Do words matter?

“Big business is doing fine in many places – they get the loans they need, they can deal with all the regulation. They know how to find ways to get through the tax code, save money by putting various things in the places where there are low tax havens around the world for their businesses.” – Mitt Romney.

“No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this is the place that we were born and raised.” – Mitt Romney

” I’m not familiar precisely with exactly what I said, but I stand by what I said, whatever it was.” – Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney has a plan to turn the economy around. Except for a few vague threats like more tax breaks for millionaires, fewer too big to fail business regulations, and drill, baby drill, not many details. He has a plan to fix the immigration problem. Except he’s given no details at all. He has a plan to fix our foreign relations problems as well. Since the Iraq war is over and we’re finally starting to leave Afghanistan, bin Laden, and Qadhafi are gone, and the Arab Spring is in full-bloom, Romney’s plan is to stand by Israel. And of course, no other details.

In fact, the biggest, strongest, loudest message so far has been, “We DID build that!” Which, unfortunately, proves Obama’s point, that no one single individual can succeed in a vacuüm. Great individual success goes hand-in-hand with great national success. It’s “we”, not “I”.

“Trust me.” Is Romney’s response to everything from his income taxes, to just about every aspect of how he would govern this great land. But why should we?

Majority rules

The Romney/Ryan team has distanced itself from comments made by Todd Akin, a six-term congressman running against incumbent Democrat Sen. Claire McCaskill, who, when asked in an interview broadcast Sunday on St. Louis television station KTVI if he would support abortions for women who have been raped, replied:

“It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

We know God takes care of these kinds of problems. Remember the Salem witch trials, where a women would be proven innocent only by drowning in the throwing-the-accused-into-the-water ordeal.

To be fair, both Romney and Ryan have stated on more than one occasion that they oppose giving women the right to choose in any event, including rape or incest. Corporations, since they are now people, should have more rights than the gentler sex.

Should these kinds of policy positions, as well as turning Medicare into a voucher system, privatizing Social Security and cutting taxes on the one percent while raising taxes on everybody else, hurt the Romney/Ryan ticket enough to stop them from defeating President Obama this November? Many on the Right say “no”, and I happen to agree with them. With an enormous money advantage, and new voter-suppression laws in several states that Obama won last time around, the numbers don’t lie.

I’ll be voting for Obama, but I’ll be in the minority.

What do you think we should change the name: “The United States of America” to?

I remember going to a History class way, way back when I was in grade school. There was a story about something called the “Tea Party”, a political protest by the Sons of Liberty. They even had a rallying cry as they were dumping loads of tea into Boston Harbor: “NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!”

Well, we had a Revolutionary War and ultimately gained our independence. We celebrate that monumental day on the Fourth of July by watching fireworks to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. That’s all in the past.

Today’s ruling by Judge Robert Simpson to uphold the most stringent voter suppression law in the nation effectively takes away the Right to Vote for 750,000 Pennsylvanians. Period. You can hem-and-haw all you want, but 750,000 tax-paying Pennsylvanians who could legally vote before the Voter I.D. law passed no longer can. The most insidious aspect of this is that nearly all of those ex-citizens have no idea their Constitutional Rights have been stripped from them. They can’t fix a problem if they don’t know the problem exists.

There are tons more to be said about the end of democracy as we know it, but I’ll leave you with this: It’s all but certain Mitt Romney will be our next President. The question remains, at what cost?…