What Does It Mean?

These days, a "conservative: is a guy who loves America - or at least an idealized version of America - but seems to hate just about any American who doesn't look, think and act almost exactly like he does.

So how do I reconcile this one?  Justice David Souter quit the Supreme Court a coupla years ago, and took a pretty hard shot at his "conservative" peers on his way out, in the form of a dissenting opinion on a matter before the court at the time.  Meanwhile, Chief Justice Roberts (no relation to your beloved blogger here) used a procedural gimmick to delay the court's decision (Citizens United) long enough to make it impossible for Souter's critique to escape into the public domain - and his rationale was based on not wanting to harm the credibility of the court.

Didja catch that one?

hat tip = Balloon Juice

From The New Yorker - Jeffrey Toobin:

In one sense, the story of the Citizens United case goes back more than a hundred years. It begins in the Gilded Age, when the Supreme Court barred most attempts by the government to ameliorate the harsh effects of market forces. In that era, the Court said, for the first time, that corporations, like people, have constitutional rights. The Progressive Era, which followed, saw the development of activist government and the first major efforts to limit the impact of money in politics. Since then, the sides in the continuing battle have remained more or less the same: progressives (or liberals) vs. conservatives, Democrats vs. Republicans, regulators vs. libertarians. One side has favored government rules to limit the influence of the moneyed in political campaigns; the other has supported a freer market, allowing individuals and corporations to contribute as they see fit. Citizens United marked another round in this contest.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/21/120521fa_fact_toobin#ixzz1uxL8bOut

Today's Quote

"Every man has a right to an opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." --Bernard Baruch

Thank You, Dr Chomsky

I was never a big fan, but the simple fact that so much scalding vitriol is aimed in his direction requires me to look for myself.



Special Bonus: David Frum at about 8:30.

I'm good with it until near the end (about 1:15:00) when he starts talking about the new "Libertarian Socialism" which will lead us to a spiritual transformation.

First, as soon as you tack that "ism" on the end of a set of philosophical tenets, you're well on your way towards the logical extreme, which means you've begun the slide into the abyss of self-cancellation.

Second, never bet against human nature.  If your system requires people to behave as anything other than people, then your system just ain't gonna work - not any time soon anyway.

But third, maybe it's more of a chicken-or-the-egg proposition.  Maybe it does work the way Chomsky imagines it working, where if you take the idea of Libertarian Socialism, and mash it up together with the need for a spiritual transformation, you nudge the evolutionary process - the philosophy and the transformation serve to carry each other forward.  I like that one better.

We're #1

...except when we're not - or about stuff we shouldn't be - or somethin'.

We have an amazing capacity for deluding ourselves.  And while it's not exactly unique to Americans, it seems like we have some special kind of weird need to buy into our own bullshit.  Maybe it's because our insistence on Free Speech made the slide into Propaganda unavoidable.  Maybe it's because we've allowed Free Speech to mean we can say whatever we want to say without being held to account for its consequences.

We think Foreign Aid makes up 25% of the Federal Budget, and that a more appropriate level would be about 13% - when it's actually less than 1%.

• 48% of Americans believe Healthcare Reform has been repealed.
• 51% don't know The US Supreme Court has 9 Justices
• ...and 54% can't name even one of 'em.
• 78% know Larry, Curly and Moe, while 58% can't name all 3 branches of the US Government.
• 125 million American Christians can't name all 4 Gospels.
• 67% of adults in the US can't find England on a map.
• 80% of us consider ourselves Above Average Drivers.
• 41% can't name the current Vice President of the United States.
• 7% think funding for Public Broadcasting represents more than half of the federal budget.
• As recently as 1999, 20% of Americans thought the Sun orbits the Earth.

Economic Mobility

"The South is the native home of American poverty" --Gene Nichol, director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

I really wish this would come as a surprise - just once in a while.  Why is it always The South?  There're 9 states doing worse than the average and they're all in The South, and they're all Deep Red politically.  The politics in every one of those states is dominated by Right Wing TeaBaggers and/or Christianists, but certainly by radicals who're pretending to be "conservatives".

Utah's an obvious outlier, but on the other side of that coin, there're 8 states doing better than average, and 7 of those are either Hard Blue or toward the blue end of Purple.

I don't know what exactly has to happen to change all of this, but I do know that not much will change until people figure out for themselves just how badly they're being swindled.

Where Credit Is Due

Jon Stewart is a fucking genius.

Politicizing Mothers' Day

Ann Romney has a piece in USA Today all about the glories of motherhood and the importance of cherishing our moms.  Wow - way to take a tough stand on that one, Annie.

Go read it if you think you need a little blast of meaningless treacle from about 1915.  For my own self, this is one of those times I wish I could spell the sound I make when I puke.

It's hard to imagine now, but before the birth of my first child, I had never held a baby. Not once, not in my entire life. No baby at home to tend, no niece or nephew to babysit. So you can imagine, the day my first boy was born I felt woefully unprepared.

She tries to make it sound like she's some kinda "regular person".  She isn't.  She'd never held a baby?  Seems odd 'til you take a quick little Google spin thru her old neighborhood, or do a bit of reading on Bloomfield Hills Michigan* where she grew up.  She probably never did any laundry or cooked a meal for herself either.  Not that any of that makes her a bad egg in any way - just that it doesn't make her any kind of kindred spirit with anybody who's ever struggled with any of life's little obstacles.  It's hard to imagine Ann Romney ever being denied much of anything, or a time when somebody wasn't shinin' her ass over one thing or another.

*Bloomfield Hills ... consistently ranks as one of the top five wealthiest cities in the United States with population between 2,500 to 9,999 — it currently is listed at the number four position and in 1990 it was ranked number two,[6] and has the highest income of any city outside of California, Florida or Virginia. The median income for a family is over $200,000. In 2000, 49% of residential property in Bloomfield Hills had a value of over $1,000,000.[7]

Generally, I don't mind when campaign consultants insist on trying to pull this kind of crap; I just wish they weren't always so fucking clumsy and obvious about it.

Go Greeks

Y'know, some people just really know how to do that protest thing better than others.

Prostesters in Greece managed to get into the studio and pelted a TV Anchor Guy with eggs and yogurt (this is Greece after all).

Unofficially translated, they're chanting, "Cops, TV, neo-nazis, all the scoundrels are working together."

One Example

Government as Business can be even more of a nightmare than what "conservatives" are always creamin' their jeans over.

A teenager in a For-Profit Prison in Mississippi turned up missing, and it took his dad more than a month to find him - in a local hospital, after suffering irreparable brain damage in a riot that was possibly instigated by at least one of the guards.  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From AlterNet via Democratic Underground:

On March 26, U.S. District Judge Carlton W. Reeves issued a blistering court order approving the settlement of the lawsuit. He wrote that the GEO Group Inc., the company that runs Walnut Grove, “has allowed a cesspool of unconstitutional and inhuman acts and conditions to germinate.”

Violence by youths and guards wasn’t the only problem. Neither were the gang affiliations of some guards. Or the grossly inadequate medical and mental health care. Or the proliferation of drugs and other contraband. Or the lack of educational and rehabilitative programs. Or the wild overuse of pepper spray on passive youths.

Indeed, the DOJ found that sexual abuse – including brutal youth-on-youth rapes and “brazen” sexual misconduct by prison staffers who coerced youths – was “among the worst that we have seen in any facility anywhere in the nation.”
What’s more, both the prison staff and the Mississippi Department of Corrections, which pays GEO $14 million each year to run the prison, showed “deliberate indifference” to these problems.

This hyper-macho, get-tough bullshit just ain't workin', guys.  We gotta figure out something else.

Back In The Black

Not that it's gonna last, but the US Gov't reported a budget surplus of $58 Billion for April 2012.

CBO estimated that receipts were $30 billion higher in April than the same month a year ago, due to declining refunds that month and higher corporate income tax receipts. Spending fell by $69 billion compared to April 2011, marked by lower outlays on defense, Medicaid and the Postal Service.  --Market Watch

How this happened is anybody's guess, but the real question is how long will it take for the Repubs to turn it around, and get the failure they've been pushing for?

Making Government run like a business is great as long as it's never ever allowed to turn a profit.  Which kinda shows how fucked up the GOP's premise actually is.  Because if Gubmint works like a business, then Gubmint is - in fact - working.  And that just can't be because we all know that Gubmint doesn't work at all, so we have to work a lot harder to make it work better, but...  

If your premise is false, your conclusion can't be true.  So, like I've said before - they run in tighter and tighter circles until they disappear up their own assholes.

As Austerity Fails

...the Romney campaign discusses US Domestic Economic Policy.

GOP And The Lady Parts

Found this days ago and forgot all about getting it posted.

hat tip = Crooks and Liars

Republicans, Get In My Vagina! from Kate Beckinsale      

Today's Pix

Political Judo

You take your own negative and project it onto your opponent.  It's worked for a long time because most people have short memories where this kinda shit is concerned - which is actually what Willard's campaign guy was talking about when he made that Etch-A-Sketch remark.

Well, Obama kicked off his 2012 campaign at Ohio State's basketball venue (I think), where, according to the wingnuts, "he was preaching to an empty room", or he "failed to fill the seats" or some such hokum.

Here's one view of what that empty room looked like:

Here's one more:

And here's a look at the adoring throngs that showed up for Romney's major economics address in Detroit earlier this year - this is the one the Repubs need us to forget about:

Well, That Sucks

86% of us (per recent polling) think that unlimited donations to SuperPACs has a corrupting influence on our democracy.

Which means there're more than twice as many Americans who don't understand how fucked up Campaign Financing is in this joint than there are who believe the moon landings were faked.

And Jesus wept.

hat tip = Republic Report

To Be Clear

If somebody tells you they think you're sounding a little racist, it doesn't have to mean they're just "playing the race card" and that you should ignore them and go right on being a cheap imitation of a normal human.

Sometimes it means you need to stop for a minute and recheck your assumptions.

France

Lil Nik Sarkozy has lost the French presidency to a Socialist named Francois Hollande, who is expected (by some folks anyway) to ease up on the austerity choker.  So OK, I guess we're about to see something more of a Keynesian approach to the economic side of the house (france is the # 2 economy in the EU - right behind Germany), and that can only mean that the Right Radicals in the US are about to freak the fuck out.

Won't that be fun.

BTW Broad Observation:
The political world is cratering in on the Repubs, so that's why they're doing everything they can to pass legislation that's mostly just plain stupid, and will take a long time to sort thru once they're gone.  I think the strategy is to make it look like it's the Dems who're implementing the "radical agenda" as they work to unravel all this crap, and the GOP can sit on the sidelines complaining about how the Dems aren't doing the things they said they'd do to make things better.

Ya heard it here first.

Progressive Roster

Lifted directly from Crooks and Liars, and with a hat tip to The Professional Left.

Here's a list of Progressives doing their thing in the world of "New Media":

PART 1

All Power To The Positive—Featuring Sensei Gregory C. Lewis and Jacob “The Jacobin” Brown (radio)

Alternet Radio Hour—With Joshua Holland (radio)

The Anonymous Show—With Mr. X aka John Smith (radio)

BearMan Radio Show—Featuring the BearMan (radio)

Blacking It Up—Featuring Elon James White, L. Joy Williams and Aaron Rand Freeman (radio)

The Blatant Minority—Featuring Greg Hanson (radio)

Bob and Chez Show—Featuring Bob Cesca and Chez Pazienza (radio)

The Breakdown—With Richard Eskow (radio)

Brookland Café—(radio)

Captain Jack Show—With Captain Jack (radio)

Clearing the FOG (Forces of Greed)—With Kevin Zeese & Margaret Flowers (radio)

Coffee Party Radio—Featuring Annabel Park and Coffee Party volunteers (radio)

Create the Change—(radio)

The DC Sports Beat—With Mitch Malasky (radio)

DC Voice’s Education Town Hall—With Thomas Byrd (radio)

Democracy Now—With Amy Goodman (video/radio)

Digital Politics Radio—With Karen Jagoda (radio)

The DMZ at BloggingHeads.TV—With Bill Scher & Matt K. Lewis (video)

Earth Radio One—Featuring Doctor Drake and Doctor Truth (radio)

Equal Time Radio—With Frank Blair, Traci Kelly, Andrew Bacon (radio)

The Matthew Filipowicz Show—Featuring Matthew Filipowicz (radio)

Filter Free Radio—With Jacob Dean (radio)

Fireside Chats at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)

The Flaming Sword of Justice—With Ben Wikler (radio)

Foreign Entanglements at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)

The Richard Fowler Show—With Richard Fowler (radio)

The Frank Factor—With Frank (radio)

Friedersdorf at BloggingHeads.TV—With Conor Friedersdorf (video)

The Glenn Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Glenn Loury (video)

The God Above God—Aeon Byte (radio)

GoLeft TV—Featuring Mike Papantonio (video)

Green Power—Featuring Akili West (radio)

GRITradio—With Laura Flanders (radio)

The Thom Hartmann Show—Featuring Thom Hartmann (radio)

ill doctrine—Featuring Jay Smooth (video)

In Deep and Live From the Left Coast—With Angie Coiro (radio)

In Your Face Radio—With JD & Greg Zollo (Radio)

The Inside Scoop—With Mark Levine (radio)

Leaning Left—With Rutherford Lawson and Sandi Behrns (radio)

Left Jab Radio—Featuring Mark Walsh and Dave Goodfriend (radio)

Liberal Oasis Radio Show—Featuring Bill Scher & Traci Olsen (radio)

The Josh Lopez Show—Featuring Josh Lopez (radio)

The Luv Lounge—Featuring Jamal Muhammad, aka Dj One Luv (radio)

Majority Report—Featuring Sam Seder (video)

The Leslie Marshall Show—Featuring Leslie Marshall (radio)

Media Matters Radio—With Bob McChesney (radio)

The Stephanie Miller Show—With Stephanie Miller (radio)

Moment of Clarity—Featuring Lee Camp (video)

MOMocrats—Progressive mom bloggers writing about politics from a mom's perspective (radio)

The Shannyn Moore Show—Featuring Shannyn Moore (radio)

The More Me Show—With DJ Downtown and Eddie Herradura (radio)

Moyers and Company—Featuring Bill Moyers (video)

The Nation Conversations—With various hosts (radio)

One on the Right—Maine politics with Gerald Weinand (radio)

The Other Side—With Ron Moten (radio)

The David Pakman Show—Featuring David Pakman (radio)

The Posner Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Sarah Posner (video)

Power To The People—With Mike (radio)

The Power To The People Radio Program—Featuring The Bedouin (radio)

The Bill Press Show—With Bill Press (radio)

The Professional Left—Featuring Driftglass & Blue Gal (radio)

The Professor Rex Show—Florida politics with Professor Rex aka Kenneth Quinnell (radio)

Progressive Blend Radio—On Radio or Not (radio)

Progressive News Network—Florida politics (and beyond) with Richard W. Spisak Jr. (radio)

Ring of Fire—With Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder (radio)

Roots Radio—(radio)

The Nicole Sandler Show at Radio or Not—With Nicole Sandler (radio)

The Ed Schultz Show—Featuring Ed Schultz (radio)

The Sara Schulz Show—Wisconsin politics with Sara Schulz (radio)

The Scream Cafe—With Grobeck and Monkeyhead (radio)

The Nancy Skinner Show—Featuring Nancy Skinner (radio)

Soulful Green Living—With Vicki Blues (radio)

SpeakEasy—With Kymone Freeman and Ron Pinchback (radio)

Take Action News—With David Shuster (radio)

Talking Left—With Danielle, the Left Neck Chick, and Shane-O (radio)

This Week In Blackness—Featuring Elon James White (video)

The Trees Radio—With Stone Kawala (radio)

True Blue Talk—With Steve M. (radio)

Turn Up the Night—With Kenny Pick (radio)

Virtually Speaking—Featuring Jay Ackroyd, Stuart Zechman, Alan Boyle, Tom Levenson and various other hosts (radio)

Washington Squares at BloggingHeads.TV—With Michael Brendan Dougherty (video)

PART 2

A World of Progress Radio—(radio)

Worldwise at BloggingHeads.TV—With various hosts (video)

The Wright Show at BloggingHeads.TV—With Robert Wright (video)

The Young Turks—Featuring Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian, Ben Mankiewicz, Michael Shure, Brian Unger, Wes Clark Jr., RJ Eskow (video)

Your World News—From the University of Maryland (radio)

AFGE "Inside Government" — From the American Federation of Government Employees (radio)

The Alyona Show — Featuring Alyona Minkovski (radio)

America's Workforce — With Ed "Flash" Ferenc (radio)

Julian Assange on RT — Featuring Julian Assange (radio)

At the Chalk Face — Education with Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar (radio)

The Big Picture — With Thom Hartmann (video)

The BradCast — With Brad Friedman (radio)

Building Bridges — Labor-themed show (radio)

Cognitive Dissonance the Podcast — With a heavy emphasis on critical thinking (radio)

The Tim Corrimal Show — With Tim Corrimal (radio)

Democratic Talk Radio — Featuring Stephen Crockett (radio)

Electric Politics — With George Kenney (radio)

The Norman Goldman Show — With Norman Goldman (radio)

The Green News Report — With Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen (radio)

Heartland Labor Forum — Radio show about working families from Kansas City (radio)

The Keiser Report — With Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert (radio)

Labor Neighbor Radio — Labor-themed radio show from Washington state (radio)

Local Edge Radio — North Carolina politics and beyond featuring Blake (radio)

The Mike Malloy Show — With Mike Malloy (radio)

The News Dissector — Featuring Danny Schecter (radio)

Progressive Radio Network — With various hosts (radio)

Revolution Boston — With hosts including Jim Lowenstern, Jeff Santos, Samantha Clemens, Brad Bannon and others (radio)

The Randi Rhodes Show — Featuring Randi Rhodes (radio)

RT TV — With various hosts (video)

The Lifeboat Hour — With Michael Ruppert (radio)

The Rick Smith Show — Featuring Rick Smith (radio)

This Is Hell — Featuring Chuck Mertz (radio)

Where Is the Outrage? — Featuring Errington C. Thompson, MD (radio)

Workers Independent News — With various hosts (radio)

Working Family Radio Network — With various hosts (radio)

Your Guide To Natural Living — Featuring Gary Null (radio)

Jay Smooth

I lost track of this guy for a while.  Glad I caught up with him again.

Who Are Those Guys?

The Washington Post has gone from a truly great example of Gutsy and Righteous Journalism in the mid-70s to its current smarmy incarnation as a Bullshit Centrist Rag.  And seeing as how this piece is co-authored by Thomas Mann and Norm Ornstein, on the surface, it's just more of the same "both sides do it" malarkey.  But it doesn't just feel different - it says it straight out: "the Republican Party is the problem".

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington. In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies. The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

Then scan through some of the (>5000) comments - which (by my quick and totally unsubstantiated estimation) appear to be running 10-1 in support of the basic premise that the GOP is the problem.  Tho' I think a more accurate characterization would be that the extremists in the GOP who are masquerading as conservatives are the problem.

So like driftglass and BlueGal have been saying, conservatives are lying to us and those dirty liberals were right all along.

Which brings me to my newest bumper sticker idea: