Republicons vs A Republican

George Bernard Shaw observed, "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."

Today I heard Mitt Romney say he is convinced of American exceptionalism--that we are different and better than all other countries on earth.

Abraham Lincoln called America the last best hope of mankind, but when he said that he was speaking of a country which was the only true democracy on the planet. England was evolving into a constitutional monarchy, but, for the most part, the American experiment was the first real, large scale effort to forge a republic, "If you can keep it," as Benjamin Franklin said.

Lincoln called himself a Republican.  He would be appalled to see the Republicans of today--John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney. These are men who would say the slaves would free themselves if only government regulations did not constrain them.

But, to go back to GB Shaw, "Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."

And we have been discovering just how little we deserve a good government lately.

What I cannot understand is why we are so undeserving, what makes us so stupid that Rush Limbaugh is a man who commands the attention and adulation of 15 million listeners daily. 

During the Civil War, soldiers who were educated, if at all, in one room school houses looked at their choices, looked back over three years of dreadful carnage and did not choose to vote for the glamorous George McClellan, but they voted for Lincoln. They chose well, but why? How did they reason and reach the decision that saved the Republic?  Could our soldiers, will our citizens be able to see through the wall of lies to the truth?

I am not sanguine.

Part of the argument this time is not about union or slavery or even rape or contraception and abortion. It's about the economy. The Republicans persist in selling the idea that all we need to do is to reduce taxes and, like pixie dust, everything after that will miraculously turn happy.

They will trot out economists to say it's all true.

But, as GBS remarked:  "If all economists were laid end to end, they would not reach a conclusion."  

Bad Leaders Matter

Top:  General Ambrose Burnside; Bottom:  General Benjamin Butler

During the Civil War, the Southern insurgents who began with war with not a single cannon factory, with a huge disadvantage in terms of population, economy and political organization (no central government) managed to fight the North to near defeat because they had one form of central government which mattered, an army, and they had excellent generals.

The North had some pretty terrible generals.  Some, like Ben Butler were well connected politically, and really incompetent and some, like Ambrose Burnside, were simply incompetent.  But they did things like sending their troops across a long field in long lines of marching bodies only to have them mowed down because the enemy now had rifles instead of muskets.  In the days of muskets, long lines of infantry marching upright worked pretty well because you could not shoot accurately from half a mile away and you could not reload many times. Rifled barrels changed all that, but the generals either did not realize this or they realized this but were not flexible enough to change tactics. Something similar occurred in trench warfare in World War I, when lines of troops were sent running across fields raked by a new weapon, the machine gun.

In hospitals, the generals, i.e. the chiefs of service, kept on call schedules for interns at the thirty six hours on call rather than instituting a night coverage system whereby interns handed off the baton at night and went home and got some sleep. The chiefs argued this was good for the interns, because they could see a patient from his admission, through his "crisis" and could appreciate the full course of an acute illness.  This may have been true when the chiefs were training, because there was relatively little for interns to do during lose long nights on call.  But by the time the chiefs had become chiefs, the patients were sicker and there was more to do at night.

When the chiefs were interns and a patient went into cardiac arrest, they sent that patient to the morgue and the interns could go back to bed. When electrical defibrillators and a new generation of medications arrived, patients going into cardiac arrest became a new demand for interns' time and energy.  Ditto for patients who went into gram negative sepsis. 

Charles Christian, who was chief of medicine at Cornell once stunned a group of medical residents by saying it was much easier to be on call in the "days of the giants"  when interns were on call every other night, because they slept through the nights most nights and there was so much less the interns could actually do for patients. His generation of doctors had always bludgeoned the current generation who complained about the sleep deprivation and the difficulty of surviving the on call schedule with comments like, "You guys have it easy, every third night on call. We were on every other night."  So don't be so faint hearted, you wimps. This was a revelation. 

Eventually, the system changed and interns were sent home to get some sleep and the number of hours they worked consecutively were limited. And guess what? The interns still got trained as doctors.

So now, we are faced with choosing leaders again. And there are men and women who want to be leaders who do not understand the nitty gritty of what the troops on the front lines have to do and the difficulties they face. These leaders say we can do health care with coupons, and they say we can provide for retirement with the stock market and they say we do not need taxes--all we need is tax cuts. They say government is bad and what we need is less government and more private enterprise to solve the problem of a stalled economy, of business men who destroy banks and business. They say government regulation is the problem, not the solution. 

If we make these people our leaders, our troops will suffer, and the people they serve will suffer. And by our troops, I mean everyone who works in the trenches, providing medical care, putting out fires, policing our towns, building bridges, paving roads. 

In Hampton, the Smutty Nose brewery almost did not get built because there was no sewer hook up. All those jobs would have been lost, all the commerce down the drain because leaders were short sighted, not wanting to spend money to provide infrastructure to bring business to town.

Penny wise, pound foolish. That's the Republican-con.  Bad leadership. 

Zombie Tax Deniers: New Hampshire and Reason to Believe

It was hot today in Hampton.  The Hampton Democrats put up a tent in a Mill Road backyard and heard from three candidates for governor and one for US House of Representatives.

The crowd, as usual was compromised mostly of sixty to seventy somethings, but there were younger people as well, and spirits were high, despite the heavy weight of the heat.

The governor of Connecticut showed up, with his security people with the ear pieces and the vigilant looks and the governor gave a stirring speech about how the Republicans are intent on destroying government and all the good things it does in the name of some cockamamie idea of "freedom." 

I met a man running for sheriff, who was a Republican last election but could not abide the government haters, and so he switched parties.

Maggie Hassan gave one of those polished, focus group tested speeches with which I could agree, but somehow I could not see her persuading anyone with that who was not already a solid Democrat.  A man named Kennedy got up and introduced himself as a candidate for governor and said he favored an income tax and legalization of marijuana. You might say he dug in on the left flank. He sort of lost me when he said, "I often shoot from the hip, but always from the heart."  

Then Jackie Cilley got up and really started shooting, not from the hip, but raising that gun to the chin and letting loose with both barrels.  This is the Jackie Cilley who will bar the door against the zombies who keep trying to rise up from the dead and break the house down with their efforts to destroy the tax base of New Hampshire. 

Cilley has refused to take the pledge to never impose an income tax because she thinks it's a cowardly, destructive and ultimately immoral thing to do. What you are doing, essentially, when you grandstand and promise never to approve an income tax is to say, "Okay, I've got this gun, but it's not loaded. So now drop yours."

She identified about a dozen ways other than income taxes you could raise enough revenue to run the state government, but none of these proposals will even get a hearing if you don't have the threat of an income tax to hold against the temples of 425 legislators in Concord.

"We've got t consider what will happen when we actually do win this election," Cilley said. "Then we have to govern."

The Republicons are, of course, only concerned with winning. They have no interest in actually governing. They promise no taxes and then they cannot govern. They replace big government with really bad government.

I spoke with Chris Muns, who is running from Hampton for a seat in the House at  Concord. He'd seen the disaster of the 2010 election, when Democrats were swept from Concord and replaced with people who believe birth control pills cause prostate cancer and vaccines cause mental retardation.

I asked him why he had not given up trying to save this state, which persists in trying to walk back through some time warp, to get back to the 19th century.  He shrugged and said we'd never move forward if we give up.

Carol Shea Porter drifted by and she did not say, "I told you so," when I mentioned Frank Guinta, who beat her for the US House seat last time, has said he wants to destroy Social Security so thoroughly his own children will never learn that it ever existed.  He wants "private enterprise to lead the way," whatever that means. Ms. Shea Porter just smiled and said, "Vote."

So, there are people out there who continue to fight. 
It has been comforting to read A Stillness At Appomattox  which depicts the voting in the Union Army during 1864, when the army had been beaten repeatedly, when the government of the people, by the people, for the people seemed to be to be a ship going down in stormy waters. But the Army, which had loved its little dandy of a general, George McClellan, who was running against Lincoln, lined up and voted overwhelmingly against their darling and for Lincoln.  They sensed, or reasoned, some how concluded, the work they had done together over the three prior years of immense tumult and sacrifice and loss had to be continued.  They were staggering, but they had not given up on the idea of Union, on the possibilities of government and they voted to continue the fight.

And so it was a Southern Cause, the cause of aristocracy, slaves, fairy tales of chivalry which masked the bullwhips cracking and the iron shackles and chains and the fact that less than 20% of the population even owned slaves, that pixie dust monster was finally brought down and a stake driven through its heart.

So, in the end, because it has happened before, maybe there is a reason to believe, it can happen again: Maybe this great experiment of a government of the people, by the people, for the people may not perish from the earth.  

PS: Here's the link to the zombie ad. It's fun.
http://youtu.be/kTZMTTcvTm8

Mitt Romney and the Kiss of the Spider Wasp

When the wasp larva hatches it begins to feed on the still-living spider. After consuming the edible parts of the spider, the larva spins a silk cocoon and pupates – usually emerging as an adult the next summer. Some ceropalines lay the egg on a still-active spider, where it feeds externally on hemolymph. In time, that spider will die, and the mature wasp larva will then pupate.
                         --Image and text courtesy  Wikipedia


So how is Mitt Romney like a spider wasp? 
As I understand it, and I'm not sure I understand it, Bain Capital functioned by buying up companies, often struggling companies, then borrowing massively using those companies as collateral, not risking their own money, but making the company the borrower. The partners at Bain would pocket large "consulting fees," as board members of the company--now they were attached to the company, not attacking it as a hostile takeover or an outright kill-- like the spider wasp attached to the body of its host, eating away at the still living creature, and, ultimately,  the company would collapse, with all souls lost, but Bain walked away richer.

So, on the face of it at least, Mr. Romney and Bain Capital took it's cue from the spider wasp--very similar strategy, similar life cycle.

And this, we are told by the Republicons, is what qualifies Mr. Romney to run the U.S. government. 

I guess, he has that plan in place--first you plant the egg: Cut taxes!  Then once you've got it growing, you start gobbling up and digesting all those programs like Medicare and Social Security and then when those collapse, you leave those empty shells behind and you go back to private life on Wall Street.  

Linda Wendt: The Trojan Horse

Now here's an attractive Midwestern lady, who owns a restaurant in Wisconsin, and she is interviewed on Morning Edition, sounding oh so reasonable and non confrontational,  youbetcha. 
She voted for Bill Clinton twice but will not vote for President Obama because he does not understand the burdens carried by small business owners like her the way Mitt Romney does. She won't say anything nasty about Mr. Obama, but she slips in the knife, with a smile, about how he just doesn't know what hardworking people like her go through, trying to meet a payroll, but of course, Mr. Romney does.
It's no knock on Mr. Obama, personally, she says; he just has never had the experience of working hard to build a business.
But, of course, it is a knock against Mr. Obama, personally.
It's the same knock every person who thinks she pulled herself up by her own bootstraps, without any help from any one, not from the parents who gave her the restaurant, not from the government which paved the roads to the restaurant. She did it all herself, just the way Mitt did and Obama did not.

And, of course, the NPR reporter doesn't ask a single revealing question to unmask the nasty  beneath that smiling exterior.

She does mention she knows Obamacare will be an unreasonable expense for her, although she doesn't know what's in the law. She knows if she has more than 50 employees, she'll have to provide medical coverage for them, so she'll game the system and keep her employees down below 50--playing that Republican tune that job creators like here will pull back because of government regulation.

The last thing a job creator wants to do is to become the parent of her employees, to become responsible for their welfare. If you are a job creator, you want to get labor out of your employee, not an obligation, especially if all they are doing is poaching fish. 

 NPR gave her fifteen minutes to slip her knife in multiple times, without ever challenging where she gets the idea Obamacare will be bad for her. And they never asked her how she knew Mitt Romney had to meet a  payroll. And they never asked how much Bain Capital was  like her fish fry. Is there really anything at all in the experience of running a vulture capital firm which is like running a fish fry restaurant?

She did let slip she did not believe the government should pay for contraception, and in this she echoes Rush Limbaugh's rant about the Georgetown law student who he called a slut for asking for her insurance to cover contraception.

She comes across as very open minded, reasonable person. Of course, she is not open minded, or reasonable, but she is never revealed by any tough questions. She looks like a nice wooden horse you might want to wheel into your city.

Medicare Destroyers, and Social Security: The Republicon Assault

Paul Krugman  is an economist who knows how to look at economic numbers. He writes in today's New York Times about what happens when you look at the numbers in the Paul Ryan budget--the budget virtually every Republicon voted for in the last Congress.  

First you cut taxes to the tune of $4.3 trillion (that's with a T).
These tax cuts are for the rich, of course. 
Then you try make up that $4.3 TRILLION with spending cuts.
Now where do you find $4.3 TRILLION in spending cuts?
Mr. Ryan refuses to divulge. (Like President Nixon's infamous plan to end the war in Vietnam, he's not saying.) It's a  secret.

He does say, with a sly wink, there's lots of money to be saved by cutting Medicaid--which is for poor people, for whom nobody except some touchy feely soft hearted soft headed Democrat has any sympathy. 
That saves $800 Billion. (Remember, a trillion is a thousand billion.) And then there's Medicare, which he'd kill altogether, except for coupon care.  That's another $800 billion.

Still not there, are we?

Oh, then there's food stamps, aid to college students, and all told the stuff he has gotten specific about comes to $1.7 trillion.   
But 4.3-1.7 =2.6, so we've still got to find $2.6 Trillion in spending cuts.

So then there's Social Security.

This is what Republicons call "fiscal responsibility" and "cutting the deficit." 

Remember Reagan? He was a big deficit hawk who tripled the deficit over his 8 years in office. Can you imagine what Ryan/Romney and the Republicon artists would do?  Their deficit cutting plan so far has added $2.6 to the deficit.  But it has cut taxes for the job creators, the upper 1%, the billionaires, so it must be all right.

Krugman points out Ryan/Romney are now attacking  President Obama on the same Medicare cuts which Ryan had in his own budget. 

And this is from the most "serious" man, the biggest policy wonk in the Republicon Party. 

Now there's a confidence, man.

Medicare, Ryan, Romney, Medicare, Medicare

Republicans will try, every day, from now until November, to say they are trying to save Medicare from inevitable bankruptcy and destruction.

They have, of course, invented a fatal disease for Medicare, which does not threaten it. 

As Democrats, we should all emulate Gail Collins, who cannot write about Mitt Romney without including some reference to a dog strapped to the top of a car.

We must always mention Romney/Ryan want to kill Medicare and substitute Coupon Care, as if you can replace a living thing with a dead body and call it life saving.

Romney/Ryan, the Medicare Murderers. Romney/Ryan, axe murderers of Medicare. Romney/Ryan, Medicare killers.

I don't know...vote here for your favorite. But this should be not just the lead sentence, but part of their names. 

For Republicans, it's the "Democrat Party."  For Democrats it should be...What? The Medicare Killer Party?  

I'm not much with Marketing Phrases.  Help me out.