The Commentariat -- August 25, 2012
The President's Weekly Address:
... The transcript is here.
My column in the New York Times eXaminer is on David Brooks' columns & "conversation" about Paul Ryan. The NYTX front page is here.
Gail Collins: "In 2008, Al Baker reported in The Times that the accuracy rate for New York City officers firing in the line of duty was 34 percent. And these are people trained for this kind of crisis. The moral is that if a lunatic starts shooting, you will not be made safer if your fellow average citizens are carrying concealed weapons.... We are never going to have a sane national policy on guns until the gun advocates give up on the fantasy that the best protection against armed psychopaths bent on random violence is regular people with loaded pistols on their belts." Read the whole column.
The difference between an intelligent conservative and, say, Paul Ryan: (1) a conservative has some dumb theories: (2) the dumb theories are tried and they don't work; (3) he changes his mind. Ryan is right there on (1) and (2); he can't do (3). The smart conservative in this case is Judge Richard Posner. Eliot Spitzer has the overview. ...
... Speaking of dumb ideas & Paul Ryan. Even if you're not vaguely interested in the gold standard, watch the segment, because Ezra Klein -- and Jared Bernstein -- makes the topic understandable:
Presidential Race
Birther-in-Chief
... Evan McMorris-Santoro of TPM: "At a campaign stop in his home state of Michigan Friday, Mitt Romney made a joke referencing the continued doubts about President Obama's birth certificate raised by Romney supporters like Donald Trump." ...
... Philip Rucker & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Whether he meant to or not, Mitt Romney on Friday injected the toxic issue of birtherism into an already bitter presidential race at an unhelpful time for the presumptive Republican nominee." ...
... Greg Sargent: "... it looks to me like a major mistake. Coming just after days spent debating Todd Akin's 'legitimate rape' remark, this is again a reminder of the extreme voices in the GOP, which Romney has at times been slow to denounce. And it seems less than presidential, to put it mildly.... It will be easy for the Obama campaign to seize on this to raise questions about Romney's judgment, temperament, and character. Wow."
... Michael Tomasky of Newsweek: "Once again, Romney panders to the party's most loathsome elements. Looked at that way, it's kind of disgraceful. Imagine Obama joking, 'No one's ever asked to see my special underwear.' Right wingers would instantly seize on that as an example of offensive religious bigotry. Romney would demand an apology, and the story would float around for days." ...
... Digby: "I don't know what they're seeing in the polls, but saying this on top of the 'welfare' lie makes it clear they're going full blown white privilege solidarity now.... This isn't even dogwhistling. It's a primal scream." ...
... Imani Gandi of Angry Black Lady Chronicles: "The people in the media who are excusing his comments as being merely a joke response to Obama's Seamus shade are also assholes. (I'm looking at you, Jim Acosta.) The Birther conspiracy is a lie. Romney strapping Seamus to the roof of his car isn't. The people who were claiming that because Barack Obama is selling mugs with his birth certificate on it, Mitt Romney's 'joke' is no big deal are assholes. (I'm looking at you, Chris Moody.) That is nothing more than 'black people can say 'nigger' so why can't I?' argument." CW: and thank you for explaining to the unaware why Romney is projected to get zero percent of the black vote (see yesterday's Commentariat).
... ** Adam Serwer of Mother Jones: "... He was engaging in ironic post-birtherism -- showing solidarity with birthers by making a humorous remark that can be plausibly denied as a joke later. This is a necessary device for a Republican politician who wants to rile up the base without seeming like a lunatic, because the belief that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States is still held by nearly half of self-identified Republicans even after the very public release of the president's birth certificate. Birtherism remains the most frank and widespread evidence of racial animus among some of the president's critics.... Birtherism is more than just a conspiracy theory about the president's birth. Its underlying principle is a rejection of American racial pluralism.... It comes across as gloating about the fact that, as a rich white man born into a wealthy and powerful family, Romney has rarely been subject to the kind of racist or sexist assumptions that clog the daily lives of millions of Americans. Romney might as well joke that he's never been mistaken for a waiter in a restaurant or a clerk in a retail store, or that he's never been selected for extra screening at an airport or randomly told to empty his pockets by the NYPD.... That should not be a point of pride for Romney; it should be a matter of anger and disappointment. " ...
... Mitt uses the opportunity as a vehicle to show what a great sense of humor he has:
... Annie-Rose Strasser, et al., of Think Progress: "... as Republicans head down to Tampa for their convention next week, they are preparing to see a veritable festival of politicians who have dabbled in -- or fully embraced -- birtherism." The reporters list "the members of the birther bunch who will be speaking in Tampa next week." CW: See, people, you're taking this all wrong. Mitt was just preparing to be a good host to his guests at next week's party party. ...
... The Obama campaign's 30-second response:
... Here's the Ta-Nehisi Coates piece whom a number of writers at the linked posts mention. ...
... Ezra Klein has the disturbing numbers ... and Coates:
... Desperately Seeking White People. Ashley Parker & Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "In his introduction Thursday to the exurban, nearly all-white audience at an orchard farm here, Mr. Ryan, too, seemed to emphasize cultural differences with Mr. Obama. 'Remember about four years ago when he was talking to a bunch of donors in San Francisco and he said people in states like ours, we cling to our guns and our religion?' Mr. Ryan said, emphasizing the word 'our.' It was a reference to Mr. Romney's native Michigan and Mr. Ryan's Wisconsin, but also, it seemed, to differences based on religion and class. 'I just have one thing to say," Mr. Ryan added. "This Catholic deer hunter is guilty as charged, and proud of it.'"
Steve Benen publishes Vol. 31 of "Chronicling Mitt's Mendacity." ...
... Benen didn't include this one, but let's add it. Kyle Cheney of Politico: "On Thursday, Mitt Romney ripped President Barack Obama's health law for establishing an 'unelected board' that can 'tell people what kind of health care they can have.' The clear implication was that Romney's plan doesn't have an equivalent to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a panel established in Obama's law that's charged with clamping down on Medicare spending. But Romney's law had a powerful, unelected board of a different kind, one that has vexed Republicans and business groups for years. That entity, called the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority -- which oversees the Massachusetts health insurance exchange -- has made many of the most critical decisions about the type of health care Massachusetts residents must obtain."
Karoli of Crooks & Liars shares this audio of Romney talking to people about appalling working conditions at a factory in China. Mitt appears to be mentioning the factory as an example of how much better off we are in the U.S. The problem with that? As far as Karoli can tell, Mitt it talking about a factory Bain Capital purchased as part of its outsourcing program -- that is, he was moving U.S. jobs to this horrible sweatshop. So Mitt is A-okay with "exploiting women and making them work for nothing so billionaires become mega-billionaires." Hey, it's just business, for Pete's sake. Thanks to contributor Lisa for the link. Here's the audio:
More from the Department of Dumb Ideas. New York Times Editors: "On Thursday, Mitt Romney unveiled the latest in a series of bad ideas for taking government duties out of Washington and hiding them in the back rooms of state capitols. Mostly, Mr. Romney wants to allow states to quietly smother social programs the federal government has run for decades. In the case of his new energy policy, he wants to give states power to bypass Washington's caution in burrowing for oil, gas and coal on federal lands.... Mr. Romney wants to put these programs on the backs of state governments he knows cannot handle the load, then reduce the resources they have now."
Anna Mulrine of the Christian Science Monitor: "The US military is pushing back against the campaign of a group of former Special Operations Forces officers who have spoken out against President Obama in what some have described as a latter-day 'Swift Boat' campaign.... Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded to the film, warning that using the uniform for partisan politics erodes the trust that people have in their military."
Michael Shear of the New York Times: "Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. has postponed an in-your-face visit to Tampa scheduled for Monday, his office said Friday night. Mr. Biden planned a campaign stop in the city even as Mitt Romney’s nominating convention got underway. But his office said the visit might drain law enforcement resources needed to deal with Tropical Storm Isaac."
Right Wing World
** Dana Milbank describes some of the proceedings & policies proposed & passed in the Republican party platform. It's a whole party full of crazy uncles aunts. ...
... In his column, Milbank writes that reporters know only snippets of what's in the platform as it won't be released till Monday. Actually, the geniuses at the RNC accidentally posted it briefly on their Website, & Politico captured it. You can read the whole putrid thing here (pdf).
News Ledes
New York Times: "Republicans on Saturday canceled the opening day of their national convention, saying their first concern was for the safety of delegates and guests in the face of Tropical Storm Isaac, which is strengthening and is headed toward Florida's west coast."
New York Times: "Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, died Saturday."
New York Times: "All nine people wounded in the shooting outside the Empire State Building on Friday morning were hit by police gunfire, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said on Saturday."
New York Times: "The two men at the center of a fatal shooting outside the Empire State Building on Friday had brushed shoulders for years -- often literally, two large egos stuffed into a small office -- and yet could hardly have been less alike."
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Reader Comments (17)
Willard the Rat continues to show America exactly what a low life piece of shit he is.
He goes to Michigan and whips a raucous crowd of supporters into a brain dead frenzy by making a point that he was born there. No one ever asks to see HIS birth certificate.
Not two minutes later he demands that Obama not say divisive things.
Is this guy for real? While he's bending over for birther fools and eliciting the most racist haters in the crowd to vote for him because he's NOT BLACK, he further degrades himself and insults the president by demanding that Obama not be as bad as he is because that would drag the election through the mud. But once again Romney's lying tongue allows some truth to shine through the shit that fills his mouth. He asks the crowd if that is the kind of president you want? (the kind that divides and drags down the entire country).
Of course they don't.
Then the answer is clear. Don't vote for Romney.
But get ready. This was a planned attack. This wasn't just a random bit of stupidity (although god knows there's been plenty of that emanating from the Romney Rat Hole), this is a run up of ignorance and blasting dog whistle racism readying the droolers for the convention. The next few days there should be much more of this kind of insulting bullshit.
And when questioned by it, the Rat brushed off his racist ignorance with a "lighten up, ya gotta have a sense of humor!"
Okay, how's this. You and your fraud of a VP climb back into your shitmobile and drive away into the sinking sun and never come back. How's that for funny?
Yuk it up while you can, Willard, you piece of shit.
Come November, anyone with a working brain is going to let you know that it's time for you to retire to one of your mansions and write your memoirs.
Pig.
Re: Ak, my man, I never know where you stand on an issue. Can you be a little more clear in your writing?
Now I have to go out and find someone with a working brain.
Re: The doping cycle. This site doesn't lend itself to sports, I think I"m one of the few people that ever make reference to the sporting life. Today though Lance Armstrong's world rubbed up against real world and the parallels are amazing. He denied, he lied, he said prove it, he said he was doing work too important to be found guilty, he said it was a long time ago, he said it was a witch hunt.
Now when there are at least ten credible witnesses ready to testify against him, he rides away. I"m struck by how the birthers continue to claim a falsehood in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They lie, they deny and when faced with the facts they ride away. Those who drink the kool-aid simply refuse to believe the truth. Check out the letters to the NYT concerning Lance; they sound just like the birthers, "We believe in Lance so we know he could not possibly dope." Ah, faith and the faithful, I love them but they are so gullible.
I like the line from some cyclist, "Jesus, look at the race, how could you win the Tour without doping?"
For those of you who did not see Bill Maher's "Real Time" tonight, this is the final segment of his "New Rules," about Todd Akin and the far right troglodytes.
Hilarious, but sad. And, unfortunately, true......
Article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-maher/todd-akin-republicans_b_1826617.html
So I see that a few groups are planning on protesting at the Racist Pig People's convention in Tampa. Good luck to them. Remember how that great civil libertarian George W. (pig people president extraordinaire) Bush used to handle anyone who wanted to protest his visit to a city or at the 2004 Pig People Convention in NYC? Protesters were restricted to a "Protest Zone" conveniently placed 45 miles away from the closest location visited by King George. And at that 2004 convention, the King called out the Stormtroopers and ordered protesters gassed and/or arrested.
I'm guessing these protesters at Tampa will be welcomed with batons, handcuffs, special High Burn pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannons by the national Racist Party apparatchiks and Florida's high minded governor, Rick Scott who has no doubt arranged a special "Protest Zone" on a barge directly in the path of Hurricane Isaac. But don't worry. Anyone going overboard will get the same kind of response given by BP to those oil riggers blown up in the Gulf a couple of years ago. Which means that sometime before the inauguration in January they may have time to fish out the bodies.
Is this stuff sounding screed-like? Yeah. I guess it is. I've long ago had enough but these assholes just keep comin' with more and more disgraceful examples of the low tolerance in this country for anyone who dares to challenge the medieval mindset of the Party of Racist Pigs.
This hurricane, if there really were anything like divine justice, would blow them all into the Gulf and let them cry out for help as sharks try to answer the question "inedible human or chum?"
Ah Akhilleus: Batons, handcuffs, special High Burn pepper spray, rubber bullets and water cannon are our destiny if Ryan and Romney are elected.
Ryan's Randion belief that removing the safety net will make the moochers and takers more self reliant is probably correct. They will not starve quietly but will take to the streets in protest and maintaining law and order will require extreme measures.
Protecting Capital from the " terrorists " will require lots of police using all of the tools you describe.
Re: Right in the cross hairs. We know Pauly is smart, he tells so but how does he know the difference between a Catholic deer and a Presbyterian deer?
I enjoy hearing about the Ryan plan to save our economy. Mr. Ryan will enable job creators, who apparently do not have enough money at present, to create many jobs that can be filled by people with skills in order to offer goods and services of which America at present has too many. But that's OK, because his plan will inspire confidence in those same job creators, so that they will go on creating jobs until they go broke from lack of demand. But they'll go broke confidently, and I think that's the key point here. I also enjoy Mr. Ryan's use of asterisks (a word that, sadly, is mispronounced by many Americans, leading the press to believe that the Ryan plan contains not only asterisks but also astericks); the aforementioned reference mark is a screen like the one in Oz behind which are omnipotent processes that will eliminate tens of trillions of dollars of government debt that the Ryan plan will create by lowering revenues (at least until those employers are so buoyed that they hire lots of people to create goods and services for which there is no demand yadda).
Clearly, the most entertaining aspect of the Ryan plan is watching the members of the press revert to childhood and believe once again in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. No, Virginia, they already believed in the Confidence Fairy, who we believe is good and from the South. Consider:
See Dick. See Jane. See Spot. See Janesville. See Social Security Checks. See government employment. See no evil.**
So, let's sum up: It seems that Mr. Ryan's plan to reduce the budget deficit while lowering taxes for rich people and putting more money into the military is an opaque bag filled with, apparently, the same substance contained within Mr. Ryan himself.
However, at least in the immediate future, we can enjoy watching how stupidity enables cupidity. Then things may get a lot worse. Be sure to write.
**This paragraph, while seeming like nonsense, is actually a lost novel, "Don Quixote II: Sancho's Revenge" by none other than Miguel Cervantes, expressed in a binary code you couldn't possibly understand you liberal scum. The portion quoted is a poor translation of that code attempted at the Army Language School after the school was purged of gays and Democrats, and the book is owned by the U.S. government, which acquired it after the Spanish-American War along with the Philippines. "Sancho's Revenge" will be publicly offered by Goldman Sachs, and I can't stress how much I believe you should buy this novel from the government at the Facebook-cheap IPO price of a million dollars a copy. Those of us who have a plan (mostly, me and Paul Ryan) are confident that what's outlined in this footnote will solve our deficit problem! Nice going Paul! Nice going Jack!
The NOAA track for Isaac shows you under a hurricane warning, Marie. Take care.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/23/anderson_cooper_hammers_wasserman_schultz_over_romney__abortion.html
Anderson Cooper vs Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Is this the best spokesperson the Dems can find? Jeez. Even Sunnunu did better.
Jack,
A second Cervantes novel. And so descriptive.
I guess that would make Ryan's super double secret plan to save the economy uber Quixotic.
In any event I'm sure, if Ryan has been reading it, there must be a detailed ("legitimate" or at least "forcible") rape scene a la Man of La Mancha. We know how much that sort of thing appeals to those manly Republicans.
Also impossible dreams. Ahh..the stuff of warped adolescence. So many of them will be in Tampa next week. Strip clubs, here we come.
Some strip club owner with a sense of humor and good business sense must surely have considered changing the name of club from the Pussycat Lounge to Sea of Galillee. It would be packed with congressional Republicans on some kind of "fact finding" mission.
Regarding the video of Romney talking about the Chinese workers,
I feel like Romney sees himself as a missionary of capitalism...spreading the "good word" and giving a gift to Chinese women who live in dorms so they can save for marriage. He feels so good about himself. Unfortunately, the jobs these women do used to done by Americans who may, someday, find themselves working in bunks in dormitories working for dollars a day while these saviors get rich spreading the American Dream. Did the employees at that plant get higher salaries or a better quality of life or are the companies simply exploiting them? I can't fathom why someone like Romney has no remorse for the devastation he leaves behind in the US.
We are at the point where we as a nation need to decide what does "nation" mean. With globalization, IS there a need for nations and do corporations have a responsibility to help secure any nation or its citizens beyond what needs to be done to make their company successful? As long as they are able to buy governments, they will force those governments to act in the interest of their business interests. Corporations exist to make money for the investors and owners - nothing more. The concept of having to share that wealth with anyone not directly involved with the profit is contrary to their goals. It seems to me that Americans willing to vote for Romney/Ryan are willing to give away the American Dream.
LA Times online features an Op-Ed today by
By Cary Schneider and Sue Horton :
"Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged': What the critics had to say in 1957" among them were Whitaker Chambers (Hated it) and Donald Malcolm of the New Yorker: "Miss Rand's villains resemble no one I have ever encountered, and I finally decided to call them "liberals," chiefly because I can't imagine whom else she might have in mind. In her vision of the future, then, the liberals have brought the world to a sorry plight..."
and then there was Hedda Hopper (who LUV-ed it. 'nuf said.
Lisa,
You've hit on one of the best descriptions of the kind of world Romney is looking for: corporate nationhood. No countries, only entities battling each other for the most money. No responsibilities to people, to culture, to history, to laws, or ethics, or morality.
Pure unbridled capitalism.
But those who drool for such a world have never thought about what it does to others or, for that matter, for themselves. An Ayn Rand world in which capitalist bosses like Romney (he only barely makes it; Ryan, according to Rand, is just another loser moocher) lord it over the rest of us is a world where no one strives for anything other than a paycheck. There is no loyalty, no community, no society. Just individuals who live or die by the amount of money they have.
But at some point, even the self appointed gods like Romney and the Kochs will fall because there will be no infrastructure, no laws, no schools, no armies or navies, no transportation system, no safe water or air or food, no education. All of that will have been outlawed by the drones like Ryan.
And there will be nothing left.
This is the world Romney and Ryan swoon after.
Anyone staying home on election day due to some insane form of political pique deserves perdition if they leave the field to these maniacs.
Guess you'd have to believe in perdition to be motivated by it... but I pretty much agree. Go to the polls; vote against the oligarchs. Easy to remember--don't even have to write in on your hand.
Or we start a rumor that R&R are going to shut down your favorite porn sites. Let them deny it.
It's ironic in this day in ago of globalization that many fairly educated people I've come across while living abroad, when discussing the question of nationality, claim to be "citizens of the world" after living abroad long enough to integrate into other nations' cultures and see the world through other optics. I'm American myself but with my travel trajectory I feel slightly less so, especially after giving my own country a long, hard look from abroad. Maybe not less American, just disappointed in how things are turning out, à la Norman Mailer.
The irony here comes in while contemplating this "citizen of the world" idea, because it seems to me the true citizens of the world are the Romneys/Kochs/Adelsons who truly do have personal interests and connection in other countries as it serves their bottom line. In this sense national cultures, pride, history has NO importance, it's the finance, nada más. These Capitalistic Overlords know no boundaries, serve no nation, and probably keep hoards of cash in strong foreign currencies so they can save a few cents while they buying up people's livelihoods and then betting against them as they please.
The "invisible hand" of Mr. Smith was supposed to keep each nation's bourgeoisie from committing economic treason against their own countries. He was convinced that by building up a strong society through this liberal economic doctrine, the rich would see the benefits it serves to their own nation, and therefore, as a responsible, conscious citizen they wouldn't dismantle the progress their past generations had built. We see now, plain and clear, that the true God of the pure capitalists is named Dollar.
In God we Trust?