Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Better than worse.

Election’s over. Dodged another bullet there. That was close … sort of… if three million human votes and about 100 electoral votes is a thin margin. Thank you, black people, brown people, and women for saving us (i.e. white men) from ourselves once again. Without your help, John Bolton would likely be the next secretary of state. You should be very, very proud of what you kept us from doing – that being, quite literally, driving this country into yet another war. Now it’s merely possible that we will have a war with Iran, not likely. A dangerous state of affairs, to be sure, but not a guaranteed catastrophe. Nice work.

Post-election used to be a time to reflect on what happened, what was decided. There appears to be some of that going on, though probably not enough. Suffice to say that the predictions on the center-left were far more accurate than those on the popular right. It was more than a little cheering to see Karl Rove scrambling for data on Fox News after Ohio was called for Obama. This can’t be right! It would mean all of our assumptions are massively skewed! Welcome to the world of fact, fat boy. Couldn’t happen to a better guy. Wish I could be a fly on the wall the next time he speaks with Sheldon Adelson and some of the other rich wing-nuts who gave him millions of dollars to crush Obama, Sherrod Brown, and others.

Right. So… what we’ve got is something very much the same as we had before, minus some very bad actors – namely congress members Joe Walsh, Allen West (it appears), and so on. The administration still has its many problems, namely targeted killing, extralegal detention, craven lack of effort on Israel/Palestine, soft commitment to expanding employment, etc. But as I’ve said many times to friends and family, same is better than worse. That’s enough reason to vote. I think many, many Americans were smart enough to see that this was the case, and many stood in lines for ridiculous stretches of time to cast their votes.

God bless them. They saved our sorry asses to fight another day. That’s something to celebrate.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

W.B.G. (We’ll be gone)

Back before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the guiding principle of Wall Street bankers was i.b.g./y.b.g. – when the whole thing comes crashing down, “I’ll be gone and you’ll be gone.” We will get away with it. That was prescient, to say the least. They pretty much did get away from it, except a handful of bad actors that hurt the wealthy as well as the ordinary. (Bernie Madoff is one of those.)

As we stand at the cusp of another presidential election, witnessing the terrifying aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it’s clear that for the “conservative” (i.e. statist reactionary) side of the political equation, i.b.g./y.b.g. appears to apply to the climate crisis as well. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has adopted his party’s Luddite stance on global warming, advocating massive expansion of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use and joining the crackpot consensus on the right that sees extreme weather as a series of unfortunate (and wholly unrelated) accidents best ignored.

That the G.O.P. standard bearer can maintain this position after a year of unprecedented extreme weather is remarkable. That he can do it in the wake of Sandy’s devastation is pathological. Madness though it may be, it has a goal: profit. Romney is fighting for his class, and fighting hard. He is the champion of short-term gain, narrowly shared.

His beloved Keystone pipeline is case in point. Romney speaks of this project as a means of “energy independence”. I’m guessing he’s not ignorant enough of global markets to think that any resulting fuel would simply be shared amongst Americans. Any oil produced in the U.S. goes into the global market. Even more importantly, Keystone would carry tar-sands sludge, mixed with toxic chemicals, down to refineries on the Gulf coast where it would be refined into diesel fuel and shipped to China. The bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Who cares if it contributes mightily to the collapse of our ecosystem? They make their money, then i.b.g. / y.b.g., right?

Trouble is, w.b.g. (we’ll be gone), too. That plainly won’t do. Do the right thing on Tuesday, and send Romney back to his mansion and his $100 million I.R.A.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Shameless.

In our monthly podcast, it’s my job to do a cheap (dirt cheap) imitation of Mitt Romney. (Matt’s got the heavy lifting – he has to talk like a horse.) And I think you can tell if you listen to more than one episode, my impression of him is shifting. But I think you might agree that Willard’s own impression of himself has mutated a hell of a lot faster than anyone would have imagined a few months ago.

We are truly living in a post-modern age of political rhetoric. Romney has a massive right-wing orchestra to blow hard on every note that passes his lips. He makes a claim, and it gets chorused incessantly by FoxNews, Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and countless others like them to millions of Americans. Together they create such a storm surge of bullshit that it pushes far inland to where the mainstream corporate media lives. They who spend most of their time trying to disprove the canard that they are radical leftists feel compelled to report on whatever’s being tossed up, whether it’s the massive Benghazi coverup or the “racism” of Shirley Sharrod. That’s how national news stories are made. That’s how a deadly skirmish in Libya becomes a bigger scandal than Bush’s failure to stop the 9/11 plot.

Then of course there’s the fact that neither candidate wants to talk about global warming. I guess it takes time away from agitating for more drilling, more fracking, more wanton extraction from every available patch of land. Needless to say the right-wing gas machine is totally behind this, but then so is the mainstream and even the mildly liberal media. If I hear one more pronouncement from one of the three white dudes at Politico that we’re heading for a fiscal cliff, I might explode. One morning late this week, I literally watched them complain about the presidential candidates not giving ample time to the debt issue while right behind them a weather map showed the approach of Hurricane Sandy, a.k.a. Frankenstorm, whose confluence is no doubt fueled by our warming atmosphere.

Needless to say, there’s plenty of blame to go around for our current state of denial on a whole range of vital issues. But if someone deserves a trophy for obfuscation, it’s Romney.

luv u,

jp