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

Scab referees removed

Posted on September 27, 2012 by oddmanout215

NFL team owners, apparently rattled by public outrage over bad calls by scab referees during the first three weeks of professional football season, have agreed to let a little more of their enormous wealth trickle down to the referees union:

The locked-out NFL officials will return to work Thursday. The league announced a settlement was reached late Wednesday with the NFL Referees Association, which had been locked out for three months.

It is an eight-year deal, the NFL announced. Union members will vote on ratification on Friday.
The NFL and its referees strike a deal. Word comes two days after a controversial call made by a replacement ref in Monday night’s Packers-Seahawks game gave the story national exposure.

Thursday’s game between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens in Baltimore will be the first game worked this season by union members, as the league lifted its lockout.

Greg Aiello, the NFL’s public relations man, reported via Twitter at about midnight ET that an agreement had been reached…

I’m sure the TV announcers — those glib ex-players in the extra-large suits — heaved a huge sigh of relief at news of the deal. They will no longer be in the awkward position of having to implicitly criticize their masters by pointing out that the scab refs were destroying the credibility of the league.

Footnote: Don’t you wish the American public could direct some outrage at the Republican scum who are trying to break the unions of schoolteachers, firefighters, and other essential public servants?

From Marc Ash of Reader Supported News:

Think workers have no value, think anyone can do any job, think experience doesn’t matter? Ask the Green Bay Packers or the Detroit Lions or any head coach or player in the NFL, they’ll break it down for you. American workers have value. The NFL like all American businesses (whether they know it or not) was built on the backs of workers. The workers are the process, and in the case of the NFL the fans and customers as well.

Posted in mainstream media, sports | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Boehner’s Gloria Gaynor moment

Posted on September 20, 2012 by oddmanout215

You remember Gloria Gaynor — thump, thump, thump, thump — “I will survive.”

Even as he joked “I just hope I survive,” House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to defend Mitt Romney’s now-infamous 47 percent remarks Thursday, and insisted the Republican ticket can still win.

Asked repeatedly about Romney’s secretly videotaped admissions that he doesn’t care about the 47 percent of people who he said pay no income taxes and therefore won’t vote for him, Boehner demurred, instead saying the election is about jobs…

You’ll be OK, Johnny. Just keep that liquor cabinet stocked.

Posted in humor, Politics | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

A woman’s place

Posted on September 13, 2012 by oddmanout215

This is for you heartless liberal fools who think Ohio Gov. John Kasich and other Republicans, just because they want to take away women’s reproductive rights, aren’t sensitive to women’s needs:

Republican Gov. John Kasich of Ohio said Wednesday at a Romney campaign rally that his wife was at home doing laundry while he gave political speeches…

“…It’s not easy to be a spouse of an elected official,” Kasich continued. “You know, they’re at home, doing the laundry and doing so many things while we’re up here on the stage getting applause, right? They don’t often share in it. And it is hard for the spouse to hear the criticism and to put up with the travel schedule and to have to be at home taking care of the kids. And where is the politician? Out on the road…”

I guess if you close your eyes and wish real hard, it’s almost possible to believe marriage today is like it was in those 1950s sitcoms. The last thing the Kasichs of the world want to deal with is the reality of domestic life in a wrecked economy, more than a half-century after Leave It To Beaver.

Something tells me Kasich and his homeys didn’t read The New York Times Magazine cover story about real life in 2012:

…As the usual path to the middle class disappears, what’s emerging in its place is a nascent middle-class matriarchy, in which women… pay the mortgage and the cable bills while the men try to find their place…

Posted in history, humor, The New Depression, unemployment | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Warren vs. Wall Street (and Obama)

Posted on September 8, 2012 by oddmanout215

There is an amazing disconnect between Elizabeth Warren and the man for whom she gave her excellent speech Wednesday night at the big Democratic pep rally:

“People feel like the system is rigged against them,” Warren said. “And here’s the painful part: they’re right. The system is rigged. Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs — the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs — still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them.

“Anyone here have a problem with that?”

Warren sounded like a Democrat. Barack Obama did not sound like a Democrat — i.e., a New Deal Democrat — during his acceptance speech Thursday night. Predictably, the big chief paid lip service to the populist themes raised by Warren, but didn’t dare suggest doing anything specific to correct injustices that have undermined the credibility not only of the financial industry but also the justice system. Such as making the crooked Wall Street CEOs reimburse us for bailing out their banks.

James Fallows’ argument that Obama’s speech “‘did the job’ he needed it to do” is true only in regard to people who already are knee-jerk Obama fans. Obama said nothing to indicate he can be anything other than the Democrat-in-name-only who wasted his first term trying to buddy up to Republican wackos. The only reason to vote for him — and it’s reason enough — is to keep the Romneybot out of the White House.

Footnote: I’m imagining Obama crony Tim Geithner’s reaction as Warren spoke. He is not applauding. He definitely has a problem with anyone who disses his bros on Wall Street.

Posted in Obama, Occupy Wall Street, The New Depression, unemployment, Wall Street | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Update on Ohio voter suppression efforts

Posted on September 8, 2012 by oddmanout215

It’s a presidential election year, so Ohio Republicans are up to their usual dirty tricks. Whether the feds will stop them from stealing the election this year is still up in the air:

Judge Peter Economus has set a hearing for September 13 to address Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted’s refusal to comply with the court’s ruling that the state must allow early voting on the three days leading up to the general election. Economus released a terse order Wednesday afternoon: “The Court ORDERS that Defendant Secretary of State Jon Husted personally attend the hearing.” The Obama campaign filed a motion earlier Wednesday asking the court to make Husted give way.

On Friday, Husted backed down, although the Republican Party quickly appealed the court ruling:

…The Republican secretary still hopes to forestall a federal court’s order that he set hours for voting during that run-up period to Nov. 6, asking to hold off at least until the state’s request to appeal is decided…Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, a Republican, immediately announced that Ohio would appeal…

The ruling was considered a victory for Democrats who are believed to have been the beneficiaries of a large number of in-person early voters in the final weekend in Democrat-rich counties, such as Cuyahoga, before the 2008 election, helping Obama win Ohio and the White House…

DeWine has said that he is appealing to fight for Ohio’s rights to set its own laws.

“States’ rights” regarding voting, as if the Civil War never happened!

Posted in dirty rotten scoundrels, voter suppression | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Rove: Don’t forget to vote white

Posted on August 30, 2012 by oddmanout215

From The Raw Story:

Republican strategist Karl Rove says that part of Mitt Romney’s plan to win the White House has to include getting “white Democrats” not to vote for President Barack Obama.

During a discussion with Politico’s Mike Allen on Monday, Rove made it clear that politics had actually become more racialized since the country elected its first black president.

“Obama has no chance of carrying Indiana,” the Fox News contributor explained. “I was having dinner with [Indiana Gov.] Mitch Daniels this spring, and I said, ‘Mitch, is there a white Democrat south of Indianapolis who’s supporting Obama who’s not a college professor in Bloomington?’ And he stopped for a minute over his green beans and says, ‘Not that I can think of…’”

“You know, Indiana’s gone,” he insisted, adding that North Carolina is also “gone” because “New South independents” — which The Atlantic‘s James Bennett says is code for “white independents” — and “racial moderates, economic conservatives, who in 2008 said this would be really good for our country, let’s put the issue of race behind us,” but now they are saying “we did the right thing” and the experiment failed…

Rove’s implication is that Obama has proven himself to be anti-white — an appalling lie by a vengeful nerd who is spending hundreds of millions of billionaires’ dollars to make the lie resonate. Let’s hope most voters understand the Turd Blossom’s outreach to white people is nothing more than a tactic to help elect those who represent the obscenely rich.

Footnote: My mother’s people came here from England more than 200 years ago, and my father’s people are from County Tyrone in Ireland, but I have nothing in common with the Romneys and Roves of the world. In fact, I wouldn’t want to live in the same city with such soulless creatures. Which means I’m not white, I guess — not in the way that Rove means.

Posted in dirty rotten scoundrels, humor, Mitt Romney | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment