Governor Romney isn't a right wing extremist. But he isn't a moderate either.

Seems like the general public believes Mitt Romney is a moderate Republican, while the Hard Right also believes he's a moderate--but who will sign any bill a Hard Right Congress sends him.

I think the Hard Right is right about this. But that means the Mitt is neither Hard Right nor Moderate Right. A moderate would veto radical legislation. A radical Republican would veto moderate legislation. Either way a politician with a political philosophy will promote that political philosophy.

And while the Mitt is clearly a Republican and has never in his life as far as I can tell strayed outside the outermost bounds of the the Republiverse, he shows no allegiance to any particular political philosophy within that spectrum. He reverses important policy positions depending on the audience and the time of day, often saying one thing, then having his peeps tell the press he actually meant the opposite of that (after the public he was speaking to heard the first thing while, like, 1% of them hear the reversal.

He does, however, show strict and steadfast adherence to a different philosophy: that he's entitled to rule us.

That's the only political philosophy we could ascribe to him that fits all the things he and his peeps have said over the past four years he's been running for President.

Problem: Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama

The GOP's Ministry of Propaganda dealt with this problem neatly and effectively:

They had Governor John Sununu, one of Mitt Romney's chief, official spokesmen, dismiss the endorsement as racial, then unring the bell the next day.

That's exactly like a prosecutor telling the jury some damning but tangential fact about the defendant, upon which the defense objects and the judge tells the jury to ignore what the prosecutor just said.

Un-hunh.

This let Republican voters ignore this prominent moderate Republican's endorsement of the Other Guy, ignore the reasons General Powell gave for his endorsement, and go on with the business of usual of rooting for the GOP's Great White Hope without ever saying a word about the fact that Governor Romney is, exactly and precisely, GOP voters' Great White Hope.

And of course not saying this fact is crucial to maintaining the postracial/postclass pretence of the GOP from top to bottom. So it was crucial to convey this dismissal of Colin Powell's endorsement by sacrificing a pawn. Governor Romney can piously denounce any such imputation, and if that requires abandoning John Sununu for a couple of weeks until the election's over--no problemo.

Does Square Romney trump Cool Obama?

CNN pundit Alex Castellanos apparently predicted a Romney win because he's square like a majority of Americans while Obama's coolness--his associations with movie stars, being able to sing like Al Green (Romney's singing is a little painful to listen to)--such coolness is offputting to America's Squrare Majority.

America does have a Square Majority of voters, since younger people tend not to vote, and even young conservatives are a lot less square than their parents--not being bothered by homosexual marriage, for example.

But there's a problem with Square Romney being more appealing to voters than Cool Obama: lying. I know a lot of squares. My own spouse is proudly square (albeit a lot less square than her siblings). But my spouse is also truthful, and the other squares I know are generally very truthful, while in the sphere of politics at least Romney isn't just a liar, but a pants-on-fire serial liar whose lying includes impeaching the personal character of his opponent, all the while looking like the very soul of honesty.

So that's the problem with this reduction of the presidential race to atmospherics.

Real squares are really square--which precludes being a real liar and a backstabber (and a frontstabber to boot).

Obviously Bishop Romney is honest and fair to his wife, children, and parishoner-equivalents. So how does he justify the radical difference in honesty with Candidate Romney?

I speculate that it's elitism. Romney was born to rule, he believes. His father was a ruler. He had an elite upbringing, and experience elite success running an investment business. His wife is the woman he'd wanted to marry. He gets what he wants. He's smart. He got an elite education. He's a leader in his church.

And all this justifies him lying, and lying, and lying--along with refusing to reveal his tax returns unlike other presidential candidates. He plans to be a Good Ruler, but that doesn't include telling us the truth.

Because we are not his equals. We are to be his subjects, grateful to have such a beneficent ruler.

Hail Romney!

Does your vote count if you aren't in a battleground state?

If President Obama wins reelection, the GOP will immediately embark on a full-bore campaign to delegitimize his win--especially if he loses the popular vote and wins because of the peculiarities of the electoral college, as has happened a number of times.

So it's crucial that the popular vote for him be as large as possible.

And don't underestimate the frenzy of Republicans to elect their Great White Hope, and, even more strongly, to defeat the Enemy, who they identify as Barack Obama.

If you listen to the right wing radio and TV stations regularly, as I do, you will see how personal this campaign is--and how venemous. Recently they've been emphasizing the traditional traits racists assign to all Negroes, stating as a fact that President Obama is lazy and stupid (needs teleprompter--can't speak extemporaneously--which his first debate performance reinforced) and unpatriotic.

Many right wingers hate President Obama so much they regularly write letters to the editors of their local newspapers denouncing him in the vilest terms--even in areas that are absolutely certain to vote to re-elect him. Their hatred is so mind-clouding that they appear to think that the latest calumny they got from Rush or Sean or Bill O'Reilly will actually convert Democrats in their Democratic districts. This happens to me at church fairly regularly, since I'm one of very few out of the closet Democrats in the denomination I attend.

That's what we're up against. They claim Democrats were like this about Bush, but we weren't. We despised him all right, but (a) he is one of the worst presidents in US history by the accounts of presidential historians--unlike President Obama, who they ranked #15 last time they were polled--and (b) the vituperation didn't extend to denying that he was an American citizen, or that he wasn't actually of the religion he said he was, or that he was the AntiChrist, which about 20% of Republicans believe (!). What I'm seeing reminds me of the way I imagine people in lynch mobs talk with each other.

So all our votes matter. And if you have relatives in the battleground states, encourage them to vote.

The foreign policy debate: Obama won, kind of

1. Foreign policy can't be reduced to bumper sticker slogans, and much of it takes place out of public view.

For an obvious example, we couldn't tell Pakistan's government about our raid to get Bin Ladin. For another example, diplomacy often involves compromises the average guy won't like. We do business with dictators, turn our backs on virtuous causes we're not in a position to pursue...we do what we can with what we've got under the prevailing circumstances.

And we can't do a lot of this out in the open. This is true regardless of who's president or which party is in charge. Life is just messy, and pretending otherwise is a path over a cliff.

2. If you watched the debate with the sound off, Romney looked like the president (except for the flop sweat), Obama like the contender. If you watched with sound on but didn't factcheck the answers, Romney had the relaxed, reasonable tone of a leader of a major nation comfortably in the lead, while the younger man looked like the upstart gunning for the Big Guy's job--slightly desperate.

3. If you knew your facts or looked them up afterwards, it quickly became obvious that Romney was once again reversing foreign policy positions he'd been stating for the last four years of pandering to the neocons and the Tea Party right wing of the right wing.

It also became obvious that while both contenders often shaded the truth, Romney not only stated one whopper after another, but they were whoppers that he'd already stated frequently--and which had already been debunked authoritatively.

So it was Obama's half truths against Romney's Pants On Fire baldfaced lies--but baldfaced lies told with a gentle "more in sorrow than in anger" smile that would earn the professional admiration of any professional con artist watching the debate.

Just go to politifact.com and factcheck.org for the details.

4. Sarcasm is the crack cocaine of smart people. It's sooo tempting to get snarky after hearing some halfwitted calumny for the umpty-umpth time. But it should be resisted. Women, in particular, don't like snark. Obama indulged himself in frequent snarkiness in this debate. I understand his exasperation with the con artist sitting across from him, but he shouldn't have gone there so much.

5. This debate was Kabuki theater, with each working angles underneath the putative reasons for each one's statements. Practically everything that was said in this debate had a reason for it being said that wasn't said, mostly in the form of manuvering to get the votes of particular constituencies in particular battleground states.

For example, Romney's mildness was a ploy to get women to vote for him in the main election after his wild-eyed chest-pounding caveman foreign policy stance in the primaries.

Romney's specific mention of ships was a ploy to win Virginia, home of major shipbuilders for the military.

Both of their devoting so much of the debate to Israel's concerns was a ploy by both to get the Jewish vote. Neither mentioned the drug war involving Latin America--in part because the obvious solution is to legalize narcotics for adults, along with marijuana (which is not a narcotic), and American's don't want to hear that.

Likewise pandering to the Jewish vote (especially important in the battleground state of Florida) precluded dealing with far more important foreign policy issues like Europe's ongoing economic crisis and our frenemy relationship with China, plus our role in helping all the nations surrounding China to the south/southeast/east deal with China's claim to pretty much all the waters between them and China's neighbors--a very dangerous issue. Plus China's efforts to conquer the independent nation of Taiwan and to commit ethnicide in Tibet.

And India--one of the primary locales for outsourcing of American jobs--got not one word, despite also being one of the two most populous nations on Earth.

Nor did sub-Saharan Africa.

Because talking about these places didn't improve battleground state voting for one or the other.

6. Romney's foreign policy as of last night is Obama's, only by a white guy. All those Southern crackers don't like Romney's pivot to the mild side, and they don't like his religion, but they really, really hate having a black man in the White House, so they'll vote for Romney as a bloc even as Romney abandons their preferred foreign policy in an effort to trick women into voting for him.

Making Romney the GOP's Great White Hope.

7. Neither Romney nor Obama drew the logical conclusion about military spending: that there is no sane reason for America to spend more than the next ten largest military-spending countries combined, much of that for expensive hardware rather than on training and equipping our troops better. And much of that expensive hardware is useless or at best suboptimal for the military conflicts we actually face.

For example, we don't need more supercarriers. We need a fleet of pocket carriers (like today's assault carriers) with UAVs and choppers instead of manned warcraft, for a fraction of the cost of those supercarrier task groups.

8. Winning the second and third debates was less important than winning the first one. If President Obama fails to win re-election, he'll spend the rest of his life kicking himself for thinking that people wouldn't buy Romney's constant lying--constant lying wrapped in extremely presidential-looking atmospherics by a Guy Who Isn't Black.

"Al Qaeda is stronger now"

Tonight Romney argued that Al Qaeda is stronger now.

The problem with such a statement is that Al Qaeda is not one organization. Terrorists don't respect copyrights. The original Al Qaeda has been decimated and is no longer able to centrally command resources and training and high-impact operations like 9/11. Most of what the West has experienced since 9/11 has been much smaller scale--the biggest being the Spanish and London train bombings. The attempts made on an in America have all been thrwarted, and have all been small scale--mostly one-man operations that had had some training and equipment from organizations such as "Al Qaeda in Yemen."

That organization is as radical as the original Al Qaeda but it doesn't report to the original group and is in no way controlled or coordinated by it.

These regional self-named Al Qaeda knockoffs are dangerous in their areas but do not represent a significant threat to America. We must pursue them but not turn ourselves inside out on their behalf.

So Romney's wrong. He has been continually campaigning on the scaremongering scenario that Al Qaeda has practically taken over the Arab nations. It hasn't, though right wing Arabs and Arab groups are trying to take over in every Arab country.

The Arab Spring is just the beginning of revolution across the Arab world--of people trying to get rid of the dictatorships that have parasitized the Arab world for many centuries. Democracy has a chance there but there is going to be decades of upheaval in most countries there. Trying to hang this around Obama's neck is ridiculous--as if America could turn back this tide, and as if this tide is uniformly right wing Islamist. That plays well with Tea Party types, and helps pry loose some Jewish votes, but it's false.

"The biggest threat to world security is a nuclear Iran"

That's what Mitt Romney just said in the third presidential debate.

Um, Iran isn't nuclear. So "is" "nuclear" and "Iran" don't go together. Obviously Iran is working hard--really hard--on developing nuclear capability.

But Pakistan is nuclear today--not just nuclear energy, but nuclear weaponry. It is also, unlike Iran, politically unstable, with a substantial part of its governing structures hating America, and a majority of its populace hating America. And it has a large, active, radical Islamist element--elements, actually--and even non-radical (by their standards) Pakistanis are, in a majority, radical by Western standards.

Iran is a potential danger, and that danger must not be overlooked. But to put that above the real and present threat of nuclear Pakistan is ridiculous.

"When I am President"

Some candidates for public office--Mitt Romney for example--state as a fact, consistently, that they are going to win the upcoming election.

I admire self-confidence. I agree with George Bernard Shaw that the humble "usually have much to be humble about."

But when the consensus of the polls show that it's a crapshoot--heck, even if the polls show the guy doing the boasting is, say, five points ahead--and that's about as much as any presidential candidate gets in this country--constantly doing the victory dance before the victory just looks like crude braggadocio.

This is a small point. A tiny point perhaps. And Boss Romney isn't the first one to boast about a victory before an election (remember Truman holding up the newspaper announcing Dewey's win?).

I bring it up because I think it's a guide to the character of the man.

Lance Armstrong: both villain and scapegoat

Okay, so now Lance is on track to losing everything--all that reward money, endorsement money, all connections to bicycling. It's obvious now that he won by cheating. So he's getting what he deserves, right?

Yes and no. Consider the fact that no winner of those seven Tours de France will be named now. Because the rest of the leaders were doping too. Have they all been banned for life as well. Nope. One or two year suspensions mainly.

And compared to other sports--he never paid anyone to make another competitor crash and get injured. Yet the football coaches and players who paid for and did this have not received comparable opprobrium. Or how about the player/enforcers in ice hockey, whose job description is in reality "breaker of opposing players" ? Or the more thuggish NASCAR race car drivers with a rep for making other drivers crash?

Also consider the extreme likelihood that no one who didn't dope could have won those races. With or without doping Lance was one of the toughest, most skilled cyclists ever. Without doping he would not have won any Tour, however.

So for my money the greatest punishment should go to sportsmen who injure other sportsmen intentionally. And to the extent that Lance may have coerced other teammates into doping, I'd punish him more for that than for doping himself. For doping himself, he deserves the same punishment anyone else gets--not more, not less.

And doesn't it seem like he's getting more because he won all those races? How is it just to punish him for winning AND doping. Punish everyone in every sport who doped--and punish them the same. Don't single out Lance because he was the most adept at it. Or because he also won.

How should a presidential debate be moderated?

The RWM (Right Wing Media) went into a collective rage over Candy Crowley's moderation of the second presidential debate.

The ideal they put forth is a moderator who stays out of the way--who introduces the combatants and then shuts up for 90 minutes.

What the RWM never says--not once--is that this kind of moderating favors the bully.

"Bully" meaning the guy who talks over both his opponent and the moderator, interrupts both repeatedly, and treats the President of the United States with the same level of respect as a prosecutor would in the trial of a perp accused of human trafficking.

The RWM totted up all the times Candy Crowley "interrupted" Boss Romney. They forgot to mention the fact that what she was doing was trying to keep BR from trying to keep the POTUS from finishing a sentence--over & over & over.

And of course her fact check of BR's triumphant declaration that the POTUS didn't call the Benghazi assault an "act of terror" for two weeks was correct, as the transcript showed, even though that statement was followed by two weeks of waffling--even though that has nothing to do with which person would be better overall in foreign policy.

The RWM said that CNN had apologized for Crowley's fact check. I looked up CNN's official statement on the CNN website and they did just the opposite.

Again showing that the RWM's statements of fact are generally unreliable.

Romney isn't an extremist. But he isn't a moderate either. He's a winner.

The Democrats were wrong in trying to paint Boss Romney as an extremist, hard right ideologue. At the same time Romney is lying when he describes himself as a moderate. Because a moderate wouldn't sign a bill banning all abortions for all reasons, and Romney has said he would, on the record. But an extremist wouldn't shake the Etch a Sketch and say he doesn't believe in outlawing abortion.

But it's no paradox. You just have to understand that Romney is neither an extremist nor a moderate. He's a winner. That is, his true, underlying political philosophy is "I win. I say whatever it takes to whoever I say it to to win." 

He can justify this to himself because he believes himself to be--as do most seriously wealthy Americans--to be someone who's entitled to be our Boss of Bosses. That his acumen in acquiring wealth makes his deserving of the position, and is due entirely to his acumen, not his accident of birth, because his father didn't set him up in business (after paying for his entire, very expensive private school/college education, however).

That he is so deserving of the position that it justifies lying constantly to voters. End-means.

He is correct in believing that no one can tell voters the unvarnished truth and become President. Because he'd have to tell voters that America can't have the social services most Americans--very much including the Republican ones--want at the level of taxation most Americans demand, and voters have a grossly unrealistic picture of who would have to sacrifice what in order to get this country on an even keel--again, both Demos and Publicans are equally deluded in this regard. 

Nor can either candidate be honest about the limitations of the American President--how our Founders and their Constitution put so much budgeting power in the hands of Congress, and then tilted the voting playing field so much in favor of small rural states and the expense of rich urban ones, that the most ignorant, hidebound Americans have a disproportionate say in how our government is run, and the President's powers are most circumscribed in the area of domestic policy and spending. 

President Obama can't tell voters he can't do much more in a second term than block the GOP's relentless drive to hand over all the country to the billionaires instead of just most of it. Boss Romney can't tell voters how much he'll be a captive of his party's most extreme voters and leaders if he wants a second term. "Campaign in the primaries from the far right; campaign in the general election from the middle; run the country for the far right."

So we get smoke and mirrors from both sides.

However, the nonpartisan factcheckers are showing that the Democratic leadership lies and spins about a third of the time, while the Republican leadership lies and spins about half the time--and even when they're telling the truth they're telling it in such as way as to get voters to believe a lie. 

So the two parties are not morally equivalent. I attribute this to the Republican's admiration for raw power. They don't mind Boss Romney lying--he's their Great White Hope, after all. They don't mind him ordering around both the moderator and the President of the United States in debates. They don't mind him not telling us how his economic plan adds up when no reputable economist can figure out how it can. 

As long as he WINS...all is forgiven. 

The Republicans have embraced Coach Lombardi's guiding principle for the Green Bay Packers for all those decades: "Winning isn't the most important thing. It's the only thing."

And that's Boss Romney's utterly consistent political philosophy, carried out during the primaries with the foaming-at-the-mouth Republican Base, and now carried out with vastly different promises and policies with the mainstream voters and independents.

"I win."

Of course this will continue through his first term as President as he signs every bill Congress sends him, no matter how Hardcore Right Wing it is, because if he doesn't he won't get re-elected. Bush I is living proof of what today's GOP does to presidents who act rationally.

Oddly enough, President Obama appears not to respect Boss Romney's profoundly consistent philosophy...

"The last four years have been a failure"

The heart and core of Romney's pitch to the American voter is that President Obama is a failure. A failure on the economy, on foreign policy, on social issues.

Of all the Big Lies Boss Romney is running on, this is the biggest lie of all.

First: Compared to what? Compared to earlier boom years? That's ridiculous. The only valid comparison is compared to what would have happened from 2008 to 2012 if the Republican candidate had won the presidency instead of the Democratic one.

The fact the Republicans totally refuse to face is that we were teetering on the edge of a second Great Depression--and President Obama pulled us back from that edge. So though times were tough, we weren't seeing a third of the workforce out of work, along with the rest of the social upheaval Americans endured through the Great Depression.

And the best example of what a Republican presidency would have done is what Herbert Hoover and his team actually did under similar circumstances about 70 years ago, preaching almost exactly the same ideas that Boss Romney is peddling. Hoover's fiscal stringency turned a major recession into the Great Depression. So would have today's Republicans, who apparently learned nothing from the last depression.

The second fact the Republicans totally refuse to face is that we are now inextricably embedded in a world economy, and what happens in the EU, in China, in India and elsewhere affects America significantly--and no American president can ignore that. Romney's talk about American exceptionalism and his bringing us back to world leadership is insulting to our allies and is also shallow revanchism. At the end of WWII we were the last man standing. This is a very different world--one in which America is extremely important, but not in anything like the way it was when we had the only nukes and the only plexus of intact factories.

Meaning that Boss Romney's chest-thumping posturing about foreign policy does nothing but insult our allies by positioning them as our servants--except for handing leadership in our foreign policy over to the leader of one faction of one small country, whose own coalition partners and a majority of public opinion in that small country don't agree with.

President Obama's "failure" in foreign policy rests on Boss Romney's unspoken assumptions that we could have stopped the Arab Spring from happening if BR had been in power; that the Arab Spring exactly equates to Al Qaeda's takeover of the Arab countries that have overthrown their dictators; that either killing Bin Ladin doesn't matter, or that President Obama deserves zero credit for it; that what the President does quietly in behind-the-scenes negotiations equates to doing nothing; that his UAV campaign has not degraded Islamofascists' capabilities; and that Al Qaeda is as strong or stronger today than it was when he took office.

Every single one of these assumptions are false, but play well to non-college-educated white men--the heart and soul of today's Republican Party--not according to me, but to easily verifiable voter demographics.

And President Obama's "failure" in social policy depends on whether you're pro- or anti-abortion, pro- or anti-immigration (I'm anti-illegal immigration personally, but BR's base really doesn't like their Anglo white country becoming a multicultural rainbow one--I sympathize with their angst, actually, but enjoy our new multicultural country myself; so whether that's a failure or not is not objective reality but dependent on whether you want a monocultural/monoracial America or not).

The RWM (Right Wing Media) didn't mind Romney's moves

Sometimes style is substance. In Tuesday night's debate, Governor Romney ran over the moderator, ignored questions posed by the audience to say what he wanted to say...and repeatedly interrupted and ran over the President of the United States, at one point pointing a finger at the President and telling him "You'll get your turn" as if Romney was already the Prez, and at another time telling the Prez "Let me give you a bit of advice."

All of this sailed right over the RWM's collective head. Instead they attacked Candy Crowley for not giving Romney the deference he was due (from their point of view) and calling her a Lib-er-ul working for Obama for her daring to try to get Romney to abide by the very ground rules he himself had insisted on for this debate. And they attacked the President of the United States of America for failing to give the former Governor of Massachusetts the deference the RWM felt was due said Guv.

Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough, whose early-morning MSNBC show is the only moderate Republican show left on TV, did point out that Romney had crossed the line from seeming confident to seeming arrogant. People's true nature shows up when they are challenged. Romney showed that expects everyone to defer to him and not challenge him--and that the rules must be obeyed...by everyone else. Scarborough observed that you don't run over a female moderator...and you don't run over the President, whoever currently holds the office.

In other words, Romney doesn't act like a contender for the Presidency. He acts like a contender for CEO, and the President as someone he's about to sweep aside--someone whose office deserves no respect per se. I think he honestly doesn't realize the difference.

Nor does the RWM.

In doing so the RWM demonstrates how tribal is has become. A real conservative like Scarborough--who will assuredly vote for Romney--accords the office respect. The fake conservatives who throng the RWM do not. They give zero respect to the office, putting their tribe/party above the nation, their party's flag above the Stars & Stripes on the flagpole.

This is not quibbling over style. A man who does not respect America's institutions, as Romney demonstrated Tuesday night--a man who doesn't think his own rules apply to himself--is a man who as president would do what Bush II did: install a Party apparatus superseding the national one, with Party operatives in charge of every department, running every department for the benefit of the Party's political goals, politicizing every function of the State.

And like Bush II he would treat foreign heads of state as owing deference to him, continuing the blunders Romney has already made abroad.

Yet another sign of how his Presidency would be an Imperium is his son Tag joking (?) after the debate that he'd wanted to charge up there and take a swing at the President of the United States for calling his father "a liar."

There are things you don't make jokes about. Saying you have a bomb on you as you're waiting to board an airliner. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater just for the fun of it. And joking about physically assaulting the President of the United States.

Mitt Romney's father and mother were moderate Republicans, not hard-eyed tribalists. Boss Romney has now effectively repudiated most of what his father and mother stood for...and Mitt's son has too, apparently.

What happened to conservatism? Because this kind of behavior is not conservative.

CEO Romney is that boss

"Mitt Romney is that boss who tells lame jokes and waits for everybody to laugh--or else. And who keeps us forever off-balance, uncertain, and anxious...

"America is now faced with a very clear choice. Does it want a President--or a Boss? And Romney would have no objection to being characterized as a boss, because that's how he presents himself--as a CEO, or what he prefers to call a Job Creator, with that halo...

"[But] Job Creator is a euphemism for Profit Creator, and creating profit often involves firing people. So he wouldn't mind being called a Boss...

--James Lipton, host of The Actor's Studio program

Romney's secret buddy program works!

Romney has friends. Boy howdy does he. Only you don't get to know who all his friends are, because the Supreme Court's corporatist majority decreed that politicians can have secret friends. And now Romney's friends--many of them secret--have spent over $100,000,000 on trying to get rid of Obama than Obama and his friends (only 3% of whom are secret) have spent on trying to stop Romney from grabbing the White House.

One hundred million dollars more on one side than the other, mostly from billionaires and corporations that don't want you to know who they are.

How's that for a thumb on the scale?

Romney's jobs plan is....

Governor Romney's jobs plan is for the government to do nothing about jobs--no spending on our infrastructure, which is now approaching that of a third world country. No spending on public sector jobs--no more teachers, cops, firemen.

His "jobs plan" is lower taxes--especially for the rich. Then businesses will hire people. Just like they did when Bush II and the Republican Congress lowered taxes.

Only they didn't. Because "supply side" economics doesn't work, has never worked, will never work.

Saying you're all about jobs all the time sounds great if you're concerned about jobs. Unless you look at what he means by what he says, and what he means is a rejection that government can help produce jobs in any way other than by withering away (the last people who talked about the government withering away were the Communists BTW).

Does the Libyan terrorist attack mean Romney'd be a better CIC?

Commander in Chief-wise, Romney talks about almost nothing but the death of four Americans in Libya on Obama's watch and the followup.

First, in the context of America's entire foreign policy, economic and military and humanitarian, even with the death of four Americans including the Ambassador, even if the Obama administration bungled security for our diplomats there, it's a tiny part of our entire efforts/operations around the world. Romney is depending on voters being unable to comprehend this fact. He wants voters to ignore the death of Bin Ladin on Obama's watch and at his order. He wants voters to ignore the overall great success of Obama in foreign affairs and to only think about this one thing. He wants voters to ignore the fact that Romney has almost no foreign affairs experience himself, and what he has said and done has not been competent.

Above all he wants voters to forget the fact that the terrorist attack on 9/11 occurred on the last Republican presidency's watch, with nearly three thousand people murdered instead of four, and with that Republican presidency denying any responsibility whatsoever for that tragedy to this day, despite all the warnings coming to them from the intelligence community and from the previous attack on the Twin Towers, the attack on a US Navy warship, and the bombing of our embassy in Kenya with a loss of hundreds of lives.

I'm not impressed by the Obama administration's varied statements and actions before and after the Libyan tragedy, though I certainly didn't expect them to immediately name who did it--and in fact we still don't know exactly who did do it--it's a blip compared to the Republicans' permanent evasion of any responsibility whatsoever for 9/11--not to mention their incompetence at going after the person who did it and the country who harbored him.

Half of America wants a CEO; the other half wants a President.

Given that America is split down the middle about Romney vs. Obama--and about what the job is. Those for Romney want America to have a CEO. What they may not realize is that there's a fundamental difference between a CEO and America's presidency: Congress doesn't work for the President. It's a totally independent entity. There's no equivalent to that in a CEO's organization--everyone in his company works for him, and he can fire anyone who opposes him.

But if the Senate retains its Democratic majority, Senator Reid won't be working for a President Romney. Romney would say he understands that, but his behavior in last night's debate showed a man who believes himself to be the superior--by virtue of his enormous wealth?--to both the moderator and the President. He treated Candy Crowley like an employee, and the President of the United States like a competitor for a major contract where Romney has all the cards.

This is not the behavior of a bully--not exactly. A real bully bullies everyone all the time. Romney is quite pleasant with those who acknowledge his superior status.

I suspect he's been this way all his life. The high school incident where he organized other students to waylay the school's eccentric boy with the long hair to hold him down and cut that hair is no different from his behavior in last night's debate. He didn't torment or harass the odd boy in his high school. He just did what it took to make him conform to Boy Mitt's dress standards.

A small panel of Ohio undecided voters after the debate leaned slightly in Mitt Romney's direction after the debate. So obviously the behavior I found to be condescending and arrogant seems to have struck them as just fine--commanding and dominant like they'd expect an Alpha male to act. They bought off on Mitt's assertion that as a successful CEO he knew what to do with the economy and the jobs issue.

So while I didn't think Romney made his case for America needing a CEO (as Herbert Hoover was) instead of a President, much less himself, around half the country is still buying what he's peddling.

"Romney has a plan, and the Democrats don't."

That's a key GOP mantra. 

Well, the GOP definitely has a plan. And if it gains full control of Congress, the White House, and the Judiciary, it will execute that plan swiftly, efficiently, and do so in a way that would be extremely hard for a subsequent Democratic majority to unravel (especially with the hard-Right Corporatist Supreme Court supermajority that a Romney administration is almost certain to achieve).

It's also true that regardless of whether President Obama has a plan, the Republican-dominated Congress will not send him any bills to sign that would reflect such a plan. So whether he has a plan or not is moot.

Nor does Romney's plan matter either. Seriously, can you imagine him vetoing any bill the Republicans in Congress sends him?

So what it boils down to is dueling pens: Romney's signing pen vs. Obama's veto pen.

Re-electing President Obama guarantees four more years of gridlock and brinksmanship by the Republicans. The only thing more unpleasant to consider is what will happen if they gain total control over government.

Better gridlock and crises of governance than four to eight more Bush years. And even though Romney undoubtedly has a higher IQ than Bush, he's just as ignorant of foreign affairs as Bush, and just as willing to sign his party's bills as Bush.

Remember, duelling pens.

 

Tr

When politicians lie it looks like they're telling the truth

Lying politicians don't lie like your five year old son, stammering and fidgeting and shifty-eying. Nossir. The lie in a calm, collected manner. They wear a suit and tie (if they're men) just like your pastor's. They look you right in the eye. And they back up their lie(s) with fake facts, fake stats, fake studies--lots of them.

Thus when CEO Romney tried to counter the fact that the arimatic of his budget proposal doesn't add up, he cited six studies that refuted the study the President referred to.

One the study the President cited was a reputed, nonpartisan, authoritative group's study, while all of Romney's weren't studies at all--mostly they were blog entries and a Wall Street Journal editorial.

There were six of them, though. He wasn't lying about that.

But here's the biggest problem: both parties' lies tell each party's partisans exactly what they want to be true. They reaffirm each side's tribalists' belief that all things good and true accrue to their side and their side alone--and vice-versa.

Even when they shake the Etch-A-Sketch and start to say the exact opposite of what they'd been saying for two years, partisans happily accept that if the candidate winks to them that he's just saying these things to fool non-partisans into voting for them.

Partisans always believe their ends justify their means (and that your ends don't of course).

Solyndra and the GOP's paradoxical attack

Solyndra failed for a number of reasons--two of which the Republicans never, ever mention: Chinese product dumping and Chinese currency manipulation.

Solyndra used a newer, more efficient solar panel technology but couldn't compete against Chinese product that didn't work as well but was vastly cheaper.

It was cheaper because the Chinese government-backed companies were selling at a loss in order to drive competitors out of business--that what "dumping" means--and because the Yuan's value is fixed by the Chinese government at an artificially low value.

Now Governor Romney rails against the Chinese government for fostering product dumping and currency manipulation.

Except when it actually does it, apparently. Because Romney's attacks on the Obama administration for Solyndra's failure never ever not once mention Chinese product dumping and currency manipulation.

Isn't that interesting?


This is also an example of the limits of "free" capitalism: when it's up against state-backed competition. Unless our government acts to protect our industries from unfair competition, such marketplaces operate on a tilted playing field, where our "free" capitalism fails without support from our own government. Yes, that inefficient, evil federal government Romney rails against so much of the time.

Are we a "center-right country" as the GOP constantly says?

Well, for one thing, Americans don't say they are. Only a third of Americans say they are conservatives, while about a fifth say they are liberals. The rest say they are moderates. So while more Americans say they are conservative than say they are liberal, a plurality of Americans reject both labels.

But wait, there's more. A solid majority of Americans are against raising taxes for pay for federal government spending. But that same majority have a picture of what the federal government spends money on that's radically different from reality--they grossly underestimate what the government spends on them, and overestimate what it spends on others--particularly foreign others via foreign aid, which is a tiny part of the budget. Many don't even realize that MediCare is a federal program.

What our "center-right" tilt boils down to is "Justice for thee--mercy for me." Americans want a level of government services that our current level of taxation won't pay for. They don't want fewer services. They don't want higher taxes. And our politicians of both parties don't want to tell this to the public. Instead the Democrats tell sob stories while the Republicans tell horror stories and talk about "waste and fraud" when the biggest amount of fraud--by far--goes to corporate welfare, not personal welfare.

Is Mitt Romney trying to shoot Big Bird?

Neither side has been clear about Big Bird. Cutting off federal support for PBS won't kill Sesame Street, which is well-funded with or without federal support, as Governor Romney has pointed out repeatedly.

What cutting off federal support for PBS will do is kill off many public TV stations outside the major urban markets.

Same is true for the Postal Service BTW.

In both cases the Republican model is the market model, naked and unadorned. Treat government exactly like a for-profit business.

The irony here is that the Republican heartland is precisely the territory and the people who will lose out. We in the urban areas--mostly Democratic--will get Sesame Street and our mail regardless. It's the crusty old farmer out in the countryside who will have to drive into town to get his mail, and get Sesame Street for his grandchildren via DVDs or satellite-based transmissions. And in the latter case, what's really lost isn't national programs like Sesame Street but local programming--not just news, but local cultural events, nature shows and more.

Romney sells himself as the right guy to run the country like a business. For being America's CEO.

If that were true, the first thing he'd do is quit taking money from Democrats and sending it to Republicans--which is what the federal government has been doing for decades, since all the Blue states are net donor states in terms of taxes going to Washington vs. business coming from Washington, and all Red states are net recipient states.

What odds can I get on whether CEO Romney would do that at any point in his presidency?

And this is a lot more money than the relative pittance going to PBS.

The presidential race at this point

The GOP's central thesis for undecided voters is that President Obama is a nice guy who gives a good speech but is incompetent to lead the country--can't get things done--while Romney may not give as nice a speech and may not be as nice a guy but he's a very successful businessman who is supremely competent and can get things done.

The Democrats' central thesis for undecided voters is that President Romney is a blustering incompetent in foreign affairs and untrustworthy in domestic policy--that he may be able to work with a Democratic majority in the legislature, but with a Republican majority he will be efficient all right--efficient at leading the American middle class over the cliff, because he sees anyone who isn't as successful as him as a moocher. And that Mr. Romney is a closet extremist on social issues like abortion.

Some points:

1. Foreign Policy

The Republican Party always attacks the Democratic contender's proven strengths. Here it's foreign policy, where President Obama has been generally highly effective. The GOP attacks about Libya are bogus. It's tragic that four American foreign service personnel were lost on Obama's watch, and at least some blame attaches to his administration for it.

But the last Republican administration saw us losing nearly three thousand Americans to a sneak attack on Bush's watch. Like Obama on the loss of four Americans in Libya, the Republicans said of 9/11 that no one could possibly have known what was coming, and at the time of the attack the Republican administration didn't say who did it because they didn't know until some time had elapsed, and they weren't about to make accusations without knowing.

The other reason for the GOP's constant attacks on Obama's foreign policy is that they're trying to peel off Jewish voters by playing to their fears about the revolutionary changes taking place in the Middle East.

The profound falseness of the GOP narrative stems from its underlying assumptions that
(1) any American president could shape events in the Middle East to the extent the GOP says a Democratic president should be able to do (watch how they'll pivot if Romney gains the White House and is no more able to shape events than Obama was);
(2) all the Arab Spring has produced is the takeover of the Middle Eastern countries by Islamofascists.

The latter is a grotesque oversimplification of what's gone on there but it plays to the fears of American Jews. Both assumptions imply that we should have thrown in our lot with the Arab countries' dictators. It's hard to overstate how disastrous such an approach would have been.

President Obama and his party should have known that the GOP would attack on foreign policy. Obama appears to have made the error of believing that because he's done so well in foreign policy that the GOP wouldn't attack this area. But the GOP always attacks its opponents' strengths. Not to have realized this is idiotic.

In fact a President Romney would do about the same things abroad that President Obama has done, if you look at Romney's specifics. This is all just invoking the Republican myth that all Democratic presidents are soft on our enemies and unreliable towards our friends. It is possible that Romney would act on the NeoCon macho go it alone bombs away! approach that got us into a protracted war with the country that hadn't attacked us.


Note that today in Iran many members of Iran's business class--not college students and liberals there--were demonstrating against Iran's administration, because the sanctions President Obama has spearheaded are hurting their business severely, and Iran's administration has behaved so as to let this happen.

2. Domestic policy

Both sides completely avoid the plain fact that under our Constitution, domestic policy is at least 2/3 the province of Congress. No American president can pass a bill. He can sign it or veto it, he can wrangle over its terms beforehand--but he can't pass a bill. Particularly a spending bill. He has some scope, and a bully pulpit of course. But the ball is mostly in Congress's court.

And the next Congress will be dominated by the Republican Party.

This means that even though the once-again moderate Romney (after the "severely conservative" Romney of the last two years) is proposing moderate-sounding things (by today's GOP standards), he is still the candidate who stated he would turn down ten dollars of spending cuts if the price were one dollar of tax increases.

And he is still the man who most assuredly would sign every bill a Republican Congress sends him to sign, no matter how "severely conservative" that bill was about spending, abortion, or anything else.

The question about Romney isn't his policies but whether he would sign bills enacting the Congressional Republicans' policies.

The question about Obama isn't his policies but what compromises with an extremist Republican Congress's bills he would accept and what he would veto.

If the President is re-elected there will be four years of GOP brinksmanship--continual threats to bring government operations to a halt, continual sending of bill to the President that they know he will veto, four years of an embattled President dealing with a Congress dominated by people who consider compromise immoral.

If Romney is elected there will be four years of swift, efficient restructuring of the country around hard-Right ideas, carefully done in such a way that it would take at least twenty years of Democratic control of Congress and the Presidency to overturn--because at the end of the next four years the Supreme Court will have a secure five-vote hard-Right corporatist majority that will overturn Democratic reforms until they age out and can be replaced with moderates.

3. Atmospherics

Romney and Ryan prove that you can be arrogant, condescending, and wildly insulting...as long as you do it all with a smile and a gently furrowed brow conveying "more in sorrow than in anger." Toward the end of the first presidential debate Romney strongly implied that Obama was a corrupt cronyist president--but it went under everyone's radar because he impeached the President's character with a smile...and because the President let it go without saying one word about it.

And at least half the country judges the debates from what they see, not what they hear. Just as the Presidency is usually won by whoever's better looking.

Plus, as I have noted before, after the Republican Party became a tribe, it ceased to care whether its leaders tell the truth. Lyin' Ryan was lying factually nearly half the time during last night's debate. I challenge you to find one comment from any right-wing media mentioning this fact. Lyin' Ryan's "facts" were expressed succinctly and directly. Apparently that's all that matters to most GOP voters.

-------------------------------------------

The fact that President Obama failed so badly in the first presidential debate bespeaks some  kind of genuine failure on his part--part and parcel of his continued failure to explain his policies coherently to the public.

This certainly aggrieves people like me who agree with most of his policies.

CEO Romney and Representative Ryan, to paraphrase some wag, state policies in way that is clear, easy to understand...and wrong. I don't mean ideologically wrong. I mean factually wrong.

I prefer an incoherent person who's right over a coherent person who's wrong. I prefer someone who's lousy at debating and right about being President to someone who's the opposite on both counts.

Next Tuesday's presidential debate will be hugely watched. I sure hope President Obama takes it more seriously this time. Judging from his rueful remarks since the first debate, I believe he will.

Vice-presidential debate

First results in from the fact-checkers: Vice president Biden was lying nearly a third of the time, while Representative Ryan was lying nearly half the time.

I think this maps to the presidential contenders' claims and statements as well.


EDIT ADD:
This is borne out by factcheck.org's analysis of the factuality of Ryan & Biden, which you can see here. Politifact.com's analysis is here.

Is CEO Romney's tax plan deficit-neutral?

Well, Mr. Romney insists that he won't vote for a plan that isn't deficit-neutral.

Yet no fact-checking organization that isn't beholden to the GOP (and vice-versa) says this is possible. There aren't enough deductions and loopholes out there to make the ends meet.

But I wonder if a President Romney might be able to rationalize signing a massive tax cut bill that increased the deficit equally massively--by invoking supply-side theology. That is, claiming that without the burdens of regulation and taxation, the captains of industry would then hire a lot of people and start a lot of businesses and thus grow our way out of the deficit.

This is exactly what the GOP did when it gained power in 2000. 

Hmmm. If memory serves that didn't work out so well.

Not to mention that supply-side-ism isn't a conservative policy. Conservative would be pay as you go, wouldn't it? 

One sliver of possible Democratic benefit from Obama's loss

Before President Obama's loss of the first presidential debate--a loss purely the product of his underestimating his opposition and the importance of the debate (he should have taken it as a given that Mitt Romney would be aggressive and lie prodigiously)--Romney's billionaire backers were about to pull their money from his campaign and direct it towards Senate races across the country. Now they're not--big money is sticking with Romney. So whether Romney's current advantage maintains through the election, Democrats may have a better chance of hanging on to the Senate--which is crucial, from the viewpoints of both parties.

Mitt Romney's pitch: "Trust me."

"I promise I'll do right by you. Just trust me. You little people don't need to know what my taxes have been. Just trust me. You little people don't need to know how I'll confound all the economists who say my arithmetic doesn't add up--that I can't amp up defense spending and give you a big tax cut and make it all happen with nothing more than closing loopholes and entitlements. Just trust me. And so what if the facts and figures I reel off in debates exaggerate the truth by two to ten times? That's just politics. So trust me.

"You see, I'm a really smart, really important person. I was born to rule you. It's not your job to question me. It's your job to obey me, just as it's the job of a CEO's employees to obey him. And being President of the United States of America is exactly like being the CEO of a small investment firm. A CEO makes the best President, as Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter proved.

"So just trust me. And leave those messy little details to your betters."

Will Governor Romney have his medal revoked?

Lance Amstrong won over half a dozen Tour de Frances--one of the toughest athletic competitions out there. He did so in an age when many if not most of his competitors have since been found to be doping. And now, apparently, he has too, and stands to lose just about every award he's ever earned. I don't know how they'll award those races to someone else, given how many of the runners-up have also been convicted of the same thing. Some obscure guy in the peloton, perhaps...

It would be comforting to know that the same thing happened in politics. Often, instead, the truth tellers get expelled by a public addicted to comforting delusions and propagandistic narratives that flatter them.

On the other hand, the fact checkers are becoming more visible and their "pants on fire" conclusions more damaging. So we'll see.

Governor Romney won the first presidential debate. The President lost badly on all the atmospherics, and it's not like the Governor was the only one lying and shading and spinning up there. But the President was not accusing the Governor of being a corrupt politician, smiling as he said it, and the Governor was. Just as Governor Romney clearly won the debate in the eyes of most of the public, he also won the Stack O' Lies contest too, his stack being substantially higher and stinkier than the President's stack.

So will his victory come to be seen as a pyrhhic one as the political equivalent of steroids he used to win with come to light, one by one, even the powerful forces arrayed on his side do their utmost to discredit the truth-tellers as they do so?

And if this does enable him to win, will he ever feel qualms about having cheated his way to the top?

In both cases, I don't know. Apart from his fierce desire to win and to dominate, and his equally fierce devotion to his family, who can tell what else he actually believes? His positions sometimes reverse within 24 hours. Kind of head-spinning, really.

I bet when at age 16 he led the pack of boys that held down the homosexual boy to cut his hair to an acceptable length, Boy Romney told the homosexual boy--with a smile--that he was doing it for the boy's own good. Traumatizing him for life was unfortunate collateral damage, ultimately acceptable in light of the greater good achieved by enforcing conformity to proper social norms. Right? He wasn't bullying the boy just to bully him...or so I'm sure he told himself.

Then as now, though I don't know this of course, I suspect he thinks to himself that he does everything he does politically for the common good...and that the ends justify the means.

Nothing personal, as the mafia soldier says in The Godfather. Just business.

The one question the Prez must ask the Guv in the next debate

"Governor Romney: is there ANY bill a Republican Congress could send you that you would veto? Because your own policy positions can only become law if Congress passes the bills you say you want. If a Republican Congress chooses to ignore your positions and sends you pure Tea Party bills, isn't it true that you will sign them?

"For example, a bill that repeals Obamacare in its entirety, killing its restrictions of healthcare insurers dumping people who actually get sick? You said you wanted to preserve some aspects of Obamacare. But what if Congress ignores you and gives you the "Repeal" without any of the "Replace" ? You'd sign that in a New York second, wouldn't you? If you wouldn't, say so now. Otherwise your silence is assent.

"How about laws mirroring the most restrictive state laws on abortion? Laws handing the military multibillion-dollar weapons systems it hasn't even asked for because they send money to key Congressmen's districts? Laws handing huge tax cuts for the rich that stick ordinary taxpayers with the bill? Laws on drugs that help the "war on drugs" establishment continue its as-fruitless-as-Prohibition-was efforts to keep billions of dollars flowing into the "drug war" enforcement complex? Laws that destroy FDR's New Deal--Medicare and Social Security, privatizing both with cheapskate vouchers that will leave many oldsters having to choose between medicine and food? Laws restoring the ban on homosexuals in the military?

"Because the moderate positions you now say you want--as opposed to the "severely conservative" things you said to get the Republican/Tea Party nomination--are meaningless unless you are willing to state now, unequivocally, that you will veto measures more extremist than those of Romney 2.0."

The core of partisanship: "Heads I win; tails you lose."

The right wing media--talk shows, blogs, pundits--was unanimous on one point about last night's debate before last night's debate: that the "MSM" (mainstream media)--that they dismissively conflate with the People's World--that the MSM would declare President Obama the winner afterwards, regardless of what actually happened.

This is the core of cult brainwashing: to tell your cult members that they can't trust any source of info outside the cult.

Only the next day the MSM unanimously declared Governor Romney the winner of the first debate.

Which means that the RWM was dead wrong--across the board. FOX News, Rush, Savage, you name it.

But I challenge you to find a single RWM source admitting that they grossly misjudged the fairness of the MSM, coupled with a resolution to treat the MSM with more respect as a consequence.

Not a word. Too busy doing the Victory Dance over Romney's aggressive debate performance.

And the consumers of the RWM? Not a problem for them either. If you point out to them that their news sources were dead wrong about the MSM, they'll just say "Well it's because Obama did so badly they knew they couldn't get away with lying about it."

They will not admit that their preferred news sources grossly misrepresented the fairness of the media outside the right wing bubble.

Facts shmacts. When politics get reduced to tribal warfare, factuality is the first casualty.

The Guv vs. the Prez

Each side got what they look for in a leader tonight at the first presidential debate of the season. Republicans want someone who's bold, confident bordering on aggressive, with simple, clear-cut answers to complex questions. Democrats want a Community Organizer in Chief who's sensitive to ordinary people's needs and proposes solutions to problems that are as complex as the complexity of the problems require.

Both got what they wanted.

But the question is, what did the 7% undecideds want to see? As the President pointed out several times, the Governor's bold, clear proposals and answers were devoid of any specifics that might upset different special interests.

The biggest problem is that the Governor's economic plan's figures don't add up. You can't add $7 trillion to the deficit (via tax cuts favoring the rich and added military spending) without cutting $7 trillion from the government's operating expenses--and there aren't $7 trillion to be cut if you exempt military-related spending. The numbers simply don't add up, as the fact check organizations keep pointing out.

One other thing: the ruthless CEO "you're on yer own pal" Romney of the GOP convention Etch-a-Sketched himself into the moderate "works with both sides" Romney of the Massachusetts governorship for this debate.

I think his far-right supporters will generally go along with this, because they know that whatever he says in debates to placate centrists, when a Republican-dominated Congress sends him a radical right wing bill to sign, he'll sign it. Because it seems that he's neither a centrist nor a hard-right guy: he's a "whatever it takes to get me to the White House, and hold on to it for a second term" guy. This isn't mind reading--it's simply the only plausible explanation for his vast political mood swings over the past four years. Swings that continue to go on, sometimes daily.

Because he doesn't really want to be America's president--he wants to be America's CEO. That's a great thing to many, but it's quite a rethinking of the role of the President of the United States, and its previous practitioners (notably Herbert Hoover) don't augur well for this model.

If I were the President, I'd have asked Romney whether he'd sign some of the radical bills the Republican House has passed--and whether he'd also sign a pledge not to benefit personally from any changes in the tax code during or after his presidency, so at to avoid not just sin, but the appearance of sin. That's a key Mormon principle BTW.

EDIT ADD:
You can read Politifact's factcheck of this debate here, and FactCheck.org's factcheck here.  Both the Guv and the Prez strayed from Truthville pretty frequently, though often with half-truths, but just as the Guv won the debate from a testosterone standpoint, he also won the Most Lies Told competition.

However, that may not be a problem for most of his supporters, since the New Republican Party appears to have embraced the Islamic principle of Taqiyyah, which justifies saying anything to an Infidel if it advances the faith.

I watched the Fox News "analysis" afterwards, and what interested me wasn't the glossing over of factual misrepresentations but how much of the discussion centered on describing how manly Governor Romney was and what a Girly Man President Obama was, using boxing metaphors frequently.

They did not discuss the fact that the so-called Liberal Media gave Governor Romney credit for his dominating performance--they'd predicted the Liberal Media would declare the Prez the winner regardless of what actually happened. More Taquiyyah?

Needless to say, fact checking did not happen on Fox's post-debate "analysis." Just Our Guy Good Their Guy Bad discourse that went on for hours.