President Obama schools Metamorphosis Mitt on the nature of modern warfare
During last night’s final presidential debate, it soon became apparent that, in the arena of foreign policy, Willard Mitt Romney is playing fantasy football while President Obama is grinding out the real thing.
Obama is studying the opposition, meeting with his coaches, drawing up and revising game plans as circumstances require. He chooses the starters, putting his faith in his players whether they are in the State Department, the CIA, or the military, then sends them out to the field. He trusts in their professionalism and experience to move the ball forward, to stop the opposition, and ultimately, win the game.
Meanwhile, Romney is just making shit up as he goes along, shifting positions faster than a fantasy football fan/atic trades his virtual players. He even threw most of his foreign policy advisers under the bus, some 70% of whom are Bushie neocons, including chicken hawks like Dan Senor and Robert Kagan who’ve never seen a war they wouldn’t start or send somebody else’s kids to fight. Heck, Romney tacked so far to the left that he sounded like he was channeling John Lennon:
“…[O]ur purpose is to make sure the world is more — is peaceful. We want a peaceful planet.”
Even with plenty of advanced warning to his advisers that he was going to shake his mighty, all-forgiving etch a sketch once again, John Bolton’s head must have exploded, if even out of just one side.
On record for criticizing Obama’s decision to set a 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan? No problemo. Just inhale a heady dose of Romnesia , and voila– Romney is suddenly on the same page as Obama, despite his earlier characterization that setting a withdrawal deadline was a grievous strategic flaw that only empowered the enemy.
But it wasn’t just Obama’s Afghanistan policy that Romney suddenly found himself embracing. (A growing majority of Americans are sick to death of the longest war in US history, so that has to be counted as a no-brainer.) Add Willard’s support for the Administration’s role in the overthrow of Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak and Libya’s Mohamar Qadaffi; the killing of Usama bin Laden, despite the violation of Pakistani sovereignty that previously had Willard’s magic underwear in such an excruciating twist; the cautious approach to the civil war in Syria; the imposition of increasingly ruinous sanctions against Iran; the handling of the Benghazi incident; and other gimmees like unconditional support for Israel and the increasing use of killer drones around the world—Obama and Romney might just as well have been kissing cousins.
The political calculation of Romney’s debate strategy is painfully obvious. While maybe a million people at any one time are exposed to a given campaign speech or a targeted media buy, alight as they are with inflammatory, hyperbolic rhetoric, the number of people tuning into any one of the four televised debates is [at least] an order of magnitude greater. A perfect venue to re-invent a candidate from a “severe conservative” into a controlled, reasonable moderate that would appeal to undecided voters, including a large swathe of the coveted female voter demographic, with whom Obama continues to enjoy a substantial lead.
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.”
Big Bird responds to Romney’s promise to carve him up for Thanksgiving dinner
As the debate post-mortems flood in, the overwhelming consensus is that Willard Mitt Romney won, at least on style. Charlie Pierce begins his critique of President Obama’s performance with a boxing analogy:
The thing is, if you’re going to play rope-a-dope, sooner or later, you have to come off the ropes and throw a punch. You bounce off the ropes and land the left and then the right over the top, and then the other guy goes out of the ring in a blanket. Otherwise, it’s just a way to get yourself punched in the stomach a lot. Along about the 48-minute mark of Wednesday night’s debate, it became clear to me that the president simply was not going to do that.
And, because of the president’s unaccountable lassitude — is it possible that the whole angry-black-man kerfuffle ginned up on the right on Monday got into the man’s head a little? — Willard Romney was able to portray himself as a firm, principled national figure of what passes for the rational center. I didn’t think that was possible.
In my view, a better metaphor would be a mixed martial arts match. Obama entered the cage with heavily padded 20 ounce boxing gloves while Romney opted for 4 ounce MMA grapplers that allowed him hit a lot harder and wrestle and pin O to the mat. As for the re-release Monday of a 2007 vid of Senator Obama delivering a public critique of the Bush Administration’s of post-Katrina aid to New Orleans, I do believe it was a deliberate attempt to get inside O’s head, muting his natural instincts to throw some elbows lest he conform tothe angry black man racial stereotype that the right is always ready to smear him with.
Style issues aside, Mitt “make up a number” Romney offered nothing of substance. Unless his performance as a substantial liar counts. Big Orange has started to make a list:
Romney lied:
When he claimed that “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” They’re not.
When he said that President Obama had “cut Medicare by $716 billion to pay for Obamacare.” Obama didn’t.
When he denied proposing a $5 trillion tax cut. He did.
When he said President Obama had “added almost as much to the federal debt as all the prior presidents combined.” Not even close.
When he resurrected “death panels.” That was called “one of the biggest whoppers of the night.”
When he stated that half the green energy companies given stimulus funds had failed. Only if three out of nearly three dozen is half.
Stay tuned. These just scratch the surface.
ThinkProgress uses a less confrontational term– “myths.” Some 27 of them delivered in a mere 38 minutes, to be exact. Romney’s biggest whopper remains his promise to balance the budget while raising defense spending by $2 trillion; and by extending the Bush tax cuts and implementing new ones that overwhelmingly favors the uber rich and corporations. Kaching-– add another $5 trillion debt to the US Treasury.
Now, Romney claims that it will all be paid for by cutting costs in discretionary programs (sans defense), and by closing tax loopholes and eliminating exemptions. But he has adamantly refused to identify which loopholes and exemptions he would eliminate. And the only cut out of the discretionary budget that he identified was to end the public subsidy of the Public Broadcast System, which includes among other programs, debate moderator Jim “call me a feckless whimp” Leher‘s Newshour, and Sesame Street.
If Big Bird becomes the main course for the Romney’s Thanksgiving spread, expect the appetizers to include Kermit frog legs, served up by a submissive staff of former educators: Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, and Mrs. Sparklenose.
“I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past,” he said when asked about his position on the issue. “So, I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird. I mean, you can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know.”
“… former Republican Party leader Rep. Tom Davis this week observed that “the Republican brand is in the trash can. . . if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”
Which inspired the following comment:
So distressed at Barack Obama’s successful “Change” theme, the Repugs have tried to claim some of that turf as their own with their new campaign slogan—”Change You Deserve.” Unfortunately for them, that is the trademarked advertising slogan for the anti-depressant Effexor, used to treat generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder in adults. (Who said that the Most Highs don’t have a sense of humor?)
Nearly two years later, we did a followup titled Teh Crazy Poll, which cited a number of poll derived metrics pertaining to Obama Derangement Syndrome [ODS], concluding with this:
“Bruce Bartlett, Deputy Assistant Secretary for economic policy at the U.S. Treasury Department during the George H.W. Bush Administration, gets the last word. In his post yesterday titled Why I Am Not a Republican:
“I can only conclude from this new poll of 2003 self-identified Republicans nationwide that between 20% and 50% of the party is either insane or mind-numbingly stupid.”
“The favorability ratings for both the GOP and the tea party are totally underwater, with just 39 percent approving of the GOP and 32 percent liking the tea party. Among self-identified party members, Democrats have a five-point edge over Republicans in favorability, 89 percent of Democrats are positive, versus 84 percent of Republicans. And here’s where it gets interesting.
The difference is that 32 percent of Americans in this survey identify themselves as Democrats, vs. 25 percent as Republicans, levels that have held essentially steady the past three years. That’s down for the GOP, which achieved parity with the Democrats in 2003 but has lost ground since. (Independents now predominate, accounting for 39 percent in this survey.) Intensity of sentiment is another challenge for the Republican Party: Substantially more Americans see it “strongly” negatively than strongly positively, 33 percent vs. 18 percent, while the Democratic Party breaks even (28 percent on both sides).
On the other hand, because fewer Democrats are registered to vote, the Democratic Party slips among registered voters to 48-46 percent, favorable-unfavorable, essentially an even split. The GOP, though, remains underwater among registered voters, 42-53 percent.
Ah, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Limbaugh just before his head explodes in a fit of cognitive dissonance
“Never get high on your own supply.” —Notorious Big.
When the polls started turning up for Obama and the down ticket Dems after the DNC convention, the GOPers dismissed it as a “sugar high.” Some high octane sugar, that. Obama now leads in all nine swing states, each outside the margin of error. Worse for Team Romney, the internals showed a double digit drop in the number of people saying the country is on the wrong track. Obama’s favorability ratings have now risen to the crucial 50% level. Romney’s pick of Paul “Voucherize Medicare” Ryan to be his Veep has hurt him in the crucial senior demographic. And Obama now leads on the question of who is the better candidate to improve the economy, formerly Romney’s greatest strength. While the post-convention bounce could have been explained away as a short term effect, the political impact of the leaked 47% vid has unmistakably bent the arc of the campaign towards Obama and the Dems, leaving the Rethugs flailing around for a new narrative spin.
Enter one Dean Chambers, an obscure right wing blogger who claims to have scientifically “unskewed” the polls by eliminating a presumed oversampling of the number of Democratic respondents. Presto change-o — Romney actually enjoys a substantial lead. (For an analysis of why Chambers’ methodology sucks, see this article from TPM, featuring a critique from the former champion of GOP leaning pollsters, Scott Rassmussen himself.) Citing what is rapidly becoming known as the “Poll Truthers” movement, ThinkProgress reports that:
Rush Limbaugh also outlined the pollster conspiracy on his radio show: “They’re all Democrats. They’re all liberals. They just have different jobs. The polls are the replacement refs. They see certain things. They don’t see other things. They don’t call certain things, and other things go by. In this case, what they’re trying to do is exactly what they’ve done in your case: frustrate you, make you pull your hair out, say, what the hell’s happening to the country? They want you thinking the country’s lost. They want you thinking your side’s lost. They want you thinking it’s over for what you believe. And that makes you stay home and not vote. That’s what they’re hoping.”
Limbaugh, while doing his best to rally his troops, is thus planting the seeds of a post-election narrative that blames the liberal media and their co-conspirators in the pollster business. Jason Linkins and Elyse Siegel over at HuffPo write that there is a longer term goal, with a clever Catch-22 hook:
So you should look at “Unskewed Polls” as less of a strategic effort to get Romney elected, and more of a long-game effort to mount a war against pollsters once the election is over. (They will magically have a case, no matter which way the election turns out: if Obama wins, pollsters are in the tank; if Romney wins, pollsters are terrible and wrong about everything.)
I would offer a third possibility: that the Rethugs are seeding a post-election rationale to be employed after they steal the election: “See, there was polling precedent that showed Romney was winning all along.” I’m not ready to abandon that possibility just yet, given their track record in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. (See, e.g., former DNC communications spokeswoman and current MSNBC political analyst Karen Finney‘s repeated warnings about same.) But for now I am more intrigued by Billmon‘s analysis over at the Big Orange titled, “Skewed polls and the paranoid style” (the latter phrase being an homage to Douglas Hoffsteader‘s 1964 classic essay, “The Paranoid Style”).
The most striking feature of the current right-wing obsession with “skewed polls” is that it combines two of modern conservatism’s most pronounced tendencies: A complete rejection of empirical reality, and a deep conviction that said reality is in fact a conspiratorial plot by the enemies of America (a.k.a. the liberals) to poison public opinion— to win through deception what they cannot achieve openly. Memories of the right’s insistence that all was going well with the bloody occupation of Iraq are hard to avoid— likewise the manufactured “debate” over the causes and consequences of global climate change, the imaginary role of ACORN and the Community Reinvestment Act in the subprime mortgage meltdown, and just about every other instance in which conservative ideology has had to come face to face with the cold, hard facts of life. In each case, the knee-jerk conservative response to inconvenient (and unfriendly) truths has been to mimic Adam Savage’s line from Mythbusters: “I reject your reality and substitute my own.” Except Adam was being ironic. They are not.
The “complete rejection of empirical” reality and substituting a different one was, of course, enshrined in the political universe when a Bushian political operative, widely believed to be Karl Rove, told author Ron Suskind:
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality— judiciously, as you will— we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”[2]
Writer and blogger Julian Sanchezdescribes this cognitive mindset as “epistemic closure”:
One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts with that reality can be dismissed out of hand because it comes from the liberal media, and is therefore ipso facto not to be trusted. (How do you know they’re liberal? Well, they disagree with the conservative media!) This epistemic closure can be a source of solidarity and energy, but it also renders the conservative media ecosystem fragile. Think of the complete panic China’s rulers feel about any breaks in their Internet firewall: The more successfully external sources of information have been excluded to date, the more unpredictable the effects of a breach become. Internal criticism is then especially problematic, because it threatens the hermetic seal. It’s not just that any particular criticism might have to be taken seriously coming from a fellow conservative. Rather, it’s that anything that breaks down the tacit equivalence between “critic of conservatives and “wicked liberal smear artist” undermines the effectiveness of the entire information filter. If disagreement is not in itself evidence of malign intent or moral degeneracy, people start feeling an obligation to engage it sincerely— maybe even when it comes from the New York Times. And there is nothing more potentially fatal to the momentum of an insurgency fueled by anger than a conversation. A more intellectually secure conservatism would welcome this, because it wouldn’t need to define itself primarily in terms of its rejection of an alien enemy.
h/t Chris Hayes.
Billmon again:
There simply is no getting around the fact that the mentality of the modern grassroots conservative movement is in almost all particulars the spitting image of a 20th century totalitarian political party— an “epistemically closed” loop of self-reference and self-delusion. In other words: a cult. The upshot is that one of America’s two main political parties has managed to turn itself into the proverbial insane asylum run by the inmates. . . But for most sane (or at least semi-sane) people, there comes a point where you realize you’ve lost the thread and have to back up a bit— and maybe enter rehab. But epistemic cults have no such corrective mechanisms. They never go in reverse, never question their own assumptions, and most of all never ever admit error. Their belief systems are too fragile. Break the gestalt, even in one place, and the entire edifice may come crashing down. Which may explain why totalitarian cults that actually achieve unchallenged state power usually end up astonishing the world not just with their barbarity, but with the sheer zaniness of their thinking. They can’t stop themselves from taking their obsessions to the ultimate extreme.
Or as The Urantia Book might put it:
But life will become a burden of existence unless you learn how to fail gracefully. There is an art in defeat which noble souls always acquire; you must know how to lose cheerfully; you must be fearless of disappointment. Never hesitate to admit failure. Make no attempt to hide failure under deceptive smiles and beaming optimism. It sounds well always to claim success, but the end results are appalling. Such a technique leads directly to the creation of a world of unreality and to the inevitable crash of ultimate disillusionment.
Mittens reflecting on the current state of his presidential campaign
The last eight weeks haven’t been kind to Willard Mitt Romney. His inaugural overseas trip in late July and early August, designed to make him look presidential on the world stage, was roundly considered a disaster.
His innate ability to look down and insult people was on full display, dissing Palestinian culture while visiting Israel. And in Britain, he scored a hat trick, criticizing his hosts’ Olympic preparations, forgetting the name of the leader of the Labour Party after being introduced to him, and letting slip that he had had been briefed by MI6, all of which earned him headlines like “Mitt the Twit.”
Then came the RNC Convention, billed as Mitt Romney’s coming out party where The Real Mitt would be introduced to the country. Why that should be necessary after running for president for the last seven years only underscores his total fail at connecting with ordinary people. That was to be remedied by a warm and fuzzy keynote speech by his wife and a puff piece bio-vid, both originally scheduled for prime time network broadcast coverage.
Hurricane Issac changed all that. Ann Romney was moved to Tuesday night, but not to the prime time spot. That was given to New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who showed what a bloated egotistical fukwad he is. During what was really a commercial for his 2016 presidential run, he finally got around to mentioning Romney’s name 16 minutes after he waddled up to the mic. (Ann was seething. I’m sure a cut-away shot would have shown smoke billowing out her ears.) And the bio-vid was moved out of prime time to make room for Clint Eastwood’s empty chair.
The climax was Willard’s acceptance speech, written by himself and his chief strategist, Stuart Stevens, the man behind the hilarious Demon Sheep ad run against Meg Whitman during her California gubernatorial campaign. After rejecting two speeches by professional speech writers, the Dynamic Duo forgot to mention Afghanistan or even the troops, much to dismay of the Republican establishment.
Then came the murder on 9/11 of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other embassy personnel, including two Navy Seals. Romney, before the facts were in, labeledPresident Obama‘s handling of the situation “disgraceful” and accused him of sympathizing with the terrorists who carried out the attacks, while the attacks were still going on:
“The Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Naturally, his comments were condemned by individuals across the politcal spectrum. President Obama weighed in on 60 Minutes, accusing Romney of having “a tendency to shoot first and aim later.” Two polls, a Monmouth Universit survey released Monday, and a poll by Reters/Ipsos released Tuesday show a high level of awareness among the populace of the violence directed at our embassies in Egypt and Libya; and Romney upside down in his approval/disapproval numbers for his self-serving, unpresidential response.
Which brings us to the latest flaming bag of dog shit that Romney is having trouble stomping out: the release of a covert video tape taken in May during a fund raising event at a billionaire hedge fund’s mansion in Florida in which he reveals what he really thinks of the Great Unwashed. (A complete transcript can be found here). Think Progress describes the poo on his shoes:
The Romney campaign is in damage control mode today, trying to explain Romney telling wealthy donors in a private meeting that “there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” “These are people who pay no income tax,” Romney continued, in a video posted by Mother Jones. “My job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”
But who are the 47 percent of Americans who currently have no federal income tax liability? Mostly, they are either too poor to qualify for even the lowest tax bracket (but still pay federal payroll tax, and state or local sales taxes, gas taxes, and excise taxes), or they benefit from tax credits for the working poor, the elderly, or students, as thesecharts from the Tax Policy Center show. Only 7 percent of the country is non-elderly and has no federal tax liability, and most of them make less than $20,000.
Jon Stewart provides his take on the Millionaire Gaffemaker and his attempted reboot
Not surprising, Romney is getting a lot of heat from even moderate pundits like NY Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who describes the Romney revealed in the videotape as a “Sneering Plutocrat.” But it is the fire he is taking from conservatives that is of particular interest, the acrid smell of desperation rising in the air:
Bobo: “Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers…It suggests that Romneydoesn’t know much about the culture of America. …The people who receive the disproportionate share of government spending are not big-government lovers. They are Republicans. They are senior citizens. They are white men with high school degrees. …Romney’s comments also reveal that he has lost any sense of the social compact…. But, as a description of America today, Romney’s comment is a country-club fantasy. It’s what self-satisfied millionaires say to each other. It reinforces every negative view people have about Romney.
Personally, I think he’s a kind, decent man who says stupid things because he is pretending to be something he is not — some sort of cartoonish government-hater. But it scarcely matters. He’s running a depressingly inept presidential campaign.
Bill Kristol: “It’s worth recalling that a good chunk of the 47 percent who don’t pay income taxes are Romney supporters—especially of course seniors … as well as many lower-income Americans (including men and women serving in the military) who think conservative policies are better for the country even if they’re not getting a tax cut under the Romney plan. So Romney seems to have contempt not just for the Democrats who oppose him, but for tens of millions who intend to vote for him … Romney’s comments, like those of Obama four years ago, are stupid and arrogant.
Indeed: Has there been a presidential race in modern times featuring two candidates who have done so little over their lifetimes for our country, and who have so little substance to say about the future of our country?
Peggy Noonan: What should Mitt Romney do now? He should peer deep into the abyss. He should look straight into the heart of darkness where lies a Republican defeat in a year the Republican presidential candidate almost couldn’t lose … It’s time to admit the Romney campaign is an incompetent one. … An intervention is in order…
Joe Scarborough: “This is one of the worst weeks for any presidential candidate in a general election that any of us can remember… Unemployment is still 8% plus, the economy is still in tatters, and Mitt Romney is blowing this race.”
And that only concerns the manner in which Mr. Managerial Genius is running his campaign. The more serious, long term issues concern the policy implications of his remarks:
While conservative activists are circling their wagons around Mitt Romney and encouraging to stand by his claim that the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes are essentially mooching off the government, prominent policy voices onthe right are dismayed by his comments — both because they’re inaccurate, and because they cut against fundamental conservative causes.
Romney argued that the 47 percent — of which three-fifths pay payroll taxes and one-fifth are seniors — represent President Obama’s core base. “The story is complicated, and it doesn’t line up well with the dependency story Romney seemed to have in mind,” wrote Reiham Salam at National Review. “As an explanation for electoral trends, though, this theory doesn’t hold up,” wrote Ramesh Ponnuru at Bloomberg View, pointing out that many low-income Americans vote Republican.
Many conservatives support programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit — which contributes to the phenomenon Romney derided — because it advances the goal of replacing welfare programs with work incentive programs. Anti-tax activists separately note that Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan have worked to grow the ranks of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes.
For Matt Welch of the libertarian magazineReason, the problem is that Romney’s message contradicts the pitch Republicans made to voters at the GOP convention.
“This is economic determinism at its worst, going against the very message the Republican Party was trying to sell to the world during its quadrennial national convention last month,” he wrote. “Over and over again, we heard speakers there talk about how their immigrant grandparents came to this country, worked hard, built ‘that,’ never asked for a handout, and as a result their descendants have enjoyed the American Dream of ever-upward mobility. What the 53/47 dividing line says, to the direct contrary, is that income status is a permanent political condition, defrocking all Americans of agency and independent thought…. There are to my mind many more important things to consider in this presidential race than Mitt Romney’s reductive parroting of plausible-but-wrong GOP tropes. But the reason this controversy will have legs is ultimately because many Republicans think Romney’s comments were just fine. They are about to learn what the rest of the country thinks about that.”
In sum, we now have a better idea of Willard’s world view. Seniors, students, military service personnel, and the working poor are really a permanent underclass comprising some 47% of the populace whose votes he’ll never get, so fuck them.
As for the uber rich job destroyers creators like himself, they are entitled to paying virtually no income taxes at all. Under the Ryan tax plan, for instance, Willard will pay less than 1%. The trillion dollars in proposed tax cuts, including a reduction in the corporate rate, will be offset by closing a plethora of loopholes that, alas, must remain undefined lest they incite the peasant class to revolt. Meanwhile, the military industrial complex will continue to enjoy rising budgets ad infinitum. And the budgetshall be balanced by setting fire to the social safety net and gutting every government program and tax incentive designed to help those on the bottom of the economic pyramid achieve a higher standard of living.
So, can Ann start measuring the drapes in the White House yet? After all, as she toldDianne Sawyer: “It’s our turn now.”
President Obama schools Metamorphosis Mitt on the nature of modern warfare 
