Tag Archives: Romney

Political Rants

Eyes wide open.

I suppose if I’m going to rant about anything this week, it’s going to be the election. Election years are always nerve-wracking, like a slow-motion train wreck. They make me feel, more than ever, that we as a nation are sleep-walking into history. The notion that we can be on the knife-edge of electing someone like Mitt Romney president – that working people of any persuasion (to say nothing of retirees) would ever consider voting for that overpaid fichus tree in a suit – is simply flabbergasting.

To be certain, Obama has not acted boldly enough on the economy, on basic issues of human rights, and so on. That’s a given. But let us not forget how we got into this hole in the first place. We had eight years of Dubya Bush, during which time he and his fellow cartoon pirates started two wars, established torture as an open instrument of foreign policy, blew an enormous hole in the federal budget with two rounds of wartime tax cuts, let New Orleans be destroyed, crashed the economy into what has turned out to be a milder version of the Great Depression, and quite a bit more. They did so with the full cooperation of a Republican led congress for six full years, and effective Republican control for the remaining two. (The Dems’ razor-thin majority 2007-2009 didn’t buy them much.)

I find it hard to blame anyone for falling into cynicism with regard to the two-party duopoly we call American democracy. In too many ways, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two major parties. But there are enough differences to make it worth the time and effort (and in some states, it will take both time and effort – I’m looking at you, Ohio!) to cast a decisive vote against Romney and the G.O.P. congress. Not that this is all one has to do to move the country in the right direction – far from it. But the consequences of doing nothing on election day are … well, we’ve seen them. (See paragraph #2.) The Republicans get worse every cycle they hold power. If they take it again this time, they will gut the remaining social safety net (frayed as it is), throw millions out of work through forced austerity, drive us into recession, start another war, build a transcontinental pipeline to carry toxic sludge to the gulf where it can be turned into diesel fuel and sold to China, and… well, you’ve heard the rest.

I’m not asking you to ignore Obama’s failings. Resist, of course. But don’t think replacing him with a clueless millionaire won’t drive us into a deeper hole. We can’t afford to take that trip again. Vote with your eyes open … but for @$%# sake, vote.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Mitt’s excellent adventure.

Did you hear it last week, over the noise emanating from the London Olympics? That collective groan from points east? That was the world reacting to the man who might be president next January. There are, I’m sure, millions in Europe and the Middle East thinking, Really, America? So soon after Bush, you’re going to elect yet another ham-fisted idiot? Really? In many respects, our president is president of the world, if only because he (and thus far, it’s always been “he”) wields enormous power – military, economic, and diplomatic – over virtually everyone else. (They should probably get a vote in the matter, but then here in America we’re not even guaranteed that right, depending upon which state we live in.)

Though his spinmeisters have been working overtime to put a positive gloss on it, Mitt’s softball trip to friendly nations was an unmitigated (or un-Mitt-igated, perhaps) disaster, from the crypto-racist tone of the adviser referencing our shared “Anglo-Saxon heritage” with the British, to the Olympic gaffe, to name-checking MI6 (psst, Mitt: it’s supposed to be a secret), to blaming Palestinian poverty on their “culture” or lack of same. That last comment is something of a bookend to the Anglo-Saxon trope he started off with, making Romney seem strangely fixated on issues of ethnic identity. (He later doubled down on the Palestinian remark in an essay in National Review online.)

Of course, the stop was another opportunity to signal his willingness to countenance war with Iran, whether started by Israel or by the United States. In this we hear his neocon Bush-era advisors speaking, such as Dan Senor, former military flack during the early days of the Iraq invasion, who said on Romney’s behalf that the governor would “respect that decision” if Israel chose to strike Teheran militarily. No doubt. I hope everyone over here is listening closely to what Romney and his campaign are saying about foreign policy. They seem anxious to get another war started, having tasted what they seem to consider “success” in the Iraq catastrophe. And for those who say the economy is the only issue that matters, it’s worth considering what yet another pointless war would do to the federal budget.

Mitt’s got FoxNews syndrome – too much time spent with friendly media. He just doesn’t know how to behave in the real world. Ergo, his press availabilities were practically zero during this trip. I’ll bet he’s glad to be back home, in the comforting embrace of Sean Hannity.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Go, Dick.

This is going to be brief. My back is a disaster area today, and that’s no Jonathan Harris imitation.

I was listening to President Obama speaking at the NATO summit this past week, talking about ending the Afghan War “responsibly”. And I had this impulse to say, “Thanks, Nixon!” Back in the day, old Dick was winding down his war, so to speak, standing up a colonial army (the ARVN – south Vietnamese army) and always talking about “peace with honor” after nearly a decade of mindless slaughter. They were fighting “terrorists” as well – just look at Life magazine or some other news publication from the late 1960s and you’ll see that that was one of the terms they used to describe the Viet Cong (NLF). Not so different.

Except that it was actually more brutal, as brutal and ugly as the Afghan war has been and continues to be. Vietnam and more generally Indochina was almost totally destroyed during the American war there, particularly from 1962 forward. People are still being killed by that war, by virtue of tons of unexploded ordinance, Agent Orange hotspots all over the south, and more. I don’t want to minimize that fact. For every drone strike Obama launches, there were likely 1,000 sorties over Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia dropping high explosives, napalm, and cluster bombs by the ton. The fact that this likely would not be tolerated today speaks to a gradual increase in our collective humanity. If anything constrains our leaders, it’s that.

Still, even within these constraints, we can do a lot of damage. The drone strikes are a very easy option for the administration. It’s a political winner, since American lives are not put in jeopardy, and it has the vague perception of accuracy going for it, though our targets have very little to say on the subject (because they are, of course, dead). It is a very corrosive weapon, though, on both legal and moral grounds, and it is likely causing a great deal more hatred of the United States than could be propagated by the likes of those we are targeting. Like Nixon’s (and LBJ’s) Vietnam war, it is approached as a project of eliminating the “bad guys” so that there will be fewer of them. That, of course, does not work and never will. Aside from being wrong, it is strategically stupid, and it is putting us in greater danger with every attack.

Still, the alternative to our little Nixon is Reagan on steroids – a Romney administration following a neocon-powered foreign policy, with multiple additional wars on tap. That being the case, well… Nixon’s the one.

luv u,

jp