The Real Losers: The Plutocrats

Jagor's brother commented:

"Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove and all those other scumbags that spent hundreds of millions trying to buy the White House and some Senate and House seats all rolled snake eyes. These crooks might as well have taken their money and put it in a dumpster and burned it." 

And, speaking of Karl Rove, the  Huffington Post  reported that "No one lost as much on election night as Karl Rove.

"Although he wasn't running for office, his Crossroads organizations spent more than $300 million on Republican candidates in the 2012 election, with some of the biggest spenders in the conservative movement putting their hopes -- and dollars -- in the care of Rove.
 
"The results were bleak. According to the Sunlight Foundation, American Crossroads, Rove's super PAC, saw just a 1 percent return on its investments."

A one-percent return is definitely not the kind of Return-on-Investment that these multi-billionaire plutocrats expect.

Now that their buddies, the Gang of Five Republican justices on the Supreme Court [Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy], otherwise known as "The Impeachables," made it possible for them to spend millions of dollars to buy elections, those plutocrats want guaranteed results, not a measly 1% return!  They wanted Karl Rove to buy the White House for their fellow plutocrat [and tax-evader] Mitt Romney--in no uncertain terms whatseover!

I, for one, would certainly not like to be in Karl Rove's shoes these days--with some of the nation's richest and most powerful plutocrats wanting to take their multi-milliion dollar losses out on Rove's hide! 

Watch your back, Karl!

Jagor

Democrats Sweep the Senate, Too!

Election Day wasn't just a landslide victory for Barack Obama, but for Democrats running for the Senate, too.

Here's how Jagor's brother, brother, an astute political observer, analyzed the results of the Senate races:

1. Tea Party lunatic Richard Mourdock [R-IN] cost the Republicans an almost-guaranteed Senate seat in Indiana to Joe Donnelly
2. Another Tea Party lunatic, Todd Akin [R-MO], cost the Republicans another slam-dunk pickup in Missouri, losing to Claire McCaskill
3. Democrats won nearly all of the other closely-contested Senate races including Tim Kaine [VA], Elizabeth Warren [MA], Heidi Heitkemp [ND] and Chris Murphy [CT].  All were seats that the Republicans thought they could win.
4. Democratic Senator Jon Tester (MT) won reëlection Wednesday morning, surviving a tight race with Rep. Denny Rehberg that stretched into the day after voters went to the polls.

In the House:

1. Trash-mouth, treasonous Congressman Joe Walsh [R-IL] , who belittled and mocked his opponent Tammy Duckworth, a decorated war hero who lost both legs in combat piloting an Apache helicopter, was defeated.  Duckworth is also the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress from Illinois.
2. Fascist Congressman Allen West [R-FL], who once said 77-81 Democrats in Congress were members of the Communist Party, was defeated by Patrick Murphy in the wee hours of the morning after leading all the way.

Jagor's
brother concluded:
In short, all those f*****s got blown out of the water,  That should humble the Republicans into cooperating now, but I'm not holding my breath.

To which Jagor would add:
My favorite Congressman, Alan Grayson [D-FL], is back in office after being out for the past two years, in the biggest come-back in the entire history of the House of Representatives!

Aside from Obama's reëlection, this could possibly be the most significant election result in the country, because the Republican political machine detested him and had placed him at the top of their Enemies List: George Will called Grayson "America's worst politician."

When a candidate the GOP hates so much wins a come-back election in a landslide, there really IS hope for America!  

Some people are already talking about Alan Grayson for president in 2016! [He'd be America's first Jewish president, by the way.]

If you don't know about Alan Grayson, find out!

Wikipedia: Alan Grayson 

Alan Grayson: A Congressman with Guts 

The Biggest Comeback in the History of the House 
 
Jagor

Why Mitt Romney Lost the Election

As I write this, President Obama has won re-election and Mitt Romney has been crushed.

President Obama's victory in the Electoral College can only be described as a landslide-- either 330 to 206 or 303 to 235, depending on the results in Florida, where the voting will not be stopped this time by the Gang of Five Republican justices of the Supreme Court, as they did in 2000, in order to throw the election to one of their buddies.

So, in light of all the Monday-morning quarterbacking I saw on CNN, I can offer several reasons why Mitt Romney suffered such a humiliating defeat:

1. Romney was a tax cheat.  He didn't just cheat on his personal income taxes, Bain Capital cheated, too.   

Americans hate tax cheats.

2. Romney was a hypocrite. If Romney had retained and reiterated the centrist and socially progressive potitions and policies he had endorsesd as Governor of Massachusetts [health care for all, women's reproductive rights, etc] , he might have won the election.  But he first flip-flopped to the extreme right by parrotting the fanatical views that are consistently rejected by a majority of the American people, and then he flip-flopped again in the closing days of the campaign to return to the center. But it didn't work because We the People saw that Mitt Romney was a hypocrite.

Americans hate hypocrites.

3. President Obama won an overwhelming percentage of the votes of young, single women of all races and religions.  Why?  Because those young women knew correctly that Mitt Romeny would not only attempt to take away the reproductive rights that women have today, he would be certain to appoint one or even two more fanatical right-wing, anti-woman justices to the Supreme Court, who would not only repeal Roe v. Wade but attempt to curtail women's access to contraception as well.

American women hate men who wage war on their reproductive rights.

4. I was watching the Romney campaign headquarters as his supporters glumly awaited his concession speech--and vented their spleen by booing a hapless Candy Crowley--and happened to notice a gigantic banner furled out above the stage.  It read: Believe in America.  But I would have added a corollary.  I would have amended the banner to read: Believe in America, But Put Your Money in the Cayman Islands.   

Americans hate people who are so unpatriotic they stash millions and millions of dollars in offshore tax havens.

Jagor

The Real Reason for the Sanctions on Iran

On  October 10, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order that carries out new sanctions against Iran that Congress approved this summer, according to a statement by the National Security Council published on on the White House website. 

The stated reason for the increased sanctions is "to deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons program." 

That is patently false.

The real reason for the increasingly onerous economic sanctions directed against Iran has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with its nuclear energy program. 

All sixteen American intelligence agencies [yeah, there really are 16 of them--your tax dollars at work!] as well as Israeli intelligence--are unanimous in attesting and stating publicly that the Iranians are not building nuclear weapons. Source, New York Times:  U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb

The Iranian leaders themselves have respeatedly stated that atomic weapons  are "un-Islamic."  In April 2012, Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ali Khamenei issued a fatwa (religious edict) declaring the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are to be haram (prohibited in Islam).  Source: Tehran Times: Ayatollah: production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are prohibited in Islam

Iinstead, the Iranians have repeatedly called for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East, which would mean that Israeli [which, unlilke Iran, has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty]  would have to dispose of or disarm all of the atomic bombs and warheads in their arsenal.

The inarguably real reason for the sanctions is to foment regime change in Tehran.

The Obama Administration has convinced or browbeaten their supine allies into imposing economic sanctions, whose direct impact is to inflict misery and hardship on 74 milion ordinary Iranians.  And then, their Machiavellian plan is that those unhappy Iranians will revolt and overthrow the mullahs and ayatollas.

Well, there's no doubt that the first part of the plan is working.  The Iranian currency is hyperinflating--according to Forbes, it collapsed 40% in value last week alone.  Ordinary Iranian citizens are protesting in the streets that they can't even afford the basic necessities of life such as rice.

But there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the real suffering of the Iranian people and a wished-for revolt against the government.

Instead, it's just possible that the sanctions can backfire and result in a hardening of Iranian resolve to resist the pressure from America by reinforcing Iran's ties with its close neighbors, especailly China and India, whose combined population of two and a half billion people are big customers of Iranian oil.  

In fact, Iran's oil: Iran's oil exports increased +10% in September 2012 on higher sales to China, according to Dow-Jones.

The Iraian people are tough: they fought a war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq [which was supported by the United States] that lasted from 1980 to 1988 and in which Iran lost between 320,000 and 720,000 soldiers and militamen killed and in which more than 100,000 civilians were killed on both sides.

Don't Kill Big Bird--Kill the Flying White Elephant!

What I fail to understand is why there is so much sound and fury emanating from the Republicans--not the least of whom is Mitt Romney--about PBS, which receives only around 15% of its budget from the federal government--a modest $444 million--and most of its funds from private corporations and endowments.

What the American people should be discussing is not why Big Bird should be strangled, but why the taxpayers are going to squander $1.5 trillion dollars on a Flying White Elepant known as the F-35.

What is the F-35?  It's a fifth-generation jet fighter.  Now let's think a little bit--when was the last time the U.S. Air Force actually engaged in an aerial dogfight using our jet fighters in combat against an enemy's jet fighters?  As far as I can see, that was in the Korean War [1950-1953], when our F-86 Sabre jets fought North Korea's MiG-15's over Mig Alley.  That was over half a century ago! And yet, these imbeciles are planning to squander one and a half trillion dollars of precious taxpayer money on what should be called the Flying White Elephant.

Are the American people going to summon the courage to say "Stop!" to this insanity?

Are the American people going to demand that their taxes be used to benefit the citizens of the United States through investments in health care, education, research and infrastructure instead of on the Flying White Elephant that has no purpose whatsoever except to fatten the coffers of the defense contractors and the plutocrats by another $1.5 trillion?

That's one of the the real issues facing America--yet no politician dares mention it.  Why not?

What I say is: Don't Kill Big Bird--Kill the Flying White Elephant!