Romney, Hitler & Energy

"Gosh, Hitler, during the second world war, I guess, because he was concerned about losing his oil, liquefied coal—that technology's still there. Why don't we develop those sources? I think government has a role to do that, by the way."

- Mitt Romney, in a video posted May 15, 2012, on Buzzfeed. See also Brian Merchant's post on Treehugger,

Well . . .

As Brian said, 

Obviously, Romney isn't pro-Hitler. But what right-minded politician seeking office in the 21st century ever considers it a good idea to let fly a statement endorsing Hitler's ideas? It's f@$&ing Hitler!

There is simply no other politician I can think of that would ever dream of voluntarily and publicly casting Hitler's ideas in a positive light, apropos of nothing. 'Well, nation, Hitler had some good ideas' is perhaps the single least effective rhetorical framing device in the world.

Actually, there may be two: David Duke, a perennial GOP Presidential candidate - expelled from Germany in November, 2011 (Question More / wikipedia). And Pat Buchanan, the "Pundit" who used to talk about the American auto industry and drive himself around in his Mercedes? He also also lost a GOP Presidential primary run in the 1980's and went on to become one of President Reagan's advisers.

Duke was a Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan. His slogan could have been "All the way with the KKK," altho he would have needed a Madison Ave "Creative" to come up with it and even the ones that are not Jews think like Jews. Buchanan persuaded Reagan that "We must mourn the Nazi SS victims of World War II." Those guys are Nazis. 

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is probably not a Nazi. After all, some of Romney's best friends are Jews: men like Shelly Adelson and Bibi Neranyahu, and the boys from Wall Street. These are real humanitarians, the best friends money can buy. Unlike, say, Todd Akin or Sarah Palin, Romney probably doesn't even believe Jews have horns.

And remember: Romney's a Morman. The members of The Church of the Latter Day Saints love Jews. LOVE JEWS - especially the light-skinned ones. They Baptize Jews after they die - at least the light skinned ones. It's wonderful, in a creepy sort of way. But it's kind of nice; they're saying "We like you, we want you with us in heaven." That's better than offering Jews Mel Ginson's choice:  "Baptism or Hell." Or Torquemada's choice: "Baptism or die," or the choice favored by Romney's dead energy maven, Hitler: "die or die."

But in his defense, Romney is only suggesting we adopt one of Hitler's bad ideas, and one on energy policy, "Burn Baby Burn," not his domestic policy, "Burn Baby Jews." And it makes sense that the Repulican'ts would look to the Nazis for energy policy. German-American Republicans in the 1930's like Lindbergh were Nazis. German-American Republican'ts today, like Karl Rove, Donald Trump, and Newt Gingrich use Nazi propaganda tactics when talking about their opponents (Newt Gingrich: Language A Key Mechanism of Control). Goebbels would be proud.

But bad politics aside, Coal Liquification is also bad policy. We should be moving off fossil fuels. Pioneered in Nazi Germany because we cut off their oil supply, and further developed in Apartheid South Africa because of the embargo on that regime, coal liquification is simply a technology that furthers "Burn, Baby, Burn." Pursuing it will lead to "Rise, Oceans, Rise," "Swim, Baby, Swim," and "Drown, Baby, Drown."

And  quoting Hitler on the campaign trail, illegal in Germany, is like telling senior citizens about the beauty of turning Medicare into a voucher program - it's "Stupid, Baby, Stupid."

Mitt or W, Let's Compare

Round 1 - Papa.
Mitt - His father, George Romney ran AMC, then ran for President & lost.
W - His father George H. W. Bush ran the CIA, then ran for President & won.
Round 1 goes to W
Score: Mitt: 0: W: 1

Round 2 - early adult life.
Mitt - spent a few years in his 20's in France prosetizying for the LDS.
W - spent a few years blowing coke then turned away from present day sinners
Round 2 goes to Mitt
Wait - didn't Mitt strap his dog to the roof of his car for a trip from Boston to Montreal or Toronto or somewhere in Canada? Didn't the dog subsequently run away?
Round 2 - Mitt disqualified, loses half-a-point
Score: Mitt: -0.5: W: 1 

Round 3 - Graduate School
Mitt - Harvard MBA & Harvard Law
W - Harvard MBA
Round 3 goes to Mitt
Score after 3 rounds: Mitt 0.5, W 1.0

Round 4 - Professional Experience
Mitt - Bain Capital made a fortune downsizing failing businesses
W - Oil company and Texas Rangers - Made a fortune in failing businesses
Round 4 - a tie.
Score after 4 rounds: Mitt 1.5: W: 2.0

Final Round - Electability
Mitt - except for his lovely wife, people don't like him. Seems unlikely to be elected President
W - able to git enough people to vote fer him that, despite losing popular vote by 543,895 votes (50,999,897 to 50,456,002) won that crucial vote in the Supreme Court.
Round 5  we hope Round 5 goes to the American People

Not Registered?

Click Here.  It's between Hope and Nope! or Hope and Dope.

Should The President have Known About Al Queda's Planned Attack on Sept 11?

Did President George W. Bush drop the ball on National Security?  What would a President Gore have done differently?

My song, "Gone Now Forever"  ( XB Cold Fingers / You Tube ) tells the story of a man who was lost on September 11, and his family. My friend Maria loves it, but it brings a tear to her eye. It also brings me anger, and resolve.

I also wrote "City of Heroes" ( XB Cold Fingers ) to attempt come to grips with the attack of September 11. This began as an eyewittness account - I saw the flames from 34th Street and 7th and walked down as far as 18th St. It developed into a tribute to the men, women and children killed or whos lives were disrupted by the terrorist hijackers, including the cops and firefighters, who rushed into the Trade Center and the passengers and crew of Flight 93.

As I learned more about "Al Queda," which means "The Base," I re-wrote the song to challenge the notion of "Holy War." No religious leaders, I think, are worth following if the teach that “We are Saved and They are to be killed.”

Then, as I began to understand the official American response to the terrorist act, to the “Unholy War” that “brought the twin towers down,” I added an additional focus: our official response, the war in Iraq, our use of torture.

But … President Clinton and Vice President Gore knew that bin Laden was a threat. They knew he financed and or masterminded the simultaneous attacks on U. S. embassies in Dar Es Salam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya on August 7, 1998, and the October, 2000 attack on the U. S. S. Cole.

Should The President, then George W. Bush, have had a better understanding of the threat posed by bin Laden and his people? Tony Karon, in “Time” magazine on May 30, 2001, 3 months before the attack on the Pentagon and the second attack on The World Trade Center, wrote, 

“the conviction in New York of four footsoldiers of Osama bin Laden's jihad to drive the United States out of the Middle East.... the man named in the indictment as the architect of the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania wasn't even in court … Bin Laden remains holed up in Afghanistan under the protection of its ruling Taliban militia, and reiterated that it has no intention of handing him over for trial....“

“The war on terrorism is primarily about intelligence — being able to monitor your enemy's communications and anticipate his actions in order to confound his plans and keep him on the defensive.”

As we know from the mission that brought bin Laden to justice, in Pakistan, far from Kabul and even farther from Baghdad, the 'war on terrorism' is a war than can be effectively waged with small teams of commandos using “actionable intelligence.”

Should the President have been able to foil the attacks of September 11? This is an unknowable question. However, We sustained:

1990 assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane in New York City,

1993 bombing of the World Trade Center,

1998 bombings of the Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,

2000 bombing of the U. S. S. Cole.

And we foiled Al Queda's Millennium plot.

Should the President have been able to foil the attacks of September 11? Here's the timeline of events.  Here's the unclassified version of the August 6, 2001 intelligence memo to President Bush.  What do you think? 

And what would a President Gore have done?  

It's pretty clear that he would not have let bin Laden go and gone into Iraq. But what else? Gore knew that bin Laden was a threat.Clinton, as Commander-In-Chief, set up the CIA unit tasked to investigate bin Laden in 1996. After the Embassies were bombed he ordered an attack on bin Laden's compound in Sudan.

Cognitive Abilities Impaired By Wealth

The Anna Maria Blog reported here

[Australian] Mining magnate Gina Rinehart intends to bring in semi-skilled migrants to work in her mines. She doesn’t want Australian workers because our wages are too high so she’s had a brilliant idea - bring in desperate people from other nations willing and overjoyed at the opportunity to work for half the Australian wage. She’s trying to convince anyone who will listen that it’s got nothing to do with profit, she’s not being unpatriotic, she is simply suffering from an acute labour shortage.

The Anna Maria Blog reported in the same post that there are 10's of thousands of Australians who would want the jobs Rinehart wants to fill, but they would want them at union scale.

Rinehart has been publicly advocating that Australians should work for no more than $2 per day, given the rates at which Africans and Asians work. Does she include herself in that? If she was to start working for $2 per day? As she is said to makes $600 per second, 51.840 Million per day, what would she do with the $51,839,998 excess?

Mark Memmott, showing that he can cover arcane neuroscience as well as hard news at the NPR "Two-Way" blog, has reported that Rinehart, reported to be accumulating money at a rate of $600/second, appears to be having trouble with self-awareness, cognition, and empathy. Some memory loss may be indicated. These symptoms of cognitive deficits are most marked in a video which Rinehart produced herself, posted on the website of the Australian Mining Club (one suspects that the A.M.C.'s wine cellars are at exactly the right depth), in which she argues that great fortune is the product of merit. The BBC, which reported the $600 per second figure, also reported that she acquired her wealth via inheritance. It may be that her merit consists of having persuaded the legator of her merit in leaving her or his fortune to her, or that merit may have been self-evident.

Forbes currently lists Rinehart as the world's 29th-richest person, with a net monetary worth of $18 billion, and the wealthiest woman from the Asia/Pacific region. She could be headed toward becoming the world's richest person, the magazine speculated last year.

If Australia is, as Rinehart claims, to expensive for business ( Anna Maria Blog / Herald Sun / LA Times ) maybe she should move her operations, and herself, to China or Africa. If she did so would doubtless make Belgium's King Leopold look like a prince, or Mother Theresa.

Do Rinehart's mining interests include the mining of lead or mercury? Does she eat the lead? Mainline the mercury? Perhaps she eats whale?

It has also been suggested that lower income class warriors want to "Eat the Rich." If that is the case, Rinehart could feed a lot of them.

It's sad that such an obviously superior woman should be experiencing so much stress as the result of her wealth or the rate of accumulation of same. Perhaps Australian health authorities should temporarily place her funds in the hands of a custodian while she returns to her senses or regains her humanity or her sense of affiliation with same.

Perhaps Rinehart should spend some time with Paris Hilton. While Hilton's net monetary worth is estimated at only $100 Million, as opposed to Rinehart's $18 Billion, we suspect that Hilton has more fun and may have a more profound sense of herself as a person.

Paul Ryan, Marathons, and Character

On June 23, 1990, when he was in college, Paul Ryan ran "Grandma's Marathon," in Duluth, Minnesota, completed the 26.25 mile race in 4 hours 1 minute and 25 seconds. He took 1990th place.( Runners World / Article / Race Stats )

I've never run a marathon, and I think it's a tremendous accomplishment. If I ran several, I think I'd cite my best time and the number of marathons I ran. If I only ran one - and there are no records of Paul Ryan running other marathons - I think I'd remember my time, even after 20 years. If I did it in 4 hours, 1 minute, and 25 seconds, I might say "I ran the marathon in 4 hours."  And I'd only use the term "Personal Best" if I had run more than one. Because if you've only run one race, then your personal best is also your personal worst.

On a broadcast interview on the Hugh Hewitt show, on August 22, 2012 (description / transcript), Ryan claimed his "Personal Best" was "Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-something." That's a huge difference from "I ran the marathon once in four hours."


What does this say about Paul Ryan's character? 

I think it speaks volumes and none of it good.

New Yorker / Daily News / Opposing Views / Politico

Why I Love Mitt Romney & Paul Ryan - If Only

Top 10 reasons why I'd love Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, if only,

1. I'd love Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan if only I was a money manager who spent each day considering whether I should sell my holdings in Apple, Ford, or IBM or speculate on Cree, Lighting Sciences, and Solazyme. Then I'd want low capital gains taxes, (except I'd be concerned that people needed jobs to buy the stuff my companies designed or manufactured).
2. If only, like Donald Trump, I was a real estate investor and pocketed a few million each time one of my buildings went bankrupt but the banks didn't want them so they forgave part of the debt, or I simply  owned a few buildings and lived off rents (except I'd be concerned that people needed jobs to pay the rent). (click, click, click & click)
3. If only I was a real estate shark and I made money buying, fixing, and selling foreclosed properties from banks (except I'd be concerned that people I'd sell to needed jobs to be in a position to buy).
4. If only, like Sheldon Adelson, I owned casinos outside the U.S. and was in trouble with the SEC, IRS, and DoJ over the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act over alleged bribes paid to develop them (except I'd still be worried that some low level bureaurocrat wanted to "bring me to justice"). (click, click, click)
5. If only, like some friends of Chris Christie, I owned a private, for-profit prison, half-way house, hospital, school, or other company that performed a government function and could help claim to shrink government by paying less educated or uneducated and less qualified or unqualified people minimum wage to do the work of skilled and trained people. And anyway, why should we educate the next generation? They're just going to be buying crap made in China. (click)
6. If only I owned my own private island and truly didn't interact w the outside world (except I'd be concerned about radioactive waste from Fukushima and US plants, fallout from French nuclear weapons testing, pollution from China, mercury in fish from coal plants, plastics in the oceans, and rising sea levels).
7. If only, like the Charles Koch, David Koch, Boone Pickins, I owned coal mines, coal plants, oil wells, refineries, frakking wells, or nuclear plants, or owned interests in companies like Halliburton, and I didn't go to the beach, didn't eat fish, and I didn't care that "Drill Baby, Drill" and "Burn Baby, Burn" means "Sweat Baby, Sweat," "Swim Baby, Swim," and ultimately, "Drown Baby, Drown." (And I can't charge you for sunlight.)
8. If only I owned gun shops or gun and ammunition companies and lived in a gated community, and never went to movies, didn't have children or grandchildren in or someday to go to college, and didn't go to meetings w my Reps in the House or Senate, or I, myself, lived in a state with reasonable restrictions on gun acquisition and gun ownership. (Why is it that we are not allowed to shout "Fire" in a crowded theater but are allowed to open fire in a crowded theater?)
9. If only the women I care about didn't need birth control or other medical care, and if I never needed doctors or nurses, because anyone who becomes a doctor, nurse, therapist, or other medical practicioner needs an education. ... BUT 
10. I'd really love Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan if only I was a comedian or writer working for Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Jay Leno, David Letterman, Jimmy Fallon, Saturday Night Live or Rupert Murdoch and the Faux News crew.

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Copy Left (CL) 2012, XB Cold Fingers. Ownership Rights Reserved. Feel free to pass it along. This is a work of satire. But while it may be speculative, it's not fiction.  Look for this and my other observations on Cultural Forensics and my YouTube Channel, XB New Music.