Photo(s) of the Day: Tussling turtles (and Republicans)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Globe: "Two Aldabra giant tortoises fight for a carrot during feeding time at the Singapore Zoo."

I'm tempted to make some quip about how image this would seem to represent the current tussle between Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, about how it symbolizes the pitiable state of the Republican presidential field, fighting over a carrot, but, really, these are such noble creatures. Why exploit them for such a foul purpose?

**********

Turtles aside, you really want to accelerate the decline and fall of the American Empire? Here's your choice:

(image)

GOP 2012 strategy: an idiot and a prayer

By Nicholas Wilbur

In 2008, the Republican Party chose as its presidential nominee a crotchety, 71-year-old Bush lackey, a stalwart Iraq War defender, and a has-been "maverick" who admitted, even as the economy began to sink, that he was ignorant about economic issues. 

Source: WMx Design

The guy they didn't pick was Mitt Romney.

Why this happened is a matter of opinion, and like... noses... everyone seemed to have one after Romney bowed out of the race in February 2008.

Mormons believed Romney lost the primary because of America's intolerance of Mormonism. Social conservatives thought his inability to wow the social conservative demographic cost him the nomination. Anti-abortionists said his flip-flopping stance on abortion was the reason for his defeat. Homophobes believed his flip-flopping on gay rights were to blame.

The rest of the party seemed to believe Romney lost because he was socially awkward, because he tried way too hard to appear charming, because looking at him gave people the creeps, and because electing him would have been like inviting Tom Selleck's smooth-chested, perfectly-coiffed, and pedophilic twin brother to the family Christmas party – a four-year Christmas party.

The fact that the Republican Party still doesn't like Romney, then, isn't surprising. It may be antithetical to their alleged goal of making Barack Obama a "One. Term. President." -- as Tea Party member and presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann likes to say -- but it's not surprising.

He's still Mormon. He's still not quite socially conservative enough to wow the Tea Party. He still tries way too hard to appear charming. And he's still awkward in front of both cameras and prospective voters.

Unfortunately for Republicans, Romney is pretty much the only moderate candidate in the entire field of GOP nominee contenders. (Ed. note: Maybe Buddy Roemer and Fred Karger, but that's about it. And these two aren't exactly serious contenders. Jon Huntsman is moderate on some issues, and generally has a moderate approach to politics, but is for the most part a solid conservative, if still significantly to the left of the party's new far-right mainstream. -- MJWS)

He may be a flip-flopping toady whom the electorate views as willing to say anything to get elected, but he's not insane. He doesn't advocate abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. He's not a birther, he doesn't believe evolution is a myth, and he has yet to claim that the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly to end slavery."

For those reasons, Romney is much more palatable to the general, non-conservative electorate. But also for those reasons, he isn't palatable to the hard-core conservatives who turn out in swaths to determine who will be the next Republican nominee.

FreedomWorks, a conservative political action committee that raised $688,000 in 2010 to campaign for Tea Party candidates including Sharron Angle, Allen West, Mike Lee, and Ken Buck, has criticized Romney as "an establishment hack posing as an outsider" who "represents everything the tea party stands against" but who "suddenly... wants to be one of us."

Source: WMx Design

Western Representative PAC, which raised more than $400,000 in 2010 for Tea Party candidates, is also campaigning against Romney, claiming that his "flip-flops, lies, and support for the progressive agenda (undermine) his credibility on conservative issues."

"Mitt Romney brought us RomneyCare, donated to Planned Parenthood, and as governor oversaw the most anemic job growth in the Northeast," the PAC's website StopRomney.org states. "Now, he says he wants to repeal ObamaCare, is adamantly pro-life, and wants to oversee the country's economy."

In June of this year, a former Republicans legislator from California, Steve Baldwin, launched the website RomneyExposed.com, which "attacks Romney's (allegedly) conservative record as a businessman, fiscal issues, gay marriage, abortion, and a host of other issues."

As the GOP frontrunner throughout the first half of 2011, Romney raised a disappointing $18 million in the first quarter of the year – an astonishing $29 million less than President Obama raised this year, and $3 million less than he raised in his 2008 bid for the GOP nomination.

Perhaps the worst news Romney's campaign has received came following Texas Gov. Rick Perry's announcement that he would be joining the race. Within a week of his entrance, Perry was posting double-digit leads over Romney in almost every public opinion poll.

It appears all signs are pointing to no.

But not just for Romney.

Perry may have roused the Republican base when he announced his candidacy, but the change in energy, while noticeable, was akin to heavily sedating a formerly comatose patient. At no point in the race for the Republican nomination could anyone – the media, the candidates or the Republican Party's constituent base – claim to have experienced or witnessed genuine, across-the-board excitement.

Polls continue to show lagging enthusiasm for any of the candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination.

Source: WMx Design

The reasons for this are as obvious as the reasons behind the party's opposition to Romney: there are no medals for second place. Primary election victories don't mean anything. General election victories change the world, and no candidate currently in the race for the presidency has the mass appeal to oust President Obama.

The incumbent is expected to raise more than $1 billion for his re-election campaign – not one dollar of which will be wasted in a primary election.

The question isn't whether or not Republicans are able to compete with that. They aren't. The question is, are Republicans stupid enough to try to compete with that?

Throwing $1 billion at an unpopular candidate in an unwinnable race is neither fiscally nor politically responsible, let alone sane.

What's a party to do? – The same thing it did in 2000: pick the dumbest one and pray for a miracle.

(Cross-posted at Muddy Politics.)

Koch Krazy: Inside the shadowy world of the plutocratic corporatocracy

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Want a window into the shadowy world of the plutocratic corporatocracy that runs America, controlling much of movement conservatism with its libertarianism for the super-rich (and class warfare on everyone else) and operating politically through the wealth-obsessed Republican Party?

Then check out "Exclusive Audio: Inside the Koch Brothers' Secret Seminar" at Mother Jones, written by Brad Friedman (of The Brad Blog).

Here's a taste -- the opening paragraph:

"We have Saddam Hussein," declared billionaire industrialist Charles Koch, apparently referring to President Barack Obama as he welcomed hundreds of wealthy guests to the latest of the secret fundraising and strategy seminars he and his brother host twice a year. The 2012 elections, he warned, will be "the mother of all wars."

That's right, this powerful figure on the right used Obama's middle name to compare him to a brutal dictator, and prepared his (no doubt) drooling audience for battle. (And Hoffa gets in trouble for encouraging people to vote?)

You may know what to expect, but read the piece. It's illuminating.

Never Forget

By Capt. Fogg

This coming Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on Washington and New York and there's no way that anyone is going to forget it. After 10 years we're not only still mired in lachrymose and maudlin self-pity, but the incident has taken on a religious tone, complete with holy martyrs and holy relics. We still have cars with those plastic flag holders attached to the windows and we're reminded constantly that not only will we never forget, we'll never allow our grandchildren or their grandchildren to forget this dark day: the worst day in American history.

Of course I'll be condemned by some for hard heartedness, if not outright treason. I'm only arguing for a sense of proportion, but any balanced and reasonable viewpoint is so condemned in today's America. We're a radicalized, polarized nation choking and strangling on our own anger, yet cherishing it, nourishing it and hoping to preserve it in ritual, in perpetuity: a new anger for the ages. At least some powerful people hope that to be the case. Grieving people being so easy to manipulate and exploit, as some funeral directors know.


Some bits and pieces of the World Trade Center steel framework are being distributed to towns in my area. The Navy SEAL museum in Ft. Pierce now has a chunk and another arrived in my town a few days ago. The local paper printed photos of people kissing the rusty steel, touching their rosaries to it to make them extra holy and others simply hugging the metal, weeping.

The flag wrapped bits of steel arrived escorted by a motorcade over a quarter mile long. Military, law enforcement and veteran's motorcycle clubs accompanied it all the way south from the Georgia border like a funeral procession.

"Our objective is to eventually put this steel on every corner so that people never forget,"

said a retired New York homicide detective. That even includes my tiny, unincorporated crossroads town which has no other monuments of any kind. He expressed hope that one day there would be a holiday in every state honoring the policemen of New York. He promised never to forget.


Of course it wasn't all maudlin lamentation, there was plenty of anger still, even though bin Laden, most of his henchmen and all of those who perpetrated the attack are dead. Former detective Dennis McKenna promised that his son was soon going off to Afghanistan, where the perpetrators no longer dwell, to "whack one of them." Bagpipes were played, America the Beautiful was sung, Holy Water was poured on Holy Steel and then the bandwagon moved on.

"Let these pieces of steel remind us of the 2,973 men and woman who sacrificed their lives and, unknowingly, made our country and people become even stronger,"

said one Vietnam veteran. I wish it had done so, I wish all the other war memorials had made us more reluctant to make wars, but we're hardly stronger. We're far more divided, our economy has suffered from trillions of borrowed dollars turned to smoke. There is a bigger economic divide and the tear-shedders in their sackcloth and ashes want to sacrifice every bit of social progress since the 1860's, impoverishing the already debt-ridden majority while enriching the aristocracy.

Never forget that we're victims. Never remember how we victimized millions abroad in an uninvolved country. Always remember that "they" hate us and always complain when we attempt to make peace.

But how long will we actually remember and how long will we see this sad period in the same dim light? Surely half of our country no longer remembers 12/7/41 as the date that will live in infamy, nor the Battleship Maine on 2/15/98 or the burning and sacking of Washington DC on 8/24/14. People will forget. It won't be the worst thing that ever happened any more.

Some of those pre-teens who are too young to remember will absorb the tailored and fitted viewpoint they have thrust upon them at the moment, but their children will live in a vastly different world and one in which this country will not have the same status and those 3000 saints and martyrs won't really compare with the millions and millions dead in other places we wouldn't get involved in because "they hate us."

"I know that Osama bin Laden did the whole thing,"

said an 8 year old. Perhaps he'll remember that, perhaps not. Perhaps he will learn some more comprehensive history, perhaps not and it's more than likely there are events to come that will make the death of a few thousand seem insignificant in comparison. No, I'll never forget. I won't forget going to the Red Cross office to donate blood and not being able to get there for the crowd. I won't forget the feeling of national unity that was so soon hijacked and exploited and used as a tool, an excuse to wage war at home and abroad. I won't forget the overwhelming, commercially distributed fear and xenophobia and lust for battle either, but I'm old and the world belongs to the young - or soon will and the myth of 9/11 will go where it goes, not where I predict it will go.

(Cross posted from Human Voices)

Idiot of the Day: Richard Cohen

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Why do I make the mistake of clicking to, and then reading, a Richard Cohen WaPo column? Surely it can do me no good whatsoever.

Have I not learned my lesson? Despite all the evidence that has piled up over the years, do I not realize that there is usually nothing there but a barren wasteland of self-important navel gazing mixed with embarrassingly shallow and utterly ill-formed political observations?

Alas.

But okay. This once. Just this once.

Behold the genius at work:

Barack Obama has lost the Hamptons.

That sentence is a fat target for ridicule, I know, since the Hamptons are often reviled as the playground of the ridiculously rich and the promiscuously silly — hardly the working-class Democratic base. As is usually the case, there's some truth to the stereotype, but enough exceptions to that rule to make the White House pay attention. The Hamptons is where the Democratic energy, money and intellectual firepower of Manhattan goes for R&R. It’s just not another beach.

Over the Labor Day weekend, I went to a number of events in the Hamptons. At all of them, Obama was discussed. At none of them — that's none — was he defended. That was remarkable. After all, sitting around various lunch and dinner tables were mostly Democrats. Not only that, some of them had been vociferous Obama supporters, giving time and money to his election effort. They were all disillusioned.

Boo-hoo. Boo-fucking-hoo.

Yes, Cohen is right -- how could he not be, making such an obvious point? -- that "the Hamptons are not America" and that "some of these people will scurry back to the Democratic fold when they have to choose between Obama and, say, Rick Perry," but, no, the early returns are not in.

Obama hasn't lost the Hamptons. What he's lost, if anything, is the vote of a handful of wealthy, ignorant fools who have far less influence on the general electorate than Cohen suggests.

You may not like Obama, you may be "disillusioned" (which is really just another way of saying "gratuitously self-absorbed"), but if you can't defend him at all for anything he has done (health-care reform? the stimulus? his SCOTUS appointments? the troubling but necessary bailouts of Wall Street and the auto industry?) you're just an ignoramus without any sense of perspective or political understanding or appreciation for reality.

Look, it's a difficult time. And Obama has had an extraordinarily difficult time ever since he took office. Not to excuse everything he has done -- I've been harshly critical at times and remain deeply disappointed with his Republican-friendly centrism and occasional anti-progressivism -- but what else was he to do?

Okay, let's see...

-- He hasn't used the bully pulpit effectively enough, hasn't tried to sway public opinion towards a Democratic agenda that for the most part enjoys broad popular support.

-- He should have pushed for more progressive health-care reform, including a public option -- assuming he actually wanted such progressive reform.

-- He shouldn't have embraced so much of the Bush-Cheney national security state.

-- He should have put an end to the failed Afghan War. And perhaps shouldn't have supported NATO intervention in Libya, though the world is certainly better off with out Qaddafi in power.

-- He should have been more aggressively partisan in response to a Republican Party that is out to destroy him. He should call the GOP out for its extremism and obstructionism.

-- He should have built on his magnificent '08 campaign and been more of a transformational leader -- assuming he isn't just an establishment centrist Democrat. The opportunity was there for meaningful change, change we supposedly could believe in, but such change hasn't come.

Yes, fine. That's a lot.

But for a bunch of rich New Yorkers to abandon him entirely? Seriously, are they that fucked up, are they such Cohen-esque navel gazers, that they've lost even a shred of a clue? Sure, I get that some of them are "disappointed." But in their pitiful self-pitying, which is what so much of this is, they show themselves not to be "politically sophisticated" but, well, quite the opposite. Can they name nothing Obama has done that they like? Do they understand at all how he couldn't just show up in Washington and get his way? It would seem not, on both counts.

As if drive home his idiocy, Cohen cites as an example of Obama's weakness the whole flap over when he would give his jobs speech to Congress. To any reasonable person, it made sense for Obama to postpone the speech, given that it would have interfered with a Republican debate. But no -- to Cohen it was "an epochal moment in weakness, confusion and brain-dead politics." Really? Epochal? That's just fucking stupid.

Alright, enough. I now need to get back to not reading anything Cohen writes. Why impose such idiocy on yourself? You might as well go wallow in the 24/7 batshittery over at Fox News. At least those right-wing clowns are stupendous in their shameless partisan shenanigans.

What should we make of Sarah Palin's poor poll numbers?

By Richard K. Barry

I was away for a couple of weeks and noticed upon my return that the country is still paying far too much attention to Sarah Palin. This leads me to believe that either she is a marketing genius, or we, and I include myself, are a bunch of fools to pay so much attention to someone as dim as the half-term governor from Alaska.

Why we have found her so fascinating I cannot say. Maybe her relative popularity so amazes us that we focus on her in hopes of better understanding the wholly irrational side of human nature. Sometimes I actually think that if that many Americans view her, or have viewed her, favorably, then I must know very little about politics, or at least the vagaries of public opinion. That's a scary thought for those of us who like to think we know a thing or two about these related fields.

In any case, I suspect that the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin has been very depressing for those who want to think that politics is, to some degree, based on reason.

The good news is that the American people seem to be catching on to her little act, as her popularity, at least as gauged by pollsters, continues to wane. According to a new poll by Fox News, an incredible 71% of GOP voters say they don't want Palin to run for president, while only 25% think she should jump in.

Even Tea Party-identifying voters seem to have had enough. Sixty-eight percent in that group say she shouldn't run with 28% percent saying she should.

As for the general electorate, 74% percent don't want her to take the plunge, while only 20% hope she does.

I know there has been speculation recently that she might get in the race. If so, she is the most delusional politician we have seen for some time. Though the real question we might ask is whether or not it is finally over for Ms. Palin. Do these numbers mean that even those who had once been wildly enthusiastic supporters are done with her, that they have woken up and smelled the proverbial coffee?

It's true that when she showed up in Iowa over the summer and elsewhere she got rock star treatment, but is that because she is now simply, as the saying goes, famous for being famous? Charlie Sheen draws crowds too, but I haven't heard anyone suggest he should run for anything.

In a sense I just want the American people, most of them anyway, to see her for the idiot she really is. I want to think that even Republicans are smart enough to finally laugh her off the national stage. For some reason I really want this to be true.

At long last I hope that is what these plummeting poll numbers mean.

Wave goodbye, Sarah.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Photo of the Day: The India-Pakistan border, from space

By Michael J.W. Stickings

From the Globe: "The India-Pakistan border appears as an orange line in this photograph taken by the Expedition 28 crew on the International Space Station. The fence between the two countries is floodlit for surveillance purposes."

A remarkable image, if also a depressing one -- one that literally highlights the artificial divisions that keep humans at war with one another.

Is Ed Rollins' latest move a sign Bachmann campaign is doomed?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Interesting:

Ed Rollins is going to be stepping back from day-to-day management of the Michele Bachmann campaign, and moving into a senior advisory role, he said in an interview.

Rollins said the reason for the change is personal — his health and the rigors of a campaign.

"I wish I was 40 years old, but I'm not," he told POLITICO. "I'm 68 years old, I had a stroke a year and a half ago. I'm worn out."

The change is coming just as Bachmann is entering a new phase of the race, searching for the right way forward against the Rick Perry juggernaut, which has sucked away the oxygen since her Ames Straw Poll win.

Rollins insisted this represents a change of schedule but not his commitment to Bachmann.

"I want nothing but the best for her, she's a great candidate, I'll continue to be there for her," he said.

Hmm. Maybe.

Maybe his health really is a concern. But you can't help but wonder, can you?

The guy's not stupid. He's been around. And maybe, just maybe, he sees the writing on the wall, what with Rick Perry well ahead in Iowa and looking more and more like the frontrunner -- and certainly like the main right-wing opposition to Mitt Romney. (Would Rollins be stepping down had Perry not entered the race?)

Not so long ago, it looked so good for Bachmann -- when she was new and fresh and the anti-Romney. But now, things having changed so dramatically, maybe Rollins just doesn't want to be so deeply involved with a loser. 

(image)

Jim DeMint states the obvious (about Palin), then goes off the rails again (about democracy)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Right-wing Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who hosted Republican candidates at a forum in his home state of South Carolina yesterday, said it "doesn't appear" Sarah Palin will run for the GOP presidential nomination but still had some lovely things to say about her:

She's done a lot, I think, to engage the American people and stir things up, which we really needed to do, to get American citizens more involved in the process. It made a big difference in the last election. My hope is it'll make an even bigger difference in the next election, as people take back their government.

There's no doubt Palin has generated a great deal of political arousal, if more with the media than with voters (let's not forget that many of her chosen candidates fared miserably in the '10 midterms), but... wait... what? Take back the government? From whom?

Don't Republicans control the House? Aren't they able to paralyze the Senate with the filibuster? Doesn't the Supreme Court lean right, 5-4, with a conservative chief justice in place for many years to come?

Oh, right, it's about Obama, that progressive firebrand in the White House.

Or not. (How exactly has Obama been so horrible for Republicans? He hasn't, but extremists like DeMint won't accept even Republican-oriented compromise.)

Basically, what DeMint means is that the government should be taken back from the majority of Americans who voted for it.

And, basically, he won't be happy until America is a one-party autocracy / theocracy governed by extremist Republicans like himself.

This is what he and his ilk think of democracy, of government of, by, and for the people.

Who said that, "government of the people, by the people, for the people"? Abraham Lincoln, of course, a Republican.

If anyone would loathe today's GOP, a party dominated by the likes of DeMint and Palin, and most of those running for to be its nominee for president, it would be that great man.

Jon Huntsman, media darling

By Richard K. Barry

Steve Benen noted a couple of days ago that GOP presidential contender Jon Huntsman is getting plenty of love from the media for a candidate who is consistently polling at the very back of the pack.

Among Republican voters nationwide, Fox News, Quinnipiac, CNN and Gallup all have him running last with 1% support.

Yet, as Benen points out, on Friday Huntsman was on CNBC's The Kudlow Report. On Thursday he was on Fox News' On The Record with Greta Van Susteren. On Wednesday it was John King, USA on CNN, and then last week, also on CNN, he was on Piers Morgan Tonight. And finally, he was scheduled to be on NBC's Meet the Press, though apparently this was cancelled due to hurricane coverage.

You get the point. Really lousy numbers, really great media coverage.

Benen rightly asks why Huntsman is getting such special treatment given the fact that he is performing so miserably.

Good question. What could account for all this media love?

The simple and totally unsophisticated answer is that sometimes the media falls in love with a candidate especially when they are so darn good looking and charming. And he does look "central casting" presidential though it is sad that politics often boils down to factors so banal.

Yes, apparently a lot of people making booking decisions at the above mentioned networks think that Huntsman is good TV even if only 1% of the Republican party thinks he's a particularly good candidate for the nomination.

That's my explanation. Got anything better?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

The Lost Decade

By Carl

 

I'm going to make a concerted effort to get my 9/11 rants out of the way early this week. The tragedy still has too much emotion tied up in it for me to want to dwell until the last minute, when my maudlin streak will rear its ugly head.

 

You know what has me most upset heading into this ten year memorial?

 

What could have been.

 

I've written often over the past seven years...has it really only been seven years?...of my frustration of a nation on the precipice of a new century, a budget surplus and the hope of a brand new age of progress. Yes, we were in the middle of a recession, but it was a relatively mild one, a shake out of the fat in the dot-com boom. We've come back strong from those kinds of recessions before.

 

And yes, we had a moron for President, but morons generally don't do that much damage to a nation in four (or worst case, eight) years. There's inter- and intraparty squabbling, and factions form, and politicians jockey for positions. Bush certainly looked like he'd be a one-term President, lost in the office, popularity dangling in the 40s in not even his first full year in office (and that's without the albatross Obama entered office with.)

 

We'd have a debt of closer to $10 trillion now, instead of $14 trillion. There would have been no wars to speak of (as far as we can tell. Bush foreign policy was more focused on Russia and China.) The tax cuts probably would have passed, at least the first round, but there's no guarantee rounds two and three, the really economically devastating ones, would have been anything but a non-starter. Remember the attempt to privatize Social Security.

 

But 9/11 happened. It's hard to say what else we might have saved. To be sure, however, there are plenty of things we would not have.

 

We wouldn't have Alan Greenspan artificially surpressing interest rates, and Bush encouraging already debt-laden middle Americans from loading up on even more debt in an effort to be patriotic.

 

One reason I believe the stimulus package of $780 billion should have been primarily for mortgage holders is that it would be akin to a veteran's benefit: after all, we shopped and mortgaged to the hilt because our President asked us to, insisting we were an "ownership society."

 

We wouldn't have been bullied and cowed into submission by a government that believed to dissent is to commit treason, even if we could see the emperor had no clothes. There'd be no PATRIOT Act. Torture would be a thing for television programs, and at the end of the day, there'd be no using the protagonist as an argument to legtimize what we all know to be illegal, immoral, and sinful behavior.

 

We wouldn't have the logical end of thirty years of raping the American worker, stripping him and her of union representation against goliaths and behemoths that can stomp a mudhole in our own government. After all, the stimulus package had zero accountability, precisely because that was the term bankstahs dictated to Congress and President Bush. We wouldn't have jobs just folded up in the dead of night and exported, not to Mexico or Central America (which might make sense, if you're fighting an immigration battle,) but to India and Asia and China.

 

All because this quarter's profit was pennies less than last quarter's and woebetide the company that doesn't pay attention to the software that can pick up that nuance and short the stock and make it crash!

 

We wouldn't have Glenn Beck, the modern-day Father Coughlin hate-mongerer, railing about them. Sarah Palin would be sitting on someone's lap, taking dictation. Michele Bachmann would be trying to cure her husband of teh gay.

 

We'd be a better nation. A more secure nation, not just physically but psychically. We wouldn't see bogeymen behind every beard and under every turban. A mosque at Ground Zero wouldn't even catch the blink of an eye in the national attention span. We wouldn't have endless terror scares coinciding with the re-election of a President who was terrified of his own shadow.

 

You know what has me most hopeful heading into this ten year memorial?

 

What still may come to pass.

 

See, there was some good to come out of 9/11 and while I would not thank Al Qaeda from bringing it out in the mix, we ought to acknowledge the wake-up call we got.

 

I think the foremost good to have come out of the past decade is this: the politics of fear, so amplified and echoed, has been shown to be a hollow barrel after all. Eight years into the Bush administration and no succuessful terror attack was even attempted in the US. One could claim that was the outgrowth of the policies of Bush the Younger, but the American people saw through this and disagree, firmly.

 

Else, John McCain would be President now. Simply put, the US was shown to be a terrified little child, led by terrifying children. We were The Lord of the Flies writ large.

 

It is this focus of the people now that has me most hopeful for our future, for as much as I rail against the tyranny of the idiocracy, I see a slow (painfully slow) evolution in the American mindset.

 

9/11 woke the people up to the hubris of American society, of American culture, of American hegemony. Our belief that oceans protected us from harm was stripped away not by an ICBM, but by a Boeing 757 (or 767).

 

We were woken by the quintessential American transportation: the transcontinental flight that anyone of us could have been on that morning. 

 

If we could be attacked so savagely with such ease and familiarity, my thinking goes, then the very fabric of our society, the glue that holds this culture together, has to come under question. How could it not? It's not unlike finding your son or daughter smoking out of the nickle bag you hid in the back of your fetish porn collection. Clearly, you're going to wonder how things got that out of control. 

 

We questioned the need for war, even as we stood up as the patriots we were demanded to be and supported the troops. We saw the horrors that war did to our economy, masked as it was for the eight years of Bush by being placed off-budget, like how jobs were not being created, yet enormous wealth was trickling upwards. It had to bother us on some level that companies were snapping each other up like potato chips, yet each of us saw no raises or bonuses for ten years. Meanwhile, our taxes would go up, while those on the rich kept slipping lower.

 

And when the neutron bomb that was the mortgage crisis exploded, the anger that had been bubbling up since 9/11 finally was directed to the proper parties: the businessmen and cronies who had taken from us our God-given destiny of freedom and happiness. Remember how the American people flooded Congress when the first stimulus package failed in a late-night vote?

 

We elected Barack Obama, arguably the least-likely President since Harry Truman. He spoke of hope and change, and we responded to this. That's not a coincidence, even if in application neither has truly come to pass in a recognizable form (I won't debate the merits of Obama here expect to say that, on the whole, he's done a really good job, all things considered. It's this last condition that concerns me.)

 

In short, we've begun to reject the old schools of thought: the free markets will provide (they structurally cannot), lower taxes create an economy (they don't), Republicans are strong on defense (who got Osma bin Laden again, while the other guy fiddled?).

 

Indeed, even the old shibboleths, like the first rule of Socialism is you can't talk about Socialism, have gone out the window, slowly.

 

Yes, there is a significant percentage of yahoos and asshats and failed PoliSci assprofs who profess the end of socialism and progressivism, but they are winnowing out. We hear them only because they have megaphones, and the American people are rolling up their windows.

 

Fret not, my friends, my readers. This is a time for hope. This is a time for optimism.

 

This is a time for America.

 

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)

Jimmy Hoffa fires up crowd with call for peaceful political change, conservatives freak out

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Pants wet with righteous outrage, conservatives have been freaking out (see, for example, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here -- it's all over the right-wing blogosphere) over Teamsters head Jimmy Hoffa Jr.'s aggressive remarks in Michigan yesterday, warming up the crowd for President Obama:

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.

A call to violence! A call for blood to flow in the streets!

Conservatives are right to be angry. Wouldn't we be angry if it were the other way 'round. Weren't we angry over Palin's irresponsible "in the crosshairs" rhetoric, particularly after the Giffords shooting?

Yeah, well.

The thing is, these conservatives, piling on and not bothering to look into what Hoffa actually said, are missing something: context.

As Media Matters notes, Fox News (surprise, surprise) edited Hoffa's speech to make it appear he was calling for violence. Specifically, they edited out the context. Hoffa wasn't talking about a violent uprising, he was talking about voting, about winning at the polls. Here's what he actually said:

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. And President Obama, we want one thing: jobs, jobs, jobs... That's what we're going to tell him... When he sees what we're doing here, he will be inspired. But he needs help. And you know what, everybody here's got a vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.

(I watched the clip. And I have transcribed his speech verbatim. Funny how many in the media can't do that, or can't be bothered to, even those supposedly without a partisan agenda.)

The first quote above is from RealClearPolitics. It conveniently omits the point about voting (and about jobs). And this is what other conservatives are doing as well, from Fox News on down.

But it's not just the right-wing media. Consider this headline from ABC News: "Hoffa On Tea Party: 'Let's Take These Sons Of Bitches Out!'" No, that's only part of what he said, and the headline misses the point about voting as well. The post includes part of the part about voting, but the focus of the post is clear, and highly misleading.

Look, it can certainly be argued that Hoffa said some inappropriate things -- or rather that some of what he said he said in an inappropriate way using inappropriate rhetoric. I'm not sure he needed to be so militaristic, that he needed to refer to the political struggle with the Tea Party and with the right generally so aggressively, and that he needed to say those sons of bitches needed to be taken out. Sure, he was fired up, but come on, even if the other side uses such language, we can show a bit more restraint, can we not?

Well, you know what? What's wrong with being fired up? Given what's happening to the economy (and not because of Obama but because of the corporatocracy that runs America), what's happening to workers and to families just trying to make ends meet, what's happening with a political system that empowers wealth and dismisses the concerns of the vast majority of the population, isn't it right to be angry, to want to fight back? Isn't that what Hoffa, however inelegantly, was calling for, for a more engaged struggle to take the country back from the plutocrats who dominate both parties, the media, and pretty much every segment of society?

And, no, he wasn't irresponsibly calling for bloodthirsty violence, for literal warfare, but responsibly calling on people to use their constitutional right to vote to achieve meaningful change at the ballot box.

Lest we forget, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be all about?

Is it really Labor Day?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It is, or so the calendar says, though you might be forgiven for forgetting that there's a day set aside for labor, that is, for working men and women, people who aren't CEOs or investment bankers, who aren't the sort of "supermen" our society deifies in Ayn Rand fashion. (Just spend five minutes on Fox News or CNBC or any other mainstream media outlet, pretty much, and you'll see that deification in full swing.)

It's like "labor" doesn't matter anymore, except the "labor" of the millionaires and billionaires at the top of the corporate hierarchy. It certainly doesn't seem to matter in Washington, or in various state capitals, where the GOP has made it part of its plutocratic, corporatist mission to assault labor whenever and however possible. Republicans have always been anti-labor, of course, but at least many of them pretended to care about labor, pretended that their pro-business orientation included concern for workers. But now their mission is nakedly exposed for what it is. Even their populism is anti-labor, with their base, hardly plutocrats themselves, buying their anti-labor agenda. Whether it's teachers, factory workers, public servants, or family farmers, they don't seem to give a shit. Except when there's a union involved, when not giving a shit becomes venomous hatred.

One would hope, if not expect, Democrats to fight back, but they rarely do, so widely has the corporate net been cast. Unless they think they can score some political points, as in Wisconsin, they generally don't stand up for working men and women either, at least not with nearly enough passion and commitment.

So maybe it's time to call a spade a spade, as they say, as E.J. Dionne (not seriously, though his commentary is nothing if not serious) suggests:

Let's get it over with and rename the holiday "Capital Day." We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.

No matter that the likes of Abraham Lincoln and Pope John Paul II, both quoted by Dionne, were ardent supporters, each in his own way, of labor.

That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.

Consider that what the media call economics reporting is largely finance reporting. Once upon a time, a lively band of labor reporters covered the world of work and unions. If you stipulate that the decline of unions makes the old labor beat a bit less compelling, there are still tens of millions of workers who do their jobs every day. But when the labor beat withered, it was rarely replaced by a work beat. Workers have vanished.

But we are now inundated with news (and "news") about the world of capital. CNBC and the other financial media are for investors what ESPN is for sports junkies. We cheer the markets, learn the obscure language of hedge fund managers and get to know some of the big investors in off-field interviews. Workers are regarded as factors of production. At best, they're consumers; at worst, they're "labor costs" cutting into profits and the sacred stock price.

In other words, it's about time we gave a shit again -- all of us:

With the worker disappearing from our media and our consciousness, isn't it only a matter of time before Labor Day falls off the calendar? As long as it's there, it should shame us about our cool indifference to the heroism of those who go to work every day. 

It should... but, alas, it won't. There is too much "cool indifference," and far too much hatred. What is needed is a paradigm shift with respect to how we think about capitalism, and how we think about society generally -- about what we value, about the nature of work, about respect for the everyday heroes of those who don't get the Fox/CNBC deification. And that, I fear, isn't coming anytime soon, not given how entrenched our political biases are, not to mention our widespread ignorance.

Today is indeed Labor Day, but most people are just enjoying the day off without regard for what it means, or for what the struggle for the rights and dignity of the working class -- and that means almost all of us -- is all about.

**********

Yesterday, partly in anticipation of Labor Day (and partly because I love the song), I posted a fantastic clip of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band performing "Youngstown." It is one of the finest songs about the working man (and woman) ever written. It includes these lines:

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Then smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

I encourage you to check it out.

Bruce Springsteen: "Youngstown" and "The River"

Music on Sunday @ The Reaction

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm all about Bruce Springsteen these days. I posted my revised Top 10 last week, along with a clip of what I think is his best song, "The Ghost of Tom Joad," live with Tom Morello.

Well, let's head back to the well this Sunday evening, the day before Labor Day, with two more of his best -- "Youngstown" (with The E Street Band, Hyde Park, London, 2009) and "The River" (from way back when).

"Youngstown" is from Tom Joad, maybe his best album. It includes these unforgettable lines:

Well my daddy worked the furnaces
Kept 'em hotter than hell
I come home from 'Nam worked my way to scarfer
A job that'd suit the devil as well
Taconite, coke and limestone
Fed my children and made my pay
Then smokestacks reachin' like the arms of god
Into a beautiful sky of soot and clay

Brilliant. (A brilliant vision of hell.)

Reconciling conservative "logic" is like pulling teeth

By Zandar

A pretty depressing story from just across the river from me in Cincy: a 24-year old man is dead because without health insurance he couldn't afford antibiotics for an infected tooth.

A 24-year-old Cincinnati father died from a tooth infection this week because he couldn't afford his medication, offering a sobering reminder of the importance of oral health and the number of people without access to dental or health care.

According to NBC affiliate WLWT, Kyle Willis' wisdom tooth started hurting two weeks ago. When dentists told him it needed to be pulled, he decided to forgo the procedure, because he was unemployed and had no health insurance.

The line at a free dental clinic in Georgia last month

When his face started swelling and his head began to ache, Willis went to the emergency room, where he received prescriptions for antibiotics and pain medications. Willis couldn't afford both, so he chose the pain medications.

The tooth infection spread, causing his brain to swell. He died Tuesday. 

And yet that's the reality of the country we live in. America is the richest, most advanced, most powerful country ever according to conservatives, and if you don't agree you hate America. But at the same time, conservatives scream bloody murder that there's no way Americans can afford to help the least among us, because programs to do so immorally traps the nation's poor in unending poverty, where they are a drain on the "job creators."

Conservatives say only America can lead the world from a moral and military standpoint, American exceptionalism is our manifest destiny on the global stage. And then they turn around and warn that we are a bankrupt, destitute, third-world socialist hellhole where the "misguided efforts" to "bribe" the weakest among us with government assistance is the only way a Democrat could ever get elected.

God wants Republicans in power, they say. When a Democrat is elected, God hasn't failed, but the people have been fooled by the evil socialist liberals. America would be a shining utopia, and example to peoples across the planet, if we just got over our baser instincts to help the poor and simply left them to their own fate.

If that's confusing you, congratulations. You have a conscience and are capable of both complex logic and compassion. It also means you're probably not a Republican. Here's the worst, most tragic part of Willis' death:

"People want to believe there's a safety net that catches all of these people, and there isn't," said Dr. Glenn Stream, president-elect of the American Academy of Family Physicians. He noted that it is often young men who are the most likely to lack health coverage.

Dr. Jim Jirjis, director of general internal medicine at Vanderbilt University, said people, like Willis, without access to care often die of conditions that were much more common decades ago.

"He [Willis] might as well have been living in 1927," Jirjis said. "All of the advances we've made in medicine today and are proud of, for people who don't have coverage, you might as well never have developed those."

There are a number of free dental clinics in operation around the country, where dentists volunteer to provide care to those without health insurance. But even if Willis had access to a free dental clinic, Stream said he still may not have been able to get the care he needed for his infection. "The wait is often months at these clinics, and this young man died within two weeks of his problem," Stream said. 

According to the article one in three Americans forgo dental checkups because they can't afford them. Even if you have dental insurance, you have to take time off from work to go to the dentist, and the combination of the expense and lost work time puts even simple dental care out of reach for some 100 million Americans.

And yet the richest country on Earth can't afford to help its own poor. There's something deeply wrong with that. Trying to reconcile that "logic" that we're the best country ever and flat broke is not only quixotic to an extreme, but deadly as well.

To the White House: Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice - you can't get fooled again.

By Distributorcap

Day after day,
Alone on a hill,
The man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still
But nobody wants to know him,
They can see that he's just a fool,
And he never gives an answer

But the Fool on the Hill

The Beatles, 1966

When I went to the voting booth on November 4, 2008, I (and everybody else) knew there was no way that Barack Obama would be able to live up to all the hype and promise the media, the country and his own campaign had cast upon him during the electoral season. While I had much trepidation in voting for Obama, I was never going to vote for any Republican (more so with Lizzie Borden sitting a heartbeat away). I pulled the mechanical lever (NY still had the old machines) and actually thought that despite the over-hype and he potential let downs - Obama was someone that would bring about some change and some semblance of progressive principles to governing.

In 2000, when Bush was appointed king by Sandra Day O'Connor, we all knew what we were getting - an inarticulate, brainless simpleton who would pick up a lot of brush and carry out the orders of his billionaire check-writers and born-again disciples. In 2008, I thought as I cast that ballot that we were at least potentially getting rid of 8 years of Republican idiocracy and the enormous amount of destruction the Bush-Cheney reign of terror wreaked upon the planet.

I could not have been more wrong.

By the fact this country did not elect a Republican in 2008 - we should all just lay back and heave a big sigh of relief that no right-wing damage was not imposed on the country for the past 3 years. Stuff like:

Extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Keeping Guantanamo open. Backing down on the debt deal. Gutting environmental legislation. Pulling the public option off the table before it even got there. Putting Social Security and Medicare on the table. Failing to prosecute Wall Street crooks. Failing to prosecute war criminals. Failing to repeal telecom immunity. Expanding the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and adding Libya. Giving up on green jobs and high-speed rail. Approving more oil pipelines and offshore drilling. Slashing the safety net. And letting the Republicans completely control the narrative despite their minority status and deep distrust among the populace.

Was I dreaming or did none of that happen?

I gave up on Obama when he caved on the Bush tax cuts last December. After that I thought he would go from being some minor spark of change to a benign and hapless speech giver that would at least prevent a total Republican steam roller.

Yesterday between the speech-gate and smog-gate, I guess I was wrong there too.

This President is a nothing more than Richard Lugar or Chuck Hagel or John Warner - a somewhat moderate 80's Republican.  He is no progressive and I don't think he is much of Democrat.  In fact I don't think of much of Obama at all anymore.

In the back of my mind I have been trying to justify sticking with him, but the complete collapse on something as little as a speech date - and then a total cave-in to the GOP on the EPA rules - that is it for me.

He's gone from being benign to actually enhancing the rightwing talking point machine. He is Rush's biggest wet dream. I never thought a Democrat could cause so much damage to the very people who backed him -  he is actually setting back progressive principles decades. I truly never thought I'd get to this point and I can no longer kid myself.

People can bash me all they want for harshly criticizing a Democratic President.  The Democratic party can call me all they want for money - not one nickel for any candidate that does not speak out against the President's current policies.  The Barack Obama party doesn't need me or any other individuals for that matter - the endless Citizens United money stream coming from corporate America should be more than enough to pay for his 2012 campaign.

People can say I am ensuring a GOP victory in 2012.  It's not me - it's the rest of this deranged country that falls for the lies of the GOP.  I wouldn't vote for any of the current crop of Aristocracy running for the Republican nomination.  If we end up with a President Perry - who in my mind is now the man (or prune face) to beat for the GOP nomination - then this country gets exactly what it deserves - another Texan who is George W. Bush, Father Coughlin and Josef Stalin wrapped into one big closet case. I guess we really do need a Republican to lead us completely off the cliff to finally wake the fuck up. Apparently reason, logic and presenting the facts don't work in a world competing with Justin Bieber's car accident or J-Lo's divorce.

And as President Perry (or Bachmann) is sworn in on January 20, 2013, many of the billionaires who funded the election of either of these modern-day brown shirts will be flying on their secret rocket to Mars or Krypton or Vulcan.

I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — You can't get fooled again.  This country is the Fool on the Hill