October 6, 2012 at 12:21 P.M. Harassments and obstructions in connection with this text have been normal for me at these blogs. I expect the harassments and cybercrime to continue. I will do my best to write every day. I hope to complete my review of "Total Recall" over the next few days.
Amy O'Leary, "Paying Hackers, Military Forms Alliance," in The New York Times, October 6, 2012, at p. A1. (U.S. military-intelligence agencies using hackers to target sites on-line. Censorship and cybercrime? Will "targets" include Cuba, Korea, Iran and China?)
Sheila Dewan & Mark Landler, "Jobless Rate Sinks to 7.8% Its Lowest for Obama's Term," in The New York Times, October 6, 2012, at p. A1. (After the first debate, Mr. Obama is at 46%; Mr. Romney is at 42%; 2% undecided as reported today on Melissa Harris-Perry quoting a number of polls.)
"Names of the Dead," in The New York Times, October 6, 2012, at p. A8. (2,114 American service members dead in Afghanistan. Mr. Romney will increase military spending and U.S. involvement in the region; Mr. Obama will bring the troops home in 2014.)
Dalia Lithwick, "One Nation By and For the Corporation," in The Nation, October 8, 2012, at p. 22.
Jamie Ravin, "Citizens United and the Corporate Court," in The Nation, October 8, 2012, at p. 17. (How much free speech can you afford?)
Peter Baker, "A Clash of Philosophies," in The New York Times, October 4, 2012, at p. A1. (Is there a humanitarian role for government in the American community?)
Jeff Zeleny & Jim Ruttenberg, "Obama and Romney, in First Debate, Spar Over Fixing the Economy," in The New York Times, October 4, 2012, at p. A1.
Ethan Bronner, "Voter ID Rules Fail Court Tests Across Country," in The New York Times, October 3, 2012, at p. A1.
Matt Taibbi, "Greed and Debt: How Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Staged an Epic Wealth Grab, Destroyed Jobs -- and Stuck Others With the Bill," in Rolling Stone, September 13, 2012, at p. 42.
Gore Vidal, Imperial America: Reflections On the United States of Amnesia (New York: Nation Books, 2004).
"There you go again, Mitt."
Presidential debates are very much like professional wrestling: less quasi-athletic competitions than show business spectacles.
The first presidential debate between President Barack Obama and Governor Mitt Romney was no exception to this rule. When all the smoke clears, after the flag waving and balloons disappear, when the paid partisan cheerleaders (Charlie Rose, David Letterman?) have been silenced (Republicans immediately called out the troops to declare Mitt Romney the "winner" because, allegedly, "he did not make a fool of himself"), it becomes clear that not much was said and that few minds will be changed by this so-called "debate."
Is there any significance to be attached to this "pseudo-event"? Not really. Persons questioned immediately after the debate found it boring and a draw. After the Republican storm troopers went on the air screaming about Mitt as the new Terminator, everyone began to see Romney as the "winner."
First, President Obama has decided to take the high road in this election by avoiding personal attacks. This may be a mistake. In response to Mr. Romney's hand on heart concern for jobs, Mr. Obama should have alluded to Bain Capital's ruthless and predatory capitalism that left so many Americans WITHOUT jobs and entire families devastated.
Many of those persons impoverished by Bain could not purchase health coverage, but they can today thanks to "Obama Care." In fact, Mr. Romney is a champion in the art of creating jobs in China rather than in America by profitting through leaving many of his fellow citizens unemployed.
Second, Mr. Romney should not have referred to 47% of Americans -- again, like many of the victims of Bain Capital -- as "freeloaders" because they receive some government benefits. Among persons receiving benefits are millions who have worked their entire lives to collect modest social security payments and medicare/medicaid.
Others who are ostensibly "freeloaders" for the Republican presidential candidate are servicemen and -women who have been wounded or suffered from traumas that entitle them to receive government subsidies of some kind. Mr. Romney did not serve in the military. I do not believe the 47% comment was a slip-up.
I think this statement (and others that are more disturbing) reveal some of the ugly undercurrents in this election that have to do with race and class in America. Mr. Obama was accused by Mr. Sununu of New Hampshire of being "too lazy to prepare" for the debate. Coded racism is a daily feature of this increasingly ugly election.
Third, Mr. Romney was permitted to get away with contradicting himself, repeatedly, (lying?) about his position and what he will do. Mr. Taibbi charged Mr. Romney with "lying and selective memory" in his Rolling Stone article. I concur.
Mr. Romney has spent years telling us that he will "cut down on taxes" for "America's movers and shakers" (i.e., the 1%) while increasing military spending and cutting medicaid/medicare benefits for people now in their fifties who have, foolishly, relied on the government to fulfill its commitments and contributed to the system from their earnings. Mitt says, nicely, "screw 'em."
As with Mr. Romney's concern for the environment that, somehow, allows him to favor burning "clean coal" and "oil independence" -- which is really impossible given that oil is a scarce and limited resource -- even as he avoids alternative energies, the Republican candidate also dreams of a strange alchemy that allows for collecting less money and spending more than he takes in without borrowing to make up the difference. Don't try that at home, kids.
Mr. Romney favors government assistance by way of tax cuts (whether he will admit it or not) for the richest members of the population, like himself, and their "enterprises." He offers only cold indifference to the poor, sick people, those injured in war or living on fixed incomes -- that is, "freeloaders."
More importantly, the only way Mr. Romney will be able to increase a military budget that makes up more than 50% of the federal budget, while adding to the tax cuts for his friends and himself, is by borrowing more from China, Japan, and Europe. This is in keeping with Mitt's past practice at Bain where he burdened target companies with debt, ripped-off nice fees for himself, then cut the corporate wreckage loose to go under as he headed to the Cayman Islands in search of tax shelters.
Ironically, Mr. Romney's complaints about generous funds for Wall Street and what I call "corporate food stamp" programs failed to mention that his beloved Bain has been a beneficiary of government generosity in the past and, probably, will be again. Mitt has always been pro-debt (that he can exploit), unconcerned about jobs for the "little people" (like those left out in the cold by Bain), and more than willing to disregard the rights of the poorest and least able Americans who can only be helped by government.
"By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions -- placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to service the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding on an image of children roasting on flames of debt. ... If Romney pulls off this whopper [lie] you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big a lie. ..." (Taibbi, p. 43, emphasis added.)
"Eat Cake and Lose Weight!"
Mr. Romney's $7 TRILLION package of increased spending and tax cuts just makes no sense from a strictly logical and mathematical standpoint as Mr. Obama insisted throughout the debate. I have reason to believe that Republicans have difficulty with logic. Mr. Romney may be the all-time example of an "up-is-down" thinker. "It's all relative" for Mitt.
In addition to this "corporate welfare" package, Mr. Romney's party continues to favor the war on Americans' civil liberties that has come to define us, in Noam Chomsky's phrase, as a "pariah state" in the world, because of out-of-control surveillance and monitoring of persons who have committed no crimes. No doubt these innocent people -- like Professor Chomsky -- are also "freeloaders." Mr. Ryan calls them the 30% who live off the government discounting their contribution to the political process.
Thinly-veiled racism reared its ugly head as Mr. Romney stated: "I have 5 boys and I am familiar with persons not speaking the truth." The President of the United States of America is not Mr. Romney's "boy." ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "Albert Florence and New Jersey's Racism.")
To win this election, again, Republicans will find it necessary to deny the franchise to millions of Americans -- more of the "freeloaders," perhaps -- especially persons of color. In Florida, 80% of the persons on voter lists deemed "questionable" and therefore to be struck from the rolls are persons of color or immigrants. For Latino politicians (like Marco Rubio or Iliana Ros-Leghtinen) to favor such tactics of disenfranchisement and/or censorship through cybercrime is disgraceful and sad. A similar pattern has been detected in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and elsewhere. ("How censorship works in America.")
It is very likely that Republican-controlled jurisdictions, like Florida, will engage in New Jersey-like fraud -- as, indeed, will New Jersey's politicians since the state's "undead" are expected to vote in droves, usually more than once! -- most of the fraud and disappearing votes will help Mr. Romney. Just ask Al Gore about Florida's "Chits." ("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "Is Union City, New Jersey Meyer Lansky's Whore House?" then "Voting in North Bergen, New Jersey.")
If elected, Mr. Romney will become America's "corporate food stamp" president happily permitting the wealthiest 1% of Americans to "freeload" on the rest of us. That's not right, Mitt. ("Book Chats and 'Chits.'")
This November, not for the first time, Republicans will try to "control" the democratic process -- if necessary, through intimidating police presence in voting places and traffic courts as well as Richard Nixon-like "dirty tricks" -- designed to prevent poor people from voting at all. Primarily, Republican efforts will focus on excluding or not counting the votes of the "rabble," mostly brown and "black" people (as Richard Posner likes to say), who are without resources or power in our society except for the ballot.
Please do not stay home this election. Make sure to vote and that your vote is counted. Many good Americans have died for your right to vote freely. Do not allow those deaths to have been in vain.
" ... corporate America arranges elections for us while their media" -- 5 corporations own more than 95% of news outlets in America -- "covers-up those crimes, great and small, that are committed in the process. Although many [Americans] were aware that games were played by those supervising the election in November '04, none of those accountable, like [G.W. Bush's] Secretary of State, has thus far answered the questions put to them by Congressman Conyers. Also, the companies that make the electronic [voting] machines from Diebold to Triad are owned by die hard Republicans who insist that because of 'trade secrets' only their employees can examine the machines. Thus, our elections are privatized." (Vidal, p. ix, emphasis added.)
