The Romney Standard of Truthfulness

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"I like being able to fire people." It was the kind of statement, like John McCain saying he didn't know exactly how many houses he owns, that can define a candidacy. It played right into the picture that Mitt Romney's opponents, both Democratic and Republican, had been trying to paint of him: that of a heartless "vulture capitalist" who made his fortune not by job creation, but by buying companies and laying off thousands.

It made Mitt Romney look like - well, like a guy you wouldn't want to have a beer with. In a political environment where a candidate ordering orange juice instead of coffee in a diner causes pundits to call his regular-guyness into question, it's hard to see it as anything but a major gaffe.

Romney's opponents seized on the quote. Rick Santorum's criticism was somewhat mild. "I am not too sure that is a very good message to a lot of folks out there," he said. Jon Huntsman was a little more pointed: "Gov. Romney enjoys firing people, I enjoy creating jobs."

Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, started sounding like they were about to join Occupy Wall Street.

"There is something inherently wrong when getting rich off failure and sticking it to someone else is how you do your business," Perry said. His campaign even made "I like being able to fire people" into a ringtone you could download from his website, no doubt bringing joy to the tiny black hearts of horrible bosses everywhere.

For his own part, Gingrich said, "I think there's a real difference between people who believe in the free market and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment."

A pro-Gingrich Super PAC released a video called "King of Bain: When Mitt Romney Came to Town." It called Romney a "predatory corporate raider" who "destroyed the American dream for thousands of workers and their families."

The ringtone has since been taken down, and Gingrich has backed off. "I think they're way overboard on saying he wants to fire people, he doesn't care," Gingrich said.

Whew. For a minute there, it was a little disorienting. I thought they were going to form a drum circle or something.

The Romney campaign complained that the comment had been taken out of context. Romney, they said, was talking about being able to ditch your insurance company when they're not serving you well.

They were, or course, right about the context. It was more than a little amusing, however, to hear that complaint coming from the campaign that had edited Barack Obama quoting something a Republican adviser had said about the McCain campaign ("If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose") and made it sound as if it was the president talking about his own campaign.

When confronted with that little bit of dishonesty, the Romney campaign was unapologetic. "He did say the words. That's his voice," Romney adviser Tom Rath insisted. So using the Romney campaign's own standard, the "fire people" quote was fair.

But we certainly don't want to use Mitt Romney's standard of what's fair, do we? That would be horrible. So let's look at what he actually meant.

"I don't want to live in a world where we have Obamacare telling us which insurance we have to have, which doctor we can have, which hospital we go to," Romney said at a press conference. "I believe in the setting as I described this morning where people are able to choose their own doctor, choose their own insurance company. If they don't like their insurance company or their provider, they can get rid of it."

Problem is, "Obamacare" doesn't restrict that. In fact, just the opposite. The law doesn't empower the government to pick your insurance company or your doctor. Nor does it keep you from "firing" either one. In fact, through the health care law's prohibition on denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and the setting up of insurance "exchanges" that allow people to compare different companies, the ACA actually will make changing insurance easier than the current system.

And here's the thing: Mitt Romney knows that. As I hope they will continue to remind the American public, the Obama administration based much of the act on the one championed by Romney himself in Massachusetts.

So while Mitt Romney may or may not actually enjoy firing people, his actual quote shows us one thing: We don't want to use the Romney standard of what's truthful.

Reflections On Iowa

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So Mitt Romney, whom the media still insist on calling the "presumptive Republican nominee," has won the Iowa caucuses by a whopping eight votes.

The surprise of the evening (which everyone saw coming days ago) is that the person whom Romney beat by that molecule-thin margin was not Newt Gingrich, but was instead the former senator from Pennsylvania, Rick "For God's Sake Don't Google My Last Name" Santorum.

Santorum had the advantage of timing. This is a contest where every other member of the Republican Klown Kollege has gotten to be the front-runner for at least two weeks, until people actually got to hear them and they became a late-night TV punchline. (Gingrich got to do it twice.)

Santorum's "surge" came right before the caucuses, when people were desperate for a conservative, any conservative, to vote for. It was closing time at the GOP Bar, everyone else had turned out to be a dog, and Iowa conservatives were willing to squint and keep the lights turned low when they took Rick Santorum home.

It remains to be seen, however, how he'll look to them the morning after, when people who aren't completely off the deep end find out about some of the things he actually believes, such as:

- Exceptions to abortion restrictions to protect the mother's health are "phony."

- Insurance companies should be able to deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions.

- We don't need food stamps or other programs to fight hunger, because there are fat people in America.

The smart money says no. Even if those positions don't turn off sane people, that dorky sweater vest might. I mean, really. Dude. A sweater vest? Seriously?

The news networks spent millions of dollars and hours upon hours of air time obsessively covering the Iowa caucuses, all the while telling us they don't really matter. The caucuses, they tell us, are nonbinding and have no effect on the delegate count. They are, in effect, a straw poll on steroids. The winner of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, they point out, was Mike Huckabee. The eventual nominee, Hon. John McCain, came in fourth. And so on.

What the media consistently ignore in all this cognitive dissonance is that the alleged importance of the Iowa caucuses is entirely their creation. It's one of the clearest examples of how 24-hour news coverage has warped and distorted the political process.

For instance, the day after her dismal showing in the supposedly meaningless caucuses, former front-runner Michele Bachmann dropped out of the race (an announcement that led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by political humorists everywhere).

It looked for a moment like Rick Perry was going to bail out as well, but a Twitter message to his followers defiantly stated, "Here we come, SC! And Florida! And ... dang, I forgot the third one. Oops."

When confronted with the weakness of their candidate lineup, some Republicans insist that it really doesn't matter whom they run, because Obama is "worse than Jimmy Carter."

This is, on its face, absurd; there's no way, for example, to hang something like the millstone that was the Iran hostage crisis around the neck of the man whose administration presided over the death of Osama bin Ladin, the fall of Moammar Gadhafi and the end of the Iraq War.

In addition, while there's dissatisfaction with Obama on both sides of the aisle, the deep hatred required to motivate people to get out of the house and go to the polls for an "even a flip-flopping, unprincipled empty suit like Romney over Obama" vote is restricted to a few noisy wingnuts who think everyone's as angry and hateful as they are.

Ask John Kerry how well "sure, you don't trust me, but I'm not the other guy" worked for him.

But leaving that aside for the moment, the biggest problem with that desperate attempt at historical analogy is that the GOP doesn't have a Ronald Reagan to run against Obama.

Reagan was a charismatic candidate with a solid conservative record and a message of hope. The current right wing that runs the GOP has made "hope" a word to be mocked, and when it comes to charisma, these people are not only not Reagan, they're not even Dan Quayle.

The Republicans have their best opportunity in a long time to win the White House, and they're blowing it with lame candidates, inept campaigns and nasty infighting.

That's usually the Democrats' job.

Review: SNUFF, Terry Pratchett

Snuff by Terry Pratchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sam Vimes has always been my favorite Discworld main character because he's easily the richest and most complex: a good man and a good copper who's always aware just how thin the barrier is between that and becoming bad. It doesn't help that he's taken on a rider in his head (possibly imaginary, but very possibly all too real) who would cheerfully give him a shove through that barrier.


In this book, Vimes takes a holiday at the insistence of his adoring (and incredibly rich) wife Sybil. Vimes being Vimes of course, it's not long before he's neck deep in murder and corruption in a place where no one knows him or cares that he's the Commander of the City Watch.


There are some of the usual pointed and witty observations here, as well as some good suspense. Pratchett does seem to indulge his penchant for beating you over the head with the book's message a little more than usual, but once you get past that, it's an amusing, fun read. I would have liked to see more of Vetinari (my second favorite Pratchett character), but then I feel that way in every one of the Discworld books. I just love that magnificent bastard.


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Fearless Predictions For the Year Ahead

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Once again, here are our predictions for the year ahead (assuming that the Mayans weren't right):

JANUARY: Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich fails to place higher than third in the South Carolina primary, then throws an on-camera tantrum in which he claims that he has the right to subpoena all of the voters in the state to come to Washington and appear at a hearing to explain themselves.

FEBRUARY: A firestorm erupts on Fox News, talk radio, and the right-wing blogo-sphere when President Obama wishes his wife a "happy Valentine's Day." Bill O'Reilly devotes 30 minutes of his news show to ranting that the exclusion of any mention of Saint Valentine "just proves that President Obama has declared war on religion." Anti-Muslim blogger Pamela Geller shrieks that the omission of the saint's name is "the most compelling evidence yet that Obama is secretly an Islamofascist trying to impose Sharia law on the United States."

MARCH: Scientists discover a new faster-than-light subatomic particle whose only function seems to be to allow Kim Kardashian to get divorced a split second before actually being married.

APRIL: The first day of spring sees the return of a perennial rite of the election season: flag-pin mania. Michele Bachmann, still gamely hanging on despite low delegate numbers, gets the ball rolling when a picture of President Obama taken on a Hawaiian beach shows him without a flag pin. "A president who was a real American would figure out a way to attach the pin to his chest, even without a shirt," Bachmann proclaims. This sets off a war among the GOP candidates to see who can most ostentatiously display the largest flag pin. Tragedy brings the contest to an end when Rick Perry attempts to nail a seven-by-five-inch pin to the center of his forehead and ends up in a coma.

MAY: Rick Perry miraculously comes out of his coma, but dramatically changed in that he can now remember more than two things at a time. His rebounding poll numbers drop precipitously when Republican primary voters turn against him for "acting like he's smarter than us."

JUNE: TLC announces its new fall schedule and causes controversy with its new program "Celebrity Cannibal," a reality show in which D-list celebrities compete in various contests, with each week's loser cooked by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey and devoured by the rest of the cast. In the show's end-of-first-season cliffhanger, all those in the remaining cast (Hulk Hogan, Courtney Stodden, Stephen Baldwin) face expulsion from the show when they refuse to ingest former rock singer Courtney Love.

JULY: Canceled due to budget cuts.

AUGUST: The Republican Party holds its nominating convention in Tampa, Fla. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finally gets enough delegates to clinch the nomination when the head of the Massachusetts delegation rises and delivers these stirring words: "Romney, I guess. Whatever. Can we go to the beach now?"

SEPTEMBER: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin gives an interview on Fox News in which she announces that "it's not too late" for her to enter the race for the 2012 GOP nomination. "Who knows what might happen in the future?" she chirps to an incredulous Gretchen Carlson. Despite the fact that the nomination has already been awarded to Romney, contributions pour in to Palin's campaign headquarters. Palin uses the contributions to purchase a yacht, which she christens the "One Nation" and uses on an extended "campaign tour" of the U.S. Virgin Islands.

OCTOBER: Apple announces its latest innovation: the iWash, an Internet-enabled washer/dryer combination. Despite the fact that no one at Apple can coherently explain why a washer and dryer need an Internet connection, record-breaking crowds of "early adopters" line up around the block at various Apple stores to purchase the device. Rumors that a security problem in the iWash's operating software could allow hackers to remotely steal your underwear fail to affect sales.

NOVEMBER: America goes to the polls, but the turnout among a dispirited, unenthusiastic, and battle-weary electorate is the lowest in U.S history. Barack Obama wins over Mitt Romney, with a national tally of 400 votes to 275 - in the popular vote, not the Electoral College.

DECEMBER: Dec. 21, the supposed date upon which the Mayan "Long Count" calendar (and therefore the world) ends, comes and goes without the expected cataclysm. The American economy receives a massive boost as merchants are deluged by people realizing they're going to have to do their Christmas shopping after all.

And so, once again, I offer you my traditional New Year's greeting, courtesy of Ogden Nash: Duck! Here comes another year!

Review: CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA by Frank Bill

Crimes in Southern Indiana: Stories by Frank Bill
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

You might try to comfort yourself by thinking that Frank Bill's exaggerating for dramatic effect in these short, tightly written tales of country meth addicts, domestic brutality, dog-fighters, unpredictably vicious rednecks, and rural ultra-violence. You might try to tell yourself that things this grim and lurid could never happen in real life. But I can tell you, they do.


This is not a book for the faint of heart; it's pure distilled essence of redneck noir, and there are few happy endings. But the quality of the writing keeps you coming back for just one more page, then another, until it's all gone, like a bottle of cheap whiskey that you can't put down and that's gone all too soon.


I got this book for Christmas, and Frank Bill just made it to the top of the "Buy As Soon As It Comes Out list."


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Jesus Probably Wasn't Born Today, But So What?

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Well, here it is, December the 25th. Christmas Day. Since I can assume the first thing most of you did was NOT run out to the driveway, get your copy of The Pilot, and run inside to read this column, I figure the stockings are empty, the presents all opened, the turkey or ham or whatever your choice of holiday meat is either in the midst of cooking or resting comfortably in your tummy. Unless you're Jewish, of course, in which case I hope you have a good day and are enjoying your Hanukkah and the Chinese food.

Some pedantic souls are fond of pointing out that it's highly unlikely, based upon the account in the Gospels, that the actual birth date of Yeshua bar-Yosef, aka Jesus, was December 25th. For instance, shepherds in first century Israel did not  "abide in the fields and watch their flocks by night" in the wintertime; that happened in the spring, when the lambs were born.  In the winter, the sheep were kept corralled, and the shepherds stayed home. The angels would have had to come to the door and knock to announce the birth of the Savior in the City of David,  like some sort of divine Western Union. It's a much less compelling image, to be sure, than the one of the Heavenly Host filling the sky with praises.

No, we're told, the December date was much more likely picked to coincide with (and hopefully take the place of) already existing pagan festivals. They'll point to the fact that sometime in the fourth century A.D. the Roman Emperor Aurelian announced the feast of Sol Invictus (The Unconquered Sun) which took place on December 25th.

Or perhaps the celebration of Christ's birth was meant to occur at the same time as an older Roman holiday, that of Saturnalia, a week-long debauch beginning December 17th. During Saturnalia, people exchanged presents and partied in a fashion that makes even the rowdiest office Christmas party look like an ice-cream social.

In addition, the normal social order was turned upside down; masters served their slaves at the dinner table, and the slaves could boss them around for a change--carefully, one would imagine, since they'd be back on the bottom of the pile next week.

Others suggest that our Christmas was meant to overlap Yule or other Northern European holidays celebrating the Winter Solstice. Those are the holidays from which we get our traditions of bringing evergreen plants indoors, of mistletoe, and of the blazing Yule log (fa-la-lalala, and all that).

I think, however, that the argument  that late December isn't the "real" date of Jesus' birth and that it's really just a date co-opted from paganism kind of misses the point. All of those seasonal pagan celebrations have one thing in common: they take place during the coldest and darkest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, the time when the night seems endless, the cold seems eternal, and it seems as if nothing will ever grow again. But they don't curse or bemoan the darkness; they look forward to the return of the light. They're celebrated with candles and firelight and evergreens. They remind us that however long the winter may seem, spring always comes back. They're holidays dedicated to hope when everything looks hopeless.

 And that's why it's the perfect time to celebrate the birth of Jesus, no matter if it's more likely that He was born sometime in the spring. Whatever your belief as to the divinity of the person known as Jesus, it's undeniable that He was born at a time of great darkness and cruelty, in a country beneath the boot of an empire so brutal that they routinely nailed people to pieces of rough wood then hung them up to die slowly as punishment. And yet, His  message was one of peace, of healing, of love, and of hope. It was a message of light in the darkness.

So, no matter what your beliefs, or lack of same, I wish all those things for you today.