The Supremes reign supreme...and weirdness ensues.

I should have known when I woke up Wednesday morning in a cold sweat from a feverish dream in which George Will – dressed like Angus Young – was licking Antonin Scalia’s neck with Clarence Thomas singing Windmills of Your Mind in the background that things were about to take a weird turn.  I couldn’t have known just how weird things were going to get though – the media since yesterday morning has been like a terrifying and inexplicable front page of the World Weekly News being read aloud by Chet Huntley on acid.  In other words, thanks to the unexpected courage of Chief Justice John Roberts, the shit has hit the fan.

The ominous tsunami of bad news that has been wounding Obama like so many banderillas is suddenly overshadowed – at least for a few days – by the outraged cries of right wing pundits, congressional drones and empty-headed Faux News commentators as they try to figure out what the fuck happened.  How did their carefully orchestrated take-down of Obama get scuttled by one of their own – a George W. Bush appointee and heretofore conservative stalwart like Roberts?   It is puzzling but certainly not inconceivable if you think about it from his perspective.

Remember that the health care reform law – the ACA – was born out of republican DNA as a response to that uppity bitch, Hillary Clinton, and her bridge-too-far attempt to reform health care in Bill’s first term.  The fundamental aspects of what is derisively called Obamacare came straight from the lineage leading back to Hillarycare that passes right through Romneycare to the present.  And the intensity of the opposition has the same roots, going back to backroom fascist and nativist Bill Kristol, who devised a no holds barred obstructionism-as-policy strategy and whose threats to Bob Dole, waiting in the wings for his chance to run for president, galvanized the entire unruly republican mob, led by Newt Gingrich.  This rabble’s subsequent fervent overreach over Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky’s blow job provides a direct link to the extreme partisanship we see all around us today. 

Roberts is 57 years old and appointed to the court for life.  That could be a hell of a long time, time enough to create a lasting legacy akin to the great Chief Justices of the past.  Does he want his legacy stained by extremist partisans – traitors, really – who expect him to march in lock step, bowing to their every whim?  Probably not.  Instead he has begun what we can only hope becomes a legacy of even-handed, well thought out decisions that aren’t overtly political – a course of action that is anathema to the right wing intelligencia who feel like their ideas, as promulgated on some wrinkled and blood stained piece of ancient parchment somewhere, are the only ones with any merit. 

And that doesn’t take into account hallucinating conservative wing-nut scholars like Michelle Bachman who was quoted as saying – and we’re paraphrasing because her transmission was garbled – “Anytime the Supreme Court renders something constitutional that is clearly unconstitutional, that undermines the credibility of the Supreme Court. I do believe the court's credibility was undermined severely today.”  That counts as a relatively lucid comment from her but illustrates what I call “the new treason”; pseudo-patriotic gibberish hiding what is really borderline sedition and, in some cases, borderline criminal behavior in the name of righteous but poorly thought out principles.  If a Supreme Court decision regarding what is constitutional is subject to a mob gathering with burning torches and political opposition simply saying, “No it isn’t”, what does constitute the rule of law?   Who is going to decide in their stead?  Bachman?  John Boner and the other semi-criminal elements that pretend to represent Americans in Congress?  Grover Norquist?  Newt Gingrich? 

No, Roberts somehow put on his big boy robe and decided to make a decision based on logic as he saw it and more’s the honor in that. 

Meanwhile Scalia and his dim-wit sidekick, Mumbles Thomas, revealed themselves to be the overtly political creatures they are.  Scalia went off on a foaming-at-the-mouth rant about a decision against which he dissented in the question of Arizona’s immigration policy, slamming Obama in a virtually unprecedented partisan screed, essentially accusing Obama of criminality in his executive order imposing aspects of the long-obstructed Dream Act.  Never mind that the issue at hand was an Arizona law regarding overt usurpation of federal laws governing in immigration; Scalia decided to vent.  This is the guy who said that riding out to the lake in Cheney’s four-by-four for a weekend of duck hunting wasn't enough to require him to recuse himself from a case involving the Vice Reptile because they weren't actually sharing a duck blind.

And the weirdness is peaking around the contempt of congress vote against Attorney General Eric Holder, led by oily southern California congressman Darryl Issa, high school dropout and a charter member of jarheads for Nixon.  Issa is a repugnant little creature, who became a multi-millionaire selling car alarms – not exactly a constitutional scholar. 

I have no idea of the details of the infamous botched gun operation in Mexico – "Fast and Furious". I didn't pay any attention to it when it was happening and don’t know the details.  But from what I gather, some kind of sting was initiated during the last days of the Bush administration and carried out by Holder and his justice department brown shirts.  It got screwed up through who-knows-what bureaucratic bumbling and incompetence and then – as is often the case – the pointy-headed apparatchiks running it scattered once the lights came on and a massive cover-your-ass operation swung into action.   

Issa has admitted that there is no evidence for Holder being guilty of anything, nor is there any evidence that the White House was involved in anything remotely resembling a cover up.  Evidently there is still some kind of investigation going on requiring a certain amount of discretion and Holder is not turning over every piece of paper that Issa asked for.  But they have turned over thousands of papers related to the operation, they have agreed to meet privately and provide any information that Issa and his boys want and still they ask for more. 

Now none of this is particularly unusual – the list of Attorney Generals who have dissembled and obfuscated and stone walled etc., is a long list containing the name of virtually every Attorney General who ever served.  But never has congress voted to accuse them of contempt.  Think about that – is this sordid little fuck up so unique and extraordinary that it warrants this blathering partisan outrage?   My guess is, no.  Is it a coincidence that the NRA – a cowering herd of paranoids who spend their weekends firing semi-automatics at imaginary black helicopters – let it be known that anyone who DID NOT VOTE YES for the charge of contempt of congress would be held accountable by them come November?  Is this a congress that represents you?  A sniveling pack of cowards with not 1% of the political courage of John Roberts? 

Of course he does have that “appointed for life” thing going for him – no denying that.  But unless all you ever wanted in life was to be a politician, you just can’t be afraid to have principles and put them on display instead of shoving them into the nearest closet at the slightest hint of political blow back like they were porn tapes and your mother-in-law was pulling into the driveway.   Issa is nothing but a creepy political opportunist who has probably been promised some special donations if he can just hump Obama’s leg like a rabid Pekinese through August and then his work will be done.

I am continually astonished and repulsed by the level of pure hatred overwhelming our national politics in the last 20 years but this nasty grease fire is threatening to burn down the house and the barn and the whole damn works if we don’t all get off our asses and do something about it.  The next few months are crucial.  If Obama loses to Mitt the cyborg, there will be a pall of darkness that falls on this country the likes of which haven’t been seen since 1850.  Republicans with their hair on fire are already talking about taking up arms in rebellion against the tyranny of the Awful Negro.  We’re running out of time to give ourselves a chance for the country we were all expecting in the 21^st century. 

As Obama gets relentlessly pummled, some free campaign advice.

The last couple of weeks have seen some ominous developments in the presidential race as David Axelrod seems to have lost control of the political narrative and Romney surrogates have emerged to savagely bash and batter Obama like a pack of hallucinating Dingoes going after a wounded bandicoot. 

It’s interesting to watch as Tim Pawlenty and Jeb Bush and other prominent conservative voices serve up a strident defense and long-winded interpretations of republican orthodoxy and dogma in place of Romney, who can’t seem to keep his tassel loafer out of his mouth.  

In the aftermath of the Wisconsin recall election, he took to the stump with a wildly off base explanation of Scott Walker’s victory and a barely coherent attack on Obama’s call for an economic policy that stops the bleeding of government jobs and maintains funding for public safety workers, teachers and infrastructure.  His bleating speeches in front of Obama haters were reflexively cheered and applauded, until even Scott Walker himself had to demur and gently disagree with Mitt’s enthusiastic but empty headed ridicule of Obama for wanting to hire more cops and firemen.  Walker may be a union busting fascist but even he knows that, no matter how disgusted the public may be with union over-reach and sense of entitlement, they don’t want fewer cops on the street or people manning the fire stations around town or even teachers to try to educate their children. 

Aside from the consistent blame-the-awful-negro-for-everything strategy barely hidden beneath the surface of much of conservative super-PAC advertising there is also the repeated refrain of failure, failed policies, failed presidency, fail, fail, fail.  And the news that triggered this choking avalanche of overheated rhetoric is last month’s employment report, showing a net job creation of only 69,000 and, worse, extended a downward trend that wiped out the good vibes generated over the winter and which had made Obama look like an easy winner over whoever emerged from the savage slap-fight that the republican primaries devolved into.  

Axelrod seems to be content with a strategy of turning the other cheek, staying calm and carrying on, and that is admirable.  But in the face of this sustained onslaught of lies, hyperbole, distortion and more lies, being presidential and dignified will only keep you from utter disaster and that is not a very promising prescription for winning the election in November.  So in the interest of getting Obama re-elected and fending off the specter of living in a mind-numbing plutocracy for a significant portion of the rest of my life, I am going to help Dave focus on the task at hand and – more importantly – show him how to keep the rats from slowly and viciously eating his candidate’s face while he sleeps.

 Republicans calling Obama a failure while they actively work to obstruct his every initiative and make sure he is a failure is something that needs to be pointed out as the despicable treachery it is.  How can they say his policies failed if they never allowed his policies to be tried?  Isn’t that what elections are for?   If a president’s program is put in place and doesn’t work, that one thing.  Fair enough – let’s try something else.   But since the 2010 mid-term elections Obama’s initiatives have essentially been stopped dead in the water so how can they be deemed to have failed?  Of course, to the Right this is a purely rhetorical question; they’ve failed because we say they have failed and we’re damn proud of it too.

 So certain things need to be pointed out again and again and again over the next six months until even the most dull-witted Faux News consumer can’t help but have the audio running through his head.   Key points the Obama campaign needs to make repeatedly can be divided into three general categories; what I did, who tried to stop me, and who supports my program.   Let’s take the last one first.  

People who support the idea that there has been a fundamentally damaging shift in income and increase in the inequality of income distribution and feel that reforming the tax code to correct this will help the economy include Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and Robert Reich, Labor Secretary under Bill Clinton and professor of economics at UC Berkeley who helped craft economic policy the last time we had a surplus in the Federal budget.   All three of these able men have written that the obsession over the deficit while simultaneously cutting taxes and spending is exactly the wrong thing to do to rev up the economy.   

On the other side we have Grover Norquist, former Nixon-youth, earnest supporter of Ollie North and hater of taxation in any form with or without representation, corporate water-boy Paul Ryan, who has a BA from Miami of Ohio and a Delta Tau Delta pledge pin and whose mysteriously vague budget plan has been enthusiastically endorsed by Mitt Romney for its merciless stripping of any public benefit involving tax money in favor of more corporate largess and assistance to the uber-wealthy, and Michelle Bachman, who has voices in her head and not much else.   The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that Ryan’s budget proposal would be a disaster in terms of public policy for the vast majority of Americans and that Romney’s plan would vastly increase the size of the deficit boogie-man which is allegedly the inspiration for the Right’s current economic prescription.  I think Obama’s team wins this one – they just need to go out and repeat the correct prescription relentlessly.  And they’re not…

Now as to what he can point to as significant achievements, there is a long list and, in one of the many perplexing developments of Obama’s campaign to date, they seem to have a very difficult time coherently laying them out in any kind of easily understood narrative.   I cannot understand either the difficulty or the reluctance to highlight these accomplishments other than the certain knowledge that they will illicit immediate and fiery ridicule – much like the orgy of slash and burn ridicule being ladled onto Obama for an innocuous but clumsy comment attempting to highlight the fact that public sector job loss is an anvil-like drag on the economy due to the deficit cutting frenzy in congress but the private sector is continuing to create new jobs.   As a matter of fact, the private sector has created 3.7 million new jobs since the president took office – the strangulation of the public sector has lost 500,000. 

Bob Cesca, of The Hufffington Post, laid out the balance of the positive side of the ledger quite concisely recently so, rather than re-inventing the wheel;  "GDP is growing steadily, though still sluggish. Jobs are being added every month. Unemployment is slowly declining. The deficit is shrinking. Middle and working class taxes are lower. Inflation is nearly an entire percentage point below the average that began in the middle 1920s (long term average is 3.43%, while our current rate is 2.3% and dropping). The price of oil dropped below $90 last week and stockpiles are huge -- the highest level in 22 years. New home sales are up by 10 percent over a year ago. Moody's Analytics called this a "genuine rebound" in housing, and mortgage rates remain tantalizingly low. Consumer debt is declining and corporate profits -- despite the president's false reputation as a profit-hating commie -- are nearly double what they were in the boom times of 1999. 9.75 percent at the end of 2011, compared with 5.7 percent in the final quarter of 1999. The Dow has doubled since the deepest, darkest days of the Great Recession and some analysts suggest that the DJIA should be around 20,000, not 13,000, given all of these positive indicators."  That seems pretty clear – why aren’t they able to put this into a speech to counter-act all of the determined republican dissemination of fear and doom and failure?  Obama’s administration has the lowest annualized rate of growth in government spending of any modern president – look it up.

And the third – and, I think, crucial leg of this stool is to highlight the willful obstructionism of the republican party as an institution since the day he was elected.  As a matter of fact, the plan to fight everything Obama proposed probably started among the pale underbelly of the republican party the day a delirious John McCain proudly announced Sarah Palin as his running mate.   The full extent of this traitorous behavior is almost too much to get one’s arms around.  But just to scratch the surface, on January 20^th, 2009, a meeting was held in Washington and attended by the leading lights of the republican congressional delegation, along with Newt Gingrich.  At this meeting it was decided that they would do everything in their power to sabotage Obama at every turn, regardless of the consequences.   They vowed to challenge the democrats on every single bill and show unyielding and complete opposition to every Obama policy proposal.   The same cabal of republicans who supported all of the Bush/Cheney policies leading to the economic crisis; the Bush tax cuts, war in Iraq and Afghanistan with no way to pay for it, and completely unregulated financial markets ,now reversed themselves, even opposing Obama's national security initiatives.  According to the Dailey Kos,

“Senators: Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn, John Ensign, and Bob Corker have:

- Filibustered more Bills (over 300) than any Congress combined in US History.
- Voted NO on every single piece of Legislation brought to the Floor including:

NO on Al Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment,
NO on Lilly Ledbetter,
NO on Fair Pay Act,
NO on Anti-Outsourcing Bill (2010)”

In addition, there’s this, also from The Dailey Kos report; “Representatives: Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Pete Sessions, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra and Dan Lungren have voted NO on every single piece of Legislation including:

NO on increasing FEMA during natural disasters

This opposition seems almost unbelievable coming from the same people who form a cock-a-mamie Greek Chorus filling the airwaves every day with incessant criticism and the idea that Obama’s policies are ruining the economy.  Sadly it’s a strategy that seems to be working.  The last week or so has seen the media – perhaps sensing Obama’s vulnerability – practically teeing up questions for these right-wing liars and handing them the driver.  And there seems to be a determined attempt to rehabilitate the Bush family's image.  Even as George the Dull has the lowest post-presidency approval rating of the modern era - and well deserved - brother Jeb goes on Charlie Rose and defends him as best he can for god knows what reason.  Poppy is treated like some kind of weird elder statesman instead of the sinister criminal he really is.  It's all part of the same attempt to convince American voters that even the foulest examples of republican duplicity and irresponsibility are "good guys".   

If Obama’s campaign people were able to effectively counter all of this blather with a sustained response it wouldn’t be so frightening.  But they have seemed remarkably inept and unfocused and have ceded the high ground to Mitt Fucking Romney of all people, the most vacuous, empty, unprincipled republican nominee I can ever remember who wanders bug-eyed from event to event, tie carefully loosened, spewing the chosen nonsense of the day with impunity.   

Meanwhile it was reported today that republican-supporting PACs, billionaires and supporting organizations have exceeded the fund raising of their democratic counterparts by 8 to 1, virtually insuring that their message will continue to prevail unless we all get off our asses and do something about it.  I, for one, intend to do just that.  

The Sun Never Sets on Republican Ridicule of Alternative Energy

I’m not sure why the putrid scent of desperation still clings to the republicans at a time when Team Obama is treading water, at best, and hoping like hell that something can kick the economy back into gear.  But it is.  Yesterday, a few miles across the Dumbarton Bridge, with the glow of Facebook world headquarters visible in the distance, empty suit Mitt Romney stood on a dusty road shoulder presiding over a hastily organized photo op in front of the now shuttered remnants of ill-fated solar manufacturer Solyndra’s facility, flogging the dead horse of this poster child to Obama’s "failed energy policy and economic cronyism".  Nice try, Mitt, but in case you didn't notice, the horse is dead.

At the same time another of the many republican media hacks, syndicated columnist Victor Davis Hanson, published an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury essentially calling the Obama cabinet a pack of criminals and bumbling fools.  This hyperbolic characterization mostly stems from their various human foibles and clearly defensible policy decisions with which he happens to disagree, including funding of alternative energy projects at the expense of more generous subsidies for big oil.  This fixation with Solyndra puzzles me.

Isn’t the fundamental principle underlying the unfettered capitalism favored by the republican party for the last 50 years embodied in the concept, big risk / big reward?   Since when does their economic philosophy include punishing risky investment in pursuit of a huge reward?  Is it only when the risk is born by the public and the reward is reserved for corporations, private investors and heartless bastards like himself that failure is acceptable?   In regards Solyndra, to paraphrase Otter in the movie, Animal House, let’s face it; we fucked up – we trusted them.   The clowns at Solyndra probably weren’t the horse to bet on.  But the right wing is determined to repeatedly run over the horse with bulldozers to make their point. 

What strikes me is the fervor with which the republicans attack this particular misstep.  It not only serves as a surrogate for Obama economic policy in general, it allows republicans to reinforce the notion that the very idea of alternative energy production is quaint but naïve and provides an opening for them to pimp for the oil company benefactors that keep them in business.   Hanson’s column goes so far as to suggest that the US has the largest oil and gas reserves in the Western world and all of our problems would be solved if we could just have unobstructed drilling and exploitation of those reserves anywhere they occur.  He is dismissive of any ecological concerns that get in the way of “progress” and has a scorched earth development philosophy that would make James Watt blush.   He trots out 20 year old tax liens and assorted other horseshit accusations in the pursuit of partisan advantage, while never mentioning the jackals on Wall Street who precipitated the economic crisis for which he and Mitt are so eager to blame Obama. 

Is that all you’ve got?  Seriously?   Or let me ask it this way; what’s your best idea, Mitt?  Just give us one. 

OK, while we wait for that, why don’t we cut to the chase?   Romney appeals to two segments of the republican party; the stiff-collared patrician, Bill Buckley, conservative wing and the we-hate-that goddamn-negro-Obama wing and that’s pretty much it.  This current push is to try to convince the independents who voted for Obama last time that he had his chance and blew it and now they need to turn the ball over to the Mitt-ster so he can try to use his knuckle-curve to get us out of the mess.  This is the danger for Obama – he has to convince those people that it will all still work; he just needs another year.  And the sad truth is, as slow as it is, the housing market – the overwhelming drag on the economy – is recovering, albeit way too slowly for most people to notice.   So if Mitt does happen to win, he could be as ineffective as King Edward II and if the housing market improves enough to pull the economy out of the doldrums he can stage-dive off the White House balcony and adoring crowds would probably carry him up Pennsylvania Avenue – life’s a bitch, Barack, but it is what it is.

That’s why you need to push Boner and McConnell and the other traitorous swine in congress relentlessly through the summer and talk jobs, jobs, jobs.  Screw the deficit.  That’s all bullshit and an underhanded way for the republicans to accomplish their long-dreamed of social engineering in the name of responsible governing and conservative austerity; also bullshit, as both Paul Krugman and Robert Reich will testify.  You need to hitch the wagon to those guys, drop any impulse towards cooperation and collegiality with the donkeys in the House and put the hammer down.  Otherwise your legacy may end up being the unpopular, one-term guy who just happened to save the country from doom.  

Cynical Irony and disingenuous pandering, thy name is Mitt…

I was driving home recently listening to NPR when a story came on detailing the latest attempt to attack Obama by Mitt Romney out on the stump and I almost spit Diet Pepsi all over my dashboard.   Here was Mitt Romney, candidate of a republican party which has de-funding of government on all levels as its main operational principle and which has gone to court to fight bilingual education all over the country, speaking to a group of Hispanic small business owners and claiming that education reform as designed and prescribed by him is suddenly the most important issue of our time.   It’s laughable to watch Mitt stumble around trying to find an opening so he can land that one knock-out punch.  And since nothing else he or the Koch Brothers or Karl Rove or any of their congressional minions have tried has gotten any traction, Mitt trots out faux concern for education and hope that somehow we can ignore his imperious and patrician background long enough for it to stick.

Moreover, he had the gall to flat out accuse Obama of putting campaign donations from the teachers’ unions ahead of improving education and to blame him for the state of education today when John Boner and the rest of the unruly and bug-eyed rabble in the House of Representatives are starving local and state governments of funding, causing a catastrophic reduction in the number of teachers available to educate the children he pretends to care about so deeply.  He makes me want to puke.

This is the guy who has a schizoid immigration policy in a party that is certainly not known for being sympathetic to the Hispanic community, shedding big fat, toxic crocodile tears about the sad state of minority education.  His party is almost universally contemptuous of the public school system and yet he promises these Hispanic business people that he would lead the charge to make certain that their children get the education they deserve.  Meanwhile he is proposing and supporting an economic agenda – designed by weasely wunderkind Paul Ryan - that would cut public funding for schools – and virtually everything else - and turn it over to “for-profit” educational companies, meaning that the very minority children with whom he is pretending to empathize won’t be able to afford his grand private education and will be stuck with underfunded, crippled public schools of last resort.   Who can believe this guy about anything?

The republicans to try to pretend that they are concerned about education but that concern only runs deep enough to include cutting teacher salaries – directly or indirectly – and starving public schools by slashing the Federal budget’s aid to state governments.  Much of that aid is directed to education at the state level and the deficit boogie-man haunting republican dreams is resulting in unprecedented chaos most clearly manifested in the state of American education.  They have made public employee unions – and the teacher’s union specifically – the enemy and the targeted example of corruption, complacency, mismanagement, laziness, incompetence, sexual depravity and bad personal hygiene.   They would prefer to either send their kids to private schools like Mitt himself if they’re wealthy enough or home school them if they’re delusional, fanatic and socially terrified enough.  

Schools – like much of government – have significant waste and disorganization that should be addressed.  There needs to be a way to get the almost comically incompetent teachers drunk on tenure out of the classroom and into retirement or another line of work.   There needs to be a way to get parents engaged in the process of educating their own children and make them understand that sending their children to school isn’t the same as taking your car in for service.  Overlapping responsibilities, unnecessary layers of management and tenure combined with non-English-speaking students conspire to make modern education less than ideal.  But the only solution you achieve by yanking the ventilator off the struggling patient is to kill them – not a great outcome unless you just don’t give a shit and are sick of paying the electric bill to run the thing. 

Romney hasn’t bothered to lay out his brilliant plan to resolve these issues and empty promises are the order of the day in political campaigns but the idea that he is going to portray himself as the last great hope for education is hilariously incompatible with reality. 

Blame Obama for having a jack-booted justice department that is focused on all the wrong things, blame him for being a little bit timid and underfunding the stimulus program, blame him for spending the first two years of his term trying to be the level-headed community organizer pleasing everyone instead of using the bully pulpit to kick ass and take names and get things done.  I think he made a mistake spending so much political capital on health care even if it will turn out to be a signature achievement.   But to blame him for the state of education in an age of a dumbed down, discouraged and angry population and schools starved for funds, all the while pretending to have the answer is Romney being a cyborg gas-bag who truly believes nothing but who will say anything to try to be president.   That really is who he is…

"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son..." - thoughts on the Obesity Epidemic in America

I heard a report recently that well over one-third of the adults in the United States are obese and that number is climbing rapidly with no end in sight.  Twenty percent of children are obese.   My first thought on hearing this, was, “What the hell is wrong with us?”   Twelve states have obesity rates over 30% - in the year 2000, none were that high.  How in the world have we let this happen?  It’s inexplicable, as if 40% of adults were still smoking.   But obesity will kill you just as surely as smoking will and maybe more.   Relentless and mostly government ordained education about smoking has resulted in the number of smokers in the adult population being cut in half since the 50’s.  Maybe that will happen with obesity too.  But being fat is so obviously a bad thing that it still begs the question; why is this happening?

My own opinion – ungrounded and pure speculation – is that modern life has become so complex, and the volume and velocity of information so completely overwhelming, that average people trying to confront those complexities just shut down.  They resort to the simple things in life, the things that are cognitively economical and physically rewarding.  They eat, they shop, they grab on to a religious belief like grim death, they work, if they can, and they go to bed at night exhausted, dazed and satiated.  When they get up in the morning, the world is still the same fucked up place and their life is still careening out of control.  But eating feels good, especially sugary, fat-loaded clusters of empty calories, so they eat their way through a day that is filled with blasts of random and non-stop information, a thousand decisions that amount to nothing, a shitty job – if they have a job – and emotional whiplash at every turn.

Then they turn on the TV and see Orwellian political gibberish coming out of multiple media outlets whose own 24 hour new imperative demands that they “update” and report every garbled utterance of the professional political class to these weary souls all day every day.   What do they understand and believe?  What do they take to be real?  Who do they believe?   I say they eat a big greasy cheeseburger of simple political thought and wash it down with a 40 ounce Big Gulp of comforting nonsense they want to hear and finish it with a few doughnuts of scantily disguised hate speech and racism.  Bob’s yer uncle, they’re as mentally obese as they are physically.

It doesn’t help that news outlets beat to death anything that remotely seems like news.   For evidence, take stock of the coverage of Obama stating the obvious; that he is in favor of gay marriage.  I mean, c’mon; who is surprised by this?  No one.  Is it surprising that he said it without equivocating or detailing a dozen caveats?  Yeah, probably.  Since no politician does something like this without carefully doing the math as to what it means, you can bet that the Obama camp thinks it helps more than it hurts and it was pretty clear anyway from the man’s overall policies that this would inevitably be the end game. 

But now that he’s being criticized by everyone from Romney – who can’t seem to quite decide how he wants to frame the criticism – to goof-ball Howard Stern to Rush Blowhard to Meagan McCain to Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, it is THE story everywhere you turn.   Somewhere some overweight dimwit is probably having a second cheeseburger just because he’s so upset about the whole story and trying to reconcile his own confused feelings for that tall guy who stocks shelves at the drug store.  Is there anyone who was going to vote for Obama who now isn’t?  Maybe, though for the life of me I couldn’t describe them to you.   It seems to me far more likely that progressive independents who were considering sitting it out in disappointed protest now feel like maybe he has enough balls to vote for after all.  I know it made me happy for that very reason.  It’s as if he finally said, “Fuck you back-ass mouth breathers.  This is right and that’s what I think.  Let’s move on to something important.” 

 Of course there may have been a whole bunch of his campaign geniuses who peed themselves when he said it but they were largely an overly timid bunch of pussys  anyway.   

But back to the central thesis of this post – and there is one: when potential voters, who have mentally shut down and refuse to process anything more complex than who should get thrown off Dancing with the Stars, hear the garbled rants and bug-eyed screeds that Romney has been frantically tossing off for the last two weeks, it’s, "Honey, get me another plate of ribs and mashed potatoes." 

He takes credit for the resurgence of the US auto industry after being boldly and with great certainty on record as saying they should all go bankrupt and that would fix what ailed them.  It takes guts to try to pull that off but he’s counting on that guy on his couch with the TV tray believing him just because he’s so god damned earnest about it.   He totally sounds like he believes himself when he excoriates Obama for his tragic mishandling of the concerns of small business, evoking the magic voo doo doll of Jimmy Carter to measure the extent of Obama’s failure.

I’m sure couch guy doesn’t think twice when the republicans propose a defense budget larded with even more unnecessary shit than the Pentagon wants and say it’s absolutely critical to build a missile defense capability on the US east coast in case the Iranians somehow overnight roll out some nukes that could reach that far before the Israelis bomb them into oblivion.

I’m sure he’s bedazzled by the reptilian charm of Paul Ryan and his “let-them-eat-cake” budget and believes that if we just kill more poor people and give rich people more money he can get off his couch and head to Wal-Mart with a full wallet and a shopping list two feet long. 

To me, the same I-don’t-give-a-shit-anymore attitude that turns ordinary people into heart attack prone diabetics gives license to the Super PACs to spew their toxic swill with impunity too.  And you don’t have to be Ivan Pavlov or even Karl Rove to know that endlessly repeated lies become the truth if for no other reason than ubiquity to a certain portion of the population.   How has our country come to this?  How did the ferocious hatred for “the other” become institutionalized?  I wish I knew.  For now, I’m need to go out and get some chicken wings…

Half truths and savage lies: the republican presidential campaign begins in earnest...

A veritable conga line of prominent right-wing national political figures has formed up behind Mitt Romney in the last couple of weeks after Rick Santorum ended his fervent but misguided run for the nomination, leaving only crazy Uncle Ron Paul and delusional blowhard, Newt Gingrich as Mitt’s foils.  And Newt finally threw in the towel today, albeit with an incredibly lukewarm endorsement of Romney and an unrepentantly over the top hyper-partisan blast at Obama.  But the writing is writ large on the subway walls so there is no longer anything to be gained by withholding support, no matter how queasy Mitt makes them.  Lo, suddenly the ghost of Ronald Ray-Guns walks beside him and he has clothed himself in the blue blazer of wealth, privilege, power and an utter cluelessness regarding the day to day life of most of the Americans he purports to want to lead.   How is it that the republican nominees seem congenitally incapable of forming lucid thoughts when speaking extemporaneously?  (Rhetorical question)

He has spent the last couple of weeks hammering Obama on everything from foreign policy to taxes, the deficit, his regulatory and environmental policy and even his choice of associates when he was in college, in a clearly desperate attempt to get some traction from a voting public which mostly doesn’t like him much.  Give the public credit; they usually have a pretty good bullshit detector.  Mitt’s flip-flopping gibberish on the stump sounds like nothing more than a guy hoping against hope that short attention spans and millions of dollars in negative advertising will help him carry the day come November, particularly if his treacherous co-conspirators, John Boner, grim millionaire Mitch McConnell, unprincipled donation slut, Eric Cantor and shifty eyed ferret, Paul Ryan succeed in obstructing every attempt to continue the economic recovery and crater the economy by September.  If they can’t, Mitt and Ann should load the Cadillacs with cheap liquor and head for The Hamptons by Labor Day. 

One of the biggest challenges facing Mitt and his merry band of supply-side zealots and deficit alarmists is that their deficit cutting austerity agenda is taking a beating globally, particularly in Europe.  Germany and France continue to hold out for an extension of these policies in spite of the building evidence that they are not working and are in fact exacerbating the down turn because they are not fostering employment growth, something everyone agrees is crucial.  Most of the balance of the EU is going through a serious re-thinking of the idea of government cuts being the answer.   In America, more and more economists are weighing in in favor of more government spending, not less, as the answer to the continued economic doldrums in which we still find ourselves drifting in spite of Obama’s efforts to put some wind behind our sails.   

This fundamental argument is the central battle ground for the next 6 months, and perhaps it should be.  But the election is about more than this simple – though important – argument.   Obama will probably win or lose based on the economy even though his every attempt to do anything to fix it has been systematically sabotaged since November of 2010 to an extent that borders on treason.   Defying all previous protocol and notions of collegial cooperation – the kind of thing that used to be routine – the entire republican political apparatus has worked tirelessly to ensure nothing so much as Obama’s loss in November of 2012.  It remains to be seen if this cynical ploy to manipulate low information voters and exploit feelings of helplessness and fear succeeds.   Lord knows they will never stop trying.  They have been blocking a bill to provide transportation funds for infrastructure that has historically had broad bi-partisan support and would go a long way toward reducing the 17% unemployment rate among construction workers in the country.   The imaginary boogie-man of the deficit combined with undercutting Obama at every turn trumps every other impulse.

So let’s just add up the evidence and see which vision of America we prefer, shall we?

The republicans don’t want to pay for health care for women, the poor or the elderly, they don’t want to pay for education, they don’t want to pay for the EPA or any kind of environmental protection that gets in the way of unrelenting exploitation of resources, they don’t want to pay for research and development unless it is in the interest of oil companies, they didn’t want to pay for the auto industry bail out, they’re against everything that Obama and the democrats propose, they seem to be indiscriminately against immigrants – even those here legally, they are against any kind of financial reform to protect us against the Wall Street swine who precipitated the crash and great recession,  they seem to all be against the idea of the TARP program but all of them have benefited from donations from those companies who received the TARP funds, they are against FNMA and FHLMC, school lunch programs, anti-drug education programs, virtually any regulation that impacts profits, they’re against gay and lesbian rights and are seeking to disenfranchise large blocks of voters who typically vote as democrats, they’re against unions and any kind of worker protection, such as OSHA.  They are also against any kind of respectful negotiations with our enemies or those with whom we disagree.

They are for more military spending and lower taxes for the top 5% of income earners, including lower corporate taxes and lower capital gains taxes.  They are for hating Obama. 

 In sum, this doesn’t seem particularly patriotic to me.  In the past the opposition party would cooperate with a president – for the most part – and let him succeed or fail on the merits of his idea and – more importantly – the results.  But you can’t hit the ball if you don’t swing, as my dad used to say.  If Obama’s proposals are never allowed to succeed or fail this, in itself, accomplishes much for the republican party, as the continued unemployment and misery makes already angry voters even more restive and give cockamamie ideas like the Ryan budget some legitimacy, if only because pissed off voters who are desperate will be willing to try anything other than the status quo.  The repugnant Citizens United decision is allowing the porcine Karl Rove and the Koch brothers to anonymously flood the airwaves with twisted swill and toxic and horrifying tales of Obama's socialist agenda whether it has any relation to the truth or not. 

I’m not Obama’s biggest fan; far from it.  But a duly elected president deserves to be judged on the results of his policies as a whole, not some truncated version that was fought bitterly and sabotaged every step of the way.   For that level of duplicity alone, these jackals deserve to be sent packing…

Romney meets the Lizard King - foreign policy madness

Endangered reptile, Dick Cheney, emerged from under a rock somewhere sporting a new, donated heart and the same incredibly ignorant hubris as always.  He was at the Wyoming republican convention endorsing Mitt Romney, and called Obama an “unmitigated disaster” and he ought to know; he engineered and presided over the most tragically wrongheaded series of foreign policy blunders since the Gulf of Tonkin.   His complete misunderstanding of the potential outcomes in Iraq and the idiotic post-invasion policies dreamed up along with Rumsfeld over cocktails at the Bohemian Grove is to blame for, not only our continued disastrous involvement with Afghanistan, but the tar pit from which Obama has been carefully struggling to extricate us since he took office almost four years ago.

 Now with Romney as the presumptive nominee, the snarling pack of neo-con hyenas and chicken hawks is once again whispering seductive messages in the ear of the GOP – like, reasoned engagement is weakness and restraint only encourages those who hate us for our freedom – a foreign policy that stinks of bad cheese but which the camo-clad limp dicks of the party are all too eager to embrace out of frustration, racism and the urge to kill something.   

Being the empty headed vessel he is, Romney is also enthusiastically casting aspersions on the Obama foreign policy, criticizing him in the wake of the abject failure of the feared North Koren rocket launch, apparently not realizing the US foreign policy and accompanying comprehensive sanctions have starved the North Koreans of the technical resources necessary to achieve what has to be considered as the monumental bluff that it is.  Still, Japan clearly gets nervous every time some addled Korean poo-bah decides he wants to join the space age, even if the rockets typically pose more of danger to the North Koreans than they do Japan, so it’s important that we have some kind of influence over their behavior.  Romney seems to feel that talking to them – and offering them food – only serves to encourage this behavior and we should disengage, not give them anything and hope that teaches them the lesson we want to impart.  Fat chance, Mitt, but thanks for weighing in with your opinion.

With Obama in Cartagena this week for a Latin American summit, Mitt also apparently feels the time is right to re-state his solidly 1980’s-era advice – you know, right up there with his contention that Russia is our main foreign policy opponent these days – and parrots the utterly discredited but strangely pervasive notion that Cuba is a menace to us in the Caribbean and should be treated with a firm “communist-threat-to-our-way-of-life” hand until they allow freedom and democracy and cheap consumer goods to sweep over the land.  Never mind that Cuba has a 97% literacy rate – higher than ours – universal medical care and are as catholic as Rick Santorum.  They play that goddamn merengue music, smoke cigars and drink rum all night; they are suspect and dangerous as long as that bearded freak Castro is alive. 

No, Mitt is of the Dick Cheney / Jean Kirkpatrick / George the Dull school of neo-conservatism that proposes that all foreign policy decisions and policies arise from the seed of American exceptionalism and entitlement.  If a country doesn’t want to play ball with us we need to ignore them or – in the case of one perceived as a threat – park an aircraft carrier offshore.  It’s a variant of the “nobody fucks with us – you lookin’ at me?” testosterone-fueled belligerence that put George the Dull into a bigger shit-storm than he expected when he decided to start bombing people willy-nilly in the wake of 9/11.  It presupposes that other countries have no patriotic self esteem and will roll over and piss themselves if we just threaten them with tragic enough consequences for misbehaving. 

That this has been a miserable failure for the last 50 years escapes these donkeys.  It’s either that or the “Obama is wrong about everything” reaction that has characterized republican policy making since 2008.  They think the way to calm down a pissed off Doberman is to hit it with a stick rather than tossing it a rib-eye.

For his part the newly recovered transplant patient Cheney, spent part of his night trying once again to justify water boarding, extraordinary rendition and various other medieval enhanced interrogation techniques favored by his merry band of fascists in front of the GOP movers and shakers in Wyoming, the most republican state in the union, where he still has some sort of reputation as a kingmaker in spite of his being shoulder to shoulder with Bush the Dull during an administration known more for blundering ignorance and malapropisms than any historically notable achievements.  For me, I hope you do have Mitt’s ear as some kind of twisted elder statesman, a la Henry Kissinger, and he trumpets his fealty to the cause of incoherent foreign policy that is your stock in trade.   It would give people one more reason to vote for Gary Johnson…