6 March 2013. You Can’t Make Up Shit Like This… THIS is What the Rightwing Crazies Believe In… Mark It and Oppose Them

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Look at the above image. I found it whilst I was searching for images today. It’s disgusting and untruthful, isn’t it? However, not only do the rightwing kooks in general eat this shit up, but the Orthodox konvertsy are even worse… they’re some of the most unhinged righties that I’ve ever met, bar none. Many of them are on the Monomakhos site… others came out of the looney-tunes “Continuing Anglican” movement (as typified by a reactionary site called Stand Firm in the Faith)… they believe that Coolidge‘s nutty squirrel laissez-faire economic policies (which led directly to the Great Depression) are the ne plus ultra of economics and that they’re a beleaguered minority beset by a voracious “socialist” government (actually, the government doesn’t give a rat’s ass about them, but that’s attending to reality, and these sorts would NEVER do that).

Take a good look at the above… that’s the sort of shit that’s peddled by the likes of Potapov, Paffhausen, and Whiteford (the last-named is the least-culpable, as he’s the most ignorant). It’s nasty, isn’t it? However… if you march in a March for Life, that’s what you march for. Not quite what you thought, was it? I’d say, “Don’t march in a ‘March for Life’ until it disassociates itself explicitly and completely from Hard Righties such as Rick Perry, Darrell Issa, and Franklin Graham“. If it doesn’t, you’re responsible for their evil agenda. Sad to say, but there’s no “clean” option here. You can stand for social justice, but if you do, you have to stand with those who believe in legal abortion (that’s the way of it in the real world… you can’t choose your family and you can’t choose who stands for what).

If you stand for “Pro-Life“, you also stand for the promiscuous use of the death penalty, unending warmongering in foreign parts, the gutting of the American economy, generous tax cuts to the rich (and Scroogish cuts to social services), and the continuing rape of the working-class to enrich the corporate oligarchs (that’s the agenda of “Pro-Life” politicians such as Chris Smith and Willard Romney). Weigh both in the scales… neither are “clean”; both are “grey”… I have. I stand for social justice… the Left may stand for legal abortion, but it also stands against the Anti-Life agenda of the Hard Right. It’s NOT an easy or simple decision (unlike the cartoonish and mawkish arguments brought forward by the “Pro-Lifers”), but one HAS to go where the least evil’s being wrought. An anti-abortion plank doesn’t mean that an agenda is Pro-Life… NEVER forget that. It may be just the exact opposite… Satan laughs…

BMD

USA Awaits Possible Russian Retaliation for Magnitsky Act

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The White House was less than enthusiastic about proposed legislation in the US Congress linking normalised trade relations with Russia to the so-called “Magnitsky Act,” a bill aimed at punishing Russian officials suspected of corruption. However, with the US House of Representatives expected to pass the combined bill on Friday… and the US Senate likely to give its stamp of approval after that… most anticipate that President Barack Obama will sign it into law anyway. The question in Washington now is… “What’s Russia going to do about it?”

American officials, lawmakers, and business lobbies have a broad and united consensus that enacting Permanent Normalised Trade Relations (PNTR) with Russia would provide a boost for American exporters. However, the decision to link PNTR to the Magnitsky Act, named for Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died in a Moscow jail three years ago, angered top Russian officials, who accuse the USA of meddling in their country’s internal affairs. On Thursday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs vowed to “react toughly” to this “this unfriendly provocative act”, but it remains unclear exactly what this reaction will be and what impact it might have on bilateral ties.

Cliff Kupchan, head of the Russia and CIS team at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy in New York City, said, “The most unfortunate outcome would be a Russian response that disrupts American-Russian economic relations. If Russia responds with some proportionate blacklist of its own, my view is that the issue will be contained. If Russia responds with an extremely-expansive bill based on multiple criteria, it’d negatively affect relations”.

The bill to go before the House of Representatives on Friday would deny visas to… and freeze the assets of… officials suspected of involvement in Magnitsky’s death and other alleged human rights abuses. The Obama administration maintained that the American government already has mechanisms in place to punish such individuals, and has tried in vain to keep the Magnitsky bill separate from the PNTR issues. Russia joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in August, and, as a fellow WTO member, the USA must normalise trade relations with Russia in order to allow American businesses to capitalise on opportunities in the Russian market.

Carroll Colley, a Washington-based analyst for Eurasia Group, wrote in an essay published Thursday on the Foreign Policy website, “These advantages could be diminished by punitive bureaucratic measures targeting American companies doing business in Russia as a response to the Magnitsky Act. The measures could include unannounced tax inspections of American companies, delayed or denied licensing or registration procedures, and other bureaucratic complications”. James Collins, a former US ambassador to Russia under President Clinton, told RIA-Novosti, “Human rights have long been an issue in American relations with the USSR and Russia, and it’d be unrealistic for anyone to expect this to change anytime soon. The real question is whether the two governments can find reasonably effective ways to manage both the places where we agree and where we disagree. Or, they don’t, and, instead, let this become a disruptive part of the relationship”.

16 November 2012

Carl Schreck

RIA-Novosti

http://en.rian.ru/world/20121116/177503608.html

Editor’s Note:

What do you think would happen if Russia made a list of the American states where labour organisers are routinely brutalised and killed? What do you think that the Republican Party would do if Russia blacklisted Texas, Arizona, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Arkansas for their racially-based efforts to restrict voting by blacks and Mexican-Americans? What do think that the USA would do if Russia barred Rick Perry, Paul Ryan, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Joe Arapaio, and Sean Hannity from Russia on the grounds that they foment and spread extremism (although they DO such and aren’t ashamed of it, no siree)? (Orthodox people… what do you think would happen if Russia banned JP, Potapov, Rod Dreher, and Josiah Trenham for supporting Hard Right causes and for being religious kooks?) Why, there’d be a hellacious stink! You could smell it all the way from the banks of the Potomac to the Arbat!

In short, this is arrogant Anglo posturing. The people who brought you Wounded Knee, Hiroshima, and Guantánamo should know better. THIS is why the world despises the USA. It isn’t envy… its disgust. We should grow up and act like adults… but shall we?

BMD

Romney is Another Obama… The Only Difference is that He’s a Mormon

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Former Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination. His final speech on the last day at the Republican National Convention in Tampa FL met with a storm of applause. As one watched the convention, it was easy to get the impression that Romney was already president. The question of whether America is ready to elect its first Mormon president is still open. It happens in politics, just like in business, that a product becomes more popular due to the scale of its advertisement. However, the advertisement doesn’t change the product’s quality. This is Romney’s main problem. Even Romney’s rather unusual “confessional orientation” doesn’t matter as much. Why not elect a president from the ranks of the LDS movement? After all, four years ago, America elected its first Afro-American President, Barack Obama.

Sergei Mikheyev, the director general of the Centre for Political Status, said, “The fact that Romney’s a Mormon will play a certain role in the election, but this role won’t be decisive. The religious views of the voters themselves are likely to have an influence on their choice. Let’s be frank, the Mormons’ reputation is a bit tatty, but at the same time, there are many undisclosed Mormons amongst famous and influential people in the USA. In any case, America is a country of sects, although they wear many different visages. That’s why America, where everything intermingles, turning into an undreamt of mélange, may elect a Mormon as president”.

Romney’s main problem is that he’s a “hard sell” to most Americans. He can be inconsistent, and very few people are able to discern where one Romney, the moderate centrist, ends, and the next one, the radical rightwinger, begins. Hardly anyone notices a fascinating fact. Just before the last day of the RNC in Tampa, the American press published an opinion poll of likely Republican voters, which revealed an interesting fact… Romney’s one of the most unpopular GOP candidates in the past 30 years! Even George W Bush was better “liked”. Bush, by the way, didn’t receive an invitation to the RNC in Tampa; he had to be satisfied with an “appearance” via a video link. It was too problematical for them to claim the legacy of the last Republican President. The Democrats, by the way, at their convention, will give much attention to Bill Clinton.

Compared to Paul Ryan, the favourite of the Radical Rightwing Tea Party and “conservatives”, Mitt appeared quite “moderate” at the convention. On the one hand, Ryan’s candidacy will attract Teabaggers, but on the other hand, it greatly disappoints moderates and “independents”, who may stay home on Election Day. Romney needs all the help that he can get in this election campaign, but his ratings numbers are abysmal. His “approval” numbers run from 15 percent all the way up to 40 percent. It’s been a struggle for him to get even that. In the end, if we average out the polls, they show that Obama beats Romney by anywhere from 1 to 8 percent. If we factor in that the contenders for the White House in the last four elections were separated by a difference of 1 to 6 percent (Obama’s margin in 2008), then, it appears that Romney may have a slight chance to win 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

However, looking at the Republican Romney-Ryan ticket, the “friends of Barack” should be satisfied… the facts are such that the chances of Obama’s re-election aren’t decreasing, but increasing. Unless the economy collapses, which is unlikely, it looks like he’ll be lucky again. It’ll be a replay of 2008, where he had the luck of being matched with John McCain, an unelectable old codger. This time, it’ll be a somewhat different kind of luck. Lucky for them, the Republican economic programme is so confused that it resembles a mushy concoction, a problematical mixture of unrelated ideas and programmes. On the one hand, they promise to cut taxes, reduce government, and boost spending on defence, on the other, they promise no cuts in Social Security and Medicare. How they could reconcile this on the basis of the current tax base, it’s difficult to understand. Nevertheless, the current election is all about the economy, jobs, and money in your wallet.

Many see Romney as a moderate conservative. When one takes into account that the American South is an especially-rabid hotbed of the Radical Right, as shown by its support for the so-called Tea Party movement, and that it’s the Baptist “Bible Belt” of America, where Mormons are thought of as worse than heretics or schismatics, it’s not so simple for him. If you averaged all the polls amongst American Christian believers {that is Radical American Sectarians, in real terms: editor}, it turns out that a quarter to a third of them aren’t ready to accept a Mormon in the White House. Whilst Mormons claim to be Christians, outside of their sect, members of the LDS movement still face a prejudiced and/or suspicious attitude. Mitt Romney isn’t just a simple rank-and-file Mormon… he’s former “clergy” of the LDS movement, the head of a ward (parish). I must say that Mormon “clergy” are more like businessmen than real clergy. Later, he became a bishop, the head of a stake (this includes several dozen wards).

Mitt shows signs of flexibility and political consideration. However, his Democratic rivals and opponents believe that he’s notorious for waffling, concealment, distortion, and God knows what else. For example, David Axelrod, who was the chief architect of Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, who’s now one of the leading lights in his current election campaign, called Mitt a “charlatan”, saying, “He takes two positions on every issue, one more moderate, and the other on the Far Right, but that doesn’t make you a centrist. It makes you a charlatan”. Amazingly, even fellow Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry claimed (prior to Romney winning the GOP nomination), “[Mitt’s] a buzzard, a Fibber, and differs very little from Obama in his gutter ideology”. Indeed, everywhere, Mitt seems to say exactly what he thinks people want to hear. He’s a furious Tory in one state, a moderate in another, and politically malleable in a third. However, any road, he’s still a Mormon.

The only trouble is that he doesn’t present any real alternative to the Obama’s economic course. This delights Obama’s camp, for it makes it easier for Obama to compete against Romney. As Professor Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of the USA and Canada, said, “Romney doesn’t have much chance of winning. It isn’t because he’s a bad candidate, but because it’s difficult to defeat a sitting president, who has powerful administrative resources at his disposal. To do this, he should be someone outstanding, but Romney isn’t that. I think the strategy of the Republicans is only to give a formal opposition in this election; they’re focusing on seriously preparing for the next election, when Obama’s second term expires”.

Romney’s a graduate of Harvard Business School; he’s a lawyer, businessman, and politician, a very wealthy man, the head of Bain Capital, a major investment firm. In 2002, he was head of the Winter Olympics Organising Committee in Salt Lake City UT. He managed to eliminate waste in collected funds, and instead of a projected shortfall of 375 million USD (12.1 billion Roubles. 300 million Euros. 235 million UK Pounds), the Games gained a profit of almost the same amount. Mitt and his wife invested in about a million dollars of their own funds in the Games. When Romney was the governor of Massachusetts in 2003-07, he conducted an economic policy that was similar to Obama’s current economic policy. When he took office, the state treasury had a shortfall of 600 million USD (19.4 billion Roubles. 477 Euros. 378 million UK Pounds) to meet current outlays, and there was an estimated deficit of 3 billion USD (97 billion Roubles. 2.4 billion Euros. 1.9 billion  UK Pounds) for the following year. Yet, he raised taxation over expenditures by almost 700 million USD (22.7 billion Roubles. 556 million  Euros. 440 million UK Pounds). He solved his budget problems by closing tax loopholes for corporations, increased excise duties on petrol, and introduced higher fees for driving licences, gun licences, and marriage licences, and so on. By the way, his state was the first one to introduce a mandate that all citizens obtain health insurance. Obama was only able to do something similar on the national level after three years. In general, everything or most of the things that Romney did in Massachusetts, the Obama administration is doing now. Does America really need a second Obama, with the only difference is that he’s a Mormon?

31 August 2012

Andrei Fedyashin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2012_08_31/Romni-vtoroj-Obama-tolko-mormon/

The Unbearable Awfulness of the 2012 Election Campaign

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When the Republican race for the presidential candidacy started, I thought it’d be fun to write a series of columns tracking the 2012 election campaign race from its beginnings to its conclusion this November. I’d poke fun at fatuous press dribbling, the evasions, and misrepresentations of the candidates, etc. That ended when I realised that the whole Republican race was a freak show beyond parody, consisting of nothing but gimps, lepers, and glue-sniffers. Well, it wasn’t that bad but you get my gist. There was Newt Gingrich, talking about Outer Space; Rick Perry, high as a kite on painkillers; Herman Cain, and his ladies; Rick Santorum, wanting to puke over JFK; Michele Bachman doing her low-budget Sarah Palin schtick; a few other nonentities; and, of course, Ron Paul. All Mitt Romney had to do was stand there, smile, and do nothing to remind people he was a Mormon. He won easily. There was no point writing about it.

Romney’s a preppy, upper-crust CEO type, lacking in people skills. As for Obama, the days when he would appear on TV instead of American Idol and ramble on about whatever he wanted to, Chávez-style, are gone, but he still has a high opinion of his charm and oratorical skills. The president was reportedly delighted with the GOP’s selection. The Democrats set the tone early, as Obama surrogates started digging for filth on this well-groomed, caffeine-dodging executive. Ancient yarns about Romney the teenage school bully and Romney tying his pooch to the roof of a car were unearthed as evidence of his diabolical character. Hacks and media lapdogs ran with both tales, but neither really took off.

Next, the Democrats decided to reignite the “Culture Wars” by making it mandatory for the Catholic Church to provide free contraceptives to frisky young lassies in their institutions and, also, Sandra Fluke. Cue conservative outrage, and lots of media jibber-jabber about the Republican war on women, Republicans tying women to the roof of Mitt Romney’s car, the Republican Taliban, etc. It worked for a bit, but then passed. Then, came attacks on Romney’s business record, as Obama surrogates portrayed the Wooden Mormon as a cackling, top-hat wearing capitalist of the sort Mayakovsky drew in Bolshevik propaganda posters in the 1920s. Apparently, there was nothing Romney loved more than bathing in cash after asset-stripping a firm and firing all its employees. These attacks backfired because there are plenty of gazillionaire Democrat asset-stripping venture capitalists and a few politicians voiced their disapproval of all these attacks on capitalism, which is, after all, a big part of the American Way of Life. So, the strategy then shifted to outright innuendo and lies… a whispering campaign that Romney hadn’t paid taxes since the Mormons practised polygamy in the 19th century, and, oh yeah, that he kinda sorta killed some dude’s wife, while taking a bath in money. Kinda.

That last attack, which appeared in a Democrat ad, and was swiftly revealed to contain no truth whatsoever, impressed me with its sheer chutzpah. The media duly talked about it for a few days, whilst Romney just stood there, wooden, preppy, grinning nervously; eager to escape to the next board meeting where he could perhaps fire some people and take a bath in money. He dispatched an underling to make a weak response, and, then, a few days later accused Obama of running a campaign based on “division and anger and hate”, an assessment not entirely without merit, but then he let the attack slip away and soon we were back to talking about his dog strapped eternally to the roof of his car yipping for release.

How times have changed! I enjoyed the election in 2008 because it made so little sense. Obama talked sweetly, conjuring a magical fluffy cloud out of words, inviting the people to come float away with him to a wondrous land where there was no hate or political division, and where the government didn’t keep foreigners locked up forever at Guantánamo Bay. This time around, it’s all about personal attacks, innuendo, gibberish, and appeals to special interest groups. Still, 2008 and 2012 do have one crucial factor in common… in neither campaign, has Obama run on his record. Four years ago, it was because he didn’t have one, so, it was all hope, change, and millenarian blather; this time around, he does have a record, but it’s clearly not anything he wants to talk about, other than, “Yeah dude, I totally blew a hole in bin Laden’s head”. The media is still pretty friendly to Obama, so they’ll happily run with stories about Romney’s dog or push unfounded accusations about his business record if they get an opportunity. Thus, the election is about everything except what’s important, which is something that rhymes with “economy”. Instead, we get a perpetual side show display of inanity, bumbling, distractions, and general rottenness. I’d say, “Wake me up when it’s over”, but I’m about to leave the country for a few weeks, so, that may not be necessary. I’ll save my nap for when I get back.

24 August 2012

Daniel Kalder

RIA-Novosti

http://en.ria.ru/columnists/20120824/175419645.html

Editor’s Note:

I’ve noticed a great deal of “battle fatigue” amongst those covering this excuse for a political campaign. No one, but no one, has ANY enthusiasm whatsoever over it. Yes, many of us are willing to vote for “the lesser of two evils”, but there’s no “fire” in it. On the one hand, Mittens is unrepentantly greedy… “Yes, I screwed people unmercifully to get where I am today. I’m secretive, and I don’t owe you a damn thing, except to pay extortionate taxes so that I and my friends don’t have to… and I’m going to cut all programmes for ordinary people because I and my friends don’t want to pay for them”. On the other, Obama’s supremely feckless… “I promised to end the wars and close Gitmo… but that wasn’t expedient, so I didn’t do it. I won’t do anything that’s remotely unpleasant for me and my backers. If you don’t like that, find another planet to live on. I know that the One Percent parties hearty whilst most people suffer, but that’s life. I like the money that my rich backers give me, so I won’t cramp their style”.

In short, many people want to vote for “none of the above”. Neither the GOP or Dems are trusted… NEITHER. The Dems are seen as having turned their backs on New Deal square-dealing and the GOP’s seen as violating the principles of its most-revered leaders (Lincoln, TR, and Ike). Both are seen as greedy and grasping enablers of the rich… the Dems are simply less blatant about it (and will keep the social safety net somewhat intact). That’s why no one has any “fire in their belly” over the present campaign. NOBODY GIVES A SHIT. Everybody just wants it all to end, and we all know that we’re stuck with this shit for two more excruciatingly-long months. I think that the turnout this year will be the lowest in decades, if not in history. That’s sad… and it vitiates every criticism that American “conservatives” and “liberals” hurl at Russia… especially, if the turnout at the American presidential election is less than that in the late Russian election (65 percent of eligible Russian voters actually cast a ballot in 2012, compared to 63 percent of American voters actually voting in 2008). Vova will lift a glass and smile… and he’ll have every right to.

Mr Kalder’s struck a vein of pure gold here. However, who’s going to listen?

BMD