Sex, lies and presidential politics

So, Herman Cain is out, Newt Gingrich is up and Mitt Romney has no scruples. Just another week in the long-running (or so it seems) Republican primary.

Cain, who appears to be a serial harasser at the very least, announced today that he’s suspending his campaign — which basically means he’s done. That he ascended as high in the polls as he did despite being a raving nutcase, does not exactly place the GOP faithful in a good light.

As Cain plummets, Newt rises — despite years of hypocrisy and a campaign based on pure self-interest.

And Mitt, the likeliest candidate to survive the primaries? He proved himself a liar of the highest order, a man without any discernible integrity. It’s one thing to distort an opponent’s position; it’s something else — and something outright disgusting — to do what he did in his recent anti-Obama ad.

Romney quoted the president so badly out of context — he quotes Obama quoting McCain in 2008 and leads viewers to believe it was Obama’s opinion now — that the best you can say is he’s a disgusting liar. The worst? Don’t get me started.

The sad thong is that we need a strong, principled Republican in the race and a legitimate lefty to expand debate beyond the nonsense we’ve been getting.

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Elsewhere, it’s called revolution; here, we call it ‘anxiety’

I guess Time thinks Americans are so self-obsessed that they prefer to focus on their own anxiety and not on the revolutions around the globe — or even in the revolutions happening here at home. I love this graphic, which has been making the rounds on Facebook.

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Up a tree

Sophie

I was playing ball outside with the dogs, tossing one tennis ball to the west for Rosie and the other to the east for Sophie. Occasionally, I’d flip up in the air to let them catch it. Except once — when I tossed the ball up and, somehow, got it caught in a tree. Go figure.

Rosie
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  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
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Love and contradictions

I want to state up front that some of my favorite movies have been superhero and spy films and that I love cop shows. These shows tend to have a conservative, pro-government outlook, even the best of them, but I go and revel in the spectacle.

That does not mean I can’t also be critical of their political subtexts and wish that our film culture could be more progressive, less about defense of the status quo or a pro-military ethos.

I guess I am part of the problem, but I can’t help but like Bond films and Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes. 

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  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
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#OWS: Democrats or democracy

This is an interesting piece from In These Times that rips the mask off the false pragmatism that the Democratic Party has demanded from its minions since the election of Barack Obama, but that has heightened in its hypocrisy as the Occupy Wall Street movement turns its attention to the broken party.

In it, Joe Macaré outlines four basic fallacies on which the prime criticism of the movement hinges — that taking a moral stand, as the Occupy protesters have done, is morally indefensible; that pragmatism requires protesters to trade principle for the potential of some paltry favor from those in power; that history shows that progressive protest creates backlash (when it actually shows that protest creates a moral momentum for change); and assumption that the Occupiers are looking to be an extension of the Democratic Party.

None of these assumptions are accurate, as Macaré makes clear, which is why they are fallacies.

The Occupiers are small “d” democrats who have as their chief goal breaking the grip of money on the political system and re-empowering the so-called 99 percent, to give us control over a government that now views corporate America as its sole master.

This goal may require the election of some progressive Democrats, but it may also require the defeat of corporate Democrats and the formation of a new progressive party outside the Democrats, which is something the Occupy movement understands.

This is about democracy not the Democrats or the liberal establishment.

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  • Read poetry at The Subterranean.
  • Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
  • Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Email me at grassroots at comcast dot net.