Year: 2012

WHO IS AYN RAND?

When she speaks on this short video it’s a little hard to make out her responses — turn up the volume — but as Ayn Rand guides so much Republican thinking, it’s worth a watch.   I share her atheism but not her aggressive rejection of all that Christ taught.

WHO IS MITT ROMNEY

If you skipped Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone piece linked to Friday, it concludes this way:

. . . Romney is a perfect representative of one side of the ominous cultural divide that will define the next generation, not just here in America but all over the world. . . .

That conflict will be between people who live somewhere, and people who live nowhere. It will be between people who consider themselves citizens of actual countries, to which they have patriotic allegiance, and people to whom nations are meaningless, who live in a stateless global archipelago of privilege – a collection of private schools, tax havens and gated residential communities with little or no connection to the outside world.

Mitt Romney isn’t blue or red. He’s an archipelago man. That’s a big reason that voters have been slow to warm up to him. From LBJ to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, Americans like their politicians to sound like they’re from somewhere, to be human symbols of our love affair with small towns, the girl next door, the little pink houses of Mellencamp myth. Most of those mythical American towns grew up around factories – think chocolate bars from Hershey, baseball bats from Louisville, cereals from Battle Creek. Deep down, what scares voters in both parties the most is the thought that these unique and vital places are vanishing or eroding – overrun by immigrants or the forces of globalism or both, with giant Walmarts descending like spaceships to replace the corner grocer, the family barber and the local hardware store, and 1,000 cable channels replacing the school dance and the gossip at the local diner.

Obama ran on “change” in 2008, but Mitt Romney represents a far more real and seismic shift in the American landscape. Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution, in which transactions are manufactured instead of products, wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity, and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured while American communities fall apart. The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It’s a vision of society that’s crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it’s running for president, and it has a chance of winning. Perhaps that change is coming whether we like it or not. Perhaps Mitt Romney is the best man to manage the transition. But it seems a little early to vote for that kind of wholesale surrender.

Tomorrow:  Whose Debt Is It, Anyway?

I know it’s Labor Day — let’s hear it for Labor, by the way, and the things like “weekends” we have to thank Labor for — but I thought I’d post tomorrow’s column early, in case you have more time when you’re not at work.

WHAT MITT DIDN’T SAY

This two-minute video has its share of snarky background music, but the substance of it is well worth watching and sharing.  So many of the differences between the Romney and Obama visions are real and stark.  Take one not specifically mentioned in the video: Mr. Romney has consistently pledged to lower the estate tax rate on families like his from 45% to zero.  It’s one of the few things he’s never flip-flopped on.  He really believes billionheirs get a raw deal.  If you agree, vote Republican.  Likewise, if you believe the drastic Bush tax cuts on the wealthy unleashed amazing job creation over the last 12 years, vote Republican.  (But if you missed it, here’s a must-must-must-see, must-share six-minute video by a billionaire totally, totally putting the lie to the whole concept of rich people as job creators.)

LEGITIMATE RAPE — THE PHARMACEUTICAL

Following up on “we’re not perfect but they’re nuts” from Friday, have you seen this ad for a birth control product called Legitimate Rape™?

FACTS TAKE A BEATING IN RYAN/ROMNEY ACCEPTANCE SPEECHES

Here:

Representative Paul D. Ryan used his convention speech on Wednesday to fault President Obama for failing to act on a deficit-reduction plan that he himself had helped kill. He chided Democrats for seeking $716 billion in Medicare cuts that he too had sought. And he lamented the nation’s credit rating — which was downgraded after a debt-ceiling standoff that he and other House Republicans helped instigate.

And Mitt Romney, in his acceptance speech on Thursday night, asserted that President Obama’s policies had “not helped create jobs” and that Mr. Obama had gone on an “apology tour” for America. He also warned that the president’s Medicare cuts would “hurt today’s seniors,” claims that have already been labeled false or misleading.

The two speeches — peppered with statements that were incorrect or incomplete — seemed to signal the arrival of a new kind of presidential campaign, one in which concerns about fact-checking have been largely set aside. . . .

WHO IS AYN RAND?

When she speaks on this short video it’s a little hard to make out her responses — turn up the volume — but as Ayn Rand guides so much Republican thinking, it’s worth a watch.   I share her atheism but not her aggressive rejection of all that Christ taught.

WHO IS MITT ROMNEY

If you skipped Matt Taibbi’s Rolling Stone linked to Friday, it concludes this way:

Romney is a perfect representative of one side of the ominous cultural divide that will define the next generation, not just here in America but all over the world. Forget about the Southern strategy, blue versus red, swing states and swing voters – all of those political clichés are quaint relics of a less threatening era that is now part of our past, or soon will be. The next conflict defining us all is much more unnerving.

That conflict will be between people who live somewhere, and people who live nowhere. It will be between people who consider themselves citizens of actual countries, to which they have patriotic allegiance, and people to whom nations are meaningless, who live in a stateless global archipelago of privilege – a collection of private schools, tax havens and gated residential communities with little or no connection to the outside world.

Mitt Romney isn’t blue or red. He’s an archipelago man. That’s a big reason that voters have been slow to warm up to him. From LBJ to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush to Sarah Palin, Americans like their politicians to sound like they’re from somewhere, to be human symbols of our love affair with small towns, the girl next door, the little pink houses of Mellencamp myth. Most of those mythical American towns grew up around factories – think chocolate bars from Hershey, baseball bats from Louisville, cereals from Battle Creek. Deep down, what scares voters in both parties the most is the thought that these unique and vital places are vanishing or eroding – overrun by immigrants or the forces of globalism or both, with giant Walmarts descending like spaceships to replace the corner grocer, the family barber and the local hardware store, and 1,000 cable channels replacing the school dance and the gossip at the local diner.

Obama ran on “change” in 2008, but Mitt Romney represents a far more real and seismic shift in the American landscape. Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution, in which transactions are manufactured instead of products, wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity, and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured while American communities fall apart. The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It’s a vision of society that’s crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it’s running for president, and it has a chance of winning. Perhaps that change is coming whether we like it or not. Perhaps Mitt Romney is the best man to manage the transition. But it seems a little early to vote for that kind of wholesale surrender.

WHOSE DEBT IS IT ANYWAY?

Kevin Clark:   From Friday’s column (quoting Matt Tabbi): “Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.”  The good news for Romney (and arguably bad news for the rest of us) is that his opponent is one of that handful of people on planet Earth who is an even more irresponsible debt creator.  I don’t think Romney’s anywhere near $5 trillion.”

You know that’s not fair, yes?

You know that in most cases, burdening the companies Romney did burden with debt served no greater purpose than enriching a few investors and weakening the companies.  Nothing illegal about that, just not a compelling need to do it.

And you know that the $1.5 trillion 2009 budget deficit begun running BEFORE OBAMA WAS EVEN ELECTED, right?  October 1, 2008.  So, being a very bright and fair-minded person, I don’t think you mean to include that.  Which brings it down to a still staggering $4 trillion.

But you know that the REASON to run deficits in deep recessions is to replace private demand (and alleviate suffering) to bridge the gap until demand picks up again – which, after a financial collapse, always takes a very long time.  The worst thing we could do is pull demand OUT of the economy.

So there is a difference between borrowing to enrich oneself and borrowing to, say, win World War II or, in this case, dig ourselves out of the ditch that Republican leadership from 2001-2008 drove us into.

Make any sense?

UNFORTUNATE RNC SIGN PLACEMENT

Have you seen this?  May be Photo-Shopped, but could hardly be more apt.

CORRECTION: WEAPONS BANNED, NOT GUNS

James Valente:  “If you scroll down in the link you posted, you’ll see that an update/correction was subsequently posted.  No guns were allowed in the convention hall by Secret Service, but the 7.4 mile radius refers only to ‘weapons,’ which did not, incidentally, include guns.  (Tampa’s Democratic mayor requested the ban, but Florida’s Republican Governor refused to include guns.)  I’ll refrain from commenting on the logic of all this, but assume you don’t want to be spreading a mistaken fact.”

I do not.

THE CRACKPOT CAUCUS

Here.  Do we really want to entrust the House committee that oversees climate change to a climate-change denier?

At a 2009 hearing, [Representative John] Shimkus [of Illinois] said not to worry about a fatally dyspeptic planet: the biblical signs have yet to properly align. “The earth will end only when God declares it to be over,” he said, and then he went on to quote Genesis at some length.  It’s worth repeating: This guy is the chairman.

Remember, according to Rush Limbaugh, science is one of the “four pillars of deceit.”

Have I mentioned Barney Frank’s preferred bumper sticker?  WE’RE NOT PERFECT, BUT THEY’RE NUTS.

RECORD-LOW WAGES, RECORD-HIGH PROFITS

Here.

Wages as a percent of the economy are at an all-time low. This is both cause and effect. One reason companies are so profitable is that they’re paying employees less than they ever have as a share of GDP. And that, in turn, is one reason the economy is so weak: Those “wages” are other companies’ revenue.
— Business Insider

RELATIVE PERFORMANCE

Ohio Governor John Kasich told the Republican Convention Tuesday night that on his watch he had taken Ohio from 48th in the nation in job creation to 4th.  He made a big deal of this, and attributed it to his cutting taxes (no mention of the auto-industry bail-out Ryan voting against that may have helped the auto-industry-dependent midwest rebound).  The implication?  A governor CAN boost his state’s job creation rank and SHOULD be judged by this.

Which bears note, becausewhen Mitt Romney was sworn in as governor, Massachusetts ranked 37th in job creation.  When he left: 47th.  He had taken it down almost to the bottom of the heap.  His Democratic successor has boosted it all the way up to 11th or so.

So while Kasich was trying to promote a Romney presidency, the logical point he was making is that he, Kasich, had done a very good job on job creation; Romney had done a very bad job.

(Romney supporters purposely miss the point and stress the low unemployment rate Romney’s Massachusetts enjoyed.  But of course times were very different then — Romney left office two years before the 2008 collapse — and it’s widely acknowledged that a principal reason for Massachusetts’ low unemployment rate back then was that so many people left the state to look for work elsewhere.  Kasich is right: what matters is relative job-creation performance.  In Kasich’s case, from 48th, near dead last, all the way up to 4th.  In Romney’s case, from 37th to an even worse 47th.)

BUT HE RESCUED THE OLYMPICS!  HE FIXED +THAT+ AT LEAST

And do you know how?  By getting a larger taxpayer-financed federal bail-out than had been required by all seven prior U.S. Olympics, combined.  If that’s an argument for miraculous government-shunning job-creation skills, it’s not a great one.

MATT TAIBBI ON MITT

In Rolling Stone.  Here.

. . . And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Everyone knows that he is fantastically rich, having scored great success, the legend goes, as a “turnaround specialist,” a shrewd financial operator who revived moribund companies as a high-priced consultant for a storied Wall Street private equity firm. But what most voters don’t know is the way Mitt Romney actually made his fortune: by borrowing vast sums of money that other people were forced to pay back. This is the plain, stark reality that has somehow eluded America’s top political journalists for two consecutive presidential campaigns: Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time. In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you’ll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. . . .

And that’s the gentle part of Taibbi’s article.  Taibbi writes with such heat and outrage that it will scare off, turn off, anyone who isn’t already predisposed to agree.  After all, how could anyone as nice-looking as Mitt Romney — a good family man who wants to reduce the estate tax rate on billionheirs from 45% to zero — not be striving to achieve whatever is in the best interest of those less advantaged than he?

But it’s worth a few minutes of your weekend to read it anyway.  Decide for yourself whether Taibbi’s venom is justified, his tone appropriate, his world view skewed too far left — I’m not comfortable with all of it myself.  But separate from that, what do you think of his account of, for example, Ampad?  Of KB Toys?  And what do you think:  Is this the guy to whom we should entrust our future and, essentially, the weightiest responsibility in the world?

From the New York Times, on Tuesday’s convention speeches:

. . . the Republicans’ parade of truth-twisting, distortions and plain falsehoods arrived on the podium of their national convention on Tuesday. Following in the footsteps of Mitt Romney’s campaign, rarely have so many convention speeches been based on such shaky foundations. . . . Conventions are always full of cheap applause lines and over-the-top attacks, but it was startling to hear how many speakers in Tampa considered it acceptable to make points that had no basis in reality. . . .

We are becoming numb to this kind of thing.  Down is up, up is down.  But that is a terrible thing.  Without honesty (Iraq did not have a role in attacking us on 9/11 even though 70% of the people who voted to reelect George W. Bush were made to believe it did; “by far the vast majority” of candidate Bush’s proposed tax cuts did not go to “people at the bottom of the economic ladder” as he promised they would) voters cannot make informed choices.

And as the Times notes, it’s gotten worse than ever: President Obama has simply not waived the “work” component of welfare to work, but the Republican machine has decided they should just lie — with millions of dollars in TV ads and from the podium of their convention — and say he has.  The President did not say, “if we talk about the economy we will lose” — he was quoting the staffer of his opponent — but that was snipped out to make it seem as though he had.  The President did not say entrepreneurs didn’t build their businesses, he said they didn’t build the roads and other infrastructure that made their businesses possible (try starting the same business in Somalia, he might have added) — but the Romney team, needing a straw man to attack because the President has in fact an excellent record on small business, simply lies about it.

I cringe when we do this, too, but it’s rare, and not remotely the foundation of our campaign as it is theirs.  I can think of only one significant example — that clip we show where Mr. Romney says he likes to be able to fire people (without showing the context “who provide services [poorly]”) — but at least there is some (small) justification: Mr. Romney’s fortune has been made in significant measure by laying off tens of thousands of people, either by adding so much debt out of which to scoop huge fees and dividends that it bankrupts the company or by shipping their jobs overseas. So even if he doesn’t literally enjoy firing people, he’s sure profited mightily from doing it.

Contrast that with the charges against President Obama, who stabilized a collapsing economy, rescued the auto industry, increased by 20% the work requirement of welfare states must incorporate in order to be granted waivers, improved the environment for entrepreneurs and small business people in numerous ways.

(The very same woman who told the Convention how bad Obama is for small business turns out in real life to give small businesspeople a Powerpoint exploding this myth.  See it here.  “Bidding on government contracts has never been easier,” her first slide leads off.)

FEAR FOR DEMOCRACY

You’re not allow to lie in toothpaste ads.  Claim your toothpaste reduces cavities by 38% and you’d better be able to back that up.  But political ads?  Lying is totally legal.  As bad as Citizens United is for democracy — making a mockery of “one man, one vote” by giving billionaires vastly more “votes” than their fellow citizens — what really may doom us is that that ocean of ads they pay for can be complete lies.  And largely are.

And it’s not just the superPAC ads that lie.  It’s also the ads from the candidate himself.  As when candidate Mitt Romney approves the message that Obama is removing the “work” component of welfare to work.  Mitt Romney lies every time he approves that message.

Well, he’s telling the truth that “he’s Mitt Romney” and that “he approved this message”; but the message itself is a complete straight-out lie.

Shouldn’t that matter?

REPUBLICANS RELY ON GOVERNMENT, BAN GUNS

Of all the places to impose a 7-square-mile ban on guns!  How weird.  Don’t Republicans know guns don’t kill people, people kill people?  They should be banning people, not guns, from their convention.  The ironies abound.

AND IN RELATED NEWS

This fake video from the Onion News Network is so X-rated I won’t provide the link, just the headline:   “Tampa Bay Gay Prostitutes Gearing Up For Flood Of Closeted Republicans.”

MORE FROM THE ECONOMIST

Adding to yesterday’s excerpt:

. . . In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions . . . A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. . . .

WHAT HAS OBAMA DONE?

James Musters:  “Here Are 200 Accomplishments.  With Citations!  Well organized and presented.”

Not included — as it’s not something the Obama Administration has directly done — is the performance of the stock market.  But it’s relevant, because the market is a barometer of how investors feel about the future.  From the day George W. Bush was inaugurated to the day he left office — eight years of Republican stewardship — the Dow fell 20% and was headed lower fast.  It would fall a further 20% to bottom out at 6,500 six weeks later.  Investors feared a terrible future.  Yet from that bottom just six weeks after President Obama was sworn in,  the Dow has doubled.

Doubled.

This suggests investors see a brighter future.

I worry that the market’s no bargain here — especially because there’s a real chance the Republicans may win in November and impose the austerity budget they are so deeply committed to, out-Hoovering Hoover and sending the world economy over the cliff.  But right now, after nearly 4 years of the President’s stewardship, investors look into the future with double the optimism they displayed (if the Dow is a measure of investor optimism) just six weeks after he was handed the reins.  Given what he was handed, it seems to me that counts as an accomplishment, too.

THE ECONOMIST

“Too much about the Republican candidate for the presidency is far too mysterious,” says The Economist.

When Mitt Romney was governor of liberal Massachusetts, he supported abortion, gun control, tackling climate change and a requirement that everyone should buy health insurance, backed up with generous subsidies for those who could not afford it. Now, as he prepares to fly to Tampa to accept the Republican Party’s nomination for president on August 30th, he opposes all those things. A year ago he favoured keeping income taxes at their current levels; now he wants to slash them for everybody, with the rate falling from 35% to 28% for the richest Americans.

All politicians flip-flop from time to time; but Mr Romney could win an Olympic medal in it (see article). And that is a pity, because this newspaper finds much to like in the history of this uncharismatic but dogged man, from his obvious business acumen to the way he worked across the political aisle as governor to get health reform passed and the state budget deficit down. We share many of his views about the excessive growth of regulation and of the state in general in America, and the effect that this has on investment, productivity and growth. After four years of soaring oratory and intermittent reforms, why not bring in a more businesslike figure who might start fixing the problems with America’s finances?

But competence is worthless without direction and, frankly, character. Would that Candidate Romney had indeed presented himself as a solid chief executive who got things done. Instead he has appeared as a fawning PR man, apparently willing to do or say just about anything to get elected. In some areas, notably social policy and foreign affairs, the result is that he is now committed to needlessly extreme or dangerous courses that he may not actually believe in but will find hard to drop; in others, especially to do with the economy, the lack of details means that some attractive-sounding headline policies prove meaningless (and possibly dangerous) on closer inspection. Behind all this sits the worrying idea of a man who does not really know his own mind. America won’t vote for that man; nor would this newspaper. . . .

ROMNEY’S LYING MACHINE

Robert Reich, here, in the Christian Science Monitor:

I’ve been struck by the baldness of Romney’s repetitive lies about Obama — that Obama ended the work requirement under welfare, for example, or that Obama’s Affordable Care Act cuts $716 billion from Medicare benefits.

The mainstream media along with a half-dozen independent fact-checking organizations and sites have called Romney on these whoppers, but to no avail. He keeps making these assertions.

Every campaign is guilty of exaggerations, embellishments, distortions, and half-truths. But this is another thing altogether. I’ve been directly involved in seven presidential campaigns, and I don’t recall a presidential candidate lying with such audacity, over and over again. Why does he do it, and how can he get away with it?

The obvious answer is such lies are effective. Polls show voters are starting to believe them, especially in swing states where they’re being repeated constantly in media spots financed by Romney’s super PAC or ancillary PACs and so-called “social welfare” organizations (political fronts disguised as charities, such as Karl Rove and the Koch brothers have set up).

Romney’s lying machine is extraordinarily well financed. By August, according to Jane Mayer in her recent New Yorker article, at least 33 billionaires had each donated a quarter of a million dollars or more to groups aiming to defeat Obama – with most of it flooding into attack ads in swing states. . . .

We knew he was a cypher — that he’ll say and do whatever is expedient, change positions like a chameleon, eschew any core principles.Yet resorting to outright lies — and organizing a presidential campaign around a series of lies — reveals a whole new level of cynicism, a profound disdain for what remains of civility in public life, and a disrespect of the democratic process.

The question is whether someone who is willing to resort to such calculated lies, and build a campaign machine around them, can be worthy of the public’s trust with the most powerful office in the world.

And now, by contrast, a guy who tells you what he really thinks:

TALK SHOW HOST GETS AN EARFUL

James Musters: “A Tea Partier Decided To Pick A Fight With A Foreign President.  It Didn’t Go So Well.  Listen to the audio.”

This is some four minutes!  Hats off to the Irish.

THESE GUYS

Watch.  The pay-off comes in 80 seconds.

THERE’S A SITE CALLED YIDDISH CURSES FOR REPUBLICAN JEWS

Well, of course there is.  (Sample curse: “May you live to a hundred and twenty without Social Security or Medicare.”  Or how about:  “May the secretary your husband is schtupping depend on Planned Parenthood for her birth control.”)

 unPAC

Too much money in politics?  Watch this 3-minute video and see what YOU think.  I signed up.

PAUL RYAN’S ANA-GRANDMA

If you take the letters of author AYN RAND and move them around a little you get (tell me there is not something greater than coincidence operating here) AYN RAND AND RYAN.  Ayn Rand is Paul Ryan’s spiritual anagram.

And if you’ve read Atlas Shrugged (which robust-memoried readers may recall I listened to on audible as I walked 120 miles), you will find Michael Kinsley’s send up . . . completely delicious.  (“Paul Ryan laughed. He stood naked on top of the vice president’s desk in the Senate chamber, scanning the crowd of sniveling politicians below him. . . . It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that of all the men and women in this room, only he, Paul Ryan, had been selected for his current office by the president himself.  The president. Ryan’s mind wandered as he thought about the only man who stood between him and absolute power. Mitt Romney was a weakling, Ryan thought — and not for the first time. He’s a man whose views can change. The thought filled Ryan with disgust. His own views were as solid as granite. They were the views of the only clear-thinking woman he had ever met: Ayn Rand. . . .“)

BUMPER STICKER

Barney Frank sums it up with this bumper sticker he had printed:  “Vote Democratic: We’re not perfect but they’re nuts.”

Four videos today.  Let’s start with this one.  Short, funny, and topical:

HOW TO SPOT LEGITIMATE RAPE – 2 Minutes

Evelyn MacPhee:  “I adore this song. I am sending it to 60 of my closest friends.”

Next up:

FLIP FLOP MAN – 6 Minutes

No one should be criticized for changing his mind as circumstances change or as he evolves in his thinking.  Indeed, we should welcome evolved thinking — when it’s sincere.  But, this guy?

Allen Brand:  “If you haven’t seen this . . .”

Awesome.  A 92-year-old World War II vet and retired North Dakota judge — in uniform, no less — reads the poem he wrote (text included, if you have any trouble hearing him) . . . O, Romney-O, Romney-O, Wherefore art thou, Romney-O?

(If you have 20 minutes more, John Seiffer points us to “the ultimate Romney flip-flop collection.”  You will be forgiven for not watching — we get it: he takes flip-flopping to an entirely new level — but just so you have it.)

And now:

THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES 3 minutes

Well, the movie isn’t three minutes, but this trailer is.  And if you can find the movie itself someplace (your hotel room?), take another hour-forty to watch the whole thing (94% of Rotten Tomatoes-approved critics liked it).  It is the story of the Time Share King (you will never again even think about investing in a time share) and his young wife — basically nice people with absolutely no regard for anyone but themselves — and, tangentially, of their large brood of dreadful children and dogs, one of whom she has stuffed and keeps on display after it expires (dog not child) — who set out to build a 90,000-square-foot single-family house, the largest in America . . . and who basically epitomize all the excesses of inequality and personal consumption and salesmanship and leverage that have taken such a toll.  (One nice touch: the Time Share King says he delivered Florida for George W. Bush in 2000, though he declines to say how because, he says, it may not have been legal.)

Finally:

DAN SAVAGE DEBATES THE MAN FROM N.O.M. – One Hour

So what happens when perhaps the nation’s most articulate equality advocate, a lapsed Catholic, has an after-dinner debate with perhaps the nation’s leading anti-marriage-equality advocate?  Watch — it makes for snappy video — or read the New York Times account (by the debate moderator) here.

Have a great weekend.

ROMNEY AND YOUR GRANDMOTHER

Some helpful reporting by the New York Times, as swing-state voters are assaulted by dishonest Romney ads (emphasis added):

Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings, Analysts Say.

Mitt Romney’s promise to restore $716 billion that he says President Obama “robbed” from Medicare has some health care experts puzzled, and not just because his running mate, Representative Paul D. Ryan, included the same savings in his House budgets.

The 2010 health care law cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and insurers, not benefits for older Americans, by that amount over the coming decade. But repealing the savings, policy analysts say, would hasten the insolvency of Medicare by eight years — to 2016, the final year of the next presidential term, from 2024.

. . . Henry J. Aaron, an economist and a longtime health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Medicine, called Mr. Romney’s vow to repeal the savings “both puzzling and bogus at the same time.”

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries . . .

. . . “One can only wonder what’s going on inside their headquarters in Boston and among their policy people,” said John McDonough, the director of the Center for Public Health Leadership at Harvard. “But there are only two explanations: Either they don’t understand how the program works, which is hard to imagine, or there is some deliberate misrepresentation here because they know how politically potent this charge is.”

Read it all here.

IF SHE WEARS GLASSES

The cool kids are wearing Warby Parkers.  And saving money doing it.  And changing lives.  Check it out.  I think you’d look good in these, by the way — and $95 for prescription glasses with frames and giving a free pair to someone who needs them . . . how can you beat that?  Maybe your grandmama would like a monocle.

Yesterday I noted that Republicans want to make gun-buying easy but voting hard (at least where that will help them win).  But the Republican in this radio ad doesn’t want gun-buying to be easy for everybody.

BOWLES (OF SIMPSON-BOWLES) ON THE ROMNEY BUDGET

Here, in the Washington Post:

. . . This month, Romney said that his tax reform proposal is “very similar to the Simpson-Bowles plan.” How I wish it were. I will be the first to cheer if Romney decides to embrace our plan. Unfortunately, the numbers say otherwise: His reform plan leaves too many tax breaks in place and, as a result, does nothing to reduce the debt. . . . The Romney plan, by sticking to revenue-neutrality and leaving in place tax breaks, would raise taxes on the middle class and do nothing to shrink the deficit.

KRUGMAN ON RYAN’S BUDGET

Here, in the New York Times:

. . . if we add up Mr. Ryan’s specific proposals, we have $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, partially offset by around $1.7 trillion in spending cuts — with the tax cuts, surprise, disproportionately benefiting the top 1 percent, while the spending cuts would primarily come at the expense of low-income families. Over all, the effect would be to increase the deficit by around two and a half trillion dollars. . . .

. . . What Mr. Ryan actually offers are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us [that would cut it].

THE TIMES’ TAKE ON IT

Here:

. . . More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan come from programs for low-income Americans. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops protested the proposal as failing to meet society’s moral obligations, saying the plans “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors.”

. . . Mr. Ryan’s budget would not reach a surplus for 30 years, according to the C.B.O., because he would cut taxes, largely for the rich and for corporations, by $4 trillion. . . .

CONSERVATIVE BILL KRISTOL ON ROMNEY’S TAX BURDEN

He thinks it’s too low.  Not (as Paul Ryan believes) too high.  Watch.