Did Dem Neoliberalism Contribute To The Rout?

"For the Democratic Party is not a collection of diverse interests brought together only to win elections. We are united instead by a common history and heritage--by a respect for the deeds of the past and a recognition of the needs of the future."   -- John F. Kennedy

This header embodies  the central question put forward in a provocative blog post by Arun Gupta on www.smirkingchimp.com, actually written a day before the mid-term election. It is something we may all need to consider - those left of center - especially since 63% of voters in exit polls asserted the "system is rigged in favor of the richest" (which begs the question of why so many voted in the party of the rich and business class). This is also why we must not avoid the painful history Gupta recalls. It is also something I have discussed a number of time on this blog: how the insidious poison of Neoliberalism is poisoning both parties.

See, for example, my April 14 blog post wherein I observed:

The problem with the Neoliberal, pro -free market idiom is that it denies the most basic security for the majority of citizens. In this way it feeds economic inequality while it rewards the speculator and banker class. It also helps to corrupt the political class via unregulated campaign contributions.

I then cited a segment of a 1997 piece on Neoliberalism by Jay Bookman aptly entitled 'The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences."

In other posts I referenced the invasion of many Democratic policies by Neoliberal ideology, priorities and memes , for example as referenced by SC blogger Richard Eskow, e.g.:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/richard-eskow/54446/yes-the-left-killed-the-chained-cpi

Excerpt:

“As for the president and his supporters, it is clear that the chained CPI is well-liked by both the White House's key economic players -- and by many of the commentators who support them. That's unfortunate, because it is inaccurate, unjust, and economically unwise. But like it, they do.

It appears that both the Republicans and the White House like it, but neither wants such a politically unpopular measure hung around their neck -- especially in an election year.”

Does that mean they might cooperate on resurrecting this abomination as a sign of "mutual cooperation" like they did after the 2010 Dem drubbing? Possibly!  Further perspective is provided by Robert McChesney in his excellent book, The Problem of the Media, Monthly Review Press, 2004, p. 49:

"With the election of Ronald Reagan, the neoliberal movement had commenced. Neoliberal ideology became hegemonic not only among Republicans but also in the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Joseph Liebermann. Differences remained on timing and specifics, but on core issues both parties agreed that business was the rightful ruler over society"

If all this is true, and all the authors present plenty of facts to support it, then it would seem the Democrats are their own worst enemies - seeking to advance a misbegotten, pro-business agenda even at the expense of losing many of their base - or at least turning them off to come out in mid-term elections (though I still believe political immaturity is at least a partial factor). 

What about Gupta's claims? He writes:

"Now, neoliberalism is often thought of as synonymous with privatization, deregulation, and trade and capital liberalization, but the state will discard these policies for corporate handouts the instant elites get into a self-inflicted mess, as with the Wall Street crash.

This has left the Democratic Party in a bind. It relies on votes from social groups like women, union members, Blacks, Latinos, and environmentalists who favor redistributive policies like gender equity in income, a higher minimum wage, lower healthcare costs, more environmental protection, and stronger immigrant rights. 

At the same time, Democrats need billions of dollars to run elections and their party machinery. They go hat in hand to corporations and promise more tax breaks and corporate welfare in return. But Democrats can never be as committed to the free-market ideology as Republicans. Democrats need to satisfy some needs of their social base while Republicans can move the goalposts further right and wait for the Democrats to play catch up."

This is born out by the corporate funding disparity relative to each party, and the fact the Rs always grab slightly more, because - well-  they aren't as dependent on the social groups that rely on redistributive policies. So the Ds can't be as committed to free market nonsense else they'd be the same as the Repubs. 

Gupta goes on:

"Obama and likely 2016 presidential nominee Hillary Clinton say we will manage trickle-down economics more efficiently. This will increase taxes for modest market-based redistribution in the form of healthcare, housing and higher education subsidies, and tax breaks for the working poor. It’s the same role many traditional left parties play in other countries. Democrats offer a bit more funding, miniscule compared to military spending and corporate welfare, for food stamps, homelessness, and energy assistance. But the commitment to neoliberalism leaves the programs vulnerable. Obama readily cut tens of billions of dollars in social welfare to appease Republicans complaining about a $17.9 tillion national debt. Obamacare is part of this framework. While it did extend coverage to uninsured millions, the goal was to reduce costs through intensified neoliberal restructuring, which is reducing overall quality of healthcare."

Which also makes sense and is all verifiable. I have written before about the cuts - including to food stamp programs - back in December, 2013. Again, Democratic Neoliberalism emerges as a malignant cancer eating away at the parties innards. 

Gupta cites the historical background of the Clinton years in embracing Neoliberal policies:

"Lacking a progressive vision, Democrats follow the GOP on economic policy, pushing the center rightward. Most media outlets have little interest in unpacking historical conditions that shape politics, preferring gossip about the personality, values, tastes and lineages of candidates. Yet it’s the historical contradiction Democrats are trapped in that explains how and why Bill Clinton and Obama pursued a neoliberal agenda that dashed the hopes of their supporters, resulting in the biggest midterm losses in Congress of any president in the modern era. It also explains why the Democrats will likely lose the U.S. Senate in November 2014.

Bill Clinton campaigned as a “New Democrat”: tough on crime, fiscally responsible, and stern with welfare recipients. Clinton effectively fulfilled the Reagan Revolution by gutting welfare, passing NAFTA, deregulating telecommunications and the finance sector, and ramping up government spying, policing, and immigrant detention. Clinton could grant the right-wing’s wish list because the Democratic base was conditioned to supporting any deal no matter how bad because the Republicans would supposedly be worse. Yet Clinton needed Republicans to pass NAFTA because the Democrats controlled Congress. He threw millions of poor women and children off welfare to shore up his right flank in advance of the 1996 election. But that cynical calculation was unnecessary Clinton trounced the feeble Republican nominee, Bob Dole in a race that was never in doubt. And deregulation happened in Clinton’s second term when he was freed from election concerns."

The last paragraph, especially, speaks to the perils of 'lesser of two evils'  thinking- thus the base accepting Clinton's travesties because the Repukes under Dole would be worse. (In fact, the odds of Dole getting elected were slim and none but most of the base didn't know that at the time).

So there we are. The Demos have moved progressively rightward economically under the lash of the Neoliberal global imperative. Voters either keep putting them in because  there is no compelling third party alternative, or they reactively toss them out  in droves (including by apathy)  - as the case Tuesday night - to vent their frustrations.

At root, the reason for this perversion is the influx of money into our political system - to buy politicians and parties. The abominable meme of "money as speech", validated by the atrocity of 'Citizens United',  has only reinforced the corrupted landscape - so no wonder so many voters see the system as rigged. Of course it is, for those with the money to buy Senators and whole parties! 

Justice Stephen Brier pointed out that along with the Citizens United decision, the more recent one (last year)  "eviscerates our nation's campaign finance laws leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve."

Sen. Bernie Sanders has it exactly correct when he said, in response to the ruling:

“Freedom of speech, in my view, does not mean the freedom to buy the United States government,” 

Alas, that is what has happened and why citizens, many voters, are willing now to say more often than not, "A pox on both their houses!"

In effect, Neoliberalism and its attendant cancer of campaign cash  has engendered an inherent instability in our political system - also fed by polarization-  which is unlikely to abate soon. Perhaps the Dems, as they puzzle over these recent losses, need to take a long, hard look at JFK's quoted words at the top of this post.

Chrystia Freeland Blows It On Russia And The Ukraine

Communist party member in Kiev beaten by fascists to within an inch of his life. Jews are being thrashed as well because they're linked to "communists"

First, let me say Chrystia Freeland has been one of my favorite authors as well as commentators. Her book from 2012, ‘Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. ‘  ought to be required reading for every self -professed liberal or progressive concerned about inequality. Her valid point was that Über Plutocrats  no longer feel any civic allegiance or social obligation to the average citizen. While in decades past, the massively wealthy acknowledged on some level the need to contribute to the welfare of the whole society via just taxation, they no longer believe so.  This fact, coupled with the Citizens United Supreme Court decision – that allows corporate entities to give as much as they want to specious election fronts to undermine votes, is part of why the Neoliberal state has tightened its grip on the rest of us. It can do so by the venal pay to play rubric that allows the wealthy to buy congress critters- and “laws” – wholesale.

 Which makes one wonder why this doesn’t extend to Freeland’s grasp of what’s happening in the Ukraine, wherein a Neoliberal fascist state is making a bid (with the help of the Neoliberal West)  to justify its egregious existence predicated on some nominal “democracy”.  In reality, it's bare-faced fascism backed unwisely by U.S. Neocons (in the National Endowment for Democracy) and their hangers on and fellow travelers.

 In her Sunday New York Times piece, ‘Russia Has Already Lost the War’, Freeland indeed exhibits and displays all the misplaced tropes and disinformation one can hear and see on FOX News every day. Including that Putin is the “big bad guy” who started it all, never mind – as Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.) pointed out a week ago on Chris Hayes' MSNBC show, the West and the U.S. brought this disaster on themselves by recklessly expanding NATO to the east, and also staging a coup – compliments of the neocons like Victoria Nuland- in Kiev.

 

Now, with ever more information coming out on the fascist connections to this “new Ukraine” – see e.g.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/us-backing-neo-nazis-Ukraine

 
 

It is inexcusable for someone with the gravitas and keen intellect of Freeland to fall pell mell into the same memetic tripe. But she has!    To catalog all her errors would take a dozen blog posts so let me concentrate on the primary ones, starting with:

“No matter what happens over the next few months, or even years, Mr. Putin and his vision of an authoritarian, Russian-dominated former Soviet space have already lost. Democratic, independent Ukraine and the messy, querulous (but also free and law –abiding) European idea have won.”

 

Which makes one wonder what the hell she’s smoking. It’s got to be more powerful than anything offered here in Colo.  In that one paragraph are embodied nearly all the misbegotten  canards we’ve heard the past two weeks from the Western, Neoliberal, corporate-owned and operated press. Including an abysmal lack of the knowledge of Russia’s history and the claim that the “law abiding European idea has won.” No it has not. It's been disguised in gutter fight tactics fomented by shameless neoncons seeking only power, and disruption of the Obama-Putin cooperative  alliance. An alliance that had worked well to stave off conflicts in Syria and Iran.

Even Col. Wilkerson at least understood enough Russian history to know that Putin would not tolerate a NATO client state set up on his very border via a coup. Indeed, Wilkerson even said flat out on Chris Hayes’ program that if he were Putin, he’d have done the same thing!  This after Gorbachev and Russia were PROMISED by Bush Sr. that NATO “would not move one more inch to the east”.

And then to foment a coup on Russia’s doorstep? I am afraid that Ms. Freeland has it all wrong, every last bit!  Putin’s vision is not of a “Russian-dominated former Soviet space” but of protecting his nation’s security at its borders – in this case from a growing fascist state- the same damned way the U.S. would if Russians launched a massive Naval Base in Cuba and attempted to annex Guantanamo Bay!  So  WHO is she trying to fool anyway?

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson himself made plain what the deal is, in his own words:

“Anyone who knows Russian history .....could have guessed that  President Putin would move into the Ukraine once we had formed a group there, led by the NED and its affiliates - which effectively pulled off a coup".
 

This take was fully reinforced by Dimitri K. Simes, President of the Center for the National Interest quoted in the Sunday NY Times (p. 10):

 

“The new pro-Western government in Kiev lacks legitimacy because it came to power by toppling a democratically –elected President. “

In other words, while Ms. Freeland portrays Putin’s moves as predicated on offense, they are in fact defense, and of the same kind the U.S. would employ if its own border security was threatened – say by a still existing Warsaw Pact or Russia – building extensions in this hemisphere.. What gives the U.S. the right to dictate the extent of its national security and not the Russians? And btw, this isn’t any case of “choosing sides” here – as some liberal websites have gotten themselves into a twist over via dozens of specious, sterile  ‘debates’, but of adjudging fairness for any given nation to exert self-interest in matters of security. Also, to accept and define that the same security standards must apply to all nation states, no exceptions!

The claim about being “law abiding” is also foolishness. Says who? Did Ms. Freeland receive a signed and sealed affidavit from her uncle,  who apparently lives there? Did he attest -  like the other Neoliberal blowhards at the WaPo  and FOX- that ‘there ain’t no sign of any disruptions'?

If Ms. Freeland were to avail herself of The Nation, she’d learn the Svoboda Party wants to "ban abortion, gun control, foreigners’ adoption of Ukrainian children", and “the Communist ideology.” (Hell, these rapscallions have already banned Russian!) Svoboda has also organized violent attacks on gay pride events, as well as on those they outed as belonging to any communist group. To get inside the brains of some of these fascist derelicts, check out this BBC video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SBo0akeDMY

Party leader Oleh Tyanhybok, a member of Parliament, routinely trashes “the Kikes” and calls for the liberation of Ukraine from the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia.” He idolizes the OUN. (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists,  founded in 1929 by a man named Stepan Bandera, who latter threw his lot in with the Nazis.)  Bandera solicited and received Nazi money and support for two battalions to be deployed against the Soviet Red Army. One of these was the Nachtigall Battalian, which according to the Simon Wiesenthal Center, rounded up around 4000 Ukrainian Jews for the Nazis in Lviv in July 1941

 

 “They did not fear,” he declared in 2004, “but took up their automatic rifles, going into the woods to fight Muscovites, Germans, Jewry and other filth which wanted to take away our Ukrainian nationhood. It’s time to give Ukraine to the Ukrainians.”

Now these renegades are going around beating the crap out of anyone that even looks Jewish (or communist- see graphic above) , intimidating others and defacing property. Much of this behavior can likely be traced to days before the putsch, when Victoria Nuland was observed handing out cookies to the rebels and encouraging them to ‘go for it’.  What, do she and her neocon ilk think the Russians are stupid?

While Svoboda has only received about 10% of the vote in recent parliamentary elections, it was deeply involved in the street violence that toppled Yanukovich, executing a coup. One (anarchist) protestor in Maidan Square told Salon that 30% of the demonstrators were “fascists.” There has been a credible report, based on a leaked phone conversation between EU Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton and Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet, that the sniper fire that occurred in Maidan Square, attributed by the opposition to Yanukovich’s security forces in order justify the coup, was actually arranged by neo-fascists. See e.g.

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54626/did-right-wing-protesters-hire-snipers-to-kill-protesters-and-police-at-maidan
 

Nuland herself - incredibly -  is a neocon Cheneyite holdover in the Obama administration, a consistent liar who has campaigned for endless war on Iraq, Iran, Libya, etc. Her husband, pundit Robert Kagan and top NED honcho,  is also well-known for his support for wars based on lies.  Nuland was famously recorded discussing with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine plans for regime change in Kiev. In the days leading up to the coup, she dismissed the EU’s advocacy of a role for Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s rival Viktor Klitschko (whose party has in fact been excluded from the present cabinet). “Fuck the EU!” snapped Nuland. More interestingly, also declaring that the newly installed Yatsenyuk needed “Tyahnybok on the outside” and needs to talk to him “four times a week.” See, e.g.
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54558/what-neocons-want-from-ukraine-crisis

Freeland then goes on to claim:

“The reality is that everyone in the country speaks and understands Russian and everyone at least understands Ukrainian”

The subtext being that they can at least all get along and find common cause based on language, since of course, “bilingual discussions are commonplace.”  Her disinfo then is that Ukraine could as well be regarded as a single, unified democratic state – when in fact it is a savagely divided failed state. This is what likely causes her to misconstrue Putin’s vision as “believing Ukraine was Yugoslavia” etc. Nonsense! If she’d have taken the time and trouble to even check former Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock’s website, she’d have read that:

 

“In the 22 –plus years of its independence, it has not yet found a leader who can unite citizens in a shared concept of Ukrainian identity”.

 

Sadly, it was this lack of national identity that the West’s Neo-conservatives chose to exploit in order to try to set up a NATO puppet state on Russia’s doorstep. As the ‘bear’ she is, protective of her security, Russia bit back and now the West, its Neoliberals- Neocons and others act all surprised at the move, while remaining unctuous to the neo-Nazi street gangs in Kiev and projecting a  self-righteous demeanor to the world.  They  are all hysterical they finally met a nation they can’t bully,  and  increasingly frustrated, they want to push Obama into a stupid, forceful move – which might be the end of it for us all.

Let’s hope those like Freeland see through the charade before it’s too late. And let’s hope Obama takes no precipitous action we may all live to regret! (It's bad enough Russia is likely to halt all nuclear inspections from the START Treaty, thanks to the latest "sanctions" imposed.)

See also:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/walter-c-uhler/54786/the-hypocritical-united-states-of-amnesia-and-russia

http://www.salon.com/2014/03/12/propaganda_lies_and_the_new_york_times_everything_you_really_need_to_know_about_ukraine/

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-parry/54693/crimeas-case-for-leaving-Ukraine

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/ernest-partridge/54716/thinking-like-a-russian

 

Walter White's Saga: Why Would a High School Chemistry Teacher Go Bad?

'Breaking Bad', the fantastic AMC series is now in the can as far as television history is concerned. On Sunday night, the finale grabbed no fewer than 10.3 million viewers, as former chemistry teacher Walter White went down in a blaze of glory. He also showed he knew plenty of physics, in devising an electronically-triggered,  high caliber, rotating machine gun in his car trunk,  to annihilate most of the Nazi meth makers.

But the question that really emerges is: How did this one time high school chemistry teacher mutate into the greatest meth maker the southwest had ever seen, and even to the level of taking out Mexican cartels?   As a former chemistry teacher myself (in the Peace Corps) I enjoyed it as much as teaching physics later.  Probably the titration of weak acids with a strong base were my favorite experiments, though the students were more enthralled by the ones that created small, vigorous 'eruptions' in their test tubes, like adding magnesium metal to dilute hydrochloric acid, see e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeKsLi_6WkY.

Anyway, when I began watching 'Breaking Bad' five years ago, I was interested to see how it was that Walter White would want to go to the dark side. The answer arrived when he found out he had lung cancer, late stage lung cancer. Being in his late forties, this wasn't good news, because the health insurance he had provided a capped amount which would expire in no time with necessary chemotherapy treatments.

Walter probably knew even then that his treatments would ensure that his family would either go bankrupt or into massive debt. He'd also likely know that most bankruptcies in this country are medically -based. Either people lack any health insurance and they are afflicted with cancer or have a serious accident, or their insurance is inadequate to cover the costs over time, usually because most policies are capped at a maximum.

Faced with this stark choice, Walter - in cahoots with former student Jesse Pinkman- ends up making some of the purest meth ever seen. (Mainly because Walt is a chemistry task master, always imposing his high standards on his young apprentice who, if he had his way, would churn out any barely passable crap.)

Now, the rub arrives when he has "enough". Enough moola to cover his treatment costs with more than enough left over. But he - like many Americans, once they get the taste of newfound riches - doesn't want to stop at "enough". He wants more. At this stage, he transforms into the  quintessential American CEO, always spouting  figures and formulas to justify further expansion.  Alert viewers also would pick up on White's incessant citation of the 1 percent, and his insatiable drive to be part of it.


Well, from here it's all downhill, because to rise to the top Walt is forced to ruthlessly take out competitors, including the head of a Mexican cartel (Gus Fring) with one foot in the southwest U.S. By the end, in compiling his multi-millions, Walt has left a pile of bodies behind. As one blogger has put it aptly:

"It’s all there: the ego, the entitlement, the testosterone-fueled drive to come out on top, and the sense that money, not character or relationships, defines a person’s worth."

Walter White then has transmogrified into the epitome of the one percenter who scoffs at the little people and believes wealth defines worth. It is primarily this dynamic that fuels his unquenchable yen for ever more wealth, at great cost to his family and other relationships.  I would argue a similar dynamic is at work in wrecking the relationships of the wealthiest, as they grab for ever more - not to mention wrecking the country itself.

For make no mistake it is the wealthiest,  so many 'Walter White' clones - like the Koch brothers - who have brainwashed a third of the country into believing using a shutdown to get their way is the right thing to do.   As blogger Thomas Hartmann has put it:

"...despite the complete takeover of our political landscape by corporations and billionaires like the Koch brothers, the mainstream media has remained dead silent about the devastating effects of the disastrous Citizens United decision.

As a result, the majority of Americans have no clue what Citizens United is, let alone the damage it's done to our democracy and way of life."

At least, at the end, Walter White did the right thing and took out all the scum attempting to enslave Jesse Pinkman to make their meth. He also disposed of all his money, in his family's (son Flynn's) best interests.

Don't look for anything analogous (politically) to happen to the scum attempting to enslave Americans and hold them hostage to an Oligarchy wherein health care is denied and massive debt arising therefrom is the norm.

I REFUSE to Believe American Women are THIS DUMB!

Trixie with her only option after a Romney Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade

“Idiot America is a collaborative effort, the results of millions of decisions made and not made, to reduce everything to salesmanship. Debate becomes corrupted argument, in which every point of view is just another product- no better or worse than all the others- and informed citizenship is abandoned to the marketplace. Idiot America is the development of the collective Gut at the expense of the collective mind.
It’s what results when we abandon our duty to treat the ridiculous with ridicule. It’s what results when politicians make ridiculous statements and we not only surrender our right to punish them at the polls, but become too timid to punish their ideas with daily scorn – because the ‘polls’ say those ideas are popular…and therefore must hold some sort of truth."- Charles P. Pierce in 'Idiot America', p. 250.


Charles P. Pierce basically 'tells it like it is' in his polemic against the American brand of political idiocy. But even he might be surprised at what new stratospheric heights it's reached in this election cycle. From Romney passing himself off as an economic and military moderate in two debates (hence, too many fail to heap scorn on him and refuse to punish him at the polls) to other outbursts of memetic insanity and pundit foolishness. Such as Michael Barone, in a recent Washington Examiner column, insisting women are more leaning toward Romney (some recent polls, e.g. ABC, show Obama's earlier 16 pt. lead has evaporated- while his lead among women in Colo. and VA has been halved) because they want "a safer choice" and also demand "a reliable grown up".

Meanwhile, a supposed "scientific" study released by the UCLA Psychology Dept. has contributed to the 'judge a book by its cover' meme by making the claim - from its findings- that "GOP female politicians are prettier" than liberal or Democrat politicians. The latter possessing supposedly more "mannish" faces and features.  Some have theorized women are buying into this bollocks and this is helping to tilt more women toward Romney-Ryan.

But I refuse to believe American women are THIS stupid.

Nor do I believe that most American women are so stupid as to buy into the jabber of a female professor highlighted yesterday on the Andrea Mitchell Report. This prof,  after being asked about the Richard Mourdock "God intended it" rape soundbite- argued that truly "things are more complex than just the abortion issue. My students understand that!"

Well, DOH! SO does everyone else with two firing neurons! But that's not the point! The point that seems to have escaped the prof (and many other female voters, especially undecided)  is that the abortion issue as enunciated so radically 2 days ago by Mourdock is the linchpin to grasping the extreme radicalism of the WHOLE GOP ticket and party! In other words, the Mourdock remark (and Romney's support in his ads backing Mourdock, never mind he attempts to divorce himself from it!) translates into a snapshot of how the GOP and Romneyites will govern: to the EXTREME RIGHT!  This will necessarily influence economic policies as well as social, and military!

The trick, for the intelligent woman, is to link all of those together into one whole cloth radical fabric as opposed to piece meal separating them in her mind - and wrongly believing she can ignore the abortion issue but all else will be A-Ok. Sorry, doesn't work that way! The abortion debacle and knuckledragger memes concerning women's bodies are all of a piece with Romney-Ryan's equally radicalized economic issues and how they intend to treat women in that sphere! (Just look at Mitt Romney's avoidance of the Lily Ledbetter equal pay for equal work act.)

Let's even move beyond equal pay for equal work and assume that perhaps many of the married women (who for some reason seem to be most enchanted with  Willard Mitt) don't have a problem. Then, what will they do when their kid comes down with fungal meningitis because Romney cuts even more drug regulations, as his GOP-ers already did with respect to the FDA, eliciting the sort of outbreak from improperly mixed back pain relief drugs we're seeing now?

What will they do after Mitt peels back more food regs - so his "business plan" can prosper, and their kid comes down with E. coli from that next fast food burger, or severe salmonella from consuming peanut butter or whatever? Will they get hysterical if - after Mitt and his GOP congressional stooges lower the clean water regulations- their kid or kids or the whole family, comes down with campylobacter infection? Or perhaps amoebic dysentery?

Oh, and what will they do after Mitt dispatches "Obamacare" and these women won't be able to afford medical care for their kids, especially if getting them into an ER translates into on the spot payments first to a corporate bill collector? Will they be so happy with their "safe choice" then? Will they be enamored of the "reliable grown up"? Or will it finally sink in that an entitled rich boy brat who never grew up can't be a "reliable grown up", period?

And when Mitt, along with his Neocon generals, advisors like John Bolton, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney et al, launch two wars in his first year - one against Syria and the other against Iran - will they happy and content they went with the "reliable grownup"? Will they be happy if and when Mitt imposes a draft (as his military Neocon planners will doubtless insist, because rotating tours won't be adequate for two more wars)   and their ofspring are called up? Will they still love Mitt then, or repent at their leisure?

See, as Charles Pierce points out, these are the pointed questions that must be asked now! If American women aren't prepared to punish this huckster -ass salesman for his bollocks, then someone must, others must! Someone - even a lone blogger- has to be prepared to heap scorn on him and ridicule the ridiculous! Obama did call his ass out, but so far it appears too many are too dumb or too shocked, to take that call out seriously!

If Romney wins, also consider that at least two justices will be replaced by two more conservatives who will ensure that not only Roe v. Wade is overturned but cases like Citizens United continue to be decided wrongly. A vote for Romney is also a vote in favor of a Supreme Court akin to the one that ordered the state of Florida not to determine who really won the  2000 election. It will also plausibly legitimize voter suppression for which we saw outbreaks in over a dozen states this year. (By demanding photo IDs for everyone.) Is THIS what you want?

Lastly, when Mitt blows up the deficit and adds $7 trillion to it - $5 trillion in tax cuts and $2 trillion from additional Pentagon spending - how happy will you be then? Will you finally see that the "abortion issue" you took to be one simplistic, isolated  "singleton" was in fact the Skeleton key  to the whole Neo-Neocon Mittster War-Profit agenda? Or maybe the expected 15% unemployment from his folly won't be enough and you will lay blame on Obama (or as some of Romney's Zombies call him "Obummer")

Think hard, very hard! Those sound bites of Mourdock dourly pronouncing on your ability to obtain abortions - whether for self or daughters - is also a heads up on the broad scope of radical Right policies if you are stupid enough to put this miscreant and his vampire Veep candidate in office.

Believe it!