Undecided?

As regular readers know, I am not a great admirer of President Obama.  Living in a "safe" Democratic state, I was feeling entirely comfortable about voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein for president.  After all, I'm pretty much in total agreement with the Green platform.  So, why not?

Then, I turned on the TV tonight, and I saw Romney grinning his grin and rolling his eyes and tilting his head and turning my stomach.  I saw ads from Restore Our Future and Crossroads GPS, and it occurred to me that while I'm not a great admirer of Obama, I still like him a hell of a lot better than Mitt.  If I vote for Jill Stein, I'm wondering, am I equating Obama and Romney?  That certainly is not my intention.

Hey, how about that?  I'm an undecided voter!  Honestly, I didn't think we existed!

Unlike a lot of so-called undecided voters, though, I'll go to the polls tomorrow.  While my vote for president essentially doesn't matter, I've got a Congressman in a hardscrabble fight to keep his seat, and an absurdly corrupt state legislature where my selections just might make a difference.  (Okay, that's extremely unlikely.  Whoever I vote for probably will be just as corrupt as his opponent, and all the rest of them.)

Tomorrow, I think I'll just leave the TV turned off — except, maybe, for John Stewart and Stephan Colbert.  Whoever wins, I reckon I'll need a laugh.

Recent Events

Yes, I watched the final presidential debate, albeit I had to watch a good deal of it on the C-SPAN replay because I fell asleep on the live broadcast.  Maybe it was because I had tuned to CNN, and my attention kept shifting to that line graph showing how a group of "undecided" Florida voters, separated by gender, were responding to what the candidates had to say.  Watching that graph was, well, somewhat hypnotic.  Whatever.  I passed out, but dutifully watched what I'd missed later on.

Mind you, though, it's not as if the debate itself was especially stimulating.  It sounded pretty much like Romney would not do anything different from Obama, with the possible exception of rattling his spear with greater emphasis.  The only one who's talked truth to Bibi Netanyahu recently is good old Jimmy Carter, who observed that Bibi has abandoned the two-state solution.  I think that's a valid observation.

So, let's consider what that entails.  If there's to be just one state, the choice is between Palestinian citizenship in Greater Israel — and apartheid.  Granted, the ultra-Orthodox Jews are reproductive marvels comparable to the proverbial bunnies, but I still think the Palestinians, given that they are starting with larger numbers, would emerge victorious in the fecundity Olympics.  Hence, it's either apartheid or bye-bye "Jewish State."

No, it's not an encouraging situation.

Getting back to the alleged "debate," I did not notice any mention whatsoever of Europe.  At the moment, the most significant economic problem for the United States is the fiscal fuck-up in Europe, driving down our manufacturing exports.  Why did Our President not bother to mention that the European austerity policies, which Republicans want to impose on us, over here, have pushed Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal, and Ireland into depression and the UK and France into recession, soon to be followed by Germany and everybody else the Vaterland has bullied into submission?

It seems the GOP has done much too good a job creating deficit panic, and Obama is much too much of a pussy to fight back.

The Romney Tapes

Now that everybody has heard Mittens pandering to his plutocrat friends and demeaning the memory of his father — who was a decent man — it hardly seems necessary to comment.  Well, when you get right down to it, my comments hardly ever seem necessary.  Nevertheless, comment I shall.

It should be no surprise that Mittens is, in his heart of hearts, an insufferable little twit.  Yes, it is true that that "the 47%" do not pay income taxes, albeit they pay a hell of a lot of other federal taxes.  Those who are employed (most of them) pay payroll taxes, which turn out to be a larger percentage of their incomes than than the combined income plus payroll taxes of a lot of top earners.  The cap on payroll taxes of roughly $110 thousand is unabashedly regressive — and if you figure in the "carried interest" advantages enjoyed by Romney and his fellow "lucky duckies," most of those low income workers pay a greater proportion of their income in federal taxes than the very rich.

Despite Romney's "doubling down" on his repulsive comments — essentially designed to capture the support of those who associate "the 47%" with the usual minorities — it's pretty clear that even the least involved are sickened by the Romney tapes.

Sorry, Mitt.  I'm pretty confident you won't surpass your father.  Tough shit.

Republican Wrap-up

Well, this is a lot of of posts for one month, but it's been kind of a special month.

I couldn't even be bothered to comment on Paul Ryan's tissue of lies last night, albeit I might blow my nose into it.  (What's with the "tissue" analogy anyway?  I guess I'll have to go to Ask.com,)

Clint Eastwood was very entertaining tonight, and he remains somebody whose work I admire, whatever his political views.  Marco Rubio is looking a lot like a future presidential candidate.  When it comes to Latinos, Republicans seem to be especially fond of Cubans. Uh huh.

Anyway, Mitt's speech tonight was another attempt at "humanizing," and it wasn't too bad except when he was scripted to smile.  I guess there wasn't enough time to teach him to smile convincingly.  Just the same, I guess he managed to appear a little more human — but if you were watching him going down the rope line before his speech, he was the same old rod-up-his-ass Romney we know so well.

I counted less than a minute of totally vague policy talk, and maybe a minute and a half of Obama bashing.  Nevertheless, I guess it will give him a "convention bump" for a week or so — until the Dems launch their infomercial.

Blah blah blah.

Romney in Israel

Demonstrating his usual absence of anything resembling sensitivity, Mitt Romney kissed Binyamin Netanyahu's ass a couple of days ago, noting how Israeli "culture" must be superior to the Palestinian "culture next door" because the Israelis have more money.  A lot of journalists and others have pointed out that it's hard to attain economic success while under occupation — but why belabor the obvious?

What I heard was the old stereotype of the "shrewd" Jewish businessman.  Okay, that "shrewd" label, in the case of Jews, tends to include "cheap," "cutthroat," "greedy," "selfish," and "corrupt."  Hey!  No wonder Romney admires them so much!  I wonder if anyone from AIPAC noticed.

Israelis and Palestinians, however, are not the only "neighbors" Romney cited with regard to one being economically superior to the other.  Another comparison, of course, was the USofA v. Mexico; yet another was Chile v. Ecuador.  For those accusing Romney of racism, those comparisons offer only more ammunition.

The USofA, as Sheriff Joe Arpaio clearly has observed, is a hell of a lot whiter than the predominantly mestizo Mexico.  Chile, where the indigenous population was pretty much wiped out by the Conquistadores, had its "white" population greatly "enhanced" by emigrant Germans and Italians.  Ecuador still is pretty much mestizo and Indio.

Nice examples, Mitt.  As I recall, your quasi-Christian cult first allowed black members to be admitted to your priesthood way back in 1978, when you were in your early thirties.  Given all of the above, it just might be reasonable to wonder if you might be a racist.

Whatever.  Clearly, you want to attract many more big big bucks from Sheldon Adeldon — who accompanied you to Israel — and also from as many other right-wing corporatist Jews as you can suck into your bottomless maw.  Most Jews, however — those who are not millionaires — remain pretty strong for Obama

Job Creators

Let's begin with the obvious: no firm hires more workers unless it needs more workers.  Businesses hire when there is enough additional demand for the firm's product to justify a larger workforce.  Needless to say, stagnant wages and high unemployment do not create much additional demand for most products.

Second, there must be no way management can squeeze more work out of the existing workforce.  In times of job insecurity, squeezing more work out of an employee is easy.  Workers will push themselves beyond all limits rather than risk being replaced by somebody more "productive."  Insecure workers will be more productive, whatever the impact on their physical and emotional health.

Yes, entrepreneurs create jobs.  A successful start-up needs workers, so new jobs are, indeed, "created."  Aside from workers, entrepreneurs need capital — and those who produce the most jobs require a lot of capital.  That's where venture capital firms come in.  Venture capitalists take real risks when they bankroll new, unproven businesses.  Sometimes they get good returns on their investments, and sometimes they just lose their money.

We should not confuse private equity firms with venture capital firms.  Private equity firms find existing businesses that appear to be undervalued, buy them up, and look for ways to make profits for the private equity partners.

Occasionally they might change some failed business practices, and improve efficiency.  Sometimes they can improve the "productivity" of the workforce — meaning that some workers become redundant.  Sometimes, it makes sense to dissolve a business because its assets, sold separately, are worth more than what the private equity firm paid for it.

Sometimes it's easiest just to load up a business with debt, declare bankruptcy, and collect large "management" fees for doing so.  The workers lose jobs, benefits, and pensions; lenders lose their investments;  private equity partners shrug their shoulders and fatten their offshore bank accounts.

It doesn't matter when Mitt Romney stopped actively managing Bain Capital.  The firm's objective never was to grow new business, much less "create" jobs.  Its objective was to further enrich its already rich principals — and it did that very well.

Romney on Education

I just read the Romney campaign's "white paper" on education.  Absolutely nothing in it surprised me.

Central to Mitt's K-12 "reform" are vouchers.  He praises George W. Bush's DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, which Barack Obama allowed to lapse.  It provided federal funds to allow poor DC children to attend "private" schools.  Needless to say, the only "private" schools poor families could afford, given the size of the scholarships, were religious schools — resulting in direct federal subsidies of religious education.

While the Romney model includes a lot of talk of poor children leaving poorly performing schools, reading slightly between the lines we imply that his idea is that every child should be able to take his or her share of public spending on education to the school of his or her parents' choice.  In some states, which offer "scholarship" programs for children to attend private schools at taxpayer expense, children are learning that Earth is 6000 years old, and that the fossil record reflects the aftermath of Noah's flood.  (I can't be entirely sure, but it looks like those stay-at-home moms "home schooling" their kids might also be able to suckle at the public teat.  It's certain, though, that those entrepreneurial types offering online "schooling" would qualify.)

Romney would provide block grants to states that eliminate teacher tenure and seniority rules.  He wants to remove teacher certification requirements, which might impede "talented" individuals from entering the field.  Needless to say, he is just as enamored of testing children to evaluate their teachers and schools as all the other clowns tumbling out of their clown cars into the political arena.  Of course the questions might be a little different.

Which of these is the approximate age of the Earth?
a. 4.5 billion years
b. a million years, give or take a million
c. 6000 years
d. a little older than grandma

As far as higher education is concerned, Romney's main concern is to re-privatize the college loan program.  Things were much better, after all, when the banks serviced loans made with federal money — with no bank funds at risk — and collecting all the fees and interest.  Romney's Wall Street buds clearly regretted losing that cash cow.

Finally, Romney calls for (you guessed it) deregulation of colleges.  The main thrust of that would be eliminating the Obama regulation that for-profit schools provide prospective students with data on what proportion of their graduates find gainful employment, in the field for which they trained, upon graduation.  Clearly, such regulation stifles entrepreneurs like those who created the "Draw Me" Matchbook School of Art and Late-Night Cable HVAC University.

Granted, I think Obama's basketball buddy Arne Duncan is a perfectly awful Secretary of Education.  On the other hand, things could get worse — much, much worse.

Short Subjects

The North Korean "threat"

So what if they have "the bomb?" The Great Leader Centennial Satellite Launch wound up, almost immediately, in a great many pieces. California is safe, and probably will remain safe until some Pakistani sells them a workable missile. Now that we've sort of been forced to agree to stop fucking over the Pakistanis, that's unlikely to happen. Come on — give North Korea the nutritional aid. Starving children are not building nuclear weapons.

Another Centennial

Well, the coincidence of the centennial of the birth of Kim Il Sung and the sinking of the Titanic is unlikely to have any cosmic significance. In my opinion, the James Cameron movie had the most poorly written dialogue of any movie (with the possible exception of "Godzilla vs. Mothra") ever produced. 3D will not improve that. Try to find the 1953 version, which (unwittingly) is a much better illustration of the class struggle.

"Never Worked a Day in Her Life"

Some mothers work hard at being full-time mothers. Other mothers do the whole mother thing and also hold down full-time jobs — usually because their families couldn't survive unless they did. Ann Romney had it easy, and Obama should have had the balls to point that out. The whole fucking "controversy" makes me feel ill.

Spain and Ireland

Austerity kills struggling economies. The Irish, at the moment, seem, at last, to be figuring that out — after being the "good children" of the Eurozone for too many years. It is to be hoped that the Spanish — trapped in a depression only exacerbated by forced austerity — figure that out sooner than the Irish did. Iceland, I believe, got it right: fuck the banks.

Sayonara Santrorum

It's possible that Rick Santorum gave up his presidential campaign because of the health crisis of his baby daughter. Whatever. I really can't believe in prayer, Rick, but I understand how a father feels when his little girl is in dire peril. I pray with you, Rick — despite the uselessness of my heathen prayers, and despite the fact that I think you're a total asshole — I hope your little girl will survive and thrive. It's not her fault that you're her father.

It's also possible that Rick Santorum left the Republican presidential campaign because the Party came down on him hard. Maybe he was offered a cabinet position — Secretary of Morality, perhaps — but I don't think so. I think he just ran out of money.

Whatever.

Romney still has to tack towards the center. Who the fuck cares? Obama has tacked so far to the so-called "center" that those of us on the "old" (New Deal) left have no real candidate. All we can do is pick the least offensive of the various piles of shit.

How dum r we?

It is no secret that Americans read little and none too well. American computational skills have necessitated the development of the modern cash register, which requires only that the human being be sufficiently competent to scan in a price, punch in the amount of cash presented, and count out the correct amount of change. (The operators of such machines generally earn more than minimum wage because of their superior skill sets.)

Hence, it comes as no surprise that there is a lot of support, out there, for assorted Republican candidates for the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. If you've had a look at Paul Ryan's latest budget proposal, you will understand that Ryan — like me — does not hold American intelligence in high regard.

Just two tax brackets?!!! Are you kidding?!!! (No.) Letting American corporations repatriate their foreign profits for free, forever?!!! (I know! Let's ship even more jobs overseas!) Let's not even bother to consider the extreme reductions to high income and corporate tax rates.

(Well, maybe we ought to at least think about them, because we Americans are not too bright. The justification for tax breaks to the rich is that they will invest more in our economy and, therefore, create jobs. Sounds good, except that when they got tax breaks under Bush, they invested their extra money in derivatives — not new business — and brought down the Western World. Derivatives represent fast money. Investments that create jobs represent slow money. Don't bet on the tortoise against the hare. You'll lose.)

I won't get into Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Pell grants, and the rest of the proposed Ryan cuts right now — suffice to say that the plutocrats grow fatter and grosser at the expense of the far more ordinary. Romney implies that the ordinary deserve to struggle all their lives, because they're dumb — and he deserves to be President because he embodies the "meritocracy."

Well, the ordinary are pretty dumb, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve decent lives — with decent incomes, decent health care, and what used to be very ordinary hopes for the future of their children. If we really had a meritocracy, Paris Hilton would be whoring out on the Tenderloin, and Romney's vast brood would have no greater opportunities than some very nice, bright kids who are growing up in East Harlem.

Watch Obama move even further to the right. Here, in the 21st century, money moves all mountains — and it makes me sick.

Santorum??? Surely you jest!

Needless to say, I wouldn't mind at all if Rick Santorum won the Republican nomination — having declared war on women (possibly forgetting that they now are allowed to vote), I honestly don't see how he could win the presidency. Yes, America has moved distressingly far to the right over the past thirty years, but that far?

Listening to Santorum, Romney, Gingrich, and Paul, I'm starting to believe that when Nixon inaugurated his "southern strategy" and Reagan brought the social conservatives into the Republican coalition (bigots, Luddites, and the super-rich, all working together to benefit the super-rich), they unknowingly strapped their party into a suicide vest. The Republican base has moved so far to the right, it risks falling off the edge of its flat earth.

The more states Santorum wins, the harder it will be for the Republican super-delegates to hand Romney the nomination at the convention. Going against the base to that extent would risk splitting the party. If it's a toss-up, though, they still could "draft" somebody who hasn't had a chance to disgrace himself in the endless debates. The last I heard, the real Republican favorite was "none of the above."

But who could it be? Jeb Bush seems to want to wait for 2016; Chris Christie, despite having such a Christlike name, still might be too fat and too northeastern; Tim Pawlenty comes over as a total wimp; even John McCain is not so senile that he doesn't realize he's too senile to run again; Eric Cantor wants John Boehner's job, not Obama's, and anyway he's still kind of Jewish for the traditionalist Catholics and Evangelicals.

Paul Ryan? He's presentable and articulate, and it might be possible, with enough money spent, to conceal the fact that he's a really mean son-of-a-bitch. At the moment, though, I think he's looking for Cantor's job when Cantor pushes out Boehner. As far as the presidency goes, he's still young enough to wait for 2020 or 2024.

Well, as you know, I don't make predictions anymore — but I'm guessing that Obama will get his second term. If he does, I only can hope he might turn out to be less of a "New Democrat" and more of a liberal.

The Circus Continues

While mourning the death of Etta James — and the non-death of Henry Kissenger, who will be sharing his alleged wisdom with Vladimir Putin in the near future — let me make a few bemused comments on the state of the Republic(ans.)

I have no problem with Willard Romney's activities at Bain Capital. He was, after all, obeying the law. I do not know the extent to which Bain manipulated that law, nor the extent to which Bain participated in buying the lawmakers who gave such firms and their executives such generous tax advantages — albeit, my guess is that Bain was a full participant. What I am sure of is that Romney's proposed tax "reform" would enshrine and extend those advantages.

Newt Gingrich is an unmitigated wack job, which probably explains his increasing appeal to South Carolina Republicans. Are those "man-in-the-street" interviews we see on television genuinely representative of ordinary South Carolinians, or is the "liberal media" going out of its way to cherrypick certified morons? If the NAACP, the SCLC, and/or the Democrats really wanted to screw things up, they could have urged the state's black voters to register Republican and all vote for Ron Paul. Well, maybe next time.

Rick Santorum is basking in the glow of his endorsement by the most vindictive and narrow minded religious leaders of America, and by his "victory" in Iowa. I have clear memories of his days in the Senate, and I don't recall him being any more "moral" than the rest of those over-entitled bozos, despite his very sincere efforts to deprive women of custody over their bodies. Still, if Gingrich somehow manages to grab the lead in South Carolina today, Florida — that other-worldly mix of rednecks, Cubans, and the elderly — could be decisive.

Hopefully, Romney will not have the nomination "sewn up" tonight, because I'm looking forward to more rib-tickling debates. The fact that just three scarcely significant states can "sew up" a nomination for a candidate is, of course, an absurdity of our system — but the mechanism is clear. The leading candidate (and his superpac) get increased contributions from bundlers and wealthy donors, the less successful candidates get less. Money, as always, wins.

..........

11:50 PM
Hoo hah! Batshit wins!

Newt blew it away in SC, and the speech I just heard was extremely well done. He found positive things to say about the other three, but managed subtly to dis them at the same time. For some odd reason, he kept associating Obama with Saul Alinsky, even though everybody who's been paying attention knows that Alinsky has been the theoretical godfather of the Tea Party. (Download Rules for Radicals from Amazon, and see how many right-wing "recommendations" you get.)

Anyway, we get to see it go on to Florida, at least. Who knows? There's a chance Ron Paul could win the Nevada caucuses in February, and everything could become totally crazy. Wouldn't that be fun!

Viva la batshit!

Anybody but...?

Willard (aka Mitt) has a problem: nobody actually likes him.

He's been doing his best, this time around, to hide his insufferable sense of entitlement. Somehow, though, it keeps leaking to the surface. As an unrivaled opportunist with no core beliefs about anything but the preservation of wealth, it is no wonder that people have a hard time warming up to him.

Has anybody asked him why he wants to be President? Perhaps there is some underlying Oedipal need to surpass his father, but to me it looks more like he genuinely feels superior to the rest of humanity, and has decided that becoming the most powerful man on Earth is his due.

No wonder nobody likes him.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, he managed to scrape together roughly a third of the votes, primarily from people who think his is the best chance to oust that socialist darkie from the White House — not because of any personal characteristics of his own. If the Republican field included a truly viable candidate to oppose him, Romney wouldn't have stood a chance — but objects in motion tend to stay in motion, and he's been in motion since 2008.

Just the same, I wish the Virginia primary were next week instead of Super Tuesday. The only candidates who filed in time to qualify for the Virginia ballot are Romney and Ron Paul. Wouldn't that be an amusing test of the "anybody but" hypothesis? Would the voters of Virginia reject the Mormon multimillionaire for a crazy old coot who wants to put us back on the gold standard and withdraw all our troops from everywhere?

Sigh. I'm afraid we'll never know.

Re: Willard Romney

I was just reading the Wikipedia entry on Willard Mitt Romney, and I'm 99.6% certain it was written (or rewritten) by one of his PR people. Well, what the hell — that's Wikipedia. The last one to get there gets the last word, and I imagine Mitt's people get there several times a day.

One thing Wikipedia does not mention is that Romney is the test case for whether or not a shitload of money can buy an election. The funny thing is that nobody in the Republican base actually seems to like him, but he seems to have locked up the 25% who consider him the candidate most likely to defeat the heartily hated Obama. Well, the Democrats, too, consider him the candidate most likely to defeat Obama. There are two reasons why that probably is the case. First, he has a ton of money behind him and, second, his chameleonlike ability to shift in the political winds should make him especially attractive to so-called "independent" voters.

(Long-time readers will remember that my take on so-called "independents" is that they are those who don't know shit from Shinola, and therefore are most likely to be persuaded by 30 second spots on TV.)

The Romney superpac, "Restore Our Future," outspent the Romney campaign 2 to 1 in Iowa — and did a devastating job on Newt Gingrich. Mind you, pretty much everything they said about Newt was true but, nevertheless, I believe Newt is enough of a son-of-a-bitch to get even. His own presidential hopes may be down the toilet now (albeit his book sales have surged), but it's pretty clear that Newt is pissed. Needless to say, in the light of the Citizens United decision, the "Winning Our Future" superpac that supports Newt will not in any way "coordinate" with Newt's pissedness, but nevertheless will spread some significant negativity on the former Mormon missionary to France. (France?!! Jesus in a manner of speaking Christ!)

While it seems likely that Rick Santorum will turn out to be the Mike Huckabee of 2012, there's no telling how the evangelicals of South Carolina and Florida may vote later in the month. I'd like to see Mitt and his moneyed buds go down in flames, of course, but "Restore" is much better funded than "Winning" — and if Santorum has a superpac, its budget probably is around $12.95.

Oddly enough, I think there still might be a slim chance for John Huntsman, who also has a rich Mormon father but a lot less ideological baggage than Mitt. At the moment, though, my money still is on Obama this year.

The Demise of Herman Cain

Sex scandals? Jesus Christ!! Newt surges ahead, with not much attention paid to the fact that Newt was banging a Congressional aide while he was leading the thrust (pun intended) to impeach Clinton for getting head from a Presidential aide.

For all I know, Cain is not guilty of the accusations against him. Well, what do I know? It all could be a plot hatched by Mitt Romney, who may have had his own kids by immaculate conception. Okay. Cain has been a CEO, a lobbyist, a politician, and probably part of many other categories of lying scumbags with more testosterone than is good for the world order. Sorry, though, but when a guy (any guy) is trying to be President of the United States, you can't believe a word anybody else says about him (or a word he says.)

Here we are, in the world of unimpeachable lies — lies that are unimpeachable because scarcely anybody is paying attention.

Pay attention, damn it!

999?

Herman Cain has been shooting himself in both feet from quite a few different angles lately, but now that some major media have started paying attention to what econometricians make of his 999 plan, we should not have to wait too long for the shot to his head. Although all of 999 is a shameless giveaway to the rich, the real "killer" is the national sales tax.

Even innumerate Americans can understand that a 9.1% federal sales tax on every gallon of milk, every pair of new shoes, every gallon of gas, and everything else except for "used" items (used milk?) will cost them a hell of a lot of money. Ordinary Americans, who spend most (or all) of their incomes would be hit the hardest. Even those willing to ignore how a 9% income tax would devastate the working poor will come to view that sales tax with horror.

The rich, of course, whose incomes far exceed whatever they conceivably could spend, would pay an even smaller proportion of their incomes in taxes than they do now. I'm far too lazy to do the math and construct a chart showing the impact of "999" on people in different income brackets, but I assume somebody will do it fairly soon — probably some anonymous somebody from the Romney campaign. (It won't be the Obamanistas, who will be happy to see Republican infighting go on for as long as possible.)

In the meanwhile, most of the Wall Street money is going to Romney — and as far as politics is concerned, Wall Street money is the smart money. Needless to say, though, the financiers are hedging their bets by contributing to Obama as well. Then again, once there's a clear leader — of whatever party — they'll flood him with money. They always like the winner to think he couldn't have won without them. (It sure worked with Obama!)

* * *

Following up on my previous post: recent polling shows that a majority of Americans are sympathetic to the "goals" of the Occupy Wall Street movement — which shows that you really don't need specific policy goals to win public support. Most Americans don't have specific policy goals. They just get it.

The Republican Debate

Unlike most of America, I actually watched it. Needless to say, what most of America thinks about it depends on what most of America's individually preferred media have to say about it. Here are some personal impressions:

Rick Santorum's facial expressions, as he listened to the few questions the moderators bothered to address to him, precluded anybody actually listening to whatever answers he eventually offered. "Gee," I thought, "he looks like he comes to school on the little bus." I suspect he won't be around for the next debate. (By the way, the eventual answers were not too impressive either.)

Michele Bachman's hair and makeup were just wrong. There was a bit too much blue eyeliner, and a hell of a lot too much hair lacquer. Many will say that it's a shame that a female candidate's appearance should matter so much, but appearances matter just as much for male candidates as well. As for what she had to say, who knows? She got totally predictable questions, and answered them with generally off-topic talking points.

Newt Gingrich, who knows he's out of it, was just having fun. I kind of enjoyed the way he stirred the pot — when the "moderators" (ha!) gave him the chance. As a long-term pot stirrer myself, I just had to smile.

Herman Cain acquitted himself nicely. Although I suspect nobody in the mostly Tea Party audience was following his "9-9-9" plan, he sounded as if he knew what he was talking about, which, of course, is what matters most. The plan itself would exacerbate the rift between the rich and the poor (and the decimation of the middle class) in the United States, but it is proof that race need not be a significant factor in the class war. Wealth is colorless. Nevertheless, as we're all aware, he doesn't stand a chance.

Jon Huntsman has good hair, but he's a bit too tan. Is that supposed to suggest that he actually spent time outdoors in Afghanistan? If so, I suspect that suggestion might be just too subtle for the Republican base. Anyway, he didn't use the opportunity of the debate to establish himself as a centrist — his only chance to differentiate himself from the pack — and hence made little or no impression at all.

Ron Paul came over as aged and frail, I'm afraid. He's lost the oomph he showed four years ago, and while he tossed a dart or two at Perry, they didn't hit very hard.

So, that leaves Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, the front-runners. In the handsome-off, I thought Romney had a slight advantage tonight — that is, until MSNBC tossed in an homage to Ronald Reagan (presumably because the debate was held at the Reagan Library.) Perry, we could see, looks a lot more like Reagan that Romney does.

The big news, however, will be that Romney wants to preserve Social Security while Perry wants to end it. Given that primary voters tend to be a bunch of old farts like me, I'd say "advantage Romney" for tonight — but you can't, by any means, count Perry out.

Hell. He really looks quite a lot like Reagan.

Poll numbers

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, 60% of Americans do not approve of the job President Obama has done in managing the economy. My question is, "Who the hell are those people in the other 40%?"

The right insists that Obama can't do anything right, and the left is not far behind in its disapproval. Long-term readers of this blog may remember that Obama lost my support when he surrounded himself with the Robert Rubin gang before he was elected.

Granted, the president doesn't actually manage the economy — the Fed does the monetary policy and the Congress does the fiscal policy. On the other hand, one ought to be able to look to the president for some leadership. Leadership has been notably absent as Obama has consistently crumbled under the weight of Republican demands even before sitting down to play at negotiation.

Yes, I said play. If any authentic negotiation has taken place, I haven't noticed it. Right now, as the Republicans hold hostage the economic health of the entire world by refusing to increase the debt ceiling, the only real discussion seems to be about just how austere the austerity must be. Nobody at all is talking about the need for further stimulus.

For most Americans, though, Obama's negatives are based not on any particular policies. Their poor opinions are based on looking around — at the unemployed and underemployed, at the way wages have lagged behind the price of staples like food and energy, and (despite a good deal of shouting about the need to shrink government) reductions in government services that have an adverse impact on quality of life.

So, who are those people in the approving 40%?

Some have to be Obama loyalists who will support him no matter what he does — there's a lot of cognitive dissonance theory at work among those who drank the Kool-Aid in 2008. Then, I guess, there are the respondents who are doing reasonably well at the moment and don't much care what's happening to others. Finally, I suspect, there are those Democrats who tell the pollsters they approve in the hope that the poll results won't look too bad.

The same poll had Mitt Romney ahead of Obama among registered voters, but nobody liked him very much either, and the other Republican hopefuls fared considerably worse. It's not looking like employment is going to pick up much, if at all, by next year; and if we have to wait for the housing market to recover for the economy to recover, the next presidential term will be just as much a downer as the current one.

Okay, I seem to recall swearing off predictions a while ago. Let's just say that, like a lot of others, I'm not feeling optimistic.

Conventional Republicans

Frankly, I don't get it. The rhetoric hasn't changed -- not even a little bit. Okay, it worked for them in 2000 and 2004, sort of -- if you believe they actually won rather than stole those elections -- but a rational person might ask if using rhetoric associated with eight years of failure is, well, rational.

Mitt Romney took the "liberal as boogieman" rhetoric to what may be a new extreme. It played very well with the convention delegates, of course. The main qualification for representatives to the Republican convention, it seems, is extremism. Mike Huckabee, as we have come to expect, spoke of a choice between good and evil (before rambling off into a story about veterans and school desks.)

Mind you, those were the speeches scheduled before the network coverage began.

Rudy Guiliani, on the other hand, was a lot more effective, and even managed to go close to ten minutes without mentioning 9/11. He was especially effective when attacking Obama's inconsistencies, although the delegates seemed a bit confused when he criticized Obama's change from being against wiretapping to being for wiretapping. Nevertheless, it was one hell of a speech.

Sarah Palin did exactly what she had to do. She read her speech from the teleprompter without stepping on any lines. She and her family are attractive and well-scrubbed, and she delivered the requisite digs against Obama, Washington, and the national media with a brilliant smile. Surprisingly, I heard very little that sounded like a direct appeal to women -- probably a good choice on the part of her speechwriters. Everybody assumes the choice of Palin was a calculated effort to peel away some of the women's vote from the Democrats, so a bit of understatement was in order.