US Politics

Romney Gets It Right

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

I think that Mitt Romney struck exactly the right tone in this speech, given in the aftermath of the horrifying shootings in Aurora, Colorado. NPR reports:

Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney who was in Bow, New Hampshire for a campaign event addressed the mass shooting in Colorado, during a speech this afternoon.

Romney said he was addressing the nation, not as “political candidate,” but as “a father, a grandfather, a husband, an American.” Now, he said, “is the time to look into our hearts and remember how much we love one another and how much we love and how much we care for our great country.”

The report continues:

He said that as the days go by, we’ll learn of the brilliant futures that were lost due to this “hateful act.” And that “there will be justice.”

“But that’s a matter for another day. Today is a moment to grieve,” he said. It’s a moment to remember that hate is overcome by the outpouring of support that the victims of the shooting were shown today.

Romney echoed the president’s earlier speech saying that tonight we’ll hold “each other closer.”

“We pray that the wounded will recover and that those who are grieving will know the nearness of God,” Romney said.

Amen.

A Funny Conservative Meme

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

It doesn’t happen often. I think even most right-leaning Americans would agree that the political left has a disproportionate share of the talent when it comes to humour and comedy (think The Daily Show, The Colbert Report etc.) But in a recent speech Obama finally seems to have given America’s budding right-wing comedians the impetus that they needed for success.

Cue the “You Didn’t Build That” meme, which can be found here.

I’m going to treat the substance of Obama’s speech – in which he uttered the now famous line “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that” – more seriously in a separate post.

But for now I encourage everyone to enjoy this comedic renaissance taking place within the American right. My favourite example is below:

Or maybe this one:

Clearly a vast improvement from this truly awful song about government czars under the Obama administration, which attempts to rhyme “USA” with “citizenry” and includes the dreadful line “word is they’re getting one [a czar] for centaurs”, with accompanying inappropriate footage in the video:

 

I guess it is true – from rock bottom, the only way was up.

Bad Journalism Award

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

You know how it is when you read an article that is just so weak, so clearly living in a hermetically-sealed bubble of similar opinions, so insulated from opposing viewpoints, so grandiose in its self-righteous assuredness and yet so utterly wrong that it makes you just want to issue a point-by-point rebuttal of every stupid thing that the author committed to print (hopefully at this point you are not nodding and thinking “yes, that would be the last article I read here…)?
Well, Charles Hurt, writing in The Washington Times, stepped up to the challenge and magnificently managed to push all of my buttons with his piece entitled “Obama’s South Side Chicago Thuggery” (yes). So here you are, Charles: this is why you are wrong. From the top:

Now that we know just what President Obama thinks of people who succeed in business, it is no wonder that the economy is so much in the crapper. In his desperation to avoid any discussion of his own disastrous handling of the economy, Mr. Obama announced last week what he thinks of the struggling spark plugs of commerce: They are a bunch of felons.

Of course, he did not come right out and directly say that himself, because that would risk drawing renewed questions about whether he is actually an American with the slightest whiff of respect for private industry and ingenuity that defines America.

The economy being “in the crapper”, of course, is all Obama’s fault. Nothing to do with the huge credit crisis and other systemic and structural flaws developed under the previous eight years of Republican oversight.

And what’s this? “…that would risk drawing renewed questions about whether he is actually an American with the slightest whiff of respect for…” Actually an American, what an interesting turn of phrase. Almost as though the author were trying to subconsciously plant the idea that the president is, in fact, actually not an American. But we’ll say no more about that.

So he did what gangsters from the South Side of Chicago have always done. He dispatched one of his bloodthirsty capos to handle his dirty work. Then he strolls up onto the scene all clean and innocent-looking in his fancy, pressed duds and shiny spats and plays the wise guy.

Oh really? Valerie Plame. Scooter Libby. Dick Cheney. George W. Bush floating serenely above the fray. That is all I have to say to that.

As Mr. Obama misquoted Harry S. Truman the other day: “The buck stops with you.” Obviously he was confusing Truman with his real hero, Al Capone.

This political thuggery straight off the streets of Chicago signals desperation in the Obama campaign and a level of deception unrivaled in recent presidential politics.

Yeah, I don’t know what he is talking about either. But will someone please explain to me the American right’s frequent use of of the terms “thug” or “thuggish” in describing left-wing activism? You read or hear it all the time, on any right-wing blog. Why thugs? Is this a remnant from the Jimmy Hoffa days, or something else? Why is a left-wing person who uses strident language and occasional overstatement a “thug”, while a right-wing person is just understandably carried away because of their deep and abiding love for America, and should be given a free pass? Huh?

And most decent people would not suggest that the president’s hero is a murdering gangster. You can say it, Charles, that is totally within your constitutionally guaranteed rights, but I’m going to call you a low-life, slanderous, sanctimonious moron for having said it.

Democrats howled when John Kerry got “swift-boated” during the 2004 election with questions about his deservedness of medals he won during Vietnam — medals that he later threw away in protest of America and the military.

Okay, this one really annoys me. “…threw away in protest of America and the military”? Charles Hurt, could you be any more of a stereotypical US conservative? All about institutions and paternalism and respect for authority, and livid whenever anyone questions any of these. John Kerry loves his country, I’m sure, having served it in so many ways throughout his career, and it is disrespectful in the extreme for you to suggest otherwise. I would venture to say that Kerry threw away his medals in protest at the US foreign policy of the time, as conducted by the US military, and not at the idea of America and the US military in themselves. Many people, patriots also, would defend the right to burn the flag as a protest, but then I’m sure you would consider them traitors and anti-Americans too. Because anything but total, blind, unswerving allegiance to the government policy of the day is treason, of course. Oh, wait – unless there a Democratic administration that you disagree with in power, in which case you exercise your patriotism by making warm noises about armed uprisings and overthrowing the government.

And it’s just so much easier to win an argument when you grossly mischaracterise someone else’s actions and arguments, isn’t it, Charles?

Okay, I’m not going to spend any more time on Charles Hurt. I should not have risen to the bait. But the thought of him sitting there, reading the daily papers and getting outraged about all of the terrible policies that liberals are enacting, and the dirty processes by which they operate, whilst wilfully forgetting everything bad that happened under the previous Republican administration, was too much for me.

So I’m calling you on this one, Mr. Hurt.

Your article sucks, and you are the first winner of my Bad Journalism Award. Not that what you do – based on this example, at least – can really be called journalism as such.

In case you are wondering, your prize was the fact that I called you a low-life, slanderous, sanctimonious moron on my blog.

The Worsening Lunacy Of Michele Bachmann

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

It takes a lot for an article about Michele Bachmann to get under my skin these days – there are few taboos that she has not broken, and few lines that she has not crossed – but this one from Politico managed to do the job:

In a June 13 letter, five GOP congressmen – Reps. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Trent Franks of Arizona, Louie Gohmert of Texas, Tom Rooney of Florida and Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia – called on the State Department’s deputy inspector general to investigate whether Abedin and other department officials were trying to influence U.S. foreign policy to aid the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist causes. The congressmen cited a report by the far-right think tank Center for Security Policy.

The report alleges Abedin has three family members — her late father, her mother and her brother — who are connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives or organizations.

“The State Department and, in several cases, the specific direction of the Secretary of State, have taken actions recently that have been enormously favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood and its interests,” the five House Republicans wrote Harold G. Geisel, the acting inspector general.

It seems that the congresswoman from Minnesota’s 6th congressional district – Minnesota Palin – has decided to pick up where McCarthy left off, and start a witch-hunt against Muslim Americans working for the US government. In this case, the target was Huma Abedin, a senior aide to Hillary Clinton in the State Department.

The unfounded allegations of ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, and of harbouring anti-American ideals and seeking to use her position to promote pro-Islamist policies within the US government, proved too much even for John McCain, who chastised Bachmann in a Senate floor speech:

“I know Huma to be an intelligent, upstanding, hard-working, and loyal servant of our country and our government, who has devoted countless days of her life to advancing the ideals of the nation she loves and looking after its most precious interests,” McCain, the GOP’s 2008 presidential nominee and a leading voice on defense and foreign policy, said in his floor speech.

“Put simply, Huma represents what is best about America: the daughter of immigrants, who has risen to the highest levels of our government on the basis of her substantial personal merit and her abiding commitment to the American ideals that she embodies so fully,” McCain added.

McCain’s political integrity ebbs and flows much like the tide, but I think we can all be grateful that it was working on this occasion at least.

And shame on Michele Bachmann and her fellow Republican joint signatories of this letter.

The fear that grips so much of today’s Republican Party – fear of cultural change, fear of terrorism and “the homeland” no longer being an impregnable fortress, fear of people who look or behave differently to a black-and-white 1950s television show – leads to the type of controlling, paternalistic, paranoid behaviour that drives so many people, myself included, away from supporting them.

Which is a real shame, because there are some solid, proven, and much-needed conservative policy solutions to many of America’s problems being buried by the GOP under big piles of precisely this type of nonsense.

Giant Tax Increase Or Cynical Nonsense?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Twenty-four hours after the US Supreme Court handed down their ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, and the Republican Party’s initial line of attack against the new reality is starting to emerge. (1) Push, at every opportunity, the line that ObamaCare represents a massive tax increase for all Americans, and (2) sow fear that the IRS is poised to start hammering at the doors of the uninsured (a group for which the GOP seems to have suddenly developed strong and protective feelings of filial loyalty) with threats of wage garnishment or prison.

As this piece from Politico, discussing Romney’s likely response to the SCOTUS decision, says:

To the Romney campaign, the ruling left the ACA looking like a richer target than ever: The justices upheld the law — leaving its unpopular provisions intact as a campaign issue — but did so on the grounds that the mandate requiring all Americans to purchase insurance is a “tax,” a traditionally easy target for Republicans.

One strategist aligned with Romney called that “the best-case scenario of it being upheld: It’s upheld as nothing but a massive tax hike.”

“President Obama just turned GOP intensity amps up to 11,” the strategist said.

And in this article, the new line of argument is laid bare:

Everyone from tea party stars to establishmentarians to possible 2016 presidential contenders seized on the tax language in the Supreme Court’s 5-4 majority opinion, which included Chief Justice John Roberts.

“‘Obamacare’ raises taxes on the American people by approximately $500 billion,” said Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. “‘Obamacare’ cuts Medicare by approximately $500 billion. And even with those cuts, and tax increases, ‘Obamacare’ adds trillions to our deficits and to our national debt and pushes those obligations on to coming generations.”

Unfortunately for the GOP, there is precious little evidence to support either of their new assertions. My stance on the Republican Party’s new line of argument against ObamaCare is this:

  • If you are a hard-pressed middle class American doing the ‘right’ thing and keeping health insurance either individually or through your employer, exactly how does ObamaCare represent a tax increase for you? You don’t have to pay the ‘fine’, and your insurance premiums should actually start to fall as more healthy people are brought into the insurance pool.
  • If you are doing the ‘wrong’ thing and not buying health insurance when you could afford to, then surely you are a parasite within the system, clogging up emergency rooms when your untreated conditions come to a head, and leaving yourself unable to pay any unplanned medical expenses that you incur, forcing insurance companies to charge higher premiums to everyone. That’s not exactly responsible citizenry, so are Republicans really going to act aghast in horror that this group of people will have to pay a fine, or a ‘tax’ as interpreted by the Supreme Court, to compensate for the negative externality that they are creating?
  • If you are doing the ‘wrong’ thing and not buying health insurance because you cannot afford to, the government will help you to buy it in the private marketplace, as I understand it using funds raised from fining people with the ability to pay who choose not to.

To me, the embryonic Republican response to defeat at the Supreme Court appears to be dumbed-down politics at its worst. Having had their well-worn argument that ObamaCare is a gross constitutional overreach taken away, they have reverted to the tax increase argument, not because there is any compelling evidence to support it but because of a semantic technicality in the language of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Republicans love to be on the side of defending people against higher taxes – a very worthy stance, and one which I share – but are they really going in to bat now exclusively for people who freely choose not to purchase health insurance, and burden everyone else with the costs of that attendant risk? I think I would almost rather be known for advocating tax cuts just for billionnaires.

It is too early yet to see how this new GOP line of attack will play in the media and the opinion polls, but given the fact that I managed to deconstruct it on my blog in less than ten minutes, I do hope (and sadly it is hope rather than expect) that proponents of the Affordable Care Act will be able to do so with even more effectiveness, and show this sudden Republican concern about ‘raising taxes’ on the willingly uninsured to be the cynical nonsense that it is.