Your Tax Dollars At Work

A Little Something To Remember

I was reminded today of something I hadn't tho't about for a long time.  It popped into my brain as I was half-listening to an interview with Jimmy Carter on his new book.

It was during Carter's term that we formalized diplomatic relations with China.  Nixon first made the effort at rapprochement, but it was Carter's actions that made it all real and concrete.

A Democrat actually followed up and followed thru on an initiative of a previous (and VERY) Republican president.  So I'm thinking that's what real bi-partisanship looks like.  Not the bullshit we hear about now.  Where is that kind of thing now?

Quick Note

The culture war is back in a big way, and one of the favorite themes is "Poor Down-Trodden Rich People".

It's become Accepted Political Fact that the top 1% of Income Earners make 19% of Adjusted Gross Income, but they carry 37% of the tax burden.  What nobody ever seems to notice is that these same 1%-ers actually own 43% of the wealth.

If your argument is all about taxing people according to the benefits they receive from the economy, then you must be in favor of raising taxes on the Top 1% to more closely reflect the benefits they get.

Just sayin' - everybody oughta pay for what they get.

Shameless

Endorsed by Sarah Palin, Renee Ellmers is running for congress in NC's 2nd district.  Here's an ad That shows a lot of what's wrong with politics in general; and what's wrong specifically with these "New Repub Insurgents".



Shouldn't somebody be asking: What exactly does she propose to do to prevent people from building this "mosque"?

What Just Happened

Some good things have just kicked in, no thanks to Repub and Blue Dog opposition to healthcare reform laws.

• Many plans will be prohibited from placing lifetime limits on medical coverage, and they will not be able to cancel the policies of people who fall ill.
• Children with pre-existing conditions will not be denied coverage.
• Dependent children will remain on their parents' health insurance plans until age 26.
• Private plans must cover peventive services with no co-payments, and with preventive services being exempt from deductibles.
• Insurers will no longer be able to cancel your health insurance retroactively due to an unintentional mistake made by you or your employer on your paperwork.
• A way to appeal insurance company coverage determinations or claims is established along with an external review process.
• States are granted money to investigate unreasonable rate hikes by private insurance companies.

Little Republicans

DADT

It's about equal rights.  It's about trying not to be on the wrong side of history.

A Quick Note

To people who are fed up with politics as usual; people who want a chance to vote "None Of The Above"; people who believe that not voting is actually making a politically valid statement:

Wise up.  I hear a lot of people tell me they just can't bring themselves to choose between the lesser of two evils any more.  Been there, guys (still there in some ways).  It sucks and it feels like you're not making any progress at all.  But one thought keeps me goin' back over and over again.  Choosing in favor of the lesser evil is the same as deciding against the greater evil.  If you're confronted with two lousy alternatives; neither of which will do you much good, but one of which could be worse than the other; why would you choose not even to try to beat back the one you think poses the greater threat to you?

And for my Values Voter friends - in the face of evil, doing nothing is not an option.

Something New

Sometimes, it's hard not to see the hand of God at work.  Just beyond the limits of our imagination; just out of our reach; somewhere out there is where God could be.  There's a real probability that we'll never know what God is.  So for now, we have to be content with pushing the outside of the envelope; always trying to learn more about what God is not.

From Who's The Monkey, watch this video right now.

Short Memos

A couple of quick reminders for people who want very much to take the reins of power.

1) While religious faith is very much all about feeling certain that there are answers to whatever questions you have, it is NOT about being certain that only your brand of faith is in sole possession of those answers.

2) Here in the good ol' US of A, it's NOT up to the government to make good citizens; it's up to the citizens to make good government.

3) Regarding the pure arrogance of the organizers of silly things like The Values Voter Summit:  I think you're smart enough to know there aren't any voters who DON'T vote their values, so please just knock off that kinda bullshit.

Useful Idiots

I don't use the term in the pejorative.  I think anybody who gets on board with a political party or identifies strongly with a movement of any kind is a "Useful Idiot", so in this little experiment in self government, we're all Useful Idiots to some degree.  It's just that some are more useful and others are just idiots.

The Republican Tide

Well, maybe not so much.  In a previous post, I predicted the Repubs making gains in House and Senate races, but not taking majorities in either.  I'm no big deal political analyst; I just try to get a feel for these things

My main line of reasoning is that while some incumbent Dems have drawn opposition in their primaries (challenged from their left because they're seen as "not progressive enough", etc), they haven't lost - or at least they haven't lost many.  Blanch Lincoln in AR and Mike Bennett in CO both won their primaries, and both are likely winners in November.

But on the Repub side, it seems like the uber-freaks from way right are winning primaries all over the place.  Christine O'Donnell - DE, Sharron Angle - NV, Marco Rubio - FL, Carl Paladino - NY, Rand Paul - KY.

I could be wrong (it does happen from time to time).  Maybe it's possible that voters are pissed off enough to allow some yahoo to get out in front of 'em and pretend to be some kind of leader.  I'm just thinking we haven't reached critical mass yet, and that Dems have a shot at reminding voters that we need to be FOR something - that practically nothing the Tea Partiers are saying can actually be translated into policy that anybody with a living, thinking brain would agree with.

Hope springs eternal.

Out On The Limb

Maybe the Dems have finally kinda gotten part of their shit together, and maybe the Repubs are being exposed as a little too extreme; and maybe, even tho' the Press Poodles keep trying to convince us the big bad polling numbers must surely spell doom for incumbents, they're actually soft enough to melt on a cold day; I dunno.  I'm just not convinced that conventional wisdom holds true this time around.

Boehner kinda broke ranks with the standard Repub reaction of opposing everything Obama wants to do when he said he could support letting the Bush Tax Cuts expire for the top tier if it means we keep the middle class cuts in place.  Also, Karl Rove got into a bit of a spat with Hannity on the air when he (Rove) questioned the viability of Repub candidates like O'Donnell (DE) and Angle (NV).

I think the Dems keep both houses in congress.  They lose seats, but they maintain the majority.

Trouble In Repub Land

After a spring and summer filled with the non-sense of anti-Latino, anti-Obama, anti-Working Guy, anti-Government politics, we get to revel in the sheer awesomeness of the GOP faithful showing what seem to be their real colors - again.

There's been a lot of generalization regarding Muslims and the vocal political forces at work in American politics right now.  A big bunch of our Press Poodles write a lot about how the Tea Partiers and the Right Wingers are bigots, while a slightly smaller contingent of Press Poodles push back saying it's not fair to characterize all of them as biased assholes based on the signs some of the rubes carry at their rallies.  At any rate, the Repubs are trying pretty hard not to be too closely identified with the too-extreme elements of the Tea Party movement (even tho' the movement is largely funded on the sly by some very prominent Repub donors and directed by some longtime Repub operatives).

Since most of the pushback comes from pundits and other media types who are self-described conservatives &/or Repubs, plus what seems obviously an attempt either to launch  the Tea Party as a sub-brand of the Republicans (or at least to co-opt the Tea Party to make it part of the Repub stable) I think it's pretty safe to say that, politically, the GOP owns these wackos and owns whatever these wackos say and do.

No matter how hard the Repubs try to deny and dismiss, the simple fact remains that the assholes on display at the Tea Party parades won't be voting for any Democrats in November.

Just sayin'.

A Question For Newt

Dinesh D'Sousa wrote a slam on Obama, and Gingrich picked up on it, knowing he could capture a couple of news cycles by attacking what should be Obama's real strength - ie: his rise from humble beginnings to become POTUS.  That's pretty much Standard Operating Procedure for the Repubs over the last 20 years or so  - they let the opponent describe what his own strengths are; and then they attack those strengths by simply making shit up.

So anyway, Ol' Newt uses D'Sousa's fantasy about how Obama's all hung up on his dad's world view as a Kenyan, trying to make a coupla points.

First, the connection to Kenya.  This is brilliant because it reminds the rubes of the Birthers' crapola theories about Obama's legitimacy without having to say anything about it at all.

Second, it goes after Obama's real strengths. As I mentioned above, it strikes at the rags-to-riches narrative, but Gingrich adds an attack on Obama's persona as the cool intellectual with a passion for public service.

But here's my point: after the rhetorical fog has lifted, we're still a country founded by people who wanted to stop living under the rule of foreign kings and their appointed nobles.

In such a country, how is it a bad thing for the president to be "anti-colonialist"?

Just wonderin'.

I Heart Larry Wilkerson

From The Real News Network:

WILKERSON: Oh, au contraire, we don't have that choice anymore. We get two idiots to vote for every year, whose campaigns say all manner of things, but whose actual actions are not—I'll quote Ralph Nader here—virtually are not any different from Tom and Jerry. I mean, the two of them are going to do the same thing, because basically what we have today is a corporatocracy: we have the presidents and the Congress in the hands of big food, big pharmacy, big oil, finance, insurance, and real estate. Look at Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. They're quintessential representatives of those communities. And that's who runs this country now. The president doesn't run this country, the secretary of defense and the secretary of state don't run these people, and God help us, the American people don't run this country. Big money runs this country.

Snappy Comeback

Sunday Funnies

Modern Day Book Burning

Yesterday, I downloaded a copy of The Quran to my iPod and then angrily deleted it.

Cold Dead Fingers

Lotsa "conservatives", when talking about 2nd amendment rights and their notions of self-reliance and self-determination and whatever, like to argue that their gun is the great equalizer; that having the gun means it's less likely that anybody is going to push them around.  I call this position The Meyer Lansky.  To paraphrase Mr Lansky, "Everybody's more polite when everybody's got a gun".

I think we could all come up with a fairly simple rebuttal, but that's not what I'm thinking about right now.  I'm wondering why the people who try to make that point are usually the same people who seem to think the same philosophical outlook doesn't apply to nuclear weapons.

Just wonderin'.
  

Today's Word

Mockery Is The Best Defense

Mid Terms 2010

Do not put these assholes back in charge.

Political Insurgency 2010

Everybody seems really freaked out about how the "Tea Party" candidates are likely to screw everything up in the elections this year.  The Repubs are talkin' like they have the House majority sewed up already, but then again, there're lots of stories about how the establishment losers of the primaries refuse to show up at the little Party Unity rallies, where they're supposed to throw their support behind the insurgency winner.

If the Repubs are sure of a big win in November, why are they so upset about the Repub candidates who they say will win them the majority?

Two guesses:
1) The Repubs aren't really feeling confident - it's all just bluster.
2) If these Tea Baggers get elected, the Repub leadership will find it difficult if not impossible to hold any of the new members to party discipline.

Actually, Maybe Freedom Is Free

Electioneering 2010

From TPM:

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," Babeu told the Times. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has."

"This is going on here in Arizona," he added. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

 This guy Babeau is the sheriff of a border county in Arizona, and the guy who appears in John McCain's campaign video about "finish the danged fence".  TPM actualy does some decent reporting, so they called around to other law enforcement offices, and couldn't get anybody to confirm anything Babeau said.  In fact, while most stopped short of calling him full of shit, they all flatly contradicted the guy.

Here's a quick question:  Since Babeau is supposed to be in charge of upholding the law in his jurisdiction, is he just pleading for help...or is he admitting to professional incompetence?

Assuming he's a capable agent of the law, I gotta wonder why he says such things.  So I'm thinking it has everything to do with making sure certain middle class white people have something to be afraid of so that Big Daddy Politicians get more power.

These assholes pull this kinda shit because it works.

Right Rage Of The Day

Attempts to tear down Obama will never stop. It doesn't matter what he says or does, the "conservatives" will keep hacking away. Not because they think he's wrong; and not because they think they have better ideas; but because that's how they make their living.

Obama recently installed a new rug in the oval office that includes a quote from a speech by Martin Luther King: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice".
Here's the video:

Jackie and Dunlap

New Slogans Needed

Why aren't the Dems blasting the Repubs for saying (essentially) the the US is done - we can't do anything anymore.

Where's all that "Yes We Can"?

The New Right Exposed

Read this from Conor Friedersdorf

There's this weird dynamic in the United States where some conservatives will praise the hard working kid who gets good grades in high school, completes all their homework, avoids behavioral and legal trouble, plays varsity sports, takes a leadership role in student government, and studies hard for his SATs... until he or she attends Harvard, at which point they're put in the coastal elite box, especially if they wind up in politics, media, or academia.

The Great Divide

Never Heard Of 'Em

History Lessons ala Beck

The people Glenn Beck has in his thrall are thirsty for knowledge - they see things are going wrong in their lives but they can't quite accept that they've just been voting for the wrong people.  They need their favorite opinion makers to explain how they can let themselves off the hook, and find somebody to blame for their troubles.  Beck is really good at playing the "don't be naive" card.  "Wake up, America!" is something the guy says on his shows a lot.

He draws it out on his blackboard and always presents his doctrine as if he's just eager to share this new-found information with all of his friends.  The visuals and the presentation style are (I think) purposeful and well thought out - they're aimed at evoking a Sunday School feeling in the audience.  Here's good ol' Glenn; all he wants is to help regular people understand some things.

So now he's all about rewriting US History, but of course what the Beckies are actually learning is a Politically Branded version of history; instead of learning the facts or something as close to the facts as possible.

Read this from Will Bunch at CNN.

The revisionist message behind "Restoring Honor" is nothing new for the conservative shock jock. In the year and half since President Obama took office, Beck has led his loyal followers on a journey not just to "reclaim" civil rights but much more audaciously to rewrite the sweeping narrative arc of American history from the time of the Founding Fathers forward.

The backbone of the Tea Party is over-55s and especially retirees -- some planned, some forced -- with the most valuable asset of all, time.

They see studying U.S. history as a powerful reconnection with their youth. Waiting for Beck's "American Revival" show in Orlando, Florida, in March, 70-year-old fan Joseph Cerniglia told me he was way too busy for civics lessons when he was raising kids and working as a stockbroker and then cider-maker. "I have learned more from Glenn Beck -- learned more about American history and government, from Glenn Beck -- than in the previous 40 years of my life," the retiree told me.

After 8-28

8-28

Not long after the real thing happened on August 28 in 1963, a young Curtis Mayfield sat down and wrote a tune that would become one of the enduring anthems for people who just need a little hope and encouragement from time to time.

I can't wait to see what some yahoo comes up with after today's clown parade in Washington. Just so ya know, this is a taste of what you're up against. Covered here by Eva Cassidy at one of the joints in Georgetown, this is part of her only known live performance ever captured on video.

Cassidy died of cancer in 1996. (see Wikipedia article)

Ten Years Of Hell

Ken Mehlman

...is a complete asshole.

He presided over a political party whose platform was openly hostile to the basic principles of equality at the foundation of the USofA.

He led the re-election team for Jr Bush in 2004 which had, at it's core, a campaign strategy of fear and hatred - with one of the main themes being the demonization gays and gay marriage in order to motivate voters.

From Ambinder at The Atlantic:

"It's taken me 43 years to get comfortable with this part of my life," said Mehlman, now an executive vice-president with the New York City-based private equity firm, KKR. "Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey, and for me, over the past few months, I've told my family, friends, former colleagues, and current colleagues, and they've been wonderful and supportive. The process has been something that's made me a happier and better person. It's something I wish I had done years ago."

What a dick.

It's The Hypocrisy, Stupid

Whenever you get a politician like Gingrich or Little Quayle preaching "this great nation" or "Family Values" or harpin' on "I was raised right", remember this little tidbit about Leo Strauss and see if you can catch just a glimmer of the truth hiding behind the tower of bullshit.

Betcha Can't

Krugman Speaks

Under no circumstances should we revert and put the Repubs back in charge - they're either crazy or evil or something else.  When I look back on what was happening all thru the 90s and then especially what was going on with Junior Bush, I feel a little sick.  It's important to remember that it's possible Junior wasn't the fuckup he seems to have been.  There's a fair probability that he did it all on purpose - he didn't really know what was going on; he's just an empty vessel, incapable of fully understanding the damage resulting from his policy decisions.  He did what he was told to do by all those really smart guys he had around him.

Those smart guys are still with us, and Professor Krugman explains a little about what they're up to.

Late last year the conventional wisdom on economic policy took a hard right turn. Even though the world’s major economies had barely begun to recover, even though unemployment remained disastrously high across much of America and Europe, creating jobs was no longer on the agenda. Instead, we were told, governments had to turn all their attention to reducing budget deficits.

Skeptics pointed out that slashing spending in a depressed economy does little to improve long-run budget prospects, and may actually make them worse by depressing economic growth. But the apostles of austerity — sometimes referred to as “austerians” — brushed aside all attempts to do the math. Never mind the numbers, they declared: immediate spending cuts were needed to ward off the “bond vigilantes,” investors who would pull the plug on spendthrift governments, driving up their borrowing costs and precipitating a crisis. Look at Greece, they said.

Don't get fooled again.

God Love The Onion

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

Corporatization

Poster

Peace Train

It kinda sucks when a US President pulls people out of harm's way and it's like nobody even notices. I wanted to post something the other day when it was all happening, but I'm just now getting to it.

I guess I can hope there's something positive in this kind of non-reaction - like maybe peace is making a comeback(?), but I think it has more to do with trying to avoid having to take some real responsibility for the war if we can pretend we have more important things on our minds.

Anyway:

The Fix Is In

From a story in NYT, Balloon Juice posts this:

 Far from being able to take advantage of market forces, our wheat farmer friends are cowed into inaction because our markets are fickle and unreliable and prone to manipulation. This is fundamentally no different from the average joe trying to invest wisely in stocks- he can’t because the game is rigged. Our current system is anything but a free market. A free market would mean that people would be able to act with adequate information. We’re a nation being held hostage by these Galtian super-geniuses like Rick Santelli at the CME and that idiot blowhard Jim Cramer.

Oy

Somebody please tell me this is satire.

OMG

Tea-Partiers may actually be as dumb as we thought.

By way of Dayton Daily News:

DAYTON — About 30 local businesses are participating in a program to link conservative consumers with businesses owned by conservatives to help support the Tea Party.

Donald Hutchinson, a businessman and Tea Party supporter, calls his initiative the Tea Party Exchange Inc.

Tea Party supporters who obtain a TPX-Great American card — similar to a customer-loyalty card consumers can attach to key rings — and show it at a participating business can get a discount on the company’s services. The local merchant then gives 5 percent of the sale revenue to the local Tea party chapter to help fund rallies.

So the business owners are actually willing to drive off some whole-number percentage of their customers and prospects; AND they're willing to pay 5% of what's left of their Sales Revenues in order to support a political party?  They're volunteering to pay an additional tax (cuz a tax is exactly what it is) to an organization that has shown a particular animosity toward good business investments like paving the streets and enforcing the law and educating the labor pool;  and they WANT to pay this additional tax so they can try to avoid paying taxes?

Here's my guess: it's so absolutely counter-intuitive, and the rubes have swallowed so much right wing jiz already, that it's almost automatic for them; they will absolutely eat it up.

Comparing Tax Cut Proposals

Applied Ayn Rand

The logical extreme in Rand's Objectivism is perfectly illustrated by Eric Hague here.
To wit:

When little Aiden toddled up our daughter Johanna and asked to play with her Elmo ball, he was, admittedly, very sweet and polite. I think his exact words were, "Have a ball, peas [sic]?" And I'm sure you were very proud of him for using his manners.

To be sure, I was equally proud when Johanna yelled, "No! Looter!" right in his looter face, and then only marginally less proud when she sort of shoved him.

The thing is, in this family we take the philosophies of Ayn Rand seriously. We conspicuously reward ourselves for our own hard work, we never give to charity, and we only pay our taxes very, very begrudgingly.

Don't let anybody tell you we need to put the Free Marketeers back in charge.  These people are thieves and hustlers who blow the smoke of Ayn Rand's rhetoric in your face while using the implied deadly force of the law to pick your pockets.

As usual, they do almost exactly the opposite of they say they're doing.

Don't Make Me Laugh