"Utterly Slick in His Projection of Genuineness"

Sun. August 19, 2012:            [Part 2]


Sturdy Readers, wait'll you get a load of Frank Bruni's characterization of 
new GOP veeper Paul Ryan, at the bottom.  Does he have it right?


I.

The TWO best questions of the week come from Mark Bittman, left of Obama,
and from Andrew Ross Sorkin,  left of Ryan:

              A.  Hey, Barack Obama, you're failing your progressive base!
                    http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/lets-make-him-do-it/

              B.  Hey, Paul Ryan, does Wall Street really know what you are for & against?
                    "Everything Wall St. Should Know About Ryan: A pro-business veneer, coupled with
                    shifting policies"
                    http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/paul-ryan-and-what-wall-street-should-know/





II.

             A.  Earlier tough questions for Obama from Mark Bittman, on "diet, food safety, weapons -- issues that beg for leadership. "
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/bittman-guns-butter-and-then-some/



            B.

Timothy Egan has rough questions for Mitt Romney:
"Romney The Unknowable:  The Republican Candidate Has Too Many Narratives to Hide From"
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/romney-the-unknowable/





                C.

       
Gail Collins has more questions for Romney & Ryan:
"Middle-Age Blues:  Here's the good news about the Paul Ryan Pick"
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/16/opinion/collins-middle-age-blues.html



                D.

So does Frank Bruni:
"The Bold To Mitt's Bland:  What Ryan can give Romney is a tutorial in political myth-making"
"Ryan knows how to handle the curves in the road, because he has fine-tuned the most valuable oxymoron in political life:

HE'S UTTERLY SLICK IN HIS PROJECTION OF GENUINENESS."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/bruni-the-bold-to-mitts-bland.html

10 Reasons for Reforming USA's Elections

Sun. August 19, 2012:          [Part ONE]


1.  GOP says Obama has no plan to pay for funding any of his programs.  "Does he hope to win the lottery?"  The Obama election campaign DOES need to clarify how it plans to pay for things, while also reducing deficits!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-bankruptcy_650106.html?page=2

2.  Representative Dennis Cardoza, a 5-term Blue Dog [i.e. conservative] Democrat from California,
had already announced that he would not run for re-election and would retire when his term ended.

But on Tuesday, he issued a statement that surprised many by saying he would step down immediately.
The resignation is unlikely to have much impact in the House, where little legislative action is expected during the rest of this session.  The chamber now has 5 vacant seats. 
Mr. Cardoza told The Sacramento Bee that the time was right, "in light of the fact that nothing is going to happen for the rest of the year" in Congress.

3.  The 2012 Election Cycle:  "Attack, Feign Outrage, Repeat"
WE CAN'T KEEP DOING ELECTIONS THIS WAY!
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/the-2012-cycle-attack-feign-outrage-repeat/

4.  "Overt Discrimination in Ohio:  Republican election officials curtain early voting in Democratic counties, but not in theirs."

5.  A Republican judge in Pennsylvania rules in favor of new GOP-led state law [which a leader openly boasted would "help Romney win the state"] which will require voter ID to vote.  Supposedly this is to prevent a voter from pretending to be someone else, yet evidence shows that this practice is almost totally nonexistent.  Folks most likely not to have a driver's licence or other acceptable ID?
Black & elderly voters, normally overwhelmingly Democratic.

6.  In a private message to GOP candidates, House Republican leaders instructed them how to respond to inquiries about Medicare:  choose their words carefully, emphasize "strengthen" and "protect" over phrases like "every option is on the table."

7.  If Romney & Ryan win, their big donors "will not be settling for sleepovers in the Lincoln Bedroom," says Bill Keller.  "Sheldon Adelson (casinos & Israel), Charlie & David Koch (petroleum and libertarian politics), and Bob Perry (home builder and bankroller of the Swift Boat slander) . . .
Don't expect to see a secretary of commerce or energy or a director of the EPA (if any of those positions still exist) or any other key regulator who does not pass muster with Romney's big investors, or does not take their phone calls."

8.  R. Glenn Hubbard, below, wearing glasses, in 2008 on GWB's Council of Economic Advisors:

Back in 2008, Columbia University's Glenn Hubbard, a top Romney economic advisor, endorsed the large Bush tax cuts, but the promised bonanza of jobs failed to materialize.  Hubbard also rationalized deregulation, which is now widely blamed for contributing to the housing and banking mess.  "Now," says Bill Keller, Hubbard "lends an expert gloss to the claim that Romney's sketchy economic plan will create 12 million jobs -- a claim I doubt would pass muster in a first-year Econ class at Columbia."


9.  Last week new GOP veep candidate left Iowa's drought-stricken farmers to meet with casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson in Las Vegas.  Ryan, winner of Americans for Prosperity's
"Defender of the American Dream" award for a Wisconsin chapter, has gotten tight with the
Koch brothers.

10.  Private sector hospital business, touted by Romney & Ryan:

HCA hospital chain is now making huge profits, by forcing its
Emergency Room doctors to send away patients if they don't look seriously ill, AND, by forcing its other doctors to order only tests for which HCA will get highest Medicare reimbursements!

Conservatives' Turn for High Dudgeon & Outrage

Fri. August 17, 2012:       



Conservatives deserve to be outraged too.
A few samples:


I.  Vice-president Joe Biden goes "racist" in a recent campaign speech, but "gets away with it":

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/15/joe-biden-s-chains-comment-and-the-racial-double-standard.html

[The media's true bias, though, is NOT in hounding Biden off the ticket, but in
FAILING to report on 2 key questions:

         A.  Was Biden's remark before an all-black audience?  Mostly black?  Half-and-half?

         B.  Was his audience offended by his "put y'all back in chains" remark?

WE DON'T KNOW, because the mainstream media has not told us; therein lies a legitimate bias.]



II.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-romneys-present-ryans-future/2012/08/16/d0411adc-e7b8-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_story.html?wpisrc=emailtoafriend

Charles Krauthammer:  Romney's choice of Paul Ryan was a "sweet judo move" which may bring back another 2010 mandate against Obamacare.



III.   Left-wing media attacks on veep candidate Paul Ryan are WAY OVERDRAWN:

 http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/11/paul-ryan-7-great-reads-on-romney-s-running-mate.html



IV.  Conservatives have spurned Sarah Palin, and embraced Bill Clinton!  WHY?  and WHY?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/31/why-sarah-palin-s-reputation-has-plummeted-as-bill-clinton-s-has-grown.html

Revisionist Looks at Paul Ryan & "His" Ayn Rand

Thu. August 16, 2012:

Gentle Readers -- or, as it is Ayn Rand day on this blog -- should I say
Ferocious Unfettered Individuals:

What follows will not be pleasant reading to right-wingers.
But tomorrow is their day on Bitesfromedwin.

1.   http://front.moveon.org/is-ayn-rand-really-the-person-republicans-want-to-imitate   
An unflattering analysis of Ayn Rand.  Has Mitt made a Veep Mistake?

2.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/opinion/ayn-rand-wouldnt-approve-of-paul-ryan.html
Ayn Rand herself is okay, but she would NOT approve of Paul Ryan, or today's GOP.

3.  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/15/opinion/dowd-when-cruelty-is-cute.html
Maureen Dowd's acerbic pen:
New GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan, Dowd says, is 
"the cutest package that cruelty ever came in . . ."
"Not since Ronald Reagan tried to cut the budget by categorizing ketchup and relish as vegetables has the GOP managed to find such an attractive vessel to mask harsh policies with a smiling face . . ."
"Ryan should stop being so lovable.  People who intend to hurt other people should wipe the smile off their faces."

Reagan's David Stockman v "Congressman" Ryan

Wed. August 15, 2012:

First, remember, on Jan. 20, 2013, our new Vice-president may be the current GOP
"Congressman" Paul Ryan from a U.S. congressional district in Wisconsin.


 
Having already downed a few power drinks, she turns around, faces him, looks him straight in the eye and says,
"Listen here, good looking, I will screw anybody, anytime, anywhere, their place, my place, in the car, front door, back door, on the ground, standing up, sitting down, naked or with clothes on . . . It doesn't matter to me. I just love it."
His eyes now wide with interest, he responds, 
"No kidding... I'm in Congress too. What state do you represent?


Second:
Between 1981 and 1985, the GOP's most heroic president, Ronald Reagan, had one
David Stockman as his director of the Office of Management & Budget [OMB].

On Tues. Aug. 14, 2012, David Stockman, of all people, takes a dim view of
Congressman Paul Ryan, in Ryan's role as Chair of the House Budget Committee.
[Stockman does not mention Obama's rival budget plans, but surely they would get
a similar Stockman tongue-lashing]:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/14/opinion/paul-ryans-fairy-tale-budget-plan.html

Australia on Paul Ryan: Gimme a Goddam Scotch

Tues. August 14, 2012:

Australia Fair has its own take on the new Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan GOP ticket.


Saturday morning's stealth-surprise Romney announcement, of Ayn Randian congressman Paul Ryan
-- Wisconsin's rising star -- as the GOP Veep nominee, has been an American pundit's Field Day.

Tally up the number of U.S.A. pundits out there -- from Bloomberg News, National Review, NYT, New Republic, WSJ, and countless others:  Unless they were on vacation, like Paul Krugman, they have already published their opinion.

So far, if there is any consensus, not counting the wild extremes to left & right, it is this:

Paul Ryan is an attractive young rising politician, and his choice by Romney is either risky or shrewd or both.

_______________________________________________________________________________


But perhaps more enlightening for us Yanks is the opinion of
one Guy Rundle [now writing from

London], a kind of leftish latter-day Australian Alexis deTocqueville,
who has recently been criss-crossing the USA, and writing about what he observes.

Enjoy [or not]:


Guy Rundle writes from London:
2012 US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, MITT ROMNEY, PAUL RYAN:  
WHY MITT'S MATE, THE ANTI-PALIN PAUL RYAN, MATTERS

 
Mitt Romney has jumped out the blocks early, and announced a vice-presidential running mate -- Wisconsin congressman, and congressional budget leader Paul Ryan, a choice that has been met with bemusement, head scratching and an ocean of interpretation. In typical Mitt style, even the innocuous announcement of veep pick was something that Mitt stuffed up -- turning to Ryan, he announced him as the "next President of the United States," which at least offered the possibility of a spectacular Inauguration Day live suicide.

There was little else that was exciting about Ryan as a pick, on the surface -- he appeared, clad in the same white shirt as Romney, looking more or less like a young Romney, the exact opposite of the longed-for VP 
surprise pick, whether it be Walter Mondale's selection of Geraldine Ferraro in '84, or John McCain's recourse to Sarah Palin in 2008.

The sparsity of those choices makes clear a peculiarity of US politics -- everyone monitors the veep choice for a great surprise, the surprise is usually there ain't no surprise. No African-American or Hispanics have ever been chosen for the veep spot, and only one Jew -- Joe Lieberman, running as Al Gore's partner in 2000, and now a hawkish independent, supporting the Republicans on most issues.

For the most part it's been white guys -- the veep choice is usually a more, not less, traditional person than the presidential candidate himself. Ronald Reagan was a former actor some could not take seriously, balanced out by uber-WASP insider George Bush; Michael Dukakis was of Greek heritage, and Lloyd Bentsen all but strolled down the lawn and offered mint juleps y'all. And in 2000, Dick Cheney chose another scion of an old Republican family as his running mate. I can't even remember who Bob Dole -- Jesus, Jack Kemp, Wikipedia just told me. How obscure is that? Finally in 2008, Barack Obama made the wise choice of Joe Biden, who for all his fumbles and gaffes, could go around the north-east labour heartland and say (more diplomatically), the schwartzer's all right.

So the surprise of Paul Ryan is simply because most pundits expected that Romney would choose someone who would add a bit of, literal, colour to the ticket, and a sense of fire and life. Some thought he might go directly for the religious base, and choose someone like Mike Huckabee; others that he might get a twofer out of Hispanic/Tea Party favourite, Florida senator Marco Rubio. Choosing a woman was unlikely, after the Palin experience -- unfair, but there it is -- and the only high-profile one was Michele Bachmann, who makes Sarah Palin look like Hannah Arendt.

That they have gone for a square white guy is indicative; that the square white guy in particular is Paul Ryan has many ramifications. To the general white guys choice first. Various commentators have described this as "tepid" and "disappointing"; Noam Scheiber in the New Republic suggests it is an alibi for a loss -- Ryan's profile is highest as leader of the post-2010 GOP Congress extreme budget push, which read more like a synopsis for the Hunger Games than a document of modern governance, and the theory is that the organisational wing of the party is using this as a decisive demonstration to the party's right that they will be in opposition forever if they don't move to the centre.

That is mad, and only persuasive if one avoids the nasty truth about the choice of Ryan -- as a choice based on race, not Ryan's but Obama's. To choose the whitest guy around, and create the whitest guy team in history, is mainlining on the idea that a coterie of independent voters will consciously or otherwise, groove on the idea that they gave the African-American guy a try, and he screwed it up; more in sorrow than in anger, they will conclude that if you want a job done, you get a pair of white managers in. That is unquestionably the semiotics of the veep choice, ugly as it is, and people who don't want to see that, because they are too enamoured of the ideal of America, rather than the reality, miss its acuteness. True, Romney could have chosen Florida senator Marco Rubio, who, for all his boilerplate right-wing rhetoric, is an impressive man -- from a family of Cuban refugees, worked his way up, etc. He had a bit more help than he is willing to admit, but hell, he's a Senator, an eloquent speaker and a passionate man.


Sadly, to many of the vaguely right-shifted independents the GOP hope to attract, and especially those north of St Louis, that doesn't matter. When they look at Rubio, they see a busboy. When they see him in a suit, they reach for their valet parking ticket. That's rough, it's far from total, but there it is. To have a Latino on the ticket would have muddied the clear distinction between traditional authority, and the prejudices that is calling on. By having a presidential team composed of two men in white shirts, who appear to be modelling white shirts for a catalogue, the Republicans are effectively re-summoning the Einsenhower era, when things worked goddamit, and before the African-American and hippies started burning down the cities. Gimme a goddam Scotch. Make it a double.

                                          

By this move, President Obama and his administration become identified with the whole allegedly failed trajectory of the '60s -- Obama becomes identified as the first affirmative action President, and a whole slice of voters are thus relieved of voting against him purely on account of his race -- 'Well, we gave 'em a chance and y'know ...". Who are those voters? Well they're the voters Joe Biden fielded for Obama in '08. They're northern white voters in the rustbelt states. Unionised and leftish in some ways, they are not merely conservative in social matters, but identified with the American project, of greatness. They are the grandchildren of the voters that the Republicans persuaded to switch from Truman to Eisenhower in 1952, and -- given the appalling state of American social mobility (worst in the advanced OECD) -- they havent moved far. Few of them are vicious racists as one might find in the south, but many have a clannish, collective identity based around white working-class identity -- now based largely around the jobs that used to be there, which makes the sense of cultural identity all the keener.

More Signs of LIMITS to Right-Wing Extremism?

Fri. August 10, 2012:

For some reason, Esteemed Readers, more & more criticisms are blasting both Obama & Romney these days.  A few items are worth your time:
_______________________________________________________________________________

The notorious August 6 Newsweek "wimp factor" cover story on Romney includes 5 quotations from conservative leaders critical of Romney -- 

1.  Wall Street Journal:

"The Romney campaign thinks it can play it safe and coast to the White House by saying the conomy stinks and it's Mr. Obama's fault . . . What [Americans] want to hear from the challenger is some understanding of why the president's policies aren't working and how Mr. Romney's policies will do better."

2.  William Kristol [prominent conservative pundit]:

"Adopting a prevent defense when it's only the second quarter and you're not even ahead is dubious . . . as a strategy . . . The economy is of course important.  But voters want to hear what Romney is going to do about the economy.  What is his economic-growth agenda?  His deficit-reform agenda?  His health-care reform agenda?  His tax-reform agenda?  His replacement for Dodd-Frank?"

3.  Rupert Murdoch [conservative owner of Fox Network, Wall Street Journal, et alia]:

"[Obama] will be hard to beat unless [Romney] drops old friends from [his] team and hires some real pros.  Doubtful."

4.  George Will [senior conservative pundit]:

"Governor Romney seems to be risk-averse.  He . . . seem[s] to be in something like a four-corner stall in basketball . . . But you can't get to the NCAA championship, you can't get to the presidency running out the clock.  So he's going to have to do something more than say Obama's not working."

5.  National Review [conservative journal]:

"The only question is whether [Romney] releases more [tax] returns now, or later -- after playing more defense on the issue and sustaining more hits."
__________________________________________________________________________

6.  In today's Wall Street Journal, conservative columnist Peggy Noonan lambastes both Romney
AND Obama.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443404004577579571659026022.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop


7.  Liberal Nicholas D. Kristof blasts Obama for his passivity about Syria, in yesterday's New York Times.

                                          Similar critiques about Obama's policy in Libya


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/opinion/kristof-obama-awol-in-syria.html


8.  CNN, which aspires for the middle, is running stuff analyzing the Good as well as the Bad & Ugly in ObamaCare [a label Obama himself has begun to embrace, because, he says, I really do "care" about affordable health for all].

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/09/opinion/carroll-health-care-act/index.html?hpt=hp_c2


9.  But perhaps most telling is that young Republicans are abandoning extreme right positions, or soft-peddling them when they go campaigning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/09/us/politics/young-republicans-erase-lines-on-social-issues.html


This does NOT bode well for the long-range future health of right-wing extremism.
Even in the short run, Romney strategists are trying to marginalize the roles of right-wing "cartoons" Michelle Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, and Donald Trump at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Tampa.