"There are a lot of bad republicans; there are no good democrats." Ann Coulter

Satan’s favorite republican pin up girl and the masturbation inspiration for thousand - well, probably hundreds - of deeply disturbed and camo-clad militia members across the country, Ann Coulter, had her nasty partisan potty-mouth screed bleeped by MSNBC yesterday because she called John McCain either a douchbag or a dickweed, it’s not clear which.  I want to stand up for her rights as a political commentator and say bleeping her was unforgivable and a terrible overreach by the politically correct, left-leaning MSNBC and host Joe Scarborough.  I think if the bony-assed skank wants to call McCain a douchbag, I will defend to the death her right to do that.  As one foul-mouthed political satirist to another, I say Huzzah! Annie.  Your pseudo-intellectual right wing blather is music to my ears.  And of course your relentless lashing out at liberals and lefties everywhere can be justified by the nasty things they say about you.

After all, Al Franken was less than flattering to you, calling you “the reigning diva of the hysterical right”, an accurate but mean spirited description that you worked hard to earn and which is well deserved.  Your clueless loyalty to George W. Bush, an equally clueless empty suit who was a real conservative like I’m a real astronaut, qualifies you for the Lazy Blowhard Journalist Hall of Fame.  Memo to Annie; sitting around the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown drinking Mojitos is obviously keeping you from achieving the level of journalistic excellence you clearly think you’ve attained.  But that’s no reason to call you a parasitic bitch. 

I’ll bet you thought it was really cute to call Ted Kennedy “human pestilence”, although that begs the question; what does that make you?  A useless and neurotic bleach-blonde bulimic bimbo publicity whore?  And you calling Newt Gingrich a chubby dork, that was probably just good natured teasing between two like-minded republican foot soldiers girding for battle against the dark and evil forces of liberal extremism, atheism and homosexuality…and pot smoking…don’t forget pot smoking.  You confided in Laura Ingraham that you think Michele Bachman or Herman “Fingers” Cain would be better candidates that Newt would.  I have to say, Ann, that sounds an awful lot like one fake-academic gasbag being territorial in the face of a threat from another fake-academic gasbag.  After all, if you really think Bachman or Cain are able to find their way to the hotel bar by themselves, it calls into question your whole schtick as the learned voice of conservative wisdom and makes you look like an overcompensating, narcissistic slut-princess with Daddy issues.

But that’s just name calling and we’re above that, aren’t we Ann?  You once claimed to be “more of a man than any liberal” and had this to say about others of your sex…or at least the sex that you appear to be:

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women and 'We'll pay for health care and tuition and day care -- and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'"

Dang, girl; it’s no wonder real manly men think you’re hot – you know, open- carry, anti-immigrant, racist homophobic Timothy McVeigh types with two digit IQ’s.  Maybe you should take a testosterone supplement and just give up the pretense altogether.  Then you could get yourself a deer rifle and some Carhart overalls and join the other geniuses patrolling the Canadian border.  Protect and defend, eh? 
But seriously, Ann; I applaud you for your outspokenness and your forthright way of informing the body politic and furthering the political debate in this country.  Obscenity laced tirades and provocative and demeaning insults are as American as apple pie.  Please just keep on being you…you’re an inspiration.

Did Mad Max go to the mall?

Amid reports of increasingly violent and disturbing behavior by shoppers at traditional brick and mortar stores over the holiday weekend, sales statistics indicate more and more consumers eschewing what used to be a joyous and fun-filled tradition of post-turkey shopping for the comfort and simplicity of shopping online.   Little wonder.  Ominous, long lines of hyped up latte fueled customers desperate for a deal on just about anything make heading for the mall an unsettling prospect to many.  

Online retailers, on the other hand, offer an almost infinite selection of goods available at the push of a button, rain or shine.  You don’t have to play musical parking place in the mall parking lot and risk a fist fight before you even go inside.  Many online retailers offer free shipping so you don’t even have to take off your jammies.   These sales are reported to have increased over 25% on Friday and now represent nearly 20% of total sales with the numbers increasing every year.  It makes you wonder what will happen if this trend does indeed continue.  What would it look like if online sales represented 50% of total sales?  Think about how fundamentally that would change life in this consumer based society.

Many small towns have experienced something similar to this already in the “Walmart-ization” that has reduced many small community downtowns to a series of empty store fronts and dusty small businesses struggling desperately to survive.  It’s happened in my home town and only after a few years have the residents come to realize that they have paid an extremely steep price for minimum wage jobs with no benefits – downtown is two banks and two bars surrounded by dead and dying businesses and empty lots.  But what about bigger towns and cities? 

Downtown areas of cities like San Francisco, New Orleans, Chicago and New York are unlikely to be impacted – there is too much going on and you can’t get a good meal online – at least not yet.  But I think of a city like San Jose, where I lived for 25 years.   A typically sprawling California city, San Jose has struggled for many years to try to revitalize its downtown with middling success.  Now as it sits nervously in the midst of Silicon Valley, it risks being destroyed by that which it cultivated and is most proud.   As much as a doubling of online sales will benefit Pay-Pal and EBay and Apple – local icons and powerhouse employers, it could devastate a downtown populated by old line furniture and shoe stores, boutiques and other small and vulnerable retailers.   It already has essentially closed down book and record stores all across the country.

What would it mean to a city to have a hollow core, devoid of any activity, abandoned much like Detroit is today?  How would it affect housing and development, taxes, city government, schools and public transit?  It could affect cities in profound and fundamental ways not seen since the development of electricity and the steam engine.   Is there any reason to think that this won’t happen, at least to some extent?   I wonder if anyone in government is thinking about this as they watch the stunningly stupid behavior of the hordes of bargain hunting shoppers. 

Would the decline of brick and mortar shopping serve to further isolate us from each other and exacerbate the already fraying fabric of unity that has always served this country well?   Now, with politicians seeming eager to emphasize and amplify our divisions and use them to partisan advantage, what will take the place of civilized interactions on bustling streets alive with commerce?  Are we going to devolve into a people who go from home to work and back again with time out to go to a mega-church on Sunday, who subsist by texting each other and updating our social media?  Will we eventually lose the power of speech?  Develop ultra-sensitive and specialized and versatile fingertips, enlarged ear openings to accommodate ever more sophisticated ear buds?   

And most importantly, will Al Gore still take the credit?

Let's hear it for The Roots...!

Rush Gasbag and the conservative media are all up in arms about the disrespect shown Michele Bachman when she recently appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s late night talk show.   She was serenaded onstage by The Roots, playing a song called Lyin’ Ass Bitch and, somewhat predictably, when she discovered the name of the song, she and her campaign went ballistic.  Her outrage was echoed and amplified by other conservative voices desperate for an opportunity to slam the Hollywood liberal elite, etc., etc.  However this outcry misses the point entirely.

The truly unfortunate thing for Ms Bachman is that the song isn’t true; she isn’t a lyin’ ass bitch.  The garbled nonsense that she routinely spews is what she really believes to be true!  She truly believes that carbon dioxide is harmless and that The Lion King is gay propaganda.   In her heart of hearts she actually thinks that eliminating the minimum wage would create jobs and that “hundreds of scientists – some Nobel Prize winners” believe in intelligent design.   And that’s OK; at least you know where she’s coming from…or, at least where one of her personalities is coming from.  When she criticizes Obama she swings hard and puts both cheeks into it; no apologies, no mercy, no regrets.   But at least she doesn’t out and out lie and put words into his mouth like Rick “I think that’s what he said” Perry and Mitt Romney, who have both released campaign commercials recently taking public Obama speeches, deconstructing them and intentionally mashing them up into something completely false and utterly misleading.  In the voice over both parties solemnly and harshly accuse the president, distorting his position in a blatant bullshit shoveling session intended to confuse already confused low-information republican primary voters.

It’s one thing for dim-bulb Perry to accuse Obama of being a socialist; I would bet he doesn’t even know what that means and he’s a dead man walking anyway.  Erstwhile front-runner Romney, however, is another matter.  He may dodge and dissemble, flip and flop, equivocate and spend more time lying in the weeds than a garter snake but he isn’t the dumb-ass that Perry is; he can’t use that as an excuse.   His disingenuous use of doctored Obama speeches is reprehensible and pathetic.  Moreover, the fake speeches he creates by doing so are used to highlight "terrible" Obama policies like holding rational and adult conversations with our “enemies” and not supporting the half-crazed notion of bombing Iran back to the stone-age.  Romney is trying so hard to prove he has enough sack for the job that he appears – to anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of foreign policy and diplomacy – completely unsuitable for the job and the naive and uninformed former governor of Massachusetts that he is.  What a clown…

Compare these two knuckleheads with Ron Paul, a man whose foreign policy is so sane and sensible he doesn't seem to be in the same party as the rest of the General Jack D. Ripper-wannabes.    How is it that a candidate who doesn't like the two extremely questionable wars in which we’re currently involved and who doesn't want to get involved in any more comes to represent the fringe of a major American political party, an outcast?  He’s usually treated like a nut, like the addled uncle who lives in the attic and only comes out at Christmas time.  He may be proudly outside the mainstream of American domestic policy – waaay too libertarian, even for the tax and government hating elements of the party, who are fine with shutting down NPR but who might balk at eliminating the Federal Reserve or punching holes to drill for oil down at the car wash.   But he and Jon Huntsman are the only two I’d trust with the red telephone and even then I’d be nervous.

So where’s the explanation for Newt Gingrich?  Gingrich has crashed and burned more times than Orr in Catch-22.   That may be the answer – his dirty laundry has been hanging on the line for a long time now and people are used to seeing it, disturbing as it might be.   At the same time, a new story line seems to be developing, one that suggests that the republican debates are exposing the American public to new ideas and that will be a tipping point in the general election because everyone is so dissatisfied with what Obama has done that they want something – anything- different.  Unfortunately for him, Newt doesn't have any new ideas.  But it might explain why polls indicate that Obama loses a match up with a hypothetical republican – the proverbial, “anybody” – by a few points but is 6-10 points ahead of any of the current specific candidates, including Mitt Romney, lying swine and current leader of the pack. 

The simple fact is, people are pissed, disappointed, angry and afraid and that’s poison for any incumbent, period.   All this carnival midway crap – Obama’s a Kenyan, he’s a Muslim, he’s a socialist – is a distraction for the weak-minded on their way to the big tent for the main show.   The muddled republican race is so confusing that it’s no surprise that the terrified residents of the village who are hiding in the basement from the zombies understandably embrace any “good guys” who show up with the flashlight to lead them to safety.  But as they quickly discover, they’re not the answer to the fundamental problem and at the end of the day, creepy things still want to eat them.   Mitt and Perry running blatantly misleading and untrue campaign ads is no shock.   What else have they got?  They’re the real Lyin’ Ass Bitches…

Reflection on a Thanksgiving weekend…(what a cliché…)

For a couple hundred years, Thanksgiving has been celebrated in American as a time of reflection and gratitude for the things we have and appreciation of family and friends.  Crisp fall days, the smell of burning leaves and roasting turkey, cheering crowds at football games and tossing back a few cocktails – these are the traditions associated with the holiday.  It’s traditionally had an inherent selflessness in its focus on giving thanks and generosity, both material and spiritual.  As such it was characterized by quiet nobility compared to the more garish American holidays like New Year’s Eve, the 4^th of July, Halloween and Christmas.  And for a child anxiously waiting, it marked the beginning of the glorious Christmas season, as surely as the first snow fall and carols on the car radio. 

Today Thanksgiving Day has been hijacked by commercial interests who start to cram Christmas down our throats November first and who continue relentlessly and mercilessly right up to New Year’s Day, leaving Thanksgiving as just that day in late November when we super-size our routine gluttony and steal ourselves for the chaos, fist-fights and greed-fuel excess of Black Friday.  I am not clear who thought that was an appropriate name for a surge of herd-like shopping, parking lot-rage and desultory interaction with exhausted retail slaves bleary-eyed from starting work at 1:00 AM but it certainly seems to reflect the situation nicely.

I used to think it was funny; the eight hours of madness involved in preparing the Thanksgiving meal for the family, including relatives normally kept at arm’s-length during the rest of the year but who – due to the basic decency of my mother – ended up camped in our living room chowing down on chips and assorted celery and carrots sticks, swilling beers and watching the Detroit Lions lose to someone.   So much energy and angst went into making sure the stuffing wasn’t too gooey and the turkey wasn’t too dry, setting the big table with both leafs inserted and keeping everyone happy that my mother was practically on the verge of a nervous breakdown by the time everyone gathered to actually eat.  Then, in a flurry of clanking silverware and grunting noises, this huge feast was consumed, as if by locusts, in twenty minutes – an orgy of gravy and corn bread, green beans and mashed potatoes.   Throw in a few glasses of wine and the immediate aftermath looked as if everyone had been drugged; push back the chair, loosen the belt, belch discretely and slump in a daze, hoping for coffee and fearing the pie that was sure to follow.  This part of the ceremony is largely unchanged.

What’s different now is, that instead of gathering around the fireplace after dinner for some stilted conversation and shared lethargy, we now have the spectacle of people leaving the Thanksgiving table, grabbing the tent from the garage and heading down to wait overnight in line at Best Buy to get a crack at a $200 flat screen.  I will admit that this is motivated, not simply by greed, but also by our tenuous economic circumstances; almost everyone can relate to saving a few bucks.  But the enthusiasm and excitement exhibited by those queuing up in front of Target makes me think there’s more going on here than the intrepid hunter / gatherer going out into the cold to provide for his family.  No, this is also clear evidence of the toxin of consumerism coursing through our collective veins – the 21^st century striving for an American Dream that has gradually become more and more difficult to achieve and which is beginning to be seen in the misty distance of memory more than in the reality of today.

These cheap consumer goods allow the illusion to persist a bit longer, enabled by the exploitation of workers who are far from America but who also strive for a dream of their own – who work for dollars a day in order to have an indoor toilet.  That’s to be expected and is admirable.  But when you have fistfights over two dollar waffle irons and people pepper-spraying line jumpers to get a deal on an X-Box the Thanksgiving Holiday has morphed into something surreal and dirty and noxious.   

The hyper-consumerism that fuels this weird behavior is a symptom of both an inevitable evolution towards a global economy and the dangers inherent in unfettered capitalism run amok.  Capitalism and democracy have been joined at the hip since WWII and in some sense continue to be thought of as an inevitable yin and yang.  This notion underlies – and undermines - contemporary American foreign policy.  The greed that not so obviously underlies it is the more destructive component – the poison in the system that leads an enormous and disheartening percentage of citizens to abandon the idea of us all being in this thing together for a self-centeredness that threatens to rend the fabric of the American psyche into pieces.  

If this is the inevitable result of the global economy, the wealthiest citizens watching in dismay as the rabble fights for the last scraps of leftovers, I think I want a turkey leg and a blanket and a quiet place to lie down.   Wake me up in January...

" There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible, and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge."

In a completely cynical play to the lowest common denominator in the republican party – AKA, the tea party – Mitt “The Twit” Romney is practically giving himself a hernia blasting the Newt-ster for his reasonable and somewhat thoughtful take on the immigration issue during the last debate.   This pitiful attempt to placate the mouth-breathers is a perfect illustration of the systemic dysfunction in the modern republican party and – I am sure – fills the Obama campaign with joy and gives them something for which to be thankful today.  The sight of Mitt feverishly trying to get both feet in his mouth is giblet gravy to the democrats anxious for anything that will turn the dialogue to what’s wrong with Obama’s opponents from what’s wrong with him.   The fact that Gingrich has a position which stops short of rounding up immigrants, tattooing them and shipping them out of the country in box cars makes him the subject of scorn and derision amongst the republican opinion makers, pseudo-intelligencia, and the other candidates.  

That knuckleheads like Bachman, Cain and Santorum are fixated on how big a fence to build across the US / Mexican border is no big surprise; they don’t have three sensible ideas between them.  But Mitt is counting on being seen as a moderate, electable reactionary and not some filthy unwashed down-in-the-dirt reactionary like them.   I guess he figures it worked when he beat Rick “Mexico is where again?” Perry over the head with his one sensible position on immigration so why not hammer away at Newt as well.  It shows how much of an original thinker Mitt is, as well as what a calculating hypocrite he is at the same time.   One of the many positions he has flipped-flopped on is his take on immigration and, more specifically, what to do about the millions of illegal immigrants already here.  Back before the drugs kicked in, he thought some kind of path to permanent residency, if not full citizenship was probably the answer.  Now he treats that idea as if it’s global warming, evolution or reasoned negotiations with other sovereign states or any of the other half-baked , crazy ideas that liberals float around out there.   

In the republican primary you can’t go too far wrong pandering to the so-called base and Mitt can pander with the best of them.  Say what you want about Bachman, Ron Paul, and Santorum: they might be crazy but at least they have convictions, the expression of which proves they’re crazy.  And malapropisms aside, Perry and Cain are just flat out meatheads so much of what they say can be forgiven as garbled gibberish that represents their best efforts at expressing themselves.  But Romney doesn’t really strongly believe anything apparently.  Well, maybe he strongly believes that it would be a cool thing to be president.  But I am convinced that if you held his feet to the fire he couldn’t give you an answer that would make you sleep soundly at night. 

His commander-in-chief chops are a bit suspect as well.  During the debate he continued his rope-a-dope strategy, staying on the sidelines lest he venture too far out onto the skinny branches and fall and hurt himself.   He’s smart enough to know what he doesn’t know, unlike Herman Cain, who is so out of his depth it’s almost embarrassing.   He spent the evening deferring to Huntsman, Santorum and Bachman, who have actual foreign policy experience, and Ron Paul, who also knows what he’s talking about.  He did know enough to refute Rick Perry’s ridiculous notion of a “no fly” zone in Syria, although the idea of intervention there was tossed around as if it were really an option – strictly a play to show how tough he wants to be in Middle East matters and a blatant suck-up to Israel.  But criticizing Obama for not doing what military commanders wanted him to do was an unsettling parallel with past foreign adventures that ended badly and Huntsman calling him out on it was a highlight.

Poor Mitt; he still is desperately trying to prove his dick is big enough for the job and that being a Mormon doesn’t mean he believes in impending alien space craft visits or that he will start passing out the rat poison jello shots the first time a comet comes around.  The surge in support for Newt represents the first real challenge to his front runner status and obviously makes him nervous.  Newt’s boisterous and indignant certainty about everything is in stark contrast to Mitt’s strategy of playing it safe and letting his opponents take turns hoisting themselves on their own ill-advised blather.  How he handles this home stretch leading up to Iowa will reveal a lot about the race to the finish next November.  But regardless, I suspect that Barack is enjoying his turkey today in a way he might not have envisioned a few short weeks ago.  Enjoy the sweet potato pie, Mr. President…

Red Herring caviar is best when served on white bread...but it still stinks...

Bitch McConnell is a funny guy.  Of course, he doesn’t intend to be but inadvertent comedy is no less funny than a polished stand up routine.  And I have to give him credit for having absolutely no shame.  It takes a certain kind of balls to stand up on the floor of the senate, as the man who publicly proclaimed his number one legislative goal in 2008 to be the defeat of Obama in 2012, and accuse Obama of wanting the Super Red Herring Committee to fail – and for partisan reasons.  Wow… that devious bastard!  How dare he?!?!   Never mind that if we simply let the Bush tax cuts expire and get the hell out of Afghanistan and Iraq there would be no deficit.  But those things are near and dear to your heart, right, Bitch?  So there really is no other option than to lop a few hundred billion from discretionary spending programs, barricade ourselves in our houses and hope the bad guys don’t find the gasoline, eh?   But the whole idea of Obama hoping the Red Herring Committee fails gives you and the raggedy-ass pack of geniuses running against him a huge opportunity to come up with a solution all by your little selves so why don’t you just see this as the chance of a life time and trot out your best ideas and let your freak flag fly?  Oh, that’s right – after cutting taxes for rich people and corporations you guys are out of ideas, huh?  Well, if anything changes, let us know.

 Twit Romney is equally funny and he did a routine in New Hampshire yesterday that was a classic. 

Describing Obama’s lack of engagement in the dealings of the Super Red Herring Committee – a congressional committee specifically designed to work together as a bi-partisan, bi-cameral group of problem solving brainiacs sequestered and empowered to hammer together a solution to this vexing but pointless “problem” without any interference from the White House – Twit loudly proclaimed this to be “another failure of leadership” on his part.   Harsh words from a man with no spine, who can’t decide where he stands on any significant issue other than that rich guys are cool.  I think the last original idea Twit had was when he was on his Mormon mission in France and decided to stop telling the locals that drinking wine was sinful.  You’d think a guy who lost the republican nomination in 2008 largely because McCain lied about his positions over and over again would be less inclined to sling bullshit nonsense around quite so liberally.  But it is politics…

And I keep coming back to Paul Krugman’s quote about Newt Gingrich on Sunday; that he is a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like.   If I was on the republican national committee I think I would rent one of those buildings on Times Square and put that up in big neon letters 5 stories high – assuming they actually want to win, that is.  I’m not sure they do.  There is a line of thinking that goes something like, “the economy is a complete mess, everyone says we need to cut to the bone, the world is going to suck until at least 2020 so why fuck up our reputations being president and being responsible for it.  Better to lay back and throw things in the spokes for a few years so that when we finally do win we can be hailed as the triumphant conquering emperors we’re destined to be.”  

Or something like that…Newt has a reputation for being a smart guy.  This is a profoundly incorrect notion but kind of an urban legend that he has been doing his best to prove or disprove lately, depending on your point of view.  But his hilariously wrongheaded idea that child labor laws are stupid and should be repealed, particularly in poor neighborhoods, (translation; black / brown), so that poor 13 years olds can go to work for rich smart guys, (like himself, left unsaid but clearly intimated), and learn first- hand what exploitation feels like by picking up dog shit in the local park.  Sheesh, Newt; you’re such a preposterously stupid idiot.

But I am saving the best for last; the latest blast of unapologetic racism from Rush Blowhard in response to the knuckle-dragging inbred pea-brains at a NASCAR event lustily booing Michele Obama and Jill Biden and, tangentially, the military family chosen to be honored as a symbol of all of our troops in service.  The fat drug addict defends the booing as coming from intelligent and sensitive types who resent her wanting people to eat healthy food and hate her husband because…well, because he’s black primarily.  Clearly Rush resents the whole healthy food imperative – he’s a blob-like flatulent fat ass and big mouth publicity whore who might as well put on a KKK hood and wear it when he tries to sneak into his doctor’s office for more “diet” pills and other exotic pharmaceuticals.  He called her uppity – he might as well call her a nigger and I am sure that’s how the idiot thinks of her and her husband.  Normally I just laugh at him but this is kind of beyond the pale and if I was Rush I think I would stay out of certain parts of Miami or he may end up laying in a pool of his own vomit with David Carruso staring balefully down at him over the top of his ridiculous aviator sun glasses.  

It must make the 21^st century republicans proud to have these kinds of traitors as their public face – Bitch and Rush are an embarrassment to the body politic.  Gingrich and Twit Romney are a couple of clowns but they aren’t toxically treasonous like these guys are.   The two of them should thank their lucky stars they live in the country they routinely betray…

Turkey leg, anyone...? Thank you, Super Committee, for our blessings this year...Now go home!.

It’s Thanksgiving week and so the clock is ticking down, leaving little time for the Justice League of America to…wait, I mean, the Super Committee, to craft a miraculous solution to the issue of the ongoing budget deficit, thus causing the earth to be torn asunder…er… I mean causing automatic across the board cuts to go into effect, (in over a year), and raising a major shit-storm from sea to shining sea.  Media types and the punditocracy are particularly worked up about this and will likely be frothing at the mouth and having convulsions by Friday of this week. 

                                        

Like the trumped up issue of the debt ceiling itself this summer, this is a solution searching desperately for a problem.  Once John Boner was unable to convince his unruly army of god-fearing anti-tax zealots that the deal he had coerced out of Obama was more than they could have reasonable hoped for, the fix was in and no semi-imaginary Super Committee of republicans and democrats was every going to be able to bridge the gaping crevasse separating them.  This was a politically convenient fiction providing temporary cover for both sides while the republicans tried in vain to winnow the ridiculous herd of candidates and Obama and the democrats feverishly tried to figure out how to get people to like them. 

Regardless of the public angst, this is another non-issue and only serves to distract people from far more important things, like ending the wars, cutting the defense budget, and getting money out of politics.   I know; that ship has largely sailed and it may be naïve.   But there was an article on The Huffington Post recently about how 15 freshmen members of the house have raked in millions of dollars this year from corporations allowed to be treated like people and from shadowy PAC’s  who don’t answer to anyone headed by whores like Eric Cantor running around the country doing essentially nothing but collecting contributions to his PAC and promising sleeve jobs to anyone giving him $500 buck.  Hey, Eric, if you just let the Bush tax cuts expire the deficit disappears in 5 years. 

This brings me back to Newt, the historian.  In typical Newtonian over-the-top fashion, he blasted Obama at the same time he was not so subtly blowing his own horn, spouting  off that, rather than being a liability as some suggest, his intimate knowledge of Washington would be valuable because “we tried amateur ignorance and it hasn’t worked out too well”, or words to that effect.   Gingrich’s “amateur ignorance” comment is particularly ironic as he both promotes his working knowledge of how Washington functions at the same time as he touts his outsider credentials, (code for his being smarter than everyone else in the district), and then insists that he has never been a lobbyist.   The inconsistency of these positions doesn’t seem to bother him and the short term memory loss of republican primary voters facilitates this nicely.   But anyone paying attention knows that this guy is for sale to the highest bidder and that’s not a particularly attractive quality in a president.  Even Peggy Noonan called him out this morning.

George Will scoffed at the notion that Newt was hired by anyone to be a historian, much less by Freddie Mac, who needs the puffed up pseudo-academic blather of an out-of-work historian like a fish needs a bicycle.  It is kind of funny to hear Will accuse Newt Gingrich – or anyone – of “absurd rhetorical grandiosity”.  This from a man who defines semantic masturbation and loves the sound of his own voice more than anyone in modern political life.   But it is telling.  For Gingrich, when the majority of the republican punditry turns on you, you have a problem, whether you are the flavor of the month or not. 

Mitt  Romney, the one candidate who is unapologetically all about the Benjamins,  continued to play rope-a-dope on the issues while 6 of his rivals sat around a table singing kum ba yah, each trying to out-emote the others while sharing their personal relationship with Jesus.  It’s not entirely clear why this is so important in a secular country but they all seem to feel it is.  Romney is a guy who looks more and more as if he has George Bush syndrome – he wants like hell to be president but doesn’t seem to have a clue why or what he would do if he were actually elected.  Maybe just getting the nomination would give he enough of a woody that he wouldn’t have to actually win to get off.   But when you come down to it, he’s a guy who has made a living for over 25 years screwing people in the name of improving efficiency and productivity, sort of like Stalin did.  You know, dig more coal or no gruel for you.  Bain Capital probably took away more jobs in its normal course of business than Mitt every “created” as governor of Massachusetts.  That’s what they do.  That’s what they are good at.  He is an uber capitalist Randian who is running at the behest of and with the permission of big business interests because he’s one of them. 

I’d like to suggest to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, if they’re awake, and to you too, Barack; stop kissing the asses of the party that wants nothing more than to see you fail.  Tell them to suck on it when they want to talk about the deficit, and go to work overturning the Citizens United decision; the most damaging Supreme Court decision of the last 50 years.  That would be doing something.