Thu. Feb. 9, 2012:
I. The Land of Auzz has a roving political reporter, goes by "Rundle." His take on the current Republican nominating scene is worth occasional glimpses:
"Republican or Democrat, Minnesotans were once uniformly liberal and progressive, their worldview grounded in the Lutheran Protestantism of their northern European founders.
"The last thirty years have seen that complexion change, as mainline Protestantism loses it cultural centrality, and those searching for a Christian experience have been increasingly attracted to the evangelical and fundamentalist movements. The process is part of the wider cultural and intellectual decline of the US . . .
"So on account of both those places, and half a dozen others, Santorum has a major claim on a VP title. Furthermore he has the only serious claim of the other candidates -- neither Gingrich nor Ron Paul are VP material. Without Santorum, Romney would have to go hunting amid the wilder shores of the Right, with the same problems that John McCain encountered when he selected a dashing young woman discovered by Bill Kristol and other neocon grandees in the wilds of Alaska."
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II. More Obama-Critique NYT Material, from Wed. Feb. 8, 2012, issue -- to shock Conservative Readers of this "Eastern Liberal Rag":
1. Lead editorial, p. A22, slams President Obama for joining "the sleazy 'Super PCA' money race:
"Two years ago, while delivering his State of the Union address, President Obama looked the Supreme Court justices in the face and told them they were wrong to have allowed special interests to spend without limits on campaigns. 'I don' think American eletions should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests,' he said. 'They should be decided by the American people.'
"On Monday, the president abandoned that fundamental principle and gave in to the culture of the Citizens United decision that he once denoucned as a 'threat to our democracy' . . .
"But if President Obama had refused to join in this downward spiral -- and if he had proudly campaigned on that refusal -- he and his campaign might have made up for that deficit in other ways: with more small contributions, and more support, from a public disgusted by the outsize influence of big money.
"A president has a megaphone bigger even than Mr. Rove's bloated bank account, and Mr. Obama could have impressed many wavering voters if he had chosen to use it against campaign corruption. He could have pointed out that it was Republicans who used unlimited corporate funds to win back the House in 2010, pressing a corporate agenda that has severely hurt the middle class.
"He could have ridiculed Mitt Romney's super PAC for accepting $18 million frust just 200 donors in the second half of last year, including million-dollar checks from hedge-fund operators, industrialists and bankers.
"But now Mr. Obama has given up that higher ground . . .
"He is also telling the country that simply getting re-elected is bigger than standing on principle."
2. Same page, for those who think Attorney General Eric Holder is "incompetent," grist in NYT:
"Release the Stevens Report" lambastes the Justice Department for possible "prosecutorial misconduct" in the Senator Ted Stevens case. Conservatives would nod vigorously.
3. Page A23, "The Zuckerberg Tax": Criticizes President Obama's proposed "Buffett rule" that would "require millionaires to pay tax at a 30 percent effective minimum rate. [Multimillionaire Mitt Romney currently pays a tad under 15%]. Under the rule . . . this would represent only a trivia mount of additional tax for him. If the Buffett rule applied in 2010, Mr. Buffett's effective tax rate would be only 2/100 of 1 percent on the $8 billion on appreciation of his holdings. A Zuckerberg tax would be far better: under it Mr. Buffett would have paid $1.2 billion in tax for 2010." [Speaking of social network Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, one blogger jokes that Mitt Romney has also started his own social network, and he calls it Twoface Book].
4. Same page, not just one but two warnings on foreign policy:
a. "Iran's Achilles' Heel": "The public debate in America and Israel these days is focused obsessively on whether to attack Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons ambitions; hardly any attention is being paid to how events in Syria could result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government. Iran's foothold in Syria enables the mullahs in Tehran to pursue their reckless and violent regional policies -- ad its presence there must be ended. Ensuring that Iran is evicted from its regional hub in Damascus would cut off Iran's and access to its proxies (Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza) and visibly dent its domestic and international prestige, possibly forcing a hemorrhaging regime in Tehran to suspend its nuclear policies. This would be a safer and more rewarding option than the military one."
b. Then, Thomas Friedman's "Freedom at 4 Below": " . . . [Y]ou can't have a democracy without citizens, and you can't have citizens without trust . . . America has that kind of trust because our country started with a shared idea that attracted the people. The borders came later. In most Arab states awakening today, the borders came first, drawn by foreign powers, and now the people trapped within them are trying to find a shared set of ideas to live by and trust each other with as equal citizens." [Bold-face mine].
5. Finally, lest we think the NYT has abandoned any liberal views, check page A16, "Romney's Returns Revive Scrutiny [by both Republican Senator Charles Grassley & Democratic Senator Max Baucus] of Lawful Offshore Tax Shelters." Its most original insight is this:
"In short, Mr. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, may well become his party's nominee, and could be elected the 45th president of the United States, but if history is a guide, he might have a difficult time making it through the Senate's tax-sensitive confirmation process if he were merely a cabinet nominee."
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