Douchy

Willard Mitt Romney was a bishop, a lay pastor in his church, something he brings up to discuss abortion on the campaign trail. For being a Mormon missionary, he received a deferment from military service during the Vietnam War.

So my question is, as a man of religious faith, is this his idea of morality? :

"Close them. Turn 'em off. Even some you like," he said. "You might say, 'I like the National Endowment for the Arts.' I do," Romney said. "I like PBS. We subsidize PBS. Look, I'm going to stop that. I'm going to say that PBS is going to have to have advertisement."

"We're not going to kill Big Bird," Romney said. "But Big Bird is going to have advertisements. Alright?"

Alright? Because we all agree that educating children always goes so much better with advertisements? Not alright, Willard.

Mitt's too old to have watched Sesame Street as a kid. In fact, electing him would turn back the leadership of our country a generation, to the Clinton/Bush generation. So maybe he just doesn't get it because, like so much else, he's above it by age and wealth.

Sometimes I wonder if Mitt is not just embarked upon the greatest single performance art piece of our times. If he can flip-flop so easily, if he is indeed the hollow man everyone believes he is, if he's say or do anything to get elected and we're not getting real principles, and if enough people understand that but vote for him anyway hoping the massive tea-pandering is with a wink, then he's doing a better act than Stephen Colbert or Sasha Baron Cohen.

If not, then he's just kind of douchy.

If you want to see his whole pander, here you go:



And watching this clip, as always with Willard, I find it difficult to believe American will vote to see this man representing America on TV for the next four years.

Crazies

Any politician or scam Fox pundit who calls Barack Obama anti-American is at best a cowardly McCarthyite liar, at worst pure evil doing Satan's bidding. That's Christine O'Donnell, Republican Party Senate nominee for The First State, Delaware:



That's today's GOP.

Any two-bit fascist who says that, if elected, he will use his powers as Governor of The Empire State, New York to make suddenly, single targeted, authoritarian use of eminent domain to keep Cordova House from being built, make it a war memorial, and block any buildings of an Islamic tint from any place in NYC that the dust from the World Trade Center bombing reached, is at best a major league reactionary or, at worst, the Devil walking the earth, i.e. the Republican nominee, Carl Paladino:



And any candidate who still thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional at around eighty and forty years down the line and who's platform is basically to end them is at best a buzzkill and at worst Lucifer made Galt, Republican Senatorial nominee in Alaska, lawyer Joe Miller:



or Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharon Angle:



Or Colorado Senate Republican nominee Ken Buck.

They aren't the GOP, they're the Republican Party on steroids, led by the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee. This is the Party coming home. This is people power in that Party, and it is like the mask ripped off to reveal rubes who have turned the tables. It's hilarious that Karl Rove is feuding with them, because he fed them his red meat and his bosses' red meat every day for eight years and more before that.

There is no moderate Republican Party in this election. Any power they get is power to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who could be the next Senate Majority Leader, if the same people that elected Barack Obama let these candidates win.

Because any or all of these candidates could win their races in the November mid-term election. This is serious stuff, threats to the Republic.

If you want to be petulant, if you want to be apathetic, if you don't see that as flawed as it may be, it is a clear choice, and elections are all about choices, then you're being reckless.

Then you're just as crazy as they are.

Lucifer

I'm for impeaching Cheney first, and getting going quickly, but if Nostradamus was on the mark then Bush himself is the Antichrist.

He was speaking to another hand-picked audience of yahoos and suck-ups, this time in obvious panicked response to Michael Moore's brilliant Sicko, but without actually addressing his points. Of course Bush hasn't seen the movie -- he's just advocating the Republican/corporate Democratic line of off-loading risk from our nation's pooled resources onto individual Americans.

Government programs that lock you in to private health care! Control those costs...by limiting your right to sure for mismanagement and malpractice! Fuck you, American citizen!

It strikes me that The Big Lie of this rhetoric is an embedded assumption at the beginning of the segment:

"The objective has got to be to make sure that America is the best place in the world to get health care."

I don't actually believe it. I think the objective is make America a good or great place to get health care -- it doesn't actually have to be the best in the world. We're #37 right now. I'd be a lot happier with #8, even. This "best" fixation is part of the American Exceptionalism fallacy, like we're somehow touched by God and our shit doesn't stink like any other industrialized nation's. Hey, we're all flawed. Just take the thieves out of the equation.

Then he states his true goal as health monopoly tool:

"The immediate goal is to make sure more people are on private health plans."

Sure, sell more indentured servitudes to Kaisers.

In fact, as you listen to his argument after having seen Sicko, the video takes a stark turn into overdetermined speech. Bush claims to be in favor of some children and old folks getting public health assistance -- he's just against all the rest of us getting the help we need. In fact, as you listen to his crazy "plan", it sounds more and more like the complicated formulas Hillary Clinton was (rightly, in my view, although I opposed the overall demonization of her effort) criticized for when she tried to create a national system back in the early 1990's. It's exceptions here, incentives there, cover you who need here, cut back accountability there...it's a parody of a complicated liberal government nannystate program.

Once you simplify the health care question down to one of the government serving the people rather than for-profit managed care cartels, the rest is just anecdotal. Cut out the profit motive, pay doctors out of taxes, suddenly you jet-fuel the economy by taking the stress out of everyone's life so they can be more productive, and open up employment fungibility so that people can move around to different jobs without worrying that won't be able to afford his digitalis at the next one.

Yesterday I linked (thanks to Crooks & Liars) to Michael Moore savaging Wolf Blitzer for having run Dr. Sanjay Gupta's hit piece just before their interview. That was "Part I" and here's "Part II", although as de-mystified-in-chief Moore reveals, it was all shot in the same session. Moore has calmed down in this one which may appeal to folks who don't like Moore when he's so strident, but the message is the same: truth to power, and Wolf is just a functionary of the power elite.

It turns out there's email evidence that Dr. Gupta received the correct information before altering it in his set-up piece.

Maybe Moore is obnoxious. Maybe he's not in particularly good health himself. Maybe he's just a working class guy who got lucky and turned into the most successful populist documentarian in film history.

But in comparison, Mistah Bush just does The Devil's work.