that's his/the acceptable way. Any and ALL individual decisions about one's relationship to the rat race are bad.

In terms of the individual private personal organic motivation to put one foot in front of the other, to will one's heart forward from one second to the next, Romney is the apostle of a Death Cult.

I read it last night. When I wake up this evening (nightshifter), I hope to read an even more impressive one from one of my favorite political writers. William Rivers Pitt. You might have heard of him?

until now.

The more I read his specific biography, the more I felt like he was a sinister, craven opportunist.

I don't necessarily think he's evil. I think he is empathetic hole who sucks worker's dreams down a bankrupt void.

He justifies himself by negating those people's humanity. He doesn't think employees are one of his social class, so it doesn't matter what happens to them.

I am just glad Romney broadened the criticism beyond young bucks and welfare queens who most people believe are black to a broader color blind attack on low and middle income people.

The crusaders who indiscriminately killed Muslim, Jew, or any odd duck along the way as they waged a battle to recapture the promised land (true believers can be extraordinarily evil).

Mass murders can be grossly indifferent suffering and never see the wrong in what they do.

Romney is just a political stooge parroting talking points in such a way that the common voters finally hear the bell whistle.

If he stood on the sidelines like Bush did during Katrina, negating those people's humanity, and be indifferent to their suffering when he was in a position to do more/better/different things to improve their plight, Romney would become a evil doer.

The moral stain on Bush boils down to torture and gross inaction.

Whereas before this tape people merely found him disgusting, they now seem to actively hate him.

I have to say as much as I disliked Romney before, I really didn't think that he believed a lot of this crap. It's frightening to think how close he came to ruling us.

How many people suspect that W had more compassion than him?

Mind your tense. It's not over yet.

Don't get me wrong overall he sucked, but credit goes where credit is due.

Bush was an unmitigated disaster for the US in or out of the 47% Rmoney is not representing. Get a grip.

Get a grip?

-o-

Far be it for me to actually say something positive about Bush on a Democratic board. I am not a troll. I like DU. I haven't been very active in the last several months.

I will reintroduce myself. I voted for Howard Dean in 2004 primary and Kerry in the general. I voted for Gore in 2000 and wished we had a better primary in 2000 to flush out some of the problems within the Clinton Gore years that Ralph Nader mentioned about corporate democrats.

I was truly angry during the 2008 primary because of some of the knocks Clinton's campaign were landing on Obama. I voted for him in the primary and general in 2008.

-o-

That said Bush was better at telling us he felt our pain. He also had one or two moments in the sun with his foreign policy. 2 wars and torture is a lasting legacy.

Sudan/Darfur is not as good as Bosnia Herzegovinian policy of Clinton but it was better than what Clinton did with the Somalia people (i think the movie black hawk down involved this area). Most Americans would and did tolerate the starving and suffering within Somalia since our economic interest was not engaged in Somalia.

Bush for once in his life, put humanitarian aid and worked an embargo in front of oil/gas interests of American business.

Romney just said 47% of the country doesn't matter. The extension of domestic government money is foreign humanitarian aid.

Bush did believe in the have mores. Even in his grossly disproportionate tax policy, he did not use his haughtiness as a means to exclude aid from a poor country abroad deeply involved in a bloody war.

- o -

If my analysis doesn't have a good foreign policy grip, please take me a tour in foreign aid. Romney sucked on his foreign policy tour. I know that sneering visage will mow down more than just America's 47%. More than just Americans depend on government money.

Bush most definitely not only believed in the 'have mores'-he lauded them, he sucked their toes and he kissed their ass.

George Bush was a disaster as a President by any measure imaginable. Hell, even his own party didn't want him at their conventions.

I could care less whether you are a republican. But you sure as hell don't sound like a democrat and that's a fact.

Neither has any empathy, kindness or frankly any humanness. Romney hasn't learned the good 'ol boy persona like Dubya did, but never mistake it, they are exactly alike.

Mitt Romney has been more sociopathic in his political career than I can stomach.

Most of us can't and won't be pro choice and then make a hard right turn for no exceptions for the life and safety of the Mom anti abortion.

He has the ability to hold all sides of an issue regardless of who is impacted by a policy.

It is one of the reasons he is unfit to be president.

Bush is much more seductive than that. He had a come to Jesus moment after a life time of being a good ole boy. He became a true believer, a zealot.

There is an ocean of difference between Romney growing up in the Mormon faith and being socialized into a religious practice and the religious fire a guy turned good can put forward. It is a difference between a crusader and a church elder.

The effect might be the same, but zealotry can be vastly different.

How much more does it take to finally recognize that we have a Ruling Class??? The MittWit is a Junior Member at that!

class structured as Britain ever was. Horatio Alger was and is a lie. Luck happens. But hard work does not guarantee wealth. Ask a teacher or a nurse. I am a nurse and proud of what I do. I will never be rich and I'm okay with that. I have remained in the strata I was born to and most of us do or unfortunately, mobilize down, if an illness, or any catastrophe happens.

And yet by refusing to let go of the dream, we are manipulated by the ruling class.

It was at a place that he was able to do off the cuff remarks, where he can let his hair down and talk candidly.

It just means that that is exactly how he feels and thinks. Great!

Thanks for adding a pick axe to your digging.

So, with that I was trying to decide just which "Sinister" cartoon character that Mittens most resemble..
is it... Simon Barsinister or is it ...Snidely Whiplash or better yet... is it Dick Dastardly!?!?

It's hard to decide because he is really a caricature of all of them...

...the video exposes an authentic Romney as a far more sinister character than I had imagined. Here is the sneering plutocrat, fully in thrall to a series of pernicious myths that are at the heart of the mania that has seized his party. He believes that market incomes in the United States are a perfect reflection of merit. Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)

Or does Mr. Burns have some redeemable traits but Romney has none?

:kick: for the sig line

We just have video evidence now to confirm our earlier suspicions. It's all that's changed.

Glad you're here! We need you to help us all keep this cold-hearted calculating phony-ass bastard OUT of the White House!





Now get to work.

Many of those who aren't retired are students.

The link to the Brookings Institution was valuable, as stated in the OP.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/jobs/posts/2012/04/06-jobs-greenstone-looney

It is about time the government paid back the money we have put into social security most of our lives. I have been paying into social security since I was 23. I am now 73 and retired, so social security owes me quite a bit and I do not feel guilty collectiing it.

I didn't work that long, what with raising kids and all, but we all contribute in whatever way we can...like Obama says, we're in this together.

Give me additional percentages: Military (2%?), underage(?%), college part-timers(?%) and how much do we have left for supposed outrage?

How many working poor?
Disabled?
Geographically disenfranchised?

I don't know.

Can't someone pay someone to figure out these figures. I have to go to work.

I am grateful for the 80% figure.

"was oblivious or naïve about the damage he would inflict upon the poor, sick, and vulnerable..." ???

Nah. These people think if the peasants are screaming, they are on the right track. I know a few (relatives). They wink and pat each other on the back, sneer and chuckle. They THRIVE on the misfortune of others, especially when it benefits them. They are ruthless. It's what feels "right" to them.

Rmoney had a pretty good facade when he was in public. Now his cover is blown.

That twit keeps trying to equate Rmoney's statement to Obama's 'guns' statement from 2008. The article addresses this, and also addresses why it's not the same thing at all.

All the networks are carrying that bucket.

I have mistakenly used "god, guns, and gays" to describe a voting bloc in the worst possible company.

It is what mitt said that is the problem and I'm sure there are a number of donors who have either been outed or embarrassed by their presence at the event.

And it was what Obama said that angered some republican voters. Fortunately, less than 47% of the population was offended.

They used it. We will use it.

Why is it so different when it's our guy?

Romney?

or they are just standing by their man. There are a few how are criticizing him, others are proudly claiming he's right.

Essentially calling the tea party a bunch of pearl clutchers and calling 47% of the nation grifters?

I'm afraid I can't help explain it then.

I am referring simply to circumstance. It's not a comparison of what was said. Just of the condition of getting caught saying something that is not palatable to voters at a private event.

The other unmasks a sociopath. Completely different

Obama is human. Romney is whatever a sociopath is. Inhuman? Certainly inhumane.

The basic event: they both got caught saying something they didn't expect to be filmed. I said nothing about content or results.

false dichotomy thrives. And it is a false dichotomy.

Obviously romney's content revealed something so disgusting that he should not even be considered qualified to run for any office again. How it happened does necessarily have to be part of that equation.

A person may be unknowingly caught by surprise saying something worthy of praise. What I am comparing is the condition of being unknowingly filmed.

When you combine what romney said with the difference the comfort level he displays, and what he said obviously, it reveals something absolutely disgusting about his character. IMO it was only a matter of time.

Obama made a comment that some people found disdainful. And one with which I and many liberals happen to agree. He did it in his natural affable disposition. Some people were outraged but it was never considered a vile and venomous hate filled comment in the eyes of any reasonable person. I said "so what?" I think many, if not most people agreed.
----- He and his campaign were caught off guard because someone captured and publicized comments made at a private event.

As for what romney said, I think most people are outraged. But there is a sick minority of people who will say "so what" to romney's outing as a more arrogant hater beyond what we imagined.
----- He and his campaign were caught off guard because someone captured and publicized comments made at a private event.

Opinion is much more recoverable. Having one's sociopathic personality revealed is so irrevocable. I knew he was a sociopath way before this but that's because I have sociopath-dar but having the rest of the country see it so clearly is, as I said, irrevocable.

For me I just think that it is important to step back and view things objectively. The media won't do it, so I try to do it on my own.

Great analysis.

compared Mitt's gaffe with the leaked comments made by President Obama in the 2008 campaign fund raiser. It really showed that though Obama faces similar challenges with working class voters, he doesn't write them off entirely. Obama saw this as an area where he still had support on a small scale and that it kept him committed to working hard for all Americans - not just the ones who supported his ideological mission.

He is so detached from the reality of most peoples' lives he has absolutely no desire to relate to them on any level, and he dehumanizes them in his own head. He thinks their need for basics such as food and shelters is a weakness.

"Obama was aspiring to become president of all of America, even that part most hostile to him, in the belief that what they shared mattered more than what divided them. Romney genuinely seems to conceive of the lowest-earning half of the population as implacably hostile parasites."

His view of the lowest earners is grist for the war drums that play with his ego issues perhaps.

Let's hope in the next presidential term the draft is reinstated. Insure that the progeny of people like Mitt Romney get to play the game in real time too. That would be a worth while project to work on while working to eliminate the need for war altogether.

IMPLACABLY hostile PARASITES" BECAUSE of how he himself has made "his" money, i.e. through manipulating DEBT, i.e. NOTHING, or actually even less than nothing, nothing but private/secret arbitrary ambiguous completely and utterly FUNGIBLE virtual codes, 0s and 1s, shuffled at the right instant, extremely quickly, back and forth, between synched-up privately owned computers . . . talk about PARASITES on the Real Value of WORK!!! Is it any wonder that t/he/y are pathologically paranoid about what they perceive as other parasites???

He didn't make his money. He was born into it.

As a former Mormon, I remember we were taught that if you were weathly, it was because you were "special". If you were starving in some less developed country, it was because before you were born, you were neutral when it came to taking sides between god and the devil. Many Mormons actually believe in this sort of fatalistic scenario because it's doctrine. I can see where it would be justification for the "haves" to become heartless assholes.

It's amazing what people believe due to religion. But I guess I'm not entirely surprised. Sigh.

I don't usually diss someones religion but if this is doctrine in Mormonism, then Mormonism is awful.

And he believes himself to be superhuman. Far better than you and I. He's a deluded sociopath but then that's redundant.

K&R

"Far from seeing his own privileged upbringing as the private-school educated son of an auto executive-turned-governor as an obvious refutation of that belief, Romney cites his own life, preposterously, as a confirmation of it. (“I have inherited nothing. Everything I earned I earned the old fashioned way.”)

Well this takes the cake. Mitt Romney's education alone is more than many families/people make in their entire lifetimes, and that is here is the good old USofA.

It strikes me this man does not know how to tell the truth to anyone. Perhaps his life is just a lie. Even to his supporters, those he is seeking money from, he lies to them for support his campaign as he even lies to America(that's called OPM other peoples money. Has Mitt put any of his money into the campaign like Meg Ryan did?

Great article thank you for sharing this perspective!

dumped in an urban poverty-stricken neighborhood and has to survive their for a month or something so that he gets more money or something. I can't remember the details, but I like the premise. I'd love to see Romney dumped in the roughest part of Chicago, his memory erased, and left to fend for himself.

drug him and leave him for dead in Mexico, for his own damn good lol...

There are still Romneys living in Mexico. Not all the family slunk back to the US during the Mexican Revolution, some stayed down there, in their Mormon enclave.

Send him to Afghanistan!

In besieged Mormon colony, Mitt Romney’s Mexican roots
By Nick Miroff, Published: July 23, 2011

COLONIA JUAREZ, Mexico — Three dozen of Mitt Romney’s relatives live here in a narrow river valley at the foot of the western Sierra Madre mountains, surrounded by peach groves, apple orchards and some of the baddest, most fearsome drug gangsters and kidnappers in all of northern Mexico.

Like Mitt, the Mexican Romneys are descendants of Miles Park Romney, who came to the Chihuahua desert in 1885 seeking refuge from U.S. anti-polygamy laws. He had four wives and 30 children, and on the rocky banks of the Piedras Verdes River, he and his fellow Mormon pioneers carved out a prosperous settlement beyond the reach of U.S. federal marshals. He was Mitt’s great-grandfather.

Gaskell Romney, Mitt’s grandfather, settled in Mexico as well, and Mitt’s father, George Romney, was born in nearby Colonia Dublan — raising the possibility of a 2012 presidential race between two contenders whose fathers were born outside the United States.

<SNIP>

But like the other Saints, Miles Park was also hounded by U.S. marshals, whose pursuit intensified after the 1882 Edmunds Act, which stripped thousands of polygamists of their ability to vote and other basic citizenship rights. Mitt’s great-grandfather was jailed for “unlawful cohabitation,” had his property confiscated and once had to evade federal agents by hiding in a wagon, according to the Thomas Romney biography.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-besieged-mormon-colony-mitt-romneys-mexican-roots/2011/07/21/gIQAFGOXVI_story.html

This is a DAMNING bit of evidence. But the GOP will NOW have time to falsify this bit of treachery. Since it was released now, it was obvious that it was held onto for weeks, if not months. So why release it now??

Something is starting to bother me. We have the media on our side for the most part, but this information should have been released at the proper time. NOT seven weeks out!

become even more diligent after the vote, no matter how it turns out.

Simple as that.

rather than in the Friday news dump.

And this one is sticking. It's growing long and hairy legs.

To make more gaffes, errors, and let his true feelings about anybody who isn't worth 9 figures come out in the open.

He's a sociopath. That his brain may be as pickled as Dubya's is a question, but he has been a sociopath his whole life. There are so many instances in which he showed it, animal abuse, he abused his children, he treats his wife like trash (she is trash, but he would treat her so no matter what). He screws up human emotion on a regular basis because he is faking human emotion.

Occam's Razor

Symptoms of Sociopathy.

Glibness and Superficial Charm

Manipulative and Conning
They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.

Grandiose Sense of Self
Feels entitled to certain things as "their right."

Pathological Lying
Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.

Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

Shallow Emotions
When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

Incapacity for Love

Need for Stimulation
Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.

Callousness/Lack of Empathy
Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.

Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet "gets by" by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.

Irresponsibility/Unreliability
Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.

Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Credited to the below website, though there are many that list these traits.

http://www.mcafee.cc/Bin/sb.html

The "gaffes" are not through with Mitt yet.
From here to November, the walls are gonna come tumbling down on this spoiled snob.

I don't want them to just knock down Romney I want it to knock down the entire Conservative philosophy & the Republican Party which housed it all in one big swoop.
It's time to crush this ignorance. Decades upon decades.
It has held the country back for too long now.
John Lucas

Either...

A) He buys into this nonsense, which provides strong evidence that he's a fucking moron.

or

B) He knows it's nonsense, but repeats it anyway for the sake of duplicity and manipulation of his moronic base who does believe it.

I can't decide which is worse, but either would be disqualifying to anyone north of a room temperature IQ.

to me and a few others? He is a classic sociopath, in the mold of Bush and Cheney.

hit a nerve with me like Mitt's Blooper. I've been seething and thinking about the magnitude of the republican "Leaders" hatred for the working, the working poor and the just plain poor in America.

It made me think about my Dad's last couple of months of life, if you'd call it that. His last six weeks, my Pop was asking me about his social security disability claim he'd filed a few months before that. Six weeks before he died of lung cancer the cancer metastasized to his brain and his brain malfunctioned and his heart rate shot up to over 200 beats per minute. His doctors tried to slow it down with drugs, but that didn't work, so the doctors put him in the IC unit and shocked his heart back into normal rhythm. My Pop was already down from two hundred pounds to a hundred pounds, by then and the cancer had spread all through him. To his skin, bones, lungs and brain. I'd been staying with him at the hospital almost around the clock, because after the cancer attacked his brain he'd gotten up and fallen one night and broken his nose trying to go to the bathroom by himself. When I came in from home that morning the doctors had him in restraints and I made them untie him and I stayed ever night after that.

I'd gone home to eat shower and get my mail and in my mailbox was a letter from Social Security saying that My dad was able to go back to work. According to Social Security's doctors, my dad wasn't disabled at all, he should be able to go back to work, ASAP. Those SS doctors had checked him out about six months before they set that letter, when he had opened his claim. When dad had been examined by the SS doctors he'd been blacking out and coughing all the time and had skin lesions. So when I went back to the hospital, Dad was in intensive care and they were shocking his heart. I showed his doctors the disqualification letter and three doctors told me, that the SS doctors should have known by Dad's chest x-rays when they checked him out at SS, that he wasn't fit to go to work. My dad's doctors were as upset as I was with social security, but the doctors advised me to appeal it and not to tell my Dad about SS turning him down, because they said I shouldn't upset him in the shape he was in, by telling him about the denial of his claim. They all had written the SS letters overnight for an appeal and I hand carried them to an attorney who filed an appeal shortly. After Pop got out of ICU he asked me one day if I'd heard from social security and I looked him right in the eyes and lied to him, knowing that he didn't have long to live. He'd ask again in a few days and I lied again and every time I lied to him it broke me heart. He died at my house after the doctors let him come with to live out his last three weeks and then my wife and I lied to him, until he was unable to think or ask anymore.

My Dad never did get a check. He had worked in a coal mine, on a railroad, on heavy construction for Union Carbide and UMWA construction jobs. He gone to work in the mine loading coal by hand when he was sixteen and had paid into Social Security the rest of his working life. He paid into medicare since medicare began and he never drew a dime.

So when I sat and listened to Mitt's blooper it pissed me off worse than anything else has for a very long time and it made all the hurt and anger I'd felt when Dad was denied by his government, on Ronald Reagan's watch, come back just as strong as back when my government had caused me to have to lie, to the best friend I ever had, to almost his dying day.

Working people are like dirt under the mover's and shakers feet, in mitt's "Faith Based" "COMPASSIONATE" party. Do I hate? I'm simply a product of my environment. And I'll never forget.

Don't ever forget the reason that poor repigs aren't offended by Flip-Flopper's 47% remark.

When they hear that speech, they don't hear "47%". They hear "lazy ------s".

which (they don't realize) is completely nuts.

They are also brainwashed to believe "the 47%" can't be
republican or conservative, when the sad truth is that
those 47% are "the working poor", retirees and youth of
this country. And plenty of them vote Repub.

That the term "working poor" even exists is an appalling
indictment on us, as a society: that we accept such a
condition and treatment of our neighbors.

This is what should outrage those brainwashed, huddled
masses on the right. People can't make enough money
to meet basic needs. (see "Walmart&quot

to get in the white house, but after this I am pretty sure he's a sociopath - evil

...making his comments almost surreal.

But his base is frothing at the mouth...getting the class warfare they've been looking for...

grandkids and...god help her...Ann. She's not well, regardless of her sense of entitlement. It's well known...none of his family wanted this "it's my turn" asshole to run for office. The family is never the same.

I didn't need this expose to convince me, but I can only hope that it some of the jerks that support them come to the senses. Although, I won't hold my breath.

By kicking out the workers when he got control of the Bains Corp., exporting work to Chine, thereby maximizing his profits.

He inherited it.

I am as in favor of the republicans failing in their drive to turn the US into a Dickensian dystopia as anyone else with any capacity for reason, however, I am concerned for Romney the man. This is a guy who has had the world prepared for him, and grew up with an expectation of privilege and the right of destiny. He shows occasional evidence of being emotionally brittle and holding a capacity for flashes of anger and general emotional meltdowns when cornered. For the sake of the well being of the man, we should find a way for him to navigate this disaster of a campaign into something in which he might yet save face, sufficient to grant him time to process reality against his delusional assumptions of privilege. It would be one thing to see him lose, but quiet another to have to witness a very public emotional and/or mental breakdown of a candidate for president of the United States. Surely someone in his family or some of his friends understand the risk and can help him find some reinterpretation of the abject failure he is facing.