US Politics

Don’t Say Anything Mean, Don’t Say Anything Mean…

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Politico reports that the former Vice President, Dick Cheney, recently received a heart transplant:

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0312/74431.html

Cheney, 71, had been on a transplant waiting list for more than 20 months, and is now recovering in the Intensive Care Unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va.

“Although the former vice president and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” Cheney aide Kara Ahern said in a statement, according to the news service.

Dick Cheney is not a tremendously nice man, at least in terms of his public work. He was the dark force behind some of the most egregious power grabs by the executive branch in recent memory, enthusiastically and unapologetically supported the use of torture by US forces, and was in every respect one of the most ruthless proponents of the worst of neoconservatism ever to have occupied high public office.

Nonetheless, the man is recovering from heart surgery so I will spare him the polemic that I normally feel like writing whenever he is forced back into my consciousness by current events.

However, I can’t help but allow myself a little chuckle when I think back on this old article from The Onion:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-heart-device-allows-cheney-to-experience-love,2294/

New Heart Device Allows Cheney to Experience Love. Image from TheOnion.com

That is all. For now.

The Republican Party, Or The Mikado

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Okay, so some good news out of St. Louis. Ron Paul, the only Republican presidential candidate still in the race whose political ideology, record in office and personality that I can reasonably tolerate, is apparently doing well in the Missouri caucuses. So says the St Louis Post-Dispatch:

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/ron-paul-supporters-dominate-gop-caucus-in-st-louis/article_4c7977d4-75e0-11e1-858e-001a4bcf6878.html

Hooray.

Except, why is Missouri having a caucus, didn’t they just have a primary last month? Why, yes, they did, but it was a non-binding primary because some awesome person or people in the legislature screwed up and left a law requiring the state to hold a primary on a date that was earlier than the Republican National Committee would sanction. So they went ahead and held the primary in accordance with their state law, but it was essentially a “beauty contest” because the results counted for nothing. These caucuses, happening now, are the ones that count.

As The St. Louis Post-Dispatch helpfully explains:

“The slate backing Paul cast 158 votes in the non-binding caucus Saturday. The purpose was to choose representatives to a round of Congressional district meetings in April and June that will repeat the process to send 52 delegates from Missouri to the August convention in Tampa, Fla.”

Is that clear everyone? What do you mean, no?

So. The primaries that happened last month in Missouri counted for nothing. But that’s okay, because the caucuses that are happening now will choose the representatives that then go on to another round of meetings in April and June, the output of that meeting being the selection of 52 delegates to travel from Missouri to Florida where they can then all bicker together about who will have the honour of being electorally destroyed by Barack Obama in November.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the greatest democratic system on the face of the earth, etc.

Seriously, this is the stuff of which Gilbert & Sullivan operettas were made in terms of farcical plots, topsy-turvydom and bureaucratic nonsensical officialdom.

Firstly, having a long series of primaries and caucuses is dumb, because by the time the race gets to the big states that actually, y’know, contribute the most to the union (we can quibble about how we define “contribute the most” but we all know it’s true – lose Alabama, for instance, and the USA will pick itself up and limp on, ‘real America’ or not; lose California or New York or Texas and there’s a mortal wound right there) the race is pretty much already decided. Sure, it’s great to make the big rich hot-shots trek around a million diners and pancake houses pressing the flesh every morning and participating in good ol’ fashioned retail politics. But why should ethanol-swilling rural Iowans and their special interests have more of a say in choosing the nominee than those residents of the industrial midwest, or the two heavily populated coasts? It makes no sense, and the way in which those overlooked states which rightly try to increase their influence by bringing forward their primaries have been bullied, slapped down or penalised by the establishment is, if anything, the real affront to democracy taking place in America at the moment.

Secondly. if you are going to have a series of primaries and caucuses, can we at least get together to apply roughly the same rules to them all, so that you don’t need to fire up IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer to work out the impact of each primary election night on the fortunes of the respective candidates? I know, I know, state’s rights and so on and so forth. That’s fine. Every state is allowed to do what they want and organise their primaries the way they best see fit. But when the existing method makes you all look like a disorganised bunch of ass clowns, maybe it’s time to actually get together and come up with a more uniform system. Now when might be a good opportunity to do that? If only there was some upcoming pre-arranged big gathering of the nation’s top Republicans, in a big convention city like, say, Tampa, Florida, that would perhaps be ideal. But we can only wish.

Thirdly. As long as America persists with the ridiculous system they have in place at the moment (and the Democrats aren’t much better on their side, but of course Obama’s renomination is not being contested so we hear nothing about the “superdelegate” shenanigans this time around), I will continue to unapologetically act as cheerleader for Ron Paul’s scrappy efforts to increase his delegate haul by using his army of devoted supporters to out-organise the front-runners and win the apparently-crucial but almost-unreported actual meetings that assign the delegates for real.

After all, if the rules are stupid or flexible enough that winning a majority of votes in a state’s primary or caucus doesn’t guarantee you something approaching a commensurate proportion of delegates to the convention, three cheers for the guy with the smarts to actually play the system.

Fundamentalist, Self-Righteous Moron Needs To Shut Up

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

Not to be outdone by Newt Gingrich, the other candidate running to be the first High Priest of the new American theocracy was also out with a new television campaign commercial, inviting us to imagine the dystopian world that will exist in two years if Obama is re-elected:

 

That’s right, a terrible dystopian land where big government decides what women can do with their bodies and employers can chop and change your healthcare, denying you critical coverage based on their own…oh wait, no that’s the dystopia that we want if we are Republicans today.

Dylan Byers from Politico also notes:

In addition to all the other scary things that happen in this new Rick Santorum ad, which was released today, you’ll notice that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad morphs into U.S. president Barack Obama right about the time the narrator says “sworn American enemy.”

Pay close attention and you will see how President Obama’s face is briefly superimposed over that of Iranian President Ahmedinejad, as the words “sworn American enemy” are uttered.

Keep it classy, Rick Santorum.

Fundamentalist, self-righteous moron needs to shut up.

That is all.

Jowly, Pompous Moron Needs To Shut Up

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

From the Burns & Haberman blog on Politico today:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/03/newt-why-does-obama-behave-the-way-that-people-would-118463.html

Asked about polls suggesting many in the public continue to think Obama is a Muslim, Gingrich said in Louisiana that he takes Obama “at his word” that he believes in Christianity.

Then he launched into a riff on how Obama’s policies are excessively sensitive to non-Christian, non-Jewish faiths, suggesting it could raise doubts for some about where the president’s impulses come from.

“Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he’s Muslim]?” Gingrich said. “You have to ask, why would they believe that? It’s not cause they’re stupid. It’s because they watch the kind of things I just described to you.”

Yes. This is one of those delightful two-step moves performed so effortlessly by so many shameless people in today’s Republican Party, whereby they cosy up to the foaming-at-the-mouth racists on the far right, and then walk it back just enough to be acceptable. So Gingrich doesn’t agree with the huge trunk of his party’s base who believes that Obama is a Muslim (not, for heaven’s sake, would there be anything wrong with that even if he was, but that’s a whole separate blog post). No, he doesn’t agree with them, but they aren’t stupid (actually, yes they are), Obama must be doing something to make all of these sensible, level-headed, god-fearing Americans believe that he is a Muslim. Y’know, other than being black.

Jowly, pompous moron needs to shut up for awhile.

That is all.

On Grover Norquist And Ideological Headlocks

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

From The Boston Globe, an interesting long-form profile of Grover Norquist, the founder of Americans for Tax Reform  and promoter of the famous (or infamous) “Taxpayer Protection Pledge”:

http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-18/magazine/31199550_1_pig-farm-rocky-ledge-speech

The article is well worth reading, if for no other reason than the fact that we should all better understand the man who works quietly in the background in Washington and across the country to squash any efforts to raise additional government revenues, and who effectively owns the political souls of the vast majority of the congressional Republican Party. At the present time, an astonishing 238 members of the House of Representatives and 41 Senators are signatories to “the pledge”, including 97.5 percent of the entire Republican congressional delegation.

Few other special interest groups – even lobbying powerhouses such as the National Rifle Association – can boast such levels of fealty from elected representatives.

The only problem is that Americans for Tax Reform is obsessed with treating only one of the two symptoms of America’s fiscal malaise, and couldn’t care less about the underlying illness (the structural deficit). Seeking to cap the revenues that government can collect is all very well and good, but there is nothing bold or patriotic about doing that while doing nothing, or in some cases, actively thwarting efforts to make a serious effort at reducing expenditures, such as those outlined in the Bowles-Simpson committee proposal.

The following passage from the article lays bare, once again, the automatic, unapologetic contradictions at the heart of today’s GOP:

Jon Golnik, a Republican pledge-signer who was unsuccessful in his 2010 bid to unseat Democratic congresswoman Niki Tsongas, tells the crowd he’s running again and rails at the out-of-control spending of the Obama administration. He rattles off a host of statistics about the implications of the national debt that are so sobering they might give even a Keynesian pause.

When Golnik begins taking questions from the audience, the first comes from a North Shore man named Edward Purtz, who asks with furrowed brow: “We’ve seen the Navy cut to levels it hasn’t been since the 1800s. How do you stand on these defense cuts?”

Without missing a beat, Golnik replies, “I oppose them.”

I would point out that, as frequently said by Ron Paul, it is entirely possible to actually increase spending on national defence while cutting overall military spending by extracting America from costly foreign entanglements. I could further point out that comparing the number of ships in the US Navy in 1800 and 2012, noting a fall and interpreting this as a decline in relative naval power is about as stupid as it is possible to be, given the fact that any modern frigate or destroyer could make short work of the entire 19th century fleets of every naval power and not suffer a scratch, but again this is rather beside the point here.

Today we have a Republican Party caught in an ideological headlock by the likes of Grover Norquist and fired-up tea partiers, all of whom talk incessantly about cutting and balancing the federal budget, but all of whom reflexively oppose cutting their own pet projects, or those large parts of the non-discretionary budget that account for the vast majority of spending.

The interviewer in one passage asks Norquist that, given the fact that government spending as increased in real terms every year since the 1960s, has his personal crusade not been a complete failure?

Following our lengthy discussion about runaway spending under Bush, Norquist stresses that ATR’s “ultimate goal is to reduce the size and scope and cost of government as a percentage of the economy, so we want to spend less and not raise taxes.”

“So,” I ask, “that has been a complete failure, right?”

“No,” Norquist replies and begins to speak extra slowly. “The line in the sand on taxes has been very successful.”

And there we have it, folks. Defending the line in the sand – no new taxes, ever – is what matters, the only thing that matters at the moment to those on the tea party-hijacked right. They won’t look for additional revenues anywhere, under any circumstances. They talk loudly about slashing the budget but single out their pet projects for exemption and fail to seriously engage on the topic of cutting spending in the key areas which drive the federal budget deficit. And still they call themselves the party of fiscal responsibility.