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America’s Road to Oligarchy

November 12, 2013 By Jeff

Chris Christie was all over the Sunday talk shows and the national press/media after his re-election as Governor of New Jersey, supposedly all but ensuring his nomination – or anointment – as Republican nominee for President in 2016. Time Magazine went so far as to put him on the cover under the oh-so-clever title: “The Elephant in the Room”. Then a piece in the New Republic comes along pursuing the possibility of Elizabeth Warren capsizing the USS Hillary in the race for the Democratic nomination. But, it seems to me to be waaay premature to be worrying about the candidates for 2016; too much can happen between now and then and in some ways the 2014 congressional elections may be more important, especially for domestic policies.

While Christie will have his detractors – both within and outside the Republican party – Clinton and Warren would likely be presented as polarizing figures. But it seems that any candidate for the Democratic party inevitably becomes a polarizing figure because the system  is broken.

We are a country moving in an almost inexorable way toward oligarchy with the help of the current Supreme Court, people like the Koch brothers, major financial institutions and international corporations.  While Bill Clinton was able to raise a lot of money from Wall Street his presidency was under the most vicious kind of attack from day one of his presidency, with the complicity of a mediocre press and a well-financed right-wing hate machine. The same has happened to Obama and would most certainly also happen to Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren.

The combination of an electorate unable to identify their own interests let alone vote for them, a courtier press unable to extricate itself from the ordinary thinking that dominates political discussion in America, the corrupting influence of money and the breakdown of Americans’ commitment to the common good has led to a broken country. Warren understands this and her candidacy would be welcome simply to get some very basic political issues on the table. But first, let’s see if the Democratic Party can figure out how to win back the House of Representatives in 2014. Not that I am especially hopeful.

Filed Under: Chris Christie, Elizabeth Warren, Hillary Clintom, Politics, Press, Supreme Court, U.S. Domestic Policy

What’s the Matter with Maine?

February 25, 2013 By Jeff

“Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well-warmed, and well-fed.” — Herman Melville

The short response to the question above is: Governor Paul LePage and the members of Maine’s Tea Party. They personify the political dynamics in Maine that led to the election of a governor who is now doing serious long-term damage to not only the people of the state. but also to the political culture of the state.

Lepage’s 2010 election was the result of the support of Maine’s Tea Party and, Maine’s historic pride in being strongly ‘independent.’ LePage garnered less than 40% of the vote in his election but since the majority of the vote was split between Independent and Democratic candidates, it was enough. So the people of Maine have a governor, elected by 38% of the voters, who is committed to an “ideology” created by Tea Party fanatics who have a slim grip on cause and effect reality and a demonstrated non-existent learning curve.

Among LePage’s antics:

  • removing  serious historic works of art depicting workers from the states Department of Labor building because of a written complaint from a “secret admirer” and complaints from unnamed business owners. Among the inflammatory works was one portraying Rosie the Riveter;
  • promising that when elected he would “tell Obama to go to hell” ;
  • hiring his wet-between-the-ears 22 year-old daughter to a $41,000 job with $15,000 worth of benefits AND a $10,000 housing allowance while she lived in the Governor’s mansion;
    hiring his brother-in-law to a $68,000 state job;
  • resisting the banning of BPA in baby bottle and other plastic containers because heating up plastic bottles only causes it to “give off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards…”
  • pushing legislation that would allow public funding of religious schools despite state constitutional issues;
  • and, offending many with his characterization of the Supreme Court decision to allow the Affordable Care Act to proceed as a decision that “has made America less free. We the people have been told there is no choice. You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo — the I.R.S.”;

He did a sort-of apology for the use of the term “Gestapo”

According to a recent report in the Boson Globe, he has joined those Republican governors who refuse to accept federal funding for an expansion of Medicaid; an expansion that would provide medical care to a significant number of uninsured citizens of Maine. This most recent step by LePage plays to his base of Tea Party fanatics in a state in which – unlike most states – unemployment is growing.

LePage’s leadership has resulted in Maine’s ranking last among all states in personal income growth and – again, according to the Globe – Maine’s median income is less than $48,000 and 27% of the state’s residents are already enrolled in Medicaid – compared to the national average of 20%.

The Globe provided examples of those who will lose benefits due to LePage’s actions and it is not pretty. The victims are the usual mix of the elderly, the uninsured seriously ill who cannot afford insurance, the working poor, etc. .

So one result of the Maine commitment to its treasured image of being populated by “rugged Independents,” is a political system that has allowed only 38% of the population to elect a Governor of tremendous mediocrity – even crass stupidity. It is their democracy and they can cherish it, but they will pay for this in many ways that will show up in very human terms while the Tea Party continues to work against their fellow citizens.

Filed Under: Healthcare, Politics, Tea Party, U.S. Domestic Policy Tagged With: maine, Paul LePage

The Slandering of Chuck Hagel

February 17, 2013 By Jeff

The United States Senate, once known as “the world’s greatest deliberative body”, has become a stage for narcissistic Republican poseurs and clowns. The Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on former Senator Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense has produced one of the most embarrassing episodes in the ongoing saga of the dumbing down of the Republican Party.

The rookie, Deb Fisher, a Sarah Palin pal from Nebraska who finds Hagel; “too extreme – far to the left of Obama” – whatever that means.. (Her refusal to refer to “President” Obama a pathetic reminder of her connections to the Nebraska Tea Party). That Hagel had the good sense to endorse her opponent, Bob Kerrey, in her election campaign apparently fueled her ire but so what? This is about the Secretary of Defense not about Fisher’s feelings.

Noted global warming denier and biblical scholar Senator James Inhofe (R from Oklahoma) found that Hagel was an “appeaser” without specifying why other than to refer to a statement by the Iranian Foreign Minister describing Hagel as someone with whom they might be able to talk.

Noted Chicken Hawk Saxby Chambliss, Republican Senator from Georgia and previously a slanderer of Senator Tammy Baldwin who had lost both legs piloting a Blackhawk helicopter in Iraq, found that Hagel’s commitment to the concept of international negotiation was really simply a commitment to “appeasement” – again, whatever that means.

Senate newcomer and Tea Party pet Ted Cruz of Texas decided to become the reincarnation of Joe McCarthy, raising the suspicion that Hagel has been paid by enemies of the United States for speeches, questioning the patriotism of a battlefield decorated marine with a mythical list hidden away in his pocket.

But the main attractions in the early hearings – before Inhofe and Cruz pushed the process over the Crazy Cliff – were Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham. Noted poor loserJohn McCain got all red-faced with anger when Hagel refused to concede that McCain had been right in his support of the Iraq War “surge”, the grand strategy that delayed the inevitable U.S. withdrawal from a war that almost no one ended up supporting. His emotional, post-adolescent demand that Hagel agree that McCain was right and Hagel wrong on the surge was a sad display by a once admired Senator known now chiefly for his unwillingness to accept that he lost an election.

As for Senator Graham, what can be said about his obsession that Hagel is soft on support for Israel, or that he once said “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here, I’m not an Israeli Senator I’m a US Senator, this pressure makes us do dumb things at times”? Or that he is somehow responsible for telling us what went wrong with Benghazi?

It is depressing enough to see a major political party sink into a cesspool of gratuitous innuendo verging on slander without watching the national press serve as a largely unquestioning conduit of cheap shots, distortions and outright lies. Where is Edward R. Murrow when we need him?

How long will we have to avoid the Sunday talk shows as they wheel in McCain so they can help him lick his wounds from a defeat that is now 5 years old? Or watch the likes of Dick Gregory sidle up to Lindsey Graham without calling him on what has become a bizarre personal vendetta against one of the few Republican Senators to have had the good sense and political courage to admit that President George W. Bush’s Iraq war turned out to be a bad idea, poorly implemented.

As for the soft on Israel charge? Do we elect Senators to act in the national interests of the United States or of Israel? When they come in conflict – which they occasionally do – can we have an adult conversation in the press – as they do in the Israeli press? Or do we continue to put up with a national press unable or unwilling to consider the real implications of blindly following the lead of a foreign leader like Benjamin Netanyahu?

As the Republican Party moves toward reconsidering their “message” after a serious defeat at the polls last November, will they finally – at long last – have the decency to accept that President Obama is indeed the President and that the American people expect them to behave with respect to the office and to the national interest?

Filed Under: Iran, Iraq, Israel, McCain, Politics, U.S. Domestic Policy, U.S. Foreign Policy Tagged With: Deb Fisher, Hagel, Jim Inhofe, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz

Who has charisma? I’ll tell you who: Angela Merkel

December 5, 2012 By Mackenzie Brothers

In “Schubertiana” one of his greatest poems – and he has written more of them than anyone else alive – the matchless Tomas Tranströmer – incredibly he is  a Nobel prize winner who actually deserved it – presents the  composer  Franz Schubert like this: “And the man who catches  the signals from a whole life in a few ordinary chords from five strings who makes a river flow through the eye of a needle is a stout young gentlemen from Vienna, called “the mushroom” by his friends, who slept with his glasses on and stood  at his writing lectern punctually in the morning.  And then the wonderful centipedes of his manuscript were set in  motion.”  (Trans. Robin Fulton).  What Tranströmer is driving at here, among other things, is that the superficial outer shell of  beauty that  plagues so many contemporary politicians;  think in terms of Obama’s wife and kiddies, Romney’s religious zeal, Sarkozy’s phoney aristocratic bearing, Berlusconi’s bizarre displays of burlesque pleasure, the no-name British prime minister’s ridiculous portrayal of a person of power, etc.  In all of Europe there is now only one politician who has real power and she has  gained it by not playing a role that  is based on poor theatre, but on hard work and policies that have brought results.  This is Angela Merkel, the 57 year old former East German physicist, who displays none of the silliness of her colleagues in supposed power, who dresses without flair (we have to mention the one extraordinary exception to this that proved the rule when she wore a dress to the opening of the new Oslo Opera House that was so low-cut that the puritanical Norwegians missed watching the opera), and whose husband, an eminent physicist, is never seen at political events.

Against all odds she has now been in power as  the first female chancellor of  Germany  for 7 years,  and today she was reconfirmed as leader of her party, the conservative CDU, by the largest majority she has ever received:  80% of the party delegates voted for her.  Even the most conservative wing of the conservative party for whom she is too liberal, admitted that they would be “blöd” (nuts) to not give her their full support in the upcoming election, which they will certainly win, (but by how much is unclear).  In a stunning display of solidarity, the leader of the even more conservative Bavarian sister party (CSU), which has usually been  at odds with anyone governing in Berlin (no wonder when you experience  the splendid condition of the Bavarian capital München compared to rundown bankrupt Berlin) admitted that his party will be a “purring cat” during  the pre-election months, content to snuggle up to the warmth provided by Mama Angela.  Now that is charisma.

Filed Under: Germany, Politics, Public Diplomacy, Uncategorized

Innocence Abroad: The Romney Road Trip

July 29, 2012 By Jeff

Mitt Romney – with the unquestioning help of most of the American press – has made the presidential race almost entirely about the American economy.  Yet,  in reality the president’s power is limited in addressing domestic issues – especially when faced with a belligerent Congress unwilling to deal with any issue that might make the President look good. And for current Republican senators and representatives, that trumps national interest.

The President does, however, have considerable power in foreign affairs and traditionally has the support of the Congress on major elements of foreign policy, making a candidate’s stances on international issues more important than is generally recognized by the press and voters. Romney’s current trip abroad, which he is attempting to use to build his foreign policy credentials, takes on considerable importance in helping determine his ability to keep America’s best interests in mind.

His first stop in London was not reassuring. He insulted the Brits by questioning their ability to host the Olympics, did not appear to know the name of the leader of the Labor party, Ed  Miliband, when he met with him, broke an unwritten rule  by bragging to the world that he had met with the head of the secretive MI6, and spent a good part of his time there walking back his public remarks. The British press headlined him various ways, but “Mitt the Twit” was one not atypical reference.

He then headed for Israel where he will hold a major fund raiser with the help of Sheldon Adelson, famous for having donated tens of millions to the Gingrich campaign and now pouring similar millions into Romney’s campaign.  Adelson’s considerable wealth was gained mostly from gambling casinos and he has been accused of illegally influencing leading politicians in Macau to gain approval of a major gambling operation there. While Romney’s interest in Adelson is at least partly financial – Adelson provides access to large donors – it is also to find a wedge issue to attract American Jewish voters who have traditionally voted for Democrats.

The question for now is what Romney will promise Israel beyond what American presidents – including Obama – have always promised, which does not include unlimited support for an Israeli attack on Iran, a step seen by U.S. defense and foreign policy professionals as premature and, for many, counter productive.  American presidents have always supported  Israel’s right to defend itself and that has not changed under Obama. So it is hard to see what Romney can add to the debate, but given his history of unpredictable and irresponsible remarks, it is worrisome to consider the possibilities. American politicians are frequently tempted to define our national interest in terms of Israel’s national interest and they are simply not always the same. So, for instance, while it might be in Israel’s national interest for the U.S. to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities it is most certainly not in the national interest of the U.S. Let’s hope Romney remembers that crucial difference.

Filed Under: Obama, Politics, Romney, U.S. Foreign Policy

London Olympics 1948 and 2012

July 29, 2012 By Mackenzie Brothers

London 1948.  The last World War had only been over for three years.  To a significant  extent London still lay in ruins as a result of that war and it was a daring idea to ask a country that had been bankrupted and almost destroyed by an aggressive enemy  to host an Olympic Games.  And yet the United Kingdom welcomed  the choice by an Olympic committee that had not yet become  a group of old boys, most of whom had dubious  expertise in the area of amateur sports.   After all, this was not an overly expensive event and  the UK deserved the chance to show that it had survived the war with its basic values intact.    Thus London hosted the Olympics and  put them on in venues which, for the most part, had survived the bombings well enough to be used for sporting events.   All the participants were really amateurs, were asked to bring their own  personal items for the dormitory rooms that they slept in, were fed fn large part by donated food, and of course received no money for any medals they might win.  Security was provided by the Boy Scouts.  Film of the opening ceremonies capture the excitement when  a single runner ran up a staircase with a torch and lit the  flame which seemed to carry the hope that the future would be better than the immediate past.

Skip ahead 64 years to the spectacle witnessed on  tv by several billion people on the weekend.  It cost something like 30 million dollars, had 10,000 extras milling about in what apparently was meant to be the history of the British isles , featured an  Irish actor, dressed like one of the sleazy doctors or lawyers  from an Ibsen play and surrounded by rising polluting smokestacks while quoting from The Tempest of all things and waxing on about the edenic isle of Blake.  This eden was then highlighted by a 20 minute segment set in a gigantic hospital ward full of dancing nurses and hopping sick children.    British culture was represented by Sir Simon Rattle and the London Philharmonic attempting to play the theme song from Chariots of Fire with Rattle playing straight man to Mr. Bean.  Unfortunately the designers of this apparent nod to the British bureaucracy and humour failed to include a nod to the Ministry of Silly Walks.  Where are the Pythons when you need them?  Even the queen who was a princess soon to become a queen in 1948 agreed to make her acting debut in  a comic role with James Bond that involved her jumping out of a helicopter.   And later was that really Daniel Barenboim carrying in one section of the Olympic flag?   My how the mighty  lowered themselves for this spectacle.

In the Parade of Nations that interminably followed, athletes making many millions of dollars walked in alongside amateurs making nothing who had no chance of competing even half-serioiously with the millionaires.  Cannon-fodder.  How that will work out can be witnessed tomorrow when the so-called US dream team plays basketball against Tunisia.  No odds were being given by the ubiquitous gambling spots that the Tunisians would beat the US multi-millionaires.  Even at a million to one there was no chance.  Whatever happened to the Olympics of 1948?  As if to answer this question, the Olympic flame was lit this time by an enormously expensive and technically  impressive machine that  ignited a cauldron of fire that cannot be seen from outside the stadium into which almost no mortals succeeded in buying  a ticket.  That’s what has happened. The Olympics have been turned into a celebration of money and kitsch, and cannot be saved if its organizers don’t turn it back over to the amateur sportspeople and the general public who would like to see them compete beneath a flame that has a completely different meaning than it has today.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Politics, Sports

All Politics Are Loco

May 3, 2012 By Jeff

The wasteland of the American political landscape is matched by the emptiness of what passes for political reporting and analysis. How’s this for a list of candidates for the presidency who have been treated seriously at one time or another by the national press – print and TV?:

  • Donald Trump who built a campaign on searching for Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate;
  • Herman Cain who babbled incessantly about “9-9-9” as the program to save the American economy;
  • Michelle Bachmann -the girl with the faraway eyes – who swept the Iowa caucuses only to sink beneath a sea of ridicule;
  • Rick Perry, he of the Texas swagger and the first grade syntax;
  • Newt Gingrich, who spent millions of others dollars, paid himself $500K, owes millions to suckers who extended credit and spent a good part of his campaign self-inflating in front of non existent crowds;
  • Ron Paul, the bizarre communicant of the Church of Ayn Rand, who would throw virtually everyone in the poverty grouping under the bus;
  • Rick Santorum who carried the Catholic Bishops’ water in their campaign to place American women in the Catholic brand of Sharia law; and, finally,
  • the putative winner of the Republican race, Willard Mitt Romney, a charmless, entitled man who regularly and frequently changes his views to gain delegate votes in Tampa.

The operating rules of the American press include following tips from political campaigns on the sins of their opponents and then usually – or sometimes – a feeble attempt to provide “balance” – guaranteed to lead to false equivalencies. For instance, time given to believers in intelligent design in response to time given to scientists discussing evolution; or bringing on someone like Senator Inhofe to ridicule climate change after scientists discuss the reality of climate change.

The banality of the press is currently on exhibit in Boston around the Scott Brown-Elizabeth Warren campaign for U.S.Senate. The Boston Herald, a low rent tabloid, has been beating the drum about Warren’s listing in a Law Directory that she has Native American blood. Obviously the tip on this earth shaking news came from the Brown campaign and the press has chosen to run with it without doing any reporting or – God help them – thinking about it – and consequently they have made it the “NEWS”. It has run wild with over a week of analyses and reports in the Boston Globe, the Herald and local TV.

The usually reasonable talk radio and TV guy Jim Braude has determined that this is an issue that deserves highlighting on his TV show for several nights. And what exactly is the issue? No one really knows- is it that she is part Native American? Maybe for some of Scott Brown’s folk that may be true, but certainly not for most  people. Or is it that she used her ethnicity to get her jobs at Harvard Law School? But no sane person really believes that to be the case. It is merely an opportunity to paint Warren as something she is not and as someone different from the guy with the pickup truck and the barn coat. And Braude and his press colleagues have gone along with what is without question a partisan pile of crap, hand delivered to them by political hacks. It is how it works and we have unfortunately gotten used to it. Which means we are unlikely to demand better, let alone know that something better is possible,

Filed Under: Election, Politics, Press, Romney Tagged With: Elizabeth Warren, Jim Braude, Scott Brown

May Day: Europe and the United States Compete for Worst Economic Policy

May 2, 2012 By Jeff

In a battle for world supremacy for economic stupidity America’s Paul Ryan is taking on Angela Merkel in a battle for the ages. While Ryan is only one of 435 Representatives in the U.S. Congress he has become the intellectual leader of the party that gave us the $3 Trillion Iraq War, the huge Bush tax breaks for the wealthy, the unpaid for prescription drug benefit for Big Pharma, and unleashed America’s investment banks so they could sell paper crap around the world and bring the world economy to its knees. Having participated in creating a recession that barely missed becoming a depression, Ryan is now regaining his strength with Mitt Romney, much of the American press and virtually all of the so-called Tea Party singing the praises of the Man Who Would Destroy the American Economy as an homage to his heroine, Ayn Rand. Ryan’s austerity budget has even managed to create a negative response from elements of the Catholic hierarchy – a group normally focussed on how best to reduce women’s power.

Across the Atlantic Angela Merkel serves as Ryan’s powerful competitor for the title of Master/Mistress of the Recession. With the help of France’s embattled President, Frau Merkel has managed to force Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Ireland (the list will surely increase) to adopt economic austerity policies guaranteed to force most or all into a lengthy recession with devastating unemployment rates, low or no actual economic growth and a near suicidal commitment to doing more of what demonstrably does not work in order to avoid admitting to their mistakes.

Ryan and Merkel have so far avoided being compared to David Cameron whose ongoing commitment to economic disaster seems to have been missed by much of the press, but that could change at any time as Britain has entered its second recession in four years. But before Cameron can be allowed into the field he must rid himself of the attention given to his love affair with Rupert Murdoch which has greatly diminished the attention given to his disastrous economic policies.

The next several months will determine the success of Ryan, Merkel and Cameron as they struggle – each in his or her own way – to bring national economies to their knees. The U.S. election, the budding resistance to Merkel’s stubborn commitment to folly among other Euro zone countries, and the shakiness of of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat ruling government in Britain will play out as the three head for the finish line in this race to the bottom.

Filed Under: Economy, Europe, Politics, U.S. Domestic Policy, Uncategorized Tagged With: Angela Merkel, Budget, David Cameron, Economy, Paul Ryan

Rick Santorum: The Catholic Church’s Trojan Horse

March 18, 2012 By Jeff

The Republican primaries continue to amaze and entertain with Mitt finding new ways to sink lower into the mire of pandering to the lowest common denominator, the aptly named Newt Gingrich self inflating at the sight of a microphone – any microphone – and Rick Santorum ranting against the joys of sex. Of particular recent interest is the role being played by the Catholic bishops in a strange, retro fight over birth control.

As the self appointed guardians of American faith and morals the bishops are mostly known by members and former members of their faith as the enablers of countless Catholic priest pedophiles. Just to be clear, we are being asked to buy into the morality of a group that ensured that priests under their administration could continue to rape young boys by moving them to ever new pastures of altar boys at the slightest threat of disclosure. The photo in the Boston Globe of the new Cardinal Dolan from NY being hugged by Boston’s chief pedophile enabler Cardinal Law after Dolan was elevated to Cardinal by Pope Benedict tells us all we need to know.

So now in a country that used to pride itself in its ability to keep religion largely out of our political life, the likes of Cardinal Dolan and his old friend Bernard Law have inserted themselves into the presidential election on the issue of birth control. in doing so the bishops are promoting a largely ignored and even ridiculed Church’s view that birth control is against God’s law even as virtually every Catholic woman in America has moved beyond that medieval view.

The moral power of the Catholic church is contributing to the dingbat wing of various state legislatures which are imposing laws that are intended to remind American women who is in charge – white guys in suits waiting in line to order the legal rape of any woman who might wish – for whatever reason – to have a legal abortion. In states like Texas and Virginia women are faced with these bizarre laws regardless of whether a pregnancy is the result of rape or incest or whether a woman’s health is threatened.

Rick Santorum follows the bishops’ lead and and would have everyone in America have sex only when they are intent on conceiving a child. We are truly in a dark and strange area here; an area where state legislators begin to practice medicine of the ob-gyn variety..

As for the Catholic Church – I refer readers to Catholic historian Gary Wills’ history of the church’s screwing around with contraception (“Contraception’s Con Men”)
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/
and how it became “Catholic Dogma” on the NY Review blog. And let’s all pray for the lives destroyed by pedophiliac priests and their bishop enablers, and the lives lost to AIDS because the church won’t support condoms in Africa, and for the disappearance of Rick Santorum into the dustbin of history.

Filed Under: Election, Politics, Republican Party, U.S. Domestic Policy Tagged With: Church and State, Republican Party, Santorum

Living in Lies: America Goes to the Polls

January 19, 2012 By Jeff

Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred.
—— Vaclav Havel

The late Vaclav Havel promoted the concept of “living in truth” as a revolutionary strategy for overcoming the authoritarian crimes committed on the Czech people by the Soviet regime. A frequently jailed dissident, Havel led the Czechoslovak people through their Velvet Revolution, became the president of Czechoslovakia, and watched sadly as the country’s Czech and Slovak populations went through their Velvet Divorce. Havel then re-emerged as the President of the Czech Republic and started the process of re-invigorating the country’s political and economic cultures. Throughout his life his commitment to truth remained paramount and constant, both in his literature and his politics. Small of stature, he was a giant among the world’s leaders.

And that brings us to those of our home grown political practitioners who are convinced that truth is at best a relative term and at worst an inconvenience. We are stuck – and I do mean stuck – with a group of Republican challengers for the presidency whose commitment to truth is about as strong as Newt Gingrich’s commitment to his first two wives.

The likely Republican challenger to President Obama, Mitt Romney, flits from one stance to another while manufacturing Obama quotes that were never actually said. People expressed shock when Newt Gingrich said on national TV that Romney is a liar, but their shock was only that he said it, not that the description was untrue. Our candidates are expected to lie and we accept it as part of the game. But the result of our willingness to play along with that game is that we end up electing people we cannot trust and then wondering later what went wrong.

The Czech Republic is a country of approximately 10 million people and it produced the leadership of Vaclav Havel; our country of 300 million produces the Lilliputian likes of Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Donald Trump and Rick Santorum. Go Figure.

Filed Under: Politics, Republican Party, Romney Tagged With: Havel, Romney

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