Bizarro Obama - San Francisco Democrat on Astini News
Electoral politics is a game of contrasting values and ideas. It requires that a candidate present a compelling argument explaining why they're the best person for the job. But what's a person to do if they're up against a superior opponent, one who bests them in nearly every category? The answer is simple and obvious, provided you can get away with it — just run against somebody else.
That is exactly the tack that Mitt Romney has taken against President Obama. Mr. Romney, who has the personality of a pet rock and has been "severely" on both sides of every issue, finds himself facing a smart, articulate, and charismatic leader with a pretty damn good record, especially when given due credit for circumstance. Couple the obvious nature of a values versus return-on-value / man versus robot matchup, with the impact of Romney's well-deserved mantle as Champion of the One-percent, and you've got a situation that screams for creative remedy.
So, instead of running against President Obama, the Romney campaign is running from him. According to Romney, the person he's up against is an anti-business, anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs socialist who's bent on penalizing success, apologizing for the US, and raising taxes on working Americans. Romney's opponent doesn't care about the deficit or debt, is weak on using military force and responsible for higher gas prices. He's made the economy worse, "stood watch over the greatest job loss in modern American history," and believes thatAmerica's greatness is a thing of the past.
Who is this person Mitt Romney's campaigning against? It's obviously not President Obama. No, the opponent who Romney has chosen to mount an attack against is a fictitious character; he's a Bizarro World version of President Obama — he's BizarrObama.
As it was in Dell comic's Bizarro World of Htrae (Earth spelled backward), Romney's fictitious opponent is categorically the opposite of the actual President Obama in every way. Where the President has promoted investment, and actually signed 18 tax cuts for small business, BizarrObama is anti-investment and anti-business. Where President Obama has approved fewer new regulations than President Bush and proposed a sweeping jobs plan, the American Jobs Act, his Bizarro World counterpart "hasn't put forth a plan to get us working again" and is anti-growth and anti-jobs.
Willard M. Romney has repeatedly stated that President Obama has "made [the economy] worse." But again, he must be referring to BizarrObama, because things have improved considerably under the real President. The economy was in freefall when President Obama took office; we were hemorrhaging over 700,000 jobs per month in January 2009, but his efforts quickly slowed the bleeding and led to the past 27 months of private sector job growth. On the investment side, somehow the Dow that fell to just 6,626 before the President finished moving into the White House has climbed to 12,649 today. And in the wake of the largest economic disaster since the Great Depression, by late 2010, corporations were recording record profits and sitting on $2 trillion in cash. But Romney says this is "worse?" Could it be that the Mittster is referring to the Bizarro-economy — where worse actually means better and better is worse?
Possibly the most glaring evidence of Romney's fixation with the fictitious world of Htrae are his statements about the President and the federal debt. According to Willard, the debt "will keep growing under this president" and will be "passed on to young people." He's likened Obama's economic policy to a prairie fire, a "debt and spending inferno." Yet since the 2009 budget, which was developed and signed by George W. Bush, federal spending has increased very little. It actually went down by 1.7% in 2010, up about 4% in 2011, and is expected to rise less than 1% this year. And that spending includes the much maligned Stimulus, which is credited by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) for adding as much as 4.5% to the GDP and increasing employment by 3.3 million jobs.
All told, while the numbers are historically large, the debt has actually grown at a much slower rate under President Obama than under either George W. Bush or Republican hero, Ronald Reagan. The true "debt and spending inferno" actually occurred under Reagan, who was responsible for nearly tripling the debt, and the prairie fire that more than doubled it again blazed under GW's tight fiscal control. If this GOP leadership is to define the standard, then the less than 50% increase under Obama is more a "simmer" than the type of out-of-control burn characterized by the Romnibot. Of course, in the world of Willard, where Bizarro bonds are "guaranteed to loose money for you," I suppose this might all make sense.
But here on planet Earth, where the real President Obama has never "apologized for America," has been exceedingly strong on national defense (often to the dismay of much of his base), and no president has control over gas prices, even when domestic drilling increases under their watch, as it has with Obama — slowing the increase in debt is a good thing. And it certainly does not square with Romney's claim that "Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelerated at a pace without precedent in recent history."
The truth be told, here, where the planet is blue, not the sun, we don't hate beauty, better is better, and when a presidential administration cuts income taxes for 95% of working families and cuts payroll taxes for all working Americans — in contrast with Romney claims, they did "lower taxes for the middle class." And when that same administration proposes a rule to end the free ride where the richest few pay tax rates far below that of the middle class, the vast majority are in support, and only Willard and those like him who save Mittloads of cash under the rigged system are against it.
Indeed, every time Mitt Romney opens his mouth, it's virtually certain that some distorted contrary version of reality will escape his lips. It's almost as if he believes the 99% to actually be the 1% and vice-versa. Fortunately, there may be a simple explanation for Romney's confusion. Be it in his defense of Citizens United, his calm assertion that "corporations are people, my friend," or his mockery of the President's call to protect firemen, police and teachers, Mitt Romney always appears to think that the American people are with him. The question is — which American people . . . those here on Earth, or those on a cube-shaped planet orbiting a blue sun?
In case anyone might think this is all conjecture, perhaps a little something straight from the horse's mouth will help: while at a campaign event in Virginiain May, Romney was asked what he would do about the economy. His response is quite revealing: "What I would do? People ask me, 'What would you do to get the economy going?' and I say, 'Well look at what the president's done and do the opposite." Now, the core tenet of the Bizarro Code being "Us do opposite of all Earthly things," is alarming enough, but when you consider that the opposite of what President Obama has done is another GOP directed financial crisis, and you understand that on Htrae it's a "big crime to make anything perfect" . . . well, draw your own conclusions.
Perhaps this is all just a wild attempt to explain the strange behavior of Willard M. Romney. But most people would agree it's a bit odd to "like being able to fire people," more than a little rude to criticize cookies offered by a gracious host, downright bizarre to strap a dog to the roof of a car, and a multimillionaire quipping that he too is "unemployed" is funny as a rubber crutch. With Romney, the issues are much deeper than those of the average selfish Mitthead.
If not some weird connection with a fictitious world, what is it that explains the Willard? Why does his laugh seem so canned, his smile seem so plastic? How can anybody be so stiff, so robotic? What is it that makes you want to smack the Mitt out of Romney? So little of what the man says having any basis in reality, an impartial observer who's unwilling to accept the Bizarro is forced into a more mundane conclusion — that Romney is just another out-of-touch, psychopathic rich guy who happens to also be a pathological liar.
