Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Vicious Doublethink



Is anyone else tired of the incongruities of the anti-choice/standard right wing viciousness? "Don't breed 'em if you can't feed 'em" is a common sight at authoritarian rallies for their own oppression on signs. As is the many permutations of "go to work, millions on welfare are depending on you" and how many right wing propaganda "discussions" begin with some variation on how awful "government dependency?"

False Flags, ridiculous and paranoid

It is not actually that surprising that the fevered imaginations of the radical right, what is surprising is that a state legislator actually sent the conspiracy theory email out using his official state email account. John Celock at Huffington Post reported:

"WASHINGTON -- A Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature emailed constituents Tuesday morning with a rumor circulating in conservative circles that President Barack Obama is planning to stage a fake assassination attempt in an effort to stop the 2012 election from happening.
Rep. Kelly Keisling (R-Byrdstown) sent an email from his state email account to constituents containing a rumor that Obama and the Department of Homeland Security are planning a series of events that could lead to the imposition of "martial law" and delay the election. Among the events hypothesized in the email is a staged assassination attempt on the president that would lead to civil unrest in urban areas and martial law.
Keisling appears to have forwarded a more widely circulated email from Joe Angione, a Florida-based conservative blogger. Angione prefaces the rumor by saying it has not been confirmed but likewise notes it has not been denied. Angione also writes that people need to work to prevent the rumor from becoming reality.
The conspiracy theory started with an article written by Doug Hammon and posted on CanadaFreePress.com, which he said arose from conversations he had with an informant within the Department of Homeland Security." (emphasis mine)

The loonies are always coming up with apocalyptic projections of their own dark desires, but lately they seem to have learned this exciting new word. "False Flag" attacks. It has come up over the Aurora massacre, over the Olympics, and now from the President himself.

But putting the ridiculous idea out on official government accounts is not only shameless, but toeing the line of treason. Kelly Keisling should be investigated and removed from office, this nonsense is no longer funny. Remove one idiot from office (grothmann, you're next) and the rest might figure out that once in, you are responsible for your actions.

Limbaugh advocates last year's dirty tricks

Shhhhh. Maybe if your audience does not tell the bums on welfare when the election is, it will have some kind of difference.

"Rush Limbaugh is calling on his listeners to keep the election date a secret from the poorest Americans.
"Ninety-nine days, folks," the conservative radio host announced on Monday. "Ninety-nine days before the election. If you are a welfare recipient, that's just a little more than three checks."
"Maybe we shouldn't remind people," he added after thinking about it. "We shouldn't remind people on welfare when the election is. That may not be something we want to actually do."

Well, now that we know rush does not have the kind of audience he claims, and advertisers are dropping him like a hot plate of fat, does anything he tells his followers to do relevent? Especially when this particular dirty trick has been in play for at least 12 years? Or maybe I just imagined all the stories about robo-calls reminding people to vote on the day after the election, or signs put up anonymously with the same advice. Or the signs that scolded people to pay all their parking tickets before voting or the cops would take their children away, etc., etc.

I know we shouldn't worry about what this bloviating pile of monkey guts has to say anymore and that this was simply a throwaway line, but what does it say that the "leader of the republican party" is this far behind the times? He makes it sound like some kind of original idea he had.

The Gun Maniacs' Fear Abates

From CBS:

"A U.N. treaty to regulate the multibillion-dollar global arms trade will have to wait after member states failed to an reach agreement, and some diplomats and supporters blamed the United States for the unraveling of the monthlong negotiating conference."

The mental image conjured by this statement should be of millions of overgrown man-children finally blowing out the collective breath they have been holding since the temper tantrum of "The UN is coming for our guns" began. But, of course, it won't be. The storyline will change, but in the gun maniacs' mind the result will be the same. The intertubes will still be littered with breathless warnings of imminent doom, as though the same government that could not find New Orleans on a map during Katrina will swoop down and seize 300 million guns at a moment's notice.

"This was stunning cowardice by the Obama administration, which at the last minute did an about-face and scuttled progress toward a global arms treaty, just as it reached the finish line," said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "It's a staggering abdication of leadership by the world's largest exporter of conventional weapons to pull the plug on the talks just as they were nearing an historic breakthrough."

"A Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, also blamed the U.S., saying "they derailed the process," adding that nothing will happen to revive negotiations until after the U.S. presidential election in November."

Or more likely, it won't. Now, I know the gun-maniacs do not understand how our government and laws actually work, or silly terms like "progressive taxation" or even that wall street and giant corporate farms are not actually small businesses. But you have to think they could understand the difference between "export" and "domestic."

"The draft treaty would require all countries to establish national regulations to control the transfer of conventional arms and to regulate arms brokers. It would prohibit states that ratify the treaty from transferring conventional weapons if they would violate arms embargoes or if they would promote acts of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

In considering whether to authorize the export of arms, the draft says a country must evaluate whether the weapon would be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian laws or be used by terrorists, organized crime or for corrupt practices.

Many countries, including the U.S., control arms exports but there has never been an international treaty regulating the estimated $60 billion global arms trade. For more than a decade, activists and some governments have been pushing for international rules to try to keep illicit weapons out of the hands of terrorists, insurgent fighters and organized crime."

You see kids? This treaty that got your panties all in a bunch, concerns US conventional weapons trade with other countries. All that huffing and puffing was in defense of "others" having the same access to deadly weapons that you enjoy.

I did not know the old adage about how a right winger cannot really enjoy a steak unless he knows someone else cannot have one did not apply to their assault rifles. Ignorance of what this treaty actually contained is the only explanation I can think of for why your average American gun maniac would fight so passionately for the rights of non-Americans (that might include muslims and dark skinned people) to have what they have.


Saturday, July 28, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises


Last weekend the Dark Knight Rises brought in an estimated 160 million in box office receipts. Undoubtedly it will be the most talked about movie this summer especially in the wake of the Colorado shooting. But what does the Dark Knight Rises reveal to us about our society?

The Dark Knight Rises is the third installment in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. It begins with Bruce Wayne, Batman, now a recluse hiding in his Mansion. Outside, police commissioner Gordon delivers a speech honoring the fallen Harvy Dent. In the speech Gordon begins by pausing for a moment while pondering whether to reveal the truth about Harvy. He then describes the continuing need for the strong policing measures introduced in the Dent act and reminds everyone of how bad organized crime was prior to the Dent act. The first scene then ends with guests enjoying cocktails while Catwoman, disguised as a maid, furtively meanders upstairs to steal a copy of Bruce Wayne’s finger prints.

Thus two political dogmas, crime and feminism, are paraded before our eyes on the big screen. Gotham has strong anti-crime laws and they work. Women in Gotham are no longer confined to housework; they are now every bit as strong as men and are stealing from the men of Gotham. What are these, but the reflections of the dominant views of our time?

Later the villain Bain is introduced. Predictably, he is from the Middle East. Bain is a mercenary and a product of a third world prison camp. Bain is irrational, violent, suicidal, and bent on the destruction of Gotham. Bain carries out a faux revolution in Gotham where elites are given death sentences. The transformed Gotham is anarchic as Mr. Nolan believes this is the inevitable result of removing elites from society. Here, the “mainstream” view of the 99% movement is revealed; anarchic and doomed. Its leaders are nothing but violent, irrational terrorists.

It is on the screen that the mock representations of the real battles are played before the viewers’ eyes. In this respect Christopher Nolan’s third Dark Knight movie is indeed a dark reflection of society, but to quote from his second movie “it is darkest just before the dawn”.

Friday, July 27, 2012

Voter suppression graphically illustrated

Shared from upworthy.com
http://www.upworthy.com/infographic-wow-if-i-didnt-know-better?c=ufb1

Stop opening your mouth glenn!

Whiskey and the morning after: This is not "class warfare"

Whiskey and the morning after: This is not "class warfare"

Republican voter fraud

Republican candidate quits after companion caught voting while dead

Oh those wacky arizona republicans:

"John Enright, 66, had been seeking the Republican nomination for county supervisor of District 5, an area that includes Apache Junction and Gold Canyon...His statement made no mention of the scandal unleashed in an anonymous, undated letter sent several weeks ago to the Pinal County Recorder's Office. As recently as this year, the letter alleged, someone had been filling out and mailing in absentee ballots addressed to a woman who died on Feb. 3, 2007. The woman, Sheila Nassar, and Enright lived together at the time of her death."

Can we drop the "holier than thou" act now?

"Voter fraud is a Class 6 felony."

Way to go GOP! You found one.

But I'm sure some Democrat broke into the guy's house and filled out the absentee ballot right?

Wednesday, July 25, 2012

A Debate on the Left

Academics and professors love to debate things. They argue over the meaning of a particular event in history, whether a scientific experiment can be replicated with the same conclusion, what the proper makeup of a demographic sample is for a political science study, and so on. One professor I know called journal articles "one long, extremely drawn-out conversation." Scholars debate over ideas, they generally do not attack each other. This is why I am actually a pretty rotten scholar, and a pathetic weak-kneed pundit/pseudocommentator at the same time. The two halves of my personality clash like matter and anti-matter, instead of a brilliant flash of light though, the forces simply cancel each other out. At this point in time I cannot seem to decide whether I really want to be an academic historian, or a political journalist. My training lies in the former and my passion in the latter. So, when I come across a debate like the ones I found today, I am really torn as to whether I write about it now or twenty years from now to entertain my fellow inmates for debt peonage (oh yes, it is coming). The Progressive Movement such as it is in the United States is often labeled a "circular firing squad" because we just cannot get on message about anything.

Usually, when an academic writes something he or she is representing a university or some sort of institution, this is not always the case in Progressive writing. So the debate up for analysis is more representative of individuals than any kind of institution. The first shot was taken by Alex Pareene, which Salon sponsored as part of a so-called "hack list" ostensibly so popular that: "This column is a regular feature taking a deeper look at our media's most pernicious hacks, which we'll rank in order at year's end." Today's target: Aaron Sorkin,

"Aaron Sorkin is why people hate liberals. He’s a smug, condescending know-it-all who isn’t as smart as he thinks he is. His feints toward open-mindedness are transparently phony, he mistakes his opinion for common sense, and he’s preachy. Sorkin has spent years fueling the delusional self-regard of well-educated liberals. He might be more responsible than anyone else for the anti-democratic “everyone would agree with us if they weren’t all so stupid” attitude of the contemporary progressive movement. And age is not improving him."

The smug appraisal does not get any less ad hominem from there.

Coming to Sorkin's defense, sort of, is Bob Cesca (regular readers know that I tend to hold Cesca's commentary in pretty high regard). He begins by saying,

"Seriously, the act of observing fellow liberals every day on the blogs, on The Facebook and elsewhere too often makes me want to smash my computer using a team of monkeys brandishing explosive wiffle bats. Specifically, the act of watching progressives who don’t understand the realities of American government and politics, watching progressives desperately seeking “reasonable” conservatives in some sort of futile attempt at détente, and watching hipster cool-kid progressives undermining support for the most liberal president of our time might actually make me lose my shpadoinkle, even though I generally feel pretty centered."

And takes a few shots at some media personalities he considers "hacks" himself. Guys like Chuck Todd, Harold Ford, Jr. and Mark Halperin who insist Americans "hate" Liberals, despite agreeing with liberal positions pretty consistantly. Cesca hits it on the head when he states that what they actually hate is "the stigmatized cartoon word and the absurd commie pinko caricature painted by the right-wing media for the last 40 years." This demonization is possible mainly because he "see[s] too many liberals shying away from the forceful argument or the contentious debate because of some kind of limp, exhausted sense of futility."

Then we turn almost 180 degrees to Steve Almond writing in The Baffler, an on-again, off-again critique of popular culture and standard-bearer for hipsterism that actually tries to poke some life into the "limp, exhausted sense of futility" noted above. Only, in this instance he is committing political aggravated assault with his targets. "The Joke’s on You" is one of those moments that makes a genuine Progressive hang his or her head and ask whether it might not be time to emigrate.

"What Stewart and Colbert do most nights is convert civic villainy into disposable laughs. They prefer Horatian satire to Juvenalian, and thus treat the ills of modern media and politics as matters of folly, not concerted evil. Rather than targeting the obscene cruelties borne of greed and fostered by apathy, they harp on a rogues’ gallery of hypocrites familiar to anyone with a TiVo or a functioning memory. Wit, exaggeration, and gentle mockery trump ridicule and invective. The goal is to mollify people, not incite them."

I guess the Rally to Restore Sanity and Stephen Colbert's equivalent faux-demonstration seem more understandable from this perspective. "Let off some steam you young concerned citizens, but don't actually organize into something durable that could threaten our little game." How hard do you think a visa for Germany or Sweden is to get?

But then Stephen Deusner comes along to calm our fears and assure us that everything's really okay.

"A passionate and often excitable writer, Almond can be a bold and incisive critic, but also occasionally trollishly provocative, as though tipping sacred cows was an end in itself. He often writes to be disagreed with, it would seem. And this piece is a mess. Almond argues pugilistically, adopting a tone more reminiscent of playground taunts than of high-minded cultural criticism. The essay is oddly cynical and ungenerous, too quick to dismiss its subjects and too unwilling to consider anything positive they might have to offer."

In conclusion though, Progressive criticism of other Progressives is doubly destructive. First, it ensures that the "circular firing squad" continues and "we" never get on the same page, as Cesca spends much of his articles emploring. Second, each criticism is like a bullet for the very organized, very powerful, and very evil right-wingers to pick up and use to gun down any survivors of the CFS. We see it often, someone's words taken out of context and blown up to caricature and demonize the left in its entirety. So whether or not Aaron Sorkin is a dick or Pareene is a dick for pointing out Sorkin's dickishness; or who's side John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are really on and if Almond is just another Joker trying to watch the world burn, you can bet dollars to donuts it will end up recycled into the one thing sean hannity knows for the week. And the left will only be weaker for the attempt.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Hello! My name is Glenn Grothman and I drink my own pee.

From Thinkprogress:
Why does he always look like he's snarling?
My state senator really is the unrestrained id of the republican party. You may remember some of his greatest hits such as "single parenthood is child abuse" or "money is just not important to women" (why he voted against equal pay laws). Now he comes right out and says what we all know, that disenfranchising voters through poll taxes/ID is just a political ploy to elect republicans.

“Insofar as there are inappropriate things, people who vote inappropriately are more likely to vote Democrat,” got that?

"Right. I think if people cheat, we believe the people who cheat are more likely to vote against us."

Or in other words, voting against republicans is cheating.

In case anyone was wondering, no, we really didn't elect this guy. He "won" a special election and then ran unopposed the next time around. This year will be the first time he will be in a real election, with an actual opponent.

If you would like to see more of glenn's greatest hits, we have a dedicated local blogger who has spent several years chronicling this large child's abuses of decency and common sense. See him here, and say thank you for all his hard work.

What if you could prevent the Kennedy assassinations?

11/22/63: A Novel
Horror novelist and master storyteller Stephen King is out to answer that question in 11/22/63: A Novel and frankly I am on the edge of my seat. My wife and I just started listening to this story on audio for road trips (which we take a lot of) and the narrator is great. Craig Wasson has incredible vocal range to give real distinctiveness to the characters. I have to admit that when I first saw the title, I thought it would be a really in-depth look at that day but I really sold King short. Maybe I was just had Bobby (Widescreen Edtion) in mind, where it was just a bunch of people working at the hotel the day RFK was assassinated. A good film, but did not have the emotional impact I thought it would. Maybe because I was not around in 1968 to experience that awful year.
Now, it must be said that I have never read a King story that did not grip me and to my knowledge he has never written a bad story. Also I do not know of any time travel stories he has written but I admit there are many I have not read. There are quite a few that bounce around from past to present in the characters minds, flashbacks and the like but nothing like the incredible counterfactual opportunities 11/22/63 offers. A comment about counterfactual history. You may have heard of What If? 2: Eminent Historians Imagine What Might Have Been and other titles in the series edited by Robert Cowley. These are fun, but very hard to defend academically. Serious historians try to avoid counterfactuals whenever they can because they are just too tricky. One might be able to predict changes along a small number of variables very close to the time a change was made, but as time marches forward and the number of variables increases a counterfactual history becomes statistically untenable. Historians love to debate, and love to defend and criticise ideas in journals, panel discussions, and online forums. But counterfactual scholarship is like painting a big, red target on yourself.

And so we usually leave contemplating changes to the past for novelists and science fiction writers. People with far more imagination than an historian grounded in facts can hope to muster. Occasionally there is a crossover, such as Harry Turtledove, but most of the time you end up with dreck like Newt Gingrich's pathetic reimagining of the Battle of Gettysburg. Enter Stephen King, a man with intimate knowledge and memory of the 1950s and 1960s, access to the historiography of the period, and more imagination than the next 50 writers could ever hope for.

You can see why I'm excited to travel back to 1958 with Jake Epping.

As I said before, I just started the story but already the possibilities are jaw-dropping. I wrote my MA thesis on Cold War Liberalism and Vietnam, so JFK was a central figure in my research. I have always been facsinated by the era. My own interpretation of what happened to the US after Dallas '63 was that "we" swallowed one too many bombs and have been just limping along ever since. American society could have weathered the Civil Rights movement and all the other movements for equality and justice, or we could have weathered Vietnam but not both. The scars of too many body blows haunt us to this day almost fifty years later. Please don't misunderstand, it was right and it was just for African-Americans to march and demonstrate for equal rights as it was for women and all disenfranchised groups but white male backlash against freedom and justice for all tore our social fabric to the core.

Vietnam was another story altogether. I have yet to find convincing evidence that JFK would have pursued escalation in Southeast Asia differently than LBJ did, it is one of the daunting tasks of historians on the subject. Many historians' interpretations of just what the hell happened in Vietnam are confusing and contradictory. Obviously, over 58,000 Americans died there, many many more were wounded terribly both mentally and physically, to say nothing of the indigenous population's suffering. But the slip and slide down to the massive military operations in SEA is tangled. To speculate is almost to be irresponsible. But to tell a story...

Saturday, July 21, 2012

Yellow Journalism and Palermo


Over the past few months our “News” papers have been refusing to report the facts relating to the strike at Palermo’s. In a series of “news” reports, the Journal Sentinel and Biz Times have first repeated the allegations of the Palermo’s employees and then repeated the denials of the Palermo spokespersons. The complaints alleged by the workers include: unsafe working conditions, poor compensation and lousy benefits, discrimination, and more recently intimidation and retaliation in response to labor’s attempt to organize.  

While the Journal Sentinel has reported these allegations, and the denials by Palermo; journalism is more than reporting claims by parties. Journalism is investigating and reporting. Palermo has paid 18,500 in fines in safety violations. There have been amputations at Palermo. These are some of the facts regarding safety and the Journal Sentinel should report them.

The Journal Sentinel should also report the facts on discrimination. Palermo is certainly aware of the number of minorities they have hired and the number of minorities they have promoted. The Journal Sentinel should have asked Palermo for the relevant statistics and reported those statistics.

The Journal Sentinel should do more than reiterate the complaints by workers of low compensation and the assurances of management that pay is competitive. Journalists ought to investigate that claim. What is the starting pay? What is the median pay? How many workers make at or near minimum wage? The public needs more than yellow journalism. The public needs to know the facts so that informed decisions can be made.

Friday, July 20, 2012

Another "isolated incident"

So now we can add one more to the long list of irritating, obnoxious elements involved in going to the movies. Sure, just another isolated incident. Just like when Joesph Goebbels released live mice into a theater showing All Quiet On The Western Front in Berlin and tossed stink bombs in just for good measure. Whether James Holmes had an ideological agenda to terrorize and intimidate people into not seeing The Dark Knight Rises is basically irrelevent. The result is the same, I am sure not going to the theater again for a long time. Whether this particular maniac took rush limbaugh's tirade about batman being a liberal conspiracy to defeat mitt romney to heart or not, the result is the same. People are dead, more are wounded, and many more will suffer shock and psychological damage from this armed attack on civilians.
Recently I saw a guy with a pistol strapped to his belt coming out of the theater when I took my wife to see a show. At the time it just made me really anxious, then I thought about how it was only a matter of time. How many times do I have to write about violence? One, two, three, four, fivesix, seven and that's not nearly all of them. Sure, this is a big country and your chances of being murdered by a crazed gunman are pretty small, but think of all the massacres that Americans have endured since the late 1990s. When combined with all the "regular" gun homicides, it is becoming just a regular fact of life.
My friend Ms. Solidarity had this to say this morning. "Dear West Bend wingnuts:
Tell us again after todays tragedy why pushing for guns in the library was such a good idea?
Just sayin." And: "I just thought of somethin else..its easier to obtain a gun in this country then get mental health care if your severely mentally ill.God help us." Guns are a cancer in America, and it has so metastisized that we can't even approach the problem without self-described maniacs screaming bloody murder about it.

It is a problem, not an issue. Gun violence and the terror it causes should not have a defending side, but it does. Sickeningly, this is not even the first gun massacre this week! Don Hamel wrote a moving plea to rachet down the rhetoric and passion around guns. He echoes my thoughts pretty well by writing: "I don’t want to be shot. I do not want anyone I love to be shot. I don’t want people I don’t particularly care for to be shot. I do not want harm to befall strangers, even if their beliefs do oppose mine. Outside of war, shooting is the most preventable tragedy on the face of the earth.
That is not a political position."
Can our local gauleiter, owen robinson, name a single instance when more guns in more hands have led to fewer deaths or "isolated incidents?" But why is it that a guy shooting 17 people at a bar in Alabama gets very little coverage while another guy shooting 50 people in a movie theater is front page, all day news? It is insane to think this is becoming a regular, routine part of American discourse. And irresponsibility is rife. "Get there first!" As drudge passes on without the slightest bit of shame that holmes was a Democrat. Bullshit! And you had to know at least one insane tea party congressman would roll "Christian victimhood" and concealed carry into one utterly tactless response.

"The blade itself incites to violence" It will never end.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Labor breaks with the DNC

Now here's a change I can believe in:

"In a bold move, the AFL-CIO and many other labor union are pulling their funds back from the Democratic National Convention. This is largely due to the fact that the DNC is being held in Charlotte, NC. North Carolina is a well known Right To Work State and has very low union percentage. The DNC will be hosting the convention at a non-union hotel and a non-union convention center."

The Labor Movement and the Democratic Party have had separate interests for quite a long time. It is about time unions stopped bending over backwards and spending so much of their meager funds on politicians who do not stand for working people.

Five Trillion

No, that is not how much federal debt incurred by the president. It is how much cash US corporations are sitting on.

Monday, July 16, 2012

Chickens over the cliff

What happens when the mark you're mugging takes the gun away and points it at you? Are the republicans about to find out? This may be the appropriate image, but the reality according to the beltway is we are hurtling toward a "fiscal cliff." Politically, it is the right move on the part of Democrats. The trick will be to make the gop own it. From WaPo:

"Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households.
Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise."

While letting the republicans obstruct their way to letting taxes go up on everyone two years ago and then letting them explain why super-rich parasites need tax cuts more than the other 98% would have been the way to go, this time around they have something they really want to protect.

"Obama assured Hill Democrats during a White House meeting that he would veto any attempt to maintain the Bush tax cuts on income over $250,000 a year, according to several people present. It also echoes the dismissive response by Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) to Republicans seeking to undo scheduled reductions in Pentagon spending that even Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has said would be “devastating” to national security."

How it will be devastating is not clear, is North Korea going to invade if we trim back a little on half the world's military spending? Devastating to lockheed and blackwater's profit margin maybe (though I doubt it), but probably not to national security. But this is how the story is wrung out inside the beltway.

Update:
Apparently and in defiance of "conventional wisdom" both taxing the rich and cutting "defense spending" are actually pretty popular in polls. Here's to doing nothing!

Bareknuckle Obama

If the president has many more weeks like this past one he should have little difficulty winning reelection. From wash. post's "The Fix":

"Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said late Friday that the attacks by President Obama on his record at Bain Capital were “ridiculous and of course beneath the dignity of the presidency.” Matt Rhoades, Romney’s campaign manager, took it a step further, demanding that Obama apologize for the allegations — calling the charges “so over the top that it calls into question the integrity of their entire campaign.”"

I thought it was speaker boehner who did all the crying on the gop side?

"How did the Obama campaign respond? “Stop whining,” counseled former White House chief of staff and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. A new ad funded by Obama’s campaign, meanwhile, features Romney singing “America the Beautiful” while stats are shown on screen about outsourcing under Romney and his Swiss bank account — among other things.
The Obama response amounts a collective sticking out of the tongue — or another gesture involving your hand — at the Romney campaign. What Obama’s campaign is saying with the level of rhetorical aggression — and the unapologetic reply to the controversy it has caused — is that it is willing to push the boundaries and do so unrepentantly.
The shoe has often been on the other foot."

At last, the fighter we wanted, needed to kick out the shaky supports big money has built around their deathcult of greed and irresponsibility shows up. Can the Obama campaign keep it up until November?

If there is anything that is deadly to a campaign according to Dr. Drew Westen, it is the appearance of weakness entailed by demanding an apology. There is nothing unethical about these new ads and nothing factually incorrect in the president's speeches about the opposition.

It is about time the Democrats stopped acting like battered spouses and stopped worrying about offending these weasels.

Rum and The Misfits?


I was watching the end of Cujo the other day, waiting for Creepshow to come on and saw the oddest thing. A commercial for some knockoff spiced rum called Sailor Jerry's that featured "Where Eagles Dare" by the Misfits in the background. The most recognizable line of that song is "I ain't no goddamn son of a bitch" that Glenn repeats over and over for reasons I have always been unsure of. But that is one of my favorite Misfits songs. I have very mixed, ambiguous feelings about this. First I thought it was funny that seconds earlier the almighty TV gods bleeped out a character saying "goddamn" during the movie, but it was perfectly alright apparently for that word to be sung in the commercials.

Here it is:


And here's the full song:
The full lyrics:
we walk the streets at night
we go where eagles dare
they pick up every movement
they pick up every loser
with jaded eyes and features
you think they really care?

i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby
i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby, babe

an omelet of disease awaits your noontime meal
her mouth of germicide seducing all your glands

i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby
i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby, babe

let's test your threshold of pain
let's see how long you last
that's happened in your rape
on bosoms of your past

with jaded eyes and features
you think they really care
let's go where eagles dare
let's go where eagles dare

i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby
i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby

i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think about it baby
i ain't no goddamn son of a bitch
you better think baby, babe, babe, babe
The Misfits have always been the soundtrack to Halloween for me. So why would a spiced rum company that presumably is more interested in presenting images of the high seas, tropical paradise and so on want to associate with such a dark brand of music?

No overarching point here, I just thought it was funny. And you don't often hear much punk rock on tv, especially not in commercials.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

NRA to Senate "We're watching"

From Thinkprogress:

"In a letter opposing the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 — a bill to allow citizens to know what corporations and wealthy donors are paying for the “independent expenditure” attack ads enabled by the 5-4 Citizens United ruling — the National Rifle Association (NRA) is warning Senators it will score the issue in its legislative scorecard for this Congress."

From the letter these arrogant vigilantes sent:
"Due to the importance of the fundamental speech and associational rights of the National Rifle Association’s four million members, and considering the blatant attack on those rights that S. 3369 represents, we strongly oppose the DISCLOSE Act and will consider votes on this legislation in future candidate evaluations."

In other words, we who control the minds and donations of just over one percent of Americans will dictate to you, the elected representatives of one hundred percent of Americans, what you may do.

How long can the republic last if heavily-armed extremists can intimidate the legitimate authority of the United States?

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Mitt Romney's bad week


The former governor of Massachusetts had quite a few strikes against him coming into the republican nomination. He's still not loved by his party, more like barely tolerated. Odd choice for a national contender for the presidency, flip-flopper, Yankee, Mormon, "moderate" and that is just the objections made by the rank and file authoritarians. The more information that leaks out about Mitt's financial and class identity, the more independents flee in terror. Romney, presidential candidate, is a member of the 1%.

In earlier days when Thorstein Veblen's ideas were still in the public consciousness, we would understand that Romney is part of and an ideal representative of the leisure class. In every society beyond the hunter/gatherer stage there is an elite segment that produces nothing, that provides nothing, and exists only as part of a self-designated indispensible class that feeds on productive sectors of the society. Priests and warlords constituted this class in ancient societies, nobles were the parasites in the Middle Ages, and speculators make up much of the predatory class in modern times. Mitt Romney made his pile not by building things of value for the most part as head of bain capital, but by cannibalizing productive enterprises built by others. The leisure class served a function in past times, priests were a catalyst holding a nation together, nobles protected the workers from hostile neighbors. What do the vulture capitalists do in the modern US? Is there any function to manipulating currencies, taking over companies, betting on commodity prices, or peddling insider information?

No, the predatory leisure class exists because certain parasites are able to take control of economic levers through ruthless ambition, deceit, and nepotism. They then siphon off as much wealth as they can get away with and compete with each other over who has the most. Power is seductive, if left unchecked these parasites will simply kill their host. Without countervailing forces any elite will degenerate into a leisure class, even in (or perhaps especially in) communist countries like the Soviet Union.

In a way, Americans are lucky that the authoritarians put up this joke of a man romney to run for president. He simply oozes the "I'm not one of you" vibe and even if the felony he committed by lying about bain capital, his engine of destruction, does not result in a perp walk, the defensiveness and equivocation about it that his campaign has demonstrated this week should seal his fate.

It is amazing as well that the president's team has latched onto this line of attack. If they keep it up and the "outsourcing" offensive finds traction (as it should), I will be happy to eat my words about liberal politeness and spineless Democrats. Watching the republicans squirm over stuff they used to brag about makes me think there might be hope for the republic yet. Of course they feel no real shame about all the crimes against Americans committed by the conservatives, but are simply not used to being on the defensive about anything. And the shredding of America's middle class rightly makes the electorate at large angry. Finally, we are getting some bit of truth as to who was really behind the plunder (hint, it wasn't all government's fault).


Then there is romney's debacle while speaking to the NAACP. But wait, didn't romney shore up his base by "standing up to 'them'" and chastising African-Americans for wanting more "free stuff?" Well, yes and no, obviously there are a great number of racists in the gop that needed a little pep talk but the suburban republicans do not want to side with an openly racist party. More than a few of them will find their nominee's speech unsettling enough to stay home, or even switch sides. To say nothing of African-American voters. After lying about when he left bain, and possibly exposing himself to felony charges, even the suggestion that he flew in black supporters is not going to shore up his public integrity.

All in all, it was a bad week for mitt. It should be exciting for those of us who want to keep this man far from the White House and if the president's team can keep it up that might come to pass. But the ruthless, shameless authoritarians are not going to just roll over. The election is still almost four months away, expect awful things to come.

Friday, July 13, 2012

The tax cut obsession

The problem with having one party utterly and ridiculously obsessed with tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy is that the spineless other party tries to get into the act. And looks silly trying it in the process, on top of abandoning the historic principles of progressive taxation and losing any pretense of the moral high ground. Republicans cut taxes for the 1% because that is who they are loyal to, having abandoned any sense of responsibility to the nation a long time ago.

It is also a trap. The corporatist gop has successfully erased any understanding of progressive or regressive taxation so any taxes going up automatically means "your" taxes are going up to the average voter. If the Democrats had a coherent narrative on fairness and justice instead of a jumbled mess of arbitrary statements that change with the times, the trap could finally backfire but that would make sense. In spite of overwhelming evidence that the public wants the rich scumbags who tanked the economic lives of the 99% to pay far, far more in taxes to fix things, we get a half-assed milquetoasty proposal barely defended by the president.

Consequently, Drew Westen popped out to shoot spitballs at President Obama and a Democratic Party that just can't win for losing.
"The president and his campaign continue to make unforced errors because they don't have, and never have had since he entered the White House, either an overarching vision that would guide the way they communicate with the American people about the economy or anything else or a competent messaging team that could compensate for their over-reliance on polling where their vision should be." Why polling can be an obstacle and crutch Prof. Westen explains in The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation because polling has a hard time overcoming the ambiguous nature of the feelings voters often have on complex subjects and at best can measure only a limited number of dimensions of their thinking.

I'm going to say something utterly radical here so brace yourself; your taxes are not that high. Amazing right? And neither are the koch bros, mitt romney's, your friend Joe's who owns a auto detailing business, or really anyone else's. It seems like it because so much of our incomes go to crap that would be far more affordable if they actually were the "socialism" we're all trained to abhor.

Imagine, in the 1950s that conservatives idolize the top marginal tax rate was 91%... and somehow we survived. And we didn't have this:



Back then, the public understood that it was business that messed things up and you didn't have this:



Like this asshat:


Isn't it time meatheads like this stopped getting tax cuts and we stopped getting pay cuts and layoffs and decaying schools, roads, bridges, etc?

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Tea party symptoms

1. At a debate, you boo a soldier because he is gay.
2. You accuse a decorated Vietnam veteran of “cutting and running.”
3. You accuse Obama of being a Muslim, yet condemn him for going to Jeremiah Wright’s Christian church.
4. You admire Sarah Palin’s keen intellect.
5. You agree with Alabama state senator Scott Beason who referred to blacks as “aborigines.”
6. You are considering moving to Canada to avoid health insurance mandates.
7. You are convinced that Obama is either Hitler, Stalin, the Joker or a combination of all 3.
8. You ascribe marital infidelity to your sense of patriotism.
9. You become hysterical at the thought of Muslims wanting to build a basketball court three blocks from Ground Zero, ignoring the fact that there was a mosque inside the World Trade Center.
10. You believe family values means having children from your first marriage try to convince people that your second wife is lying about your third wife.
11. You believe gay marriage is the “most important issue of our time”.
12. You believe Obama does not like white people.
13. You believe scientists are cross-breeding humans and animals and creating mice with fully functioning human brains.
14. You believe that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal caused the Great Depression; even though FDR took office 4 years after it began.
15. You believe that gay marriage undermines traditional family values although your religion and family have advocated polygamy.
16. You celebrate Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” moment, yet deny Obama had anything to do with Osama bin Laden being killed.
17. You cheer at the idea of the uninsured dying.
18. You claim that your sons are doing their “patriotic duty” by supporting you in the election instead of serving in the military.
19. You confuse John Wayne and John Wayne Gacy.
20. You could not explain socialism if your life depended on it.
21. You disparage and call a veteran who is a double amputee “unpatriotic.”
22. You do not understand the difference between people you disagree with and Hitler or Karl Marx.
23. You equate any criticism of the Bush administration’s conduct of the war with not “supporting our troops”.
24. You equate masturbation with adultery.
25. You equate opinion with fact and offer no evidence of your beliefs.
26. You feel emotionally moved whenever Glenn Beck speaks.
27. You get “nauseated” at the idea of “separation of church and state.”
28. You hate the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964.
29. You invoke the threat of “Second Amendment remedies” when you do not get the electoral result that you want.
30. You like to shout-down other citizens at town-hall meetings and call it “proper democratic dialogue.”
31. You love benefits such as the interstate highway system, safe food and drugs, clean water and air, etc. – you just don’t want to pay for any of it.
32. You love having fresh produce on the shelves, nannies and groundskeepers but want the people who provide those services deported – or better yet to “self-deport” themselves.
33. You love to invoke Leviticus 18:22 but suddenly forget your Scripture when it comes to Leviticus 19:18.
34. You make frequent information requests to the Hawaii Department of Vital Records even though you are not a resident of Hawaii.
35. You overlooked eight years of Bush incompetence and criminal destabilization of the economy but decided in less than a day that Obama is the Anti-Christ.
36. You proudly display a sign that reads: “Obama is a M-O-R-A-N” at rallies.
37. You receive Medicare, yet oppose government run healthcare.
38. You strongly oppose the new health care law but have not read it.
39. You support Michelle Bachman signing a pledge that says that black children were better off during slavery.
40. You support the death penalty, the NRA and wars, yet claim to be “Pro-Life.”
41. You think Andrew Breitbart was a legitimate journalist.
42. You think being a teabagger has nothing to do with testicles.
43. You think George Soros wrote 1984.
44. You think health insurance reform somehow affects your 2nd amendment rights.
45. You think it appropriate to arm yourself for political rallies and think armed militias are a great and noble idea.
46. You think that atheists, gays and minorities are not real Americans.
47. You think that Creationism is a valid theory to teach children in science classes.
48. You think that natural disasters are God’s wrath on humanity for homosexuality.
49. You think the Tea Party is a grassroots organization.
50. You’ve ever held a sign that said, “You can have my healthcare when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.”

Original can be found at samuel warde's site.
It is fun and healthy to ridicule the utter stupidity from these hateful, low-information authoritarians. It might even help steer one or two away when confronted by their cognitive incoherence. But mostly this plays right into their teary-eyed self-pitying victimhood, you know all of us uberpowerful liberals are calling them dumb again.