More of the same

Over 65% of respondents to the CNN poll so far this morning ( 10:15 EDT) say Obama "won" the "debate."  Of course it wasn't really a debate and nobody really wins because supporters always think their candidate did better whether he was lying or not.  I think Romney came off better than he should have, but then that's what a con man does.  A good flim-flam man makes the marks forget what he said or did ten minutes ago by sheer force of personality.  The truth just isn't as sexy and it's almost always harder to understand even for those few who try and I think Romney did as well as he could have in reassuring his minions that our current condition had nothing to do with the long standing Republican policies that caused it.  Did he do as well with his claims that his vague and not so honestly described "policies" would quickly restore the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era?  It remains to be seen.

Did Obama really stress adequately that Democratic policies, equally trashed by Republicans gave us unprecedented prosperity and near full employment or that virtually all our debt was acquired by Republican administrations preaching the same 'debt doesn't matter' idea and that  'slashing the upper brackets produces prosperity?'   No, but if the viewer doesn't see it already, he's not going to and the public is more dishonest with itself than Romney could ever be with us.

The fact check people of course, are suggesting that the fierceness of Mitt's assertions seem to correspond to their inaccuracy and mendacity, but again; fact checkers are to the cult members as liberally biased as is math itself and it won't change minds well trained to reject information from outside sources.  Perhaps Mitt's little tantrums about being able to talk over his opponent, or his foot stamping, infantile and dishonest demonstration about "government land" gives us a peek into his private self or at least a whiff of sulfur, but perceptive, informed and analytical people aren't really Mitt supporters in the first place.  Folders full of facts ( and the fact is that oil and gas production are way, way up despite the sluggish economy) can't outweigh the slick haircut, the the silver tongue and the polished art of the con.

So I'm not going to say who I thought 'won' this thing because I don't know.  I can hope that a sufficient number will be disgusted enough to go to the polls and vote. A large turnout usually favors the Democrats.

Down the drain

Maybe we shouldn't have been wasting our time last night, listening to McCain and Obama accusing each other of being big spenders when we should have gone straight to the one expert who seems to agree with John's tax proposal. I don't mean some PhD economist or tax law expert or even a CPA; I'm talking of course, about Joe the Plumber, the fellow whose concerns about Obama's tax proposal has made him one of the most well known men -- and certainly the best known plumber on the planet at the moment. If that notoriety alone doesn't translate into financial success for Joe, it will be only because he'd rather not be in a higher tax bracket.

According to Joe Wurtzelberger, a progressive tax structure is Robin Hood socialism and John McCain seems to agree. I particularly liked his oily sneer when he repeated his "spread the wealth around" formula, but I wonder how that meshes with the spreading around of wealth inherent in supply side economics. It's only the direction of the trickle that differs after all, not the redistribution.

Of course Joe seems to have misunderstand what the differences are, and who can blame him? Like all of us he's been bombarded with ugly stereotypes of tax and spend liberals all his life and to be fair, it's complicated, but Joe is wrong. If he buys a business that grosses more than $250,000, he will not be propelled into a higher tax bracket by that fact alone. Surely Joe understands the difference between gross and net and knows about all the expenses and other deductions available. It's very unlikely that the business would net that much and therefore be subject to a tax increase of any kind. It's not very nice of his "Buddy" John not to have explained that to his "best buddy."

For one thing Obama's plan offers additional benefits like a tax credit for new employees and the elimination of Capital Gains for small businesses. Even if the business is wildly successful, and with all this notoriety, it may well be, the increase would be 3%. He would be better off in Obama's America than he would have been in Ronald Reagan's or John McCain's.

Very much to Mr. Wurtzelbacher's credit, he's not endorsing anyone yet. After all, his future and my future depend on a lot more than a 3% potential tax hike that's very unlikely to affect him. A new and deep recession may make it all moot if McCain's leadership is not much better than George Bush's.

All in all, the scenario is not what Joe fears it would be, it is not what John McCain misrepresents it to be and it's very very far from anything one could honestly describe as "spreading the wealth around" even if it's said without the squint and sneer and rubbing of hands. But then we're talking about John McCain's claims about his tax policy and not about honesty, and to quote another plumber and funny guy I used to know - that shit don't flush.

Let him have one?

Although all indications are that the vast majority of Americans thought Barak Obama "won" last night's conversation, the howling of the media this morning seems to be about the whining comment McCain made: "I am not George Bush." Is this an effort to allow McCain to leave with some small measure of undeserved dignity?

In the interest of that old "fair and balanced" shell game I guess they have to show that he didn't come across as an incoherent, double-talking, sneering and condescending Bush clone. He did however, and in contrast with polls of professional pundits who listen to and repeat what other professional pundits repeat, the public seems to agree. CNN's unscientific poll shows that about 80% of respondents did not think McCain won, but the "scientific" polls seem restricted to those still, after all this time undecided and not to the voters in general. I can't help thinking there's something a bit wrong with someone unable to make up their mind after almost two years.

So far this morning, all I'm reading are rubber stamp repeats of the "I am not George Bush" line and nothing of the embarrassing (for McCain) reiteration of "he's going to fine you" after it was explained that he would not and the nauseating repetition of the "there's more we need to know about your relationship with Ayers' red herring after that stinker was put thoroughly in its grave. There are no more unanswered questions John, no matter how often you ask the same damn thing. No, Obama didn't say that, but I wish he had.

McCain repeated his rehearsed points over and over and it was often obvious that he wasn't really listening to the answers and that he had no idea what the public's view of his and Palin's mean, vicious accusations might be.

My biggest disappointments of the evening were that McCain seemed too often to have the last, and often dishonest word; that Obama did not point out the continuing "trickle down" nature of McCain's proposals that are so much like the Bush standard, that Obama did not bring up William Timmons and tell us "we need to know more." I wish Obama would have asked him why he kept repeating that chestnut about fines when it was patently a false claim. I wish a lot of things, actually. I wish sanity and honesty weren't so rare in this country, but all in all, I saw McCain as the defendant here, a defendant trying to talk his way around the evidence by postulating unlikely explanations of how his fingerprints were all over the crime scene.

McCain and the other Hussein

A commenter yesterday mentioned that he'd like to see Obama go for McCain's jugular. I cautiously disagreed because the polls all seem to show that McCain is suffering a backlash for the irresponsible rabble rousing attack ads he and his "sorcerer's apprentice" are known for. "Responsible" is in fact what most voters look for in a president and particularly after 8 years of the buck stopping under the White House rug. But, perhaps I should reconsider.

Of course many voters know about McCain's associations and perhaps one affair with lobbyists; lobbyists for Wall Street entities like Freddie Mac, the Military junta in Burma and the odd African dictator. They've seen how he denies this in the face of proof. I have to confess I would like to see his makeup begin to run with sweat if Obama were to bring up William Timmons, the professional Washington lobbyist he's named to head his transition team. Timmons, says Murray Waas at the Huffington Post, lobbied on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

If McCain does intend, as he indicated yesterday, to bring the straw man of the aging ex war protester William Ayers to the pyre to be burned once again, he will have a hard time confining the flames. I hope I might be forgiven a gloating moment or two if he has to argue that Saddam wasn't really such a bad guy as he's been telling us, or risk being caught not only "palling around" with a paid agent for Saddam Hussein but employing him in a position of high trust.

Days of rage

John McCain may bring up Bill Ayers in Wednesday's "debate." Oh goody. Despite a token mention or two given by him to the alligator pit, admitting that Obama isn't quite the avenging sword of Allah, he still hopes to keep his head above water by demonizing the man's acquaintances. It's a bit like grasping at bricks when you're drowning and many people see it just that way. The country is fed up with the slime, even if they won't quite admit that it's their own side doing it.

Needless to say, or perhaps it's not at all needless, Bill Ayers is not and was not a "terrorist" as that word has been transformed by 21st century events. When he blew up the infamous Haymarket Square statue in Chicago in 1969, the memory of police riots, beatings, arrests and vicious assaults on innocent Chicagoans and attendees of the Democratic convention were still fresh. The meaning of that act was not to terrorize or demoralize Americans, it was to "Bring the war home" because so far the marches and protests of millions of Americans, a majority of whom wanted the war to end, had not only been ignored, but brutally suppressed. Their bombings were designed to not produce casualties, but to call attention to the killing of millions of people in Southeast Asia.

The Haymarket statue commemorated the death of some policemen 1886 when an unidentified anarchists bomb was exploded as the cops were "dispersing" a legally assembled crowd of union supporters with violence. It did not commemorate the other citizens who were killed that day. Eight men who had been speaking at the rally were tried for murder and most were executed although there was no link between them and the bomb. The statue was seen and is seen today as extremely offensive symbol of repression and arrogant injustice by many people, myself included. Nobody was hurt in the 2969 explosion, many were hurt by the Chicago police in 1968.

The weathermen were not attacking America, they were attacking a tradition of brutality, injustice and illegal behavior by a government still persisting in such things after more than 80 years; a government still impervious to democratic reform. It's fundamentally wrong to equate such acts as were seen by many of us as acts of patriotism and bravery although misguided and dangerous, with the acts of foreign fundamentalists looking to kill, to destroy our economy and out influence in the world. There is a word for using a word like terrorist to make a false equivalence between two things, but whyuse it when "lying" tells the story better?

Bill Ayers, an aging college professor was selected as Chicago's citizen of the year in 1996. He has come to know a lot of people in Chicago politics. He's an advocate of educational reform. That Obama has had interests in common, has supported charities in common and has taught at the same major university along with other good men and women hardly constitutes approval of pyrotechnics or should be defined as "palling aorund with terrorists." Such malicious, simple-minded and malignantly dishonest claims as the McCain team has resorted to are sufficient unto themselves as disqualification from not only Presidential character, but from common decency.

I hope he tries it again. I hope the voters turn on him.

Nucular Sarah -- ya betcha

They told Sarah Palin to say Maverick as much as possible, and she did. As apparently contradictory as it is to call two people a "team" of mavericks and as questionable as maverick status may be in someone who is supposed to lead and to unify disparate interests, She continued to work the metaphor into every misrepresentation she made in her backwoods dialect.

Much is being made this morning of her "misstatements" such as denying that Gen. David McKiernan, says the "surge principle" won't work in Afghanistan. Not enough has been said about her calling him McLellan, a Civil War general often at odds with Abe Lincoln. Of course there is a bottomless well of humor in the very phrase. What after all, is a "surge principle" other than a very belated recognition that the generals who told Bush we needed a lot more troops were right -- and only after years of bloodshed and needless destruction. In retrospect, Powell's doctrine of massive and overwhelming force would seem to have been wise and would have saved a great many lives on both sides of the conflict.

Of course Palin was "in error," McKiernan did say it. Palin lied when she said Obama can't admit that "the surge" worked. He did. She raised sales taxes in Wasilla to finance a stadium and left the town in heavy debt.

The fact is that she either lied or heavily misrepresented the facts in everything she said and she did it with ebullient conviction because she was parroting, in most un-maverick fashion, the words of her trainers. Only an ignorant person can be so convincingly convinced. But that's Sarah Palin. Even with the new hair and the professional makeup and wardrobe selection, we still have the 44 year old woman who talks like a child, lies with a smile and who pronounces "you" as "ya" and nuclear as "nucular"

Most of all we have the candidate who can't afford any reference to the past lies, blunders, misrepresentations, failings and crimes of her party, John McCain and herself. She absolutely has to convince us that their past performance is irrelevant to trusting them for the future.

I'm sorry to say, Sarah, when what we have from you today is a department store window dressed with dummies and props, it's essential to look at your past and your party's past, witches and all. You betcha.

Horseshit! says the Senator

Experts on facial expression and body language have been prattling about John McCain's inner feelings during his debate with Barak Obama. We've been told of the contempt and anger hidden behind his $5000 make up job. We've had much discussion of his refusal to look directly at Obama. It's rather strange that nobody has commented on his exclamation of "Horseshit."

Watch his lips and listen carefully. What do you think?

The quiet American

It is better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt. ~Abraham Lincoln

We haven't been hearing a lot of words from either Republican candidate recently and of course that brings Honest Abe's quote to mind. It's obvious that the handlers are terrified of some monstrous gaffe from Sarah - something that would dwarf the Iraq-Afghanistan border groaner or confusing the Spanish Prime Minister with some South American insurgent. Hence the retreat to the safety of silence.

It's harder for McCain to justify his Cheney-like seclusion, but it now seems he's found a way to counter the public impression that he has no interest in fixing the economic crisis, no ability to understand it and is too close to the people who made it happen. Here he comes to save the day; Mighty Mouse McCain goes to Washington and he can't be troubled with pettiness like debates.

According to an ongoing CNN poll, 71% of the respondents at this point see it as a political gimmick and only 24% as an honest attempt to deal with the economy. I agree. Will it backfire? It might, as public sentiment seems overwhelmingly against the proposed bailout and being identified with it may be politically dangerous.

Best in Show

Hark, hark The dogs do bark
The beggars are coming to town

-13th century nursery rhyme-

Do we really believe Ron Paul has no idea about who wrote the articles that went out under his name during the 1990's? Does anyone buy the statement that he never read them? Does anyone think it's irrelevant because it happened before the 6 week memory span of the American public? Paul says what I want to hear about our drift away from a constitutional Republic toward an oligarchy driven by expedience. He is willing to directly address many problems directly that his opponents are either ignorant of or afraid to incriminate themselves by mentioning, but anyone can say anything. His customary candor seems to have gone missing when it comes to the Ron Paul Political Report.

Does anyone believe the pusillanimous pandering of Fred Thompson?

“On the one hand,” he said last night “you have the Reagan revolution, you have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security."

Actually we never did, we had a corrupt president with a progressive neurodegenerative disease who inflated the government to record size, ignored the law, trained terrorists in Central America sold missiles to Iran and a military that tripped all over it's inadequacies while invading the tiny Caribbean Island of Grenada. A pretty revolting sort of revolution it was.

"He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies”

Thompson said of Huckabee. The Pope would be a Christian leader too, even though neither man could be accused of being Liberal or being qualified to be our president, nor could Jesus be accused of being conservative. Perhaps that's all there is to Thompson's campaign: just say Reagan and Liberal and lie about what that means until the dogs start to bark.

“The Air Force has a saying that says if you’re not catching flak, you’re not over the target,” he said. “I’m catching the flak; I must be over the target” was supposed to be a demonstration of the Huckabeean wit and probably was, to anyone dumb enough to let the false syllogism pass unnoticed.

And then there was Rudy.

"There were other people on this stage that also supported the surge. The night of the president’s speech, I was on television. I supported the surge, I’ve supported it throughout.”

Me too, me too you guys - it wasn't only him, it was me too! 9/11 - 9/11 - I was there! What about a candidate that isn't afraid to criticize the grotesque and fatal errors of the worst president and most inept Commander in Chief in American history? Not amongst the Republican kennel club.

"I’m going to fight for every single job. Michigan, South Carolina, every state in this country. We’re going to fight for jobs and make sure that our future is bright.”

Says Uncle Milton Romney. Sure you are, Mitt and I'm sure you'll explain just how you're going to do it after the election is over.

Then came McCain.

“One of the reasons why I won in New Hampshire is because I went there and told them the truth, and sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear along with things that they do want to hear.”

Right, whatever suits the occasion and the audience and that's usually the latter.

Are we bothering to name a "winner" in these debates any more? For may part, I don't give a damn and I don't have a dog in this fight anyway but It's easy enough to name a loser of course. There may be about 300 million of them.

Some in rags and some in Jags
And one in a velvet gown

Ignore the man behind the curtain

How anyone can think that anyone in the latest TV blabberfest is presidential material is beyond me. The latest nausea inducing exhibition featured Bible waving and professions of faith and idiotic declarations like Fabulous Fred Thompson's "A nation that cannot and will not defend its own borders will not forever remain a sovereign nation." Isn't anyone tired of xenophobia as a crucial issue at a time when we face economic disaster and another war without end? Funny that we were a sovereign nation for most of our history of unguarded borders and that New York was a sanctuary city for the forbears of just about everybody listening to the actors on stage in St Petersburg.

Funny too, that the media isn't making much of the polls showing a preference for Ron Paul's arguments other to mention that McCain told us Paul's policies are the type that facilitated Hitler's rise to power. And here I thought it was the Germans who elected him. Not only is it getting harder to ignore Paul, it's requiring that once again, Fox News ignore it's own numbers. The nervous laugh and the near hysteria of Hannity's declarations of disbelief are music to my ears.

Right on Ron!

One of the reasons I hate watching the TV political debates is that I can't stand up and say what nobody ever stands up and says while listening to the slogans and platitudes about victory and honor and perhaps it's just as well I'm not there to be arrested for it, but at least we have Ron Paul. He and I may disagree about many things like public education and social security, but all along in this premature political contest, when he speaks up about our history in Iran, when he calls hucksters like Huckabee on his claims that continuing the Iraq horror story is about "honor" I'm on my feet saying "Right on Ron."

It's not about honor, it's about saving face and the insistence that saving face is more important than doing the right thing is the same thing that made Nixon prolong the war in Viet Nam. Huckabees memorized babble about "unity" reminded me more of gangsters needing to stick to the story to avoid prosecution than about us all getting behind a lie and a war and the liars who started it. It's not unity it's saving face.

Crooks and Liars has the video here.

Keep it to yourself

There have been some, but not many events in the American political circus that have left me feeling almost as bilious as last night's Democratic revival meeting. Ronald Reagan's colonoscopy photos on TV for one and the detailed descriptions of Bill Clinton's dalliance posted on the Internet by the very same Republicans who were trying to make it illegal to talk about sex in cyberspace. Way too much information, as the cliche goes. I want to know more about all the candidates, but I don't to share a confessional any more than I want to share a bathroom with them.

I smell the same flatus-in-the-elevator, dirty laundry funk in the fulsome proclamations of fatuous faith by people claiming to be capable of filling the most powerful office on the planet. I don't want to know that the guy who feels chock full of sin has a finger on the button or can't get through a marital crisis without invoking invisible spirits and claiming fealty to a supernatural master with inclinations toward world destruction. I'm not impressed with someone who needs the spectre of eternal punishment resting on his shoulder to be able to make a moral or ethical decision. I'm just not impressed with faith at all; it's a sign of weakness.

Although I guess it's best that I know whatever batshit beliefs a candidate has, I still can't see such lapses of decorum as anything but vulgar if they are sincere and anything but disgusting if they are not.

Cross posted at The Reaction

The candidates debate

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate's debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.

First of all, it's not a debate and secondly, to expect any of these candidates to give a satisfying solution to a problem without discussing the causes of the problem is silly. Ruben Navarrette's article today on CNN.com may correctly identify the lack of clarity on the part of the Democratic proto-candidates ideas about immigration, but it doesn't identify things like NAFTA and its effect on Mexican farmers or discuss the ease of obtaining forged documents and employment by corporations eager for cheap laborers without the ability to complain. Even with a clear picture of our immigration woes, would we know who would make a better president?

I have to wonder if these rhetorical analogs of dodge ball aren't really serving best to introduce confusion and to distract from the selection of someone best suited to reverse the dictatorial and imperial ambitions of whoever it is that is actually running the united States. I am far more concerned and I think we all should be far more concerned with Bush's blatant arrogation of permanent dictatorial powers without congress or the courts being able to say no. We should be more concerned with the attempts to create new and more violent wars that would precipitate such actions than which doomed attempts to seal the borders should be chosen.

Even for those who are worried, there is no opportunity to ask what they would do to preserve Democracy, the rule of law and the Constitution while someone is trying to trip them up on the pressing question of the visa status of their gardener. Even with the internet the answers we get are not answers to the questions we ask and the candidates we get are chosen by others. Every way you look at this, you lose.