Wow….this has caused me to change my mind about Romney/Ryan!  Here is Mitt’s (whoops…I meant Mitten’s) healthcare proposal.

Brilliant, absolutely fucking brilliant.  Poor people should go to a hospital emergency room whenever they need medical treatment.  Are you kidding me?  That is what happens now and is one of the primary reason that medical costs are so high.

Just I thought it couldn’t get any better I found another clip of the Mittster this time talking to Glenn Beck, the looniest of the looneys.  Be patient and listen closely to what Mitt has to say about people who can’t afford to pay for healthcare going to the hospital for treatment.

No…you ears did not deceive you.  Mitt said that when people getting free medical care at a hospital  it is a form of socialism.  So…the Health Care solution that Mitt proposed for poor people last night is socialism, which means that Mitt is a Socialist.  Its even better than that…he goes on to make the best case for Obamacare that I have ever heard!  Unbelievable…..

Let me say it one more time….you cannot trust anything this man says.  He has told so many lies that he can no longer keep track of them.  For a while I thought he was just evil and was doing all of this intentionally but at this point I am leaning more towards the opinion that he is just stupid.  To back up this position, I offer you the following news story from the Huffington Post today.

Mitt Romney Wonders Why Ann

Romney’s Airplane Windows Don’t

Roll Down

Making post-fundraiser comments this weekend, presidential candidate Mitt Romney revealed a tenuous grip on the science of aviation, despite the fact that he and his wife, Ann, have been flying around the country this summer on the campaign trail.

After his wife’s plane was forced to make an emergency landing this weekend,Romney told the Los Angeles Times, he was worried for her safety. The candidate then continued on a bizarre tangent that showed just how little the Republican nominee understands about flight.

“I appreciate the fact that she is on the ground, safe and sound. And I don’t think she knows just how worried some of us were,” Romney told the paper. “When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly.”

Romney said the biggest problem in a distressed aircraft is that “the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous.”

The main reason airplane windows don’t open is because there isn’t enough oxygen at cruising altitude to keep passengers alive. (The fear of window or cabin failures, which would lead to potentially fatal hypoxia, is why many planes are equipped with emergency oxygen masks.)

“You can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open,” Romney told the Times, suggesting that additional oxygen in the cabin during the electrical malfunction could’ve alleviated the problem. In fact, if there were an electrical fire on board, additional oxygen would have fed the flames.

Strangely, Romney seemed to acknowledge the importance of oxygen later in his comments. “Fortunately, there was enough oxygen for the pilot and copilot to make a safe landing in Denver,” he said.

Hypoxia aboard aircraft has led to many fatalities over the years, including the 1999 crash that killed golfer Payne Stewart. In 2005, Helios Airways Flight 522 crashed, killing all 121 aboard after the crew was incapacitated.

This is the man that wants us to elect him as President of the United States………scary stuff!

The Republican Party has, over a number of years, managed to implement some draconian Voter ID laws.  Roughly two dozen states have significantly tightened their identification rules for voting since 2003, and the pace of change has accelerated rapidly in the last two years. Ten states have now passed laws demanding that voters possess a current government-issued photo ID, and several others have enacted measures slightly less strict.  Most of these laws were based on a template provided by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).  (note: this is the same ALEC that is behind the “Stand Your Ground” laws that are being used as the basis for supporting George Zimmerman’s killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, in Florida)  Republicans have justified their Voter ID laws with claims of significant levels of voter fraud.  These claims were supported by a 2011 Republican National Lawyers Association list of reported election crimes during the last twelve years.  On the surface, it is hard to argue with laws aimed at eliminating voter fraud but, as with many Republican initiatives, things are not always as they appear.  Let’s dig a little deeper. (Reference 1)

What types of voter fraud are addressed by Republican Voter ID laws?

Voter ID laws only address the kind of fraud  where someone walks into a polling place and tries to vote as someone else.   Guess what….this type of voter fraud is a non-existent problem!  After extensive research, Kevin Drum (author of the Repeat After Me article referenced above), was only able to identify one case of possible in-person voter fraud that could have been prevented by a Voter ID law.  ONE FUCKIN CASE!!!    This seemed strange to me, so I went to the Republican National Lawyers Association website and personally review every cited case of possible voter fraud.  Based on my review, none of their examples could have been prevented by Voter ID laws.  So what the fuck is going on here?  We obviously need to keep digging.  (References 2 and 3)

Who is impacted by the Voter ID law?  

According to most studies the people that are impacted are disproportionately young or elderly, poor, black, and Hispanic (Reference 1).  Having established that, let’s look at the composition of the Republican and Democratic parties.  According to my research on this topic (Reference 4)) the Republican party is almost totally dominated by white people with approximately 87% of the Republicans being non-Hispanic whites.  The Democratic Party on the other hand is much more diverse with 30% of the party composed of Hispanic and Black members.  The bottom line here is that the Voter ID laws put in place by the Republicans almost exclusively impact Democratic voters.

How many Democratic voters could be impacted by Voter ID laws?

According to the Voter Suppression Returns article (Reference 1), “The number of people potentially affected is considerable: the Texas secretary of state, for example, estimates that at least 600,000 already registered voters do not possess the documents to cast ballots in November. New York University’s respected Brennan Center for Justice has estimated that a total of more than five million people may lack the requisite identification documents in states that have passed new ID laws.”

Bottom Line Conclusions!

• The Republican Party has put draconian Voter ID laws in place that address a voter fraud problem that does not exist.
• The Republicans knew this when they put them in place….so what was the point of the laws?
• The laws are about voter suppression not voter fraud.
• The vote being suppressed is not random!  The laws are aimed at minorities, racism at its worst, blatantly taking away voter rights that were hard won over the last 150 years.
• The laws are also aimed, almost exclusively, at Democratic voters with the potential to eliminate five million votes during the 2012 election.

These Voter ID laws could swing the election to the Republican party and there my friends is the bottom line.  The Republicans can’t win the election with their policies which serve only the top 1% of the US population, so their only hope is to steal the election with racist Voter ID laws.  Romney has clearly said he doesn’t give a damn about the 47%….if you needed more proof that this was truly a Republican position now you have it!

This post owes much of it’s content to the following articles/resources, I have provided hyperlinks to the materials that I used and suggest that you refer to them for additional details.

1. Voter Suppression Returns, Harvard Magazine,  Alexander Keyssar (Stirling Professor of History and Social Policy at Harvard Kennedy School)
2. Repeat After Me, Mother Jones, Kevin Drum
3. Republican National Lawyers Association website
4. Gallup Poll On Republican Base

I saw this headline on Huffington Post tonight and it made me fall down in the floor laughing.

This guy will truly say anything for a vote.  We know what he tells his millionaire buddies and you can see what he is selling today in the headline above.  I have said it before and I will say it again.  He truly thinks America, or at least all of it except for the 1%, is stupid enough to fall for it.  Need more to convince you of that?  Watch this……

Thanks to the Huffington Post for the headline!