Romney's Offshore Doctrine: offshored jobs for American workers, offshore tax havens for the rich

"A healthy American economy is what underwrites American power."

That's a line from Romney's speech today addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Obviously Romney thought the assembled veterans were senile, brain-damaged, or not too bright in the first place. The most pressing problem for returning veterans today is their inability to successfully reintigrate into civilian society.

And why is this such a struggle? Because the best and brightest of our hedge-fund whiz-kids (who oddly enough rarely find themselves in uniform) have made themselves fabulously wealthy by sending American jobs to Mexico and China.

That's one prong of the Offshore Doctrine. The other is that once a patriot like Romney has made himself a few hundred  million, it becomes a hassle to pay taxes in America. After all, that most powerful military machine in history that Romney couldn't mention often enough costs an awful lot of money to maintain. Better to keep your cash in Switzerland or Monaco, countries that don't have to pay for such an ambitious military-industrial complex.

So even though he's shipped untold numbers of jobs out of the country and refuses to cough up his share of taxes to pay for the military, he told the vets that he believes America is the greatest force for good the world has ever know. He even drew the vets a time-line; America's mission to bring  justice, peace, and hope to the world can be traced from Lexington and Concord in 1775 right through to Fallujah and Kandahar in the modern era.

If I was a Romney speech-writer I probably would have sawed that one off before he got to Falluja and Kandahar. Presumably there were more than a few vets in the audience who are far better acquainted with the nature of the "justice, peace, and hope" they brought to Falluja than Romney is.

About the Arab Spring he had this to say; "we will not be complicit in oppression." That one's going to have the People of the Towel laughing themselves to death, from Cairo to Kabul and from Baghdad to Islamabad for months to come, but there's no indication in the speech that Romney intended it to be a joke.

In preparation for his visit with Netanyahu next week, Romney saved his harshest words for a message dear to the Israeli leader's heart; Iran.

There is no greater danger to the world than the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Well, Mittens, I don't know about the particulars of that claim. But I do know that doing something about it is going to be damned expensive. What with all those jobs off-shored and all those rich tax evaders off-shoring their money, America can't afford to do anything about it anyway.

Better tell Bibi he's on his own.