Joy At Republican Humiliation Shouldn't Make Us Forget The Choices Sucked

I was in a bar/restaurant near my house on election night, trying to get some work done and watching the results come in. At first it seemed like a nail-biter (though I was convinced that it would be a fairly easy sweep for Obama) and people were texting and Facebooking their fear that Romney the snake might win. Of course, he didn't.

I must say that there was a palpable sense of relief. Like the whole city of Toronto let out a collective sigh. (Except for the Ariel Sharon supporting Israeli dude who kept shaking my hand and kissing me on the top of my head - but that's another story). And, I cannot lie, I was one of them. Romney and Ryan were such an odiously diabolical duo that one can hardly NOT be relieved and filled with joy that they were defeated. Here we had a reactionary plutocrat in alliance with a running mate who represented the most profoundly racist and paranoid lashing out of white, middle class (as in petty bourgeois) America. Hell, just the pleasure of reading Donald Trump's shrieking twitter feed was worth the price of admission.

They were defeated and now will commence a process of Republican auto-destruction that ought to be entertaining to watch. Hopefully it will lead to a split between the (cough, cough) moderates and the Tea Party radicals. Likely there will be a shabby compromise that keeps the two demented siblings in the same party.

In the meantime, their defeat will have given hope to tens of millions that America won't be taken over by Christian fundamentalists and free-marketeers who will dismantle what little social safety net exists (and shut down Sesame Street!). Tens of millions will feel that they have beaten back the right and won some space for more social change - an impression that will be strengthened by the victory for state ballot initiatives that won same sex marriage rights in several states and the legalization/decriminalization of marijuana in two states.

All that is worth celebrating.

But we can't stop there because we need to be honest that Obama isn't the answer either. Things have gotten worse under Obama, not better. America has become more unequal and there is more racism than before his election. Of course, the racist backlash of the Tea Party lunatics can't be blamed on Obama but there are plenty of ways to reduce racial inequality in America through government policy and public statements & campaigns; initiatives that were never taken. America's policy of drone strikes inside Pakistan continues, as well as continuing support for repressive regimes in the Middle East - like Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Obamacare was a sop to the health insurance industry and not a cure for an unaffordable, inaccessible healthcare system. These betrayals are surely a part of the reason by the biggest bloc of votes for any candidate were the 80+ million abstentions (vs 62 million votes for Obama). Those who abstained are more than twice as likely to support Obama and the Democrats as they are to support Republicans.

The victory for progressive politics that Obama's re-election represents is an almost purely symbolic victory. And, to steal a phrase: symbolism don't pay the bills.

To turn Obama's victory into a real one will require mobilizations that don't depend on the magnanimity of Democrats or Obama. The successful maneuver by trade union leaders in Madison, Wisc. to deflect a mass movement against the GOP governor's vicious union busting into a recall movement to get a Democrat elected was an abysmal failure. The movement was derailed and defeated and Wisconsin is still a red state, run by a Republican governor - and just re-elected Paul Ryan, Romney's running mate, to the House of Representatives.

On the other hand, Obama's early failure to support gay rights in anything more than a timid, prevaricating way led to mass mobilizations by the LGBT community, including a mass protest in Washington that had hundreds of thousands of people. I am convinced that a key reason for the ballot victories backing the right to same sex marriage (and the election of the first lesbian senator in Wisconsin) was that the LGBT movement didn't wait for Obama to come around and maintained their independence. Hopefully that lesson has been learned.

Ultimately, workers and the oppressed in America will need to create their own party to represent their interests, rather than a corporate dominated lash-up like the Democrats. That's not likely to occur in the short term but that shouldn't make us depressed or fatalistic - after all the Republicans just got their asses handed to them and gay rights scored some big victories. It is possible to win. But it should inject an element of sobriety.

Gingrich: Vote For the Kook, I Mean Crook, I Mean Astronaut

This is awesomely awesome stuff and further proof that the American political system can only be defined as being from outer space. Newt Gingrich made a campaign speech in Florida in which he promised to establish a permanent moon base - for science tourism and advanced manufacturing - within 8 years.

Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if it could be done theoretically speaking. I mean, they got to the moon less than ten years after Kennedy's famous speech. And America does spend about a ba-zillion dollars on coming up with ways to kill people in every corner of the planet if they don't do what America says support democracy. If they took that ba-zillion dollars and instead put it towards building the coolest, bestest space hotel in the solar system that would save a lot of lives and create a lot of jobs. Just think of all the people you'd need to work in the hotel serving lunar drinks to Newt and his buddies or in the gift shop where advanced manufacturing products like lunar keychains that beep when you clap your hands will be sold.

Newt Gingrich promises moon base by the end of his second term | World news | guardian.co.uk:

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Republican Contest: Battle Of The Scumbags

Where do they dig up these cretins? I mean, is it really possible that in the 21st century these guys can be the front runners of one of America's two mainstream parties to be the next president? Seriously?
On the bright side, I can't see how the Republicans can possibly win the White House with these evil, fanatical weasels running up against Obama.

Don't get me wrong, Obama is no shirk when it comes to evil himself. He ramped up the illegal war inside the borders of Pakistan (not to mention in Afghanistan et al), he continued the clampdown on civil liberties in the United States. He not only did nothing to help out the millions of Americans who were losing their homes and their jobs, he hired the jokers who were responsible for the 2008 economic meltdown as his advisors. And he handed out money to the richest of the rich to reward them for screwing up the global economy. But Obama doesn't come across as a crass, personally odious and heartless asshole. The Republican presidential hopefuls?

Well, first there's Rick Santorum who would urge his daughter, were she raped and impregnated, to not get an abortion. Why? Well gals you really ought to accept the "gift" that "God is giving to you." What's more odious than this is that millions of freaky deaky US conservatives will vote for him precisely because he is such a vile shitburger (to use the proper term of this type of human being). Happily, so many people know what kind of dude he is that if you google his name you are just as likely to come up with results that compare him to fecal matter (thank you, Dan Savage!) as to his actual personage.

Then there's the front runners, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. These two jokers are trying to out do each other in the "you're more of a corrupt and selfish fuck" contest. It really is hard to pick which one is the winner. Could it be Romney whose job as the head of a Bain Capital was to throw American workers onto the unemployment line. As reward for that despicable role Romney made millions, for which he paid little - if any taxes. His reluctantly released returns of the past two years showed him paying less than 15% taxes on $45 million in income - and those are for years when he knew he was going to run for president. He has refused to release the details of earlier returns when, it is speculated he probably paid even less, not thinking about his presidential career.

Gingrich is, of course, a long time crook who was so corrupt that even the Republicans turfed the dirt bag as head of their party back in '95 because of his, possibly illegal, activities while lecturing poor Americans - and implementing cutbacks. As Romney himself said during debates last night:

"The speaker was given an opportunity to be the leader of our party in 1994 and at the end of four years he had to resign in disgrace," said Romney. "In the 15 years after he left the speakership, the speaker has been working as an influence peddler in Washington."

As Romney pointed out, Gingrich was not only paid millions by pharmaceutical companies while serving as a US Representative in Congress who opposed healthcare reforms - a position that benefited the people paying him big bucks. He also was paid $1.6 million by Fannie Mae - the semi-public US mortgage lender that had to be bailed out because of its role in the sub-prime debacle. Gingrich tried to claim that he was hired as a "historian" but nobody can possibly buy that he was paid $1.6 million - $25,000 per month for six years - to give lessons on the origins of the American suburb. It's so not surprising that Gingrich is receiving big time backing from the wife of Sheldon Adelson who is a major casino owner. I mean, does it get any more parasitic than owning a casino?

Certainly all these creeps deserve to be put in jail rather than in the highest political office in America. But the fact that their personal failings dominates the debate as it does, is not only a sign of how corrupt the presidential candidates (all of them multi-millionaires) all are. It is also a sign of the corruption of American politics. There is so little real difference between the candidates from both parties that you'd be hard pressed to slide a cigarette paper between them. Even where their rhetoric differs by degrees the policies that they implement are well nigh identical and the differences in their impact on the lives of ordinary Americans fades to statistical insignificance.

If I were an American citizen I can tell you where my vote would go: Revolution, Egypt style. It's long overdue, don't you think?