarah Palin's past than BO's disproves whatever point you were trying to make there.  
  
"We do not really know much about Barack Obama’s constituent record in the Illinois Legislature.

We still don’t know his college transcripts.

We still don’t know what exactly he did for ACORN in his community organizing time.

We still don’t know all the details about the depth of the cocaine use Barack Obama admitted to in his book. Likewise, we know very little about his drug use in high school beyond just a few lines of reporting from 2007.

We know very little, outside of his own autobiographical spin, about how he overcame his rage at white people — something he wrote about, but again, as a politician in an autobiography.

We still don’t know about just how many communists Barack Obama chose to surround himself with.

We still know very little about Barack Obama’s ties to Bill Ayers and the media sure hates to talk about Barack Obama getting his major political start in Bill Ayers’ living room.

But the press is perfectly happy to go back several decades to tell us every salacious detail about Mitt Romney the teenager.

This reminds me of 1992 all over again. The George H. W. Bush team wanted to go focus on Bill Clinton the draft dodger from Vietnam because they couldn’t fight on the economy. Unlike 1992, Barack Obama has the media doing it for him." -EE

In other words, he was a grown man - and should have been charged as an adult.

No, the term 'hate crime' refers to the motivation, not the severity of the crime.  In both this crime of Romney's and the Matthew Shephard case, the motivation was the same - hatred.


You should sue that sadistic pedophile.

Ummm....

So if someone illegally downloaded Beyonce's music because they'd rather not pay a black girl, that's a hate crime? All right, pal. You stick with that.

What.

Republicans would have more credibility on these issues if they'd been more aggressive in squashing demonstrably false rumors about Barack Obama, like that he wasn't born in the United States or was a closet Muslim. By giving credence to these out-there ideas, they deprived themselves of the room to be successful with more conventional kinds of character-assassination stuff along the lines you suggest, and as they'd done with Bill Clinton in 1992.

That stuff started in the democrat primary with Hillary and the GOP "establishment" slapped it down more than anyone else including the media and Obama himself. 

The MSM is so predictable now.

I said in numerous fora last Summer that Romney -- as the most anti-Tea Party of the leading Republicans -- was the MSM's guy for the GOP nomination.  As I predicted, the MSM would give Romney a clear path to the nomination while launching insanely vicious attacks on any "conservative alternative" that popped up in his way.

But I told Romney supporters that as soon as their guy locked up the nomination, the MSM would -- with no more danger of Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, etc. becoming president -- then launch the non-stop campaign to Palinize Romney with nothing but attacks on his own and his friends' and family's personal histories.

So far, the MSM has made me look like a genius.

Btw, as a former newspaper reporter in D.C., I assure you the Post sat on this 47 year-old story for months or years, waiting for the right moment to drop it on Romney. 

Your analogy fails.

Okay, so because the timing of the story was evidently political*, I guess that means none of this happened and Mitt Romney never assaulted a presumed gay classmate in high school.  Got it.


* And in an election year?  Good heavens!

There's a lot more to the repubs than their establishment, as we all know.
Besides, on all of this stuff the voters are the final court of appeal. All of the issues you raise were certainly discussed during the 2008 Democratic primary and during the general election campaign. You may think they weren't adequately discussed; clearly, the electorate as a whole didn't agree. And now that Obama has been president for a term, he's rightly going to be judged much more on his record than on who he knew in college, or whether he or George W. Bush did more cocaine. Romney can be judged on his record in office, though that seems to upset him, but it's pretty much inevitable that any questionable episode from a presidential candidate's past will come up at some point. And, as with Obama in 2008, the voters will have the final say.

Well than MSM is executing a pretty dumb and predictable strategy, they should have dropped it a couple days before Michigan primary for maximum effect, and that would have opened another can of worms.

Based on what I said -- that the MSM favored anti-Tea Party Romney, why would you call the MSM "dumb" for failing to run stories to hurt Romney during the GOP primaries? 

Wow, how dare the media report news stories on presidential candidates during the election campaigns they're running in! The nerve! In respect for Mitt Romney and his family they should have waited until after he was dead to print this.

Not applicable.

Reason number 16,427 to hate Mitt Romney.

Wow, Mitt Romney was a bully in high school!?

This will be SO DEVASTATING to his run for the presidency 47 years later!

^

This should be a non-story; there are much better things we could be attacking Mitt Romney about.

But wouldn't they want Santorum to win if they are anti tea party? Bonus is that he would fail hilariously in the general.

The silliness on all sides of this astounding. Really.

Irrelevant.

There are like 100,000 more recent reasons to dislike Mittens.

Media Covered Romney Twice As Favorably As Obama During GOP Primary, Study Says
by James Crugnale | 9:10 am, April 23rd, 2012
» 57 comments

According to a new study from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, an analysis of 52 newspaper, television, radio, and web outlets from January 2nd through April 15th saw Mitt Romney receiving significantly more positive news coverage than did President Obama.

Over the past four months, researchers found news coverage of Romney was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, whereas Obama’s coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral.

Newsweek‘s Howard Kurtz observed that this analysis meant “Romney’s depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the President’s.”

“So much for liberal bias,” Kurtz quipped.

--------------------------------------------------------

Posted at 11:13 PM ET, 10/11/2011
Just nominate Mitt Romney, already
By Alexandra Petri

Other than the part of the evening where Michele Bachmann compared Herman Cain’s tax plan to the work of Satan, the Washington Post/Bloomberg Republican debate was fairly uneventful.

In fact, it reminded me why I dislike Jane Austen novels. It takes so long to get to what seems a foregone conclusion, and the protagonists always irritatingly fail to understand that the man who is “good” for them is in fact superior to the the temporarily exciting fling who wants them to run off with him in a carriage.

Mitt Romney has stopped running circles around the rest of the field and is now orbiting them several levels up. He seemed mature. He seemed awake. The fact that these characteristics set him apart tells you how bad things have gotten.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now they'll Palinize him.  (Don't forget how they told us that, as mayor, Palin sent a thank-you note to a welding shop for free flowers -- free flowers!  contradicting her squeaky image! -- and another one for an "awesome" facial.  Meanwhile, those 24,199 emails are kept under MSM lock and key -- but not before, for the first time in history, the MSM called on its zombie audience to "crowd source" them.)

yup.

Agreed.  The hate crime moniker is way overused.  Still, if this were to happen in 2012, it probably would have been caught on a cell phone camera and then Mitt would have been charged with assault unless his father the governor managed to bribe the victim with an out-of-court settlement.

You know what I have to say about that? TOUGH LUCK!

The way the Republicans have acted in recent years, they deserve what they get.

Underused actually.

Ummm...

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-friend-stu-white-says-campaign-wants-him-to-counter-prank-accusations/ (http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/romney-friend-stu-white-says-campaign-wants-him-to-counter-prank-accusations/)

One former classmate and old friend of Romney’s – who refused to be identified by name – said there are “a lot of guys” who went to Cranbrook who have “really negative memories” of Romney’s behavior in the dorms, behavior this classmate describes as “evil” and “like Lord of the Flies.”

The classmate believes Romney is lying when he claims to not remember it.
“It makes these fellows [who have owned up to it] very remorseful.  For [Romney] not to remember it? It doesn’t ring true.  How could the fellow with the scissors forget it?” the former classmate said.

OK, I think it's pretty much settled that this actually did happen, but he was in high school. It's not like it's going to affect his handling of the economy.

The people I know from high school who did garbage like what Romney did have not changed one bit. I've seen the garbage they post on Facebook 20 years later.

Yeah, that's really, really creepy if it's true. If a teacher'd done that to me I'm pretty sure I'd have called the police.

One, it's a woman. Two, it wasn't at a school, it was private lessons. Three, she also put a bow in my hair. Four, we are still good friends to this day.

All I'm saying is, sometimes people need to grow a pair.

A teacher wouldn't even get that far with me.  Hell, I would be going to the police.

Well, we certainly know he's going to bully holy heck out of the working class if he gets a chance.

Um... how did this little wrestling match end?  Were you at last a Man?

She cut a lock out of my hair, we finished the lesson, and she told me not to come back until I got a hair cut.

I'll tell you. I'm glad I got that hair cut.

Really?  Why?

Because I looked like an imbecile.

I hope you're not serious.

I don't know man, this is the 2012 Board.

lol

Romney is DOA.  He is the Republican version of Michael Dukakis.

You know, cruelty isn't a 'non-issue'. The fact that Mitt Romney was capable of doing a thing like that (-and it's a pretty extreme thing to do by high school standards-) says way more about him than whatever neat little policy on abortion or gay marriage he happens to espouse right now.

Uh, no. He's virtually Bob Dole.

Except Dukakis was good.

lolwut

Your story is bizarre and your teacher is a pedophile if true.

Ephebophile at most, wormy, as hagrid is not a little child - more like a teen lummox.

^ Seriously.

sigh.

Barack Obama was snorting cocaine as an adult yet Mitt Romney is being attacked for something that may or may not have happened? And if this John Lauber was really a homosexual, he'd probably be dead by now given what happened to most homosexuals his age in the '80s and '90s (e.g., Freddie Mercury, Liberace, Rock Hudson, etc.)

Bingo.

Perhaps it's time for somebody to start recalling the time that Barack Obama smoked crack?

If they want ugly, they'll get uglier than they can dish out.

Ummm.....what?

That's politico for you.

edit: and politico, you adorable little muffin, mr. Lauber actually is dead. Died in 2004. Whether it was from horrible Gay AIDS I don't know.

BTW, anybody remember the fake Bush AWOL letter?

Almost every gay person I know who were born during the Baby Boom (i.e., 1946-1964) died of AIDS in the '80s or '90s. The only exception is one who was born in the early '60s.

Says in the article it was liver cancer (which is commonly caused by Hepatitis B but that's irrelevant).  Politico has a bizarre obsession with AIDS.

I am fairly anti-homosexual but I think you should be banned for this.

We're supposed to ignore history, and ban people who bring it up? OK...

...

You are assuming this story is fabricated, because you find it highly unlikely that a gay guy would have lived to 60?  Do you have statistical evidence for this or do you think creating a list of 4 dead gay dudes is sufficient?

You'll be happy to know, I guess, that he died at 56 of liver cancer.

edit: a little late on the draw there.

Michael Stipe, Elton John, and Barney Frank can't possibly be gay. They would have died of AIDS by now ::)

Of course I am not happy to know that he is dead. I presumed he was the source of this story, and would be giving interviews, much like the allegations from the guy who supposedly wrote that fake AWOL letter regarding Bush. Now I am hearing this guy never even brought it up to a soul, which is odd. It is the sort of thing everybody would share with their friends and family.

This whole thing reeks just like the fake Bush AWOL letter did. The political timing cannot be ignored.

AIDS destroyed a whole generation of gay men. Are people, especially informed people on here, really not aware of this? It is common knowledge, I thought, even amongst young people today.

This thread is so bizarre on so many different levels.

Did I drink more than I thought I did earlier?

Ever hear of a qualifier? As in, "this is probably the case"? I did not make any absolute statements. And I did jump the gun because I thought this guy was alive, well, and the key source of the story.

Well, it's thread about Mittens, what did you expect?

I really doubt that this is turn-around since the gay marriage story, considering that would literally be an overnight fabrication.  I think this is a virtually unfalsifiable story (in the scientific sense), but there are points of suspicion -- Romney basically non-denied this, and not remembering something like this is pretty un-charming; and the independent verification doesn't really scream snow-job.  Like I said, unfalsifiable, but...


You are apparently presuming that they likely made up this guy's being gay, because he lived to middle age.  What percent of gays who were alive before 1992 do you think died of AIDS, exactly?

Michael Barone was a classmate of Romney's at the same elite private high school (Cranbrook), and said at that time Mittens was an insufferable brat. Some folks take awhile to grow up. Look at Dubya, who had to struggle for about 15 years to get into a neighborhood adjacent to being a responsible adult. But unlike some, both did in fact grow up.

I am not sure that I can make that claim. :P

The end.

100%, obvi. That is why I have never met a homosexual older than 35. They simply do not exist because they're all dead from AIDS.

That is all very interesting. Who knew?  :P

Er, just how old are you Politico? Did you spend a lot of time with older gay men or something? Or maybe you need to get out more. Just a thought.

Is somebody innocent unless proven guilty, or guilty unless proven innocent? This story is neither verifiable nor falsifiable.


No, I am assuming somebody sat on this story, and thought it would be convenient to claim the guy was "presumed" gay now that gay marriage is a hot issue. Surely everybody on here can take off the partisan blinders and see that the timing is not coincidental...


That would be a wild guess for anybody, especially when you factor in all of the Roy Cohns of the world and such, but I am quite confident it is over 50% for those who were born before 1960 and were sexually active before 1980. A potential proxy may be comparing the number of open/closeted gay celebrities born before 1960 who died of AIDS compared to those who are still alive.  Obviously there is a whole list of the departed. In comparison, somebody ringed off two names that fit the criteria, and I am not sure we can consider Barney Frank a celebrity per se, and it is my understanding that Elton John was not sexually active in a gay way until the late 1980s.

Another thing to consider is that most people no longer die of AIDS in America. They take excruciatingly debilitating medication to keep their HIV from causing AIDS. For most of them, their ticker goes, or they die of cancer, before they officially develop AIDS. It's really bad, and it's awful the type of things people go through. The numbers are quite misleading. Ask people who are involved in this area of health care.

Are you writing a novel or something?  This is all quite creative I must say.

It is a joke story! The media's quest to save Obama's failed presidency is getting even more sickening...I can't imagine what will happen over the next six months.

Any plans for the funeral, by the way?

What about "it's unfalsifiable" makes you presume I think Romney should be assumed guilty?  Do I think he probably did it?  Yes.  Do I accept unfalsifiable claims because they seem intuitively likely?  No; that's obviously your racket.


...I think you're kind of missing the irony between this and your last paragraph.


...exactly why does it matter if Barney Frank is a "celebrity" considering the population you're attempting to estimate?  I'm not one to accuse others of over-thinking, but you think pretty weirdly about this.

You seem to assume by default secondhand information about people being gay is false if they were of age to be sexually active in the 1980s.  What percentage of gays would have had to die of HIV before you consider your presumption to be valid?  What is the "cut-off" point, and what is your intuitive guess about what the number likely is?


Or you could, you know, find statistics instead of making these anecdotal leaps you're making.

Come on, Torie. It's ing awful what happened, and what is happening. It's not as bad, obviously, but it's still bad. I lost a cousin in 1987. I've talked to folks in health care, and they've told me about the side effects many folks have with the medications of the past twenty years, and how many people eventually just have one of their organs give out, or watch cancer take over. And, myself, I think it's awful how many people have no idea what they're leading themselves into without knowing the full threat. It's not diabetes. It's more like multiple sclerosis now. A painful, painful condition that nobody should have to endure.

This thread was entertaining.  We should have more of them.  That's the good part about Romney.  He'll provide us with plenty of bizarre things to spend 10 pages debating and sharing stories.

I believe somebody is innocent unless proven guilty. I know things work differently in some places, but I thought that's how it worked in America.


Then you're overestimating the importance of our posts on here, not to mention over-analyzing them. This place is first and foremost about quantitative election results, and secondly about entertainment and becoming better informed. IMHO, anyway. It certainly does not constitute anything becoming political football. This place is not important enough for that.


Like I said, the best we can do is come up with a proxy to help answer your question. I suggested gay/closeted celebrities born before 1960 and sexually active before 1980. You are free to come up with a better proxy.


If forced to give a hypothesis, 60% +/- 15%.


Or you could, you know, find statistics instead of making these anecdotal leaps you're making.
[/quote]

I would love to use statistics, but when somebody dies of a heart attack or cancer their death is classified as death due to heart disease or cancer regardless of the HIV status of the deceased. The only way to even know what's really going on is to talk to health care service providers, including doctors, who are involved with treating HIV patients.

This election cycle might not be as boring as I thought.

I am failing to understand why you think I disagree with you.  I said it's unfalsifiable and I didn't mean that positively.  However, my personal sense of judgment is not the same as the legal system's sense of judgment.  I get to be a bit more actuarial, you know?


I'm not sure why you think apparent internal inconsistency is "entertaining."


I assume you're looking at gay celebrities because information on them is accessible, even though it's obviously an unrepresentative sample.  Then, you exclude someone from the analysis because they're not in the unrepresentative group, even though information on him is accessible.  It doesn't make sense.


So, a 60% chance of a gay man of his age dying of AIDS -> assuming that his gayness was fabricated, because 60% is so overwhelmingly probabilistic?  What exactly is your cut-off for probabilistic enough to presume fabrication - 50.0001%?


You need to watch more cop procedurals.  Underlying causes of death are also listed.

Some people mentioned the Bush AWOL letter, but this screams more of the New York Times John McCain quasi affair with lobbyist hit piece that was as I recall right after he locked up the nomination...  

Everybody is entitled to their own opinions, but nobody is entitled to their own facts. The fact of the matter is that this story is both unverifiable and unfalsifiable. Some people will believe something that can never be proven nor disproved. I choose to not believe something that is not proven and cannot be proven, especially when political timing is all so convenient.


I am not being inconsistent. We are merely having a communication breakdown, and it's probably my fault because I am exhausted and have a lot on the go.


Like I said, the best we can use is a proxy to give us an idea of how devastating it was to a whole generation of gay men before medications became readily available. Everybody knows that homosexuals tend to dominate the arts. And clearly a whole generation of homosexuals in the arts were devastated by a deadly disease. Now perhaps it hit homosexuals in the arts harder than homosexuals outside of the arts, but I still believe it's a pretty good proxy after you downgrade the figures by 20 or 30 points in order to give a conservative guess.


No, I am suggesting that 60% +/- 15% of homosexual men born between 1940-1960 who were sexually active before 1980 became victims of AIDS/HIV.


When somebody with HIV dies of a heart attack, they are added to national statistics as being casualties of heart disease, not AIDS. When somebody with HIV dies of cancer, they are added to national statistics as being casualties of cancer, not AIDS. If somebody with HIV never develops AIDS, they cannot be listed as having died of complications from AIDS. The medications of the past twenty years are largely preventing HIV from causing AIDS in most cases, but they are only prolonging an inevitable death, although by a considerable amount (on average, they are probably adding 10-15 years compared to if one went without treatment). Eventually the heart goes, or cancer develops, and takes out the victim. The bottomline: It's not diabetes, even if most everybody wants to pretend it is.

There really is something wrong with you isn't there?

There's something wrong with all of us, I'm sure. I mean, this is an uber geeky obsession of ours (i.e., election results...watching returns on Election Day sometimes gives me more of a high than the Super Bowl).

As for other stuff in this thread, I am just saying it like it is. Maybe it will save somebody's life/health.

Well it's not boring because we get to watch Mitt shoot himself in the foot, but the election is hilariously predictable after Obama endorsed gay marriage, unless fate throws us a curve ball and a catastrophic event makes election competitive again.

Flip-flopping. Guilty as charged. What do you expect from a Romney supporter? :P

Seriously, though, are we comparing something that may or may not have happened nearly 50 years ago when Romney was a teenager to something Newt Gingrich did not once, but twice, and maybe even more times? Gingrich has confessed to cheating twice. It's not a stretch to imagine him saying, "Callista doesn't care what I do," but you are right: I can neither prove nor disprove he said that. There are exceptions to every rule, as they say :P

On point 1... sure.

Point 2... you're talking out of ... well, you get my point. I just need to understand the EXACT point you're making... you doubt the guy is really gay, because at his age... he should have died of AIDS?

As someone who's done a lot of work with HIV/AIDS research... I'd LOVE to see where you get that apart from your need to prove a point.

Absolutely not. Nobody should die of AIDS. I never said or indicated any such thing. I simply doubted the guy was really gay because:

1) Use of the qualified "presumed"

2) The timing of the release of this story

3) Because if he was really gay, the likelihood of him being alive and gay is probably lower than being dead by virtue of the fact that AIDS wiped out most homosexuals of his generation (i.e., those born in the '40s).

As previously noted, I assumed he was alive and the key source of this story. Alas, he is not alive. Apparently he died in 2004. Apparently he never spoke of this incident to a single soul, which leaves one to wonder if it is really true.

In any case, Romney has not been a teenager for nearly half a century. And even what he is accused of is fairly mild by 1960s standards, especially if one removes the "presumed homosexual" aspect that is so politically convenient at this moment in time. When Romney was a teenager, I STRONGLY doubt that he EVER thought of ANYBODY as being a homosexual. I mean, we are talking about a guy who grew up in the '50s and early '60s. I just do not buy that Romney picked on a guy cause he presumed he was a homosexual. It's a rather absurd notion, really, given the era he grew up in. It would be a different story if we were talking about the late '60s-onward.

jesus christ Politico I don't even

The round about thing is... that's utter BS. The death rate was high among that age bracket... but to suggest that he'd more likely be dead than alive is utter twaddle.

For example, my mother was in the beauty industry before I was born, so a lot of her friends are gay men in that age bracket, none were infected, let alone died of AIDS... that may be anecdotal, but it's a stronger evidence base than you're using.

Early death stats were shaky, as many died very quickly - however in Australia AIDS-related deaths, whether cancer, pneumonia  etc etc... are indeed listed as AIDS-related. Even if not known to be infected, that blood work is done at time of autopsy.

As to the story?

I don't care, he looked like the type who probably was a douchebag at school... I don't honestly think it should be an issue today. I knew people in HS that were genuinely horrible people, but 12 years later are actually decent human beings.

Speaking as a 47 year old gay man who became sexually active in the '80s, I can tell you that I have known many gay men who have died from AIDS, as well as many that are still living with HIV, and many who have never had it (myself included).

Can someone explain to me how this thread became centered around Politico and not Romney's high school jaunt down disturbia lane? :P

That would be Politico talking out of his proverbial ... you can't let BS like that stand...

At least we've moved on from Hagrid's creepy music teacher

Politico's strategy for protecting Romney here is to take this thread in the strangest possible direction so that that's all we can now talk about, and not Mitt Romney assaulting a gay guy in high school.

Between Hagrid's pedophilic teacher and Politico's declaration that this story can't be true because the victim didn't die of AIDS, personally I can't wait for Winfield to get here.

Who needs television or movies when you've got... this? All of the sadistic pleasures of a cockfight or a gangbang in nine neat little pages.

It's not creepy! She put a bow in his hair!

uh, ok, but I asked why you seem to be operating on the assumption I disagree with you...


You're complaining that you shouldn't make presumptions of guilt based on unfalsifiable/unverifiable information (although the latter is a subjective standard), and then proceed to do that in your next paragraph.  No?


Um, OK.  Let me walk through this:  You're trying to estimate the HIV death rate for the population "gay people."  You have a convenient subsample -- celebrities -- that are convenient because they're highly accessible, although probably not representative.  That's fine.  However, accessibility is the only criteria you're accepting celebrities for.  To exclude Barney Frank because he's not a celebrity makes no sense.  You're excluding him because he's not a celebrity, even though you limited your sample based on an issue (information accessibility) that is not a problem with Frank.  Basically, you're eliminating Frank because he makes your sample too representative.  It doesn't make sense.


Were you not suggesting earlier that this story was probably fabricated, because someone of that age was likely to due of HIV/AIDS?  A 2-in-5 chance is so improbable you're willing to assume fabrication?  You are definitely invited to my house to come over and gamble whenever you like.


...Did you just ignore my response about underlying causes, or do you think this addresses it somehow?

So cutting someones hair in the early 60's would be like what today?  
Telling a kid to put on a belt and pull his pants up?  

FYI, sports teams cut kids hair all the time to this day.    

This is a non-story obviously. But it's amusing how people think Obama hasn't been attacked at all. Did they forget what happened with Reverend Wright? Obama had to give an excellent speech to squash that. And what about all the Obama is a muslim bullsh**t? One network ( a very "fair and balanced" one) in particular pretty much came out and hinted that he was. And the rest of them reported on it constantly as well. Those who think Obama hasn't been attacked enough are just haters.

Reverend Wright is a classic example of the kid gloves Obama gets.  The Story was ignored for what five months?  Then it actually gets covered for two days... Obama gives a crap speech and the media fawns over his "momentous speech" and forgets about it.  

I don't know about all of FNC, but I watch O'Reilly regularly and he knocked that crap down more than anyone including Obama himself.  

I honestly don't know, but does Obama have any recent religious history outside of Wright's church?        

boys pull girls pony tales, it usually means they like them. 

girls put gum in other girls hair, it usually means they're jealous.

girls have slumber parties and do all kinds of stuff

guys cut other guys hair, typically in some kind of "team/tribe" context. 

This has gone on for hundreds of years  ...breaking NEWS, put it on the front page!!!

Romney wasn't a child when he did this, he was practically an adult and old enough to know better.

Back then more so than today, the age of maturity is two years older every decade it seems.

Romney is opposed to same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage was never legal in the Soviet Union. Therefore, Romney is a communist.

This is a non-story, whether it's true or not.

What's more interesting is some of the responses in this thread. We seem to have some masochists...

Do you really think any of those are analogous to the social dynamic going on with a group of near-adult males forcibly cut the hair of someone who's allegedly ostracized?  I'm not saying that happened, but if it did, do you really think it should be treated the same way?

Romney is still a bully.

1) you don't know that
2) If it did happen -- no one knows how bad it was -- it may have been harmless -- only the people involved know and the "victim" is dead and never told a soul. 

3)Meanwhile at the same age Obama was selling drugs, he was practically an adult and old enough to know better.

1. 18 is an adult and that's old enough to know better, no excuses.
2. Romney didn't deny it, he just gave the "I don't remember" response. Being held down against one's will is never harmless.
3. Stop making things up, it won't change that Mitt Romney is a bully.

Um....what?

This wasn't SAE....

I didn't make anything up.  What do you think I made up?

Maybe you should check up on the efficacy of HIV meds currently available.  Sure if you get full blown AIDS because you don't take your meds, that is another matter. It isn't the 80's anymore.

One of the most valuable skills you'll ever learn in politics is knowing when to cut your losses. Politico: It may be very instructive for you to just cut and run from this thread -- it's getting worse for you here, not better.

In other news, I'd just like to specify that it was a rather pretty bow.

As an addendum to the above, Politico, you know I have no animus for you personally, but you are just wrong on this gay sicks stuff - both current and for that matter past. You just are. Go research first next time. The winning argument here is that Mittens was in F'ing High School, and we all did stuff there to one degree or another, and folks grow up. After you "win," you let go. It's really easy. Why you then go on to lacerate yourself over irrelevancies, is just well - puzzling.

Anyway, you might ponder what I am saying here some. Sleep on it.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/10/us-usa-campaign-romney-idUSBRE8491B220120510

It's a non-story, he's apologised for being a tosser... let's move on.

This thread defies any existing mine and belongs in the Atlas Geological Laboratory of the Totally Unclassifiable.

It's a bad thing, of course, but there's plenty of stuff to attack Mittens about far fresher than 1965. 

No, but I remember the REAL Bush AWOL letter.

the correct term is 'grids.'

Politico's '50% of sexually active gays died of AIDS' claim is quite fun.

There were 76,546,000 people born between 1940 and 1962 (18 years before 1980), of which 39,038,000 were men and approx 35,000,000 survived to 1980. At least 7% of men have sex with men (MSM) which gives us 2,450,000 sexually active gay men (and regardless of what shams some of them were living in, you can be damned sure they were having sex)

So we are looking, if Politico isn't talking out of his ass (which of course he is) at some 1.225million gay deaths from AIDS; that's excluding those born before 1940 and after 1962.

A total of 600,000 people in the USA have died from HIV/AIDS related complications, of which 300,000 involved MSM. Based on figures from 2007, that includes those born as late as say 1989. So if we add all them into the mix we have a potential adult population of 20.1 million MSM of all ages, all born before, during and after HIV/AIDS was first identified set against deaths of 600,000.

Deaths from HIV/AIDS related complications - 0.29%. Even if you take just 1% rather than 7% of the population, you still have deaths at about 2%.

I know it was horrible but Politico's Liberace post had me cracking up.

Yes, Dubya was also a spoiled rich kid who bullied others at prep school.

This thread is delicious and effervescent.

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That's actually more dubious than Politico's claim, since he is correct that HIV deaths were highly concentrated among men born between those years, and also in the period when the disease was most deadly (late 70s to late 80s) cause of death was very frequently misdiagnosed.  AIDS did kill a *massive* amount of gay men, although claiming a figure as high as 50 or 60% is pretty unlikely.

I'll add that AIDS did probably kill most *openly* gay men - the reason being is that getting AIDS was essentially a forced outing...

at least romney didn't do cocaine, unlike the last 2 presidents.

I'm also not clear on why irregular recreational cocaine use, which might be dumb but is unlikely to directly affect others, is being treated as worse than severe bullying here.

I wouldn't say that with so much certainty, Young Mitt is starting to sound more and more like Patrick Bateman.
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^^This.

Here's your failed assumption. The real figure before 1980 was probably 1-3% (e.g., even Elton John wasn't having sex with men before 1980). One just needs to look at the levels of gay bars and bathhouses in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City to realize the figure was nowhere near 7%. Those joints were large and profitable, but not THAT large and profitable.

Go tell the families of victims of the Mexican drug cartels that the cocaine market does not directly affect others. It's ignorant to believe the current cocaine market, or the one back when Obama was doing cocaine, does not impact anybody other than consumers/producers.

FYI: I believe all drugs should be legalized in order to curb the gangsters.

Shouldn't you be a Gary Johnson supporter?

"Does not directly affect others" is NOT what I said.  I know of the Mexican drug cartels and have researched this issue.  I said it is "unlikely" to directly affect someone else, which is absolutely true, unless you mean that in the marginal sense.  However, I still think it is ridiculous to claim that the marginal effect of purchasing a small amount of cocaine is "obviously" worse than the effect of directly bullying someone.

Please do not extend your inattentiveness to analysis to reading my posts.  Thanks.

My stance is no different from Milton Friedman's, who supported Ronald Reagan in the same fashion that I am supporting Mitt Romney.

I do not need to agree with my candidate of choice on every issue. In fact, I never have with anybody.

I apologize for any misunderstanding, but you said that "recreational cocaine use" is "unlikely to directly affect others." I am sorry, but you do realize how cocaine is bought and sold, right (i.e., how the market currently works)? Every time someone buys cocaine, the cost of the cocaine they bought reflects the costs involved in getting the cocaine to them (along with a profit margin, of course). Part of those costs include extreme violence among warring drug producers (e.g., gangsters like Pablo Escobar in Obama's era, and the Mexican drug cartels today). There are few cocaine producers who are NOT involved in violence, and there are few recreational cocaine users who did not pay for their cocaine. In other words, recreational cocaine use is LIKELY to directly affect others in a violent, harmful way. Of course, the only remedy to ending the violence is by ending the black market via legalization. But that will not happen anytime soon.

The one that was printed off MS Word in 1970-something, before Microsoft even existed? LOL

True. Maybe this aspect is clouding my judgment. Things were more closeted back then, and most openly gay men ended up being outed by the disease. I probably know gay men who are older than 50 and still alive, but just do not know they are gay.


Maybe giving a range of 45-75% was wrong. But I am almost certain the number is not lower than 33%.

Yes. Let's get back to this. The whole AIDS thing is what it is, and there's no point talking about it anymore. I've said my part.

And you needed five posts why...?

Back on topic: Bullying isn't cool, but it's not like Mitt's going to forcibly cut peoples' hair on the campaign trail.

Well with Mitt's tendency for gaffes, nothing will surprise me.

This thread, in 12 pages, describes my hatred for the 2012 board.

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Mitt Romney reminds me so much of my high school principal that it's not even funny.

Elton John was open about gay sex as early as a 1976 Rolling Stone interview.  Not that you got anything else right either.

Yes.  Do you understand what "unlikely" means?


Yes, but these are big piles of cocaine we are talking about.  Purchasing cocaine certainly has a marginal effect on all these negative consequences of the drug trade, but my statement was that any individual, discrete cocaine purchase is unlikely to itself have a direct effect.  You're right that it contributes to the overall effect on the margins, but is the effect of its overall portion of the contribution obviously greater than the negative effect of tormenting someone socially?  That's not necessarily evident to me.


not really...even at your pre-revised figure of 60%, your original assertion still stands as really bizarre

I approve of this meme.

That would be as much a copyright violation as would be illegally downloading a recording of a Wagner opera conducted by Herbert von Karajan because one hates Germans.

Really? I thought Republican's were the party that's become really radical.

But the liberal media blowing things up from what a teenager did in high school and speaking about it like it' like it's fair game. Yet this is the same media who's completely trashed news sites that bring up Treyvon's martians suspension and marijuana use during that incident and speak about how what a kid does as a teen shouldn't be relevant to a scandal.

The problem with Republicans and Dems is you guys want to have it both ways.

How about people actually run a campaign without using retarded gimicks and things to sidetrack the people how about a campaign not run about someone's high school career, religion, race ext. How about people just run a campaign about their vision for America.

O wait I forgot this is what American politics has downgraded to.

I'm surprised no one mentioned the family of the kid knocking down this whole thing and ripping the post.  Also, a "witness" wasn't there and the "long bothered by it" was he heard about it 3 weeks ago... classic hit piece collapse. 

Well Romney apologised for it... so I think the issue as to whether it happened or not isn't really one...  HOWEVER, as I said before, Romney may have been a douchebag at school... who cares? It's a non-story as far as I'm concerned, much like whatever Obama did when he was 6....

?

Mitt Romney?
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Christine Lauber, the older sister of Romney’s classmate, John Lauber, claims she has no knowledge of the bullying incident involving her brother, who passed away from liver cancer in 2004. When ABC News showed Christine the story, she became agitated and somewhat emotional.

“Even if it did happen, John probably wouldn’t have said anything,” she said. “If he were still alive today, he would be furious [about the story].”

Betsy, another sister, spoke up about the incident as well. Aside from stating that the portrayal of her brother is inaccurate, she said the family is frustrated that the story is being used to push a political agenda.

“The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda,” she said. “There will be no more comments from the family.”

...“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and said he has been “disturbed” by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by The Washington Post. “But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks.”  ...This, of course, calls into question the notion that White was bothered by the incident for a long time (after all, he just learned about it).

I also didn't realize this was a prep school that the students lived at, which totally changes the dynamic.  A team/tribal situation for sure. 

I'm not reading this thread, but from what I understand, it seems that I'm not surprised. Romney is definitely an Alpha. He's a dick and people love him because he brings certainty into people's lives, even if it is at their expense. Everyone will rant against this but bar chicks  and co-workers like this....and voters love this for that matter. This is the only reason why Mitt could be 45.

http://news.yahoo.com/maxwell-brothers-tales-romney-hair-cutting-incident-differ-165926030--abc-news-politics.html

One of the Maxwell brothers has a different story of Romney's behavior.

What do Lauber's sisters' views have to do with anything? They weren't there, and it was otherwise corroborated. I'm sure they sincerely don't want their brother's bullying to be a point against Romney, and as senior citizens who went to prep school it's not hard to imagine they'll vote for him. But so what?

Because snorting cocaine in your bedroom is the equivalent of deliberately ganging up on and assaulting a kid because his hair-cut was too faggy.

Another lawyer is on the premises? Soon we may have enough to form a Bar Association. :P

Indeed :P