Thoughts on the Knuckleheads of the Round Table...

Anita Perry, wife of Rick “What the hell happened?” Perry, has been campaigning in South Carolina and she gave a speech today right out of a fever dream in which she said the following: 

She compared her husband's decision to run to seeing a "burning bush," referencing the Old Testament story of Moses seeing a sign from God. "He felt like he needed to see the burning bush," she said. "I said, good, let me tell you something: 'You may not be seeing that burning bush but there are people seeing that burning bush for you.'" 

This incomprehensible attempt at something deep and metaphorical was, astonishingly, met with knowing nods and murmurs of agreement from the confused southern Baptist audience, who quickly swept her away to the church basement for some cookies and bourbon, and stands as a successful day on the campaign trail for Rick lately. Today – after cheaply flaunting their christianity in a craven attempt to attract even the most delusional evangelical fringe – they are suddenly whining about being victimized and attacked because of their faith -in fact, another naked grab for the sympathy vote and a clear sign of how desperate they are. 

 During the debate at Dartmouth the other night, where the candidates sat around a circular table and shared their meager knowledge of economics, Rick looked like a freshman at his first pledge dance, a semi-panicked smile on his face as he sat quietly and tried his best to figure out what the others were talking about.  As Newt Gingrich sent out one blustery blast of overheated rhetoric after another, Rick could be seen contemplating Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan and counting on his fingers. 

After witnessing this mind-bending coffee klatch, it is no wonder that most republicans are still trying – unsuccessfully – to pull the “none-of-the-above” lever and get somebody else to run.  It’s like bad cable TV, when the programs on channel after channel are ridiculous or pointless or both and you find yourself feverishly flipping through all 500 in the vain hope that you’ll finally find something worth watching. 

While this absurd spectacle is going on there continue to be very important developments happening as the republican congressional leadership stealthily and relentlessly works to undermine 30 years of progress in everything from women’s rights to environmental protection - working to restrict the ability to vote and to roll back the rights of labor unions, all with the unwitting assistance of many in the national media who can’t seem to sort out the good guys from the bad guys.  The amount of breathless commentary and theatrical outrage over the Wall Street protests is a shameful indicator of the complicity of media and political types who should know better.  It is essentially making the victims of the wholesale greed-a-thon that landed the country in such a profound mess into the enemy somehow, and causing us to take our eye off the ball as John Boner and his band of thieves work tirelessly to advance the cause of the very greed-heads who tossed gasoline on the fire that was the housing bubble. 

If the people who are supposed to cover the financial markets in the press had done their jobs instead of genuflecting every time they went down on the trading floor there might not need to be Occupy Wall Street protests – bottom line.  Beady eyed speed freaks like Jim Cramer spent 10 years screaming “Buy, Buy, Buy” at the top of their lungs and never bothered to pull the curtain back and potentially spoil the gangbang going on in the back room.

There are moments of comedy, however, everyday if you just let yourself see them.  Gingrich’s bugged eyed rant about the filthy unwashed Occupy Wall Street masses who don’t care enough about anything to pick up their Slurpy cups was a good example.  Rush Blowhard lashed out with a sputtering diatribe yesterday also that was over the top, even for him, characterizing the protestors as un-American liberal tools of organized labor and pot smoking shiftless class warriors who want to kill the unborn…or some similarly noxious bilge. The guy is funny; he really is.  The problem is that tea party knuckle draggers take him seriously and there are obviously plenty of those around. 

And of course, in keeping with the opening theme of this post, Rick Perry’s garbled attempt to explain his emphatic non-repudiation of Robert “Hey, Mormons might be from outer space” Jefferrs is worth repeated viewings, if only as a way to symbolically wave good bye to one of the previously appointed “savior of the week” nominees and remind ourselves that the height of idiocy is not limited to marching through downtown Detroit in a Shriner’s parade playing Zip-a-dee-doo-dah on a kazoo…

Hell yes, it's class warfare...get used to it...

A report released this week showed that the average American’s income has declined 6.7% since 2009.  That’s the fundamental backdrop of the Occupy Wall Street protests that are scaring the shit out of the right wing and their corporate masters, and the reason the leaders of the republican party are soiling themselves attempting to broad-brush the protestors as nihilistic hippy anarchists and serial litterers.   Me thinks they protest too much, though, because they are being ridiculed and repudiated by everyone from Jon Stewart to Paul Krugman.   The more the Mitch McConnells and Eric Cantors stand and – with a straight face – try to play the class warfare card, the more they call attention to the salient facts in the debate and sound like a spoiled Thurston Howell the 3^rd wet nursed by Eva Peron.  And the facts have been laid out quite clearly:

·         The top 1% of income earners own 40% of the wealth of the country. 

·         The top 1% takes home 24% of the nation’s income.

·         The top 1% own fully 50% of all stocks, bonds and mutual funds.

·         The top 1% have only 5% of the nation’s debt

·         The top 1% take home a higher percentage of the nation’s income than at any time since the 1920’s

Now we have these same ruling class warriors whining about the Dodd Frank financial reform act, an emasculated shadow of what it should be but which contains a major reform provision – called the Volcker Rule – that is set to roll out in the 4^th quarter and which is putting the fear of the proletariat into the masters of the universe, specifically our favorite criminals, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, whose half-mad spree of ultra speculative investments was facilitated by their ability to play with the house money and who now are being forced to moderate their heretofore risky investment strategies in favor of protecting depositors from massive losses.   Gee, how unfair is that?  

Why would the government restrict the trading abilities of these geniuses?  Here’s is an explanation from an article in Fortune Magazine; it states that the Volcker Rule “would also bar them from engaging in trading schemes that would be considered to be a “material conflict of interest” between the bank and its customers”.  In other words, no more advising customers to do one thing and then investing their own money in a bet against them.   Sound familiar?  Like maybe the sub-prime mortgage market derivatives these evil carnival barkers were selling to every greed crazed speed freak investor from Iceland to LA. 

What pisses people off about these guys is that in 2008 they decided to become bank holding companies so they could have access to the government bailout programs and now they are bank rolling the republican clown posse that has been railing against the whole idea of bailouts and whose most enthusiastic backers are the intellectually incoherent tea party.  They somehow are against government bailouts of the most powerful forces behind the candidates they now support and who have them intoxicated and confused with rants about gay marriage and military service, questions of who is the most sincerely and authentically Christian and which is more of a job killer: the EPA or the Department of Education. 

At the Dartmouth debate tonight, Newt Gingrich, in a blast of righteous reverse class warfare, suggested throwing Barney Frank and Chris Dodd in jail and firing Ben Bernanke, apparently not understanding that the Fed chairman serves as set term and can’t be fired.  I think poor Newt is in the throes of a last wrenching grasp at staying alive in the race and, like a number of the others who are ostensibly still running, he has to make a splash in the next few of the seemingly endless succession of debates.   His wide-eyed, slightly off kilter rants sure don’t give him any presidential cred to me but maybe the book’s not selling and he needs whatever works to keep the benjamins coming in so his wife doesn’t bail on him.

Regardless of these exercises in jabbering non sequiturs, the fix is in; now that Christie has endorsed Romney this thing is just going to play out over the next couple of months as an amusing sideshow.  For better or worse, the big money in the republican party has settled on Mitt as the one guy – 25% favorable rating or not – who they want to carry their firewood to the village square for the Obama roast and if he can’t manage it, well fuck it; there’s always 2016 and by then the damned terrible negro will probably have things so screwed up they could run Bachman and Palin on the same ticket and win.   Romney flips positions like an insomniac but as feverishly as the desperate others try, they can’t make anything stick.  He was pro-choice and then pro-life.  He wanted to privatize social security and now ridicules Perry for calling it a ponzi scheme.   Romney has no real positions; has no zealously defended ground staked out except laissez faire capitalism.  He’s an empty suit who doesn’t make a fool of himself very often and can be counted on to press the agenda of lower taxes and party hats for the 1% and that’s why he’s going to be the nominee.  He’s not who they wanted; he’s not great, but he’ll have to do.

Do you take me for a fool; do you think that I can't see...

For the last couple of days I have been thinking about a couple of things that are prominent in the media and closely related; the Occupy Wall Street protests and, more specifically, the reaction to them, and the republican presidential candidates’ descent into madness. 

The politburo that is Faux News has spent the  last two weeks, first down playing it, then ridiculing it and now as it is seemingly gaining some traction, criticizing and demonizing it.  This is encouraging.   The other day Eric Cantor gave us a sputtering blast of hyperbole, saying he was fearful of the “growing mobs” in various cities across the country, channeling the ghosts of John Mitchell and Spiro Agnew.  And Herman Cain, former pizza magnate and CEO, showed his deep empathy with working stiffs everywhere by saying, “Don’t blame Wall Street, don’t blame the big banks, if you don’t have a job and you’re not rich.  Blame yourself.”  Brilliant.  Given that the tea party rabble was initially motivated by Washington’s bailout of Wall Street and the “big banks”, I wonder how that will play with them; assuming they’re paying attention.

Several prominent tea party-backed members of congress scoffed at the notion that the Wall Street protests and protesters have anything in common with their own movement, saying essentially that, well, the difference is, they’re wrong and we are right.  They completely miss the fact that the protests have basically grown organically and, while the major unions are sympathetic, they didn't start the protests; the protests were started and are being sustained by average people who are finally pissed enough to get out in the streets and make a point about who the bad guys are in the continuing financial debacle and, just as important, their complicity in it not getting better.   The initial tea party protests were about government run amock and the bailout of Goldman Sachs and Bank of Americas but I guess they were angriest that the government did the bail out; Occupy Wall Street is angry that, now that they have been bailed out, the evil bastards have turned on us all like a rabies-infected wolf nursed back to health – an 21^st century take on biting the hand that feeds you, except they've gotten away with it. 

Aside from the normal “talking heads” blather and semantic masturbation, there are more reports every day about how difficult retirement will be for millions of us, now that our pensions are being stolen away in the name of good governance, our 401k’s have had to be spent to pay upside down mortgages and our jobs have been ruthlessly shipped overseas where starving people with no indoor plumbing eagerly line up to be exploited.    It seems people who never dreamed of having to get in the streets with a sign are beginning to realize that their lives have been blown up and the guys with the detonators are upstairs in the corner office playing hide the salami with their secretaries and plotting new ways to steal the village chickens. 

And the obvious cluelessness of those called upon to comment is hilarious and unsettling at the same time.  On Faux News there was a comment that these protests will continue “until the deficit is reduced” a hilariously wrong -headed interpretation and more evidence that these clowns are just a bunch of shills for the targets of the protest and the republican party that continues to empower them.   Jason Linkins, in his Huffington Post blog says it perfectly; “but it's a result of Obama being on the wrong side of that war, (class warfare) -- under the Obama administration, corporate profits have been jaw-dropping. Occupy Wall Street isn't an army ready to fight a new class war, it's an encampment of refugees from the losing side of the last one."

On the campaign trail, there is starting to be whiff of fatigue and “who gives a shit” as the 8 or 10 or 25 remaining republican candidates try desperately to hold on long enough to raise some more money to get to the next town to try desperately to raise some money, to…well, you get the idea.  Aside from Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich, both of whom seem to be less interested in being elected president than they are in selling books and commemorative coffee mugs, there continues to be a mad scramble for money or headlines or both by the confused and awkward prom dates the right is left with now that, one after another, those deemed more attractive and electable have decided they would rather stay home and wash their hair than bother trying for the White House at this point in history.    

Michele Bachman this week made a grim campaign appearance in Iowa in front of a dwindling number of her fans and admirers, exhorting them not to settle in choosing a candidate but to choose someone who is “pro-life, pro-god and pro-marriage”.   Her faltering campaign is sinking fast; meanwhile she says she would reinstate Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell, because the military is no place for sex.   She has introduced a bill, universally ridiculed, that would require a woman choosing to get an abortion to have an ultra sound anyway, complete with audible heartbeat, a procedure with no medical benefit whatsoever and the epitome of government intrusion into our private relationship with both our physician and our god.  It’s nice to know that by Thanksgiving she’ll be back in Minneapolis using her time more sensibly, trying to turn gay men back into straight men and giving Marcus backrubs and helping him sort out his feelings.

Newt, meanwhile, appeared on Faux News and laid out a clear but, sadly, Gestapo-like plan to drag any judges who make a ruling he doesn't like in front of a congressional committee / interrogation chamber, a spectacularly inappropriate flaunting of the constitution from someone who purports to be a member of academia; seems more like the actions of the consummate snake-oil sales man.  This sort of extra-constitutional manipulation seems to be the flavor of the month with the republicans these day, as Batman & Robin…uh, I mean John Boner and Eric “I’m scared shitless of the nasty protesters” Cantor demonstrate daily, with the able assistance of McConnell and Paul “No, really; it will work” Ryan. 

At the Family Values Hate-fest, Rick “I don’t even know this guy” Perry was introduced by Robert Jeffress, who called Mormonism a cult, just to get things started off on an unambiguous note.   Rick has been busy trying to figure out how to reconcile his vision of government with the rampant pay-to-play gig he had going on in Texas, and the continuing revelations that even Michele Bachman is talking about.  And of course his inept attempts to get both feet in his mouth almost every time he speaks publicly complicate this task enormously.

Huntsman, in the straw poll associated with this exercise in pandering, got exactly 0% of the vote, demonstrating both his limited appeal to republican primary voters and the characteristic that makes him the least noxious of the whole crew. 

Santorum gets my vote as the guy I least want anywhere near the big board in the room with the red phone and the button.  The guy is nuts.

It seems to me more and more likely that there is something fishy going on in terms of the choice of candidates available.   Obama couldn't be more vulnerable and with good reason.  He got dealt a shitty hand initially and then folded about 20 consecutive times before he finally has decided that maybe he should stop negotiating with these clowns who keep killing the hostages every time he pays the ransom.   But that’s not nearly enough; not yet.  You would think that the best and brightest on the right would be clamoring for a chance to win the big prize but instead we get this bewildered flock that keeps wandering around the country in a roving dunce contest.  It doesn't add up and I can’t help thinking that there is more going on here than meets the eye. 

"Christ you know it ain't easy...you know how hard it can be...the way things are goin'..."

Charlie Rose recently interviewed Jeffrey Sachs, author of the book, The Price of Civilization, in which he posits that, for the last 30 years or so our over-heated consumer culture combined with the rise of globalization and its concomitant loss of jobs long held by uneducated but hard working men and women, has caused us to come apart at the seams and abandon the whole notion of one nation under god, that requires us to all pitch in and share the burdens of growing our economy and seeing to our mutual prosperity.   Our political parties are unwilling to ask us to face the truth and furthermore, in the case of the republicans, are actively engaged in maintaining the continuing the fictional narrative that has the America we knew and loved ruined by waves of non-white immigrants, wasteful and underhanded politicians, excessive taxation and a “wimpification” of our culture, personified by gay marriage, nanny state welfare, and tree hugging with our pants down.  

Our biggest failure – and one that the neither party is willing confront – is not adapting to the new global economic reality.  Things have changed in a deep and profound way and yet the Obama and the democrats just keep changing the band aid and the republicans’ answer is to lower taxes on the wealthy.   Nobody has the balls to come out and say that many of the lost jobs will never come back, that it might take 5 to 10 years to turn things around and we need to have higher taxes – yes, I said higher taxes – if we are going to pay for all the things that we value as a nation. 

Republicans – and the tea party rabble in particular – propose that the only thing government should pay for is a defense establishment, (and maybe hookers and vodka), and the democrats are too drunk on campaign contributions to cobble together a big picture narrative to oppose that view.  If we continue down this path we are in for a brutal decade.

Mitch McConnell gave a speech today on the senate floor, once again dissembling like a madman, lying and distorting and misrepresenting everything in his hyper-partisan path.   This guy is so slimy you should throw salt on him to make him go away.   He accused Obama of seeking “partisan tax hikes fourteen months before an election”, the poor innocent waif, and said those tax hikes “won’t create one single job”.  Funny, but he and John Boner and the rest of the republican intelligencia seem to think that the tax cuts they want, 14 months before an election, will create lots and lots of jobs.  Either that or they don’t give a shit about jobs, since their corporate masters have been shipping jobs overseas for the last ten years in the name of globalization.  

They talk about globalization as if corporations are so altruistic and open minded and willing to embrace their fellow man, when in reality if they weren’t raking in money from moving operations off shore they would be rinsing and spitting after even saying the word, overseas.  But since the piles of cash they are sitting on comes in large part from operations and customers overseas, they aren’t particularly concerned about doing anything or sacrificing anything to create jobs here.  Why should they bother?  There is a crisis in our culture, in which an overstimulated and consumption-driven populace, in a ferocious quest for wealth, now suffers shortfalls of social trust, honesty, and compassion.  The quest for wealth has turned us against each other and allowed the republican party that is in bed with the wealthiest among us to seem as if they are trying to help the striving citizens achieve their dream.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Rupert Murdoch was also interviewed recently and among the usual self serving gibberish he spewed, he admitted that the only reason he hired Sarah Palin was that “she was hot and got ratings”.  In other words, he couldn’t care less about what she said – she never speaks in complete sentences or has any idea what she’s talking about anyway.   He only wanted her in his stable of idiots because it would make him money, the same reason he has Bill “Pinhead” O’Reilly and Sean “Obama is from Mars” Hannity.  This flies in the face of the opinion of tea party kingmaker and grand high exalted pooh bah Jim DeMint, who has decided, after having a few glasses of absinth, that Palin is as important a figure in modern American politics as Ronald Reagan.  Now we can argue about that point – to me Reagan has always been that amiable dunce described by Clark Clifford - but there is no denying his impact on the American political landscape.  It’s like he was an asteroid sucked out of its orbit that landed in the heartland and the crater is still smoldering.  Palin, on the other hand, hit the scene like some two-drink minimum pole dancer who was plucked from obscurity to run for Hockey Queen.  

What is striking about the jockeying for position going on by the republican candidates is this; we now have no Palin and no Chris Christie.  We have Ron Paul continuing to be marginalized, (that’s crazy Ron…wink, wink), a fistful of also-rans in Santorum, Gingrich, Cain and Bachman, and what seem to the chosen ones – Romney and Perry.  Does any right thinking republican strategist think they have a winner in that group?   It certainly appears that Romney has the best chance and also appears that Perry is being abandoned – when Faux News starts dissing you and Michele Bachman feels free to start speaking in tongues about your well known cronyism in Texas, you have a problem.  So what is the end game?  Are these guys the best they can do?  Or is it that the country is so fucked up that no sober republican wants to be put in charge? 

Thomas Friedman recently was quoted talking about the time being right for a third party candidate and I am feeling like that might be the best way out.  I put an Obama bumper sticker on my car the other day and was flipped off three times within 2 hours, an admittedly unscientific way to assess his chances but it made me deeply uneasy.  I think he is a good man – certainly much better than the rag-tag clown posse opposing him – but he is getting bad advice from all sides and may not have the vision necessary to run this country right now as it lurches around dangerously like a rhino that just woke up after an all-night bender at the water hole, (goddamn gazelles are crazy, man...).  In the last couple of weeks it seems that maybe somebody close to him got his ear and said, Hey Barack; the ship is going down.  It time to stop bailing and get the hell off and move the flag somewhere else to fight another day.   I think he wants to do the right thing but at this point, the right thing is going to be really hard to do.  Maybe if Bachman and Perry pray for him…

It alright John, I'm only dancing...

John Boner has decided that it is appropriate for the American tax payer to pay a private law firm 1.5 million dollars to defend the Defense of Marriage Act since Attorney General Eric Holder – and many other individuals and jurisdictions across the country – have decided it is fundamentally unconstitutional and therefore not worthy of defending.   

Unfortunately Nancy Pelosi and some of her democratic colleagues missed the point entirely, railing about the cost which, in the big picture, is a rounding error.  Nancy – try to stay off the prescription drugs for a few days and stop making a fool of yourself and your party.  Get a clue… The point isn’t that Boner and his clown posse are spending a million and a half hiring Washington hired guns who may or may not be worth it.  No, the problem is that the republican party, a party rife with perverts, closet queens and serial adulterers like Newt Gingrich, gets itself into a biblically inspired lather over gay citizens getting married.  As cultural warriors learned in California, this is really a non-starter, since the basic presumption of the DOMA is that gay marriage harms someone and, hard as they try, harried Christian soldiers can’t prove anything like that. 

But since the obstructionist republican congress has seen fit to leave an unprecedented number of judicial vacancies empty, who knows how this may end up being litigated.  We could have some conservative judge hearing arguments wearing nothing but a thong under his robe while muttering old testament verses and doodling penises on his desk blotter.   But we can’t worry about that now.  If it ever gets to the supreme court and is argued logically and covered fairly by the press, it will be very interesting indeed to see if The Nine can resist their activist conservative inclinations and send this ridiculous sideshow out of town once and for all. 

But that doesn’t mean Boner is any less ridiculous for obsessing over something like gay marriage at a time when we have far more serious issues to deal with and therein lies the problem in our little biosphere of a capital; Boner and his troops have been in election mode for at least six months now, with the election only just now a year away.  They are pissing away an opportunity – created by the appointment and task of the “super congress” – to work on real solutions to real problems for a majority of people in the country and instead chose to spend time, energy and - sure - money on something that frankly most of the country is over.  Gays are mainstream and their being allowed to marry – for better or worse – is inevitable.  But since it is a divisive social issue sure to rile up the super-partisan knuckle-draggers who form the republican base, lets worry it like a dog, (a Labrador?), with a chew toy so maybe no one will notice us changing the voting laws in 20 or 30 states to systematically disenfranchise voters who smell like democrats. 

This under the covers move by former Faux News blowhard and quasi-Hitler Youth John Kasich and anti-middle class autocrat and union busting Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker stood to be the stealthiest anti-democratic move in years until it started getting media coverage and now Obama’s keystone cops justice department is investigating, which should at least give the bastards pause.  Walker is a Reagan disciple and another true believer who is also anti-choice, against giving prisoners time off their sentences for good behavior and in favor of teaching abstinence as the favored birth control method  - oh, and cutting government spending.   These two and a number of other newly minted tea party heroes have systematically moved to change voting laws and procedures to make it more difficult for students and other non-republican white bread patriots to vote next year in a blatant attempt at denying the vote to political enemies – you know; sorta like Idi Amin or Stalin...or even George Wallace before he went and got himself shot and turned into some kind of weird folk hero.   Let’s hope dragging the weasels into the light of day and maybe into court will stop them before they steal the vote.

Dick, Dick, Dick...I don't even know you anymore...

Semi-lucid war criminal Dick Cheney, while expressing solidarity with Obama after the drone strike that killed US citizen Anwar al Awlaki in Yemen, also insisted that Obama apologize for his speech in 2009 characterizing the Bush administration as a bunch of torturers, (I’m paraphrasing), claiming that the administration never tortured anyone and hadn’t flushed our traditional values down into a rancid cesspool with extraordinary rendition, water boarding and all of the other nefarious practices now seen by most clear thinking people as an overreach at best and disgusting and counterproductive foolishness at worst.   Right, Dick.  And Vlad the Impaler was just a misunderstood guy with anger management issues.  Why anyone pays any attention to this ridiculous gasbag other than to prosecute him is a mystery to me, just as it is a mystery why someone like Chris Christie would want the garbled endorsement of Teutonic prince regent and notorious law-breaker Henry Kissinger, a man who to this day is deathly afraid to show his face anywhere in Asia for fear of being “Pinochet-ed” into a dank and stinking jail cell somewhere, never to be seen again.

Cheney’s flailing attempts to justify what are now widely held to have been illegal and unconstitutional actions emanating largely from his office are pathetic.  When a “put up your dukes” warrior like John McCain calls you out and says flat out that it was torture you probably should just shred your passport, shut up and hope nobody comes knocking on your door with a warrant. 

The variety of voices criticizing the Obama administration’s reliance on drones to play kill Waldo with the al Qaeda leadership should give him pause.  It appears to be a low risk way to discourage them and the Taliban from getting together for fund raising car washes and bake sales but it is not ultimately making us safer and if the Pakistani security apparatus gets fed up enough with us pissing on their shoes to cook up another coup and install a more radical government we’d have more to worry about than who's living in what cave.  The single scariest foreign policy issue today is the nukes in the basement of the Islamabad post office.

Ron Paul’s overall political platform may be a little suspect and he is way too Libertarian to win the republican nomination but his foreign policy is admirable and he’s right about this.  Obama went too far in trying to increase his tough guy cred and defang the traditional republican aphorism that the democrats are soft on national security matters.  It’s bad enough that the state can kill citizens it deems to have committed a capital crime; Rick “Let me pull the switch” Perry and his well oiled Texas execution machine being the most efficient, unflinching and unapologetic example.  But deciding that a citizen living abroad – even one spewing the kind of toxic and hate-filled rhetoric as al Awlaki – is a worthy target for assassination, we are treading on a very slippery slope once trod mostly by the KGB.   

Apparently some genius inside the Justice Department wrote a John Yoo-inspired memo that purports to provide a legal justification for the assassination of US citizens abroad for saying the wrong things, without proof that they’ve done anything.   This follows in the twisted tradition established by Cheney and his half-mad cabal of closeted Brown Shirts serving the clown prince, Bush the Younger.   So Obama thinks he has license to go to any length necessary to take the fight to al Qaeda and the Taliban bastards who won’t stand still long enough so he can throw a straight right hand.   We’ll chase the tattered rabble right into the town square of some godforsaken stucco compound and use a Predator drone to blow it all up if it means we can take out some ersatz Tokyo Rose in a dish-dash.

After the candidate Obama used the perfidy and avarice of the whole Bush criminal enterprise to get elected, he decides that using a gun in a knife fight is a pretty good idea, if for no other reason than the entire ridiculous Afghan adventure has no foreseeable end game and therefore he has no reasonable option other than to say screw it, just take some people out and hope for the best.    Unfortunately this lends credence to the past high crimes and misdemeanors of Cheney and his half-baked band of reactionaries and makes Obama and this administration no better, a truly tragic outcome and maybe the perfect metaphor for the whole stupid adventure of the last ten years. 

Another week, another blast of indecision...

How did the responsibility and blame for the economic crisis – the mortgage mess and all of the accompanying shady dealing, unemployment, fear and loathing - shift from the geniuses on Wall Street and their political accomplices to Obama?  This is the really impressive sleight of hand performed by Faux News and the republican party.  Now there are ten candidates, all trying hard to pin all of the country’s problems on one guy; the guy who was elected to try to fix them and who has been obstructed at every turn and every step of the way by congressional leaders who are determined to see him fail.  How is that OK? 

This week once again provided evidence that there is some secret test the republican presidential candidates have to take to verify they possess the necessary level of idiocy before being allowed to run.  It is no wonder that republican audiences, such as the one assembled at the Reagan Library for some sort of celebration recently, are clamoring for Chris Christie – or anyone, frankly – to get in the race, because the woeful field so far seems to guarantee Obama a second term and to the rabidly anti-Obama true believers, that’s their worst nightmare.

“On day one we will immediately begin to change government so it starts serving the will of the American people.”  This quote is from Newt Gingrich’s web site and begs the question; what is the will of the American people?  And more importantly, how in the world do you think you know what it is?  You’re cruising the Med with your trophy wife, (#3), and running up a six figure tab at Tiffany’s and you think you know what the American people want or need?   Hilarious…In a recent interview I saw he kept repeating that the reason he is going to win is that he’s the only candidate whose ideas are “big enough”, an inexplicable phrase but one he clearly thinks will resonate because he said it three times in a 5 minute interview.

He has laid out a ten point plan in a new “contract with America”, itself a tired “big” idea that he used to screw the GOP and lose control of the congress for 10 years when he was speaker of the house.    Among the ten, nine are variations on the corporate welfare that is at the heart of republican party theology, (increase domestic energy production, with “from oil and gas exploitation” left unsaid), with only a nod to “investing in brain science” to show his humanity while he goes door to door with the storm troopers taking back food stamps and poor folks’ satellite dishes. 

Meanwhile, Michele Bachman, in a flurry of forceful speeches that, unfortunately completely missed the point, tried her best to slam Obama by saying the Arab Spring uprising were his “fault” as if millions of people rising up against dictators and oligarchies and embracing democracy is somehow a bad thing, presumably because it somehow lets the infidels get closer to the temple and threatens Israel and, by extension, her Old Testament hallucinations.   That the republican party – and the entire foreign policy elite for the last 60 years – has made a policy of Nixonian repolitik and coddled cardboard cutouts of leaders as long as they played ball with us is an ongoing embarrassment and the change in US policy  over the last three years maybe the one thing Obama has gotten right.  But the voices in Bachman’s head won’t let here accept the idea that just maybe the vast non-white majority in the Middle East may have a legitimate point of view. 

But, saving the best for last, there was Rick “Let me start over” Perry’s first major domestic policy speech,  in which he touted his record on taxes, health care, employment, and the environment while he has been governor of Texas for the last 10 years.    Let’s see…Texas is tied with Mississippi for last – or maybe it should be considered first – in the percentage of jobs that pay the minimum wage, or less.   Nearly 1.5 million Texans have dropped below the poverty line while he was busy creating his famous 1 million new jobs.  Texas also leads the nation in the number of its citizens that are uninsured and children that go to bed hungry, prison population and executions while also having the lowest high school graduation rate.  Wow, sounds like a god damn paradise to me. 

His wife reportedly defending him this week for his sputtering performance in the last debate, saying he never had a debate coach or a speaking coach, as if hiding his inconsistent policy positions and questionable record in Texas with a smoother delivery is the answer.   If he thinks offering up his Texas “miracle” is all he needs to clarify to win the hearts and minds of voters, he is dumber than he seems.  Or we are…

On a lighter note, an East Bay Velero gas station was robbed one recent morning at 3:30 AM by six people wearing Halloween costumes.  They took a fistful of cash from the till, a couple of six-packs of beer and twenty packages of condoms.   Must have been a really good, but really early, Halloween party.