12 Reasons Why Romney Should Not Be President

There are at least 12 reasons why Mitt Romney would not make a good president. Here's John F. Ince's list. What's yours?

1 • Romney neither understands nor represents most Americans. The man lacks empathy for those who have not had all the benefits he has had in life. His presidency would be deeply polarizing. One can easily image his election as president would generate new waves of social unrest and violence. He clearly represents the 1% and the 99% will not tolerate policies that exacerbate the growing divisions between rich and poor.

2 • Romney's job creation claims are inflated and unrealistic. Mitt Romney's professional career was based on a very specific task: buying and selling companies for profit. He wants people to think that this qualifies him to be a job creator. With the exception of his investment in Staples and a few other early venture capital deals, his jobs creation claims are mostly chimera. He takes credit for creating jobs, when he was only an investor in those companies, not an executive. In practice, he predominantly used his power as an investor to eliminate jobs and shift other jobs overseas, all in the interest of making profits.

3 • Romney does not have a sound fiscal plan. Extrapolating from the projections Romney has offered for increased defense spending and tax cuts, his policies would blow a hole in the Federal budget, further eroding investors faith in the government's ability to get its fiscal house in order.

4 • Romney has little respect for the natural environment, nor a commitment to protect and preserve it for future generations. He blindly subscribes to Republican views that climate change is not scientifically proven. He gives no indication of any desire to develop alternative sources of energy that can mitigate the man made sources of pollutants. Instead he supports the rollback of environmental regulations all but giving companies a green light to pollute the environment and waste vital natural resources.

5 • Romney has lived a cloistered and privileged life and today has a very narrow view of the world. From the Cranbrook School to Brigham Young University, to Harvard Business School to Bain Capital, it's difficult to imagine anyone who has been less exposed to the lives and conditions under which most Americans live. The covenants of his Mormon faith are extremely rigid, restrictive and unrealistic. His devotion to his faith is admirable, but his inability to step beyond the confines of that religion suggest that he would have difficulty reconciling who he is with who others are in an increasingly diverse world.

6 • Romney's worldview is rooted in intolerance. He has a very narrow view of the world. America today is a diverse nation with many different racial groups, faiths, all in need of respect. The bully incident at his prep school and his aggressive corporate behavior buying and selling companies at Bain Capital suggest someone who has little desire help those who are different, less fortunate and in weaker position than him.

7 • Romney does not fully understand the transformative power of technological change. Mitt has no professional technical training. Most of the companies he invested in at Bain were low tech. His expertise is finance: specifically buying and selling companies. All this suggests someone who will pay lip service to the tech sector, but won't fully grasp the potential for transforming the economy and culture through advancing technology.

8 • Romney is temperamentally unfit for the presidency. He is peevish, controlling and less than transparent. He has a rigid worldview that revolves around what is best for himself and a small circle of those who support him.

9 • Romney lacks direct foreign policy experience. His four years as Governor of Massachusetts do not give him sufficient knowledge or expertise to effectively deal with an increasingly complex world. On the job learners nearly always make blunders, sometimes blunders so large that they create huge problems for the U. S.

10 • Romney lacks integrity and honesty. His fudging of issues is a sign that he feels he can head fake his way though difficult debates. His statement that he does not remember the prep school bully incident is implausible. His evasiveness over release of tax forms and embellishment of his accomplishments are all red flags. His decisions as an executive at Bain Capital were not rooted in ethical behavior. The man is simply not forthright enough to earn the trust of the American people.

11 • Romney has no commitment to women or equal rights. There is little in his public statements or record to suggest he feels any responsibility for advancing the interests of women and minorities.

12 • Romney lacks sufficient charisma and personality to be a strong leader. The country needs someone to lead forcefully and inspire citizens to tackle problems that threaten the diminishment of American stature on the world stage. Romney's robotic and reptilian personality fails to connect, leaving people feeling that Romney is in the game only for himself, rather than in it for the good of all.

Note: The author, John F. Ince of this article is a former classmate of Mitt Romney at Harvard Business School and former reporter at Fortune Magazine. He is the author of Mitt Romney: King of Bain and the Man Who Wants To Be President.

The False Premise of Conservatives - Lessons Learned from Chick-fil-A

We see it every day. Conservatives frame every important discussion in America by establishing a completely false premise first. The most recent example is the "Chick-fil-A" fiasco.

Conservatives framed the issue as, "Dan Cathy is merely exercising his First Amendment right to free speech," or, alternatively, "Dan Cathy is just expressing his religious views." If you believe this lie, then if you take exception to Chick-fil-A's activities (and that's what they are, activities, not speech), then you are somehow against freedom of speech and/or freedom of religion.

Let me suggest, if Dan Cathy had merely said in an interview, "I believe in the traditional definition of marriage," or "I believe in the Biblical definition of marriage," and that was the extent of it, there would be no controversy. But that is not the extent of it.

First, part of what Dan Cathy said was, "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about." So he didn't just state his position on traditional marriage or the Bible, he went on to use some pretty strong language directed at the gay population in our country. Okay, so we are still in the free speech category, although the speech is a lot stronger than some would think because I had to search to the second index page of Google to get this quote. It seems that, even after the fact, conservatives are still redefining the argument. The first 11 Google hits when I searched the string "Dan Cathy quote" were stories in "Christian" publications that claimed Dan Cathy is being misquoted, then go on to omit the above quote that was in the original news stories and only quote the "soft" part of his interview.

Second, Dan Cathy didn't just speak, he donated millions of dollars in corporate profits that had made their way to his Winshape Foundation to fund the cause of depriving gay Americans of their rights. So now we have moved from speech to action. And some of that action (money) went to a group called the Family Research Council that has been identified as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center for, among other things, making statements that some gays should be exported out of the United States and that those remaining in the country should be criminally prosecuted for their behavior, specifically sodomy. Sodomy laws were ruled to be unconstitutional by a decision of the US Supreme Court called Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.

So now we have framed the real issue...Dan Cathy was not merely exercising his freedom of speech or religion, he was making negative statements that were directed at a part of our society and he was donating money to groups that were actively working to deprive that part of society of the same rights other Americans have. Starting to make a little more sense why gay Americans and their supporters were upset enough to take action, in this case, organizing a boycott to deprive Dan Cathy of the money he was using against them, isn't it? Also, starting to make a lot more sense why "Christian" leaders needed to falsely frame this argument. It would have been much harder to stage a "Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day" if the cause was to support hate speech and to take people's rights away. They would have gotten a few people to turn out, but not the masses.

Conservatives have been doing this for 30 years, and getting better and more refined about it all the time. For example, no conservative will utter the words "Democratic Party" ever, they have renamed it "Democrat Party," even though that is not its name. They have taken it so far that even I had to look up the name of the Party to be sure...they are changing what reality is...because to most people perception is reality.

It is getting harder and harder all the time in this age of electronic overload to maintain truth and sanity.

That is why I am here for those who care!