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Going to the Mattresses

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Is There Any Escape?

We have reached that part of the election when all the millions of dollars spent by candidates and Political Action Committees (PACs) lead to a barrage of ads on television and over the telephone. During the last four weeks of a hard-fought political campaign (and they’re all that way now), I screen all my telephone calls.

Irrespective of the candidate or issue, I don’t want to talk to anyone on the phone about politics; and I most certainly don’t want to participate in opinion polls. I already avoid television—unless I am watching a movie without advertising or a DVD—so I am not susceptible to that particular attempt to poison my thought processes.

As I was coming to work today, I heard a news story on the radio about how the second presidential debate will be in a town hall format, with the participants all being uncommitted voters. Who in this superheated political arena is uncommitted any more? Doesn’t one have to be stupid or disingenuous at this point to be truly labeled uncommitted? I am as committed as hell, and I don’t want to talk to anyone about it.

In about a month, all this will be over and done with. We will have a president with whom we will be dissatisfied, to a greater or lesser degree; and the media blitz will have died down to nothing.

All those Citizens United dollars will have wreaked their damage on the American voter, who will be increasingly contemptuous of our political system. Sometimes I think the only people who like our system are those directly involved in manipulating public opinion.

In the middle of a hurricane, the only safe place to be is in out of the wind.

Picture Credit: The above cartoon is taken from the Fremd High School American Studies Ning (?!), which also addresses the same point I am trying to make.

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Oh No! Not Big Bird!

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Help save Big Bird!

Mitt Romney has gone too far. It was a mistake to attack Big Bird. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a tiny, but culturally significant part of the nation’s budget. Contrast that to the untold trillions we throw away in the Middle East building fortified zones from which our young men and women venture out only to be bombed to smithereens.

Sesame Street would rather not be in this predicament. It’s not as if the nonpartisan, nonprofit wants to be in the middle of a political firestorm: It clearly is uncomfortable in that role. Even Republicans have children, after a fashion, and those children are likely to find themselves identifying with the characters who dwell in Sesame Street. By so doing, they will not necessarily volunteer to serve on Obamacare Death Panels or join the Socialist Workers’ Party, They may even grow up to be distressingly normal, unlike their parents.

There are certainly a few hundred things I would think to cut before attacking tiny PBS, whose 15% contribution from the Federal Government constitutes far, far less than 1% of the budget. (Closer to 0.015% actually.)

In politics, sometimes little things have large consequences. I think that, in attacking Big Bird, the Mittster may have taken on more than he can handle.

Photo Credit: The above image was copied from an About.Com website on political humor.

 

Irresponsible

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Romney: The Choice of Millionaires Everywhere

A nation survives based on its ability to levy taxes to provide services to its citizens. Among those services are a standing army and navy, a postal service, and embassies and consulates around the world. Within the last century, new services have been added, at least here in the United States: Social Security, Medicare, and (to a diminishing extent) public assistance.

When a man who is running for the presidency shows himself to be disingenuous about the taxes he himself has paid—and when what he reveals shows himself to be a minor contributor to his nation’s success—then perhaps that candidate is too irresponsible to hold the reins of government.

Let’s face it: Mitt Romney is playing this game for himself and for his class of the Super Rich. He is waving the flag of his experience as CEO of Bain Capital to show how experienced he is. But experienced at what? Hiding money in offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands? Outsourcing U.S. jobs to Southeast Asia? Whose president would he be?

Certainly not mine. I am not a member of Mitt and Ann’s Country Club set and would not stand to gain from what he proposes to do. Who would gain? Only those One-Percenters who have done so much to destroy America’s pre-eminent position in the world since the end of World War II.

It troubles me that so many millions of other voters who would not gain from a Romney presidency are still backing him. The only reason I can think of is that, for many Americans, the right to be free entails a form of economic and moral suicide, mixed with overtones of racism and anti-authoritarianism.

This man promises to bring America back to its greatness by pillaging the nation’s piggy bank, enriching himself and his cronies, and moving on. Isn’t this the very picture of an American CEO? And this qualifies a CEO to be president?

No, Mitt, if you don’t want to contribute to this country’s greatness by paying your just share of taxes, I don’t think you deserve to be anything but the Bain of American politics.

Strange Reasoning for a Guy

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First Lady Michelle Obama

This is going to sound like strange reasoning for a male of the species, but one of the main reasons why I want to see Barack Obama win a second term as President is my preference for Michelle Obama over Anne Romney.

Not that I have anything particular against Mrs. Romney, other than the fact that she is a blah corporate wife, but that Michelle Obama is nothing short of magnificent. If I were married to her, I certainly would not go canoodling with chubby interns. In fact, I would not mind if she were the President.

Listen to these words from her speech at the convention in Charlotte:

So today, when the challenges we face start to seem overwhelming – or even impossible – let us never forget that doing the impossible is the history of this nation…it’s who we are as Americans…it’s how this country was built.

And if our parents and grandparents could toil and struggle for us…if they could raise beams of steel to the sky, send a man to the moon, and connect the world with the touch of a button…then surely we can keep on sacrificing and building for our own kids and grandkids.

And if so many brave men and women could wear our country’s uniform and sacrifice their lives for our most fundamental rights…then surely we can do our part as citizens of this great democracy to exercise those rights…surely, we can get to the polls and make our voices heard on Election Day.

If farmers and blacksmiths could win independence from an empire…if immigrants could leave behind everything they knew for a better life on our shores…if women could be dragged to jail for seeking the vote…if a generation could defeat a depression, and define greatness for all time…if a young preacher could lift us to the mountaintop with his righteous dream…and if proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

Because in the end, more than anything else, that is the story of this country – the story of unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle.

Damn! She’s even a better speaker than Barack—and that’s saying a lot!

Compared to her, all the generations of Romneys are stumbling bozos (except maybe for George Romney, whom I respected far more than I do his son).

“The Business of Somebody Else”

Some legislators only wish to wreak vengeance against a particular enemy. Others only look out for themselves. They devote very little time on the consideration of any public issue. They think that no harm will come from their neglect. They act as if it is always the business of somebody else to look after this or that. When this selfish notion is entertained by all, the commonwealth slowly begins to decay.—Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War

Road Kill

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Everyone wants to be rich, but does everyone want to be like the rich? As one who has spent twenty years working with wealthy clients in an accounting firm that caters to them, I would have to say that, for the most part, the wealthy are not nice people. Superficially, for short periods of time, they can appear to be charming. But when they feel their interests are at stake, there are only two classes of Americans: the wealthy and road kill.

We are living at a time when many who are not wealthy idolize those who are. I must ask those people whether they think a Donald Trump would look after their best interests. Now Mitt Romney is passing himself off as a job creator, despite his reputation as an outsourcer of American jobs for Bain Capital.

Look back over American history: Why do you suppose American voters did not push for the likes of Commodore Vanderbilt, John Jacob Astor, Jay Gould, Andrew W. Mellon, and John D. Rockefeller to run for president? Perhaps voters were too smart then to vote for thieves. Now they are less smart, and they believe the lies peddled by false radio pundits like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who themselves are in the pay of wealthy corporations and individuals.

The whole theory of trickle down economics is still making the rounds after more than thirty years. In its essentials, what trickle down economics presupposes is that if you feed the horse enough oats, he will leave something in the middle of the road for the poor. That part is true; but where money is involved, give the rich more money, and—instead of creating jobs—they will salt their cash away in offshore tax havens such as the Cayman Islands.

Am I stupid or something? How do the voters who support wealthy candidates like Romney think they are going to share in their candidate’s wealth? Will Romney create jobs? No. Will Romney and his friends get even more obscenely wealthy? Yes. That is a dead certain guarantee.

Speaking as one classified in the 99% (a.k.a. road kill), I tend to vote for candidates who have my best interests at heart. Candidates who will do something for America, and not merely for their own capacious pocketbooks.

Jesus Is Not Your Good Buddy

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Whenever I think about it, I get disturbed by my country, which I love, being destroyed by people who really think that Jesus cares for their sorry asses. Generally, these are “Left Behind” people—not in the sense of the Left Behind novels of evangelical wordhacks Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, but people who are isolated by the winds of demographic and economic change and need something to hug.

If your children have moved out because they can’t stand your old-fashioned ways, and if the job you’ve held since the end of WW2 has moved to Asia or Mexico, you’ll want to pray to someone who really cares for you. That is the story in large swaths of the rural South and Midwest. It just happens to be breaking our country apart because these Glorioso Jesusites all vote: They have nothing else to do.

No, I am not an atheist. (In fact, I don’t think very much of people who profess to be atheists.) I just don’t think that we know anything about God. When He has spoken in various sacred works, they pretty much contradict each other or urge followers to do things which now look pretty loony. To be used at all, one has to cherry pick what look like universal truths and omit all the crazy stuff, like for instance various parts of Leviticus and Deuteronomy. (Check out Deuteronomy 13:12-15 for a divine command that I’ll bet you haven’t followed lately.) That carries over into Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. So while many Americans rant against Sharia law, they are blissfully unaware that Christianity has its own equivalent in the Mosaic books of the Old Testament.

You can probably guess (and guess rightly) that I’m not a churchgoer. Although I have a certain nostalgia for the Roman Catholic Church, and a leaning toward some of the more enlightened teachings of the Asian religions, there isn’t any “comprehensive package” that I endorse from soup to nuts. My belief is that God wants us to keep asking questions, not necessarily expecting any answers from on high. We need to recognize that we know nothing. Perhaps, if God is watching us at all, He wants to see how we behave in a moral vacuum.

People who pretend to have all the answers are just trying to control you. If Jesus is the answer, you are probably not asking the right questions.

The Outrage Machine

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The members of Pussy Riot behind bars

I am tired of writing blog postings about my outrage at the misdeeds of others, most particularly the political Right in America. So today, instead of the usual fulmination over the misdeeds of ignorant Confederate Yahoos, I want to bring to your attention three brave and beautiful young women who form a punk rock group in Russia who calls itself Pussy Riot. They are, from left to right in the above photo, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, and Maria Alyokhina.

Their own particular outrage is against Vladimir Putin, particularly his hypocritical attempt to suck up to the Russian Orthodox Church.

On February 21 of this year, Pussy Riot staged a performance in front of the iconostasis of Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow a few blocks away from the Kremlin. The concert was stopped by church security guards. When videos of the event were circulated the following month, the girls were promptly arrested and charged for hooliganism, a sort of ill-defined catch-all crime in Russia. As of last week, they have been sentenced to two years in prison, despite pleas for clemency from the Orthodox clergy.

If you’re interested, below is the video of their performance on YouTube:

There is a CC button at the bottom which allows you to select English subtitles of the lyrics the group is singing. While some Rightist-leaning media in this country have come out against Pussy Riot, I personally am for them. Organized religion and its sometimes dubious ties to the regime need to be exposed. The group did this with humor, artistry, and some slight blasphemous language which is pardonable under the circumstances.

There are dangers in the group’s course of action: I keep thinking of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was shot to death in the elevator to her apartment for daring to expose the utter corruption of Putin’s government, particularly in its policy toward Chechnya. There was a big show trial with some obvious fall guys, but nothing much came of it.

So, rock on, girls! I hope you can beat the rap.

“Legitimate Rape”

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Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo) tells us all about women’s bodies.

Why does the U.S. House of Representatives increasingly look like a monkey house in the zoo, with ignorant congressmen swinging from the branches and shocking us civilized people with their bestiality? My parents tell me that, when I was a little tyke, we visited the Bronx Zoo in New York and were assailed by dung thrown at the visitors by the gorillas. It was an early instance, I guess, of gorilla warfare.

What Representative Todd Akin did that upset so many people in both political parties is to hint, by his choice of language, that (1) there is such a thing called “legitimate rape,” which sounds in his words as if it were a good thing and (2) women can, when being raped, shut down their baby-making factory at will. Therefore there is no valid justification for abortion in the event of rape.

Women have tried for so hard and so long to win the equality that they deserve that it has become shocking when a troglodyte like Akin steps forward and makes chattering sounds that betray his ignorance. And he wants to join that Gentleman’s Club known as the U.S. Senate! I don’t think he’ll make it.

It’s back to the bananas for monkey boy.