The Republican primary has degenerated from farce to madness. The early days were fun. Who can forget the grin-inducing sight of Marcus Bachmann dancing gaily and unselfconsciously with his shell-shocked Raccoon of the Right Michele? And then there was the walking sexual harassment lawsuit that was Herman Cain and his remarkable rise to the top by dumbing it down so much even a Tea Partier could get it. And Rick Perry. Need we say more? Rick Perry. His decision to run, in a word – oops.
The humor is gone now, though, and only the madness remains. Newt Gingrich’s rhetoric ratchets desperately from grandiose to bellicose. He attends three separate church services in one day, raising the God bar to heavenly heights. Two Baptist churches and one Catholic were graced with the attendance of the sybaritic non-believer and his young homewrecker. At least in his crass play of the God card he shows a rational Machiavellianism. It is in Mitt Romney’s legitimately held religious beliefs that we see real madness.
Mitt Romney baptises dead people. A longtime practice of the Mormon church was to baptise deceased non-Mormons in order to bring them into the fold. Several popes, hundreds of thousands of Jews. Elvis. Some non-believers, including Edward Davies, the deceased atheist father of Mr. Romney’s wife Ann.
The Mormon church claims the baptism isn’t definitive, only that the deceased are offered the chance to become Mormon in the afterlife. A kind of neighborhood proselytizing beyond the grave, apparently, missionary work in the Undiscovered Country.
Apologists for the actions claim it’s no big deal, yawn, hardly more invasive than lighting a candle for somebody. Jewish groups have complained mightily, however, and the Mormon church alleges it stopped the practice in 1995. (Though there is evidence the practice of "proxy baptism" continues.)
Mr. Romney’s father-in-law was a committed atheist, considering all organized religion "hogwash." He died in 1992 and was baptised by the Romney clan a year after his death. We can think of no action more disrespectful to Mr. Davies’ belief system than this proxy baptism. Mr. Romney and the Mormon church have fired the first salvo of criticism and disrespect with their actions, and we consider Mr. Romney’s Mormonism fair game in the ongoing discussion of his credentials for the presidency.
For months we thought Mitt Romney was the only sane candidate in the midst of folly and farce. The more we learn about him, the more we suspect he is the nuttiest of them all.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Critical Mass.: Elizabeth Warren Vs. Scott Brown
Time out from Florida. Time out from Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and the months-long question that frames the GOP primary: Which clown will be the last one driving the car?
We turn to a different race, the critical Massachusetts Senate race of incumbent Republican Scott Brown against Elizabeth Warren, middle-class advocate and co-creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Not to up the ante too much, but the fate of America might hinge on this race.
It’s an odds-on favorite that the Republicans will hang onto the House of Representatives, and will probably pick up a few seats in the Senate, even if the President does win re-election. Most of the Senate seats that are toss-ups this election cycle include 6 Democratic incumbents and just 2 Republicans. Currently the Senate is 53-47 Democratic. Lose a net four seats and the Republicans hold the Senate.
Republican leader Grover Norquist has as much as promised impeachment hearings against the president, should Mr. Obama win re-election and the GOP controls the House and the Senate. (Yes, impeachment is an opposition tool, apparently, as it had been during Bill Clinton’s presidency. We wish the Democrats had remembered that during the George W. Bush years.) The Massachusetts race could very well be key in hanging onto the Senate for the Dems, and thwarting any attempt by the Republicans to play their impeachment games.
Scott Brown is a smart and charismatic Republican, such a rarity these days in the GOP that we really can’t think of anybody to compare him with. A former model and Cosmopolitan centerfold, he knows how to carry himself in the visual medium that is modern politicking. He’s laconic and attempts to straddle the political fence, hard to do for a Republican in Massachusetts. We saw the word "independent" quite a few times on his campaign website, but rarely saw the word "Republican." To paraphrase one of his best-known quotes, "People in the Republican Party vote for me, people in the Democratic Party vote for me...hell, people who just like to party vote for me." Cute.
Warren can beat him. She’s polling well, slightly ahead in a December poll, and she seems intent on running a serious, take-no-chances campaign, something her predecessor in the 2010 special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s seat failed to do. General consensus on Martha Coakley’s campaign for the Dems range from, She phoned it in, to Worst Senate campaign ever.
To reiterate, this is a key match-up, and we offer a link to a Daily Show interview on Ms. Warren’s campaign website:
http://elizabethwarren.com/dailyshow?sc=tw
We will follow this race closely, and other key House and Senate races.
We will return to Florida anon, where the campaigns and their helmsmen continue to beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
We turn to a different race, the critical Massachusetts Senate race of incumbent Republican Scott Brown against Elizabeth Warren, middle-class advocate and co-creator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Not to up the ante too much, but the fate of America might hinge on this race.
It’s an odds-on favorite that the Republicans will hang onto the House of Representatives, and will probably pick up a few seats in the Senate, even if the President does win re-election. Most of the Senate seats that are toss-ups this election cycle include 6 Democratic incumbents and just 2 Republicans. Currently the Senate is 53-47 Democratic. Lose a net four seats and the Republicans hold the Senate.
Republican leader Grover Norquist has as much as promised impeachment hearings against the president, should Mr. Obama win re-election and the GOP controls the House and the Senate. (Yes, impeachment is an opposition tool, apparently, as it had been during Bill Clinton’s presidency. We wish the Democrats had remembered that during the George W. Bush years.) The Massachusetts race could very well be key in hanging onto the Senate for the Dems, and thwarting any attempt by the Republicans to play their impeachment games.
Scott Brown is a smart and charismatic Republican, such a rarity these days in the GOP that we really can’t think of anybody to compare him with. A former model and Cosmopolitan centerfold, he knows how to carry himself in the visual medium that is modern politicking. He’s laconic and attempts to straddle the political fence, hard to do for a Republican in Massachusetts. We saw the word "independent" quite a few times on his campaign website, but rarely saw the word "Republican." To paraphrase one of his best-known quotes, "People in the Republican Party vote for me, people in the Democratic Party vote for me...hell, people who just like to party vote for me." Cute.
Warren can beat him. She’s polling well, slightly ahead in a December poll, and she seems intent on running a serious, take-no-chances campaign, something her predecessor in the 2010 special election to fill the late Ted Kennedy’s seat failed to do. General consensus on Martha Coakley’s campaign for the Dems range from, She phoned it in, to Worst Senate campaign ever.
To reiterate, this is a key match-up, and we offer a link to a Daily Show interview on Ms. Warren’s campaign website:
http://elizabethwarren.com/dailyshow?sc=tw
We will follow this race closely, and other key House and Senate races.
We will return to Florida anon, where the campaigns and their helmsmen continue to beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Sunday, January 29, 2012
The End of Newt Gingrich; the Ginned-Up Wrath of the Right
There is no Fountain of Youth in Florida. Newt Gingrich acts as old as his 68 years, turning in weary, sub-par debate performances, getting cranky with the reporters in his train, insisting he’s not going to drop out of the race regardless of what happens in Florida.
When they start insisting they’re not going to drop out of the race, you know they’ve been seriously talking about dropping out of the race.
The numbers: They’re tanking. Mr. Gingrich is down to Romney by over 10 points in the latest polls. Ten percent of the vote is already in, mail-in ballots sent when Romney was leading by almost 25 points. On Tuesday, primary day, Mr. Gingrich will begin a 40,000-vote underdog.
It’s all breaking bad for Newt Gingrich. He got the Herman Cain endorsement; following hard on the heels of the Todd Palin (dude!) endorsement, and the Sarah Palin just-short-of-an endorsement (the former Wasilla, Alaska, mayor has commitment issues). (We are following the burgeoning journalistic trend of referring to Mayor Palin with the title of the most recent job she did not abruptly quit in the middle). We call this endorsement trio the "triumvirate of doom" in political endorsement land. We await the George W. Bush endorsement, permanently sealing Mr. Gingrich’s fate.
Accompanying the poor debate performances, his moon-base insanity almost sealed his fate. Mr. Control the Budget wants a permanent moon colony by the end of his second term. He says it’s dreaming big. We say it's madness. And we say this as, we must admit, a long-time science fiction nerdy type who thinks a permanent moon-base would be not only awesome but, eventually, inevitable. We also know that the technology for it is nowhere near reality at the present, and that a plausible time-frame would be 80 years from now, not eight. The trillions of dollars it would cost, and the mobilization of the entire planet’s brain trust and resources, to do it in eight years is, in a word, impossible. As in Ain’t Gonna Happen. It’s Newt telling unemployed and under-employed space workers on Florida’s Space Coast what stuff he thinks they like to hear.
Finally, Mr. Gingrich’s very lame television commercials permanently sank his ship. The health care ads were the most visible, and the most ineffective. First off, he began the most prominent commercial with a sepia-tinted profile shot of Mr. Romney, trying to make him look scary. Count Dracula-like. We hate to point it out to the Romney camp, but the shot was the first time in this campaign that Mr. Romney has actually looked kind of cool. The commercial devolved into the typical attack line from the right wing, that Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan is pure evil, that it’s like President Obama’s health care plan, which is even more purely evil. Etc.
Really. Dear Right Wing Tea Partiers: Nobody is all that angry about health care plans. Truly. Neither Mr. Romney’s nor Mr. Obama’s. We don’t care, the undecided voters don’t care, and frankly, you don’t care. (We are reminded of the line from noted atheist Penn Jillette, who said – paraphrasing here – that he was such an atheist that not only did he not believe in god, he also didn’t believe that anybody else really believed in god, either.)
We don’t believe anybody on the right is all that upset about health care. It’s the Thing they’ve latched themselves to, like pissed-off little limpets who had to find something to grab hold of. This is what they’ve got to work with, so they try to get themselves all het up about it. If it weren’t health care it would be something else. They can’t stand there and scream that they hate President Obama JUST BECAUSE. They need an issue. This is it. And nobody cares.
Their anger is free-floating, personal. If it is attached to anything it is attached to the man: his foreignness (to them), his color, his brains, his ability to skewer whoever they put up against him. They can’t understand how a guy with a middle name of Hussein can be President of the United States. None of their friends can understand it, either. Their anger is not about issues or events. If they were event-oriented people, they would have been angry at the last president. They would have been angry at the incompetent fool who allowed New York City to get blown up. They would have been angry at the manipulators of the truth who lied through their teeth to drum up a pre-emptive war in Iraq, slaughtering thousands along the way just ‘cuz. The worst decisions by a president of the last hundred years occurred on the Bush watch. Where was the ire of the Good People of the Right Wing? Where was the shrillness as he wasted the Clinton budget surplus and ran up record deficits? Nah, no ire. No shrill. He was a good old boy. He talked like a good old boy. Mr. Yale Man rich kid elite snob SOB, but all he has to do is dumb down the speech patterns to Texas Moron and all the right wing lemmings loved him.
Now they howl, writhe, froth at the mouth in worked-up outrage at "health care." They don’t care, and beating that drum was a misstep by the Gingrich camp.
His day will soon be finished, and he will slouch back to the land of K Street lobbying, right wing punditry, golf with Donald Trump and indulging at random whichever of the Deadly Sins rears its temporary head. After Tuesday, Mr. Gingrich, we suspect we will be bidding you adieu.
When they start insisting they’re not going to drop out of the race, you know they’ve been seriously talking about dropping out of the race.
The numbers: They’re tanking. Mr. Gingrich is down to Romney by over 10 points in the latest polls. Ten percent of the vote is already in, mail-in ballots sent when Romney was leading by almost 25 points. On Tuesday, primary day, Mr. Gingrich will begin a 40,000-vote underdog.
It’s all breaking bad for Newt Gingrich. He got the Herman Cain endorsement; following hard on the heels of the Todd Palin (dude!) endorsement, and the Sarah Palin just-short-of-an endorsement (the former Wasilla, Alaska, mayor has commitment issues). (We are following the burgeoning journalistic trend of referring to Mayor Palin with the title of the most recent job she did not abruptly quit in the middle). We call this endorsement trio the "triumvirate of doom" in political endorsement land. We await the George W. Bush endorsement, permanently sealing Mr. Gingrich’s fate.
Accompanying the poor debate performances, his moon-base insanity almost sealed his fate. Mr. Control the Budget wants a permanent moon colony by the end of his second term. He says it’s dreaming big. We say it's madness. And we say this as, we must admit, a long-time science fiction nerdy type who thinks a permanent moon-base would be not only awesome but, eventually, inevitable. We also know that the technology for it is nowhere near reality at the present, and that a plausible time-frame would be 80 years from now, not eight. The trillions of dollars it would cost, and the mobilization of the entire planet’s brain trust and resources, to do it in eight years is, in a word, impossible. As in Ain’t Gonna Happen. It’s Newt telling unemployed and under-employed space workers on Florida’s Space Coast what stuff he thinks they like to hear.
Finally, Mr. Gingrich’s very lame television commercials permanently sank his ship. The health care ads were the most visible, and the most ineffective. First off, he began the most prominent commercial with a sepia-tinted profile shot of Mr. Romney, trying to make him look scary. Count Dracula-like. We hate to point it out to the Romney camp, but the shot was the first time in this campaign that Mr. Romney has actually looked kind of cool. The commercial devolved into the typical attack line from the right wing, that Mr. Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan is pure evil, that it’s like President Obama’s health care plan, which is even more purely evil. Etc.
Really. Dear Right Wing Tea Partiers: Nobody is all that angry about health care plans. Truly. Neither Mr. Romney’s nor Mr. Obama’s. We don’t care, the undecided voters don’t care, and frankly, you don’t care. (We are reminded of the line from noted atheist Penn Jillette, who said – paraphrasing here – that he was such an atheist that not only did he not believe in god, he also didn’t believe that anybody else really believed in god, either.)
We don’t believe anybody on the right is all that upset about health care. It’s the Thing they’ve latched themselves to, like pissed-off little limpets who had to find something to grab hold of. This is what they’ve got to work with, so they try to get themselves all het up about it. If it weren’t health care it would be something else. They can’t stand there and scream that they hate President Obama JUST BECAUSE. They need an issue. This is it. And nobody cares.
Their anger is free-floating, personal. If it is attached to anything it is attached to the man: his foreignness (to them), his color, his brains, his ability to skewer whoever they put up against him. They can’t understand how a guy with a middle name of Hussein can be President of the United States. None of their friends can understand it, either. Their anger is not about issues or events. If they were event-oriented people, they would have been angry at the last president. They would have been angry at the incompetent fool who allowed New York City to get blown up. They would have been angry at the manipulators of the truth who lied through their teeth to drum up a pre-emptive war in Iraq, slaughtering thousands along the way just ‘cuz. The worst decisions by a president of the last hundred years occurred on the Bush watch. Where was the ire of the Good People of the Right Wing? Where was the shrillness as he wasted the Clinton budget surplus and ran up record deficits? Nah, no ire. No shrill. He was a good old boy. He talked like a good old boy. Mr. Yale Man rich kid elite snob SOB, but all he has to do is dumb down the speech patterns to Texas Moron and all the right wing lemmings loved him.
Now they howl, writhe, froth at the mouth in worked-up outrage at "health care." They don’t care, and beating that drum was a misstep by the Gingrich camp.
His day will soon be finished, and he will slouch back to the land of K Street lobbying, right wing punditry, golf with Donald Trump and indulging at random whichever of the Deadly Sins rears its temporary head. After Tuesday, Mr. Gingrich, we suspect we will be bidding you adieu.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Barack Obama on Attack; Real Clear Politics
The most useful site on the web for touting the great race of our time is Real Clear Politics (www.realclearpolitics.com). A cornucopia of the latest statistics, it has dramatically updated today to show current totals in delegates, popular vote count, all current polling data, and so much more.
President Obama’s numbers are surging in polling match-ups. Against Newt Gingrich, for instance, the president is at +18 in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The NBC poll has him at +6 against Mitt Romney. Six weeks ago the numbers were much closer, with the president and Mr. Romney in a virtual tie.
Trend lines for Mr. Obama’s job approval rating has hovered around 50 percent for the past two years. Congressional approval rating in the same period has dropped substantially, from 30 to 13 percent. More than one Republican congress member looked rather nervous at the State of the Union address (we think especially of you, Mr. Cantor), as the president of late has changed tactics in dealing with the opposition, from attempting bipartisanship in the past three years to rather abruptly slapping them around.
With his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama gave a veritable flip of the finger to GOP obstructionists who seem a bit shell-shocked that Mr. Nice Guy has suddenly turned into Mr. Chicago. We expect Mr. Obama’s approval numbers to continue their rise; the presumption by the right wing has been that the president’s soft approval rating has indicated broad support for his opposition. That presumption has been incorrect. His less-than-stellar numbers have been from his supporters disapproving of his refusal to put boot to throat of obstructionist GOP members of Congress. As the bootheel (finally) begins to twist, we expect his approval rating to soar.
In the Florida primary, Mr. Romney is in the catbird’s seat. The latest polls show him at a solid +9 against his closest rival. And with some 10 percent of the vote already in, what with Florida’s mail-in voting option, Mr. Romney most likely has at least a 40,000-vote lead before polls open Tuesday morning. A big win in Florida will give the Romney camp the momentum to pretty much lock up the primary. Unfortunate. We would like the horse race to continue. The mud that gets kicked up sticks – sometimes permanently – to the horses’ asses.
President Obama’s numbers are surging in polling match-ups. Against Newt Gingrich, for instance, the president is at +18 in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The NBC poll has him at +6 against Mitt Romney. Six weeks ago the numbers were much closer, with the president and Mr. Romney in a virtual tie.
Trend lines for Mr. Obama’s job approval rating has hovered around 50 percent for the past two years. Congressional approval rating in the same period has dropped substantially, from 30 to 13 percent. More than one Republican congress member looked rather nervous at the State of the Union address (we think especially of you, Mr. Cantor), as the president of late has changed tactics in dealing with the opposition, from attempting bipartisanship in the past three years to rather abruptly slapping them around.
With his recess appointment of Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, President Obama gave a veritable flip of the finger to GOP obstructionists who seem a bit shell-shocked that Mr. Nice Guy has suddenly turned into Mr. Chicago. We expect Mr. Obama’s approval numbers to continue their rise; the presumption by the right wing has been that the president’s soft approval rating has indicated broad support for his opposition. That presumption has been incorrect. His less-than-stellar numbers have been from his supporters disapproving of his refusal to put boot to throat of obstructionist GOP members of Congress. As the bootheel (finally) begins to twist, we expect his approval rating to soar.
In the Florida primary, Mr. Romney is in the catbird’s seat. The latest polls show him at a solid +9 against his closest rival. And with some 10 percent of the vote already in, what with Florida’s mail-in voting option, Mr. Romney most likely has at least a 40,000-vote lead before polls open Tuesday morning. A big win in Florida will give the Romney camp the momentum to pretty much lock up the primary. Unfortunate. We would like the horse race to continue. The mud that gets kicked up sticks – sometimes permanently – to the horses’ asses.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Newt Gingrich On the Ropes -- GOP Lies About Housing Debacle
Newt Gingrich did himself no favors in last night’s debate. He needed to score some major body blows on front-runner Mitt Romney – he did not. He barely treaded water, ending up with no more than a tie in the must-win performance. Prediction markets capture the feeling surrounding his candidacy, with the likelihood of his winning the Republican primary falling to under 7 percent (down from 30 percent less than a week ago).
Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are increasingly non-factors. Santorum heads home today, no longer bothering to campaign in the winner-take-all state of Florida that he knows he can’t win. Ron Paul isn’t really angling to win – he has his message, he’s using this bully pulpit to broadcast it, and we assume he’s enjoying himself on some level.
It could be all but over on the Republican side after Tuesday.
Just as well. Bring on the real debate, between the pasha of plutocracy on one side, and the proponent of pragmatism on the other. The contrast will be stark between Mr. Romney and President Obama. We can trust the Republican candidate to do what Republicans always do, and as they did last night, warp reality to fit their ideology of unchecked, unregulated capitalism.
When asked last night what they would do about the housing mess, all four candidates fell back on their easy ideology and the talking point they’ve created to cope with it: The government created the mess, through the vehicles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In their lemming-like flight from reality, these four candidates – indeed, all Republicans – have re-written history for far too long. The housing debacle we are in was caused by unfettered capitalist excess, not government intervention. To reiterate: The housing crisis was created by unchecked oligarchs pushing bad loans and getting filthy rich in the process.
With increased deregulation and the consolidation of major banks, lenders no longer had to hang on to the housing loans they made. The numbers of bad loans mushroomed, with lenders realizing they could make a profit on ANY loan they made, as it could be passed up the food chain to a large investment bank. The investment bank then bundled the loans together and sold them as investment vehicles, bribing ratings agencies along the way to give the subprime loan bundles Triple A credit ratings. With no regulation going on anywhere, including the newly created investment casino-style games like CDOs and derivatives, the big players could make leveraged bets on almost any scenario, including huge bets on the decrease in value of the same mortgage investment bundles they were selling to investors.
Eventually trillions of dollars were in play, funny money leveraged to the point of absurdity, with Fed Chairman (and infamous Ayn Rand disciple) Alan Greenspan – and all other free market enthusiasts – thwarting any attempt to regulate the increasingly out-of-control leviathan.
Everything collapsed. The huckstering of easy loans at the ground level caused a frenzy in the housing market, pushing prices up and up. When the bubble burst, we could see what had happened: Unfettered capitalism did what it always does – it made a few people very rich and bollixed it up for the rest of it.
We remember wondering how the right wing would explain such a mess. We were quite certain they wouldn’t acknowledge that they had been so obviously wrong about the ability of unchecked, laissez-faire capitalism to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. We recall hearing the first of their salvoes, then what became their sole talking point on the issue: Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie. They found a couple agencies involved in the mortgage mess with government ties, and tried to pin the whole debacle on them. They did what Republicans did best: lie to their advantage, magnify their lie a thousand-fold through their hundreds of right wing media outlets (which scream incessantly of a "liberal media" HA), and worked to warp reality to fit their needs. (We are reminded of the Karl Rove dictum...Reality Is What We Say It Is....)
And what are those needs? What they’ve always been. To allow an unchecked capitalism to continue to produce wealth for the very few, at the very top, now and forever, amen.
Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are increasingly non-factors. Santorum heads home today, no longer bothering to campaign in the winner-take-all state of Florida that he knows he can’t win. Ron Paul isn’t really angling to win – he has his message, he’s using this bully pulpit to broadcast it, and we assume he’s enjoying himself on some level.
It could be all but over on the Republican side after Tuesday.
Just as well. Bring on the real debate, between the pasha of plutocracy on one side, and the proponent of pragmatism on the other. The contrast will be stark between Mr. Romney and President Obama. We can trust the Republican candidate to do what Republicans always do, and as they did last night, warp reality to fit their ideology of unchecked, unregulated capitalism.
When asked last night what they would do about the housing mess, all four candidates fell back on their easy ideology and the talking point they’ve created to cope with it: The government created the mess, through the vehicles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In their lemming-like flight from reality, these four candidates – indeed, all Republicans – have re-written history for far too long. The housing debacle we are in was caused by unfettered capitalist excess, not government intervention. To reiterate: The housing crisis was created by unchecked oligarchs pushing bad loans and getting filthy rich in the process.
With increased deregulation and the consolidation of major banks, lenders no longer had to hang on to the housing loans they made. The numbers of bad loans mushroomed, with lenders realizing they could make a profit on ANY loan they made, as it could be passed up the food chain to a large investment bank. The investment bank then bundled the loans together and sold them as investment vehicles, bribing ratings agencies along the way to give the subprime loan bundles Triple A credit ratings. With no regulation going on anywhere, including the newly created investment casino-style games like CDOs and derivatives, the big players could make leveraged bets on almost any scenario, including huge bets on the decrease in value of the same mortgage investment bundles they were selling to investors.
Eventually trillions of dollars were in play, funny money leveraged to the point of absurdity, with Fed Chairman (and infamous Ayn Rand disciple) Alan Greenspan – and all other free market enthusiasts – thwarting any attempt to regulate the increasingly out-of-control leviathan.
Everything collapsed. The huckstering of easy loans at the ground level caused a frenzy in the housing market, pushing prices up and up. When the bubble burst, we could see what had happened: Unfettered capitalism did what it always does – it made a few people very rich and bollixed it up for the rest of it.
We remember wondering how the right wing would explain such a mess. We were quite certain they wouldn’t acknowledge that they had been so obviously wrong about the ability of unchecked, laissez-faire capitalism to produce the greatest good for the greatest number. We recall hearing the first of their salvoes, then what became their sole talking point on the issue: Fannie and Freddie. Fannie and Freddie. They found a couple agencies involved in the mortgage mess with government ties, and tried to pin the whole debacle on them. They did what Republicans did best: lie to their advantage, magnify their lie a thousand-fold through their hundreds of right wing media outlets (which scream incessantly of a "liberal media" HA), and worked to warp reality to fit their needs. (We are reminded of the Karl Rove dictum...Reality Is What We Say It Is....)
And what are those needs? What they’ve always been. To allow an unchecked capitalism to continue to produce wealth for the very few, at the very top, now and forever, amen.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Gingrich by the Numbers
Four hours until tonight’s GOP debate on CNN, the final debate before voting Tuesday for Florida’s winner-take-all primary. With a whopping 50 delegates up for grabs, a victory by Mitt Romney would nearly doom the Newt Gingrich candidacy.
Mr. Romney leads by 6-8 points in all the current polls, a dramatic shift from just a few days ago. Mr. Gingrich’s mediocre debate performance Monday night suggests the most likely reason for the shift. He is in the underdog position of having to score a near-knockout punch every time he and Mr. Romney enter the ring. A performance far short of that will not cut it. When attacked Monday, Mr. Gingrich tried the rise-above-it frontrunner approach, and it did him no favors. He must stay in attack mode without cease, or he will go down.
Newt Gingrich’s numbers in the prediction markets have plummeted in the past four days. From a peak of 30 percent (predicted to win the Republican primary) on Jan. 23, the day of the last debate, his likelihood to win the primary has dropped to 10 percent.
Those numbers – and the polls – undergo sudden shifts in this quirky primary, and a solid debate performance tonight could give Mr. Gingrich the uptick he needs to pull off the necessary upset in Florida. The audience will be geared up to make some noise, if for no other reason just to show those dang lib’ral moderators they can’t tell US what to do – and the bombastic Speaker has presumably prepared a number of blood-soaked quips to toss to the crowd.
If Mr. Romney plays the above-the-fray frontrunner, he leaves himself open for a desperate Newt-ron Bomb or two. It should be good. We are ready to rumble. We have snacks. They are not particularly Newt-ricious.
Mr. Romney leads by 6-8 points in all the current polls, a dramatic shift from just a few days ago. Mr. Gingrich’s mediocre debate performance Monday night suggests the most likely reason for the shift. He is in the underdog position of having to score a near-knockout punch every time he and Mr. Romney enter the ring. A performance far short of that will not cut it. When attacked Monday, Mr. Gingrich tried the rise-above-it frontrunner approach, and it did him no favors. He must stay in attack mode without cease, or he will go down.
Newt Gingrich’s numbers in the prediction markets have plummeted in the past four days. From a peak of 30 percent (predicted to win the Republican primary) on Jan. 23, the day of the last debate, his likelihood to win the primary has dropped to 10 percent.
Those numbers – and the polls – undergo sudden shifts in this quirky primary, and a solid debate performance tonight could give Mr. Gingrich the uptick he needs to pull off the necessary upset in Florida. The audience will be geared up to make some noise, if for no other reason just to show those dang lib’ral moderators they can’t tell US what to do – and the bombastic Speaker has presumably prepared a number of blood-soaked quips to toss to the crowd.
If Mr. Romney plays the above-the-fray frontrunner, he leaves himself open for a desperate Newt-ron Bomb or two. It should be good. We are ready to rumble. We have snacks. They are not particularly Newt-ricious.
Republican Scapegoating, Angry White Men, and Newt Gingrich
The participant we most hope to hear from in tonight’s GOP debate is the audience. Muzzled on Monday by an unusually stern Brian Williams (the possibilities for humor are endless, but debate moderators have taken enough abuse of late), audience members responded with stoic acceptance. There was little to relish in the resulting chat-up, and it appeared obvious that the bombastic Newt Gingrich felt most hampered by the New Quietism.
Let the audience react! insists Mr. Gingrich, who has threatened not to participate in any future debate where the audience has been instructed to be silent. Yes! we agree. Loudly, with standing ovation.
The best thing about this multitude of debates has been the utter delight in knowing that all of America is getting to see Republicans being Republicans. What used to be done in back rooms, or "quiet rooms," as Mitt Romney terms his ideal of secretive government, what used to be done under the cover of white hoods and bed sheets, is now made public, for all of America to see. Let America see Republicans cheering for the death penalty and the unplugging of coma victims. Let America hear them – and watch them – boo one of our (gay) soldiers and boo the word "Mexico." Indeed, we hope for more visuals, more pans of the audience as they work themselves into corpulent frenzy, cuts to their screaming faces reminiscent of "America’s Got Talent," the collective anger of Unfit White Men Behaving Badly.
Eighteen debates. How many more? Fifty – was that the number bandied about? Thank you again, whatever mole the Democrats inserted into the GOP leadership cabal. (Ahem.) (See our previous column dated Jan. 21, "Michael Steele – Our Own Kim Philby?") Somebody actually thought this would be a good idea for Republicans. Remarkable.
The GOP has staked its political survival for decades on scapegoating. It’s worked, in the short run. Identify an outgroup, vilify it, rally the base against its evils and its dangers. It doesn’t matter who the outgroup consists of – African-Americans, gays, latinos, Muslims, homosexuals – just beat them with a stick and hope the other primates who kinda look like you will jump in on your side. It’s the bully factor, writ nationally. Works every time – in the short run.
In the long run, the GOP has lost those groups, and it doesn’t stand a chance in hell of getting them back. Huge blocks of voters, forever lost. Ninety-plus percent of African-Americans. Sixty-five percent of latinos. An uncertain percentage of homosexuals, but doubtless most (with the exception of all the closeted gays in Republican leadership positions, but that will be the stuff of future writings.)
This unprecedented primary makes the guts of the Republican party transparent, everything they’re about, from the plutocracy of Romney to the demagoguery of Gingrich. The Republicans wanted a referendum on the president. What they’re going to get is a referendum on their own party, a party that has failed, repeatedly, when given power, and has moved so far outside the mainstream of American life as to be unrecognizable.
We reiterate: Please let the Republican audience react. Encourage them, even. Toss the red meat, Newt. America is watching.
Let the audience react! insists Mr. Gingrich, who has threatened not to participate in any future debate where the audience has been instructed to be silent. Yes! we agree. Loudly, with standing ovation.
The best thing about this multitude of debates has been the utter delight in knowing that all of America is getting to see Republicans being Republicans. What used to be done in back rooms, or "quiet rooms," as Mitt Romney terms his ideal of secretive government, what used to be done under the cover of white hoods and bed sheets, is now made public, for all of America to see. Let America see Republicans cheering for the death penalty and the unplugging of coma victims. Let America hear them – and watch them – boo one of our (gay) soldiers and boo the word "Mexico." Indeed, we hope for more visuals, more pans of the audience as they work themselves into corpulent frenzy, cuts to their screaming faces reminiscent of "America’s Got Talent," the collective anger of Unfit White Men Behaving Badly.
Eighteen debates. How many more? Fifty – was that the number bandied about? Thank you again, whatever mole the Democrats inserted into the GOP leadership cabal. (Ahem.) (See our previous column dated Jan. 21, "Michael Steele – Our Own Kim Philby?") Somebody actually thought this would be a good idea for Republicans. Remarkable.
The GOP has staked its political survival for decades on scapegoating. It’s worked, in the short run. Identify an outgroup, vilify it, rally the base against its evils and its dangers. It doesn’t matter who the outgroup consists of – African-Americans, gays, latinos, Muslims, homosexuals – just beat them with a stick and hope the other primates who kinda look like you will jump in on your side. It’s the bully factor, writ nationally. Works every time – in the short run.
In the long run, the GOP has lost those groups, and it doesn’t stand a chance in hell of getting them back. Huge blocks of voters, forever lost. Ninety-plus percent of African-Americans. Sixty-five percent of latinos. An uncertain percentage of homosexuals, but doubtless most (with the exception of all the closeted gays in Republican leadership positions, but that will be the stuff of future writings.)
This unprecedented primary makes the guts of the Republican party transparent, everything they’re about, from the plutocracy of Romney to the demagoguery of Gingrich. The Republicans wanted a referendum on the president. What they’re going to get is a referendum on their own party, a party that has failed, repeatedly, when given power, and has moved so far outside the mainstream of American life as to be unrecognizable.
We reiterate: Please let the Republican audience react. Encourage them, even. Toss the red meat, Newt. America is watching.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Roosevelt and Hoover: Last Night's State of the Union
Our level of anticipation last night was not for the President’s State of the Union address (we knew he would do well), so much as for the GOP rebuttal, to be delivered by the esteemed Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana. Gov. Daniels has been ceaselessly touted as The One, The Man Who Could Have Been, a Republican contender who might have ignited a feeling loftier than boredom or disgust.
Which really is where the GOP candidates currently reside, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich having staked out terrain on opposing ends of that continuum. On Mr. Romney’s Greensward of Boredom we remember, vaguely, the forgettable faces of Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman. Over in the Slough of Disgust paddled, for a time, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain. (The always anomalous Rick Perry managed to occupy an outlier position of Southern Fried Stupid.)
The Republican loyal, though they would probably not share our terminology, have sensed for months that something is Not Quite Right with their candidates, and have searched far and wide for a contender who would not embarrass them in the general election. They have pleaded with Chris Christie, toyed with Marco Rubio, and actively courted Mitch Daniels. (Rick Santorum, just clever enough to sniff the wind, has taken to referring to himself as the Goldilocks Candidate. As in "not too hot, not too cold," or, to fit the paradigm of today’s column, lying somewhere in the comfortable middle of the boredom/disgust continuum. We do not think this tactic will work for him – his poll numbers stagnate in the low teens, in Florida and nationally. And it is probably not wise for a man of such delicate appearance, who has fixated so greatly in his career on the vilification of homosexuals and their "agenda," to refer to himself using fairy tale terminology. Just saying.) The courting of Gov. Daniels continues, as the GOP lovelorn are, by turns, either bored or disgusted with the men in their lives.
Last night, Gov. Daniels frankly disappointed. He rests on the far end of the boredom scale, not quite a Pawlenty, but close. He gave a speech that Herbert Hoover might have been proud of, proclaiming that math might save us, or somesuch. We remained awake, just. Little more can be said.
One serious candidate runs who neither bores nor disgusts. The prediction markets ticked upward in his favor after President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, and downward for his Republican rivals. The rhetoric of a Roosevelt soared in overture to the tinny, tone-deaf Hooverism that was to follow.
After months of listening to the children squabble, it was a pleasure to spend time with the grown-ups. Considering the current disarray of the GOP, we are increasingly certain we will be spending four more years with one.
Which really is where the GOP candidates currently reside, with Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich having staked out terrain on opposing ends of that continuum. On Mr. Romney’s Greensward of Boredom we remember, vaguely, the forgettable faces of Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman. Over in the Slough of Disgust paddled, for a time, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain. (The always anomalous Rick Perry managed to occupy an outlier position of Southern Fried Stupid.)
The Republican loyal, though they would probably not share our terminology, have sensed for months that something is Not Quite Right with their candidates, and have searched far and wide for a contender who would not embarrass them in the general election. They have pleaded with Chris Christie, toyed with Marco Rubio, and actively courted Mitch Daniels. (Rick Santorum, just clever enough to sniff the wind, has taken to referring to himself as the Goldilocks Candidate. As in "not too hot, not too cold," or, to fit the paradigm of today’s column, lying somewhere in the comfortable middle of the boredom/disgust continuum. We do not think this tactic will work for him – his poll numbers stagnate in the low teens, in Florida and nationally. And it is probably not wise for a man of such delicate appearance, who has fixated so greatly in his career on the vilification of homosexuals and their "agenda," to refer to himself using fairy tale terminology. Just saying.) The courting of Gov. Daniels continues, as the GOP lovelorn are, by turns, either bored or disgusted with the men in their lives.
Last night, Gov. Daniels frankly disappointed. He rests on the far end of the boredom scale, not quite a Pawlenty, but close. He gave a speech that Herbert Hoover might have been proud of, proclaiming that math might save us, or somesuch. We remained awake, just. Little more can be said.
One serious candidate runs who neither bores nor disgusts. The prediction markets ticked upward in his favor after President Obama’s State of the Union address last night, and downward for his Republican rivals. The rhetoric of a Roosevelt soared in overture to the tinny, tone-deaf Hooverism that was to follow.
After months of listening to the children squabble, it was a pleasure to spend time with the grown-ups. Considering the current disarray of the GOP, we are increasingly certain we will be spending four more years with one.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Barack Obama Wins GOP Debate
The Republican default setting of passing every buck that can’t be pocketed was in full display at last night’s GOP debate, while their willingness to take credit for every Democratic achievement of the past 50 years increased.
Newt Gingrich continues in his attempt to rewrite history. The Historian Who Isn’t would have us believe that the excellences of the 1990s were the result of his and Tom DeLay’s obstructionist Congress, that President Clinton did not sit competently at the helm during that Golden Age of America.
A Golden Age indeed, at least in contrast to the debacle to come, the nigh collapse caused by the arrogance and ignorance of Bush the Child.
Three of the four Republican nominees are cut from the same cloth as Bush the Younger, and would give us more of his ill-considered policies. All three would continue to slash taxes on the rich, and would continue to explode (in more ways than one) the military’s budget into the stratosphere. Government expansion would continue, and we would waste our blood and resources on the shores of every foreign entanglement we could gin up. (The fourth nominee, Ron Paul, pursues policies that would make him anathema to the power structure should he have a real chance of winning: cut the military’s overseas spending, close our foreign bases, bring our troops home. We would fear for his safety were his polling numbers more consequential.) The budget – balanced during the Clinton Era – would see less revenue and increased spending, and we would continue to be as unsafe as we were during the Bush years. Let us not forget that W.’s incompetence resulted in the World Trade Center attack. Let us never forget that, and let us never let the Republicans forget that.
Newt Gingrich’s sole reference to the 9-11 attacks were to try to blame them for the economic collapse of the Bush Era – again, passing the buck in classic Republican fashion.
The tune the Republicans play wears thin, as serious people continue to clean up the mess of the spoiled child who inhabited the White House for eight years. They continue to let us know what they’re all about: spend spend spend in an attempt to bully the world, refuse to tax enough to pay for their follies, then find some poor sap getting a few hundred a month in food stamps and blame him for it. Their song plays sweetly on the ears of their demented base, but its unharmonious screech will send the rest of America running in the direction of the only grown-up in the room.
Last night’s debate winner was Barack Obama. Of the four standing on the stage, the new front-runner in Florida – Newt Gingrich by nine points in current polls – took some blows for his lobbying work, but he continues to embody that Place of Wrath most sad, discomfited Republicans detect in the depths of their unwell bodies. He can win if he is adequately organized, but there’s the rub – the Romney machine chugs along in all 50 states, while Mr. Gingrich scarcely has a machine. Which matters, frankly – he’s not qualified for the ballot in Virginia, for instance, rendering all 49 delegates of its winner-take-all primary slated for the Romney score column.
Overall, we still would bet on Mr. Romney to win the primary, but Mr. Gingrich has momentum, and in his flesh and jowls and tiny eyes looks so much the external manifestation of the what the GOP is all about, that we cannot count him out. We continue to expect a protracted battle, and we look forward to America getting to know what the Republican Party is all about.
Newt Gingrich continues in his attempt to rewrite history. The Historian Who Isn’t would have us believe that the excellences of the 1990s were the result of his and Tom DeLay’s obstructionist Congress, that President Clinton did not sit competently at the helm during that Golden Age of America.
A Golden Age indeed, at least in contrast to the debacle to come, the nigh collapse caused by the arrogance and ignorance of Bush the Child.
Three of the four Republican nominees are cut from the same cloth as Bush the Younger, and would give us more of his ill-considered policies. All three would continue to slash taxes on the rich, and would continue to explode (in more ways than one) the military’s budget into the stratosphere. Government expansion would continue, and we would waste our blood and resources on the shores of every foreign entanglement we could gin up. (The fourth nominee, Ron Paul, pursues policies that would make him anathema to the power structure should he have a real chance of winning: cut the military’s overseas spending, close our foreign bases, bring our troops home. We would fear for his safety were his polling numbers more consequential.) The budget – balanced during the Clinton Era – would see less revenue and increased spending, and we would continue to be as unsafe as we were during the Bush years. Let us not forget that W.’s incompetence resulted in the World Trade Center attack. Let us never forget that, and let us never let the Republicans forget that.
Newt Gingrich’s sole reference to the 9-11 attacks were to try to blame them for the economic collapse of the Bush Era – again, passing the buck in classic Republican fashion.
The tune the Republicans play wears thin, as serious people continue to clean up the mess of the spoiled child who inhabited the White House for eight years. They continue to let us know what they’re all about: spend spend spend in an attempt to bully the world, refuse to tax enough to pay for their follies, then find some poor sap getting a few hundred a month in food stamps and blame him for it. Their song plays sweetly on the ears of their demented base, but its unharmonious screech will send the rest of America running in the direction of the only grown-up in the room.
Last night’s debate winner was Barack Obama. Of the four standing on the stage, the new front-runner in Florida – Newt Gingrich by nine points in current polls – took some blows for his lobbying work, but he continues to embody that Place of Wrath most sad, discomfited Republicans detect in the depths of their unwell bodies. He can win if he is adequately organized, but there’s the rub – the Romney machine chugs along in all 50 states, while Mr. Gingrich scarcely has a machine. Which matters, frankly – he’s not qualified for the ballot in Virginia, for instance, rendering all 49 delegates of its winner-take-all primary slated for the Romney score column.
Overall, we still would bet on Mr. Romney to win the primary, but Mr. Gingrich has momentum, and in his flesh and jowls and tiny eyes looks so much the external manifestation of the what the GOP is all about, that we cannot count him out. We continue to expect a protracted battle, and we look forward to America getting to know what the Republican Party is all about.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Anchor Baby Mitt Romney to Release Tax Records
Andrea Mitchell, noted telejournalist and Ayn Rand disciple, smashed a pinata on the Chris Matthews Show last night, claiming members of the Romney clan entered the country illegally from Mexico. To quote:
"The other interesting little fact is about the Mexican Romneys. Those looking back at all of those records say that Mitt Romney should look back at the records because the Romneys that came back from Mexico to the United States, they crossed the border illegally."
Ninety seconds research on the internet neither confirmed nor disproved this claim, but we did learn that Mr. Romney still has several relatives living in a Mormon community in Chihuahua. Aye, Chihuahua.
All of which would be of little concern to anyone except the most extreme of racist Americans, who see red and froth and whatnot at the mere utterance of the word "Mexican." In other words, most of the Republican base – whose votes Mr. Romney feels slipping through his fingers like the sands of his ancestral desert homeland.
Mr. Romney hopes to weather a different storm of controversy, that surrounding his continued unwillingness to release his tax records. He has claimed he will flash a bit of his financial dainties tomorrow, hopefully sparing himself from further attack on this issue at tonight’s debate. We presume he will spend the time saved continuing to attack President Obama for his alleged incompetence. We assume the irony is self-evident.
Surely Newt Gingrich sits and laughs and jiggles like Jabba the Hutt, as minions from a nearby science fiction convention feed him pieces of candy that have fallen to the floor like manna. We will not speculate as to whether Callista owns a Princess Leia outfit.
"The other interesting little fact is about the Mexican Romneys. Those looking back at all of those records say that Mitt Romney should look back at the records because the Romneys that came back from Mexico to the United States, they crossed the border illegally."
Ninety seconds research on the internet neither confirmed nor disproved this claim, but we did learn that Mr. Romney still has several relatives living in a Mormon community in Chihuahua. Aye, Chihuahua.
All of which would be of little concern to anyone except the most extreme of racist Americans, who see red and froth and whatnot at the mere utterance of the word "Mexican." In other words, most of the Republican base – whose votes Mr. Romney feels slipping through his fingers like the sands of his ancestral desert homeland.
Mr. Romney hopes to weather a different storm of controversy, that surrounding his continued unwillingness to release his tax records. He has claimed he will flash a bit of his financial dainties tomorrow, hopefully sparing himself from further attack on this issue at tonight’s debate. We presume he will spend the time saved continuing to attack President Obama for his alleged incompetence. We assume the irony is self-evident.
Surely Newt Gingrich sits and laughs and jiggles like Jabba the Hutt, as minions from a nearby science fiction convention feed him pieces of candy that have fallen to the floor like manna. We will not speculate as to whether Callista owns a Princess Leia outfit.
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