Watering Good Seeds

cognitivedissonance:

From The Daily Mail:

A newly-unearthed photograph showing Mitt Romney demonstrating in favour of the Vietnam War draft might leave the presidential candidate feeling somewhat embarrassed.

The veteran Republican, then 19, can be seen picketing an anti-war sit-in at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, in 1966.

Romney received a draft exemption based upon his status as a “minister of religion” - basically, an exemption for having been a Mormon missionary. He received numerous deferments after that for educational reasons. Romney portrays his mission in Paris as a time of humbling poverty, but The Daily Telegraph has a different story:

The Republican presidential hopeful spent a significant portion of his 30-month mission in a Paris mansion described by fellow American missionaries to The Daily Telegraph as “palace”. It featured stained glass windows, chandeliers, and an extensive art collection and was staffed by two servants.

For most of 1968, Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Romney’s stay. Tearful as he described the house, Mr Anderson, 70, of Kaysville, Utah, said Romney aides had asked him not to speak publicly about their time together there.

Romney said of his French lodgings: “I don’t recall any of them having a refrigerator. We shopped before every meal”. Anderson said that as well as a refrigerator, the mansion had “a Spanish chef called Pardo and a house boy, who prepared lunch and supper five days a week”. 

Romney added in his comments that “most of the apartments I lived in had no shower or bathtub”. He said: “If we were lucky, we actually bought a hose and we stuck it on the sink.” He said he was forced to use a hole in the ground and a bucket for a lavatory and said, “I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived, and said to myself, ‘Wow, I sure am lucky to have been born in the United States of America.’”

Sounds rough, no? Perhaps it was this time of strife that led him to make his most recent housing decision:

It recently emerged that Mr Romney has plans to quadruple the size of his $12 million California home. The 64-year-old filed an application in San Diego, California, to bulldoze his 3,009-square-foot oceanfront mansion in La Jolla and replace it with an 11,062-square-foot property.

A campaign official said that the GOP hopeful was planning the expansion as the home he bought three years ago ‘is inadequate for their needs’.

What’s the definition of a prig? Someone who is always aware of the moral obligations other people ought to bear?

(via guardiancomment)