Excerpt: 'Some of us thought Romney was without core or principle, an empty suit that would say anything to be elected. But here, evidently, is the real Mitt.'
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
The Real Mitt Revealed
19 September 12
irst are the distortions. Romney says 47 percent of Americans don't pay income taxes. That's literally true, except it's misleading because it includes every retiree who hasn't enough income to pay income taxes (most retirees), every poor and lower-income person who doesn't have enough income to pay, and a few multi-millionaires (perhaps like Romney himself - we don't know because he won't release his tax returns), who don't pay because of tax loopholes and tax-avoidance schemes. Moreover, just about all working Americans, regardless of income, pay federal payroll taxes. Everyone pays state and local sales taxes. And so on. Romney also distorts reality by purposely mixing "entitlements" with "a sense of entitlement," and lumps in all recipients of Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment benefits into his 47 percent. Even though these programs are considered "entitlement" spending, their recipients are not undeserving; they don't consider themselves entitled to handouts. They've paid into these insurance plans through their payroll taxes.
But the the most important revelation here isn't Romney's witting distortions. It's his indignant condemnation of almost half the American electorate. A president is supposed to represent all of America, not just the 51 percent who elect him, and have a modicum of sympathy for the less fortunate among us.
Yet here is the real Mitt Romney - a fabulously wealthy financier, presumably speaking to other wealthy people (note the waiters scurrying about), with a passion we haven't before seen in him - saying it isn't his "job" to worry about Americans who he describes as "irresponsible," who fail to take care of themselves, and whose neediness is presumably their own fault. Some of us thought Romney was without core or principle, an empty suit that would say anything to be elected. But here, evidently, is the real Mitt - a man whose core principle is clearly on display, and articulated with deep conviction: social Darwinism - survival of the richest, the hell with those who need a helping hand. In a subsequent news conference he attempted to make it sound as if he was talking here about political strategy, not social conviction. Watch and see for yourself.
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This video is disturbing because it is the real Mitt. For the first time EVER (in MA that goes way back to the 90's) we get to hear the CEO/Governor talk from the heart. This is the "severe" Conservative he mentioned earlier in the campaign. This is the guy who said to an NAACP audience, that if they knew what was in his heart they would vote for him. And perhaps, to some degree he is right on that last point. There are people of all races, economic strata, and cultural identity that actually agree with Romney's view of the 47% that don't pay taxes. Stupid is not just restricted to White males that have titles like CEO and Executive Vice President, although sometimes it seems that they are trying to monopolize stupidity along with everything else.
Its that stupidity that more than anything else demonstrates why being a CEO does not automatically qualify one to be President. But on the scary side, now that the population of stupid that is not a White male business executive knows what is Romney's heart, what makes the pundit class think that they won't vote for him? I actually think there will be a lot, not a majority but probably about 25% of the persons in that 47% who, in their stupidity didn't like Mitt and were planning on sitting out because he is probably a Liberal Republican that will now vote for him. I mean, why should they stop voting against their own interests now, they have been doing it since Reagan.
OBAMA/BIDEN 2012 for the 100% of us.
As usual, Barb, you hit the nail on the head. Mitt and Ann live in an Ivory Tower and would condescend to speak with us only out of necessity - they need us to VOTE for Mitt. And all the while Mitt is telling his wealthy friends that we are the scum of the earth always looking for a handout. Now Mitt - who was born with a silver spoon up his rectum - and his wife Ann "it's our turn now" Romney, think they're going to waltz into the White House without scrutiny - or better yet astride Rafalca, the wonder horse. I call him the "wonder horse" because I WONDER how Mitt took a $77,000 deduction on Rafalca - more than most Americans make in a year!
Well, WE PEOPLE" aren't gonna vote for you Mitt.
And I thought that Reagan was hilarious and then they topped that with George Sr. and his sad pick for Veep; and then it was Geo. W, say no more and his sicko, Cheney; and then they throw McCain and, hold onto it, Sarah Palin! I think its the rich digging for the lowest common denominator because they are so out of touch with reality that they think that these people are what Americans think is appealing...go figure.
P.S. Romney also supports the NDAA as it relates to indefinite detention of US Citizens! He doesn't know anything about Due Process our Constitution or Bill of Rights. And to be fair, neither does Obama.....
I have to admit being ambivalent about concern for people who are constantly trying to blow us up here and who kill young Americans there who are training them. I am an unabashed liberal but one who would have pulled the plug on Charles Manson and Jeffery Dahmer in a heart beat.
As for drones, that is a hard one. We are hurting people who have been savaged by the Taliban and 10 years of war. But we have lost enough lives in a senselessly drawn out war. What we need to do is get the hell out of Dodge and quit hemorrhaging lives and money.
It's just like Viet Nam. Fighting a war with our hands tied behind our backs. Rule of thumb: Don't go to war if you won't fight and, if you do go, fight tooth and toenail or get out.
After Viet Nam, I am very anti-war and certainly do not approve of the U.S. engaging in preemptive wars based upon false information. Afghanistan, because of Bin Laden, was at least a response to lethal aggression in our own homeland. So I can understand it. What I don't understand is staying there.
I don't even remember what respite from strife looked like? Everywhere we turn we are embroiled in one problem or another.
Journalists do not care about being sued but the Rags they write for do... It is not appropriate to name call when we all can read between the lines, not?
Wonder how long it will take the Lemmings to figure it out. Oh, thats right they are Lemmings -- so most of them will never figure it out.
It's Romney's "responsibility " to worry about his fellow "vultures;" those who's "rights" are being "violated" because of a lot of "freeloaders" having the nerve to get access to necessary assistance to help them in a situation where "fate" has had a negative impact.
It's Romney's "responsibility " to make sure that his fellow elites can have the "right" to be grossly irresponsible with their monetary power, continue the rich-poor divide, while sounding "responsible."
BTW, charities have been of course helpful but many of the recipients become a stereotype of the "perpetual, helpless poor," precisely because of a system that "needs" poverty in order to allow a few to profiteer any way they can. The economic "pie" is divided with the "successful" getting the most slices. Thus, not much left for many, and the inevitable class conflicts.
Charity has worked, but we need change, not charity, where there are no more "poverty stereotypes."
Here's a factoid that blows the mind: AIG, a shockingly irresponsibile corporation that was in good company, got loan guarantees from the government that equate to 2% of GDP.
So to OCD compulsive gambling plutocrats, I say, "Can the crap about irresponsibilit y, you are the poster child for it."
Quoting: "Can the crap about irresponsibilit y, you are the poster child for it." Exactly.
AND SINCE HE'S A MORMON BISHOP HE TAKES ORDERS FROM MEN(NOT WOMEN) HIGHER UPS IN THE MORMON CHURCH...SO THEY'LL BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY & NOT HIM, IF ELECTED. RIGHT?!?!!?! CAN YOU ENVISION A USA RUN BY THE MORMON CHURCH?????
Ever wonder why Romney acts and speaks like the Manchurian Candidate in public? He is.
And if you are not whitesome and delightful, watch out.
If the head of my church has an idea, it is just that. If the president of Romney's church has one, it is a "revelation." Really convenient ones. Like when their non-profit tax exemption was at stake due to discriminatory practices, voila, a revelation. Dark- skinned people (who were deemed to have the Christian equivalent of the mark of Cain) could come into the temple. Getting in was was one thing; acceptance, another.
If you are female, whoa. I won't even go there.
At times, I get tend think of Romney's "religion" the same way I think of Scientology, as a cults of the cosmos. Their creation stories are "interesting."
I don't really care what other people believe spiritually, I just don't want their beliefs interfering with or intruding into my life. Others' religious rights stop at the end of my nose. I take a particularly dim view of men in dresses, with a penchant for pedophilia, demanding trans-vaginal probes into female orifices when the a female insists upon autonomy over her person. But hey, just call me an out of touch liberal.
support this kind of statement.
I think it is not that they really support Romney,
but because of the equal excesses of the other
side, the type of Democrats who go so far they
alienate the moderates.
Someone has a good game going here, maybe it's
the media, maybe the right wing, but someone
creates social programs that don't work, keeps
them from working, and then blames the government
that they manipulate for them not working.
The bottom line is that we must create a set of
human values that applies to every citizens, maybe
every human being, and move forward from there.
It is great to be rich, but when one gets to be rich
to them stomp on other people from your high
powerful vantage point is a crime.
I hear this all the time, I must not be watching or reading the right stuff because I in fact look to see who they are talking about.
One Republican said, Bernie Sanders, because he is a "socialist" apparently for believing in the common good. I replied that on the scale from communism to res publica there is such a thing as the golden rule. Belief in it doesn't make one a socialist.
I am tired of the fog of absurdity that attaches to public discourse and becomes a barrier to reason.
Government likes it or not as long as you paid taxes, you also paid for Welfare as well as the Political Cretins Salaries
For those who do not make a Career out of Welfare, I have no qualms with people getting back on their feet. I was on welfare. Having made that a week it was a lowering of my esteem. Carter put a Workshop Programs across the USA and many of us opted for it as it was twice as much to learn to work at a new skill.
Republican threw it out, said we will train on your time not our dime.
I would love to see everyone, esp Media having to grovel. I think it is time people see what the Lord said about stepping into those shoes.
No shame in Welfare or SSI or SSD we all deserve help Those who are allowed to make a career should be shown the door but again no one wants to clean up the system cause then they would have to clean up theirs
Americans have long believed that all citizens were entitled to these freedoms. Romney and his cohorts support the first two but deny the last two. The government services, such as Food Stamps and Medicare, which he denounces, are the ones intended to save us from WANT and FEAR.
This is what GOOD GOVERNMENT provides, this is what all citizens are entitled to, and this has long been firmly believed by most Americans. It is nonsense to talk about "BIG GOVERNMENT" or "SMALL GOVERNMENT," what we should desire is GOOD GOVERNMENT that TAXES FAIRLY and SPENDS WISELY and PROTECTS ALL ITS CITIZENS FROM UNEXPECTED DISASTER! That means adequate nutrition, secure housing, public education, affordable healthcare.
If we are denied these entitlements, then WE BECOME VICTIMS of unrestrained greed and the nonsense of the right wing's heartless and cruel social darwinism.
LOVE the last sentence in your post! LMAO! Sorry, but that place where the sun don't shine is already full to overflowing.
Beautiful.
My mom worked from age 17 until age 83 and Romney labeled her irresponsible because she had the temerity to collect Social Security. Hell, even God rested. What was she supposed to do keep on trucking till until she dropped dead from old age?
To me it isn't just the belief system that the non-wealthy are lazy, good for nothing losers, it is also that they are so far out of touch with the basic realities of ordinary peoples' lives that they are frightening. On social issues, Todd Akin is Exhibit A. On financial issues, Romney is Exhibit B.
Discredited voo doo economics over three decades coupled with "unregulation" is what got us into this mess. The answer to snake bite is not more venom.
He will EVISCERATE the country! And he will do it with the phony smile on his too-tanned face, without a care for America or his health or its people.
Sick, sick, sick!
N.
I simply do not understand visceral hatred at that level. I didn't like Bush's policies and transferred that dislike to him I later realized. But I did not hate him. I despised his policies which are Romney's policies.
But Romney is really getting to me with his silver hoof and mouth disease. Does this man know how to do anything but insult people and countries. Where is his judgment edit button?
How is it possible for a person to achieve success at that level and be a verbal fool in public. He wasn't this way when he spoke after being named to head up the Salt Lake City olympic games. He was a silver-tongued, quick witted, reflective orator. The only explanation is that there has been an invasion of the body snatchers. Even keeping him on a short leash couldn't cause a skilled orator to develop political Tourette's syndrome.
What the hell was anyone doing with $9 billion dollars in cash in a country that doesn't have banks as we know them?
Only two possible answers: payola and bribe money, or grand theft planeloads.
I am going to take a stab here: In ancient Rome, the emperor de jour would hold spectacles to dazzle the population into blindness about the wretched conditions around them. Corporate media, offers incessant low and lowest brow entertainment and constant flapping- mouth distortion and propaganda. Contemporaneous ly, religious fundamentalists and economic Darwinists made it a sin to be educated or to think original thoughts while returning us to a 4000-year old world that was flat. People were to busy working 2 and 3 jobs to notice. When they did, the zealots had framed the debate in a way that pushed the center so far to the right that there really is no true left in existence, contrary to wing-nut assertions. It got so bad that people had to tune out to save their sanity. So here we stand.
HerbR
I'd hate to be the poor shmuck that failed to keep Mittens supply of Just For Men fully stocked and easily in reach.
He's going down the question is now by how much.
all citizens over 65,
all citizens who pay into Social Security,
all citizens who pay renter's taxes,
all citizens who pay utility taxes,
all citizens who pay sales tax,
all citizens who work for government contractors,
all citizens who send their kids to public schools,
all citizens who get federal student loans,
all citizens who who rely on Medicaid or Medicare,
all citizens who paid for college with the G.I. Bill,
all citizens who use V.A. hospitals,
all citizens who rely on safe food and safe drinking water,
all citizens who don't make enough to buy a dresage horse and deduct it.
Twit Romney DOES NOT WANT YOUR VOTE!
That's what I refer to as "C O M E D Y"!
Hey Twittens!!!
When you show us YOUR tax returns you can talk trash about 47% of us. Until then, you're making a fool out of yourself.
Let's face it, he'll lose, you'll complain about how much he didn't represent "your" particular values, you'll blame everyone else for the loss....
When will you come to terms with the fact that ANY hard-right conservative you could have picked would have done just as poorly?
When will you admit that the only reason for making it harder to vote (coincidentally in all the swing states) is because you know democracy is the biggest enemy you face?
I have had my fill of "holier than thou art" poseurs. Tell me straight up what you are doing and we can rumble but get the hell out from behind my back.
If Romney had made a full frontal speech saying the same things, the voters could have made a personal judgment about voting for or against him based upon agreement or disagreement with his views.
But what he did is like a co-worker who is sweetness and light to your face but stabs you in the back when you turn away. Romney obviously doesn't have the courage of his convictions except as a political stunt.
It was very obvious when he spoke to the NAACP that he delivered a much practiced "in your face" line, intended to rile the Black audience for the amusement of his far-right southern base. He actually stepped back slightly, straightened his back and waited for the response, with the tiniest self-satisfied smile at the corners of his mouth. Romney went to bait them for his base.
TWIT SHOULD BE President of the CAYMAN ISLANDS!
-----------
VOTE ROMNEY for President of the Cayman Islands! That could be his new campaign slogan.
If they do the outcome WILL be swift, brutal & VERY UGLY for the 1% & will make the first civil war look like a school yard fight
Please, please DON'T elect mittens.
"While extolling her own suffering, Ann Romney complained about how You People have demonized the great compassion evinced in The Mitt Romney, and added, “And for people to think that we don’t have empathy just because we’re not suffering like they’re suffering is– is ridiculous. It’s– it’s ridiculous to think that you can’t have empathy for somebody that’s struggling.” http://www.politicususa.com/ann-romney-ridiculous-empathy.html
So, she's in on the big act. What a pair! President of the Cayman Islands is too good for him! He should be Mayor of Fukushima, Japan!
However, I would have liked to ask her how she could eat with that mouth since the Republicans would deport everyone of them if possibe....and fact is Arizona and other States attitude backs me up.
I cannot understand how Blacks, and any other Person esp the ones who have third world country origins would think to vote for a Nazi Slaveowner.
Yes I am sure these people who work for these sleazes all make min wage if that...just remember they do give the food and hand me downs to them. (tax write offs) I want to see the Taxes...then I want to see Ann eat them.
I want to see the kids in the Military along with every other Poor Kid in the USA let's teach this family some manners...
The name even fits the bill-Willard Mitt Romney-how superbly upper class it sounds.
It is likely that old Mitt was just in a good old boy back slapping mood at this fund raiser. He was with "his people" and was able to let his neatly groomed hair down. Snide remarks. Condescension. Conceit. These are the common traits of these bunch of American "Patriots"-I mean swindlers. Really nothing new, in my opinion-except he got caught! Looks like I will finally renew my subscription to Mother Jones.
I mean, I've had this twice already on RSN.
Good on M.J. for the evidence but let's move on: keep it in the memory-banks as part of the increasing verifiable armory against this utter pretender, rather than repeating it time after time, as if we were rubbing our dried-out hands, like old hags who claim "I told you so!".
No doubt Twit will fill in his own blanks as he drives Karl Rove and all his many plutocrat/total itarian-incline d handlers to a new self-destructiv e level of despair.
They say..
You have no right to die...
You have no right to live...
Can't make these guys happy at all.
Before you say anything Mitt, about anyone elses taxes, lets see yours Mitt. Show us your taxes and leave everyone else alone. Your a nasty piece of work.
Yes, Obama has disappointed in many ways. As you say, Ganymede, he had to survive. Four more years will give him the breathing space he needs to follow through on many of the promises he made in 2008. He is our only hope for the reforms you so truthfully point out!
This is the confounding, hypocritical world of wealth. Lucre is purposely confused with worth and it doesn't make any difference how one gets it. By that standard successful drug dealers are laudable. There are special rules for special people. The ones with the gold make all the rules which they only apply to others.
To justify their churlish ways, they spout self-serving propaganda about others being jealous of their wealth. An absurd proposition in a country that prizes achievement through and reward from hard work. Americans applaud success.
Plutocrats don't "get it" because they don't want to. Ordinary people want a single set of rules for all to live by and not to be collateral damage to
out-of-control vultures who give us weapons of mass financial destruction.
Righteousness is the inevitable garment of the Anglo Philistine.
The British had it right" Mitt the Twitt!
OH, MY GOD, MITT
I'M APPARENTLY UNFIT
TO DESERVE YOUR CONCERN
I 'M ON MEDICARE, YOU SEE,
AND SOCIAL SECURITY
AND YOU MAY AS WELL LEARN
I BELIEVE THE FED
SHOULD HELP 'TIL I'M DEAD
IF I CAN'T DO IT ON MY OWN
GOVERNMENT SHOULD PROTECT ME
CERTAINLY NOT NEGLECT ME
NONE CAN MAKE IT ALONE
NOT EVEN YOU, FOR ONE
A WEALTHY MAN'S SON
WHOSE PATH WAS PAVED WITH GREEN
DON'T TELL ME THAT YOU
HAD NO HELPING HAND OR TWO --
HAVE THE GUTS TO COME CLEAN
YES, I BELONG IN THE TENT
OF YOUR SCORNED FORTY-SEVEN PERCENT
EXCEPT THAT I PAY MY TAX
PROBABLY MORE THAN YOU PAY
ON ALL THAT LOOT HIDDEN AWAY
IN YOUR HUGE CAYMAN STACKS
SO, GO AHEAD AND IGNORE ME
FEEL FREE TO DEPLORE ME
SAY YOU DON'T CARE WHAT I DO
WHEN WE PUSH THE LEVER,
YOU'LL BE THE GRIEVER
AND WE WON'T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOU!
Raymond when will you open your eyes to see your defending someone who isnt going to give a rats bottom about you or your family. I can only assume that your part of the super rich elite, or you wouldnt be making up excuses for this guy. Are you so desperate to see this country go down the toilet? Regardless of whatever Fox news is spewing out about Obama, most of it isnt true. Its made up and engineered facts so you will hate him. Quit defending this dolt, he should reveal his taxes and more then 2 years worth, like every other reasonable person running for president would. Quit making up your excuses for this inexcusable etch-a-sketch.
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