The view from 90

Guest post by Robert Stein

Ed. note: A couple of months ago, my friend and fellow blogger Bob Stein turned 90. I meant to publish this wonderful post at the time, but, well, time got away from me and it's been a sporadic couple of months of blogging for me anyway.

It is, in any event, a timeless post, and I'm very happy to publish it today, belatedly. Bob has led an incredibly interesting life and he's seen some incredibly interesting things. What is truly encouraging (and amazing) is that as he looks not just back at America's and the world's messy history but out at the crazy world around him now, he retains a sense of hope and optimism that overrides doubt and despair. He sees the good, that is, even when it is hard to find.

I wish him all the best, and a (belated) happy birthday, from all of us here.

This is Bob's third guest post here at The Reaction, and the first since his reflections on the anniversary of JFK's assassination last November. (His first post for us was "A life in black and white: Personal reflections on race in America.") -- MJWS

Robert Stein has had a long career as an editor, publisher, media critic, and journalism teacher. A former chair of the American Society of Magazine Editors, he currently blogs at Connecting the Dots. 

**********

On March 4, 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated. It was my ninth birthday.

In April 1945, I was a 21-year-old foot soldier on the floor of a German farmhouse when someone shook me awake to whisper that FDR had died. 

Now, at 90, I am inevitably shaped by those years after a working lifetime as writer, editor and publisher trying to explain the world to others -- and myself.

The scenes around me today are filled with human folly, selfishness and shameless behavior, but that’s far from the whole story. My so-called Greatest Generation, which survived a Depression and World War, does not in retrospect seem so morally superior to those that succeeded it but only more limited in education, experience of the world and outlook.

Many of our virtues were rooted in ignorance: no TV, cable, computers, Internet, no electronics of any kind, only radios with music, soap operas and swatches of evening news lifted from newspapers (as a teenage copy boy, I wrote some of them.)

As a nation we were united, but in an innocence that also had its dark side -- racial ghettos, religious prejudice, rural isolation -- where only unseen white men, all Protestant, held power over our lives in government and business.

Women then lived no fuller a life than those in Nazi Germany: Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). Our mothers patrolled homes in house dresses, with only one exception.

Although we knew her as Mrs. Goldstein, nothing went with that matronly name, not the shimmer of clothes clinging to her trim body, or the beauty-parlor hair, the high-heeled shoes and face painted with makeup even in daytime, or the sweet perfume cloud that came into the living room in late afternoons when she kissed her son goodnight and dazzled the rest of us playing there with a cupid's bow smile on her way out.

She always seemed on the move to someplace exciting or, if my mother's mutterings could be believed, sinful. I had no idea what nafka meant, but Mrs. Goldstein gave our pre-teen senses a whiff of hope that the night life on movie screens existed somewhere in the real world.

Jump cut through decades: a World War; prosperous but Man-in-the-Grey-Flannel-Suit Fifties; JFK, the Youthquake, Civil Rights awakening and Women's Lib of the televised Sixties; a backlash of the Silent Majority and Watergate in the Nixon years; Reagan's "Morning in America" to paper over growing economic and political gulfs followed by Clinton's centrism and self-centeredness barely surviving Gingrich's loopy Contract with America; and then almost a decade of W's preemptive war and mindless tax cuts to bring us into the Obama years of almost total Tea Party collapse of the civility that held us together all that time, with racism showing its naked face.

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My November 22, 1963

Guest post by Robert Stein 

Ed. note: This is Bob's second guest post here at The Reaction. His first was "A life in black and white: Personal reflections on race in America." We will have more of his reflections on JFK in the days to come. -- MJWS 

Robert Stein has had a long career as an editor, publisher, media critic, and journalism teacher. A former chair of the American Society of Magazine Editors, he currently blogs at Connecting the Dots. 

**********

I woke up feeling good that Friday morning. Someone using my face had been on an eight-day swing of Minneapolis, Detroit and now Chicago, like a politician, selling a version of himself in hotel dining rooms, on morning TV and late-night radio, in offices and auditoriums, not for votes but pages of magazine advertising by making himself more affable to strangers than the equally fictitious other guys.

By nightfall I would be heading home to my real self, family, friends, life and work. To celebrate I treated myself to a barber-shop shave, savoring that prospect of release after a luncheon speech to 300 ad people in the ballroom of the Ambassador East.

Shortly after noon, food was being served when a waiter whispered into my ear, "Kennedy’s been shot."

I followed him into the kitchen where cooks, waiters and chambermaids, many with tears in their eyes, were staring at a small black-and-white TV set, frozen in attitudes of holding cleavers, platters and mops as if the world had suddenly stopped.

President Kennedy was on his way to Parkland Hospital, badly wounded.

In the ballroom, I went up to the stage, took the microphone and said, "I'm very sorry to have to tell you that the President's been shot in Dallas. It looks serious. I'm sure you'll want to go where you can follow what"s happening."

When I returned to my table, the waiter said, "I kept your lunch warm." When I shook my head, he vanished and returned a minute later with a large goblet of brandy.

A silver-haired man in an expensive suit came up and asked, "Does this mean you're not going to give your speech?" I nodded and went upstairs where I could be alone to watch Walter Cronkite, in a breaking voice, say "The President is dead."

The assassination was a shock not only to my nervous system but the nation's. The powerful, rich and famous, embodiments of what we dream for ourselves, are supposed to be safe. We are not prepared to see their skulls exploding before our eyes.

In a railroad dining car that evening, I was still in a daze, watching people eating, drinking and laughing as if nothing had happened, as if the world hadn't changed.

Back in my Pullman bed, stretched out for a night of sleepless sleep, I felt as if I were laid out in a tomb.

Jamestown Jane and the cannibals

By Michael J.W. Stickings and Frank Moraes 

MJWS:

The BBC had a really interesting article yesterday on new evidence of cannibalism at Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in what is today the United States. It includes this historical nugget:

The Starving Time was one of the most horrific periods of early colonial history. The James Fort settlers were under siege from the indigenous Indian population and had insufficient food to last the winter.

First they ate their horses, then dogs, cats, rats, mice and snakes. Some, to satisfy their cruel hunger, ate the leather of their shoes.

As the weeks turned to months, nothing was spared to maintain life. How many of the growing numbers of dead were cannibalised is unknown. But it is almost certain the girl was not the only victim.

Relief came in the form of Lord De La Warr, who sailed into the settlement with food and new colonists. After six months of siege and starvation, only 60 of the original 300 settlers had survived.

"It's somebody doing what they had to do," said Dr [Doug] Owsley [a Smithsonian anthropologist who worked on the project] of the cannibalism.

Needless to say, it was a difficult time.

**********

FM:

Meet Jamestown Jane. Or as her friends in Jamestown may have referred to her, Juicy Jane. According to USA Today, in a presentation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, her reconstructed face was presented as shown in the picture at the left. A lot of reconstruction was necessary, because she was apparently butchered for food during the a bad winter in 1609-10 when 80 percent of the residents of the colony died -- mostly of starvation. Poor Jane had her skull based open to get to her high protein brain. No one can say whether she was specifically killed to eat or not. Regardless, pretty girl.

This isn't the first time that cannibalism has been associated with Jamestown. Accounts at the time claim that one man was put to death for eating his wife. (I assume this is not a euphemism!)

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SOTU Night in America: Live-blogging the 2013 State of the Union address

By Michael J.W. Stickings, with Richard K. Barry, Frank Moraes, and tmcbpatriot

(Updated frequently -- in real time. Scroll down.)

So the gang's back together tonight. When was the last time we live-blogged? It was the election back in November, wasn't it? And before that the debates. Oh, what a good time that was... well, except for that first debate. Remember that one?

And what are we live-blogging? It's the Papal Election 2013! Woo-hoo!

Wait, what? It's not the papal election? So why the hell are we here?

Oh, right, the State of the Union. Alas. It's strong, isn't it? So what's the point of all this? Can't we go back a century or so, back to pre-Wilsonian times, when the president just sent the damn thing up to Capitol Hill in writing?

Yes, Wilson changed things in 1913. Before that, no president had delivered it in person, as a speech, since Jefferson, who ended the tradition in its infancy.

That's the first page of Washington's notes for his 1790 address. Pretty neat, huh?

**********

But okay, here we are. Let's make the most of it. (I was on my own for it last year. Should be more enjoyable with the guys joining me tonight.)

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Republicans versus reality: Obama is no dictator

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Long before he announced his wide-ranging, if hardly radical by the standards of the civilized world, effort to curb gun violence, conservatives were freaking out over what they shriekingly claimed was President Obama's autocratic rule. He was some newfangled combination of fascist and socialist, the bringer of un-American anti-values, the destroyer of freedom, the face of evil itself.

But then -- gasp! -- he won re-election, and surely four more years would mean the end of America as we know it. Republicans were planning yet more party-before-country obstructionism on Capitol Hill, but that wasn't going to be enough to stop this runaway train. Short of violent insurrection, which we know is on the degraded minds of many on the right, there was only route left: impeachment.

And it's coming. You know it's coming. Because these "patriots" really have nothing but comtempt for democracy. It's their extremist right-wing way or... nothing.

As Dan Amira notes at New York, Republicans were upping the rhetoric recently on Obama's alleged assault on all things holy to the "freedom"-loving right in anticipation of his gun control plan, including the executive orders he plans to issue alongside legislative action. Basically, what's happening is that Republicans' general Obama-as-fascist sentiment has been magnified by their pro-gun insanity. It's not just that the president is a dictator trying to destroy freedom, it's that he now wants to take away their beloved guns. When it comes to the right's anti-Obama craziness, this is a lethal combination.

But it isn't just about the guns -- or, rather, about the right's gun paranoia (because Obama is actually not trying to take away people's gun rights -- not even close). As Amira writes, it's also "the use of executive orders in particular that's getting critics all riled up." Which is to say, some conservatives really do seem to think that Obama is ruling America with an iron fist.

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Obama first since 1956 to win 51% twice

By Richard K. Barry

It's good to win and it's even better to win convincingly. As Bloomberg reported yesterday:

Eight weeks after the Nov. 6 presidential election, a revised vote count in New York shows that Barack Obama is the first president in more than five decades to win at least 51 percent of the vote twice.

State election officials submitted a final tally Dec. 31 that added about 400,000 votes, most of them from provisional ballots in the Democratic-stronghold of New York City that were counted late in part because of complications caused by superstorm Sandy.

And to put that in historical perspective:

Obama is the first president to achieve that level of support in two elections since Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956 and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.

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History lesson: Guns and freedom

By Mustang Bobby

Josh Marshall has an excellent post on the impact that guns have had on determining America's journey:

We've expanded our freedoms, sometimes let it recede. We've had major blots on our history like the post-Reconstruction era in the South or the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II. It's a rich and complex, sometimes tragic, but generally incredibly powerful and inspiring story. And yet in reality not in a single one of these cases has any government — state or federal — been pushed back in some moment of overreach by armed citizens or even affected in its decision-making by the knowledge of an armed citizenry. You could imagine a very different history in which various strong men had taken power and been deposed by violent uprisings. That just hasn't been our history.

[...]

Has private gun ownership helped keep us free? We've had two centuries to look at this one. And the results make the very idea laughable.

And yet many people now believe this. And it imparts an aura of self-righteousness to their desire to stock up private arsenals, fire off semi-automatic weapons and blow shit up. That sort of ignorance is dangerous.

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Never on Sunday

By Mustang Bobby

Today's edition of right-wing stupidity comes from Ron Christie, the sock-puppet commentator who shows up on MSNBC the way the Washington Generals show up at a Harlem Globetrotters game. 

He's all twitterpated because President Obama will be sworn in at a private ceremony on January 20, 2013 at the White House and the public won't be invited:

That's because January 20, 2013 is a Sunday, so the big public ceremony will be held the following day. It's happened before: both Dwight Eisenhower's and Ronald Reagan's second inaugural happened to fall on Sundays and this is how it was done.

But since it's President Obama, Ron Christie gets to prove that once again there is nothing this man won't do to shame America.

Sheesh.

(h/t: Blue Texan)

A fun fact about Ohio

By Richard K. Barry

Everyone talks about the importance of Ohio as a battleground state. It's hard to win the presidency without it, etc., etc. But the fact is that, historically speaking, it is one seriously divided state. 

As Smart Politics reports:

Ohio has been the most politically divided state in the country in presidential elections for the last 184 years -- boasting the lowest average victory margin and the largest number and percentage of races decided by less than five points.

Although most of the projected battleground states in the 2012 election fizzled out and were not nearly the highly competitive races that many media outlets had expected them to be, Ohio, once again, did not disappoint.

Won by Obama by just 2 points (provisional ballots pending), the state was the second most closely-decided in the nation, behind only Florida at 0.9 points.

I leave it to those well-versed in Ohio political history to explain it, but it is a fun little fact. 

Five lingering unsolved mysteries from the JFK assassination

By Marc McDonald


It has now been 49 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Since then, thousands of books have been written about what is probably the single biggest unsolved mystery of the 20th century. After nearly half a century, it's becoming increasingly clear that we may never fully understand what happened that day.

I myself have long harbored doubts about the government's own seriously flawed version of what happened in Dealey Plaza. The 1964 Warren Commission Report has rightfully been criticized over the years for the inaccuracies and flawed information it contained.

The vast majority of Kennedy assassination books over the decades have concluded that there was a conspiracy to kill JFK. However, many conspiracy theories themselves have been debunked over the years. In fact, sloppy work by conspiracy writers has, in my view, damaged the quest for truth in the case.

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November 22, 1963

By Mustang Bobby

Friday, November 22, 1963. I was in the sixth grade in Toledo, Ohio. I had to skip Phys Ed because I was just getting over bronchitis, so I was in a study hall when a classmate came up from the locker room in the school basement to say, "Kennedy's dead." We had a boy in our class named Matt Kennedy, and I wondered what had happened – an errant fatal blow with a dodgeball? A few minutes later, though, it was made clear to us at a hastily-summoned assembly, and we were soon put on the buses and sent home. Girls were crying.

There was a newspaper strike at The Blade, so the only papers we could get were either from Detroit or Cleveland. (The union at The Blade, realizing they were missing the story of the century, agreed to immediately resume publication and settle their differences in other ways.) Television, though, was the medium of choice, and I remember the black-and-white images of the arrival of Air Force One at Andrews, the casket being lowered, President Johnson speaking on the tarmac, and the events of the weekend – Oswald, Ruby, the long slow funeral parade, "Eternal Father, Strong to Save" – merging into one long black-and-white flicker, finally closing on Monday night with the eternal flame guttering in the cold breeze.

I suspect that John F. Kennedy would be bitterly disappointed that the only thing remembered about his life was how he left it and how it colored everything he did leading up to it. The Bay of Pigs, the steel crisis, the Cuban missle crisis, the Test Ban Treaty, even the space program are dramatized by his death. They became the stuff of legend, not governing, and history should not be preserved as fable.

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Charlie Brown gets the Pilgrims all wrong

By Frank Moraes

With Thanksgiving comes not one, but two Charlie Brown specials. As I was cooking in preparation for today's thang, I watched them -- mostly. The first one was the traditional A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving. This is an interesting film because Lucy is not in it. As a result, it seems that Charlie Brown is meant to act the part of the asshole. He treats Snoopy and Woodstock as though they are slaves. And then, when everyone heads off to Grandma's condo for dinner, the animals are left behind to fend for themselves. I was outraged. Really.

Snoopy has a turkey dinner all ready to go in his dog house, of course. But then, after all the animal slavery, something happened that bothered me even more. Snoopy serves Woodstock part of the bird and Woodstock eats it! I know this is technically not cannibalism, but it is close enough. This is supposed to be a children's show. What is wrong with these people?!

The second Charlie Brown special was so much worse. I didn't even make it to the first commercial. It is the first episode of This is America Charlie Brown: Mayflower Voyagers. It pissed me off right away. Here were Charlie Brown and Linus in their iconic modern dress. But the girls were all in period costume. Why? How the hell should I know?! One thing I do know: it was offensive for vaguely sexist reasons.

But the reason I turned away was that the show told the same lie that most people continue to believe: the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower to find religious freedom. I'm so inspired. Wait! I feel a song coming on:

And the la-hand of the Freeeeee!
And the hoooome, of thhhhhe, braaaave!

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The failure of Mitt Romney

By Michael J.W. Stickings

At The New York Review of Books, Garry Wills makes the case that Mitt Romney didn't just lose an election, he lost his very honor in the process-- and that unlike most previous presidential election losers he doesn't really have anything to give back, so dramatically did he sell his soul to try to win:

What public service do we expect from Mitt Romney? He will no doubt return to augmenting his vast and hidden wealth, with no more pesky questions about where around the world it is stashed, or what taxes (if any) he paid, carefully sheltered from the rules his fellow citizens follow.

*****

What vestige of a backbone is Romney left with? Things he was once proud of -- health-care guarantees, opposition to noxious emissions, support of gay rights and women's rights, he had the shamelessness to treat as matters of shame all through his years-long crawl to the Republican nomination.

Other defeated candidates compiled stellar records after they lost. Two of them later won the Nobel Prize -- Jimmy Carter for international diplomacy, Al Gore for his environmental advocacy. John Kerry is still an important voice for the principles he has always believed in as a Democrat. Michael Dukakis carries on as the college professor he always was, with no need to reject or rediscover any of the policies he championed. Robert Dole joined with McGovern in international nutritional projects.

None of these men engineered a wholesale repudiation of their former principles. Romney, on the contrary, did not let earlier positions grow -- enriching, say, his experience of health care legislation to give his approach greater refinement or focus. He just tried to erase the whole matter from his record.

*****

Many losing candidates became elder statesmen of their parties. What lessons will Romney have to teach his party? The art of crawling uselessly? How to contemn 47 percent of Americans less privileged and beautiful than his family? How to repudiate the past while damaging the future? It is said that he will write a book. Really? Does he want to relive a five-year-long experience of degradation? What can be worse than to sell your soul and find it not valuable enough to get anything for it? His friends can only hope he is too morally obtuse to realize that crushing truth. Losing elections is one thing. But the greater loss, the real loss, is the loss of honor. 

This is pretty harsh analysis, but it's hard to find fault with it. Romney is essentially a plutocrat (or a wannabe plutocrat), a successful vulture capitalist who build on the wealth his father made and then decided he wanted to be in politics. It made sense, initially, for him to be a moderate Republican in a liberal state like Massachusetts, and really he was just a throwback to business-oriented moderates of the past, business-oriented pragmatism having a long history in the Republican Party. And, further, it was perhaps admirable of him to turn to public service, not just in Massachusetts but before that for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. Sure, public service meant advancing his pro-business outlook, building up his political arsenal, and continuing to profit from his former business associations (Bain, etc.), but at least there was consistency there.

But the Republican Party was changing, and the Republican he needed to be both in 2008 and even more so in 2012 was vastly different than the one he needed to be in Massachusetts in 2002, or that other pro-business types had had to be previously. That's when Romney changed, when he decided that winning meant selling out. Sure, the pro-business orientation remained, but everything else went crazy -- as Wills writes, it was "a five-year long experience of degradation."

I'm really not sure what will become of Romney now. Maybe Wills is right and he'll just go back to "augmenting his vast and hidden wealth." He may maintain a small profile in Republican circules, but it's not like Republicans like him all that much. Furthermore, it's not like he has much actual political experience to draw on, and it's not like he really seems to believe in anything other than his business interests.

Balloon Juice's mistermix wonders about Romney's legacy, finding Thomas Dewey, who lost in both 1944 and 1948, to be the best parallel: "Dewey pretty much stayed on the sidelines, turning down a nomination from LBJ for the Supreme Court, and concentrating on making money as a corporate lawyer. I imagine Mitt will follow a similar path."

Yes, perhaps so. Back in October 2011, Mustang Bobby wrote a post in which he called Romney "the perfect GOP establishment candidate; he's the 21st century Thomas E. Dewey, but without his charm or conviction." 

Which reminds me of a question I raised back in September:

Romney is the worst major-party presidential candidate since _______ ?

Forget Dukakis, Mondale, or McGovern. I went all the way back to the '30s:

So how far back do we have to go?

After all, the only thing keeping this race even somewhat close is the struggling economy, and that has nothing to do with Romney. Imagine how far ahead Obama would be if the economy were even just a tiny bit stronger at the moment.

So maybe Willkie in 1940, a business-oriented moderate who had to secure the support of right-wing isolationists in the GOP (yup, sounds a bit like Romney). But no. He, at least, was respectable out on the campaign trail, even if he stood little chance against FDR.

I'll go with Landon in 1936, another business-oriented type and by all accounts a terrible campaigner and generally inept politician. But even then, he didn't constantly embarrass himself, unlike Romney. He just didn't campaign for long stretches at a time, including for two months after he won the Republican nomination, and FDR crushed him in the election. He won only Maine and Vermont, losing the Electoral College vote 523 to 8.

Perhaps he was worse than Romney. Perhaps. 

It's easy to forget this now, but Romney really was a terrible candidate. Other than his performance in the first debate, where his shameless "Etch-A-Sketch" lying combined with Obama's disengagement to make it seem as if he was a credible candidate, what else was there?

Yes, this could mean that a stronger candidate would have won, but who was that candidate? Because one can make the case that Romney was really the only viable Republican choice in 2012, the only one who could pull the party together by saying whatever each of its constituent parts wanted to hear, and who would be prepared to sell that good 'ol Republican snake oil with a smile on his face. And yet with a still-struggling (if improving) economy he still lost badly.

Regardless, Romney's weakness as a candidate, and as a political actor generally, likely means that his post-election political career, such as he has one, will be pathetic and self-serving.

And as for any legacy, well, consider that a failure as well. 

Double billing

By J. Kingston Pierce

Has anybody else happened to mention this anomaly in American history? Barack Obama is now the third recent U.S. president in a row to be elected to two terms in the White House, following Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and George W. Bush (2001-2009).



 








The last and only other time three men were elected consecutively to two terms as president was back at the beginning of the 19th century: Thomas Jefferson (1801-1809), James Madison (1809-1817), and James Monroe (1817-1825).



 








(Cross-posted at Limbo.)

Morning Joe on yet another embarrassing Romney moment: "Sweet Jesus."

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mustang Bobby put this up at his place yesterday. If you missed it, it's well worth watching, not just for the pathetic Romney embarrassing himself yet again but for Joe Scarborough's telling reaction of incredulity and resignation.

Which raises the question: Romney is the worst major-party presidential candidate since _______ ?

Is it Dukakis? (I think Romney's worse, but it's close.) Mondale? (At least he had some gravitas.) McGovern? (Maybe, but at least he had a ton of progressive credibility.)

So how far back do we have to go?

After all, the only thing keeping this race even somewhat close is the struggling economy, and that has nothing to do with Romney. Imagine how far ahead Obama would be if the economy were even just a tiny bit stronger at the moment.

So maybe Willkie in 1940, a business-oriented moderate who had to secure the support of right-wing isolationists in the GOP (yup, sounds a bit like Romney). But no. He, at least, was respectable out on the campaign trail, even if he stood little chance against FDR.

I'll go with Landon in 1936, another business-oriented type and by all accounts a terrible campaigner and generally inept politician. But even then, he didn't constantly embarrass himself, unlike Romney. He just didn't campaign for long stretches at a time, including for two months after he won the Republican nomination, and FDR crushed him in the election. He won only Maine and Vermont, losing the Electoral College vote 523 to 8.

Perhaps he was worse than Romney. Perhaps.

Keeping down with the Joneses was never going to work anyway

By Ramona

Months before the Republican and Democratic Conventions in the summer of 2012, when politicians fell all over each other trying to out-Poor-Me-Before-the-Bootstrap-Thing, Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate, had already had enough of pretending he was one of the little people. (Did you notice it was Ann and not Mitt who told the tale about having to live in a cement basement when they were in college, poor as church-mice except for those stocks they could cash in whenever they ran out of ramen noodles?)

In the merry month of May, Mitt went for the gold at a $50,000-a-plate dinner, raising a haughty middle finger to the riff-raff, the losers, the leeches -- the only Americans so useless they would actually vote for Barack Obama.

He laid it all out there, and -- you have to give it to him -- he seemed pretty comfortable up there. He hardly stuttered at all:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what... These are people who pay no income tax.

Ouch! You talking 'bout me? (Water off my back, pal, water off my back.) But did you see how the Republicans took it? Man, you would think they didn't actually believe any of it themselves. The thing is, you never, ever say such things out loud! (Rove Playbook, page 3, paragraph 1, or thereabouts.)

You almost have to feel sorry for Mitt. He was born rich and got even richer, which should be the American Dream, shouldn't it? So why is everybody making fun of his richness? Haven't we had rich presidents before?

Well, yes we have. Almost every president came from backgrounds most of us couldn't even begin to hope for. At least two of them, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, were so whopping wealthy it was almost otherworldly. The thing is -- Mitt, I'm talking to you -- it didn't matter. Once they became public servants -- yes, Mitt, I said public servants -- they took their obligations seriously.

FDR and JFK didn't exploit their wealth; neither did they hide it. They came from families whose wealth was unimaginable to the rest of us, but it didn't matter because they were both presidents who didn't talk down to the middle-class and the poor, who didn't propose cutting social programs in times of need, who didn't cater to the rich simply because the rich expected it from them.

Picture this: FDR with a pince nez and a mile-long cigarette holder -- not often seen in most neighborhoods. His speech patterns were decidedly (and sometimes hilariously) patrician. He was elected in 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, by voters who often didn't know where their next meal was coming from. It should have been a squeaker of an election, considering how he must have looked to the masses, but he won in a landslide. It wasn't how he spoke but what he said. He built up their hopes without ever talking down to them. They trusted him. He understood that the depression they were suffering through wasn't their fault, and when he talked about "victims," it wasn't to blame them but to assure them that he was there to do something about it.

The Kennedys played football on lawns the size of small states at the family compound. They sailed the blue waters off Hyannis Port in yachts fit for potentates. Jackie wore gorgeous clothes designed by Adrian and was often seen at Paris runways rooting for high fashion couturiers. And American manufacturing output was the envy of the world, the majority of the country counted themselves as middle class, health costs were reasonable, and children were being educated without fear of failure or budget cuts. We woke up to the need for civil rights, we established the Peace Corps, and we took giant steps toward space travel.

FDR and JFK didn't exactly become one of us, and they didn't even try, but we all knew they were our champions. That's the difference.
 
Mitt? You listening? That's the difference.

Kevin Siers - Charlotte Observer

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Rick Perry, for blaming Satan and the '60s for the separation of church and state

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Some crazy moron.

Remember when it looked like Rick Perry had a good shot at the Republican nomination? Given how widely unpopular Romney was, and given that at the time the conservative banner was being carried by Michele Bachmann, Perry was looked upon a savior even before he entered the race in August of last year.

It didn't take long for that bubble to burst, with Perry embarrassing himself on the national stage and generally looking worse and worse as time went by.

But again... it could have been Perry, who still looks and sounds the part, if only he'd managed not to come across as such an extremist moron / moronic extremist.

Then again, that may not be possible, hence his downfall. And in case you need more evidence, he's back in the news this week being as mind-bogglingly stupid as ever:

In a conference call with fellow evangelicals earlier this week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) shared his thoughts on the origins of the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Rather than tracing the idea to the nation's founders, Perry warned of a more nefarious source: Satan.

"Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there that is driven is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena," Perry said during the call on Tuesday, organized by the Rev. Rick Scarborough.

Perry said the separation of religious and civic institutions in the U.S. began with a "narrative" that first took root in the 1960s.

Well, he's an right-wing evangelical theocrat, so none of this should come as much of a surprise. But while the Satan line is silly enough, it would also seem that Perry knows nothing of Jefferson and the Founders and U.S. history and a certain key document known as the United States Constitution.

I mean... really? He blames it on the '60s? What, on the hippies? Is he really that stupid?

Well... yes. And you know what? The Republicans really should have picked him. He's just their kind of guy.

This day in history - August 21, 1959: Hawaii becomes the 50th state

By Richard K. Barry

(Ed. note: Interestingly, I just finished reading Sarah Vowell's wonderful book Unfamiliar Fishes, a fascinating history of Hawaii mostly from the arrival of the first missionaries in 1820 (with a great deal leading up to their historic voyage) to its pro-American white oligarchic revolution in 1893 and appalling annexation by the U.S. in 1898 -- and more broadly a case study of American imperialism and its myriad injustices. It turned me into a Hawaiian nationalist -- though, alas, I have never been there -- and made me really, really, really want to see Princess Nahi'ena'ena's famous feather skirt for myself. -- MJWS)

Aloha!

On August 21, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive order proclaiming Hawaii the 50th state in the union. This day is celebrated in Hawaii as Admission Day or Statehood Day, and it is a legal holiday. It's actually celebrated annually on the third Friday in August.

Statehood bills for Hawaii were introduced into the U.S. Congress as early as 1919 and again in 1935, 1947 and 1950, but it wasn't until 1959 that Congress approved the Hawaii Admission Act. After this, a referendum took place in which 94% voted in support of statehood, which was then followed by the executive order making Hawaii a state. Prior to this, Hawaii had been an organized incorporated territory of the United States beginning on July 7, 1898.

(Cross-Posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Happy birthday, Social Security. And many, many more.

By Ramona

Tuesday marked the 77th anniversary of the signing of the Social Security Act, and even though it's not one of those anniversaries we might consider A Big One, it's important. For this reason: it may well be the last time any of us will be able to celebrate this landmark law without also being reminded of its untimely death.

Two years ago, when we celebrated Social Security's Diamond Anniversary (well, some of us did) the usual rumblings against the best and brightest of our safety net programs could be heard, but since they were far off and not unlike anything we had heard before (and since the Democrats were still in the majority), we did the usual and just ignored them.

Two years later, they're not just rumblings, they're lightning strikes. Even the folks who have the most to gain from the continuance of Social Security are getting ready to cast their ballots for the very politicians who are not just promising but itching to kill it dead. Mitt Romney and his cohort, the Social Security-hating Paul Ryan, would like nothing better than to get the chance in November to kill off all such safety nets once and for all. If they win the presidency, we can kiss goodbye any hope of saving Social Security and its offspring, Medicare and Medicaid. The only reform we'll see is a slow elimination or corruption or privatization of the social programs many more addled Americans have now been lulled into associating with "Big Bad Government."

The creation of the Social Security program was nothing short of a miracle. Days after FDR was sworn in for his first term, in March 1933, he appointed a committee to come up with a plan to help the people who had become victims of a devastating depression by giving them money. Cash in their pockets. Money that the oldest, the ones who couldn't work, would never have to pay back. And they did it without judgment because they knew the people in this nation were poverty-stricken because they, the government, hadn't been governing with the best interests of the citizens in mind. In effect, they owed them. (Well, no, they didn't say that, but they didn't have to.)

Roosevelt signing the Social Security Act into law -- August 14, 1935

 

Roosevelt envisioned creating a long-term safety net that would eventually be self-sustained by payroll deductions when everyone got back to work, but he was adamant about the need for the federal government to start these payments before the coffers were filled. His idea was that the normal safety nets had long since disappeared, the country was in trouble, and the government had a moral duty to help out.

President Roosevelt appealed his case for Social Security to Congress this way:

In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, non-contributory old-age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps thirty years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age. It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old-age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.

The amount necessary at this time for the initiation of unemployment compensation, old-age security, children's aid, and the promotion of public health, as outlined in the report of the Committee on Economic Security, is approximately one hundred million dollars.

(Roosevelt's message to Congress on Social Security -- January 17, 1935)

For all intents, remember, the treasury was empty, and such a request must have sounded plain loony to some. Of course it did. The Republicans fought him all the way, but they were in the minority and they lost. (Interesting to note, though, that 81 Republicans in the House and 16 in the Senate voted for the Social Security Act.) 

Three years after the law was enacted he went before the American people and talked about what it meant for the country: 

Five years ago the term "social security" was new to American ears. Today it has significance for more than forty million men and women workers whose applications for old-age insurance accounts have been received; this system is designed to assure them an income for life after old age retires them from their jobs.

It has significance for the needy men, women and children receiving assistance and for their families -- at least two million three hundred thousand all told; with this cash assistance one million seven hundred thousand old folks are spending their last years in surroundings they know and with people they love; more than six hundred thousand dependent children are being taken care of by their own families; and about forty thousand blind people are assured of peace and security among familiar voices.

It has significance for the families and communities to whom expanded public health and child welfare services have brought added protection. And it has significance for all of us who, as citizens, have at heart the Security and the well-being of this great democracy.

These accomplishments of three years are impressive, yet we should not be unduly proud of them. Our Government in fulfilling an obvious obligation to the citizens of the country has been doing so only because the citizens require action from their Representatives. If the people, during these years, had chosen a reactionary Administration or a "do nothing" Congress, Social Security would still be in the conversational stage -- a beautiful dream which might come true in the dim distant future...

Now this is interesting to consider. The first to turn to Government, the first to receive protection from Government, were not the poor and the lowly--those who had no resources other than their daily earnings -- but the rich and the strong. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the United States passed protective laws designed, in the main, to give security to property owners, to industrialists, to merchants and to bankers. True, the little man often profited by this type of legislation; but that was a by-product rather than a motive. 

Taking a generous view of the situation, I think it was not that Government deliberately ignored the working man but that the working man was not sufficiently articulate to make his needs and his problems known. The powerful in industry and commerce had powerful voices, both individually and as a group. And whenever they saw their possessions threatened, they raised their voices in appeals for government protection. 

It was not until workers became more articulate through organization that protective labor legislation was passed. While such laws raised the standards of life, they still gave no assurance of economic security. Strength or skill of arm or brain did not guarantee a man a job; it did not guarantee him a roof; it did not guarantee him the ability to provide for those dependent upon him or to take care of himself when he was too old to work.

Long before the economic blight of the depression descended on the Nation, millions of our people were living in wastelands of want and fear. Men and women too old and infirm to work either depended on those who had but little to share, or spent their remaining years within the walls of a poorhouse. Fatherless children early learned the meaning of being a burden to relatives or to the community. Men and women, still strong, still young, but discarded as gainful workers, were drained of self-confidence and self-respect.

The millions of today want, and have a right to, the same security their forefathers sought--the assurance that with health and the willingness to work they will find a place for themselves in the social and economic system of the time. 

("A Social Security Program Must Include All Those Who Need Its Protection," radio address on the third anniversary of the Social Security Act -- August 15, 1938)

This is what we're fighting to save. The moral code of this country, as spelled out by the founders, has always dictated that government is there to serve the needs of the people. Sometimes that's ignored, as Roosevelt himself infers in his radio address, but it's never forgotten.

Even now, it's not forgotten. Not by us. Reading through Roosevelt's statements on Social Security, it's clear that he intended to work tirelessly to do what was right for the people still suffering from the effects of a man-made, wholly unnecessary depression. We need to remind our leaders today -- also to blame for a wholly unnecessary depression -- that social safety nets are an obligation they've inherited, and are, in fact, an obligation they agreed to when they took their oaths of office and vowed to uphold the constitution.

So let's get to the meat of it: President Obama is no Roosevelt. Not even close. But in my heart of hearts I believe he knows in his heart of hearts what he should do. So far he hasn't done it well, but there's no denying baby steps have been taken. He dropped the ball early on and hasn't recovered it yet, but there's hope. With President Obama, there's hope.

If Mitt Romney is elected president, either because of or in spite of his running mate, in all likelihood the Republicans will take both the House and the Senate, and that will be the end of Obamacare, of Social Security, of Medicare and Medicaid, of any chance at easing the conditions of the poor and middle class and rebuilding a country nearly devastated by a man-made economic crisis not of our choosing and not of our making.

How do we get that message out? I don't know, but it can't hurt to keep reminding voters that once upon a time, in conditions much like these, something happened in this country that changed us forever. Our government took charge and did, not just what they were elected to do, but what they were morally obligated to do. They took care of a nation in mortal pain. And the country survived. It thrived. So much so that, until this latest man-made fiasco, we were still seen as the greatest nation in the world.

We could keep reminding them of that. 

(Cross-posted at Ramona's Voices.)

Republicans are lying about Obamacare and trying to have it both ways on the individual mandate

By Michael J.W. Stickings

One of the most ridiculous right-wing claims about Obamacare is that it's the largest tax increase ever -- the "biggest tax increase in the history of the world," Dear Leader Rush exclaimed, and this line has become a standard Republican talking point in response to last week's Supreme Court ruling upholding the law.

It's ridiculous... and it's simply wrong.

Kevin Drum has a table that puts Obamacare in perspective. There have been many larger tax increases in U.S. history, let alone "the history of the world." (Many on the list happened on Reagan's watch.) In chart form (from Austin Frakt, via Ezra Klein), it looks like this:

Breaking news: Republicans are liars.

**********

Now, there's still the question of whether the individual mandate -- just one of the revenue-generating elements of the Affordable Care Act, though one designed to compel people to buy insurance, and so unlike a direct tax increase -- is a tax or a penalty.

The Supreme Court, contra Obama, said it is, and that could spell trouble for Democrats, particularly with Republicans already on the offensive, but it helps that Romney's campaign has come out on the "penalty" side. It did that so as to place Romney in opposition to the Court's ruling, but politically this helps Obama.

While the truth is nuanced -- as Brian Beutler wrote, the mandate "functions like a tax, but serves the purposes of a penalty," and so isn't a normal tax -- Republicans are trying to oversimplify the matter with their anti-tax rhetoric, slamming the Democrats for imposing a new tax on the American people. But can they really get much traction with that if their nominee, whose own agenda involves sucking up to the right and therefore disagreeing with the Court's ruling, is saying it's a penalty?

Because if it's a penalty, it's not a tax and so Obama and the Democrats didn't impose one. But if it's a tax, Roberts and the liberals were right.

You can't have it both ways. Though, no doubt, Republicans will try.