(copied from my comment on the PG website) - This Jack Kelly column is a weird combination of alternative reality and wishful prediction. Every time I read a Kelly column citing polls, I just go over to the 538 blog.
As for the prediction part, what the heck, sure, we'll see.
So I have not seen any of the reactions from CNN or ABC or Fox news or the NYTimes, etc to the debate. I watched on CSPAN (in part because my girlfriend doesn't like David Brooks, who comments for PBS, and I would rather not watch on any other network).
My immediate reaction is neither candidate landed a knock out punch. Obama remained vulnerable on Benghazi, but Romney did not hammer him on it. There was a story in the Washington Post about how Benghazi had a CIA facility, so a) maybe the CIA lied to the White House about what was going on and b) maybe neither candidate now wants to risk "outing" the CIA.
Romney did try to pin deaths in Syria on Obama, and various other problems, but I felt nothing stuck, although the same could be said about Obama trying to trip Romney up. You could tell, though, that these are two men who do not like each other.
But the thing that struck me the most? Romney worked up a bright sheen of flop sweat. I first noticed his upper lip shinning, and then I realized he was glowing all over his face. In addition, towards the end of the debate his frozen half smile/smirk picked up a quality around his eyes that made him look queasy. I half wondered if someone had given him a mild poison (or he ate a bad burrito).
In today's Jack Kelly column he goes after Candy Crowley, saying essentially she was responsible for Barack Obama winning the last debate. I found that interesting, considering the next (and last) debate is about foreign policy.
Kelly spends much of his column on the Benghazi incident. I have to agree somewhat that the thing was not well handled by the administration, but I think we need to realize that the incident is probably more complicated than we first or even still realize. I have seen an editorial that suggests there was more going on at the "Consulate" than we might otherwise think. It might have been more complicated to add security troops to the "Consulate" since that might have served to put a spotlight on the place.
Meanwhile, Kelly cites Breitbart dot com and Judith Miller for their opinions about the debate. And look what Mitt Romney says when no moderator is around.
Today Jack Kelly turns to "Obama's Campaign Scandals". Well, he talks about campaign scandals for the half the column, then starts retreading other (old) scandals. He ties the two parts together by claiming they are not covered by the media. Maybe that's true for people who don't follow the news, but then these are people who don't follow the news.
A lot of people, the people who might not otherwise follow the news, watch Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show (and Stephen Colbert). And a lot of these stories show up on these shows. Sometimes they soft pedal on Democrats, but as often as not they are as vicious to Obama as they are to Republicans.
The thing is, Jack Kelly's paranoid fantasies come out very clearly in this column. It will appeal to people who already agree with him, but it has the opposite effect of persuading anyone else.
I am still trying to wrap my head around what it is I heard in last night’s debate.
Mitt Romney said that he isn’t giving us details of his tax plan or where he will cut government programs because Congress doesn’t like to be told what to do. It is enough that we know Romney’s principles, that he wants to lower the deficit while not increasing the burden on the middle class. So you may not get a deduction for your mortgage any more (just rent, let the rich own all the houses) and your children may not be able to attend a prestigious college (not even if they would qualify for a scholarship, since the deduction for charitable giving to organizations that give scholarships might well disappear, but just let the rich go to Harvard while you kid goes to community college), but you will have the satisfaction of knowing … tax rates are lower for small businesses.
So now I am confused. Is Mitt Romney going to leave all details up to Congress, or just the ones that involve cutting tax benefits and government programs that people have relied on for decades? Romney cited Reagan and Tip O’Neill as his models here, that they sat down and negotiated legislation. George W Bush expressed as one of his principles that Social Security be privatized. Congress jumped right on that popular idea, and … oh wait.
Which is what I am wondering about. Making cuts and changes like the ones Romney is talking about is going to be really difficult, especially in this partisan era. So instead of presenting ideas to voters so that voters could consider them and compare with them with President Obama’s, Romney wants to throw the issues to Congress. Congress, of course, never shies away from a tough fight, never kicks an issue down the road. This is what Romney’s experience tells him.
That and if three percent of small businesses employ a quarter of the workforce (over 25 million workers), then how are they still "small" businesses? Plus, if you are a worker at a (big) small business, and the businesses income is really high, does that mean you will be paid a huge sum of money ... well, if you work at Bain capital, sure, all the people worth knowing got big salaries. And the secretaries ... well they are nice people too. Romney made a comment about how raising the top tier tax bracket to Clinton levels (38%, not the 40 he quoted) would raise the taxes of all the workers at these 3% of (big) small businesses that employ 25% of American workers. The guy is seriously math challenged.
Today Jack Kelly wants to tell us "Obama's Real Record". Kelly hits the standard points, how Obama had a huge majority in Congress, yet has been unable to reduce unemployment. What Obama did manage to shove do our throats, Obamacare, was promised to reduce premiums, yet it is raising them and increasing the deficit. There's slow growth in the economy, the national debt and Obama's foreign policy, including a war in Afghanistan that is almost lost.
I could respond to all of these points with complicated, detailed answers that take a lot of the blame off the President, but we all know them (we know, just to mention one, that Republicans in Congress have resisted Obama literally every step of the way). But I will concede there is a grain of truth in each of these charges, and we all know that as well. Democrats may be inclined to give Obama the benefit of the doubt (even as Republican opposition has hardened), but what about independents? Since those are the voters, especially in swing states, that both campaigns are concentrating on, both campaigns will make the race about their opponents. Both candidates are vulnerable in this area, and the race will be about who makes the most mistakes, and how serious the mistakes are. All for what it is worth.
Which one, Obama or Romney, would make the better President for the next four years? That is actually a reasonable but complicated question. I personally think it comes down to some issues on the periphery. I mean, I think Obama is trying to help the economy recover, but I think he is trying to keep Wall Street, the banks and the wealthy from suffering much at all. I believe Glenn Greenwald (now at the Guardian.UK) when he accuses Obama of all sorts of unconstitutional and unethical behavior (he has no kind words for Mitt Romney though either).
The thing is, as bad (in many ways) Obama is now, would Romney be an improvement? Romney might be no more successful than Obama in moving legislation through Congress, but his executive orders and directives to agencies would likely damage our recovery (in my opinion, backed by my study of economics). I see no reason to believe Romney would be more favorably inclined to whistle blowers either, for example.
So for me it comes down to Supreme Court nominees, as well as Federal judicial nominees. That and the possibility of persuading Obama to reverse himself on the Constitutional issues. Maybe those are weak reasons to vote for a candidate, but we live in the real world, where the necessities of politics make all candidates less than desirable.
Which reminds me, I need to say something about Bill Peduto versus Luke Ravenstahl soon.
This is a copy of what I posted to the Post Gazette and also Facebook about Jack Kelly's column today.
You know, I will give Jack Kelly credit for acknowledging that there is a difference between the few Muslim extremists and the vast mass of the rest of Islam. Although Kelly had to get a dig in on Obama while making that point.
Short of a shooting war or some trade dispute that actually affects the price of 3D TV's, most Americans are content to judge foreign policy success based on their perception of things. By all rights Jimmy Carter was a fair success, for example, in advancing the cause of peace in the Middle East. And as far as Iran goes, Carter was cleaning up a mess started in the World War II when we (and the Soviets!) installed the Shah. The Iranian people knew who to blame for the years of the secret police and no democracy, and a few extremists reacted directly by seizing the embassy.
By contrast, exactly what did Ronald Reagan achieve in foreign policy. Yes, the Soviet Union collapsed (technically during George HW Bush's term), but that was really a matter of outspending the Soviets in the cold war for decades. Past that, Reagan blundered a bit in the Middle East, resulting in the deaths of nearly three hundred Americans and French. Lebanon suffered for years after. How exactly was Reagan a success.
Well Reagan could brag about illusions like no one else (morning in America?). Reagan said he was a success, so he was.
Jack Kelly wants to tell us he has given us information that the rest of the world knows, but most (other) Americans have been deceived about. And I am sure there is a core of PG readers who catch all the right wing conspiracy theories, who think Kelly is a great truth teller. But I suspect most Americans, while dismayed by the deaths in Libya, basically don't blame Obama for them. It was the crazy Muslims reacting to that crazy film.
Jack Kelly could be right about some or even all of what he is saying. But most Americans have already made up their minds about what is going on the Middle East, and are unlikely to want to change their minds based on Kelly's column.
There are a couple of ways to discuss today's Jack Kelly column. Kelly has a long history of repeating inaccurate, incomplete and frequently wrong facts. But, without even accusing Kelly of outright lying we can look at his central premise.
In this column Jack Kelly compares the economies that Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan inherited, and how well their respective responses fared. So first, what kind of economies did both men inherit? Obama came into something that resembled the great depression. Banks were in danger of failing, the stock market was in danger of crashing, unemployment was shooting up, the GNP was crashing as well. It was an immediate crisis. By the way, I need to say that while the crisis started in the Bush administration, that administration had also reacted swiftly with hundreds of millions of dollars to stem the immediate effect. Although they deserve blame for allowing the crisis to occur, they also deserve praise for not simply allowing the economy to drop into depression before Obama came into office.
When Reagan came into office, the economy was in the grip of something that had been labelled stagfaltion. That was where unemployment was high, but also inflation was high. It was not a situation where there was a threat that unemployment would go higher, or that banks would fail. There was, as I recall, concern that inflation could continue to rise and no one was sure what would happen. But no one, *no one* thought we were no more than a month or two away from another great depression.
In terms of Obama's and Reagan's responses to their respective economic crises, first, many economists agree that Obama's stimulus was too small, and contained too many tax cuts that don't really have as big an impact as direct spending (Obama's tax cut disproportionately benefited the middle class and poor, but tax cuts they were). Obama introduced the thing to Congress with a lot of tax cuts I believe as an immediate olive branch to Republicans. Not one House Republican voted in a bipartisan way to save the economy. Only three Senate Republicans voted for the stimulus, and only after they had further gutted the package, ensuring it would be too small. Thus the recovery now is anemic.
By contrast, Reagan's recovery was, as Kelly says, quite strong. But the man to credit with that recovery is not Ronald Reagan, it was the Jimmy Carter appointed Chairman of Federal Reseve Paul Volker. Volker raised interest rates much higher than the (then) current rate of inflation, and basically caused the economy to crash. Inflation dropped rapidly and then Volker dropped interest rates, essentially opening the flood gates and caused businesses to borrow money to start hiring and buying equipment, and those new hires bought things they had been putting off buying. Reagan watched this all from the Oval Office. All legislation he did put through was passed by a Democratic Congress that was interested in making America great again.
So you can see Jack Kelly whole column is disingenuous. There is no comparison between Reagan's and Obama's economies, and by the way Kelly fails to give credit to Paul Volker. I guess that is because Volker supports the idea of raising taxes on the rich now.
Jack Kelly fires a shotgun blast of complaints today towards the EPA. Which is interesting, given that the Republican convention just ended, and Kelly could have talked about the platform and Republican proposals for the economy and our society. Or Kelly could have addressed the accusations that both Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney lied through their teeth in their convention speeches. Or Kelly could have talked about Ryan's boast that he had run a sub three hour marathon, which a day later he had to admit was actually a four hour and one minute marathon. Jeez, I ran a faster marathon than Mr P90x.
But Mr Kelly talked about none of those things, instead essentially crowing about how Republicans have packed the DC Court of Appeals, repeatedly blocking and refusing to vote on first Bill Clinton's and the Barack Obama's nomiinees. Now the children of America will suffer from asthma and early death thanks to Republican intransigence. The first thing Kelly mentions is an August 21st decision by the Court to block new EPA rules for coal fired power plants. Kelly quotes the Court as saying the EPA exceeded it's authority under the Clean Air Act. Interestingly, the group of lawyers that forms the Natural Resources Defense Council (and the dissenting opinion on the Court) said exactly the opposite.
Kelly next mentions how the DC Court blocked a suit against EPA on technical grounds concerning an increase of ethanol in gasoline from 10% to 15%. Kelly says that much ethanol can harm engines, especially older ones. Now apparently the EPA rules would have permitted the higher ethanol in cars newer than 2007, but ...
This might be one of those rare areas of agreement between me and Jack Kelly. Don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of bio diesel made from whatever - sugar cane, switch grass or, yes, corn. But the gasoline additive ethanol ... I have never trusted it. Kelly is likely correct that the EPA is advancing a political agenda in supporting ethanol, but to be fair, it is an agenda set during the Bush administration. There was apparently a 2007 law pushing the higher amounts of ethanol, which means a Democratic Congress passed it (pushed by farm state Congressmen, no doubt) and a Republican President signed it. Popular Mechanics goes into how it harms engines and some of the politics. I am with Kelly that ethanol is a poor direction for us to be going in.
Kelly also mentions fracking and the wonderfulness of natural gas. But I think we have all heard about ground water contamination related to fracking; Kelly uses concerns about groundwater to assert that it is clear the EPA is not actually concerned about air pollution! The Atlantic spends some time last spring talking about the EPA and fracking, but only in terms of air pollution. I guess the industry and Republicans have successful forced the EPA to roll over on protecting our water.
Kelly has lots of other accusations, including the oft-repeated claim the Obama's green energy initiative (which I think would be more Department of Energy than EPA, but Kelly doesn't care) is actually a scheme to enrich Obama donors. Factcheck dot org addresses that in detail, and finds indications of sloppiness but none of these pay to play accusations.
The last accusation I will deal with is that the EPA is using drones to inspect farms and ranches for pollution. The EPA does use planes to make aerial inspections, saving taxpayers thousands. But the Washington Post found the drone story to be totally made up.
I guess just like ignoring the lies Republicans told at their convention, Jack Kelly does not care about truth in his own column.
So Jack Kelly’s column today continues his recent trend of accusing the Obama campaign of expecting the liberal media to cover for them, and the liberal media of mostly going along with them. His previous column harped on the Joe Skoptic (sp?) ad as a lie, now he is concentrating on the charge that Obama is stealing $700 billion from those who pay into Medicare as well as from the people on Medicare themselves.
But Kelly’s column has at least three problems. First of all, his suggestion that Obama is somehow going to skim the seven hundred billion off out of the payroll taxes, and lower the reimbursements to the elderly is too simple and pretty clearly inaccurate. First of all the savings come from two areas, as I understand it (maybe three, but I remember two). Part comes from reducing payments to Medicare Advantage plans. Medicare Advantage was a program started in the Bush administration, which like education vouchers for private primary/secondary schools, takes the money Medicare would use to administer and reimburse seniors healthcare. According to this source, Medicare Advantage plans cost more than the regular Medicare program by a significant amount. Kelly calls these programs popular and perhaps they are, but they are also a case of the private sector gouging the government. And the other part of the savings comes from negotiated reductions in reimbursements to hospitals, which should not affect the healthcare senior citizens receive. Yes, the savings in the Medicare program are supposed to be transferred to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare to ignoramuses). But the ACA should mean illnesses getting caught earlier, and treated more efficiently, more time on the job, fewer bankruptcies and premature deaths. That should benefit the economy as a whole, helping everyone.
Second, there is the point that apparently the Ryan budget also had some 700 billion of cuts to Medicare that Jack Kelly entirely ignores. Other parts of the Ryan budget have few details about where specific cuts were to fall. What are we to think about where Ryan’s 700 billion was to come from? Would it have been simply from the reimbursements to patients? We might never know, but although apparently neither Kelly nor Ryan is now not going to talk about that part of Ryan’s budget, the cuts were there.
The third problem that Kelly does not acknowledge, or perhaps does not understand, are the impact of the cuts in the Ryan budget to Medicaid. Anyone who does not think there is a connection between Medicare and Medicaid has not had a parent (or perhaps themselves) go into a nursing home. At least in Pennsylvania, Medicaid will not pay for nursing home care until a patient loses all assets down to a few thousand. If Paul Ryan’s budget passes, Medicaid will no longer be capable of paying the large sums of money nursing homes want (thousands a month). That is a serious issue that Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and Jack Kelly will not talk about before the election. Is that being honest to the voters?
In the last few months (maybe a year) I have touted Glenn Greenwald of Salon dot com as a liberal critic of President Obama's. Greenwald has castigated Obama over detention issues, drone attacks, the related issue of assassinations without due process of American citizens, prosecutions of whistle blowers, the secrecy of the Obama administration and more. Greenwald give lie to the conservative contention that the media is in bed with Obama.
Yet Greenwald is at pains to stress that he is leaving Republicans/conservatives alone only because one is not President right now. He claims he was just as hard on Bush (I wasn't reading him then).
Today his column was an interesting departure from his recent criticisms of Obama; Greenwald took a look at the divergence between Paul Ryan's and Mitt Romney's bellicose language as well as Ryan's supposed support for small government and their actual records. Rather than review it piece by piece I will leave you to read it.
I think it is really interesting that Jack Kelly so totally missed the Paul Ryan boat with today's column on education. But I will go ahead and just talk about the Kelly column.
Today Kelly attacks schools of education and their place in the education system. He particularly attacks certification, since it keeps mid-career professionals outof the classroom. Now, although Kelly doesn't actually mention unions in this column, we know he is on record wanting to bust all unions, including particularly the teacher's union. But how attractive is a union busted teaching position to an engineer or private sector PhD? The union busted job will have minimal benefits, including healthcare the employee mostly has to pay all the premiums and almost no retirement plan (defined contribution with no employer contribution) and low wages.
The people who will apply for teaching positions that you need no certification for are Tea Party activists and evangelicals. And I think Republican controlled school boards will hire them, despite all that Kelly is saying about qualifications. We should remember the Bush Justice Department favored conservative credentials over actual ability. I believe that will happen with teachers as well.
If it is evangelicals and Tea Party types are the ones who apply and are hired for teaching positions, what will happen. Well, I think how evangelicals will affect things is obvious (if there is a Romeny Presidency, we will see the Supreme Court turn away any challenges on Constitutional grounds). As for the Tea Party types, see if you can find the clause on "self styled educated classes and so-called experts" in the Tea Party declaration of independence.
And Jack Kelly missed the whole Paul Ryan thing
.The shooting at the Batman Dark Knight Rising is absolutely terrible, and of course I am as horrified as everybody else (I would hope that would be the word everybody would use).
I gather the shooter's name is James Holmes, and he was a PhD student in neuroscience. I also gather some enterprising journalists have made internet connections and made (mistaken) declarations about how Holmes is a radical or a conservative. Others have decried this as jumping the ... (ahem) ... gun. And they would be right, in my opinion.
I expect there will be some interesting pathology here. I mean, a PhD candidate, there is something weird going on here. Might be political, although it could just as easily be an apolitical pathology.
But I think there is one early comment of a political nature that could be made. If Mr Holmes had only had a lever action rifle (think the Winchester rifles you see in westerns) and revolver pistols, the death toll might have been lower. But the NRA has to allow Americans to buy files that fire 30 shots - one pull of the trigger for each shot, and for that matter pistols that can shoot perhaps seventeen shots, again one shot per pull of the trigger, and reloaded in no more than a couple of seconds. I think we have to admit that one of the arguments underpinning the NRA's defense of having these highly lethal weapons available to the public is that somehow we are supposed to be able to overthrow the government. We are supposed to kill the cops and soldiers who I thought we called heroes, in particular for doing things most of us only watch on TV and in the movies.
What's somewhat alarming is that there are apparently (at least possibly) members of the Tea Party who believe that such actions are necessary, at least as long as Obama is in office. If Obama is re-elected, I suspect some of these people might turn violent. And thanks to the NRA, they will be so much more lethal. Like James Holmes was. Just targeting the police.
The Daily Show just had a snippet from some morning show where Ann Romney said "We've given you people all you need to know and understand about our financial situation and how we live our lives" apparently about the tax returns.
Really?
"you people"?
"all you need to know"?
I think Ann Romney has just given us all we need to know about the Romney's attitude towards us, the little people.
If you look back to close to when I started writing this blog (January 10, 2007), you will see the enthusiasm I felt for the city council campaign of Pat Dowd. A secondary school history teacher with a PhD, he said (what I thought) were all the right things. Somewhere along the way I remember expressing caveats (what I think of as usual caveats) of the sort that all politicians break your heart at some point. I should mention Barack Obama as practically the perfect example of this.
Pat Dowd of course is now on city council, has taken some strange positions but surely is no worse than the rest of city council and probably better than many. My point in referencing him is to point out the risk of choosing to support a candidate or a specific cause, particularly a candidate. Reading Glenn Greenwald on Salon dot com is enough to convince one Obama should be impeached, but I am still convinced that the Republicans are a worse alternative for the nation as a whole, that they would do nothing for the unemployed and in fact make things worse. But make no mistake, President Obama has had American citizens killed without due process, and (for me, perhaps more serious) had civilians killed in the Middle East; there is no reason to think he won't do more of that unless stopped. Plus Obama has not shown a strong enough willingness to oppose Republicans in Congress. Maybe doing so would not accomplish any more than what has been accomplished and achieving a symbolic victory would not put one more person to work.
So supporting Pat Dowd was not an unambiguous good (no surprise) and supporting Barack Obama is only just barely justifiable. But I still think supporting Len Bodack (who? look it up) and/or Mitt Romney would have been at least slightly worse, barring unforeseen yada yada.
What about supporting specific causes or legislation. Not quite as risky, since legislation can't change its mind once it passed, but the "law of unintended consequences" (not a real law) often rears its head. Student loans and tax credits have probably contributed heavily to the huge rise in higher education tuition, for example. A (larger) Keynesian sort of stimulus could jump start the economy and revitalize our infrastructure, but there is always the danger that the huge bump in debt might take a long time to grow our way out of, placing a huge burden on grand kids.
It is in this spirit that I refer you to this article from Drew Westen. Westen is the author of the Politcal Brain which I found compelling, despite its partisan leanings (OK, I have those same leanings, but I hope I redeem myself somewhat by mentioning those leanings). The New York Times article is an interesting proposal for publicly financed elections.
It is hard to see how we could get to publicly financed elections. But what is our alternative? Our politicians have become specialists in raising money, specifically from the wealthy. Even more important than the (diminishing) differences between the parties is the influence of the ultra rich.
We already have a system for publicly funded Presidential elections. The problem is that it is optional if the candidates can raise more. D'oh!
Check out the article, see what you think.
There are three points worth talking about in Jack Kelly's column today. Today's column is a rejection of the concept of nation building, with the usual complaints about Obama and his policies along the way.
The first point to mention is that while Kelly does not say it explicitly, he implies that Afghan soldiers are attacking US and/or NATO soldiers because they hate Obama. Kelly says ""Green on blue" attacks were virtually unheard of before October 2009. During the entire war in Iraq, there were only three such incidents." "Virtually" strikes me as possibly a weasel word, and Iraq had a whole insurgency against US soldiers.
What's interesting is that one could make a case that Obama's reliance on drone attacks might be affecting the views of Afghan soldiers. Attacks using drones on civilians to get to (suspected) terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and probably others gets back to people across the Middle East. But Jack Kelly doesn't mention drones. Could it be that the Tea Party (and thus Jack Kelly) approves of the use drones, even if civilians get killed?
The second point I think worth talking about is Kelly's general indictment of nation building. The obvious question is, if you bomb the heck out of a country when you invade them and you want them to be a democracy when you are done, what's the alternative? Kelly calls it expensive. But isn't it more expensive to fail in nation building.
By the way, it should be pointed out that the Marshall Plan and the reconstruction of Japan was nation building. I think if you say that nation building in Europe and Japan was a failure, you better have a pretty strong, unshakeable argument. Still, I would not surprised if Tea Party mouthpiece Jack Kelly made that suggestion.
The third point I want to look at is Kelly's final point that Ronald Reagan had aided the mujahideen "freedom fighters" without engaging in nation building in Afghanistan. To suggest a comparison to our current situation is ludicrous and basically insulting. It was the Soviets who were the invaders in the 1980's, and until they left, the US could not engage in nation building in Afghanistan. And by the way, who was more responsible for aid to the mujahideen, Ronald Reagan or Congress who controls the purse strings? This is the question raised by "Charlie Wilson's War". Interestingly, the movie also suggests Wilson wanted to engage in nation building in Afghanistan after the Soviets withdrew. But although Wilson had secured perhaps 500 million for the Afghan resistance plus 500 million more from the Saudi's, according to the movie he couldn't get a few millions or even hundreds of thousands for roads, schools and hospitals later.
The final thing to say is that whether you blame Ronald Reagan or Charlie Wilson for our not helping the Afghans out after the Soviets left, there is a direct link from the victorious mujahideen to the Taliban, and from the Taliban/mujahideen to al Qada and 9/11. How expensive is nation building?
I am not sure I am supposed to do this, but I want to comment on a post on Two Political Junkies. The post is about the recent discovery that Mitt Romney was listed as Bain Capital's CEO and drew a paycheck for some years (perhaps four) after he said he left to run the Olympics.
Actually, part if the 2PJ post was about how Fox News did not cover the SEC statements, rather they were talking about how the campaigns sparred.
The Obama Campaign (in the person of Stephanie Cutler) promptly declared that Romney had lied, and possibly committed a felony. Unfortunately, no less an organization than Factcheck dot org disputes the Obama campaign charge.
Factcheck does not say that Romney was not in fact the titular (heh heh) head of Bain, nor do they say that Romney did not get a paycheck. However, Factcheck states this is not fraud, let alone a felony. I tend to believe them, which means the Obama campaign erred in trying to go for the simplistic charge.
Meanwhile, it may be true that Romney committed no felony in remaining the (non-functional) CEO of Bain, or even has any responsibility for Bain's activities after he left to run the Olympics. However, I am not sure that is the end of it.
OK, Romney broke no laws. While a case can be made that Romney was less than truthful with all of us about the entirety his relationship with Bain, it may will be that one has to say that Romney was not making the decisions that led to outsourcing or driving companies into bankruptcy and depriving workers of their retirements.
But here's the thing: the case Romney and the Republicans are making is that Obama has not done enough for unemployment. Anybody else would be better as long as they are willing to work harder than Obama on unemployment.
But what it turns out that Romney's commitment to fighting unemployment is not that strong? How would we know? Well, suppose Romney was not working at Rain anymore, but because he was still technically the CEO, he could step in and prevent Bain from outsourcing American jobs. How strong can we say Romney's commitment is to American jobs, if he didn't raise a finger to save jobs Bain was eliminating, when Romney still had the ability to?
Admittedly, that is a more complicated argument to make than "Romney committed a felony". But it is maybe more important. Romney wants to criticize Obama on jobs, yet Romney had the ability to save jobs Bain was killing during the time romney was running the Olympics, and he didn't. How hard will work for ordinary Americans as President?
In today’s column, Jack Kelly has finally declared his vision of what the world (really just America) actually looks like. If you ask me, Kelly modeled it after what liberals (and to a small extent Democrats) accused George W Bush of, Emperor Dubya the first who supposedly wanted a permanent Republican majority, and (in the weird nightmares of some liberals) to stay in power indefinitely. Actually Dubya ended up kind of like Slick Willie (hey, we should be non-partisan in our insulting nicknames, yeah?), his term ended with a reversal that was more a whimper than a bang. His somewhat hysterical descriptions aside, Barack Obama’s term as Presidency will end either later this year or in four years, and if history is any guide, likely a Republican will take over the White House (if it is in four years it probably won’t be Mitt Romney). And our giant cultural juggernaut with be pushed along by inertia in a continuingly negative direction of income inequality and diminished benefits for the poor and elderly, whether or when our economy recovers.
But to the matter at hand, Jack Kelly’s dog whistle column today. More like a dog foghorn. Before I even address the insanity therin, I want to reference this unrelated column from last someone else, last September. This column is another dog whistle, essentially saying that no attempt should be made to register the poor, since all they do is vote in politicians who get them more benefits. If you buy that, you will buy all of today’s Jack Kelly column.
The thing is, the world is not that black and white. Barack Obama has done some things that appear to be designed to perhaps appeal to or at least assuage the concerns of independents (assuming true conservatives are essentially a lost cause). Some pundits would put the too small stimulus in that category (although part of that is also the fault of Congress), and perhaps the increased program of arrests of medical marijuana shops in California and the war on whistleblowers. Or perhaps there is something more going on with Obama, where he is actually more extreme than even Bush was, on marijuana, whistleblowers and the assassinations Jack Kelly mentions.
Which brings me back to the world not being black and white. There are reasons like the ones listed above to criticize Barack Obama, and more. Obama’s and Obama’s administration‘s connections to Wall Street, and the fact that Wall Street has not suffered much since the meltdown and in fact has prospered (those who merged, and probably even those who were merged) is a great concern. The use of drones to kill terrorists that ends up killing civilians (who if they are male adults are promptly dubbed also terrorists, and if women or children, they simply aren’t acknowledged) is another great concern.
But as I have said there is only one of the concerns I listed that Jack Kelly also lists as a concern. The assassinations are serious, but Kelly’s and apparently all Republicans don’t seem to care about Wall Street, drones, whistle blowers or medical marijuana. Instead Jack Kelly trots out a bunch of in this early paragraph: “King Barack I treats the public treasury as his piggy bank, enforces only the laws he likes and asserts the power, without oversight from Congress or the courts, to kill American citizens suspected of terrorism. His attorney general dodges lawful subpoenas while protecting and promoting vote fraud.”
Kelly claims both the judiciary and the press (except presumably for News Corp and he rest of the right wing noise machine) are in the bag for Democrats. I guess its fortunate that an election is coming up, but I fear what might happen if Obama is re-elected. Jack Kelly might call for the assassination of Barack Obama.
Meanwhile the Republicans are going after different issues than the ones I listed. Some of then, such as debt, are real issues. I personally think the debt is something that we can’t afford to deal with until after we reverse the recession. I think Bill Clinton showed extraordinary wisdom when he suggested that the deficit/debt should be addressed when thinks are good, not in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression. But then the rest of their issues, that the Obama administration is spending money on unemployment, food stamps and Medicaid because of the massive up-tick in unemployment. And universal health care has not destroyed the governments of all other industrial democracies, or are Republicans saying that Greece, Ireland, China and Russia are dictatorships (well, China and Russia … never mind)? And this business of not obeying the laws of Congress, well, Bush’s attitude toward FISA and signing statements make that issue a lot more complex (except the Republicans I have talked to refuse to acknowledge Bush’s actions).
Are Republican and independents getting good information from their leaders and the right wing noise machine? Admittedly on the other side I wouldn’t know some things if I hadn’t stumbled on to Glenn Greenwald, but there is Charles Ferguson’s “Inside Job” and apparently Ezera Klein is not too bad. But a lot of the media is obsessed with being fair and finding two equal sides for every story, and there is a smaller group that does actually worship Obama (much like conservatives accuse). So the left doesn’t always have the best sources either, but at least they are there for people to find. As far as I know the right has no equivalent, only people like Bill O’Reilly, the late Andrew Breitbart, Matthew Vadum and Jack Kelly.
That’s the state of political debate today, and Jack Kelly’s contribution.
