The Horsey set, Mitt Romney and attitudes

For several years I had horses, and I hung out with horse people.  I had one, and then two horses, but my first was special to me.  She was like a cantankerous old lady.  She would try to take a bite out of your side when you tightened the girth on the saddle, but you could put a young and inexperienced rider on her back and she would take care of them.

There were all different sorts of riders in my circle.  There were people like me who just enjoyed the feelings of freedom and connection when riding a horse through the woods, trotting on a switchback trail.  There were the endurance riders, who would enter the Tevis Cup every year, a 100 mile race though the mountains.  The were those who were into 3 day events, dressage and jumping.  There were those into roping and rodeo type riding.  It was an eclectic group of people with one common interest, horses.

Now most of these people were middle or lower middle class.  They had to struggle to maintain their hobby, it is not cheap.  And most of these people were pretty conservative.  The group tended towards white and a little redneck.  Although I have not been in touch with them in years, it would not surprise me if most of them intend to vote for Mitt Romney.

There was a subset of these people who had a different attitude towards horses than most of us did.  To them a horse is sporting goods, a piece of equipment and nothing more. they were not in the majority, but they were present in the group.  And it is this attitude that this whole rambling post is about.

Mitt Romney does not hate you.  He does not even think of you as a 'you'.  To the Romneys, you and I are tools.  We are not people, we are votes, and we are units of labor and we are consumers of product.  We are no more important than the rusted hammer in an old toolbox in your garage.

He seeks power the way he seeks return on investment.  Does not matter how he gets it, does not matter what he does with it.  It is about having it, because he is entitled to it.

No matter how they try to disguise it, not matter what language they use, if you look beneath all that they stand for, this is the philosophy of the American right wing.  This is not the philosophy of the old line conservatives, Barry Goldwater is probably turning over in his grave at the though of what has become of his Grand Old Party.  But that is what you have today.

It is really very simple.  Are you a human being or are you a tool?

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Why Rep. Todd Akin scares the crap out of the Republican Party

Well, let's see, first there was thinly veiled (legitimate rape?) suggestion that most rapes aren't really rape.  If you have not been beaten to within an inch of your life, and have the cuts and bruises to prove it, then it wasn't really rape.  Hell, even then, you may just like it rough.

Then there was that whole thing about how you cannot really get pregnant from a rape.  After all, if was really, really a rape the the body would kind of shut itself down and you couldn't get pregnant.

So what you have here is that most women would lie about being raped in order to get an abortion, because you know women are lying sluts cannot really be trusted.  Add to it that wing nut conservative opinion carries much more weight than actual science.  And there you would have encapsulated the current state of Republican delusion thought.

But Todd Akin said it out loud.  It is not that they don't think the same way, look at the current Republican platform.  But you are supposed to use code that your moronic loyal base understands, but ambiguous enough that the cowardly mainstream press will not call you on it.


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Being a Republican requires that you have a bad memory

As I have watched the rise of Newt from the ashes, I am reminded of the words of our favorite whipping boy.  You know the one, the fat guy.  Back when Bill Clinton was running for president, his mantra was 'character counts'.  That was of course before he had so publicly displayed his own lack of character.

So on one hand you have Mitt Romney, who finds nothing wrong with putting thousands of people out of work so a small group of people can make a quick buck.  We are not talking about taking a dying company and salvaging what's left.  We are talking about taking a profitable company, one that perhaps treats it workers too well, not squeezing every last drop of blood they can out of them   Or perhaps they are good citizens of their community, and don't take illegal shortcuts on disposing of toxic material.  You get the idea, there is a little more to be profit squeezed out of them so the Romney's of this world move in to dismantle it.  It is the quick buck verses the long view.

And on the other hand you have Newt Gingrich, a man who resigned in disgrace from his position as Speaker of the House of Representatives.  A serial adulterer and deadbeat dad who is so convinced of his own infallibility that he is still beating the faith and family values drum.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

Do as I say, not as I do

Well they Iowa caucuses have come and gone and we have learned two very important things about the Republican party.   One is that they do understand how a democracy is supposed to work, as the recent caucuses were a fine example of an open, fair, transparent electoral process.   The other is that while they understand that, they do not believe that is the way that America should be run.  The spate of laws being rammed through be Republican controlled states are the complete antithesis of the way they behave when only fellow Republican are present.

How were the Iowa caucuses run? 

• You could register on the same day. 
• No picture ID was required to participate.  They wanted all Republicans, even the elderly that do not drive and for whom getting a state sponsored ID would be a burden.
• Paper ballots were used so there is a verifiable record of each vote cast.
• The votes were counted, in public, at the polling place.
• The results were announced at each polling place, so that it would be possible to compare the individual precinct number with those published at the state level.

The is the way a democracy is supposed to work.

Contrast this with the laws they have been passing for the rest of us.

• Restricting mail-ins ballots
• Doing away with instant registration
• Requiring a picture ID to register or to vote
• And the ever popular electronic voting machine, which leaves no paper trail so there is no way to detect tampering.  (OK, both sides of the isle are guilty of this one, but so far only the right side has done any tampering)

You see, if it is just them, they want everyone to vote and they want to be sure that the voting is fair.  But if you mix in any opposition, then all of a sudden they are concerned with non-existent voter fraud.  It is plain that their goal is voter suppression, they just proved it.

This is America - a year later

Is this your mother, your grandmother, your sister, your aunt?  Do you know where she is, how she survives?

Last year I wrote a post about Barbara, the woman who stands outside the building where I work, begging.  She is 75, which is 10 years older than my wife, and she is still there.

She has been hospitalized a couple times that I know of in the past year.  Once was for pneumonia, and I am not sure out the other.  It may have been after she was mugged.    Who mugs a 75 year old woman for the change she has managed to beg in the streets?

She is having more trouble getting around these days, and I no longer see her every day.  And when I do see her she is often using a walker, always at least using a cane.  I used to make sure I had some ones in my wallet, so I could always give her a dollar or two when I saw her.  But as she is able to make it out less frequently, I think perhaps it should be fives or tens now.

I have never seen her intoxicated, never smelled alcohol on her breath, so I suspect that her only crime against society was that she didn't make a lot of money.

If you have no children to take care of you, if you have the temerity to live past the age when you can be useful to the machine, then this is what the Republican Party has planned for you.  They are trying to drive down wages so that you will need to spend every penny they pay you to survive.  Then they will deride you for not saving.

Is this really the America you want?  If not, then fucking do something about it.

What Ron Paul would bring to the debate

For the most part I cannot stomach watching the Republican debates.  There have been way too many of them and they have been long on bullshit and short on substance.  That is because, for the most part the candidates themselves are long on bullshit and short on substance.  The exception has been Ron Paul.

Let me say that much that he has to say is completely wrong.  If his economic policies were every implemented, our slide into feudalism would be completed.  It would be like Europe during the dark ages.  But on the libertarian side, he does get some things right.

But this is my thought.  Both Paul and Obama are intelligent men.  And I suspect a debate between these two would expose once and for all the issues that the American people really need to think about.  It is about what kind of country that we intend to be.

What should the role of government be?  What should the role of business be?  And just as important, what has worked, for the benefit of us all, and what has proved to be a failure?  All this matters, all this needs to be discussed, and I think that, during a debate between these two, that would happen.

How would Obama respond to Paul's observations on the failure of the War on Drugs, of his contention that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and contrary to all our ideals as Americans?  How would Paul respond the  historical evidence that the middle class has prospered and grown the most during the periods that our tax code was most progressive, and that regulating business conduct had kept us out of this kind of economic malaise since the Great Depression?  These are just a few of the issues where it is important that both sides be heard so that informed choices can be made.

Perhaps I am being naive, but I believe that Paul being the Republican nominee would raise the level of discourse, and allow the real issues facing us to be discussed and debated.  Any one of the other Republican candidates would be running on slogans and personality and character assassination.  Either way, Obama gets re-elected, but a real debate about real issues would do much to elevate the American consciousness on the decisions that lay before us.

There is a war of ideas going in in this country, but the right is doing it's best to conceal what those ideas really are from the public at large.  I think this would get those ideas out in the open.

If the mantra were true

Over and over you here the right saying you don't raise taxes during a recession.  And on the surface, it even sounds like it might make sense.  After all, the last thing you want to do in the middle of a recession is to take money out of circulation, have people spending less.

Most of your basic necessities, you know, food, clothing, utilities, gas, those are all spent locally.  Even if most of the manufactured items were made elsewhere by slave labor, at least someone in the country is making a buck on it.

The people who's taxes they don't want to raise are the one's who are not going to spend it anyway. All of their basic needs are already covered, and most of their luxury desires are too.  They already have the boat.  And if they do spend it will not be on stuff that is going to have any impact on the US economy.

Because when you get beyond that stuff, well hiring another illegal alien to clean your toilets does not do all that much for our economy.  Nor does investing in more slave labor factories in countries with no worker protections, no safety standards, no child labor laws do much to pull us out of this.

Now contrast with their other big passion, cutting government spending.  What do you think happens when you cut government spending?  You take money away from people who are going to spend essentially all of it here in this country.  Every dollar you cut ripples through the economy many times.  So that completely belies the argument that they are doing this for the economy.

Of course there are exceptions, we could stop paying mercenaries in Afghanistan, the gold-plated benefits our elected representatives grant themselves could be cut back to something comparable to what the rest of us have to live with.  But that is not what they want to cut. They would cut meat inspectors and the FDA and other agencies whose responsibility is protecting you and your interests.

It really does come down to this.  The Republican party, and many Blue Dog Democrats, work for their corporate masters and only their corporate masters.  And they do not need the US economy to make money.  They don't need you.

The new economic model

Anyone who is paying any attention know that the recent attacks on Planned Parenthood have nothing to do with abortion and the sanctity of human life.  Abortions are not the main purpose of Planned Parenthood.  The main purpose is women's health and birth control.  But taken in context will all of the other actions of the right, it makes perfect sense.

Let's try to summarize the current Republican agenda.

• Implement laws to make it harder for the poor to vote, as evidenced by a spate of voter suppression laws being passed in Republican controlled states.
• Under the guise of 'torte reform', make it harder for individuals to hold businesses accountable for their actions.
• Attack public education, stripping both primary and secondary education of funding, demonize underpaid teachers, resulting in less educational opportunity for all but the wealthy.
• De-fund organizations that provide birth control, and cancer screenings for women.
• Remove 'restrictive' regulations on business, like child labor laws, or those that protect worker safety, food safety, or the air you breath, the water you drink.
• Strip workers of their rights to collectively bargain.

 But if you think about it, this all makes sense.  In a feudalistic society, the purpose of the peasants are to supply labor and soldiers.  The value of women is to produce children and then hurry up and die so that your workers do not waste time caring for them in their old age.  The more children they produce, the cheaper your labor costs are.  And if you disenfranchise them, both by taking away their vote, and their rights to organize, they will not be able to do anything about it.

And if you have plenty of them, you don't have to worry if too many of them are poisoned on the job or die in the mines.  There are plenty more where they came from.

Of course, you will still need a tiny middle class.  Someone has to be the physicians and the engineers and scientists who take care of the needs of the landed gentry.  But you don't need many of them.  And knowing they could be tossed back into the pile of peasantry at any moment should make them easy to control.

This model has worked for the benefit of the ruling class in one form or another for thousands of years.  You think our little 200+ year experiment is viewed as anything except a fluke by those on the right?  Think again.  You have a front row seat to what has happened to other social experiments of the past, when the old guard decides that enough is enough.

Unless you decide to do something about it.