Mitt Romney’s “Emotional” Story about Navy Seal Not Well Received by Friend, Mother

Posted: October 10, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , | 55 Comments

Glen Doherty was killed in Benghazi on September 11, 2012

Yesterday, while campaigning in Iowa, Mitt Romney told a story about a chance meeting he had several years ago with Glen Doherty, a former Navy Seal who originally came from Winchester, Massachusetts.

Except Romney didn’t use the man’s name. I was immediately struck by that last night when I saw video of Romney telling the story and supposedly getting choked up when he revealed how “heartbroken” he was when he learned that Doherty had been killed in the consulate attack in Libya. I figured Romney probably didn’t even remember the Doherty’s name.

The way Romney told the story was that he and Ann had been at their home in San Diego and had been invited to a neighborhood Christmas Party. They got the address wrong and ended up at a different party–at Glen Doherty’s home.

Romney said he and his wife, Ann, walked to the house, joined the other guests for dinner and pictures, then had an epiphany: “Turns out this wasn’t the neighborhood party,” Romney said, drawing laughs. “This was a family having a party with their friends. So we were a little embarrassed, but they treated us well nonetheless, and I got to meet some really interesting people.”

“One of them was a guy from my home state of Massachusetts,” Romney continued, referring to Doherty, “a relatively young guy, compared to me. He was a former Navy SEAL. He was living in San Diego. Learned about him, he talked about his life, he also skied a lot. He’d skied in some of the places I had, and we had a lot of things in common. He told me he keeps going back to the Middle East. He cares very deeply about the people there. He served in the military there, went back from time to time to offer security services and so forth to people there.”

And then the “punch line”:

“You can imagine how I felt when I found out that he was one of the two former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11,….And it touched me, obviously, as I recognized that this young man that I thought was so impressive had lost his life in the service of his fellow men and women.”

The audience oohed and ahhed. Here’s the video:

As usual, the real story is a little different than one Romney has been telling recently in hopes of appearing more compassionate and empathetic. One of Glen Doherty’s close friends, Elf Ellefsen heard about the party in question directly from Doherty. Ellefsen told his version of the story on a radio show on KIRO FM in Seattle.

Ellefsen said Doherty recalled meeting Mitt Romney years ago, but the account was much different from what the Presidential candidate retold in Iowa.

According to Ellefsen, Romney introduced himself to Doherty four separate times during the gathering.

“He said it was very comical,” Ellefsen said, “Mitt Romney approached him ultimately four times, using this private gathering as a political venture to further his image. He kept introducing himself as Mitt Romney, a political figure. The same introduction, the same opening line. Glen believed it to be very insincere and stale.”

Ellefsen said Doherty remembered Romney as robotic.

“He said it was pathetic and comical to have the same person come up to you within only a half hour, have this person reintroduce himself to you, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that he just did this 20 minutes ago, and did not even recognize Glen’s face.”

In response to a question, Ellefsen said he didn’t care for Romney exploiting his friend’s life and death for political reasons.

“Honestly it does make me sick. Glen would definitely not approve of it. He probably wouldn’t do much about it. He probably wouldn’t say a whole lot about it. I think Glen would feel, more than anything, almost embarrassed for Romney. I think he would feel pity for him.”

Back in Massachusetts, Romney was chided by Barbara Doherty, Glen Doherty’s mother, who told Boston NBC affiliate WHDH:

“I don’t trust Romney. He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda. It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama,” said Barbara Doherty, Glen’s mother.

Larry Summers And Another Luddite Analogy

Posted: February 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: , , , | 10 Comments

A hattip to United Republic, their new site Republic Report and for this ‘most’ enlightening tidbit on Larry Summers.

This Larry Summers.

The Larry Summers that President Obama chose to head the White House National Economic Council, even after the blowback from Summers receiving beaucoup speaking fees in 2008 at banking meetings, as in JP Morgan dishing out $67, 500 for a February engagement.  This, after JP Morgan reaped $25 billion in Government bailouts.  Or Citigroup, another happy camper after receiving $50 billion in taxpayer monies, found enough spare change to pay Summers on two occasions, once for $45,000 and two months later for $54,000.  Or everyone’s favorite, Goldman Sachs. Sachs was really generous after receiving $10 million in bailout funds but managed a double decker of $135,000 for one appearance and another for $67,500 eight weeks later.

Oh, and Summers also had managed another $5.2 million, an easy-peasy salary from D.E. Shaw, which just happens to be a major hedge fund.

Who says government doesn’t work?

When Summers exited his WH duties, he hit the lecture circuit once again. His love of giving speeches seems to have slipped under the radar.  Until it didn’t.  Interest appears to have shredded the text of his presentation at a particular business forum.  Mysteriously, the stirring words disappeared and no one could retrieve then.  Poof!  But here’s what we know: this time Summer’s concluding keynote speech celebrated the wonders of outsourcing and off-shoring jobs.  Here’s a brief statement from the catalog introduction of the 2011 World BPO/ITO Forum:

Resisting the prospect of offshoring withholds a major totem of competitive parity from the most profitable producers of economic progress, Dr. Summers said. “It is to deny the US and American businesses an opportunity to participate in this revolution in emerging markets, which is the most important economic story of our time.” He added that increasing trade in tasks makes businesses more efficient and competitive, and allows them to exploit different skills, capacities and labor costs anywhere in the world. Critics who automatically label outsourcing or offshoring a threat to prosperity “resemble luddites who took axes to machinery early in England’s industrial revolution,” he said. Instead of killing jobs, as luddites feared, machines spawned millions of jobs and better standards of living.

Oh yes, I’m sure the majority of Americans now collecting unemployment or those working two, three jobs to pay the electric bill, buy the Kraft mac and cheese dinners in bulk, while hoping to God no one in the family gets sick could appreciate this finely-tuned statement.  But this statement [though applicable to many workers] was specifically directed to business process [as in payroll, tax and benefits] and IT workers—you know, all those geeky kids that were told ‘Go for the computer degree.  You can’t go wrong.’

Oops.

Because those innocent initials in the forum’s title?  That would stand for ‘business process outsourcing/information technology outsourcing.’

And people wonder why there are so many college grads with gargantuan school loans associated with the Occupy Wall St. Movement.  These grads are mad as hell and not getting over it.

But notice the analogy that Summers uses for describing critics of massive outsourcing of jobs, jobs, jobs.  Critics are Luddites, Summers says, no better than the extremists who smashed machinery during the early days of the Industrial Revolution.  I suspect there are ‘things’ citizens would enjoy smashing right now.  And it’s not the machines.

But here’s the word that flew out at me: exploit, as in exploitation:

an act or instance of exploiting<exploitation of natural resources> <exploitation of immigrant laborers> <clever exploitation of the system>

Ding, ding, ding!  We exploit our natural resources, our fellow citizens.  We exploit immigrant workers, every chance we get.  And we exploit the system by having people like Larry Summers, whirling through the revolving door of government/business, and then pretending the damage left behind is a good thing, the most important economic story of our time.

How about the biggest heist of all time!

But it gets better.  We get to exploit workers in other countries, too, making their lives so miserable they threaten to commit suicide en masse.

What’s not to love?

If this sort of thing wasn’t so sickening, it would be laughable.

I am not laughing.

Btw, the Republic Report site will be tapping none other than Jack Abramoff for an insider’s view of  DC corruption and influence peddling.  Super-lobbyist Abramoff, released from jail last year, will be a regular contributor to RR because if you want to catch a bunch of rats what better strategy than employ a King Rat?

Could get very interesting!