I received the following email:

Steven —

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president of the United States, just said this:

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

Take a moment or two to think about that, what he’s actually saying, and what it says about Mitt Romney.

Thanks,

Messina

Jim Messina
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

Maybe this gedankenexperiment (In German – an experiment carried out in thought only) suggested by Jim Messina belongs in a category with my previous post Why Do Republicans Celebrate Labor Day?

See, my science/engineering education wasn’t completely wasted.  This is where I learned the phrase “gedanken experiment” or just plain “gedanken”.  I bet it cost less than $15,000 in tuition, for all my years as a college undergraduate.  See how great inflation is for making your past debts shrink to insignificance?  I think we could use a little of that right now.

Democracy Now has the August 10 interview Romney’s Death Squad Ties: Bain Launched with Millions from Oligarchs Behind Salvadoran Atrocities. Why have you not heard of this 2 week old story?

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is facing new scrutiny over revelations he founded the private equity firm Bain Capital with investments from Central American elites linked to death squads in El Salvador. After initially struggling to find investors, Romney traveled to Miami in 1983 to win pledges of $9 million, 40 percent of Bain’s start-up money. Some investors had extensive ties to the death squads responsible for the vast majority of the tens of thousands of deaths in El Salvador during the 1980s. We’re joined by Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim, who connects the dots in his latest story, “Mitt Romney Started Bain Capital with Money from Families Tied to Death Squads.” “There’s no possible way that anybody in 1984 could check out these families — which is the term that [Romney’s campaign] use, these families — and come away convinced that this money was clean,” Grim says. [includes rush transcript]

As I watched, in the 1980s, the news of unfolding events in El Salvador, I was struck by the fact that extremely wealthy people in countries around the world seemed to have a certain sympathy for the situations that each such family faced. It is no surprise, therefore, that wealthy families in one country could aid and support and take aid and support for and from similarly positioned families in other countries.

If you watch the video, you may understand why Romney makes such a big deal of Obama going around the world apologizing for some of the atrocities committed by the USA.

As George Bush once advised politicians, “Never apologize.”

At about 24 minutes into the video there is a reading of some quotes from Greg Grandin’s book Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism about the situation in El Salvador:

The problem was that the military groups had very little popular support due in large part to the fact that they were “preternaturally violent.” According to Reagan’s own ambassador, Robert White, their solution to the crisis “was apocalyptic: the country must be ‘destroyed totally, the economy must be wrecked, unemployment must be massive.’ and a ‘cleansing’ of some ‘3 or 4 or 500,000 people’ must be carried out”

Romney said he learned a lot from his Latin American investors. One of the things I have been fearing for a long time is that the quote above is one of the things that Romney (and the Republican Party) has learned about solving our economic problems.

Another piece of information from the video was the one about Romney’s company paying an 88% annual return to its investors over two decades. If you are an experienced investor, you know that such results are impossible to produce legally and honestly.

The Fight Back Against Todd Akin – Help Place VoteVets’ McCaskill Ad is the web page to go to in order to support the placement of the following ad:

Claire currently sits on four? Senate Committees, including Armed Services, Commerce, HSGAC and Aging. From those committees, she’s taken on: accountability and transparency, earmark reform, increased independence for Inspectors General (IG) that act as federal auditors, credit card regulations, security improvements to foreign repair stations that service our domestic aircraft, reforms to the reverse mortgage industry, consumer protections, and full benefits and resources for our brave veterans.

This is an excellent ad that just makes the positive case for Claire McCaskill. It just ignores her opponent, which is what he deserves. Of course if you want to beat some other Republican over the head, references to Akin are just great.

I sent an email to Joe Martin, the Mr. Boffo cartoon’s author.

I am sure you will get many emails from all the various towns around the country called Podunk.

Here is a link to Podunk Cemetery, on Podunk Rd, just off the Podunk Pike. This is in Brookfield, Massachusetts.

Here is a link to the East Brookfield web site.

“In 1673 a significant portion of the plantation became the town of Brookfield, which then included the villages of West Brookfield, North Brookfield, East Brookfield and Podunk. ”

DonF sent me a link to the article A Tea Partier Decided To Pick A Fight With A Foreign President.

Michael D. Higgins (who was elected president of Ireland last year) is fed up with over-the-top Tea Party rhetoric, and he isn’t afraid to show it. Listen to him call out radio host Michael Graham on everything from health care to foreign policy. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this one.

This man must have learned something about filibuster when he lived in the USA.

The following is from an email I received from the campaign.

Somerville, MA – Republican Scott Brown’s votes and views on issues important to women and their families have been in the spotlight over the last few days – and he doesn’t like it one bit.

Under fire by consumer advocate and U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren for his support of the national Republican agenda, Scott Brown sent a very clear message of his own:

“I don’t need Professor Warren talking, or speaking, or commenting on my votes.”

Warren released the following statement today:

“Scott Brown voted against equal pay for equal work. I’m going to keep talking about that.

“Scott Brown voted for the Blunt amendment to limit women’s access to birth control. I’m going to keep talking about that.

“Scott Brown supports Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan – Mitt Romney who says he wants to end Planned Parenthood and Paul Ryan who cosponsored legislation to outlaw birth control pills. You can bet I’m going to keep talking about that so the people of Massachusetts know Scott Brown’s record and where he stands — with his Republican Party against the interests of women and families in the commonwealth.

“Women and their families in Massachusetts are going to keep talking, speaking and commenting on his votes and his support for the Romney-Ryan ticket because Brown’s election could hand the Senate to the Republicans and enable them to implement their radical agenda.

“Scott Browns votes are on the record. His work to put Romney-Ryan in the White House and to put Republicans in control of the Senate is on the record. He has made it clear that he is part of a Republican Agenda that is harmful to women and that protects Wall Street and the big banks while it leaves working families to pick up the tab.”

Here a political sign you might want to use on this upcoming Labor Day weekend.

I wonder what is going through the minds of Republicans when they do celebrate labor day. If you have any insights, let me know.

Here is a radio ad from Elizabeth Warren.

Todd Akin’s comments in Missouri were not just one extreme candidate in Missouri – it’s part of a Republican pattern.

No matter what your personal feelings are about Scott Brown, we just cannot let the Republicans gain control of the U.S. Senate. Vote locally, but think strategically.

The Boston Globe has published the story Majority opposes Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan from Bloomberg News.

House Republicans twice have approved legislation sponsored by Ryan to convert Medicare to a voucher program. The plan would rely on competition among private insurers to hold down health care costs.

I wrote the following letter to the editor of The Boston Globe.

I pity the reporter who had to write “House Republicans twice have approved legislation sponsored by Ryan to convert Medicare to a voucher program.  The plan would rely on competition among private insurers to hold down health care costs.”  A fit of rolling on the floor laughing is not a pleasant sight to see.

Is there anyone alive today or who has read any history who understands why Medicare was invented?  As I recall it, Medicare was needed because it was just about impossible for people over 65 to get private health insurance at a reasonable price.  That was decades ago.  Has anything changed that would make us think that reverting to that era would be an improvement?

Considering our history of astronomically rising health care costs under the current private insurance market for those under 65, why would we assume that having more of the same would produce radically different results?  30% of the current costs for health care already go to private insurance companies with no health benefits to the public at all.

I am surprised that we cannot hear the collective roar of laughter from all over the country  when Republicans make such obviously silly proposals.  Yet, as much as 38% of those between 18 and 49 don’t get the joke.

Maybe the ROTFL isn’t so bad, but to see LMAO may be traumatic.