Compartmentalized Oil

Think Progress recently wrote this article illustrating how the compartmentalized authoritarian brain works. And not on something silly and superficial like whether half the population should have control over their own healthcare and not be called sluts or something. Hopefully the sarcasm of that statement shines through with all the intended gilding. All of the harm done by gop terrorists and their corporate sponsors is appalling, but at this point so many fronts are advancing that we have to triage.
Gas prices in my neck of the woods recently dropped to $4.17/gal from $4.25. If there were two levers a potential tyrant could use to bind and gag this country, they have to be energy and finance. Resistance is futile.
The only competition that seems to occur in American business today, or would rootless, transnational business be more appropriate, is who can suck the American people dry fastest. Not long after 9/11, when gas prices spiked to $2/gal from $1/gal, there was outrage and attempts to boycott and punish the bastards. None worked, of course, that would require overcoming the inherant cynicism and atomization that characterizes contemporary American society. But now, when it spikes to over $4/gal, there seems to be little focused outrage or even attempts to punish them. Is "punish" too strong a word? Does it simply play into the victim mentality omnipresent on the right? I don't know, but there seems little energy left to even try anything with every other problem plaguing our society. Problems aided and abetted by the corporate right and their kept politicians, if not outright caused by them.
Rational business sense would at least glance at the long-term, oil is a dwindling resource despite propaganda attempts to convince people otherwise. Even the unmistakable environmental damage done by oil should prompt at least a token PR effort to diversify. But no, these people running the oil companies are short-sighted beyond belief.
The glance at the long-term could take many forms, but short-term considerations like next quarter's profit margin and bonus mania dictates all industry actions. Textbook economics indicate that investment and diversification to maintain the firm's relevence should take its place alongside these concerns, but this is the real world. Five point eight billion in profit just this year so far, that could go a long way into research and investment into alternative energies, instead it just goes into the pockets of executives and investors. Kevin Philips has pointed out in his many commentaries on the subject that windfall profits have gone into bonuses, stock buybacks, and dividends. I guess if your rationality says to grab what you can now and the future be damned, this is entirely rational. And, oil company influence over congress ensures that propaganda instead of real debating points will spew from the mouths of traitors like rand paul and john kyl, preventing any serious changes.
This is where the compartmentalization comes in, as per ThinkProgress.
"[Rand] Paul argued Big Oil deserves even more favors from government, because they’re doing such a good job extracting wealth from American families:

'Instead of punishing them, you should want to encourage them. I would think you would want to say to the oil companies, “What obstacles are there to you making more money?” And hiring more people. Instead they say, “No, we must punish them. We must tax them more to make things fair.” This whole thing about fairness is so misguided and gotten out of hand.'"
Would anyone with a basic understanding of how "markets" actually work and a functioning brain really believe that the way to bring gas prices down or "create" jobs is to coddle oil companies more than we already do? This straw man about "punishing" success poisons all sorts of debate about the economy.
In practically the same breath, this walking, talking oil company mascot uttered this gem.
"Strangely, while Kyl and Paul called an end to oil subsidies indefensible, they used the opportunity to label clean energy tax credits “crony government.” During his clean energy rant, Paul said:

'It doesn’t seem to right that your tax dollars are sent to companies just because they’re big contributors.'"
I used to think it was extrordinary totalitarian discipline that allowed people to accept this kind of disengenuousness, but apparently if the RWAF hypothesis is correct it just comes naturally. Rand Paul is not an idiot, he knows his place as the kept politician puppet uttering all the right noises for his patrons. I believe the false equivalence he is trying to draw is that old chestnut about Solyndra. Pebble against a boulder of subsidization and policy. But republicans are not afraid to throw stones becaus they know Democrats are too polite to throw them back. It takes a firewall of compartmentalization big enough to hold back the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to swallow this sludge.


What would reagan do?

Ensuring a new crop of idiots...

From Cognitive Dissidence, one we all should read if we care about education:

Thursday, March 29, 2012

Walker's Education Plan Is Already Working!

The entire state knows that Scott Walker and his Republican hoodlums who control (for the time being) the state legislature did to the education system in the state. They slashed hundreds of millions of dollars from the budget. Walker tried to tell us that his "tools" from Act 10 would give the school districts the ability to deal with the shortfalls from his malevolent budget.

Those on the right who, for some unknown and ungodly reason refuse to face up to reality and admit his plan is an epic failure.

But the truth cannot be hidden, and to make it more graphic (pun intended) here is what Walker hath wrought, per the Wisconsin Department of Public Education:

Essential Learning and Support Program Losses:

Teacher Losses 2011-12:

K-12 Class Size Increases:

Change In Student Teacher Ratio 2010-11 to 2011-12

And most significantly, Budget Outlook 2012-13

Now, unless you're one of Walker's Kool-Aid drinkers, it's pretty obvious what he is up to. It's the same gambit he kept trying to pull when he was Milwaukee County Executive. Walker is trying to starve the school system until it breaks, then use that as an excuse to privatize the entire state's educational system.

By continuously cutting into their budgets, school systems will be forced to cut more and more programs and lay off more and more high quality teachers. Then the kids will start failing to meet the requirements. He will claim that the public school system is unable to do the job and make the false claim that privatizing the schools through the voucher program will save money and give better results.

Both of those claims will be false though.

The voucher schools are already crying that they need more money than what they are currently drawing away from the public schools. If they are finally able to force public schools out of the way, it will become a feeding frenzy as they keep demanding more and more taxpayer money.

And as for quality, we are already seeing that that is most definitely not the case:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Tuesday released a comparison of private school choice students and public school students on the WKCE. The test was given to grades three through eight and 10 last fall.

For Racine Unified, 60 of the 62 private school choice students in those grades were tested, DPI stated. They averaged 50.8 percent proficient or advanced on the WKCE math tests, while Unified students averaged 61.5 percent.

Those private school choice students also scored well below the state average math proficiency of 78.0 and the statewide average for economically disadvantaged students, 64.7 percent, DPI said.

In reading, the private school choice students from Unified averaged 55.7 percent proficient or advanced, compared with the district average of 69.2 percent.

The statewide average was 81.9 percent proficiency in reading and 70.5 percent for economically disadvantaged students.

The article goes on to show the disreputable Robin Vos claiming these lower scores as somehow being proof that we need to privatize schools, even though it might take "five to ten years" to show any sort of improvement in the private schools. Methinks that Vos is apparently a result of privatized education since he can't figure out that failing is not a good thing, especially when one was having great success.

And I can tell you with full confidence that if Walker somehow manages to survive the recall and to elude John Doe long enough to devise another budget, it will only get worse.

That's why we have to continue reclaiming Wisconsin. Make sure you help with a GOTV movement and get ready to vote the bums out on Tuesday.

 Now, the reason idiots like walker and vos are able to get away with such disgusting dishonesty is of course explained by the title of this blog. Look it up, we'll wait... it's under cognitive dissonance.

Another piece of the puzzle is given by Robert Altemeyer, his book The Authoritarians (PDF online FOR FREE!) explains that a certain percentage of people in any society are right-wing authoritarian followers. RWAFs, in relevance to this post, believe whatever their leaders tell them if they like the conclusions, in defiance of the reasoning. In this case, even the most ignorant bucket of snot wants good schools for their kids, but a lot of authoritarian followers feel that teachers are "out groups" and can be demonized. These conflicting priorities are resolved by what Dr. Altemeyer calls compartmentalization, like a computer with files that are seperate from each other, the RWAF can call up each idea, "education good" "teachers bad" without the two rubbing up against each other. Apparently, right-wing leaders, which Altemeyer calls "social dominators," understand this and can openly make these contradictory and vicious statements without the followers ever connecting them.

Therefore, the walker gop eviseration of education in WI serves many needs for authoritarians. It punishes teachers, "lowers" taxes (who cares if you get $6 while big businesses get millions), ensures the next generation will be unprepared for real life, most importantly it "defunds" any alternative to the authoritarian vision and makes sure young people lack the critical thinking skills necessary to see through all the bullshit rained down upon them.

"The Blade Itself Incites To Violence"

This quote by the ancient blind Greek poet Homer seems to have been lost in the contemporary United States over violence. It makes a nice sloganesque response to the tired line "guns don't kill people, people kill people." So, after Trayvon Martin and Bo Morrisson were murdered by gun-wielding people, this picture started making its rounds.


No, but two did.
If justifiable homicide claims have tripled in florida then the odds that some of these (admittedly arbitrary) number HAVE killed someone in the last year.
If we update Homer's quote to "The Gun Itself Incites To Violence" it becomes more relevant today. Yes, as George Carlin once said "you could probably beat a guy to death with the Sunday New York Times" but that would be a lot more work than pulling a trigger, and much less likely to happen accidentally.
The truth is, yes a gun is a tool. But it is a tool with just one use.
I am speaking as a former Army Tanker who has shot bigger guns than most civilian gun enthusiasts.
Excuse me, "weapons." There is little hope of instilling any feeling of empathy for gunshot victims in those civilians, other than for each other's phallic symbols.
Another "truth," "responsible gun owner." This is not a binary condition. I am a responsible driver, but every once in a while I make a mistake. Even "gangbangers" in the ghetto manage not to shoot their balls off most of the time. Are they responsible gun owners? Oh, you mean, white people who are around guns and have taken classes. Okay. But familiarity breeds complacence. I was around guns all the time in the army and took classes. So it wasn't an uncomfortable experience. But when I saw a guy at the movies putting on his coat a little while back to cover the 9mm on his belt, I freaked. In the army weapons were a tool of the trade, at the movies, a gun is... what exactly? Did this fellow think he was gonna get in a shootout in Mequon (one of the richest, safest suburbs in WI)? Or was it because he was black in a pretty white place?
Ahhh, there it is. And no, I saw the gun first because I was waiting on a bench outside the theater. Seeing a gun carried by anyone is enough to make me anxious, it is just something that is out of place in civilian life. I am not going to rattle off any cliches about why creeps might want to carry a concealed (or not so concealed) weapon in public, but am I going to have to feel this anxious everytime I step out of my door from now on?
"The Gun Itself Incites To Violence" I can cause you harm if I choose. All other concerns seem secondary and I do not want to save a society that thinks this is moral or ethical, and especially if it is legal.

Keep speaking truth

http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/romney-admits-gop-education-policy-intended
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2007/0701.drum.html
http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/154607/how_the_right-wing_brain_works_and_what_that_means_for_progressives/?page=2
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/santorum-strategy_b_1338708.html

The Great Walker Delusion

One great thing about being a simpleton is you can believe whatever you want. Most reactionary dickmonkeys who weasel their way into office or other positions of power just play simpletons so their authoritarian submissive followers believe that the dickmonkey is "one of them." Scott Walker of Wisconsin however, is the real deal.

http://cognidissidence.blogspot.com/2012/03/when-haves-are-really-have-nots.html

Remember, if you can't spot the sucker at the table, it's you.
Though, I suppose when we kick this disgrace out of office the kochs will find some out of the way place for him where he can't do any damage to them or the fascist agenda. His "real money" will be more or less hush money to ensure that the next dickmonkey who spends the "hard time" necessary to sneak into office at such "low" compensation won't be deterred by the thought that after his "service" to real power he won't be dropped like a hot rock.

But why?

"If your 18 yrs old the law requires you to carry i.d. so whats the big deal if you have to show i.d. before voting? whats going to stop dishonest people that write mickey mouse on recall petitions from using my name to vote?"
This is an awfully odd way for a conservative, someone who supposedly values tradition and the status quo, to frame their support for stripping people of voting rights. But, this was one of many comments I found opposing the unconstitutional ruling on WI's voter ID law by a court. Left unsaid is the rigid conventionalism in minds like this, that everyone must live according to "my" standards. If you refuse to obey my will, then you pay the consequences. In this case, you can't vote because I believe (in spite of all evidence to the contrary) that voter fraud is throwing elections. Also left unsaid is the hatred of a democracy that elects people to office that disagree with me. It should be said that the commentor describes himself as a "libertarian" you know, someone who feels the government is too involved in our lives. So, forcing everyone to get a state-approved ID is in line with his small-government ideals when it will prevent anyone getting into office that might want to expand the role of government. But, consistancy is supposed to be a libertarian value, sigh.
Reference material.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/03/12/wisconsin-voter-law-unconstitutional/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/texas-voter-id-justice-department_n_1339004.html

First shots of the Civil War?

Does anyone who hasn't taken a course on the 1960's and/or Civil Rights movement know who Emmett Till is anymore? Just as a short refresher. Young master Till was visiting relatives in the deep south from Chicago, he wolf whistled at a white lady and taken by a lynch mob that night. He was barely recognizable when his body was found but his grieving mother insisted on an open casket to display the results of hate and white supremacy for the rest of society. Till wasn't the first, and certainly not the last, victim of violence in the south. Fast forward to 2012, when this kind of vigilante "justice" was supposed to be ancient history, and another young black man was murdered. Trayvon Martin was just walking home after getting a snack and was stalked and killed by a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain. The shooter, George Zimmerman, was not arrested because he claimed self-defense and under Florida's "Stand your ground" law, it is up to the state to prove he did not. What? GG Allin would be so proud, apparently murder has finally been legalized.
The problem with putting Till and Martin side by side is that beyond being black, murdered, and their murderers (so far) not facing any consequences there is little correlation. Till broke a strong and well-established southern more, and was murdered by a mob. This was long established tradition in the south, Till being a northerner was ignorant of it, but the point is that his murder was "extra-legal." Martin, by contrast, was a resident and broke no law or more, most importantly the law allowed what Zimmerman did. He stalked and killed Martin in daylight and in public, and suffered no consequences thusfar.
If you travel to my neck of the woods, however, there is a recent case with more similarity to Till's murder. Bo Morrisson was a 20 year old African-American who got drunk at a house party in a very white little community. Two strikes right? Even with no speculation on whether he wolf-whistled at any white girls at this party, the cops showed up to bust the party. Morrisson fled to the next door neighbor's enclosed porch to escape what would have been a pretty bad situation. And the homeowner, who still hasn't been identified, went onto the porch and shot him. Morrisson broke laws and mores by getting drunk at that party, then broke more of each by hiding on the porch. His murderer broke none. The evil twin of the "Stand your ground" law is called the "Castle doctrine" and says deadly force can be used to defend your family and property.
Dumb kids are gonna be dumb kids no matter where or when, but does being a dumbass warrant a death sentence by private individuals, "just because?" Zimmerman, Martin's murderer, hasn't exactly won much public support. But "the homeowner" who gunned down Morrisson in the middle of the night for being on his porch? Holy Moly has there been an outpouring of support for him. A simple smell test can tell you a lot about what these murders were about. Imagine it was a white kid gunned down on a black homeowner's porch. Perhaps some of the emminantly reasonable objections to this scenario would go like this: "Did the homeowner really have to kill this kid?" "This is not what the castle doctrine was intended for?" "Couldn't the homeowner have retreated inside his house behind a locked door and called the cops?" Unfortunately, this is not what happened.
So far, this is what passes for support for george zimmerman:

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
I pray that Civil War is not imminent, but if it is, the legalization of murdering black kids should probably be considered it's Dred Scott decision.

GG would be proud that this society has become just as sick as him.

A few reference pieces, you figure them out. I know I can't remember why they are here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/collins-pity-the-poor-gun-lobby.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/shot-to-death-in-florida.html?src=tp&smid=fb-share
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/21/do-stand-your-ground-laws-encourage-vigilantes/?ref=opinion
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/22/opinion/kristof-politics-odors-and-soap.html
http://onmilwaukee.com/living/articles/concealedcarrycastlelaws.html?29675
http://www.wisn.com/download/2012/0321/30733454.pdf

Thomas Frank to the rescue

I was having a pretty lousy day until running into this ode to the deranged teabaggers by my favorite recovering historian.
I don't believe I've ever just cut and pasted an entire article before, but I kept all the source material so hopefully the thought police won't jump through my window tonight.
Originally posted at TomDispatch.

Pity the Quarter-Billionaire
Take a Ride on the RINO in 2012
By Thomas Frank
Dear Tea Party Movement,
For the last few months, the world has been fascinated by your frenzied search for a presidential candidate who is not Mitt Romney. We know that you find the man inauthentic and that you have buoyed up a string of anti-Mitts in the Iowa polling -- Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich -- buffoons all, preposterous figures whom you have rightfully changed your minds about as soon as you got to know them.
It was quite a spectacle, your quest for the non-Romney -- and I think we all know why you undertook it. In ways that matter, Romney is clearly a problem for you. His views on abortion, for example, change with the winds. Ditto, gay rights. He designed the Massachusetts health insurance system that was the model for Obamacare. And he’s even said that he approved of the TARP bank bailout, the abomination that ignited the Tea Party uprising in the first place.
Grievous offenses all, I have no doubt. Still, my advice to you idealists of the right is this: get over it. Not for sell-out reasons like: Romney has the best chance of beating Obama. No. You should get behind the charging Massachusetts RINO (your favorite term for a Republican-In-Name-Only sellout type) because, in a certain paradoxical way, he may turn out to be the truest of all the candidates to the spirit of your movement.

After all, given everything you represent, why wouldn’t you line up behind this quarter-billionaire who’s calling for just a little human love and sympathy for billionaires? I’m sure you already understand me perfectly well, but just to be certain, let me make the case.
The Gimme Candidate of 2012
Start with those issues where Romney’s positions so offend the sensibilities of you Robespierre Republicans. First, of course, the social issues. If nothing else, you in the Tea Party movement have spent the last three years teaching Americans that they no longer matter -- not when we’re supposedly in a battle for the very soul of capitalism.
And here comes Mitt Romney, the soul of American capitalism in the flesh. Look back over his career as a predator drone at Bain Capital: Isn’t it the exact sort of background you always insist politicians ought to have? Isn’t it the sort of titanic enterprise for which you lust, as you wave your copy of Atlas Shrugged in the air?
You accuse the former Massachusetts governor of opportunism, but from where I stand, the bad faith is all on your side. What offends you about Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare plan, for example, isn’t that it crushes human liberty, but that it provided the model for President Obama’s own healthcare overhaul, which you spent the last two years decrying as the deed of a power-grabbing socialist.
If the public ever learns about the Republican provenance of Obamacare -- and if Romney is the candidate, they most certainly will -- it will become obvious that your movement was not telling the truth about all that Kenyan Stalinist death-panel stuff. It is indeed a moment to fear, that day when the nation finds out that you were, ahem, exaggerating in your bullhorn pronouncements about the communist in the White House. Still, if the Tea Party movement is all about truth-telling and straight shooting, then you need to face it like a patriot.
And yes, Mitt Romney has also said that the bank bailouts of 2008-2009 were necessary, while you regard them as a mortal sin against free-market principles. (To his credit though, at least in your eyes, he was also a total hardliner about the auto industry bailouts, displaying the pointless meanness you seem to admire in nearly any other politician.) In truth, though, the candidate’s only offense on the bailout question was his candor. He merely admitted what should be obvious to any billionaire from a study of bank history: that conservatives have no problem doling out, or grabbing for, government money when the chips are down.
After all, President Herbert Hoover himself distributed bank bailouts in the early years of the Great Depression. Calvin Coolidge’s vice president, Charles Dawes, helped out in Hoover’s bailout operation, later changing hats and grabbing a big slice of the bailout pie for his own bank. Ronald Reagan’s administration rescued Continental Illinois from what was then the largest bank failure in our history.
Citibank’s market-worshiping CEO Walter Wriston begged for (and of course received) the assistance of big government when Citi needed it -- after making loans to the troubled Penn Central Railroad. And don’t forget, every single one of you is guilty of taking a government bailout any time you make a withdrawal from a bank that’s been rescued by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
The reason they -- I mean, you -- do these things should be as obvious as it is simple: “free market” has always been a high-minded way of saying “gimme,” and when the heat rises, the “market” is invariably replaced by more direct methods, like demanding bailouts from the government you hate. Banks get bailouts for the simple reason that they want bailouts and have the power to insist on them -- the same circumstances that got them deregulated in wave after wave in the Eighties, Nineties, and Aughts.
In this sense, Romney, who is loud and proud when it comes to the need for further deregulation, has actually been more consistent than you. He’s the gimme candidate of 2012 and so he should really be your guy.
Promethean Job Creators and Heroes of Venture Capital
You say Romney is an unprincipled faker. Fair enough -- he is. He’s so plastic he’s almost animatronic. But have you looked in the mirror recently? Aren’t you the ones who fall for it every time Fox News wheels out some Washington hack to confuse this or that corporate issue with the sacred cause of freedom or states rights or man’s inalienable right to mine uranium in his backyard? Aren’t you the ones who thought that Glenn Beck’s tears were markers of emotional sincerity? And for Pete’s sake, your populist Tea Party movement was actually launched from the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade!
I know, I know: for almost three years now you’ve dazzled the world with your proclamations that we’re being dragged into “tyranny,” that the country is being “destroyed,” that America needs to be “saved” -- and now here comes Mitt, with his fondness for workaday compromise, ruining your carefully contrived atmosphere of panic.
That must be disappointing, but don’t lose the faith! Give the man credit: he has tried. He’s no stranger to the core Tea Party myth of the noble businessman persecuted by big government. Indeed, at the Conservative Political Action Congress in 2009, he opened his talk as a stand-up comic this way: “I gotta get through this speech before federal officials come here and arrest me for practicing capitalism.”
Meanwhile, he has the perfect Tea Party sense of social class. A centimillionaire who made his pile as a venture capitalist, Romney has both deplored class warfare -- meaning, certain criticisms of Wall Street -- and practiced it, taunting President Obama as a modern version of Marie ("let them eat cake") Antoinette.
There’s no contradiction in any of this, either for him or you. When someone has made his way in life via academia, like the president, he is, of course, a snob, and part of the ruling elite. When, on the other hand, a person’s multi-millions were visited upon him by open-market actions directed from the C-suite, he is automatically a man of the people, a horny-handed son of toil. In fact, Romney takes this kind of market populism a step farther than you ordinarily dare: corporations, he has famously announced, are themselves people.
And keep in mind that, with Mitt Romney, venture capitalist, carrying your banner in 2012, you will finally get to submit your capsized vision of social class to the verdict of the people -- the actual flesh-and-blood people, that is, not the corporate “people” who make up the S&P 500. You will get to defend exactly the sort of “person” your movement has longed to defend since it was birthed by a CNBC reporter almost three years ago to the cheers of a bunch of derivatives traders in Chicago.
You will get to explain your peculiar conviction that the way to react to a gigantic slump brought on by frenzied finance is to unshackle Wall Street. You will get to line up behind a heroic businessman, like those rugged, resourceful fellows in the Ayn Rand novels you love. You will get to go into battle for the job creators, which is what all capitalists are, right? (Well, okay, maybe not the guys at Bain Capital, the particular outfit where Romney made his pile, but the theory is all that really matters, isn’t it?)
Indeed, your leadership cadre is already playing up the inevitable criticisms of Romney as a job decimator as a way of launching a grand debate about capitalism -- by which they mean, of course, freedom itself. When Newt Gingrich criticized Romney a few weeks ago for his career in private equity, the airwaves of your winger-tainment world exploded with outrage. “This is the kind of risk-taking, free-market capitalism that most people who call themselves conservatives applaud,” intoned Brit Hume on Fox News. If Newt had a problem with Bain’s operations, announced syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg, “then Gingrich really doesn’t believe in capitalism at all.”
Washington Post columnist George Will declared that what Romney did in his venture capitalist days was an “essential social function,” that his company was “indispensable for wealth creation.” (Just whose wealth was being created he left discreetly undefined.) Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Center and a familiar figure at Tea Party events, is no fan of Romney’s, but he had this to say about Romney’s career: “private equity serves an incredibly important productive function in our economy… Private equity is in my view a heroic activity.”
“Heroic”: that’s exactly the word! In Romney we have finally found a quarter-billionaire to cry for. And so Suzy Welch, author and wife of Jack, appeared on Fox Business to wonder why Romney wasn’t defending himself aggressively against criticism of his business career. Romney, she announced, is “an American hero to people who believe in free enterprise, or he should be.”
And that combination of tragedy and heroism, my friends, is why you will soon be signing up for the Romney juggernaut. In him you will see the saintly victimhood of Sarah Palin melded with the Promethean job-creator who was the cult object of your 2010 efforts. Social issues be damned! Romney will ensure that we get the one thing that this country can’t do without on its path to hell: further deregulation of Wall Street.
The nation’s all-powerful elitist socialists will, of course, disagree, and you’ll have a field day, raging and weeping at the way they are going to set out to persecute this noble, wealth-creating soul.
Pity the billionaire: it will be a powerful rallying cry for 2012.
Yours in petulant individualism,
Tom
Thomas Frank is the author of the just-published Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right (Metropolitan Books). He has also written The Wrecking Crew, What’s the Matter With Kansas? and several other abrasive volumes. He is the “Easy Chair” columnist for Harper’s Magazine and the founding editor of The Baffler.
Copyright 2012 Tom Frank

 At some future date I want to review Frank's latest book Pity the Billionaire, but I can't stop listening to it long enough to write. If you need a good book to listen to on your awful commute or job search, I highly recommend getting the audio version, read by the author.

The Framing Wars

Jill Klausen posted this helpful guide to not stepping into reactionary boobytraps this election season. I don't know if I am just especially gloomy this morning or resenting idealistic liberals who reflexively say that understanding framing drops "us" to the republican level of barbarism. Perhaps that is not the appropriate word, barbarism implies taking what you want by force. Many aspects of movement conservatism approach barbarism, such as vote-rigging, voter suppression, deceit and misdirection, and simply unleashing the cops to beat protesters, etc. But manipulation of language is more of an exercise in demogaugery than barbarism, so perhaps we can settle on calling republican framing simply an extraordinary program of propaganda on a particularly insidious level.
Klausen summarizes the problem this way: "Democrats have failed to speak in a language strong enough to rebut Republicans who have defined who we are and what we want, in a way that doesn't even remotely reflect an iota of the truth, and instantly conjures up the negative in the mind of the listener." Part of liberal/progressive failure is simple intellectual laziness, trying to speak in terms that play right into republican boobytraps. More insidious is the attitude of idealists such as the philosophy professor I loaned George Lakoff's book Don't think of an Elephant. Super Dave returned it to me the next day (it is a short book) and said, "very interesting, but if we go this route we will be as bad as the conservatives." Super Dave is a liberal, through and through, I mean by this that he hangs on to Enlightenment thinking. Further, that he ascribes to an earlier liberalism epitomized by John Dewey, that all people have the capacity to critically think about events and evaluate them rationally. Dewey argued through his long career that education was the key to building a better society and combined with the reform of institutions would yield a humane and just world.
I honestly and truly respect Super Dave and John Dewey, I wish their ideas were universally valid. But as an historian, I understand too well that beyond a point far from universality people simply are not rational and not equally capable of critical thought. And in any case, we live in a world that prizes irrationality and refuses to allow everyone the opportunity and access to the education necessary for training your mind. Dewey's great antagonist on this idealism was the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr had a great understanding of Christianity (the good kind, not rick santorum's brand) as well as history and used it to formulate a philosophy of realism that understood the frailty of human nature but sought to use it to build a more just society in spite of human proclivities to injustice.
Though I am far from a Niebuhrian expert, I argue that he would have fully supported the use of framing. Not to manipulate people, but to empower them. Niebuhr argued that selflessness was good, selfishness was sinful and like Lakoff, good people must activate the better angels of selflessness and empathy while not discounting the power of self-interest in service to justice. To illustrate, Niebuhr wrote a book called The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness as a defense of democracy and pluralism. The Children of Darkness (or of This World as in the Bible) are wise but know no law beyond their self-interest, the Children of Light are foolish but reach beyond themselves to seek justice for all humanity. Sound familiar at all? Niebuhr also had some interesting things to say about group morality that applied well to the conservative tribalism in contemporary America. Moral Man and Immoral Society posited the idea that individuals could be selfless but group identity by individuals often leads to immoral actions by organizations and institutions. Niebuhr suggested that even patriotism, the selfless love of country, could be turned to immoral ends by both individuals and leaders.
Niebuhr would understand that if Children of Darkness used framing to manipulate people into supporting the selfish ends of the CoD, the Children of Light must use framing in the service of selfless ends for the achievment of justice. But isn't this "just as bad" you may ask? In a way yes, but Niebuhr had an explanation for this as well, Irony. He argued that a pathetic situation, such as masses of working people voting against their self-interest by voting republican, illicited pity. A truly evil situation where republicans use wedge issues and framing to "manufacture consent" for their destructive policies, illicts contempt. But the ironic situation is one in which evil means are used for just or good purposes. Thus, during the Cold War Niebuhr argued the irony of American nuclear arms kept in readiness for use to keep the peace even though their actual use would destroy the world.
Now, Super Dave and other idealists would probably argue that Demosthenes and Aristotle did not need framing to pursuade their audiences. Using framing in response to republican propaganda undermines democracy and insults the intelligence of the people. To this I unfortunately have to point to the 2010 midterm elections, not ancient history. Two words, "death panels" and fierce desire to shamelessly promote themselves allowed the reactionary base of the gop to reinvent itself as the tea party (itself a shameless use of framing) to fire up and scare people who rationally would know better to the polls. Thus ensuring that the next two years at least will and have been about putting the needs of conservatives far, far ahead of what is best for the nation and obstructing rationalism as an end unto itself.
Any strategy to reclaim America for the Children of Light must include the use of framing issues on progressive terms. Without activating frames favorable for empathy and justice in the electorate, all the best intentions of the foolish Children of Light are buried under an avalanche of fear, hate, superstition, and selfishness.

Conservative entrepreneurship

C'mon, you knew this stuff was out there. And it can all be your's for a small price.

This little number can be your's for only $6.99! What is the printing cost for bumperstickers? Greeting cards are sometimes marked up 1000%,

This one's the same price, but it really gets to the heart of it. See rednecks and conservative bigots are really kind of rebels, maybe even punk rock in reverse. Thomas Frank perused the pages of Trader Monthly, a magazine that seems to have shut down in fear now after the financial crash and reduced now to this silly blog. But in it's heyday before the crash, this was the Big Middle Finger to everyone outside of the insider class. Frank noted from their pages how they glorified the bonus culture and how traders at big wall street firms used their ill-gotten gains for trinkets like $300k record players and private jets.
The market this stumpy is targetting seems of a similar ilk. Show-offs, hardasses, wannabe toughguys, really insecure guys trying to project strength. But when it gets to horseshit like this:

You kind of have to draw the line.

Yes, republican dickheads, this guy speaks for you. If I see one of these stickers...
And all to get $6.99.
These are the toughguys. Bumperstickers. Threatening anonymous bill boards and internet postings.

Well, we used to know a thing or two about what to do with this shit.

Update: Apparently this story got some much press that the website went down and rendered all the "wonderful" pictures defunct. Two things. Was the owner so braindead that they thought they could put this stuff on the "world wide web" and only "their" kind of people would find it? So much for the redneck confed. flag sticker and it's "bold courage." These cowards folded faster than cockroaches scurrying away from the flourescent kitchen lights. This is not to say they are no longer dangerous. Gun + redneck + racist/confederate sticker=potential terrorist. But at least in this instance of movement entrepreneurship... they sucked... big... black... balls.

Coulter, Palin; Charlatans. Scott Walker; fool.

It somehow seems appropriate amidst the stage-managed republican war on women that a zombie like ann coulter would pop out of the graveyard to call sarah palin a charlatan. Pot. Kettle. All that. This joke practically writes itself. But I am going to leave it alone because beyond chuckling at their internecine squabbling there is nothing there. What is interesting is when coulter says: "a weakness in the Republican Party as a whole — that certain individuals become celebrities and are allowed to profit off that status and yet still interfere in GOP politics." Pardon my naivate, but isn't this the part and parcel reason the conservative movement exists? Coulter put it more plainly in another story "the incentives seem to be set up to allow people, as long as you have a band of a few million fanatical followers, you can make money."
What a wonderful "revelation" from the former pin-up girl of the right. Just one of many episodes of sour grapes on the American wacko right. One comment from the huffpo story sums the utter hypocrisy up rather well.
"They rail on Dems for being tied to the Hollywood culture yet they all love celebrity. Coulter has some nerve considering she has made her fortune twisting the constitution with flaming rhetoric. Commentators like her have contributed to celebrity in politics with their continuing criticism of the 'elite' media as the excuse for ignorance.. She should pledge to be factual and end her personal attacks. Dems still for the most part believe in good government not destroying government for personal gain. They are not as selfish. It will be a cold day when free market Republicans believe the shouldn't make their fortunes off politics at any cost to the country." 
The second part I am not so sure of, it is fealty to the corporate overlords Democrats must demonstrate to get elected and pledge privately at least not to rock the boat that allowed the teabag party to flourish in the first place. Though the belief in good government and public service is relatively intact on the Democratic side, and the commenter does qualify the remark well.
Thomas Frank's latest book Pity the Billionaire expands in grueling detail the cult of DIY celebrity on the right. The central thesis that free-market idealism in response to free-market catastrophe has energized the "latest" right in their pursuit of power has already been superceded by the return to culture war staples on steroids. But conservative celebrity worship and the pusuit of money through a moment in the spotlight that Frank detailed validates buying the book all by itself. Frank began his examination of political activism for profit in The Wrecking Crew and has really hit home with the theme of why such a destructive force as movement conservatism appeals to so many and endures disaster after disaster.
It started in the 1970s when Richard Viguerie entered the direct-mail business and redefined it as a money machine for the emerging movement by capitalizing on white backlash and fear. Jack Abramoff got into the shakedown business as president of the college republicans around this time as well, extorting money from business groups to act as political hitmen against campus good goverment groups. But the real celebrity-making money tree waited until rush limbaugh and his bigot clones reinvigorated AM radio by turning it into a forum for gathering audiences of angry white men that could then be sold to whatever snake-oil salesmen sensed the possibility of turning discontent into profit.
Frank noted in Pity with the kind of gloom-tinged glee that I really appreciate how local teabag nobodies "would attempt to parley a moment of Youtube glory into a lifetime revenue stream." And the entrepenuerial talent on display at teabag gatherings selling "Don't Tread on Me" snake flags, bumper stickers, and so on to the masses. Like misdirection, mystification, and mythologizing, making money was absolutely central to the conservative movement and it's latest incarnation as the "tea party."
I certainly don't want this post to sound like I am picking on girls, the two stooges at the beginning were simply coincidental. They just happened to be in the news and vampiratically sucking some celebrity from the dwindling energy left in their stars. No, this goes far further. Newt's attacks on Mitt Romney and Bain Capital was a pretty good example of another vampire attack. The best though, is Wisconsin's disgrace of a governor scott walker. After polarizing the state as no other could possibly do, ramming through vicious new laws to kill unions for no reason, cutting taxes for his buddies, and lying about everything under the sun, he now claims that if he is recalled it will be no big deal. He is so deluded that he really believes the relatively few "fanatical followers" he has accumulated during his membership in the wrecking crew will finance "real money" in the "private sector" of the right-wing echo chamber.

Mechanically-separated debate

Why, why, why do I bother? After noticing this picture on a heart-string jerking appeal to stop "pink slime" beef from use in school lunches. I made a remark that the same picture was used to scare us about mechanically-separated chicken. A third person then jumped in and said there was no difference between them, the same process is used on beef and chicken. Maybe if I had said that "they" don't then use soylent beef to make chicken nuggets or soylent chicken to make hamburgers the distinction I was making would have "revealed itself." In any case, my distinction was ignored and I was told to do more research.

Did the animal this stuff came from look like this:

Or like this:

Regardless of the process used to formulate the above picture, they are not the same. When the same image is used to jerk the heart-strings on two different issues, it is fraud. One is true, the other false.
Have our moral systems degraded so far that this doesn't matter anymore? Are we so used to big business and government lying to us that we think nothing of lying?
If I have learned anything from many internet debates, the answer must be yes and then some. It seems that the key to internet arguing is:
1. Never concede anything
2. Maintain your premise regardless of opposing evidence
3. Never acknowledge points your opponent makes
4. Talk past your opponent to the larger audience of spectators
5. Never accept opponents' premises
6. Even when you have no idea what you are talking about, fake it and defend your position in spite of this.
7. When all else fails, attack your opponent using any of a dozen fallacies.
My favorite part of the argument was when she said it is not big business but government that is responsible for pink slime. I suppose that is true in the same way government caused the 2008 crash, or any of a dozen things people blame government for when the same morally and ethically challenged businesses are the real culprit and have simply captured elements of government that are supposed to regulate this or that objectively bad thing. So the problem was that government was buying pink slime to put in school lunches, not the beef products llc or whatever the company that makes the crap in the first place.
Anyway, doesn't matter, "I" need to do more research. Fuck this shit.

He who controls the past...

A political science professor I had once told the class in a completely sincere voice that history and social studies textbooks in high school now mention more about Harriet Tubman than George Washington. He also in that sincere voice reported to us the completely debunked but nonetheless widely believed myth that Clinton White House staffers removed all the "W" keys from their computers. On the first, I had to borrow a social studies book from one of the baby bmxers who rode with us to debunk it. His book had a picture and a paragraph about Tubman and six pages about GW, with several pictures and many references to him in other sections. I may have mentioned this episode before, and to my anonymous readers this may seem apocryphal, but I bring it up because the past and our understanding of it is not intuitive.
Humans are really the only lifeform that can understand and remember our past. Collective and individual history informs our views on life and choices we make in the present. It is not automatic, nor is even our own memory completely reliable. Unfortunately I packed away all my books on the study of history itself, the only one I can remember is nostalgia. But many factors influence how we remember the past, better than it was, worse than it was, or completely different than it really was.
Which brings us to the point, the worst offense a real historian can make is maliciously rewriting the past to push an agenda. Orwell was not kidding when he wrote Ingsoc's motto "He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past."
Mississippi Republicans Seek To Ban Liberal History In Social Studies Courses
"Conservatives have made strong efforts in the past few years to rewrite textbooks and brainwash school kids with their own twisted version of history. Mississippi Republicans are the latest to attack education, and they plan to pass a bill in the legislature that would practically ban liberalism in class rooms and in textbooks." Link Here and the original source here.
This just smells of another in the long line of relentless power grabs by dumbass neanderthal conservative ideologues. It is not an attack on expertise per se, just the Asimovian axiom that the authoritarian gut is as good a source of expertise as a proficiently trained historian. "My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." No, it isn't. Democracy is the best method we've come up with for tolerably just government, it is not an excuse to pull everything down to the lowest common denominator. Especially when that denominator no longer exists. Movement conservatives do not agree with the rest of America on ANYTHING. There really is no common ground.
What this bill and its supporters wants to do, in case I haven't stated it openly enough, is to intimidate teachers into submitting to teach their agenda. Airbrush liberalism completely out of American history, despite its permeating all aspects of history and even the so-called conservatism in America. So history will be whatever conservative trolls say it is.

"Big" Labor and elections

I am shaking my head after reading this article in Politico about Labor's "Big Revenge." It is unclear from the story who is actually going to be doing more than $450 million in spending on elections during the 2012 cycle. Alright, let's just assume it is the aggregate of organized labor, but the bulk of that chunk of change will probably be flushed down the toilet on TV and other advertising. Somehow, commercials are going to make a difference? Ads that so many of us fast-forward through while watching network programming on our DVRs? This is going to do little more than irritate opponents of workers and maybe inspire supportive head-nodding from sympathetic viewers. It will do nothing toward changing minds or building an organization that can endure the current full court press against collective bargaining or whats left of workers' rights. Almost $450 million in 2008 spent by the dwindling labor organizations... for what exactly? A tweek of healthcare and complete sycophancy toward wall st., the sworn enemy of workers. The one promise that candidate Obama made that broke my heart when he failed to even try to get it passed as President was the Card Check. The provision, whatever it could have ended up being called as legislation, that would have allowed workers to bypass formal elections that the bosses can rig and influence, intimidate, coerce, etc.
As a former member of two separate UAW locals and still a strong supporter in spirit, I have to say: Give it up, this strategy is a complete failure. Workers owe the Democratic Party... nothing. President Obama will win or lose on his own, nothing workers or their organizations can do will change that. Working people are no longer a core constituancy of the Democratic Party and the longer labor deludes itself that it matters on the national level the more opportunities closer to the grassroots will languish and be lost. Having Hilda Solis as Secy Labor is nice, but any positive of having a Secretary of Labor who doesn't actively dispise workers as during republican administrations is drowned out by the numerous wall street representatives in the cabinet and important policy positions. President Obama could have lobbied more for Congress to pass a Cardcheck bill while it was overwhelmingly Democratic, he could have put his foot down when teabag state governments decided to wage war on public workers and collective bargaining. He could have stood up more forcefully to advocate for workers' rights, or finally, finally forced the states to comply with federal labor laws. But that would have required effort, and distracted from safely guiding bailouts to the grubby-handed bosses and financial criminals.
No, we have to go back to the old ways. Trying to gain influence with people who don't need us and take us for granted is a fool's errand. That money could have been spent in 2008 actually organizing on the ground, you could pay laid-off workers and enthusiastic college kids to go out and talk to people about why you should have rights in the workplace. There has been analysis lately on how labor unions act like businesses and try to operate in the shadow of business operations. This is the ultimate in foolhardiness, working people are not another customer base or interest group. WE ARE THE PEOPLE! The atomized public that lives in fear at work could gain more in a 10 minute chat with sincere organizers than any number of TV ads. Instead of using dwindling resources to compete with the 1% and their unlimited resources, we need to reimagine how to bring back middle-class America.
Update I
"Many argue that labor needs a permanent presence in communities across the country to beat back [a rash of Republican-backed efforts in the states... that would make it harder for unions to organize] such attacks, even at the cost of devoting less money to electing candidates. Such an approach could still benefit Obama and other Democrats, but would not directly finance party activities." From Labor unions rethinking their role in politics in the LA Times.

Rushed in

I hate discovering a post that covered almost the same ground I just did. Peter Fegen posted Rush Job two days ago. This is why I am a lousy blogger, just can't keep up. My posts are far too long and don't always link to hundreds of other sites. Fegen does not take the chastisement of rush as far, concentrating on the l'il players. Where I argued that the alter is being prepared for the pig and the fire stoked, Fegen thinks it is a smokescreen, rush might lose out on earning equivalent to a few median annual incomes but will be back once the heat dies down.
The advantage to studying history is knowing in advance how the story ends. In a case like this, the ending is all conjecture. But I stand by my prediction for a simple reason, the zeitguist has turned. Fegen compares rush's chauvanism to don imus and notes that imus is back on the air. What he doesn't note however is that imus' episode was televised, and outrage barely extended beyond the chattering classes. Does the fact that the victim was a white law student testifying about necessary and popular womens' rights' issues matter? I hope it is not crass to note the distinction, but rush stoked the fury of normally non-political women. These regular ladies have many more outlets to express their anger, social-networking is even bigger today than in '07.
The inside (ruling elite) monitors popular opinion closely, they have to in order to maintain control. Rush was simply a method of control, his final act therefore would appropriately be as a sacrifice to defuse popular anger. Even if it was simply to make him a zombie sunk cost.

A farewell to rush?

I could not believe it at first, but the sustained pressure on limbaugh really seems to be working. The suprise being in the choice of his many libelous attacks finally got some traction. Why and how did calling a college girl a slut and prostitute awaken outrage? He says awful things like that on practically a daily basis. I personally think he should have been driven off the air when he called Chelsea Clinton the White House dog. While that stunt helped get him off TV, the oxymoronic "excellence in broadcasting" empire continued. Limbaugh keeps getting expanded presence on TV and keeps getting thrown out for being an incredible jackass.
Now, normally, venom-spewing shitbags on AM radio go about their business of atomizing and polarizing Americans who should know better without drawing attention from the larger society. This is the biggest flareup in my memory over a slathering personal attack made in the dark underground of AM radio. Radio is the perfect medium for disseminating propaganda One-way broadcasts allow the host to lie, distort, and misdirect with impunity. The only opposition heard is selected, filtered, and controlled by the men behind the curtain. Any liberals allowed on the air are those deemed clueless enough to be smacked down by the host. Or, simply take the rush approach and have no one on. A daily sermon of hate and division.
The rush program is a highly profitable (whether the boycotts and advertiser drops will have any effect is yet unclear) medium that defends the fascist side to the hilt and blames all ills on Democrats. Just as schoolkids need refresher courses after summer break, every election season brings fresh attempts to brand Party positions and introduce the narrative to the public. The advantage brought to the conservative brand (whose ideas are wholly unpopular across a broad spectrum of the electorate) is the consistant, year-round narrative that deceives and misdirects listeners but reinforces self-proclaimed identity among the faithful. Rush is simply the end-product of a vast and sophisticated machine that analyzes, interprets, and filters reality through the right-wing imagination. This process was detailed extremely well in Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media? (pdf review here), and David Brock's The Republican Noise Machine (wiki entry). Of course, these books are somewhat out-of-date for the contemporary situation, given the success of the corporate inside's D.C. machine where big money simply buys politicians outright of both parties and changes laws as they see fit.
This is where, as I can see it from the outside, rush may have finally outlived his usefulness to the business community. As mentioned before, right-wing hate radio is extremely profitable; but the money comes from somewhere. Now that koch's and the other big players' in the corporate takeover of government machinery is all but complete, they (the inside) has little need for a bombastic pig like rush to get what they want. So rush may be headed for the great dust-bin of discarded conservative heroes. Every once in a while, the masters need to make a sacrifice that can keep pitchforks pointed away from the real agenda. Rush may have been too successful in building the army of dittoheads, aka teabaggers, that by this point they can push their masters' agenda without massive expenditures. And it is always good to remind the functionaries that they have power only insofar as the real masters allow it. For years now, rush has been titular kingmaker and power to be heeded by the transient gop politicians. It may have been decided over expensive scotch and cigars in back rooms that he has outlived his usefulness and may actually decide that his power is so great as to actually start making independent decisions. Not that any decisions he would make would run counter to the real agenda, but if rush has approached the limits of control there is a need to dump him like a hot rock.