Settle In

Get the popcorn ready and sit yer butt down - this is gonna take a while.

Chris Hedges on C-SPAN

At the heart of any protest (at least here in the US) is the simple desire to get this country to live up to its own ideals.

My Kinda Republican

It's certainly a rarity in politics now, and maybe it always was a rare thing, but once in a while somebody steps up and shows us a little something about honor and leadership and soul.

Via Wikipedia, the story of Fred Tuttle:

In 1998 Tuttle was persuaded to run in the Republican US Senate primary. His opponent was Jack McMullen, a multi-millionaire who had lived in Massachusetts for most of his life. McMullen faced opposition from some Vermont Republicans who felt that he was a carpetbagger who apparently moved to Vermont for the sole purpose of establishing residency for a Senate run. The Vermont primary structure allows Democrats and Independents to vote in the Republican primary, and many people foresaw the possibility that Tuttle would beat McMullen by drawing votes across party lines. In addition, some may have hoped that a Tuttle campaign would help to publicize the film Man with a Plan.

Fuck John Galt - Where is Fred Tuttle?

Scorecard

Mother Jones has lots of pretty pictures of the ugly truth.

Here's one of my faves.  5000 Americans were asked about Wealth Distribution.

And - surprise, surprise - there's a fairly simple reason your Congress Critter hangs out in the hot tub with Mr Monopoly, but sends you form letters.

Here We Go Again

Happy New Year.

Now get yer butts back to work - we got shit to do.

A Revoltin' Development

South Carolina Tea Partiers are gearing up to put on quite a show for us next month.

"The Tea Party" isn't monolithic.  Like most political entities, it's an amalgam - but unlike a "real political party" where the point of the exercise is to cobble together a coalition of interests that's as wide and as deep as possible, Tea Partiers are all about purity.  And I think that means they'll have to keep splitting into smaller and smaller factions as they try to rid themselves of "the non-believers".  Listening to their language, I hear the telltale signs of Fundamentalism taken to the Logical Extreme.
1) Compromise is not an option.
2) Compromisers must be expelled.

So what happens when Fundamentalists start feelin' their oats?
(hat tip = The Firebrand)

Organizers of a tea party convention scheduled to convene next month in Myrtle Beach are fending off accusations that they called for “armed guards” with concealed weapons permits to staff the event. A senior leader of one tea party group in the Palmetto State raised concern about heat-packing patriots amid a flurry of email backlash after supporters of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann announced their intention to hold a straw poll at the event to promote their candidate.
Read more: The Daily Caller

And be sure to drill down into the comments to get a good taste of what's in store for us.

If it was any less tragic, it wouldn't be funny.

Thank You, Firebrand

Wow.  I'm just so impressed with my own bad self right now, I cain't hardly stand it.  Thanks, guys.

Firebrand

Bless Their Pea-Pickin' Little Hearts

From The Richmond Times-Dispatch today:

Anyone who wants to vote must sign a form at the polling place pledging to support the eventual Republican nominee for president. Anyone who refuses to sign the pledge will be barred from voting.

During a brief meeting Wednesday at the state Capitol, the State Board of Elections voted 3-0 to approve three forms developed by the election board’s staff to implement the loyalty pledge requested by the state GOP.

(hat tip = Wonkette)

It's nuts.  Obviously, the oath is unenforceable unless they can tie an individual's Primary Vote to the vote he casts in the General Election.  It's just a guess, but I'm thinkin' there's a coupla dozen laws in place at various levels of government that are supposed to ensure the Secret Ballot.  Are they telling us they intend to break the law trying to impose a little party discipline?  (insert sardonic Political Crook reference here)

For me, the real problem is the simple fact that anybody in a leadership position would think it's legitimate even to propose such a thing.  Somebody please tell me how this is in keeping with any of the traditions of democracy, in any way, at any time.

I don't vote for Repubs any more because they insist on doing stupid shitty things that make it impossible for me to vote for them.

Give It A Rest Already

Every election cycle - actually, we're well into the Era of the Perpetual Campaign, but that's a different rant - anyway, every election cycle for at least a good 35 years, we hear the same crap: "We need the government to run like a business".  This is the dumbest fuckin' nonsense imaginable.

Think about any business you've ever owned or worked for.  Can you tell me, with even the tiniest kernel of honesty, that that business was operated as a democracy?  Think of the lightest, fluffiest management you've ever worked under; did they put their policies up for a vote?  Good management always talks about "empowering our people" and "soliciting input" on some of the more important issues, but let's be real clear; what's going on is that you're being invited to agree with decisions that have already been made, and/or decisions that will be implemented when the "labor climate is a little more receptive"; no matter what they are, and no matter how they affect you, these decisions are not yours to make.  Your participation in these decisions is always post facto.

Looking for proof?  You find a hundred people who've worked for any private company maybe 3-5 years, and I'll do the same.  We'll ask them all this question: "Have you ever been in a meeting (or in an argument with your boss) debating company policy, where the final pronouncement on the subject has been, 'Yeah well, this is no democracy'?"  I'll pay you for every "No" answer, and you pay me for every time somebody says, "Shit, that's all we ever fucking hear any more."

A business is Top-Down and Authoritarian.  It's run by Powerful Elites, chosen by other Powerful Elites, who form a Central Planning Committee that sets policy and issues commands in order to make the company do whatever Ownership wants it to do.

Are you sure that's what you want your government to look like?

E-Con

Here's another good one from Firebrand:

The Atlantic Cities ran an interesting piece today about corporate relocation battles. The short of it is that states compete with one another to bring in specific corporations by giving away huge sums of public money. Right now, Ohio and Illinois are fighting over the Sears corporate headquarters, with both states offering around $400 million of public money to the corporation. Incentives like these amount to around $50 billion a year in state and local spending.

Companies have been playing this Labor Arbitrage game for a long time, with the emphasis on paying very low wages overseas, and counting on relatively cheap fuel and zero tariffs to make shipping easy.  Maybe they're starting to see that they're causing themselves to have some real problems because of it.  Or maybe they just see that it's time to apply the Principles of Arbitrage here at home in a bigger way.

Unions are on the ropes, so one angle is to propose opening a plant in the Rust Belt (eg), but make sure everybody knows the company simply can't afford to pay union wages, so "If you want a job, you'll have to work for shit - that's the only way - after all, we've got lots of people in Cambodia doing this work right now for 16 cents an hour; you wanna bitch about us doing you a favor at 8-and-a-quarter?"

I think we can look forward to a lot of really shitty things happening as States and Counties and Cities continue to hack away at every government expense trying to find ways to buy those jobs.

Welcome to Pottersville.

A New One

First, I'm lovin' me some serious Wonkette.  They keep coming up with great posts that have very sharp edges.

And B, I found The Firebrand on their blog roll.

Conservatives are pretty shifty in arguments. One moment they appear to be concerned about the poor and how taxes will ultimately hurt them and kill their jobs. The other moment they seem to think the poor don’t deserve anything anyways. Most folks — no matter their political leanings — do not consciously think about the philosophical frameworks that the justifications for their opinions tend to fall in. Although rigid frameworks are probably a bit reductive, they can be useful tools to understand what exactly people are saying. The following three conservative philosophical frameworks can account for almost all of the conservative rhetoric and arguments out there these days. I offer them here to hopefully help those who want to understand and better analyze conservative justifications.

The piece is a good breakdown of three basic formational ideas of what passes for "conservative" thinking these days, and it gives me some good new vocabulary to work with.