Though they certainly aren’t alone, Mittens Romney, his wife, and campaign staff seem to be particularly bad about this. Hardly a day or stump speech goes by in which they don’t find themselves walking back policy statements that are directly at odds with those given a year, month, week, day or a few hours ago. His blatant half-truths are a constant problem and sometimes he’s just plain comical in his attempts to relate to the “common man”, such as when he told NFL fans how he shared their passion for the sport…by watching the game from the team owner’s skybox or how NASCARy he is because he personally knows many car owners. To the delight of the NRA, he shoots “varmints” too.

Of course in a business where nothing is EVER the candidate’s fault there are worse coping mechanisms. The evil media, or Sarah Palin’s “lamestream media” if you prefer, are often the whipping boys of choice. They are perpetual “gotcha gatos” who ALWAYS misquote the candidate – despite unedited video to the contrary or except when the politicos like the quote.

Sharron Angle set the gold standard for this type of blame shifting when she criticized the media for asking questions she didn’t want to answer, apparently mistaking them for some rogue, pro-bono campaign operation.  Walking Hefty Bag of Ego, Newt Gingrich, even went so far as to have a student journalist bum-rushed by security for breaking the, “I won’t tell even if you ask” policy. More often than not, Mittens just responds to a completely different question.

“Mr. Romney, what is your position on health care?”

“Well, I’m glad you asked that. By the way, I was sick once. My staff physician took CAT scans of my nose and assured me it was only a cold. In any case, I just told my gold bullion broker that I think taxes on imported tin from Uganda are completely destroying the American way of life.”

The constant attempts to lower their performance to the lower than lowest common denominator is an embarrassing sight, even if growing numbers of people can’t see it or are turned off by the whole process because they can.

It’s so bad even the penguins are pissed.

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Republicans argue that if we didn’t tax the wealthy or corporations and got rid of regulations we’d be trickling jobs like Ronald Reagan’s pissing down Donald Stockman’s leg.

The Democratic vision is to tax the hell out of the wealthy and make corporations pay dearly, but oddly considering their constituency and history, get rid of regulations too. Dems also like to retrain those with unmarketable skills into those with different unmarketable skills. Turning steel makers into assembly line workers doesn’t gain much unless you only need workers to assemble steel Big Macs.

We Unbombed Them Back From the Stone Age

After WWII, America spent a lot of money rebuilding the world economy. We rebuilt countries we bombed back to the Stone Age. Sure it was altruistic, but more importantly, there was plenty of economic benefit for America too.

“Made in Japan” used to be code for cheap crap – items from faux Stucky’s gift shop Indian drums to transistor radios that barely lasted through the voyage to American shores. Crap made cheaply, sold to relatively wealthy Americans, kept the money flowing and built a unified international economy that replaced the chaos of dozens of national unequal economies.

By the late 60′s, Japanese cheap crap became a flood of very good Japanese products. There was still a fairly vibrant US economy where heavy industry provided adequate jobs for adequate pay. Japan was still cheap enough to compete with American companies, but that was rapidly changing. As America exported more jobs, we also became a nation of consumer debt ridden, credit-crazy, not-saving orgyists buying stuff like 5-bladed razors and houses we couldn’t afford.

The collapse was on.

But the Japanese were no fools. As their fortunes rose. they began to demand the same sort of money and working conditions as Americans. American corporations responded to their demands and continued to send jobs even as their products became inexorably more expensive.

Eventually, both America and Japan became too expensive. Jobs moved from there to places like Korea. Then by the same route, Korean jobs moved to places like India, and lately, China. Radically low costs may draw jobs to places like Uganda next.

Truth is,  America can’t compete with foreign sweatshops and Chinese prison labor on cost. If Americans worked for those wages they’d have even less money than we do today.

What about deregulation? We’ve already moved most high paying American jobs to Third World countries. Their lax or unknown regulations make their sweatshops and factories some of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.

Doing Anything to Turn a Rupee

For example China, on behalf of American companies, push Chinese workers to the point of suicide. The air in most Third World countries is too thick to breathe. Workers die from exposure to toxic chemicals or crushworthy machines and when they do are replaced with other destitute people willing to do anything to turn a Rupee – regardless of the danger and damage to their health and safety. If you don’t provide adequate health care, the cost of dead and disabled workers doesn’t matter much.

It’s often said that Americans won’t take some jobs. That may be true, but there’s a reason. American corporate sweatshops may make products cost competitive with India or China, but do it at the expense of worker safety while producing less and less money to buy their own goods.

You got no money, you can’t buy a color TV…from anyone.

The economic pendulum has swung one direction for a long, long time – perhaps too far to swing back. We should expect recessions to be deeper and last longer than ever before, regardless of the Democratic or Republican plans.

The War on the Middle Class is true, but so is the War on the Wealthy. Sadly, these are but the first battles in the War on Everyone, rich and poor alike. It’s united we stand, divided we fall time. Absent some agreement between waring political factions, we’ll all be killed in an economic holocaust.

And, that benefits no one.

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Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Care Bear-in-Chief made an ill-advised move to put the hammer – or more like a feather – down on SCOTUS. The hyperbole begins. Charges of  “playing politics” fly from the mouths of some of the most partisan politicos the world has ever seen. It’s just another shite-storm in Rancorstan.

Karl Rove decided the O-Man is, “some kind of political thug”. A thug that comes into the health care fight wearing a lace glove and with two hands tied behind his back and a shiv already sticking out between his ribs. Of course, Karl would know about such things since he is the embodiment of  bad faith and shakily ethical politiking.

Karl thinks Obama, by virtue of being President, gives up his First Amendment right to say anything he wants about the Court or even Rowe. Talk about your political “activism”. In fact, you can make a case that Obama is right on many counts. However, to suggest he will wreck the Constitution and bring about the end of the Republic while somehow intimidating the court is piffle.

Hot Air from the Balloon

The court is an independent branch of government and under no obligation to make a decision based on political opinion. The idea they can be intimidated as Karl suggests is absurd at best and disingenuous at worst. Karl’s idea of Obama’s move is about as empty a threat anyone can muster. Rove’s translation of Obama’s statement, “You better uphold my law or there’s going to be political damage created and I’ll help do some of the creating,” is just hot air out of the balloon – Karl Rove autographed edition.

Now giving Karl some credit, he isn’t the only one flinging Molicrapitov bombs. Appeals court judge Jerry Smith took the “unpresidented” step of ordering the administration to produce a 3-page letter – not 2-page or 4-page and single spaced, not double spaced letter- from the administration to explain themselves. Apparently Smith believes his court’s responsibility is to act as third grade teacher. Check that. Act as a third grader.

BTW your honor, I’d be happy to produce a letter – punctuated and formatted any way you like – to defend my assertion you are a whining crapweasel. Far be it from me to bully your honor or SCOTUS, given the immense political power I have over you and the Supremes.

SCOTUS is, like it or not, a political animal. The President recommends the justices  and the Senate approves them. I don’t think anyone could reasonably argue that a Congress and President viciously divided against themselves aren’t “playing politics” whenever possible. And thinking Karl isn’t the worst of the worst – or best of the best  depending on your point of view – is fantasy enough to have you committed to the closest asylum post-haste. After all, politicos are live in highly partisan institutions. Playing politics is what they do. In fact, it is what they are supposed to do.

The Business of the People

Luckily, the court has been reasonably responsible for most of the nation’s history. Sometimes they make decisions I may not agree with and certainly decisions none of the professional politicians agree with, but that is what it is designed to do.

Would I have done as Obama did? No. Would I have criticised the Supremes during the State of the Union address? No.

In hindsight, even Obama agrees. He’s walking the statement back and that walkabout probably hurts him more than the original statement anyway. I’m sure it doesn’t change his mind unless he’s got some Romney DNA that makes him a compulsive pander bear with no mind to change.

We already have enough to distract us from the business of the people – unless the business happens to be acting stupid.

Fer Chrissakes, give it a break.

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The latest skirmish is the one aledgedly waged by evil secular humanists  – or future candidates for hell as some would say – over compelling Christian hospitals to offer abortion services against their beliefs.

In this particular war, however, Christians have a point. It’s obvious that if a religion were compelled to offer the offending services it would violate the freedom of religion clause whether the majority of followers – for instance, Catholics – follow church teachings or not. But, that’s a narrow view. It excludes the beliefs of others to benefit to narrow, but powerful, Christian beliefs. The First Amendment applies to them too.

But, there is a compromise.

Many secular people don’t argue so much about religion as they do imposing religious beliefs on others. They object to the government giving religious enterprises special rights by exempting them from taxes and providing funding for some of their enterprises.

The compromise here is easily evident. If religions want to offer services to the public, but not offend their own beliefs, forsaking government funding for religion-owned businesses should be on the table. If a religion wants to operate secular businesses – like schools or hospitals – they have two choices. Stop asking the rest of the nation to pay your businesses in support of your specific religious teachings. Or,  stop providing services to those who do not share your beliefs.

There are positives in this compromise. Religions would no longer be required to provide services against their beliefs. They could provide any service they want to any person they want. The secular community would get relief for their complaints about government policies that are against their beliefs. Both sides get a sturdier wall between church and state to resist the evils of theocracy, which isn’t good for anyone, even the Christians.

However, there are some problems too. People living in areas where religion-affiliated health care is the only practical choice will have to find their care in between different church decisions that conflict with their ability to get dogmatically unfettered care or travel far to find it. However, there are ways to mitigate that issue.

There might also be some degradation of education and charitable services through reduced government funding, but again, there are mitigation solutions for this as well.

Given the religious and political trench warfare of our times, these solutions will never be mentioned, much less adopted. Both sides will agitate for solutions that require total capitulation from their ideological foes. These ideas may make things fairer, but neither side will buy into them.

After all, compromises are “one size fits all” and so, by definition, fit no one perfectly.

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New revelations about the two people involved in the tragedy arrive almost by the minute. Depending mostly on your political bent, Trayvon is the bad guy with a hoodie-full of malice aforethought and ready to spring into deadly action against poor George Zimmerman. But no, George is a hapless Neighborhood Watch volunteer in the wrong place at the wrong time just doing his undeputized act of public service.

Everyone from slap-silly Congressmen (and their opponents) to pundits to run-of-the mill citizens feel perfectly justified in  ripping their opposing side a new one based on uninvestigated and unverified statements from a bunch of people who know nothing in dead-solid certainty about who is guilty or innocent.

OJ Part Deux

This is OJ Part Deux. Everyone has an opinion. Everyone feels they “know” what happened and everyone will howl like hot air siroccos bloviating like an Oklahoma dust bowl about unfairness after the investigations and sentencing are done. There is no way this case can now be fair. The concept of innocent until proven guilty has been well and truly trampled.

Part of the public’s visceral reaction is a deep belief that our justice system can’t do anything except tyrannically rob everyone of their Constitutional rights, even though the public’s constant screeds are already doing that far more effectively.

Part of it is also a hyper-sensitivity to anything remotely racial. Had this been one of the dozens of white-on-white, black-on-black, or Insert Ethnicity Here-on- Insert Ethnicity Here crimes that happen every day, we’d all be listening to Rick Santorum being the world’s biggest nutcase (well, next to Michele Bachmann) instead.

Asking Americans to calm down and let the facts surface as they should is a lost cause. The facts of this whole disgraceful crime will come eventually come from both sides. That is the nature of criminal cases. Never is one side or the other totally wrong or totally right. Almost no one stands up, claims responsibility, and then provides air-tight facts to prove their confession. Ain’t gonna happen, regardless of what the public thinks.

Blathering Everyone Into a Lather

Did OJ do it? I think so given what I saw of the trial. Had I been in the jury room where some information never appeared, I might have felt differently. Did Zimmerman do it? Was Trayvon simply a good boy shot by a rabidly racist Rent-a-Cop? As with the Juice’s trial I don’t know and neither does anyone else, despite their self-ordained “expert” status.

It would behoove everyone to settle down and let the justice system run its course without all the blather. At the end of the day, you can fault the jury and judge as much as you like. At least we will have more of the facts than we do today.

Justice is an imperfect thing, regardless of who metes it out and fairness is a subjective thing – especially when someone may end up with a needle in their arm based on that subjectivity.

When all is said and done, you don’t get to make the decision, the jury does whether you like it or not.

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