Slow News Month?

August is supposed to be a slow news month, a good month to take a break — but we don't have slow news months anymore.  We're battered by news, oppressed by it.  Sometimes it seems there's just nothing more to say.

Everybody with a shred of decency was horrified by the separation of refugee children from their parents at our southern border, and continues to be horrified because the immediate crisis remains unresolved and the damage to children will be permanent.  One needn't recognize any religious faith to recognize evil.

Nobody could have been even mildly surprised by the "Omarosa revelations" — if she has more tapes to share, they will be more of the same.  Tr*mp continues to alienate America's allies, and Democrats still struggle to solve their "Pelosi problem."

The Cohen plea agreement and the Manafort convictions have made no noticeable impact on Congressional Republicans, much less on the rabid Republican "base."  Giuliani's assertion that "truth isn't truth" could have been based on observation.  Wildfires, both literal and figurative, continue to burn.

Still, I will look forward to the "reality television" of the McCain funeral, which potentially could have more political impact than babies ripped from their mothers' arms.  Truth isn't truth, you know.  It's only the perception that counts.

Briefs

"Not my fault"
He still can't find Niger on a map, and still doesn't know it's different from Nigeria, but that wasn't the problem.  "Why can't they give their kids names someone can remember, Kelly?  Tell me that!"

NAFTA
It's a real dilemma when the guy who wants to slash your taxes also insists on screwing up your supply chains and demolishing your agricultural exports — not to mention the little problem of a five-year renewable trade agreement being the same as no trade agreement at all.

Tax Reform
Reagan exploded the deficit and the debt, so Republicans just might be willing to do it again to satisfy their wealthy patrons.  With mortgage interest, charity, and 401K deductions proclaimed "safe," and elimination of the deductions for state and local taxes on thin ice, the "deficit hawks" might have to reveal themselves as the hypocrites they've been all along.

Sexual Politics
Predatory behavior by powerful men may suffer a setback in light of scandals in Hollywood, the tech sector, and at Fox News, but America still has a long way to go to overcome its stubborn belief in female inequality.  Who's going to "reform" the religious right?  Mike Pence?

The Republican "Rebels"
It would be nice if some Republicans who weren't about to retire (or die) were willing to point out some of their nominal leader's glaring flaws, but things may have to get a lot worse before that happens.  Self-interest continues to outweigh the interests of their party or their country.

America wins

Barack Obama is our next president. We really don't know what the result of that will be, but, what the hell, it feels good.

Tears were rolling down my face as I watched tears rolling down Jesse Jackson's face on CNN. That guy who delivered the concession speech was the old John McCain, not the nasty old bastard we've seen on the campaign trail over the past few weeks.

The president we really need right now is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he's long dead. Will Barack Obama rise to the challenge? It remains to be seen.

"We are and always will be the United States of America," says our next president. I don't know exactly what that means, but, what the hell -- I'm feeling hopeful tonight.

"Smile! You're on television!"

I was able to stay awake for tonight's debate thanks to Bob Schieffer and a really superior debate format. McCain and Obama actually were forced to listen to each other, and, more or less, respond. Granted, it wasn't Lincoln-Douglas, but what the hell -- by contemporary standards, it was quite good.

On the other hand, I suspect what the candidates had to say was lost on much of the audience. What may have counted most, I'm afraid, were the smiles -- the reaction shots. How did the candidates look when they weren't talking? How did each of them look in the background while it was his opponent's turn to speak? Hell, the American people never cared all that much about words. How confident did each of them seem to feel? Americans love confidence.

As we all know, eye-rolling isn't allowed -- not even in response to the inanities of Sarah Palin. The only alternative is a knowing, deprecating smile -- and both candidates did their best to maximize the knowingness and deprecatingness of the smiles they proferred while their opponents were speaking. Obama's grin was broad and crocodilian. McCain's was forced, distorted, and suggestive of the crazed irrationality the Obamites have attempted to attach to McCain's image over the past couple of weeks.

McCain smiled so badly, in fact, you might think Obama had won the debate -- but that broad, "I'm a wide mouthed frog" Obama smile was just a little too smug, a little too "Ivy League." I'd guess the broad Obama grin antagonized the rabid McCainiacs more than the McCain grimace amused the Obamites -- and that any semi-mythical "undecideds" who may or may not exist in the real world continue to wish they had a third viable choice.

* * *

Yes, the markets tanked again today as a few newly released figures reminded the herd and the computer programs designed to emulate the herd that, bailout notwithstanding, it's still a recession out there. Other figures, by the way, indicate that it's still an inflation out there as well, despite the recent sharp decline in the price of oil. A few mainstream economists -- in the media, no less -- are beginning to use the word, "stagflation."

Over the next few weeks, the implementation of the bailout probably will ease the credit markets considerably, but we'll still be deep in the woods as far as the broader economy goes. Thirty years of ideologically driven screw-ups are not about to be remedied in a few days.

Totally irate, again

If I seem to spend a lot of time attacking the presidential candidate I intend to vote for in November, it's because he keeps pissing me off. The latest, of course, is his support for the alleged "compromise" (read capitulation) on FISA.

Last Monday, Paul Krugman was wondering whether Obama was really a liberal or just another poll-driven, Clintonesque asshole. Okay, Krugman didn't say asshole -- that was me. (As Krugman noted, there are fates worse than Bill Clinton -- but that's not much to celebrate.)

The alternative, of course, is McCain -- and more supply side economics. If the media were a bit less corporate and if liberals invested anywhere near as much in think tanks as conservatives do, supply side would have been the victim of mercy killing years ago. America being Amerika, however, supply side economics marches on like a zombie in a B movie.

What would make any rational person think, at this particular historical moment, that tax cuts for the rich or the corporations lead to economic expansion? Give the rich more money and all they do is bid up the prices of the investments they and their friends already own. Give the corporations more money and all they do is distribute it, in the form of dividends, to the rich. Nothing new gets started that wouldn't have been started regardless. Entrepreneurs start new businesses because they think those businesses can turn a profit -- with or without tax cuts.

Granted, tax advantages always can make a business more profitable, but how often are those additional profits translated into jobs and benefits for workers in the affected industries? The answer: rarely, if ever.

So, yes, I'll vote for Obama -- how could I do otherwise? I just wish I had a better choice.

Wimp factor?

Ah, ironies upon ironies!

A woman competing in a testosterone infused environment, Hillary Clinton saw the need to demonstrate her, ah, manliness. It was that need more than anything else, I believe, that led her to vote in favor of authorizing GWB to invade Iraq. After all, saber rattling is a very manly activity, and those who demur might be considered, well, effeminate. We can't have some pansy leading the Free World, now -- can we?

And so Hillary never missed an opportunity to demonstrate that her lack of literal balls should not be construed as a lack of figurative balls. Yes, her political posturing did help to encourage the widespread suspicion that she might be a lesbian, but there was no helping that -- not if she ever was going to get a shot at the presidency.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, should have had the manliness thing sewn up. After all, in popular culture the black male is the very embodiment of unbridled male hormones. His problem, though, was exactly that -- our popularly conceived black man is entirely too scary to be elected President of the Harvard Law Review, much less President of the United States.

Obama found it necessary to cultivate his public image just as carefully as Clinton cultivated hers, except from an opposite perspective. He had to learn to be consistently calm, even tempered, and conciliatory. He had to eliminate any show of anger or aggression from his behavioral repertoire. Barack had to appear as "un-black" as Hillary appeared "un-feminine."

The result, as you must have noticed, is that Hillary out-machos Barack by a factor of three to one. She knocks back shots of whiskey while he's counting calories. I don't know if she could beat his bowling score, but now she doesn't even have to try. She even came up with a scenario for nuking Iran -- granted, a pretty far-fetched scenario where Iran nukes Israel first, but clearly that makes her a mensch. That schmekele Barack, though, won't even talk tough to Ahmedinijad. As it begins to look more and more like he'll be the Democratic candidate this Fall, Obama had better start dealing with what could be a serious problem.

It's commonly called "the wimp factor." Although the term was first used to accompany a photo of Bush Senior on the cover of Newsday in 1989, it's been a problem for many Democrats in the past. Think of Dukakis in the tank, Kerry windsurfing, even Adlai Stevenson offering his brilliant, intellectual analyses while the rest of America was chanting "I like Ike." Now think of how the press jumped all over Obama's allegedly "elitist" comments about the white working class from that speech he delivered in San Francisco last month.

Let's face it: there's nobody left in the United States who's really concerned about Barack Obama turning out to be a violent, gun toting mugger intent on raping white women. His real problem now is to start looking less like an Ivy League twit. It may not be easy, not after a lifetime of consciously assimilating himself to the culture of Ivy League twitdom, but it's something he must do -- and soon. He has to demonstrate that he is capable of real, down and dirty, testosterone laced aggression.

The fact is, though, that he can't demonstrate it against Hillary Clinton. A "real" man doesn't beat up on women -- not even women as formidable as Hillary. It's time for him to ignore Hillary (because real men are allowed to ignore women) and start consistently and systematically attacking John McCain. But how?

John McCain is not the sort of man who ever could be tarred with the brush of intellectualism. He has no connection to the Ivies, and graduated near the bottom of his class at West Point -- but that doesn't mean a populist attack on McCain can't work. McCain has flip-flopped like a beached mackerel since winning the Republican nomination. It shouldn't be hard to label McCain a sell-out -- a one-time maverick who's now in the pockets of the same mortgage bankers, oil company tycoons, and super-rich businessmen who are foreclosing, extorting, and cutting the jobs and wages of the rest of us.

The attacks should be personal, not generic. It's not enough to attack the financial elite -- Obama has to put aside his fastidious good manners and attack McCain himself. He has to forget all about McCain's war record and his age and anything else that might make him pull his punches. With luck, McCain even might lose his famous temper and say something stupid.

It's also time for Obama to drop the high-falutin' oratory about "coming together" and upgrading American political discourse. He's already cornered the market on what Bush Senior, in that same 1989 election, called "the vision thing," so it's time to move on. You can bet the Republican attack machine's political discourse will be just as brutal as it's ever been, and the only way to beat it is with a strong offensive.

Don't be a wimp, Barack. Hit hard, and hit now.

And your next president will be...

That's right. John McCain. This time, however, I can't just blame it on the Democratic penchant for self-destruction. As a matter of fact, I'm beginning to think the alleged self-destructive tendencies of the Democratic Party always had quite a bit of outside help -- and this time around, the Democrats couldn't possibly have done it on their own.

Some will call the following analysis a "conspiracy theory," but to me it's just another chapter in the ongoing saga entitled, "How to Buy an Election." There are a few new wrinkles, and the cost of buying the upcoming presidency will be higher than the cost of previous presidencies, but hell -- thanks to the policies of the Bush years, the buyers are much better able to afford it than ever before. Okay, so let's follow the money.

The first thing that catches your attention is that most of the money, this time around, went into the Democratic primaries and caucuses. The next thing you notice is that a very big chunk of it went to... excuse me, but am I seeing this correctly?... Barack Obama!

So who the hell is Obama? Well, he delivered a lovely, inspiring speech at the last Democratic convention. Apart from that, though, what has he done? Answer: he defeated Alan Keyes for an Illinois Senate seat. And how did Alan Keyes, designated loser and "black friend" of the Republican Party, get the nomination?

Well, it seems that Jack Ryan, the original Republican candidate, found himself embroiled in a sex scandal. No Republican with any real political ambitions wanted to step into Ryan's sleazy shoes, so Alan Keyes (who actually lived in Maryland at the time) came to the rescue. Hooray, Obama! What a stunning victory!

The logical next step, of course, would be for Obama to run for President. (I can't be the only one to notice the craziness of this particular sequence of events, can I?) When the results of the "money primary" came in, well ahead of the Iowa caucuses, all the media said the Democratic contest was between Hillary and Barack. John Edwards, the southern white man championing traditional populist Democratic values, was discounted from the start. Stop and think about that. All the big money, and all the media coverage, went to the woman and the black guy.

Meanwhile, back in the Republican Party, the biggest bunch of weenies in the electoral history of the United States (even Alan Keyes!) all were (1) trying to look like Ronald Reagan, while (2) distancing themselves from the gloriously unpopular George W. Bush, while (3) endorsing every program that made Bush unpopular.

The only one of them who conceivably could beat Hillary in a general election was the alleged "maverick," John McCain, who draws independent voters. His only problem was the Republican base: the talk-radio fascists attacked him for his failure to support the patriotic persecution of Latinos, and the Christian right attacked him for his failure to protect frozen embryos from stem cell research (ignoring his consistent opposition to abortion.)

Fortunately for McCain, though, he got to compete in plenty of open primaries, where the Republican base vote is diluted. It helped even more that Mitt Romney carried the taints of both Massachusetts liberalism and Mormonism. Even Rush Limbaugh couldn't help Romney. Hey, but what about those Huckabee voters in the south? Will they come out for McCain?

That brings us back to Obama. While the "social conservatives" of the southlands might not be too enthusiastic about McCain, you can count on them to come out against that uppity nigra with the terrorist-sounding name. The same thing is true of plenty of working-class white voters -- the "Reagan Democrats" who currently lean towards Hillary Clinton.

When Hillary won the New Hampshire primary and split Super Tuesday with Obama, a huge infusion of cash suddenly appeared in the Obama coffers. At the same time, Clinton found it necessary to lend her campaign $5 million of her own money. It seems very unlikely that any significant portion of the Obama contributions came from college students sacrificing their beer money. An Obama candidacy is the best guarantee of a McCain victory in November, and a McCain presidency is the best thing that could happen for corporate America. You do the math.

McCain now says he will make the Bush tax cuts for the super-rich permanent, even though he voted against them when they first were proposed. His support for the Bush immigration bill is certainly pro-business, since it will establish a 21st century bracero program -- create a pool of low-paid temporary foreign workers to depress wages and deter unionization in both agriculture and the service sector. Universal health coverage, of course, will be off the table.

And so, in conclusion, it looks like the Democrats are screwed again -- unless Hillary Clinton somehow can win the nomination without driving the Obama cultists into the arms of John McCain.

"But, wait," you may innocently insist, "Obama can win! America is ready for a post-racial, post-partisan president! Oh, ye of little faith!"

Indeed. Me of little faith. Every Republican success since the election of Richard Nixon has been grounded in an appeal to racism. America may be a little less racist now than it was in the past, but it hasn't changed that much -- and the Republican attack machine is ready. For a hint of what is to come, check out Sean Hannity's interview of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama's pastor and adviser. If you think the swift-boaters did a job on Kerry, you ain't seen nothing yet!