[I’m on vacation this week, but I’m reading and doing some metacommentary on Mitt Romney’s book. Enjoy, or skip over it: it’s a free country.]
Remember in the intro, where I complained that Mitt Romney didn’t mention any of his hardships? I think it might be because his greatest hardship in life was weeding his father’s garden when he was like 14. Here’s how he opens this chapter:
I hate to weed. I’ve hated it ever since my father put me to work weeding the garden at our home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. It was planted with zinnias, snapdragons, and petunias, none of which seemed to grow as heartily as the weeds. After what seemed like hours of work, I never could see much progress and I’d complain to my dad. “Mitt,” he would reply, “the pursuit of the difficult makes men strong.” It seems now like an awfully grandiose response for such a pedestrian task. I complained about the weeding often enough that I heard his homily regularly. I’m sure that’s why it sticks with me to this day.
Fathers and sons. Great stuff for literature. Unfortunately, in this case, it seems Mitt is going personal only so that in a few paragraphs he can say how America needs the same ability to face tough challenges. We’ll get to that in a minute, but first a little more of his father’s story:
My father knew what it meant to pursue the difficult. He was born in Mexico, where his Mormon grandparents had moved to escape religious persecution.
For a book that’s about USA! USA! USA! this is willing to call what America did to the Mormons “persecution.” I agree, incidentally. But I think an apology is reasonable for persecution. And as we’ll see later in this chapter, Romney thinks Obama mentioning any legit problem is the same as him apologizing for it. So I don’t know, Romney is apologizing for and complaining about America? Maybe it’s too much to hope he has a coherent narrative.
Anyway, more family history. They were forced to move back to America, not because of anything America offered, but because they were afraid of “Mexican revolutionaries.” So his grandparents suffered hardships. They had to leave everything they had and live off the land. His father had to go to work and support the family at a young age, and never graduated from college.* Anyway, all that hard work by his parents and grandparents leads back to Romney weeding.
Three decades later, by the time I was weeding that Bloomfield Hills garden, my father had become a successful businessman. I knew he worried that because my brother, sisters, and I had grown up in a prosperous family, we wouldn’t understand the lessons of hard work. That’s why he put us to work shoveling snow, raking leaves, mowing the lawn, planting the garden, and of course, weeding–always reminding us that work would make us strong.
I know that I don’t know enough to actually say lesson not learned about hard work. But Mitt doesn’t mention hard work he’s actually done since his parents did what parents do. He doesn’t mention any hard work he willingly undertook on his own. I mean, I don’t expect him to have worked a decade on the line at American Motors, but he could show something to demonstrate he knows about hard work beyond he had to mow the lawn and weed the garden sometimes.
Anyway, a bit more about his father doing actual good things at American Motors. And then it isn’t just individuals who have to work hard, but also much more broadly. Then several paragraphs about Staples that feel like he wanted to write them, but didn’t know exactly where to put them because they don’t really fit. A competent editor would help. And then:
Today the United States faces daunting challenges, and I am similarly convinced that if we confront them and overcome them, we will remain a strong and leading nation. Just like individuals, companies, and human enterprises of every kind, nations that are undaunted by the challenges they face become stronger. Those that shrink from difficult tasks become weaker.
The examples are that we defeated the British to gain our independence, we won the Second World War, and the moon launch. He mentions Detroit switching to building planes during the war, without ever mentioning that these were top down orders from the government. He talks about how there were failures of American satellite launches, but we kept making them until they did work and “we became the first** nation on earth to put a man on the moon.” I couldn’t help thinking when I read that, that I can imagine how the Tea Party and today’s GOP would have reacted each moment along the way if they were around in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
And we’re to a section called Facing our Challenges Head-on. it starts by saying we thought we didn’t have any challenges during the Clinton administration. So we cut our military and that was a terrible thing. As if our military should have been as large or larger after the collapse of global communism than before it. Then without mentioning the Bush administration, he says:
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, our economy has suffered its worst crisis since the Great Depression. We have amassed an unprecedented amount of debt and liabilities, and added to that, the Obama administration plans trillion-dollar deficits every year. Russian belligerence is on the rise. China holds over $750 billion of U.S. obligations. Iran and North Korea threaten the world with unbridled nuclear ambition. Violent jihadists like those who attacked us on 9/11 plot our destruction. The consequences of failure to act in response to these perils is unthinkable.
I know it’s a bit unfair to criticize Romney for things that happened after the book was written. But most of those things are better because Obama acted. The depression isn’t nearly as bad as if we hadn’t had a stimulus. Iran and North Korea are whatever is the opposite of unbridled. Bridled, I guess. Iran still doesn’t have nuclear weapons, and North Korea’s missiles keep exploding into the sea. They’re both more isolated than under the Bush administration. And of course, Bin Laden is dead and much of his terror network destroyed, unlike the decade we wasted in Iraq. I don’t agree with everything the administration has done to get there, but it’s silly to say they didn’t act. All that said, he clearly is attacking a caricature of President Obama.
The section concludes with a plea for a strong military without ever explaining how we’re supposed to pay for it. The only remarkable paragraph is this one:
Does America make mistakes? Absolutely. We never fully understood the enormously complex political, economic, and military issues we faced in Vietnam, and we were wrong in our assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs. But in every case throughout modern history in which America has exercised military power, we have acted with good intention–not to colonize, not to subjugate, never to oppress.
First off: what do you do when you do something wrong but with good intentions? Oh, that’s right, you apologize to the people you wronged. That’s like human decency 101. So the No Apology book makes yet another case that there are places where America should apologize.
Second, does intent really matter? I mean the fact that we didn’t take the land in Iraq as our own is worth noting. But the dead in Iraq and Viet Nam don’t care about the country’s intentions. Our actions matter, and are what we should be held accountable for, good and bad.
We’ve reached the end of this section. Tomorrow, strategies countries can use to get ahead, and why Obama sux at foreign policy. Stay tuned.
* I didn’t know that about George Romney. I can’t think of anyone who had a serious chance of winning their party’s nomination not having graduated from college.
** Seriously, it makes it sound like there have been more countries than just us.
“I hate to weed. I’ve hated it ever since my father put me to work weeding the garden at our home in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.”
That’s nothing compared to how much trouble I went to getting a few marigolds to grow and bloom in a sandbox outside my bunker in Vietnam.
If this “work experience” qualifies Romney to be President of the United States, then somebody should make me Master of the Universe.
I have a photo of my Vietnam War Marigolds scanned into my computer, and I would post it on HA but I don’t know how to do that.
If you don’t understand why I tried to grow flowers in Vietnam, and why I’m still sentimental about them after all these years, then you don’t know anything about what it’s like being in a war.
I enlisted in the army and volunteered for Vietnam. What did Mitt do to make himself strong? Spend two years in a luxurious French chateau doing Mormon missionary work while working class kids of his generation were drafted to fight in Southeast Asia? Is he just another swaggering, tough-talking, Republican shirtwaist who doesn’t comprehend that sucking on a silver spoon isn’t work and enjoying the special privileges and comforts of the upper class doesn’t make people “strong”? If he wants to know what a strong person is, he should meet a Navy SEAL.
It also takes a certain kind of strength to wade through Mitt’s ghost-written drivel. Not Navy-SEAL strong, but a firm spine and the patience of a sniper is required. Carl is strong in an admirable way to be able to do this.
I shoveled snow, raked leaves, mowed the lawn, planted the garden, and weeded, too. Doesn’t everyone? Everyone I grew up with did yard chores. But then, none of my friends’ parents didn’t have servants. They were working people. Doing yardwork didn’t make me or my childhood friends strong. It was expected of us, it was merely work, and it only made us tired.
I’ll tell you what made me strong. Vietnam did. Not the killing and destruction, but the sweat and toil and bravery of my buddies, people who would rather die than let you down. People you could count on to their last breath. Youngsters barely out of adolescence who were asked to do the impossible and did it. Sure they bitched, and smoked pot, and shot at their own officers for fun, but if you gave them a difficult and dangerous job they did it no matter what it was. A lot of them died in the doing. Ah, but you had to have been there to understand this; guys like Mitt don’t know anything about it. To him, “strong” is just a word. He’s never seen strong. I’ve seen strong, so I know what it is, and he isn’t it.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against Mitt sitting out the war in a comfy French chateau; that was probably a good place for a guy like him. I wouldn’t want to be in a foxhole with him.
I wonder when Harry Reid will apologize and consult a mental health professional for his outrageous claim citing a shadowy anonymous source?
Now Nancy Pelosi has joined in the nutfest–
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, though, has defended Reid. She told The Huffington Post that Reid made a “true” statement.
“Somebody told him. It is a fact,” she said.
Huh, somebody told him???
Who?????????
So if some kook tells Mitch McConnell that obama is a sex offender, does that make it ok for mcConnell to repeat on the Senate floor??
The Democrats have hit an all-time low…repeating unsubstantiated rumors and flat out lies with no corroboration. How will that help this country?
Hey Jody,
Where were you when Fox, Drudge, Limbaugh, Trump, Palin and just about everyone else on the Right was holding up Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate? We’re still waiting for someone, anyone to say “we’re sorry” or even “oops, my bad.”
Face it, there is no difference between the right fringe and the main stream right.
Jody,
You do know that Mittens can debunk this whole story by just releasing his tax returns. He can prove the story is baseless.
Of course Jody,
It could turn out Mittens really does have something to hide. Maybe he is a crook. Maybe he didn’t pay proper tithe to his *religious organization.
*Many of the Religious Right do not acknowledge that Mormons are Christians or have a church.
I hate to break it to Jody, but dropping in here to, way off topic, claim that Harry Reed is unhinged is kind of funny and will probably be deleted. (As should this.)
Is “Jody” some sort of spam bot?
@11
Probably, or a paid troll.
Ah, yes. A paid troll.
Because the right is shaking in its boots over the untapped potential of the dozen people who log on to HA on a daily basis.
They especially fear the wisdom of Rujax and the reserved nature of RR, who bides his time and comments only when he thinks he has something important to say.
Yes, that’s it. The $185,000,000 cash on hand that the GOP has right now is being spent to disrupt the train of thought of lefties in Seattle.
Darryl outed “Jody” as the excerable “Mr. Cynical” on a previous thread.
Aka Cyniklown, aka “the Klown” he used to post the daily Rassmussen Poll results. We all got a kick out pof that.
He is supposed to live in Montana, but freely comments on the politics ofSeattle and Washington State. He is totally ignorant about local issues as well as eveything else and is a reliable source of derision…just like the numbskull clownservative “bob” here.
@ 14
I’ll reliably deride you every time you say something stupid beyond belief, Rujax.
That’s about 4-5 times per day.
First, most people in the Midwest, and a lot of folks elsewhere, know that Bloomfield Hills is the poshest suburb of Detroit and one of the richest places in the country. His citing an upbringing in Bloomfield Hills, and having to do ordinary “chores” when that’s what The Help was for, only underscores what a spoiled rich brat he was and is.
Secondly, I loved his citation of America’s landing on the moon, since not only was that a government initiative, but a sizable portion of the fringe right seems to believe that whole thing was faked anyway.
@13
A couple of right-wing organizations were outed when they paid college students to surf left leaning websites and leave comments on them. I didn’t see HA on the list of websites they hit and it was just a handful of orgs using a handful of college students each.
Every now and again we do get comments that look like they’re from spambots.
but a sizable portion of the fringe right seems to believe that whole thing was faked anyway.
Isn’t it odd that we can put a real man on the real moon and yet we keep on faking Town Hall meetings:
http://www.therightscoop.com/q.....-my-taxes/
@ 17
C’mon, Michael.
Shit I say ain’t worth a dime.
@19
Like I said @17, I didn’t see HA on the list of tracked sites and no I don’t think you’re a paid troll.
@18
You really want to go down that road, Joe, not a plumber?
@ 21
??
Was JTP staging his reply to Obama during the campaign? Wasn’t Obama in front of his house?
And if your insinuation is that both sides do it, absolutely no argument from me.
Paranoia by the fools from the far-left.
No, I’m not Mr. Cynical. And no, I’m not paid.
Just a guy who detests what obama has done to this country and wants to see him lose.
1) OK dipshit…prove me wrong.
2) My 4-5 (even if I’m wrong, which I’m not) times beats the 20-25 times per day you pull shit out your ass and expect to be taken seriously.
@6 “I wonder when Harry Reid will apologize and consult a mental health professional for his outrageous claim citing a shadowy anonymous source?”
The day Romney releases his tax returns and proves him wrong.
WHAT IS ROMNEY HIDING? ONLY HE AND IRS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATORS KNOW.
Sure ya fuck…how ’bout Bush’s two unfunded wars, the give away to Big Pharma and the massive tax cut which destroyed the Clinton Surplus and drove us into this crippling deficit?
President Obama with litle help from Congress has started the repair. Raw-Money will fuck us all over again.
PS asshole…Darryl knows.
@13 Think what the GOP could do with that $185M if they put it in stocks instead of wasting it on an unelectable tax cheater and draft evader.
@15 No one cares what you do.
what a bunch of loons..especially Pilosi.
“secret sources”…” I heard it from somebody”….what a bunch of bullshit
ekim supports blackmail, it would seem.
LMFAO…rujaxoff sounds like a whiny 12 year old…
rujaxoff: proudly inhabiting HA’s bottom rung of the ladder of life.
how much you wanna bet that rujaxoff’s “fair share” of taxes = $0
@18 What’s even odder is that you think the town hall was faked. I doubt very much it was.
The tech sector is full of smart, educated, thoughtful people who understand that serial tax cuts for wealthy people like them are a major contributor to soaring deficits.
They also understand that with federal revenues as a % of GDP at post-WW2 lows, these tax breaks aren’t sustainable, unless you’re willing to eviscerate defense and the rest of the discretionary budget.
But Repukes want to increase military spending, so maybe they prefer to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, in effect making the elderly poor subsidize billionaires?
ya, and all those obama “fainters” were real too..
amazingly, “the one” was able to diagnose their condition before they even hit the ground.
too funny…it was like watching a shitty “B” movie…
@19 Finally you’ve said something intelligent.
@23 “Just a guy who detests what obama has done to this country and wants to see him lose.”
That’s enough to call your judgment into question.
@31 “Blackmail” implies coerced payment. Releasing his tax returns won’t cost Romney anything if he isn’t hiding something. If anything it’ll help him quite a lot by putting this to rest.
Gabby Giffords’ shooter pleads guilty
Maybe we should forcibly medicate our trolls.
(Humor alert to trolls. Don’t get your panties in a twist.)
I would support a law that required all state and federal elected officials to release 10 years of IRS returns.
funny though, I doubt you will see any democrats or republicans support that.
where is charlie rangel when we need him?
great, so now not only do we have to feed and house that POS Loughner, we also have to pay for his drugs to keep him “sane” while spending life in the can.
fuck, a .45 is a helluva lot cheaper….and more appropriate.
I had the same thought as others here when I read that out-take from Romney’s book. He had to do CHORES? Oh, the inhumanity!
He’s complaining about weeding? How about trimming the grass from the fenceline of a chain-link fence – 3/4 of an acre, and this was before weed-eaters, we had to cut it on hands and knees with a scissors, every week starting in May through September!
Of course, on top of that I had to go to work during the school year as well to help support the family after my father died. I guess Mitt wouldn’t know anything about that.
You should look up what constitutes blackmail.
you are correct…wrong term. But the agenda is the same.
@23
“If it wasn’t for disappointment, I wouldn’t have any appointments.” – a hungover ‘Jody’ on November 7th.
40. YLBigot says: US military deaths after great, so now not only do we have to feed and house that POS Loughner, we also have to pay for his drugs to keep him “sane” while spending life in the can.
fuck, a .45 is a helluva lot cheaper….and more appropriate.
Bigot, he’s one of yours. Typical you just want to put him away with a bullet.
40. YLBigot says:
great, so now not only do we have to feed and house that POS Loughner, we also have to pay for his drugs to keep him “sane” while spending life in the can.
fuck, a .45 is a helluva lot cheaper….and more appropriate.
Bigot, he’s one of yours. Typical you just want to put him away with a bullet.
(Repost – Edit function blew up)
@23
My life was choogling long just fine under president Clinton and then George Bush got elected and my life continued to choogle along just fine. Then President Obama got elected and my life continued to choogle right along. Life will continue to choogle along regardless of who wins the presidency in 2012. Who is or isn’t president really doesn’t effect me much.
Most of what the federal government does isn’t controversial or partisan and continues on regardless of who’s president or what the president says or does.
Who’s the mayor and on the city council of my town, however, effects me greatly. Also, I have some control over what goes on in my town, where as as an individual I have no control over anything at the federal level.
Yet we spend all this time and energy on who the president is and is going to be. Most people in my town have couldn’t name the mayor (Chuck Hunter) and yet it’s the mayor and the city council of our town that have the greatest effect on us and that we can have the greatest control over.
We’ve gotten things backwards and need to refocus on the small and the local.
Rujax @ 27
“Darryl knows.”
Actually, I pointed out I am assuming it is Mr. Cynical simply by the writing style and typographic style. (I said that I hadn’t looked up the IP address location.) It’s pretty hard to hide our Mr. Irrelevant. And, frankly, I not at all convinced by the denial above.
“one of mine”? STFU retard, you dont know anything about me.
run along now, and tell us agian about those $600 billion dollar airplanes, you fucking lemming.
and hell yes I want to put him away with a bullet – along with every other asshole who murders in cold blood.
@47
good post Michael…you are 100% right.
@48
rujax defeats rujax with own-goal.
Michael @ 47
I can’t agree. Presidents nominate federal judges. Decisions of the federal judiciary impact us every day, even if not always obvious. If for no other reason, I get passionate about the presidential race for that reason.
Romney, who really doesn’t know what hard work is all about, now wants to inject welfare into the race? Really? This is the most soulless man to have run for president since Richard Nixon.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....l_politics
“WHAT IS ROMNEY HIDING? ONLY HE AND IRS CRIMINAL INVESTIGATORS KNOW.”
Actually, Senator John McCain knows. He’s seen Romney’s returns and if it were true, he could say, “Mitt paid taxes”. But McCain isn’t saying anything. In fact, he seems to enjoy watching the GOP’s not-so-beloved candidate turn in the wind. Telling.
Steve,
Indeed. I have little doubt that Harry Reid’s got what he’s talking about. And, given how easy it would be to disprove what Harry (a fellow Mormon) is saying about Mitt, you really gotta wonder . . .
Hey Bigot@49,
You mean the F-22 that you said is “only” $120 million each? According to military.com, the total program unit cost was $394 million as of March 2009.
Bigot@49,
“one of mine”? STFU retard, you dont know anything about me.
You advocate using a gun to commit murder.
Loughner uses a gun to commit murder.
My bad. What was I possibly thinking of…
then you can pay to heep the asshole alive.
I’m sure you are one of those twisted folks who think child rapists should be given “another chance in society” too…ya, just not in your neighborhood right?
some crimes deserve to be punishable by permanent removal from the planet.
you still trying to wiggle out of your “$600 billion per plane!!!!!11111eleven” statement?
LMFAO…
and yes, its “only” $120m when being compared to $600b.
its called context…go look it up.
chump.
# 54: The more I hear about Sen. Reid’s comments, the more they look like a very calculated analysis by a crafty seasoned pro. He’s racheting up the pressure on Romney to release the returns. The amount of blow-back by the GOP against Reid just shows how effective the tactic is, they hope to get him to back down or be ostracized and discredited. But those in a position to know (Pelosi, etc.) have expressed support for Reid, which means that they also think there’s some real substance to the argument.
The informed speculation right now is that Reid’s source is not Sen. McCain himself, but someone who was on McCain’s 2008 campaign staff that vetted the VP candidates and had an opportunity to see the returns.
Of course, there’s always a chance it’s a planted “leak” designed to get Reid to take the bait, so he can be discredited when Romney finally releases his returns showing he paid at least “some” taxes. That’s the political quivilent of a “false bag” operation (which I believe was the source of the forged memo which brought down Dan Rather and 60 Minutes). The mere possibility of this is enough that the President’s re-election campaign is keeping it’s distance, for the time being.
@ 60
Maybe you could site your source(s) whom you describe as ‘informed’.
We’ll likely find out that they’re just pulling random thoughts out of their ass(es), as are you.
# 61: Sure, just as soon as Mitt releases his tax returns.
I think I liked Cynical better as himself.
@13 Typical corporatist attitude–that anything can be bought for the right price. I can picture any of you guys standing in front of St. Peter blithely saying, “Just itemize my sins and my lawyer will send you a check.”