austerity mazurka

About an enthusiastic an election as a nosebleed. It looked originally like a slam-dunk for Team Obama and later, something of a hold you nose and vote for the chief coz’ the other dude stinks more; now the bets are off, the short sellers are covering. It seems that close. Of course, the issues that brought on the financial crisis have been vaguely, though not significantly or fundamentally resolved, the mortgage crisis is still wallowing on personal and corporate balance sheets, and Obama’s assertion that he would rid the White House of the hornet’s nest of lobbyists was lost somewhere in the bushes with one of his shanked golf swings. But hey, he’s the President, so you have to give him the odd Mulligan.

—Miss what? The rays of realism in Mitt Romney’s economic rhetoric. With almost subliminal subtlety, Romney and his advisors have made the excellent point the past few weeks that austerity won’t work without lower interest rates or a weaker currency. Two cheers for Romneynomics!…
Expansionary austerity works! Right?
Well, it does if your currency depreciates by 50 percent. That’s what happened to the Polish zloty during the height of the financial crisis….Read More:http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/07/mitt-romneys-big-polish-idea-lets-debase-the-dollar/260550/

So, you have to ask whether Romney’s foreign swing, given his tenure at Bain, is a scouting mission for the outsourcing of jobs and investment, maybe some call centers in the Polish backwoods; but then again, its not the same degree of discomfort as the outsourcing, possibly,  of the President. All in all, a decent trip that has been marked by a definite style; in terms of the Palestinians a lack of sympathy and failure of acknowledgement and a kind of style, an aesthetic that seems to enjoy he luxury of power and at the same time court an exhilaration framed as rebellion, such as his barb at the preparedness of the London IOC, Palestinian culture in a way that contextualizes himself a, irnoy of ironies, as something of a populist, a campaign of defiant subversives resisting powerful establishments like the IOC, Polish Unions that stymie growth, the 90% of the United Nations that backs the Palestinian Authority. Yet its very obvious in this gamesmanship as to the distinction between colonizers and who are the colonized…

Read More:Lech Walesa, the Nobel Prize winner and former Polish president, endorsed Mitt Romney for President.
“I wish you to be successful because this success is needed to the United States, of course, but to Europe and the rest of the world, too. Governor Romney, get your success, be successful!” Walesa said through a translator following their joint meeting in Gdansk. He hit his hand on the table for emphasis.—-Read More:http://www.theodoresworld.net/archives/2012/07/huge_crowds_and_cheers_greet_m.html

But Mr. Romney’s campaign was rattled after he offended local sensibilities in London by questioning the readiness to host the Olympics, and he angered Palestinians with comments about their economic difficulties. …

…An outstanding question is whether the candidate’s missteps sullied the effort to show voters that Mr. Romney can serve not just as an economic steward but as commander-in-chief.

“To the extent that people were paying any attention, it probably hurt, because the general portrayal of the trip was one of ineptitude,” said Leslie Gelb, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. That said, “I’ve never seen an election where less attention was paid to foreign affairs.”

—When a Romney foreign-policy adviser suggested in Israel that Mr. Romney would greenlight a unilateral strike against Israel by Iran, it took hours for the campaign to augment the remarks. And as Palestinians grew enraged by Mr. Romney’s comments about their economic prosperity, in which he suggested culture was a factor, aides quietly seethed for hours as their campaign was called racist and ignorant before an adviser sought to clarify Mr. Romney’s comments.
The tension came to a head Tuesday after Mr. Romney laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. After reporters shouted questions at the candidate as he walked across Pilsudski Square, traveling press secretary Rick Gorka told one of the reporters: “Shove it.”—Read More:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444405804577560683492427396.html image:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48405332/ns/technology_and_science-science/#.UBhypPVb76M

Others said Mr. Romney successfully used the trip to reach important voting blocs at home, among them Jews, Catholics and Polish-Americans. “The nationwide picture of Romney at the ‘wailing wall’ sent a strong signal to evangelical Christians across the country and paid for the whole trip,” said Scott Reed, a GOP strategist who managed former Sen. Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign, referring to the site in Jerusalem.

Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said some voters “will like the fact that he was outspoken” during his trip abroad….Read More:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444405804577560683492427396.html

—Polish resistance fighter Captain Cyprian Odorkiewicz posing with captured German insignia, Okólnik gardens, Warsaw, Poland, 14 Aug 1944; note captured MP 40 submachine gun
Photographer Sylwester Braun—Read More:http://ww2db.com/image.php?image_id=8618