Asides

Romney’s Parallel Universe Machine (Update)

For the man who has everything (except the presidency) , this handy device takes less energy than an Etch-a-Sketch to alter reality

The fallout from Mitt Romney‘s lies about President Obama shipping U.S. jobs to China continued yesterday as General Motors spokesman Greg Martin told The Detroit Free Press:

“We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Huffpo describes  it thus:

Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies….

The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.

Used to be that when a political campaign got caught with its pants down, it would mumble an apology or at least have the good sense to STFU.  Not this generation of Rethugs. Instead, they double down, drop their undies and moon  the world.:

The Romney campaign has showed no willingness to back off the suggestion that American Jeep workers may end up losing their jobs. In fact, the campaign has released a radio ad in Ohio to complement the one it has on television there that repeats the insinuation.

Which of course is entirely consistent with their adoption of the Big Lie strategy that Goebbels found so effective. What really makes it work though is constant repetition, made possible by Citizens United and the unlimited amounts money provided by plutocrat billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson who think so much of themselves that they’re intent in re-making the US in their own distorted image.

At the close of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What we are witnessing this election is no less than a battle for the very soul of the country.  We are right at that tipping point Franklin referred to.  Will we continue to be an admittedly flawed  representative government, where the democratic principle of one person, one vote prevails, and the belief that free speech is not measured in personal and corporate wealth?  Or will be become just another oligarchy run by greedy and power-hungry billionaires who have more in common with Ayn Rand than the Founders, who promised “to promote the general welfare” at home and maintain “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” abroad.

The prospect of four more years of The Black Man in The White House is enough to send the Rethugs over the edge, despite record corporate profits and huge increases in the personal wealth of the top 1%.

The Koch Brothers spent $25 million between 2005-2008 alone, fighting every attempt to regulate climate-changing green house gases, the byproduct of their energy extraction companies.  The results are super-storms like Sandy that just killed some 74 people (and counting), traumatized millions more, and wreaked $50 billion (and counting) in property damage.

And now they’re on the cusp of getting one of their own into, arguably, the most powerful office in the world.  A say-anything politician and his Darwinian running mate that want to privatize FEMA disaster relief by further cutting the social safety net to pay for it.  How’s that for Bizarro World logic?

Somehow I think that when these traitors to the planet are called to account for their crimes they will have so deluded themselves about their assumed natural superiority and moral rightness that they will find no contrition in their hearts, and thus no need for mercy from the real Powers That Be.

 But when mercy is exhausted, when the “memory” thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time.

—The Urantia Book

I want to be around for that.  Meanwhile, a little justice and righteousness would be a good thing right now.

[Image found here.]

UPDATE: (11/1 @ 1:25 pm) Exxon and Shell just announced they made $16 billion in profits during the last quarter alone.

And here’s a reminder of what a dick Romney is on the issue of climate change.

 

A Teabagging Fool

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Stephen offers Trump a million bucks to demonstrate the origin of the word “teabagging”

Neither tragedy nor good sense will prevent the The Donald Dumpster from stealing every ounce of publicity he can.

Promising a major announcement last week that would shake up the presidential election after his Teabagger inspired Birther investigation flopped, Trump offered President Obama $5 million for the charity of his choice if he would release his college transcripts and passport applications by Halloween at 5:00 PM, an offer that earned him well-nigh universal ridicule. (Obama explained to Jay Leno that Trump never got over being humiliated by Obama on the soccer fields of their native Kenya.)

Doubling down yesterday, Trump extended the deadline to Thursday at Noon. Apparently, the fact that in the wake of Superstorm Sandy the president is helping get his and the other eleven Atlantic City casinos  back in operation has earned him a few extra hours.

 But Trump’s good friend Babwa Wa Wa has had enough:

“Donald, you and I have known each other for many years, and you know that I am your friend and I think you are a brilliant businessman and you are great on television and you have a fascinating personality. You’re not hurting Obama, you’re hurting Donald and that hurts me because you’re a decent man. Stop it. Get off it, Donald.”

Friends don’t let friends drive the rest of the world crazy.

The Onion probably said it best:

In a blockbuster announcement today, Donald Trump announced that he is a very sad man who has nothing to live for other than drawing attention to himself.

‘I’m a sad, pathetic human being and a complete waste of life,’ said Trump, adding that he lives an empty existence, and that he is nothing more than a corporate shill, as well as a failed husband, father, and human being.

“I am the piece of shit you stepped in on your way to work. I am the vomit that hurls out of your mouth when you are sick. I want to kill myself very badly. Thank you.” Trump then slit his throat from ear to ear.

Fortunately, the comedy gods intervened and Donald is recovering nicely after being rushed to an emergency room where the straw was stuffed back into his neck.

Romney: The Bad Samaritan


Severe conservative Mitt Romney says funding disaster relief is “immoral,” and should be turned over to the private sector

On the eve of what may be one of the most destructive storms ever to hit the Eastern seaboard, Think Progress reports:

Last year, after a major tornado and flood struck the United States, Romney was asked in a debate about federal disaster relief funding. Romney not only suggested shuttering FEMA and sending responsibility for disaster relief “back to the private sector,” but also said it would be “immoral” for the federal government to fund disaster relief efforts without cutting the budget elsewhere. “It makes no sense at all,” Romney concluded.

No sense at all…

Here’s how The Urantia Book relates the parable of The Good Samaritan (noting that Samaritans and Jews had a long history of enmity). It was triggered by a question from a wily lawyer wanting to entrap Jesus into saying something that would contravene Jewish law, which defined one’s neighbor as “the children of one’s people.”

“But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neighbor?”

But Jesus discerned the lawyer’s motive, and instead of falling into the trap, he proceeded to tell his hearers a story, a story which would be fully appreciated by any Jericho audience. Said Jesus: “A certain man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell into the hands of cruel brigands, who robbed him, stripped him and beat him, and departing, left him half dead. Very soon, by chance, a certain priest was going down that way, and when he came upon the wounded man, seeing his sorry plight, he passed by on the other side of the road. And in like manner a Levite also, when he came along and saw the man, passed by on the other side. Now, about this time, a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed down to Jericho, came across this wounded man; and when he saw how he had been robbed and beaten, he was moved with compassion, and going over to him, he bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and setting the man upon his own beast, brought him here to the inn and took care of him. And on the morrow he took out some money and, giving it to the host, said: ‘Take good care of my friend, and if the expense is more, when I come back again, I will repay you.’ Now let me ask you: Which of these three turned out to be the neighbor of him who fell among the robbers?” And when the lawyer perceived that he had fallen into his own snare, he answered, “He who showed mercy on him.” And Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.”

If it had been Romney or Ryan, assuming that they would have extended aid to a total stranger without first checking his credit rating, they’d have billed the guy for the wine and oil, and charged him buku interest on what they considered a private equity loan.

Victims of natural disasters like Hurricane Sandy, you’re on notice: Don’t expect a hand out from the One Percenters.

Risky Business Part II: China Edition

Presidential wanna-be Willard Romney was honored by the Chinese Government recently with the issue of the 00 Yuan; yup, not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Picking up from where we left off yesterday…

Frankly, Mitt, I would have thought you would have labeled China the bigger geopolitical foe than Russia, since you have promised that on Day One of your administration you would designate it “a currency manipulator.”  That, of course, would be the first step to an all out trade war, and all the financial chaos that implies.

But that’s probably just tough pander talk to impress your wingnut base, since you have reportedly invested $23 million of your own money in a Chinese sweat shop, Global-Tech in Dongguan, China. Here’s how you gushingly described the factory to your presidential campaign donors in the infamous Boca Raton 47% video:

“And they work in these huge factories; they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. Three bunk beds on top of each other…And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out.”

In a report titled: Global-Tech – Betting Against American Workers, compiled by the   Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, its author asks the obvious question:

“Does Mr. Romney seriously believe that young men and women in China are racing to climb over fortress-like walls topped with barbed wire, just to get a poorly paid job at Global-Tech? Or is it possible that the barbed wire and armed guards are meant to lock the Chinese workers in and strip them of their legal rights?”

The United Steel Workers web site provides further details:

[The author] Kernaghan provides in the report, photos of the workers and documentation with pay stubs and journals by workers in a chapter titled, ‘Misery Updated,’ that makes clear in 2012 illegal sweatshop conditions persist at Global-Tech in China.

He publishes photos by workers of primitive and filthy dorms with squat toilets. Other photos show a workplace cafeteria, where he describes barely edible and frequently rotten food. “Global-Tech workers are easily hired, but then they are trapped and cheated of their wages if they try to leave, as well as being cheated of healthcare and other benefits.”

“Sadly, in 2012, Global-Tech remains a brutal sweatshop, where workers are paid starvation wages of $1.00 an hour and have no rights. Today at Global-Tech, every single labor law in China is violated: primitive, filthy dorm conditions are the norm; routine 15-16-hour shifts prevail, along with grueling 105-to-112 hour, seven-day work weeks.”

Kernaghan wrote that 800 high school student interns – many exhausted children just 16-years-old, are forced to work the grueling 15-16-hour shifts with no overtime pay at Global-Tech. “As of 2012, U.S. wages for the manufacturing of electrical equipment and appliances are $17.93 an hour, while wages at Global-Tech for similar work are just $1.00 an hour, or just six percent of U.S. wages.

The article concludes with a question directly pertaining to the 2012 election:

“In the context of Mr. Romney’s present ‘get tough on China’ stance, it would be critical for Mr. Romney to clarify exactly what he and Bain Capital did at the Global-Tech factory in Dongguan, China to push back against the evident abuses in the factory and to assure respect for human, women’s and workers’ rights.“

And that’s just one example of many of your China ties. According to your 2010 and 2011 tax returns, you have personal investments in at least 10 Chinese companies, one of which is Li & Fung Limited:

…a supply chain management company that oversees the transfer of Chinese-manufactured goods to giant American retailers like Target and Walmart — precisely the types of products that many argue have cost American jobs at home as they’ve been outsourced to cheaper labor markets.

Then there was your role in leveraging US taxpayer bailout money to move a critical auto parts supplier, Delphi, lock, stock, and barrel to China.

Presently, Bain is moving 170 jobs from Illinois based Sensata Technologies that pay $18 per hr to China where they pay a buck, despite Sensata turning a healthy third-quarter profit of $41.5 million.  Just not enough money for ya’all, eh?

You’ve made a quarter billion dollars leveraging other people’s money buying companies from which you extract every possible dollar, whatever the consequences to its employees, the communities in which they live, and even the US taxpayers who, among other things, have picked up the tab for your plundering of employee pension funds. All with minimal risk to you and your investors.

Yeah, you are a master at playing the financial risk game, Willard, outsourcing it to whomever and wherever you can. I didn’t think it was possible, but you have exceeded all my expectations as to your personal and political dickishness. I wouldn’t be surprised that once you succeed in outsourcing all possible jobs to China; that once we reach relative wage parity with the Chinese, you’ll have little problem importing their feudal like working conditions into the U.S.

Thereupon, we will have realized our collective race to the bottom. “And the world was made flat” as your compatriot Tom Friedman would have it. To which I must humbly offer you and your ilk my extended middle finger.

Risky Business (Part One)

 

President Obama accused Mitt Romney of “being all over the map.”  While that is metaphorically true, underscoring as it does Romney’s attempts to impose his notions of American exceptionalism on the rest of the world, it also has a literal component— geography.

ROMNEY:
“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.”

Er, Willard, any 7th grade geography student knows better than that.  Ever heard of The Persian Gulf? The 97,000 sq miles of ocean that is the most strategically important waterway in the world?

At some 650 miles in length, Iran’s coastal exposure is about half as large as the entire West Coast of the United States (1293 miles).  Additionally— we hate to break it to you— but Syria and Iran don’t currently share a border.  There’s a little country called Iraq separating the two.

Maybe it’s the word “Persian” that’s throwing you.  Long before Iran was known as Iran it was called— wait for it— Persia.  As in The Persian Empire, which was one of the world’s largest empires, thanks in large part to— wait for it— its navy. 

Xerxes, Immortals, and Persian Naval Forces at Salamis observing the Naval Battle.

Maybe you were thinking about what the map of the Middle East looked like 2500 years ago, when the Persian Empire extended to the Eastern Mediterranean and included modern day Syria.  You really should trade in your old Risk game board for an updated map of the world.  If you do find yourself in a position to bomb Iran, you might want to locate it on modern map first.  Just sayin’.

On a related note, you decry the number of US naval vessels as being less than what we had during World War I, using that little factoid to criticize Obama as somehow being weak on defense.  As President Obama was quick to point out, you seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of capability, quipping that we have less “horses and bayonets” in our arsenal as well.  Would you really trade one modern warship for two or three WWI vessels?

A poster of numerous U.S. Navy vessels sailing in New York Harbor during World War I entitled
“Uncle Sam’s Big Fighting Ships.”

 

I’d be willing to bet that a single modern day missile cruiser, armed with over the horizon radar and enough Harpoon missiles, could destroy the entire fleet pictured above in less time than it would take your car elevator to fill up your garage.

The last thing we need is a geographically challenged, militarily ignorant Commander in Chief who thinks that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.”  (I hear that Sarah Palin‘s contract with Fox News is up at the end of the year. Maybe you can hire her to keep an eye on the Ruskies for us.)

You know, Mitt, if for some ineffable reason, the real Powers-That-Be determine we haven’t suffered enough on this Veil of Tears, and you end up being installed as the leader of the free world, I fear that you won’t be able to distinguish the game of Risk from the real thing.

———–

To be continued. Part II will spotlight Romney’s bogus tough talk on China, featuring his personal investment in a Chinese sweat shop.

Metamorphosis Mitt

President Obama schools Metamorphosis Mitt on the nature of modern warfare

During last night’s final presidential debate, it soon became apparent that, in the arena of foreign policy, Willard Mitt Romney is playing fantasy football while President Obama is grinding out the real thing.

Obama is studying the opposition, meeting with his coaches, drawing up and revising game plans as circumstances require. He chooses the starters, putting his faith in his players whether they are in the State Department, the CIA, or the military, then sends them out to the field. He trusts in their professionalism and experience to move the ball forward, to stop the opposition, and ultimately, win the game.

Meanwhile, Romney is just making shit up as he goes along, shifting positions faster than a fantasy football fan/atic trades his virtual players. He even threw most of his foreign policy advisers under the bus, some 70% of whom are Bushie neocons, including chicken hawks like Dan Senor and Robert Kagan who’ve never seen a war they wouldn’t start or send somebody else’s kids to fight. Heck, Romney tacked so far to the left that he sounded like he was channeling John Lennon:

“…[O]ur purpose is to make sure the world is more — is peaceful. We want a peaceful planet.”

Even with plenty of advanced warning to his advisers that he was going to shake his mighty, all-forgiving etch a sketch once again, John Bolton’s head must have exploded, if even out of just one side.

On record for criticizing Obama’s decision to set a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan? No problemo. Just inhale a heady dose of Romnesia , and voila– Romney is suddenly on the same page as Obama, despite his earlier characterization that setting a withdrawal deadline was a grievous strategic flaw that only empowered the enemy.

But it wasn’t just Obama’s Afghanistan policy that Romney suddenly found himself embracing. (A growing majority of Americans are sick to death of the longest war in US history, so that has to be counted as a no-brainer.) Add Willard’s support for the Administration’s role in the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi; the killing of Usama bin Laden, despite the violation of Pakistani sovereignty that previously had Willard’s magic underwear in such an excruciating twist; the cautious approach to the civil war in Syria; the imposition of increasingly ruinous sanctions against Iran; the handling of the Benghazi incident; and other gimmees like unconditional support for Israel and the increasing use of killer drones around the world—Obama and Romney might just as well have been kissing cousins.

The political calculation of Romney’s debate strategy is painfully obvious. While maybe a million people at any one time are exposed to a given campaign speech or a targeted media buy, alight as they are with inflammatory, hyperbolic rhetoric, the number of people tuning into any one of the four televised debates is [at least] an order of magnitude greater. A perfect venue to re-invent a candidate from a “severe conservative” into a controlled, reasonable moderate that would appeal to undecided voters, including a large swathe of the coveted female voter demographic, with whom Obama continues to enjoy a substantial lead.

Gag me with a bayonet.

[image found here.]

Exorcising Mitt (UPDATE)

Would you want to get inside of this guy’s head?

While Willard’s dodge of a question about whether he supported equal pay for women, his  “whole binders full of women” comment that has lit up the twitterverse and is providing endless fodder for bloggers and pundits everywhere, my favorite takeaway from the debate is not something that was said during the debate but about the preparation for the debate itself.

Politico reports:

Sen. John Kerry joked Wednesday that he’ll need an “exorcism” after the final debate next week to purge Mitt Romney after playing the GOP presidential nominee for weeks in debate prep with President Barack Obama.

“It’s been an interesting exercise,” Kerry said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I’ve decided next Tuesday I’ve got to have an exorcism of Romney out of my being.”

Good luck with that.

Kerry might want to consult with Sissy Spacek, nominated for Best Actress for her lead in the movie “Carrie,” who reportedly got so into her character that it took her weeks to completely shed it.

UPDATE 10/17 12:35 pm : Ooops. Looks like Romney got caught in another lie.

HuffPo reports the following:

[Romney] “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women,” he said.

Romney’s account of that story is false, according to two women who led an effort in 2002 to recruit female candidates to high-level appointed positions in Massachusetts. MassGAP, a bipartisan coalition of women’s groups dedicated to increasing the number of women appointed to top government jobs, approached Romney and his Democratic challenger Shannon O’Brien before the 2002 gubernatorial election and pressured them to sign a pledge to appoint more women if elected.

“It was an initiative of women’s organizations, not to force [Romney’s] hand, but to make it be something he had to follow through on,” Carol Hardy-Fanta, former co-chair of MassGAP’s higher education subcommittee, told The Huffington Post the morning following the debate. “He didn’t go out looking for these binders.”

Liz Levin, who was the chairwoman of MassGAP at the time, told HuffPost that during the 2002 governor’s race, the group spent months identifying, vetting and collecting resumes of qualified women for the high-level appointments.

“They told us … that they were going to send [the binders] to us,” O’Brien recalled in a Wednesday interview with The Huffington Post. “Whoever won was going to get this.”