On Monday evening, during the debate, Mitt Romney was an even greater embarrassment to the GOP than The Pink Flamingo thought could be possible. It wasn’t because of his totally incompetent flip-flopping, but because the GOP has become so hate filled, so determined to destroy a good man they have been brainwashed into hating, they simply allow Mitt Romney to get away with his growing list of lies, prevarications, canards, flip-flops, and myths.
His apparent inability to distinguish right from wrong is terribly disturbing. There are those, including The Pink Flamingo, who feel his problem is due to a severe psychological problem. Then, again, there are others who feel something more is at work here. In an attempt to understand the man who may be POTUS, The Pink Flamingo had spent far too much time studying many aspects of his life. While I have tremendous respect for men and women of his faith, it is apparent that there are serious problems when one reaches the upper echelons of that faith, which is more a cult than a faith. In fact, it is considered, by psychologists, to be a mind control cult when one reaches the position the Romney family has.
The following was written by Joanna Brooks, a practicing member of the Mormon church, and The Pink Flamingo uses the word “church” for her, not cult. For thinking individuals like Brooks, it is not a cult, but a religion. There is a difference.
“...And it does matter. It matters because unlike in most contemporary American religious communities, Mormons are routinely expected to assess their own moral “worthiness” to participate in religious rites and to serve in their local congregations—including in positions of pastoral responsibility such as bishop (which both Governor Romney and Mr. Jessen have served). And moral worthiness in Mormon communities is now widely framed in terms of highly individualistic choices like payment of tithes, sexual chastity, and observance of restrictions on consumption of alcohol, tobacco, and coffee.
It matters because it points to grave underdevelopment in the public morality and political theology of contemporary Mormonism. As Mormon Studies expert Professor Patrick Mason has told RD, Mormonism has “no systematic theology” on issues like human rights or poverty or war. Its view of morality is “highly individualized.”
And the torture issue matters to the question of how Romney will govern. We’ve consistently seen that the candidate will be essentially values-neutral in his approach in his approach to foreign and economic policy and centered on defending and promoting the interests of large institutions that reward loyalty. The chain of command and tactical advantages matter more than time-honored humane ideals. That’s a disposition Romney has in common with Jessen, Mitchell, Bybee, and other Mormons who have been in a position not only to support torture but to develop and implement it….”
Mitt Romney’s family is part of a small group of individuals who feel that the rules don’t apply to them. They consider themselves entitled, almost royally. Their sense of entitlement comes, not from wealth, but their position within a fringe element within their cult.
Tuesday morning, Bret Stephens had a column in the WSJ, calling Mitt Romney a perfectly plausible president. What is the man smoking, drinking, taking? Plausible? The man was so far out of his element that he was truly pathetically sad. Charles Krauthammer discussed how well Romney did. No matter than Romney told 24 “myths” in 41 minutes. His prevaricating mendacity was actually a little less than the other two debates. The man clearly prevaricated, but the right still drools all over him.
Let’s face it, Mitt Romney never met a lie he didn’t like retelling.
“...ROMNEY: “Mr. President, the reason I call it an apology tour is because you went to the Middle East and you flew to Egypt and to Saudi Arabia and to Turkey and Iraq. And by the way, you skipped Israel, our closest friend in the region, but you went to the other nations. And by the way, they noticed that you skipped Israel. And then in those nations, and on Arabic TV, you said that America had been dismissive and derisive. You said that on occasion America had dictated to other nations.”
OBAMA: “Nothing Gov. Romney just said is true, starting with this notion of me apologizing. This has been probably the biggest whopper that’s been told during the course of this campaign. And every fact checker and every reporter who’s looked at it, governor, has said this is not true.”
THE FACTS: Romney has indeed repeatedly and wrongly accused the president of traveling the world early in his presidency and apologizing for U.S. behavior. Obama didn’t say “sorry” in those travels. But in this debate, Romney at last explained the context of his accusation: not that Obama apologized literally, but that he had been too deferential in his visits to Europe, Latin America and the Muslim world.
Obama said while abroad that the U.S. acted “contrary to our traditions and ideals” in its treatment of terrorist suspects, that “America has too often been selective in its promotion of democracy,” that the U.S. “certainly shares blame” for international economic turmoil and has sometimes “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even divisive” toward Europe. Yet he also praised America and its ideals…”
Unfortunately, the far right is becoming as delusional as is their candidate. In a way, we can excuse Romney’s behavior on his increasingly apparent mental illness. One can only wonder just why the right is buying into the hype surrounding him. Mitt Romney will betray and destroy anyone on his march to the White House, including his advisers.
“…Today may be the most important single day of the campaign. Obama won the debate. Everyone this side of Charles Krauthammer agrees that Romney was general and platitudinous and not that engaged. That makes two out of three. You might think that would mean momentum. And yet the conventional wisdom is congealing right now—it is hardening this morning, minute by minute—that Romney is going to win the election.
From Playbook, which distills the c.w.: President Obama won last night’s foreign-policy debate on substance, in snap polls and with the pundits, but Mitt Romney did well enough that for the first time in six years, Romney folks emailed, “We’re going to win.”
In reality, Obama is the favorite. The state maps still make him so. Nate Silver, the only person who takes every single poll into account (plus loads of other indicators), still has him so. This emerging c.w. is built more on spin and smell, which the media are starting to buy. One piece that Mike Allen bought this morning in that Playbook item: A Romney aide told him New Hampshire leans their way.
Ridiculous. Even RCP has Obama +3 in New Hampshire. A poll yesterday had him up nine. He’s never trailed there. It’s been a fight, true, but he is clearly on course to win it. But the Romney aide just threw it out there. Not blaming him or her—it’s the kind of thing you throw out when you want to start giving an impression of inevitability. But that is what the Romney team is trying now to do. (It’s up to journalism, of course, to say when something doesn’t seem true.)…”
The Pink Flamingo has watched as the delusional tendencies of the right have begun ruining one individual after another. Rush Limbaugh is a victim. So is Michael Medved, who has gone from an honest conservative pundit to nothing but a mendacious Romney shill either unwilling to expose his ten plated future god or is willing to invest in the prevarications for his own personal reasons.
While it is sad to watch someone like a Michael Medved ruin a good career, when it comes to the bitch fight between Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, please, pass the popcorn. They deserve every nasty thing they can do to one another. But, all laughing aside, the far right, the GOP, tea party idiots, and the punditry should be ashamed of themselves.
“...I go back to Kevin Drum’s idea of the “hack gap” between the left and right, in which righty hacks are supposedly so much more numerous and robotic in their support of their candidates that they move public opinion (and spineless mainstream media folks) with the sheer force of their lies, and the left can’t match them either in numbers or mendacity. I still don’t think that’s the way it works. The fact that MSNBC pundits were thrilled with Obama’s last two performances certainly didn’t change the media narrative that these debates don’t really matter much. Far more influential, to me, is most of the media’s inability to either see, or tell the truth about, how far to the right the Republican Party has shifted in the last 20 years….”
The bottom line – the far right has more hacks that the far left. We’re talking newly washed far right brains who still think that FOX Tabloid News is fair and balanced!
Romney’s ties to Jessen et al. are interesting, and go back more than a few years.
Some digging will turn up interesting things concerning Mel Sembler and Robert Litchfield, and Bain Capital.
As the old adage goes: follow the money 😉
That the right has become willfully blind to what they are bringing down not only on themselves, but the rest of us is…frightening.
Oh, and the advanced interrogation techniques go well beyond waterboarding and even playing Barney nonstop…plus, they patently don’t work. Jessen and Co. were completely incompentent when it came to interrogation, and they were training? It’s a joke; it was a joke, and it has only been the excellence and professionalism of other people that have managed to save the day; plus I’m disgusted with what they have encouraged our military to engage in — for which the military has taken the fall — regular troops and low ranking officers who are trusting command to do things that are both unethical and unprofessional, plus unproductive…for which they will be ruined and slandered when something goes wrong, as it invariably does when working with incompetents. (I say this with some experience in the matter).