There is Something About Mitt Romney
Truly, America could have done worse than to elect Romney.
They could have elected a know-nothing marionette of the Koch bros in Herman Cain.
A tool of the evangelical and oil lobbies in Rick Perry.
Returned to the Dark Ages with Ayatollah Santorum.
Have the whole nation used as a mad scientist's laboratory by Gingrich, who would have colonies on the moon while school custodians are put out of work so little Johnny can bring home what had been a fraction of daddy's salary.
Voters could have elected Ron Paul who would have compromised National Security with absolute abandonment of foreign policy; overturned the Civil Rights Act; and eventually overseen the dismemberment and Balkanization of the United States of America with the destruction of the Federal Government.
We could have done worse than to vote for Mitt Romney.
But not by much.
Mitt Romney is troubling both in the campaign he is running and what we are seeing in him publicly. In running as a business man, he is putting himself forward and someone who would sell ice to Eskimos and offer dibs on his own mother if it would seal the deal.
His incredible insincerity makes him a politician's politician.
His principals and values are entirely dependant on who his audience is and whatever backers he is courting.
The fact that he has won the primary without winning the hearts and enthusiasm of his party forces him to continue to pander to the extreme right wing of his party long after should have shaken the Etch-a-Sketch and pivoted to independent swing voter. There are indications he may be attempting this with education, but so far his efforts are ineffective if not laughable.
When he speaks off the script, from the heart, Romney is downright disturbing.
His propensity to chuckle when confronted with allegations or examples of his own cruelty are well known.
Late mass murderer/rapist Ted Bundy would probably have been appalled at his lack of sensitivity.
When Mitt says that corporations are people, that his isn't very worried about the poor, that Detroit should have gone bankrupt, that the foreclosure crisis should run its course, that he enjoys firing people...he is being sincere.
The picture that emerges is that of of a materially driven sociopath.
His performance at Bain, which created wealth at the cost of jobs, factories, industries, and communities substantiates this.
What would Christ say about such a man?
"Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
Romney has said a great many things during his campaign. If you subtract everything that he later contradicted that what we can reasonably be expected to believe is considerably less.
Let us not forget that the first "serious" campaign commercial he put out was one where he played a clip of Obama's speech absolutely removed from all context from what he said.
Breitbart smiles in hell at the homage.
His "seriousness" was measured by his absolute willingness to lie. A pattern he has exhibited time and again.
His contempt for the truth and the intelligence of the average voter is uniquely Romneyian.
However he has also seen fit to co-opt arguments and promises made by the other candidates who had fallen by the way-side.
Promises to eliminate departments made by Rick Perry. Doubling and tripling down on Perry's and Santorums's threat to eliminate the Dept of Education and prosecute all of the other candidates' war on a woman's right to reproductive choice.
He has even seen fit to steal Santorum and Gingrich's mummery about Obama threatening to make America an atheistic and secular nation, which is indeed hilarious given how much attention he wants brought to his faith by Catholics and evangelicals.
However, his greatest oratorical debt he owes to Rick Santorum for his use of Projection.
I personally would hate to think that Romney would have the BALLS to claim the Obama will end Medicare as we know it when he himself is running on the Ryan Plan; that Obama's policies have unfairly punished women when the majority of public union jobs cuts as a sop to Conservatives are traditionally pink collar jobs; or to have the sheer unmitigated gall to claim that Obama wants to take us back to the failed policies of the past without Santorum first showing him the way.
I'm sure people have been struck by lightening for less hypocrisy than that.
It is not to Romney's credit that he grudgingly acknowledges that Obama has inherited a devastated economy when he relentlessly attacks Obama on his handling of the recovery while being so incredibly short on specifics regarding what he would do differently.
Except, of course, eliminating all regulation, cutting taxes further still, letting the auto-industry go bankrupt and letting the foreclosure crisis run its course.
Further, he ridicules Obama for blaming "his Predecessor" for the wreck the economy was in when he took office.
And it is HERE...in the things NOT said that the truth is found.
At no point does he he mention George W. Bush or the Bush/Cheney Administration by name.
Nor will he.
He has no end of things to say about Obama mishandling the economy. What he has never addressed is how he would have prevented the Wall Street Meltdown and resulting economic crisis if he was Bush, or how he would prevent it from happening again on his watch if he was president.
Nor will he.
He draws bright lines showing how Obama has violated the spirit of the Clinton Administration (conveniently skipping over the tax rate and investment in job training which were positive hall marks of the Clinton Era) with no mention of how Bush/Cheney had trashed the economy before Obama was ever elected. TARP was Bush's baby. Who remembers John Boehner crying on the House Floor to get it passed and recalls John McCain freaking out and dropping his campaign temporarily when he discovered that the "fundamentals of the economy" were sound as a block of Crisco in a grease fire? Good times.
There will be no mention of the effect of unfunded tax cuts, massive deregulation, medicare expansion and two wars conducted "off the books."
(Ken Lay smiles in hell.)
Not a word of which will pass Romney's lips.
Significant?
Maybe.
Reagan pioneered the credo of tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, union busting, gutted safety nets, off-shore manufacturing, and massive defense spending.
What it produced was multi-trillion dollar budget deficits, a crashed stock market in 1987, Saving and Loan Bailouts for "junk bonds," drug wars in the inner-cities and a racist police state to keep them in check (War on Drugs, Driving While Black or Brown, Stop and Frisk...now Papers Please.)
Bush and Cheney were true believers in Reagan and were so devout in their belief that they out-Reaganed Reagan in every way that mattered.
Res ipso Loquitor.
Like Reagan, like Bush, Romney sincerely believes that if a few people become fabulously wealthy, then the system works just fine. Regardless of how many become unemployed, lose their jobs, go hungry, made homeless, wind up in prison.
Not only does Romney believe that corporations are people.
He believes corporations are the ONLY people.
Not only would he preserve the Bush tax cuts, he wants to lard on another layer of his own.
He is ready to gut the safety net in a fashion that would make Reagan proud.
Certainly the backdoor welfare state of the Prison Industrial Complex will do well and become a wonderful growth industry when the Dept of Corrections becomes privatized.
Romney has repeatedly blamed regulation for strangling the recovery.
Trust him to put that contention into practice.
Further, he has made it clear that he seeks to pursue Bush's bellicose foreign policy and has many of the worst actors of the Iraq debacle to guide him.
Significant?
Absolutely. The only reason that World War 2 helped lift America out of the Great Depression and onto it's role on the world stage was because of deficit investment in manufacturing which was heavily unionized. It was Rosy the Riveter who made America great. Thing is, she doesn't work here any more. She works in India, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan.
Everywhere where wages are low and regulations are nonexistent.
Ergo, war only benefits mercenaries and war profiteers like Halliburton.
For tax payers, the dictum laid down by Chinese Strategist Sun Tzu is as true as ever:
No nation benefits from a prolonged state of war. It is simply too expensive.
Defense spending was a huge contributor to the deficits Reagan ran up and had more than a little to do with the mess the economy became under Bush/Cheney.
Romney is guaranteeing us an austerity economy under the Ryan Plan and loads of tax cuts for all his punters.
In short, he's setting us up to be the next North Korea.
A military super-power with a compromised economy is a circus strongman riddled with cancer.
If other industries fall on hard times like the auto industry did, they will die unaided.
Home-owners underwater will be allowed to drown.
Homelessness is not a concern of corporations..
As Bush was to Reagan, so Romney will be to Bush.
Its not about social or economic stability.
It's about making sure your backers get a nice return on their investment, regardless of how many lives jobs industries and communities get wrecked in your wake.
And on that score Romney has a proven track record.
Hey, here's a nifty thought experiment. Guess what Romney's Amercia will look like.
Imagine if the East India Company had become so powerful that it was able to do to Great Britain what it did to India.
Grab those history books, kids.
There is something about Romney.
He is cynically counting on our stupidity, amnesia, greed, and attention deficit disorder to get him into the White House.
I personally find this deeply offensive.
I remember.
I remember back before Bush the Younger was elected in 2000, while we still had a budget surplus.
I remember thinking that the only secure path forward was for the surplus to be invested in manufacturing and infrastructure - like a mini Domestic Marshall Plan.
But Bush was already campaigning on tax cuts and redistribution of the surplus.
I knew he would win and America would go to hell.
Now look exactly where he took the nation.
Now Romney NOT ONLY expects us to forget that Bush was ever elected - he expects us to forget what those policies did to our nation WHEN WE HAD A BUDGET SURPLUS!!!
The thing about Romney is this...
Arguably he was not the worst choice of the Republican field to win the primary.
He might even have been the very best choice to run for president out of all of them.
He still remains entirely capable of destroying America as we have known her.
We simply can't afford him.
They could have elected a know-nothing marionette of the Koch bros in Herman Cain.
A tool of the evangelical and oil lobbies in Rick Perry.
Returned to the Dark Ages with Ayatollah Santorum.
Have the whole nation used as a mad scientist's laboratory by Gingrich, who would have colonies on the moon while school custodians are put out of work so little Johnny can bring home what had been a fraction of daddy's salary.
Voters could have elected Ron Paul who would have compromised National Security with absolute abandonment of foreign policy; overturned the Civil Rights Act; and eventually overseen the dismemberment and Balkanization of the United States of America with the destruction of the Federal Government.
We could have done worse than to vote for Mitt Romney.
But not by much.
Mitt Romney is troubling both in the campaign he is running and what we are seeing in him publicly. In running as a business man, he is putting himself forward and someone who would sell ice to Eskimos and offer dibs on his own mother if it would seal the deal.
His incredible insincerity makes him a politician's politician.
His principals and values are entirely dependant on who his audience is and whatever backers he is courting.
The fact that he has won the primary without winning the hearts and enthusiasm of his party forces him to continue to pander to the extreme right wing of his party long after should have shaken the Etch-a-Sketch and pivoted to independent swing voter. There are indications he may be attempting this with education, but so far his efforts are ineffective if not laughable.
His propensity to chuckle when confronted with allegations or examples of his own cruelty are well known.
Late mass murderer/rapist Ted Bundy would probably have been appalled at his lack of sensitivity.
When Mitt says that corporations are people, that his isn't very worried about the poor, that Detroit should have gone bankrupt, that the foreclosure crisis should run its course, that he enjoys firing people...he is being sincere.
The picture that emerges is that of of a materially driven sociopath.
His performance at Bain, which created wealth at the cost of jobs, factories, industries, and communities substantiates this.
What would Christ say about such a man?
Romney has said a great many things during his campaign. If you subtract everything that he later contradicted that what we can reasonably be expected to believe is considerably less.
Let us not forget that the first "serious" campaign commercial he put out was one where he played a clip of Obama's speech absolutely removed from all context from what he said.
Breitbart smiles in hell at the homage.
His contempt for the truth and the intelligence of the average voter is uniquely Romneyian.
However he has also seen fit to co-opt arguments and promises made by the other candidates who had fallen by the way-side.
Promises to eliminate departments made by Rick Perry. Doubling and tripling down on Perry's and Santorums's threat to eliminate the Dept of Education and prosecute all of the other candidates' war on a woman's right to reproductive choice.
He has even seen fit to steal Santorum and Gingrich's mummery about Obama threatening to make America an atheistic and secular nation, which is indeed hilarious given how much attention he wants brought to his faith by Catholics and evangelicals.
I personally would hate to think that Romney would have the BALLS to claim the Obama will end Medicare as we know it when he himself is running on the Ryan Plan; that Obama's policies have unfairly punished women when the majority of public union jobs cuts as a sop to Conservatives are traditionally pink collar jobs; or to have the sheer unmitigated gall to claim that Obama wants to take us back to the failed policies of the past without Santorum first showing him the way.
I'm sure people have been struck by lightening for less hypocrisy than that.
It is not to Romney's credit that he grudgingly acknowledges that Obama has inherited a devastated economy when he relentlessly attacks Obama on his handling of the recovery while being so incredibly short on specifics regarding what he would do differently.
Except, of course, eliminating all regulation, cutting taxes further still, letting the auto-industry go bankrupt and letting the foreclosure crisis run its course.
Further, he ridicules Obama for blaming "his Predecessor" for the wreck the economy was in when he took office.
And it is HERE...in the things NOT said that the truth is found.
At no point does he he mention George W. Bush or the Bush/Cheney Administration by name.
Nor will he.
He has no end of things to say about Obama mishandling the economy. What he has never addressed is how he would have prevented the Wall Street Meltdown and resulting economic crisis if he was Bush, or how he would prevent it from happening again on his watch if he was president.
Nor will he.
He draws bright lines showing how Obama has violated the spirit of the Clinton Administration (conveniently skipping over the tax rate and investment in job training which were positive hall marks of the Clinton Era) with no mention of how Bush/Cheney had trashed the economy before Obama was ever elected. TARP was Bush's baby. Who remembers John Boehner crying on the House Floor to get it passed and recalls John McCain freaking out and dropping his campaign temporarily when he discovered that the "fundamentals of the economy" were sound as a block of Crisco in a grease fire? Good times.
There will be no mention of the effect of unfunded tax cuts, massive deregulation, medicare expansion and two wars conducted "off the books."
(Ken Lay smiles in hell.)
Not a word of which will pass Romney's lips.
Significant?
Maybe.
Reagan pioneered the credo of tax cuts, deregulation, privatization, union busting, gutted safety nets, off-shore manufacturing, and massive defense spending.
What it produced was multi-trillion dollar budget deficits, a crashed stock market in 1987, Saving and Loan Bailouts for "junk bonds," drug wars in the inner-cities and a racist police state to keep them in check (War on Drugs, Driving While Black or Brown, Stop and Frisk...now Papers Please.)
Bush and Cheney were true believers in Reagan and were so devout in their belief that they out-Reaganed Reagan in every way that mattered.
Res ipso Loquitor.
Like Reagan, like Bush, Romney sincerely believes that if a few people become fabulously wealthy, then the system works just fine. Regardless of how many become unemployed, lose their jobs, go hungry, made homeless, wind up in prison.
Not only does Romney believe that corporations are people.
He believes corporations are the ONLY people.
Not only would he preserve the Bush tax cuts, he wants to lard on another layer of his own.
He is ready to gut the safety net in a fashion that would make Reagan proud.
Certainly the backdoor welfare state of the Prison Industrial Complex will do well and become a wonderful growth industry when the Dept of Corrections becomes privatized.
Romney has repeatedly blamed regulation for strangling the recovery.
Trust him to put that contention into practice.
Further, he has made it clear that he seeks to pursue Bush's bellicose foreign policy and has many of the worst actors of the Iraq debacle to guide him.
Significant?
Absolutely. The only reason that World War 2 helped lift America out of the Great Depression and onto it's role on the world stage was because of deficit investment in manufacturing which was heavily unionized. It was Rosy the Riveter who made America great. Thing is, she doesn't work here any more. She works in India, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan.
Everywhere where wages are low and regulations are nonexistent.
Ergo, war only benefits mercenaries and war profiteers like Halliburton.
For tax payers, the dictum laid down by Chinese Strategist Sun Tzu is as true as ever:
No nation benefits from a prolonged state of war. It is simply too expensive.
Defense spending was a huge contributor to the deficits Reagan ran up and had more than a little to do with the mess the economy became under Bush/Cheney.
Romney is guaranteeing us an austerity economy under the Ryan Plan and loads of tax cuts for all his punters.
In short, he's setting us up to be the next North Korea.
A military super-power with a compromised economy is a circus strongman riddled with cancer.
If other industries fall on hard times like the auto industry did, they will die unaided.
Home-owners underwater will be allowed to drown.
Homelessness is not a concern of corporations..
As Bush was to Reagan, so Romney will be to Bush.
Its not about social or economic stability.
It's about making sure your backers get a nice return on their investment, regardless of how many lives jobs industries and communities get wrecked in your wake.
And on that score Romney has a proven track record.
Hey, here's a nifty thought experiment. Guess what Romney's Amercia will look like.
Imagine if the East India Company had become so powerful that it was able to do to Great Britain what it did to India.
Grab those history books, kids.
There is something about Romney.
He is cynically counting on our stupidity, amnesia, greed, and attention deficit disorder to get him into the White House.
I personally find this deeply offensive.
I remember.
I remember back before Bush the Younger was elected in 2000, while we still had a budget surplus.
I remember thinking that the only secure path forward was for the surplus to be invested in manufacturing and infrastructure - like a mini Domestic Marshall Plan.
But Bush was already campaigning on tax cuts and redistribution of the surplus.
I knew he would win and America would go to hell.
Now look exactly where he took the nation.
Now Romney NOT ONLY expects us to forget that Bush was ever elected - he expects us to forget what those policies did to our nation WHEN WE HAD A BUDGET SURPLUS!!!
The thing about Romney is this...
Arguably he was not the worst choice of the Republican field to win the primary.
He might even have been the very best choice to run for president out of all of them.
He still remains entirely capable of destroying America as we have known her.
We simply can't afford him.
Comments
Post a Comment