Mormons

The Urgency Of Mitt Romney To Be Transparent About His Life

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When a person decides to run for President, he opens himself up to the American people, and we have a right to know as much as we can about his background , his history, his beliefs, and his agenda.

Of course, no one is tied down to what he says his agenda is, as circumstances and events will shape a lot of what occurs during his administration, if he is elected President.

But being honest, frank, transparent, is always the better way, as we value someone who comes across as not secretive, not deceptive, not manipulative.

Sadly, Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP nominee for President, particularly after victories in New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, now needs to prove that he is not secretive, deceptive and manipulative, the impressions he has left in the battle for the nomination over the past year.

Therefore, if he wants us to take him seriously, and decide if he deserves to be President, he must come forward with information in precise terms about the following:

Romney needs to tell us about his Mormon faith, how he views it, what he thinks of its shortcomings and the criticisms made of it, as many wonder about a religion often considered a cult. We have a right to know how much his faith will govern his decision making and his world view.

Romney needs to reveal his investments, if any, based on reports, that he has in the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, Monaco, or Swiss banks, and why he chose to invest there, rather than in US banking institutions.

Romney needs to explain his family history, and the truth about his father, instead of claiming how poor his dad, George Romney, was, and how Mitt pulled himself up all on his own without any help from family, a story that is seen as a myth. He needs to stop denying his heritage and his wealth and advantages inherited from being the son of the chairman of American Motors and the Governor of Michigan in the 1960s.

Romney also needs to tell us what his agenda is on foreign policy, how he plans to relate to the outside world. And he needs to tell us what kind of Supreme Court appointments he would wish to make, and how he sees the law and the Constitution, in specific details. And he needs to stop evasion as a tactic, as he will be confronted with it during the campaign by media investigation, and certainly by President Obama in the three televised debates. We have a right to know if he wished to govern as a moderate or a conservative.

Since he insisted that Obama should be forthcoming on his plans after the election, he must be willing to do the same, and be totally transparent in all regards, something he has not done so far.

If he is not transparent, then he will lose the election. If he is transparent, and we find the information unacceptable, then he will lose. But better to lose on transparency than the lack of it. To have an image of being honest, frank, and transparent, is always preferred, and a good character lesson for the nation at large!

Lack Of Enthusiasm For Mitt Romney Within Republican Party: Danger Sign For November!

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Mitt Romney is the least popular GOP Presidential candidate in modern history, ten points lower than John McCain was in 2008.

He is losing among women, Independents, Hispanics and Latinos, based on many public opinion polls.

He has a lack of enthusiasm among religious voters, Southern whites, Midwesterners, conservatives, and even young voters

His major support are those over $100,000 income, corporate interests, and people of his own Mormon faith in states such as Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, and Arizona.

Romney simply has no natural constituency, and as things stand now, he could very well lose by a massive landslide, with Barack Obama winning close to his electoral vote total of 365 in 2008, and possibly winning more electoral votes!

Mitt Romney has become, at least at this point, a totally uninspiring candidate, and the odds of his recovery to the point of winning the Presidency seem extremely remote!

The Controversy Over Ann Romney: A Cover For The Horrible Record On Women Of The Republican Party!

Ronald 1 Comment

Ann Romney, the wife of Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is a very attractive and pleasant lady, without doubt.

Ann Romney is, obviously, a great mother, who has nurtured five handsome, accomplished sons.

Ann Romney is a wonderful wife to Mitt Romney, very dedicated to his success and advancement, and wishes to make him happy.

There is no debate about the goodness of Ann Romney, and were she to become First Lady of the United States, she would fulfill the roles of that position with grace, dignity, and class.

The controversy over Ann Romney, stirred up by Democratic operative Hillary Rosen, while regrettable, is really quite ridiculous on its surface, however.

Hillary Rosen, NOT a spokesman for the Obama Presidential campaign, simply said that for Mitt Romney to say that his wife can provide him with a real indication of the problems of American women, is preposterous, and that is totally a true statement!

Ann Romney, like her husband, Mitt Romney, does not and cannot understand the reality of life for middle class and poor Americans, no matter how hard they try, and to claim she is an expert on women’s needs, based on the fact she is Mitt’s wife, is ridiculous to the sublime!

Ann Romney has not experienced what 99 percent of other women face–the daily problems of how to keep a family going in a country in which most women need to work, besides those who desire to work, and a country in which there are too many single mothers who struggle every day to be good parents, while juggling the bills and two to three jobs in many cases.

Ann Romney is a privileged aristocrat, very fortunate and blessed to have a situation that very few women will ever have, and while she may have done some volunteer work, that is not the same as facing work, PLUS child care.

One has to wonder whether Ann Romney really brought up her own sons all on her own, without paid help! It is hard to believe that a man with such wealth growth did not provide staff to help his wife bring up their sons.

And as tough as her five sons might have been at times, being kids, it is hard to imagine a strict Mormon family in which the kids are that unruly and disrespectful, as to make her life that difficult and challenging!

There is no debate that being a full time mother is a tough job, and the most important job a woman can have. But very few women today have the ability to just be mothers, and not also have to work, so if one is doing both, it is automatically rougher than what Ann Romney had to deal with on a daily basis!

We can give tribute to Ann Romney as a great mother with great sons, but it must be accepted that her life was NEVER as tough and complex, as challenging and overwhelming, as the middle class or poor couple, or middle class and poor single mothers, trying to deal with the stresses and strains of everyday life that most American parents, and single mothers, face!

What is clear is that the Republican Party has so messed up their relationship with women, and the issues that women care about, that now they see an opening to put the Obama Presidency on trial, as if saying that a housewife such as Ann Romney has an easy job, a false and petty assertion, is enough to make them look sympathetic to women, and make them look great as Mother’s Day comes this Sunday!

Just face the facts: Ann Romney is very privileged, fortunate and thankful for her circumstances, and good for her!

But the reality is that Ann Romney lives in a parallel universe, which only a small sliver of women in America join her in, and it is still the fact that the GOP has declared “war” on women, without, of course, using that term. But it is fact, not myth, and the Republican Party will suffer in November because of their self imposed harm and damage, demonstrating suicidal tendencies on what women will accept from politicians in the 21st century!

The Problem Of Religion For Mitt Romney, And How He Deals With It: In A Demagogic Manner!

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has many problems on the road to the Republican Presidential nomination, and despite his wins tonight in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Wisconsin, his path to the Presidency is complicated, and it turns out, religion remains a major barrier.

Mitt Romney is a Mormon, a faith regarded by many Christian groups as a religious cult.

Mitt Romney was testy when asked a question yesterday about the tenets of his faith, regarding interracial sexual relations. He said he did not wish to discuss religion, but that is not going to make that issue go away.

When one looks at Gallup polls about how people feel about different religions, we discover that 7 percent say they would not vote for a Baptist; an equal 7 percent would not vote for a Catholic; 9 percent would not vote for a Jew; while 22 percent would not vote for a Mormon!

Only two groups rate higher in voter reluctance to vote for a candidate of that religion: 46 percent would not vote for a Muslim; and 49 percent would not vote for an atheist.

So what has Romney decided to do? Instead of arguing, as many demagogues of his party and in talk radio have done, that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim, Romney goes one better.

Romney is now claiming that Obama is promoting “secularism”, in other words, “atheism”, that Obama does not really believe in God!

How despicable and demagogic Romney has become, trying to label Obama as an atheist, due to the fact that the percentage who would not vote for an atheist is double and more that of those who would not vote for a Mormon!

Romney is exploiting religious prejudice and hatred, at a time when he has a religious problem of his own!

What could be more unprincipled? And it is clear that it will not work, and Romney, by bringing it up, deserves a walloping repudiation in November!

The Most Conservative And Most Liberal States, According To The Gallup Poll

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A Gallup poll measures the level of conservatism and liberalism of American states, as judged by those who are questioned about their perception of politics.

Under this measurement, the order of the top ten conservative states are Mississippi, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Utah, South Dakota, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Arkansas.

Note that this is a list of five Southern states, two Great Plains States, and three Mountain West states (which happen to have large percentages of Mormons in their population).

The ten most liberal states are, in order, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Oregon, Colorado, Washington, New Jersey, and California.

Note that this is a list of four New England states, two Middle Atlantic states, and four Western states.

So the country is still very much a divided country ideologically, and in many respects, by geographic section!

What Can Mitt Romney Win In November?

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Mitt Romney may have won Ohio by the small margin of one percent and about 12,000 votes over Rick Santorum, but the question remains: Where can he win a combination of states to equal a majority of 270 electoral votes?

Can he win New England, even his home state of Massachusetts? Unlikely, with maybe the exception of New Hampshire.

Can he win the Middle Atlantic states? Unlikely, with the best chance in Pennsylvania, but unlikely.

Can he win the South? Unlikely, despite being the GOP nominee, because of his Mormon faith. Sure, he will win some of the states but unlikely to win Florida, North Carolina or Virginia, the swing states, and a chance to lose Georgia to Barack Obama as well, with the growing Hispanic and Latino vote in the Peach State.

Can he win the Midwest? Well, maybe a few states, but he has lost all of the Midwest and Great Plains states that have had primaries and caucuses so far, except for his birth state of Michigan and a narrow win in Ohio. Rick Santorum has real support in this area of the country.

Can he win the Mountain States? Yes, for those which have large numbers of Mormons, including Arizona, Utah, and Idaho, and probably Montana and Wyoming as well, but not likely to win New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada.

Can he win the Pacific Coast states? Is that a serious question? NO, except for Alaska.

If the economy continues to get better, Mitt Romney has lost his biggest issue.

If the anti woman vendetta of Rush Limbaugh and social conservatives in Congress and the states continues, as with the failed Blunt Amendment and the Virginia vaginal probe law, Romney will lose.

If the anti immigrant (Hispanic and Latino) mentality of Arizona, Alabama, Georgia and other states continues, the only Hispanic vote Romney might win is the Cuban vote in Florida and elsewhere, but not the Mexican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, and other Latin nations’ immigrants, meaning only those who are legal and can vote.

If the extremism of the GOP continues down its destructive path, Independents will leave them in droves.

Of course, Barack Obama and the Democrats must work and plan as if they could lose the election, because they could, but the obstacles facing Mitt Romney are massive, and this could have a deleterious effect on the Republican Party in many state races and in both houses of Congress.

There Will Be NO President Romney! The Demise In Process!

Ronald 1 Comment

It is now certain that there will be NO President Mitt Romney taking the oath of office on January 20, 2013.

It is also very likely that there will be someone other than Mitt Romney as the GOP Presidential nominee, after the Republican National Convention in August in Tampa, Florida.

Mitt Romney is loved by NO ONE other than his family and his paid workers, sorry to say.

Mitt Romney is not liked by many Americans because he is simply too rich, and wears his wealth constantly. Even his wife says she does not feel wealthy, imagine that!

Mitt Romney is distrusted by conservatives and Tea Party activists because they see him as a Massachusetts liberal who promoted RomneyCare, very close to the ObamaCare that he now condemns.

Mitt Romney is not liked because he is a Mormon, and evangelical Christians have a large impact on the heartland of the nation, and think of Mormons as not being Christian, but instead as a cult.

Mitt Romney is distrusted because he is the most massive flip flopper, and could be redefined in the vocabulary with his name meaning that term!

Mitt Romney has shown he cannot win the heartland of the nation against competition, having lost Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Colorado at this moment of writing to Rick Santorum, as well as losing South Carolina and Georgia to Newt Gingrich, and Tennessee to Santorum. Mitt Romney is NOT going to win the Atlantic Coast or the Pacific Coast, and he is not going to win Massachusetts or Vermont in the election, and will have a major struggle in Virginia, which, if all candidates had been on the ballot, he likely would have lost as well!

At this point, Mitt Romney’s only areas of strength are New England, the section he lived in for 40 year and served in government; Michigan, where he was born and grew up to adulthood; and Mormon areas in the Far West, including Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. And he is unlikely to win any of these in November, except maybe Arizona, Utah and Idaho, but not Nevada!

Mitt Romney has shown that despite all of his fantastic wealth, that does not give you the White House, and in fact, most Americans would feel uncomfortable with someone as filthy rich as Romney, who is worth more than the last eight Presidents combined, and assuming he lives to age 85, twenty years from now, he would be the first billionaire President, just from interest on his quarter of a billion fortune over a generation!

Mitt Romney does not represent America, and never could do so in any form!

The demise of Mitt Romney is in full bloom, even with Ohio still out at this writing, but with Rick Santorum leading, by 2,500 votes with 84 percent of the vote counted.

A reminder: EVERY Republican President has won Ohio, but if Romney either loses or only wins by a bare margin over Santorum in Ohio, how can anyone think he is able to win Ohio over Barack Obama in November?

With exactly eight months to the election, this Super Tuesday is good news for Barack Obama, above all!

Mitt Romney, Gutless Wonder: Refusal To Stand Up Against “Crazy” Rick Santorum Proves He Would Be Weak President!

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Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has proved to be a “gutless wonder”, unwilling to stand up against “Crazy” Rick Santorum, and if he cannot do this, what kind of a President would he be? How could we believe that he would fight against right wing extremism, or stand up to foreign nations, or believe anything that comes out of his mouth? He would lack all credibility in the White House!

Mitt Romney has shown he has no principles, no core, no stands he will not back down on if put under pressure!

This is not the kind of leadership that America needs in troubled times. He has not convinced America or his party that he cannot be pushed around, and that is totally scary and troubling at the same time.

If he cannot condemn Rick Santorum for saying that promoting college education for young people is a sign of snobbery; if he cannot stop being petty in advocating that “Big Bird” and PBS being cut from government support (a miniscule amount of money) as a reaction to what Santorum is saying, trying to outdo him in the attack on education; if Romney is unable to speak up for separation of church and state, as he himself is from a minority religion in America as a Mormon, just as John F. Kennedy was a Catholic; and if Romney cannot look us in the eye and say he wishes to govern as a moderate centrist, the only way to govern, rather than a hard line right wing conservative against his entire history, then Mitt Romney should not be President, and were he so, he would be a disaster in the White House!

The answer is to wish that Rick Santorum is the nominee, is walloped by Barack Obama, and that defeat would force the extremists out of the Republican Party, and allow the mainstream moderate center to reclaim control of the party of Lincoln, TR, Ike and even Reagan, to return to sanity and a future where Americans could again trust the GOP with national power in the White House and Congress! The only fear about asserting this is the concern that IF some tremendous economic or foreign policy crisis arises in the eight months to the election, that Americans might be crazy enough to vote in a right wing extremist, Rick Santorum, in a moment of fear and emotion. If that were to happen, then all faith in the common sense of the American people will have been lost, and we will be in deeper trouble than we have ever been in our entire history!

The Reverend Franklin Graham: A Hypocrite Of Massive Proportions!

Ronald 1 Comment

The Reverend Franklin Graham, the son and inheritor of the mantle of the Reverend Billy Graham, now 93 years old, has never been the equal of his father, and today on Morning Joe on MSNBC, he proved just how hypocritical a person he is!

Graham claimed he did now know if Barack Obama is a Christian, but would take him at his word, although he was troubled that Obama’s father, grandfather and great grandfather from Kenya were Muslims, and could understand that many would have doubts about his Christianity. He said he thought Obama might secretly be a Muslim, because Obama was working to give the Islamic faith a “free pass” by promoting the idea of contacts with the Islamic world, and was failing to protect Christians in Islamic nations from attack. Actually, Obama HAS issued a statement calling upon Islamic countries to protect the rights of minority religious groups, including Christians, but Graham conveniently lied about that fact. Graham has also earlier questioned whether Obama was born in the United States, making him a “birther”, at least in the past.

Franklin Graham measures whether one is a “good Christian” based on what they say, EXCEPT for Barack Obama!

Franklin Graham decides that one is religious, based on church attendance, when that proves absolutely nothing about a person.

What proves whether anyone is “religious” is his or her treatment of other human beings on a daily basis, on how he or she judges others, on whether one keeps an open mind, and does not condemn people who have other religious beliefs.

Graham also expressed doubts about Mitt Romney being a Christian, as he pointed out that many Christians thought that the Mormon Church was not a Christian church.

But he had no doubts that Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich were Christians, taking them at their word, although he pointed out that both were Catholics, and that Protestants had differences with Catholic beliefs.

Basically, for a evangelical Christian like Franklin Graham, there is a quandary as he is faced with a person he thinks may be Muslim, a Mormon, and two Catholics. This, plus the fact that the US Supreme Court has six Catholics and three Jews is troubling to those who have problems with both Catholics and Jews. He accepts Santorum and Gingrich as “better” than a ‘ secret Muslim” and a Mormon, but is obviously troubled that his way of looking at religion is not found in any of the possible Presidential candidates!

What it comes down to is that Franklin Graham is a hypocrite big time, and an embarrassment to his father, the Reverend Billy Graham. He is not the worthy successor of his father by any standard one can create!

Health Care, Women’s Health Rights, And Churches And Synagogues

Ronald 2 Comments

The Obama Health Care legislation has come under attack on a new front: that hospitals and universities and other institutions connected to religious groups, other than actual church or synagogue properties, are being required to provide contraceptive and abortion services to women who work for those institutions, outraging the Catholic Church, Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and Evangelical Christian groups that oppose such practices.

An exemption for churches and synagogues has not been enough to appease these religious groups, and it threatens the support of these groups for the Obama re-election campaign, but if the Obama Administration abandons the rights of women of all religious persuasions and denies them such services, they could also lose support among women who want these services covered.

It is clear that a majority of Catholic women ignore the teachings of their own church, while it is not clear that the same is true for Orthodox Jews, Mormons, and Evangelical Christians.

So this presents a quandary for Obama, and is being called an attack on religion, rather than an issue of an attack on women’s health and basic human rights to control their own bodies. Rather than have to follow the teachings of groups that are dominated by men, many millions of women want to determine their own futures, and not be controlled by their employers as to what health coverage they have.

The likelihood is that Obama will cave in on this to the religious groups, but a true profile in courage would be to make it clear there is religious freedom in this country, but it should not dictate health services available to women in the name of religious liberty.

One does not have to accept contraceptives or pursue abortion, but women should have the freedom, no matter what their religion or no religion, to pursue their own freedom, separate from organized religious institutions trying to control their destiny. They should not be required to quit their employment to have freedom of choice.