Operation Caymans: Seeking Mitt’s buried treasure

Posted on October 29, 2012 by oddmanout215

A couple of Yes Men agents visit an island paradise to find out exactly where Mitt Romney and other corporate pirates buried their treasure to avoid paying taxes:

Support the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act.

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Who’s scarier, Freddie Krueger or Philip Roth?

Posted on October 24, 2012 by oddmanout215

Reassessing an odd work of fiction, because I need a break from the mainstream media’s “facts”:

Novels and movies about ghosts and ghoulies are supposed to be scary but rarely are. If you want to enjoy a Halloween story that will chill you to the bone, read the National Book Award-winning Sabbath’s Theater (1995), by Philip Roth, master of morbid hyper-realism.

Just kidding. Sabbath’s Theater has nothing to do with Halloween, but read it anyway. Even if you don’t enjoy the novel, you’ll have to admire the author’s knack for brutally funny self-analysis and dark spiritual insights.

Or maybe not. Here’s Roth, from the point of view of his aging protagonist Mickey Sabbath, expressing what a dark-minded motorist might feel while approaching a dreaded destination. This could be me a few years ago, on my way to a new temp job in a suburban office park:

The drive was interminable. Had he missed a turn or was this itself the next abode: a coffin that you endlessly steer through the placeless darkness, recounting and recounting the uncontrollable events that induced you to become someone unforeseen. And so fast! So quickly! Everything runs away, beginning with who you are, and at some indefinable point you come to half-understand that the ruthless antagonist is yourself.

Sabbath has turned his wife into a basket case and lost his home in the process. He has rejected old friends and abandoned his artistic goals. He’s his own worst enemy. My hunch is that the misanthropic Roth, in creating the misanthropic Sabbath, set out to present the most unattractive version of himself he could imagine, to see if he could somehow make him a sympathetic character.

You be the judge. I’ll say only that the book should have come with a warning label: “Think twice about reading this if you are more than 50 years old, poor and/or battling suicidal depression; inclined to react violently to misogynistic or racist rants; actively or latently anti-Semitic; averse to politically incorrect ideas; incapable of appreciating irony; offended by nostalgia for the World War II era, mockery of Alcoholics Anonymous, blasphemous interpretations of Biblical passages, or unusual sexual situations, including ritual masturbation in a graveyard.”

Footnote: Sabbath’s Theater deserved critical acclaim back in the day, but it may have gotten too much of it. Check out James Wolcott’s hilarious put-down of Roth’s “horny geezer with a white beard.”

Posted in arts, fiction | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Binders full of lies

Posted on October 20, 2012 by oddmanout215

The topic of Paul Krugman’s Friday column was Mitt Romney’s failure to propose a credible jobs plan to bring down the unemployment rate. The upshot of it was that Romney is far less serious about creating jobs than Barack Obama, who, as we know, has not exactly attacked the unemployment problem with the fervor of an FDR.

I’m buying much of Krugman’s argument, including his point that Congressional Republicans, from the get-go, did their best to block any effort to pass legislation that might have reflected well on Obama.

But the main reason to vote for Obama is that he’s not Romney. It is Romney’s phenomenal propensity for lying about matters large and small. It’s the Ted Bundy-esque gap between the facts of his life and how he describes his life to the rest of us.

An example from Krugman:

… Mr. Romney, who started as a business consultant and then moved into the heady world of private equity, insists on portraying himself as a plucky small businessman.

I am not making this up. In Tuesday’s debate, he declared, “I came through small business. I understand how hard it is to start a small business.” In his speech at the Republican convention, he declared, “When I was 37, I helped start a small company.”

Ahem. It’s true that when Bain Capital started, it had only a handful of employees. But it had $37 million in funds, raised from sources that included wealthy Europeans investing through Panamanian shell companies and Central American oligarchs living in Miami while death squads associated with their families ravaged their home nations. Hey, doesn’t every plucky little start-up have access to that kind of financing.. ?

Let’s not even dwell on the truism that great crimes often lurk behind great fortunes. The important thing to remember is that the profoundly bland and proper-seeming Romney makes up a new set of “facts” every time he makes a new speech. He rattles off lies in bunches — bundles, he might say — knowing that most of them will go uncorrected by the media and bolster his credibility with low-information voters, also known as morons.

Being a full-time liar used to be considered a drawback, but times have changed. This year it might turn out to exactly what most of the country wants.

Posted in dirty rotten scoundrels, economic collapse, Great Depression, liar, Mitt Romney, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Bound to be a hit

Posted on October 18, 2012 by oddmanout215

Mitt Romney was describing his efforts to recruit women cabinet members while he was governor of Massachusetts — utter bullshit, of course — when he used the bizarre phrase “binders full of women.” I imagined some kinky Mormon rite taking place in the basement of Salt Lake Temple. Some viewers of the debate were inspired to set the phrase to music. Rock on, Romneybot!

Posted in humor, liar, mainstream media, Mitt Romney | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Well played, Barry, but what about jobs?

Posted on October 17, 2012 by oddmanout215

Standing up to lying scoundrels was never your strong suit, Barry, and you hit a new low in the first debate, so it was a relief to see you kick butt when the Romneybot unleashed a fusillade of new lies in the second.

You said “What Governor Romney said just isn’t true” early on, when he lied about his reasons for opposing the bailout of the auto industry. You told him it was “offensive” to play politics regarding the death of four Americans at a diplomatic mission in Libya, and you said “Get the transcript” when he lied about what you said the day after the Americans were killed. You nailed him on his absurd claim that he could both install tax cuts and reduce the federal deficit.

Your best moment came when you articulated what’s at the rotten core of his plan to revitalize the economy:

Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector; that’s been his philosophy as governor; that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate. You can make a lot of money and pay lower tax rates than somebody who makes a lot less. You can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money.

Unfortunately for you and the rest of us, you revealed next to nothing about your plan. What about jobs, Mr. Cool? What about those millions of people who can’t find work and the millions who have jobs but aren’t making as much money as their parents did? What will you do to help generate good jobs in your second term that you didn’t do in your first? Be specific.

Only a wealthy person or an idiot would vote for a smug corporatist like Romney, but there are a lot of smart, decent people who were put off by your refusal in your first term to walk the walk when it came to fighting for the working class. You’ve got to do better on what Bush the Elder called the vision thing, and do better in a hurry, or the cold-blooded creep you lit into Tuesday night is going to win by default.

Posted in economic collapse, globalization, Great Depression, liar, Mitt Romney, Obama, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Ryan dons apron to dish out big lie

Posted on October 17, 2012 by oddmanout215

Matt Taibbi made a good point regarding Joe Biden’s demeanor in his debate with Paul Ryan — laughter is entirely appropriate when your opponent’s lies are so big and so numerous that you can’t keep up with correcting them. From Rolling Stone:

We all should be [laughing]. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called “objective” news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, “Come back when you’re serious.”

The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn’t even a real platform, it’s a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.

The other day, Ryan underscored Taibbi’s point by presenting himself as a compassionate conservative, the antithesis of the guy who has said that the main reason he got into politics was Ayn Rand, the “philosopher” known primarily for her contempt of the working class. From The Washington Post:

The head of a northeast Ohio charity says that the Romney campaign last week “ramrodded their way” into the group’s Youngstown soup kitchen so that GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan could get his picture taken washing dishes in the dining hall.

Brian J. Antal, president of the Mahoning County St. Vincent De Paul Society, said that he was not contacted by the Romney campaign ahead of the Saturday morning visit by Ryan, who stopped by the soup kitchen after a town hall at Youngstown State University.

“We’re a faith-based organization; we are apolitical because the majority of our funding is from private donations,” Antal said in a phone interview Monday afternoon. “It’s strictly in our bylaws not to do it. They showed up there, and they did not have permission. They got one of the volunteers to open up the doors.”

He added: “The photo-op they did wasn’t even accurate. He did nothing. He just came in here to get his picture taken at the dining hall.”

Posted in dirty rotten scoundrels, economic collapse, Great Depression, humor, liar, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tinted windows (a pre-debate rant)

Posted on October 16, 2012 by oddmanout215

What goes on in there, Mittens?

Odd Man Out is down but not quite out, despite an ongoing reversal of fortune that has left me in debt and without health insurance. Just thought I’d let you know, in case you wondered why I post so infrequently these days.

In a nutshell, I’m a writer who no longer gets paid to write. One of millions of workers sidelined by corporate bean counters who know that cutting jobs — through outsourcing, attrition, and making each remaining employee do the work of three — is the quickest route to higher profits for the one-percenters, and so what if the long-term consequences of a permanently downsized workforce are disastrous for the economy.

To make ends meet, I work a job that is, in some ways, the 21st-century equivalent of selling apples in the Great Depression. The other day a passer-by wearing a STUD MUFFIN T-shirt told me to get a real job. “Have a nice day,” I replied. My restraint was something to feel proud of, like not spitting on the car with tinted windows that rolled past me later that same day. I can’t abide tinted windows.

I’m a lot less confident now than back in January, but I cling to the notion that there still might be time in middle age to re-assess my situation and fix it. I’m a bit like Gary Shteyngart’s protagonist in Super Sad True Love Story:

…I will need to re-grow my melting liver, replace the entire circulatory system with ‘smart blood,’ and find someplace safe and warm (but not too warm) to while away the angry seasons and the holocausts…

At this point, I’d settle for health insurance, for keeping a roof over my head long enough to get some good writing done, and for defeat on Election Day of the corporate thieves who would say and do anything to further enrich themselves at the expense of the poor. I’m thinking of Mitt Romney’s assertion that nobody in America dies because he or she is uninsured, and of Paul Krugman’s reaction to it:

…Even the idea that everyone gets urgent care when needed from emergency rooms is false. Yes, hospitals are required by law to treat people in dire need, whether or not they can pay. But that care isn’t free — on the contrary, if you go to an emergency room you will be billed, and the size of that bill can be shockingly high…

More important, going to the emergency room when you’re very sick is no substitute for regular care, especially if you have chronic health problems…

Is there anything more despicable than a super-wealthy con man, coddled from birth, who insists the poor have no reason to complain? A cold-blooded technocrat who preaches family values but lives behind tinted windows, hiding his dirty money from the IRS?

No need to answer such angry questions. Just watch the Romneybot in action tonight. And make sure you vote in your own interest a few weeks from now, which means against Romney, unless you happen to be a one-percenter.

Posted in economic collapse, Great Depression, humor, liar, Mitt Romney, taxes, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

‘Bravado’ as euphemism for lying

Posted on October 10, 2012 by oddmanout215

Frank Bruni recently argued that Mitt Romney won his first debate with Barack Obama because he showed more “bravado,” which Bruni seems to think is the one character trait common to all successful politicians.

In making his point, Bruni dodged an important question: Would voters favor the candidate with bravado — “outsize confidence” is another term Bruni used — even if they knew that candidate was a liar?

Bruni wrote “For the debate viewers [Romney] was all pluck and no doubt, even when he fibbed or flipped,” while Obama, on the other hand, “…just lost touch with his bravado in Denver.”

There’s the dodge — Romney didn’t merely fib and flip, he contradicted positions he’d previously taken and pretended he’d been taking the same positions all along. He lied, boldly and frequently, and Bruni should have stated this plainly. He should have mentioned that Romney lied when he said Obama “has not signed one new free trade agreement in the past four years,” and when he said Obama was “silent” in the face of street protests in Iran in 2009. And so on.

Here’s how Robert Parry weighed in on the issue:

Romney has long been known as a serial flip-flopper who changes positions to fit the political season, but his pervasive mendacity has been a concern since the Republican primaries when his GOP rivals complained about him misrepresenting their positions and reinventing his own…

That pattern has continued into the general election campaign, with Romney telling extraordinary whoppers on the campaign trail and even during last Wednesday’s presidential debate, such as when he claimed his health-care plan covered people with pre-existing conditions when it doesn’t…

Parry added, “Telling lies while waving your arms shouldn’t trump telling the truth in a moderate tone.”

And finally, “It’s almost as if many Americans like being lied to.”

Don’t get me wrong: The person who immediately should have called Romney on his lies was Obama. Maybe he was simply stunned by the audacity of Romney’s mendacity, or afraid of appearing angry, but those aren’t good excuses.

But reporters add nothing to the discussion by focusing on bravado and other intangibles. They merely reveal themselves as unwilling to break free of the old “he said, she said” approach to journalism that helps liars such as Romney prosper.

Bruni used Dan Rather’s next-day assessment of Romney’s performance to help make his case: “We learned again last night, if we needed any reminding, that there’s power in taking the view, ‘Listen, I’m frequently in error, but never in doubt.’ ”

That’s exactly wrong, Dan. Romney and like-minded politicians actually are saying, “I’m frequently lying, but never in doubt.” And it’s the job of journalists to call attention to their lies.

Footnote: Obama is terrible, but can you imagine what’s in store for the 99 percent if the Romneybot, the “corporations are people” candidate, is elected?

Posted in dirty rotten scoundrels, liar, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, New York Times, Obama, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Big Bird was a topic, but not big banks

Posted on October 7, 2012 by oddmanout215

I just reread my rant about Barack Obama’s feeble performance in his first debate with the Romneybot, and I thought whoa, Odd Man Out, what were you really angry about? Obama’s failure to aggressively challenge Romney’s lies? His looking down, like an admonished schoolboy, as Romney blamed him for the plight of the middle class?

No. I was angry because Obama stood there and insisted he and Romney didn’t differ all that much on many issues. Because Big Bird — mentioned by Romney in connection with his promise to de-fund PBS — seemed more important to these guys than big banks. Because the debate showed that the two-party system is again forcing a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Here’s Robert Scheer reminding us that Obama was just as reluctant as the new, upgraded Romneybot to acknowledge the 800-pound gorilla sittng between them on the stage in Denver:

Rare was the commentator who grasped, as did David Weidner in The Wall Street Journal, that the six minutes of the debate devoted to Wall Street regulation was bizarrely disproportionate to the crucial role of the financial industry in first creating and then managing the government’s response to the crisis:

“If you think six minutes out of the planned 90-minute debate is appropriate, then consider this: Since the last presidential election, we’ve endured the worst stock market, housing and economic crash since the Great Depression. And Wall Street was in the middle of it all.”

One candidate is black, the other white. One’s tie was blue, the other’s red. Neither candidate voiced a plan for putting the long-term unemployed back to work, or for effectively regulating the monster banks that caused the catastrophe that cost them their jobs.

Footnote: And please don’t mention the misleading September jobs report that says the unemployment rate has fallen below eight percent. As The New York Times noted. the share of jobless workers out of work for more than six months is 40 percent, or 4.8 million people. And, as of July, “nearly 13 million jobless workers were competing for 3.7 million job openings.”

Posted in economic collapse, Great Recession, mainstream media, Mitt Romney, Obama, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Debate debacle

Posted on October 4, 2012 by oddmanout215

I’m thinking of the Sept. 30 Huffington Post story that began like this:

Ahead of the first presidential debate this Wednesday, the Obama campaign has rejected the idea that the president will be hurling any “zingers” at opponent Mitt Romney.

That was the political understatement of the year. It wasn’t just the absence of zingers that made Obama look so infuriatingly weak. It was his obvious determination to avoid any responses that might be construed as over-aggressive, even in the face of Mitt Romney’s numerous self-contradictions.

Maybe Obama took the advice of advisers who warned him not to appear “un-presidential” — i.e., indignant in the face of Mitt Romney’s lies. More likely, Obama was simply being what many of us already thought he was — a smart, smooth technocrat who is temperamentally incapable of the combativeness that a genuine leader must summon at those moments when the policies and principles he has espoused are under attack.

Why didn’t Obama make the obvious point that Romney’s attempt to present himself as concerned about average Americans was and is ludicrous? Why did he not even mention Romney’s infamous dismissal of 47 percent of the electorate?

Pardon the boxing analogy, but here was a man so concerned about staying ahead on points that he wouldn’t even trade punches with his opponent. He could have knocked Romney out of the ring but instead spent much of the contest backpedaling and literally looking down, as if his only goal was to make sure he didn’t trip over his own feet.

Obama may well survive his timid performance in the first debate — he didn’t even defend Social Security in a spirited and convincing fashion — but he has again reminded us why there often doesn’t seem to be a dime’s worth of difference between himself and Romney, or between the two major parties as they exist today.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments