In the midst of folding tidy stacks of dollar store dish rags, it occurred to me that the basement lit reason we all find Romney so nauseatingly off-putting is due to the harsh fact that he’s way too fucking normal.

Seriously, who’s this wholesome sane post circa 1965?

Not most of us, with our shaky childhoods, sordid pasts, weird relatives, insolvent finances, extended step-families, wrecked marriages, shitty jobs, addiction issues and screwed up kids.

We’ve never even met anybody this insanely successful or boring Wonder Bread normal in bed or out.

Mitt smacks of abnormally strange Leave It To Beaver episodes juiced on Technicolor steroids. An image not to be trusted as a tangible taste of modern reality in any squared corner of middle America.

Romney’s old school brand of lofty, patrician conservatism is very similar to our last president’s record of actual governance. George Junior successfully brandished the common man’s drawl stacked on top of a shallow thimble of naughty indiscretions, camouflaging the expensive sheen of his ruling class origins cloaked in a deeply held liberal mindset.

Most folks prefer a smudge of dirty, reflective sin in their ruling class. GW managed to sell a gritty brand of political deception that felt real enough for most red-collared voters.

Mitt Romney is way too fucking, neck-tie perfect to offer up that rich sauce of delusional, primal comfort.

For instance, in 2005 he put his brilliant thought to pen in an illuminating treatise for the Middle East Quarterly. Just for kicks, let’s give his Israeli/Palestinian views a small tumble.

The Palestinians entered their war with Israel as a relatively wealthy, educated, and cosmopolitan people. They were in some ways among the most international and most advanced people in the Arab world. The long conflict has destroyed their hopes for a better future, left them without a viable economy, and for too long, left them without responsible leadership.

Hold on a minute, I thought Palestinians were an invented people?

For the Palestinians, this should mean a democratic Palestinian state under the rule of law and the right to pursue health, prosperity, and freedom.

Oops.

Is Newt saying foreign nations should refrain from meddling in Israeli/Palestinian issues rather than make the situation worse? He was certainly no fan of the Oslo Agreements and everybody had a thumb in that sloppy mess. To be fair, old Newt goes on quite sensibly for several paragraphs before once again deviating from the standard conservative line.

Third, it is important to recognize that the vast, but intimidated, majority of the Palestinian people would like to live in safety, health, prosperity, and freedom. Most Palestinians do not want their children living in war-torn neighborhoods surrounded by poverty and devastation. They do not want to live their lives under the heel of a corrupt, brutal, and incompetent dictatorship.

Then he totally loses his mind,  jumps the narrow neo-con fence and breaks out with his special brand of visionary ideas profane idiocy that would see him righteously lynched by the Weekly Standard and NRO crew.

While Israelis have the right of self-defense, Washington should impose three limitations on Israel: first, the White House should insist that a free hand in building a security fence does not mean a free hand to expand the Israeli settlements in a land grab. The U.S. government should become the protector of the Palestinian people’s right to have a decent amount of land and to have continuous communications and travel between their areas.

The desire of some Israelis to use security as an excuse to grab more Palestinian land should be blocked by Washington even if that requires employing financial or other leverage to compel the Israeli government to behave reasonably on the issue of settlements. It is vital to our credibility in the entire Middle East that we insist on an end to Israeli expansionism.

It is vital to our humanitarian duty to the Palestinian people that we protect the weaker party from the stronger power. It is vital that the world sees that our total support for Israeli security is not matched by a one-sided support for more extreme Israeli territorial goals.

Second, the U.S. government should actively support a democratic Palestinian state. There are a number of Israeli politicians who would be willing to see the negotiations carried on forever. In their view, there is no reason to have a Palestinian state. They are in their own way the equivalent of those Palestinians who believe Israel can be coerced into a right of return for Palestinians even if it would mean the end of Israel.

Oh my.

Newt closes this grand plan of blind arrogance with his usual combination of unorthodox idiocy and a few practical grains of common sense.

Truly, this bit of Newtonian bullshit sounds fairly reasonable to me, but then Israel isn’t a major concern of mine. I wish the country well, but don’t spend much time contemplating their complex internal issues and couldn’t give a rip about Palestinians one way or the other.

So what changed Newt’s reasonably moderate 2005 Israeli/Palestinian political stance into a demagogic fury come 2011?

Money of course. $13 million dollars to be precise.

Sheldon Adelson started funneling cash towards Newt’s lobbying endeavors the year after this article was published. Adelson recently poured $5 million into the former speaker’s empty campaign coffers to prop up his back runner’s flagging presidential candidacy.

One thing we know for sure about Gingrich’s conservative, core ideological values; the man stays bought if his pockets are jingling. The healthcare industry and Freddie/Fannie found that out first hand.

Looks like Adelson bought himself one hell of a dog whistle loyal politician.

I wonder if Callista can say the same.

The good news if Newt wins: We won’t hear all the family values crap in the general election. And if we do, it will at least be hysterical.

Fab shopping if you’re feeling lady-like pretty and don’t mind wrecking the budget.

The son of illiterate Greek immigrants, a true BOI rags to riches story, Christos managed to build a successful drilling company that afforded a prime slot for his fifty-three foot yacht in a private marina and sent him flying around the world several months of the year to hunt big game.

He loved killing animals nearly as much as he adored the open water. An outdoorsman to the core, our third date was spent at the gun range siting an exquisite rifle capable of sinking a rhino. I still have the target tucked away, a sweet memento of my superior marksmanship. The man was a terrible shot considering the obscene amount of money spent on gorgeous guns and expensive hunting destinations. His skills as a lover were much more noteworthy.

The morality of hunting most species for pleasure or meat has never crossed my mind. Men are carnivorous, animals are food, herds need culled and innately hardwired, human satisfaction can be found in the task of stalking wild prey.

The giraffe strikes me as off-limits though in this day and age. Along with whales, orangutans, elephants, tigers and endless others.

I seem to have an internal, irrationally loaded list of creatures that I’d rather not see harvested for commercial gain, sustenance or pleasure. I want certain creatures left well enough alone.

The death of rabbits, calves and baby goats doesn’t bother me one damn bit; the carcass of a recently shot giraffe or elephant brings me to near tears.

We’re multiplying at a phenomenal rate thanks to corn saturated poor nutrition, modern medicine and lower infant mortality rates. Bolstered by the IMF, Wold Bank and UN funded NGO’s, the third world is exploding in unsustainable landscapes that cannot bear high-concentrated numbers of dense populations, much less utilize or maintain 20th century technology.

It seems we could find some reasonable way of making room for and protecting the exceptionally unique species that make our planet so wonderful to behold if we’re so ably willing to extend and expand the ten million fold of humans living in the same space.

I’d rather not see the truly irreplaceable decimated by starving, war-torn populations, fueled into extermination by demented asian markets or hunted into obscurity by wealthy western dilettantes seeking the ultimate safari.

Hunting giraffes for sport strikes me as truly depraved. I’d prefer to live in world where these gracious animals were never considered bloody trophy fodder by wealthy thrill seekers.

Story and a horrible dozen of pictures via the Daily Mail, which makes it questionable, but the photos don’t lie.

*BOI explanation.

Via the Daily Mail – my latest internet crack addiction.

After two careful viewings, I’m of the opinion that it doesn’t really matter if you hate Newt’s full-blown assault based solely on your pro-capitalist principles. This was a devastating piece of effective political savagery.

Spinning Romney’s track record at Bain as predatory, vulture corporatism could gain fast legs with the middle and lower classes who’ve been hit the hardest by our ongoing recession and declining manufacturing job base.

Let’s pray it takes wing.

Mitt’s casual explanation of market driven, creative destruction doesn’t quite fly in the face of how Bain actually operated in several instances. We aren’t talking about the responsive type of creative destruction following the natural demise of the agricultural age as the industrial revolution swept into constructive bloom.

What Romney did as the head of Bain Capitol was to purchase profitable mid-range companies and leverage their assets to the brink of fiscal insanity.

A short excerpt from a new book I’m reading, The Real Romney, gives a clearer picture of how our presumptive nominee ran his successful venture capitalism division at Bain.

In 1996, Bain invested $27 million as part of a deal with other firms to acquire Dade International, a medical diagnostics equipment firm, from its parent company, Baxter International. Bain ultimately made ten times its money, getting back $230 million. But Dade wound up laying off more than 1600 people and filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002, amid crushing debt and rising interest rates. The company, with Bain in charge, had borrowed heavily to do acquisitions, accumulating $1.6 billion in debt by 2000. The company cut benefits for some workers at the acquired firms and laid off others. When it merged with Behring Diagnostics, a German company, Dade shut down three US plants. At the same time, Dade paid out $421 million to Bain Capital’s investors and investing partners.

If Romney’s Wall Street version of creative destruction floats your crooked boat, hat’s off to your black little hearts, have fun desecrating your warped conservative souls voting for Mitt’s rapacious vision of a prosperous America.

His petulant response of blaming wealth envy for the latest round of well-targeted criticism over his one adult act of private employment came across as smugly arrogant. I don’t expect that bucket of thin gruel will play well in Peoria, Birmingham or Sioux Falls come next November.

Most folks still recall the inestimable economic damage caused by creative destruction vampires like Bain Capital, their criminal Wall Street brethren and the corrupt political henchmen who facilitated the large-scale rape of this country’s financial landscape.

Gingrich and Santorum were part of that sordid crew, playing well-greased, civic back-ends to Romney’s private lusty thrusts.

I sincerely hope this full frontal assault on Romney’s private sector career derails his presumptive front-runner status. I can’t stand the man, couldn’t abide his amoral, plastic flexibility on the last go around. I enthusiastically applaud any effort that would see Mitt’s brand of bespoke statism burned straight into the ground.

Fuck him and his gold-plated pony.

Who knew there were that many gigantic white guys playing fierce basketball?

The husband says it’s because you have to be smart to get into Duke.

Retailers and consumers will be undoubtably be inconvenienced by this mandate and you have to wonder what other offensive plastic products will be next in line to fall under the council’s disapproving scrutiny. Trash bags, disposable diapers, sandwich baggies, rubber bands, Crocs?

Progressives seem unable to either comprehend or accept the wonderful fact that mankind is quite ingenious at creative problem solving when faced with new dilemmas, needs or desires. The knee jerk reaction of most progressives to anything they dislike or deem dangerous is to ban it, tax it or criminalize it.

These hysterical people don’t have much faith in science, engineering or technology to tackle new issues or provide cost-effective solutions, preferring to harass our ignorant politicians into making terrible decisions that annoy the hell out of rational people like me.

Plastic grocery bags don’t degrade in landfills for five hundred years. That’s their Chicken Little, end-of-discussion statement on the topic. Of course, they’re wrong, but when has that ever stopped a furious ideologue from completing their fruitless mission?

As a matter fact, plastic bags could degrade in landfills within a very short time frame if one very cool science discovery was deployed. A few years back, a really bright teenager discovered that a refined strain of microbes could naturally degrade 46% of grocery bag plastic in six short weeks. I would be shocked if commercial applications of this discovery aren’t already being aggressively pursued considering landfills are a huge municipal concern and ripe for lucrative, tax payer cushioned profit margins.

There are a few other all-natural solutions on the horizon posed to solve the plastic terror, but in the meantime, there are plenty of companies offering plastic bags that chemically bio-degrade within five years. Why wouldn’t the city council ask retailers to exclusively use those products to combat the immediate landfill problem?

I’ll tell you why, because if you live in Austin or the any of the surrounding communities, your flimsy plastic grocery bags already meet that fast rotting standard. Walmart and HEB use them exclusively, Whole Foods, always the innovator, went the solo brown bag route at least five years ago.

Those are your three choices to stock up on groceries within a seventy mile radius from downtown Austin.

I can only conclude that Mayor Leffingwell and the craven simpletons serving as council members are busy trying to burnish their Green credentials with the Silicon Valley horde of progressive elitists who’ve infested central Austin over the past ten years.

The main activists leading the anti-bag revolution appear to be an impoverished crew of devoted Hackensack’s who’ve garnered the financial support of those who love their expensive luxuries. The hip money backing this current wave of insanity reside in high six figure, inner city homes, revel in weird their lack of children (no breeders here!) and brag over the two hemp bag’s worth of organic groceries they fill once a week at Whole Foods or the Barton Creek Farmer’s Market. It’s all about aesthetics, popular lifestyle and the latest cause de jour for these progressive, environmental vanguards.

None of these pristine people could ever imagine filling a HEB grocery cart to overflow in order to meet an ordinary family’s food needs for the week, much less hauling forty reusable bags along to take the goods home. That just doesn’t happen in their tight little circle jerk of a world.

It seems they can’t be bothered to acknowledge the extra gas-guzzling trips that will follow their no bag rule or the industrial waste produced and energy consumed by the increased manufacture of their mandated glut of sustainable bags.

I guess I shouldn’t wonder why they adamantly refuse to avail themselves of pertinent facts on this onerous ban. High brow fantasy is always preferable to reality when pushing through bourgeoise policies that will never taint a single progressive front door.