An excellent Republican Reinvention idea

The Republican Party is currently in transition to something that resounds with more voters without betrayal of its core principals. Might I humbly suggest actually supporting the troops instead of a corrupt D.C. Defense Department elite?

How about taking a stand against the top-down judicial activism that has made it perfectly legal to torture whistleblowers even if the crime involved is treason for profit against our soldiers?

One of the stories that got buried in the aftermath of the recent election is how the 7th Circuit Court recently ruled that Donald Rumsfeld cannot be sued for torturing whistleblowers. In the case, Donald Vance and Nathan Ertel were “Americans working for a private security firm in Iraq. When Vance became suspicious that his employer was selling weapons to groups hostile to the United States, he went to the FBI. Vance and Ertel were then fingered as arms dealers. Military personnel arrested them in 2006 and held them for several weeks.” They not only detained them, they tortured them. This happened to citizens of a country that has a Constitution which clearly states that cruel and unusual punishment is forbidden. This is outrageous.

The Department of Defense, or indeed the Federal Governmentat large (at least under the 7th Circuit jusidiction), now has the legal right to inflict cruel and unusual punishment on US citizens for any reason no matter how frivolous and petulant with no fear of a civil lawsuit.

The first thing of note in this case is that a very serious accusation-that the employer of Vance and Ertel was possibly selling weapons to the people our troops were fighting- was somehow completely ignored. When the Iraqi Occupation was in full force, we kept hearing “Support the Troops” repeated ad infinitum as if questioning the wisdom of Bush and Rumsfeld was tantamount to treason. What does this say of a Defense department leadership when it would rather torture whistleblowers than get to the bottom of an accusation that a contractor is selling weapons to the enemy? How exactly is that “Supporting the Troops” and protesting the incompetence and corruption that endangers those same troops “un-American”?

I remember calling into one of the farcical AM radio shows early on in the invasion, when the host openly dared anyone who was protesting to call in. I explained that the difference between what he was advocating-‘Supporting the Troops” as a metaphor for the population taking orders from on high in military matters without question and what I was doing-protesting out of moral obligation was the difference between a subject and a citizen.

Here in the United States of America we are not subjects. We are citizens. With a citizen, if he has an honest disagreement with a policy he has a moral obligation to say exactly that as loud as he can. A subject is to be nothing more than a cheerleader for all policies whether they are moral or not! Participation is implied when we use the term citizen to describe ourselves! A citizen who is a whistleblower deserves our respect and protection, not torture!

And on the subject of whistleblowers, the man who just won another term in the White House, Barry Obama, directly broke a campaign promise to protect whistleblowers after making a very similar observation in 2008. He has been part of a “bipartisannormalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state”.

If Republicans are looking for new ideas to reinvent themselves- there one sits! The Republicans can safely kick these advocates of a police state at the NSA whom Obama has allied himself with to the curb and be completely consistent with an ideology which fears excess of government more than anything.

But let’s return to the accusation by Yale professor Jack Balkin, that this is not a Democratic “normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state” but a “bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state”. If that’s the case how cant he Republican party legitimately make a wedge issue out of this when it has been a part of this?

Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the majority opinion. David Hamilton, an Obama appointee, wrote for the dissent. If you look at the composition of the 7^th Circuit Court it is by far and large Republican appointed.

And this is just one case regarding the normalization and legitimization of a police state. There are others. The suspension of Habeaus Corpus. The FBI declaring that they have the ability to suspend the law. The list can go on for quite a long time.

Republican friends, whose tears are drying from the Romney loss, cheer up. A Democratic President means that the Democrats have to defend these monstrous policies or drop them. The Republican party has nothing to lose and everything to gain by being true to its small government ideology and making Democrats drop these policies!

Someone has to be thrown to the wolves in the coming reinvention of the Republican Party. I’m already getting the feeling that Joe Arpio, Jan Brewer, and every other anti-latino bigot that has tried to get rid of the Probable Cause requirement for law enforcement may just become casualties. Making enemies of the Nortenos (Hispanic population on both sides of the border some of whom settled before there was a USA) was an error and the Republican Party seems to be wising up to what an error that was.

Please for the good of our nation, can we add Easterbrook and every other top down Republican elitist in the judiciary who are currently aiding and abetting Barry Obama in his normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state? It really would be no big loss.

Seriously, any judge who voted for Rumsfeld and against the American troops in this matter does not deserve Republican solidarity. If they’ll protect Donald Rumsfeld, they’ll protect Obama.

As much as I loathe Jesse Ventura and his conspiracy theory nonsense, I do have to take one quote he said as relevant in this matter. Governor Ventura was a 3^rd party Governor and a pro wrestler. He said that the Democratic and Republican politicians were exactly like the good guy bad guy wrestlers in how they feign hostility in public and behind the scenes are laughing friends. He said that inwrestling the characters that one plays in front of the screen can be nothinglike what they are in private life. We see that so often in politics! We certainly saw it with the Romney 47% video. It is part of the reasons Republicans lose credibility when they talk of small government. They are party to creation of a police state.

If bipartisanship is only going to bring us a police state, then bipartisanship is worthless. C’mon, Republicans, if you really want to retake your credibility, forget the so-called “fiscal cliff”! Actually throw Arpio, Rumsfeld, Brewer, and these judicial weasels to the side and take a REAL stand for small government!

Republicans have only their slavish obedience to a callous and avaricious leadership to blame for these election results!

(Or why I held my nose and voted for Obama in a Western Battleground State)

Finally, it is over. The USA has endured the first General Election with the excretion of godawful slanderous ads brought about by SuperPACs and the Citizen’s United decision! Thank you Washington DC elites for making watching TV and online videos a complete chore for the past 2 years. Not that the mid terms were pleasant either.
And I realize that those same forces are now squatting and grunting out the beginnings of the 2014 mid-term elections even as I write this now. They are not interested in compromise and leadership for the USA and her people in their hour of need. Their only interest was in retaking the share of taxpayer money and public resources that was theirs before Obama took office. They deserve what they got.
We’ve had four years to present a viable alternative to Barack Obama and policies that I despise. He has been (to paraphrase Daniel Ellsberg- "a tool of Wall Street, a man who’s decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone who launched an unconstitutional war (at a time when we were supposedly out of money!), supports kidnapping and infinite detention without trial and who has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous presidents put together."
In addition, he has broken his campaign promise when it comes to respecting State’s rights to have medicinal marijuana and he has allowed a bureaucrat to lengthen the pain of the Housing Crisis by sitting on money meant to help homeowners facing foreclosure.
So, how, you may wonder, can I justify voting for this man?
We have had four years of partisan sniping and refusal to compromise with a Democratic president. And not once did I hear these legitimate reasons to dethrone Obama brought up (okay a few were brought up by Ron Paul, but I meant people who were going to win the Republican nomination). Indeed, a lot of the rhetoric was that these outrages were not barbaric enough! And what have we had instead? A slavish adherence to a party line that insists on confusing the worst excesses of Stalinist Russia with Keynesian formulas in place in this country during our most prosperous decades. We’ve had union busting and promoting superstition over science. We’ve had Global Warming bring us Frankenstorms and record hot summers and the only mention of it has been snide allusions to the East Anglia e-mails!

It has been four years Republicans have had to show me how they would be better than Obama. Instead they have demonstrated how they would be worse, much worse.
I have narrowed it down to 5 major issues that swayed my decision to hold my nose for Obama.
1.Supreme Court picks
This is always an issue in Presidential elections. But we have had a conservative court for most of my adult life. It has given us (among other pieces of judicial excrement) Citizen’s United and SuperPACs poisoning the airwaves with expensive lies during this campaign. We shouldn’t need to go further. But I will. Ginsburg, Kennedy, Bryer and Scalia are in their 70’s. The next President could nominate up to 4 Justices. This influences the lives of Americans for decades.Robert Bork himself is one of Romney's legal advisors  He could inflict Paul Clement, the lawyer who almost brought back insurance company’s Pre Existing Condition denials on the US people and their Constitution.
Or we could have another Warren Court. Given that choice, I’m holding my nose for Barack on that issue!2. Thwarting a petty and malicious Republican leadership
This Great Recession has been a burden for the American people. And to help the American people in their hour of need, the Republican Party nobly reached across the aisle to help a new President in 2008 because the constituents were in need.
Er, wait…No they didn’t!
This has been four years of failed Austerity (punishing poor people for the mistakes and malfeasance of the aristocracy). This has been four years of blocked jobs bills, filibustered remedies, and constant dishonesty regarding what was being done. We here in the United States use the default currency of the world. Our dollars are needed in order to have a currency for oil to change hands internationally. But the deficit is constantly demagogued by the most corrupt in our system to sell us on a lower standard of living.
Loosening the purse strings in order to give States money to keep Police, Fire, and Schools up, is not Stalinist Russia!
The Republican leadership deliberately made the Recession worse than it needed to be in order to run against a President at a time of Recession!
"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term President" Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

I am more than happy and proud to cast my vote not for Barack Obama, but as a middle finger raised against that arrogant callous attitude among Washington DC elites!
3.The people we don’t vote for
There is also the issue of those people whom we don’t vote for, but wind up in positions of power and influence nonetheless.
The same cliques of elites get to weasel their way in and out of power on a regular basis whenever the flavors of power change.
If Romney gets in, this same crew who were in power under Reagan and Bush get a free ride to illegally shed blood again with no fear of prosecution and at the taxpayer’s expense. I’m talking about people like John Negroponte US Ambassador to the Honduras during the Reagan years and enabler of military dictator and alleged human being General Gustavo MartAnez in the Honduras. In 2001, 185 corpses including 2 Americans were excavated from the El Aguacate air base John Negroponte was in charge of. When George W. Bush was installed in 2001, he made Negroponte his UN Ambassador in the run up to the Iraq invasion and was made ambassador to Iraq in 2004.And I already mentioned Robert Bork. Robert Bork is an advisor to Romney. This the same guy who sought to advance his career by dismissing Archibald Cox during the Watergate hearings causing a cascade of resignations and outrage known as the Saturday Night Massacre This is the legal braintrust Romney has around him telling him who to put in Federal judgeships and on the court.
I do not want to see a Justice John Yoo (torture memo legal hack) or a Justice Paul Clement on the Supreme Court!
The United States is so much better off without Bork, Negroponte, Yoo, Clement and those who think as they do. They should be far away from of positions of power (the further the better). Keep them on chat shows, keep them writing pedantic dishonest columns, but for the sake of the US People and their Constitution, keep them out of power!4. Paul Ryan’s voucher plan
The man in the contrived Soup Kitchen photo would become Vice President if Romney won. This fraud he concocted to take my Medicare from me after paying into it all of my life would be closer to becoming a reality. He would replace my Medicare benefits with a voucher. And if the voucher proves insufficient to buy decent coverage, I’m an old person who is up shit creek without a paddle.
The Health Care system just got minor improvements with passage of the ACA. One of the more repugnant spectacles of our privatized Health Care system has been the sight of people forced into bankruptcy in order to afford treatment of their illnesses.
Paul Ryan’s promise to "preserve Medicare for future generations" is a brazenly insincere reassertion of one of the ugliest aspects of our Health Care system before the ACA.
And the irony is that this "promise to preserve" only opens the door to future raiding! If they can raid the funds for 55 and under for a bullshit reason, then they can raid the funds for current retirees! The "promise to preserve" is just as sincere as his work in that Soup Kitchen.And stop calling a fund I pay into every paycheck an entitlement!! Now!
5.The War on Drugs
The only candidates living in the real world on this issue are the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein.
Civilization on the other side of the Mexican border has collapsed due to policies that favor thugs over entrepreneurs. Marijuana Prohibition is a failure as a policy and it has been high time we recognized it as such.
One of the many disgraceful scars on Obama’s record was his breaking of a 2008 campaign promise to refrain from interfering with Medical Marijuana on the State level. So why hold that against Mitt Romney?
Well, there is no real change in his stated positions. According to Mitt, he would try to reduce demand in this country.
How? Are we going to have to go through the stupid egg commercials again along with more punitive sentences for victimless crimes? That’s worked great so far! I don’t see this getting better under Republicans, I see it getting worse.
We, the people, need to mute the influence of the privatized prison industry and law enforcement unions on the government in order to fix this problem. Legalization and taxation of marijuana should have happened decades ago! And neither candidate who was approved of for mass consumption among voters has offered anything other than the conventional wisdom that hasn’t worked for decades to deal with this problem.
And I see a better chance for that happening under Obama. After all, we need the money.
That’s why I voted for Obama in a Western Swing State.
That being said, I want to offer some constructive criticism for the Republican Party. And I am being sincere. Republicans are often good-natured family and friends. Being friends, let’s be honest with one another. There were things that could have been done that would have had me casting a vote for someone with a R behind their name.
What will follow in the near future is going to be a war within the GOP. There will be an effort to rebrand. There will be an effort to expand the pool of Republican voters. Now is a time for the GOP to choose new leadership. Now is a time for reinventing yourself.
What follows are recommendations on doing just that which would have resulted in my casting a vote for the Republican.
You obviously need to steal some of the agenda away from the Democrats. So here's my advice-
1.Take Environmentalism away from the Democrats.
One of the most popular Republican Presidents was Theodore Roosevelt. There is a proud tradition and history of the Bull Moose Republicans. If a Progressive Republican of that tradition had a differing view on Economics but agreed with scientists on Global Warming and been running against Obama, I would have probably gone with the guy who had the guts to stand up the Climate Change deniers.
Outdoorsmen could be a loud voice in a view that successfully challenges Obama. Ted Nugent is ready to lead.
2.Grab the biggest States Rights issue around and Legalize Pot.
The future is already written regarding the legalization of pot. There is just too much money to be made from legalization and taxation. There is a limit to the rationalization of brutally overcrowding prisons. There are limits to the extent Minimum Sentences for victimless crimes can be sold as convincing arguments the War on Drugs is worthwhile. Advocating this puts you in the same company as William F. Buckley, Milton Friedman, Dan Quayle, George Schultz, Ron Paul, and the British House of Lords.

Washington and Colorado have just taken bold steps to end the moronic failure we call the War on Drugs with the passage of their pot legalization measures.
Do States have the right to decide their own destiny or is it the Federal Government? I say this issue is ripe for not only for acquisition by a party that will stand up from a party that takes its marijuana realists for granted. And it would drive a strategic voting wedge in the Pacific Northwest (aka Left Coast). Seriously, hippies out here are outraged enough to vote Republican!!

A Republican with the guts to take that kind of stand would have gotten my vote.
3. Don’t get rebranded as the Koch brothers and Karl Rove’s sock puppets this time.
I don’t vote for that sock puppets whom are quite that brazen.
And please don’t forget during this war within the Republican Party that whether you are blaming liberals, the media, the Tea Party, Paul Krugman, each other, Ron Paul, or whomever…that something important happens when you point your finger at someone else. Whenever you do that there are 3 fingers pointing right back at you.
You have only yourselves and your slavish obedience to a callous and avaricious leadership to blame for what has happened.

Really, the Obama win was that thin. And it would have taken so little to seduce me!

The General Election's Resemblance to Football Season Part 2

The seriousness of Barack Bellichick's flaws may just leave us with a much worse Coach in Chief. The cretins in power are in no danger from a mere election.

It’s that time of the Leap Year again. There are two major five month long contests that dominate public consciousness, Football Season and the General Election. In one we have a media frenzy led by pompous (often brainless) self-important announcers who are often extremely clueless when it comes to the brutal reality experienced by those actually exerting effort in an area rife with danger. The other has touchdowns, field goals, and cheerleaders!
Analogies between the two are going to be very subjective. Contrary opinions when speaking about such generalities are inevitable. That being said I have to state my opinion about the remarkable resemblance between our Commander in Chief and probably the most brilliant and most despised coach in the NFL today-Bill Belichick!
Consider if you would-both have impressive wins in their past. Super Bowl wins are rare even for above average teams. You really need the right combination of players, staff, and luck to achieve these things. Back to back Super Bowl wins are even rarer. Belichick is one of an exclusive club that only has 6 members. And who would have thought that when we heard about the Strip Club sex scandal involving actress Jeri Ryan’s Illinois Senator husband Jack, we would be watching the rise of his replacement (a State Senator at the time) to the Presidency? Or that his administration would succeed where the pompous blowhards who were currently in the White House had failed when it came to exterminating the leader of an organization responsible for the worst terrorist strike this country has ever endured?
Those are impressive accomplishments for both men. No one can legitimately take those away.
But there are also legitimate reasons for despising both men. Forget birth certificate conspiracy theories, dishonest Red-baiting, and Jets fanspeak, there are legitimate reasons to intensely dislike both Barack Obama and Bill Belichick.
Belichick was busted red-handed videotaping his Division rivals, the New York Jets in 2007. He was justly fined $500,000. There were other indications that the practice was more widespread than initially believed. Former Patriots employee Matt Walsh was in talks about revealing more incidents with the NFL. Then Senator Arlen Specter was interested in a congressional hearing on the matter. Belichick was lucky to avoid that hearing.
What followed was a 16-0 season and the Patriots faithful could not have cared less about these matters and just how bad things had gotten in the Patriots’ organization.
Barack Obama was elected with an overwhelming vague mandate of "Hope", "Unity", and "Change". There was also a clear priority to do something about our genocidal privatized Health Care system and breath life into an economy that Alan Greenspan and George W. Bush’s policies had left in shambles due to deregulation.
What we got was a compromised bill to reform the Health Care System (modeled on a program instituted by current Republican candidate Mitt Romney and originally proposed by the beltway elitist think tank Heritage Foundation in the 90’s as a response to Clintoncare) which barely withstood a questionable challenge in the very Right-biased Supreme Court!
We didn’t even bother changing Defense Secretaries. Considering the rampant corruption of Bush and Cheney, and a campaign promise for CHANGE after the worst terrorist attack we’ve ever endured resulted in brazen handouts to Defense Contractors, you’d think we’d put someone that would actually change that policy and get our troops out of there.
We had a program passed by Congress, which would have reduced the principal owed on mortgages by underwater homeowners during a time when it was desperately needed. Our tax money, which had already been allocated by Congress, could have been used to directly stimulate the economy! This money has been needlessly sitting idle. This is the work of Washington elitist bureaucrat, Ed DeMarco, acting director of the FHFA,(http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/31/why-is-ed-demarco-stopping-mortgage-refinancing/) the Federal Housing Finance Agency-overseers of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.
Now keep in mind, Barack Obama is the President of the United States.
Ed DeMarco is the Acting Director of the FHFA. He supposedly serves at the pleasure of the President. It is well within Obama’s power to fire him. And considering the damage he’s caused to the American people in their time of need, it would be appropriate to not only fire him but televise him cleaning out his desk and have the USMC honor guard turn their backs on him as he exits the building in shame with the National Anthem playing. It’s campaign season. It would make for a good show.
None of this matters to those currently riding around with Obama bumper stickers on their car. Obama was President when Bin Laden was exterminated. He got rid of those evil pre-existing conditions in insurance policies. Although unemployment is still high, and would probably be lower if homeowners got relief if he fired the deadwood at the FHFA, the stock market has rebounded to where it was before the Crash of ’08.
Like the 16-0 2007 Patriots season, there are serious problems in the organization, but it does not matter to the faithful.
And there are issues with despicable people working for both men.
The New England Patriots are not the only team to be busted for taping their opponents. In 2010, Bellichick protégé and current Offensive coordinator for the Patriots, Josh McDaniel was busted for the exact same infraction while head coach of the Denver Broncos. I know that the current case accusing Belichick of massive spying on his opponents is going nowhere. It is a circumstantial case as of this writing. But, I think taking what he (and Patriot defenders) say on the subject at face value is extremely naïve!
Earlier this year, legal medical marijuana clinics in Northern California have been under assault by the same US Justice Department that couldn’t be bothered with prosecuting the massive robosigning frauds perpetrated by the nation’s largest banks. The "War on Drugs" is recognized as a miserable failure by an increasing percentage of the population.
It’s expensive (money spent on enforcement, adjudication, and penalization while at the same time shrinking the potential tax base), it has caused a collapse of civilization along the Mexican border (because it is a policy empowering murderous thugs instead of entrepreneurs), and it is sadistic (treating the serious problem of addiction with property forfeiture and incarceration instead of medical treatment). And the only thing accomplished is keeping police unions and social conservative hypocrites temporarily happy!
With no concern for patients needs or state’s rights, Melinda Haag, U.S. attorney for Northern California, has brutally escalated a Federal crackdown on Medical Marijuana clinics. (http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/11/local/la-me-0712-marijuana-oakland-20120712)A buffoonish autocratic crackdown of Oakland’s Oaksterdam University in April, 2012 led to the demonstrations the local police were ill prepared to deal with.
Raped in Oakland and need an officer? Robbed at Gunpoint in April, 2012 in Oakland, CA? Maybe you just need a police presence so a tense situation doesn’t escalate! Tough! Miss Haag has her moral crusade at the U.S taxpayer’s expense to consider. And the already budget starved Oakland Police were completely overwhelmed by the just outrage of the citizenry who protested. What an excellent example of protection and service, Miss Haag!
Oh, and by the way, Barack Obama could fire and replace Melinda Haag with a penstroke. And it would be appropriate for her to exit televised, clearing out her desk as the USMC honor guard turns its back on her while the National Anthem plays. (I know it’s not going to happen, but I can dream!)
There was a brief window of hope for introducing this into the national campaign when Paul Ryan voiced a State’s Rights opinion on the subject. It didn’t last long. He showed the convictions he really has towards the right of States to determine who has access to medical marijuana and caved in immediately. It would take a lot more than a truthful stance on that one issue that to get my vote anyway.
And it’s not like there is any choice on the other side. JaMarcus Romney has come out against medical marijuana and I don’t see him firing Ed DeMarco. When it comes to relief for homeowners underwater (who would then start building equity again) and respecting patients, and state’s rights with medical marijuana- there is no choice on the ballot!
So, Republicans can take comfort in approaching election season with a candidate who is of the equivalent of JaMarcus Russell. Barack is skilled. Bellichick is good. But Barack Belichick can be beat.
After all who lost the last Super Bowl? Not Belichick!
However, the Raiders QB who showed up to play overweight and hung over from purple drank didn’t beat him, by the way! It remains to be seen if the guy who won’t release his tax returns and tried to politicize the murder of an ambassador will beat Barack.
But unfortunately, the same entrenched bureaucratic morons (whom we’ve never voted for) and the policies they goosestep to are going to be present no matter who wins!

The General Election's Resemblance to Football Season Part 1

Is Mitt Romney the Republican Party's JaMarcus Russell?

There are significant similarities between the General Election and NFL’s Football Season. Both of them are zero sum games at multiple levels. That is to say that both the Electoral College and the NFL Standings allow only closed number of possibilities. Both last about 5 months (Duration of time between the time when nominations are sewn up and the election is approximately 5 months as is Football Season). Both are dependant on the perceived value of television advertising. And both have idiotic pundits that expound their opinions and prejudices ad nauseum.
I’m the kind of person who groans whenever I hear the sports announcer praise whoever is winning at that particular moment only to do an about face whenever the momentum shifts. And this is something that has steadily gotten worse over the years. I never thought that I would miss Howard Cosell!
That being said, even the worst Sports Commentator is superior to the political season talking heads. They are, at best, trained teleprompter monkeys who often fail to do the most basic research on the subjects of which they pretend expertise in front of the public. They are, at their worst, party hacks that routinely vomit up talking points according to an unseen playbook bent on manipulating public opinion. I’ve often felt that a political hack doing his show would be indistinguishable from a kid flipping burgers for a living if the minimum wage kid was put in a suit and told to read off of a teleprompter. Televised election analysis often leaves me with a sincere feeling that if the pundit arrived on my doorstep immediately after the show, unzipped his fly and urinated directly in my ear, it would be more honest and more respectful than what was just presented as election analysis!
But, there are stronger similarities to Football than inane and purile commentators. There is a similarity in the calendars and the lack of time to recover from a slow start.
So where is the Election in Football Season terms? We’ve really been at this for a little over a month or so since Romney formally wrapped up the nomination. The sniping between Obama and Romney before that fairly counts as Pre Season. That would put us at about the equivalent of  Week 5 – the beginning of October. That is to say, the beginning of October in Football Season is similar to we are in the Election Season as of this writing, Aug 3, 2012. Strong trends are starting to emerge when we find ourselves this far into both cycles.
Teams that are 4-1 and 3-2 in Week 5 are in excellent shape and (generally speaking) tend to continue this trend to post season. And the reverse is often true as well. Teams that find themselves at 1-4 and 2-3 in Week 5 very rarely turn it around in time to make a post-season appearance.
In the past two weeks, the big Election Season stories have been Romney’s inexplicable hesitance to show his tax returns and his foreign gaffes. We have seen a slight bit of movement in the polls as a result, but we still have weeks to go. There’s a reason we don’t just give the Lombardi trophy to whoever is the most winning team after week 5.
Ultimately, “If the election were held today…”speculation has as much relevance as “If these two teams were playing the SuperBowl today” speculation! (Especially in Week 5!)
We still have most of the season’s games to play. And anything can still happen.
It is not as simple as looking at scoreboard or a Standings chart to determine who is ahead. Unfortunately, we have to rely on pollsters to see who’s winning from week to week. And if you can imagine a scoreboard that phrases questions to reflect its own agenda, then you have an accurate idea of how problematic it is to rely on pollsters for an accurate score.
So to measure the “Standings” as of “Week 5”, I’ve used 3 pollsters. One conservative (Rasmussen), one liberal (HuffPo), and one without a clear agenda (270towin.com)
Here is the movement from the middle of July to the beginning of August-

Rasmussen mid July Obama 247 Romney 191	Rassmussen early August Obama 297 Romney 212
HuffPo mid July Obama 281 Romney 191	HuffPo early August Obama 332 Romney 206
270tw mid July Obama 217 Romney 191	270tw early August Obama 319 Romney 206

What is still going on is a feud between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Mitt Romney. Harry Reid has upped the ante and put Romney into position where he must either reveal his tax returns or face August with the spectre hovering over his campaign that he paid close to 0% in taxes. The timing of this is significant. It is the equivalent of having a 1-4 Football team in early October and having a swiss cheese Defensive line. We have the party conventions/week long commercials at the end of this month. The non partisan Tax Policy Center has determined that Romney’s proposed tax changes amount to a tax increase for everyone who is not part of the rich 1%! Romney’s behavior during the past 10 years and whether or not he paid close to 0% in taxes is very relevant. The unemployment numbers are still an abomination, raising taxes at a time like this on the majority of the population so that the wealth of our nation can continue to be plundered by white collar criminals is not the correct course for this nation no matter how many times you repeat “job creator”. Romney needs to disown this proposal now. His credibility is non-existent as long as he evades telling us what he paid in taxes and requesting that the rest of us pay more. The Republican party has a lot invested in this portion of the Election season. Not just the record amount of money that the asinine Citizen’s United decision has polluted the election campaigns with, but also time (the Republican primary season was long, silly and exhaustive) and good will. And by good will, I mean good will directed at the party leadership. That’s the good will of citizens giving the G.O.P. leadership the benefit of the doubt and not thinking that they would deliberately sabotage an economic recovery and try to prolong the misery of a horrible economic downturn in order to gain political advantage. Possibly the biggest investment in the 2012 election occurred in January 2009 when a meeting was held in D.C. and the leadership of the G.O.P. agreed to a universal opposition to everything that Obama proposed. This was at the time when the American people desperately needed all help the government could offer and it needlessly prolonged the misery of the Great Recession in order for the Republicans to be able to hammer Obama on the economy exactly at this moment in time. Repulsive as this was, it was nonetheless a record investment in someone whom the powerful are confident to be a dynamic player. It is very similar to the way late Raiders owner Al Davis invested $31.5 million, setting a rookie salary record, in JaMarcus Russell. JaMarcus Russell was drafted in 2007 by the Raiders amid glowing reviews from most sports experts at the time. He was quickly revealed as an expensive oaf who got fined for being overweight, couldn’t be bothered with team meetings because he wanted to go to Vegas and showed up to play hung over from purple drank! (Please understand, I am NOT accusing Romney of this behavior. Although I do hate politicians and wealthy parasites to such a great extent that I can say I find that to be an amusing image!) There was a particularly harsh game where he failed to complete half of his passes, two of them going to the Broncos. He blamed the refs for calling those interceptions. And he tried to put the best possible spin on this by saying “I think I did all right…I try to play with no regrets.” Romney seems to be following the same pattern by not releasing his returns and then attempting to blame everyone but himself for his stubbornness in not revealing what would answer Reid’s questions in an instant. Al Davis responded to Russell’s abysmal performance by essentially doubling down on his prized quarterback. He fired coach Lane Kiffin rather than admit that his $31.5 million investment was a bust and change the game plan. We are seeing a similar attitude when it comes to supporting the Republican presumptive nominee. Compared to an exhaustive and absurd primary season, fantastic amounts of money channeled to advertisers through SuperPACs, and deliberately making the US economy worse just for ammo vs Obama right at this point in time…$31.5 million would be getting off cheap. With that kind of advantage, he should be riding far higher that he is. Romney’s performance is as dismal as JaMarcus Russell’s. It is truly sad that he is the only alternative to four more years of Obama. The Raiders, in retrospect, no doubt wish that Al Davis would have cut their losses, dumped Russell and come up with an alternate game plan. It is still not too late for the Republicans. Romney is not formerly the nominee until the convention. Ron Paul is still running. And the Republicans might just be able to get Tim Tebow. I’m sure that would come as a relief to the New York Jets!

You can depend on Conservatives Part 2

-Continued-
But how is his credibility as an expert in international markets?
Aug 6, 2011
"So the dollar is not the Go To currency the way it was, it is not the safe haven the way it was. Also on Friday, the ECB came out and said that it would buy Italian sovereign debt, provided that Italy provided that Italy balanced it’s budget. And Yesterday, Italy came out with a proposal for significant cuts in government spending… real cuts, not the phoney cuts that we have here in America. So I think what you’re going to see happening in the weeks ahead is that the market is going to get behind the Euro and dump the dollar. Y’know everyone has been focused on the Euro, y’know the Euro Zone and they have neglected to look at the real problems of the dollar."-Peter Schiff

Feb 27, 2012
" I have been forecasting that higher gas prices would become an issue because I had been looking at the crude oil chart, expecting it to break to the upside and I knew gasoline prices would also move up. I still believe"-Peter Schiff

Nov, 2011
"…it’s now easier for the banks to borrow dollars. So we are increasing the global quantity of dollars in circulation as a result the dollar is losing value and I believe is going to lose a lot more value, not just against other fiat currencies, but against real money…gold and silver, so I think investors should be buying…those of you who have been on the sidelines waiting for an opportunity to buy, I would not wait much longer, I would just buy".-Peter Schiff

April 22, 2012
"…Because of anticipation of a collapse that never occurred. Because too many people or not enough people understand the truth"(???!), "so we’ve got do what we can to insure that the truth does get out."-Peter Schiff
And my number one reason for openly questioning the credibility of Peter Schiff-the performance of Euro Pacific Capital! Please keep in mind, he is supposed to be an expert in International Finance.

EPIVX

-15.18% this year –2.52% since inception
EPASX

-10.66% this year –5.10% since inception
EPHCX

-25.29% this year +1.23% since inception
Besides the anemic returns Mr. Schiff and company offer, there’s the fact that if he foresaw the Housing Bubble burst, he neglected to position his client’s money so that it was safe! "This Time Be Ready", Mr. Schiff? How about "This time I’ll protect my client’s investment"?
Not that he should be worried. You can depend on conservatives to rationalize even in the face of brutal evidence
The ability of conservatives to rationalize support for Mr. Schiff is in no danger. Hypnotized automatons are like that.
Oh, and about that decision by the Paulites to trust the Republican party as a mean to advance their agenda rather than agree to disagree with the Greens and put discussion of Economic Schools aside for now? That was rewarded with brutal treatment similar to the way Occupy Protesters were treated at the Louisiana Republican Convention. The Paulites had won the State of Louisiana after playing by the rules.
The Republican leadership then arbitrarily changed the rules and had dissenters arrested. I see this as an indicator of how a Romney Presidency intends to treat dissenters.Much in the same way jetting around in Ken Lay's Enron jet during his campaign was an indicator of the corruption, avarice, and ineptitude that characterized the Bush Presidency. Much in the same way the vague slogans of Hope, Change, and Untiy was indicator of the vague wishy washyness of this Presidency.
But there is no danger to Etch a Sketch Romney! If you can depend on anything, it’s the ability of conservatives to rationalize, even after a brutal display of Top Down suppression in their own primaries! But imagine for a second if you could add the numbers of the Occupy protesters to this scene at the convention(all united to end the Drug War, challenge the Military Industrial Complex, and Audit the Fed), and you can have a sense of what has been lost by letting Mr. Schiff set the economic priorities of the Ron Paul movement.