Why Walruses?

Funny you should ask. Although your Bloguero is officially on hiatus, he has been posting walrus photos and videos on Facebook. And he will continue until the election has been decided.

Why is that? inquiring minds might ask. It might just be that your Bloguero is fascinated by Walruses, and particular the baby walrus in New York City. But that's not all there is to it. No, it's not.

Your Bloguero offers The Walrus And The Carpenter as a partial, but probably too metaphorical explanation. Surely you remember Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass." No problem if you can't summon up the details. This is, after all, the Internet and Wiki always refreshes your memory (or creates a new one for you):

The Walrus and the Carpenter are the eponymous characters in the poem, which is recited by Tweedledum and Tweedledee to Alice. Walking upon a beach one night when both sun and moon are visible, the Walrus and Carpenter come upon an offshore bed of oysters, four of whom they invite to join them. To the disapproval of the eldest oyster, many more follow them. After walking along the beach (a point is made of the fact that the oysters are all neatly shod despite having no feet), the two main characters are revealed to be predatory and eat all of the oysters. After hearing the poem, the good-natured Alice attempts to determine which of the two leading characters might be the more sympathetic, but is thwarted by the twins' further interpretation.

Ralph Nader, of course, seized on tweedledum/dee in 2009, saying,

"Our two parties are basically one corporate party wearing two heads and different makeup," Nader said. "There is a difference between Tweedledum and Tweedledee, but not that much."

"

Oh was he ever right about that. Yet, there are important differences between the candidates on a whole host of issues. Your Bloguero accepts the received wisdom that returning the White House to those who destroyed the economy and created Iraq would be a mistake. At the same time, your Bloguero has no illusions about how very far to the right the Obama White House has migrated. And your Bloguero is saddened, when he's not angered by that. Where, he asks, is the single payer? The closing of Gitmo? The repeal of NDAA? On and on your Bloguero goes. It is ok to tune him out before he starts ranting about this.

In 2012's election race, your Bloguero feels he should draw your attention to and quote this part of the poem:

"I like the Walrus best," said Alice, "because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters."

"He ate more than the Carpenter, though," said Tweedledee. "You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise."

"That was mean!" Alice said indignantly. "Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus."

"But he ate as many as he could get," said Tweedledum.

This was a puzzler. After a pause, Alice began, "Well! They were both very unpleasant characters—"

Both very unpleasant characters. Indeed.

This is not to say that your Bloguero will not vote. He will. Definitely. He always does. He always votes against the callous, the out of touch, the plutocrat, the oligarch, the racist, the moralist, the sentamentalist. Whatever you've got. But he has few, if any illusions that this voting against someone for more than 10 elections leads to good governance. It doesn't. Where, your Bloguero wants to know, is the candidate who embodies your Bloguero's idealistic views? Will there ever be one for him to vote for?

Big Bird And The Safety Net

Apparently, it's nothing personal at all. Willard actually likes Big Bird, or so he says, but ut oh, the aging Avian Television Star learned he might be out of a job during last night's boring, ill managed, stupefying debate. That's not how pink slips are traditionally delivered to aging employees. You might even expect better form from a guy who likes to fire people. And has experience at it. Lots of experience. But anyway, so it is, in a country without enough decent jobs and towering, long term, probably structural unemployment, that BB might soon be out of a job, allegedly to create other jobs. Jobs for others. Talk about redistribution. BB is just another aging teacher about to be excessed.

Let's face it. Other than the job he now holds, BB is probably not employable. It's unlikely he can get another job in TV. And that means, after his unemployment benefits run out, as they surely will, he'll be forced to move in with Oscar the Grouch, who apparently has landed in what passes for the safety net in this neighborhood, a garbage can.

No wonder OTG is grouchy. That's not much of a safety net he's got there in the first place. And to learn in such a strange way that BB, his colleague, was going, eventually, to have to share it with him is quite disturbing. Quite something to make one grouchy. OTG thought he'd hear in this debate about the domestic issues: energy, the environment, guns, LGBTQ rights, immigration, reproductive health, the environment, campaign finance, the drug war, and voting rights. But no. None of that, thanks in part to Jim Lehrer's idiotic questioning ("What are the differences between you?") and his complete loss of control. No. Instead OTG got to hear about Simpson-Bowles, whatever that might be, and the repeated bogus claims about $716 billion being taken from Medicare and that his colleague was going to try to move into his garbage can.

And to top it all off, Bert and Ernie were on the phone this morning to find out what the candidates thought about their civil rights.

Tax Returns? Ah, No.

A 2005 1040 form, just like the one Rmoney filed but won't let you see
Willard Rmoney, presumptive Republican presidential nominee, apparently asked vice presidential hopefuls to give him "several years" of their income tax returns so he could vet them. He didn't pick Tim Pawlenty, who told ABC he had turned over "several years" to Rmoney. And didn't Pawlenty look uncomfortable making that revelation? Rmoney did pick Paul Ryan. Who also turned over "several years" of tax returns to Rmoney. "Several" means "more than two but fewer than many in number".

Bring on today's Sunday talking heads on the TeeVee. Day 1 after the Ryan announcement. Here's Sam Stein writing about it at Huffle Puffle:

Presumptive vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan said on Sunday that while he turned over "several years" of tax returns to the Romney campaign during his vetting process, he would only make two years of tax returns public for voters.

The Wisconsin Republican, appearing alongside Romney on "60 Minutes" for their first joint media interview, seemed poised and assured throughout the 15-minute segment. When pressed with a question about tax returns -- a topic that has dogged Romney -- Ryan had a ready answer.

"It was a very exhaustive vetting process," he told CBS's Bob Schiefer. "It is a confidential vetting process. So there were several years. But I'm going to release the same amount of years that Governor Romney has. But I got to tell you Bob -- two, I'm going to be releasing two, which is what he's releasing -– what I hear from people around this country, they are not asking, 'Where are the tax returns,' they are asking where the jobs are? Where is the economic growth?"

Romney, in fact, has not yet released two years of tax returns. He released his 2010 return (with some elements missing) and an estimate for 2011. The campaign has said that a full 2011 return will be made public before the election.

Yo. Paulie. If you were listening to me, you would have heard people asking "Where are the tax returns?" You would have heard that if you listened to the news on a regular basis. You would have heard it from other Republicans. You know, Republicans like Ed Rollins, William Kristol, George Will, and Haley Barbour to name a few. You would have heard it everywhere. Know why? Because it is the current stink hanging around Rmoney. Don't tell me you can't smell it.

The Short: Team Rmoney once again refuses to turn over more than two sets of tax returns to the general public even though Team Rmoney itself wanted to see more than two years of tax returns before choosing its own running mate. Is that weirdly inconsistent? Does it suggest that something really big is being hidden by Rmoney? Is what Harry Reid said about not paying any taxes for a decade really so after all?

And so, once again, the Rmoney campaign blunders. Despite their hope that the Veep announcement would push the persistent tax return issue off of the front page and put some other issue up in neon until the Triumph in Tampa, Team Rmoney got only about 24 hours of relief. And then, ut oh, it's back with a vengeance. And it still reeks. And it still hangs in the air. It's the gift that keeps on giving.

There are fewer than 88 days left until the election. In that Olympic contest to decide which presidential campaign in the past half century ran the worst campaign, Team Rmoney seems to be going for the gold, even edging out Dukakis 1988, the previous world champion, who refused to release his medical and/or mental health records.