Mitt Romney 2012: A Company Man In A Field Of Mortals

For a candidate already having trouble rallying the Republican base, Mitt Romney seems to have no fear of being labeled a RINO. Speaking at a town hall in New Hampshire, the 2012 candidate came clean with the fact that he believes in the unproven concept of man-made global warming. Between this and “Romneycare,” these are shaping out to be some rather rough primaries for the former Massachusetts governor.Image Credit: mittromney.com

Mitt Romney 2012: A Company Man In A Field Of Mortals

Last presidential election cycle, many were taken by the candidate who possessed the best record of success showing executive leadership turning poor leadership around in both the private business sector and public trust situations. But, alas, even though Mitt Romney was the most popular single candidate the Republican party had for the 2008 election cycle, he was done in with the popularity of two candidates, John McCain and Mike Huckabee, who conspired to topple his effort and end with the best the Republican "Ruling Class" had to offer.

Romney gets vanquished, Huckabee drops out, and John McCain looses to Barack Obama in a contest of Progressive versus Progressive Lite because no one likes a half measure of anything ... even disaster.

After 40 or 50 years of an overriding progressive political culture and agenda by the ruling class based in Washington DC, the progressives finally got their non half-measure leader and our country is rupturing.

We all know the statistics ... 9.1% unemployment after assuring the country that if we use over 860 billion dollars in taxpayer debt the unemployment rate would not exceed 8%, we could keep our doctor with ObamaCare, after ObamaCare passed Congress with a single party majority (Democrat) over 2,000 waivers to comply with the law were issued to save those companies who were favorable to this Government the economic pain of implementation, an outright attack on capitalism beginning with the takeover of a large manufacturing segment of our economy (General Motors & Chrysler) in order to restructure a bankruptcy process that placed the legitimate primary investors to the back of the line to give that position to the AFL-CIO Union in partnership with the Government, and ... you get the idea. Business-as-usual in Washington on steroids.

This excerpted and edited from Pajamas Media -

Islam for Pols: a Primer
June 18, 2011 - 8:31 am - by Roger Kimball

The trouble is, business-as-usual in Washington is the problem, not the solution.

Romney would not be the grade A disaster that Barack Obama has been. But he lacks the gumption to challenge the status quo and make fundamental changes to the way government has been deployed recently in the United States. “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Ronald Reagan said those were the scariest nine words in the English language. Government has its place; but it must also be put in its place. Mitt Romney is quintessentially the man from the government incapable of understanding that (in Thoreau’s formula) the government that governs best governs least.

We need more intelligent government, to be sure, but we also need less government: less regulation, fewer programs, fewer bureaucrats, more local, more individual, initiative.

Mitt Romney is a company man at a time when our problem is the company. We can do better. Let’s hope we do.
[Reference Here]

As Roger Kimball so keenly points out, "Company Men" need not apply because it's the "Company" that is our problem.

The company men who are lining up to replace Barack Obama does not end with just Mitt Romney, we need to add to this company man calculation Newt Gingrich. Further, if Jon Huntsman (a Bush family favorite who plans to announce this week) as well as Mike Huckabee jump in, they'd have to be counted as well.

All other candidates - to date, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (MN), former Senator Rick Santorum (PA), Congressman Michelle Bachmann (MN), Congressman Ron Paul (TX), businessman Herman Cain, and if they throw their hats into the ring, Governors Rick Perry (TX) and Chris Christie (NJ) - would have to be classified as "Country Class" (versus "Ruling Class") or outside of Washington DC beltway mortals.

If we are honest with each other, the only way we can arrest or stop this downward spiral in America and American values of personal freedom and entrepreneurial opportunity, is to change the leadership and culture of the "Company"!

[Article first published as Mitt Romney 2012: A Company Man In A Field Of Mortals on Technorati]

The Deaf Are The Most Longing To Hear

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The Deaf Are The Most Longing To Hear
by Edmund Jenks

March 26, 2009, 5:52 am

A blog post spawned by a response to a previous posting about the comparison of deficiet spending between the two-party rule 43rd Presidency and the fledgling one-party rule 44th Presidency ...

Dennis Shay says:

Ed, great summary.

but you're using the wrong venue. Your dire warning is mostly falling on deaf ears, here in the Red Room.

Wed, 03/25/2009 - 8:26am

[the Red Room is a web portal for authors]

----

Thanks for your concern but if one more mind hears, then we all get a little less hurt.

You know, it isn't Left Vs Right ... Democrat Vs Republican anymore!

The political fight in this country is really between those who are aligned with Total Government - TG (Totalitarianism, Communism, Fascism, Dictatorship) and No Government - NG (Anarchy). Sadly, both Democrats and Republicans are way to the left of what would be a center point between these two extremes.

The Constitution of the United States, for example, structures a Government that is way closer to Anarchy than the center point between Total Government and No Government.

"Total Government - No Government" Political Spectrum - The political spectrum of the United Stated at the beginning of the 44th Presidency of Barack Obama. Image Credit: Edmund Jenks (MAXINE) 2009

This is simply an illustration of how far our country has drifted away from its core values found in the Constitution.

It really is about all of us treating each and every individual, as we find them, with personal freedom and respect.

If you question the logic of this proposal, then all one needs to do is ask ---

"Is this a country by the people, for the people (as it says in the constitution) when the largest spending bill in the history of the nation is put to a vote, through a forced compressed time procedure, before anyone (legislator or citizen) has enough time to actually read the legislation?"

"Is this a country by the people, for the people when the legislators are considering a law that forces the elimination of a secret vote in the work place?" - what is next, laws to abolish any secret vote anywhere there are powerful forces that want to force their will on others?

What is happening in this country is that the Constitution is under assault and people's personal freedoms are not given any value by the people who are elected to protect them ... as guaranteed by the Constitution (this nation's founding and forming document).

Ebony & Ivory - Obama Deficits & Bush Deficits Together

In back-to-back press conferences (held Nov. 24, 2008) by Bush (first) and Obama (second), the men either stated or implied that they were sort of working together to muscle the nation through this tough economic period. Bush said, “I talked to Obama about the decision we made. I told the American people, and I told the president-elect when I first met him, that anytime we were to make a big decision during this transition, he will be informed, as will his team.” The plans discussed are still in play to this day during the Obama Administration. Image Credit: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (2008)

Ebony & Ivory - Obama Deficits & Bush Deficits Together

These figures do not live together in perfect harmony here in Carter's Second Term.

Question:

Did you know that the Barack Obama Administration inherited deficits from the previous Bush Administration? Really?!

How can the Obama Administration continue to float the tired old saw that they just happen to inherit large deficits so it will take more just to dig ourselves out?

After sixty short days, the Congress that the Obama Administration actually DID INHERIT, and Barack Obama himself, increased the commitments to spend taxpayer money on social programs alone from the 3% of GDP to 20% of GDP ... or an increase in social spending programs of an eerie 6.66 times greater level.

It is called Deficit Spending (socialism) - and now foreign countries (China and Russia) are suggesting that the world economy adopt a new currency on which to peg/judge the value of other currencies other than the United States dollar - the formally most stable currency in the world.

Graphic showing the Bush Administration and the committed and projected Obama Administration deficits side-by-side. Graphic Credit: The Washington Post via the Heritage Foundation (2009)

This excerpted and edited from the Heritage Foundation -

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures
The Heritage Foundation - Posted March 24th, 2009 at 10.20am

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

* President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.

* President Bush began a string of expensive financial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.

* President Bush created a Medicare drug entitlement that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new government health care fund.

* President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. President Obama would double it.
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* President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

* President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.
Reference Here>>

What the American people inherited with the Clinton and Bush Administrations (and thrust forward with the Obama Administration) were the building blocks of economic slavery and communism.

First, the Government took the position that every person that lived in America (citizen or non-citizen) deserved to be able to participate in home ownership. The Clinton Administration formed the quasi Governmental financial institutions backed by taxpayer money of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to insure low interest loans with reduced qualification requirements. Bonus programs were implemented and paid to the political (Democrat) management of these organizations.

Banks did not want to lend money with this level of low proof, so the management of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had community development organizations (ACORN) prod them to loan money through lawsuits. In order to fuel demand for these weak mortgages (purchase commitments without the ability or intention to pay), the Government regulating agencies allowed them to be bundled and packaged as grouped financial instruments and sold to the highest bidder through insurance companies and financial institutions (AIG, WAMU, Wachovia, banks in France, Finland, Germany, and etc.).

What triggered this collapse is the increased payment demanded the mortgage companies when the initial period of artificially low inducement interest ran out and the actual value of the house became greater than the mortgage value of the home. People who originally had no real means to afford the home they committed to purchase in the first place, simply walked away with no real damage to their lives leaving all of the intuitions holding the mortgages without an income stream. The asset value of the bundled "Junk Mortgages" dropped and the economic crisis begins.

The sick logic in all of this is that the two-party Bush Government got our economy into this position and now the one-party Obama Government (of Obama/Pelosi/Reid) is smart enough to get us out … with heavier intervention and greater spending commitments - all on the American Taxpayer.

Does anyone in Government realize that this deficit spending of our collective money will all implode eventually?

We, at MAXINE, believe this strategy will turn our currency into the value of the bundled "Junk Mortgages" that helped to put us into this place to start with - all on the back of the Government move toward social engineering!

Of Amnesty Burgers And Beltway Fools

Image Credit: Michelle Malkin

Of Amnesty Burgers And Beltway Fools

The people we elect to run our Government and protect us ... Do Not Care!

This from Michelle Malkin (with edits from MAXINE)-

The J. Wellington Wimpy immigration plan:
Amnesty now, enforcement later
By Michelle Malkin - May 18, 2007 - 01:10 PM

It was true in 1986. It's as true as ever in 2007. Wimpy will get his amnesty burgers and the Beltway fools who keep deluding themselves about the false promise of immigration enforcement will be left empty-handed. Again.

Amnesty is the hamburger. Enforcement is the payment that will never come. I've reported this reality over and over and over and over and over again. All the leaked memos and graphs and analysis in the world, however, cannot sum up the deportation/enforcement/border security sham--and the mess at DHS--more clearly than the reality expressed by an illegal alien quoted by the Associated Press today:

"If I get deported and need to cross the border again, that's not a problem," he said.

Republicans in Washington who are embracing the Bush-Kennedy amnesty will tell you the package is tough on enforcement because the millions of illegal aliens who are here now will be deported later if they fail to meet the requirements of their so-called "Z visas."

Here is how the clueless Republican National Committee is selling it:

No Amnesty For Illegal Immigrants: Illegal immigrants who come out of the shadows will be given probationary status. Once the border security and enforcement benchmarks are met, they must pass a background check, remain employed, maintain a clean criminal record, pay a $1,000 fine, and receive a counterfeit-proof biometric card to apply for a work visa or "Z visa." Some years later, these Z visa holders will be eligible to apply for a green card, but only after paying an additional $4,000 fine; completing accelerated English requirements; getting in line while the current backlog clears; returning to their home country to file their green card application; and demonstrating merit under the merit-based system.

Those who refuse to return home, comply with the visa provisions, or who remain here illegally and don't apply, supposedly would be deported ... Later.

Department of Homeland Security chief and Ted Kennedy cheerleader Michael Chertoff regurgitated the same talking points at a press conference earlier today. Open-borders Republicans in the Senate are committing them to memory pronto.

Image Credit: Michelle Malkin

Does this empty promise of the amnesty/deportation trade-off sound familiar?

Why, yes, yes it does.

Let me boil it down to fundamentals: Bush-Kennedy amnesty is the J. Wellington Wimpy plan:

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."
Reference Here>>

Senator H.R. Clinton - NOT Presidential Material

A new Time Magazine national poll has New York Senator Hillary Clinton leading the democratic pack with 40-percent, 19-points ahead of Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Now all eyes are on Clinton as she heads to Iowa this weekend and her trip could tell us a lot about how she plans to run her primary campaign. Image Credit: KCRG News

Senator H.R. Clinton - NOT Presidential Material

In an "Off-With-Their-Heads" proclamation combined with whiney "If President ... I don’t want the responsibility" attitude, now Senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton proves SHE is NOT up to the task of Presidential leadership.

If she had her way, the heavy lifting and responsibility of being leader of the most powerful free nation on earth would be removed so that she would be able to concentrate on what she really wants to do … create a liberal, popularity-loving, and socialist America.

Excerpts from The Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune -

Clinton wants all U.S. troops out of Iraq when Bush leaves office
The Associated Press - Published: January 28, 2007

DAVENPORT, Iowa: U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that U.S. President George W. Bush should withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq before he leaves office, saying it would be "the height of irresponsibility" to pass the war along to the next commander in chief.

"This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy," the Democratic senator said her in first presidential campaign tour through the early-voting state of Iowa.

"We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office" in January 2009, the former first lady said.

The White House condemned Clinton's comments as a partisan attack that undermines U.S. soldiers.
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Pressed during a forum to defend her vote to authorize force in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, Clinton responded by increasing her criticism of Bush.

"I am going to level with you, the president has said this is going to be left to his successor," Clinton said. "I think it is the height of irresponsibility and I really resent it."

Bush describes Iraq as the central front in the global fight against terrorism that began after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "The war on terror will be a problem for the next president. Presidents after me will be confronting ... an enemy that would like to strike the United States again," he recently told USA Today newspaper.

One questioner asked Clinton if her track record showed she could stand up to "evil men" around the world.

"The question is, we face a lot of dangers in the world and, in the gentleman's words, we face a lot of evil men and what in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men," Clinton said. She paused to gaze while the audience interrupted with about 30 seconds of laughter and applause.
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During the town hall meeting, she tried to make clear that she thinks she would be a chief executive with enough fortitude to confront any danger facing the country.

"I believe that a lot in my background and a lot in my public life shows the character and toughness that is required to be president," Clinton said. "It also shows that I want to get back to bringing the world around to support us again."
Read All>>

U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York speaks during town hall meeting in Davenport, Iowa. Image Credit: AP Image

Hillary ought not limit her demands to a single item (that the United States leave Iraq and its potential representative spread of Islamo-fascism throughout the world) ...

... Hillary ought to insist that Bush also complete ALL of the following, so as not to "irresponsibly" pass-on these additional items to the next President ... so that SHE may focus on more important items during her tenure:

1) Rebuild all of New Orleans to better than original. This will allow her to focus on more creative, village-supported initiatives.

2) Eradicate the H5N1 flu virus from all sectors throughout the world (don’t forget to include a plan for free vaccination to all if his administration is not successful by the end of 2008).

3) Revamp the entire automobile infrastructure so that our country is not dependent on foreign oil before the next President takes office. This includes market availability of automobiles and hundreds of thousands of ethanol stations for fuel. The will allow her (or any next President) to not have to deal with the issues of ANWAR, Mideast oil, and the other sticky issues surrounding petroleum-based economies.

4) Why not insist that Bush rebuild all of Mexico along with its failed economy and culture so that the border problem just goes away. After all, terrorist security will be a thing of the past because He will have already pulled our troops out of Iraq.

5) Oh yes, make the Social Security solvency problem just go away!

6) Sign the Kyoto Protocol -- so that Global Warming will be just a thing of the past.

7)

8)

9)

AND ETC. - Please feel free to add your own wishes of problems to be eliminated due to the fact that if the problem still exists ... it must be irresponsible that the problem remains for the next President to deal with.

At MAXINE, our reaction to Hillary's apparent fear of the challenge of leadership this stance shows -- assuming that She is elected President.

"WE REALLY RESENT IT!"

The statements made by New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are just NOT Presidential and this episode proves she is NOT Presidential material.

Poll Answers

Comment Posted Here>>

Bush’s Threat Of Surge Pays Early Dividends

Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr delivers a speech during prayers in Kufa, Iraq, in this Nov. 24, 2006 file photo. Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc announced Sunday, Jan. 21, 2007, that it is lifting its nearly two-month political boycott of Iraqi parliament after reaching a compromise over its demands for a timetable for Iraqi forces to take over security and the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Image Credit: AP Photo/Alaa Al Marjani, File

Bush’s Threat Of Surge Pays Early Dividends

In Iraq, it’s the Crips and Bloods all over again. Baghdad is South Central LA and the ugliest elements of the wild, wild west all rolled into to one pot and power is the only currency that has favor.

It is good to see that a return to basics seems to be having an initial positive effect.

Excerpts from the Associated Press via Yahoo! News -

Iraqi leader drops protection of militia
By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer 1-21-07, 3:00 PM PST - BAGHDAD, Iraq

Iraq's prime minister has dropped his protection of an anti-American cleric's Shiite militia after U.S. intelligence convinced him the group was infiltrated by death squads, two officials said Sunday.

In a desperate bid to fend off an all-out American offensive, the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr last Friday ordered the 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers under his control to end their nearly two-month boycott of the government. They were back at their jobs Sunday.

Al-Sadr had already ordered his militia fighters not to display their weapons. They have not, however, ceded control of the formerly mixed neighborhoods they have captured, killing Sunnis or forcing them to abandon their homes and businesses.
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Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi Army was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia. It is held responsible for much of the sectarian bloodshed that has turned the capital into a battle zone over the past year.

Shiite militias began taking revenge after more than two years of incessant bomb and shooting attacks by Sunni insurgents.

Sometime between then and Nov. 30, when the prime minister met President Bush, al-Maliki was convinced of the truth of American intelligence reports which contended, among other things, that his protection of al-Sadr's militia was isolating him in the Arab world and among moderates at home, the two government officials said.

"Al-Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi Army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," said one official. Both he and a second government official who confirmed the account refused to be identified by name because the information was confidential. Both officials are intimately aware of the prime minister's thinking.

"The Americans don't act on rumors but on accurate intelligence. There are many intelligence agencies acting on the ground, and they know what's going on," said the second official, confirming the Americans had given al-Maliki overwhelming evidence about the Mahdi Army's deep involvement in the sectarian slaughter.

Earlier this month, Bush and al-Maliki separately announced a new security drive to clamp off the sectarian violence that has riven the capital and surrounding regions.

Bush announced an additional 21,500 American soldiers would be sent to accomplish the task and al-Maliki has promised a similar number of forces, who will take the lead in the overall operation.
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The neighborhood-by-neighborhood sweep, expected to begin in earnest by the first of the month, will target Sunni insurgents, al-Qaida in Iraq and its allied militant bands equally with Shiite militias, both the Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigade.

The latter is the Iranian-trained military wing of Iraq's most power[ful] Shiite political group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq.

The first government official said al-Maliki's message was blunt.

"He told the sheik that the activities of both the Sadrist politicians and the militia have inflamed hatred among neighboring Sunni Arab states that have been complaining bitterly to the Americans," the official said.

Sunni Muslims are the majority sect in key Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, all of which have shunned al-Maliki. Shiites, long oppressed by Iraqi's Sunni minority, and vaulted to power with the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Many of the leading Shiite figures in Iraq have deep historical ties to Iran, also a majority Shiite state, whose growing muscle in the Middle East is deeply threatening to the autocratic Sunni regimes in the region.
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