We Despise Mitt Romney To The Very Core Of Our Being

“I don’t know a single Tea Party person who does not despise Mitt Romney to the very core of their being.”

-- Karen Martin, Spartanburg South Carolina Tea Party, quoted here

Sarah Palin Follows Rush, Tries To Change The Subject to Jobs from Looting

Newt has tried to appear to take a principled stand in the war on Romney and today's Republicans don't seem to want to join him there, which just shows what a throwback Newt is and what co-dependents Republicans have become in their job-servitude.

Republicans are in thrall to the concept of The Job as much as Germany was to The Worker in the 1920s. Sarah Palin's remarks asking for full disclosure of job creation data and of Mitt's tax returns strike me as pure posturing and ass-covering in the face of Mitt's impending coronation. What was it, five colleges she attended to get a four year degree?

While Newt's gotten older the Republican Party has continued to move so far away from its old moral positions that it now considers Newt to be talking the values of the enemy. Rush Limbaugh is a case in point, who constantly derides Newt for using the language of the left, when Rush can't make up his mind from day to day whether the bank bailouts were necessary, superfluous or deceitful. A convert like Augustine of Hippo couldn't possibly have something important to contribute, could he?

The truth is Romney's capitalism is parasitic, not entrepreneurial, because it incessantly demands gains in productivity which go to the owners and investors at the expense of the workers. Please. Save. My. Crummy. Job.

No one aged 50 or more who has lost a position on a mere technicality after twenty or more years of service, and they are legion, is sympathetic to this argument. What work at year 5, 10, 14 or 18 was superior to the work at year 20, but for the fact that salary and benefits at that point represented a juicy cost savings going directly to the almighty bottom line? The young who lose their jobs are too inexperienced and too frequently abused to know any other reality than job-hopping in the world created by the corporate raider. Such lives do not produce traditional, stable families, nor committed, law-abiding communities and reliable tax bases. The business left is now in full-throated holler for simplifying taxes, removing tax deductions, and, the real point, a more mobile worker, one who doesn't own a house and who can be moved here and there at will without having to sell first.

Pat Buchanan, who twenty years ago this month made life very difficult for one President George Herbert Walker Bush in the New Hampshire primary, had a change of heart about what was really happening to American workers as he made the rounds during the campaign. It made him realize that something had begun to change in the relationship between worker and employer which went to the heart of patriotism. Today we see the full expression of businesses' loyalty, and it's not to justice, only to the letter of the law, skilfully crafted by its bought and paid for politician. 

If only we had Republican candidates today who could effectively tap this well of misery in order to alleviate it instead of merely to get elected. Democrats are better at this, which is why their future looks bright, and ours looks dim.

Senator Jim DeMint is NOT a Conservative

If he were, he'd be doing everything he can to repeal the 17th Amendment.

Raising money to elect so-called conservatives is raising money to perpetuate the status quo post. Originalism isn't just for the Supremes.

He's a phony.

The TARP Elephant Still in the Republican Living Room

BUSH:

"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."

-- December 16, 2008 (video here)

Bob Rodriguez Says 2012 Will Be Languid Economically

Here:

"I’m looking for GDP growth at about 1%, probably even lower at times. It’s going to be a very languid year economically, and the stock market will face profitability issues along with governmental issues."

Mighty Dullness Crowned

"In a dull stream, which moving slow,

You hardly see the current flow;

When a small breeze obstructs the course,

It whirls about for want of force,

And in its narrow circle gathers

Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:

The current of a female mind stops thus,

and turns with ev'ry wind;

Thus whirling round, together draws

Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws."

-- Swift

"No Economic Recovery Until We Deal With Housing"

They think we're turning Japanese.

So say the boys at Institutional Risk Analytics, here.

Read it.

They are right.

(video here)

If Romney Still Has To "Come Up With A Rationale For November" He's Already Finished

So Michael Walsh here:

[T]o call corporate restructuring “jobs creation” won’t fly. Romney is going to have to come up with a far more persuasive, positive rationale for his candidacy if he hopes to beat Barack Obama in November.

What we are witnessing with this weak field of Republicans is a Republican Party "redefined" and ruined by George W. Bush himself, as Matt Latimer famously told us, because for eight years it consisted in and ended in a gross repudiation of the American idea, of capitalism, and failed utterly.

None of the candidates has the courage nor the conviction to say so. And because of that, they have nothing to say to us.

Which makes the moment incredibly awkward, because Obama has nothing to say to us either.

"There is no conservative movement."

If Newt really were smart, he'd attack that.

Stunning Video of the Dead Voting in New Hampshire Yesterday

Video and story here.

ID is not required to get a ballot in New Hampshire, just the way Democrats want it.

Romney Likens Bain to Obama Bail Out of Auto Cos.: Rush Livid Romney Makes Newt's Point!

So Rush is left today simply trying to change the subject to what Romney SHOULD have said, because Newt not only can't be right, he MUSTN'T be right, now that he's guilty of "anti-capitalism" according to Rush.

The story and video of Romney on CBS this morning are here:

“In the general election I’ll be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler – closed factories, closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers – he did it to try to save the business." ...

“We also had the occasion to do things that are tough to try and save a business." ...

Where is Sarah Palin and that crony capitalism talk from Sept. 3, 2011 when you need it? Is she going to leave Newt to hang out to dry and defend Ron Paul who now defends Romney, or ante up and call Romney (and Obama) nuts and Newt right?




"In a dull stream, which moving slow,
You hardly see the current flow;
When a small breeze obstructs the course,
It whirls about for want of force,
And in its narrow circle gathers
Nothing but chaff, and straws, and feathers:
The current of a female mind stops thus,
and turns with ev'ry wind;
Thus whirling round, together draws
Fools, fops, and rakes, for chaff and straws."

-- Swift

Non-Party Members Can Interfere in Primaries Except in a Handful of States

Eeny Meeny Miny Moe 4 Lap Dogs In A Row

Anybody But Romney, But Who?

Jeffrey Lord successfully locates Romney squarely in the progressive wing of the Republican Party for The American Spectator here, but doesn't really explain how the supposedly dying wing of the party keeps getting its people nominated for president.

Not only that, Republican progressives dominate in the Senate, which can only mean one thing: Republican progressives owe their electoral success not to Republicans but more broadly to Democrats and independents who interfere in their primaries and occasionally vote for them in the general. The relatively small size and influence of the Tea Party in the US House underscores this point, despite its role in giving the House back to the GOP in 2010. Narrower constituencies elect representatives.  

The way forward is for the Tea Party to narrow them further still.

Which is another way of saying the Tea Party needs to work for greater representation for the individual American's interests. What better way than by insisting on the originalist interpretation of the very idea of representation? The Tea Party should be demanding an end to a fixed House delegation of 435 members, a Republican fast-one pulled on the country back in the 1920s at the height of the progressives' influence. The Tea Party should call for expanding the House to its original constitutional proportions of one representative to every 30,000 of population.

I can think of no quicker, more sane and just way to wrest control of government away from the political parties as presently configured and return it to the people where it belongs.

We need 10,267 members in the US House.

And surely you know what that means? Instead of dividing 538 or so electoral votes to win the presidency, he or she would be fighting for a majority of 10,367 electoral votes. The growing and wildly disproportionate and unconstitutional electoral influence of the Senate since the 20s would thus be ended at a stroke because their 100 electoral votes would be up against 10,267 others, not just 438.

And so would be ended the Senate's ability and power to cram down our throats odious nostrums like Obamacare, gays in the military, START and any number of other progressive, enlightened ideas rejected by the vast majority of Americans. 

Tim Carney Draws Blood and Larry Kudlow Proves it By Losing His Cool

Kudlow didn't like being exposed for a hypocrite, and beat up on the young guy (video here) just to show who's in charge, but the point still stands:

Republicans shill for high finance and free trade at the expense of Main Street and American manufacturing workers. Protestations that government must not pick winners and losers to the contrary, it's high time in this country that American business and American government started picking America to win instead of some libertarian notion of the bottom line, which is poison to our communities.

Tim Carney speaks up against it here, noting how Rick Santorum's populism has rankled Kudlow.

A Brief History of Third Parties' Performance in Presidential Elections

2008  2.0 million votes  1.5 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

2004  1.2 million votes  1.0 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

2000  3.9 million votes  3.7 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  Nader

1996  9.7 million votes  10  percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  Perot

1992  20  million votes  20  percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  Perot

1988  0.9 million votes  1.0 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  Paul

1984  0.6 million votes  0.7 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

1980  7.1 million votes  8.2 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  Anderson

1976  1.6 million votes  1.9 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes  McCarthy

1972  1.4 million votes  1.8 percent of the vote  1 electoral vote    Hospers

1968  10  million votes  14  percent of the vote  46 electoral votes Wallace

1964  0.3 million votes  0.5 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

1960  0.5 million votes  0.7 percent of the vote  15 electoral votes  unpledged Democratic

1956  0.4 million votes  0.7 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

1952  0.3 million votes  0.5 percent of the vote  0 electoral votes

1948  2.6 million votes  5.4 percent of the vote  39 electoral votes Thurmond

I'm cool with that

                 

Social Spending on 'The Worker' Ruined Germany Before 1933, Not War Reparations

So Oswald Spengler:

"For this part of the political wage also - insurance of every kind against fate, the building of workers' dwellings (no one thinks of demanding these for farm labourers), the construction of playgrounds, convalescent homes, libraries, and the special terms for food, railway journeys, and amusements - is all paid for directly or indirectly by taxation of "the rest" for the working man. This in fact is an essential part of the political wage, and it receives very little thought. At the same time the national wealth of which we are given the amount in figures is an economic fiction. It is calculated - as "capital" - from the yield of economic undertakings or from the market prices of interest-bearing shares, and it falls with these when the value of the working factories is threatened by the burden of high wages. A factory that is thus made to close down is, however, of no more value except for the scrap-heap. Under the dictatorship of the trade unions, Germany's economic system had in the four years 1925-29 to meet an extra load of 18,225,000,000 marks annually in respect of increased wages, taxes, and grants for social purposes. This means one-third of the national income spent one-sidedly. One year later the sum had grown to far beyond twenty milliard marks. What are two milliards for reparations compared with this? It endangered the financial position of the Reich and the currency. Its drag on the economic system was not even taken into account when the effects of wage-Bolshevism were in question. It was the expropriation of the whole economic system in the interests of one class."

What Republicans and Karl Marx Have in Common Today: Free Trade

"Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative, whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities and renders the contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie more acute. In a word, the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense do I vote for Free Trade."

-- Karl Marx, 1847

Self-Denial is Hard When Faced with Self-Indulgence

"[The] vulgar luxury of great cities - little work, much money, and still more amusement - exercised a fatal influence upon the hard-working and simple men of the open country. They learnt to know of needs of which their fathers would never have let themselves dream. Self-denial is hard when one has the opposite before one. The flight from the land set in: first the farm-hands and maids went, then the farmers' sons, and in the end whole families who did not know whether or how they could hold the paternal heritage in the face of all this distortion of economic life. It has been the same in all Cultures at that stage. ... The depopulation of the villages began in England in 1840, in Germany in 1880, in the Middle West of the United States in 1920. The peasant is tired of working without wages when the town offers him wages without work. So away he goes - to become a 'proletarian.'"

-- Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision, July 1933

Here's to Tony!

Suddenly I'm Big in the Ukraine