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Political Rants

Veep debate postmortem.

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I know most people did not watch the quadrennial spectacle of the vice presidential debate this past Monday. For those who missed it, you didn’t miss much. That said, it appears as though the corporate media in particular is intent on scoring this match-up on the basis of style points, thereby awarding the debate to former right-wing talk show host Mike Pence, one of the most reactionary men ever to adorn a major party presidential ticket. He was smooth and relaxed, the commentary goes, whereas Kaine was somewhat agitated and even rude. Well … glad we’re focusing on what matters.

centrist, reactionaryI have, however, heard some more interesting points made outside of the beltway punditocracy. Majority Report has been particularly good on this. Much of it confirms the impression I had at the time that Kaine was basically setting Pence up to defend, point by point, the most ridiculous and intemperate statements Trump has made during the campaign. Not rocket science, right? He was being pretty systematic about it, getting Pence on the record as denying that he and Trump had said things they had obviously said on camera, getting him to take positions at odds with those of his running mate, and drawing him out on some of his own well-documented extremism. That content was subsequently cut together into Clinton campaign web videos. And all of Kaine’s interrupting? Some have suggested it was to deny Pence usable soundbites. Basically all the Trump campaign could do was clip together Kaine’s interjections in kind of a whiny little ad about him being rude. Kaine – so the thinking goes – basically threw himself under the bus for the good of the order. Why not? Does it matter who “wins” the veep debate?

This is completely aside from the content of what was discussed. That was abysmal, for the most part. The moderator had some kind of Russia obsession, asking at least three questions about it and zero about climate change. Even more irritating was the unchallenged claims by Pence that the Obama administration “paid ransom” to Iran for the release of a detained journalist, that they had some option with regard to the Iraq status of forces agreement George W. Bush had signed with Baghdad forcing a U.S. withdrawal in 2011 (or that to remain would have been either desirable or effective in some respect), and that the “Russia Reset” led to the annexation of Crimea and Russian involvement in Syria. Worse, both men appeared to endorse the creation of a “safe zone” in Syria, which would require a no-fly zone, which would demand a U.S. fighting force of tens of thousands, plus the destruction of Syria’s air defense capabilities and its aircraft. That would put us into direct conflict with the Russians. Something to look forward to?

So, yeah … it was pretty awful. But the fundamentals of this race are the same. We have to do the hard thing – vote for someone we don’t like in order to block someone who should never be president under any circumstances. Hard to swallow for many, but we should swallow hard, vote to elect Clinton, then continue the fight as soon as we leave the voting booth.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Debatable.

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A couple of comments about the Democratic primary debate this past week. First of all, CNN is an amazing crapfest. Why the hell do we allow corporate media to turn this process into a property to be marketed like some cheap-ass reality show? And reality show it was, in both its tone and its production values. The ridiculous opening sequence, with hyper-dramatic music, the rumble of drums, and introductions torn straight out of some WWF bout or America’s Top Chef. The only thing missing was a fully loaded clown car (though they did have that at the G.O.P. match-up).

Can YOU spot the extremist?Okay, that was a sobering sign, to be sure. Even more infuriating than the sideshow atmospherics was the framing of the questions, delivered for the most part by Anderson Cooper. While the Democratic field is decidedly to the left, at least from a rhetorical perspective, of where they were even eight years ago, the corporate media questioners proceeded through the lens of Reagan’s America. The signal example of this for me was Cooper’s comment to Bernie Sanders about his support for the Sandinista government in Nicargua in the 1980s, as if that was a particularly controversial position in retrospect. (This can be equated with opposition to the Contra terror war against that government being pursued by the Reagan administration at the time – a war so broadly opposed by the American people that Congress had explicitly banned funding for the Contra forces.)

So that was what Bernie Sanders thought as what, mayor of Burlington, Vt.? Fair enough. But up on that same stage was a man who was Secretary of the Navy in the late Reagan years, during which time the U.S. was actively supporting Saddam Hussein in his bloody war against the Iranians. That was during the so-called “tanker war”, when the U.S. reflagged Kuwaiti tankers carrying Saddam’s oil to market and deployed our Navy in the Gulf to protect those ships and harass the Iranians. What was Webb’s role in that? Don’t know, but it might be worth a question or two. Of course, we can’t go there. That period is among the least discussed in American politics, and with good reason.

Aside from the CNN sponsored bullshit, it was good to hear directly from these candidates at long last. I just wish to hell we could get our shit together and demand that some non-profit organization like the League of Women Voters sponsor these forums so that we can have a serious discussion and not some freak-ass reality show.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Resolved.

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You’ve heard enough about the debate, I know. Now hear it from me. I will dispense with my usual grouse about these not being actual debates – no proposition advanced or opposed, no rules of order, etc. Let us concede that they are essentially dueling press conferences. The salient fact is, I tuned in to watch a debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney, and neither of those two men showed up. Obama was taciturn and seemingly unaware that he was in front of a national television audience of 68 million, his head featured in an inset box practically the whole ninety minutes. (I felt like yelling, “He’s over there, Barry! Stop doing your homework!”)

And Romney. Has a man ever run farther or faster from his own proposals? Can conservatives truly celebrate the candidate they saw on Wednesday night? Just a few small points:

Romney: “I don’t want to cut our commitment to education”

Okay, aside from funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I didn’t hear Romney advocate cutting anything. So… if he’s going to cut the federal deficit without raising revenue – in other words, reforming the tax code in a “revenue neutral” fashion – where are those cuts coming from? Not from defense – he’s adding many billions to that as he’s boasted many times. Apparently not from education. His intimations about Medicaid spending sounded like cheap sleight of hand; how does the federal government save money by block granting programs like Medicaid? You’re still spending the money, only without the knowledge that it’s being spent on what it’s intended for.

Romney: OK, what are the various ways we could bring down deductions, for instance? One way, for instance, would be to have a single number. Make up a number — 25,000 (dollars), $50,000. Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.

This counts as kind of a bidding war with himself. Romney’s people have been floating this notion of a $17,000 deduction cap on individual income tax. Wednesday night he worked that up to $25 – 50K. Do I hear $75K? Wait another week. Once again, caught advocating for a deeply unpopular policy of ending major deductions like mortgage interest, Romney is cycling backwards at lightning speed. We still have no information on where “loopholes” and deductions could be found to make up for $5 trillion in tax cuts – 20% across the board, which he has endorsed.

Romney: It’s — it’s — it’s a lengthy description, but number one, pre-existing conditions are covered under my [health care] plan. Number two, young people are able to stay on their family plan. That’s already offered in the private marketplace; you don’t have — have the government mandate that for that to occur.

Say what? Since the hell when? A week ago, Romney’s plan was for sick poor people to go to the emergency room – that’s what he told David Gregory, anyway. And if keeping your kids on your “family plan” is common in the marketplace, it’s news to working people.

Then there’s the look. The patient, condescending smile while Obama is talking. It’s actually the same look Romney uses when people are saying nice things about him. Fact is, he uses that all the time when he’s waiting to speak. I call it his screen saver.

Barry: Here’s a free line for the next debate. “Hey, Mitt – glad to see you’ve finally come around to my positions on health care, education, and taxes. I’m thinking about asking you to join my administration.”

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Eight is enough.

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Though I didn’t intend to do so, I did in fact watch part of the Republican debate at the Reagan Library on Wednesday night. At the outset, I have to say that this election season is front-loaded beyond all comprehension. For chrissake – no one has actually voted in any real sense, and yet we’ve already seen a major candidate – T-Paw – drop out, seen others alternately being accorded front-runner status, seen the declaration of a “two-man race” for the G.O.P. nomination, etc. What the hell… it’s bad enough that we are now in perpetual election mode (i.e. all of last year and much of 2009 was taken up with the mid-terms; all of this year with 2012). Can we just let the voters sort this out?

Having said that, on to the debate. The moderator’s attention first trained on THE NEXT NEW THING: RICK PERRY, who is, in fact, a very old thing. Perry (no relation) has gotten a lot of pop-culture credit for job creation. Every time I hear this, I think of an Onion headline from back when a previous Texan was in the White House – the headline went something like “Bush to U.S. Businesses: Create Millions of Shitty Jobs.”  I think it’s kind of a Texas thing, because many of those great Texas jobs that are not either in government or in the extractive industries are of the low-wage, no benefits, no security type. Anyway, here is what the governor had to say:

You want to create jobs in America? You free the American entrepreneur to do what he or she does, which is risk their capital, and I’ll guarantee you, the entrepreneur in America, the small businessman and woman, they’re looking for a president that will say we’re going to lower the tax burden on you and we’re going to lower the regulation impact on you, and free them to do what they do best: create jobs.

This is the kind of trope you hear from all of the G.O.P. these days. It’s those job-killing (low to non-existent) taxes and those job-killing (incredibly lax) regulations that are killing those jobs! Hokum. I have to think these people are just garden-variety liars, because they all look old enough to remember some substantial portion of recent history. If they think for five minutes, they’ll realize that the reason we have high-tech industry and something we call the internet is because public investments were made over the course of decades, mostly through the Pentagon system. I don’t know why these people can’t simply admit that the Federal government, with its enormous buying power, can play a significant role in prompting the development of new technologies and new industries, and has a history of allowing the privatization of innovations that the government paid to procure.

It’s not rocket science. Wait… actually, it is. That was funded by the government, too. More on these clowns later.

luv u,

jp