Susan Cardoza makes some important points in her article today about the presumptive republican nominee, Willard Mitt Romney. She writes today about how he is re-coloring the fact that he used his daddy’s money, political power and religion to avoid being drafted into the Vietnam war while simultaneously recklessly poking the stick in the eye of potential conflict for Americans.

Given that he now feigns regret over not being able to go to Vietnam because he was forced to hang in France and serve his faith instead. Imagine- enduring the hardships of the french mansion and peddling his legs off in his position as missionary for the Church of Latter Day Saints while young men like my uncle were returned home in a box that we were told contained pieces of what was left of his body. Or my cousin who suffered such unfathomable nightmares from what he did and saw in Vietnam that he used his gun one last time to take his own life stateside.

Like others in his war hawk clubhouse photo above, this ass has the unconscionable audacity to make light of his conscientious objector behaviour and insult those who gave their lives, limbs and mental health to a war that should never have been fought. A war that this jackass supported – for everyone else that is. He had more important things to do, a higher calling. After all, it is established over and over that Mitt really is just not like the rest of America.

So when you hear him spout off like some tough guy, remember that this spineless amoeba is in good company when it comes to republican war hawks who talk big – but cowered when it really counted. Pathetic. This all gets summed up for me in the added “Romney liked to dress up and play Trooper” story. I will admit, so did I – but my brother and I were 4 and 6 respectively when we did it and my mom was making our uniforms out of my father’s worn out ones because he was a real trooper – an Alaskan State Trooper.

My father saw many like Romney. Big talk and even bigger cowards. In later years my father wrote many regulations for the Department of Public Safety, including screening and hiring practices. Guys like Romney like to wear a badge and carry a gun on their hip, but wash out of the psych evaluations before ever being fitted for a uniform, thank god! What he did, pretending to be a Michigan State Trooper, was illegal. And not only illegal, but to actually go out and pull people over was illegal, dangerous and a complete demonstration of total disregard for the Rule of Law and the impact his behaviour had on others. It is this type of blowhard fake that can stand before us and invite war.

So, vote for this disrespectful coward you hypocrites! As you sit there clinging to your guns and your bibles drooling over the prospect of unseating our first African-America president remember that it is your children and grandchildren that this puke will be sending off to war – certainly not his own. It is your Medicare and Social Security that he will destroy – not his own. It is your descendants that will suffer a lack of access to quality healthcare and education – not his. It is your families that will see their paychecks reduced and benefits cut – not his. It is you who will pay higher grocery prices as federal welfare dries up to farmers across America so that the tax benefits will remain in place to those poor oil companies and the wealthy.

So…go ahead…vote for this fraud! After all, the ReBiblican machine has apparently convinced a huge bloc of you to vote with enthusiasm against your own self-interests and those of your fellow Americans – all so you can feel the satisfaction of getting your spineless white boy in the White House to do the bidding of people that will happily walk all over you and yours. VERY patriotic!

When the Chips Were Down, Mitt Romney Chose to Cut and Run – To France

by Susan Cardoza

Recently on a stage with war heroes Mitt Romney praised the sacrifice of the great men and women of every generation who have served in our armed forces. One thing he ommitted is that not only did he not serve when his time came, he received several deferments despite the fact he marched in support of the war in Vietnam. As a matter of fact, the Mormon church as a whole supported the Vietnam war and I imagine there were many who served from the Church – just not the war hawk Willard.

The son of George Romney, then Michigan’s governor, was one of a limited number of Mormon youth chosen as missionaries — a status that protected him from the draft between July 1966 and February 1969 as a “minister of religion or divinity student.” Essentially, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints re-routed Romney from Vietnam to the south of France, where he served as a missionary. Mitt Romney spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as a “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection. It was staffed by two servants — a Spanish chef and a houseboy.

As a matter of fact he received three more deferments over the next few years and did not stop applying until he figured out his number was too high to be drafted to serve.

So what he claims to revere now is, in fact, a sacrifice the Republican presidential candidate did not himself make. This was a time where we did not have an all volunteer military like we have today. The draft left absolutely no way out – except for fleeing – of being shipped into the horrors of war for the majority of those who set foot on the ground then known as Vietnam.

Those that high-tailed it across the American border into Canada or to other unknown destinations were sentenced to serve time if caught for draft-dodging. Unless, of course, you were uniquely privilege like one Willard Mitt Romney and others like him. George W. Bush comes to mind. No, George didn’t go abroad as a Mormon missionary, but he was able to avoid the draft nonetheless. Massive wealth and political influence buys that type of protection.

President Barack Obama, Romney’s opponent in this year’s campaign, did not serve in the military either, but the Democrat, 50, was a child during the Vietnam conflict and as an adult did not enlist in the voluntary armed forces where the draft had been done away with.

But because Romney, now 65, was of draft age during Vietnam, his military background — or, rather, his lack of one — is facing new scrutiny. Perhaps if he had been against the war his lack of service would be understandable however when you hawk for a war then refuse to serve yourself, people are going to question your ethics. Yes, they are going to question your ethics when you are so eager to send others off to die for their country, a sacrifice you refused to make in a war you supported. A look at Romney’s actions with regard to Vietnam offers a window into a 1960s world that allowed him to avoid combat as fighting peaked.

From the Political Carnival:

May 20, 1966, a 19-year old Romney, whose father was at the time Michigan’s governor, standing with pro-war University President Wallace Sterling. To the young Romney, anti-war activists hoping to end the draft — and the senseless deaths of nearly 60,000 young American men — should not sit-in, they should sit down and shut up in preparation for potential deployment.

In 1994, when he was running for Senate, Willard told The Boston Herald, “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam, but nor did I take any actions to remove myself from the pool of young men who were eligible for the draft.”

He makes reckless and irresponsible statements about his eagerness to confront Iran or “Russia”, our “geopolitical enemy” (in his words) and other potential conflicts.  And while carelessly threatening to take this country into another war we can ill afford, in lives and dollars, think back to how he evaded the sacrifice when it was his turn to serve and step onto a battlefield. He is joined by a plethora of neo-con war mongers who are on his current staff who themselves have never seen war. According to Romney today, his own words make it impossible to discern whether or not he is now saying that he would or would not have gone to Vietnam. Isn’t that convenient now that it is history?

In 2007 he said this about serving in Vietnam:

 that he had “longed in many respects to actually be in Vietnam.”

Sure. Right. The reality of the situation is that he didn’t have the courage to go. He didn’t feel it was important enough to him to serve his country at a time of war… Vietnam was a war that the poor and the people who couldn’t afford to go to college served in while people like Mitt holed up in a mansion in France.

It seems that he also liked to impersonate Michigan State Troopers in his youth and, in fact, a few of his staffers in 2007 left the campaign after it was learned they, too, impersonated Massachusetts State Police.

From the National Memo:

When Mitt Romney was a college freshman, he told fellow residents of his Stanford University dormitory that he sometimes disguised himself as a police officer – a crime in many states, including Michigan and California, where he then lived. And he had the uniform on display as proof.

So recalls Robin Madden, who had also just arrived as a freshman, the startling incident began when Romney called him and two or three other residents into his room, saying, “Come up, I want to show you something.” When they entered Romney’s room, “and laid out on his bed was a Michigan State Trooper’s uniform.”

Madden, a native Texan who graduated from Stanford in 1970 and went on to become a successful television producer and writer, has never forgotten that strange moment, which he has recounted to friends over the years as he observed his former classmate’s political ascent. The National Memo learned of the incident from a longtime Madden friend to whom he had mentioned it years ago.

Said Madden in a recent interview, “He told us that he had gotten the uniform from his father,” George Romney, then the Governor of Michigan, whose security detail was staffed by uniformed troopers. “He told us that he was using it to pull over drivers on the road. He also had a red flashing light that he would attach to the top of his white Rambler.”……..

You can read the rest of the article and the Boston Globe articles on his staffers who ultimately resigned the campaign here and here.

This habit of lying or flip flopping or even some of the actions that he ruthlessly recalls as “practical jokes” and thought were funny – are all part of a very disturbing pathological pattern. Not only was he cruel in his pranks, he has never, to this day, given a heartfelt apology.

We all do silly things as young people but I would hope at some point in our lives we show sincere misgivings about such actions. Romney is clearly not capable of understanding that these actions even require an apology or re-thinking. We all have changes of heart, but how many times in a lifetime do you change your core values? Apparently the answer is – as many times as you want. For Romney, his ‘values’ appear to remold with each run for public office rather than ever experiencing a sincere epiphany.

So, as it is with most of Romney’s core beliefs, it is not surprising that he has told different stories regarding this time in his life. His recollection of those days and the decisions he made have evolved as well, all in relation to whatever office he is running for at any given time.

The Etch-a-Sketch does not work in real life. In fact, we all know etch-a-sketch is by design – not permanent. All you have to do is turn it over, shake it a bit and you have a clean slate. Yet Republicans are lining up in a row to vote for this man. Have they jumped the shark as well? It would seem so – especially when we are still recovering from the other Frat Boy they elected and gave carte blanche, simply because he claimed he was a born again Christian.

In the real world people who think their values can be changed like an etch-a-sketch have no business leading our country.