Houston, we have a VP: Portman

Jackie Belfast usually stays out of the prognostication game and doesn’t think vice presidential candidates are worth the warm bucket of spit they’ll be drinking for four years if they are nominated and win election. And right now, the talk is all about prospective VP candidates. Even so, with all the hubbub over the possibilities for a #2 on Thurston Howell Romney III’s ticket, Jackie feels he must weigh in. Especially because it is now fairly obvious whom that vice presidential candidate will be.

Yes, Rob Portman. To understand why, you probably have to be from Houston, in which case you would understand a complicated history involving dozens if not hundreds of connections that would seem insignificant, otherwise. But bear with me, because I’m informed by Jackie, who understands the connections like no one else in the world.

You have probably never heard the name Chase Untermeyer. It that’s the case, it’s your loss; he’s a distinguished public servant who went to high school in Houston, graduated from Harvard, was a state representative from Houston and served in a series of increasing important positions in the Reagan and Bush I presidencies (the most apropos to the current situation being Director of Presidential Personnel for Bush I). Thereafter, he was ambassador to Quatar under Bush II. Jackie says he’s a good, smart, decent guy, and I believe him.

Untermeyer just wrote a very public spirited op-ed for the Houston Chronicle that argues “the job posting for a modern vice president should read, `Hill experience required.'”  The column makes a compelling case that the vice president’s primary job is “lobbyist in chief” of Congress and is dismissive of potential vice presidential candidates who do not have experience on the Hill. Untermeyer also writes that a Romney VP needs “a running mate with whom he will feel proud and comfortable to serve in the White House — and, yes, one who will help him get there in the first place.” Look at Untermeyer’s op-ed and the various names raised as potential Romney III VP’s, and you’ll see that only one fits Untermeyer’s bill: Rob Portman, senator and former congressman from Ohio, the Midwestern swing state that Romney absolutely must have to have any reasonable path to the presidency.

Now, Jackie and I can just hear you muttering under your breath, “So a mid-level functionary gave an unspecific suggestion in a third-rate newspaper that Portman might be a good pick. So what?” But that muttering just proves how little you know of Houston, and George H.W. Bush. Untermeyer is an embodiment of the Houston-DC connection. He is the master of local, state and national Republican political appointment-making. And the Houston Chronicle is the perfect media placement for his views. It’s important in Houston and some conservative circles, but not of enough national note to seem overbearing to the Romney campaign. If there’s anyone who knows Houston and its media hand signals, it is Jackie Belfast., and unless Jackie’s public tea leaf-reading capabilities have failed him, this op-ed is one of two things: The announcement that Portman is the pick, or a warning to Romney III that other picks are unacceptable to Bush I.

And who cares what Bush I thinks? Well,  a certain upper-crust presidential candidate may care a lot. Back in March, when the Republican nomination was by no means sewed up, Bush I endorsed Romney III in this way:

“I do think it’s time for the party to get behind Gov. Romney. And she was reminding me Kenny Rogers sang, ‘It’s time when to hold ‘em and time when to fold ‘em,’” Bush said, loosely quoting a lyric from the famous song, “The Gambler.”  “Well I think it’s time for people to all get behind this good man. And, some of ‘em waged a very good fight — I say that about some of his opponents. But we’re so convinced and we’ve known Mitt for a very long time, that he’s the man to do this job and get on and win the presidency.”

Bush had already expressed support for Romney last December, telling the Houston Chronicle at the time that the former Massachusetts governor was “the best choice.”

“Barbara and I are very proud to fully and enthusiastically endorse and support our old friend Mitt Romney,” the former president said, flanked by Romney and former First Lady Barbara Bush. “He’s a good man, he’ll make a great president.”

A lot of things happen in a political campaign, and as Jackie always says, nothing is a sure thing til the fat lady takes off her girdle. But Portman is at least 90 percent a VP choice, or Jackie Belfast isn’t a political golden boy.

One man’s horse’s ass is another man’s horse of a different caste

The women in Jackie Belfast’s life are always complaining that all he ever talks about is politics and vermin and mixtures of the two. Even some readers of this world-famous publication have muttered about a purported lack of pop culture and Lady Gaga pictures and the like. Being an autodidact of the world, Jackie is not so much hurt as mystified by these unwarranted claims. Among his many and varied interests, Jackie would note, is a life-long attraction to the delightful sport of dressage and, particularly, the wonderful, open gentlefolks who keep the sordid world of working stiffs away from the horses and people who count. This heartwarming tale, “Ann Romney’s Horse Hangs Out With Assholes,” from Deadspin, one of Jackie’s favorite upper-crust reads, explains everything you ever need to know about the splendid supporters and practitioners of dressage. (A special note to art lovers: The illustration for the article, by renowned equine watercolorist Tommy Craggs, is by itself worth the price of admission to Deadspin.)

And just in case that’s not enough to illustrate the enormous range of Jackie’s interests, he also offers you Lady Gaga, being swarmed by small naked men who, it certainly seems, wouldn’t be as useful to her as Jackie might, if he were inclined toward usefulness.

Exclusive: Belfast Institution finds nothing ever changes in politics

Jackie’s been noticing that a lot of what happens in the intersection of news, politics and public policy is driven directly by crap that shows up on think tank websites. You wouldn’t think that “Addressing the Nation’s Fiscal Crisis: A conversation with Senator Patty Murray (D-Wash)” would be so powerful. But Powerpoint presentations attended by 11 bored people happen, facts are facts, and think tanks are the place to find them.

As you know Jackie’s in jail, i.e. in the tank, and he certainly has a lot of time to think. And so he thought it was time to found the Belfast Institution for the Betterment of Society through Subversion, a think tank for our times, and all others. He expects to see this breaking news reported everywhere, with proper attribution.

NEWS RELEASE

For immediate release

Belfast Institution finds that what election winners did always works

HOUSTON — Researchers at the Jackie Belfast Institution for the Betterment of Society through Satire have found that no matter what it was, whatever the winners of some earlier election claimed as their “silver bullet” will always work, now. A survey of countless Americans who might or might not vote but have no cell phones found that because “it’s the economy, stupid,” was the strategy that elected Bill Clinton, even though the economy had actually emerged from recession long before the 1992 election, “it’s the economy, stupid non-rich minions I look down upon smilingly” will be a certain winning formula for Thurston Howell Romney III in 2012. A survey of the same unengaged, cell phoneless Americans found that because the swift-boating of John Kerry worked in 2004, even though most voters did not care about Sen. Kerry’s war service one way or the other, the Bain-boating of Romney III will make all the difference in November 2012. The results of these surveys are significant at the p < .05 level, when the Chi Square value approaches infinity and the New York Times, Ezra Klein, Ari Fleischer and Paul Begala agree. The researchers offer the caveat that if Matt Drudge links to the situation, variables are cubed and results become indisputable, even when false.

The Belfast Institution study indicates that the 2012 election will be very, very close, determined by a small number of Midwestern swing states in which the presidential candidates drink beer with ordinary voters, and it will be exactly like previous presidential elections, in every detail (unless Barack Obama wins the Electoral College near-landslide that all polling has suggested for months). The apparently major differences between 2012 and earlier presidential races — particularly the massive and untracked campaign spending enabled by the Citizens United decision, the explosion of social media, and enormous changes in the demographic makeup of the country — will be inconsequential to the result of the presidential election, because those differences are in conflict with what we know to be true, based on histories written by winners who have never told a lie by accident.

Sing along with Thurston Howell Romney III

Jackie Belfast did not have sexual relations with this video,and has not had a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of intercourse with the Obama for President campaign. No matter what the Republicans say.

Yes, even though he’s still sitting in jail, waiting for your help in raising bail, Jackie is smiling now.

News update: Supreme Court retroactively reverses Bush v. Gore. Details at 11. Yesterday.

There are unfortunate moments in the annals of political gaffery, and then there are seminal, sputter-inducing, Top 10 gaffes:  Gerald Ford certain — certain — that the Soviet Union had never dominated Eastern Europe; Teddy Kennedy utterly unable to explain why — why, why, why? — he wanted to be president; Dan Quayle stretching his neck out for Lloyd Bentsen’s guillotine by likening himself to JFK. It’s unclear whether Ed Gillspie’s claim  — that the presidential candidate he spins for, Thurston Howell Romney III, retroactively retired from Bain Capital, thereby rendering his paid leadership of the company moot for three years — will make the all-time crazy presidential campaign assertions list. The competition for this honor is fierce, and if you wish to know how fierce, just remember two words: Herman Cain.

But I’m pretty sure Gillespie’s has earned a place on the all-time list of crazy presidential campaign assertions made on purpose. Yes, Gillespie said Romney retroactively retired on national TV — more than once, so the statement had to have been planned. The Romney III campaign had to have thought retroactive retirement was a winning formula, a sure-fire explanation that would soothe the minds of doubting and voting Thomases. Although it has not exactly ended the controversy over Bain Capital, Jackie welcomes the concept and its potential for improving public life. In fact, Jackie recommends that almost everyone engage in retroactive cancellation. And because this is the Internet, where the only thing better than a list is a list of lists, Jackie offers his top five retroactive political acts to be cancelled immediately, with the positive societal results to flow therefrom :

1) John Edwards cancels Rielle Hunter and is now Attorney General of the United States.

2) Eliot Spitzer cancels  Ashley Dupre and is now President of the United States.

3) John McCain cancels Sarah Palin and is now a defeated presidential candidate with some sense of honor attached to his name.

4) Bill Clinton cancels that whole cigar-in-the-vagina thing, but President Gore subsequently becomes embroiled in a scandal that has something to do with Swedish masseusses and couch-leaping.

5) Mitt Romney cancels strapping a dog carrier to the roof of his car, and the New York Times’ Gail Collins is put out of a job.

Will Obamacare authorize a spine transplant for Eric Holder?

As Thurston Howell Romney III twists and writhes entertainingly at the end of a noose of his own creation — bellowing that he was, indeed, the CEO, chairman of the board and owner of Bain Capital, but that doesn’t mean he had anything to do with running it while it was engaged in the Satanic rituals of corporate bloodsucking that are the raison d’etre of private equity firms — Jackie Belfast is contemplative, even conflicted. He understands that Democrats couldn’t have prayed for an opponent more allied with — nay, representative of — the vulture-lamprey hybrid parasite that infests the collective American pocketbook and psyche under the general notion of “Wall Street.” From offshored jobs to offshore  bank accounts, T.H. Romney III is (or at least can be effectively made out to be) the living exemplar of the faux-capitalist paper-hangers who have been draining the life from the productive, genuinely capitalist part of the US economy since the days of Ronald Reagan, our great fiscal eviscerator. The Romney III candidacy is the political gift of all political gifts to an Obama reelection effort that needs all the presents anyone is willing to bestow.

Which is exactly why Jackie is contemplative, even conflicted. He is always all in favor of taking political advantage of maximal exaggeration that benefits Democrats or undermines Republicans and their supporting cast of jackals — if the exaggeration has a purpose. The purpose is supposed to be that our guy is going to be better than their guy in regard to the subject of gross exaggeration. I suppose one could take the position that a reelected President Obama would be more likely to stand up to Wall Street and stand with the average American on financial matters than a President Thurston Howell Romney III, but that would be taking a lot on faith, given the record of the Obama administration, which may well by now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. (I’ll have a minion check the SEC records and get back to you if the administration isn’t wholly owned by Goldman.)

The fact is that the Obama administration and its appointees have shoveled not hundreds of billions but trillions of dollars into Wall Street coffers and done remarkably little for the middle-class voters it claims to fight for every day. Mortgage relief has been largely a joke; the programs put in place were generally idiotic in conception, and in the few cases when they might actually help homeowners, the administration let banks take over and gut the programs. Millions of homeowners could have been saved through principal reductions on underwater mortgages with, literally, a stroke of the administration’s pen. The money was in place, in state and federal programs. The cost would have been minimal, and certainly a small fraction of the bailout given to banks. But, frankly, the Obama adminstration cared more about the bankers who didn’t want principal reduction than it did about homeowners who, in many cases, have now had their life savings wiped out and credit ruined — even though it would have been better for the country and, even, the banks, to implement the mass principal reduction program that would have already ended the housing crisis.

But it’s not just installing Goldman Sachs as a shadow government, showering Wall Street with trillions of dollars and largely ignoring ordinary people’s financial woes since the crash of ’08. On top of all that, perhaps the most powerful Cabinet official in the Obama administration, Eric Holder, is also the most spineless attorney general of recent memory, doing very, very little to hold the people responsible for the ’08 crash accountable. He’s also done very little to educate ordinary Americans about how they’ve been screwed over, and even less to entertain them with showy public prosecutions of the bankers who lied the United States into the terrible financial state it now finds itself. And as Jackie always says, “There can be no greater calling than the provision of public entertainment in the pursuit of justice.”

So Jackie thinks it’s fine for the president’s talented campaign hatchetmen and -women to go around suggesting the Thurston Howell Romney III may have committed a felony in regard to his comments about his role or role-lessness when Bain Capital devoured some US companies and shipped American jobs overseas. He’d love to see Thurston III behind bars, with “Lovey” standing outside, crying, even if just for a day.

But Jackie also wants target letters to go out and high-powered bankers to tremble in their towers. The average American thinks Libor is the next erectile dysfunction drug. The US Department of Justice could make all of Wall Street quail and hide under its desks just by whispering that it would investigate — actually, seriously investigate — the Libor scandal. Eric Holder needs to read the following words, excerpted from Charles Ferguson’s book Inside Job and published here by the Guardian, and then get president Obama to authorize the spine transplant that would finally allow the godfathers of Wall Street to be brought entertainingly and repeatedly to account:

It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.

And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way. …

The Obama government has rationalised its failure to prosecute anyone (literally, anyone at all) for bubble-related crimes by saying that while much of Wall Street’s behaviour was unwise or unethical, it wasn’t illegal. With apologies for my vulgarity, this is complete horseshit.

When the government is really serious about something – preventing another 9/11, or pursuing major organised crime figures – it has many tools at its disposal and often uses them. There are wiretaps and electronic eavesdropping. There are undercover agents who pretend to be criminals in order to entrap their targets. There are National Security Letters, an aggressive form of administrative subpoena that allows US authorities to secretly obtain almost any electronic record – complete with a gag order making it illegal for the target of the subpoena to tell anyone about it. There are special prosecutors, task forces and grand juries. When Patty Hearst was kidnapped in 1974, the FBI assigned hundreds of agents to the case.

In organised crime investigations, the FBI and government prosecutors often start at the bottom in order to get to the top. They use the well-established technique of nailing lower-level people and then offering them a deal if they inform on and/or testify about their superiors – whereupon the FBI nails their superiors, and does the same thing to them, until climbing to the top of the tree. There is also the technique of nailing people for what can be proven against them, even if it’s not the main offence. Al Capone was never convicted of bootlegging, large-scale corruption or murder; he was convicted of tax evasion.

A reasonable list of prosecutable crimes committed during the bubble, the crisis, and the aftermath period by financial services firms includes: securities fraud, accounting fraud, honest services violations, bribery, perjury and making false statements to US government investigators, Sarbanes-Oxley violations (false accounting), Rico (Racketeer Influenced and Criminal Organisations Act) offences, federal aid disclosure regulations offences and personal conduct offences (drug use, tax evasion etc). …

As time passes, criminal prosecution of bubble-era frauds will become even more difficult, even impossible, because the statute of limitations for many of these crimes is short – three to five years. So an immense opportunity for both justice and public education will soon be lost. In some circumstances, cases can be opened or reopened after the statute of limitations has expired, if new evidence appears; but finding new evidence will grow more difficult with time as well. And there is no sign whatsoever that the Obama administration is interested.

Teaching America the names of all seven dwarves will take some time

Jackie Belfast firmly believes that knowledge of current events is essential to a thriving democracy and therefore offers this first in a series of Political Golden Boy polls aimed at increasing attention to the the great men and pressing issues of our time.

Please support this selfless effort to improve public discourse by CLICKING ON THESE WORDS and buying The Return of Jackie Belfast, the best book in this or any other Fairy Tale world.

At the Hamptons with Thurston Howell Romney III

Jackie Belfast understands well the concept of getting out of the way of Republicans and other jackals when they are sprinting toward a cliff or otherwise engaged in political suicide.

In that spirit, he directs you, with no editorial comment whatsoever, to this wonderful piece in the esteemed and rigorously nonpartisan National Journal, which includes this wonderful plutocratic quote, among many similar Marie Antoinette musings tossed off by the upper-crustians attending three recent Mitt Romney fundraisers in the Hamptons:

A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney. “Is there a VIP entrance? We are VIP” ….

A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, long a favorite of the Hamptons’ well-off and well-known, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold Mercedes, as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

Ms. Simmons paused to highlight what she said was her husband’s generous spirit. “Tell them who’s on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!”

Over Mr. Conklin’s objections, Ms. Simmons disclosed that a major executive from Miramax was on Mr. Conklin’s 75-foot yacht, because, she said, there were no rooms left at the hotel.

The National Journal actually cribbed the quotes from LA Times and NY Times coverage, which you can find by clicking on those mysteriously underlined and highlighted words a half sentence back. Jackie Belfast is nothing if not scrupulous about his attributions to the media entities that will eventually carry his message to the world, returning him to the genuine political golden boy status that is his birthright.

But Jack can’t get golden again until he gets out of jail in Houston, and he can’t get out of jail til he makes bail, and he can’t make bail until you click on THESE MAGIC WORDS and buy The Return of Jackie Belfast, the best book you haven’t read. Yet.

Rick Perry for vice president. Hair we can believe in.

Jackie Belfast has never been a full disciple of the holy trinity of Texas progressive political humor — Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower and Ann Richards — mostly because of what he calls the twang-for-the-masses factor. They were all sharp as brand-new razor blades, and Jackie never thought they needed the good-old-boy syntactic crutches they hobbled around on as they built national followings. The multiple y’alls were simply unnecessary, to his way of thinking. Just the same, he wishes one of them still walked this mortal coil, so as to deal satirically and properly with the seething wild-eyed public mess who is the governor of Texas (and still grasping, yearning, frothing presidential hopeful), Rick Perry.

Oh wait. What’s that you say? Hightower’s not… Really? You’re sure?

No, of course Jim Hightower’s not dead yet, and in fact he’s still writing and speaking some pretty good and vitriolic stuff, as you can see if you poke around here. I’m just taking his name in comedic vain for a moment or two so the Google alert I just know he’s set on himself pulls up this post and reminds him: “Jim, you haven’t bought and read The Return of Jackie Belfast yet, and Jackie’s still in jail. And are those the two sins you really want to be remembered for?”

Anyway, back to Rick Perry, who has almost outdone himself in terms of speaking in contentless right wing-o-verse cliches in the Fox News clip you can watch at the top of this post. If I were Molly, or  Ann, or Jim, I could point out, in deft jabs of a verbal stiletto, that Perry’s statement — “Every Texan has health care in this state” — is absolutely true, if having health care means that when you get sick, you get to go to the crappiest inner-city emergency room in existence, to wait around with the other people who don’t have insurance until either an exhausted med student finally gets to you, or you die. Flip a coin. But I am none of those talented people and so will simply let you watch this video and goggle at the blithe, heartless, self-satisfied and supremely confident  and well-coiffed ignorance.

Jackie, on the other hand, has an idea. It’s called Rick Perry for Vice President. Mitt Romney, Jackie points out, is, in Republican wing-o-verse terms, weak on health care and immigration. Where Romney stumbles and vacillates, Perry is certain: Yes to boots on the border, no to expanded health care for people who might die without it. Perry for vice president. He’s hair we can believe in.

Psst, Obama’s a Marxist; pass it on to the nearest gullible Republican tool

If there is any endeavor in which Jackie Belfast is expert, it is the fine art of driving Republicans, corporate Democrats and other thin-skinned members of the controlling class into frothing rages that do not abate over time. The methods for creating such lasting and heartfelt dudgeon are not simple, either to put in practice or to explain; I doubt Jackie could teach them, except by example. Inspiring nearly eternal hatred is a knack, and even though he’s in jail on bullshit official misconduct charges ginned up by grudge-holding Republicans, Jackie is trying to keep the knack exercised. He says the current rise of Marxism around the world is just the handle by which the right wing-o-verse might be wound up and launched into an idiotically misguided, Tasmanian devil fury that would be very entertaining to watch as it is proven, very publicly, to be absolutely idiotic and misguided. Again. At least, Jackie wants me (and therefore you) to consider that possibility.

Oh, you hadn’t heard of the Marxist resurgence? Neither had I til Jackie passed along this intriguing hyperlink to a story in the Guardian, an English newspaper that is reliable and reliably but not incendiarily left-leaning.  Like a lot of journalism, this story is focused on a trend that did not exist until a writer decided he had enough people saying something is a trend to sell it to a trend-happy editor. But this trend is nowhere near as thin as many; it’s established by feature writer/columnist Stuart Jeffries, who talks to Marxists old and young all about Europe to come up with some pretty solid and interesting evidence to support the existence of a new wave (or at least wavelet) of Communist aspiration:

Sales of Das Kapital, Marx’s masterpiece of political economy, have soared ever since 2008, as have those of The Communist Manifesto and the Grundrisse (or, to give it its English title, Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy). Their sales rose as British workers bailed out the banks to keep the degraded system going and the snouts of the rich firmly in their troughs while the rest of us struggle in debt, job insecurity or worse. There’s even a Chinese theatre director called He Nian who capitalised on Das Kapital’s renaissance to create an all-singing, all-dancing musical. And in perhaps the most lovely reversal of the luxuriantly bearded revolutionary theorist’s fortunes, Karl Marx was recently chosen from a list of 10 contenders to appear on a new issue of MasterCard by customers of German bank Sparkasse in Chemnitz.

The prospect of a Karl Marx MasterCard notwithstanding, I severely doubt this mini-Marxist resurgence in Europe will mean much this side of the pond, but Jackie disagrees, and with a vicious twinkle in his eye that I have learned never to discount. Jackie is absolutely certain sure that the right wing-o-verse is so obsessed with the allegedly anti-American otherness of President Obama that it is primed — just coiled in the starting blocks — and ready to sprint after anything that looks as if it backed up the notion that Obama and his programs are not just socialistic, but … Socialist. And, Jackie feels, the wing-o-verse might come near to orgasm if it thought it could prove the president has Communist leanings.

Now, no one thinks the crude Photoshop job you see here will fool even the most bug-eyed and demented of the Obama-haters into believing it is real and using it as easily disproved, Web-posted evidence of the president’s Marxist beliefs, thereby making themselves even more ridiculous than they already are. But there are more accomplished Photoshop artists and cleverer clue-planters than I spread out across the Internet. And if the Republican message machine can be fooled, by itself, into falsely and idiotically claiming that the president was going to spend July 4 at a celebrity-studded campaign fundraiser in France (a claim that was later walked back into this kind of insinuating post, with the pleasant headline “Tyrant Obama’s Campaign Will Spend 4th of July Fundraising in Socialist France”), it may well be fooled by “evidence” that President Obama is part of the neo-Communist resurgence around the globe. Perhaps he has been espied carrying a copy of Das Kapital or Mao’s Red Book? Who knows? Planting phony connections between Obama and Marx could have the discrediting power of Birtherism, Jackie thinks, only with pictures and a more direct payoff for Democrats who haven’t yet sold out to Wall Street. It could be … perfect.

Anyway, Jackie invites your participation in inspiring the right-wing-o-verse to new heights of obvious overreach and falsehood that will discredit it and entertain us. Help the GOP call the Obama a Marxist. It will brighten up the dog days of summer, and some never-ending Republican loathing might also be created, as an added bonus.

Of course, Jackie also invites your participation in raising the bail that will get him out of jail. Free Jackie by CLICKING ON THESE SIX MAGIC WORDS and buying the best book you’ve never read. Yet.