PoliticusUSA (Politics)

Obama Opens Up a General Election Can of Whoop Ass on Romney (May 16, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

A little over ten days ago, President Barack Obama, who has been frequently criticized by members of his base (myself included) for anemic fence straddling throughout his first term, came to Virginia in a vigorous mood. Our sitting Commander-in-Chief chose the swing state he won in 2008 to formally launch his drive for re-election, casting the 2012 race as “a make or break moment for the middle class.”

Declaring himself “still fired up,” those of us who have enthusiastically followed his trajectory from Illinois State government to U.S. Senate to the White House can vouch for Obama’s ability to excite a crowd. His ample charisma and message of hope is one of many reasons BHO drubbed John McCain on election night four years ago.

The irresistible orator has turned out to be a far more pragmatic leader than the revolutionary-minded among us may have wished, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We have some epically serious problems with which to contend and although there have been times when I would loved to see Obama challenge a political rival to an old-fashioned duel (see John Boehner and last summer’s debt ceiling tango), my better self understands that this is no way to move the country forward. And however quiet his methods, the POTUS has certainly done that. As Joe Biden said correctly, “Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.”

So after a rousing start to what is sure to be a long general election campaign, the nation settled into several presumed months of contemplating the Veepstakes. Which GOP crazy would Romney tap to be his second-in-command? Boring conversation for certain. Then two very awesome things occurred…

BOOM! Obama tells ABC’s Robin Roberts that “at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.” It may have taken a lot of words to state a simple fact: everyone has the right to decide who to love and wed. And the admission may have been forced by a clumsy, off-message but must-love-his-honesty Joe Biden, who unequivocally declared his support for gay marriage on Meet the Press, but the important thing was that the words were finally said.

And BOOM! JP Morgan Chase, one of the pillars of Wall Street, an institution long heralded for its ability to manage risk, announced it had lost two billion dollars through hazardous betting, adding new chum to the waters surrounding the debate on financial regulation and oversight.

Folks we have a live one!

In no time at all, Mitt Romney raced for the podium to declare “My view is that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” Romney said. “That’s the position I’ve had for some time, and I don’t intend to make any adjustments at this point. … Or ever, by the way.” Well good, glad we cleared up your permanent inflexibility Mittens.

Except that was a lot easier to get away with in 2004. Fortunately, society’s pendulum is swinging quickly on this issue, with a March 2012 Gallup ABC News poll showing that 52 percent of Americans support the legalization of same-sex marriage. I know the Republicans have long stopped caring about majorities or embracing the mainstream, but they continue to isolate themselves at their own electoral peril.

Likewise, the Romney camp wasted no time stepping in it over the JP Morgan Chase debacle. Romney spokesman Rick Gorka issued a statement that read in part, “JP Morgan’s investors, not taxpayers, will incur any losses from this hedging trade gone bad. As president, Gov. Romney will push for common-sense regulation that gives regulators tools to do their jobs, and that gives investors more clarity.”

Um, didn’t JP Morgan use taxpayer money, in the form of savings, holdings and other securities in the bank, purchased and stored with the honest dollars of hard working people, to execute this financial belly flop? Are we expected to believe that the bank will sell off buildings, reduce executive salaries or liquidate other assets to compensate for the loss?

Out of touch, and come November, out of time, the Republicans will finally be forced to take themselves out to the shed and contemplate a platform overhaul that includes elements of reality, modernity and tolerance. But until then, it will be wildly amusing to watch Mittens try to grapple with unscripted events as they happen, generally coming out looking like an ass, as has occurred in this first week of the general election campaign.

EU Austerity Rejection Spells Trouble for GOP (May 9, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

There’s a funny thing about austerity measures, typically promoted by conservative political elements during times of national fiscal crisis: when adopted alone without a balanced approach to investment in education, infrastructural improvement and other short-term and long-term economic stimuli, they don’t work.

In a piece published May 1 in the Hoover Institution Journal, writer Richard J. Epstein opines:

“Throughout the European Union, austerity programs have failed both politically and economically. In Spain, unemployment rates have soared above 24 percent. The Dutch government is on the edge of collapse because of the popular and political unwillingness to accept the austerity program proposed by its conservative government. Romania is not far behind. Greece, Italy, and Portugal remain in perilous condition…On the American front, the decline of GDP growth to 2.2 percent rightly raises fears that our sputtering domestic recovery is just about over.”

It is both ironic and appropriate that scholars at the Hoover Institute should draw such conclusions, as President Herbert Hoover himself is often cited as the most obvious 20th Century example of failure to lead through a combination of restriction and investment. President F.D. Roosevelt had Hoover’s short-sightedness to thank for his 1932 win as much as his own charisma and bold ideas.

But as we know, those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them. European Union leaders from Greece and France were reminded of three certain facts this past weekend, as citizens went to the polls to repudiate the post-financial crisis steps taken to try to the right the foundering Euro ship:

  1. It is never a good idea to let Germany call the shots (see almost every relevant historical event since 1900).
  2. You cannot simply cut your way out of a recession, and you most certainly cannot ask the general populace to suffer helplessly in every possible way in the quest for an improved bond rating. As NPR reporter Philip Reeves said yesterday, “Prosperous, smooth-running countries have been stripped of their coveted AAA credit ratings. The crisis started in the banks, whose executive are still pocketing huge bonuses. Europe’s public is paying the price.”
  3. If you fail to observe the first two rules, you will be tossed out of office eventually. Democracy has a way of having the last word.

In France, Nicholas Sarkozy, one-half of “Merkozy,” is out and Francois Hollande is in. “Merkozy” is the cute hybrid name bestowed upon the decidedly unadorable pairing of Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The terrible twosome has led the way in the resurgence of Hooverism as a response to the collective financial meltdown experienced by the planet in 2008. New York Times’ columnist Paul Krugman, a virulent critic of austerity-only policy, has often wondered in his columns when the European Union, and certain disturbed elements of the U.S. Republican Party, will finally stop believing in the non-existent “Confidence Fairy.”

The idea promoted by Merkozy, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and other shysters of the one percent, is that starving the public will somehow promote growth and investment. Like if you stop eating, showering and brushing your teeth you will only look healthier and more attractive. This is a logical fallacy that a preschooler is likely to be able to identify, yet it doesn’t stop the interested parties from whoring it out at every opportunity.

The clear repudiation of austerity alone, the rejection of a status quo that promotes self-reinforcing, wide-ranging human suffering as a disingenuous path to prosperity, is a sign that the tide is turning. People are looking for true pro-growth policy, not open-ended sacrifice that reinforces corporate and political corruption.

I hope Mitt Romney and other GOP leaders are paying close attention to the electoral fallout that is only beginning to occur overseas. The proposed Paul Ryan budget is the ideological cousin of many of Greece’s current failed policies. What’s the definition of insanity again?

The Right Claims Obama Has More War on Terror Hubris Than Flight Suit Wearing Bush (May 2, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Creating a new entry under the “Well don’t that beat all?” file, the former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service, Jose Rodriguez, took to the airwaves this past Sunday night. In an interview with Lesley Stahl, Rodriguez put forth the idea that President Obama is taking on radical Islam in ways that would make predecessor President George W. Bush blush. It may surprise exactly no one to learn that Rodriguez plays for Team GOP.

Folks, I don’t know what to say anymore. The mouthpieces of this party are so used to trying to have it both ways, I sincerely believe its members are in the throes of a full-on dissociative fugue. How can Obama suffer routine hounding from birthers and other whack jobs who claim that he is a covert practitioner of the Muslim faith, yet at the same time confront lambast from critics who wish to depict him as ruthless killer of Islamic innocents?

How on Earth could Obama out-display the pitiless hubris of a flight-suit wearing Dubya standing aboard an aircraft carrier declaring a “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq? This smarmy soundbite is characterized in an apolitical Wikipedia entry as such: “While this statement did coincide with an end to the conventional phase of the war, Bush’s assertion—and the sign itself—became controversial after guerrilla warfare in Iraq increased during the Iraqi insurgency. The vast majority of casualties, both military and civilian, have occurred since the speech.”

Obama’s measured, targeted approach to the War on Terror is more ruthless than Bush’s Cowboy Diplomacy, more tasteless than a man who later admitted that his bellicose “bring ‘em on” taunt to Iraqi insurgents was an error in judgment? Yes, because nothing says “I care about humanity” quite like baiting the country you’ve invaded in order to co-opt its oil reserves.

But I do not wish to misframe the debate. Rodriguez’s claims are yet another political red herring designed to obscure the abundant, wasteful ineptitude of the Bush years – you know, the ones where Osama bin Laden was hiding in plain sight. And the former CIA employee has a book to sell – Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives.

In this wondrous tome, Rodriguez argues that enhanced interrogation techniques embaced by the Bush administration after 9/11 “saved lives.” There’s just one problem: Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats are on the verge of concluding a three-year investigation of enhanced interrogation and will report that it had little to no success in eliciting vital intelligence. The Atlantic Wire noted that “With the lack of specifics in his 60 Minutes interview, supporters of torture had probably better hope there’s more in his book to make the case.”

And what does any ex-CIA official worth his salt do when posed tough questions about previous policy for which he has no good answers? Deflect. After all it’s an election year, and every opportunity must be availed to portray the man once decried as a foreign-policy newbie who’d go soft on terror as a veritable Genghis Khan.

“We don’t capture anybody any more,” Rodriguez told Stahl. “Their default option of this Administration has been to … take no prisoners … How could it be more ethical to kill people rather than capture them? I never understood that one.”

Obama the Mercenary set in relief against Dubya the Lamb. There are just no words.

Mitt Romney Shakes His Etch-A-Sketch, But Women Don’t Forget (April 16, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

Frankly, I was surprised that Rick Santorum threw in the towel last week. The numbers made clear that a path to winning the 2012 Republican Presidential nomination was all but impossible for our favorite radical Christian, but the current slate of candidates have never gone in much for reality. I think it’s the practicality of the move that stunned me.

With Santorum disposed, Mitt Romney’s remaining competition includes King of Hubris Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul, who indicated throughout the entire primary that he understood his campaign’s futility. Quite an inspiring duo aren’t they?

So the candidate nobody in the GOP really wanted, and for whom they still can’t get an erection, is on his way to accepting the nomination in scenic Tampa, Florida this August. Tampa, land of strip clubs and men in trucker hats, seems a fitting locale for a bunch of wealthy, mostly white, patriarchal ideology producers to anoint their sacrificial lamb.

Because now Romney has to shake that Etch-A-Sketch. Game on. (I bet Eric Ferhnstrom, Romney’s adviser and utterer of the ubiquitous sound bite that keeps on giving, wished for a time machine in his Easter basket.) President Obama long enjoyed the luxury of not having to address the freak show exhibits that comprised the Republican primary slate. But now that we’ve got something approximating a general election campaign, he occasionally has to tear his attention away from running a nation facing so many challenges to swat away jabs from Mittens.

To a point I sympathize with the Romney camp. Not only is their man dull as a butter knife (no insult to butter intended), which will only become more glaringly obvious when he enters the debate arena with the President, but he’s also saddled with a comical load of flip flops and rhetorical left turns. I don’t know how his staff will find time to prepare an offense when there’s so much to combat defensively: family dogs on the car roof, Romneycare and the good old Etch-A-Sketch comment just to pick a few easy cherries.

Romney has spent months and years pandering to the GOP power base, social conservatives who treat a belief in global warming or women’s reproductive rights as a “liberal” litmus test. There have been moments when I’ve pitied the open degradation of Romney’s integrity, his unwillingness to stand by his moderate record, but it doesn’t seem to bother him.

That type of radical right kowtowing may have seemed necessary until last week. But Romney has to face the rest of us now, the mainstream whose votes he needs just as badly. And given his limp track record for uniting his own party, Mitt has a tough slog ahead. How do you hit the reset button and arrive at anything approaching credibility?

President Obama excels at campaigning, to put it mildly. He is a wunderkind, an interview subject and debater able to convey intelligence and gravity as well as charm and humor. To watch him make mincemeat of John McCain on the regular during the 2008 campaign tempted invocation of the slaughter rule.

Mitt Romney is in for it. If nothing else, McCain has a personality and the deserved respect of his country as a decorated war veteran. Romney is a corporate viper, a smarmy, colorless ladder climber who approaches the Presidency like an item to check off his career bucket list. He will say anything to win the election, hitching his wagon to the notion that his fellow Americans are a bunch of ADD-afflicted sheep who will forget everything he has said and done in the past to accept his position of the moment.

I don’t think it’s possible to shake the Etch-A-Sketch hard enough to make the nation’s women forget the attacks on their rights this year. That’s slightly over half the electorate right there. Like I said, game on.

Opposition to the Individual Mandate Not a Question of Liberty (April 9, 2012)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment

In my home state of Illinois, the possession of a liability-only car insurance policy is a condition of the right to own and operate a motor vehicle. While this state of affairs adds an additional financial burden to automobile owners, the general consensus is that the law is necessary. In an orderly society, we can’t very well have folks driving about smashing into other cars without means of restitution. Oh sure there will be automobile accident-related lawsuits as long as there are daytime commercials paid for by bottom-feeding attorneys, but at the very least, basic car insurance mandates more often than not mean that if you find yourself in a fender bender, your car will be repaired. Personal liberty ends at the presumed right to destroy without consequences.

For obvious reasons, Republicans would rather liken the health insurance mandate portion of Obamacare (a sound bite ready-slur I am more than willing to take back as a proud Presidenntial supporter) to the force feeding of broccoli to American citizens than consider the apples to apples comparison I have raised above. Because commons sense isn’t helpful if we’re to continue a dysfunctional health care system that benefits everyone but the patients.

Treatment decisions have long ceased to be made by the physicians performing the exam. Monthly health insurance premiums run more than your average mortgage payment and yet for most of us, we’ll never see a modicum of return on the investment. A trip to the emergency room for standard care results in a whopper of a invoice with an $80 line item for two Tylenol.

While much of the blame for this lose-lose situation (your money and the standards of care) resides with a lack of price-controlled state services offered by such “socialist” regimes as India, Israel, and pretty much the rest of the world, it would seem the individual mandate is a small effort at trying to control astronomical costs.

Consider the aforementioned expense of a basic emergency room visit. One of my colleagues suffers from a peanut allergy. For reasons unknown, he tried an eggroll for the first time in his life several weeks ago…and I think we know what happened next. He was dispatched to the emergency room for a stiff drug cocktail to reduce swelling and restore normal breathing. He availed himself of these services for a couple of hours and was asleep in his own bed that evening. Mercifully, my colleague is in possession of a solid health insurance plan. Because several weeks later he opened a bill in the amount of $4,026.

Part of the reason that basic services continue their disproportionate unaffordability is the large risk pool created by individuals without health insurance. And there are a lot of them. Yesterday the Ironton Tribune opined that “14 percent of Americans are without health insurance by choice or lack of access…Those decisions, to avoid health care, impact all insured persons by raising the fundamental costs of care to all who took the responsible path of paying to insure protection.”

Don’t misunderstand me. I do not entirely agree with the conclusion drawn by the Tribune. There’s a large subsect within that 14 percent that simply cannot afford a policy, or don’t have a job that offers coverage. And therein lies the small-business opportunity, the employment creation and economic stimulus potential offered by the individual mandate.

In Illinois, there are oodles of mom and pop basic car insurance providers, who offer lower-income families the opportunity to remain legal without breaking the bank. Filing a claim may be more frustrating than dealing with a higher-cost option like State Farm, but the point is that there are choices. A similar health care mandate would create a vacuum for upstart challengers to the Blue Cross and United Healthcares of the world. And in the process, those with premium plans would see their bills systematically lowered, no longer covering the cost of their uninsured neighbors.

This sort of equanimity is exactly what the GOP and its Supreme Court friends need to avoid. Big Oil, Big Banks, Big Insurance – these are the tricycle wheels upon which the party turns. The lobbyists, donors and other players within the insurance game stand to lose quite a bit if they’re no longer the only game in town, if the cost of those two Tylenol adjusts to something approaching reality.

Thus those who wish to purchase health insurance but can’t afford it, or Americans who suffer from one of the ever-expanding list of “pre-existing conditions” used to deny them treatment for which they pay premiums, may continue to go without the security afforded impoverished citizens of certain Third World countries.

This has nothing to do with civil liberties and (surprise!) everything to do with avarice and political power. Why car insurance and not health insurance?