Romney's Political Triumvirate

If Romney wins the election, we will have lost more than a year of sane and civilized dinner table conversations.  We will lose our souls.
 I say this because the election will have been bought.  Sheldon Adelson has spent more than all the corporations and super pacs combined and a lot of it was spent in Israel to get the vote of 164,000 American Jews living there. Mr. Adelson is spreading the word – not just for a Romney presidency, but for Netanyahu to get another go as Prime Minister of Israel  in January, 2013.

By producing a daily newspaper called Israel Hayom (Israel Today) and handing it out to readers for free with advertisers getting a substantial discount, Adelson has essentially closed down the Israeli free press. Traditional papers such as Maariv and Haaretz may have to sell to the highest bidder because they cannot compete. Adelson, as you may recall, is the Las Vegas casino magnate who at first supported Newt Gingrich and is now Romney’s benefactor, advisor and big daddy.

What he is hoping to accomplish is to ensure the election goes to Romney with help from the ex-patriot vote in Israel.  As a result, he will have a grateful Romney, control of Netanyahu after the Israeli election, ending in an all but certain war in Iran.  Romney and Netanyahu have been friends for thirty five years and most of Romney’s foreign affairs advisors are former Bush advisors.  Think Iraq.    

And, don’t forget what will happen here in the U. S.  With Romney as president, we will likely have no more balance of powers. The Republicans will control not just the presidency, but the House and soon (with the kind of money machine the Republican Party has no qualms using) they will also control the Senate, and the Supreme Court.  There are two imminent positions to be filled on the Court and you can be certain they will be filled with over the top conservatives.  Does the name, Bolten ring a bell?

There are abundant reasonable American Jews in Israel and there are Israelis who are far more moderate who believe Adelson’s influence in Israel is wrong.  On the other hand, there are people like Barry Rubin and Arlene Kushner, whose anti-Obama vitriol is in perfect harmony with a bellicose prime minister. With Netanyahu’s re-election, and a Romney victory in the U. S., we will have a triumvirate of power -- Adelson, Netanyahu and Romney.   

I can’t make these corporations, super pacs and multi-billionaires refrain from buying our leaders.  All I can do is draw attention to their purpose.

And, I just have.

A Confluence of Conspiracy (Theories)

First, we hear that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen; a conspiracy perpetrated on American citizens, and a theory whose greatest proponent is the intrepid Donald Trump. Mr. Trump, it seems, can’t help periodically roiling the conspiracy waters of the extreme right, even though the President has produced his birth certificate more than once, proving he was born in Hawaii (part of the United States, folks).   

Then we are told that he is a closet Muslim secretly planning on converting our democracy to Sharia,  the strict set of laws set forth by Muhammad and subverting all that we Americans hold dear. Of course the fact that he has been a Christian all his life, even attending the notorious Pastor Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church of Christ (“Christ” should be a dead giveaway that he’s Muslim) was also a conspiracy and likewise under suspicion.

Next, we’re told Obama’s social security number is a fraud. I learned this from a fantastic website @ www.obamaconspiracy.org. 


The attack on the U. S. Counsulate in Benghazy Lybia was the result of a planned terrorist attack and not caused by the anti-Muslim movie, made from a small studio in Hollywood. Of course we KNOW that now, but no one knew for certain why the attacks occurred at first and rather than blame elements of the Libyan revolution, Susan Rice cautioned against jumping to conclusions on all the Sunday morning talk shows.  This was interpreted as a conspiracy to withhold information from the American public, thus placing blame on the administration for being TOO careful, TOO cautious and TOO conspiratorial.
    

Now, the conspiracy theorists believe that the jobs report figures, released on Friday by the Department of Labor (which at 7.8 were mildly better than they’ve been in the last few years) were “manipulated” by the WH one month before the election in order to squelch those on the right whose main political mantra has been the President has not been able to bring the economy back. The major proponent of this particular theory is the owlie Jack Welch, former CEO of GE (which used to own NBC) who tweeted the day after our first presidential debate the following:


 "Unbelievable jobs numbers ... these Chicago guys will do anything ... can't debate so change numbers." 


All of these conspiracy theories point to the same thing: hatred.  It doesn’t matter what Obama does or does not do – he is somehow illegitimate.  And why is he illegitimate?  It pains me to say this, but he's black, he had a father from Kenya, he's not a red-neck good ol' boy, he's professorial, he's different.  And being different is a reason for suspicion.

Don’t let hatred take over our country.  We are bigger than this.        

John Sununu's Remarks

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I'm offended by John Sununu's remarks today on one of the cable TV news programs with Andrea Mitchell.

In the presidential debate last night, the president seemed to be distracted. He has always been an effective speaker and in command when behind the podium. But last night, it was Mitt Romney who came out fighting from the beginning, not Barack Obama.  Mr. Romney was a new version of himself, confident and assertive and articulate.  The role reversals were mind boggling.  It was an unexpected disappointment for me and my family as we were certain Obama would flay Romney. For whatever reason, he simply did not deliver. However, to hear John Sununu’s words today on Andrea Mitchell’s cable TV program was offensive and sad.

 “What people saw last night, I think, was a president that revealed his incompetence, how lazy and detached he is, how he has absolutely no idea how serious the economic problems of the country are, and how he has failed to even begin to address them” 


Really? Lazy?  No matter how much Republicans disagree with the President, no one, I think, would call him lazy.  Later in this same interview, Sununu says:

 “On the other hand, Mitt Romney came in with a lot of specifics, a lot of very sharp knowledge of issues not only with the Obama version of bumper sticker numbers, but the governor showed that he understands policy and he understands how to make policy into law, talking about what he did in Massachusetts.” 


This was laughable!  Everyone knows that Romney not only stretches the truth but denies his own previous statements as fabrications.  There are sufficient analyses out there to support this supposition without my having to quote fact checkers - Democratic OR Republican. So I won't.  

On top of this, I recently read a column by George Will, which went far beyond what he – a normally articulate though dour ultra-conservative journalist with the NYT -- has said in the past.  In a column for the Washington Post on October 1, he wrote the following: 

“Perhaps a pleasant paradox defines this political season: That Obama is African American may be important, but in a way quite unlike that darkly suggested by, for example, MSNBC’s excitable boys and girls who, with their (at most) one-track minds and exquisitely sensitive olfactory receptors, sniff racism in any criticism of their pin-up. Instead, the nation, which is generally reluctant to declare a president a failure — thereby admitting that it made a mistake in choosing him — seems especially reluctant to give up on the first African American president. If so, the 2012 election speaks well of the nation’s heart, if not its head.”


Give me a break, Mr. Will.  I submit that there is an undercurrent of racism in this election in spite of “MSNBC’s excitable boys and girls” you so easily dismiss with their “(at most) one-track minds…”  It is not a paradox requiring any special apparatus to smell it.  And, pardon me, but President Obama’s administration is not, as you say four paragraphs back in your piece,  “. . .in shambles. . .”

This kind of journalism is not what this country needs right now.  I had given Mr. Will far too much credit for being "reasonable." And the kind of slander that erupts from the mouths of the radical right like Sununu is unconscionable and unforgivable.

I wonder, does Mr. Sununu represent the views of the recently glorified and “forked tongued” dragon slayer, Mr. Romney?  

Ahmadinijad's Last Visit to the UN

The president of Iran has been interviewed ad infinitum by almost every major electronic news source out there – most recently, today on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS on CNN.  
 

He’s a bit contentious, and circular in his answers.   He seems to enjoy putting his interviewers down while smiling wisely and condescendingly, as the interpreter drones on. But make no mistake: this man is a rational being with a weakness, I think, for the Big Apple.

In his interview with Fareed, he discussed the fact that while in New York, he spent most of his time riding from the UN building to his hotel and back again and even apologized for inconveniencing the people of NYC for having to wait as his motorcade passed by.  Charming.

 

Perhaps he felt magnanimous, riding on a phantom wave from a “news” story out of FARS this past week, (the “official” news source of Iran), which quoted verbatim a spoof from The Onion, that President Ahmadinijad was preferred over President Obama by a large segment of our southern population in a recent poll. The almost entirely plagiarized piece quoted a make believe West Virginian as saying, “he (Ahmadinijad)  takes national defense seriously and he’d never let some gay protesters tell him how to run his country like Obama does.”  

 

FARS has since apologized for falling for satirical piece in The Onion and publishing it.

 

Ahmadinijad knows he is virtually a “lame duck” with Iranian elections coming along in 2013 and the mullahs back home issuing mysterious comments that iran will be moving to a more moderate regime soon.

 

I’m happy he had all the attention he craves here in the States.  But since the demographics in Iran run toward a youthful, more educated  and sophisticated population, I don’t think we’ll see the likes of him again. 

 

I can dream, can’t I?

Romney Sinks to New Lows

My deepest condolences to the families of the four foreign service agents including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and those attached to the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi (Lybia).  It is a tragic day for America here and across the world. 

Even more tragic is the immediate reaction of Mitt Romney, who jumped on the situation to excoriate our current President, the Secretary of State and the Ambassador to Egypt in Cairo for issuing statements of apology for the hugely tasteless and insulting anti-Muslim movie apparently causing the riotous infiltration of the Consulate in the first place.

I just watched an interview with former (George H. W. Bush) Ambassador Nick Burns who says to inject politics at a moment like this is not only thoughtless, but embarrassing and unconscionable.  I say it is traitorous!

Romney deserves the condemnation he is apparently receiving here and abroad.  I do not want this man representing me.  Can a candidate for president be impeached?    

Israel's Biggest Threat

Whenever Benjamin Netanyahu opens his mouth, the world comes a little closer to nuclear war, beginning with the forces or Israel against Iran, followed without much doubt by the U.S., the players in the Middle East, possibly Russia and even China -- who knows? A global conflict could occur because of the threats of one confused and dangerous egomaniac whose Israeli political counterparts are mostly opposed to a strike against Iran; these are not just the American Jews, I mean Israelis.
And who are they?

A piece in Reuters today by Matt Spetalnick and Allyn Fisher-Ilan quoted the single most important supporter of Netanyahu’s bellicose rhetoric, Ehud Barack saying the following:

"Despite the differences and importance of maintaining Israel's independence of action, we must remember the importance of partnership with the United States and try as much as possible not to hurt that," a statement from his office said. Do I hear an adult voice in the room? Perhaps this attack of reason upon Mr. Barack is a clear indication of the Israeli political climate.

Additionally, Bradley Burston’s piece in the Israeli Haaretz today makes it clearer:

“If immediate red lines are in order, Benjamin Netanyahu would be well advised to set them for himself, and the malice and abuse and disrespect he has heaped on the president. If deadlines are in order, he might consider his upcoming U.S. visit - and the White House rejection of a meeting with Obama - as an opportune moment to shut down entirely the verbal centrifuges he has set spinning in attacks on the president, the secretary of state, and other administration officials.”

Netanyahu should stay out of American politics. Of course he wants Romney to win the election because Romney would blindly follow him into war with Iran. I wonder – has anyone considered what might happen the day after an attack on Iran by Israel even with U.S. backing?

Haven’t we been in enough wars, incursions, police actions without having thought of the way to extricate ourselves?

The answer is Afghanistan.

A Truth Tsar

I’ve told my share of lies, more when I was a child than now. But when I did,  it became increasingly offensive to me, like an odor about myself, just as embarrassing to me, as it would be to anyone around me. I don't tell lies today, well, maybe an occassional fib now and then.  But the problem is that I’m not the only one who does it. Lying is almost common these days. It’s a stink in our society that is as prevalent today as honor and truth-telling were to our ancestors.

I do try to be truthful (I promise), in my blog, in my conversations, in my correspondence; even in my fiction, I try to write from the heart as my Freshman English instructor suggested all those years ago.

But if you think about it honestly you’ll realize we are surrounded by lies on a regular basis: lies, exaggerations, untruths. It makes me wonder: is it an attribute of human nature or is it merely a very bad habit that we’ve allowed ourselves to sink into and don’t really think much about it anymore?

I used to think that people lied because of money. After all, many lies are for money: the scams across the Internet are manipulating the elderly and the unaware for money. Preparing our annual tax returns, 75% of the population will try to use tax dodges, any scheme at all in order not to pay their fair share.

Commercials are filled with lies – why? To sell more product.

What about the law? Lies, lies and more lies, not just by witnesses, but by attorneys in order to win their cases (and their fee). The Law is filled with tricks which allow the guilty to go free (most recently the story of the ill-fitting glove and O. J. Simpson).

Job applications – are we always perfectly honest about our attributes or do we exaggerate our experience in the work force, our education, sometimes even lying about our age and birth circumstances, just to get a job?

The Press (both electronic media and print) - how they’ve been allowed to make lying a legitimate exercise and create the news that is not news, or de-emphasize reals news so that it can be found as an after-thought on TV or on page D9 in the newspapers. This is our fourth estate – we own the air-ways and yet we allow one or two major conglomorates control our media as though we lived in a third world country. Money is the cause of this as well. Powerful interests depend on prominent spots on tv and in print. I don't want to imply there are not great and fearless journalists out there -- there are.  I'm just saying, there is a trend to manipulate the  news to one's own advantage.

Politics - may be the greatest arena for lying and here is where my earlier theory flounders. Politics is rampant with lies. But many politicians are rich, filthy rich, even. So why do they lie?

In politics, it’s not just money, it’s power. But money is power, is it not? In the case of the rich guys in politics, it must be different; they’re not seeking money because they’ve already got lots of it. They’re seeking power, but if they have money, they already have a certain amount of power. Whatever it is they are seeking, they will lie to get it.

Lying has become acceptable. Just as lack of responsibility has become a way of life. If you do harm to someone, a public apology (usually only after the harm is discovered) is all it takes to be forgiven. What happened to responsibility? Retribution? Atonement? They are unnecessary because the liar has already been forgiven as the result of a wimpy statement of apology which in my opinion, is meaningless. A public apology in this world is merely a way to get back in the game after a suspension.

I don’t know what the remedy is. Maybe what we need is a “Truth Tsar.” (I've become my own) -- someone to take the place of all the fact-checkers out there that only check the facts for their chosen party, thus allowing only the "facts" that suit them.  .