Steve Brodner is an artist and illustrator. This is his official website.
In today’s Times the difficult article about the Apple Foxconn factory in Chengdu, China. Like so many stories it implicates all of us. But this time we must connect human misery with the bright, uplifting futuristic world of the i-Pad. Hard to look, hard to look away. Ask Siri.
Last night’s speech by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (the former Bush OMB head) was the big debut of the thoughtful, friendly face that the GOP has been calling out in the night for since the primary circus has become, for them, an unending nightmare. Daniels proposed the old cut/cut idea with a gentle presentation. But it was Paul Ryan, really, back again. What commentators didn’t include in their assessment was the fact that Daniels is set to sign off on the Indiana legislature’s passage of a Right to Work law, which would effectively bust unions in that state. This comes after doing that to public unions; the very thing that Scott Walker in Wisconsin is now facing recall over. Indiana, however, seems not to be upset about the banana economy that this will generate. Creating jobs regardless of whether they will keep people in the middle class or not is all that counts. This is the great Republican revival, the Wal-Mart world for the majority and high times for the 1%. What this union-busting goon has in his hands here, in the image of Daniels, may be called a club for growth.
Tonight will be Pres. Obama’s chance to weigh in, after the rivers of nonsense that have flowed out of the Republican debates. Can he mention the condition of the country being partly the result of the GOP policies given full flight in ’01 – ’08? Can he also say that almost everything that the GOP is attacking him now for (health care, bailouts etc) were GOP policy ideas in the first place (so great a compromiser was this “socialist”)? Can he actually point the finger at the GOP congress who have stated that they would let the country burn in order to smoke out Obama? Please let him do it and keep the spirit of the Osawotamie speech going, fired with the fuel of “Occupy”. Romney derided the Teddy Roosevelt analogy to Obama by making a joke about the name “Bull Moose”. If he knew American history here he would realize that the actual name of Roosevelt’s insurgent party was The Progressive Party. Anyway, here’s hoping Obama hits those big, fat, fastballs all out of the park tonight.
Now that Romney has tasted bitter defeat after laid-back, phoned-in debate performances, attacking Obama in brain-dead boilerplate and allowing Gingrich to tear up the stage, how will he handle the debate tonight? Mitt “Zelig” Romney, will, I suspect, adapt to the new normal; show up unkempt, uncombed, 50 lbs overweight, affecting a gassy, nasal wheeze and immediately begin to gnaw on Brian Williams. Bon appétit!
In last night’s debate there were too many ironies to note, let alone draw. Here are a couple I was able to jot down before passing out from BS overdose. Willard “Mitt” Romney, the leader, in one day saw it revealed that he paid 15% income tax last year, that he has major amounts of money parked in the Cayman Islands and that he didn’t actually win the Iowa caucuses after all. Gingrich was moving ahead in the polls in South Carolina by virtue of debate belligerency and racially-coded campaign slogans, only to have his ex-wife decide to go public with accusations of Newt’s desire for an open marriage. Thus the “conservative” candidate arrived to face the conservative debate crowd last night. Attempting to make a virtue out of a necessity he unloaded on the moderator for bringing up the trash news topic of the day. Irony on top of irony was the memory of Gingrich choreographing the sex scandal of Bill Clinton 15 years ago. So what was his strategy last night? Blame the media, blame everybody. Then in rising red foams of victimhood Gingrich went further. It was the media and their liberal defense of Obama that was behind the whole thing. This makes you wonder why anyone showed up last night, at least to do anything other than burn the CNN camera equipment. So here was Newt’s suicide act, in dying color. Flaming out to divert attention to the “media”, as if his baggage now is not getting bigger. Whatever happens in South Carolina, he will find that there are states without a confederate flag on the capitol building. And that they will like their political theater without a twist of spleen.
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