Tag Archives: GOP

Political Rants

Bite back the bad news.

I’m not going to say much about politics this week. Just bracketed with work, school, more work, etc. A few quick comments and I’m out – sorry for the lameness.

Watched the Biden / Ryan matchup. My thought about presidential and vice presidential debates is that you tend to feel the person you agree with was the winner. Only makes sense, right? This was a much easier contest to watch than the last one, I must say, but it retained one of the central themes of the presidential debate: Romney/Ryan does not want to talk specifics about anything, and are now in full flight from their own positions.

The purported “numbers guy” seems very reluctant to use any when it comes to talking about their tax plan. They are planning to cut marginal tax rates to 20% across the board, while increasing military spending something like a trillion dollars or more above current spending levels. Ryan was claiming that this can be balanced by closing loopholes on upper income earners. Horseshit. Where’s the proof? They don’t have any numbers. They can’t name deductions that they would suggest in any negotiations with Congress. They’re talking about an enormous gap that their plan would greatly expand, they claim they can close it, but they offer no details. They’ve got a secret plan to cut taxes and balance the budget while raising military spending: it’s called “Just trust us.”

The laser focus on the Benghazi terror attack is instructive about how efficient the right-wing echo chamber is. Fox News blows this story to its many millions of viewers, along with Rush and the gang; the more mainstream outlets pick it up out of nervousness. What the hell – they are blowing this thing up as if it were a bigger failure than 9/11. They certainly talk about it more than Afghanistan, where Americans are killed every week, for chrissake.

That’s all for now. More later.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Soothsaying.

The trouble with writing blog posts at the end of a week is that, more often than not, you find yourself on the wrong end of the news cycle, when every blogger and talking head has had more than his/her say. So what the hell – I’m going to comment ever so briefly on a few things and then be quiet for a stretch of days. You’re welcome.

Embassy attacks. Been watching the awful scenes from overseas. Trouble is, it’s always that way for ordinary people in many of those countries. Think of what life is like in Iraq still, with the economy and infrastructure still in a shambles and bombs going off regularly, killing people at random in large numbers. We almost don’t even give it any notice unless the death toll reaches north of fifty or so. And yet, I tune in to Talk of the Nation and get to hear Fouad Ajami, formerly known as George W. Bush’s favorite Arab and a strong advocate of the Iraq invasion, talking about what Arab peoples need to do to join the community of civilized nations.  Doctor, cure thyself. (Again… how wrong do people have to be before they stop being trotted out as “experts”?)

Forty-seven fifty-three and fight. Like practically anyone with a television, I’ve seen excerpts of the Romney fundraising video captured in Boca Raton last May. There’s been a lot of talk about the errors Romney has made, but it seems like his most egregious ones are when he tells the truth. I’m sure that’s exactly how he and his advisers see half of the American people – a bunch of layabouts who want everything handed to them. Think about the picture that paints in your mind – who are they talking about? Are they talking about your mother on Social Security, or your father in the nursing home?

I’ve got news for Mitt Romney – and obviously there’s no way he would know this without being told – but when it comes to nursing home care, practically everyone in this country is poor enough for Medicaid. Here’s some more news: old people used to suffer badly before Medicare, Medicaid, and yes, Social Security. My grandfather had a heart condition for ten years before they passed Medicare. Try that sometime, richy, rich.

If there are a lot of working age people getting government checks or food coupons, it’s because Romney’s party skull-fucked the economy over the last decade… not because they want to be there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re now trying to shift the blame for that onto those who suffer the most.

luv u,

jp

Uncategorized

After party.

Just some random thoughts on the major party conventions, now that they’re over. Don’t have a lot of time to write this, so it’s going to be… well, random.

Tale of Two Crackers. Bill Clinton’s big speech on Wednesday night capped what seems to me like a political rehabilitation of monumental proportions. At some point, everybody started loving Bill Clinton, and he has become a major statesman … or as close to that as you can come in this age. It wasn’t terribly surprising to see this process happen with Ronald Reagan, who – despite having a spotty popularity rating during his presidency – the media always portrayed as wildly popular, and around whom an image-enhancement industry of sorts has been at work since his departure. But Clinton? Does anyone remember how denigrated he was throughout his presidency? I suppose people have gradually come to the realization that things weren’t so bad in the 1990s … since everything since then has pretty generally sucked.

That brings me to the second cracker – W. Bush. During Clinton’s long speech, while people were hanging on every word, it was hard not to think of W’s total absence from his own party’s convention, both in person and in rhetoric. If this election is truly about a competition between two distinct approaches to government, this contrast speaks volumes about the degree to which each vision (1) has a record of success and (2) is something its proponents can advance with confidence.

Turnaround. Is America ready for a turnaround, Romney-style? I think we’ve already gotten a piece of that. Matt Taibbi’s recent reporting on Mitt Romney’s history at Bain Capital illustrates a bit of what we can expect from a Romney administration. The short story is this: Like the corporate raiders of the 1980s, Bain would do leveraged buy-outs of companies – basically buy them on credit with relatively little money down. The resulting debt would then be held by the company. Then they would compel the company to monetize its assets for dividend payments to its new shareholders – the people at Bain and its partners. What is left is the husk of a company that had already been under stress before Bain’s arrival and is now buried under a crushing debt burden, its assets sold off to enrich others.

That’s the Romney plan for America, in a nutshell. The G.O.P., if elected, will do what it always does – borrow massively (i.e. leverage), cut taxes for the rich (i.e. dividend payment to investors), privatize (i.e. monetize assets), and deregulate. You don’t need an MBA to figure out where that’s headed.

luv u,

jp