Owing our soul to the Bain Company store

Mitt Rmoney is exactly wrong for a democratic America, and nominating him was an act of supreme hubris. Why won't Democrats make the Republicans pay?  Robert Reich explains:

Romney is the only casino capitalist who is running for president, at the very time in our nation’s history when these views and practices are a clear and present danger to the well-being of the rest of us—just as they were more than a century ago. Romney says he’s a job-creating businessman, but in truth he’s just another financial dealmaker in the age of the financial deal, a fat cat in an era of excessively corpulent felines, a plutocrat in this new epoch of plutocrats. That the GOP has made him its standard-bearer at this point in American history is astonishing.

[W]hy don’t Democrats connect these dots? ... Part of the answer, surely, is that elected Democrats are still almost as beholden to the wealthy for campaign funds as the Republicans, and don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them. Wall Street can give most of its largesse to Romney this year and still have enough left over to tame many influential Democrats (look at the outcry from some of them when the White House took on Bain Capital). But I suspect a deeper reason for their reticence is that if they connect the dots and reveal Romney for what he is—the epitome of what’s fundamentally wrong with our economy—they’ll be admitting how serious our economic problems really are. They would have to acknowledge that the economic catastrophe that continues to cause us so much suffering is, at its root, a product of the gross inequality of income, wealth and political power in America’s new Gilded Age, as well as the perverse incentives of casino capitalism. 

I've been working this theme for a while:

Democrats gave up their [class] unity voluntarily as a result of the marketplace, not of ideas, but of campaign contributions. They passed post-Watergate reforms in reaction to the financial abuses of Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP), but they ran afoul of unintended consequences.

Democrats could no longer raise large chunks of money from wealthyideological sources; they now had to spread their fundraising to wealthy business interests who were much more likely to play the access game.

Go and listen to Reich, as well.

Another pro-lifer who's lying

In the sorry state America is now in - perhaps our death-spiral - Teapublicans such as Rand Paul don't really believe in life:

Mary Jane Koren, a geriatrician and vice-president of the Commonwealth Fund, noted that seniors often suffer health problems and are put in nursing homes after falling down. Poor nutrition leads to decreased muscle strength, meaning a higher chance of falling—and weaker seniors are more likely to be gravely injured in such a fall. Koren noted that by 2020, the annual cost of medical care for seniors who fall is expected to reach $54.9 billion—many magnitudes more than the approximately $2 billion per year the federal government spends on nutrition assistance for senior citizens.

Senator [Rand] Paul, however, explicitly rejected this logic. “It’s curious that only in Washington can you spend $2 billion and claim that you’re saving money,” he said. “The idea or notion that spending money in Washington somehow is saving money really flies past most of the taxpayers.” Instead, Paul touted the “nobility of private charity” as opposed to government-funded “transfer programs.” He suggested privatizing Meals on Wheels and other government assistance for hungry seniors

The simple premise that's missing from Paul's "logic" is that this anti-hunger program saves money if you assume you actually want to save lives.  Paul wants to cut taxes so bad that he doesn't care whether old people die.  And they voted for him.

Of course, in Teapublican world, seniors should have planned better.  If they had just taken care to be more economically viable, they wouldn't have to choose between food and medicine.  Losers!

If you vote for Republicans, this is what you get.  Good luck with that.

Aphrodisiac of power

Bernie Goldberg is a tool. He has found a profitable niche that keeps him in face-puffing booze, paid for by wingnut welfare, and he's going to hammer it without regard for fairness. He and Ann Coulter have the same job, just different shticks.

Was Chris Matthews a lunatic for saying that Obama's speech made a thrill go up his leg? Damn straight. That blithering chatterer has issues, man. Alcohol seems to be one of his, but his propensity for man-crushes didn't start with Obama.

At many times before, Matthews has swooned over the manliness of Republicans - Duhbya (nice package, eh Chris!), Rudy Giuliani (so manly he looks good in a dress!), and of course John McCain (cut of his jib? Chris would sail him). If you look too closely at this, it's enough to make you say, "Eeeew!" This is a guy who'd want a date, not with George Clooney or Brad Pitt, but with Henry Kissinger. Barf.

Goldberg will never tell you this, though. He'll pretend that Matthews is a straight (heh) party-line liberal Democrat who only has man-crushes on Democrats. This is bullshit, the wingnut pundit's stock in trade.