Grey October 12 and I love it. Coffee is black and strong and the wind is rattling the windows of my 6 floor office overlooking a giant red oak tree.<\/p>\n
The election is a three weeks away and it’s the lamest and most disheartening evidence of the true state of the US. The dark ages are coming, where no one knows what to believe, and people react on basic and primal intuition, and the people who know how to create and manipulate that state of fear take full advantage of it for their own gain. And what an incredible gain it is. Literally all the way to the banks (which they own). The\u00a0privatization\u00a0of all profit (“We built this, it’s our money!”) and the socialization of all losses (“Bail us out, we’re too big to fail!”)<\/p>\n
Neither candidate is highly appealing, though one is clearly the better choice. The other, a Fuck Face, has proven utter disdain for any thinking person, perhaps believing that there isn’t a thinking person of consequence left in the country. In the opening debate which the media has decided he “won”, he changed his entire running platform, contradicting almost everything his party supposedly stands for, and contradicting himself from just the week before. In short, he lied about every issue he was asked about. I watched with great confusion until I realized what was happening. Compared to the President’s platform, the challenger’s platform would come across as weak and unpopular, and he knew that. So, to prevent that realtime contrast from being made,\u00a0he changed his platform, just for the purpose of the debate. What you now have is a nation of people who don’t even know what the Fuck Face is running on<\/em>, but thinking that because he “came across better” on TV, he’ll be a better president. What he would do in office is anyone’s guess.<\/p>\n Of all the commentary on this (and there is lots, mostly describing the same), I think the best I’ve read yet has come from Roger Ebert (of all people):<\/p>\n It is clear to anyone in either party that in last week’s debate Romney cast aside all of his principles and reversed himself on everything he has said he believes. As Hendrik Hertzberg worded it in the New Yorker:<\/p>\n Well, they are, aren’t they? Pause with me a moment to recall the campaign before the debate. If someone had handed you that paragraph and asked you which candidate it described, would you have said it fit Obama, or Romney? The Romney who walked into the debate hall was on record for most of the previous eight years as the opponent of all the items on the list. And his running mate Paul Ryan has been even more outspokenly opposed.<\/p>\n I have no desire to debate the pros and cons of those issues. I simply wish to point out that Romney changed his position on each and every one.<\/p>\n After reversing himself on the central issues of the campaign, Romney’s standing went up in the polls. How? Why? Were the members of the electorate paying absolutely no attention to the campaign? Were they responding only to the general opinion that Romney “won” the debate? Is winning, in the pro football truism, now the only thing?<\/p>\n Something that puzzled me is that there were no howls of protest from the Right. Romney now presented himself as the advocate of positions hated by the Right, and there wasn’t a squeak of protest from the conservatives who have been excoriating Obama on the same issues. Did they all reach a common consensus that if it was necessary for Romney to lie, then let him lie? The Right has been advising him for months to be true to conservative issues. That wasn’t working. Now he was being true to liberal issues.<\/p>\n The silence from the Right reminded me of another deafening quiet when there should have been a response recently. On the infamous tape of Romney addressing a room filled with his millionaire and billionaire backers, he essentially wrote off 47% of the American electorate. But not long after, in an interview on Fox News, Romney rolled that back, saying “I said something that’s just completely wrong.” Obama continues in the Presidential campaign in possession of his own lifelong principles. Romney now seeks the luxury of running on both his principles–and Obama’s. What depresses me is that the polls suggest the electorate isn’t alert enough to realize that. What allows me hope is that, given a little time, I trust the American people will figure this one out.<\/p>\n Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times 2012\u00a0<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Anyway, busy weekend with a project partner in town. We’re set to work all day tomorrow on a website, Sunday I have to attend a wedding (probably hate) and then Monday it’s back to busyness. I really need a vacation. I know everyone says that, but if you guys have said I’m uncharacteristically wound up these days. I think I could use some time to recharge a bit. It’ll be nice when there’s no looming thing (like a dissertation) in the back of my mind, always preventing full satisfaction with my status and self.<\/p>\n For now, I continue to rely on training to keep me sane and balanced. Stronger, faster, stronger faster smarter. Let’s go.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Grey October 12 and I love it. Coffee is black and strong and the wind is rattling the windows of my 6 floor office overlooking a giant red oak tree. The election is a three weeks away and it’s the … Continue reading \u2028”By the end of ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false.”<\/em><\/h6>\n
\nThe rich men in that room presumably pledged a fortune to the Romney campaign chest. Were any of them offended that Romney no longer agreed with what he told them? We haven’t heard from them.<\/p>\n