I read this the other day, and laughed. But I also think it's a great idea.

A Great Political Idea

Here’s what you should do, Mr. President. In the debates this fall, pull out a small, laminated card you’ve had made as a prop for this purpose. Then remind Mitt Romney that the ranks of the uninsured today are equal to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and ­Wyoming.

Read that list slowly, Mr. President. Then ask your opponent: Would America turn its back on the citizens of these 25 states if everyone there lacked basic health coverage? That’s what we’ve been doing for decades. You knew it was right to act when you were governor of Massachusetts, Mitt. How can you pretend we don’t need to solve this for the nation? And how can you object with a straight face when your own pioneering plan was my model?

~~~~~Matt Miller, in a Washington Post opinion piece, July 10, 2012

And then, there was Ann Romney, telling the world that she and Mitt have already released "all you people need to know" about their finances. Seems Ann shares Mitt's tendency to insert foot when speaking.

Seriously, what is it Mitt doesn't want us to see in his tax returns? Given how poorly his campaign is doing at defining the election on his terms, he couldn't possibly think that allowing Obama (and the media, and more and more Republicans) to continue to question why he won't release his tax returns is a good strategy. As this goes on and on and on, you really have to wonder, what is in those tax returns? What has Mitt so scared about us seeing that he's stonewalling even his own party?

Secrecy has never been much of a selling point for the Presidency. We don't like being kept in the dark (well, those of us who aren't simulating mushrooms don't).Mitt seems to love it, however. He's against disclosing his campaign money bundlers, against the Disclose act to make all those PACs list their donors, against releasing his tax returns (even though he gave years and years of those same returns to John McCain while he was running for president.) I guess letting another 1%er look at his returns is different than letting the other 99%ers see them. That's a rather telling point, don't you think?

I was incensed the other day when one of Romney's guests at his Hamptons weekend fundraiser told a reporter that people like common workers just "didn't get it" about what was at stake in this election. They "have less education", this woman said. They just don't understand their world, apparently.

While I am not saying that everyone in America is brilliant, or even well-educated ,(well, not in Texas, I guess, since they keep putting crazy stuff in their standards for education) I am sure that many, many people this woman dismisses as "poor, uneducated voters" do indeed know what this election is about. And it is my fervent hope that this snotty woman, and others like her, find that out in the most painful way, by the re-election of Obama.

I guess the rich are different. Really different. Clueless about the world they're living in, sometimes even clueless about the little circle of entitlement they inhabit. Talk about class warfare? That was a statement  surely  intended to start one.

And there was good ole Mitt, ranting on about how taxing the rich would hurt our economy, burden the "job creators", and all sorts of bad things.  Doesn't that man read? Every graphic out in the last month has clearly shown that "job creators" do not inhabit the 1% world. In fact, the lower their rate of taxes, the worse the economy does in terms of employmen, wages, and growth.All of those things go up, by a lot, when the upper tax rate hits anything over 70%. And goes down, by a lot, when the rate dips below 35%.  The real job creators, the middle class, need a tax break. The 2% at the top of the wealth scale do not.

We've been down this road before. Over and over. Doing the same thing, giving the wealthy more and more benefits, lowering their tax rates, all in the belief that all sorts of good things would "trickle down" to the bottome 98%.  As everyone knows, it HASN'T WORKED! And no wonder. What Romney, et al, are proposing to do is basically, keep doing the same thing, over and over, and he keeps telling us to expect a different result. Standard definition of insanity, no?

And where is the media on all this? Why don't they call him out on his pet failed policies? On his flip-flopping? Why do they keep reporting what he says as the truth, rather than just more campaign rhetoric? What happened to fact-checking? Why aren't they in full hue and cry about his refusal to release his tax returns? We already know he had, or has, a Swiss bank acount, and many accounts (at least 30) in the Caymen Islands and other off-shore locations. What else is he hiding? And if he's not hiding, why doesn't he release them? His own father had no qualms about releasing 12 years of his tax returns. But wait ~ his dad earned his money the regular way, through work and smart investing (of his own money). Guess Mitt isn't a "chip off the old block". He's more like the oil we get out of tar sands. Dirty, and hard to process.