Mitt's Debut

"This president can tell us it was someone else's fault. This president can tell us that the next four years he'll get it right, but this president cannot tell us that you are better off today than when he took office." Mitt Romney's convention address 8/30/2012.

Like much else that Romney and Ryan said, this statement is factually wrong. Things aren't great, but we are better off than we were when the financial system was imploding with the housing market. Further, although unemployment rose after Obama was inaugurated, it fell in response to his policies--just not far enough. The problem was that his policies were too timorous, in part because Obama made attempt after mistaken attempt to compromise with the GOP minorities in both the House and the Senate: mostly the Senate, where the latter wielded its filibuster veto.

His attempts were mistaken, because Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, had made it very clear that his party would do almost whatever it could to insure that Obama would be a one-term President.

Neither Romney, nor Ryan, nor any of the other so-called leaders in the GOP, are willing to admit it now, but they are at least as responsible for the parlous state of the nation as Obama. They blocked whatever initiatives Obama attempted to bring about a recovery of the economy their (and Clinton-Rubin's) extreme laissez-faire policies had brought to the brink.

The GOP's hypocrisy is extraordinary, so the string of falsehoods promulgated by Ryan and then Romney at the convention should not be surprising.

What I do find surprising is the lack of "message control" on the part of the most prominent participants in the Republican Convention. Only the lesser lights, like Susana Martinez and Ann Romney stayed on message: to promote Romney as their standard bearer. Aside from the disastrous "address" of Clint Eastwood, Republican stars like Chris Christie, and even Paul Ryan appeared at best lukewarm in their promotion of their putative nominee.

This leads me to wonder: perhaps Mitt isn't even the super-manager he claims, or perhaps the GOP isn't really uniting behind him, after all. Ron Paul hasn't endorsed him, Clint referred to him as "the other guy" and many others seemed to treat him as an afterthought.

Maybe, the huge financial advantage Republicans have gained from Citizens United and their billionaire "super-pacs" has made them careless. After all, Sheldon Adelson has said he'd spend "whatever it takes" to defeat Obama, so, why worry? They'll just smother the airwaves with their lies.

I hope enough people tune out their distortions, but this is a classic case of the selfish class attempting to take over what had been at best a limited democracy. If their class succeeds, the US, and the world, will look increasingly like the last, fumbling years of the western Roman Empire.

Rapists for Romney-Ryan

Rapists: just think, if the GOP wins the White House and Congress, then the women who carry your babies will just have to have them, hah, hah! You can go around the country forcing women to have your sons and daughters. Won't that be fun? Oh, you might have to go to prison, but that's a small price to pay. And just think, if the nasty woman you’ve impregnated tries to "get rid of it," she'll end up in prison, too!

And think of it this way: you're carrying out God's plan to be fruitful and multiply. Maybe the GOP will pass a law that your rap-ee will have to marry you, sort of like the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Hey, as far as Afghanistan goes, the only thing wrong with their social policies, from a Republican point of view, is that they're justified by the Quran, not the Bible; it's like going back to the Fourth Century, when the Catholic Church even humiliated Emperor Theodosius the Great!

Some Republicans, like Michelle Bachmann, are worried that the US will be governed under Sharia law, if Obama is re-elected, but really, if the Republicans are elected, maybe they'll re-institute stoning: it's in the Bible, after all.

Anyone who thinks it would have been much nicer in the Dark Ages, should vote for Republicans. Just think: if the GOP swept away all the regulations they enjoy complaining about, we could be re-visited by the Black Death, since basic sanitation would have to be left up to the "Free Market," meaning no one would do anything about accumulating garbage, unless someone paid them to: What! The Government? No, no! They'll have "drowned it in the bathtub."

Now, if you’re a billionaire, you should also vote Republican because you'll get at least $250,000 more to piss away any way you want to, instead of being subjected to the indignity of having to give it to the Government. You can spend it on ermine pillow covers instead of Govmint spending it on all sorts of ridiculous things, like job training, early childhood education, or even Food Stamps so some un-enterprising slobs don't go hungry at night! Or maybe they'd spend it on those awful women, who seem to think they should get birth control for free, probably, even if they're raped.

If women don't want to be raped, they should pack an automatic, or just don't go out anywhere, unless they have an escort, preferably male and over 6 feet tall--or, or hold an aspirin between their knees.

That's why women should really stay home, you see. Again, the Taliban have had the vision to create the glorious future that Republicans are only now beginning to realize--if it's Christian, of course.

What Is To Be Done?*

I despair the politics of this era, the lies and distortions that impel it, the money that drives it. Mitt Romney is its perfect symbol; Paul Ryan is the embodiment of its deceptive promises of reaction snake-oil.

The Economist asks, 'Who, really, is Mitt Romney?' I doubt he can answer, except: he's determined to win the Presidency; he has no goal, other than winning it. He's been both a moderate liberal as governor of Massachusetts, and an "extreme conservative," (his own words), while running for President, even after winning the nomination. He was pro-choice, and now, he'll run on a Republican platform in which even rape and incest are not exempt from its absolute ban. He insists, after Akin's blooper, that he'd allow abortion for either reason, but who knows whether he would, or could, given his party.

Romney even threatens a Gold Commission to investigate returning to the Gold Standard--presumably to mollify Ron Paul supporters.

Then Senator, George McGovern, wrote an awful forward to The Promise of the Coming Dark Age: McGovern touted the Khmer Rouge as a beacon! If Mitt is able to buy the Presidency--that's what it would be, a purchase, costing several billion dollars--then the Dark Age could be upon us: the Roman Senators of old couldn't match the callous disregard the elite bear today for the rest of us. Romney would cut services (Food Stamps, Medicaid) for the desperate and cut taxes for his (lightly taxed) class of multimillionaires and billionaires. He'd also increase Defense spending, possibly for fighting another war: Iran, probably, although he'd also start a trade war with China the day he's inaugurated.

Romney appears to have chosen "extreme conservative" over moderate liberal, although he's still claiming he lives in Massachusetts (there is a question whether he did, when he filed taxes and voted in Massachusetts, claiming residence in his son's basement, a possible felony). But Romney still resists political, as well as geographic, definition.

His party tries to rally natives against immigrants, whites against blacks, men against women--its absolutist anti-abortion position is only a small part of that--but all is subsumed in the general war against all who are not owners of significant capital.

Capital is the contemporary version of the gold, land and slaves controlled by Roman Senators in the fourth and fifth centuries. Unlike the wealth of old, however, capital is expandable, and radical. Roman Senators could do only a small fraction of the damage that can be done, is already being done, by our contemporary elites, from eviscerating the safety net, environmental pollution and impoverishing the non-rich, to global warming, global immiseration and buying this election.

Can sanity stop them? Even the sitting President, Obama, doesn't have the money to beat back their misinformation, smears, and outright lies: example, their claim that Obama is reviving welfare.

What is to be done?

*Lenin used the same title.

Democracy Needs Wikileaks

It's not just disturbing, that the US, UK and Sweden are ganging up on Julian Assange, and Ecuador.

You can be sure that none of the first three nations are concerned about the rough sex accusations made against Assange (the charges are not for rape, but for a kind of sexual aggression only prosecuted in Sweden; but he's not even formally charged: the extradition is only for questioning).

So, the UK threatens Ecuador's Embassy, and despite the threatened action being a breach of international law, the US and Sweden both make encouraging noises.

Why, because under Assange's leadership Wikileaks published thousands of US diplomatic and military documents, classified from NOFORN to Secret. Newspapers all over the world published articles about them, and even Americans now know a lot more about what our nation is doing to the rest of the world. Wikileaks enabled one of the US's most crucial freedoms--freedom of information--to be dramatically, if temporarily, expanded.

Wikileaks sympathizers claim that the US is pressuring both the UK and Sweden to extradite Assange to the US. They say the US intends to try him for espionage, which is punishable by death. Of course, the three principal nations deny everything. But note what the US is not saying: it's not saying that Britain should honor Ecuador's grant of asylum to Assange; it's not saying that Britain shouldn't threaten Ecuador and it's not saying that it won't prosecute Assange for espionage.

Meanwhile the UK denies him safe passage.

All three nations boast about their freedom of the press. Ecuador has only recently had such freedoms: its media was privately owned, in bed with dictators and staunchly opposed to Rafael Correa's government, which has not repressed it.

But the Obama administration appears as zealous as the former USSR to crush dissident Assange; and Romney, if anything, would try to outdo Obama. US media say Ecuador's President has attacked his own press, but that appears to be a distortion.

Correa's government faced a hostile, partisan private oligopoly dominating Ecuadoran media; his supposed "assault" is his government's attempt to nurture a fairer press. Ecuador has promoted public and cooperative outlets, so they could compete with private media.

It would be as if Obama promoted NPR and MSNBC. Oh, he has?

So, why are Assange and Ecuador the new bad-guys to three supposedly democratic governments?

Both bad-guys have defied the American Empire. If they prevail, The Empire looks weak. So, it doesn't matter that the New York Times and WaPo, co-publishers with Assange, are just as culpable as Assange himself. They're connected to power; Julian isn't.

"Hang the bastard!" parallels Rome's response in its declining years. The Fifth Century Empire tortured and "slow-burned" its opponents, but still it lost control, long before CE 476.

Reporters and Corruption

Everything is for sale, including our supposedly representative government. What I find almost worse is the market of public information--and what, apparently, is not for sale.

Fox News, the most popular (faux) news channel, is despite its slogan "Fair and balanced," an unabashed propaganda mill that actively disseminates half-truths that become, momentarily, lead stories in the rest of the news.

Supposedly, on the other side, is NPR, which Congressional Republicans and candidate Romney both want to cut off from the public teat. NPR may favor Democrats, you see, because it's just as wishy-washy as they are. It's not hard-line for tax cuts for the wealthy, but it takes no position and attempts to present a 'fair and balanced' presentation of the issue.

NPR listeners are better informed than Fox watchers, or those of MSNBC, but none of the above present serious analyses of an issue, like reasonable rates of taxation. Even on NPR, the tendency is to parrot whatever one side said, and then how the other side responded: a he-said-she-said model that requires of the reporter no thought or research.

Will the Watergate break-in, and the investigations that issued from it, be our last really serious and effective investigative journalism?

Fewer and fewer news bureaus have reporters on the ground, either around the nation, or around the world. A worker-police massacre in South Africa is reported on by a journalist in Nairobi, 1780 miles away. If something happens in Minnesota, the reporter may be sent in from Chicago.

And more and more reporters only report: recording what the official, and/or his opponent say, without any reflection like: What the hell is "legitimate rape?" Or, damn, is that how contraception works: "the woman's body" somehow knows how to get rid of it--no abortion needed? Should I report that Congressman Akin don't know nothin'?

Maybe Akin made even the laziest reporters sit up and realize: they can't just report; they've got to base their reporting on facts.

Maybe. If extremists--who seem to be overwhelmingly on the right during this period--keep on attempting to present fiction as fact and fact as fiction, ever more wildly, maybe a more responsible information system will emerge. I hope it will finally allow most people to really know what's going on, and why it affects them.

On the optimistic side: people do help each other, and given a choice, most people will lend a helping hand when needed. Factual and analytic reporting would help people.

On the negative: fear is probably our most powerful emotion, and the one-percent, ably represented by Fox and Limbaugh, are backed by much more money, because our moneyed Roman Senators only want more money, and think in zero-sum terms: if they pay workers more, or protect us more from their pollution (pay their own external costs), they'll get less. Their strategy: keep'em scared and angry.

Will fear and anger work?

Romney-Ryan Can Win by Losing

It's more likely Romney won't win the Presidency, having named Paul Ryan. Ryan defines Romney, clarifies that he's not some "compassionate conservative," as W pretended to be--until he was elected.

But winning appears to be less important than changing the conversation.

Radical reactionaries won't meet the fate they did with Goldwater in 1964. Then, conservatives had neither think-tank brainpower, nor the financial power unleashed by Citizens United. Goldwater went down hard, because Democrats/progressives dominated the conversation.

It wasn't until Reagan that conservatives gained a second chance, but they won only a toehold.

The reactionary, Ayn Randian ideas of Paul Ryan are far more extreme than Reagan ever dared. They represent an aspiration to turn American political society back to the Robber Barons, before not only the New Society (Medicare-Medicaid), New Deal (Social Security, fair wages, labor union power), but even before the Anti-Trust Progressive era, when governments began to regulate and tax corporate and personal excess.

If Democrats/progressives/liberals/labor are able to get the word out, a slim majority of voters in "contested battleground states" will probably vote for Obama, and maybe even for a Democratic Congress and Senate.

That's a big if, since Ryan's name has drawn over $3 million to Republican coffers in just two days. Self-interested moneybags will mobilize to send much more--not just to the GOP, but to the so-called super-pacs, to spend on bile against Obama, or anyone to the left of Attila the Hun (I wrote Attila's autobiography, which you can buy here: http://www.amazon.com/Attila-Told-his-Scribes-ebook/dp/B00855M90G).

Still, there are ways incumbent Presidents can get the word out. But the election is only part of the story, perhaps the least likely part. Ryan is important even if he and Romney don't win: the right wing will have succeeded in shifting the conversation far to the right in their favor.

The great failure of Goldwater was that LBJ's landslide shifted political ideals and policy leftward. But with millions to billions of dollars mobilized against Obama and Democrats by Ryan's candidacy, Obama and even other Democrats might still win, but the election will probably be close.

So, the ideas put forward by Ryan and the Tea Party, will not only NOT remain unthinkable, they will become The Alternative, if nearly half the electorate supports Romney-Ryan-Republicans.

Romney has never, until now, allowed himself to be defined in policy terms: he's run away from his one signal accomplishment as Massachusetts Governor (Romneycare), but by naming Ryan, he becomes dependent upon the Tea Party and its radical corporate base: addled activists subsidized by Robber Barons.

So, today's equivalent of Fifth Century Roman Senators will attempt to control virtually all levels of government--and, of course, their own serfs. That's why they're willing to spend (100's of) millions of dollars against Obama.

Conspiracy

I never used to believe in conspiracy theories as a way to explain our world: the Bilderbergs, or Illuminati, the Communists, or aliens, Satan or the Anti-Christ. When I muttered darkly about climate destruction, a health foods store proprietor told me about contrails: "They're destroying the atmosphere, so we'll all have to buy their food."

"Who?"

"The Government."

That was a new one. Or maybe not so new; I saw it mentioned online the next day, and remembered that the health store lady had whispered "contrails" years before.

But what is happening in Congress, in election campaigns, in dismissals of bank fraud charges, in watered down or canceled regulations, in timorous actions by Obama and his administration--and other governments even more so, well, it does look more and more like a grand, if informal, conspiracy by a small group of people to grasp firm control. Rising inequality, the international power of corporations and Billionaires International--the richest man in the world is Mexican, though more billionaires hail from the US than anywhere else--does begin to look like a kind of conspiracy.

It's backed by billions of dollars (to protect trillions); it's international in scope: the US, Canada, most European nations excepting Greece, seem to have been taken over by this global elite, as have the white nations down-under. Russia, China, Korea, Japan, India and maybe Brazil are joining up, as well.

But it isn't a tight conspiracy, maintained by communication and central control; that's why it's so successful. This amorphous elite has socked away anywhere from $30 to $60 plus trillions, according to estimates by various sources, hidden in ways that are difficult for governments to trace--or certainly to tax. That's at least several times the GDP of the largest economy in the world: the United States.

Where is this money?

It's parked in low-wage countries outside of US, or other nations' control, largely in banking havens, where no one asks questions. Mitt's overseas accounts are emblematic.

Mitt isn't anywhere near the wealthiest, nor most powerful of this elite, but he represents their most overt attempt at gaining control. It isn't as if Obama has stood resolutely in the way: he's not one of them, but people around him, like Tim Geithner, probably are.

It's possible that many of this elite would rather the GOP and Romney didn't make their project quite so obvious, but Citizens United has so stacked the deck in their favor that it's difficult to stop.

Think of all the services, education, training, infrastructure and jobs that could be bought by the US portion of that $60+ trillion--without raising taxes on anyone else! Occupy made a valid point.

Even if Romney loses, we are on the cusp of the takeover by a global elite even more dominant than Roman Senators in Fifth Century Rome. Who knows how long it could last--until a popular explosion/revolution, or a global environmental disaster.

Celebrity-itis

As in disease. I wonder what percentage of Americans are in the grip of it.

In my last blog, I pointed out that Batman of Dark Knight Rising is a billionaire, who, like most billionaires, according to the new GOP religion, is a hero, whose "job creation," or other heroic action, is essential for our society to function. That's why they and multimillionaires should get tax breaks, so that their share of Americans' wealth will become even more extreme than it already is, paying even lower tax rates than they do now: less than half the rate of the middle class, earning a middle class income, working a 50+ hour week.

But then, after all, billionaires are heroes, job creators.

And celebrities? Celebrities are the ones who keep the stupid slobs' attention, so they don't even think about how they're being ripped off, every day.

It's like a crime team. The billionaire is the thief, who hoists your wallet when you're not looking. The celebrity is the reason you're not looking: he or she diverts your attention: they're the con man's partners, so they share in the loot: that's why they're paid so much.

Most people are persuaded not to bother even looking. Cynicism about politics may be justified, but it enables the thieves, and disables a politics of community, or sharing power and wealth. It doesn't have to be this way, but we're taught that it does.

Our whole culture, created by corporate hype, has been unsubtly taken over by the likes of Jamie Dimon and the Koch brothers. They've sunk millions (mere change to them) in think tanks, media outlets, shows, movies, even colleges and universities, to persuade us: only the very wealthy should be free--that's what freedom means. Freedom to be rich, a celeb, so you can do anything--buy elections, or pollute, and not pay damages you impose on others. That's freedom. You can break laws and then change them, like Sheldon Adelson, who's apparently 'investing' $100,000,000 so a Romney administration will change (or ignore) the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Then he'd avoid a trial, maybe jail(!), for million-dollar bribes in the Chinese gambling capital of Macao!

What about freedom for the poor slobs who aren't multi-millionaires/billionaires? Too bad. You don't have enough money to buy freedom: you'll have to work even harder: 60+ hour weeks just to pay the rent and groceries. And if the billionaires' party gets its way, it will privatize Social Security and Medicare--and get even richer, but poor slobs will have to work until they collapse--in the street.

Like the serfs in the fifth century Roman Empire: yet the Roman Senators lived well--until the whole edifice collapsed.