Tag Archives: mitt romney

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Why?

In managing The Random Journal, I read a lot of news.  This morning, I was looking for things to write about but also posting a new piece I put up by writer, Andrew Hall, about President Obama resigning.  I thought it would make a good “breaking news” story and posted it to the site and then a bunch of conservative Facebook groups, Facebook is the best driver of traffic I have found.

I thought I had heard of most of the crazy rumors about our president.  He’s a Kenyan muslim hell bent on America’s destruction, yeah, tell me something I don’t know.  Then I learned he’s also a “crack smoking, homosexual liar.”  Now, that’s new, I told myself.  His wedding ring, some say, has an inscription “There’s no God but Allah.”  Snopes has disproved that one, which means little to the true believers because they see the rumor busters as being “liberal hacks and Obama apologists.”

This all got me thinking.  When my side loses an election, I may be sad about it (see my reaction to the 2000 presidential) and maybe mad but I know there’s another election coming and in politics, sometimes you lose.  In 2000, I was incredibly upset about the outcome but what made me feel better is my genuine belief in our system of government.  If people preferred George W. Bush to Al Gore, well, then he was the person who should be in the White House.  A few years later when my wounds were healed a bit I started thinking that Gore should have fought more for Florida but my brain never went to a conspiracy place.  I never saw the W admin as Illegitimate.

Fast forward to 2009.  President Obama has been inaugurated.  Not only do people I know on the right dislike this, they see it as a sign that we have entered the Biblical “end of days.”  The United States, some say, no longer exists and we are now part of a “North American Union” consisting of Mexico, us and Canada.  Soon our currency will be made invalid.

To many, Barack Obama was not just the wrong choice to be POTUS, he was born in Kenya (see my post  on my time at the McLaughlin Group).  He’s a muslim with a heart of darkness and sincere desire to destroy America and end all freedoms as we know them.

What?  Isn’t it enough to just disagree with someone?  Look, I don’t think Mitt Romney would have been a good president. I think he thinks he is wealthy because he is just a better person (never mind the legions of really good people who will never be wealthy because they chose to be firefighters, teachers, cops, nurses, the list could go on) and I just don’t agree with his politics.  That doesn’t make him evil or horrible.  He seems like a decent man who just shouldn’t be president.

Maybe someone can explain to me why some people feel it is not enough to disagree with someone but you have to make them into the most evil person.  Why is that?

Here’s an interview with a woman who claims to have been a friend of Obama’s back in Hawaii, you know, during his gay, crack smoking years.

(And please check out the Random Journal).

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In Boehner we trust

Official portrait of United States House Speak...

Official portrait of United States House Speaker (R-Ohio). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We will not go over the “fiscal cliff.”  That’s my prediction anyway.  I don’t make predictions often.  As I often tell people, I am NOT clairvoyant.  I cannot read minds or see the future.  I do have pretty good political instincts, probably from working in or near politics for 90 percent of my life.  I am no Chuck Todd but not too far away.

In any case, I do not believe we will go over the all too arbitrary and Congress created “fiscal cliff.”  This is partly because President Obama was reelected.  It was partly because the Democrats kept the Senate.  With that in mind, our collective future rests in the hands of one man; Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Oh).  Yes, the man who refused to use the word “compromise” on national television last year will be the one who forces his caucus to do just that.

First I need to have my own “Sister Souljah moment” (she once had an office down the hall from mine at RCA Victor, true story).  The Tea Party makes for a great target as to why Washington seems incapable of getting anything done but they are a response to that inaction, not the cause of it.  Our Congressional districts are becoming more and more polarized, resulting in more and more extreme representatives — remember, Congress is very much a mirror.  If you don’t like what you see in Washington, you probably don’t like what you see when you look around you.  It’s become too easy to blame one group or another for our collective failure to pay attention and act on what happens.

So, here we are.  On the brink of yet another economic crisis.  Europe has already gone back into recession (And we think that same austerity will work here?  Are we that stupid, Joe Scarborough?).  The great menace that is China has an economy that is slowing down.  I am no economist but running a government on nothing but stop-gap continuing resolutions is not a way to run a government, when exactly was a full round of appropriations bills passed?  Yeah, if you have to scratch your head at that one it has been too damn long.  See?  I am still a bitter cynic.

Yet, because Boehner is the speaker of the House and not someone like, I dunno, Eric “Dr. No” Cantor or Paul “I ran the marathon in under a minute” Ryan.  Take home message:  he is reasonable.  Now, I would like to have a second “moment.” I believe that everyone who gets into public life is a patriot.  Maybe a power hungry, egomaniac but also a patriot.  I do not think Cantor or Ryan want to see the country fail, I just don’t think they are seasoned enough to understand the value of compromise.

Who is this John Boehner?  His upbringing is nothing like Mitt Romney‘s.  He has 11 siblings.  He grew up in a two bedroom house.  Yes, that’s right 14 people lived in a house with two bedrooms and one bathroom.  He started working in his father’s bar when he was eight.  If anyone gets the hardship brought on by recession, it’s John Boehner.  He currently rents a basement apartment on Capitol Hill (really, his favorite restaurant is my favorite Italian place on the Hill).

Now I am no fan.  In 2007, I worked a communications director for a Democratic member of Congress.  One night there was a vote at about 1:00 am (we were still in the office, eyes glued to C-Span.  The Democrats still had the House then and the man in the Chair was a D.  He called the vote wrong — some members had not voted when he thought they had.  It was bad.  Steny Hoyer called for the vote to be held a second time and it was but the Republicans stormed out.  The bill they disliked passed.  The next day Hoyer asked Boehner to hold off on going to the Ethics Committee until they had looked into it.  Boehner agreed (this was on the floor) but had actually already submitted a complaint with that committee.  For years, that just got my craw (is that a real phrase?).  Seriously, I thought that was crazily underhanded.  Now, I have forgiven him.

What else do you need to know about John Boehner?  He tried to lead a “coup” against Newt Gingrich.  He smokes enough that you can smell him from a block away.  He is a really conservative guy, though religious conservatives complain he is motivated more by small government conservatism than the issues that matter to them.  I am not sure how he could be more conservative on same sex marriage, abortion and other things but I am not a social, fiscal or any kind of conservative so I am not the one to judge that.  The conservative Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote this about him. The Plain Dealer says Boehner can “disagree without being disagreeable.” We need more of that in the world but even that is not going to save us from fiscal armageddon.

We will avoid the “cliff” because John Boehner is reasonable.  We will lose the Bush tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year or more.  We will lower corporate tax rates but raise the top two rates to what they were under President Bill Clinton (you remember those horrible recession years, oh right, we had a great economy then) to 36 and 39 percent.  We will make a pledge to deal with entitlements, though the actual changes won’t happen right away (sorry young people, the retirement age will go up, if not this year, sometime before you retire. Seriously, it has to.).

Don’t worry family, I am still the bitter cynic you know and love.  Don’t believe it?  I still wear only black.