Romney’s Parallel Universe Machine (Update)

For the man who has everything (except the presidency) , this handy device takes less energy than an Etch-a-Sketch to alter reality

The fallout from Mitt Romney‘s lies about President Obama shipping U.S. jobs to China continued yesterday as General Motors spokesman Greg Martin told The Detroit Free Press:

We’ve clearly entered some parallel universe during these last few days. No amount of campaign politics at its cynical worst will diminish our record of creating jobs in the U.S. and repatriating profits back to this country.”

Huffpo describes  it thus:

Mitt Romney’s round of highly dubious television and radio ads suggesting that Chrysler and GM are shipping American jobs to China has managed to offend both car companies….

The day before, meanwhile, Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne penned a letter to the Detroit News insisting that there was no validity to the idea that the company was shipping Jeep production overseas. Instead, he noted, the company was looking to open new factories in China to meet increasing demand there.

Used to be that when a political campaign got caught with its pants down, it would mumble an apology or at least have the good sense to STFU.  Not this generation of Rethugs. Instead, they double down, drop their undies and moon  the world.:

The Romney campaign has showed no willingness to back off the suggestion that American Jeep workers may end up losing their jobs. In fact, the campaign has released a radio ad in Ohio to complement the one it has on television there that repeats the insinuation.

Which of course is entirely consistent with their adoption of the Big Lie strategy that Goebbels found so effective. What really makes it work though is constant repetition, made possible by Citizens United and the unlimited amounts money provided by plutocrat billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson who think so much of themselves that they’re intent in re-making the US in their own distorted image.

At the close of Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787, Benjamin Franklin was asked:

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

  “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

What we are witnessing this election is no less than a battle for the very soul of the country.  We are right at that tipping point Franklin referred to.  Will we continue to be an admittedly flawed  representative government, where the democratic principle of one person, one vote prevails, and the belief that free speech is not measured in personal and corporate wealth?  Or will be become just another oligarchy run by greedy and power-hungry billionaires who have more in common with Ayn Rand than the Founders, who promised “to promote the general welfare” at home and maintain “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind” abroad.

The prospect of four more years of The Black Man in The White House is enough to send the Rethugs over the edge, despite record corporate profits and huge increases in the personal wealth of the top 1%.

The Koch Brothers spent $25 million between 2005-2008 alone, fighting every attempt to regulate climate-changing green house gases, the byproduct of their energy extraction companies.  The results are super-storms like Sandy that just killed some 74 people (and counting), traumatized millions more, and wreaked $50 billion (and counting) in property damage.

And now they’re on the cusp of getting one of their own into, arguably, the most powerful office in the world.  A say-anything politician and his Darwinian running mate that want to privatize FEMA disaster relief by further cutting the social safety net to pay for it.  How’s that for Bizarro World logic?

Somehow I think that when these traitors to the planet are called to account for their crimes they will have so deluded themselves about their assumed natural superiority and moral rightness that they will find no contrition in their hearts, and thus no need for mercy from the real Powers That Be.

 But when mercy is exhausted, when the “memory” thereof testifies to its depletion, then does justice prevail and righteousness decree. For mercy is not to be thrust upon those who despise it; mercy is not a gift to be trampled under foot by the persistent rebels of time.

The Urantia Book

I want to be around for that.  Meanwhile, a little justice and righteousness would be a good thing right now.

[Image found here.]

UPDATE: (11/1 @ 1:25 pm) Exxon and Shell just announced they made $16 billion in profits during the last quarter alone.

And here’s a reminder of what a dick Romney is on the issue of climate change.

 

Risky Business Part II: China Edition

Presidential wanna-be Willard Romney was honored by the Chinese Government recently with the issue of the 00 Yuan; yup, not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Picking up from where we left off yesterday…

Frankly, Mitt, I would have thought you would have labeled China the bigger geopolitical foe than Russia, since you have promised that on Day One of your administration you would designate it “a currency manipulator.”  That, of course, would be the first step to an all out trade war, and all the financial chaos that implies.

But that’s probably just tough pander talk to impress your wingnut base, since you have reportedly invested $23 million of your own money in a Chinese sweat shop, Global-Tech in Dongguan, China. Here’s how you gushingly described the factory to your presidential campaign donors in the infamous Boca Raton 47% video:

“And they work in these huge factories; they made various uh, small appliances. And uh, as we were walking through this facility, seeing them work, the number of hours they worked per day, the pittance they earned, living in dormitories with uh, with little bathrooms maybe 10, 10 room, rooms. And the rooms they have 12 girls per room. Three bunk beds on top of each other…And around this factory was a fence, a huge fence with barbed wire and guard towers. And, and we said gosh! I can’t believe that you, you know, keep these girls in! They said, no, no, no. This is to keep other people from coming in Because people want so badly to come work in this factory that we have to keep them out.”

In a report titled: Global-Tech – Betting Against American Workers, compiled by the   Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, its author asks the obvious question:

Does Mr. Romney seriously believe that young men and women in China are racing to climb over fortress-like walls topped with barbed wire, just to get a poorly paid job at Global-Tech? Or is it possible that the barbed wire and armed guards are meant to lock the Chinese workers in and strip them of their legal rights?”

The United Steel Workers web site provides further details:

[The author] Kernaghan provides in the report, photos of the workers and documentation with pay stubs and journals by workers in a chapter titled, ‘Misery Updated,’ that makes clear in 2012 illegal sweatshop conditions persist at Global-Tech in China.

He publishes photos by workers of primitive and filthy dorms with squat toilets. Other photos show a workplace cafeteria, where he describes barely edible and frequently rotten food. “Global-Tech workers are easily hired, but then they are trapped and cheated of their wages if they try to leave, as well as being cheated of healthcare and other benefits.”

Sadly, in 2012, Global-Tech remains a brutal sweatshop, where workers are paid starvation wages of $1.00 an hour and have no rights. Today at Global-Tech, every single labor law in China is violated: primitive, filthy dorm conditions are the norm; routine 15-16-hour shifts prevail, along with grueling 105-to-112 hour, seven-day work weeks.

Kernaghan wrote that 800 high school student interns – many exhausted children just 16-years-old, are forced to work the grueling 15-16-hour shifts with no overtime pay at Global-Tech. “As of 2012, U.S. wages for the manufacturing of electrical equipment and appliances are $17.93 an hour, while wages at Global-Tech for similar work are just $1.00 an hour, or just six percent of U.S. wages.

The article concludes with a question directly pertaining to the 2012 election:

In the context of Mr. Romney’s present ‘get tough on China’ stance, it would be critical for Mr. Romney to clarify exactly what he and Bain Capital did at the Global-Tech factory in Dongguan, China to push back against the evident abuses in the factory and to assure respect for human, women’s and workers’ rights.

And that’s just one example of many of your China ties. According to your 2010 and 2011 tax returns, you have personal investments in at least 10 Chinese companies, one of which is Li & Fung Limited:

…a supply chain management company that oversees the transfer of Chinese-manufactured goods to giant American retailers like Target and Walmart — precisely the types of products that many argue have cost American jobs at home as they’ve been outsourced to cheaper labor markets.

Then there was your role in leveraging US taxpayer bailout money to move a critical auto parts supplier, Delphi, lock, stock, and barrel to China.

Presently, Bain is moving 170 jobs from Illinois based Sensata Technologies that pay $18 per hr to China where they pay a buck, despite Sensata turning a healthy third-quarter profit of $41.5 million.  Just not enough money for ya’all, eh?

You’ve made a quarter billion dollars leveraging other people’s money buying companies from which you extract every possible dollar, whatever the consequences to its employees, the communities in which they live, and even the US taxpayers who, among other things, have picked up the tab for your plundering of employee pension funds. All with minimal risk to you and your investors.

Yeah, you are a master at playing the financial risk game, Willard, outsourcing it to whomever and wherever you can. I didn’t think it was possible, but you have exceeded all my expectations as to your personal and political dickishness. I wouldn’t be surprised that once you succeed in outsourcing all possible jobs to China; that once we reach relative wage parity with the Chinese, you’ll have little problem importing their feudal like working conditions into the U.S.

Thereupon, we will have realized our collective race to the bottom. “And the world was made flat” as your compatriot Tom Friedman would have it. To which I must humbly offer you and your ilk my extended middle finger.

Risky Business (Part One)

 

President Obama accused Mitt Romney of “being all over the map.”  While that is metaphorically true, underscoring as it does Romney’s attempts to impose his notions of American exceptionalism on the rest of the world, it also has a literal component— geography.

ROMNEY:
“Syria is Iran’s only ally in the Arab world. It’s their route to the sea.”

Er, Willard, any 7th grade geography student knows better than that.  Ever heard of The Persian Gulf? The 97,000 sq miles of ocean that is the most strategically important waterway in the world?

At some 650 miles in length, Iran’s coastal exposure is about half as large as the entire West Coast of the United States (1293 miles).  Additionally— we hate to break it to you— but Syria and Iran don’t currently share a border.  There’s a little country called Iraq separating the two.

Maybe it’s the word “Persian” that’s throwing you.  Long before Iran was known as Iran it was called— wait for it— Persia.  As in The Persian Empire, which was one of the world’s largest empires, thanks in large part to— wait for it— its navy

Xerxes, Immortals, and Persian Naval Forces at Salamis observing the Naval Battle.

Maybe you were thinking about what the map of the Middle East looked like 2500 years ago, when the Persian Empire extended to the Eastern Mediterranean and included modern day Syria.  You really should trade in your old Risk game board for an updated map of the world.  If you do find yourself in a position to bomb Iran, you might want to locate it on modern map first.  Just sayin’.

On a related note, you decry the number of US naval vessels as being less than what we had during World War I, using that little factoid to criticize Obama as somehow being weak on defense.  As President Obama was quick to point out, you seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of capability, quipping that we have less “horses and bayonets” in our arsenal as well.  Would you really trade one modern warship for two or three WWI vessels?

A poster of numerous U.S. Navy vessels sailing in New York Harbor during World War I entitled
“Uncle Sam’s Big Fighting Ships.”

 

I’d be willing to bet that a single modern day missile cruiser, armed with over the horizon radar and enough Harpoon missiles, could destroy the entire fleet pictured above in less time than it would take your car elevator to fill up your garage.

The last thing we need is a geographically challenged, militarily ignorant Commander in Chief who thinks that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.”  (I hear that Sarah Palin‘s contract with Fox News is up at the end of the year. Maybe you can hire her to keep an eye on the Ruskies for us.)

You know, Mitt, if for some ineffable reason, the real Powers-That-Be determine we haven’t suffered enough on this Veil of Tears, and you end up being installed as the leader of the free world, I fear that you won’t be able to distinguish the game of Risk from the real thing.

———–

To be continued. Part II will spotlight Romney’s bogus tough talk on China, featuring his personal investment in a Chinese sweat shop.

Stay Thirsty My Friends

The most interesting man in the world on one of the least interesting men in the world.

Yeah, that sloshing the water around your teeth every time is so attractive.
Did that leave a bad taste in your mouth?  K then, here’s your palette cleanser.

RomBot5000 Severely Moderate 2.0 Download

That was my first thought, too:  “Does that junk work?”   “Does it has an off button?”

WASHINGTON, D.C.— In the face of what looked increasingly like an inevitable blowout by President Obama, Washington beltway wags were ecstatic this week after the nearly powered-off Rombot5000 provided the presidential race with an all-important infusion of high-grade lithium energy.

The surprising up-tick came immediately after an emergency software update just prior to the first presidential debate, dubbed by anonymous programmers as “Severely Moderate 2.0.”  Romney Campaign spokesman, Ben Dover, refused any characterization the update was emergency in nature, saying, “This was a planned incremental update, anticipated by Mr. Romney long before his main operating chip had become inarticulate.”

Dover was also tight-lipped about who actually writes and authorizes the downloads, referring all inquiries to the “Billionaires For Romney Consortium.”

Asked if the Rombot5000 would be performing in the next debate with the same upgrade, Dover said it didn’t really matter. “Our polling indicated we would not only win the first debate, but also that we would easily win all three debates, as well as the November 6 election.”

Pressed on specifically how their polling results were anything more than just the biased opinion of a few hundred Republicans, Dover said he wasn’t going to answer hypothetical questions, but that he did have an unspecified quantity of sodium chloride we could “all go pound.”

 

Killa The Magilla

I know you’re wondering too, who the effen hell is Omney Yan?  No— really. Who is he.

 “The taller the tree, the sweeter the peach
I’ll give you the whole megillah* in a one word speech”
Frank Sinatra in Come Blow Your Horn

Quoi de neuf, chiens.*  You Leftist Elitists may be unacquainted with Magilla, a cartoon gorilla from the Gorillini tribe, who spends the bulk of his time languishing in the front window of Peebles’ Pet Shop eating beaucoup bananas and being a general drain on a small businessman’s bottom line.  Mr. Peebles would heavily discount Magilla’s asking price, and Magilla wound up being repeatedly outsourced for brief quixotic episodes in the “real world”; typically, to Wall Street thieves who needed someone to bail out break into a bank or two, or some other less imaginative malfeasance.

A las, Magilla was always returned to the Pet shop, and full refunds demanded.  Because even in cartoons,  it’s not about the tasty carrots or the power of cheese;  it’s all about the money.  Always.

On the other hand.  “Megillah” is also one of the five books of the Hebrew scriptures;  notable as a long and tedious account of a sort of holocaust prequel, the entire reading of which is often used as a natural sedative during the Jewish holiday of Purim.  Hence the birth of the phrase, “The full megillah.”  Funny thing;  Ahasuerus, dickish ruler of Persia at the time— yeah, same old Persia— also suffered from— wait for it— insomnia.  But there was no Book of Esther yet;  the poor schmuck had to rely on the not-so-efficacious court records being read to him to help him sleep.

Bof.  Where was I— So what has this got to do with the debates between President Obama and Omney Yan?  Well yada, the likelihood of some one of Romony’s speechifyin’ sycophants coming up with the zinger “Killa the Magilla” is, adMittedly, much much slimmer than Chris Christie after a twelve month twinkie pizza bender; but hey they’re dorks;  it could happen.

More to the point is the narrative around creating zinger “moments” the LoFos (Low information Voters) can extract from what must pass for their cortical overlays, and bring it to bear in the present moment in such a way that it hermetically divorces it from every other stenchi-fied thing they have on file about Mitt Romoney.  And at this late date, that should be enough dope to knock down a dancing horse.

So the chances of one of those clowns writing a zinger like that— and having it delivered effectively by the Romoney 2012-5000DW6-J are— in a “one word speech”—
unimaginable.

 

* What up, dawgs?