Someone Explain This—I Think I’m Crazy


Okay, when did Romney start running? Two years ago, maybe? And, at that time, his being a Mormon and a Republican and a Wall Street playah, etc. –was nothing compared to his fellow GOP hopefuls’ bags of bananas. So all this time the Media is focused on who is ahead in the GOP primary race: Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Jindal, et. al.—their party’s race started out with about ten of them, whittled it down to two or three, and finally, as if forced to swallow cod liver oil, they settle on the only candidate NOT provably crazy, stupid, or scandalous—Mitt.

Republicans were a little embarrassed about Mitt’s Massachusetts gubernatorial health care legislation—purportedly the model for what would become ‘Obama-Care’. And the hyper-evangelicals were not too crazy about his new-fangled Christianity (in spite of the LDS being the only major faith engendered by our great nation, rather than being imported from the Old World).

The Republican party was even more embarrassed by their last president, who left our armed forces mired overseas in multiple theaters of battle; who left our economy going into toxic shock—thus proving right the Democrats whose dire warnings about de-regulation and overdone tax-cuts for the First Estate had, ‘til then, been laughed off; and who left behind ‘No Child Left Behind” Policies that had managed to leave all our kids ‘behind’ (‘except for the rich’—that eternal GOP refrain).

So then, after the primaries, Obama and Mitt go head-to-head in a series of debates. I’m skipping over all the lies and misdirection employed by Mitt’s campaign—it’ll suffice to say that while being accused of being a ‘softy’, Obama had brought down Bin Laden and successfully surged into Afghanistan; while being accused of destroying the economy, Obama had made good headway (better than any of us had a right to expect) on lowering unemployment, preserving and creating jobs, and putting our national commerce back onto an upward incline, out of its free-fall begun under Bush; and while being accused of idleness, Obama had ended DADT, signed the Ledbetter Act, the Dream Act, and restored our reputation and our image in the big world outside of Washington DC. And he sings!—not a politician’s groan (see YouTube videos of Mitt attempting to match this—hilarious) but an actually fine singing voice.

So, having disproved all of Mitt’s and the GOP’s charges against him, Obama went to the first debate. Wasn’t he surprised to hear Mitt try to say that Obama’s policies were ruinous—while simultaneously avowing an administration almost identical to Obama’s (just without Obama—apparently the only thing that is really wrong about our present administration). The fact-checking added by the Media indicated that Mitt hadn’t said a word that wasn’t perpendicular to every word he had said publicly up until the debate. The Media also pointed out that while Mitt definitely ‘won’ the debate—he did it by mostly telling lies.

I understand that ‘massaging’ the truth is part and parcel of modern campaigning—I’m not even saying that the Democratic ticket is above giving back as good as they get. But the President’s party is different from the GOP in one very important way—it is the ‘intellectual’ party. The Democrats scruple at telling bald-faced lies because they know their constituency won’t put up with the kind of ignorance the GOP inspires—so they are far more limited in the amount of bull-puckey they can get away with slinging. A Democratic voter is the kind of person who would still vote for a candidate who admitted to atheism, or polio, or having an African father.

The GOP never falters at embracing the zealously Christian, the greedy Rich, the misogynistic, and the bullies, commercial or ethical. Their campaign doesn’t even deserve the name—it has been a treasonous rally, begun on the day of Obama’s inauguration and continued for the full length of Obama’s first term. It has been a flood of scandal-mongering, legislative stonewalling, and thinly veiled bigotry.

So the question I’m troubled by, what totally stumps me, is—why would Mitt Romney be so eager to take the presidency away from a man who has performed so valiantly, so effectively, and so in the spirit of what America means to the vast majority of us? Why would he take on the daunting task of a presidential campaign, when he clearly has no better ideas to offer us than Obama’s ideas? How could he imagine that the Presidency of the United States would be something he’d be comfortable with? He hasn’t the smarts. He hasn’t the charisma. He doesn’t have the ability to truly relate with average Americans. In spite of his claims to the contrary, I think this country could not be in greater danger than it is in right now.

I believe that because Mitt says he ‘knows business’. He says he knows how to help his country with its financial woes in a business-like way, rather than in the way of the former community organizer with no business experience. Well, I have two comments on that score—first, our country has given Obama a four-year intensive course in governmental finance—and, so far, he has aced his tests in nearly every category.

Second, the United States is not a business—it is a great experiment, a 200-year-old dream of humanity’s fulfillment—and the last thing it (or We) need right now is a Gordon Gecko having a fire sale on our social services—in the name of ‘small government’, no less—and a wheeler-dealer trying to lead us into a prosperous future (well, maybe not ALL of us).

And let me just say this about ‘small government’. Are you stupid, or just ignorant?! The USA is the richest, most powerful nation on Earth. The USA is home to over 300-million people. The USA is comprised of fifty sovereign states and a few territories. The USA leads the world in invention, research, space exploration, higher educational systems, and lots of other stuff. It’s huge, it’s important, it’s constantly under threat from terrorists and megalomaniacs, and let’s not forget—it is the year 2012—you know, the 21st century? Any idiot that suggests we run it all using town hall meetings and flyers and sunbeams of goodness—well, they will be disappointed, that’s all I’m saying.

What drives the Republican party? Well, my parents voted Democratic until they made their first million—then they started voting Republican. Its reputation for protecting the wealthy from taxes is its biggest draw in metropolitan areas. Its cozening up to evangelicals is its biggest draw in the rural areas. So, basically, it’s about greed and religious extremism—a strange choice for a Mormon—the LDS has a history of being driven away from our entire Eastern Seaboard, all the way to Utah, by God-fearing Christians.

And how can my fellow voters think a businessman is going to improve their country, or their living conditions? Corporate deregulation and runaway spending made the financial swamp we’ve been mired in this last decade-and-a-half. Raising our kids the best we can—that is bad business. After all, it’s all expense, with no revenue—of course we want to cut education during the lean years! But wait—maybe it’s bad for business, but we still want a good education for our kids. Hmmm. I wonder if that may also be true of medicine? –of law-enforcement?

Maybe running this country like a business is a bad idea. Maybe a president that understands the importance of both business and social services would be a better pick. Who knows, right? Being President is a big job—you know, I’m almost as scared for Mitt, should he win the election, as I am for myself and everybody else.

My Baby’s Sick –And That Debate Just Now Isn’t Helping

Tuesday, October 23, 2012              2:18 AM

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Our sweet petunia, Jessy, came up on the Harlem North train tonight with her dog, Tuesday (the Wonder Dog). She came and asked for heartburn remedies, of which I have several. But she was in intense abdominal pain and she wanted a hug. So I gave her my best daddy-hug, but it didn’t work. Claire just called from Northern Westchester Hospital in Mt. Kisco. They say ‘appendicitis’ and she’ll call me back when she knows whether the surgery will be tonight or later this morning.

 I know I’m not supposed to be worried about a little appendicitis operation, but it is surgery, minor or otherwise, plus I’ve been getting pessimistic lately and I could really use one in my win column—if only to convince me that there are two sides to luck, and not just the s**t end of it, which is all I’ve been getting lately. And our baby is so fragile. I couldn’t stand it if anything went wrong.

 Just to give you an example of how things have been going lately: Jessy’s emergency surgery in the next few hours will require us to cancel the surgery scheduled for Tuesday later today—the reason Jessy came up to our house in the first place! I should be grateful—if she had stayed in the city, who knows what might have happened. Now she’s with Claire, up here in Westchester—and I’m watching Tuesday until they get back. And Tuesday’s surgery can wait—she’s just getting something removed, in case it’s cancerous. Maybe I should talk to my doctor about adding a third anti-depressant prescription….

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And that debate tonight—I nearly gag every time that nut-job tries to criticize Obama while saying that his policies won’t be any different. It’s times like these that I really wish the USA had a higher standard of education—if Obama doesn’t get his ‘four more’, I’m just going to stop talking to people. If the people in this country have already forgotten what eight years of GOP admin has done to us, we have nothing to talk about.

Besides, it seems like the stupid people are always winning elections these days—those tea-party whack jobs got voted in in 2010, pretending they were a new, improved conservative agenda—they’re new, alright—we haven’t had such narrow-minded, fear-based elected officials since the Salem Witch Trials—who woulda thunk any group could out-stupid Geo. W. Bush!

 But it will all happen the way it happens. I’ll be thrilled if we voters get the better man—but, if it’s Romney, that will only indicate that our days as an ‘empire’ are fading. And that’s something I’ve been hoping isn’t true for decades now, while suspecting that it already was. Making sense and having patience—stuff like that has never been the American way—hell, it’s never been the way of the world at large. Nor can I claim any great sense or patience in the way I lived my own life, so how can I complain?

If civilization doesn’t simply collapse under its own weight, it will only be due to a sea-change in the global paradigm. Unless the entrenched powers-that-be are overrun by angry mobs, nothing of significance will change quickly enough to stop our totally uncontrolled explosion of digital tech, the widening gap between rich and poor, and the abuse of natural resources that threaten the world’s ability to sustain life of any kind.

 And that angry mob will have to be a global one—so, imagine Syria, then multiply that times the whole world. Not a pretty picture—yet, still the only alternative to allowing the stuffed shirts to guard their own precious quality-of-life until it is too late to reverse the damage. Am I advocating violence? No, I am not. But I would appreciate it if someone else can tell me what the hell else can change civilization’s inertia from self-destruction to self-awareness? And in just a few decades—because, while our ecological policies remain as is, the damage they cause accelerates constantly—and now we have all of China (and other just-now developing nations) well on their way to matching, even exceeding the pollution that we Americans produce.

I’m just saying.

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Pre-Town-Hall Jitters

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( or “How Stupid Are We?”)

 

My wife and I just had an argument. I think we were arguing over her being disappointed with Obama’s loss in the first debate and my being understanding of that loss. Her point was that Obama should have called Romney out for lying throughout the debate, for reversing what few commitments he had made during the primary race, and while stumping afterwards, right up to the day of the first debate. My feeling was that Obama may have given us too much credit as an audience.

 

If I were to debate to an opponent who lied straight through the event, start to finish, would I choose to speak about the reality of the subject or would I spend the whole time accusing my opponent of being a liar? Should I assume that the audience knew better than to fall for a bunch of what Biden calls ‘malarkey’, or would I waste the entire evening ripping up every lie my opponent uttered? That’s not an easy call to make–especially in the USA, where the audience may shock you with its depth of ignorance and weakness of reasoning power.

 

Even the so-called ‘pundits’ and talking heads described the debate as a Romney ‘win’, with the caveat that he lied over and over, reversing his public views on everything. Is this a fair statement? Do I actual live in a country where liars are considered the winners of a debate, simply because they took some Ritalin® before the curtain went up? Is the president a loser simply because he overlooked all the lies of his opponent, opting instead to address the issues in an honest, substantive way?

 

According to the polls, yes, indeed! That’s exactly the type of country I live in. The USA has jumped the shark of free speech and gone for assessing ignorance as a respectable argument–merely another point of view, rather than a poor joke as compared to knowledgeable speakers’ statements. And this strategy may win the election for Mitt because, according to all those deep-thinking ‘undecided’s out there, Mitt CAN have it both ways.

 

He has warned the public for years now (as has his entire party) that Obama’s policies are destroying our country, our economy, and our way of life–and that our President must be replaced with a Republican before America goes completely to wrack and ruin. Then, at the first debate, he claimed that his policies were indistinguishable from Obama’s–with just a tweak here and there!

 

Can he have it both ways? Is impudence a debate ‘win’? Should we remove the President that turned around our economic landslide, and replace him with a Republican (the people that started the landslide)? Should Obama’s pro-active hunting down of global terrorism and piracy be replaced by a businessman who knows how to convert those evils into cold cash for the corporations, without unduly restricting said ‘evils’?

 

Tonight’s Town Hall debate should provide the answer–but I won’t be watching the two debaters–I’ll be watching the ‘towns-folk’. If the audience echoes the false memes of the GOP, accusing the President of false faults and lacks, and accepts Mitt Romney’s character as suitable for supreme leadership, then we live in a Wonderland as ludicrous as Alice’s. If they press Romney for substantive, specific answers, and accept some basic truths about the President (for example, that he has done a Herculean job of reversing our economic woes), then I shall watch the debate with great interest. But I’ll still remain more concerned over my fellow Americans’ powers of reason than the, to my eye, obvious differences between our two choices.

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I Can’t Calm Down (Which Is Bad For My Health)

I’m having trouble backing away from my mind’s fomenting of angry thoughts over the shooting of Malala Yousafzai, a fourteen-year-old girl, in Karachi, Pakistan. Armed men pulled over the school bus by waving their guns at the bus driver (one terrorist rode a bicycle). They boarded the bus asking for Malala and, recognizing her, shot her in the head and neck. Fucking bastards—I want them to die slowly and painfully. Perhaps that is what will win the war on terrorism—when their insane behavior finally produces not Terror, but Rage (as it always ought to have done).

 

She’s still in hospital, in critical condition as of this writing, but the bullets have been removed from her head and neck. The Taliban were quick to take ‘credit’ for this atrocity, promising to try again if she survives. So, perhaps they aren’t effective girl-slaughterers, but dogged ones? Can you imagine the psychotic viewpoint of the creature who wrote up that public statement? I can’t—I’m too caught up in rage and disgust.

 

Large-scale gatherings have been a hallmark of the Arab Spring phenomenon these last few years—if I lived in Karachi, I’d be thinking pretty hard about getting together and stringing those bastards from the lampposts. Not that further lawlessness is any remedy for their situation, long term—but maybe this calls for a brief recess for civility, while they drag these madmen into the street and beat them to death. (I’m sorry!—Did I just say that?)

 

As you can see, I’m just seething about this. It is probably because I have a daughter of my own, though she is grown now (with a college degree) but I can only imagine the feelings of the family of Malala Yousafzai—and every daughter’s father in Pakistan.

 

I felt, and still feel, a great protectiveness towards my beloved daughter. Male chauvinism notwithstanding, I can’t help thinking that the fathers of the Swat Valley feel the same way. If the Taliban organizing there are not in fear for their lives, than there’s a lot more wrong with Pakistan than anyone ever imagined.

Open Letter To Pakistan

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Thursday, October 11, 2012            6:03 PM

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen:

The USA has subjugated women in the past. In many ways, some or all of us still do today. But our society is against it, in an ethical sense—that is, in public places right-thinking folks will shout down any voice favoring male chauvinism; in private, the police can be called to jail a husband who physically abuses either his wife or their children. Honestly, many American men of misogynist outlook still feel that it is the ‘natural order’ of things to subjugate women as inferiors. But they are by and large forced to do it secretly or risk losing their own freedom. The majority of our people face the truth implicit in the following questions: How can we be superior to our mothers; how do we deserve better than our sisters; and how can we withhold humanity from our daughters?

We feel that we cannot. Our collective conscience won’t allow us. We see a difference between ‘difference’ and ‘hierarchy’—surely the two genders have many differences—but the females are only different, not less than the males.

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We do not accept scriptural citations that suggest this is immoral—not in context of the overall message that commands us to love and respect each other. We see such aberrations as a product of the cultures and times of the setting down of our holy books. We see their citation as deliberately self-serving, since men are the chief ‘officers’ of these interpretations. There are many women who accept this as truth, as well, only because they have been taught these ‘truths’ from the day of their birth—and because they are denied literacy, cutting off any input beyond the men who subjugate them and the Imams who persecute them.

We Americans are called by some “The Great Satan”. Is not this title itself sinful? Are Pakistanis immune from Evil because they despise a far-off country? I believe all men and women are equally vulnerable to Evil and equally capable of Love. If there is much to hate about my nation, so be it. If Pakistan wants to pluck out the mote from America’s eye, it will still need to remove the beam in its own.

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Don’t we want our children to learn more about the world made by their Creator? Don’t we do better when everyone shares ideas and questions? Only religious zealots ever answer those questions in the negative—because secrets and sacrifice are part of their stock in trade. Humbler believers take responsibility for their own knowledge and their own actions—they don’t presume as much on their Supreme Being because they respect that they themselves are responsible for what happens.

Only with religious zealotry are we shamed by the persecution of a brave little girl such as Malala Yousafzai. Only with the conviction of our own beliefs can we overpower the insanity of religious extremism.

Nothing Worse Than Art

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There ain’t Nothing worse than Art

Cause Art’ll break your Heart

Even if you’ve Never Fallen

Deeply down in Love

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An unpaid Actor plays a Part

Interrupted by a Fart

Just before Sweet words have Fallen

Sneezer gives’em a Shove

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A Starving painter forms a Tart

Of Colors rich, Of Dawn’s first Start

But all the Beauty painter’s Drawn

Is repossessed Ungently of

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The Keepers of the Shops and Carts

Who, without Coin, will ne’er Part

With Tools or stuff of Inspiration

Naye Food or comfort’s Cove.

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My Bad

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My post, “President At A Loss Arguing With Idiot”, has been slapped with a warning: ‘reported as “abusive” by one of Facebook’s “partners” (whatever that means)’ ..per my friend, Chris K. I think that means my aggression was palpable—I can get that way (and the funny thing is I feel quite dispassionate and logical as I write those kind of essays).

 

I read this one back to myself, partially to verify that this was a Republican tactic, vilifying their opposition’s more-rational public supporters. But I did, in fact, find it very abusive. I was insulting, facetious and just plain mean—So, does that mean the GOP have won? Have they taken a peaceful person like myself and pestered me into crazy-talk? Was it that easy?

 

It was the same with WWII. Before then, the idea of bombing a city was unthinkable to civilized folk. Before that war ended, America and the Allies had virtually carpet-bombed Germany, Japan, and a few other places—all in defense of liberty and equality. And ever since WWII, dropping a bomb on a city has been considered par for the course when at war—as can be seen today in Syria.

 

We also learned to use propaganda on ourselves, just to fight off anyone else’s—and now we expect our government to lie to us, and the government should expect lying right back. There’s also the coup de grace, atomic bombs—we use them twice and spend the next half-century (and counting) worrying about using them and having them used on us.

 

The GOP, as portrayed in the news, has been something of a sensation of late. Their entanglement in gayness, as an espoused evil and as a scandalous truth about many of their elected officials who most viciously attack the gay community, was hard to keep from laughing over. Human nature, so conspicuously on display, is hard not to laugh at.

 

But, my first thought was of sympathy. I can only imagine the difficulties of a gay person who fights politically to marginalize gay people. You couldn’t pay me to live in that skull.

 

But in other forums, the Republicans have become masters of the deconstructive. They realize that fear is their friend and there sure are plenty of fears to pass around. They brought up Obama’s having crossed paths with some radical, many years ago, and used it to try labeling him as ‘dangerous’—which is odd since those most endangered by Obama nowadays are the terrorists.

 

They began by criticizing his long-term church minister of being anti-American—and when that didn’t get any traction; they started whispering that Obama was a Muslim. They spent months after the election trying to convince people that the President wasn’t born in Hawaii. And even though this may sound ridiculous, there are a lot of conservatives who still swear that Barack Obama is a foreigner, a Muslim, and a threat to ‘real’ Americans. While that makes me feel impatient towards such people, it makes me even more upset with a party that could undermine the President so, in time of war.

 

 

They realize that losing faith in one’s religion is nearly inescapable for the educated, thoughtful people of our day—and so they champion it. Their detractors are, thusly, either ‘godless’—or they are just as pious as the GOP’s platform, i.e. insincerely.  But this is an entirely manufactured schism. Plenty of people choose to belong to a church, to pray to a God, to live by its tenets, and seek fellowship with other church members, including social support programs for the locally disenfranchised. Only a tiny fraction of those people, however, insist on the myths of the Bible being set above scientific inquiry. Only a tiny slice of Americans are actively expecting an End Of Days in the near future. Just a few knuckleheads try to separate the various other ‘Single God’ religions from each other—to make Christians war against Muslims war against Jews, etc. and so forth. Extremism is a synonym for unbalanced. I can’t see much difference between an extremist zealot and an unbalanced mind. They’re both capable of killing themselves and others, they both reject the importance of civil obedience over ‘spiritual mission’ and they both do a terrible job of raising well-educated, emotionally well-balanced children.

 

With certain mid-eastern nations giving a perfect demonstration of how to ruin everything with dogmatic theocracies, there couldn’t be a worse time for us in the USA to break our long and hallowed tradition of separating church from state. There is a reason why Americans made that ideal a part of our heritage—and it should not be called into question by those who feel picked-on when asked if they read a newspaper now and then.

 

Our freedom of speech is now being questioned by some because of naysayers whose language is slaughter and burning of US diplomats, consuls, their staffs and buildings. Well, two wrongs and all that—What Would Allah Do? -is perhaps the best approach to this. Besides, America does not modify its rules whenever they annoy other nations—we know how strong our freedoms make us and we know how wrong it is for one person to have complete control over another’s thoughts and words.

 

But back to me. Have I been turned into a monster merely by witnessing the bile of Todd Akin claiming a difference between victims of ‘legitimate rape’ and, well, ‘illegitimate’ seems redundant when used with the word ‘rape’? The succession of crazies that were the GOP primary racers sensitized me to the fact that stunningly drastic changes in our country’s character were being threatened by the Republican party, many of them having no qualms about the continuing chasm that spreads between the rich and the poor. And it has been pointed out that many of their staunchest supporters, lower-income families, would clearly be hurt, financially and legally, by the GOP agenda.

 

Then there’s the audiences at these ‘rallies’ of extreme right-wingers such as Sarah Palin—they have the sound of a hungry mob. And the GOP speechifiers do this great little dance wherein they get these folks all lathered up without actually raising their own voices—but they also don’t ‘correct’ the crowd when they go too far—and that is a problem when it might be taped for the cable news channels.

 

Maybe the mid-westerners think all the folks who live on the coasts on either side are a bunch of spoiled intellectuals who think they know better because they went to college. To a certain degree, they’re right—the average person graduates from college knowing a lot more than they went in with—and college graduates of the mid-west have been known to return home and make great contributions to their state and their community. Besides which, smart is smart and dumb is dumb—only bullies try to minimize the value of education and only snooty brats think their diplomas make them better than someone else.

 

In short, every time the GOP is presented with a challenge, they go by the low road—to the point where some of their worst tactics (like strangling the legislature for four years) can seem downright unpatriotic, to put it mildly. They never answer a single issue with “we are in agreement with the opposition on this, except for a few details”. They never say, “We recognize the importance of settling this matter, and we’ll be bi-partisan on this bill’s passage because of that urgency”. And if one of them did, the rest would ostracize the traitor—I’m thinking here of the courageous Olympia Snowe—she suffered loud criticism of her attempts to create a middle-ground for the two parties.

 

These are only a few samples of what we’ve seen paraded across our TV screens for four long years—and every year they are emboldened to blame Obama for our economic troubles. They couldn’t do it on election day 2003, because it was still quite clearly Bush(W)’s spilt milk—but they only waited a few months before they began speaking of the economy as if Obama had made the mess to begin with. And according to several indices, Obama has had surprising success at pulling us up from the nose-dive the GOP left him. And so another claim is made to paper over this hole in their wall, “Obama isn’t fixing the mess quickly enough—Obama doesn’t know enough about business to fix this thing”. Well, employment is up, job losses are down, business is improving (although slowed by the EU crisis and the slowdown of China’s economy) and it is hard to justify kicking out a President who has so masterfully turned our economic frowns upside-down.

 

So, then the debate. I guess I blew my top on that one. When Mitt accused the President of ‘wasting time’ on health care reform when he should have been fixing the economy(!) –well, I tell ya, if I coulda crawled through that screen and got at’im—I’d be locked up in a sanitarium for the criminally insane by now. The GOP showed us foot-dragging as high art throughout their struggle to block health-care—if they’d really cared about getting Obama focused on fixing the economy, why’d they waste so much of his time, and the time of the hundreds of Democratic legislators?

 

I just can’t imagine that they’re fooling anyone with this whole ‘create a crisis, draw out a crisis, and blame the crisis on Obama’ strategy. It is very much of a piece with Mitt’s betrayal of every promise he made to the Neo-Cons during his primary race. It also answers the question of why Mitt hasn’t given details on his ‘plans’—he reveals his plans, as needed, during the debates to rebut any accusations against his older positions. I think it’s kinda funny that his supporters are all saying ‘He won the debate—and that’s that’. That’s because they don’t like the sound of ‘Yes, he made a great huff-and-a-puffing—too bad he made up his answers as he went along.’

 

As far as that goes, I think the President would have performed better if someone had told him he was playing liar’s poker—he thought he was there for a debate.

 

Now, there I’ve gone again. I simply lose all sense of propriety—I think it comes from a fear that more than 50% of my fellow citizens might disagree with me. I fear that the majority of Americans will say, “Hey, lying’s okay—all politicians do it” or they’ll say “Hey, women don’t really have the right to control their own reproductive choices.” Or they’ll say, “Yeah, we grow faster and go faster with fossil fuels—let’s drop all this ‘hybrid’ nonsense until the gas runs out—then we’ll worry about it.” Or they’ll say, “Climate change? It’s a hoax, the ice caps melt all the time—what are you, a big sissy?”

 

And I guess my fear that you all might find the GOP acceptable, when they have (to my eyes) conclusively proven their unfitness for office, makes me too excitable—I’ll try to calm down and write something less ‘abusive’ next time.

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President At A Loss Arguing With Idiot

 

 

Romney has an unfair advantage in these debates—all he has to do is collect the facts and figure out how to twist them in favor of himself.

Obama has to work twice as hard—he has to put away his knowledge and facts, and waste valuable time to gain command of the ‘ideas‘ Romney’s cotton-candy world has so few of, memorize all the lies the Republican’s candidate has been telling for over a year, and then memorize the truths that refute those lies. Then he has to defend himself against this mountain of horse-dung without seeming dismissive. I understand how the President must feel—I’ve never felt anything but ‘dismissive’ towards our little Mittley-Droid—well, I take that back. When I heard about his high school bullying of a gay kid, I felt pure disgust. But then I went right back to ‘dismissive’.

Obama didn’t want to look him in the eye. Damn right—Romney, the ‘Grand Old Idiot’, doesn’t have a case for winning other than his demonstration that he’ll bend in the direction of the strongest wind—without pause or scruple, lying and flip-flopping. And, if he did win, he would continue to lie to us all for the worst potential four years of Republican mismanagement that will have ever been inflicted on the USA (And I say that knowing just how badly we were misled by his predecessor, Bush W). If I had to look that goon in the face while he made stupid jokes about our 20th anniversary, I’d have lost my mind. So I, for one, can attest to Obama having way more self-control than me. How about the rest of you? Could you really stay on that stage for 90 minutes without spitting in Romney’s eye and calling him a big, fat liar?

To pay attention to the words that come out of Romney’s rictus is to give him the same accord as an honest person. It’s like showing respect for that clown in Stephen King’s “It”. It is hideous, its presence may fill us with fear, but we do not ‘respect’ it any more than we respect Cancer. We just wish we were somewhere else.

I would feel much safer if everyone wasn’t so impressed by his ‘energized’ lies and reverses during the first debate. The Republicans, in courting the Fundamentalists and Big Business, have become an ugly bunch of folks. They are expert in lying because they haven’t stopped for twelve years and practice makes perfect, I guess. They have also been unforgivably brick-wall-like in putting all our legislative needs, including budgets, on hold so they can blame the President for this legislative deep-freeze. They want to replace the President and put those disastrous agendas back in place which caused the collapse that Obama has been digging us out from under, these last four years.

What gets me is the incivility. And that is not solely because I could be described as a ‘pansy’ when it comes to civility—it is, rather, for the same reason I favor it so—it is the only sane response in a modern nation’s leader that will win through when facing the savagery still found in much of the world, including quite a few places right here at home. Civility is the responsibility to lead a nation without letting oneself get swept up in childish petulance, passive-aggressive obstructionism, or resentment over personal slights.

Our current President has that civility. He didn’t let it stop him from taking down Osama, or from taking out those pirates off the coast of Somalia, and he didn’t let his civility get swept away by the contrarian nature of the Republican campaign. Obama is strong—as strong as any President—but not in his impulses, only in his dedication.

A man can’t control a nation if he can’t even rule himself—and we see that lack of resolve in the pasted-on grin of the President’s debating opponent. Mitt Romney would do better to return to honesty and plain-speaking (if, indeed, he has ever stopped there) rather than outshout his President in a respectable, public debate.

It burns me up that the GOP is trying to worm their way into power, rather than challenging Obama and the Democrats with forthrightness and sensibility. Even if GOP platforms made sense (and they don’t) I would be loath to support their candidate on the sheer effrontery of their campaign. It isn’t just their showing a disrespect for responsible Government, or a disrespect for our sitting President—it is a disrespect for the intelligence of the citizens they hope to win over.

Lying has worked well for the GOP in the recent past—one can see where they might start to accept it as ‘good tactics’—but the lies are so tired, so roundly disavowed by third parties, so blatant and ludicrous, that we would have to be brain-damaged to offer them any credibility at all. God forbid the GOP ever told the truth—at this point, whatever they said, I would believe ‘the opposite of that’ to be true for years before I could afford to grant them any credence at all.

*81. “Prothalamion” by Edmund Spenser. (1552–1599) – (excerpt)

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Eftsoones the Nymphes, which now had Flowers their fill, 55

Ran all in haste to see that silver brood,

As they came floating on the Christal Flood;

Whom when they sawe, they stood amazèd still,

Their wondring eyes to fill;

Them seem’d they never saw a sight so fayre, 60

Of Fowles, so lovely, that they sure did deeme

Them heavenly borne, or to be that same payre

Which through the Skie draw Venus silver Teeme;

For sure they did not seeme

To be begot of any earthly Seede, 65

But rather Angels, or of Angels breede;

Yet were they bred of Somers-heat, they say,

In sweetest Season, when each Flower and weede

The earth did fresh aray;

So fresh they seem’d as day, 70

Even as their Brydale day, which was not long:

Sweete Themmes! runne softly, till I end my Song.

 

*[Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. “The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900”.]Image