Whack-A-Mole, GOP-style (Cue Psy...two, three, four!)

I said before and I'll say again that the GOP ran 2 weak candidates in 2008 and 2012 against Obama: John McCain and Mitt Romney. 

They knew, like the rest of us suspected, that the economy was headed down the toilet and they wanted to be able to use a Democrat as the scapegoat for 8 years of Enrich The Rich economics which tanked the economy. They probably guessed back in 2008 that Obama, if he won, would be a one-term President, not guessing that he had a chance at a second term. But when the economy hadn't recovered by 2012, they doubled down and ran a second weak candidate, Romney, figuring that as long as they had an intransigent Congress which would stop most Obama initiatives, as it has, they would be in good shape to take over the Oval Office again in 2016 when the economy was back on its feet. But, they underestimated the depth of the recession and now they're running scared for 2016, so they're at Defcon 1 with anything at all they think they can turn to their advantage.

But, their own man, former SecDef Robert Gates, unwilling to lie, put the kibosh on that end run on Sunday, as far as the non-partisan public is concerned. So, it's back to North Korea-like hypervigilance hoping for new scandals to arise. 

It's like the GOP is playing Whack-A-Hillary, using the oversized, comic mallet of Conservative Doom to obliterate-then-defecate any hint of success that might, in an alternate universe with idiocy aforethought, be construed as shining a positive light on Democrat-leaning news, especially as it applies to former Secretary of State Clinton.

Watergate none of this is, but someone in the GOP must be channeling Richard Nixon.

Karl Rove and class warfare

Ever since Karl Rove's involvement with the GOP began, there's a trend in campaigns he touches where the candidates deny or denigrate a negative issue within their own policies or ranks by projecting it onto their opponents. 

So when Romney/Ryan/Republicans talk about class warfare, they're merely attempting to move that failure from their brand and rebrand it Democratic. Sadly, it works when you also own a media outlet watched by the vast majority of your party's supporters. But to those not so close to the trees that they can still see the forest, it's a puerile tactic.

The same goes for wealth redistribution. While it's a conservative ideal to move wealth upward, they fear any downward redistribution, even when that redistribution is simply paying the middle and working classes living wages.

Their belief is that by being proactive rather than reactive, they control the ball and hence the game. But telling a lie before the fact doesn't exonerate the liar, it merely doubles down the offense by virtue of premeditation. 

New GOP ticket order - Ryan/Romney

Ann Romney gave a good speech and after hearing her, I'd vote for her...for HER. But she didn't tell me anything about HIM, and he's the one running for President. 

Chris Christie sounded like a high-schooler giving his first public address to the student body. It was embarrassing, and since I'm an Independent, I really didn't care if he embarrassed himself. That's an indicator how bad his performance was.

This morning, I'm still embarrassed for him.

But the pundits are right about one thing, the ticket has flip-flopped such that now, it's a Ryan/Romney ticket instead of a Romney/Ryan one. Looks like the GOP have picked yet another real winner for VP candidate. 

After the election, maybe Mr Not-Vice-President Ryan and Mrs Not-Vice-President Palin can start a club.

Response to Bain Capital political ad

Response to article found at the link here.

If you feel alienated by this ad, then it's not President Obama who's doing it, it's your conscience. This ad can not be misconstrued to represent a simple layoff as bad. This was not a simple layoff. This was the intentional dismantlement of a company for quick profit. Bain Capital under Mitt Romney had a tried and proven system for the quick extraction of capital from the companies it chose to cannibalize. The system worked like this:  First, they would look for redundancies in labor, like any smart company would do, and then they would eliminate the redundant positions. All good, so far. But the next step was to sell securities - stocks and bonds - in order to gain quick capital. Then, they would pay themselves and their shareholders massive distributions leaving little for the necessary operation of the affected company.

At that point, the company would be unprofitable, deeply in debt because of the capital extracted by Romney, and facing bankruptcy. Since Bain would have made many times their initial investment back by that point, the company could fold, fly, flap, fart, or just fail. They didn't care, they had already sucked it dry. And that's when the real pain set in for the company's employees.

At that point, Bain would look to unload any non-revenue-producing stream from the company, or any that they could paint as such. Usually this was done in bankruptcy court and the debts would be discharged to the favor of Bain Capital. Employees were left with no employment, or with being underemployed. Bain had sucked the company's last producing teat dry, and now it just wants rid of the hulk.

That's not capitalism. That's cannibalism. And that's what Romney did at Bain Capital that earned him the wealth that he has beyond what he inherited from his wealthy father. He made his name as a scavenger, a corporate raider, a 'Barbarian At The Gate'.

Siding with Romney opposed to the thousands of workers who lost their livelihoods seems as calloused as he is. And that's the problem that I and others have with him. Not that he is wealthy, but that his wealth was milked from the lowest workers the companies that he raided employed. His wealth was made on human suffering and the total lack of compassion that his form of capitalist has.

A man who has no compassion in business will have no more than that in government. Add to that that he has allied himself with the ignoratti of the far right and you have a recipe for national bankruptcy, and I'll bet dollars to donuts that he would manage to profit from the downfall of our republic along the way.

Romney? I'd vote for no one before I'd vote for him.

Response to fascinating Addicting Info article

Overthrowing Carter @ Addicting Info




For 30+ years, I've been telling people that Ronnie RayGun was NOT the President they thought he was. The proof is everywhere, but it's been painted over to make him seem godlike. I was at the free world's anti-aircraft school, the US Army Air Defense Artillery Officer's Basic Course at Ft Bliss, Texas, in the Fall of 1979. We were being instructed in, an training on, the new Patriot missile system. Ronald Reagan wasn't elected President until 1980, took office in January 1981. So how is it that he got credit for the Patriot? By the simple expedient of his followers lying, that's how.

Jimmy Carter got more done in 4 years than Ronnie RayGun got done in 8, and that's a easily-proven fact; you need look no more than the Congressional Record which will PROVE it. No bias, no party affiliation, just the truth...ma'am. 

Jimmy Carter was elected to bring openness and common sense to Washington, DC, attempting to air out the stench left behind by Richard Nixon and, to a lesser degree, Gerald Ford. He warned us 36 years ago about the problems of relying so heavily on imported oil. He put solar panels on the White House. He tried to bring transparency to the Federal government just as he had done in Georgia when he was Governor, although subsequent administrations in Georgia have succeeded in closeting any information they felt was too sensitive for the public's eyes. Jimmy Carter told us we had to tighten our belts for just a little while, and then we'd be OK, but no, we wouldn't have that. Jimmy Carter left office with a TINY deficit, but Ronald Reagan would balloon it 100 times larger. Carter, a Democrat, told us we had to cut waste in government and especially in the military, and he should know - he was a US Navy nuclear officer. Ronald Reagan was an actor. Reagan, the man whom Grover Norquist would have us believe was an anti-tax hero, actually raised taxes 11 times in his 8 years in office. He presided over 2 recessions beyond the one he inherited, which itself was a result of failed residual Conservative policies. Every real increase in GDP and the economy which resulted in real growth, not that growth resulting from inflation upon borrowing, that Ronald Reagan took credit for, even in his second term, was a result of policies that Jimmy Carter enacted into law.

Reagan's administration was a sham and was the genesis of the current economic destabilization. Jimmy Carter is a national treasure, and if you still have trouble believing that he was the far better leader than Reagan, then you need to study them side-by-side in order to see the truth. I have. 

Conservative policy failures and the failure of the two-party system

It has been the agenda of the GOP since Ronald Reagan's administration to broaden the gap between the rich and poor. This serves the purpose of preventing more people from achieving ultra-wealthy status and separates the Haves from the untouchables, the Have Nots. Be objective. Look for yourself. Read everything whether you agree with it or not, and do so with an open mind. I come from a long line of fiscal conservatives, many of whom have since left the Republican party, as I have. Members of our family were in Henry Hudson's expeditionary party, fought in every war from the Revolutionary war on. We have always been conservatives, but for the last 30 years, and even then it has been a slow exodus from the GOP. But you can't call yourself a fiscal conservative and simultaneously believe that the policies of Reagan, Bush 41, & Bush 43, as well as those of the Do Nothing 112th Congress are conservative. They're not. They have created a welfare state, but not one which helps those in need. They've created a welfare state which has served the ultra-wealthy. Trickle-down economics is a myth, such as it's portrayed. Twenty years worth of conservative administrations hasn't created the jobs they boast. It's all been a lie. As for the Democrats, they're not significantly better, either. It's time to abolish the two-party system and urge other parties into the mix. We also need to enact legislation which will force candidates to accept public campaign funding to remove money from the equation, and we need to ban lobbying completely. When wealthy concerns alone have the ears of lawmakers, individual rights get trampled.

Response and agreement with a friend's Facebook post

You're right. Arch-conservatives have long had the goal of privatizing every part of government they could so that they could profit from it. They duped social conservatives like evangelical, fundamentalist, and extremist christians into voting for them with the God-Gays-Guns scheme and it worked. It was a propaganda program that Joseph Goebbels would have been proud of, and it's still working for them today. You have to hand it to them, they did their demographic and psychological research. You can pretty easily divide humanity into 2 groups, when thought about in this way, Thinkers and Believers. Believers are the type who want to...believe...in things rather than do the skeptical work of research, no matter how simple that might be. Thinkers are skeptics, not accepting everything at face value until they've had a chance to research it. So, the arch-conservatives went after the Believers - christians. They made it SEEM like they were pro-god, pro-gun, and anti-gay. In reality, they couldn't have given two shits about god, guns or gays, they just wanted a voting bloc who could elect their proxies to office in order to establish the conservative agenda. Again, you've gotta hand it to them, it worked...beyond their imaginings, at that. Now they can sit back, throw a handful of money at this or that campaign and have their work done for them by people who actually believe that they're better off with a privatized government. But when ALL roads become toll roads, when ALL schools are for-profit, when ALL medicine is pay-upon-receipt-of-services, when credit is denied to everyone (the wealthy don't need credit), and EVERYTHING you do requires payment at the time you need it...it will be too late to do anything about it because the police will be on the side of the wealthy...for that matter, they already are. Just take a look at what's happening with Occupy Wall Street at this very moment. Arch-conservatives want no middle class. They want but 2 classes: Theirs, and the workers who do their bidding.

Reply to a comment on Rachel Maddow's blog

You're right. I've been watching fairly closely and I think this is how the process goes: First, somewhere in a room filled with the Faithful (faithfully defending their stacks of money, that is), talking points are created. Then, they're handed off to Fox News for initiation in the early day's news cycle. Next, other Fox talking heads cite the FIRST Fox report using the same talking points, and that continues and escalates throughout the day. Simultaneously, emails convey those talking points to GOP members who are likely to have media exposure during that news cycle, reinforcing their fictions. And so it goes. A new day brings a new talking point, and the GOP cycle-of-life continues because the Believers don't do their own research. Only Thinkers do that.

Jim's GOP debate summary

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, AKA Tweedledum and Tweedledumber - I know you are, but what am I?; Michelle Bachman - Look, Mama, I eated all my Obamacare!; Herman Cain - The tax is TOO DAMNED HIGH!; Ron Paul - It'ssss the MANDATESSSS, My Preciousssss!; John Huntsman - 請問這條領帶讓我看中國人?; Newt the Gingrich - Thou shalt not...JESUS CHRIST, look at the T*TS on that chick!; Rick Santorum - *insert Standard Protest #51 and prayer*