The Watering Hole, Thursday, August 16th, 2012: FOCUS!

Okay, so last weekend, presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney introduced Paul Ryan as his Vice-Presidential running mate. While this does open up a whole new can of worms – or can of whoop-ass, depending on one’s political leanings – it does NOT change the fact that it is MITT ROMNEY who could become the next President of the United States of America. This solid rock of a fact is still the absolute center of the widening ripples caused by last weekend’s announcement. Those ripples will slowly fade, but the rock will remain: Mitt Romney, a lying, shallow, amoral and characterless opportunist, might end up as the “leader of the free world.”

So our focus must remain on Mitt Rmoney and his obvious weaknesses:

- Rmoney has changed his mind on (or out-and-out denied that he ever held) nearly every policy position that he ever professed as Governor of Massachusetts (abortion rights, his own ‘Romneycare, LGBT rights, etc.);

- Rmoney’s record as Governor of Massachusetts was dismal at best: as was pointed out several times during the Republican debates, Massachusetts was 47th in job creation under Rmoney (of course, you won’t hear Mitt’s former challengers pointing that out ever again.)

- Rmoney’s career at Bain Capital was marked more by bankruptcies, lost jobs and outsourcing than by job creation and helping businesses;

- Rmoney’s “saving” of the Salt Lake City Olympics involved lobbying and outsourcing jobs (U.S. Olympic uniforms made in Burma?!)

- Rmoney’s complete lack of foreign policy ideas or experience (with the sole exception of bombing Iran on behalf of Israel), as evidenced by his recent disastrous trip abroad;

- Rmoney’s refusal (insultingly reinforced by Ann Rmoney) to release additional tax returns – and I think that the Mittster probably believes that his announcement of Ryan as his Veep pick put an end to that topic (as our “journalists can’t hold more than one thought in their collective heads at once) but we CANNOT let this issue go away!

The big boys with the big money are ready, more than willing, and able to prop up the Rmoney campaign in order to ensure themselves a kindred spirit in the Oval Office. Thanks to Citizens United, those people with even deeper pockets and more self-centered motives than Rmoney (Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, etal) are pouring millions upon millions of dollars into SuperPACS in their efforts to sway those oddly undefined but key “independent” voters. On the State level, Republican governors and state legislatures are passing Voter ID laws specifically designed to disenfranchise certain voter groups who tend to vote Democratic. This Presidential election is the culmination of strategies which were begun months, years, decades ago by those deep-pocketed people (and corporations, who are ‘people’ too, my friend), and they are not going to give up now.

That is what we, as liberals and as Americans, have to focus on from now until November. Mitt Rmoney CANNOT become President of these United States.

This is our daily open thread — go ahead, have at it!

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