Well, at least the Republicans haven’t blamed Hurricane Sandy on Obama.  I’m sure they will come up with something hurricane-related to blame on him in the next few days.  They say everything that has happened since his election—recession, unemployment, gas prices, house foreclosures—are all his fault.  Does anyone remember George W. Bush?  Of course Republicans are in denial that he ever existed, got us into two disastrous wars, turned a budget surplus into a humongous deficit, let the financial industry run rampant and nearly destroy the American and global economy. But Republicans have their own kind of logic.  It involves ignoring their own history, pretending their failed trickle-down policies actually work (which they don’t), never acknowledge they caused a lot of problems though obstructionism, and truth has no relevance in the pursuit of power.  You’ve heard the latest Romney lie that Jeep is moving all its production to China.  Even after the lie was exposed the Republicans kept running the TV ad.  It’s unfortunate that Sandy arrived at election time.  Hopefully we can avoid another disaster.  Sandy’s mess can probably be cleaned up in a couple months.  If Romney is elected the mess he will create will take a generation to fix.  Remember what P.J. O’Rourke said, “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it.”

We all know that life is not fair. But one of history’s greatest inequities would be Mitt Romney becoming President of the United States.  Whether Republicans will admit it or not, Obama’s policies have begun to take effect and the economy is turning for the better—slowly, indeed, but turning. Most economists agree that whoever becomes President, things will improve.  So if Romney becomes President, Americans will see a brighter picture and he will claim credit for fixing the economy although no credit will be due.  An example of this is Romney’s spurious statement that he will create 12 million jobs in the next four years.  Economic forecasters have long predicted that 12 million jobs will be created over the next four years no matter who is President.  Romney knows this, but he is already claiming that his plan (whatever that is) will be the reason for those 12 million new jobs, which it won’t be.  Romney has already made the outrageous claim that his election alone will produce a wave of optimism because of what he will do, although no one is really sure what that is.  I would venture that Obama’s reelection would also greatly bolster the American spirit if for no other reason than this dreadful election campaign will be over and we can get on with our collective lives.  The Republicans caused the mess and then obstructed every attempt Obama made to correct their mistakes.  Rewarding them with a Romney victory would be a horrible mistake.

Dear God,

The Republicans are at it again.  In addition to blaming their bigotry on You, now they’re saying You’re the one causing women to get raped. "I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen," according to Indiana Republican Senate candidate Richard Mourdock. I really find that hard to believe. I realize that Your Bible isn’t precisely clear on rape like in Deuteronomy where if a woman was raped in the city both the raper and rapee were stoned to death but if it happened in the country they just wasted the guy. Another prominent Republican, Paul Ryan said his position is that “the method of conception doesn’t change the definition of life.”  You see he wouldn’t allow a women to get an abortion even in the case of rape or incest (which I know you are against, Leviticus 18:6). So, according to Mourdock, if a woman gets raped You wanted it to happen and then, according to Ryan You are adamantly against abortion no matter how conception took place.  Oh I forgot to mention Missouri Senate candidate Republican Rep. Todd Akin who said women subjected to "legitimate rape" (presumably sanctioned by You) get pregnant only because their anti-rape conception system failed.  Kind of like getting pregnant by rape is their fault. It seems the Republicans’ attitude towards women in just about everything is, oh just screw ‘em.  Excuse the pun. I do hope You get through this Presidential Election with Your reputation intact.

Your friend,

Bill

Oh poor Mitty Boo Boo.  That bad old Mr. Obama was attacking him and he didn’t like it.  “Attacking me is not an agenda,” Mitty Boo Boo complained more than once during the last performance of the Presidential Debate Show.  Of course, Mitty Boo Boo would never think of being so nasty as to attack Mr. Obama.  Oh no.  As you can see I am sparing you a rehash of all the lies Romney told which have been factchecked to death.   At several points in the “debate” I heard Romney repeating the same things the President had just said, essentially agreeing with him.  Romney’s pattern seemed to be he would do the same things the President is actually doing only he would somehow do them more, tougher and better.  Like he would have started sanctions against Iran sooner and would make them tougher.  Of course, since he was not the President, he did not actually have to deal with the problem so he can say “would have,” “could have” all he wants. Romney agreed with Obama that America has to work with China economically and politically except that Romney would declare China a “currency manipulator” on day one which hardly seems like a good start for working with another country.  If you look back at all the debates what came out of them?  Nothing substantial.  They were the same old stump speeches woven into so-called debates but all anybody remembers is that Romney came on strong in the first debate and Obama looked like he was suffering from constipation. At least the third Presidential Debate gave us one thing to be thankful for.  It was the last one.

Sideblog:  Romney won the lapel pin issue.  His American flag pin was bigger than Obama’s.

There is a very specific reason why Mitt Romney keeps changing his position on just about every issue. He’s a career businessman.  Businessmen exist for one reason: to make money.  You can’t make money by never modifying your product or updating your service.  Right now the Mittster is adamant that he wants to create jobs in America, but when it was advantageous to him to send American jobs overseas that’s what he did.  For anyone who has spent years in business (and I have) particularly in sales, you learn very quickly that you have to offer a product the clients want to buy.  You may have a product that would be better for the clients but if they don’t want to buy it, they won’t.  For example, when the Mittster was running in the primaries, his main client was the extreme right wing Tea Party so he bragged about being “severely conservative.” It worked. With their backing he got the nomination. Now that he has it, and 75 per cent of the American public think the Tea Partisti are nuts, he has new clients—the entire voting public—so he has to modify his product to appeal to them.  Remember the guy who hated Obamacare so much that he would repeal it his first day in office?  Well, he now says some aspects of it are great and he would keep them.  Could it be that those aspects are products his new clients would like to buy?  Oh, remember the Romney that hated regulations because they cripple business?  He has been replaced by the Romney who thinks some regulations are necessary.  And oh, remember the Romney who slimed 47 per cent of the American public and declared he did not care about them.  At that moment his customers were fat cat supporters.  Now the new, improved Romney says, "My campaign is about the 100 percent of America, and I'm concerned about them.”  Of course, the customers now include the scruffy 47 per cent.  The question for Americans now is:  Would you buy something from this man when you are not sure exactly what he’s selling?

Right after the second Presidential debate women became the demographic target du jour for both parties.  Just think, if you were a black, Hispanic, evangelical lesbian you would be constantly bombarded with solicitations aimed at the category vote every day.  I found it somewhat ridiculous that Romney’s idea of proof that he supports women’s issues is that he appointed women to his cabinet in Massachusetts. Wow!  Millions of women are paid less than men for the same job, they’re worried about their health care, their right to choose, right to obtain contraceptives, victims of abuse and Mitt Romney appoints women to his cabinet.  Did you need more proof that he cares for women than that? He claimed he intentionally solicited names of qualified women which produced the now famous “binders.”  Chalk up another lie to Romney.  Prominent women’s groups in Massachusetts had already compiled the binders to give to whoever became governor.  He did not solicit them they were given to him.  He put women in his cabinet because he already knew he was going to run for President and it would look good.   His popularity in Massachusetts plummeted in his last year because voters felt he was spending too much time out of state preparing his Presidential run.   In case you forgot, here is the actual debate question:  “In what new ways do you intend to rectify the inequalities in the workplace, specifically regarding females making only 72 percent of what their male counterparts earn?” Romney replied he appointed women to his cabinet in Massachusetts.  Obama replied that the first bill he signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Play Act which extended the statute of limitations for filing an equal-pay lawsuit regarding pay discrimination. You figure it out.

If Mitt Romney had gone to high school with me, he would have been called a “snot.”  Snots were the kids who always considered themselves better than everyone else. We also had our ”nerds” but we called them “brains” because, although they might be a bit awkward socially, they were really smart and we admired them because at that time getting good grades in high school was very important to us and our parents.  But the snots, sometimes referred to a “stuck ups,” were universally disliked.  That’s the Mittster’s problem.  He is just not a likable guy.  He really does think he is better than everybody else and that’s the way he comes across. You have heard him defending his offshore bank accounts and bragging about how successful he was in business.  But does he really have to ram it down our throats?  “I’m not going to apologize for being successful,” he says, but does he have to consider everyone who has not attained his millions a failure?  When he labeled the famous 47 percent of Americans moochers who don’t take responsibility for their lives, does anyone doubt that he really meant that?  Of course he did.  The spin artists blow it off and say well he was talking in private so that doesn’t count.  Of course it does.  When speaking to your snotty club members in private that’s when you say exactly what you mean.  Once a snot, always a snot.

Welcome to the Second Presidential Debate pre-game show with Harry and Clyde:

Harry:  Well, excitement has been mounting for the second meeting of the series between Romney and Obama.

Clyde:  Right, Harry.  The Obama fans are hoping their guy can make up for his lack-luster performance in their first outing.

Harry: And the Romney side hopes he can keep up his continuous talking stream regardless of what he says just as long as he keeps talking.

Clyde:  But you know, Harry, it really doesn’t matter what anybody says during these debates because most of it isn’t even true.  What really matters is the performance.  You know, how did he conduct himself, was he too aggressive or not aggressive enough.

Harry; Yeah we saw that in the one game series between Biden and Ryan.

Clyde:  Ryan won that one on number of lies and how many swallows of water he took while Biden clearly led in smirks, laughs, interruptions and eye rolls. You know, the AP scored 92 smiles for Biden which could be a debate record.

Harry: Well, the scoring could go any way tonight since the playing field layout has been changed.

Clyde: Right, it’s town hall rules tonight. And we’ll be right there to explain it to you after it’s over since you probably will miss a lot by concentrating on how the players look and behave rather that what they say.

Harry:  Right they’ve said it all before anyway but you still need pundits to explain it to you in case you didn't get it the first 300 times. 

Clyde: We’ll see you tonight at the event.

 

Harry:  Wait a minute, aren’t the Yankees and Tigers playing tonight

Well, it looks like the miserable people in America are going to decide the Presidential Election.  All we have heard during this campaign is how miserable Americans are.  The news media and politicians, left and right, have gone on endlessly about people who lost their jobs, can’t find a job, have an upside down mortgage, got evicted, have a mountain of debt, have no health insurance… Both parties have been courting these miserable people.  According to the Republicans, everybody in America is miserable and it is all Obama’s fault so if you elect them they will fix all Obama’s mistakes and put you out of your misery.  According to the Democrats a lot of people in the United States are, in fact, miserable but Obama’s policies are turning the situation around so re-elect them and you will no longer be miserable.  This presents a somewhat unique problem for Romney because most of les miserables are in the 47 percent he doesn’t give a shit about but now he says he really does care and wants to make them less miserables.  But to counter this, the non-miserables who have tons of money want to elect Romney so they can continue to be non-miserable with even more money and screw the miserables.  I feel kind of lost because I am not miserable and I don’t have tons of money so nobody cares about me.  I used to think I was middle class, but I can’t be.  The politicians keep telling us the middle class is miserable, but since I’m not miserable, I can’t be middle class. I wonder just how many forgotten people like me there are out there? 

Good news and bad news.  My PET/CT scan and yesterday’s endoscopic ultrasound confirmed the cancer is gone.  Obviously, that makes me very happy.  But the bad news is, now that I will be around hopefully for several more years I will contribute to the increase in health care costs, worsen the deficit and become a burden on society.  I now have to live with the Republican guilt trip they have laid on us seniors for years and have really ratcheted it up during this election cycle.  You know the pitch, we seniors suck up too much government money with our expectations that we collect the Social Security we paid for, we like Medicare but we cost the government too much and we are screwing up our grandchildren’s future.  Since I have been personally and totally immersed in the health care system for most of this year I think I can speak with some authority.  First, Medicare is good and it works.  I know the Republicans will go ballistic on this point, but we would be far better off with a single-payer government-run health insurance system.  Before the right wing dings start screaming, universal health care does not equate to socialism.  Every democracy but ours has it.  Second, there are drastic flaws in Medicare which I have seen firsthand but they can all be fixed without turning it over the insurance industry.  I have lived in countries that have universal health care and the insurance companies still make tons of money. The Republicans say the richest country in the world can’t afford to provide health care for its citizens.  The truth is they don’t want to provide health care for all Americans (Mitt can tell you how many freeloaders we have).  I suppose it would make Paul Ryan happy if people like me just died and stopped wasting taxpayers’ money.

There is a scene in the 2006 Broadway play "The Lieutenant of Inishmore" where two characters are hacking up corpses to render them unrecognizable.  The stage is strewn with dismembered body parts and totally spattered with blood.  One of the characters screams in desperation and despair, "Will this never end!?" This strikes me as an appropriate metaphor for our current presidential election campaign.  Not only does it seem like it will never end, we have also hacked decency, honesty and civility in political discourse beyond recognition. Outright lying has become the norm for both parties with Romney-Ryan holding a significant edge in that department (see last week’s Time cover story).  We all know that candidates’ promises are basically meaningless since they serve only to get elected not as a basis for actual policy making.  This is where I have my biggest problem with Romney.  He keeps saying “I know how to…”  He makes all these assertions that he can fix everything then offers the same “solutions” Republicans have been spouting for years: lower taxes, less regulation, cut spending, all of which will suddenly create jobs and lower the deficit.  They haven’t and they won’t.   Regarding Obama, the Republicans will never admit that they have been a big part of the problem for the last four years.  Yes, Bush and company actually did create the mess, but they won’t admit it. The day Obama took office they swore they would not cooperate with his Administration which has been the major reason our government doesn’t get anything done.  These are facts.  But Republicans have a way of dealing with real facts. Take a drop in unemployment, they just pull a Jack Welch and say Obama’s government falsified them.  Even some prominent Republicans balked at that, so maybe there is hope.  But I doubt it.

This election does present a really difficult choice.  If you are a radical religious rightist you have to decide between a candidate who is pro-choice on abortion and believes women should have the right to control their own health decisions and one who was pro-choice but has decided he is now pro-life and if women become pregnant through rape or incest, well, that’s really no different than any other insemination so it’s just too bad. Let’s not even get into gay marriage. Then if you also happen to be a bigot, you are faced with the additional dilemma of choosing between a Mormon and a black man.  Which do you hate the most?  Politics really does get difficult doesn’t it? What if you are an independent who is totally fed up with the crap being flung around by both parties?  Do you trust Romney who keeps saying “I know how to… (fill in the blank)” He’s claiming that he knows how to do just about anything to correct everything but since he has not done anything on the national or international scene (Massachusetts is not the United States--it does not have a foreign policy) how can you believe that he can do all he says, especially when his position changes according to what day it is and his audience.  Obama claims that his policies are working and will bring us salvation given enough time and that our wealthy elite exists solely for the purpose of shitting all over the middle class while being coddled by the Republicans with huge tax cuts.  You will notice I have spared you more commentary on last night’s debate.  Romney came across as more energetic, articulate and well prepared.  Obama looked like he would have rather been any place but where he was.  Both of them said nothing we have not heard before.  As one commentator said today, last night’s debate probably ensured that there will be fewer viewers for the next one.

Some of you may remember I am also running for president.  I was unanimously nominated by all six delegates to my convention at the Palace Saloon. We have all heard Romney declare that he knows how to create jobs, get Republicans and Democrats to work together (fat chance), and do anything to get us on the right track.  And Obama claims he will be the hero of the middle class and just needs more time to fix the economy and keep the Republicans from cancelling grandma’s Social Security and Medicare.  Now here’s my platform.  It is guaranteed to fix our country no matter what your party affiliation.  First, I will establish term limits for all congressmen so they will not spend their entire lives pandering to private interests for money so they can keep getting reelected.  Second, I will get rid of the Electoral College so everybody’s votes will really count not just those in the “battleground states” (those with a lot of electoral votes).  Third, I will require all states to establish an independent commission to draw honest congressional district lines so state legislatures cannot blatantly stack the deck in their party’s favor.  Fourth, all Congressmen will participate in Social Security and Medicare just like every other American.  While in office, their Social Security and Medicare deductions will count toward their eligibility for benefits at age 67 which makes sense because after their term limit they will have to go get another job.  While in office they will participate in a 401k which they can also take with them to their next job.  This platform will, undoubtedly, fix many of the flaws in our system and hopefully get our politicians to think more about what’s right for our country rather than how they can keep themselves and their party in power and line their own pockets.  The Republicans and Democrats will never adopt this platform of course because it’s not in their own selfish interests.  You notice I was not invited to participate in the debates.