What's so foreign about foreign policy?

In a time when so much of U.S. foreign policy involves our global military footprint, ongoing engagements, waning engagements and threatening engagements, it's easy to think that war is the sole function of that governing platform. Americans are conditioned that way; like a computer that insists on entering a discarded wi-fi password at your favorite cafe, many young voters cannot remember a time when it was not how we operated in war that ran our international relations, but how we manage our peace.

God, and the voters, willing, that period will return soon.

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Truth slightly distorted - the Republicans' latest cobbled frame

"The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted." -G.C. Lichtenberg, 18th Century scientist and satirist

Word has come, from a piece in New York Magazine, that former President George W. Bush has begun to paint, "making portraits of dogs and arid Texas landscapes" to occupy his time in retirement. It's a good hobby for a 66 year old man to take up, especially one who used to represent a party that makes it its business to hold up a picture of what they want Americans to see, instead of what is actually there.

As Bill Clinton said last week in Las Vegas, in aping Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, over his sudden teleportation (not turn, because it was too sudden a shift to be congruous) from "severely conservative" to the political center, "Who ya gonna believe - me or your own lyin' eyes?"

Whether, as Clinton suggested, moderate Mitt is back, or whether he just rejiggered his campaign because of the influence of of his family, as some have suggested, it seems rather apparent that the Republican party as a whole will continue to carry the hard right's message, even as Mitt distances himself from it.

For the former Massachusetts governor, re-framing is second nature. For the GOP, re-framing is what they do when they want to distort a perceived chink in an opponent's armor or shield their nominee from his own weaknesses.

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Romney's Core

Mitt Romney, as CEO of the Salt Lake
Organizing Committee
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Given all the different positions that Mitt Romney has taken throughout his political career, it may be easy to label him a liar and a flip-flopper. But if voters are looking for the "real" Mitt, they will have a hard time trying to peer through the gauzy obfuscations to the man at the core. Mitt plays politics in a carnival funhouse, and one cannot tell with certainty if what they are looking at is the authentic Romney or one of a series of distorted reflections, each intended to please a particular block of voters.

Somewhere in the center of the rotating Romney record that spins on the public life turntable, needle dropping alternately (that's like an iPod shuffle, to you Millennials) on the Senate candidate cut, the Bain cut, Massachusetts governor cut, the 2008 presidential candidate cut, the 2012 GOP primary cut and the 2012 official Republican nominee cut, is a tall, silver spindle that is unmoving and unmovable. It is the axis around which everything that is Mitt Romney swirls.

The first debate, in Denver last week, was the ultimate clue that the Romney campaign is both more and less than it seems. To attribute his polymorphic politics to mere pandering, is to imply a schedule of nefarious plotting by the candidate and his campaign. That is not only antithetical to the moral man he claims to be, it ignores the possibility of a simpler explanation, an Occam's Razor, if you will. It is not only possible, but likely, that he sees no disconnection between his stoic center and the political characters he has trotted out on the stage throughout his life.

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Can't hang your hat on polls when winds of crisis blow

In politics, you can't hang your hat on a poll, because the winds of global events will easily send it tumbling away. In the battle for leading a nation, there are only two things you can plant at the top of a poll: a flag or your ass, and if one isn't up there, the other soon will be.

It's safe to say that following the revelation of the recent video with Mitt Romney speaking "off the cuff," as he called it, at a high end fundraiser in Boca Raton, this spring, his keester is high in the breeze, hoisted with his own Mitt-tard, as it were. He just cannot get away from who he is. As Bob Marley sang, "You're running, and you're running, and you're running away, but you can't run away from yourself."

But there are still seven weeks until the decision is final, and anything can happen.

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Come up with a position - Mitt will be along shortly

He has been running for president of the United States for almost six years, and there are still so many doubts about his backbone and his political footing that opposing party partisans are not the only ones questioning his ability to be leader of the free world. But if he doesn't belong in the Oval Office, where does Mitt Romney belong?
His bona fides may suggest Secretary of Commerce, or a modest financial adviser to the chief executive or the Treasury secretary, but the Republican party has pushed him to the fore, out of a bevy of imbeciles and a cattle call of kowtowers, to be their alternative to President Obama - a well liked, popular incumbent with exceptional social skills, and a record of modest improvement from the situation the nation was burdened with when he took office, almost four years ago.
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Republicans praise truth one night, bury it the next

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers," Romney pollster Neil Newhouse, to an ABC breakfast panel, ahead of GOP vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan's acceptance speech, Wednesday.

It is kind of appropriate that Aeschylus' famous, fifth century, B.C., quote, "In war, truth is the first casualty," was popularized by a World War I era, American politician. Who knows better than someone who has had to fold falsehoods into the fight for votes in this diverse country, what a nuisance the truth can be?
Last night, at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, commentators and rebutting Democrats pointed out lies in many of the speeches, but it was with the faux earnestness of the words presented by the featured speaker, GOP vice presidential nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI),  that most took exception.

Paul Ryan, Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You have probably read, or heard, by now, how Ryan told the exuberant crowd that President Obama was responsible for the closing of a GM plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, where, Ryan said, "[a] lot of guys I went to high school with worked... It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight." But Ryan buried the fact that the plant closed in December, 2008, when George W. Bush was still in the White House.
Other obfuscations in Ryan's speech...
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Akin Republicans move Heaven to stop Romney

"Heaven sent a hurricane to hold off Gov. Romney's coronation."
-  Troy Newman, president of the anti-abortion activists group, Operation Rescue, in a statement, Monday, August 27, 2012

Having to push the actual vote to nominate Mitt Romney from Monday night to Tuesday because of Tropical Storm Isaac is a gift from heaven, according to strident anti-abortion activists and delegates gathering at the Republican National Convention, in Tampa this week. Newman, and others, believe that Heaven itself has intervened to give them a chance to circle their wagons in support of the embattled U.S. Senate candidate from Missouri, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO), and urge the rest of the GOP to put its money where its platform is.

"We're urging pro-life GOP delegates to abstain from any voting on Romney's nomination until all GOP financial support for Todd Akin is reinstated," Newman declared. He also is urging a vote holdout until "details of Romney's income tax returns in connection with Bain's Stericycle investment have been made public," according to reports.

Stericycle medical waste bin
(Photo credit: DaveBleasdale)

The Stericycle story, reported earlier this summer by Mother Jones magazine, as well as the Boston Globe, said that Romney signed Security and Exchange Commission documents on behalf of Bain Capital, long after he supposedly left, in connection with the firm's $75 million investment in the medical waste disposal company, which also destroyed aborted fetuses.

Neither the party's abandonment of the staunchly anti-choice Akin, nor its cognitive dissonance when it comes to Stericycle and the nominee, is making social conservatives very happy.

"To Gov. Romney we say... let's not kill an innocent child or cut off good men like Todd Akin," said Steve Baldwin, a former member of the California Assembly, and form director of the Council for National Policy. "I'd sooner take him or Paul Ryan as our party's Presidential nominee than Gov. Romney."

Baldwin is part of a group of dissatisfied Republicans who feel the nominating process has been hijacked by the Romney team, and the party establishment that has rallied behind the former Massachusetts governor. They think the Republican presidential nomination is still up for grabs, based on the delegate rules.

As for Akin, and his relationship to conservative convention delegates, Politico reported yesterday:

"At a breakfast meeting of Missouri delegates here in Tampa, a number were sporting 'Akin for Senate' stickers and stood strongly behind the six-term congressman’s decision to stay in the race.

"'The party should not throw him under the bus simply because he made a misstatement,' said Mitch Hubbard of Fulton, Mo."

But Heaven hasn't merely intervened on behalf of fetuses, apparently. Republican hatchet man and chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), thanked Isaac for keeping Vice President Joe Biden from doing his counter-event to the RNC, scheduled for Monday, in Tampa. "I would say from a standpoint of coverage, the hurricane already eliminated one blowhard," he said.

-PBG

UPDATE: America Right to Life has launched a website, RepublicansAgainstRomney.com, with a series of Bible banging, highlighted lines, like: "If you fear Obama, you'll vote for Romney. If you fear God, you won't."

Among the litany of reasons listed by the RTL for why they do not trust Romney, is a bullet item tracking his changing stance on abortion:

"pro-choice in '94; pro-life in '01; choice '02; pro-life '04; choice '05; life in '06; then funded abortion in '06."

"Romney has already implemented what Obama and Clinton only dreamed of: homosexual marriage, tax funded abortion by health care reform with the individual mandate, robbing religious freedom by forcing pro-life hospitals to administer abortion pills, etc.," the website asserts, "Obama is the lesser of two evils."

Republican bridge too far takes a political toll

"I am disappointed that I won’t be able to continue my investigations of the Obama administration such as the risky loan guarantee to Solyndra and holding Planned Parenthood accountable to the taxpayers."
- 12 term incumbent, Rep.Cliff Stearns (R-FL), in a written statement, after his narrow defeat to unknown Tea Party favorite Ted Yoho, Tuesday

Cliff Stearns regrets not being able to embarrass the Obama administration, and not being able to attack the nation's most accessible provider of women's health. Despite being supported by presumptive GOP veep nominee, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and having name recognition and money behind him, Stearns today finds himself a lame duck. Now, Yoho is certainly no great shakes as far as political progressives are concerned, but he unseats someone who was more interested in partisanship than policy, and that is worth celebrating.

Planned Parenthood called Stearns' investigation "nothing more than politically motivated intimidation," after he launched it last year. In a petition letter attacking the Congressman's probe, the women's health group wrote:

"Your effort to discredit, damage, and weaken Planned Parenthood will only harm the women and families who rely on Planned Parenthood health centers for essential preventive health care. Focusing on attacking Planned Parenthood when millions of women lack access to basic, affordable health care just shows how far out of touch Congress is with Americans' priorities."

But the Republican War on Caterpillars, er, I mean War on Women, has resulted in push back at the polls, this primary season, not only at the Congressional level, but also in state races and in the race for the White House.

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B-A-I-N, a song for Mitt

B.A.I.N.

B is for the billionaires’ ad buys.
A is for all the assets I hide.
I is islands offshore where cash and jobs were outsourced.
N is nothing more do I hold to that I did before, and

Bain, I said I left in ’99.
Bain, until 2002 was mine.
Mine, corporate papers say it.
We closed plants, might as well face it.
Bain improved my bottom line.

B is for the businesses Bain bought.
A is for anxiety Bain wrought.
I is inequity – you envy liquidity.
N is nothing more will I release than I did before, ‘cuz

Bain, it made me rich beyond my dreams.
I’m taxed at a lower rate, it seems.
Seems Bain backs my retorts.
Just don’t expect my old tax reports
‘Cuz Bain improved my bottom line.

Ann and I are doing fine.
‘Cuz Bain improved my bottom line
You can envy us, but just don’t whine.
In percent, I’m one. You’re 99.

Why a Walker victory will not stop a movement

 

Protesters outside the Wisconsin Statehouse,

Madison, WI, Feb. 26, 2011.

(Photo by Richard Hurd, via Creative Commons) 

A new poll conducted last week shows Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) with a seven point lead over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in next Tuesday's recall election, in Wisconsin. Contemplating a negative outcome after all the protests, all the statehouse sleepovers, all the nights the Democrats of the Wisconsin Senate hid out in an Illinois motel, all the visits from Ed Schultz and the rest of the national media, all the signatures on recall petitions, it all sucks, of course. Big time. But the herculean effort it took to try and oust the union busting governor of the first state where public employee unions were recognized is worth more than just an "Oh well, we tried," and an "atta boy" for the recall movement's strident activists. It deserves to be recognized for initiating a conversation on fairness, and bringing ownership and unity to a movement.
First, if one were to follow the fuse that exploded in Zuccotti Park, last fall, to its source, they would find an unwound reel and depressed plunger in the rotunda of the statehouse in Madison. Occupy Wall Street could not have happened without it. No matter what happens Tuesday, the conversation about fairness - fairness for the middle class and for union workers - is not over. What began in Madison was amplified by mic checks in Lower Manhattan that continue to echo across the country. The chorus is just beginning, even appearing as a central theme of Obama's reelection campaign.
"The job of a President is to lay the foundation for strong and sustainable broad-based growth," Obama said at a campaign stop in Iowa last week, "It’s to make sure that everybody in this country gets a fair shake, everybody gets a fair shot, everybody is playing by the same set of rules.
 "When you’re the President," he added, with rhetoric intended to distinguish himself from the GOP nominee, corporate raider Mitt Romney, "your job is to look out for the investor and the worker; for the big companies and the small companies; for the health of farmers and small businesspeople and the nurse and the teacher. You're supposed to be thinking about everybody -- and the health of the middle class, and what the future is going to hold for our kids."
 Obama took on economic fairness directly because he saw there was support out there. Politicians don't adopt an agenda just to be "radical." Sure it helps if it's in their philosophical wheelhouse, but they do it because they have political cover. They see there is a thriving movement that will support it. And if voices support it, and they get lots of media time, the money will follow. Just ask the Tea Party.
Second, what Wisconsin re-affirms is that this is our country. No matter how much money the Koch Brothers and Karl Rove and Sheldon Adelson throw at a politician's feet, our voices and our actions are the weapons they fear most. Otherwise, they wouldn't be working so hard to disenfranchise us at the voting booth.
Lastly, what happened in Madison united us. It brought liberal and progressive activists together with establishment organizations like major unions, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, in a fight that Rebuild the Dream founder Van Jones might call "class warfare… against people who have no class." Indeed, it's likely that the Susan G. Komen, anti-Planned Parenthood blow-back, this past March, would not have happened without the unity with which we have empowered ourselves since February, 2011.
Remember that no matter what happens in the Battle for Wisconsin, on June 5, there will be no flag of surrender, from either side. For those of us committed to fairness, equality and the right of everyone to be healthy and prosperous, the fight never ends. There's always someone who wants to turn back the clock on women, sacrifice the welfare of workers and suppress the rights of voters. We have to be there every time. They only win when we allow ourselves to lose, and that will never happen.
-PBG

Related articles

• Labor Falters in Wisconsin (thedailybeast.com)
• The defining reason behind Scott Walker's recall election - Milwaukee Political Buzz | Examiner.com (mbcalyn.com)
• Esquire:Scott Walker Doesn't Like Him No Rules (esquire.com)