The Hood Ornament Effect or, Why the U.S. Needs a Parliamentary System

Orson Bean once told Merv Griffin or Mike Douglas that he did not read the newspaper, nor follow current events.

"Reading a newspaper is like focusing on the hood ornament of your car while you're out driving in the country," Bean explained. "You miss the beauty of the world around you."

Watching the talking heads on Face the Nation and Meet the Press (John Edwards and Mike Hucakbee, though not sure which was on which), it dawned on me: American politics essentially is hood ornament-gazing.

I haven't "blogged" in almost two weeks as, frankly, following American politics and politicians disgusts me. Reading blogs one realizes that there actually is a disease called graphophilia, where someone becomes addicted to writing. Like "Thomas Wolfe" disease, that is, diarrhea of the pen, the political junkie infected with graphophilia writes on and on, day after day, until he (and its always a he) has created a mountain range of molehills, a range that in the junkie's own mind rivals the Rockies or the Andes, nay, the Himalayas. And they are still molehills.

The beauty contest that is the Presidential selection process essentially is about electing the Mole-in-Chief. Is it no wonder why the Presidency and American politics is such a tragicomedy? Tragic when seen up close, a comedy when one steps back, then a tragedy for the rest of the world that has to bear the brunt of the Mole-in-Chief's policies for four-to-eight years.

Look at the wallpaper in your room, or some object on the wall. Take your index finger and bring it very close to your thumb, and then bring it up to your eye If you are concentrating on a small detail on the wallpaper, suddenly, framed in such a way, it has assumed massive proportions. It has filled the "space" and psychologically, has become the "world" from this Point of View.

And it is false, just like the American Presidential election process is false.

We are focusing on personalities rather than issues. One can say we are focusing on the way a candidate, like Barack Obama, articulates the issues, but we would be wrong. We are focused on the way a candidate like Obama frames the issues, markets the issues, which is essentially thumping the tub for him or herself.

In a parliamentary system, the party picks the leader and the candidates who will run for a seat in Parliament. The voter focuses on the party and the issues, not on the personalities. One votes one's interest, as articulated by the party, not because John Edwards is better looking, in his WASPy button-down way, then Bill Richardson, whose face is a map of Mexico.

In a parliamentary system, a man like Richardson with his full resume (cabinet member, United Nations ambassador, governor) would be the head of a party. The press, and I mean the Boston Globe, not the National Enquirier, would not make up fantasies that Obama's world travels as a boy uniquely position himself as a diplomat (which he hasn't been -- this incidentally, is Obama's own fantasy that the Globe, seeking for a Rockefeller Republican, bought), ignoring the fact that Bill Richardson actually IS a diplomat.

This is insanity.

On the one hand, you have the real thing, an experienced man with executive and international experience, and he is ignored by a major American newspaper to tout the more marketable brand.

My father said that the essence of American life is that someone, sometime, is always trying to sell you a horse made out of horseshit, claiming its a real horse.

In the late 1960s, when the book The Selling of the Presidency came out, revealing how during the 1968 Presidential contest, the two candidates (Humphrey and Nixon) used Madison Ave. advertising firms who sold them with strategies used to flog dogfood and cigarettes, American pundits were outraged. Now, the talking heads on the boob tube hail Mitt Romneys religion speech, utterly devoid of substance, as a good "marketing move," a canny "advertisement for myself" from Mitt to evangelical Christians.

It's not the tail wagging the dog, it is a horseshit simulacrum of a horse being bridled and piss-tested and entered into the Kentucky Derby. It is baseball on steroids, which the sporting press was entirely conscious of us, and indeed, was part of the conspiracy to sell that conglomeration of horseshit to the sports fan, who is a dumb slob and could care less. Integrity is something for other people.

The United States, which has just endured seven years of a Mole-in-Chief who has utterly disgraced this country, is going to reap the rewards of the dragon's teeth it has sowed for the last generation.

Herr Einstein & The Modern GOP

"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them." -- Albert Einstein

"Wanna bet?" -- Mike Huckabee

"'You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time....' Here's where I prove Abe Lincoln a liar!" -- Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney's "Willie Horton"?

Mitt Romney continues to campaign lustily here in Cow Hampsha, as part of his strategy of building up an insurmountable momentum by taking the early contests in Iowa & the Granite State . On Saturday, November 24th, the handsome and telegenic Mormon marched in a seasonal parade without a hat on (how Kennedyesque!) in the testicle-numbing freezing temperatures afflicting Allentown, which is located halfway between Manchester, the state’s largest city, and Concord, the capital.

Romney enjoys a comfortable lead in the polls over his two nearest rivals, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain. However, the contest is still wide open as the numbers of uncommitted Republicans and independent voters -- who can request the ballot of either party on election day -- remain in the majority among those registered voters likely to go to the polls. With the primary set for January 8, 2008, there is a little over six weeks left to campaign.

In press conference held in Allentown that Fox News and other outlets for some reason referred to as Derry, which is nearby but is NOT Allentwon (my father lived in the area once called Suncook but which as been changed to Hooksett, the nearest large town, for real estate purposes, one supposes; it is across the river from Allentown, and it IS all rather confusing) Romney addressed the question of the judge he had appointed to the Massachusetts Superior Court, who released a convicted mother-killer who subsequently migrated to Washington State, where he slew a couple.

In July 2007, Superior Court Judge Kathe M. Tuttman rejected the request of prosecutors to hold Daniel Tavares, Jr. on $50,000 bail after he was arrested on assault charges. Tavares had been released from prison in June after serving 16 years for murdering his mother, sprung early for “good behavior“ despite his assault on guards and his threats against public officials. According to the Boston Herald, http://bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1046369&format=text
in February 2006, Tavares had threatened to murder then-Governor Romney and other public officials, including the attorney general of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

Tuttman reversed a lower court and granted Tavares a bail waiver. The convicted momslaughterer then quickly violated the terms of his parole and left Massachusetts for Washington State to go live with a woman he had met online while he was in stir. In Washington State, the irrepresible con shoot to death Brian and Beverly Mauck, who lived near him in the Tacoma suburb of Graham.

Before she was elevated to the bench, Judge Tuttman was a prosecutor from Essex, Massachusetts who then-Governor Romney appointed to the Superior Court in 2006 after meeting with her and reviewed her qualifications. After endorsing her nomination, she was approved by the Governor's Council, a state-level government organ screens and confirms gubernatorial appointees.

To avoid a “Willie Horton” incident, the likes of which helped sink the Presidential aspirations of fellow former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis, Romney was quick to turn on his appointee, calling for her to resign from the bench at the press conference during his stopover in Allentown (Derry).

Never one to avoid licking a gift whore in the mouse, Rudy Giuliani, "America's Mayor", lagging far behind Romney in the polls, siezed upon the issue to question Romney’s bona-fides as a crime fighter.

The media in attendance on at the Derry (Allentown) press conference and at the Allentown (Derry) parade were quick to characterize this as a potential “Willie Horton” issue for Romney that may doom his candidacy like that of fellow former Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis in 1988. However, the majority of Allentown citizens who were interviewed by TV news crews said that the issue was unlikely to hurt Romney, as he was human, not perfect, and human beings make mistakes.

It is hard for a wooly-headed (brain wrapped in cotton wool, natch) to understand how the release of a Caucasian killer could turn into a full-blown Willie Horton-class wedge issue, as Mike Dukakis was a liberal Democrat who had a much more progressive attitude towards the administration of justice than does Mitt Romney, Republican. Romney, who ran during the 2001 Massachusetts gubernatorial race as a liberal Republican, revealed himself to be a conservative after assuming office, which obviated his chances for reelection. Romney stepped down rather than be defeated by a Democrat.

Like the true liberal “Rockefeller” Republican Rudy Giuliani, Romney now is running as a conservative, for the Republican nomination. Unlike Giuliani, who is running in conservative drag this time around, Romney truly is a conservative. The judge’s poor judgment in releasing a convicted killer on personal cognizance does not jibe with Romney’s stated position on crime.

The decision by the Romney-appointed judge is not congruent with Romney’s policies on crime and the administration of justice, whereas releasing Willie Horton was in line with Mike Dukakis’ policies. Furthermore, Dukakis defended the furlough program and remained a staunch opponent of the death penalty. Romney faulted his judge, if not his actual choosing of her, and is a strong proponent of the death penalty, which does not exist in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

One could fault Romney’s choice of the judge, but then again, Tuttman was a career prosecutor with a reputation for “law and order."

One could criticize the vetting process under which the judge was selected, but the fact is, Romney did not know the judge personally, and many judges turn out to rule on cases with a philosophy that was unexpected by the person appointing them to the bench. David Souter, the former attorney general of New Hampshire, was recommended to George H.W. Bush by his chief of staff John Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, as being reliably moderate-conservative. As an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, David Souter, the assumed moderate, turned out to be a closeted liberal . The great liberal Felix Frankfurter, appointed to the Supreme Court by Franklin D Roosevelt in 1941, turned out to be a conservative on the High Court.

A more logical candidate for nomination to become Mitt Romney’s “Willie Horton” is the tax judge Don Gorton, a Harvard Law School graduate who was essentially fired by Romney and replaced with a real estate agent with a high school diploma and no legal background. Gorton had blown the whistle on irregularities at the court by the Chief Judge.

More importantly, Don Gorton the head of the Bay State’s Gay-Lesbian Transgendered Group, was the head of the Governor’s Task Force on Hate Crimes, which was created by William Weld and funded by Weld, his successor Paul Celucci, and Celucci’s successor. After campaigning for governor as “gay friendly”, Romney eliminated funding for the Task Force after becoming governor, and gutted the Task Force’s anti-bullying initiative. He then apparently retaliated against Gorton for whistle-blowing, an action that may be attributed to homophobia.

According to sources, the Romney campaign in conservative Red States points to the sacking of Gorton to show its bona fides for being against gays.

This then is the true Willie Horton of the Mitt Romney campaign, for just as Willie Horton showed Mike Dukakis to be an unapologetic liberal and “Card-carrying member of the A.C.L.U.”, as he was denounced by then-Vice President George Bush, the sacking of the gay Gorton shows Romney to be intolerant and a hypocrite, as he pleads for tolerance from those who would question his Mormon religion. Like Willie Horton apparently elucidating the weakness of the Dukakis governorship, the sacking of Don Gorton elucidates Romney’s weakness of a penchant for institutionalized homophobia, which he is attempting to use to woo the evangelical Christian vote that has become so critical to the Republican Party.

==Sources==

Romney Calls for Judge Who Released Killer to Resign, as Issue Becomes Political Fodder http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,312683,00.html

Mom killer vowed to take out Romney


http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1046369

The Dark Side of George S. Patton

Speaking of killing, I've got a nice article up over on Associated Content about General Georgie Patton, a first-class loon. When Pauline Kael, the great critic (I was somewhat involved with her great-niece, btw, fulfilling an adolescent wish, but that's another story) said that the eponymous Oscar-winning movie errered in creating a "Comic Book General", she was off point (as she was with Stanley Kubrick post-Lolita ouvere): Patton was a comic-book general, and in such, he was an All-American archetype.

Patton's greatness as a field general was his mobility, and he achieved mobility by assassinating, or murdering if you will, all Germans who tried to surrender or who had been taken POW. He was a commander of armored forces, and mobility is the key to the success or armor.

As a politician, which generals inevitably are going to dabble in, being "stupid sons-of-bitches" according to Harry S Truman*, Patton was a terrible bust. I bring this up to remind the audience that generals will get involved in politics, which is why 1.) we should involve foreign entanglements and maintaining the congressional-military-industrial complex that empowers a meddling military, and 2.) wars should be short affairs so as NOT to provide fertile breeding ground for the military & their political aspirations.

The best defense against having generals meddling is to avoid war, and the need for a large military. If we have to have a Patton, and let him loose to commit war crimes, then again, the war should be short, not an open ended, eternal "War on Terror" as justified by former-General "Colon" Powell until his will was waylaid by infectious diverticulitis of the soul from bathing in the cesspool that was the first Bush 43 Administration.

Associated Content wouldn't let me post the entire article, as some of what I wrote about had already been published by your humble narrator, anonymously, on the Internet Movie Database. Here are the juicy bits I left out:

The movie biography Patton, which reportedly was President Richard Nixon’s favorite film, won the Oscar as Best Picture of 1970. The cinematic Patton, no matter how dark, stands as a whitewash of the real man. Patton’s diaries, which were pub-lished after his death, reveal that Patton was an anti-Semite. In the movie, there is one slapping incident, but in real life, there were actually two such incidents.

After the second incident, Patton reportedly made an anti- Semitic remark, claiming that "battle fatigue" was a fake con-cept created by the Jews (a reference rooted in the percep-tion in the first half of the 20th Century that there was a predom-inance of members of the Jewish faith in the psychiatric profession). After making this injudicious remark, some
witnesses claim that Patton wept.

Seen in this context, theater commander Dwight D. Eisen-hower's subsequent removal of Patton from command, which took place long after the incident, might be interpreted as con-cern with Patton's own mental health, and that the brilliant, high-strung general himself was perceived as possibly suffering from battle fatigue. This would also explain why he was subse- quently returned to command after what could be seen as a "rest." (In the North African theater, British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill similarly had given General O'Connor a rest.)

One of the more controversial episodes of Patton's career was when he gave a speech to American G.I.s at a "Welcome Club" in Knutsford, England in mid-April 1944. Having been relieved of his command in Italy after the soldier slapping incidents, Patton was positioned as the head of fictitious com-mand, the "Quicksilver Army Group," as part of Operation Fortitude, a disinformation campaign to confuse the Nazis.

The Allies wanted to convince the Nazis that they were going to invade Europe at Calais, France and not Normandy. By positi-oning the man the Nazis believed was the Allies' greatest gen- eral at the head of this fictitious Army, the Allies did indeed help confuse the Nazis as to their actual intentions.

Still under consideration to be used as a commander in the invasion of Normandy (though his recklessness and unrelia- bility made it impossible to appoint him as overall head of the invading force; that command went to Omar N. Bradley), Patton had agreed to give a speech at Knutsford on the condition that there were no reporters present.

At the event, he was reported as saying that "...the British and the American are two people separated by a common language. Since it is evident destiny of the British and Americans rule the world, the better we know each other the better job we will do."

The speech, as reported by the press, became a major incident as Patton had failed to mention the Soviet Union, one of the Allies fighting the Nazis in Europe. Patton swore he did men-tion the Russians, and Bradley backed him up on this. The Sov-iets were outraged, and Ike, the Allied Supreme Commander, wrote to Patton saying, "I am thoroughly weary of your failure to control your tongue and have begun to doubt your all-round judgment, so essential in high military positions."

From the Pentagon, General George C. Marshall, the overall commander of the U.S. Army under Commander-in-Chief President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told Eisenhower that he would back him up if Ike chose not to use Patton in Normandy. In a letter, Marshall told Eisenhower if thought Overlord would work without Patton, "all well and good." If not, "then between us we can bear the burden." Ike decided not to give Patton a command on D-Day, and so the brilliant general remained at the head of his phantom army.

Patton believed that British reporters or even his own comman-ders had set him up. Patton wrote back to Ike, saying, "You probably are damn fed up with me...but certainly my last alleged escapade smells strongly of having been a frame-up in view of the fact that...the thing was under the auspices of the (British) Ministry of Information."

Historian Anthony Cave-Brown argues the "Knutsford Affair" was manufactured as part of the Fortitude deception campaign. It is known that the Allied high command, as part of Fortitude, had gambled not only with Patton's reputation but his career by
keeping him as the head of a phantom army when his skills as an experienced battlefield commander and brilliant strategist could have been exploited at Normandy, so they were certainly not above that kind of manipulation.

Patton was put into action shortly after Normandy as the com-mander of the Third Army. As Third Army commander, Patton ordered the killing of German soldiers in the act of surrendering or taken prisoner because he said they could not be trusted. When Eisenhower reprimanded Patton for ordering his troops to kill P.O.W.s, Patton responded "If you order me not to, I will stop. Otherwise, I will continue to influence troops, the only way I know, a way which so far has produced results." Ike then informed Patton to continue any way he saw fit, but to be cau-tious lest the murder of prisoners boomerang against him.

On his part, Patton did not believe killing prisoners was wrong as he believed it saved his solders' lives.

"Some fair-haired boys are trying to say that I kill too many prisoners. Yet the same people cheer at the far greater killings of Japs. Well the more I killed, the fewer men I lost, but they don't think of that."

Referring to the fact that American soldiers and Marines fighting the "purple-pissing Japs" (as Patton so eloquently put it in his famous address to the troops on assuming command of the Third Army) took no prisoners. Giving no quarter was the modus operandi on both sides of the Pacific War, similar to the Esatern Front where the German Armies and their Axis allies were fighting to the death against the Soviet Red Army.

Patton was convinced that he was doing no wrong in calling for the calculated, cold-blooded murder of the enemy. Killing "Kraut" soldiers in the process of surrendering and the bloody dispatch of prisoners eliminated logistical problems that would otherwise have slowed down Patton's Third Army, which some-times advanced at the rate of 60 miles a day.

Eisenhower, who was given the overall Allied command in Europe as he was a masterful politician, was wary about Patton's killing of P.O.W.s as such a practice could be seen as antithetical to a democracy based on the rule of law.

The movie Patton also fails to mention one of the most controversial incidents in Patton's military career, when he diverted troops to liberate a German P.O.W. camp housing his son-in-law. As recounted in the book Raid: The Untold Story of Patton's Secret Mission, Patton sent a mobile force of about 50 vehicles and approximately 300 men to liberate the camp, which was approximately 100 kilometers (60 miles) behind enemy lines. With no air support and no additional ground support, the task force liberated 300 American officers, including General Patton's son-in-law, Captain John Waters, and 1,200 enlisted men.

This semi-suicide mission was not authorized by Patton's chain-of-command and is seen by some contemporary historians as indicating that Patton was emotionally unstable, particularly when considered in light of his two slapping incidents and his anti-Semitism.

Ike, who had know Patton since 1918 and considered him a friend, respected his military genius and leadership abilities but was wary about his inability to control his emotions. Cautiously, Ike had appointed Major General Lloyd Fredendall to command the army in North Africa instead of Patton in 1942, then had to replace Fredendall with Patton when Fredendall proved inad-equate. At the time of giving him the appointment, Ike cau-tioned Patton about avoiding "personal recklessness", and he counted on the presence of Omar N. Bradley to be a calming influence on the mercurial general. Conscious of why Bradley was assigned to him, Patton insisted that Bradley -- who had earlier commanded his own corps -- be assigned as Deputy Corps Commander. Bradley essentially was there to ensure that Patton didn't say or do anything untoward, and in tandem, they proved a great success.

By the second half of 1944, Bradley was in command of the First Army, the great force that invaded France on D-Day. Patton, free of Bradley's calming influence, was on his own as head of Third Army when he launched his foolhardy raid. The raid was uncalled for as Waters and the other prisoners were not in any danger; it likely was influenced by paranoia on Patton's part rooted in his own orders to his troops to kill German prisoners.

In an interesting sidelight, when Patton's Third Army overran its supply lines, Eisenhower (who as a military commander and as a man, allegedly disliked African Americans, though he backed up the U.S. Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Educa- tion desegregation decision with military susasion in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957) decided to send the Red Ball Express in to supply Patton's tank army, a situation portrayed in the 1952 film “Red Ball Express“. The Red Ball Express, a transportation outfit manned by African Americans (though their officers were Caucasians), became famous during the war for braving the odds to supply Patton.

In 1979, director Budd Boetticher, at a symposium at UCLA, revealed that the U.S. Department of Defense pressured Universal to alter the film's portrayal of race relations and to emphasize an upbeat, positive spirit. Commenting on the
studio's whitewashing of history, Boetticher said, "The army wouldn't let us tell the truth about the black troops because the government figured they were expendable. Our government didn't want to admit they were kamikaze pilots. They figured if one out of ten trucks got through, they'd save Patton and his tanks."

*This was a characterization that did not extend to George C. Marshall, whom he revered, the former Army Chief of Staff & F.D.R.'s military right-hand-man whom said that American soldiers should be apolitical to the point of not being allowed to vote. This sentiment of Marshall's, who served Truman as Secretary of State & Defense, was in line with those of our Founding Fathers, who eschewed a standing army as it would inevitably dabble in politics. Truman broke with Eisenhower, whose career was made by Marshall from the top and Patton from the bottom, when Ike -- sharing a stage with Joe McCarthy -- did not say anything when McCarthy tarred Marshall as a fellow-traveler of the communists. To Truman, Ike's disloyalty was unconscionable, but as he told Merle Miller in Plain Speaking, generals generally were "stupid sons of bitches".

Illustration: Lieutenant General George S. Patton and his pit bull, Willie, circa 1944. Stars & Stripes cartoonist Bill Maudlin, called on the carpet by the general for creating cartoons extolling "gold bricking", said that General and dog had the exact same eyes and expression.