ROMNEY TURNS VOTING INTO A GAME OF CHANCE

Romney's lies, flip-flops and obfuscations, have made a shambles out of the first Presidential debate and as they continue, will make voting for him a "crap shoot". With Romney's refusal to come clean with the voters on his tax returns, his Cayman Island accounts, and his policies,changing the latter at the drop of a pin to suit whim and venue---and the polls, an honest, informed voter can not really know who or what they are voting for. When we step into that voting booth on November 6, we don't want to be faced with a "one armed bandit"instead of a voting machine. But that is the kind of choice we will face.

 On the tenth of October Mike Tomasky penned a piece in the Daily Beast (10-10-2012) which includes a list for President Obama on how to make Mitt unacceptable again. (See: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/10/michael-tomasky-on-how-obama-needs-to-make-mitt-unacceptable-again.html) His list is a great one, and includes Romney's tax plan, his vagueness on what he would cut, his disdain for the poor, whom he would relegate to a hospital ER and then call that a "health plan", his problem with women's health issues, his desire to cut basic government functions, and Romney's repetitious lie that Obama's $716 billion-dollar cut (over ten years) to health care PROVIDERS--- is a cut to services....while he ignores his health care cut of the same magnitude which would be taken away from recipients and that money funneled into tax cuts for the wealthy.

 But it is Romney's skimpy resume and basic inability to be honest with the American people that disqualifies him and makes him unacceptable in my book.

 Let's begin with Romney's resume. It's thin! What has he done? He has no foreign policy experience. He is a one-term governor of a small state, which he left in worse economic condition than when he was elected. He had a much-touted role in managing the Olympics. And with a great deal of financial help and direction from others, he established Bain Capital...a vulture capital firm which made a great deal of money by buying up companies and exporting jobs overseas. To my way of thinking, the fact that he he created great wealth for his buddies and himself on the backs of the US worker is not a recommendation for higher office in the government, or acceptable preparation to make decisions for the future and welfare of a great nation. It makes me question Romney's preparation for the job.

 We are now just recovering from the G.W. Bush administration's emphasis on cutting taxes for the super wealthy and hollowing out the middle class. Those policies left us with two costly and simmering wars and the Great Recession of 2007-8. Romney would like to repeat, continue and intensify those disastrous Bush-policies of continuous war and "trickle down" economics. Why would any knowledgeable voter want to revisit that awful period?

But unlike Bush junior, who began his destructive policies while we were affluent, Romney would embark on the same course of failed economic policies in 2012, when we have been weakened and undermined by the disastrous, lingering effects of the Bush wars-on-the-cuff and irresponsible tax cuts. The Obama first term has been able to raise the suffering US carcass only to its knees in the time it had, (while bucking stiff Republican obstructionism determined to make this our first black President---fail).  After the Bush years, we find that the top 400 most wealthy in the nation have more assets than the bottom 150 million. When the top ten percent own more than the bottom 90 percent. When wealth is accumulating in the coffers of the super-wealthy at an alarming rate. When the middle class is hobbled by high unemployment, higher tax rates than the wealthy classes, low wages, lack of universal health care, limited upward mobility, and the prospect of an old age suffused in ill health and poverty.

 These are the present circumstances that Romney's policies would have us revisit and extend and intensify. Recall, that his tax policy would cut domestic spending in half, and that he sees 47% of Americans--the elderly, working poor, retired and military class on the bottom, in his own words, as "moochers and takers".  His "clients" are the upper class, super wealthy, the so-called "makers" and "job creators" classes. It is well to recall here that given the chance as a "job maker" Romney himself failed during his business career--firing and laying off more employees than he hired.

Finally, we must address Romney's absolute lack of core principles. He has been all over the map on health care, women's health issues, taxes, foreign policy, etc., etc. Ted Kennedy once referred to Romney as "multiple choice Mitt", a truly apt epithet. His icon should be some sort of moving and flip-flopping image. His present turnaround on almost every issue that he had formerly cemented himself to in the primaries, (it seems only to gain the approval of the hard right) he is now retreating away from at warp speed.

In a Democracy, we must have a minimum expectation that the candidate whom we elect is truthful and states generally what he actually believes. In Romney's case, we have no idea where he stands on anything. He has been successful in blurring his image so effectively that a voter really does not know who or what he or she is voting for. One could imagine him as taking on any political complexion--socialist, democrat, or even Tory or Whig. He could be any of those since he changes like a chameleon as he moves from one venue to another as circumstances require. Such behavior should disqualify him as presidential material. One thing is certain, that as a rich successful guy with money to spend, he now wants to be the President of the USA and he will do or say anything to close that deal and get his heart's desire.

In this election, if you pull the lever for Romney, a spinning double row of brightly colored fruits may appear in before you in the voting booth, like the "one-armed bandit"of Vegas or Atlantic City. What you get from pulling that lever will just be luck! That is no way to elect a president! Don't fall for it! I'd say demand a straight answer from Mitt, except for the fact that his history indicates whatever he says is suspect. How can we elect a guy like this?

Get the picture?

rjk