Hey, Mitt, I Think I Found The Source Of The Honesty Problem You’re Having With Your Five Sons.

Since President Obama is too much of a gentleman, and was probably advised to avoid any back and forth bickering during the debate in order to attract the few remaining undecided voters who by all reports want solutions instead of name calling (oh, the naiveté!), he couldn't jump all over Mitt Romney’s remark bemoaning his dishonest sons.

My spontaneous reaction to this obviously rehearsed “zinger”, at least in my imagined sudden transport to the podium directly opposite Mitt, was as follows:

“Governor Romney, after patiently listening to your laundry list of brand new moderate policy positions this evening, where you’ve suddenly abandoned virtually every single already tested and failed George W. Bush tax cutting and regulation gutting policy, vehemently argued for by you and your surrogates the last eighteen months, I think I’ve found the reason you’ve been having so much trouble keeping your sons from lying to you repeatedly in the hope you’d finally believe them. You’ve set a bad example.”

BOOM! With a short right jab, ala Jon Stewart.

Then I remove my steely glare from the middle of Mitt’s forehead and turn to the American people, smiling broadly. Of course what follows is no longer my spontaneous reaction to Mitt’s string of mendacity, but what I imagine a real smart guy from Harvard might say as his face goes from smiling broadly to a serious, yet friendly father visage, pausing for effect.

At least the response I’d expect from a real smart guy from Harvard without weak kneed eleventh dimensional chess players as campaign advisors who’ve run out of ways to roll over for the radical right and plutocrats bent on remaking our democracy into a Randian utopia.

Facts Are Pesky Things, Especially For Republicans

Have Susan Page and USA Today Joined the Romney Campaign, or Just Their Headline Writer?

So this is the headline in USA Today that greeted me this morning, along with tens of thousands in airports and hotels across the country:


"Romney: Obama is waging a 'vicious' campaign"


With this sub-headline below the fold:


"Republican calls president's tactics low- but effective. He talks about lessons learned and the road ahead."


Here's the opening line of Ms. Page's article from the interview, given in a Columbus, OH suburb after Mr. Romney's last rally before the Tampa convention:


"Mitt Romney calls campaign attacks by President Obama and his allies "vituperative" and "vicious" and "absurd" and "sad". Also: Effective. "I do think that the president's campaign of personal vilification and demonization probably draws some people away from me," Romney says when asked why he's no better than tied against a vulnerable incumbent."


Then the article goes into the usual fluff we've all come to expect from our vaunted "liberal" media about personal biography and Mr, Romney's enviable advantages of enthusiasm and money, leading in a USA Today/Gallup poll on the economy and apparently "more likely to be respected by foreign leaders".

Randian Dystopian Authoritarian Failures derided forever by History and Common Sense?

Randian Dystopian Authoritarian Failures derided forever by History and Common Sense?

Although I liked “ALEC provided Koch Brother's funded anti-American swing-state boilerplate voter suppression "laws"” as a title too!

Hyperbole much, Jim?

So I’ve read way too much good stuff over many years and tons of liberal web sites (especially this one) to ever worry about writing much myself, although were my overworked arthritic fingers to ever catch up with my sometimes insightful, always blue collar perspectives?…anyway.

The short of it is virtually every time I come here (Daily Kos) someone has already written something so spot on brilliant there’s just no point in mucking it up or commenting much, but I try to tip & rec a lot to show my appreciation for the free education in how the world really works lo these many years.

So, I like to comment in some other places periodically, particularly if it’s apparent there is a dearth of liberal (sane) contributors who keep the teabaggers from slobbering all over themselves. When these guys get on a roll…sheesh!

Below the fold!

MAKE MANUFACTURING A NATIONAL PRIORITY

The word's getting out that it's past time to to bring manufacturing back to America. 

"That seemingly self-evident observation continues to elude decision-makers, both in industry and government, who have been quick to export manufacturing plants and jobs overseas. Lower taxes and lower wages provide short-term relief to manufacturers seeking immediate cost savings, but the long-term effects are devastating to our future quality of life."

It past time that we as a society accept that which is starkly self-evident and proven empirically the last thirty years or so, manufacturing is the only segment of the economy that directly leads to and increases business activity and local employment.

Plop any 500-employee manufacturing plant into a small suburban or rural community and local business activity explodes. How do we empirically know this?

We've too frequently seen the inverse, local communities destroyed and practically made ghost towns for the benefit of a few investors.

Germany is a great case study for those not above looking outside their borders for answers, as a recent Der Spiegel article outlines - we taught them everything we knew after the war and they improved on it and they kick our rears by every measure as a prosperous nation, while we forgot what brought prosperity to the most citizens.

It is in our national security interests and viability as an economy and democracy to determine what trade and with whom is in our interests, after we've repopulated our formerly vibrant communities with employees and taxpayers by finally making manufacturing our top economic priority.   

The financial sector has gone from 14% to 40% of corporate profits over the last decades while manufacturing has declined, even taking into account technological improvements; it's the difference between making something and taking something the way we do it - or both sectors enhancing each other, as they do by law in most other western democracies.

CUTTING OUR WAY TO PROSPERITY?

From one of my daily reads that make me smarter, so of course you'll never hear from her on the TV, for sure. 



Raising revenue without raising taxes

"Now it's possible that cutting these "tax expenditures" really will bring in some money. But let's just say that the idea that this means they can lower tax rates while insisting on harsh cuts in "entitlements" makes no sense at all. Either we are raising revenue or we are not raising revenue. But I'm fairly sure that old Saxby reaching back to Reagan and Bush (Jr or Sr, it doesn't matter) gives away the game. They left huge deficits behind which subsequent Democratic presidents had tied around their necks like a flaming tire. Indeed, for the past 30 years the defining feature of our economics has been Republicans insisting on huge tax cuts which they insist will pay for themselves, running up massive deficits and then demagogueing the hell out of them when a Democrat takes over. And so, here we are.

I do not believe that any "deficit reduction plan" agreed upon under these circumstances will ever do anything but fill the coffers of the wealthy by stealing from the poor. That's how this con is played. In this case it's especially cunning --- the people will blame the Democrats for their lousy financial prospects and attribute it to an unwillingness to cut even more. That's the Republican version of winning the future."

AMERICA THE UNGOVERNABLE

Below is an excellent observation of the inexplicable adoration by the masses of utterly clueless "leadership", as demonstrated by the two men who accidentally destroyed the most by governing the least; bless their hearts.

(Author's unfortunately colorful language included)

From ginandtacos.com

"Bush and Ronald Reagan were very different people, with very different backgrounds and ideologies. It's easy to forget now that Bush was a born-again and Reagan barely even WENT to church. But their administrations served remarkably similar priorities, and this stems from their most important commonality: They were both absolutely STUNNINGLY incompetent executives.

Neither of them had any idea what their various appointees were doing, or even necessarily who they were. The picture that has emerged of the Bush administration since its merciful departure has been not one of calculated malevolence, but one of almost pitiable impotence. Bush and Reagan were both quite personable campaigners who couldn't administer a government if their life depended on it. The consequence of that is that when they took power, the people around them who actually knew the score had a very easy time doing pretty much whatever the fuck they wanted with no consequences whatsoever. Reagan had his Ollie North, Bush had his Donald Rumsfeld, and these guys are not exceptions. The Minerals Management Service was not a case of the foxes watching the henhouse; it was a case of NOBODY watching the henhouse and the foxes just walking right in and doing whatever they pleased.

MONEY AND AMERICAN POLITICS

Over at a fantastic "just working folks" blog, Campaign For America's Future , Dave Johnson responds to Whirlpool's response to Dave's post last week titled
"Whirlpool Bites Hands Of American Taxpayers That Feed It".

It's a great read and from the what it's worth department, my response is below.

I agree completely with Dave's response to Whirlpool's "clarification", we do indeed have only ourselves to blame - I fear the damage to our Democracy may be irreparable.

The 1976 Buckley V Valeo Supreme Court decision, assuring "he who has the gold gets to speak", was the deathblow to 40 years of societal progress and the The New Deal; as Rehnquist and the Republicans intended.

They realized that just funding blatant propaganda outlets and employing every Randian hack they could find was hardly enough to implement the radical change they yearned for, so, much like the recent Citizen's decision, ideologues on the court determined that those who sole goal in life was to advocate for the rich, powerful, and rapacious, needed a little hand up in order for the wealthy to be treated fairly by the unwashed masses.

The only correct solution, the one that everyone avoids going back many, many years, is passing a Constitutional Amendment banning all private campaign contributions with full public funding.

WHO TRIPLED THE DEFICIT?

Entire article quoted below, for our mathematically challenged conservative brothers, bless their hearts! They're consistent, I'll give them that - they still think Herbert Hoover had it right!


Who Tripled The Deficit?

"Conservatives claim that President Obama "tripled the deficit" and point to the huge 2009 budget deficit as proof. The fiscal-year 2009 deficit, as reported in October was, indeed, about triple the prior year's borrowing. But the 2009 budget was the last budget year of the prior, conservative administration. It is just one more demonstration of the failure of conservative policies.

Basic math: A budget year that ends 8 months into a President's first year wasn't that President's budget.
Yet we hear, over and over, that "Obama tripled the deficit." Recently, when President Obama spoke at the Republican caucus retreat, Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas said that Obama had "tripled the deficit." A CNN fact check addresses this,

Obama was essentially correct when he said he inherited a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion. Though the budget deficit for 2008 was a then-record $458.6 billion, the CBO issued a projection in January 2009, just days before Obama took office that the budget deficit would reach $1.2 trillion that year, before the cost of any new stimulus plan or other legislation was taken into account.

Don't believe me? See the conservative Cato Institute on this: Don’t Blame Obama for Bush’s 2009 Deficit | Cato @ Liberty

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REPUBLICANS AND "BLUE DOG" DEMOCRATS ATTACK SOCIAL SECURITY!

Shhhh, don't tell anyone - the oft demonized "left wingers" on those crazzzy blogs? They have most of the real smart, honest people. :)

Print some of this to defend against the oncoming tsunami of Republican attacks on Social Security.

We can't afford it! Cut those scrawny benefits and tell the masses to suck it up!

I wrote my thoughts below, regarding a nice young mis-informed man that came in to advise us on our 401K, last May.

Professor Dean Baker is quoted below, he's one of those who must be ignored along with all the hippies that warned us of pending financial market collapse five years ago, most of whom also wrote there were no WMD's and Dick Cheney really ran the country.


MAY, 2009

This is for that nice young man advising us on our 401K the other day that "wisely" fears Social Security won't be there when we retire, so better invest in the brilliant market.


He's sadly misled, along with millions of other well meaning people, duped over many decades by right wing laissez-faire, trickledown elitists whose party voted against virtually every middle class enabling social program in our short history since the Republican Great Depression.

The author is Phoenix Woman over at www.firedoglake.com, one of the oft demonized "left-wing" blogs, where they actually know Economics and Constitutional Law and quote experts and facts.

It begins by notifying us that DINO (Democrat In Name Only) Steny Hoyer and other "Blue Dog" (Pro-Big Business anti-worker pretend Democrats) Democrats are getting ready to roll over for Republicans yet again and finally destroy the most efficient, cost effective program in American history.