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.