Shoot out at the New Hampshire corral part 1 - someone forgot the bullets...

Watching the debate tonight it dawned on me why no one seems to lay a glove on Mitt Romney; he never says anything.  He basically repeats a standard speech in bits and pieces in order to answer any question that comes up.  He’s so utterly bland and empty that there is nothing to attack.  He’s just an empty suit full of hot air and single minded ambition.

So unless the shit really hits the fan tomorrow morning – and really, does anyone expect things to get crazy on a Sunday morning – this thing is really over except to watch in amusement as a terribly earnest but deranged Rick Santorum nips at Mitt’s heels for a month or so. Santorum has a weird look these days facing the excited hordes of star struck republican shut-ins coming out to see him; like a college professor who unexpectedly woke up with a nasty hangover and now has to go teach medieval civilization to an 8:00 o’clock class.  And it is hard to imagine him ever attracting much support in a nationwide race; he’s too much of a dangerous and unstable mixture of ignorance, stupidity, hate and bigotry with an overlay of heavenly voices in his head.  But he has that zealot’s inspired confidence, like he’s somehow doing god’s will even if he is insulting and racist, confused and delusional.

 Perry’s dead; he is not even on the radar in New Hampshire and looked like he’d rather be on somebody’s front porch in Charleston having a beer than standing there sporting the standard issue presidential red tie and a zombie grin.  He apparently decided to double down on the traditional conservative red meat issue of belligerent and pointless militarism by suggesting we send our troops back to Iraq because that would assure us that the 4,500 American deaths there were not for nothing.  I couldn't follow that logic exactly but it did allow him to try to hammer Obama with the Iranian boogey-man and accuse him of not understanding that part of the world.

 I’d like to just stop and examine that bit of exuberant partisan ignorance for just a moment.  Bush the Dull and his madcap Prince Regent Dick “Peckerhead” Cheney started an illegal war for no good reason and lied about it, a war that wrecked havoc on our country in so many ways, that included inept and amateurish administrative oversight and a blindingly stupid series of bad decisions until he finally said, “Fuck it; let’s get out of here”; whereupon he negotiated the withdrawal Obama just concluded.  At the same time the secretive cabal of neo-con savants and seers meeting in the White House basement let Khaddafi run amock, supported a whole swath of autocratic dictators, let Yemen become a completely lawless wasteland and al Qaeda sanctuary, and fumbled away multiple chances to push an Israeli / Palestinian resolution such that there are more new apartment building in the West Bank then there are foreclosures in Vegas, all while allowing Afghanistan to slowly sink into chaos overseen by the Pakistanis.  Whew…quite a legacy of conservative republicans “understanding that part of the world”.  Now another blowhard Texas pea-brain – all hat and no cattle if there ever was one – thinks he has all the answers to managing the single most volatile region in the world today.  And we’re confident about this vision why exactly…?

The rest of this stuff was so boring even Diane Sawyer was seen nodding off a couple of times.  There was the obligatory bitching about birth control, abortion, gay sex and who is or isn't a racist.  Santorum and Paul were seen playing rock, paper, scissors over that one.  Santorum is discovering to his surprise and dismay that people are actually recording the shit he says, making it really hard to later deny saying it.  And Paul is still pulling an OJ Simpson and trying to find the real writer of the homophobic and racist newsletters bearing his name.  Ron doesn't have a deep enough well of belief and goodwill to try to pull off the “Well, it might look like I did it but trust me, I didn't” thing and he obviously needs to go back to the Ed Meese memorial school for political hacks and take the course in plausible deniability again.

The real surprises were, first, that these idiots ruthlessly hammered on each other, as if finishing second was the big prize, and left Romney standing there brushing lint off his sleeves all night instead of having to put a tourniquet on anything.  And second, Gingrich the nutty professor was unusually placid, making the breathless media build up seem tremendously anti-climatic.  From what I read I expected Newt to come on stage with war paint, wearing a loin cloth and looking for Mitt’s scalp.  Instead he spent the night jousting with Paul and the others over arcane points of republican ultra-right orthodoxy and trying to use big words to denigrate Obama.  He could have at least cut Romney who, even though he will surely win this primary, is still vulnerable, especially heading closer to Newt’s home turf in South Carolina and Florida. (Paul may very well win Nevada and really, who cares; I think they have a third of an electoral vote). 

As Chris Matthews said, Romney is being rejected by a large part of the republican voters like the human body rejects foreign tissue.  He may skate in New Hampshire but letting him wander around give his standard stump speech over and over like the automaton he is lets him off way too easily if this is really going to be a contested nomination process.  But maybe someone got to Newt; pointed out that if he plays nice and doesn't drive a wedge into the party that he could scam an ambassadorship to someplace really cool and he and Callista can go off and live like the important and influential people he clearly wishes they were.  Greece might be nice, if they could figure out the whole “going bankrupt” thing. 

If no one is going to lay a glove on Romney he’s going to play rope-a-dope right into Super Tuesday and by then it will be over. And if it’s going to happen it has to happen in South Carolina or Florida and it looks as if it is going to have to be Newt who muses Mitt’s hair. You just know he wants to; Mitt is the guy who has always gotten the hottest chick and laughed at Newt and you just know he wants to take him down a peg.  But if it is a choice between being ambassador to Monaco or getting into a slap fight with Mitt, you have to feel that Newt’s not going to hit on 17.  And for that I am terribly disappointed.

Generous Republican gifts for the New Year...

It being the holiday season – and since I have been especially good this last year – I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to be receiving generous and thoughtful gifts, but really; the universe is kind of going overboard and my stocking is overflowing.  Just look at what the new year has brought in the way of presents:

First, the Iowa caucuses took place the other day and it was like Santa’s bag fell out of the sleigh on his way home to the North Pole.  Rick Santorum came out of nowhere to tie Mr. Foregone Conclusion, Mitt Romney, and provide enough juicy head banging and republican establishment angst to last until Valentine’s Day at least.  Rick earnest and delusional vision for an America based on his personal religious fixation has struck a chord with voters eager for a “family values” candidate who can form linear thoughts and has at least a veneer of sincerity and for the moment, Rick is that guy.  In their zeal to find someone to whom they can desperately cling, these poor souls can be forgiven for overlooking the unsettling specter of jackbooted government agents criminalizing impure thoughts and imprudent and vaguely sexual activities – the drugs will wear off soon and everyone will come to their senses, although a persistent throbbing and occasional hallucinations are likely until after the Florida primary.

Another gift came in the form of the deliciously ironic humiliation of a couple of back fence favorites, Michele Bachman and Rick “Which Carolina is it again?” Perry.  Both Michele and Rick have had a turn as the un-Mitt flavor of the month and, clearly intoxicated by the experience, thought they actually had a chance to win the nomination.   Perry and Bachman found out - as ex-Senator Santorum is likely to soon discover - that subsisting on evangelical fervor is a lot like having peanut M&M’s for breakfast every morning; you get a sharp acceleration of energy from it but you end up falling asleep by 11:30 AM.  Michele threw in the towel almost immediately, thanking the good people of Iowa for providing her with a level of insight she and her campaign staff had been lacking since her first sugar buzz – winning the Iowa straw poll in August, an event that only served to highlight the pointless irrelevance of having a bunch of “voters” who would otherwise be wandering the county fair amped up on cotton candy sit sweating in a tent listening to garbled speeches in the heat of the day.  “Here’s my vote now let me get the fuck out of here…”

Perry decided to press on to South Carolina, a decision that came to him while he was running to clear his head in the aftermath of his 10% debacle.  I’m not sure if something fell on him out there or what; it’s more likely that the big money Texas clowns who thought he was a good candidate to begin with called his cell phone and convinced him that his stumbling, insincerity will play well there and that he should give it one more try.  If Santorum gets 20% of the New Hampshire vote Perry might as well call it a year because even brain-dead evangelical voters prefer a winner to a dimwitted loser like him.  It’s over, Rick.

The last gift from Iowa was the snarling, sarcastic speech given by Newt Gingrich after he dug his way out of the house that collapsed on top of him and doomed him as surely as the Wicked Witch of the East.  Newt sounded like his head was going to explode any minute. He stopped at the airport Bev-mo to stock up on vodka and took the first charter to Concord, where he displayed his fury by rolling out a full page ad calling Mitt a “moderate”!  Whoa, Newt…take it easy on the guy.  Newt has a puncher’s chance Tuesday because there are a couple of debates scheduled before the primary voting and those events work in his favor; Romney comes off as a hip Ward Cleaver and Newt always sounds like he at least thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room.  While this contrast is ultimately meaningless as a practical matter, debates have done much to shape the narrative so far and every politician alive lives with the nightmarish image of Dick Nixon’s sweating upper lip.  If Gingrich survives to go to South Carolina he will have a chance to piss on Romney’s shoes until March.  Thank you, Santa.

Finally we come to the gift I just unwrapped this morning; the twin images of John Boner and Bitch McConnell trembling with apoplexy over Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the new financial oversight agency and filling three positions on the National Labor Relations Board.  The opportunistic candidates in New Hampshire also got all stirred up about these appointments, as one might expect, and used them to throw partisan stones at Obama – no surprise there.  But it was the sight of both the republican congressional leaders red-faced with righteous indignation that was such a welcome gift.   Their sputtering speeches were masterpieces of right wing wrath, condemning Obama so vehemently that birds fell dead out of nearby trees.   Never mind that Bush the Dull had used twice as many recess appointments at this same point in his terrible reign; Obama the hateful socialist negro, the anti-Christ, had struck again, determined to drive us to ruin.  The hypocrisy is hilarious; the bug-eyed but impotent anger is even funnier.  Suck on it, fellas…howzat taste? 

And now, as a gift to you, the loyal readers of BL, I present this snippet of gibberish from newly crowned Anti-Mitt, Rick Santorum, trying to explain why reasonable people should vote for him:

"I can tell you, you may not agree with me on every issue, and I suspect you don't," Santorum said as an attempt to win over the votes of the people in the room on Wednesday, several of whom told The Huffington Post they were considering backing Romney. "But what you know is that I agree with me on every issue."

Occupy Mitt Romney and the 25%...Iowa speaks for many...

It’s 10 PM in Iowa and the official tally is confirming what most of us suspected when the evening began – 75% of the republican voters don’t want Mitt Romney as the nominee.  In spite of he and his secret super-PAC spending millions and millions of dollars saturating the media with negative adds against his nominal rivals – particularly the chubby Napoleon, Newt Gingrich – he is in a dead heat with Rick “the Saint” Santorum, a man so unfamiliar with reality that he thinks pre-marital sex should be criminalized.  They are currently tied with a robust 25% of the vote.   Since Santorum has absolutely no chance of being the nominee this result reduces Mitt’s burden going forward considerably and sets him up to slam dunk little New Hampshire next week, do middling well in South Carolina and have enough momentum going into Florida that the race will effectively be over.  But James Carville hit the nail on the head when he said this is a really weak performance for Mitt.

Sure, there are still pundits out there who earnestly proclaim that Rick “Which state is this again” Perry can rally from his dismal 10% showing here.  And Ron Paul has his fired up 20% and can’t be completely discounted either.  But like Santorum, Paul has as much chance to be nominated by the republican party as Barney Frank.  The party seems to have a death wish but it not as yet that profound and determined.  He won’t be nominated either.   Michele Bachman’s body just washed up in New Orleans  and Jon Huntsman, trailing the field with an ignominious 1%, clearly has to win New Hampshire or he’s can’t go on.  

That an incredible dunce-like performance over the last 60 days hasn’t driven Perry over a cliff is a testament to the predominance of ultra-conservatives as the bulk of the primary voters.  They don’t seem to care that he can’t get his boots on the right feet, as long as he can regurgitate key right-wing talking points from memory and seems to hate the right people, he will get votes from that 10% of addled voters who remember that Reagan wore cowboy boots too and who will cross their fingers and pull his lever.   But I believe he is the guy being dragged down main street behind a fine brown horse never to be seen again, no matter how much the crusty political bosses of the oil patch yearn for another dimwitted Texan to carry their flag.  Sorry podners…that ain’t happening.  He looks like a man who has his thong on backwards.  Even oozing false humility tonight he can’t get his speech straight and stumbles over the simplest of sentences.   He is the absolute worst kind of drawling populist fraud and all I can say is good riddance…

Right now Newt-poleon, with his fleshy Barbi-doll, Callista, is standing in front of a cluster of microphones calling up the ghost of the Gipper, grossly distorting and inflating his congressional history and bemoaning all of the negative ads that buried him in a landslide of mud.  He is congratulating Santorum for not going negative because he knows as well as anyone that Rick’s fundamental delusion is toxic and doesn’t threaten him.  He shamelessly holds out American soldiers fighting over seas as doing so to defend free elections like tonight's, (sort of true), while also saying they aren’t doing so to defend Romney’s PAC so it can run negative ads against him, poor little Newty.  If he wasn’t such a blowhard provocateur with a well documented history of hurling personal insults at his opponents it might be possible to sympathize with the poor bastard.  But Newt burned his bridges long ago and now that the whole republican establishment hates him he suddenly is shocked – shocked I tell you – that Mitt is running negative ads and not playing fair.  Now he’s pissed and the Mitt-ster better watch out. 

Last to speak now at just past 10:30 PM local time, as the vote counts dribble in, Michele Bachman is putting a brave face on her desultory and ragged campaign over the last couple of weeks which resulted in her last place finish, (Huntsman doesn’t count).   Somehow she still thinks she is the best candidate to defeat Obama – or at least tonight she is saying so – and she vows to ignore the pundits and soldier on like the righteous Christian soldier she is.   Maybe later Marcus will take her aside, give her a quick look at the checking account and, tomorrow morning after the Xanax wears off, she'll maybe change her mind.  She still has plenty of time to re-register to run for the house in Minnesota and she’ll no doubt be filling out the paper work by the end of the week. 

The endless chewing of this tasteless cud by the cattle at CNN – Wolf, go have a beer for Christ’s sake – is the most entertaining thing going on now since the candidates are off hitting the mini-bars.  It reminds me on the semi-coherent enthusiasm of the knuckleheads who obsess over the NFL every Sunday morning, endlessly churning various scenarios, dissecting the minutia of strategy and pouring over the injury reports until you just have to turn the sound off.   The infinite loop of the news cycle will plow repetitively through until morning, at which time I will have a piece of raisin toast and a hearty cup of decaf and see what the smart money is saying.  Maybe the tea leaves will be easier to read and the bodies will have floated to the surface by then.  Good night, Iowa...

Late night pre-Iowa roundup and merciless assessment of the odds...

"I think he's an excellent candidate, but I'm still not decided," said Paul Massey, a 65-year-old eyeglass salesman from Sioux City who visited Perry. "He is saying what I want to hear and he is sincere for sure. But I want to make sure I vote for and caucus for someone who is a winner.

There, encapsulated in one brief sentence, reported by a member of a media horde slavishly traipsing from one of corner of Iowa to the another searching for an angle, is a summary of why this idiotic elevation of Iowa to some bell weather for the whole country is an utter waste of time.   First, this guy is talking about Rick “I thought you said I was ahead” Perry, a man reduced to wandering from coffee shop to corner drug store and reading his stump speech from a handful of tattered note cards.  Hey Rick; you’re supposed to believe this shit, OK?  I know Reagan is one of your heroes and he was an addled dimwit but that’s really not what the country’s looking for right now.  Try to remember what city you’re in.   I think that speaks volumes to the “excellent candidate” idea and might cast doubt on the “he is sincere for sure” while we’re at it.  His own campaign is coming apart at the seams over what a dork he is and he’s still polling about 10%.  Of course, in Iowa that’s 10,000 delusional souls who think Children of the Corn was a documentary.

As to his “saying what I want to hear”, is that surprising?  Given half a chance every one of these candidates will tell you exactly what you want to hear, a time proven, successful strategy if there ever was one.  Hell, between them we’re going to eliminate half the government – the half you don’t like – bomb Iran, undo legal gay marriages, outlaw abortion, cut taxes on every one and make sure the Supreme Court is subservient to every halfwit congress person from sea to shining sea.  Anything else you want? 

But the last sentence may be the most telling of all.  We have a tiny fraction of the voting population of a state with about a third as many people as Los Angeles, 90% of whom are white, culling the herd for the rest of us and this guy’s main concern is to vote for a winner, as if it will reflect on him personally if he picks the person who gets the most delegates. (Remember, this is a caucus and not an election) Is it any wonder that the candidates jabber on about anything that comes into their heads?  “Oh, well, if you want your president to give classes on levitation and play the harp underwater you need to vote for me and not someone who has spent their career inside the beltway as an actual politician.” 

As the breathless reporting reaches a crescendo this evening, with desperate reporters  stopping people driving through the Bob’s Big Boy take out window to ask them how they’re leaning, the absurdity of whole thing is practically exploding over Ames like red, white and blue fireworks.  Front runner Mitt Romney – who didn’t really care about Iowa a month ago – has been scampering from place to place trying to find a half dozen people in any one of them who really want him to be the candidate.  His campaign slogan might as well be, “Whatever...”.   Finally today, as one after another of the competitors has sputtered and fizzled, he is attracting crowds who are half-way enthusiastic if for no other reason than this, “I want to vote for a winner and he looks like it...”, sentiment, a dubious reason for choosing a president but one  which seems to be Mitt’s main claim on the electorate.

Bachman meanwhile, bug eyed with all the veins in her neck visibly pulsating, has been delivering a series of high octane rants promising to wreck biblical havoc on Iran if they so much as twitch when she’s president, a nightmarish and terrifying prospect that we luckily will never have to experience.  Cranky-assed Ron Paul, in between barking indignantly at reporters bold enough to confront him about the weird and disturbing things he has said in his past, is lobbing bombs at the other candidates and has drafted his tea party rock star son Rand to hit a few last Des Moines hot spots with him and continues to position himself as the ultimate spoiler / kingmaker and the most viable third party candidate since John Anderson. 

Newt has graciously pre-admitted defeat today, acknowledging his plummeting free fall in the face of relentless negative ads coming at him from every direction.  While the process to this point has mostly resembled a “who’s not Mitt” whack-a-mole, the concentrated blast of anti-Newt advertising has been enough to turn his own family against him.  Even Callista has been keeping her distance in public in case whatever terrible cooties are affecting him jump onto her.  It’s a measure of the disdain and loathing he inspires in the republican establishment that he has flamed out like a shooting star in the Iowa night and now sets his sights on the more friendly reactionaries in South Carolina to make his last stand.  And a last stand it will be.

The purpose of the Iowa Circuses is really as a savage and merciless Darwinian cage match and by the end of the week the bottom two finishers here will be floating face down in the pool like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard.  And I suppose that’s as it should be; the two who finish last, (are you listening, Michele?), inhabit the very fringe of the political universe and really had no business seriously thinking they could run the most powerful country in the world.  It almost seems like one of those ideas that come to people late at night after too many shots or after two days of eating bennies – “Wait...you know what would be a great idea, dude...?”  For that I suppose we should be grateful, although we all know the dog with two heads isn’t destined to live very long anyway.  

Now we need to prepare ourselves for a tidal wave of nonsense in the aftermath of tomorrow – sadly this is a function of the 24/7 news cycle that inhabits the media like a mad tapeworm.  If you have people talking all day, every day, the chances of them saying something stupid increase exponentially.  Watch Faux News for a couple of hours.  But the fact is, it’s 2012.  This is it – the election is this year and it will be the year of living comedically and much hilarity will no doubt follow the journey for at least the next three months until the republican candidate is confirmed.  (It will be Mitt, just for the record).  It will be serious business once that happens and the earnest and heartfelt lying and exaggeration will prevail.  So let’s enjoy this last bit of carnival inspired theater while we have the chance and before everyone climbs into the little clown car and exits stage left.

Santorum Surge in Iowa Leads to Obama win in November...a roadmap.

The quote below is from Rick Santorum, who is “surging” in the latest polls in Iowa, largely as a result of frustrated evangelical voters who have worn out their bibles praying for someone to emerge for whom they can vote in good conscience.  Bachman is a bit too Joan-of-Arc crazy, Perry is a poser in Tony Lamas and has been exposed as a crook and not a savior, Cain is lying in the sun somewhere in the Virgin Islands trying to explain how he didn’t have a sexual relationship with Ginger White to his wife and Newt is in the church basement again after Saturday night mass explaining how his love for his country drove him to adultery but that he’s a changed man now because of Calista, his former mistress.   And Romney’s a mormon; he might as well be from Alpha Centauri. 

“One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country. It’s not okay. It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. [Sex] is supposed to be within marriage. It’s supposed to be for purposes that are yes, conjugal…but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen…This is special and it needs to be seen as special.”  Rick Santorum

Whew…I’m relieved Herr Santorum is on the case because I swear fornicators are going to be the ruin of this great country.   Rick is using his pre-Second Vatican Council denial of the modern world – his 19^th century ideas about sex, his old testament ideas about foreign policy, his home schooling of his seven kids – and turning from a Jon Huntsman-like also ran into a red hot contender and that tells me all I need to know about the relevance of the Iowa caucuses to anything approaching day to day reality in my world. 

Here’s a brief news flash for Rick and any other republican with Taliban-like ideas about sex in general and women in particular; significant numbers of the population are gay, period.  Talk to Marcus Bachman about it; that genie is out of the bottle and no amount of praying or hoping they go away is going to change that.  Moreover, they like being gay.  I know you probably think that in their heart of hearts, deep down inside they are praying for god to flip a switch and get them back on the straight and narrow but they’re not, Rick.  Really.

 And in case you missed the whole 60’s thing, people now have sex for fun…for FUN, Rick!  They do it because it feels good, not because god told them it was time to do their chores and have more children for his glory.  Perhaps you prefer to have each ejaculation result in a little fertilized egg-thing but that’s not normal.  Oh, and rape is real.  I know you probably think it’s the woman’s fault for wearing sexy clothes and cavorting around like she’s on I Dream of Jeannie but mostly it’s because a lot of men are assholes and bed wetters and torture kittens in the back yard and Rick, women don’t want to have babies from that particular ejaculation, so they take a pill or in extreme cases, have an abortion.  Which is legal, by the way – I know you’d prefer it not be but it is.  And that is one good reason you have absolutely no chance to win a nationwide election, at least in this country, in this century.  You couldn’t win even in a country where it’s common practice to bury a misbehaving woman up to her neck and stoning her to death. 

Ironically, you probably have some surprising people rooting for you.  Mitt Romney is one.  Mitt is an empty suit but he isn’t stupid.  I’m sure Mitt would be quite comfortable having you be his main competition heading into the spring, as he recognizes your neurotic delusions for what they are; a guarantee of victory for him at the convention.  Moreover, Mitt’s not the only one.

Leading up to the election in 1991, there were three candidates running nationally instead of two. George HW  Bush was the northeastern Rockefeller republican who had alienated a significant portion of the republicans by raising taxes and independents for lots of reasons, giving them cause to look for someone else to support.  The democrats ran Bill Clinton, a relative unknown southern governor who was saddled with the traditional brickbats the democrats have to dodge – soft on defense, tax & spend, socialist lover of homosexuals, blah, blah, blah.   But the lack of enthusiasm for an incumbent president drove the disaffected into the arms of Ross Perot, who ran a campaign largely based on not being either one of the other two.  And that seemed to be enough – he bled off enough votes so that Clinton won with 43%. 

Now picture a Rick Santorum on the evangelical end of the spectrum or an uninspiring Mitt Romney, who causes tea party true believers to run away with their fingers in their ears, winning the nomination while Ron Paul, with his deep well of support and very well oiled organization, is left sitting on the sidelines.  He runs as a third party candidate and drains off a significant portion of the republican small government, anti-tax but socially moderate vote, doing more damage to the republican nominee than Obama and you have a scenario where Obama can win with his current level of support – around 45%. 

Romney’s old guard party support essentially guarantees him the nomination absent his pissing all over himself somehow between now and March.  But a vigorously churning undercard will keep the support from coalescing and insure Mitt is weak as a fawn going into the summer.  Enter Ron Paul – or even a clownish Donald Trump – sensing weakness and seizing the opportunity.  For the 76 year old Paul, it may very well be a noble quest to push his ideas further into the mainstream.  For Trump it’s nothing like that; it’s simply his whorish need to be the center of attention so he can sell some time shares.  Whichever it is, it will be exactly what Obama needs  - so thanks Rick, and thanks, Iowa…

Pre-Iowa Caucus Thoughts on a Winter's Day...

Following closely on yesterday’s post – a short, brutal summary of the Bush family’s 30 years of foreign policy idiocy – and just as we are at the onset of that wonderfully American spasm of democracy in action – the Iowa primary – it seem appropriate to examine the foreign policy postures of the candidates and, moreover, their take on the power of the presidency in times of international crisis and upheaval.   Just remember, fear is your enemy and curling up in the fetal position and sucking your thumb with the blanket pulled over your head solves nothing.

Serving as the forward to this unsettling tale is the Associated Press story today, describing how the clearly nervous military leaders in Egypt have reacted to the new-found Arab Spring impulse for freedom in the country by kicking down doors and storming the offices of 10 human rights and pro-democracy groups yesterday, accusing them of “destabilizing the country by fomenting protests”.   This is only the latest example of desperate power elites and frightened, ignorant autocrats clinging to the last vestiges of empire – witness Syrian security forces blatantly shooting peaceful protestors right under the noses of wide-eyed Arab League monitors.   I guess seeing Ghadaffi  ritualistically sodomized and then summarily killed has given Assad nightmares and inspired him to out-brutalize his fellow tyrants, a strategy that will no doubt end badly.

With that unsettling diorama in our rear view mirror we can move on to the republican presidential candidates and explore the choices being offered to the good citizens of Iowa this winter, where the past is serving as eerie prelude and the 30 year republican trend of increasing the power of the president and his minions – as long as they aren’t some negro democrat – is well on its way to becoming right-wing conservative dogma rather than the usurpation of constitution power it actually is.  Witness, for example, the contempt for the Supreme Court and judiciary in general exhibited by all of the candidates, but particularly from Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both of whom have proudly promised to ignore court orders with which they disagree and to eviscerate the constitution while they’re at it.  Newt has defiantly and proudly proclaimed that he would arrest judges who disagree with anything he feels strongly about; he might as well be wearing one of those funny armbands and goose-stepping at the same time. 

Santorum, whose appeal as a candidate seems to be based solely on his exhibitionistic religiosity and evangelical fervor, would amend the constitution so as to make it virtually unrecognizable as a document which protects the rights of the individual over those of the state, a position at odds with the traditional reverence for the document accorded by most conservatives.  And it is this very subjugation of the constitution that has caused him to rise in the Iowa polls, a fact perhaps even more disturbing than his Joan-of-Arc visions for a western version of theocracy by fiat. 

This misplaced lust for an all powerful presidency also manifests itself in the foreign policy positions of all of the candidates – with the exception of Ron Paul – and is a bitter tasting stew of christian righteousness mixed with a jingoistic hubris reminiscent of Joe McCarthy and the Cold warriors of the 50’s and 60’s.  Only now the incessant saber rattling is not grounded in any rational fear of a tangible enemy but in the kind of fear that one feels alone in the dark, unfamiliar woods surrounded by spooky noises, causing you to lash out blindly in all directions.  Santorum and the rest of these military-avoiding chicken hawks harp on Obama about the Iraqi troop withdrawal as if he has betrayed them personally and insist that, if they were president, Iran would be bombed back to the stone age or suffer some similar fate.  The entire republican establishment has conspired to marginalize Ron Paul for having the audacity to suggest that maybe a constant state of war isn’t really necessary and asking us to re-think the pseudo-imperialist impulses that have dominated our foreign policy since World War II. 

There is also an aggressively knee-jerk defense of Israel on the lips of all of the candidates and used as the rational for the absurd fist-shaking at Iran, a position that only encourages the hardliners there to dig in and push the boundaries of settlement ever farther into heretofore Palestinian territory, infuriating the entire middle east. 

It’s likely that some of the more irrational statements and positions being reported are a function of ignorance; I for one am not impressed with Rick “Where’s Iran again” Perry’s world view any more than I am impressed by the neurotic jabbering of the chubby Napoleon, Newt Gingrich.  I’d like to think that any sensible congress would provide a check on their most self-destructive impulses, for self preservation if not ideological disagreement.  But the universal contempt for the judiciary combined with the notion of an imperial presidency is truly a frightening prospect for anyone concerned about their liberty.   Even libertarian Ron Paul has questioned the need for a Voting Rights Act, something that should concern all of us, regardless of our particular skin tone. 

Imagine a country with a subservient and pliable judiciary under the thumb of an ego-driven little fascist wanna-be like Gingrich or a delusional religious fanatic like Santorum or even a robotic “businessman” like Romney, (think Milo Minderbinder in Catch-22), and the US quickly becomes some kind of bad sci-fi place patrolled by black-shirted thought police and ruled by a guy with a chest full of ostentatious medals wearing sunglasses at night – a totalitarian hybrid of Disneyland and Wal-Mart where we all sell out for a 50 inch flat screen and 3-D glasses.   History has shown that freedom and democracy can be frightening concepts to some and we would do well to remember that.

And Obama is not in the clear on this issue either.  His championing of the Defense Authorization Act, a slip on the slope of tyranny and oppression, is one of a number of disappointing and shameful sell outs of priniciple for which he is justifiable vilified by the left in this country and something which should only serve to awaken all of us to the dangerous possibilities inherent in an overly powerful chief executive.   His sad tough-guy posturing is a subject for another day.  But for today, in the pre-primary media overload and avalanche of breathless reporting sure to bury us this weekend, it would be wise to recall the words of Ron Paul himself,

“A dictator enjoys unrestrained power over the people. The legislative and judicial branches voluntarily cede this power or it’s taken by force. Most of the time, it’s given up easily, out of fear in time of war and civil disturbances, and with support from the people, although the dictator will also accumulate more power with the use of force.”

So I call upon the good citizens of Iowa to exercise your rights judiciously on Tuesday.  I don’t know who the hell to suggest you vote for but maybe if everyone stayed home and none of these chumps got any votes it might have an impact far beyond the quiet and humble mid-west and wake the rest of the country up like a bucket of cold swill dumped on a sleeping drunk can cure a hangover.  Or maybe we’ll all still have a headache, but at least we’ll be awake…

Post-Iraq Monday Morning Quarterbacking - Some Context...

Today as I read and thought about the Obama bashing by unapologetic neo-cons, republican chicken hawks and “big stick” foreign policy Monday morning quarterbacks over the recent spasm of tribal violence in Iraq I was struck by the extent to which the Bush family has been involved in some of the most disastrous and stupid military interventions and belligerent American forays into 19^th century imperialism of the last 30 years.  It’s a remarkable and largely ignored legacy of foreign policy blunders and missteps so blatant and clumsy that it’s easy to dismiss them as the terrible results of a Northeastern prep school dorm dick measuring contest but which, upon examination, are so noxious and sinister as to provide overwhelming evidence that this one family may constitute a criminal cabal to rival the Gambinos or Gottis or any 20th syndicate imaginable.  Now as faint but unmistakable voices can be heard whispering for Jeb Bush to emerge from under his sheltering rock and come to the rescue of a faltering republican president field, it is an unsettling thing to ponder another royalist Bush bringing his tiny penis and hyper-drive hubris to the White House.

For all his bookish Yale-via-Amherst affectations, George H. W. Bush had been director of the CIA during the dying days of the Ford administration and grabbed the spinning steering wheel as the agency was threatening to careen over a cliff after an in-depth congressional investigation into its dirty and largely illegal activities dating back to Nixon’s first term and the coup d’etat in Chile among other things. At the time Bush was Ambassador to the United Nations.  He decided to run for the republican nomination for president in 1979 but ran into the amiable dunce, Ronald Reagan, and in the end settled for the Vice Presidency, a move I always felt was orchestrated by behind the scenes power brokers scared shitless of Reagan’s addled but good natured somnabulance.  Bush became Reagan’s man behind the scenes and the quasi-legal and unethical fun began almost immediately.

First the Reagan/ Bush administration armed Saddam Hussein to the teeth in his war against the evil Iranians, treating him like a vicious pit-bull of a surrogate so as to punish the unruly mob of mullahs and fanatics still beating their collective chest over the capture of our embassy and the turning of Jimmy Carter into a drawling gelding.  Much of this arms trafficking was illegal at the time and in a deep and profound irony, was the wellspring of Saddam’s mustard gas weapons of mass destruction and surely he’s somewhere right now kicking himself for taking that phone call.  The notorious “slaughter of his own people” that was a high profile justification for turning him into Dr Evil with a mustache was a result of our supplying him with the means to do so, a disgusting bit of truth that was somehow ignored in the bellicose days leading up to both wars with Iraq to follow.

In the meantime, in our own hemisphere, we had a decade of slaughter and genocide carried out by our latino surrogates in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala until the Sandinistas ruined everything by shipping our boy, Anastasio Somoza, to Miami and uniting Nicaragua into a socialist republic.  Thus began the foul saga of the Contras in Nicaragua and the collateral damage to all of Central America that followed our panicked and illegal intervention and determined attempt to get rid of them.  Bush was in this up to eyeballs, despite his subsequent pleading that he didn’t know anything about what Ollie North was doing in the basement of the White House for 6 years.   Calling the vicious Contras “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers” in an overheated blast of hyperbole intended to obscure their routine massacres of innocent civilians, Bush and the other beady-eyed fascists of the Reagan administration spent the 80’s futilely causing havoc and destruction on countries simply trying to get rid of medal-bedecked crackpot dictators and succeeding with the persistence only a home grown revolution can engender. 

Not content with illegal and strategically questionable intervention in our own hemisphere, the Reagan/Bush team also decided to send the marines into Lebanon where 241 of them died in a horrendous bomb blast that not only drove the marines out, it led to the subsequent invasion of Grenada, the single most illogical and pointless use of military force in the history of the Western Hemisphere and the worst movie Clint Eastwood ever made.  This cynical parlor trick of an intervention to ostensibly save a handful of college students was so clearly meant to distract the public from the Lebanese debacle that even the mainstream press alluded to it as sleight of hand.  Semper fi indeed…

As the decade came to a close and Bush began his own campaign for the presidency, his dirty little relationship with cartoonish thug, Manny Noriega began to receive the uncomfortable but typical media scrutiny of any presidential candidate.  As Wikipedia explains, “Although he worked with the Drug Enforcement Administration to restrict illegal drug shipments, he was known to accept a very significant amount of financial support from drug dealers themselves simultaneously,^[5] because he facilitated the laundering of drug money, and through him they received protection from DEA investigations due to Noriega's special relationship with the CIA.^[7]"

The inconvenient part of this was Manny’s refusal to promise to keep his mouth shut after a series of Iran-Contra connection exposes threatened to blow the lid off his role as fixer and bag man so he had to go.  Again, from Wikipedia…

"In 1988, Elliot Abrams and members of the Pentagon began pushing for U.S. invasion, but Reagan refused, due to Bush being tied to Noriega through his previous positions with the CIA and the Task Force on Drugs, and their negative impact on Bush's presidential campaign.  Pressure mounted on Bush, as the media labeled him a "wimp" for failing to aid Panama amidst his campaign rhetoric that called for a tough stand against known drug traffickers.^[5] Bush declared that the U.S. would not negotiate with a known drug-trafficker and denied having any knowledge of Noriega's involvement with the drug trade prior to his February 1988 indictment, although Bush met with Noriega while Director of the Central Intelligence, and was the Chair of the Task Force on Drugs while Vice President."

Somehow the media couldn’t or wouldn’t connect the dots and after a quick invasion Manny was surgically removed and ended up in the Miami county jail, spending the rest of days shouting in vain through the bars on his cell. 

How is it that the Bush family’s public lives have been to intertwined with a series of high profile dictators and clownish characters like Noriega, Somoza, and Saddam Hussein?  Arguably the high point of Bush senior’s presidency was the first Gulf War, on its face a noble undertaking meant to liberate Kuwait but in reality just another dance with the devil between Bush and Saddam, who didn’t like being pushed around by a pencil-neck like Bush and wouldn’t stay in line so he had to be slapped down by the 82^nd Airborne.  Inconvenient references to Bush’s role in providing Hussein with the capability we all now fear was again overlooked or shouted down by jingoistic cheers from the mainstream press.

This finally leads us to George the Dull and his completely illogical and trumped up invasion of Iraq. After the 9/11 bombings, in a petulant attempt to regain the family honor and a fruitless quest to find his father’s balls, George and the aging band of cold warriors itching for a chance to engage the forces of evil somehow, somewhere, decided to make an example of Saddam and simultaneously kick somebody’s ass.   Sadly, like the elusive WMD’s, the missing balls were never found.   Perhaps they were just a legend to begin with – maybe the Bush family saga is one where the balls never existed in the first place and their war-mongering and frat-boy hubris was just a natural outgrowth of their anger at the futility of the search. 

Whatever the case may be, republican bleating about Obama finally being able to extricate us from the Iraqi tar-pit should be taken in the context of 30 years of systematic and cynical republican foreign policy madness.  As history will no doubt confirm, we should all be celebrating this one tiny victory and thinking carefully about how we really want to conduct ourselves in the next 30 years.  And praying fervently that Jeb Bush stays on the sidelines…