An interesting new piece of information about Mitt Romney

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For a long time I've wondered what Mitt Romney was all about, and a new video that's being circulated piecemeal gives a little insight. One wonders whether it has been doctored (beyond a little blurring that has been introduced to protect those who ostensibly recorded the video), and some heavy cuts.

The big motive, apparently, is to give a big boost to the Stock Market.  [Romney says (I'm paraphrasing) If I (Romney) win, I know the stock market will have a huge jump.  If the other fellows win, I don't know what will happen.]  Yes, I know: the Stock Market is important for All Americans. It is an indicator of a sort of average of what a whole bunch of total idiots think are important stocks, and what stupid value they place on them. But these Economic Elite investors do not realize that they've given the Stock Market a sort of superstitious value that is extremely dangerous, and which is easy to manipulate by unscrupulous people, as we found to our dismay during the collapse of the housing market.

The Stock Marketologists (sort of like Scientologists, but less rational) believe that nothing like the housing market collapse will happen again to investors. They don't mind consumers being hurt by it, you see? As long as the investors can pull out in time. So: Investors 1, Consumers 0.  (These same people were angry at the Government bailout of GM and Chrysler, because it was intended to save the workers, not the investors. I'm still not sure how well the GM and Chrysler investors did as a result of the bailout; perhaps the Fed waited until the stocks hit rock bottom before they intervened; perhaps the big GOP types pulled out of GM and Chrysler too fast to benefit from the bailout. (They deplore insider trading, but there certainly is plenty of networking among big investors to enable them to respond fast to approaching disaster.)

The Church of StockMarketology, like other extreme denominations, does not believe in (1) handouts for the poor, (2) bailouts for struggling companies, (3) Government spending beyond its ability to levy revenue, except to lower taxes, (4) and they don't believe in any moves to prevent offshoring of jobs. They would rather let a company (and its workers) die, than permit government intervention, but particular members have been known to sneak off to Mexico to obtain treatments not available in the US.

As long as the GOP stuck to its principles of lowering the deficit, keeping a brake on raising taxes, and keeping government small, I sort of knew where they stood, and it was actually possible to compromise with them. But this new, fragmented, shooting from the hip, disunited, jingoistic unholy alliance of neoconservatives and feeble-minded conspiracy-theorists and StockMarketologists is pathetic to see.

In strong contrast to that, Ed Rendell appeared on Stephen Colbert's show recently, to promote his book: A Nation of Wusses. The video is here. In a pithy remark, Ed Rendell says that no politician worth his salt should be afraid of losing an election over something that really matters.  Obama may lose the election over Obamacare, he says, but it would have been worth it.  Certainly a whole Congressfull of Democrats lost over Obamacare, but I wonder whether it was for lack of confidence in their product (Obamacare), lack of support from the President in their bids for re-election, or just a brilliant effort by the Tea Party to get them defeated. I guess the voters qualified to be labeled Wusses if it was lack of courage that resulted in that debacle. Perhaps elections are just as much of an averaging of stupidity as the Stock Market is. If Democrats do not turn out to vote this election and every election in the next century, we truly deserve what we get.

[Added as an afterthought: More importantly, voters must have the courage (read: the guts) to stick by their candidates over the long haul. Voters who abandon their candidate at the slightest thing, at the least bit of political discomfort, at the most minor criticism, these voters do more harm than good. Some writers think that political loyalty is stupid. I think a certain amount of ideological continuity is essential if we are to support initiatives that take more than a year or two to bring to fruition. Credit card reform, Lobbying Reform, Health Care reform, Social Security reform, all of these take at least six years to get done, and voters who abandon their candidates before the job is done are silly, and may as well have stayed at home.]

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