“…And one ring to rule them all…”

Posted on October 29, 2012 by A. E. C.

 ~ the nine ring wraiths…um, I mean policy advisers, that are shaping Mitt Romney’s policy positions. _______________________________________________________________ My father had a saying; “You can judge a man by the company that he keeps.” He would pull that one out and … Continue reading →

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Coerce the Vote!

Posted on October 23, 2012 by A. E. C.

~How some CEO’s use threats and intimidation to control their employees politically.

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Wow! Atlas Shrugged, but apparently he hasn’t done many sit-ups! Sitting on his throne all day hasn’t really done much for David Siegel’s girlish figure. Maybe he should get himself a gold-leafed treadmill…

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This is a posting from the Think Progress website. I thought that it was important to pass it along.

It was written by Scott Keyes on Oct 9, 2012 at 2:55 pm

The CEO of a massive timeshare company sent an email about the upcoming election to his employees yesterday, threatening to fire some of them if President Obama wins re-election.

David Siegel, who owns Florida-based Westgate Resorts, sent an email to all his employees yesterday to discuss the upcoming election. “The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job,” Siegel wrote, noting that the company is “the most profitable [it’s] ever been.” “What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration.” He went on to say that although he “can’t tell you whom to vote for,” if Obama is re-elected, it would mean “fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.”

Here are a few select paragraphs from the email:

Subject: Message from David Siegel
Date:Mon, 08 Oct 2012 13:58:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: [David Siegel]
To: [All employees]

To All My Valued Employees,

As most of you know our company, Westgate Resorts, has continued to succeed in spite of a very dismal economy. There is no question that the economy has changed for the worse and we have not seen any improvement over the past four years. In spite of all of the challenges we have faced, the good news is this: The economy doesn’t currently pose a threat to your job. What does threaten your job however, is another 4 years of the same Presidential administration. Of course, as your employer, I can’t tell you whom to vote for, and I certainly wouldn’t interfere with your right to vote for whomever you choose. In fact, I encourage you to vote for whomever you think will serve your interests the best.

However, let me share a few facts that might help you decide what is in your best interest.

[…]

So where am I going with all this? It’s quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company. Rather than grow this company I will be forced to cut back. This means fewer jobs, less benefits and certainly less opportunity for everyone.

So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn’t? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job. While the media wants to tell you to believe the “1 percenters” are bad, I’m telling you they are not. They create most of the jobs. If you lose your job, it won’t be at the hands of the “1%”; it will be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this country.

You can view the email in full here.

Siegel earned national notoriety this year for his quest to build the biggest house in America, “a sprawling, 90,000-square-foot mansion inspired by Versailles.”

In a bizarre twist, Siegel’s email was modeled after a fake letter that made the rounds on the internet during the last presidential election. He confirmed his own email’s authenticity in a phone call to Gawker, saying that “it speaks the truth” and gives employees “something to think about when they go to the polls.”

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Peace through meaningless slogans

Posted on October 22, 2012 by A. E. C.

Mr Romney and Congressman Ryan are fond of tossing around slogans that are cloaked in a 50’s era bravado like: “peace through strength.” But no one seems willing to ask the all important follow up question to that bumper sticker pronouncement; What does that mean?

Since it is safe to assume that no clear answer would be forthcoming from Messieurs Romney and Ryan (because there have never been any clear answers forthcoming from either of them about anything else…) we must assume that a literal understanding of that slogan means that presumably our enemies won’t attack us under the leadership of a Romney/Ryan administration because they fear us, or more specifically, they fear what we would do to them in retaliation for their attack on us. This supposition has its philosophical roots in the concept of “MAD” or Mutually Assured Destruction which was the keystone dynamic of the entire Cold War; the premise that if you shoot your nukes at us, we will shoot our nukes at you and everyone ends up dead. Nobody wins.

Well, that strategy worked well enough then. But here’s the problem with employing that strategy now; How do you sell it to someone that is willing to strap on a bomb vest and blow himself up in order to kill anyone. The terrorist mindset, indeed the fundamental operational theory underlying terrorism as a battle tactic, is that the scenario of “everyone ends up dead” is, in their view, a winning strategy. It is, in fact, the entire point.

So, given this new paradigm of conflict, how does a “peace through strength” foreign policy strategy play out in our favor? There is only one way that it can; and that is to kill all of the terrorists before they kill us and themselves. Thus convincing whoever is left alive to live a peaceful and productive life. Wow! Great idea. Except that in order to kill all of the terrorists you would need to first know who they are and then when and where they are going to strike before they act. The dynamic of a “peace through strength” policy within the paradigm of a terrorist “let’s all die” mindset must, if it is to be successful, be entirely “preemptive.” There is in fact, no other way for such a strategy to function.

You, clever person that you are, have probably asked yourself by this point “Well if it is entirely “preemptive” and we are killing thousands of “civilians” in the process, how can we ever achieve our objective (that objective being Peace, in case you got a little confused back there…)?

Right. So how do you do that? Perhaps, more importantly, how do you do that without actually killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people from whom we cannot accurately distinguish the terrorists?

Or doesn’t that matter?

The simple truth is that war in the 21st century is asymmetrical. There are no enemy lines, there are no meaningful borders, there are no “troops” and there are no conventions that dictate how, where, or when a terrorist attacks us. So how do you successfully prosecute a policy of “peace through strength” if the primary battle tactic of your enemy is to kill you and everyone around you, by first killing himself?

The simple truth is that you can’t successfully prosecute a war on tactics, which is what our war on terror actually represents. How else can it possibly be characterized? We are not fighting this war the way that wars have been fought throughout the centuries; We are not fighting this war to gain territory or mineral rights or access to maritime shipping lanes. We are not fighting this war against a specific and stated ideology. Not really. I mean there is a kind of laundry list of cultural differences that we can list in trying to create a narrative that would describe our enemy. But that construct is nebulous and generic at best (which is why, I believe, that many people have taken the fall back position of just hating Muslims in general, even though Muslims have been a part of our society for decades without incident or trouble…). Yes, there are religious zealots and extremists that do subscribe to a particularly convoluted, strident and insidious form of the Islamic faith. But the vast majority of Muslims will tell you that the narrow, myopic version of Islam that these strange people cling to is utterly and completely foreign to them. They will tell you ( if you will listen with an open mind…) that those people represent some sort of cult-like subset of regressive Islamic “literalists” that conscript their legions through lies and intimidation. They prey on the fear and hopelessness of poor, ignorant peasants. They are in fact a mystery to them and they do not understand them or their motivations any more than the rest of us.

We are told over and over by each administration that enters office; that “we will not negotiate with terrorists.” That is a true statement and a sound philosophy. Another true statement would also be that “We could not negotiate with terrorists even if we were willing to do so…”

I mean, think about it for a minute; How could you possibly have anything to offer someone that has already strapped on a vest full of explosives, or has set himself on some equally self destructive course ( such as flying airplanes into buildings ). Forget about it. That’s like trying to negotiate with stage four cancer. The fundamental concept is quite simply nonsensical.

But if we allow ourselves to continue that metaphor a little further; To defeat cancer before it spreads, we must first recognize it for what it is ( and also what it is not…) and then we must take steps to eliminate it before it reaches a stage that makes its removal a practical impossibility. Our doctors tell us over and over that prevention is the best cure.

I think that we can all agree that this advice is good for all aspects of living a long and productive life. I mean, no one would ever say that the best way to fight cancer is to pretend that it isn’t there and then, when it is about to kill us, attack it with irrevocable overwhelming force, killing most of the healthy tissue along with the cancer in the process. Wait a minute… You know, now that I think about it, that is the way that many people deal with cancer.

I think we all know how that story ends…

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Benghazi & The Semantics of “Defense”

Posted on October 22, 2012 by A. E. C.

It is a sad, sobering fact of political struggle and the inevitable conflict and retaliatory violence that arise from that struggle, that innocent people are often killed or injured. We have witnessed the grisly evidence of that fact from a relatively safe distance, throughout the Middle East during the course of what has been characterized as “The Arab Spring” which ironically began with a Tunisian street vender setting himself on fire in a fit of impotent rage and frustration. This act, as well as the set of circumstances that allowed it to manifest itself in this way, is completely alien to our cultural sensibilities.

In a western world that is now forced to deal with the new reality of global terrorist acts, the mortality rate and the collision of radically differing cultural mindsets, rises exponentially. We have seen it time and time again yet it is still difficult for us to fathom how and why these savage and senseless acts of violence can occur. And while it is at certain times, more vividly obscene in terms of its scale or its immediate proximity, such as in the case of 9/11 and the carnage and devastation that took place on our shore and in front of our collective eyes on that fateful day, it is nevertheless, morally no less significant when this violence happens in a remote outpost, thousands of miles away from our eyes and our lives.

I was 3000 miles away from New York on September 11th, 2001. As I sat, blurry eyed, on my sofa with my morning coffee ( it was six o’clock in the morning in California when those horrible events began to unfold ), and I turned on my television to watch the usual patter of Katie and Matt, what I was instead greeted with were scenes that my still half asleep mind could not immediately process. I can still distinctly remember thinking in those first few moments that I was seeing a trailer for some new disaster movie.

When I was finally able to comprehend the truth of what I was seeing I felt the air leave me as if I had just been sucker punched in the gut. Tears would come, but not until much later. The enormity of the event left me in a suspended state emotionally. I did not know what or how to feel.

I shared that dissociative state with the rest of the stunned nation as we watched the world changing before our eyes. But as that collective wound healed, it left a scar, a kind of emotional callus with which we could better weather the treachery and violence of this new paradigm that had been thrust upon our collective consciousness.

In the aftermath of that event we did many things; we created a massive bureaucratic structure which we named the “Dept of Homeland Security”. We created a commission to examine the weaknesses of our intelligence and investigative infrastructure and how their counter productive hostility and mistrust of each other allowed critical dots in the progression of events to remain unconnected and thus left us open to such an attack.

We debated the merits of various solutions and we eventually came to a difficult and grudging consensus on how to approach the problems at hand. We are still at odds with the attempts that have been made to make us more secure as a nation while still maintaining the basic freedoms and liberties that make us unique in the world. We all agreed that changes needed to be made. We were able to make our nation more secure. But none of us are so stupid as to believe that we are now safe.

We made the door stronger but the wolf is still out there on the other side of it. We know that and we accept the truth of the world as it is now. The brave men and women that choose to be part of our diplomatic corp, just as those who choose to join the various branches of our military, accept the fact that the important and difficult work that they do puts them in harm’s way.

To our credit, the one thing that we did not do in those difficult days immediately after the attacks on 9/11 was to insult the victims and their families by reducing the event to a political sideshow. We did not sully the sentiments of a grieving nation by casting blame and unsupported accusations of negligence or cover-ups on the Bush administration and the various relevant agencies under its purview. We understood, intuitively, that to do so would be wrong. We understood that to do so would only make us weaker and more exposed. We understood that what we needed to do in that moment was to draw closer to one another. We understood that the enemy and the greater threat to everything that we held dear was external. We understood that war had been brought to our door. We understood that in times like that a nation must act (and react) as one.

So here’s the thing; when did that fundamental truth change? When did it suddenly become acceptable to cast blame and unsupported accusations of conspiracies and cover-ups on our President and his administration before any actual investigation had been completed and as the nation and the families of those that had been lost, still grieved?

The answer is that it didn’t. It is not acceptable to do those things for pure, craven, political gain. Yet that is exactly what is happening. And to do so is quite simply PROFANE!

The “kangaroo court” that is being presented to the public by Congressman Issa under the guise of a “congressional investigation” reeks of calculated partisan grandstanding of a grade and quality that would be the equal of any such posturing ever attempted by Joseph McCarthy.

While I believe that it is prudent to avoid speculation regarding the circumstances and the impetus of the attack until a thorough investigation of the facts provides us with some honest answers, I think that a thorough examination of the political shell game that left us vulnerable to it is fair game…

For instance, consider this interview conducted by the Christian Science Monitor of Scott Lilly, who spent three decades as a senior staffer for Democrats in Congress, often working on budget matters, and now a fellow at the Center for American Progress in Washington DC. He says that the cuts that have been sought by Congress have been steep since the new House sat in 2011.

The Worldwide Security Protection program ( WSP ), which the government says provides “core funding for the protection of life, property, and information of the Department of State,” and a separate embassy security and construction budget, which in part improves fortifications, have both been under fire.”

In 2011 Congress passed a continuing resolution for the remainder of that fiscal year. “The House proposed a $70 million cut in the WSP program and they proposed a $204 million cut in Embassy security funding,” says Mr. Lilly. “Then the next year, fiscal 2012, they cut WSP funding by $145 million and embassy security funding by $376 million. This year’s bill is the same thing all over again. The House has proposed cuts to the WSP budget by $149 million below the Administration’s request. That’s not the actual budget – simply the Republican negotiating position. The Senate and the President have sought more money than the House for embassy security, but the horse-trading between them means that the State Department ultimately ends up with significantly less than it requested.

For instance, in the fiscal 2012 budget, the cuts over the State Departments’ request were “whittled back by the Senate,” down to $109 million for the WSP program and $131 million for embassy security, restoring $88 million of the administration’s request.

“We’ve got something like 260 embassies and consulates around the world, and there’s a remarkable number of them that aren’t anywhere close to “Inman” standards and are still particularly dangerous,” says Lilly. “Inman standards” refers to the report written by Admiral Bobby Ray Inman on US building security abroad after the 1983 Marine barracks bombing in Beirut that left 241 US troops and 58 French soldiers dead. Nearly 30 years later, many US consulates and embassies abroad still do not meet the Inman standards.

Lilly recalls traveling to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, on a congressional delegation years ago and finding the embassy, in a crumbling old Soviet party building, cramped and nowhere near a safe offset from the road to guard against attacks. “They had file cabinets on landings of stairways because they had so little room, the building was barely five feet off the road,” he says. “It was so bad that I got Bob Livingston, who was the chairman of the appropriations committee at the time, to cancel an event and go look at it. He was so upset that he put an earmark in a bill to fix it.”

CS Monitor suggested to Lilly that if there weren’t enough trained personnel for diplomatic protection in Libya, then maybe Ambassador Stevens should have reined in his operation and done less. Basically just bow to the limitations. Lilly pushed back on that idea: “If the foreign service took that attitude, a hell of a lot less of this really important work would get done. These people know that they’re taking risks just by being in these places. They’re pretty adventuresome and they’ve got to get out and do the job.” he says. “Benghazi is a critical part in the formula for creating a stable environment in Libya, and Stevens knew that he had to get out and work on it.”

To be sure, US missions abroad are generally much safer now than they were years ago, thanks to the partial implementation of the Inman standards and a major overhaul of security measures after the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on three US embassies in Africa. Adam Serwer at Mother Jones wrote earlier this week on embassy security in a piece that has a chart on attacks on US diplomats going back to 1970. It shows that annual attacks have declined sharply since they peaked at over 30 attacks in 1991.- via Libya attack: Congressmen casting blame voted to cut diplomatic security budget – CSMonitor.com.

Last year Secretary of State Clinton warned that the Republican’s proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security.” – a charge that Republicans rejected.

Congressmen Ryan, Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, so-called “non-defense” discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed by nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts in embassy security.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-forget-about-b…

Congressman Ryan rails about an alleged projection of weakness being shown by the President and his administration. He decries that any cuts to defense spending leaves us vulnerable. Given the rank hypocrisy of Ryan’s political duality regarding this matter, it would seem that a new definition of the meaning of “Defense” should be supplied by the congressman and those of his party that would boost spending to supply money for projects in Congressional districts where defense contractors are located. Contractors that donate huge sums to Republican campaigns. But the funding for embassy security does not provide any such “return on investment” and therefore suffers on the altar of “fiscal responsibility.”

What really shows weakness to our enemies is a lack of unity. When they see us factionalized and fighting with one another in a time of crisis. When they see us recklessly accusing and betraying one another for pure political gain, we justify all of their worst beliefs about us.

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Episode IV: A New Hope

Posted on October 13, 2012 by A. E. C.

~thoughts on the Vice Presidential debate

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Let me say three things at the outset:

  • Joe Biden won the Vice Presidential debate.
  • Enthusiasm and assertiveness in defense of the truth is no vice.
  • Despite any implications to the contrary by my choice of titles, I will forgo any lame analogies to Star Wars themes or characters ( well… at least I will try… “There is no try, only do…or do not.”  Doh! ).

For those of you that are perhaps too young or, conversely, have become too feeble minded, to remember his pivotal speech during the 1964 Presidential campaign, I’ve paraphrased a former senator from Arizona named Barry Goldwater in my second point. I did this to illustrate a premise within the context of the right wing’s contention that Vice President Biden was too vociferous in his demeanor during his frequent rebuttals of congressman Ryan’s numerous erroneous statements in Thursday night’s debate. And I thought it appropriate to do that by employing the sentiment, if not the actual words, of a prominent Republican. One that is, in fact, still revered by some remaining vestiges of what has become, for all intents and purposes, our father’s Republican party.

While not correlative in representing an ideology in the same way that the actual verbatim slogan represented the political philosophy of that Senator from Arizona, it does, I think, accurately characterize the mission strategy of the Vice President in his approach to the debate.

Joe Biden went into the Vice Presidential debate on Thursday with a mandate: Bring the fight to the enemy. Stop the rampant and uninhibited false narrative that had been created and recreated in an almost asymmetrical fashion by the Romney campaign, thereby setting the record straight, in real time. And in doing so, begin to change the energy and momentum of the contest.

Joe Biden did that as only Joe Biden can; with dramatic, yet deeply authentic, bravado.

He also did something else in the process; something that is, in many ways, difficult to measure or quantify, but nevertheless essential in generating the all important energy and enthusiasm that is needed to prevail in a contest of this size and import. He gave the democratic base something that it has been lacking for the entire campaign season; a raucous and bruising primary style debate.

Here’s the thing: We have watched bemusedly over the course of many months as the Republicans have, metaphorically, devoured their young. References to the Greek Myths aside, it has been a strange slow motion train wreck of a primary season for the Republicans but at least they have been in that fight, while we on the Left have been spectators to it. Sitting and watching them from our primary-free sidelines as they fought and grew tougher, or if not “tougher” at least more wily.

The President and Vice President entered this campaign unchallenged. There was no winnowing out of lesser contenders and there was no seasoning or honing of combat tactics against a series of worthy opponents.

In the 08′ campaign Senator Barack Obama had to fight for his life in a brutal series of primary tests that prepared him ( and his supporters ) for an equally difficult campaign against the Republicans. In doing so he not only prepared himself mentally and physically for the challenge but in the process he generated an unprecedented amount of enthusiasm from a broad and strategic base of support.

I think we can all agree that being the President of the United States is a tough gig. I think that we can also agree that no President in the recent history of the republic ( with the possible exception of FDR ) as arrived at the big desk in the oval room with the deck stacked so heavily against him. It can take a lot out of a man during the course of a “normal” term, but the “sack of woe” that Barack Obama found waiting for him on January 20th 2009 was not even in the same zip code as normal. In addition to that, being the President requires a completely different rhythm and perspective than becoming the President.

In dealing with foreign dignitaries and heads of state ( and for that matter, home-grown, congressional adversaries…) that can often be difficult in their behavior and duplicitous in their intentions, a sitting President must adopt an air of strength and conciliation. It is a difficult balance to achieve and maintain. Many have fallen short, but Barack Obama has displayed an innate sense in this area. It has served him well and helped him weather some treacherous times in his freshman term. But that same rhythm and balance that has informed his work as the President has, perhaps counter-intuitively, impeded his work as a candidate, ironically, for the very office in which he is now serving.

That cognitive dissonance presented itself in the President’s demeanor during the first debate and was, I believe, the primary causative factor in his seemingly listless and laconic performance.

I believe that Joe Biden has, through his combative and heartening performance, forged a path to regaining that elusive campaign edge that the rigors of the office of the POTUS have dulled in President Obama and will allow him to once again become candidate Obama. It’s in him. We all know that it is. It has just needed a means to find its way to the fore once again.

Round two is about to begin. Sometimes it takes a poke in the nose and the taste of your own blood to get your head in the fight. When that bell rings I’m betting on the champ.

Forward!

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Performance Art

Posted on October 10, 2012 by A. E. C.

~thoughts on the recent event that was billed as a Presidential debate

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OK. So, that happened…

I’m not happy with the outcome, but neither am I willing to stipulate that Mr Romney can rightfully claim any true victory. Here’s why:

To state that one candidate won and the other lost would be to imply that the “debate” actually had rules and that there were judges keeping score and allotting points. If we use this as our gauge, then it is clear that the staged appearance did not, in any way, resemble an actual debate. It was a performance piece, pure and simple. Based on that criteria I would have to say that Mr. Romney put on a better performance than did the President.

This semblance of a debate gives both sides a lot of latitude to declare some form of victory. Here’s the thing: All Romney had to do was look like someone that could play the President on TV and his people could claim “victory.” President Obama needed to not only maintain the image and stature of being the President but in addition, also show us that he could stand up to bullies and liars and not allow his opponent’s fallacious nonsense to go unchallenged.

Personally I was, and still am, angry with President Obama for allowing the rampant dissembling and prevarication of Mr Romney to go unanswered. And don’t even get me started on the “moderator” that was charged with dictating the tone and tenor of the tableau. I left a post on a politically oriented web site saying that “someone needed to have Jim Lehrer’s nurse give him his pudding and wheel him  back to his room in time to watch reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond…”

OK. I’m not proud of that, but he was just pathetic and useless.

Facts? Truth? Arithmetic? Those things would have had meaning and utility in an actual debate. What I needed and I believe what the nation needed, was to see and hear the President calling Mitt Romney on any of his bullshit. Sadly, that didn’t happen. So, hopefully the President will stage a better performance on the next one.

I think, collectively, the feeling on the left is that, had he nailed this, he would have put that poser in his place and he could have then strolled casually back to the WH with a slam dunk victory waiting for him in November. Now, the feeling is that this is going to be a serious battle with a reinvigorated and reinvested right wing.

Many of the President’s supporters decry the right wing’s claims of victory as false because their candidate’s statements were completely divorced from the truth. Even a casual examination of the facts reveal the obvious truth; that Mr Romney’s contentions just don’t add up. They cite the obvious and inevitable conclusion that it is in fact, impossible to cut taxes by 20% across the board and leave entitlements untouched…That his statements regarding a two state solution in Israel are diametrically opposite of the position that he took earlier this year and…and… Yes, yes. I know… But the hard truth is that in the minds of much of the electorate those things don’t matter.

You see, what people on the left and the middle fail to comprehend is that Mr Romney’s base doesn’t care if he is being truthful or even consistent when he spouts one nonsensical position after another. Whether or not Mr Romney’s rhetoric and policy proposals have any basis in reality or fact is utterly and completely irrelevant to them. The right does not even want someone that can think and chew gum at the same time and they have said as much.

They want someone with a pulse and one functional hand to sign legislation that is representative of the interests of his billionaire donors and the radical fundamentalists, once they have written it and have forced it through congress. They want nothing more. Mr Romney fills that bill quite nicely.

I find myself feeling at somewhat of a loss; I have made contributions and signed petitions. I have talked to people and I have sent emails. I am nevertheless still plagued by a single, overarching fear that all of the thinking people (even the wrong headed thinking people) have already made up their minds and this election (as in 2010) will be left to the so-called “low information voter,” otherwise known as the zombie cast of The Walking Dead, to decide.

OK… shake it off. Take some aspirin and some vitamin C. Splash some cold water on your face and pop some corn. Let’s get ready for Thursday’s “set piece” between Vice President Biden and Eddie Munster… Er, I mean Paul Ryan.

Forward!

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Application process

Posted on September 20, 2012 by A. E. C.

Finding a job is an arduous task in the best of times. To find a job during the current state of the economy is, you should pardon the rhetorical flourish; Herculean. It’s not just finding a job that is tough, it is the process that one must go through to actually get the job.

I have never liked job interviews. They can be so stressful and even sometimes degrading and invasive. People that you have never met, asking you question after question, judging your every word, reaction and response. The withering feeling that someone else has such overwhelming control over your life and your future. Yes, It’s difficult looking for work. Hopes being raised and then dashed. Trudging from place to place in your job search outfit, handing out resumes like you are searching for a lost cat, reciting the same thing over and over. It is daunting and mind numbing. The rejection can be soul-crushing. I know what it’s like and so do you…

Here’s the thing; I don’t think that Mitt Romney knows what that is like. Mitt Romney has never really had to apply for a job. In the immortal words of Herman Cain; “I don’t have any hard evidence to prove that statement.” But based on my observations of his campaign I just don’t think that he has a clear understanding of how the application process works.

What’s that you say? Yes, I know; Romney won the Governor’s election in MA. That would seem to provide a significant counterpoint to my conjecture. However, I still contend that he has no intrinsic understanding of the process. After all, he’s never actually snagged the interview before. At least not this interview…He has always been weeded out in the pre-interview process.

I think we all know how that feels; If you go after that dream job over and over again and miss the cut every time, it can get into your head. It can, in fact, at some point, be an exercise in psychological deconstruction. I mean I get that whole thing about what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger… Well, yeah, up to a certain point. But after shooting and missing repeatedly over a span of years…well, that can have a real impact, and not in a good way. Am I right, or am I right?

I mean I have had some tough interviews in my time. I have said the wrong thing and once or twice I’ve just completely locked up mentally; Just total “deer in the headlights” brain lock. I’m not proud to admit that, but you and I both know that sometimes it just happens. (I’m talking to you Jan Brewer…). We try to learn from it and move on to the next interview, because we have to. We need that job. Well, I don’t think that Mitt Romney has ever really needed that job…How else can you explain the things that he has said and done. Things that you and I would never consider that we would be able to do or say and still land the gig.

The candidate’s work experience as the former Governor of MA not withstanding, I sight the following examples as empirical evidence of my contention that Mitt Romney (to paraphrase President Obama…) is “new to this process” and is quite simply blowing the interview.

  1. You and I have never told our prospective employer that we don’t like his or her cookies when they offer them to us during one of the interviews. Suggesting dismissively, that they look as if they might have come from the convenience store down the street…
  2. We don’t sneeringly say to our prospective employer that “If you want free stuff then you should hire the other guy”
  3. You and I have never told our prospective employer that nearly 50% of their work force are irresponsible lay-abouts. That they are in fact a drain on the company’s resources, and that no amount of training or coaching from you will ever convince them to become responsible or productive. Nope. I’ve never said that during the interview...
  4. You and I have never told our prospective employer that with regard to the high profile and high risk project that they have been working on for decades, -for the sake of illustration let’s give the project a name – oh, how about “The Mid-East Peace Process” – …that the goal they have been hoping and striving to achieve in regard to this project is, in fact, insurmountable. It has no realistic solution and that you, the applicant, have no plan to help them in bringing about a peaceful and equitable solution to this project- a project that is, in fact, a cornerstone of the company’s global aspirations – …To transform the single largest source of geopolitical strife and unrest in the world- this goal they have bet so heavily on, cannot be achieved and that they must be realistic and accept that fact. Nope. Never said that either…
  5. You and I have never watched as one of the company’s beloved and respected executives is murdered in a cold blooded and savage terrorist attack on one of the company’s vital outposts in the Middle East then, without any evidence or any concern for the executive’s family and friends, proceed to say that the reason that executive is dead is directly related to the current CEO’s weak and feckless leadership.
  6. You and I have never left large sections of our job application blank (for instance, the section on finances…) and when asked to supply that information, responded that “you will have to just take my word for it…” I’m trying hard to remember but I am pretty sure that I have never said that during the interview either…
  7. You and I have never said to our prospective employer; “I think that I would have a much better chance of getting this job if I was a Latino…”
  8. You and I have never said to our prospective employer that their bottom line will improve on the day that they hire us just by virtue of the fact we are now part of the company’s team. Wow! I wish I could say that I had the brass balls that it takes to say something like that…but, no… I never have.

As you probably know; the interview for any high level position is always a multi-part process, often involving several interviews over the course of many days, weeks, or even months. Man, that can be rough. But if you are fortunate enough to actually be in that process, at minimum, you strive for consistency in your dealings with a seemingly endless stream of people asking you what are essentially the same questions. It can be tedious and repetitive. The urge to go “off script” can sometimes be overwhelming. I mean you want to show them that you can think on your feet, right? You want them to see that you are not just some mindless automaton reciting answers to questions, right?

Yeah, right. That is usually the point at which the whole thing goes sideways.

For the Romney campaign what constitutes “sideways” (…and I’m talking sideways on a steep hill covered in black ice here…) is a litany of gaffes, flip flops, improbable conjecture, and just plain bone headed statements that, taken cumulatively, begin to provide a picture of the man and his potential presidency. For example:

“Moments of Candor” (the media and the campaign staff prefer to call these statements “gaffes” but a gaffe is merely a poor choice of words that doesn’t provide any accurate insight into the methods or mind of the candidate. These statements however do provide a great deal of insight into the mind and the potential methods of a Romney presidency):

  • “Corporations are people, my friend… of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? Whose pockets? People’s pockets. Human beings, my friend.” —Mitt Romney to a heckler at the Iowa State Fair who suggested that taxes should be raised on corporations as part of balancing the budget (August 2011)
  • “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.” –Mitt Romney, using an unfortunate choice of words while advocating for consumer choice in health insurance plans (January 2012)
  • “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.” -Mitt Romney (January 2012)
  • “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. … My job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” -Mitt Romney, in leaked comments from a fundraiser in May 2012
  • “It’s hard to know just how well [the 2012 London Olympics] will turn out. There are a few things that were disconcerting. The stories about the private security firm not having enough people, the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.” –Mitt Romney, insulting Britain on the eve of the Olympics by suggesting the country is not ready, NBC News interview, July 25, 2012
  • “We have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it.” –Mitt Romney, talking about his plan for the Middle East in leaked comments from a Florida fundraiser, May 17 2012
  • “I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.” –Mitt Romney, on the American auto industry, despite having written a New York Times op-ed in 2008 titled “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” in which he said if GM, Ford and Chrysler got a government bailout “you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye”
  • “PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air.” —Mitt Romney in 2007, responding to criticism from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals following revelations that he had once put the family dog in a carrier and strapped it to the roof of his car during a 12-hour road trip
  • “I’m running for office for Pete’s sake, we can’t have illegals working on the property” –Mitt Romney, recalling his reaction when he learned that there were “illegal aliens” doing yard work on his property, employed by a firm that he subsequently fired (October 2011)
  • “I get speaker’s fees from time to time, but not very much.” —Mitt Romney, who earned $374,000 in speaking fees in one year according to according to his personal financial disclosure (January 2012)
  • “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.” —Mitt Romney, speaking in 2007 about the prospect of hunting down and killing Osama bin Laden
  • “I’m not familiar precisely with what I said, but I’ll stand by what I said, whatever it was.” —Mitt Romney (May 17, 2012)

“Blunders” (while not as telling as “Moments Of Candor” these statements do, on a smaller scale, provide an insight into the way that the candidate approaches certain groups and / or situations):

  • “I’m Wolf Blitzer and yes, that’s my real name.” —CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at the beginning of a November 2011 Republican presidential debate. — “I’m Mitt Romney and yes Wolf, that’s also my first name.” —Mitt Romney, getting his own name wrong (his first name is “Willard,” and his middle name is “Mitt”)
  • “Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who…” –Mitt Romney, during an awkward photo op with a group of African Americans kids at a Martin Luther King Day parade (January 2008)
  • “I love this state. The trees are the right height.” —Mitt Romney, campaigning in Michigan and offering a truly bewildering commentary on the local topography (February 2012)
  • “My dad, as you probably know, was the governor of Michigan and was the head of a car company. But he was born in Mexico… and had he been born of, uh, Mexican parents, I’d have a better shot at winning this. But he was unfortunately born to Americans living in Mexico. He lived there for a number of years. I mean, I say that jokingly, but it would be helpful to be Latino.” -Mitt Romney, in leaked comments from a Florida fundraiser, May 17 2012
  • “I’m not sure about these cookies. They don’t look like you made them. No, no. They came from the local 7/11 bakery, or whatever.” —Mitt Romney, visiting a local bakery while campaigning in Pittsburgh, PA, April 17, 2012 (The owner of the baker later told MSNBC he was offended by Romney’s remarks.)
  • “I’ll tell you what, ten-thousand bucks? $10,000 bet?” –Mitt Romney, attempting to make a ridiculously large wager with Rick Perry during a Republican presidential debate to settle a disagreement about health care (December 2011)

“Flip-Flops” (If changing his position on literally anything could have been an Olympic event then Mitt Romney would have taken more gold than Michael Phelps)

Regarding ABORTION:
Flipity:”I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. I believe that since Roe v. Wade has been the law for 20 years, that we should sustain and support it. I sustain and support that law and the right of a woman to make that choice.” — Debate with Sen. Edward Kennedy, 1994
Flip: “I will preserve and protect a woman’s right to choose and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.” — Massachusetts Gubernatorial Debate, 2002
Flopity: “Look, I was pro-choice. I am pro-life. You can go back to YouTube and look at what I said in 1994. I never said I was pro-choice, but my position was effectively pro-choice. I changed my position.” — IowaStraw poll debate, 2007

Flop: “What I would like to see happen would be for the Supreme Court to say, look, we’re going to overturn Roe v. Wade and return to the states the authority to decide whether they want to have abortion or not, state by state. That’s the way it was before Roe v. Wade. So I am firmly pro-life.” — Town hall meeting, Hopkinton, NH, 2011

Regarding RONALD REAGAN:
Flip: “I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I’m not trying to return to Reagan-Bush.” — Debate with Sen. Edward Kennedy, 1994

Flop: “When I was running for office for the first time in 1994, I was trying to define who I was….  I’ve said since, and continue to reiterate, that one of my heroes is Ronald Reagan.” — Q&A with Human Events, 2006

Regarding DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL:
Flip: Romney once said he was in favor of  “gays and lesbians being able to serve openly and honestly” in the military. — Letter to Log Cabin Republicans, 1994

Flop: “[Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has] been the policy now in the military for, what, 10, 15 years – and it seems to have worked. This is not the time to put in major change, a social experiment, in the middle of a war going on.” — Presidential primary debate, 2007

Regarding VIETNAM:
Flip: “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam.” — Quoted by the Boston Herald, 1994

Flop: “I longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam and be representing our country there and in some ways it was frustrating not to feel like I was there as part of the troops that were fighting in Vietnam.” — Quoted by the Boston Globe, 2007

Regarding GUN CONTROL:
Flipity: “We do have tough gun laws in Massachusetts. I support them. I won’t chip away at them.” — Gubernatorial debate, 2002
Flip: “Deadly assault weapons have no place in Massachusetts.”  — Signing ceremony for bill banning assault weapons, 2004

Flop: “I don’t support any gun control legislation, the effort for a new assault weapons ban, with a ban on semi-automatic weapons, is something I would oppose.” — Interview with conservative bloggers, 2008

Regarding HEALTH CARE REFORM:
Flipity: “I like mandates. Mandates work.” — Presidential primary debate, 2008
Flip: I’m proud of what we’ve done. If Massachusetts succeeds in implementing [Romneycare], then that will be a model for the nation.” — Speech in Baltimore, 2007

Flopity: “At the time I crafted the plan in the last campaign I was asked is [Romneycare] something that you would have the whole nation do, and I said no. This is something that was crafted for Massachusetts. It would be wrong to adopt this as a nation.” — Presidential primary debate, 2011
Flop: Bret Baier: “Governor, you did say on camera and in other places, at times you thought [Romneycare] would be a model for the nation.” Mitt Romney: “You’re wrong, Bret.” — Fox News interview, 2011

Regarding CLIMATE CHANGE:
Flip: “I believe the world’s getting warmer. I can’t prove that, but I believe based on what I read that the world is getting warmer. And number two, I believe that humans contribute to that. … And so I think it’s important for us to reduce our emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases that may well be significant contributors to the climate change and the global warming that you’re seeing.” — Town hall meeting,  Manchester, NH, June 2011

Flop: “My view is that we don’t know what’s causing climate change on this planet. And the idea of spending trillions and trillions of dollars to try to reduce CO2 emissions is not the right course for us.” — Q&A session, Pittsburg, PA, October 2011

Regarding the BUSH TAX CUTS:
Flip: Romney spoke at the 10th annual legislative conference organized by U.S. Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Lowell) and met with the Massachusetts delegation. … Congressional sources said that a point of contention arose when Romney refused to take a position on Bush’s massive, 10-year tax cut plan.” — Boston Herald, 2003

Flop: “McCain opposed President Bush’s tax cuts, Romney noted. ‘I supported them,’ the former governor said.” — Quoted in The State (SC), 2007

Regarding TAX PLEDGES (such as the one from Grover Norquist):
Flip: “I’m not intending to, at this stage, sign a document which would prevent me from being able to look specifically at the revenue needs of the commonwealth. ” — Quoted in Union-News, Springfield, MA, 2002

Flop: “Signing the pledge now sends a very clear message to those in Washington who have voted against tax relief and for tax hikes that such actions will never grow our regional and national economies.” — Romney spokesman quoted in the Boston Globe, 2007

Regarding FLIP-FLOPPING:
Flip: “I’m a strong believer in stating your position and not wavering.” — Comments to NARAL Pro Choice Massachusetts, 2002

Flop: “I changed my position.” — Iowa straw poll debate, 2007

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/mitt-romneys-biggest-flip-flops-20120801#ixzz280sh9EHf

At this point it is understandable that you might, having read these words, find yourself in a state of utter bewilderment. He flips and he flops, he dissembles and prevaricates. Mitt Romney seems almost incapable of even forming a sentence that is factual or honest. To say that Mitt Romney lacks sincerity is to say that the Universe is kind of big. There is no position that Mitt Romney has taken that does not have a polar opposite somewhere in the past, or will not have, at some point in the future.

But why? we ask ourselves. Why would Mitt Romney behave that way? It just doesn’t make sense to most people. Beyond the shear audacity of Mitt Romney’s outlandish dance with alternative reality, we, in the end, are left simply scratching our heads in confusion.

It is a remarkable and quantitative element of the human psyche to achieve an understanding of actions through the assignment of motive. This is fundamental in our process of determining truth. It is in fact so fundamental that we have even incorporated that process into our judicial system. We can see a thing, we can witness an event, we can compile all of the relevant facts associated with those events in an effort to form a theory about something, but in order for us to truly understand that thing we must first know why.

Why indeed…

How are we to discern any meaning or intent from these disparate and frankly, odd statements from Mitt Romney? Is this condition representative of a pathological behavior? Does Mitt Romney lie to us about literally everything because he feels some compulsion to do so?

We could, as many in the media have done, simply chalk it up to rampant and craven political pandering in a desperate attempt to reach that elusive 50.1 percentage of the electorate that Mitt often refers to. If this were the case it would be troubling enough, but I think that it goes deeper than that.  I believe that this behavior is driven by something else, something that is both less complex in its meaning but more nefarious in its intent.

I believe that Mitt Romney lies to us because he does not think that we deserve the truth. He sees us collectively as creatures of limited capacity. Unable to grasp a truth that is larger and more complex than the caste to which we belong will allow us to fathom. He sees us (well, at least 47% of us…) as childlike and ignorant in the ways of the larger world in which he and those of his standing dwell. We are as a child who has asked him an inconvenient question about the existence of Santa Claus. He does not tell us the truth because it would serve no useful purpose in attaining that which he seeks. After all, why trouble our simple little minds with issues and concepts that we could not possibly understand?

If we could see ourselves from Mitt Romney’s perspective we would see ourselves in a dramatically different light; What we would see is that we are all just part of a larger investment vehicle for Mitt Romney. We are part of a commodity that is grown and then “harvested” for a profit. In point of fact; we are the most expensive and in his way of thinking, the most expendable part of that investment. Ask any executive and he or she will tell you that the most expensive component of running a profitable business is the workforce. (That is why the first and the most expedient way to bolster the bottom line, and as a result, a company’s correlative value, is always to trim the size of the workforce).

Mitt Romney excoriates us for having the unmitigated gall to feel that we should be entitled to anything as frivolous as food or shelter, or basic healthcare. But Mitt Romney is, himself, the absolute embodiment of the entitled class. He truly believes at a core level, that he is entitled to the Presidency. He believes, as does his wife, that we would be lucky if he would deign to make himself available to us as our President.

Know this: Mitt Romney is not a public servant. He has always been a member of an exclusive club. He has always been part of what passes for a “ruling class” in American Society. Mitt Romney does not, and never will, see himself as a candidate for this job. He doesn’t believe that he needs to ask us for this job that he wants because he feels… no, more than feels… Mitt Romney knows, as sure as he knows the number of his Swiss bank account, that he is entitled to that job.

Mitt Romney is an owner, a profiteer. His world is dictated by the cold, calculated terms of profit and loss. He does not see the Presidency of this country as a sacred charge that is granted to him by a nation of his fellow citizens. Mitt Romney sees the Presidency of the United States as a return on his investment. He can see the office and the country as a whole, in no other terms. Because you cannot spend your life seeing the average person merely as a component of a commodity that you own, a commodity that is acquired and then, at the proper time, “harvested” for profit, and then suddenly see those same people as constituents; as someone that he must answer to, as people that he aspires to serve.

But no one can truly take the measure of a man by his words alone. One must also take his actions into account. To that end I have provided a portion of Mitt Romney’s resume. The part that would actually correlate in any direct way to the job for which he (whether he knows it or not) is applying.

So what about that other gig? That gig being his one term as the Governor of Massachusetts. In point of fact; the only political office that Mitt has ever held in his entire life (No Senator. No congressman. No alderman. No community organizer. Hell, not even a neighborhood watch…). How did that single stint in public service go?

OK, look, I know this part is admittedly, statistical and boring. But boring though it may be, it is important nevertheless. So do a few jumping jacks, make yourself a cup of coffee and lets examine for a moment, the relevant work experience of applicant; Willard Mitt Romney _____________________________________________________________________________

Work Experience

Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts on a platform of promising more jobs, less debt, and smaller government. Here’s what Massachusetts got instead:

Regarding JOBS:
Romney: Mitt Romney claims the unemployment rate in Massachusetts fell during his tenure as governor, and that he created 40,000 jobs in his last year in office.

Reality: As the nation’s economy grew and the median income rose, under Romney, Massachusetts plummeted from 36th to 47th out of 50 states in job creation, and the median income declined.

Regarding TAXES:
Romney: “As governor I cut taxes 19 times and didn’t raise taxes.”
—Mitt Romney [Iowa debate, 8/11/2011]

Reality: As governor, Romney increased taxes and fees by as much as $750 million per year. [Factcheck.org, 1/31/08]

Regarding DEBT REDUCTION:
Romney: Mitt Romney claims that while governor of Massachusetts, he cut spending and balanced the budget.

Reality: Governor Romney left behind a $1 billion budget deficit for the next governor and saddled Massachusetts taxpayers with more debt per person than any other state.

Regarding OUTSOURCING OF JOBS:
Romney: “The idea that we have to see more and more products move from our shores to China is unacceptable.” —Mitt Romney [Detroit News, 9/5/11]

Reality: The Washington Post reports that as CEO of Bain Capitol, Mitt Romney advised companies that were “pioneers” in outsourcing jobs overseas. As governor, Romney drew from the same playbook and outsourced state jobs. Today, Romney has proposed eliminating all taxes on companies’ foreign profits—which would actually encourage companies to send jobs overseas.

Regarding MANUFACTURING:
Romney: “I will help usher in a revival in American manufacturing.” —Mitt Romney, 5/8/2012

Reality: Under Romney’s leadership, Massachusetts manufacturing declined by double the national rate, and was the third-worst overall in the country.

Legislative Failures
Romney issued 844 vetos as governor, the largest share of which were overturned by one or the other of the state houses. Late in Romney’s term, his prodigious number of vetos began to annoy even the Republicans in the legislature and he lost support among them too. Nevertheless, Romney defended the practice: “I know how to veto. I like vetoes. I’ve vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations as governor.”

Last year of term as Governor:
In 2006, his last year as governor, Romney spent all or part of 212 days out of state, laying the foundation for his anticipated presidential campaign. The cost of the Governor’s security detail for out-of-state trips increased from $63,874 in fiscal year 2005 to a cost of $103,365 in the first 11 months of fiscal year 2006. Romney’s use of state troopers for security during his campaign trips was criticized by former Governor Michael Dukakis, who never traveled with state troopers during his 1988 presidential run, and Mary Boyle of Common Cause who complained that “the people of Massachusetts are essentially funding his presidential campaign, whether they like it or not.”

A Romney spokesman noted that Romney did not accept a salary while he was Governor and that he paid for his personal and political travel, while the superintendent of the State Police pointed out that the Governor never requested the security and that the security detail followed the Governor on all trips. In some cases his statements made while campaigning elsewhere in the country came back to affect him in Massachusetts, such as when he caused offense by using the term “tar baby” in Iowa in reference to the potential pitfalls of taking responsibility for the Big Dig.

And under the catagory of highly suspicious and more than a little creepy:

At the end of Romney’s term, several of his staffers purchased the hard drives from their state-issued computers, and emails were deleted from the server. The amounts expended purchasing the drives came to nearly $100,000. Under the Massachusetts Public Records Law, the emails did not have to be made public but did have to be preserved. Terry Dolan, who worked as director of administration under Romney and several other governors, has said that scrubbing the servers was a common practice but that selling the hard drives was not. When news of the actions became widely known in 2011, a Romney spokesperson said that the purchase of the computer equipment “complied with the law and longtime executive branch practice.” State government officials and aides to Romney’s three predecessors as governor said that they did not know of any prior sales of hard drives to staffers. When questioned on the subject in 2011, Romney responded that he had not wanted the information to be available to “opposition research teams”.

Romney’s term ended January 4, 2007. Romney filed papers to establish a formal exploratory presidential campaign committee on his next-to-last day in office as governor. _____________________________________________________________________________

All in all, this makes for quite a… what’s the word… lets go with “remarkable”… yes, a remarkable Curriculum Vitae.

So, to continue with this convenient (and I think, apt) metaphor, let us imagine for a moment that we are the prospective employer in this scenario (because we are…) and that we are faced with the decision of whether or not to hire this applicant for our job opening (because we are…) – the job of being our Chief Executive, the man who would be charged with running our company efficiently and equitably and representing us and our interests to the entire world.

When all of the words and all of the actions are taken in to account, what are we to say to this applicant? Hmmm… I know! How about saying something that Mr Romney has himself said to many, many people over the years, but which, I venture, he has never actually heard addressed to him:

“Thanks for coming in Mr Romney. We’ll let you know…”

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