Tag: Mitt Romney

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Corporations are People: Yes they are — psychos.

Corporations are people, my friend.  Mitt Romney

As Michael Kinsley observed,” a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth”. And so Mitt Romney inadvertently– and unapologetically– spoke the truth. The truth about what he believes, that is. This election is about dumping the 47% out onto the streets. It’s about getting rid of the old ball and chain. It’s about traveling light, free and easy, without being dragged down by losers and weaklings. And that’s why Ann Romney can’t understand why people don’t think her husband is the nicest guy there is.

Ann Romney thinks people would change their opinion of Mitt Romney if they only knew about the very nice things he has done for families and friends within his social and professional class. And indeed, by most accounts, Romney has been an exceptionally nice guy. But he reminds me of Ronald Reagan, of whom it was said, he would give you the shirt off your back, and then sit down at his desk in the Oval Office and sign a law that took away school lunches for two million poor children.

Nice guy.

What Romney and Ryan probably are not going to tell you is that they don’t even believe in Medicare or Social Security, or Medicaid. When you hear so-called moderate Republicans like David Brooks declare that the U.S.– unlike every other developed country– can’t afford Medicare, can’t afford Medicaid, and can’t afford Social Security, you realize that there may not be any thing as a “moderate” Republican any more.

What Brooks really means, of course, is that the rich don’t want pay taxes for anything other than ensuring our ability to kill other people, presumably to take their oil, if necessary.

If Romney wins, I suspect he will actually turn out to be a bit of a pragmatist. Confronted with a budget crisis in Massachusetts in 2003, due largely to unfunded medical costs for people who did not carry insurance, Romney hired some smart people from MIT and analyzed the problem and came to a rational conclusion. And thus Obamacare was born. If this is a model for what he would do as president it would be interesting. But even more interesting is the fact that the Tea Party wing of the party will be expecting marvelous things from Mr. Romney and he will, I’m sure, consider long and hard the costs of gratifying them balanced against the possibility of a second term.

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Ayn Ryan

“Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, at least 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale. New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. The new tax cuts at the top would dwarf those for middle-income families. After-tax incomes would rise by 12.5 percent among millionaires, but just 1.8 percent for middle-income households. Low-income working families would actually be hit with tax increases.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

We should always be disturbed when liberals and conservatives rejoice at the same the news. Or at least wary.

Do conservatives believe that most people would support a far right conservative fiscal policy if it was honestly and openly presented to them? I think they do. I think they are very mistaken. I think it was no accident that George W. Bush did not campaign on a policy of cutting taxes on the rich and making war on Iraq. That was his agenda, but he campaigned on tax cuts for everyone, improving education, and drilling for more oil. The only thing he actually achieved, aside from destroying the entire world economy, was the tax cuts for the rich, which he didn’t advertise. Republicans never announce those tax cuts as tax cuts for the rich. They announce “tax cuts for all Americans” and then only cut taxes for the rich and then, having created a massive deficit, they announce program cuts for the poor. Now, with Ryan, the target is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Social Security, by the way, is perfectly solvent. Social Security is this incredibly rational little plan to have employees and employers each put a certain amount of money into a fund every pay period for a person’s entire working life. When this person gets old, he is able to draw from this fund to live off of. Can you imagine a more rational social policy? It’s positively ingenius. Does it work? Hell yeah! No government or private policy in the history of the world has reduced poverty more than social security.

And no conservative policy is more sinister than the one to destroy it. Conservatives say, we can’t have it. We can’t allow people to benefit from rational policies. We must destroy them! Because, you see, we all pay in to Social Security. Even if you are rich. Even if, like Mitt Romney, you are so rich, you will never need Social Security.

The massive current government deficit– Bush inherited a surplus from Bill Clinton and immediately converted it into a deficit with his tax cuts for the rich and wars on Afghanistan and Iraq– is seen by the Republicans as the best opportunity in years to try to convince Americans that we can’t afford Social Security or Medicare.

I think about that a lot. If the Republicans are right, we live in a world in which millions of people must live in poverty without medical care of any kind. That is the only possible outcome of Republican policy in this area.

The real “death panel” is Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan planning to gut the only health insurance plan for poor Americans.

I don’t really see the logic of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate. Obama and Romney are running neck-in-neck among decided voters and the only way either of them can win is by winning a majority of the independent voters. Who these independent voters are is a bit of a mystery: who, in his or her right mind, in this election, could possibly still not know how he or she is going to vote for yet? What are they waiting for?

What is clear is that they are not ideologically committed, so they are not going to warm up to Romney because he chose an extremist as running mate. Ryan plays well to a constituency Romney already owns: the hard right. He is not going to play well to seniors in Florida, women in Pennsylvania, blacks in Michigan, or Hispanics in Colorado. He has nothing for any of them. He doesn’t really have any thing for white working-class Americans either but they don’t seem to understand that. “If you vote for me, I’ll wack you in the face with a spiked two-by-four.” “I’m in.” “Plus, you get a chance to go overseas and get paralyzed by an ungrateful Arab.” “Woo hoo! Can’t wait.”

By the way, don’t buy all this horseshit about Ryan being the “intellectual” heart of the Republican Party. He is a hack: someone who has absorbed something of the language and style of policy but, in the end, draws absurd conclusions that are completely rooted in his fervent emotional beliefs– not in science or rationality. I believe Romney will soon find himself backing away from Ryan’s budget and his other positions. [Aug 28, yes he is.]

That’s why it’s a bit hard to stomach Romney/Ryan claiming that they are the ones who want to have a serious discussion of the issues in this election. It’s always good strategy to accuse your opponent of your own cardinal vice, especially if you can do it before you become identified with it.

There could be a good debate. There is a fundamental issue at stake in this election. Is America a nation in which citizens pull together for the common good, or in which every person looks out for his or her own interests. The only flaw in this debate is that the Republicans don’t mean it, and they never did. They talk about self-reliance and individual responsibility but that’s for you and me. Once they get into power they fall over themselves cutting lavish tax breaks– which are subsidies in everything but name– for their corporate puppet masters, buying up bushels of new, hi-tech weapons systems from other corporate puppet masters, and shifting more and more of the tax burden on the working classes. This is not personal responsibility: it’s a plutocracy.

And of course, neither Romney nor Ryan served in the military: that is a personal responsibility conservatives invariably offload onto the shoulders of credulous patriots, while they hire the brass bands and salute the flag with contrived expressions of piety.

 

2012-08-10

Index

“Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, at least 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale. New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. The new tax cuts at the top would dwarf those for middle-income families. After-tax incomes would rise by 12.5 percent among millionaires, but just 1.8 percent for middle-income households. Low-income working families would actually be hit with tax increases.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

We should always be disturbed when liberals and conservatives rejoice at the same the news. Or at least wary.

Do conservatives believe that most people would support a far right conservative fiscal policy if it was honestly and openly presented to them? I think they do. I think they are very mistaken. I think it was no accident that George Bush did not campaign on a policy of cutting taxes on the rich and making war on Iraq. That was his agenda, but he campaigned on tax cuts for everyone, improving education, and drilling for more oil. The only thing he actually achieved, aside from destroying the entire world economy, was the tax cuts for the rich, which he didn’t advertise. Republicans never announce those tax cuts as tax cuts for the rich. They announce “tax cuts for all Americans” and then only cut taxes for the rich and then, having created a massive deficit, they announce program cuts for the poor. Now, with Ryan, the target is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Social Security, by the way, is perfectly solvent. Social Security is this incredibly rational little plan to have employees and employers each put a certain amount of money into a fund every pay period for a person’s entire working life. When this person gets old, he is able to draw from this fund to live off of. Can you imagine a more rational social policy? It’s positively ingenius. Does it work? Hell yeah! No government or private policy in the history of the world has reduced poverty more than social security.

And no conservative policy is more sinister than the one to destroy it. Conservatives say, we can’t have it. We can’t allow people to benefit from rational policies. We must destroy them! Because, you see, we all pay in to Social Security. Even if you are rich. Even if, like Mitt Romney, you are so rich, you will never need Social Security.

The massive current government deficit– Bush inherited a surplus from Bill Clinton and immediately converted it into a deficit with his tax cuts for the rich and wars on Afghanistan and Iraq– is seen by the Republicans as the best opportunity in years to try to convince Americans that we can’t afford Social Security or Medicare.

I think about that a lot. If the Republicans are right, we live in a world in which millions of people must live in poverty without medical care of any kind. That is the only possible outcome of Republican policy in this area.

The real “death panel” is Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan planning to gut the only health insurance plan for poor Americans.

 

All Contents Copyright © Bill Van Dyk 2012 All Rights Reserved

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Free Stuff

When I mentioned I am going to get rid of Obamacare they weren’t happy, I didn’t get the same response. That’s O.K, I want people to know what I stand for and if I don’t stand for what they want, go vote for someone else, that’s just fine… But I hope people understand this, your friends who like Obamacare, you remind them of this, if they want more stuff from government tell them to go vote for the other guy — more free stuff. Mitt Romney, July 14, 2012

As Rolling Stone Magazine pointed out, the day after giving his speech to the NAACP in which he was booed for declaring that he would rescind Obama’s health care legislation, Romney gave a speech to a more congenial crowd in Montana in which he made the comment about “free stuff”. Read it carefully.

Fox News rhapsodized about Romney’s “courage” in going to an audience known to be hostile to Republicans and laying it on the line.   Fox News can’t be serious– they don’t really like Romney.   He is way too moderate.  He practically invented Obamacare (check it out).

He allegedly gave them the same speech he gives to white audiences. That’s manly of him.

Except he did and he didn’t. That is, it would have been courageous if Romney had made a bold statement of his personal principles and then made a specific promise about things he was going to do as President which are necessary and right but which are politically unpopular, like increase taxes in order to pay down the deficit.

That is exactly what he did not do.

He basically told them that he would cut taxes to the richest people in the country, increase military spending to deal with the communist menace, and then magically make the deficit go away without having to cut any entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

His speech was nothing more than the usual clichés and conservative stock phrases and platitudes. And he clearly didn’t care what they thought about it: the speech was not meant for them. It was meant for those folks up in Montana waiting for the line about “free stuff”. They got it.

He wasn’t booed because he advocated unpopular political positions but because he acted as if he was completely oblivious to where he was. It was as if your smelly old aunt with bad breath suddenly leaned in on you one day and urged you to get a haircut and go to church and get a job and find some girl and get married.

And you already have a job.

But here’s the most important thing: Republicans love giving away free stuff.  The earned income deduction.  The oil depletion allowance.  The military industrial complex.  Sports stadiums.  9/11 Victims Compensation (compare to Hurricane Katrina victims compensation), military bases in Congressional Districts that are no longer needed, tax incentives, and so on, and so on.

Yes, loads and loads of Free Stuff.

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Is There Some Confusion Out There?

I just realized that a lot of Americans seem to believe that Mormonism is, like Pentecostalism and Roman Catholicism, a variation of Christianity, and, therefore, we don’t need to worry about Mitt Romney’s ultimate loyalties, the way we needed to worry about an Islamic Barack Obama. Or Tom Cruise or John Travolta.

Never assume anything. Here’s the hilarious part– liberals, who never felt it was right to raise questions about Obama’s religion anyway– don’t want to raise the issue of Mormonism against Romney.

Why not? Mormonism is not a religion: it is a demented cult. I define a cult as a set of beliefs that deliberately tries to exclude rational examination of it’s preconceptions and assumptions. Like Scientology. And the Tea Party. And I define “demented cult” as the same thing as “cult” but with silly narratives.

I have no problem with a Roman Catholic president: Catholicism is a deeply sophisticated, well-developed, and fearless set of beliefs which I disagree with, respectfully. Well, all right, the Catholics have moments of silliness too– check out Lourdes, or the pope-mobile. But I have a problem with someone who believes in the words of a man (Joseph Smith) described accurately, in my opinion, as “a fraud and conjurer” by Slate.

This is a man capable of rational analysis? Of weighing the facts and the issues and coming to wise decision? More importantly, can this man choose smart, rational people to head departments and offer sound advice?

I don’t think so.

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The Confederacy in South Carolina

Let’s face it– most people knew very well that the racism was already there– it was always hidden, disguised, sublimated into guns and states’ rights.

But it’s pretty well out in the open now. Newt Gingrich cemented it with his “yeah, so what” defense of his comments about African Americans needing to get off food stamps and into jobs. He announced that he was willing to attend an NAACP conference and tell them all directly. Yes, he said it. He didn’t say poor Americans, and he didn’t say lower class Americans, and he did not even say unemployed Americans. He said African Americans. He said NAACP. He didn’t offer to make statements like that directly to the Southern Baptist Convention.

That was stunning enough. What was even more stunning is that none of the other candidates thought it would be in their interest to disavow Gingrich’s statement, criticize it, or even disagree — openly– with it. Not even Romney, who has struggled so hard to be so absolutely cosmetically correct in all things. Now we know that the cosmetics of race are this: the Republican Party has no problem with a racist candidate and South Carolina has no problem with a racist Republican. You just have to be subtle about it. This was not subtle.

Ron Paul was booed when he said American foreign policy should adopt an attitude of “do unto others what you would have them do to you”. This is a state Republican Party which, pollsters tell us, is conservative evangelical. Well, no it isn’t, but they say they are.

And I know it sounds rude, but just how stupid are South Carolina Republicans. Do they seriously believe that Romney wants to come down there after the election and do some hunting and kill some large mammalian critters with a weapon? Do they hear him say that and go, why, I just know I can trust him to appoint the right guy to the Federal Reserve and make good decisions about entitlements and interest rates and environmental policy, and I’ll bet he can handle those Iranians too. He’ll just hunt them down and stack them in his freezer.

Well, maybe they do.

They all vow to attack Iran. Do the voters of South Carolina go, well, he talks a big stick but we know there are complications to foreign policy and it might not always be in our interests to just go over there and whack someone.

Like Iraq, hmmm.

A woman came up to Gingrich after the debate and thanked him for “putting [moderator] Mr. Juan Williams in his place”.

The so-called “liberal” main stream media has not done a thing with this story yet. My theory is that they can’t believe it either and just don’t have the language ready to deal with it.

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’til Selfish Gain no Longer Stain

Mitt Romney transverses Iowa in the last days of the primary caucuses there quoting the bowdlerized, corrupted, bullshit version of “America the Beautiful”:

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea

But here’s the real verse, from the real song, as composed by feminist/lesbian poet Katharine Lee Bates, who saw that there were a few things wrong with America:

America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

Why, that sounds like a jab at Wall Street and those big corporations like the one Romney used to work for. As with the dropped verses of “This Land is Your Land” real Political Correctness has always come from the right, usually in the form of patriotism, but also religious virtue. In the issue, for example, of Christmas symbolism in public buildings, the “political correctness” is to trumpet the Christian virtues of the nation at taxpayer expense. Separation of church and state is the liberating doctrine.

Every ideology sees their own cause as correct and virtuous.

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The Seven Dwarves: Republican Primaries

Of course I wouldn’t have liked any of the Republican candidates anyway, but I doubt that there has ever been a more mediocre group of presidential candidates than Romney, Perry, Bachman, Huntsman, Cain, Santorum, and Gingrich. And never a group of candidates more desperate to say anything they think the audience– the Tea Party– wants to hear. Anything. Anything at all.

It’s not that all Republican leaders are always idiots. John McCain sounded interesting before Bush blind-sided him in North Carolina in 2000. Chris Christie actually sounds pretty interesting now. Patrick Moynihan, who claimed to be a Democrat, could occasionally be interesting, if not tiresome.

Christie believes in Global Warming, thinks there is no such thing as an “illegal” alien, supports some form of gun control, and thought the opponents of the “ground zero mosque” should get a grip. One of the things that most makes him interesting is the kind of sensible attitude that has led him to decide not to run.

Rick Perry is just not very bright. You actually feel bad for him standing up there with no one to help him think of intelligent things to say. Just when I thought he was going to have the courage to stand up for the idea of vaccinating young girls against HPV he turned out to only have to courage to whine about how he would never do it again. I also admire his stand on college tuition for children of illegal immigrants but he’s not only in the wrong party for that one– he’s on the wrong planet.

Herman Cain is clearly only interested in selling his books and his services as a speaker on leader-shit– that’s what it is– this culture of useless and vague aphorisms and “wit” that passes for leadership seminars– , for which he receives $25,000, presumably to explain why he is so brilliant he will be president except that even he would probably giggle at the thought that he was ever in it for anything but the free publicity. He has one good idea: the U.S. should have a goods and services tax– it makes a lot of sense economically. But then, that’s just science and facts and information.

He’s rather run ads like this.  (Has been removed.)

Michelle Bachman? Who on earth ever thought she would be a good candidate for president? Whoever convinced her of it should be arrested and charged with fraud. Even most hard core conservatives will have more than a little trouble electing someone this clueless.

Santorum is a psycho. The man is clearly mentally unbalanced. Prompted to explain his position on homosexuals in the military– he wants to repeal something but he’s not sure what– he suddenly ejaculated “there should be no sex in the military– no sex at all!” He has that nasty, bitter, self-righteousness doesn’t play well outside of church.

Gingrich really wants to be pope. He’s smart to get enraged whenever anyone raises the question of hypocrisy: he was cheating on his wife, who was dying of cancer, at the very moment he was demanding that Bill Clinton be impeached for groping an intern. He also seems to suddenly believe that the separation of Church and State is a myth. He’s very family oriented and expect to see his wife co-governing if he gets elected, the possibility of which seems dazzlingly remote.

And then you have the Mitt. Romney– who is surprisingly similar to Obama in a lot of ways– he even enacted a health care plan in Massachusetts that is very similar to Obamacare– a cold-blooded technocrat– might be better off selling nuance. The more he tries to scoop up those extremist Republicans, the more he diminishes his one asset: the sense of reasonableness and rationality he used to represent. He’s eating away at his own virtues by repudiating all of his moderate positions. He is now uncompromisingly pro-life, uncompromisingly against taxes, uncompromisingly against illegal immigrants, uncompromisingly against the HPV vaccine…. is there anyone in the room who doubts that once he wins the Republican nomination he will announce “just kidding” and go back to those sensible ideas that appeal to independent voters?

 

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Oh oh oh! My Sharia!

Shariah is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Newt Gingrich, quoted in NY Times, 2011-09-01

One has to grant the possibility that one day Newt Gingrich will be telling a rapt television audience, maybe on Jon Stewart, that he alone warned America about danger; he alone saw it coming. And he was mocked.

Tennessee recently pass a law making it a felony to follow Sharia law. Does that make sense on any level at all? Let’s say a man divorces his wife according to Sharia law. Will the police arrest him and force him to remarry her, and then go to court and get a regular old Christian or secular humanist divorce? It’s mind-blowing.

So, let’s get on with the mockery. Somehow, 300 million Americans will soon be living under laws that require amputations and veils and polygamy. Well, at least they might require a mahr, which is a lump sum payment due to the wife when the husband dies or divorces her.

According to Abed Awad of Rugers University, Sharia law is also:

a methodology through which a jurist engages the religious texts to ascertain divine will.

So I have a really simple solution to the threat of Sharia Law. Let’s have all the states pass laws that make it illegal to appeal to religious doctrines or texts in support of any legal or legislative proceeding. How about that?

But wait— didn’t Newt Gingrich also just say something about it being a bad thing that God was being driven out of public life? Sounds like he doesn’t really mind religious bigotry intolerance– he just wants to make sure that he’s the one carrying the torch.

And aren’t both Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann campaigning on the idea of bringing religion back into the White House? They don’t seem shy about it either. Of course, that’s the Christian religion, so that would not be intolerant or bigoted, because it is the right religion.

Is there anything in Sharia like this new policy in Arizona– in a supposedly “Christian” nation? All visitors to prisoners in state prisons will have to pay a $25 fee each visit.

This sounds familiar. Sounds like something in a Dickens’s novel. Sounds like something from an era of heartless soul-crushing cruelty.

My my my my Sharia!

David Brooks, an otherwise sensible conservative, really thinks Rick Perry has a serious shot at winning the next presidential election. Perry is opposed to Social Security, thinks Franklin Roosevelt ruined the country, ridicules science, gives state jobs to any of his major contributors who want one, and loves macho posturing and quips.

His solution to the hardship caused ranchers and farmers by the drought over Texas this year: a prayer meeting.

I suspect Perry will crumble once he encounters the relentless scrutiny of the media given a national campaign. At this stage– and it’s early– I think Romney actually has a better chance of being the nominee, and a better chance of beating Obama.

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John McCain Takes a Leisurely Walk Through Peaceful Downtown Baghdad on a Bright Sunny Day in Iraq

According to the New York Times, John McCain and other members of a congressional delegation recently took a walk through a Baghdad Market, browsing, drinking tea, haggling with the merchants, and getting their shopping done. Afterwards, all smiles, they reported that great progress was being made in Iraq. It was now safe to shop.

Mike Pence, a Republican from that centre of cosmopolitan diversity, Indiana, reported that it was just like taking a walk through a market down home. Of course, in Republican America, eventually he will be right.

What they did not report to the media was that they were accompanied by 100 American soldiers in Humvees, sharpshooters, attack helicopters, and bullet-proof vests. They didn’t report that traffic had been diverted away from the area for their visit, and access to the delegation by Iraqi citizens restricted.

The merchants themselves, after hearing McCain’s comments, were incredulous. They thought he was out of his mind. They reported that they were being driven out of business by the failure of the Americans to provide security.

This is more than just an interesting anecdote. Bush accuses congress of sabotaging the Iraq project by linking funding to a time-line for American withdrawal. Congress says, we don’t see that there is any progress. Rather than stay for another five or ten years and another 3,000 American lives, let’s get out now.

McCain supports Bush on this issue. It is rather striking that, in his search for some symbolic act of confidence, to show that there is real progress in Iraq, the only thing he could hit upon was this– a exercise in fakery and deception. This is a supporter of the war, remember. He wants us to believe things are getting better– there is progress.

McCain has also announced that he will copy George Bush’s campaign fund-raising strategy of lavishing side-splittingly hilarious adolescent nicknames upon donors of especially large amounts of cash. They will be called-…. wait for it… the McCain 100’s or McCain 200’s.

Doesn’t quite have the pizzazz of “ranger” or “most honored and lavishly-sucked-up-to-crony now, does it?” No wonder he is beginning to trail… wait for it… Mitt Romney! Yes, the only Republican candidate who has never cheated on his wife! The Mormon! Could it be that the fundamentalist wing of the party, that cohort that still thinks, given enough time, Iraqi’s will be lining up for macjobs at local fast-food outlets, has finally spoken?

It is very, very sad to see a man like McCain, who once seemed like such a promising alternative to all of the sold-out, compromised politicians of both parties, go down in flames.

Like Colin Powell, he has learned that it almost impossible to be honorable and a Republican.

Sooner or later, you’re going to have to get down on your knees behind someone like Dick Cheney and in front of someone like Jerry Falwell or James Dobson– those apostles of intolerance.