And then there was 1; thoughts on Romney versus Obama

Now that Rick “The Saint” Santorum has finally sobered up and realized he had as much chance of being elected president as some guy named Abdul has of being the next pope, the race for president has crystallized into a two man race between Obama and Romney.   The frantic republicans are scurrying around searching for some issue that will resonate with voters, apparently realizing that, “things aren’t as good as we think they should be” isn’t it.  And they’re having a tough time; gas prices seem to be dropping and experts predict they will continue to drop absent Iran doing something suicidal and stupid.  This deflates the bogus, “Obama is causing gas prices to rise” rhetoric and takes away the “drill, baby, drill” urgency and trumped up pseudo-patriotic rants of oil soaked lobbyists and their insipid sycophants in congress.   Iraq is typically restive but not on fire.  North Korea-The Axis of Bumbling - had their giant firework go sideways.  Our economic nemesis, China, is experiencing slowing growth which isn’t a good thing for us but as long as they don’t start redeeming 10 year T-bills we’ll probably be OK.  There just isn’t a lot of traction for the Romney juggernaught to get some momentum.

 And yet, the democrats are once again proving that they are capable of misplaying a royal flush just because they are so politically inept.  It’s a party without an overriding guiding principle – unlike the republicans – and they are so unfocused they can’t hit a soft, underhand toss out of the infield.  The latest example of this tendency is the whole “Republican War on Women” stuff that they are beating into the ground.   During the last couple of months we had mouth-breathing male clowns proposing to make birth control illegal at worst and unaffordable and out or reach at best, force women seeking an abortion to have vaginally intrusive ultrasounds against their wishes, oppose pay equality measures and generally treat women in total as a nice smelling convenience who are lucky they are allowed to leave the house to vote.  I will grant that this makes for a tidy bit of campaign material to use against them.  I find it hard to believe any woman would vote for these guys, even if her family has been republican since Lincoln.   The last thing we need in government is a bunch of tired, closeted blowhards who are afraid of women and who probably watch tape loops of Ann Coulter while wearing nothing but tighty-whities and cowboy boots filled with Vaseline.  

But I can’t help feeling that the incessant drum beat from the left about this “war on women” is counterproductive – the horse is dead; you can stop hitting it anytime now.   Are there any conscious women in America who need to be convinced?  I don’t think so.  So get off it already.  I’m sure some propeller head at democratic headquarters thinks it’s a swell fund raising tool – maybe it is.  But it makes them look like hysterical opportunists working to exploit an issue that is already right there for all to see.  I don’t need 10 hyperventilating emails every day telling me what brain-dead assholes they are.  We get it.

And worst of all is the issue now bubbling away around the comments made by Hillary Rosen, questioning Ann Romney trying to portray herself as every woman and defend the essentially indefensible positions of her husband’s party.  Rosen said – quite justifiably – that Ann Romney shouldn’t be trying to come off as being a typical woman who understands and relates to women’s issues when she is married to a multi-millionaire and who never worked a day in her life.  Suddenly the media jackals and hyenas pounced on her and the indignant bleating and wailing was heard to echo across the land.  Of course we expect Faux News and other empty-headed news organizations to seize on this as some kind of bell weather issue and try to stir up controversy for its own sake.  And I understand the Obamas’ reluctance to embrace the rhetorical high hard one just for political comity.  But really; do we have to trip over each other apologizing to imaginary, infuriated soccer mom's and hard working June Cleavers over it?  IT’S TRUE, for Christ’s sake!  She can’t know what it’s like to have to choose between her job and her day care and her kids and the baby sitter's money.  The Romney’s probably had an upstairs freakin’ maid for all we know.   What are you apologizing for? 

Isn’t this right in our wheelhouse; the out of touch patrician Romneys clumsily trying to appeal to every day 99% blue collar voters?  This is so typical of the democrats, who can’t seem to throw a punch even as they are getting stomped to death, and then when to do get in a crisp, left hook that connects they are mortified that they resorted to such tactics and apologize, all while the opponent is getting up and pulling a Crocodile Dundee knife to eviscerate them. 

Obama should, by all rights, be able to beat this guy.  And if he does – in the face of the most disloyal opposition in the country’s history – it would be an historic achievement.   I get the feeling he knows enough not to bring a knife to a gun fight and I trust him – for the most part – to be able to take care of his business.  But Barack – for god’s sake – get some people with some balls on the team.  We don’t want a bunch of stammering nice guys slap-fighting with Karl Rove and the Koch brothers and the rest of these savage dingoes.   They’ll eat your children just like Idi Amin.  You need the democratic equivalent – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – to Newt Gingrich; a half mad bull terrier to chase Mitt right down the god damned driveway and not let him get away with pissing in the flower bed.  I’m kinda busy right now or I’d volunteer for the job myself but call me in August for the stretch run.

A hero shall arise from among them, and his name will be...Mitt?

Apparently the only thing the republican party fears more than a Romney nomination is the specter of a Caligula-like orgy of sweaty delegates clumped together in Tampa in August feverishly trying to decide on an alternative to a delegate deprived Mitt.   Listening to him try to speak extemporaneously while Newt works the floor for uncommitted delegates and Santorum holds court in the adjacent conference room, speaking in tongues does not make compelling television.   So one after another, the jowly and powerful, treacherous and Machiavellian have come out and grudgingly endorsed Romney.  “Well, uh, I guess…I mean I think…er…that is, I believe that Mitt will do an OK job…I mean, a much better job than that terrible negro we have now…”

Today’s slim Wisconsin primary victory – 43% to 38% - was immediately trumpeted as the latest sign of the inevitable coronation in Tampa, and brought a fresh round of plaintive urging for the other candidates to “do the right thing” and leave the playing field to the champion.  Mitt as the conquering hero appears with the weasel-like Paul Ryan standing beside him - his little tail wagging – and sincerely and politely stammers out a less than convincing victory speech and some perfunctory Obama bashing and then disappears into the night.  What a scene…!

The two of them tag-teamed Obama today after Barack gave Ryan and his cockamamie and monumentally regressive budget a few crisp verbal back-hands.  Ryan accused him of choosing “tired and cynical political attacks as he focuses on his own re-election." 

Wow, Paul, that’s hurtful…Mitt took a turn as well, chirping, “Instead of standing up and saying his policies haven’t worked, this president is unwilling to take responsibility”, his eyes wide with surprise.  Both of them acted as if it is unnatural for the sitting president, running for re-election, to tout his accomplishments and attack his opponents, who produced this grotesque budget and practically teed it up and handed him his driver.   Meanwhile Mitt’s more enthusiastic supporters, like Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, spew incomprehensible gobble-de-gook like, “I’ve spoken to Mitt; I totally believe he is committed to saving America”, once again turning policy differences into full blown insurrection-worthy crises. 

And we should probably get used to his jabbering spokes-person, Andrea Saul, who chimed in with a fetid blast of utter nonsense, saying Obama had done more to devastate the middle class than anyone since…well, Nero, and calling Romney a “job creator”. 

The GOP stable of hatchet men and take-down artists is running full blast these days, as a Romney candidacy seems ever more certain and their choice of issues ever smaller.  Can they attack Obama on foreign policy or, better yet, tout the candidate’s foreign policy expertise?  Not really.  Progressives may be unhappy with Obama’s performance in this domain but there are no make-or-break issues percolating there and Romney is not exactly known for his intimate grasp of foreign policy issues.  Can you imagine him confronting Iran and Amahdinejad?  “Why we’ll just sail the sloop right on up there and give him a proper talking to…”  Romney thinks the biggest threat to the US is Russia, an idea whose expiration date was 10 years ago.  Bin Laden is dead, Ghadafi is dead, we’re out of Iraq, on the way out, (albeit, ever so slowly), from Afghanistan, working through nuclear disarmament with the scary Russians and – despite the jingoistic screeches of John McCain and his ilk, showing admirable and adult restraint in dealing with Syria. 

 Plus the electorate doesn’t give a shit about that at this point in any case.  Strange as it may seem to the republican gentry, people want jobs.  They want to be able to go to Walmart and fill one of those big ass shopping carts with all manner of cheap things they don’t really need – it’s as good as sex without all the messy bodily fluids, shame and remorse.

It’s on the domestic economy that the desperate republicans are pinning their hopes.  What is the battle cry?  “It’s not as good as it could be”, seems to be about the best they can muster.   They seek to combine this idea with the royalist-friendly budget of the little ferret, Paul Ryan, and make one last attempt to convince voters that the deficit should be their biggest fear, that lower taxes for Wall Street money-changers and swells like Romney are the path to overall prosperity, that oil companies know best how to fix the economy and if we just kill all of the old people and poor people and sick people we could have that shopping cart full of stuff and everyone would be happy.

There is a scene in the movie, Trading Places, when Eddie Murphy is talking about pork belly traders and says, “They panickin’ out there; I can feel it”  That’s what’s happening now with the GOP.  When you stick Sarah Palin on the Today Show to drop steaming non-sequitars like, “Anyone but that socialist, Obama” into a discussion of Oprah, it stinks of fear.   When the personification of the dream of America is reduced to Mitt Romney, that fear is justified. 

I thought that somewhere along the line the delusional but somehow popular Rick Santorum would get some traction, raise some money, and hump Mitt’s leg all the way to Tampa, causing chaos and disruption and the mad-cap theater of an open convention.  Alas, it’s seems it’s not to be.  Wiser heads have prevailed; out of a haze of Cuban cigar smoke and the delicate aroma of 20 year old scotch, the word came down to all of the Kings’ men to clear the stage of the clowns and let their robot give it a try.  It is still a puzzlement that these are the guys they ran with.  It doesn’t make sense.  Maybe they were so cocky at the time that they loaded up the clown car, they thought it didn’t matter; that anyone could take Obama down.  And maybe at some recent point that thought made sense.  But today, in 2012, asking the public to buy into Stiff Mitt the Savior; that’s just not going to work. 

Is it wrong to be sick of the health care debate...?

I’ve spent this week trying to wrap my head around the whole health care reform / Affordable Care Act / this is the best guy available to be Solicitor General? drama as it was breathlessly covered by the relentless media which – for the most part – seems to fundamentally misunderstand it.  My due diligence took a few rewinds of the tape to sort through it all.  Here’s my take away;

Health care is stunningly expensive; that much is pretty clear to anyone unfortunate enough to get seriously sick.  Drugs are expensive, visits to your primary care physician are expensive and lord knows the high tech treatments are expensive.  I recently paid $578 dollars for a 90 day supply of a prescription medication that I have no choice but to take every day.   Every aspect of care is expensive. 

At the same time, the percentage of Americans who can reliably get insurance coverage through their employer is shrinking fast, right along with unions and the quaint notions of employment for life and a pension for anything other than a government job.  Lots of Americans can’t afford it and don’t buy it, period.  Many of those same Americans, however, get sick.  When they do they either go to the emergency room, turning those places into one more modern portal to hell – like the DMV -or if they don’t or can’t get their treatment from the emergency room, many of them end up in hospitals undergoing increasingly expensive treatments, none of which they are able to pay for. 

Since many hospitals are quasi-public or outright public, guess who pays?  One way or another, we all do.  To fix this vexing problem the Affordable Care Act – among many other things – requires everybody to pony up for some kind of insurance.  It doesn’t say who you have to buy it from; just that you have to be covered to some basic extent.  If you choose not to do that, you pay what is currently called a penalty – a strategic blunder of monumental proportions – but which is really a tax that’s collected to put into the reserve pool to help make up the difference and, more importantly, provide enough juice in the system so that insurance companies have to cover everyone.  The howling over this “individual mandate” has almost entirely drowned out the rest of the debate.

 When Antonin Scalia – charming as always – asked, “Can the government force you to buy broccoli because it will make you healthier?” and when Donald Verilli, the current Solicitor General went all mush-mouth trying to answer that question, the media pounced and declared the signature achievement of the Obama administration – and the hair-ball in the throat of republicans everywhere for some reason – dead in the water.  That remains to be seen.

My confusion comes from the fact that, if I get on a motorcycle the government requires me to put on a helmet.  Why?  Because if I lay the bike down or otherwise crack my noggin in an accident, I may very well become a brain-damaged ward of the state and that would cost everyone and burden society unfairly, as the majority of us don’t ride motorcycles.  We all would pay a cost associated with that admittedly stupid decision.  Likewise, in most states I have to wear a seat belt when driving my car because a serious accident could injury me and cause me to become a drain on the resources of the state – of all of us.  So “click it or ticket” is the law of the land.  I can no longer hold a cell phone to my ear while driving for the same reason; to prevent accidents which injure people and cost money.

 So how come what appears to be a majority of Americans are against this law?  It allows kids to stay insured on their parents’ policies until they’re 26, it compels insurance companies to insure little kids, even when they are found to have some condition that previously, it…well hell, this is right out of our favorite Wiki:

·         will require insurers to offer the same premium to all applicants of the same age and geographical location without regard to most pre-existing conditions (excluding tobacco use).

• A shared responsibility requirement, commonly called an individual mandate, requires that all persons not covered by an employer sponsored health plan, Medicaid, Medicare or other public insurance programs, purchase and comply with an approved private insurance policy or pay a penalty, unless the applicable individual is a member of a recognized religious sect exempted by the Internal Revenue Service, or waived in cases of financial hardship.^[23]
• Medicaid eligibility is expanded to include all individuals and families with incomes up to 133% of the poverty level.
•  Health insurance exchanges will commence operation in each state, offering a marketplace where individuals and small businesses can compare policies and premiums, and buy insurance (with a government subsidy if eligible).
•  Low income persons and families above the Medicaid level and up to 400% of the federal poverty level will receive federal subsidies^[27] on a sliding scale if they choose to purchase insurance via an exchange (persons at 150% of the poverty level would be subsidized such that their premium cost would be of 2% of income or $50 a month for a family of 4).
• Minimum standards for health insurance policies are to be established and annual and lifetime coverage caps will be banned.
•  Firms employing 50 or more people but not offering health insurance will also pay a shared responsibility requirement if the government has had to subsidize an employee's health care.
•  Very small businesses will be able to get subsidies if they purchase insurance through an exchange.
• Co-payments, co-insurance, and deductibles are to be eliminated for select health care insurance benefits considered to be part of an "essential benefits package"^[34] for Level A or Level B preventive care.
• Changes are enacted that allow a restructuring of Medicare reimbursement from "fee-for-service" to "bundled payments."
•  Additional support is provided for medical research and the National Institutes of Health.

What is it exactly again that has people so pissed off?  Cause I don’t see it.  It allows everybody to go to the doctor regularly – preventive care – and if you get sick you don’t go broke.  And for this someone at 150% of the poverty level pays 2% of their income or $50 bucks a month.   Check me if I’m missing something but isn’t this a hell of a lot better than the ridiculous system we’re using now, where one serious illness – cancer, heart disease, etc. – essentially drives families straight to a living hell? 

Do the tea party knuckleheads really understand what they’re shouting about?  The conservatives – are you listening, Paul Ryan – want to fix Medicare and their idea of how to do that is to take it away.  Doesn’t this seem like a better idea?  Is the right so full of blind hatred and fury about Obama that they can’t see straight? 

Somebody – and I’m serious – tell me what the problem is with this and what is the better idea. 

Romney / Santorum ticket takes shape as Newt throws in the towel

In a little remarked upon story this week, Rick “Saintly” Santorum reportedly said he would be open to accepting the vice presidential position should Mitt Romney prevail  at the republican convention in Tampa in August.  So that pretty much seals the deal; the fix is in and all that remains is for Karl Rove and his merry band of super PACs to herd the sheep into the right pasture and there’s your 2012 republican ticket.  Romney brings the privileged white gentry and Santorum brings the delusional, crazed, ignorant and sexuality obsessed white riff-raff.  Bob’s yer uncle, as they say.  This way the republican establishment gets their guy in Stepford bag-man, Mitt, while throwing red meat to the snarling rabble who will do all of the heavy lifting by assigning Santorum to be his Boy Wonder. 

 They’ll let Newt make a big speech so he feels like everyone appreciates his gravitas and wisdom.   Today he announced that he was scaling back his campaign and no longer expecting to win the nomination by winning primaries.  He fired his campaign manager and laid off a third of his staff.  Rather, he’ll focus on a strategy based on social media and personal phone calls to delegates to try to get them to support him and to deny Romney the nomination, forcing an open convention.  In other words he’s going to sit around while Callista massages his feet and think up scathing yet historically relevant Twitter postings about how much Romney sucks.  Pretty clever, Newtie.  

Newt has to figure out the complex jujitsu involved in “obviously supporting” the eventual nominee after spending weeks and weeks calling him a pointy-headed moderate pussy who has no chance to beat Obama.  Don’t throw your back out, Newt.

They’ll also let Ron Paul make a speech so he can rant about his favorite causes and ideas, even though the GOP really wants nothing to do with any of them.  He’ll take the podium and talk about ending a tragic interventionist foreign policy, slashing half a dozen federal departments , and abolishing the Federal Reserve and the delegates will use the time to refill their drinks and take a bathroom break.  Let’s hear it for Uncle Ron…!  OK, we love you; we mean it; now go home.

And they’ll save the key-note for an up and coming republican star like Marco Rubio – just like the democrats did with Obama – to position him for 2016.  Of course this also is a sure sign that they understand the political calculus of having Romney and Santorum on the ticket together:  to give them their day in the sun and get them the hell out of the way. 

But if the Supreme Court validates the Affordable Care Act – something very much up in the air but also a real possibility – Obama can take Michelle and the girls and go to the beach.  Under no foreseeable scenario would the republicans even make it close in November.  And for all the traction a brokered convention could get them, they could draft Rubio and Christie and have Sara Palin and Michelle Bachman perform a lesbian love act in a kiddy pool full of Mazola oil and no one would care.  Make no mistake about that. 

If the court strikes it down as unconstitutional Romney is still in tough if the economy continues to improve – it would be closer but they’re still doomed.  It would be fascinating to sit in on Rove’s planning and strategy sessions right now to see if he is working on trying to maintain or increase republican control of congress – as George Will has suggested – or go all in with the loons and go out like Pike and the gang at the end of The Wild Bunch.  “Give ‘em hell, Karl…” 

Of course the court won’t rule on Obama-care until late June and by then anything could happen.  Between now and then the democrats will be working hard to press their advantage and hope to hell that they can keep the momentum.  

On the subject of jobs, there was a story in The Nation magazine today, headlined by this interesting fact:

 “Since 2010, a handful of Republican-controlled state legislatures have worked furiously to shrink government. Now, twelve red states account for 70 percent of all state and local public sector jobs lost.” 

So a key component of the tea party’s intellectual platform  – shrinking government – has increased the misery index for those states that provided them with the most support.  I wonder if the mob’s torches are still burning as hot as they were in 2010.  With tea party poster boy Paul “Hairball” Ryan having just turned in a hilariously wrong-headed budget proposal calling for even more draconian spending cuts while doling out generous tax cuts to his key constituents – and Romney’s for that matter – and increasing defense spending beyond what even the Pentagon requested, I wonder how that unemployment tastes to the citizens of those states who fell for the steaming pile of horse shit these guys have been shoveling.  As Randian fantasies go, this was a beauty.  It remains to be seen if this is what people who are justifiable pissed at the monstrous, larded, semi-competent aspects of government really want; to stand in the unemployment line.

And while empty-headed young money grubbing sluts like Eric Cantor scramble madly from one donor function to another, preaching the tea party mantra of government sucks / screw the desperate and the doomed among us, Rove and his obsession with 30 years of uninterrupted republican rule, (not governance; RULE),  is a fundamentally more establishment gig.  After all, he’s been up to his chubby man-boobs in republican establishment politics since the late 70s.  His vision is still clouded by the misty memory of the Reagan years and the glorys of a shining city on the hill.   He doesn’t really want to shrink government; at least not his piece.   He just wants to make sure his guys are running things.

The real problem Rove and the monied interests of the republican party face is they really don’t have much of a constituency left.   Running a Romney / Santorum ticket would mean drawing votes from the 1% - or let’s call it the 5% - and evangelical Christians.  No people of color, immigrants, students, or the elderly benefit from their policies and neither does the middle class.  And if I’m an independent surveying the political landscape, do I really want to vote for a ticket representing things like an end to the EPA, subjugation of women, governing by the rules of the Old Testament, leaving the sick and the poor to die in the streets and bombing our enemies to rubble?  How do you draft a campaign ad to make that look attractive?   

The political media and non-stop gibberish between now and the Supreme Court ruling in June should be fascinating in its banality.  We’ll watch an utterly vapid and colorless Mitt gamely try to show himself to be a regular guy and a viable alternative to Obama when what he really is, is a fresh version of that old republican stand by, the kindly, wise and rich paternal patrician – a George HW Bush without the stench of scandal and criminality to make him interesting.   Good luck making the voters clamor for that, Karl.

Illinois' heartland primary gooses Romney campaign - in a good way.

Illinois…the land of Lincoln; a man who was a great republican president and who became an icon of American political history, and deservedly so.  Today his home state held their presidential primary and the rattling sound you hear in the background is Abe spinning in his grave as he witnesses the odious quartet of candidates still flogging each other mercilessly and grabbing each other by the back of the pants, trying hopelessly to get an advantage, only to have someone else grab theirs and do the same.  “Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine…”    

Here where it’s 8:00 PM on the West Coast, it appears that Mitt Romney has been able to re-calibrate his “Inevitability Express” and lurch forward again claiming that he and only he will win the nomination and be the one to smite the Awful Negro.  He’s probably right, about the first part anyway, in as much as none of the other three maroons still running against him has the slightest chance of winning except if Earth spins out of orbit and careens into the sun.  And then of course their triumph will be short lived.

 No, it does look like neatly dressed, milquetoast, verbally challenged and utterly vapid Mitt will be the winner.  Or, he’ll at least have the most delegates when the eyes of a bored, sweaty and dispirited nation turn to Tampa in August.   Tonight his support, as always, came from the wealthiest, most educated and mostly moderate part of the republican stew, and – of course – the whitest.   These are voters who are convinced he is the one who will best represent their interests as president and who don’t really give a damn about whether or not Mommy’s on the pill or that Billy, next door, has a boy friend.  They’ve got money and the want to keep it and Mitt’s the only one they can trust.

Chubby Napoleon, Newt Gingrich, panting like a pug in a long distance race, is barely staying alive but like a half-mad Doberman, he’s still dangerous – to himself and others.  I had to laugh at his overwrought reaction to a comment Robert DiNiro made at an Obama fund raiser recently – something to the effect of, “Is the country really ready for a white first lady?  I don’t think so; too soon, too soon…”  DiNiro can be mildly funny but a clever comedian he’s not and he probably had a couple of cocktails so who knows what the hell he was thinking.   But Newt seized on this lame attempt at a joke and blew it up into Brown v. the Board of Education, yammering on about how this type of comment reveal that liberals are trying to divide this great nation and was repugnant and unacceptable and calling on Obama to apologize.   I swear to God, he said all that; or words to that effect.   Gingrich apparently wouldn’t recognize irony if it fell off a ten story building and hit him on the head. 

This is the guy who practically invented racial code, incorporating it into his stump speeches and bloviating about Obama being the “food stamp” president and having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial viewpoint”.  Newt is still trying to attract chicks by using obtuse imagery that they don’t understand.  This is a guy who has only done middling well in the heart of Dixie and who’s support has been reduced to that crazy ass guy who has the elaborate HO train set out in his shed, running under a full size reproduction of the Confederate battle flag.   He’s accusing DiNiro of causing racial divisiveness – that’s hilarious.  Of course, Bobby D is part of the mythical liberal Hollywood elite that conservatives love to hate as long as it not Chuck Norris or some other closet fascist.  Newt, it’s embarrassing…your unfavorable rating in your own party is approaching 30%.  Go home…

Which brings me to Rick “Saintly” Sanitarium, Mitt’s closest pursuer.  Unlike Mitt, Rick’s a man of the people; his support comes from a sliver of the party that is less educated, less wealthy, less moderate, but just as white – maybe whiter.  And they’re a damn sight more religious…or delusional; whatever.   Yesterday Rick came right out and admitted that he didn’t think the campaign was about the economy anymore; it was about re-establishing our freedom as Americans and preventing the Obam-unists from tuning us all into caged gerbils.  You know – those little bastards run around and around, accomplishing nothing, and only stopping to eat and have sex.  Heck, throw in some porn and some liquor and he could be describing many of his own supporters.   But the problem with Rick is, his idea of freedom is very different from mine – and probably yours.  For Rick it’s a perilously short distance from freedom to license to sin to a fiery fate in the depths of hell.   Freedom is narrowly defined and decidedly biblical and his damn vest it too tight for him to see that it’s his squinty-eyed vision of freedom that scares the shit out of anyone who had a normal human impulse any time in the last 10 years.  

On top of his apparent deep seated fear of women and sex and not necessarily in that order, his obsession with Iran and Syria and protecting the baby Jesus’ replica manger is even scarier.  At a time when Iran is nothing more than a working hive of honey bees compared to the seething, angry hornets’ nest that is our erstwhile ally, Pakistan – and Rick, they already have nukes, in case you fell asleep that day – he and the rest of the chicken hawk wing of the party continue to give closet sleeve jobs to big oil companies desperate to find someplace where they can drill for more of the filthy stuff, promising to kick Amadinijhad’s ass if given half a chance.   If it takes a mini-Armageddon, so be it, what the hell.  Rick, go home with Newt…

And of course those crazy mischief makers in congress – led by John Boner – are busy proposing every kind of repulsive and regressive legislation they can think of to try to get the democrats to take their eye off the ball or to slip something by them – the old legislative sleight of hand.   Got a transportation bill?  Throw in some abortion language.  How about another cockamamie tax cut for the rich while we yank medicare benefits from Auntie Em?   Brilliant!  We can pretend we’re destroying Medicare in order to save it!  Poor Boner – this sad-eyed son of a bitch is probably praying for November so he can go home to Ohio.  Every time he tries to cut any kind of a deal with Obama or the democrats the tea party rabble light the torches and egg his house.   He trotted out poster-boy Paul Ryan today with their half-assed budget – the details were “to follow” so nobody really knows what they’re talking about.  But all I had to hear was they want to cut the top tax rate from 35% to 25% and cancel Obama’s cuts to the defense budget.  This is bald-faced sucking up to their patrons and a defense industry that treats war like a crazed George Patton – “God help me; I do love it so…”   They have nothing; their arguments have become fatuous laugh tracks and they are out of ideas.  This is fundamentally why Romney isn’t exciting anyone.  40% of republican voters have misgivings about the person they voted for; never mind the other guy. 

 So Rush; give a dog a break.  I need something to write about and your ongoing stupidity is pretty bullet-proof.  I’m a disoriented gerbil gorging on pine nuts and sex in a cage – call me a slut – please!!!

Santorum wins the deep south and I really don't care...

New polls are showing that Obama’s approval ratings have dipped recently, driven down by rising gas prices.  This is a cogent illustration of how abysmally ignorant people are and how his desperate enemies on the right will stoop to any lie, distortion or overwrought hyperbole to try to wound him as their pea-brained candidates continue their feverish pie fight for the right to run against him.  Hey voters; here’s a news flash – nothing Obama does can lower the price of oil.  He could agree to the republican red herring, the Keystone Pipeline, open the north slope to new drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and agree to litter both coasts with new oil drilling platforms and it wouldn’t drop the price of oil one cent.  There wouldn’t be one drop of oil from any of those witless endeavors hitting the market for 10 years, by which time – if we’re lucky and there is enough money for the necessary R&D – we won’t need the god damned stuff.  

Of course, republican after republican rises on the floor of the House and Senate and gets all red faced with outrage that Obama WANTS the price of oil to rise in order to further some nefarious liberal plot against cars and to promote god damned mass transit, a disgusting exercise in involuntary cooperation and communism disguised as something necessary for the greater good.  You have to sit on those filthy seats next to some mouth-breathing immigrant criminal instead of getting in the Caddy or the Towne Car and just driving your ass wherever you want to go.  And buses…!  Christ, they’re like a county jail on wheels, full of delinquents and perverts and poor people.   You’re lucky to get off one of the things alive. 

Needless to say, this is nonsense.  And it’s curious how the party that is rife with belligerent chickenhawks who – if given their way – would bomb the entire Middle East into a smoldering pile of cinders and broken glass can’t connect the dots and see that the endless unrest to the region that this attitude enables is what really drives up the price of oil.  For example, take the sanctions on Iran.   These sanctions, which you feisty little guys repeatedly say are far too lenient, are already reducing world oil supplies by some 1 million barrels a day.  The threat of the pissed off Iranians disrupting supply lines further has the oil futures market in a tizzy.  And Santorum and Romney and Gingrich all want to get tougher and all loudly proclaim their intent to use military force on Iran to remove the threat of the developing a nuke.   So who is more to blame for high gas prices again? 

The other striking news of the last few days is the inexplicable slaughter of 16 Afghan civilians by a US Army Sergeant who wandered off into the night and went nuts in a nearby village.  So we again find ourselves having to apologize to grieving next of kin.  We have had to do that a lot lately; from mistaken drone strikes to idiot child-soldiers pissing on corpses or burning Korans and now this.  The local Taliban decided to avenge this awful random burst of hyper-violence by bombing a mosque during a wedding…or a marketplace in mid-day.  There were riots after the Koran burning in which six Americans were shot.  The recent killings prompted riots in Pakistan by sympathetic Islamic militants and anti-American agitators, as if it was any of their business. 

By some twisted 16^th century logic, it’s OK for the local criminals to kill Afghan civilians – horribly - but it’s really, really not OK for the infidel soldiers to do so.  It’s perfectly fine to stone young people because of their haircuts but if a GI farts walking past a mosque it’s time to go set something on fire or strap on a suicide vest.

 The point is, there is no longer any reasonable justification for staying there.  The only regret is that there has been such enormous sacrifice, death and destruction that to leave makes it seem like the foolish and empty exercise it very quickly turned into - so many good men and women wasted on the proverbial “noble quest” that was really just a savage and justified spasm of rage and revenge.  Sadly, it was followed by 10 years of trying to figure out what to do next.  After the first 6 months it was a horrible and tragic nightmare you could see coming from 10,000 miles away.  And yet we persisted.   We will leave and soon the weeds will grow tall and the fields our military toiled in will turn to dust and blow away in a nasty return of the cold winter of 500 years of tribal hatred.   Do gooders will swarm the streets of Kabul doing interviews with the tiny merchant class who will all say they want the Americans to stay so they can sell more tea and bread and t-shirts and Nike’s but that will ultimately mean nothing to those who want Afghanistan to stay frozen in time. 

It seems to me that the question we need to ask is, are we doing more harm than good there?  What’s the ideal ending to this ill-advised adventure?  There isn’t one.  Unruly tribes of primitive people will still grow opium poppies and a corrupt central government will spin its wheels in a futile attempt to join the 20^th century – never mind the 21^st – in a country with no discernible exports aside from the aforementioned opium, no infrastructure, no democratic tradition, no legacy of industry of any kind – nothing.  Just what did we expect to accomplish?  Under the best scenario we should have gone in and kicked the Talibans’ asses and rounded up the cockamamie al Qaida rabble and gotten the hell out of there. 

Instead, after ten years of incredibly random violence we have a generation of soldiers with PTSD and missing limbs and the enduring enmity of ultra-volatile Pakistan and an entire region.  The military experts continue to say that victory is achievable if only we stay a little longer, add a few more battalions and kick down a few more doors in the middle of the night.  Shades of William Westmorland and Robert McNamara…

 Obama is right, however, to abhor the violence perpetrated by one half-mad soldier; we’re the civilized ones.  We understand that there is no justification for random killing done on purpose.  But in the end, it changes nothing; they hated us 10 years ago, they’ve hated us ever since, and they’ll continue to hate us long after we’re gone.  Village elders will teach the children to hate us for the next 50 years.  If it wasn’t for the pallets of $100 bills falling from the sky, Kabul would be on fire by now.   It’s long past time to get out.

Surveying the wreckage from Super Tuesday...

Another tumultuous week in politics has sailed past at light speed with a dizzying series of events and developments that might lead a person to wonder – in the immortal words of a disoriented hipster many years ago – “What’s it all mean, Mr. Natural…?”  If I recall correctly, Mr. Natural’s reply to that existential question at the time was a muttered, “Don’t mean shit…”   However with the advantage of a 21^st century perspective, I feel that answer is no longer appropriate to the times.  There is indeed some meaning to glean from the furious outpouring of hyperbolic and breathless reporting and the cascade of events we’ve seen unfolding over the past week or so.  Witness, Super Tuesday…

 The cluster of primaries and caucuses proved once again that Mitt Romney is probably the least enthusiastically supported front-running republican presidential candidate ever.  Exit polling interviews all seemed to reveal the same sentiment among people who voted for him; “Well, I don’t really like him that much but at least he’s not crazy…” - thin ice indeed upon which to base the party’s fortunes in November.   He won 5 of the 10 contested states, mostly because he saturated low information voters with so much advertising they couldn’t help wandering into a voting booth and pulling his lever like they were buying a box of Tide or a bottle of Draino.  This saturation-bombing is the best of Mitt’s few ideas and certainly the most effective.  

Yesterday, puffed up with this store-bought hubris, he haughtily suggested his rivals surrender with honor, a suggestion greeted with a symbolic middle finger from the deluded but feisty group.   Newt won his home state of Georgia and as he is wont to do, completely misinterpreted it as a repudiation of those calling for him to quit the race and treated it like he was raising his battered battle flag yet again to march across the south, victorious in the next series of primaries and on to the nomination through his brilliant strategy of losing miserably over and over, thus making Romney and the others over confident.  Right…even Calista looked a little dubious on stage beside him as he tossed out this absurd notion.  Newt’s best hope now is to try to not be an asshole and insult Romney, who will then throw him a bone, like Secretary of State.  This would be a terrifying prospect if it looked likely that Romney was actually going to win. 

Santorum for his part continues to parlay his hallucinating vision - leading an army of Christian soldiers descending upon the snake pit of Washington in glorious victory over the Muslim, socialist, born-somewhere-else awful uppity negro, Barack Obama, thus making Americans safe again from the terrifying and insidious dangers of secularism, sex just for the fun of it, and Dancing with the Stars - into otherwise inexplicable primary wins.  Whenever I hear some addled citizen saying they voted for him because he, “seems like a good, Christian man”, I wince like someone just pulled out my nose hair.   But it is a measure of the insipid and vapid nature of Romney’s “front runner” status that a man with a 19^th century notion of morality – a social Luddite – with a completely disorganized campaign and almost no money can be nipping at his heels at this point in the process.  After all, Mitt has been running for five years, at least.   When George Will basically suggests that the GOP surrender the presidency and concentrate on not losing the House, the predicament becomes very clear.   Other than other rich white people, the only ones voting for Romney are those loyal republicans who have looked around and decided, “What the hell…”  This is not the kind of campaign likely to end in victory for Mitt and you can tell he knows it.  On to Alabama…!!!

 Of course, the other major dust-up of the last week or so has been the reaction to Rush Blowhard calling Sandy Fluke a slut.  This is hilarious on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.  My first thought was, who knew this asshole had a TV show and what kind of brain-dead maroon actually watches him?  How home bound and bedridden do you have to be to want to watch this cartoonish gas-bag pontificate for three hours a day?  Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons would be preferable and probably more politically sensible and informative.   Of course what he said was repugnant; he’s repugnant just sitting there.   But it was the aftermath that was fascinating. 

If I was a republican politician I would be embarrassed for any number of reasons but primarily because this guy is the de facto leader of your mutant army of liberty loving subversives and yes, you have to answer to him, just like you have to answer to half-mad Grover Norquist.  This alone would be enough reason to walk with your eyes downcast, guilt written all over your face.   It’s like Bozo the Clown was your pre-eminent political philosopher.  

Moreover, your ostensible “leadership” in Washington responds to the blowback with utterly tepid statements ripe with equivocation and dissembling.   Hey John Boner – Rush is a dick; why can’t you just say so?   Instead there is lot of nervous glancing around and throat-clearing until you finally say that what he said was “inappropriate”.  Again, as George Will so aptly put it, using your salad fork for your entrée is inappropriate.   What he said was reprehensible and inexcusable.  But you can’t bring yourself to say so even if you believe it because he scares the crap out of you and McConnell and Boy Wonder Cantor.  You’re a bunch of spineless worms. 

Lost in all this was the initial absurdity of a grave and serious bunch of republican MEN having a hearing on women’s health issues, as if any of them ever menstruated.   Ms Fluke only testified to a subsequent gathering because you hurrumphing knuckleheads were so blindly stupid that you couldn't see the irony.  “Me and some of the boys are going to have a meeting, smoke some cigars, drink the old bourbon, tell some dirty jokes and decide what your health insurance should cover.  Now don’t bother me, woman…” 

To me any attention given to Rush Blowhard was time wasted; he’s just the most overt symptom of a much deeper and more serious problem in this country, one that won’t soon be fixed.  As Leonard Pitts put it in a column I read this morning, paraphrasing; modern conservatism has become a landfill and Rush is just a seagull circling overhead.   I don’t think you can sum it up any better than that.