07/26/12 – Wes Messamore – The Scott Horton Show

All right, y'all, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton, scotthorton.org, keep all the archives there.
And our first guest is Wes Messamore.
He wrote this great thing, 100 ways Mitt Romney is just like Barack Obama.
And now, so maybe this is kind of old hat, entry level stuff to a lot of people and maybe especially listeners to this show.
But then again, partisanship rules America.
And it doesn't matter whether George W. Bush and Al Gore are identical twin cousins or whatever.
People will scratch each other's eyes out over which one's better and and, you know, solidify their own support for their own chosen side.
By, you know, imagining all kinds of horrible and different things about the other guy.
It's really more of a psychological experiment than anything to do with politics, if you ask me.
But anyway, so now we got Robert Johnson and John Robertson running against each other for president.
And as Wes writes, the New York Times recently made a less than half-hearted attempt to summarize the similarities.
And it's all just personal stuff, right?
Well, they're both men and they're both taller than five and a half feet.
And oh, they like the family guy or whatever.
I don't know.
No, they don't like the family guy, anyway.
And so he did a better job of looking at substance.
So welcome to the show, Wes.
How are you doing?
I'm doing fantastic today, Scott.
How are you?
I'm doing great.
I appreciate you joining us today.
And I appreciate the fact that you're so much better at journalism than the New York Times.
Now, okay, in a way you could do, and I guess this is sort of what you do here, you start with Obamacare and then you have a subset of similarities about their versions of corporatized health care and whatever.
So I don't know, I'll leave it up to you, I guess, as you go through the list, how detailed you want to be.
I welcome you to be as detailed as you want.
We got two 10-minute segments and it's basically, you know, you try to time yourself out that way and I'll interrupt you if I think I have to, but I'll try to not.
Well, I really appreciate that, Scott.
And I've got to say, it's not hard to be better at journalism than the New York Times.
You've just got to make even like a token effort at objectivity and you're better than the gray lady.
So yeah, that's just the way it is.
That's where Michael Gordon has a job, so he ain't kidding.
The reason I came up with this list was basically a year ago, it was almost just a year ago that I did 100 Ways Barack Obama is Just Like George W. Bush.
And I did that at my website, humblelibertarian.com, and I mean, it was a huge hit.
If you go visit it now and read that article, you'll see it's been liked on Facebook on the little widget there 11,000 times, it's been tweeted over 400 times.
I was getting so much traffic.
People loved this and they shared it.
That's the big part.
People were sharing it.
And that's because this whole list of 100 thing is a powerful, powerful tool in our hands.
Like you said, this is just entry-level stuff for all of us.
We know these two are substantively no different.
These three, I should say, Bush, Obama, and Mitt Romney.
But for some reason, the American people think they're different, and I think it's personality.
I think it just comes down to personality, and people who don't like Obama, they just don't feel like he's one of them, and so they just kind of don't like him.
But Romney, who has everything in common with Obama on policy, they kind of feel like maybe is a little more like them.
And let's be honest, no one really feels like Mitt Romney's anything like them.
But there could be race involved, there could be religious issues involved, there could be all kinds of reasons, cultural issues.
Certainly Obama just doesn't seem like he's one of these liberal progressives who wants to change things, and we're scared of change.
Well, you know, South Park said, it's just country and rock and roll.
If you're country, then you're pro-war.
If you're rock and roll, you're not.
If you're country, you're a red state.
If you're rock and roll, you're blue, or whatever.
NPR versus Fox News.
These are just teams.
It's not a matter of, well, I don't know, you explain what you think it's a matter of.
Well, I think everything that you would probably say it's a matter of, I would agree with.
We're all on the same page here.
But these voters aren't on the same page with us, and the way you get them to finally realize, gosh, these two guys are the same thing, is you put all the information in one place.
You should say, look, here, I'm going to give you a hundred ways they're like each other, and not only that, I'm going to source just about every single one of them with links to, you know, credible to you sources, you know, mainstream news reports that document these as facts.
So this isn't just my opinion.
Here's Obama's words on an issue, and then here's Mitt Romney's.
Hmm, they sound pretty similar.
Here's how Obama voted on this as senator, and then acted on it as president.
Here's what Mitt Romney says about it.
So if you do that a hundred times, and you put it all in one place, that's just so powerful a tool.
So people were sharing this.
I imagine it got shared so much because people were sharing it with their partisan friends and family and coworkers.
Look, I've been telling you this.
Here's the evidence for everything I've been trying to tell you.
This is what I've been trying to say.
So I hope that's what was happening, and I hope some eyes got opened.
But this year, I thought a couple months ago, why not start putting together another list of 100 for Obama and for Romney?
And this is amazing, Scott, because for the Bush one, you know, I was three years into Obama's presidency and had all that material to work with to compare the two.
Mitt Romney doesn't even have the GOP's nomination yet, technically.
We don't even know if he's going to be president.
We're not really that far into the, we're not in the general election campaign season yet.
And I already have enough, I already have enough to make a list of 100 ways he's just like Obama.
Now, he was governor, but goodness gracious.
Yeah, no, it really is something.
I mean, last time, John McCain at least had a mean and quirky enough personality that there was kind of something to work with there in terms of difference.
I mean, look at him right now saying, you know, Obama sent in the CIA to regime change Syria isn't enough.
We need to send in the Marines or, you know, bomb them from, you know, carpet bomb them or whatever.
So, you know, there was some kind of difference there.
But yeah, I mean, Obama is such a perfect centrist, conservative Democrat.
The mirror perfect reflection of Mitt Romney's Rockefeller, liberal, Northeastern Republican.
It's, it's really kind of, in a way, it's, it's neat, like a little souvenir.
But then you also for me, I just get bored of it so fast, like a little souvenir or something.
It's just, it's, it's the least interesting election of my lifetime.
For sure.
I just can't even force myself to pay attention to it.
It's ridiculous.
It's so banal.
It's so boring.
And I've got to tell you what, all the humor in the Obama era is so stale.
The humor about the president, that is, it was hilarious for eight years under Bush.
But under Obama, again, the effort to actually lampoon him is half hearted.
And if it were, if it were actually a little more sincere, it'd be a lot funnier.
And if it were a little more sincere, it would be about, yeah, just how bland and boring and the same he is as every single one of them.
And he's a big liar.
And if they could find a way to sort of crystallize that in humorous situations, I feel like that would be, that's a bit of a digression.
But yeah.
Well, and you can see how well it still works on people, too.
I think it's reflected greatly in, for example, the way Glenn Greenwald writes, that you can tell that his intended audience of every sentence is, you know, very generally speaking, people on the left who ought to completely agree with him about how horrible Barack Obama is, but who instead are caught up in it and love him anyway.
And so he's constantly trying to talk them out of it.
Here is years of this going on, Guantanamo and the wars and everything else.
And he still is constantly attacked every day by the left for not being on board the Obama train, you know, for being even pro-Romney.
And so it still works that well.
Really does.
I'm sorry, we've got to hold it right there.
We'll be right back with Wes Messamore on The Sames after this.
All right, y'all.
Welcome back.
I'm Scott Horton, scotthorton.org.
Keep all the archives there.
More than 2,500 interviews going back to 2003 there.
Prove I've been right about everything all along.
All right.
We're talking with Wes Messamore from The Humble Libertarian.
This one is at IVN.
US.
100 ways Mitt Romney is just like Barack Obama.
All right.
So now blast through this list here and really, you know, see if you can surprise somebody about wow, they really are like that, huh?
Yes, that is correct.
This is at IVN.
US.
The last one was at my blog, but IVN.
US is the Independent Voter Network, and we published the list here because now I'm working as the editor, as an editor at IVN, and let's blast through it.
Basically, on all of the healthcare issue, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are the exact same person.
And since this seems to be the most galvanizing issue, it's pretty funny that they nominated the exact same guy as Obama to challenge him.
Okay.
Now, each side would say that that oversimplifies it and that actually, no, our program is different from theirs and whatever, and I never said that and that kind of thing.
Is there any credibility to that, or they really are just damn near clones of each other on this issue?
We'll read the article.
I just go issue by issue on individual mandates, on individual mandates for the nation as a whole, on portability of healthcare, on pre-existing conditions, on expanding spending on Medicaid that is federal spending on Medicaid.
Every single issue, they're the exact same.
They also flip-flopped.
They both flip-flopped on whether Obamacare's a tax or not when it was politically suitable for them.
So during the healthcare debate, oh, this isn't a tax, this is definitely not a tax, they pass it.
The Supreme Court then upholds it as a tax, bizarrely.
I thought taxes had to originate in the House, huh?
Scratching my head here.
And Obama goes, oh, yep, okay, cool, it's a tax.
That sounds all right.
And then he'll probably flip-flop again on whether it's a tax or not in the November election.
But Romney's campaign came out and said, yeah, okay, sure, it's a tax, and then a few days later realized how politically stupid that was and how good it would be for them to say, yeah, Obama raised taxes on you.
So they flip-flopped on it.
So that's funny that the similarity there is that they both shared the same position on the same issue twice, because they both flip-flopped.
And there were so many of those, and that was the most striking thing in making this list, Scott, is that so many times I wasn't sure what, like, Mitt Romney had the opposite position on an issue.
So can I count that as being the same as Obama, since at least once he's had the same position?
And really so many times Obama has flip-flopped on issues throughout this list, and I have links to prove it from campaign Obama versus President Obama, for instance.
And so that was another striking – that's what probably struck me the most, was how many times I was like, wow, what they have in common is that we have no clue what they think about these issues except judging by their actions, which is screw the rest of us and help the entrenched wealthy elite who don't deserve it.
They just keep it by oppressing and hurting and stealing from the rest of us.
Right.
And that's where on the list, actually, you transfer from the healthcare scam straight to the Wall Street TARP bailout money, and I guess that includes the Federal Reserve money too.
That's right.
So we try and reel them in a little bit with the healthcare issue.
That's what's going to catch their attention.
That's what people are talking about.
But then we get down to the real crux of it, finance and foreign policy, and we talk about how on Wall Street these guys are both the same.
Romney would be the most Wall Street-friendly president that we've ever had.
We have no reason to expect anything else from him, from his history, from how many donations he's getting from the same banks that were top donors for Obama when he ran in 2008.
And that's on the list, and I have links to prove it to the FEC data that shows that they're getting their money from the same people, the big banks, the big banks that their government bailed out.
And I'm going to call it their government.
This is not my government anymore.
I don't think hardly anyone feels like it's their government anymore, except for probably the big banks that are funding these guys' campaigns.
So go through and read those.
It's amazing how soft these guys are on the Fed, too.
They just don't really want to do anything about it.
It doesn't...
Oh, why are you distracting...
And they don't take a firm position.
They're just like, oh, why are you distracting people with this issue?
That's weird.
I'm not really thinking about that right now.
I can't get my head around it.
I'm focusing on birth control.
I don't know.
So we go through this list, and I move from finance into tax policy and fiscal policy.
And tax-wise, these guys are both nightmares.
They don't have any serious plan to get the economy on track by actually cutting spending, government spending, so that the economy can grow.
And then we get into foreign policy.
And foreign policy-wise, these guys, it's just like, okay, here's what this is foreign policy-wise.
Obama said he was going to be the opposite of Bush on foreign policy, and it turned out to just be everything no one liked about Bush, but more.
Mitt Romney is trying to chart a different course, but like you said earlier in the last segment, this is just really boring to watch, not as exciting as Obama vs.
Bush in a way.
But we have every reason to expect Romney would be...
No, we don't even just have every reason to expect.
By his own words, Romney is even admitting to us and saying he would take everything that we don't like about Obama, that we also didn't like about Bush, and he would ramp it up another level.
Oh yeah, Obama's not doing enough to sanction Iran and to get tough with Iran.
Oh, Obama's not doing enough in serious foreign civil war.
Oh, Obama's not...
And so it's actually pretty scary, the progression this has taken.
It's just getting more and more obvious each time, and it's happening faster and faster each time, this sort of oscillation between the two parties.
And I think that we're starting to maybe develop a long enough memory, or that it's getting short enough to accommodate our short memories, that maybe the people are waking up to what's happening.
And then I spend the last part of the list linking quotes from several people who, of all political persuasions and parties, who said that the two are the same, and that's something that they both have in common as well.
Dave Gingrich said they're the same, George Soros said they're the same, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Rick Santorum, Gary Johnson, Ralph Nader, they were both endorsed by the Des Moines Register.
And my last item is voters.
Voters, according to the data, just can't find a difference between them, really, on anything but women's issues and gas prices.
So glad we've got our priorities straight, you know.
It's a trillion dollar national deficit, and it's horrible.
But I'm going to tell you, Scott, the 101st thing that the two of them have in common, really, is that they were both designed by the opposite party in the year 2029 as cyborgs to come back in time and destroy the other party's credibility forever.
That's my theory.
That's my conspiracy theory.
Well, that's, you know, as sound as any other.
But no, I mean, you're certainly right that the veneer of this lie is wearing pretty thin, and it's becoming more and more obvious, I think, to people that, you know, on anything that matters, on anything that, say, you know, the center of the future of our society, that they're all in agreement on everything that's wrong.
Their consensus, the establishment consensus on every important question, all the biggest questions, as you said, the nationalization and, you know, corporatization, further price-fixing, cartelization of the healthcare industry, bailouts for billionaires, unending warfare, the war against civil rights and the Bill of Rights, and all of these things.
There's no difference whatsoever between, and of course, you know, all the deficits and the bankruptcy and the Federal Reserve and all of that.
This is the road to hell.
Anybody who's stopping to think about it for a minute can tell, and these are the things where everybody's bipartisan and in agreement, is to do all of these things wrong.
And the rest of us are just sitting here going, you know, and you can tell why people don't vote, don't participate.
It's not that they're principled non-voters in the sense that they're anarchists and see voting as aggression or something like that.
It's just that they don't see a part for them to play in it.
Why would you even bother paying attention or vote when you know, as you just were explaining, it's Wall Street decides, you know, which of these two they want to finance a little bit more over the other when they finance them both against us, and we don't have the slightest say in it, you know?
It was obvious a year ago Mitt Romney would be the nominee.
There was no question a year ago.
The media just picks them.
They don't report the facts.
They try to actively shape reality.
They are activists, not journalists, and that's fine to be an activist.
I'm an activist, but I don't really try and like say I'm not, you know, and when I talk I use facts.
I don't use distraction.
I don't use just pointless invective.
I use facts, and really the thing to think about here is as alike as these two are, Gary Johnson, Ron Paul, even the Green Party candidate Jill Stein couldn't be more different.
Think about that for a while.
All right.
Thanks very much.
That's Wes Messamore, the humble libertarian, and check out his piece, A Hundred Ways Mitt Romney is Just Like Barack Obama at IBN.
US.
Thanks.
Thanks, Scott.