Stars and stripes - but hopefully not forever!

AS you may be aware, I'm not one to complain.  But as a life-long avid Steelers fan, I can only  respond with total horror  over the team's s throwback uniforms against the Redskins on Sunday.   Look for yourself.    When the team poured out of the tunnel  before the game, it looked like a jailbreak. How could  the costume department have so abused a team widely known for its decorum, gentility and  civility on the field? These guys have wives and mothers and children.  ESPN's poll said two-thirds of the respondents agree with me.  So for once, I am in the majority.  Hrrrummpphhh!!!

Ken Blackwell, now a Tea Party huckster

 Slate  Magazine reports that Ken Blackwell,  the former  Ohio Secretary of State who played  a less-than-illustrious official role in managing Ohio's elections, is appearing in a TV ad as the "titular head" of the  Tea Party Victory Fund.  Honest.

Blackwell's target is the so-called "Obama phone" video unearthed by the Drudge report.

According to Slate, Blackwell wrote the ad, which  once again rails at Democrats for literally buying off votes from people in need.

Rather than cherry-pick the message, here it is:

This is it --this is the October surprise.  We just need to get this ad on television today.  Will you help us?

This commercial  is a microcosm of the difference  between Republicans and Democrats.  Republicans want to create an environment where free people make their own choices and pursue their dreams. President Obama and Democrats want to create a dependency on government that ensures that Americans will continue to rely on Washington from cradle to grave.  

What this lady said is so offensive because it's so blatant  -  she finally comes out and says what we all know that the Democrats really think.  That's why this ad is so damaging to the president in Ohio. 

Let me tell you something.   I'm from Ohio.  I was elected statewide as the Secretary of State and Ohio State Treasurer - the ad is effective.  If swing voters in this state see this ad, they simply will not support President Obama, and he will lose Ohio.

There are too many weird  assumptions to address in the ad, which is supposed to run in Summit, Lucas and Mahoning Counties. But if Blackwell has cast his lot as a Tea Party huckster, he obviously is blind to the sort of racist stuff  that turns up on some of the signs at the teabagger rallies.

P.S..   The only October surprise , Ken, is that you probably got paid to write this.  

Christie: High praise for Obama's efforts in critical times

While New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was praising President Obama's intense engagement  in  the post-Sandy devastation of Christie's state,  Mitt was doing photo-ops in Ohio on a day when he said he wouldn't be campaigning at all.  Christie emphatically described Obama's  quick action  to expedite FEMA's assistance as ''outstanding" and said he didn't care  if such  praise violated party loyalties in the presidential race.

Meantime, Romney was more circumspect about  FEMA, the agency that he has long dismissed as a drag on the federal budget,  having once said that critical disaster work could best be handled by the private sector!   He didn't say  how that would be fail-safe but it is a clue to his secret plan to end the deficit.   Does that make you feel more secure these days if your town is hit by another disaster with him in the Oval Office?

On Tuesday,  trapped by his past feeble notions, he ignored  all questions from reporters on  whether he  now felt that FEMA was necessary for the nation's domestic emergencies.  It was just Mitt being Mitt when he faces an unpleasant situation that can't be solved by metrics and IPOs.

Having watched this guy since the start of the primaries, I've concluded that his campaign is much like the Seinfeld series:  It's a campaign about nothing.

That being the case, the narrative must find a way to gain traction with lies.  Not that he nor his supporting cast worry much  that it all reflects on Romney's incurable waffling and dishonesty.   Indeed, any challenge to his plot devices is merely cause to repeat them.  When top Chrysler executives criticized his fictional  Jeeps-to-China  TV ads,  the trash talk continued to turn up on TV and radio, especially in the Toledo area where the auto industry has heavy impact  on the economy.

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Poor John McCain.  He grows more erratic by the hour.  There he was in Ohio with Josh Mandel at his side - ya know, the old soldier and his young aide-de-camp -  asserting on TV that Obama was  "unqualified" to be America's commander-in-chief.  The only thing I  can figure is that McCain  is bored and needs to hug up to Romney for a possible appointment to Team Romney if Mitt lands  in the White House. I think he might be holding a pair of sixes against a full house.

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The Columbus Dispatch today endorsed Sherrod Brown over Josh - the second conservative Republican paper forced to concede  the wide gulf that separates the two candidates.The other paper: The Cincinnati Enquirer.

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My column on the Romney campaign's lies about Obama and the auto industry is posted on Plunderbund.

No cookies this week for Ben Stein from Mitt

From a reader comes this battlefield report that he  labeled "Friendly Fire", as told to 
Fox:

:

Cohen: A divisive conflict among Jews in Cuyahoga County

 There's an online piece by New York  Times Columnist Roger Cohen that reports the fierce  mano- a-mano  dispute among Cuyahoga County Jews  that has ripened during the current presidential election campaign.  It has been long seeded by the distrust by some Jews that President Obama, of all things, is anti-Israel.

Cohen sets the stage for his report in the first paragraph, writing in the paper's Global Edition:

Things are getting ugly among the Jews of Cuyahoga County, with family splits and dinner   invitations declined.  "I have never seen the divisions this acute," said James Ratner, an executive of the Forest City real estate group.

Normally, the family argument would be just that:  a purely inside event with little more than passing attention from beyond its sphere.  However, in this case the implications are broader because any fallout from the traditionally progressive Jews  could determine the outcome of the Ohio election and therfore,  the U.S. election.  Not that Mitt Romney hasn't noticed its electoral possibilities with his constant pandering to Israeli interests on this side of the ocean.  (Obama has thrown Israel under the bus!, Mitt has quacked, as though all blessings of foreign policy, even such myths as these,  flow from his Bain cornucopia.)  

To heighten the intensity of the Jewish  combat in Cuyahoga County, the Ohio  Senate race has  devolved into the spectacle of Josh Mandel, a conservative Jewish Republican who has been on message since grade school.  He married into the influential Ratner family but today enjoys no more  than partial support from his in-laws.

Cohen  writes that Mandel's  anti-abortion stance included "calling the indiana Senate nominee Richard Mourdock a  'class act' [!] after Mourdock said pregnancy resulting from rape was 'something God intended to happen' and was 'always a gift from God.'"

Back to James Ratner:  Cohens reports that Ratner  emailed him with word that a Jewish womens' group, with 60 members attending a meeting  at Park Synagogue, unanimously supported  Obama.

"Those Jewish women," Cohen writes, "know exactly what Romney and Mandel represent: an obcurantist and invasive threat to their rights in the name of God whose wishes these men presume to know'.

Youngstown Vindicator offers words to Mandel

Today's recommended viewing of another Josh Mandel gem:

It's the film clip of Mandel's interview by the Youngstown Vindicator that is posted on-line by Daily Kos.    During a testy discussion of the auto bailout, which Mandel opposes, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate snapped at the paper's editorialists, "Please, sir, don't put words in my mouth." To which the editor replied:  "Somebody's gotta put words in your mouth because all you do is talk in circles."

It's also newsworthy that when a conservative newspaper like the Cincinnati Enquirer endorses  a liberal Democrat like U.S.Sen. Sherrod Brown over Mandel, the enthusaism for Mandel's candidacy continues to take a beating -  if ever there were any enthusiasm in the first place other than the right-wing high rollers who have put nearly $20 million into the Whiz Kid's campaign.

Sununu, the white man's candidate

Once again, John Sununu misfired a finger (it's supposed to be the middle one raised in defiance, John) when  he returned to his race-baiting ways against President Obama. No, we're not talking about your average redneck.  We're talking about the co-chair of Mitt Romney's campaign who made it a point to tell the voters that the only reason Gen. Colin  Powell endorsed President Obama was that they are fellow-African Americans.

It would therefore be  fair to ask Sununu whether the only reason he is siding with Mitt is that they are fellow-Caucasions.

 He's the same guy who once expressed his wish that President Obama  would learn to be an American. (We know what you were thinking, John,)

At other times he has described Obama as"lazy and disengaged".  (You  can filll in the blanks with "watermelon" and food stamps.)

The Washington Post noted that Sununu asserted that Obama's Southern accent was as  "phony as his jaunt".  That leads us to wonder when he will get around to Stepin Fetchit and Sambo.

Considering how much racists feed on these comments from the big man, you can reasonably  ask whether Sununu is as loose tongued as he sounds, or whether he knows exactly what he is doing.

Brown-Mandel debate: Josh just being Josh

Having just watched the final debate  between Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican challenger Josh Mandel,   there are a  few points that I want to get off my chest:

Mandel's repeated pledges (including the one he signed for mega-lobbyist Grover-Norquist)  that he would never raise taxes cherry-picked the old Republican theme that there are other ways to pay for the things that  Americans want, eliminate the deficit and sustain a healthy society. (On this score, we learned more about his grandparents and parents than we did on how he would replace the tax loss).
 
His cadence and mechanical gestures were stylistically perfect, indicating that he was still young enough at 35 to remember his lines for a class play without a flaw. My notes asked, Is this fellow the young Mitt Romney?

He stressed his opposition to the auto bailout without once acknowledging the huge number of jobs that it saved.

He also added a new spin, that polls show him to be one percentage point ahead (The latest average of several polls show Brown more than 4 points ahead.)

Finally, he enthusiastically talked of his future as a "bipartisan" problem solver in the Senate.

On that point, history is not on his side.    Most of his talking points are  clearly on the hard Right, as are the super-rich wealthy right-wing contributors who have dumped upward of $20 million into his campaign.  An important condition that he has yet to learn if he ever reaches the Senate floor is in the book of Ancient Political Realities :

                            You must dance with the  people who brung you there

Mitt's mini-Olympian fanfare for the common man

Mitt Romney, posing as the average commoner,  happily totes a grocery bag to the counter with Sen. Rob Portman at his side  during a campaign stop in Cincinnati.  Another photo-op for the archives to demonstrate Mitt's down-to-earth regular guy-ness. It's sort of self-flagellation with a smile for a guy who will  never have to suffer the awkward ordeal again after the election.

Still, the reports of his post-Richard Mourdock moments were less aglow.  He dodged all questions from the media  about how a man of his keen concern for at least half of America could still be supporting Mourdock with a TV ad in Indiana that suggests the Republican senatorial candidate will help him rid Capital Hill of Obama  evil.  (Mourdock, in case you haven't been paying  attention, says God wills rape victims to bear children.)

Mitt continually  rambles about in the farthest reach of the oddball Republican right.  As for Mourdock, the polls show him to be ahead of his Democratic opponent.    Albert Camus was so perceptive  when he  wrote in The Plague:

"Supidity  has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we're not always so much wrapped up in ourselves."

UPDATE:  While wandering through the land of Nod, we came across this incredible  assessment of Mourdock from Josh Mandel, the  Republican candidate for senator:  "He's a class act!"  No, the Whiz Kid wasn't looking into the mirror this time.

Bombshell Trump is back on the stump

Donald Trump's  foolishly awaited "bombshell"  that would blow President Obama out of the race came and went today with the usual zero-sum results.  The billionaire wannabe game-changer and friend of Mitt Romney got the attention he sought after spending painful time in the shadows.  He offered $5 million to President Obama's  favorite charity if he released his college records and passport application.    How generous of Donald,  even if it was widely accepted as a meaningless stunt.  We should recall that he also spent a lot of money trying to prove, without success, that Obama was not an American.

As a youngster, I and the other kids in the neighborhood had a great time with a tongue-twister that seems quite appropriate in Trump World.  It goes like this:

A skunk sat on a stump.
The skunk thunk the stump stunk
and the stump thunk the skunk stunk.
But if the stump thunk  the skunk stunk
and the skunk thunk the stump stunk...
Who stunk?  The stump or....the Trump?

It works for me. folks.