We now know the exact value Mitt Romney places on himself. He can be bought with $2 million and/or one-tenth of one per cent of the vote in November.
How do we know this?
Last night Mitt Romney held a gala fund-raising dinner with Donald Trump, the racist birther and professional idiot. Reputedly the event raised $2 million dollars. In presidential politics these days, that's peanuts. Especially when Romney's super pacs have already raised over half a BILLION to campaign for him.
So Romney is for sale cheap. That speaks very ill of any future presidency of his, doesn't it.
And what about that one-tenth of one per cent of the vote?
He named that price when answering a reporter's question aboard the campaign plane (or "aircraft", as he strangely calls it). The question was: why was he associating with Donald Trump instead of clearly separating himself from Trump's recently-renewed insistence that Obama was not born in the USA? Romney said that he and his supporters didn't agree on everything but that he needed all of them so as to get 50.1% of the November vote to win.
In short, he is saying he'll do anything to win. Anything to get over 50%. Anything.
Not for him the decent moment of a John McCain, who forthrightly corrected that old lady in 2008 when she said she feared Obama because he was a Muslim. I can still see McCain beginning to shake his head in denial even as she was still speaking. Calmly and clearly he corrected her. Obama, he said, was a good American and a good family man. And in that moment, McCain showed what a good American McCain is, that he still has the courage and sense of honor he deminstrated as a prisoner of war.
Romney, however, is a bad American. A corrupt and corrupting hoodlum. He and the GOP are trying to buy this election just as blatantly as old-time crooked pols used to buy votes for $2 apiece. They are also trying to win by suppressing the vote through new state laws that require would-be voters to document their registration with drivers' licenses or other "proof", most of it costly or difficult to obtain if you are a college student or old or poor or struggling as a single mom just to make it through the day.
They are also willing to use any lie in order to win. Romney lies about Obama's rising spending (it's been flat), his having increased taxes (he has lowered them), his unwillingness to lower the debt (he offered a Grand Bargain last year with a $4 trillion debt reduction), his "socialist" health care reform (it's Romney's plan), and for using Romney's approach in saving the auto industry without giving Romney "credit" (baloney!).
He lies about being a "job creator", claiming Bain Capital created 100,000 jobs although he has no proof of this and all the evidence is against that figure. Instead he ignores the fact that, as Governor of Massachusetts, he led his state right down into the cellar, right to the lowest rank of new jobs created.
Well, we always knew Romney had no class. It was evident in that stupid incident he staged in which he pretended that a waitress had pinched his bottom. Do you remember that extremely unpresidential moment last year?
But even if he has no classiness, at least you'd think, him being a supposedly devout Mormon, that he would refrain from being a g.d. liar.
But he wants that winning fraction of a per cent over 50 per cent. To get it, he will not only embarrass some poor waitress in a fake bottom-pinching. He'll go the whole way in demeaning himself and this nation.
He will kiss the rump of Donald Trump. And the birthers.
George Bernard Shaw told the story of asking a beautiful young woman if she would spend the night with him for a million pounds. She agreed. Then he asked her if she would for two pounds. "What!" she shrieked. "Do you think I'm a prostitute?" Shaw replied, "We've already established that. Now we are just haggling about the price."
Well, now we know Romney's price. The young woman would sell her body. Romney has sold his soul.
Sadly, if he wins this bargain with the devil and gets the presidency, he will take this entire nation to hell with him.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Baseball, Politics and Germany
Politics raises the weirdest questions.
Can we old Cubbies fans "bear" to give up finally on our ever-disappointing team because of super pac politics? We far outpace the Red Sox fans in our ability to be loyal no matter what. (We last had a really winner team over 100 years ago.) Yet the owner of the Cubs is such a disgusting piece of work politically and such a stupid guy generally that maybe we should pack it in.
This past week the owner of the Cubs - a billionaire named Ricketts - almost financed a $10 million smear campaign against Obama, based on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's notorious jeremiads of yore. The proposal for this attack urged that it would make people "hate" Obama as a "metrosexual black Abe Lincoln", whatever the hell that is. The proposal noted that Ricketts had already given the plan "preliminary approval at the New York meeting."
Obviously it's hard to be loyal to a team when the owner is not just a jerk, but a racist, hate-mongering billionaire who would consider stealing an American election with his super wealth. To me, buying an election is even worse than throwing a baseball game or drugging up as a trackster. And to me, these last two sins are really big ones. Racism is even a bigger sin.
What's also disturbing - and more germane to baseball - is that Ricketts is so dumb. What hope do the Cubs ever have when they are under the control of a genuinely stupid man? Yeah, Ricketts made a lot of money. But he did it by filling a need that was crying to be met. (In fact, it's a testimony to the dumbness of a lot of other business people that the need he filled existed at all and for so long.)
Business people tend to be really stupid about baseball (as fans well know) and also about politics and governing. Examples: Romney, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorini, and - the most stupid business/politican guy of all time - Herbert Hoover. He was the last businessman to become president. And we all now how that turned out! Taking a dry, brown leaf from Hoover's playbook, Romney urged in 2008 in a New York Times editorial that the U.S. auto industry should be allowed to go bankrupt. Not exactly a good business call in light of the industry's soaring success after its help from Obama.
Like the ill-fated Hoover, Romney and his fellow "business" GOPers are anti-stimulus and pro-austerity in a time of a recession. Yet this week the G8 summit renounced Germany's insistence on austerity as the sole policy in Europe because - as Obama pointed out to the assembled leaders - his program of spending by government has worked in the U.S. while Europe's austerity-only approach has caused stagnation and even worsening of the European economy.
How's that for an "I told you so"from Obama! And hats off to Obama for not giving up since Day One in trying to get Europe to do the right thing. Obama has a lot of items for a victory-walk. His success this week in getting Germany to agree to some stimulus spending in Europe is a mighty victory to add to his list. And one we needed, given that Europe is one of our biggest export customers.
Contrast this newest of Obama's economics achievements with Romney's record upon leaving the Massachusetts governor's office. Under his governing, his state sunk to the bottom spot nationally in job creation. Some record, Romney!
Ricketts is right in there with Romney and the other GOPers who think making money qualifies them in politics and government. And Ricketts is not even a good businessman! Maybe the Cubs aren't an important part of his business fortunes, but did he really think it was a good idea to alienate all those black fans and all the other fans who despise racism? It would have been the dumbest business move since Coca-Cola changed its formula and then hastened to cover its mistake by saying it was bringing back original Coke as "Classic Coke". But Classic Coke doesn't taste at all like original Coke.
I still have a six-pack of the real Coca-Cola in the bottom of my closet. It's in those old glass bottles with that old curvy shape. I squirreled it away when Coca-Cola announced the abandonment of real Coke. I've been saving it "for an emergency". What's it been? Thirty years? Now I'll just leave it to my five kids, one bottle each, and the sixth to share at my post-funeral party as a toast to the passing of a loyal Coke fan. (Planning one's funeral is such fun!)
Yeah, and I'm going to hang on to the Cubs too until death do us part, even if they are also and ever at the bottom of my closet. Yeah, even in spite of Rickety Ricketts. Maybe he'll sell the team, but as daft as he is, nothing ever seems to make the Cubs better or worse.
Tinkers to Evers to Chance. I grew up on the lovely set of words even though that Cubs infield - baseball's all-time best - was long gone before I was even born. It's still a melodic set of words, and it's music to the heart of any baseball fan, no matter one's age or persuasion. Yeah, I'll stay with the Cubs and Tinkers and Evers and Chance.
So here's the deal: Give me, O Lord Of All Things American, a victory for Obama in the fall and it will really be okay if - yet once again - the sun don't shine on my ol' Cubbies.
I'll still have my Chevy and my levee and my daughter's apple pie. And America will still have hope.
Can we old Cubbies fans "bear" to give up finally on our ever-disappointing team because of super pac politics? We far outpace the Red Sox fans in our ability to be loyal no matter what. (We last had a really winner team over 100 years ago.) Yet the owner of the Cubs is such a disgusting piece of work politically and such a stupid guy generally that maybe we should pack it in.
This past week the owner of the Cubs - a billionaire named Ricketts - almost financed a $10 million smear campaign against Obama, based on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's notorious jeremiads of yore. The proposal for this attack urged that it would make people "hate" Obama as a "metrosexual black Abe Lincoln", whatever the hell that is. The proposal noted that Ricketts had already given the plan "preliminary approval at the New York meeting."
Obviously it's hard to be loyal to a team when the owner is not just a jerk, but a racist, hate-mongering billionaire who would consider stealing an American election with his super wealth. To me, buying an election is even worse than throwing a baseball game or drugging up as a trackster. And to me, these last two sins are really big ones. Racism is even a bigger sin.
What's also disturbing - and more germane to baseball - is that Ricketts is so dumb. What hope do the Cubs ever have when they are under the control of a genuinely stupid man? Yeah, Ricketts made a lot of money. But he did it by filling a need that was crying to be met. (In fact, it's a testimony to the dumbness of a lot of other business people that the need he filled existed at all and for so long.)
Business people tend to be really stupid about baseball (as fans well know) and also about politics and governing. Examples: Romney, Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorini, and - the most stupid business/politican guy of all time - Herbert Hoover. He was the last businessman to become president. And we all now how that turned out! Taking a dry, brown leaf from Hoover's playbook, Romney urged in 2008 in a New York Times editorial that the U.S. auto industry should be allowed to go bankrupt. Not exactly a good business call in light of the industry's soaring success after its help from Obama.
Like the ill-fated Hoover, Romney and his fellow "business" GOPers are anti-stimulus and pro-austerity in a time of a recession. Yet this week the G8 summit renounced Germany's insistence on austerity as the sole policy in Europe because - as Obama pointed out to the assembled leaders - his program of spending by government has worked in the U.S. while Europe's austerity-only approach has caused stagnation and even worsening of the European economy.
How's that for an "I told you so"from Obama! And hats off to Obama for not giving up since Day One in trying to get Europe to do the right thing. Obama has a lot of items for a victory-walk. His success this week in getting Germany to agree to some stimulus spending in Europe is a mighty victory to add to his list. And one we needed, given that Europe is one of our biggest export customers.
Contrast this newest of Obama's economics achievements with Romney's record upon leaving the Massachusetts governor's office. Under his governing, his state sunk to the bottom spot nationally in job creation. Some record, Romney!
Ricketts is right in there with Romney and the other GOPers who think making money qualifies them in politics and government. And Ricketts is not even a good businessman! Maybe the Cubs aren't an important part of his business fortunes, but did he really think it was a good idea to alienate all those black fans and all the other fans who despise racism? It would have been the dumbest business move since Coca-Cola changed its formula and then hastened to cover its mistake by saying it was bringing back original Coke as "Classic Coke". But Classic Coke doesn't taste at all like original Coke.
I still have a six-pack of the real Coca-Cola in the bottom of my closet. It's in those old glass bottles with that old curvy shape. I squirreled it away when Coca-Cola announced the abandonment of real Coke. I've been saving it "for an emergency". What's it been? Thirty years? Now I'll just leave it to my five kids, one bottle each, and the sixth to share at my post-funeral party as a toast to the passing of a loyal Coke fan. (Planning one's funeral is such fun!)
Yeah, and I'm going to hang on to the Cubs too until death do us part, even if they are also and ever at the bottom of my closet. Yeah, even in spite of Rickety Ricketts. Maybe he'll sell the team, but as daft as he is, nothing ever seems to make the Cubs better or worse.
Tinkers to Evers to Chance. I grew up on the lovely set of words even though that Cubs infield - baseball's all-time best - was long gone before I was even born. It's still a melodic set of words, and it's music to the heart of any baseball fan, no matter one's age or persuasion. Yeah, I'll stay with the Cubs and Tinkers and Evers and Chance.
So here's the deal: Give me, O Lord Of All Things American, a victory for Obama in the fall and it will really be okay if - yet once again - the sun don't shine on my ol' Cubbies.
I'll still have my Chevy and my levee and my daughter's apple pie. And America will still have hope.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Obama Isn't Abandoning Gay Marriage to the States
You don't have to be a lawyer to get this. But apparently a lot of commentators don't get it at all. When Obama said the issue of gay marriage has to be dealt with by the states, he wasn't consigning gay marriage solely to the un-tender mercies of the states. No indeedy.
In our system the states deal with marriage. Nothing in the Constitution enables the federal government to involve itself in marriage, and the federal government has only the powers allocated to it by the Constitution. HOW the states deal with marriage is, however, subject to Constitutional protection of our rights. Thus in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on inter-racial marriage was unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment's requirements of due process and equal protection in its impermissible racial discrimination.
But what about sexual discrimination? Is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation forbidden by the Constitution? Right now California's Prop 8 case is possibly headed to the Supreme Court. A panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the proposition's attempt to ban same sex marriage. Whether the case now goes forward to the Supreme Court is uncertain. Prop 8 and the Ninth Circuit opinion are both narrowly written to apply solely to California, and the US Supreme Court may see little reason to get involved and therefore deny a hearing. If the Court grants a hearing, it still has ways of narrowing its decision so as not to really address whether gays have a right to marry.
We don't know what will happen to the Prop 8 case, whether it will even get before the Supreme Court or what the Supreme Court will decide. But unless Obama is re-elected, we are surely going to see lots of bad decisions narrowing the rights of many of us. This is a sink-or-swim election for all, not just for gays. Two, and possibly three, Supreme Court seats are coming open soon. Bad as the present Supreme Court is (and its decision on strip-searches was outrageous!), it could be infinitely worse with Romney appointments.
Do you want Romney to make those appointments? Are you insane?
Obama believes that denying gays the right to marry is not only wrong but is unconstitutional. That's the grounds he cited in ordering the Justice Department not to enforce the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which is anti-gay marriage and was enacted during the Clinton administration. Obama can halt applIcation of this federal law, but he can't do anything about the anti-gay state laws by trying to get a federal law to supersede them. He can't suddenly remove marriage from the jurisdiction of the states. That's over-reaching on too colossal a scale, given our federated system. But he has made clear by his pronouncement on DOMA that laws, federal or state, must meet Constitutional muster regarding gay marriage, and that laws banning same sex marriage do not satisfy the Constitution.
That's all he can do. He can say what he thinks. Under our system, it's now up to the Supreme Court. It's not up to the president. "Leaving the issue to the states" actually means leaving it to the Supreme Court. If he pushes for a federal law - which he would never get through Congress - the resulting law would then become highly vulnerable to overthrow by the Court as an impermissible violation of state jurisdiction over marriage.
Actually the issue is up to YOU. You will decide the winner in this next election. You will thereby decide the makeup of the Supreme Court. The right of gay couples to marry is in your hands, as are the rights of all of us.
You stand now with the Minute Men at Lexington and Concord. In fighting for their freedoms, they faced the world's greatest military power. You face Karl Rove's super pacs and their $300 million campaign fund.
Oh, yeah, baby! The British are sure as hell coming! In the form of three more of Scalia, Alito and Clarence Thomas! So do a Paul Revere and WALK - do not ride! - a precinct for Obama. Do it for the gay teenagers who escape the tormenting by killing themselves. Do it for all of us who prize our rights. Do it for your children.
Or this ain't gonna be the home of the brave and the land of the free any more. You betcha!
In our system the states deal with marriage. Nothing in the Constitution enables the federal government to involve itself in marriage, and the federal government has only the powers allocated to it by the Constitution. HOW the states deal with marriage is, however, subject to Constitutional protection of our rights. Thus in the case of Loving v. Virginia in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on inter-racial marriage was unconstitutional because it violated the 14th Amendment's requirements of due process and equal protection in its impermissible racial discrimination.
But what about sexual discrimination? Is discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation forbidden by the Constitution? Right now California's Prop 8 case is possibly headed to the Supreme Court. A panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the proposition's attempt to ban same sex marriage. Whether the case now goes forward to the Supreme Court is uncertain. Prop 8 and the Ninth Circuit opinion are both narrowly written to apply solely to California, and the US Supreme Court may see little reason to get involved and therefore deny a hearing. If the Court grants a hearing, it still has ways of narrowing its decision so as not to really address whether gays have a right to marry.
We don't know what will happen to the Prop 8 case, whether it will even get before the Supreme Court or what the Supreme Court will decide. But unless Obama is re-elected, we are surely going to see lots of bad decisions narrowing the rights of many of us. This is a sink-or-swim election for all, not just for gays. Two, and possibly three, Supreme Court seats are coming open soon. Bad as the present Supreme Court is (and its decision on strip-searches was outrageous!), it could be infinitely worse with Romney appointments.
Do you want Romney to make those appointments? Are you insane?
Obama believes that denying gays the right to marry is not only wrong but is unconstitutional. That's the grounds he cited in ordering the Justice Department not to enforce the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which is anti-gay marriage and was enacted during the Clinton administration. Obama can halt applIcation of this federal law, but he can't do anything about the anti-gay state laws by trying to get a federal law to supersede them. He can't suddenly remove marriage from the jurisdiction of the states. That's over-reaching on too colossal a scale, given our federated system. But he has made clear by his pronouncement on DOMA that laws, federal or state, must meet Constitutional muster regarding gay marriage, and that laws banning same sex marriage do not satisfy the Constitution.
That's all he can do. He can say what he thinks. Under our system, it's now up to the Supreme Court. It's not up to the president. "Leaving the issue to the states" actually means leaving it to the Supreme Court. If he pushes for a federal law - which he would never get through Congress - the resulting law would then become highly vulnerable to overthrow by the Court as an impermissible violation of state jurisdiction over marriage.
Actually the issue is up to YOU. You will decide the winner in this next election. You will thereby decide the makeup of the Supreme Court. The right of gay couples to marry is in your hands, as are the rights of all of us.
You stand now with the Minute Men at Lexington and Concord. In fighting for their freedoms, they faced the world's greatest military power. You face Karl Rove's super pacs and their $300 million campaign fund.
Oh, yeah, baby! The British are sure as hell coming! In the form of three more of Scalia, Alito and Clarence Thomas! So do a Paul Revere and WALK - do not ride! - a precinct for Obama. Do it for the gay teenagers who escape the tormenting by killing themselves. Do it for all of us who prize our rights. Do it for your children.
Or this ain't gonna be the home of the brave and the land of the free any more. You betcha!
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Romney: Consistently Cruel "Lynch Mob" Mind
Hurling a kid to the floor, holding him down by five to one, cutting his hair while he screams and cries.
No, it wasn't a "prank". It was the crime of battery, as in "assault and battery"; "the unwanted touching of another". It was also on the same spectrum as lynching because it was the degrading of a human being. Further, it was extremely dangerous and could have ended with that high school boy dead from being stabbed by the scissors in the struggle. Such deaths have occurred in prior decades from similar "hazing" haircuts. I'm a retired attorney, and if I had been a DA back then I would have prosecuted the young Romney.
No, we mustn't let the talking heads on TV, almost all of them men, successfully dismiss Romney's attack on a fellow student as "boys will be boys". Or claim that "teenage years" are off limits in a campaign. Joe Scarborough - predictably - blathers on about the irrelevance of "what kids do when they're fourteeen, fifteen, or sixteen."
Romney wasn't fourteen. Or fifteen. Or sixteen.
He was a graduating senior. He was eighteen or close to it. In states like New York, he would have been considered an adult under the liquor laws back then. Nationally, he was eligible for the draft. In many states he was old enough to enter binding contracts and to marry without parental permission. And he had been old enough to drive for two years. So suppose he had killed or injured another youngster in a game of "chicken" with automobiles, as in a James Dean type movie. Would that have been a "prank" or a crime?
You can't be an adult for a lot of things and escape it because you are just months from high school graduation.
The main thing is that the young Mitt Romney is still with us. Over the years he has remained the same "prankster". His friends and former employees (or a few of them anyway) say he's really a kind and gentle man. Baloney! Because they also keep saying he's a "prankster". It's their word, not mine.
A prankster is not a humorist. He gets laughs by making other people look bad. Or by humiliating them. Or by causing them pain or worry. The laughter is always based on cruelty. A prankster loves a banana peel, pulling someone's pants down, taking photos of a young man kissing another man. Romney's history of pranks consistently involves, at the least, someone being made to look a fool or being scared. It's what my mother used to call "cheap" humor. Meaning "low class". That was back in the days when "classy" had to do with character, and a jumped-up bunch like the Romneys couldn't buy their way into being respected unless they respected others.
Romney is still bullying. He tried to bully his debate competitors in the primaries. Remember? And he's still trying to bully the press for daring to question him about anything. Remember the angry flash at the Fox News interviewer? And did you catch the snarling sneer at the rope line reporter this week?
He's admitted he's cruel. He has said he "loves to fire people" who don't do a proper job for him. He joked and laughed about the closing of a factory that costs hundreds of people to lose their jobs. In his family, it's a "humorous" incident when the family dog is crated up and tied to the roof of a car.
Romney has never been held accountable for anything! Wrapped in wealth and lionized since birth, he is a spoiled brat. To this very day, it's his way or the highway. Remember him yelling for Anderson Cooper to enforce the time rules at that debate? Romney is the spoiled little kid who always gets the apple and makes life miserable for others. There"s a Yiddish term for such a kid, though I've forgotten what it is. But - unlike Romney - I do remember what happened in my high school years. We all do.
Lynching was fun too, Mitt. We know that because there are photos of the crowds at lynchings, laughing and holding their kids aloft to see the fun. Lynchings were still going on when Romney was a youngster. But there were young people in the North who were heading South in that same decade to help end the horrors. Or joining the Peace Corps. Or sheltering other kids in their high schools from homophobic bullies or racists.
But not Mitt Romney. There's no record he has ever voluntarily lifted a finger for social justice. He has reputedly done good works within his church, but it appears that's because he had to. In Mormonism you have to go along to get along, and obedience to church demands are intertwined with financial success. (I write books about the history of the Far West and know something about Mormonism.)
Well, what's all this got to with us as voters? Do we care if Romney is a twisted form of the Tin Woodsman with no heart? Sure, we do. As president, he would decide whether we have more wars. If you're indifferent to people's suffering, you don't go gray about war deaths as Obama has. You don't really care about the unemployed if you can "joke" that you too are "unemployed" because you're running as a candidate. And if you are basically a cruel bully, you're going to mess up our foreign policy just like George W did. Bullying may work in business. It's a disaster in governance.
We say the president has a "bully pulpit". But we don't mean that the presidency is the place for a genuine bully.
Hell no!
No, it wasn't a "prank". It was the crime of battery, as in "assault and battery"; "the unwanted touching of another". It was also on the same spectrum as lynching because it was the degrading of a human being. Further, it was extremely dangerous and could have ended with that high school boy dead from being stabbed by the scissors in the struggle. Such deaths have occurred in prior decades from similar "hazing" haircuts. I'm a retired attorney, and if I had been a DA back then I would have prosecuted the young Romney.
No, we mustn't let the talking heads on TV, almost all of them men, successfully dismiss Romney's attack on a fellow student as "boys will be boys". Or claim that "teenage years" are off limits in a campaign. Joe Scarborough - predictably - blathers on about the irrelevance of "what kids do when they're fourteeen, fifteen, or sixteen."
Romney wasn't fourteen. Or fifteen. Or sixteen.
He was a graduating senior. He was eighteen or close to it. In states like New York, he would have been considered an adult under the liquor laws back then. Nationally, he was eligible for the draft. In many states he was old enough to enter binding contracts and to marry without parental permission. And he had been old enough to drive for two years. So suppose he had killed or injured another youngster in a game of "chicken" with automobiles, as in a James Dean type movie. Would that have been a "prank" or a crime?
You can't be an adult for a lot of things and escape it because you are just months from high school graduation.
The main thing is that the young Mitt Romney is still with us. Over the years he has remained the same "prankster". His friends and former employees (or a few of them anyway) say he's really a kind and gentle man. Baloney! Because they also keep saying he's a "prankster". It's their word, not mine.
A prankster is not a humorist. He gets laughs by making other people look bad. Or by humiliating them. Or by causing them pain or worry. The laughter is always based on cruelty. A prankster loves a banana peel, pulling someone's pants down, taking photos of a young man kissing another man. Romney's history of pranks consistently involves, at the least, someone being made to look a fool or being scared. It's what my mother used to call "cheap" humor. Meaning "low class". That was back in the days when "classy" had to do with character, and a jumped-up bunch like the Romneys couldn't buy their way into being respected unless they respected others.
Romney is still bullying. He tried to bully his debate competitors in the primaries. Remember? And he's still trying to bully the press for daring to question him about anything. Remember the angry flash at the Fox News interviewer? And did you catch the snarling sneer at the rope line reporter this week?
He's admitted he's cruel. He has said he "loves to fire people" who don't do a proper job for him. He joked and laughed about the closing of a factory that costs hundreds of people to lose their jobs. In his family, it's a "humorous" incident when the family dog is crated up and tied to the roof of a car.
Romney has never been held accountable for anything! Wrapped in wealth and lionized since birth, he is a spoiled brat. To this very day, it's his way or the highway. Remember him yelling for Anderson Cooper to enforce the time rules at that debate? Romney is the spoiled little kid who always gets the apple and makes life miserable for others. There"s a Yiddish term for such a kid, though I've forgotten what it is. But - unlike Romney - I do remember what happened in my high school years. We all do.
Lynching was fun too, Mitt. We know that because there are photos of the crowds at lynchings, laughing and holding their kids aloft to see the fun. Lynchings were still going on when Romney was a youngster. But there were young people in the North who were heading South in that same decade to help end the horrors. Or joining the Peace Corps. Or sheltering other kids in their high schools from homophobic bullies or racists.
But not Mitt Romney. There's no record he has ever voluntarily lifted a finger for social justice. He has reputedly done good works within his church, but it appears that's because he had to. In Mormonism you have to go along to get along, and obedience to church demands are intertwined with financial success. (I write books about the history of the Far West and know something about Mormonism.)
Well, what's all this got to with us as voters? Do we care if Romney is a twisted form of the Tin Woodsman with no heart? Sure, we do. As president, he would decide whether we have more wars. If you're indifferent to people's suffering, you don't go gray about war deaths as Obama has. You don't really care about the unemployed if you can "joke" that you too are "unemployed" because you're running as a candidate. And if you are basically a cruel bully, you're going to mess up our foreign policy just like George W did. Bullying may work in business. It's a disaster in governance.
We say the president has a "bully pulpit". But we don't mean that the presidency is the place for a genuine bully.
Hell no!
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Romney: Homophobic and a Big Fat Liar!
Mitt Romney led a gang of his high school chums in pinning down a fellow student and cutting his hair as the boy wept and screamed. Romney's pals still feel terrible about the attack on that child. But not Romney. He made a feeble "apology" today, just "in case anyone was offended". But he says he doesn't even remember the episode.
He also says that it had nothing to do with a belief "that fellow" was homosexual. He claims, in the Washington Post story about the crime (and crime is what it was: assault and battery!), that "back then" he and his friends didn't even know about homosexuality.
Come on! What a crock! He's talking about the 1960s. By the time I was in high school in the early 50s, we kids all knew about homosexuality. In the teenage world if you wore yellow or green on a Thursday, you were theoretically a "faggot". The words "pansy", "queer", and "fairy" were common parlance though never directed at any specific student at my school. So we kids knew about homosexuality, Mitt, and ten years later YOU knew too. But nobody at my high school of 2000 students - and I mean nobody - EVER physically attacked a fellow student like you did. Or ever verbally abused one in my hearing for suspected homosexuality. I guess we weren't ritzy-rich preppy enough for such "pranks", as you call them, Mitt.
At that same posh prep school he attended, he would yell out, "Atta, girl!" whenever a particular male student spoke out in English class. Romney and the other "guys" suspected the youngster of being gay. What else does "Atta, girl!" mean? So don't give us the lies about not being homophobic, of not even knowing about homosexuality, Mr. Romney. You knew what you were doing. And you were old enough to know better. To know not to be cruel. And, yes, you were a cruel person. It's been disclosed now that you "guided" a blind teacher into a closed door at that same school. You're sure no Boy Scout, Mitt!
Romney lies about lots of stuff. Like his claim that 92% of the jobs that have been lost were lost by women. Oh, give us a break! That can't be true, and it isn't true. Anybody who's watched TV these past three and a half years has seen the men in the unemployment lines, as many of them there as women or even more. Doesn't Romney watch TV? Or does he not bother to look at unemployment lines? Or does he think we are fools?
And the latest lies. Really whoppers! He's now claiming HE saved the auto industry! And he says he wants "credit" for that! And if that lie is not enough, he says that - yeah, sure, you betcha - he would have ordered the attack on Bin Laden. But he's ON RECORD opposing both these Obama moves!
But tell a lie and tell it often enough and people will believe it. That was the doctrine of Joseph Goebels, the Nazi German founder of the modern art of propaganda. And it worked in Germany in the 1930s, in a country that was the most intellectual and cultured in the world.
Romney and the GOP are using the Big Lie technique now. As an old Jew, I shiver. You should too. I'm not saying Romney's a Nazi. Just that he and the GOP are using their techniques. And that's bad enough!
Obama did a brave thing yesterday on behalf of all the gays who have been tormented by the likes of Mitt Romney. Please read my posting earlier today on Obama's standing up to the cruelty. The posting is called "Stand With Obama and Weep for Matthew Shepard". Obama's support for same sex marriage was actually more than that. It was a recognition of gays and lesbians as human beings who should have full rights. And that is the beginning of the end of the cruelty our gay brothers and sisters have suffered.
Dogs, blind men and teenage children. Who's Romney going to pick on if he's president? All the rest of us, I guess.
He also says that it had nothing to do with a belief "that fellow" was homosexual. He claims, in the Washington Post story about the crime (and crime is what it was: assault and battery!), that "back then" he and his friends didn't even know about homosexuality.
Come on! What a crock! He's talking about the 1960s. By the time I was in high school in the early 50s, we kids all knew about homosexuality. In the teenage world if you wore yellow or green on a Thursday, you were theoretically a "faggot". The words "pansy", "queer", and "fairy" were common parlance though never directed at any specific student at my school. So we kids knew about homosexuality, Mitt, and ten years later YOU knew too. But nobody at my high school of 2000 students - and I mean nobody - EVER physically attacked a fellow student like you did. Or ever verbally abused one in my hearing for suspected homosexuality. I guess we weren't ritzy-rich preppy enough for such "pranks", as you call them, Mitt.
At that same posh prep school he attended, he would yell out, "Atta, girl!" whenever a particular male student spoke out in English class. Romney and the other "guys" suspected the youngster of being gay. What else does "Atta, girl!" mean? So don't give us the lies about not being homophobic, of not even knowing about homosexuality, Mr. Romney. You knew what you were doing. And you were old enough to know better. To know not to be cruel. And, yes, you were a cruel person. It's been disclosed now that you "guided" a blind teacher into a closed door at that same school. You're sure no Boy Scout, Mitt!
Romney lies about lots of stuff. Like his claim that 92% of the jobs that have been lost were lost by women. Oh, give us a break! That can't be true, and it isn't true. Anybody who's watched TV these past three and a half years has seen the men in the unemployment lines, as many of them there as women or even more. Doesn't Romney watch TV? Or does he not bother to look at unemployment lines? Or does he think we are fools?
And the latest lies. Really whoppers! He's now claiming HE saved the auto industry! And he says he wants "credit" for that! And if that lie is not enough, he says that - yeah, sure, you betcha - he would have ordered the attack on Bin Laden. But he's ON RECORD opposing both these Obama moves!
But tell a lie and tell it often enough and people will believe it. That was the doctrine of Joseph Goebels, the Nazi German founder of the modern art of propaganda. And it worked in Germany in the 1930s, in a country that was the most intellectual and cultured in the world.
Romney and the GOP are using the Big Lie technique now. As an old Jew, I shiver. You should too. I'm not saying Romney's a Nazi. Just that he and the GOP are using their techniques. And that's bad enough!
Obama did a brave thing yesterday on behalf of all the gays who have been tormented by the likes of Mitt Romney. Please read my posting earlier today on Obama's standing up to the cruelty. The posting is called "Stand With Obama and Weep for Matthew Shepard". Obama's support for same sex marriage was actually more than that. It was a recognition of gays and lesbians as human beings who should have full rights. And that is the beginning of the end of the cruelty our gay brothers and sisters have suffered.
Dogs, blind men and teenage children. Who's Romney going to pick on if he's president? All the rest of us, I guess.
Stand With Obama and Weep for Matthew Shephard
He said in the beginning that he would try always to do the right thing even if that made him a one-term president. And he meant it.
He belongs now with those two Democratic presidents who faced losing half their party in order to do the right thing. JFK and LBJ stood up for the rights of African Americans against the inhumane racism of the South. Until then the white South was solidly Democratic. Signing the great Civil Rights Act, LBJ said, "Today I have lost the South for the Democrats for a generation." And he had. For more than a generation! For over a half century, with no end in sight.
But there is another end in sight now: an ending to the cruel bigotry of the anti-gays. As one commentator said, there has never been a time in American history when a president chose to advance human rights that the people did not eventually follow. Is Obama's brave stand the beginning of the end of the horror of a young college boy leaping to his death from a bridge because he has been exposed as gay? Of countless other youngsters committing suicide because they can't take the bullying? Of Matthew Shephard tortured and then crucified on a barbed wire fence in a lonely stretch of Wyoming?
Matthew Shepard died for OUR sins. Our failure to stick up for our brothers and sisters long ago. Our failure to do the right thing all along and organize to be as militantly supportive of gays and lesbians as the forces against them.
We must not fail again. If Obama does not win this election, it is not just because he lost votes by choosing the right thing. It's because we let him down. We walked away from a vision that has just become immensely brighter.
This was not just Obama's redemptive test. It is ours. We whites knew what we were proclaiming when we worked for him and voted for him and contributed money in 2008. We stood with Martin Luther King on the top of that mountain, and we too saw the Promised Land. Now is our chance - again - for redemption, the redemption of America's blighted history. And our own redemption for our prior sins of indifference to the persecution of our gay brothers and sisters.
We now stand on that wind-swept road in Wyoming and behold the poor broken body of young Matthew Shepard. We all face a choice: this election is our moment. If we don't do all we can to get Obama's back in this struggle, we are nothing more than hypocrites. We have the chance to push history further in the right direction. If we don't do the right thing, we have condemned more children to ugly death.
Too simplistic? No! Too emotional? Definitely not! It is, instead, simplistic and escapist to blame "society"for the ills that beset us. WE are society! And what each of us does matters infinitely.
Be glad to be one who can help weight the scales against cruelty and death. Rejoice with all those unforgettably happy couples getting married in San Francisco's City Hall. Contrast the image of their joyful love with that of Matthew Shephard hanging on that fence. And make the right choice.
Don't kid yourself, whether you're gay or straight. If Obama loses this election, the loss will be attributed to his stance on same-sex marriage. A people yearning to be free will be thrown backward into darkness. So will women, the old, the sick, and the hungry children. The GOP proposals for governing this country are EVIL! Not just for gays but for all but the very rich.
Please. As an old woman, I plead for all my millions of children and grandchildren whose fate and future hang on this election. Help this good, brave Obama! And thereby help all of us who are too old, too young, too sick, too marginalized to save ourselves.
Go do what you must do. Support the man who risked it all to do the right thing. Give till it hurts. Work for him until you drop. Speak up for him no matter the risk to you. And pray that no one shoots him. For the winds of hate will be blowing harder now.
And we all must be brave and strong. Are YOU the people that Obama hoped for? Are you the people I have hoped for. Are you the help that Matthew Shephard hoped for?
Or are you the help that never came to save him?
He belongs now with those two Democratic presidents who faced losing half their party in order to do the right thing. JFK and LBJ stood up for the rights of African Americans against the inhumane racism of the South. Until then the white South was solidly Democratic. Signing the great Civil Rights Act, LBJ said, "Today I have lost the South for the Democrats for a generation." And he had. For more than a generation! For over a half century, with no end in sight.
But there is another end in sight now: an ending to the cruel bigotry of the anti-gays. As one commentator said, there has never been a time in American history when a president chose to advance human rights that the people did not eventually follow. Is Obama's brave stand the beginning of the end of the horror of a young college boy leaping to his death from a bridge because he has been exposed as gay? Of countless other youngsters committing suicide because they can't take the bullying? Of Matthew Shephard tortured and then crucified on a barbed wire fence in a lonely stretch of Wyoming?
Matthew Shepard died for OUR sins. Our failure to stick up for our brothers and sisters long ago. Our failure to do the right thing all along and organize to be as militantly supportive of gays and lesbians as the forces against them.
We must not fail again. If Obama does not win this election, it is not just because he lost votes by choosing the right thing. It's because we let him down. We walked away from a vision that has just become immensely brighter.
This was not just Obama's redemptive test. It is ours. We whites knew what we were proclaiming when we worked for him and voted for him and contributed money in 2008. We stood with Martin Luther King on the top of that mountain, and we too saw the Promised Land. Now is our chance - again - for redemption, the redemption of America's blighted history. And our own redemption for our prior sins of indifference to the persecution of our gay brothers and sisters.
We now stand on that wind-swept road in Wyoming and behold the poor broken body of young Matthew Shepard. We all face a choice: this election is our moment. If we don't do all we can to get Obama's back in this struggle, we are nothing more than hypocrites. We have the chance to push history further in the right direction. If we don't do the right thing, we have condemned more children to ugly death.
Too simplistic? No! Too emotional? Definitely not! It is, instead, simplistic and escapist to blame "society"for the ills that beset us. WE are society! And what each of us does matters infinitely.
Be glad to be one who can help weight the scales against cruelty and death. Rejoice with all those unforgettably happy couples getting married in San Francisco's City Hall. Contrast the image of their joyful love with that of Matthew Shephard hanging on that fence. And make the right choice.
Don't kid yourself, whether you're gay or straight. If Obama loses this election, the loss will be attributed to his stance on same-sex marriage. A people yearning to be free will be thrown backward into darkness. So will women, the old, the sick, and the hungry children. The GOP proposals for governing this country are EVIL! Not just for gays but for all but the very rich.
Please. As an old woman, I plead for all my millions of children and grandchildren whose fate and future hang on this election. Help this good, brave Obama! And thereby help all of us who are too old, too young, too sick, too marginalized to save ourselves.
Go do what you must do. Support the man who risked it all to do the right thing. Give till it hurts. Work for him until you drop. Speak up for him no matter the risk to you. And pray that no one shoots him. For the winds of hate will be blowing harder now.
And we all must be brave and strong. Are YOU the people that Obama hoped for? Are you the people I have hoped for. Are you the help that Matthew Shephard hoped for?
Or are you the help that never came to save him?
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Meet Charles Stone, Obama's Wisconsin Weapon
Obama will win in 2012 because of Charles Stone and people like him. We may also win back the House because of Charles Stone and the others. We may even - oh, great dream - actually pick up Senate seats. And then we can get a majority on the Supreme Court through Obama's second-term appointments.
All this rests on the shoulders of Charles Stone. Or, more aptly, on his feet.
For Charles Stone is a man in Wisconsin who is a great example to all the rest of us. He's one of those who walked precincts for Obama in 2008, decided he'd give it a miss in 2012, but has now resolved to once again "light the fires", to use his own words. You can read his odyssey from "never again" to back into the trenches in the comments we exchanged re two of my recent postings: "The GOP Has the Money But We Have the Feet" and "Retro Romney, 'Polyuska Pole!', and 'The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!' "
Charles is a brave man. He knows that precinct work can be a slog. Of 2008 he says, "I continued to trudge on." (The word "trudge" means a person is very tired.) But though Charles had some not-so-great moments in his 2008 precinct work, he is willing to set that aside now because he also remembers the high points. The good people he worked with. The help from the UAW. The excitement of get-out-the-vote on Election Day. Most of all he knows that the stakes in this year's election are enormous. And he's brave enough to change his mind right out in public, through our exchange of comments.
Arguably Charles Stone should not have to do one thing more for his country. Nor should he have felt compelled to contribute that "trudging" in 2008. He had already done plenty: "I sat nuclear alert as a crew member of a B-52 during the Cold War...."
That, my darlings, was very hairy-scarey duty! It tells us that Charles is indeed a gutsy guy. It also tells us that, far more than most of us, he understands how important our choice of a president is. Keep in mind that the president is the Commander-in-Chief and has the power to unleash hell.
We DON'T want Mitt Romney to have that power. Not THAT power! Bad enough that Romney's avowed economic policies would shove us right over into a Depression, as well as reward the rich and punish the rest of us. Bad enough that his anti-regulation stance is a welcome mat for global warming. Bad enough that he doesn't "get it" about women being equal beings. Etc. What is most terrifying is his ignorant and belligerent stance on foreign policy. He opposes virtually every move Obama has made to defuse bad situations abroad. He mistakes being intelligent for "weakness".
That way lies war.
And Romney doesn't get it that one of Obama's most important achievements has been the 2010 treaty with Russia to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons and prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of the wrong people. Romney instead wants to be "tough" with everybody: Russia, China, Iran, and any other nation he can round up for his own version of the "Evil Axis". The price of this relaunching of the Cold War can be World War III. Or a terrorist attack with nuclear materials. Or a terrible war in the Middle East. We need Russia and China to help with Syria, North Korea and Iran. Obama is doing a masterful job of this. Romney would stomp on these relationships. And we would all suffer. Oh, boy, would we ever!
We don't want Charles Stone or your kids or your grandkids to be back in those B-52s, this time heading into the real Apocalypse. We don't even want lesser evils, such as gasoline prices sky-rocketing to $8 or $10 a gallon because of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. That would not just make a big dent in your paycheck. You probably wouldn't even be getting a paycheck any more because of the ensuing economic collapse!
The pundits say that Americans don't think about foreign policy, not even in elections. But we have to! Peace isn't passive. It has to be worked at, especially in this rapidly evolving world. And there can be no prosperity without peace. George W proved that. We need a president who is working for peace. Obama has been doing a good job of earning that Nobel Peace Prize.
And all of our rights as women or gays or just as private citizens mean nothing if we are dead or starving. Such things can't happen, you say. Don't tell that to an old gal who members the Great Depression and World War II. Don't tell that to Charles Stone, who sat watch in that B-52 to be sure that such things did not happen.
So the choice is yours: Walk a precinct for Obama? Or risk our lives and our daily bread with Romney?
The stakes in 2012 don't just rest on Charles Stone, good man that he is. They rest on you. I called Charles "a hero" in our comments exchange. Can you be a hero too?
Oh, yes, you can! Just walk that precinct! And save the world.
All this rests on the shoulders of Charles Stone. Or, more aptly, on his feet.
For Charles Stone is a man in Wisconsin who is a great example to all the rest of us. He's one of those who walked precincts for Obama in 2008, decided he'd give it a miss in 2012, but has now resolved to once again "light the fires", to use his own words. You can read his odyssey from "never again" to back into the trenches in the comments we exchanged re two of my recent postings: "The GOP Has the Money But We Have the Feet" and "Retro Romney, 'Polyuska Pole!', and 'The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!' "
Charles is a brave man. He knows that precinct work can be a slog. Of 2008 he says, "I continued to trudge on." (The word "trudge" means a person is very tired.) But though Charles had some not-so-great moments in his 2008 precinct work, he is willing to set that aside now because he also remembers the high points. The good people he worked with. The help from the UAW. The excitement of get-out-the-vote on Election Day. Most of all he knows that the stakes in this year's election are enormous. And he's brave enough to change his mind right out in public, through our exchange of comments.
Arguably Charles Stone should not have to do one thing more for his country. Nor should he have felt compelled to contribute that "trudging" in 2008. He had already done plenty: "I sat nuclear alert as a crew member of a B-52 during the Cold War...."
That, my darlings, was very hairy-scarey duty! It tells us that Charles is indeed a gutsy guy. It also tells us that, far more than most of us, he understands how important our choice of a president is. Keep in mind that the president is the Commander-in-Chief and has the power to unleash hell.
We DON'T want Mitt Romney to have that power. Not THAT power! Bad enough that Romney's avowed economic policies would shove us right over into a Depression, as well as reward the rich and punish the rest of us. Bad enough that his anti-regulation stance is a welcome mat for global warming. Bad enough that he doesn't "get it" about women being equal beings. Etc. What is most terrifying is his ignorant and belligerent stance on foreign policy. He opposes virtually every move Obama has made to defuse bad situations abroad. He mistakes being intelligent for "weakness".
That way lies war.
And Romney doesn't get it that one of Obama's most important achievements has been the 2010 treaty with Russia to reduce the stockpile of nuclear weapons and prevent nuclear materials from falling into the hands of the wrong people. Romney instead wants to be "tough" with everybody: Russia, China, Iran, and any other nation he can round up for his own version of the "Evil Axis". The price of this relaunching of the Cold War can be World War III. Or a terrorist attack with nuclear materials. Or a terrible war in the Middle East. We need Russia and China to help with Syria, North Korea and Iran. Obama is doing a masterful job of this. Romney would stomp on these relationships. And we would all suffer. Oh, boy, would we ever!
We don't want Charles Stone or your kids or your grandkids to be back in those B-52s, this time heading into the real Apocalypse. We don't even want lesser evils, such as gasoline prices sky-rocketing to $8 or $10 a gallon because of Iran blocking the Strait of Hormuz. That would not just make a big dent in your paycheck. You probably wouldn't even be getting a paycheck any more because of the ensuing economic collapse!
The pundits say that Americans don't think about foreign policy, not even in elections. But we have to! Peace isn't passive. It has to be worked at, especially in this rapidly evolving world. And there can be no prosperity without peace. George W proved that. We need a president who is working for peace. Obama has been doing a good job of earning that Nobel Peace Prize.
And all of our rights as women or gays or just as private citizens mean nothing if we are dead or starving. Such things can't happen, you say. Don't tell that to an old gal who members the Great Depression and World War II. Don't tell that to Charles Stone, who sat watch in that B-52 to be sure that such things did not happen.
So the choice is yours: Walk a precinct for Obama? Or risk our lives and our daily bread with Romney?
The stakes in 2012 don't just rest on Charles Stone, good man that he is. They rest on you. I called Charles "a hero" in our comments exchange. Can you be a hero too?
Oh, yes, you can! Just walk that precinct! And save the world.
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