The Slaughter of the Innocents 12-14-12

I cannot bear to look at their faces. Looking at their pictures, smiling and innocent and full of the light of life is too much – I find myself almost collapsing to my knees with a combination of horror and grief and a primal wail rises from the depth of my chest and tires to crawl out my throat.

Maybe because it was so close to Christmas, maybe because it involved so many children, this one this one has hit home in ways the columbine, Virginia Tech, or what feels like the last 16 massacres did not. Even the usual NRA stalwarts are lying low for now (later when the grief eases and the news machine moves on they will emerge from their hidey holes) in the wake of the horror.

And I suspect it will get worse - the shooter’s mother was the first victim and the guns he used were all hers – the shooter is described as a troubled (well yes) person who had been home schooled and did not seem to be in school or working and that he was home schooled because of fights between the Mother and the school about things (not stated). There are other reports that are disturbing in their implications but are not confirmed so I will not go into them here.

The bad responses are the ones saying if the teachers were armed this wouldn’t have happened neatly ignoring that a house full of weapons failed to project the shooter’s mother. The most horrible one was from some minor noise in the GOP fundamentalist wing who said the children were killed because the teachers weren’t leading prayers and such had turned their back on God.

Which begging the question what kind of god demands the slaughter of innocents if prayers to his glory aren’t being said by teachers before the start of class?  And even more horrible what kind of person worships that kind of god?

So to you Mike H – (as you try to walk back your horrible words) I say:

Fuck you and fuck your god.

Rant 11-15-12 - They are all crazy.

They are all crazy.

Every one of them. Batshit lunatics the lot of them.

Losing to the black guy – twice – seems to have broken their brains, which were to be honest, not functioning at peak efficiency prior to the election, but now the lunacy glows like phosphors in the dark

There are the large number of people asking via a White House petition web function to allow their states to succeed (peacefully this time – ha) from the United States. The professor suggests a proper answer to these lunatics is to post a picture of Uncle Billy Sherman on the top of any reply the White House gives (they won’t do that because they are decent human beings at the core – the Professor makes no such claims for himself).

In an interesting demonstration of what can happen when you combine modern electronic devices and a person judged too crazy to be allowed in the Georgia Tea party is recently the state house of Georgia was treated to a two hour video lecture by said lunatic where he claimed that Obama is using secret mind control technique to force this nation to conform to the tennates of United Nations something or other 21. This is straight utter moon bat moonshine from the pages of the John Birch Society and that anyone sat still for this in the state house in Georgia is mindboggling even if they are Republicans. Well at least when they were doing that they didn’t have time to try to redefine rape.

Paul Ryan has emerged from his sulk to blame his defeat on the vast numbers of urban voters that showed up at the polls on Election Day. Paul these people are citizens and your dog whistle ‘urban’ ain’t foolin nobody. After this outburst the professor understands that Mr. Ryan has taken to the woods to kill animals with edged weapons.

The Insufferable Mitt Romney meantime has surfaced and proved one that the views he expressed during the infamous 47% tape really are his and two he wasn’t faking it when he expressed surprise at losing the election.  Reports are that during a conference with his major donors Mitt said the reason he lost was that Obama gave gifts the voting groups that came out for him. In its amazing tone deafness it’s a priceless moment – he came within inches of saying Obama bought the election with beads and trinkets. Which the professor is sure is what he thinks.

Thanksgiving will not, as many have noted, a very happy time at the Romneys. It will be best for all concerned to allow Mitt to quickly eat his food and find someplace to sulk.  

Meantime the former very model of a modern major general one Petraus has resigned from his position as head of the CIA as the news came out he was having an affair (at least one so far) with a woman about half his age. There are twists and turns to this story including a wing nut FBI agent and the sort of spiteful jealousy between women that can make a good feminist like the professor lose all hope for the future.  We are not sure exactly why he resigned but the Professor is beginning to think that the only reason men do anything is so that at some point they can be powerful/famous/rich/infamous/whateverness enough to have sex with a woman half their age. Somewhere Freud is saying ‘I told you so.”

Meantime rich owners of businesses are acting like dicks and making noise about layoffs and reducing hours to punish the unwashed for re-electing Obama. The most prominent one of these folks is the owners of poppa john’s pizza who is saying he will reduce hours rather than pay for his workers insurance – a cost that comes to about 15 cents a pizza – now this is per him. This is also a man who is giving away 2 million free pizzas for some NFL stunt. Somehow this is supposed to make people more probusines? The mind boggles again. Many folks think the rich are insuffurable whiners, this is only confirming that opinion.

While ealier this had been grimly amusing, the continued freak out by the right wing is now simply tedious, sad and bit frightening in its impliations for the future.

Not such a rant 11/9/12

Schadenfredue on Toast.

The defeat of Mitt Romney in the general election has made many on the right wing distressed and upset and feeling like their understanding of the world has snatched away from them they are sorrow filled creatures trying very hard to cope with immense grief. It would take a truly horrible person to find this amusing but alas the Professor is at his heart a black and evil man and this tear stained meltdown of the lords and ladies of the right wing is ever so amusing.

Where indeed does one begin – this is a veritable buffet of Schdenfredue – there is the tumbler of White people morning Romney’s loss – showing face after shocked face. It’s amusing but a bit sad as these folks honestly believed the gibberish served them about the Kenyan Marxist Nazi Usurper eater of aborted babies with the bad drug habit and there are lost faces in there.

What is actually more enjoyable are the humiliation of the pundits, those such as George Will, and Dick Morris who predicted a landslide (not just a win but a landside) for Romney, along with the website Politico whose war on Nate Silver (who after all was only doing math) would in a sane world mean that nobody would ever take anything they say about anything seriously again as in “it’s raining outside” “Are you sure, let me go look. Nope not a drop.”  This will not happen as these folks were all wrong in the right way so they will be just fine. Still to read their predictions now is an exercise in nasty evil joy.

There was the live TV meltdown of one Karl Rove who threw a fit when Fox News announced that Obama had won Ohio and re-election and ended up being lectured to by a Fox News anchor person.  It seems Karl took some 390 million dollars of right wing billionaire money and managed to piss it all away (except of course for his fees which we presume will be enough for Mr. Rove to retire on) with no results.

There was Bill O’Rilley’s mourning the death of the white establishment, neatly forgetting that for many years the Irish were not considered members of the white establishment and showing such over the top sense of I’m the victim here that one wanted to seal it in plastic for future study. He also is a prime indicator that the gop will learn nothing from this – his ‘they want things’ comment shows not only is he an out of touch old fool, but a bigot as well.

But the king of Schdenfredue was the man Mitt Romney himself. It seems that he and Ryan and the whole staff really believed the horseshit they were shoving out to the rubes. There is a line in the 80’s film Scarface where Scarface is told the secret of being a successful drug dealer is “never get high on your own supply.” In this case the entire crew were wasted on their own stuff and spent the last few days of the campaign looking for munchies. It is one thing to feed the marks a story to keep their moral up as the race entered the last few days it’s another thing entirely to start sucking down the kool-aide yourself.

This story alone makes one extremely glad the Obama – whatever his many faults – won. A man this easily fooled by himself would end up attacking say Iran and wondering how on earth did the middle east end up in flames.  Presidents require people who will tell them the unvarnished truth and they need to be able to accept it.

Other small things:

The Romney campaign had a fireworks display ready in Boston Harbor for when they won. The fireworks were quietly disassembled and taken back to the warehouse.

Campaign workers found out that the credit cards made out to the Romney campaign stopped working after midnight on Election Day. Man couldn’t run a campaign to save his life but he’ll be damned if the peons get a dime more out of the campaign funds then they he felt they deserved.

The twitter hastag #romneydeathparty ended up a telling a bizarre lovecraftian horror story with Chuck Norris in the role of Narlotep the crawling chaos.  Culthu Reylli!

It’s reported that Romney had only written an acceptance speech before the polls closed and had to scramble to come up with a new speech.

Post Election Rant 11/7/12

While The Professor is not overly fond of Obama’s presidency with its love of killing via robot, the reluctance to do anything about the Banks and Wall Street to prevent what happened from happening again (we read that Wall Street is trying to bundle Rents in a manner similar to all those mortgage securities – what could possibly go wrong with that we wonder) and its all too clear desire to start the gutting of social security – we are pleased at the result, if for no other reason we will never have to deal with One Mitt Romney as a candidate for anything ever again. Rarely has a more despicable human being run for high public office – his self-centered, amoral, willing to say or do anything to get his way, clearly despising the great unwashed and his ‘yeah I’m lying my ass off what are you going to do about it?” manner kept stepping on the Professor’s wick.

Now while the weeping and rending of garments on the Republican side begins one of the things that utterly amazes me was that historically this election was theirs to lose. The economy is and remains stagnant with at best moderate recent growth (which may or may not last) the left was dispirited by Obama’s many many attempts to placate the right wing and the corporate powers that be – mostly via the means of hippy punching or tossing the left under the bus and the country was looking for a new direction. This is not a confident nation by any means these days – the signs of decadence and decay are visible to the dullest of observers and a change in course was wanted.

What the GOP gave us instead was Mitt Romney the world’s most insincere insurance salesman who reminded too many people of the guy who laid them off a while back when the company was downsizing. Mitt who slanged 47% of the American working class while at an event sponsored by a multi-millionaire who was also known for hosting sex parties. Mitt’s temporary boost from the first debate did not last (it will be one of the great unknowns of this election as to what Obama was thinking prior to the first debate and what would have happened had the Obama that had shown up at last two debates had been there for the first debate) and I do think that Sandy showed the utter shallowness of Mitt’s soul to one and all. Not that that changed folks minds  it just made folks who were voting against him more determined than ever to a) vote and b) get other folks who felt the same out there voting.

This is course not to slight the effect of Ann Romney’s aggrieved entitlement and contempt for the help had. Ann was supposed to the person who humanized Romney in the end she became a joke about a horse.

The Professor welcomes Alan Greyson back to the House and wishes Allen West good luck in whatever insane thing he plans on doing now.  Digging your way to china with a spoon is our suggestion.

Ms. Bachman alas retains her seat by a narrow margin. But as this was the first year she faced any real opposition for re-election the prospect of a Bachman less House in the near-future looks good.

Going forward, not a single GOP candidate for anything will ever answer a question about rape.

Nate Silver by virtue of going 50 for 50 on his picks of the states is the big winner of the night. The pundits and talking heads reacted to him like vampires confronted by garlic. They made faces waved their arms and tried to pretend he wasn’t there.  The existence of Nate and his damned accuracy should mean that these folks will need to actually do some leg work when they talk about what America thinking rather than simply making it up but the Professor is not optimistic that will occur. George Will, for example, is already a prominent climate change denier – one hardly thinks that this little slap in the face by reality will change his way of doing things.  

Still the internet’s vast capacity to retain things out there means that their absurdly wrong predictions are theirs for always and always ready for use when they attempt to be sage wisdom dispensers.

Karl Rove on air tantrum when Fox News called Ohio for Obama is an instant classic.

All Donald Trump needs now are a cap and bells and some pointy shoes and he can be America’s court jester.

Bill O’Reilly’s lament over the end of the White Establishment is also a moment of high sick comedy.  Between wars, sucking up to the rich and Pat Boone the end of the White Establishment can’t happen soon enough.

And of course the real work begins now with a GOP dominated House bound to continue the hissy fit they began in 2010 and just enough beltway types whispering in the president’s ear that putting the grand bargain together now – before the new more progressive Senate is installed is the way to go. It never really ends alas.

But for the moment it’s a very good day.

Rant 10-26-12

The electoral prospect continues to depress. However The Professor will be casting his vote for the current administration with some reluctance.

The Democratic Party is alas corrupt, cowardly and far too eager to serve corporate masters. However all of the above can be said about the GOP with the additional provision that they are fucking batshit crazy. If it isn’t evolution, it’s climate science (that in some ways is the most distressing matter of all – these crazy fucks are going to get us all killed) and if it isn’t Climate science it’s rape.

For some reason rape makes all their heads go funny. The most recent example is the GOP candidate for Senate in Indiana some clown named Morlock or something like that (the Professor is simply not interested in looking the cretin’s name) who beat the sitting/retiring Senator Dick Lugar in a primary because Mr. Lugar, no great prize, was not batshit enough for the Indiana GOP faithful, who opened his mouth and basthit came out.

His defense of denying a woman an abortion in the case of rape (as opposed to his not wanting a woman to have any control over her body on a general basis) was that if the act of rape resulted in pregnancy God wanted that to happen.

At this the Internet did a spit take. The little weasel has tried to somewhat walk back the comments but really he just blamed folks who aren’t religious for not understanding his insight into God’s will.

This, as baldly put, is bad enough as it elevates the rights of a rapist’s sperm above the rights of the victim of said rape (and in some states by the by if a woman carries to term and has the child the Rapist has visitation rights. Sweet yes?) but as was pointed out this is his reason for the STATE to enforce his beliefs on other folks regardless of their views on this.

This is why the founders were so suspicious of organized religion. Because of the desire of believers to use the powers of the state to enforce their view of the world you end up with things like Salem witch trials and auto-de-fe’s and all sorts of unpleasantness.

 Of course now it is being said that this clown is an outlier – an outlier who is running for senate under the aegis of one of the two major parties and has the personal endorsement of Mitt Romney who last time I noticed was running for President of the United States under the aegis of the very same party. If this is an outlier I have to wonder who if anyone is an insider.

These are utterly horrible people and that fact they are running for office and have even the slightest chance of winning is a black mark on the Republic and probably an indication of its terminal decline.

A Sports Note

As a long time Mets and a slightly less long time Boston Red Sox fan the Professor has to say that while the Yankees loss to the Tigers did not fill me with joy, there is – to quote John Kenneth Galbraith writing about something far more important: “a noticeable absence of sorrow.”

We also note that the Daily News is reporting that several Yankee players, per an unnamed member of the team, were put off their game by the booing of the fans in game 2 of the series (lost by the Yankees 3-0 during which the Yankees loaded the bases 3 times and yet scored not a run) which, the unnamed source implied put them off their game for the rest of the series.

The Professor has two somewhat contradictory responses to this: One is incredulity at the delicate emotions of the team being such that booing could disrupt them so. They should count themselves lucky that they are not playing at venues like Cleveland or Philadelphia or even Boston where subpar play is not typically greeted with great understanding and supportive comments.

The other somewhat contradictory thought was:  “Now it seems even the Yankee players think Yankee fans are jerks.”

Rant 10-18-12

Proof, as if proof was needed, as to why being a CEO is not good training to be president of the United States.

The Professor is feeling dragged down and under the weather but nonetheless feels the need to jabber into the void. Or perhaps the ill health is prompting this attempt. Well no matter.

In the recent presidential debate – actually not a debate as a bastardized town hall where the public (Horrors) provided the questions. The professor is of the opinion that if we are going to have debates between candidates they should either be in this format or return control of the format of the debates to the league of women voters (of course neither of these outcomes are very likely and after the last debate the prospect of another town hall is rather unlikely as well)

I digress.

The defining moment of the evening came when Romney – continuing his pursuit of Obama over the incident Libya – Per the Romneybot it too Obama 12-14 days to get around to calling the attack on our consulate in Libya a terrorist act. This neatly avoided the fact that on tape the President said the very next day “no act of terror” and went on to promise that the perpetrators would be brought to justice (or shot in the head by Seal team six) – when the moderator at the debate pointed this out Romney had this the fuck? Look on his face as if Obama had just hit him in the face with fish. A large salmon to be more precise.

It was such a damaging moment that the right wing noise machine has gone into hysterical over drive trying to muddy the waters and accusing the moderator who will never be invited to any of those parties again and is also parsing the president’s comments to so they somehow mean what they want them to mean.

Which brings us to the point of this – Romney should never in a million fucking years have gone near this point. It was a loser back when he held a press conference to try and score points off of 4 Americas getting killed and it’s still a loser now. He got reamed for it then and he’s getting reamed for it now.

And why? Because he’s a CEO – first off the whole maneuver by Romney was a fairly typical dick move by a CEO looking to take an underling down a peg or two.  A CEO is an absolute monarch in the business system these days. And Romney is the kind who makes jokes and the rest of the staff laugh nervously.

CEO’s are not people who are told “that won’t work.”   They live a cocoon of warm fuzzies told to them by their underlings. We are fairly certain that Romney completely believed that Obama had not said the magic word terror until 12 days later and nobody inside the cocoon who wanted to keep their job was going to say otherwise. The problems is the nature of the CEO position, in it the very qualities celebrated in American business – the Alpha Male, the My way or the highway and leadership defined as being a dick are not qualities that lend themselves to the rather difficult job of being President of the United States. Even if the President is blessed with majorities in both houses and a friendly supreme court there are ever so many people who are going to tell him to go fuck himself when he wants something done now.  The CEO of Goldman Sachs could announce that everybody who works at Goldman must wear purple on Tuesday and there would be a mad rush to the stores to find something purple to wear.

It is not a mindset that allows itself to listen to bad news or even news – business is such a constrained and artificial universe that being a total jerk isn’t that much of a handicap and at times can be a boon. But the world outside is a lot messier and harder to deal with then by just yelling at an underling.

I should know.

Rant 10-5-12

Third Party Musings.

As the election has drawn closer it seems that more and more folks are adapting a plague on both your houses mentality and wishing in blogs and out loud that there was a third party candidate or that they are not going to vote for Obama because of X.  X, mostly involves the use of drones to blow up people in places we are not officially at war with yet like Yemen and Pakistan. We are told that the folks being blown up are terrorists but as the Professor grew up during the Viet Nam war (a depressing large segment of the Professor’s life was had the United States shooting at someone somewhere) where the rule of ‘if it’s dead it’s VC” has probably been updated to ‘If it’s dead its’ a terrorist”.

It’s horrible sickening and really something that needs to be stopped.

However Romney has not said word one about not using drones, and he’s been actively beating the drums for a war with Iran (sure Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t work out so well but third time’s a charm!) and has promised to reinstall torture.

Not the most reassuring alternative.

Which brings me to the point of today – it’s too fucking late to start wishing for a better deal now. The time to have started this was probably back in 2010 at the earliest and more like 2009 when it because obvious that Obama is a Lieberman Democrat with an massive urge to cut social security as long as he can get the GOP to agree to and call it bi-partisan. We have been fortunate in that the GOP has been too crazy to take up his offers. But the time to go 3^rd party or to even mount a challenge inside the Democratic Party was then – Not now not in October. It’s too damn late for this cycle.

What we have now is a choice between disappointingly bad and worse than we could possibly imagine. I am confident that a Romney Presidency would make W’s second term in office seem like a triumph of good governing.

What needs to happen is that things have to start moving now – as in the day after the election.  And it will take a long damn time to do – Lincoln wasn’t the first Republican presidential candidate is was some self promoter and rather dangerously slick fellow named Fremont – of course he lost but the GOP learned and went on from there.

And it can’t just be president - it would make no sense to elect a left leaning president without out at least some folks in the House in the Senate in the same party. All this takes time and dedication a plan and a lot of long term thinking. One has to be willing to put up with being ignored or pilloried or having to deal with the kind of political shannagains that the established parties will put in ones way. And disappointments and losing elections. And all that.

It does not entail having a hissy fit in October when the slates have been long set.

Rant 10-2-12 How Obama beats Obama

We are one day away from the first debates between President Obama and whatever is left of Mitt Romney after some very very bad weeks. While the GOP hopes for a game change here – the odds are small – it is very unlikely that Obama is going to come out dressed as a pimp holding a 40 of malt liquor and say ‘where the white women at’  - nor is it likely that Mitt will get that zinger in he and the GOP have been hoping for since Obama was elected and lead all of America to say: “Yes the GOP were right! He is a Kenyan Muslim socialist Nazi! How did we ever believe otherwise? Let’s vote for Romney twice!”

It’s also not very likely that Romney will peel over the mask he’s been wearing revealing that he is in fact one of the aliens from the TV series V and swallow a live hamster. What is most likely is that Romney will say something illustrating just how out of touch he is with anything that does not concern Mitt Romney. The Professor made a bad joke some years ago that Steve Forbes (and does he show up on TV anymore?) was running for president simply to lower his taxes. In the case or Romney I not certain that this is not the case.

However as satisfying as watching the Mitt Machine crash and burn  - Mitt does have one hope left. That Obama will screw the pooch in his pursuit of the grand bargain. 

The grand bargain or more properly The Grand Bargain is talked about in hushed tones in the salons of DC, it is the holy grail of bi-partisan politics and is utterly horrible, something that will ensure that the lives of normal folks are benighted and full of want for the rest of their lives.

Simply stated The Grand Bargain will cut Social Security and Medicare benefits in order to pay for the 2 wars and the tax breaks the rich folks got under W, there will of course be some closing of loopholes (there is always talk of closing loopholes in Grand Bargain talk) but the loopholes most mention are things like the tax credit folks get for paying a mortgage which affects the middle class a lot more than the one percent.

The current outline of the Grand Bargain comes from the failed Bowles-Simpson commission set up by Obama in 2010. Reviewing the polices several left leaning blogs named it “the Cat Food commission” as the end result of the ideas were old folks eating cat food. The professor freely admits to some skin in the game – his 401 K has been ravaged by time, unemployment and bad stock markets so SS is going to be the major part of his life after 65 so things like cat food commission cut a little too close to the bone for the Professor’s comfort.

And therein lies Romney’s chance – the election isn’t over yet but word is filtering out that during the lame duck session of congress that will follow it – there will be a concerted effort to install The Grand Bargain to bipartisan huzzas of DC Salon class and the general despair of the rest of the electorate. And all Romney needs are enough folks reading this sort of gibberish in the papers and deciding to hell with it, we are going to get dicked over no matter who is in office and then just stay home drinking for him to win a few close swing states. Nothing to do with Romney himself. At the point only Obama can beat Obama.

The Professor just hopes he hasn’t seen the outlines of how Obama plans to do just that.  

nothing heavy today

but having these two together amuses me in a weird manner.

rant for 9-21-12

Imagined internal Romney Campaign memo:

Effective immediately at any closed party function all food service employees will be required to be swept for electronic devices.

It has, to tell the truth done the Professor’s evil black heart a world of good watching the repeated missteps, gaffes and outright blunders of the Romney campaign as it lurches like some wounded giant robot from a Japanese science fiction film, arms failing, sparks a blazing, bellowing smoke, tossing gears leaking oil and lurching from side to side destroying all in its path; not because it intends to but because it’s too damn clumsy to do anything else.

I have witnesses many a campaign in my time – the earliest one I remember was the angry and vile 1968 campaign between Nixon and Humphrey (with Wallace acting out in the south)  - and I’ve seen some really inept ones but searching the professor’s memory he can’t for the life of him recall a campaign this disjointed and this utterly incompetent.

And to be honest he should be winning. The economy is in a doldrums, the left wing of the democratic party is alienated and disappointed with Obama as president (although not for the reasons the GOP doesn’t like him, which has lead to some confusion on the GOP side “hey we can get these voters!” they think, ‘We hate Obama too!” the trouble being that left is disgruntled with O because of policies like not jailing wall street and bank fraud, his obsession with a grand deficit bargain that includes social security cuts, the expansion of the war on terror and  the national security state, the use drones and even the crack down on medical marijuana All of these would have the ecstatic support of the GOP if the president  was a Republican.   So a disgruntled leftist is not going to respond well to Romney’s basic message “wait until you see us blowup brown people and lower taxes!” with any degree of enthusiasm.)  And people are unhappy. This should be his year.

But dear lord what an utter train wreck he has been. Within the last week he’s managed to insult about ½ country calling them lazy bustards – gone on a Spanish TV station looking like he’s been dipped in bronzer and now he’s just managed to beboot his whole tax return problem by issuing his 2011 return (wherein he paid 14 or some such percent – I’d have to pull my return but I suspect I may have paid a bit higher percentage) and issued a statement about the last 20 years of his taxes.

This will not work.

The phrase that comes to mind is from the Watergate era –  “limited modified hangout” tell some of the truth (2011) and combine with this a seeping general statement that is when not directly dishonest intentionally misleading.

And Ann Romney seems to be yelling at the help again.

It’s a hell of his own making. And I for one couldn’t be more pleased

Rant for 8-8-12

We are rarely amused these days but dear lord in heaven we are most amused by the whole Romney tax returns brou-ha-ha. Harry Reid (majority leader in the Senate and until recently the second most likely to cave Democrat in Washington after Obama) told some reporters and then said on the floor of the Senate that he had been told by a Bain Capital investor that Romney hadn’t paid any taxes during the years covered by the tax returns that Mitt refuses to release.

The Romney campaign – which does not resemble a campaign so much as ad hoc collection of suck-ups and hangers on with anger issues – trotted Mitt out to  say something to the effect of  “so’s your old man” to  Mr. Reid and challenged him to put up or shut up. Many folks are puzzled by this as, Reid does not have access to the documents that would end this all – Romney does. More than one blogger has pointed out that Mitt has essentially challenged Reid to release Mitt’s tax returns.

My head, she explodes, goes the internet meme.

While I am aware that Romney is challenging Reid to name who said that, what is the only thing that will end all this is to release the returns. That Romney is not releasing the returns would argue that there is something there he doesn’t want the American people to see – (I’ve heard it banded as a matter of principle with him but he cheerfully gave McCain copies of his last ten years in 2008 when he was being considered for the vp spot – one of the things that makes me uneasy about a Romney presidency is that he’s such a utter spineless ass-kisser- so he’s willing to share with McCain but not the common rabble).

One can’t help but wonder what the hell is going on in Romney’s mind – and to wonder what the hell could be so bad that he’s more than willing to take this hammering he’s getting over the tax returns (and it seems to be doing damage). The professor is amazed at this.

Romney has been running for president since year one and a half – it has been traditional for presidential candidates to release their tax returns for some years in the past (the exact number is flexible – Mitt’s father released 12 years something that embarrasses Mitt whenever it is mentioned).  Any common variety fool with the brains god gave a rabbit would know at some point during one’s quest for the office of president, folks would want to see the tax returns. It will be expected that the tax returns would be released and not release them would create a…well what we are seeing a damaging storm of gibberish that has driven whatever momentum Mitt’s campaign right into the ditch - his momentum not helped by his comedy of unforced errors in England, Israel and Poland but this adds to it. So one would assume that he would direct the folks doing his taxes to keep one eye on how something like not paying anything in taxes based on someone questionable paper losses would look in the light of day.  

But this is not the first time Romney’s have some problems with releasing Tax forms – when he was running for gov. of Massachusetts he said time and time again that his returns for whatever the legal residency was in the Commonwealth listed MA as his primary residence. He said this more than once. And said this while cameras were rolling. Then at just about the last moment he a) released the returns and announced that he had actually been declaring Utah as primary residence for tax purposes and then said he was retroactively changing his official residence to Massachusetts (and one assumes paying more taxes) so there is some history of Mitt playing fast and loose with the truth with relation to his tax returns.

He has angrily insisted he paid taxes (but not as folks with sharp ears and nasty instincts pointed out “income taxes”) and that only a fool wouldn’t take advantage of every break he could with regard to taxes. This may be so but most of us – including the professor – simply don’t have access to the kind of tax dodges someone in his income bracket can manage.

And what little we know suggests that there is real dynamite in the returns – he got badly pinged about his canary island and Swiss bank accounts and there is that troubling IRA – which depending on the report is worth 20 to 100 million dollars.

Now reading about tax accounting makes the professor yean for an early nap but if my understanding is correct, the maximum amount that Romney could have put into the fund a year was $30,000. (IRA’s were not created for the well to do , it’s a rather pathetic sop to the middle class to somehow make up for the pension money they will never see as it was drunk like your milkshake by folks like Mitt’s Bain Capital) I have yet to see one expert anywhere that has been able to figure out just how the IRA ended up being worth 20 million never mind 100 million dollars without some really really close to the bone if not downright illegal stunts being pulled (fake evaluation of stocks as pennies on the dollar is only a start) simply put if one was not rich one would be in jail for tax fraud but those rules don’t apply to those of Romney’s ilk.

This is what he has allowed us to see.

One other benefit of this whole thing has been the eclipse of Mrs. Romney as a spokesman for the warm and human side of Mitt Romney that we never see. In a less than stellar choice of words during an interview she said that ‘you people’ had seen as much of Mitt’s tax returns as you were going to see. Combine this with the 70K tax break they got for the dancing horse they own ( I don’t mind rich playing with horses but getting a tax break for it does seem a bit too far) and suddenly Mrs. Romney was being pictured as the new Marie Antoinette by cartoonists all across the country. She has since been quietly shoved back in the kitchen.

Meantime the GOP is trying to make this about Harry Reid and there are a lot of enablers in the media who want this to be about Harry Reid. Accusations of McCarthyism have been made. On the left the ‘we must always be fair even while being disemboweled” group has clutched pearls and said bad things about Harry Reid. Harry has stood by his comment.

I suspect that the Washington press easily bored by things will move on but the Obama campaign can’t help but figure that anytime Mitt seems to be getting a bit of an edge they can use this issue like a canoe paddle and whack him on the side of the head. Obama has been in many many respects a colossal disappointment but he knows how to get elected.

Gun Rant 7-27-12

Aside from the grim amusement of watching Mitt Romney make a total fool of himself in a country that, for all its faults, does not suffer fools gladly, it’s not been a good time recently. Especially as the Banking Industry has shown itself to be even more corrupt that I was willing to believe and the economy staggering along while our best and brightest stand around it like 14^th century barbers and complain that the patient is not getting better and we should bleed the ungrateful bastard a bit more and does the widow, sorry wife have more money these leeches don’t grow on trees, the land suffering under a historic drought which isn’t of course the fault of climate change because, freedom that’s why which will have lord knows what kind of effect on food prices around here, and the underlying sense of a nation not so much in decline but fallen with the division of spoils the only thing that occupies the minds of those with any power. It’s a grim time to be an American.

            But what has me losing my normal detached bemusement about our current state has been the craven response of the elite of this nation to the slaughter in Colorado the last week at the opening of the Dark Knight Rises. There is the collective oh dear what can we do and guns don’t kill people people kill people and any regulation would be useless. We are treating these events like acts of nature a tornado or hurricane or earthquake and the thing to do is to have sympathy for the victims bury the dead and move on without making any changes.

            While this is part and parcel of America’s 21^st century what can we do spirit, it is especially hideous as in this case it has fucking blood over its fucking hands.

            Granted the fellow with the guns wanted to kill folks but a) there had been a ban on buying weapons like the AR-15 which are nothing but man killers – the small caliber combined with the a lower muzzle velocity which causes the bullet to tumble the moment it hits makes it especially lethal. (this was the part that attracted the Pentagon’s interest in the weapons in the first place – the M-16 had problems but that is a story for another time)  - in addition he had a 100 round magazine for the gun along with two pistols with extended magazines and gilding the lily he had a shotgun as well, along with body armor, a gas mask and 1 or 2 tear gas grenades – all of which he used to shoot up a dark movie theater killing 12 and wounding 70. This of course prompted the standard excuses from the chattering classes. Among the most hideous reaction was that of David Brooks who companied about the vehemence of the anti-nra crowd, as if that, rather than the dead in Colorado was the real sin. It’s a deeply corrupt thing to say but not surprising given his craven defense of Penn State while that scandal unfolded (it’s the hippies fault). There were well meaning talk about how the country is on the side of gun ownership and as such nothing can be done. All of this is depressingly familiar and will only result in more innocents being shot in the head.

            Subtract those items and you have someone with murder on their mind but you have lessened the potential for damage at least. It’s a grim arithmetic but a man with a six gun is going to cause less damage than a man with a glock with an extender magazine. And a man with a baseball bat would cause less damage than that. The urge to kill will still exist but at least let’s not make it easy for these folks.

            In a sane society nobody would be able to get his hands on an assault rifle (for the same reason you can't buy a Thompson sub machine gun) or the various magazines he used – the round magazine was banned in the 30’s as folks like Al Capone liked to use them and he wouldn’t have been able to order ammunition a gas mask and body armor over the internet. We are of course not sane.

            It pains me that not a single person in the public forum has has the nerve to call the NRA out for what they are – and evil band of bastards who are only interested in selling guns and ammunition. They are as evil as it gets and the organization has to go. That along with the gun shows and the above assault rifles, the extender magazines and all internet traffic in weapons and ammunition.

            For over 30 years they have been unpushined monsters with the blood of innocents on their hands. I don’t know what it will take to change the dynamics but I know if no one tries, it never will.

            There are so many problems we have decided we can’t solve this being one of the most awful ones. Yes folks would try to find their way around the laws but nobody suggests that the laws against bank robbing are useless because of the existence of folks like Wille Sutton.

            We remind the professor more and more of the failed Viking Greenland colony who starved to death looking out on an ocean of fish because they refused to eat fish for reasons that must have seemed very very important at the time but never really made sense.

            And of course there is that blood on our hands.

           

Rant #4

Well it has been a while since the Professor has taken time out of his busy life to write in his blog but things have been going from bad to worse in a manner that even the Professor finds surprising. In Europe country after country is truing into a basket case as the whole Euro structure is coming apart. There is talk of Greece leaving the Euro. It is being talked down by the important people and tales are told of how awful it would be. Currently nobody has any money, the garbage is not being collected, Hospitals are running out of supplies, businesses are dropping like flies and old men are shooting themselves in the head in public places because they can’t live on the reduced pension money and would rather not spend their remaining years searching the trash for bits of food like he was an alley cat so the Professor wonders just how much worse could it be?

A banker during an interview at his estate in Italy said, with one assumes a straight face that people are just going to have to get used to working until they are 70. The Professor is not a violent man, but this sort of talk is the kind of thing that brings out his inner sans-culotte and spawns horrible fantasies of said banker being shot and his body dumped into the sea for sharks to feed on or simply being dumped into the sea from a great height for sharks to feed on.

But this is where we are today. It is not a good place. There are vast numbers of very very desperate and angry people out there with no real sign that visible that their lives will be getting better anytime soon. That sort of thing breeds political instability and violence and eventually there is a man on a horse who rides into town to set things right – See Caesar, Napoleon and others.  As a historical note it wasn’t the hyper inflation of the 20’s that brought Hitler to power it was the response of the Weimer government to the depression; which was cut spending and insist there was nothing else they could do.  Like the governments are doing now. It’s being noticed, not by raving lunatics like your humble blogger, but by folks in the main stream that nobody is doing anything to solve the problems. Our democratic institutions and even our undemocratic ones have ground to a halt and have substituted action with vague hoping it gets better before it gets too bad and affects them. The only folks that seem to have a clear set of actions they will undertake are the GOP and their recommendations would serve only to make things ever worse. It’s a very dispiriting prospect.

We are also dealing with one of the more depressing presidential elections in years. A choice between a man who’s first Instinct is to sell out his supporters and a soulless robot who gives out creepy “I am seriously mentally ill” vibes when he goes off script.

Add to this the vast amounts of cash that the corporations of the world will be tossing into the race thanks to citizens united look for this to be the most negative campaign going since Jefferson accused Adams of being insane (people did not their pull punches in those days).

I’ve noticed that to mention Citizens United in a Blog (at least in a blog people read, not this exercise in vanity) is to attract vast numbers of trolls who will argue that since corporations are people and are  made up of people they have a right to free speech, which in the case of  the post Citizen’s United world means pouring money into political campaigns, vast sums of money, a lot of it. There are other arguments made but these two strike the Professor as especially annoying in their absurdity.

First there is the argument that since a corporation is composed of people shouldn’t they be allowed to express their opinions as part of the corporation. Whoever thought of this one must not have spent much time working in a corporation or way too much. These are not democratic institutions. Unless you’re the CEO or someone on the board of directors nobody cares what your opinion is. Indeed opinions are actively discouraged – your job in a corporation is providing value to the corporation. The rest of you, your hopes, dreams, desires and fears, passions, pattern baldness, and what not, the stuff that makes you you really are not important in the corp.’s eye. So to suggest that a corporation is a mechanism for having your views aired in a political debate is to be obtuse in a manner bordering on the deliberate.

The second point – that a corporation is a person. “Corporations are people my friend” Romney once said, showing more passion in that exchange than in any other in this campaign, except perhaps the time he complained about the store bought cookies he was served at a meet the voters thing. One assumes that his cookies are baked by the family’s pastry chef under the watchful eye of his wife who has the chef savagely beaten should the number of chocolate chips per cookie vary too much.

The Professor thought a bit about this argument – and while a corp. is considered for legal purposes (mostly to keep the share holders from being liable for such unfortunate  corporate actions as dumping mercury in the water supply and neglecting to inform anyone of such action or selling cars that blow up when rear ended) they cannot really be considered a citizen, a Polis, to use the old Greek term (from where we get the word politics) – there is no real skin in the game for them for the general welfare being taken care of, for them that is the government’s job (as witnessed by folks working for Wal-Mart in Georgia full time being poor enough to qualify for food stamps and other government assistance, reminding everybody that Georgia is a good place to be from) since they are not part of the government as we citizens are.

Meantime – this has taken some time to write and even so the professor isn’t fully satisfied with the outcome – we have seen the former Penn State Coach Jerry Sandusky being found incredibly guilty by a jury on 45 counts of child abuse and a member of the Roman Catholic church found guilty of child endangerment because he (along with a archbishop who wasn’t charged because he was dying) destroyed records and knowing transferred priests to new parishes (and this wasn’t 15 years ago, this is recent).

Once again the wisdom of Lemmy Kilmster of Motorhead fame is confirmed when he said “child molesters don’t look like me they wear suits and ties”

More to come – especially on the appalling passivity of our institutions in the face of problems they could solve or ameliorate but either lack the will or the desire to do so.

And oh yes –as far a climate change is concerned. We’re doomed. As in totally.