From Father to Son: A Look Back at George W. Romney

by Nomad

I wanted to share some excerpts from a speech by Romney. Not Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate, but by his father, George Romney, who was at that time the president of American Motors, soon to be the governor of Michigan.

The speech was given as part of the annual address to male students at Brigham Young University on  November 1961.

In this speech, George Romney touched upon many themes in the speech, including his faith and how much faith in God played an important role in his life and his philosophy. 

His reflections on the American system show Romney to have been a careful observer. Like a lot of liberals today, he saw America as an unfinished experiment and keeping the status quo was not one of George Romney’s principles. 

Long ago I became convinced that very few of us really understand America. Very few of us have really thought through the fundamental things about the American system. I think we are too much inclined to take it for granted that the American Revolution has been completed, that we have arrived, that we have it made. We haven't. The American Revolution is in its very early stages. This is true politically, it is true economically, it is true socially, it is true religiously. And it is going to take some nonconformists in America to jolt America out of its lethargy and its smugness.

Romney Campaign Retro

Cameroon: Where Saying “I love you” Can Put You in Prison

I magine an existence where just texting a message to your lover could destroy your life and condemn you to a prison sentence of up to five years. 

As dystopian and far-fetched as it might sound, there are still places in the world where this can and does occur. 

Take the Mbede case in the West African nation of Cameroon.

Roger Mbede’s Story

Reporter Joe Mirabella in an article for the Huffington Post, highlights the plight of Jean-Paul Roger Mbede:

Roger was arrested last year for sending another man a text message that said, "I'm very much in love w/u." He was charged and convicted under Cameroon's law that criminalizes "homosexual behavior" and sentenced to three years in prison. He's spent more than a year in jail, while being subjected to abuse in custody, but is now finally appealing his conviction. Roger's hearing is scheduled for Monday, Sept. 17.

The One Percent would rather..

The Smirk That May Have Cost Romney the Election

by Nomad

F

or quite some time, political observers have been declaring that Mitt Romney's greatest weakness (outside of the fact that he simply cannot be honest) is his complete detachment, his lack of empathy and his inability to hit the right emotional tone. In the early hours of September 12, Mitt Romney exposed his character flaws for all the world to see.

As embassy staff in Benghazi, Libya were fighting for their lives against a band of armed attackers, Romney was attempting to portray- without any justification whatsoever- that Obama had expressed sympathy for the attackers.

The statement he has used as evidence had actually been written prior to the attack and had come not from the White House but from the Egyptian embassy. That statement had been an attempt to quell protests there.

It stated that the US embassy “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims…as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

The Romney campaign reaction? Romney stated "that the Obama administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." 

The following day, Wednesday, while the grim news from Libya- the brutal murder of the ambassador along with four other embassy staff- was stilling filtering in, Romney held a press conference to restate his views. It might have been an opportunity to reconsider his hasty words. Alas, Romney pressed on, with what reporters described as a smirk.  Before the reporters, he said:

"... (T)he administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions. It's never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values."

According to a CBS article, when asked what exactly did he had objected to, Romney went on to say:

"Their administration spoke. The president takes responsibility not just for the words that come from his mouth, but also from the words that come from his ambassadors from his administration, from his embassies, from his State Department...They clearly sent mixed messages to the world and the statement that came from the administration and the embassy is the administration. The statement that came from the administration was -- was a statement which is akin to apology and I think was a -- a severe miscalculation."

It soon became apparent that the miscalculation was not the president's, but the candidate's. 
Romney's clear expression of glee was repulsive in light of the national tragedy. Making use of the event to score political points seemed to prove what most people had felt about this candidate. Romney has no sense of empathy and, for Romney, satisfying his ambition supersedes all other considerations.