[Don't] Stop Digging

I absolutely love it when some Republican luminary--hell, doesn't have to be a luminary, just an ordinary run-of-the-mill Republican--actually either on purpose or accidentally says something that's true. It's not their normal way. Such is the case and such my satisfaction with reports that the senior GOP senator from South Carolina Lindsey Graham basically told defeated party standard-bearer Mitt Romney to shut the f--k up. Not only that, but the way he said it was kinda cool.

Last week Mittens broke his silence on the election drubbing he took by blaming his loss on all the free goodies the president showered on minorities, Hispanics, students, and other undesirables. Things like free health care, a break on student loans, a partial dream act for children of illegal immigrants, etc. (NY Times story on that here.)

Well, today on Meet the Press Senator Graham slapped Mitt's jowls but good:

“We’re in a big hole [and] we’re not getting out of it by comments like that . . . When you’re in a hole, stop digging. He keeps digging.”

“Self deportation being pushed by Mitt Romney hurt our chances . . . We’re in a death spiral with Hispanic voters because of rhetoric around immigration and candidate Romney in the primary dug the hole deeper.”

Well, maybe Mittens can stop digging, but I'm sure digging this.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney Really Believes the 47-Percent Crap (bobcesca.com)
• Romney rides off into the sunset, as big a dick as always (dailykos.com)
• Mitt Romney's Sneering Farewell to the '47 Percent' (alternet.org)
• Lindsey Graham says he'll go nuts if GOPers say Romney lost because he wasn't conservative enough (dailykos.com)

The Death of the Liberal Class

Chris Hedges was not thrilled with the results of the election, but anybody who reads him knows not to be surprised. (Source) The way he sees it, and it's a point of view I'm not at all unsympathetic to, is that we've simply reinstalled a party that is beholden to the money, and it's the money that calls the tune no matter who runs the government.

Hedges, probably more than any other single political commentator I read, punctures the essential bubble of falsehood that encloses the myth that Americans really are making a choice between two distinctly different understandings of the way the country should work.

No. That's not what happens in elections. What happens in elections is we all engage in a quadrennial mime show of people exercising the right of self-government. What nonsense. We live in a plutocracy. That has nothing to do with self-government.

Here's a bit of what Hedges had to say: 

Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves—the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. 

The ineffectiveness of the liberal class, as I saw in the former Yugoslavia and as was true in Weimar Germany, perpetuates a dangerous political paralysis. The longer the paralysis continues, the longer systems of power are unable to address the suffering and grievances of the masses, the more the formal mechanisms of power are reviled. The liberal establishment’s inability to defy corporate power, to stand up for its supposed liberal beliefs, means its inevitable disappearance, along with the disappearance of traditional liberal values. This, as history has amply pointed out, is the road to despotism. And we are further down that road than many care to admit. 

Related articles

• More alternate reality, courtesy of right-wing punditry (dailykos.com)
• The Democrat Embrace Of Fascism (english.pravda.ru)

Same As It Ever Was

USA Today carries a story about unrest on the Ole Miss campus . . . er, make that "550 'agitated and angry' students and spectators," who according to the story gathered to hollar about Obama's policies but also about race. Meanwhile, the same sort of thing was going on in Virginia on the campus of Hampden-Sydney College with a lot fewer people involved.

This is a familiar refrain. We've been here before. Two people were killed in 1962 on the Ole Miss campus during massive riots protesting the integration of the university by James Meredith, the first black student to attend school there. U. S. marshals and the National Guard were eventually required to quell the violence.

The National Review says it's all overblown. But of course what else do you expect them to say? We're talking about Mississippi here. Where, I'm sure there's been a huge advance in race relations in the past 50 years. But we all know the dark vein of racism that still runs through this country. It hasn't gone away, and it won't not for a very long time.

Update I: There have been some reports that the doings at Ole Miss were exaggerated. OK. I'll give you that is possible. But I still think it's ominous.

Related articles

• Racism defines post-election student protests at Mississippi, Hampden-Sydney (insidehighered.com)
• James Meredith, Man Who Integrated Ole Miss, Troubled By Protest (huffingtonpost.com)

They're Under the Bed

You know all this talk about socialism lately--you know, that socialist in the White House for another four years is really dangerous (Don't know about you. I'm terrified.). Little segue: we were in the waiting room of the surgery center where I got my cataract surgery done the other day and overhead a guy talking about the election. Quote: "He's reelected. It's all over." Seriously. Remember, this is Oklahoma. What's all over, one wonders. What does this guy think is going to happen? 

I'm sobered by the realization that there are literally millions of people who share his fear. What can possibly be wrong with these people? They've already seen over the past four years that the president is not a bogey man. Where does this kind of thinking come from? I have my suspicions which I'll talk about tomorrow.

In the meantime, here's a sample of a brilliant send-up of past paranoia by Bob Dylan. For those of you too young to remember the pervasive fear struck into the hearts of Americans by the threat of the "worldwide communist conspiracy," you're lucky. It was the overarching theme of the 20th century. (The fascists were just a momentary menace.) It twisted us as a people in ways we haven't even discovered yet.




Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues

Well, I was feelin' sad and kind of blue  
I didn't know what I was gonna do  
The Communists were comin' around 
They was in the air, they were on the ground 
They were all over
 
So I ran down most hurriedly 
And joined the John Birch Society 
I got me a secret membership card  
Went back to my backyard  
And started looking on the sidewalk 
'Neath the rose bush
 
Well, I was lookin' everywhere for them gold darned Reds  
I got up in the mornin' and looked under my bed 
Looked behind the kitchen, behind the door  
Even tore loose the kitchen floor, couldn't find any
 
I looked beneath the sofa, beneath the chair  
Looking for them Reds everywhere  
I looked way up my chimney hole 
Even looked deep inside my toilet bowl  
They got away
 
I heard some footsteps by the front porch door 
So I grabbed my shotgun from the floor  
I snuck around the house with a huff and hiss 
and "Hands up, you Communist" it was a mail man 
He punched me out
 
Well, I quit my job so I could work alone  
I got a magnifying glass like Sherlock Holmes  
Followed some clues from my detective bag  
And discovered they was red stripes on the American flag  
Did you know about Betsy Ross
 
Well, I was sittin' home alone and I started to sweat 
I figured they was in my television set  
I peeked behind the picture frame  
And got a shock from my feet that hit my brain  
Them Reds did it, no one's on the hootin' nanny
 
Well, I finally started thinkin' straight  
When I run outta things to investigate 
I couldn't imagine doin' anything else 
So now I'm at home investigatin' myself  
Hope, I don't find out too much, good God                        
[source]

And Yet a Final Word on Mittens

He's goodbye forever now, he and his boring prevaricating self plus his phony, vapid wife can both drift off to their palaces in four locations and hobnob with their like-minded contemporaries. They are all as rich as Croesus, so they don't have anything in the world to worry about. But the rest of us have at least some small pleasure to enjoy. Romney won't ever waste our time again. (But don't worry, after a decent wait, the Republicans will doubtless find somebody equally as irrelevant and clueless to lead the party.)

I could not bid final farewell to Mittens without sharing this little thumbnail character portrait of him from James Kuntsler. (The URL for his piece is listed in the additional reading below.) Good stuff to remind us of how blessed we all are that this man did not become president of the United States.

I just don't like Mitt Romney. He's the over-eager twerp in the classroom with his arm always sticking up. He's the missionary bozo in a necktie ringing your doorbell to sell a fairy-tale cult religion dreamed up in the 1820s by another over-eager con artist. He's obviously using the national stage to work out his father issues (George Romney ran for president in 1968, blundering his way out of the race early on). He shamelessly panders to the worst elements of his own party - the ignorant, militaristic, punitive-minded Nascar evangelicals - and dissembles so automatically that there is nothing left of whatever core beliefs he might have theoretically developed earlier in his career. He's too chicken to engage with the realities of climate change, so visibly on display this season. He's spoiling to rumble with China, apparently oblivious to the fact that China's leader-in-waiting, Xi Jingping, is an army brat.

It's utterly amazing to me how such a person could get anybody's endorsement, but just a week ago we were actually wondering if somehow this loser would win the election. It didn't seem impossible at the time, although it does now.

Related articles

• Team Mittens Launched Victory Website... After Electorate Gave Him The Shaft (newsone.com)
• Fox News Puts Mittens Voters On Blast When They Use A Dumb Azz Graph To Make Their 'Point' (bossip.com)
• The Tides of Event (kunstler.com)

Some Thoughts about the Election

Just some random mental ramblings about the election just completed. No pretense of any kind of organization or import. Just mind droppings.

• It did not turn out to be that close after all, did it? Obama won this election handily and going away.
• Indiana going red was no surprise at all. Indiana electing a Democratic senator was no surprise either given the idiot Mourdock that the Republicans ran.
• North Carolina was other other blue state in 2008 that went red this time. No surprise there either.
• Obama has got every reason in the world to dig in his heels now and crack the whip with the Republicans. But he's going to be conciliatory. I think a lot of the left would rather he not be.
• What were they called? . . . Battleground states? Well, it turns out that Obama captured all but one: North Carolina. All the rest: New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, Wisconsin, Colorado, Nevada, Iowa, Florida went for the president. Might be forgetting one.
• Three states in the Union were entirely red, without a single county going for Obama. They would be Utah, West Virginia, and this mecca of bubbas I live in, Oklahoma.
• These were balanced, actually surpassed, by four states that went entirely blue, every county for Obama: Rhode Island, Vermont, Masachusetts, and way, way west, Hawaii
• Hooray for forces of sanity in Washington and Colorado that approved the legalization of marijuana. Here's hoping that opens the gates on the question . . . 
• Democrats were supposed to shed seats in Senate; they gained a couple.
• Elizabeth Warren, a good old Oklahoma girl, is going to be a great friend of regular people in the U.S. Senate. The best endorsement possible for her is that the banks hate her guts.
• Florida still ain't officially called yet. Still counting votes. Some people there didn't vote until after midnight on Tuesday . . . when Mittens had already conceded. Obama has a solid lead there.
•  New Mexico has become a reliably blue state because of Hispanics. It won't be too many more cycles before Texas is the same way.
• Women, blacks, Hispanics, young people: all for Obama by large margins. The Republicans appeal to old white guys, white guys generally, rich people, and religious nuts. Who would you bet on as the future of the country?

The Eight "Toss-Up" States

This kinda says it all. I'll have some reflections on this election tomorrow, if I'm not totally debilitated by the first of the my cataract operations at 8:15 later this morning.

Obama won this election going away

[For some reason the graphic here will not reproduce, and I cannot even find the URL to send you to it. What is showe(s)d is that Obama took seven of eight so-called battleground states handily. Florida count not finished. Sorry about the technical problem.]

Obama will also win Florida, when they get all of Miami-Dade county counted, which will not be tonight. But the issue is not in doubt . . . so he won in all but one of the "battlegrounds." Quite a show of muscle here, I'd say.

Romney Pants a Conflagration

Matt Taibbi has it so right about Romney in a recent blog post. He was in the process of dissecting what Mitt's performance during the second presidential debate, which, by the way, he heaped generous and deserved amounts of scorn upon. But the quote I want to bring to your attention is this one:

Romney's finally all the way to the endgame, and he's just letting go. No more being careful, and weighing himself down on debate stages with painstakingly parsed positions (this was frequently the situation in the primaries, where Romney's performances were always restrained and cautious, even when he "won"). Now there's no more future to worry about and he's just casting off from his moorings and being what he basically is at heart, which is a salesman and bullshit artist of the highest order.

What's the man lying about? Everything. He's just making stuff up as he goes along. 12 million new jobs he's going to create? Where's that number coming from? Moving towards a balanced budget by cutting everyone's taxes by 20 percent and spending $2 trillion more on defense over ten years? HUH? Keeping all the stuff that's popular about the health care reform but killing "Obamacare"? He's been pro-gay, now anti-gay, pro-choice now anti-choice, centrist on guns, now a right wingnut on the subject. (List of all his flip-flops here.)

This guy's so much of a liar that the president of the U.S. is recently on record as calling him a "bullshitter." (Which I'm sure is going to raise the righteous hackles of the whole Republican bullshit brigade. I can hear the screeches already.) Which pretty much brands Obama as a fearless truth-teller, at least in this instance.

Liar, liar! Pants on fire? Hell, Romney's are a conflagration.

Related articles

• Matt Taibbi: 'Romney/Ryan tax plan still makes no sense' (crooksandliars.com)
• Romneybot is Anti-Choice Again. Also Vows to Defund Planned Parenthood. (bobcesca.com)
• A binder full of lies (womensphilanthropy.typepad.com)

Not Again!

Well, boys and girls, tonight is the third and (thank you, Jesus) last so-called debate in the presidential campaign. Almost since the beginning "debate" has been a misnomer for the spectacle of two guys standing (or sitting or striding around) spouting campaign talking points for 90 minutes, largely ignoring the question, and posturing for the huge national audience that somehow through all these years have never felt moved to rise up in protest over this farce.

But there I go again, positing an educated electorate, which is the furthest thing from the voters of this country. One of the things that makes the so-called debates so crucial is how the candidates play on television. And indeed, one of the truly loathsome aspects of the debates is the endless "analysis" that one must endure after the things end. And a lot of this chatter is about appearances, mannerisms, expressions, and all kinds of other nonsense that has nothing whatever to do with the issues of the campaign. Not that these get any kind of coherent airing out. But this is the kind of nonsense that the airheads out there can understand.

Jim Kuntsler says the whole process makes him sick. I concur. I cannot wait for this farce to be over. I've been sick of it for months.

Update I: I went to sleep during the so-called debate.

Four More Years?

If it's four more years of Obama, that's about as exciting as watching ice melt. It's for certain that the country will endure yet another crippling postponement of having its very serious problems addressed. You don't seriously believe that a Republican House, and that's what it's going to be, is going to advance the slightest iota of the Administration agenda, do you? Which means all the issues that are terrible now are going to just get worse. The environment, infrastructure, distribution of wealth, reform of the tax code, energy, decline of education, and on and on. None of these problems will be dealt with so the pols can posture and bloviate and raise money for their reelections. And where do you think that is going to put us as a people?

All this screeching about restoring America to its former greatness. You hear it from both sides. It's all bullshit. This country is in irrevocable decline. It's been in decline in all of the areas above for years now and all the politicians can give us is more noise. This election is not going to matter in the long run, or even the short run.

But matters can get worse faster. I don't even want to contemplate what the disaster of the election of Mitt Romney would mean for the country. Whatever resistance to the complete ceding over of federal power to the corporations will be gone. They already own the Congress and the Court. Our fate will be sealed for good. We'll be headed for serfdom and nothing will stop it.

No, Not Really

PBS News tonight was all breathless about how the race is tightening up between Romney and Obama in the wake of Romney's uncontested "win" in the debate last week. Well, here's news: everybody who thinks Romney is somehow surging on the basis of that unrelieved torrent of lies and flip-flops he presented to the nation the other night had better think this over just one more time. Here's the straight skinny, covering a half-dozen swing states and the national numbers. Should note that the guy from Pew Research was on PBS tonight. Hence the big Romney puffery going on.

* IOWA: Obama 49%, Romney 47% -- Obama +5% since 2 weeks ago (Rasmussen)
* COLORADO: Obama 49%, Romney 48% -- Obama +3% since 2 weeks ago (Rasmussen)
* VIRGINIA: Obama 50%, Romney 47% -- Romney +2% since 2 weeks ago (Public Policy)
* MICHIGAN: Obama 48%, Romney 45% -- Romney +7% since 1 month ago (EPIC-MRA)
* MICHIGAN: Obama 49%, Romney 46% -- Obama +1% since 1 month ago (Baydoun)
* PENNSYLVANIA: Obama 47%, Romney 45% -- No change since 2 weeks ago (Susquehanna)

In the national trackers, Obama expanded his lead from 3% to 5% in the Gallup daily tracker and Romney's 2% lead fell to a tie in the Rasmussen daily tracker. Pew Research had an attention-grabbing poll showing Romney up 4%.

All of which means, Obama's numbers are going to be better tomorrow and the next day.

(Source)

Just What I Was Thinking

Matt Taibbi is out this week taking notice as are many other writers and pundits of Mittens Romney's steady erosion of support in the polls. You can't be surprised at this what with the incredible ineptness he's displayed in just about any forum in which he has appeared. The surreptitiously taped slam on half the population of the country--the infamous 47-percent recording--is just the latest. But Taibbi is wondering why this race, even given Romney's laughable campaign, is in any way close. Fact is, Obama is just now pulling away, and depending on the margin of error and what poll you're looking at, the lead ranges from 5-10 points, including leads in practically all of the key contested states.

Here's part of what he writes: 

The Times, meanwhile, ran a house editorial blaming Romney's general obliqueness, his willingness to stretch the truth and his inability to connect with ordinary people for his fall. David Brooks ran a column suggesting that Romney's overreliance on a message of strict market conservatism, ignoring the values message of "traditional" conservatism, was what killed him in the end.

All of these points of view have merit, I guess, but to me they're mostly irrelevant. The mere fact that Mitt Romney is even within striking distance of winning this election is an incredible testament to two things: a) the rank incompetence of the Democratic Party, which would have this and every other election for the next half century sewn up if they were a little less money-hungry and tried just a little harder to represent their ostensible constituents, and b) the power of our propaganda machine, which has conditioned all of us to accept the idea that the American population, ideologically speaking, is naturally split down the middle, whereas the real fault lines are a lot closer to the 99-1 ratio the Occupy movement has been talking about since last year.

Think about it. Four years ago, we had an economic crash that wiped out somewhere between a quarter to 40% of the world's wealth, depending on whom you believe. The crash was caused by an utterly disgusting and irresponsible class of Wall Street paper-pushers who loaded the world up with deadly leverage in pursuit of their own bonuses, then ran screaming to the government for a handout (and got it) the instant it all went south.

These people represent everything that ordinarily repels the American voter. They mostly come from privileged backgrounds. Few of them have ever worked with their hands, or done anything like hard work. They not only don't oppose the offshoring of American manufacturing jobs, they enthusiastically support it, financing the construction of new factories in places like China and India.
They've relentlessly lobbied the government to give themselves tax holidays and shelters, and have succeeded at turning the graduated income tax idea on its head by getting the IRS to accept a sprawling buffet of absurd semantic precepts, like the notions that "capital gains" and "carried interest" are somehow not the same as "income."

The people in this group inevitably support every war that America has even the slimmest chance of involving itself in, but neither they nor their children ever fight in these conflicts. They are largely irreligious and incidentally they do massive amounts of drugs, from cocaine on down, but almost never suffer any kind of criminal penalty for their behavior.

 Further in the article, Taibbi speculates that the press also contributes to the closeness of the race in its lust for ratings. As usual, Taibbi is worth the read.

Where Does It Say I Have to Vote for Obama?

Very interesting article in Atlantic Online by Conor Friedersdorf. He puts voice to the kind of thoughts I've expressed much less coherently than he. Basically what he says is he's not voting for Obama, and that he is not buying the argument that Romney is so terrible that one must vote for the president. He rejects this line of thinking. What he argues is "some actions are so ruinous to human rights, so destructive of the Constitution, and so contrary to basic morals that they are disqualifying." And he sees these kinds of actions throughout the Obama presidency. I've mentioned them here and there throughout the past four years. And I've noted especially that the infernal, eternal wars continue, and that as far as I can tell, Obama pursues with all the relish of a born militarist.

Not only that, but he has refused to prosecute either torturers or the scoundrel Wall Street shysters that brought the country to its knees and who continue to enjoy outrageous affluence while the rest of the country suffers through a recession that shows no sign of ending.

But what bothers Friedersdorf are the scarlet sins against individual liberties that Obama has now engrafted onto presidential powers. He's absolutely right.

1. Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue. 
2. Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.  
3. Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.

There's a lot more to this article. This is just a taste. Recommended.

Related articles

• Killer Robots Above (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
• Legitimate Criticism of Obama, But A Poor Reason Not To Vote For Him (liberalvaluesblog.com)

We're in 1856

James Kuntsler was incisive today: 

In reality - that alternative universe to flat-screen America - all the mechanisms that allow us to keep running this wondrous show teeter on a razor's age of extreme fragility.  We're one bomb-vest or HFT keystroke away from a possible dark age, or at least a world made by hand. The true sense of entitlement extends light-years beyond the peevish carpings of the tea-bags-for-brains bunch.

     The only issue in this election contest between Pee Wee Herman and Captain Kangaroo is how to do nothing to disturb the fantasy that we can keep living the way we do. I am coming to detest Mr. Obama for the unforgivable feats of doing absolutely nothing to oppose, resist, or remedy the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, and doing absolutely nothing to restore the rule-of-law in banking. Mr. Romney, at this point, can only be pitied as some kind of thought-experiment gone awry in an evil consumer product testing lab on a planet of oafs. His fecklessness has no modern analog. Next to Romney, Bob Dole looks Lincolnesque.

     Which brings me in a very roundabout way to my point: Lincoln emerged out of a political age as mendacious as ours, after decades of gaming the issue of slavery. Out of that morass of lying connected to immense human suffering somebody had to bring the clarity of real moral duty to broad consciousness and Lincoln was selected by the same hand of Providence that would lodge a bullet in his brain-pan five years later -- so it is not that hard to understand the awe of Providence that attended the terrible convulsion of the 1860s and all its long-resounding ramifications. It took most of the 20th century and then some for us to un-learn that life is tragic.

     In the history that doesn't repeat but only rhymes, we're in the 1856 equivalent of the cycle now, short of the moment when mere clowning turns to savagery. I can barely stand to watch the antics, dogged by visions of where this is all tending. We have achieved something that few cultures ever have before: made ourselves unworthy even of our own low standards. There is no center left to hold, only ragged edges around a core of darkness.

And what was it I was saying yesterday about the nonsense that is this election?

So Just Who's Entitled?

I've refrained from much political commentary as some of the half-dozen of you that read me semi-regularly might have noticed. I could cite several reasons, but really, are you all that interested in hearing them? I'm just sick to death of the whole damn presidential race. It's been going on literally for a couple of years and the sight of the media feeding frenzy that surrounds the election is enough to sicken the strongest stomach. I'm sure I'm the same as millions of Americans who simply cannot wait for this infernal sham to be over with. Let's face it, folks, we're going to continue to get corporate governance, war, and fraud in high places. It doesn't make any difference who we vote for. The fat cats are calling the tune in both parties.

So the campaign is just theater really. What the US needs is a new people's party. Neither of the current ones represent the ordinary people of the country. Both lie when they say they do. Only the Republicans are more brazen about it. Their lies are more bald-faced, their hypocrisy more flamboyant, their chutzpa more flagrant--exhibit A that little Wisconsin weasel Paul Ryan who would not know the truth if it slept in his bed with him, but who utters falsehood every time he opens his mouth.

I've already gone off on that clueless clown Mittens the other day (see here) for his remarks about the 47 percent of Americans who don't pay income taxes. What I didn't talk about was all the welfare corporate America reaps out of the hides of the rest of us.

Real entitlement programs are ones where beneficiaries do not contribute, like when we working taxpayers pay bankers hundreds of billions of dollars "interest" on their reserves, or pay for puffed-up and no-bid government contracts or farm and oil subsidies, or pay pharmaceutical companies full retail price instead of negotiating discounts, or "borrow" money from the Federal Reserve bankers instead of our U.S. Treasury, or start wars to benefit defense contractors, or bail-out bankers, and spend trillions of dollars buying gutted mortgage packages from banks, brokerage houses, and insurance companies. We taxpayers are also paying hundreds of billions of dollars in corporate welfare, subsidies, and tax loopholes.

Twelve U.S. corporations that made a collective $171 billion in profit from 2008 to 2010 got tax refunds of $2.5 billion and received $62.4 billion in subsidies. . . . Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren stated, "Republicans say they don't believe in government.   Sure they do.  They believe in government to help themselves and their powerful friends."

Economic researcher, James S. Henry adds, "Indeed, if there is a class that is truly dependent on government subsidies, handouts and protection that it doesn't pay for, it is this new American aristocracy. So it is no accident that we may soon come very close to electing a president whose sole passion and preoccupation is to serve and defend the interests of this ruling, avaricious, tax-dodging class." (Source)

True Colors

It appears that Mitt Romney can barely talk anymore. Having to articulate around your own foot that's constantly in your mouth and halfway down your throat is not easy. And the fact of the matter is, every time we get new reports of some frightful gaffe the man has made, we get more insight into this guy's character. His latest is to my way of thinking the most revealing yet into who this guy really is.

The insight comes to us via Mother Jones magazine, which obtained a tape of Romney talking to a $50,000-a-plate fund-raiser this past May. A room full of fat cats like him. And the remarks which came to light have raised a lot a hell. As well they might because Romney says exactly what he really thinks of Obama supporters. Here's what he had to say about them:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

The words speak for themselves. This man has first, no idea what he's talking about. The people who don't pay income tax comprise many of the elderly, slews of people who are working and paying payroll taxes, but who are not making enough money to pay income tax, and others. But the worst part of this statement is the contempt with which this multimillionaire holds the ordinary people of the country. Dismissing them as basically freeloaders, people who feel "entitled." It's really hard for me to fathom that anybody with a brain, much less a conscience, could be so misinformed about people. But here's a guy who believes his own bullshit. It's his true colors.This guy's a rat.

Not Hard to Explain

When you have your kids around, whom you don't see for months at a stretch, it's difficult to focus on anything worth saying in a blog entry. So you are forced to easy expedients. Like this: sharing a pretty amusing video a friend has sent you.

One Term More - With Subtitles from One Term More on Vimeo.

Just in Time

Just in time for the Republican convention . . . may the Gulf hurricane take a hard right into Tampa next week! . . . we have this cheery news. Cheery for corporations in this land of the free and home of the brave.

1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't).




 Not so cheery if you're a working stiff. 2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. One reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to.



And really no surprise given the unemployment situation. 3) Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. This is both cause and effect. One reason companies are so profitable is that they're paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those "wages" are other companies' revenue.
 

 

All this data courtesy this website. 

Now, let me just pose this question . . . how can you expect the party of the corporations, the Republican party, to really be concerned about these last two charts? Seriously. Is not the business of corporations to turn as much profit as possible? And doesn't more hiring and raises and benefits for workers, doesn't all that cut into profits? Now, I'm sure there will be howls of indignation at the idea that corporations don't care about the welfare of their employees, especially those working class employees. All I say is look at the evidence. Over the past few decades, these caring corporations have relocated untold thousands of jobs oversees and cut back on what workforce remained in the US. They have abetted the recession by opposing through their GOP legislators relief measures for workers crushed by the ongoing recession. And they are squarely lined up behind Mitt Romney and his pro-business, anti-little person agenda.

I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone in the working class with the sense God gave a peanut would vote for a party that exists for the sole purpose of enriching corporations and the filthiest of the filthy rich among us and removing every possible governmental obstacle to their further enrichment. It's one of the great mysteries of the universe.

Related articles

• The Bain Legacy (inthesetimes.com)
• A nation of temps (salon.com)
• Here's What's Actually Killing The Economy... The Decline Of The Middle Class (businessinsider.com)
• Pew Study: The Economy is lagging because the middle class is broke (finance.yahoo.com)

Nothing But the Facts

There's been a huge brouhaha about the cover story of the latest Newsweek by Niall Ferguson. The title of the piece will give you a hint as to why: "Hit the Road, Barack. Why we need a new president." I first read about the controversy in the scathing response Paul Krugman had to it, terming it "unethical journalism" because of its "multiple errors and misrepresentations."

Ferguson then responded to Krugman, saying that he had been telling the truth and nothing but. His response was followed by a whole phalanx of fact-checkers, economists and bloggers who trashed the story and Ferguson's rebuttal, saying that both were filled with distortions and falsehoods about Obama's record. (Source)

You can read reams about this controversy, and frankly, if you're honest about it, there's no way Ferguson looks good after investigation. Krugman is correct. The piece is rife with errors of fact and distortions of fact. And it's obvious why, aside from the undoubted fact that Ferguson is a careless researcher. (Why would anyone concerned with his scholarly reputation would be so slipshod with the facts? It beats me.) Newsweek ftat out admits it did not fact-check the piece. What?? I thought this was absolutely sine qua non with mass-circulation magazines. Sort of like tying your shoes before walking in them. You check the facts, verify them, before putting them out before the world.

Indeed, it's comforting to read this ringing affirmation in Mother Jones that this is indeed standard practice in places that care about the truth.

Newsweek might not bother with fact checking these days, but Ta-Nehisi Coates says it's still alive and well where he works:

When I arrived at The Atlantic in 2008, I was subjected to arguably the most thorough fact-checking procedure in all of popular publishing. That meant submitting an annotated version of the story with all sources cited, turning over all my notes, transcripts or audio, and the names and numbers of each of my sources, all of whom were called to confirm the veracity of my quotes.

In case you're curious, Mother Jones works the same way for its print pieces. And yes, it's every bit the pain in the ass you'd expect. Also every bit as necessary as you'd think.

 Amen.

Related articles

• Top Newsweek Cover Reactions (thedailybeast.com)
• Media Hacks: Why Our National Press Corps Is Failing the Public Abysmally (alternet.org)

GOP Intent on Suicide

Mittens announced his running mate today. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Here is a guy who wants to solve the country's debt problems in the worst way. And he's got a plan. Yessir, he does. It has been revealed to us already. Basically, it's screw the poor and the elderly: reduce Medicaid and put Medicare on vouchers . . . oh, and cut Social Security, too. Along with government regulations on business. All reports say the Democrats are delighted that Romney selected a Tea Party darling to run with him.

Although the partisan writing for FireDogLake may exaggerate a bit, here's what could be fairly expected from Paul Ryan if he had his way:

• No more Medicare.
  No more Medicaid.
  Privatized (vampire-squid-administered) Social Security.
  No more Unemployment Compensation, parasites.
• No more Mars Curiosity Rover program.
  No more space exploration.
  No more public television.
  No more public radio, or National Endowment for the Arts or Humanities.
• No more public health funding.
  No more volcano monitoring.
  No more tsunami warning network.
• No more Weather Service, converted to a privatized, for-pay system.
  No more Planned Parenthood.
  No more Environmental Protection Agency.

Related articles

• Paul Ryan: Randian poseur (salon.com)
• David Axelrod: Paul Ryan Pick Meant to 'Thrill the Most Strident Voices' in GOP (abcnews.go.com)
• Why Paul Ryan could be a drag in Florida (which Marco Rubio helps Romney win) (miamiherald.typepad.com)
• Sunday Late Night: Mockery, Shaming and Illustrating Utter Hypocrisy Do Not Equal Gloating Over Unelectability (firedoglake.com)
• 3 Essential Things To Read About Paul Ryan Today (upworthy.com)