Today, I washed as many dirty dishes at a soup kitchen as Paul Ryan did on Saturday. I don’t think that makes me a saint or anything, but the feeling of accomplishment is very satisfying. What kind of people are we, anyway, if we can’t pretend to help those less fortunate than ourselves?
People think Obama is going to come out swinging in the next debate with Romney and make a bid to turn things around. Don’t count on it. Obama doesn’t care about this country. He doesn’t care about The Constitution. He doesn’t care about democracy. He’s going to be richer than Croesus when he leaves office and cashes in his chips with corporate America. Does anyone seriously think he cares about being the spokesmodel for the plutocracy for another four years? Why should he? His campaign managers care, because it means jobs for them in a second Obama administration, but Obama doesn’t need a job again as long as he lives. You saw the real man in the first debate — a guy who’s bored to tears with being President, who’s ready to get paid off.
Paul Zahl reflects on what’s not being talked about in this year’s campaign for President — basically, everything that’s really important:
In the 1982 movie entitled Missing, directed by Costa Gavras, the “Ed Horman” character, played by Jack Lemmon, says to two U.S. Embassy culprits, “At least I live in a country where people like you can be prosecuted for crimes like this one.”
The line becomes ironic, as no one from our country ever was prosecuted for complicity in the murder of Mr. Horman’s son, Charles, in the aftermath of the coup against Salvador Allende in l973 in Chile. The complicity of United States officials in Santiago was later confirmed when a previously classified State Department memo was released during the Clinton administration.
Because Jack Lemmon’s performance as “Ed Horman” is so poignant and so real, it is hard not to identify with him, the grieving father, a devout Christian Scientist businessman from New York City, no matter what your politics are. You identify with the human drama — it really happened, and I myself knew Ed Horman and Charles personally — and you are filled with feeling for him, and you agree with his indignation. He left Chile with the faith that justice would be done, at least in America. It wasn’t. Justice was never done. Mr. Horman died without seeing justice done on behalf of his son.
And what about the violators of habeas corpus at Guantanamo Bay? And the makers and approvers of the “hit lists” of people to be eliminated without capture during an undeclared war? And the idea that extreme distanced combat, conducted by robots and therefore as impersonal as you could almost possibly get, is a good thing? (I grant you, it is an expedient thing.)
Or our “hit makers'” confidence that the lynching of a North African dictator without a trial, in the immediate aftermath of a US drone attack, was justified? (What did our forefathers and foremothers fight for in 1776? Why did they come here?) Or the people who decided to assassinate a world-historical terrorist, no matter how heinous his crimes, without even the possibility of a trial? (Why did this country take the trouble to try war criminals in 1945 and 1946 at Nuremberg? We knew they were guilty. Why try them? I ask you.)
Poor Ed Horman in retrospect! “I knew him, Horatio.” I remember the week that Charles, the Hormans’ only child, was accepted at Harvard College. Mr. Horman was as proud and beaming a father as you could ever see.
Last night, after my wife and I had watched Missing, viewing the movie doubles for people I grew up with, I went over to the bookshelf where I keep my childhood books. There it was: Howard Pyle’s Men of Iron.
The plate inside simply reads: “This Book Belongs to Charles Horman.” (I’d written my own name in pencil over his — I was about seven.) Charles’ plate has a drawing of a dog over it, the kind of drawing he liked so much, the kind of drawing that his Jack Lemmon father, at the end of the tale, is gathering up to take back home, to his mother.
It seems that our two, or is it four candidates to become President of the United States agree on a point that cries out from the earth for debate. They agree about drones, and Executive decisions to kill without trial (and without oversight), and “Let’s lock the door and throw away the key now” (Jay and the Americans).
Why is there no debate on the new American morality? It has nothing to do with sex and nothing to do with food. It has to do with Double O Seven — the license to kill. On that point, on who exactly is “like a tree planted by the waters” (Psalm 1:3), there is no difference at all.
Stay the course, America — we’re getting there!
“Mitt Romney’s dick is this big — at least!”
“Mitt Romney’s dick is no bigger then this — and I’m being generous!”
The debate tonight — 90 minutes of campaign-ad sound bites, winner determined in instant polls based on demeanor. American democracy at rock bottom.
Obamney has pulled ahead of Obamney in a major national poll. Oh, no! This means that Obamney might actually beat Obamney in November!
The principled Republican right has always been a minority. It has always had to make alliances with unprincipled hairpins in order to gain national power — typically with Southern segregationists, or Christian theocrats.
It has always been an uneasy and tenuous collaboration. It is so uneasy and tenuous now that “rational” Republicans have had to abandon all their principles in order to keep the hairpins on board. If this capitulation fails in 2012, the strategy may have reached the end of its practical usefulness.
If the capitulation succeeds, what will it gain for Republicans? Power without even the vestige of principle — a moral vacuum that will itself lead inevitably and in short order to the end of The Republican Party.
I hate Barack Obama — I have no respect for him as a public servant or as a man.
In terms of the crucial issues facing America today, I don’t think it makes the slightest difference whether he or Mitt Romney gets elected as President in November.
Having admitted that, however, I also think that The Republican Party, with its efforts at nihilistic obstructionism and voter suppression, and Mitt Romney, with his strategy of cynical mendacity, represent the lowest depths of moral depravity that have ever been sounded in the history of American politics.
The election of either Obama or Romney in November will represent a practical disaster for America. The election of Romney will represent a moral disaster from which the republic may never recover.
You can draw analogies to poker for almost any human enterprise that involves high stakes and competition — politics falling handily into that category.
Obama is a pretty good poker player but he has a major flaw — when he gets a good stack in front of him he grows cautious, you might even say cowardly. This is a disastrous strategy, because your opponents, if they’re any good, will read it eventually and start bluffing you off every hand. You’ll start bleeding away blinds and small bets until your stack is not so good anymore.
Obama reverted to cautious mode in the 2008 primary race every time his chances started looking good. The Clintons, who are very sharp poker players, would then start hammering him, without provoking a strong response, until his chances stopped looking so good.
But Obama is a great short-stack player. He hates to lose and eventually regains his gumption.
He was playing cautiously in the first debate with Romney, letting Romney bluff him off every hand, and his stack diminished accordingly.
If history is any judge, Obama will now start calling Romney’s bluffs and raising the stakes, forcing Romney to take bigger and bigger chances, and it will probably work for him, as it did in 2008.
Romney does nothing but bluff, on every hand, overplaying even the good cards he’s dealt. That’s not a winning strategy, either, unless you’re playing against wimps. Obama looked like a wimp at the debate, but Romney will make a huge mistake if he thinks that’s all there is to Obama’s game.
Written and narrated by my niece Nora . . .
Word is that Mitt Romney is preparing a series of “zingers” — short, memorable digs at Barack Obama — to liven up the debate on Wednesday. A few of them have leaked out to the press:
I know you are, but what am I?
Did you get that idea from your Muslim dad?
The last time I heard that one I fell off my dinosaur.
Whoa, bro — don’t mug me!
You’re the President of the United States Of America — not the President of me.
Aides report that Romney’s biggest problem with the zingers is not breaking up when he delivers them.
We’ve had four years to stop the banks from doing again to us what they did to us in 2008 — and nothing has been done. NOTHING. This is the greatest calamity that has befallen our country since 1861. Obama is the worst President America has known since James Buchanan. When the obituary of the American experiment is written, Obama will be recognized as the chief architect of its demise — the worst President in history BY FAR. The fatal President.
Click on the image to enlarge.
Obama has basically done away with two concepts enshrined in our Constitution — habeas corpus and due process. If you really want to support Obama, don’t vote for him — go out and defecate on the graves of the patriots who died defending our Constitution. Be honest about what you’re doing.
. . . you’re coming up short — gonna put you on trial in a Sicilian court.