Category: 2012 US Election

Politics

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn 2012 US Election, left and right, left vs right, PoliticsLeave a comment

The need for people to assert their ideas and own the consequences is invested in monumental sculpture as the preservation of memory is the stamp on history. Deep in our inner-child the need to be ahead of others can assert itself, core beliefs lead to a sense of oneness with a tradition of thinking. There is no fundamental reason that today’s left-right paradigm will be remotely similar to that fifty years on.

There is no guarantee that any of the many parties of Western democracies will be the same as they are now. Politics is a system of pools of clout and passages through which diplomatic pressure may be asserted.

Our model is like that of the herd animal – we create a flow to go with and democratically decide to lurch one way or another. In the current UK lurch, we have a Conservative-Liberal coalition. And lets abbreviate their gormless flight into obscurity with the epithet ConDem. Mainly as DemCon sounds like some video game marketing label and that would amount to mis-representation.

See also – Politics – Disturbing Trends history

The US Presidential Election

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn 2012 US Election, AmericaLeave a comment

Obama need do nothing. The Republicans may run out of feet to shoot themselves, but let’s hope it does not go downhill from there. It is painful to watch Romney having to discourage a Senator from standing due to the rather radically evil views he has expressed about women.

America remains the most significant economic and military giant there ever was and even though the juggernaut balances on a frozen lake it manages to eke out a little growth showing signs things are improving. It just costs a hell of a lot of cash. Cash that becomes less valuable by the second.

When the debt starts it seems like a good idea, we borrow. It is relatively easy. It is far harder to repay debt – especially if like the UK, you run huge deficits between what the tax man collects and what the Government is committed to spend. All expenses are too large for the tax take. So instead of casting the net over earnings a bit more fairly the Tories acts in Government have severely depressed the tax take. It is not just the austerity, it is the imbalance and relegation of many starting with the student fees and ending with the sale of the NHS to corporatisation.

If a business can borrow it can take on new risk, new staff and grow. If it can not take on risk, or the climate is too negative then it may simply act in the same way our Chancellor is, be boring and austere oneself away from doing anything about the crying baby of British economics.

But the US have a growing economy meaning that there is gradual improvement. After 9/11 the Dow Jones dropped for nearly the entire Bush era to below 10,000. Under the present administration it is far higher at 13,800. They gotta be doing something right.

Evil Nonsense

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn 2012 US ElectionLeave a comment

Todd Aitken must go.

Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate in Missouri who is running against Sen. Claire McCaskill, justified his opposition to abortion rights even in case of rape with a claim that victims of “legitimate rape” have unnamed biological defenses that prevent pregnancy.

“First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.”

If a bigot like this does stand then the Republicans will be represented by what comes out of such vile mouths.  Starting out with what sounds like hate speech directed at females in general and in particular rape victims, he mouths off about “medical research”, as though it were an observable fact.  Which it isn’t.  Rapists are not uniquely infertie.  And pregnant women may not know what to do regardless of rape victims.

Having government people with this sort of view is indeed a very specific and dangerous threat to the rights of women.

The evil nonsense that implies that a woman who has not miscarried post rape is somehow complicit must not be glossed over.  Such conservatives attempts to contrast Romney into a moderate become ever more bizarre.  But this candidate for Senate should stand down.

This race – the one with Obama and Romney appears to be one of those that you will look back on and say it was a foregone conclusion.  But you have to question strategies like this Todd Aitken – are idiots like him wheeled out solely to make Romney seem more acceptable and mainstream?

If the Republicans have him running for The Senate, it is quite a refection upon their values.   They had better replace him before Wednesday.

Full story: http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/19/712151/growing-number-of-conservative-call-on-akin-to-withdraw-after-legitimate-rape-comments/?mobile=nc

 

Followup

Update: 20 August 2012

I remember reading that the Romney campaign is in favour of allowing rape victims appropriate care including access to abortion and has rebuked Todd Aiken for his statement. It is also possible that Aiken deliberately set off alarms bells so that Romney could rebuke him.

The easily impressed will be briefly impressed but the lasting image, the taste in the mouth is left by Aitken and what his statement implied. Is that now the Tories think?

I fear that it really is. They believe in controlling a little too much and reducing human rights as a commercial enterprise.

 

The Republican End Game

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America, capitalism, Democrat, Economic stimulus, Economics, economy, President Obama, US economyLeave a comment

The Republican “end game” would be everything owned by big corporations not necessarily aligned with nations as entities but freely enriching shareholders from anywhere avoiding tax as their earnings are processed where there are no taxes.

If these mega corporations are able to employ everyone for a pittance then we are buying into a return to slavery.

Is this essentially the same model that makes China appear successful? Enslavement of the majority for the benefit of the few. The problem with the Republican End Game is the loss of what America is – the most rewarding economy for invention. As these corporations become less answerable to Government, they become more able to break the covenant of fairness. The Murdoch empire is a case in point. A corporation which supported a culture of law breaking that believed it could do this with impunity, which it did for twenty years before a single case sharpened public revulsion with the practice. That is what democracy does, it pitches the majority against the business interest and belief of an individual who learns that the end justifies the means time and again.

Democracy allows for peaceful revolution. An absence of democratic principles as in the case of Libya demands more severe responses. The essential problem here is a duality where both sides are destructive to each other. A unified system that causes progress according to long term principles appears have delivered stable growth in China for the last 3 decades by enforcing cheap exports to the world while the West has been experimenting with Freedman’s economics, gambling as though it were an addict. When cronyism and corruption abide, and capital exists only for its own maintenance, there are economic distortions that will result in disasters.

The West can rescue itself by very progressive and specific Government spending on the correct programmes. Education for all, being the most important. Obama decided to invest in rescuing mortgages and jobs but with poor returns. The Republicans want to reduce taxes and spending and leave America a first world city state in a third world country.

See also: Huffington Post

To Withdraw or not?

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn America in Iraq, bush, Democrat, George Bush, Republican, warLeave a comment

Reading the full Bush commentary rather than just sound bites – makes one appreciate how good his speech writers are to be able to frame American war involvement only against the “end game” risk factors.

It is revealing that the Bush logic is based on a novel. America walked into Iraq and created havoc. Why? The Democrats can not answer for that, but they do expect to be able to take over the end game. How?

The Republicans will blame them for folding early. But the Bush policy to wipe out the insurgency requires killing every insurgent or removing their motivation.

Withdrawal is not the best solution. The current strategy is even worse. Polling public opinion does not inform, but restricts.

The End Game

On By Nicholas AlexanderIn bush, Democrat, Election, obama, RepublicanLeave a comment

While George Bush is under general anesthetic – if Cheney had a medical emergency with one of his quadruple bypasses or Lipitor scheduling error, and Bush did not wake up for a while, we would have an America firmly out of the control of Republicans. Would that mean that any change of direction may occur – perhaps a rush to file papers for impeachment could be a good idea, and get in before the anesthetic wears off. It is what they would do.

Seriously, long shots like medical error on the President while Cheney is cleaning his rifle may change the nature of this crop of Democrats but if an election were to be held today how could a Republican win? The advance media for Hilary is replacing good press day for the President. She is seen as articulate where Bush is heard bumbling. Obama is seen as relevant, alive – where Cheney is only kept alive by modern medical miracles.

Bush is faced with the cost of his primary error. Invading Iraq when he did not absolutely have to, he lost the extraordinary morale high ground granted by the obscenity on the American psyche; and yet as Osama bin Laden is walking free, even if only in their thoughts, the bulk of their military muscle is being exposed to a civil war it started by undoing the chain letter of death threats that was Saddam’s rule.

What it such a good idea? Right-minded Americans find rationales to believe it is of course a good thing – but will American democracy sustain the attack long enough to do any good? These are just excuses to keep the war going indefinitely and are no longer ringing true to the electorate.

Bush will run out of time before ending this war. He will leave it to the next President to sort out, because his domestic agenda will take over. He will suddenly be having to make making handsome gestures to maintain his office.  

There is no end game in the foreseeable future unless Mr Bush just cuts and runs from Iraq.