Hey Mitt, the Election’s Over

Mitt’s top strategist, Stuart Stevens (whom many blame for Mitt’s disastrous campaign and loss, but really there’s so much blame to go around) is kind of like those Japanese soldiers who fought on in the Pacific long after WWII was over.  But at least they had the excuse of not knowing the Allies had won.

Stevens is still fighting over Pinocchios, specifically the four that Mitt got from WaPo‘s fact checker Glenn Kessler for his ad claiming that Chrysler was moving American Jeep jobs to China.

In response to Stevens’ request for fewer wooden puppets, Kessler is sticking with his original four, the most you can receive.

Maybe Stevens would have done better last November if he’d focused more on his own wooden boy and less on Kessler’s.

Mitt Wins Something!

Unfortunately for him, Mitt wins for PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year,” for his desperate, last-minute push to win Ohio by claiming that Chrysler was moving American jobs building Jeeps to China.

Is Assad About to Use Chemical Weapons?

NBC News reports that the Syrian military has loaded bombs with nerve gas, pending final instructions from Bashar Assad.

The U. S., Russia, and China have forcefully warned Assad not to use chemical weapons against his people.

Quote of the Day

“I know Romney doesn’t believe a word he’s saying on foreign policy and that it’s all aimed at ginning up votes:  there’s some China-bashing to help in the Midwest, some Arab-bashing to win over the Jews, some Russia-bashing (‘our No. 1 geopolitical foe’) to bring in the Polish vote, plus a dash of testosterone to keep the neocons off his back.”

Thomas L. Friedman, “It’s Mitt’s World,” NYT

Imagine

Imagine you’re shopping at the grocery store.  You’re almost eight months along in your pregnancy with your third child.  Suddenly you’re arrested by the local government and, after being imprisoned for four days, taken to a hospital where you’re given a shot to cause an abortion.  You go into labor and hope the baby will somehow be born alive.  But hours later you deliver a dead baby, whose body is all black and blue.

This happened to Pan Chunyan in the province of Fujian, China, last April.*

Despite having to listen to Mittens singing “America the Beautiful” and lying about the President, we don’t have it so bad.

Actually, we have it better than any other people in the history of the world.  And we will even if Mittens wins.

 

* “Pressure Grows in China to End One-Child Law,” Edward Wong, NYT

Mitt Not Throwing Stones on Olympic Uniforms

Mitt has refused to join the outcry over the fact that the U. S. Olympic Team’s uniforms were made in China.

That’s probably because the uniforms for his Olympics in 2002 were made in Burma, which produced lots of protests from human rights activists.

His media team at the time was so incredibly ignorant that their response was “What do you mean the uniforms were made in Burma, they were made in Myanmar!”

I guess Burma and Myanmar could be different places in the same universe where Mitt was simultaneously running and not running Bain Capital.

Why Is a Strong Middle Class So Essential for Everyone Else?

It’s striking that we are so focused on building a strong middle class everywhere in the world, that we see it as the magic bullet that solves threats and problems — except here at home.

When we invaded Iraq, we were assured that one of the things in our favor for building a democracy there was the existence of a strong, educated middle class.  By contrast, we’ve been told over and over that one of the reasons for the tough, fruitless slog in Afghanistan is the lack of a middle class.

We’ve been told that one of the reasons the Islamists have been able to emerge strong from the Arab Spring is the lack of a middle class in the Middle East, that a tiny group of very rich people has ruled over an enormous group of very poor, uneducated people for so long.

We’ve been told that the emerging middle classes in India and China are a wonderful thing for the growth of world trade and prosperity and stability.

But here at home, our middle class is suffering and shrinking.  And we’re told that the growing chasm of income inequality, that the falling back of so many families into poverty, that the failure of so many children to do better than their parents as they have historically, is nothing to be alarmed about.

Can someone explain this?  Mitt?  Reince? Paul Ryan?  John Boehner? Anybody?

We Can Pretend Chen Is Studying, Not Defecting

It looks as if a way out of the Chen Guangcheng mess may be for the Chinese government to give him permission to come to the U. S. to study law, with his wife and children joining him here.  Then they’d just never go back.

There remains the concern about the safety of his mother and brothers, as well as other Chinese dissidents who helped him escape and get to the U. S. Embassy in Beijing.

“If the Reports Are True”

Mitt Romney couldn’t stand up to Bryan Fischer from the American Family Association over his hiring of Ric Grenell, who happens to be gay.  Now Mitt is faulting President Obama for not standing up to the Chinese over the dissident Chen Guangcheng.

With conflicting reports swirling and a lot of confusion as to Chen’s exact situation and wishes, Mitt irresponsibly blasted the President today for a “day of shame” and a “dark day for freedom.”  But he had to preface his condemnation with qualifiers like “if the reports are true” and “if they’re accurate.”  When you have to use language like that, you have no business attacking anyone, you simply don’t have enough information yet.

So aside from the hypocrisy, we have Mitt going off half-cocked while President Obama is in the middle of a tough and messy foreign policy crisis.

Republicans in Congress also held an emergency hearing on Chen in which they criticized the President.

If it had just been about putting Mr. Chen on a plane when he was in our custody, that would be simple.  But he has a family as well, who did not escape with him, a wife, two children, a mother, and brothers, all of whom are at risk.  So the GOP effort to paint this as a situation where President Obama threw Chen under the bus to save his broader negotiations with the Chinese this week with Secretaries Clinton and Geithner conveniently ignores the complicating factor of the safety of Chen’s family.

The brighter the public spotlight that is shone on Chen, the harder it is for the Chinese government to back down.

What’s the real GOP goal here — helping Chen or making Obama  look bad?  If the GOP wants to hurt Obama, they will keep running their mouths.  If they want to help Chen, they will push for him privately and pipe down publicly.

A day of shame?  Definitely –  for Mitt Romney.

Mitt Should Keep His Mouth Shut

This is a challenging moment in our relations with China.  We have been getting cooperation from them on Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the valuation of their currency.  Now, relations are strained because of dissident Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest and flight to the U. S. embassy in Beijing.  The Obama Administration wants to help Mr. Chen and his family without derailing the progress we have made with China on vital national security issues.

The timing is especially bad, given that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner are on their way to China for long-scheduled meetings.

So when he should just shut up and let the President handle this crisis (which some are calling the most serious with China since Tiananmen Square back in 1989), Mitt Romney jumps in to declare that we must confront the Chinese on their one-child policy.  The President is in a delicate diplomatic situation, and Mitt uses the moment for a purely political shout-out to the pro-life Republican base.

Great pandering, Mitt!  Leadership?  Statesmanship?  Not so much.