Tag: Romney

The Two Lying Bastards Show, Season 14, Episode 2

2012-10-16, 9:52 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness, TV

All right, I missed the season premier and the All-Sidekick Special. But I caught this one.

On the whole I think Obama pulled this one out but they both did pretty well. Romney was at his best when he was criticizing Obama's record, his failures and broken promises -- and I think that speaks to the fundamental weakness of each campaign. Obama has failed to be the President he promised to be four years ago, but on the other hand, Romney is essentially running the same campaign John Kerry was eight years ago -- nobody's voting for him, they're voting against the incumbent.

Today's top story was Secretary Clinton's mea culpa on the attack in Benghazi. This was an opening for Romney; to my mind the Administration has bungled its narrative on the attack over the past few weeks, sticking to the "spontaneous attack over a YouTube video" story well after it became clear it was a coordinated terrorist strike.

Romney fucked that up.

The bit where he claimed Obama didn't refer to it as a "terrorist attack" on day one, and Crowley checked the transcript and confirmed that he had? That was the strongest audience reaction of the night, and we'll be seeing it in the highlight reel. Romney's best line of attack on foreign policy is effectively neutralized.

(The Republican talking point now appears to be that Crowley lied and Obama never used the phrase "terrorist attack". Per the transcript, the actual phrase he used was "acts of terror" -- claiming that the two phrases are not equivalent is absurd hairsplitting.)

Crowley was great, too; she gave the candidates rope when it was appropriate and reined them in when it was appropriate to do that. I only heard a bit of the first debate, but what I heard was consistent with what everyone said about Lehrer afterward: he was a moderator in name only and the debate was completely out of his control. Crowley owned it.

On the whole I'm still not happy with Obama. (And that he's got the balls to go up there and criticize Romney for supporting China in conducting surveillance on its own citizens, even as he's ramped up domestic surveillance beyond even Bush Administration levels...) I'm leaning Stein at this point. But I still prefer Obama to the alternative and hope he wins. If I were in a swing state, I might bite the bullet and vote for him -- but I'm not. There's a single poll showing Obama running within the margin of error in Arizona; the New York Times explains why it's best taken with a grain of salt (tl;dr the sample is too small and if Arizona were to go blue it would be part of a nationwide surge in Obama's favor).

All in all, a decent episode but I'm not sure it was good enough for me to stick around for the finale. Not nearly as good as the new episode of Walking Dead the other night.

Didn't See It.

2012-10-03, 9:23 pm
Categories: Politics, TV

I have some fans who want to know what I have to say about tonight's episode of The Two Lying Bastards Show.

Well, I missed it. And it's not as funny as it used to be anyway. I think it really jumped the shark after 1992; that episode where they let that third lying bastard in just to shake things up was hilarious.

Caught a little bit of it on the radio, but, well, nothing much to write home about. The usual platitudes. Didn't hear enough to really single anything out for praise or criticism. The show has settled into a pretty comfortable formula at this point and they're not about to shake up audience expectations.

Two more episodes left this season. Maybe I'll catch one of those and have more to say. In the meantime, I'm sure Stewart and Colbert will have the highlights.

Who? Who? WHO?

2012-10-02, 9:31 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

I've said before that I don't know who I'm going to vote for this year. Romney's right out, and I just don't think I can grit my teeth to vote Obama again either.

Johnson? There are things I like about him but if I can't grit my teeth to vote for a Democrat I sure don't see how I can grit my teeth to vote for a Libertarian. The Libertarian Party has become synonymous with a total lack of empathy for the less fortunate and an obscene worship of big business. Johnson's one of those guys like Ron Paul -- he sounds good to college kids because he wants to end our foreign engagements, decrease domestic surveillance, and end the drug war -- all good things. But you start digging a little deeper into his policies? Not only does he want to replace the IRS with a flat tax, the dude wants to abolish the Board of Education.

Stein? Well, I can't find any red flags with her, but unfortunately I've come to believe the Green Party is a dead end.

I used to be registered Green. I voted Nader in 2000. I saw him blamed for Gore's defeat, and the Green Party backed down and allowed itself to be controlled by that narrative. The leadership told Nader he couldn't campaign in swing states if he was going to run on their ticket again, and he told them he would campaign wherever he wanted.

(A quick aside: While I acknowledge Nader was one of many factors in Florida in 2000, I believe that saying "It's Nader's fault" is corrosive because it lets many more important factors off the hook: the voter disenfranchisement efforts, the intervention by Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the Supreme Court ruling, and -- most importantly, to my mind -- the point that Gore ran a terrible campaign. Nader makes a convenient scapegoat for the Democratic Party, but saying "It was Nader" implies it wasn't any of those other things, and does nothing to address them. Meanwhile, voter disenfranchisement, government by cronyism, a deeply partisan Supreme Court, and Democrats behaving like Republicans continue to be problems, even as Nader has ceased to be an issue.)

I didn't vote Nader in '04 -- I went lesser-evil that time and backed Kerry, because Bush was just so bad. But I think the Green Party made a huge tactical error in retreating from Nader and cowering under criticism from the Democrats and the media. Honestly, what's the worst possible thing that could have happened if Nader had run as a Green in '04 -- John Kerry might have lost?

Meanwhile, the Green Party proved it's not willing to fight, and will back down any time people say mean things about it. If I wanted a nominally-liberal party that backpedaled under criticism, I'd just vote Democratic.

(I'll say one thing for the Green Party, though -- at least they didn't nominate Roseanne Barr.)

Still, I don't see anyone else who's better. I loved the idea of Americans Elect, but I think we all knew how it would end going in -- get a bunch of people on the Internet trying to choose a candidate, you wind up with a bunch of Ron Paul write-ins.

I've said before that I'm sorely tempted just to write Carter's name in. He's as likely to win as any third-party candidate (and only slightly less likely to win Arizona's electoral votes than Obama). And then I could tell people I voted for Carter, even though I'm only thirty years old.

Worth it to throw my vote away for a joke? Hell, maybe; way I see it, I'm throwing my vote away no matter what. (So why vote at all? Well, there's plenty on the ballot where my vote might make a difference: taxes, overrides, bonds, County Sheriff...) I guess a tick mark under "Green" might have ever-so-slightly a higher influence than a tick mark under "Other" in the final tally, but not very much. The Green Party certainly won't reach the threshold for federal matching funds; it didn't when Nader was running and it's only gotten less popular since.

You Can Teach 'Em to Hate the Things You Hate

2012-09-28, 9:17 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

My cousin just explained to me that the reason Obama wants to destroy America is because a long time ago his dad told him America was bad.

He's about six years old.

I find this sincerely disquieting.

On the other hand, I am fairly confident that my little brother's first complete sentence was "Ronald Reagan is a fucking asshole," so I imagine my aunt was just as bothered by the horrible things her brother was teaching his children in those days.

(For the record, I told him that I don't think Obama is a bad person or trying to destroy America, I simply think that he is doing what he thinks is right and making lots of mistakes. And added that I don't like Romney very much either and don't intend to vote for either one of them.)

Independent

2012-09-20, 9:07 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Well, I did it. I filed the paperwork and I'm not going to be a Democrat anymore.

I've swung back and forth from Democrat to Green to Democrat, but I've always considered myself an independent and any time anyone's ever asked me what my political affiliation that's what I've always said. Sometimes I've qualified it -- "liberal independent", something like that.

I never really wanted to be a Democrat; I only ever registered as one to vote in primaries. (Arizona passed a ballot measure in 1998 allowing independents and people registered to third parties with no primary to choose a major-party primary to vote in, but due to a technicality it was interpreted to mean "any primary except a Presidential primary". Which is stupid, because obviously everybody who voted in favor of the initiative intended for it to apply to Presidential primaries because it's not as if independents and third parties were really champing at the bit to vote in the primary for sheriff or Congressman, but that's what we wound up with.)

It's a technicality and I don't suppose it really matters. In four years maybe I'll switch back to (D) to vote in another primary. Or maybe I'll go (R) for a change and try to get the least-crazy Republican candidate nominated -- I may not be wild about guys like Huntsman or Johnson, but I think everybody would be a lot better off if the Republican Party went back to being helmed by candidates who weren't completely fucking nuts.

But, truth is, I was never really comfortable calling myself a Democrat, because I really cannot stand the Democratic Party. The Republicans are odious but they're doing what they're supposed to do; it's the Democrats who talk a good game about reining in special interests and respecting civil liberties and then turn around and piss all over those promises.

I knew Obama was going to disappoint me in some cases, but I never expected him to disappoint me so much. I thought worst-case scenario was that he'd be another Clinton. Instead, he's like Clinton without the political acumen.

His signature achievement has been the passage of a healthcare bill designed by the Heritage Foundation -- without a single Republican vote. I'll grant it's better than what we had, but that's a pretty piss-poor campaign slogan.

He backed off his support for due process before he was even elected President; in '08 he said he'd filibuster any attempt to grant immunity to the telecoms who aided the Bush Administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program, then he turned around and voted for telecom immunity -- and when the liberal base that had gotten him nominated complained, he affected that condescending air of his and said we had misunderstood and he had never said he would oppose telecom immunity.

He's certainly proven, since becoming President, that he's not so concerned with due process after all. Indeed, as the EFF's Trevor Timm recently observed, the Democratic Party Platform of 2008 explicitly condemned warrantless surveillance, and the 2012 platform dropped that language entirely. I guess worrying about due process makes it harder to order drone strikes against American citizens and soak cancer survivors in urine while searching for nefarious objects like 4-ounce bottles of liquid.

So I've been wrestling with myself for months about whether I'd grit my teeth and vote for Obama a second time. (Third, counting the '08 primary -- though I'd have probably voted Edwards if he'd still be in the race. Now there's a politician who's become a massive disappointment for reasons that have nothing to do with policy.) And I think the last straw was the Justice Department's recent announcement that it wouldn't be filing charges against Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Not only did they announce they wouldn't charge him, they announced it before the November election. Polls are showing a tight race between Arpaio and challenger Paul Penzone (with independent Mike Stauffer polling around 5%) -- it is entirely possible that the Obama Justice Department just got Sheriff Joe reelected.

Maybe if I were in a swing state I'd grit my teeth and vote Obama anyway -- I have to admit he's better than Romney and, under the circumstances, I hope he wins.

But my state's votes are going to Romney, period -- even the pundit class has pretty much given up the "maybe Arizona will be a swing state!" nonsense they pulled the last three elections.

Absolutely any vote I make is going to be a protest vote. And under the circumstances, I'd rather my protest vote go to someone who I actually like.

If only I could figure out who that is.

Kabuki

2012-09-18, 9:15 pm
Categories: Politics, Stream of Consciousness

Cut the crap.

Democrats, news media: quit pretending that it is some kind of shock or revelation that a Republican candidate believes half the population is made up of lazy good-for-nothings who just want handouts.

Republicans: quit pretending that that hasn't been the core of your party platform since the Reagan Administration.

This is not new. Bring up welfare or the Affordable Care Act in absolutely any political discussion and see how long it takes for somebody to espouse the very beliefs that people are pretending to be surprised to hear coming from a Republican.

About the only guy who's not being utterly disingenuous here (for a change) is Romney. Because he's refusing to apologize for being an amoral mercenary with absolutely no sympathy for anybody with less money than himself.

You know, a Republican.