[Note to readers of this blog:  Due to the date of the presidential debate this week, I might not have an op-ed ready for Thursday.  We’ll see.  There will be one tomorrow to lead into the debate and, either Thursday or Friday, I will post a book review.  Good reading!]

Item: Dynasties….  I hate’em.  They’re generally associated with royalty, or greed, or privilege, or money…or all of the above.  Two irksome examples are political and sports dynasties.  Of course, the potential for a Romney dynasty is part of the national debate right now (although, at the level of state governors, it’s already established).  Mittens is an example of a pampered, spoiled, and out-of-touch member of the rich elites primarily because he’s a member of a dynasty.  But let’s consider some other examples.

Let’s talk about the Yankees first.  They definitely fall in the all-of-the-above category (well, maybe not royalty, depending on your definition).  The owners (I assume it’s the entire family now after that old curmudgeon died) are definitely in that famous 1%.  Moreover, almost every player is.  I loved the fact that old millionaire A-Rod sits out doing nada while his team wins their division.  He’s the most over-paid non-producing player in the history of baseball.  And these guys are Boring (that’s boring with a capital B).  With their budget, they should be winning every game.  Kudos to the Orioles for giving them a run for their money.  Yes, I’m a Red Sox fan, but not rabid about it.  I’m more a fan of anyone that beats the Yankees.  The latter are the quintessential sports dynasty.  (I’m sorry Derek Jeter is injured.  He’s A-1 in my book, especially compared to A-Rod.)

Political dynasties have been an infected blister on the butt of American history since the country started.  The list is long, but I’ll start in the 20^th century.  I’ve mentioned the Romneys, but even before them we had the Dulles family.  I’ve written in the pages of this blog about how the Dulles boys laid the foundations for our troubles with Iran (helping the Brits depose an elected Prime Minister and installing the Shah).  Dynasties aren’t just GOP entities either.  Dems and many Americans adore the Kennedys and even call this favorite family’s compound Camelot.  I suppose they’re American royalty?  One thing I learned about Massachusetts’ people and politicians:  they’re liberals until they’re not—some of the worse racially motivated protests against school busing occurred in Boston, for example, and even that Old Lion of the Senate was a believer in NIMBY politics (how dare those clean energy guys attempt to destroy his family’s view across Nantucket Sound with all those windmills!).

Undoubtedly, the worst political dynasty was the Bush Dynasty.  It is rumored that Papa Bush, as director of the CIA, made sure the American embassy hostages in Iran weren’t released on Carter’s watch, thus paving the way to Reagan’s presidency.  The events that unfolded certainly support this “conspiracy theory.”  That, of course, is small potatoes compared to the damage that Bush the Younger did in pushing two wars and dismantling Wall Street regulations to the point that Obama was handed an impossible situation on both accounts.  Of course, we can probably blame Cheney for the wars, but it was all done on Dubya’s watch.  Funny how Dubya has laid low during this election cycle.  Moreover, Dems have given him a pass, the strongest words being, “We inherited a God-awful mess” (Joe Biden’s words).  Now brother Jeb is lurking in the wings, probably hoping Mittens implodes so he can step onto the electoral stage in 2016 without having to face a sitting president.

Item:  Speaking of Biden….  OK, it’s understandable that Fox News correspondents became apoplectic over the VP debate results—this just proves that Biden trounced Ryan, of course, if you bother to pay attention to what they say (“Joe laughed,” “Joe interrupted,” “Joe said nothing of substance,” etc, etc).  However, I can’t fathom why ABC News calls the debate a draw, when Biden generally showed Ryan to be either a naïve and mathematically challenged idiot or an immature and lying ideologue.  Either case shows that he’s a dangerous and scary man to have next-in-line to the White House.  Of course, ABC belongs to Disney and if any group belongs to the 1%, the people at the top of the Disney Corporation do.

In particular, I don’t understand the accolades that Martha Raddatz received as debate monitor.  True, she performed better than Jim Lehrer (a zombie could do better), but her question selection was terrible.  In particular, what’s this about each candidate’s religion’s influence on his political life?  This question doesn’t belong in a debate and seemed to be attributable to paying too much attention to “the curious fact” that both candidates are Catholic.  Come on!  Beyond this, Raddatz threw easy balls on the economy and entitlements that allowed the candidates to give portions of their stump speeches.  She also threw soft pitches on foreign policy and defense with the same result, focusing on her own myopic interests.  What happened to China?  Russia?  Latin America?  Bye-bye Martha.  I hope the monitor on Tuesday is better than the previous two!

Item: Speaking of this week’s debate….  Obama is not Biden.  But he can’t be the aloof and professorial Obama either.  Forget Joe’s smiles and laughs, Mr. President, but go on the attack mode.  Take tomorrow’s list (Tuesday) and add to it (I ran out of energy—you can’t) to show that everyone in the 99% should NOT vote for the Romney-Ryan ticket.  And, when the moderate Mittens contradicts what the ultra-conservative Mittens was saying just a few days before, call him on it.  Most people know he lies—they just don’t know which direction the lies go.  Do they go in the direction where suddenly the snake will change his skin and become a moderate president looking out for the interests of the middle class?  Or, do they go in the direction of a man and an administration that will do everything bad I say they’ll do in my next blog post?  Make sure, Mr. President, that the country knows it’s the latter.

On the other hand, as Biden said, the facts speak for themselves.  Any voter that ignores these facts, and chooses a candidate based on debate performances, deserves his fate.  It’s true that politicians can spin the facts.  For example, the 7.8% unemployment number is as irrelevant as the 8.2% number before it.  To be a bit Buddhist about it, numbers are numbers, data-crunching algorithms are data-crunching algorithms, and so forth.  Nevertheless, if you think the country would now be in better shape after a McCain-Palin administration, or if you think any other administration could have dug us out of that incredible Bush-Cheney pit, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn in your future.  Don’t come crying to me either, if Romney-Ryan win and start chipping away at the U.S. as if it were just another company to be handed over to the Chinese, making tons of money for the 1%.

Item:  Speaking of the 1%….  In yesterday’s (Sunday’s) NY Times, Chrystia Freeland wrote an article titled “The Self-Destruction of the 1 Percent,” an adapted excerpt from her book Plutocrats:  The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else.  If the article is any indication, this book is definitely worth reading.  The argument is that the rich elites shoot themselves in the foot.  We all know about the French Revolution.  The article treats the rich elites in Venice, if memory serves.  Looks like the social singularity in my Survivors of the Chaos and the villain who claims to trace his ancestry back to the Doge of Venice in Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hands! are reasonable sci-fi extrapolations (the latter book, soon to be released, completes “The Chaos Chronicles Trilogy,” begun by Survivors and continuing with Sing a Samba Galactica).  Maybe I should call these books future-historical fiction?

And so it goes….

[If you enjoyed this post, support this blog:  buy some of my books.  Tomorrow:  Who should NOT vote for Romney.]

 

 

 

 

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