Game, Set, And (Almost) Match

With a victory on healthcare firmly in his back pocket, and embarassing the crap out of the GOP who thought they had it lock, stock, and barrel, wither Barack Obama?

 

For one thing, despite our grousing about Congress and the Democratic leadership, he owes a few chits from the healthcare reform battle, and he will have to mend a few fences for Congresscritters back home, but the news for Dems this year is looking better and better.

 

That said, there are landmines out there:

 

1) Justice John Paul Stevens - Republicans have already made it clear they will be obstructionist...gee, what a shock! An avowed and confirmed liberal is leaving the bench and rather than give it a pass, the Republicans have decided to try to move the court further to the Fascist, errr, I mean, right! While Stevens hasn't given a date certain beyond 2012, the sense between the lines is that this retirement may come as early as this summer. Before the midterm elections, forcing a Senatorial spectacle, something Obama really doesn't need. His options would be limited: either fight a nasty fight over an avowed liberal to replace Stevens' ideology, or choose a warm body that Republicans can't put up that much of a fuss over.

 

I have a suggestion that solves both aspects: Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo. It would be hard to pin him as a true-blue liberal when he is personally pro-life (altho supporting choice for women,) but he's old enough (nearing 80) that his service to the bench would be short in duration.

 

2) Immigration reform - This is the real trap for Obama, but one he can sidestep in the short term. Immigration reform is the most polarizing issue on the national political landscape after healthcare reform. The Teabaggers are licking their lips...er, maybe that's an image you don't need...in anticipation of letting the racist-freak flag fly. Democrats are running scared because on the one hand, a significant bloc of their new-found strength is the Hispanic vote and on the other, immigration reform that doesn't include strong penalties for illegal immigration will rally Teabaggers and allies, as well as some normally perfectly liberal people who see immigration as yet another pool of people taking advantage of a bountiful society.

 

My suggestion: duck and weave. This is not a fight you need to take on until after November, despite the gathering momentum. If you could delay healthcare for over a year, as unfair as this may be, you can delay taking up immigration until the end of this year. John McCain needs this issue, so maybe throwing him a bone in exchange for his help on the Teabaggers would make a little sense, but don't risk your Congressional majority over this. Not until you run for re-election and can take the heat off them in 2012.

 

3) Jobs - There was desperate good news on jobs last week, in that the jobs report was very positive, based on the hiring of temporary census workers. Obama needs momentum in this direction, and while he's actually lost fewer jobs in his first year than Reagan did in his, the perception is strong that bankers came first. Obama needs a big win here.

 

Fortunately, Obama has a little political cover on this one: no one wants to see unemployed Americans, no matter how desperate they are for power.

 

4) Financial reforms - This, I think, will be Obama's next stump speech topic. He can paint any opposition as anathemic to the American people, and simultaneously distance himself from the dance he had to do after Bush's bailout in 2008. The GOP will be painted into a corner, and he picks up an easy win.

 

Come November, the American people will want to see a government that works. They are less concerned with ideology so long as they see legislators earning their pay and keeping the problems of Americans front and center. We're an adventurous group when the chips are down, and I suspect that if Obama can reel off a few wins in a row this spring and summer, the 2010 elections will be seen less as a referendum on the direction the country is going and more as an endorsement of how fast its getting there.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Of course, yesterday was April Fools Day. And Google pulled one of its better pranks.

2) An expansion to 96 teams??? It's hard enough filling a bracket out now!

3) The best car in the world, as selected by the jury of the New York Auto Show. And you can't buy it in the US.

4) The March jobs report is coming out this morning. Projections call for a growth in jobs. Perhaps November won't be the Democratic bloodbath people were worried about after all.

5) Obama sure seems to think so. I like a man who can hand out sarcasm with a smile.

6) And if you need further proof...

7) The Teabaggers are running out of steam.

8) Why is your Internet access so s-l-o-w? Hey, blame the not-free market! It's funny how so many right-wingers grouse about socialism and how the free market solves all problems, but then fail to make the connection that, in the United States, there is no free market, so we may as well have socialism.

9) His name alone should have been a clue.

10) Thank you, Jesus.

Explosive boobs

Hm, I didn't think Swedes needed breast implants...

For Your April Fool's Celebrations

 

Unpaid Spanish air hostesses strip in protest

 

Oh. Wait. That's a true story!

 

And They Call Liberals "Slackers"...

...but it turns out the uberpatriot right-wing Teabaggers are the ones who seem to have lots of time on their hands.

 

And with good reason!

SOUTH BEND, Ind. — When Tom Grimes lost his job as a financial consultant 15 months ago, he called his congressman, a Democrat, for help getting government health care.

Then he found a new full-time occupation: Tea Party activist. [...]

Mr. Grimes is one of many Tea Party members jolted into action by economic distress. At rallies, gatherings and training sessions in recent months, activists often tell a similar story in interviews: they had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government.

Um, you'll notice some of the rather intriguing notes here: lost his job in January, 2009, based on the Bush failures in financial oversight; called his Democratic congressman to get Medicare; turns traitor on the same government when things don't work out so well for him, along with millions of other people who have had problems finding a job and paying for medical care, but who DON'T act treasonously.

PS Grimes receives Social Security now. But hey, Big Government is the problem, not the solution!

In the 1930s and '40s, people appropriately looked to the government for a hand out and a hand up. This is as it should be. Government should be the last thing between a citizen and starvation or death. End of discussion. For all its wonder, the free market is notoriously brutal when it comes to the individual. Agglomerations of money and power create pockets of inequity, and it is into these pockets of inequity that people fit rather nicely.

I'll get back to that in a minute, but I wanted to share something else from the article: the hatred of right-wing media and how its influenced this yahoos:

“Even if I wanted to stop, I just can’t,” said Diana Reimer, 67, who has become a star of the effort by FreedomWorks, a Tea Party group, to fight the health care overhaul. “I’m on a mission, and time is not on my side.”

A year ago, Ms. Reimer’s husband had been given a choice — retire or be fired. The couple had been trying to sell their split-level home in suburban Philadelphia to pay off some debt and move to a small place in the city.

But real estate agents told them the home would sell for about $40,000 less than they paid 19 years ago — not enough to pay off their mortgage.

Then Ms. Reimer saw a story about the Tea Party on television. “I said, ‘That’s it,’ ” she recalled. “How can you get this frustration out, have your voices heard?”

She liked that the Tea Party was patriotic, too. “They said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the national anthem,” she said.

Right. It's true saying the Pledge of Allegiance is free and so is singing the same damned song they sing before wrestling matches and demolition derbies.

Both of which demean a national anthem, I should add. But think about it: she's in the most dire, desperate straits she can imagine, about to lose her home, her husband's out of work (and presumably now collecting Social Security, as is Ms Reimer), and the best she can do is...turn to a bunch of angry old people?

That hardly seems to be a rational decision to make. I can understand it, though. You work and struggle all your life to put together a family and maybe a little nest egg for retirement, and you figure you can sell your house when the time is right and you'll make back your investment plus a little extra.

The American dream. And it all collapses under the weight of the same free market that enticed you in with the promise of, well, living the American dream. Anger is understandable, and if you're an idiot, you blame the people who are trying to help cushion the blows at the expense of perhaps not living as volatile an existence as you have. You feel entitled to more, and rather than blame the people who have taken it all away from you, you blame the people who tried to help you keep it.

Which brings me back around to the other point I want to make here: this is neither the first, the worst, or the last banking-based crisis we will experience in America.

Free Speech TV is showing an incredible documentary this month called Life On The Edge Of A Bubble, which posits that the economic cycle is designed to create bubbles and bursts cyclically every twenty years or so, and there is nothing in the current system that will stop it. From the 1700s forward, the program traces the various market expansions and contractions, with particular emphasis on the United States since 1776 (you can watch part 1 here. It's twenty minutes well spent.)

Look, the Reimers and Mr. Grimes are not unique. Even the most intelligent people in history have gotten caught up in speculative bubbles. For example, Isaac Newton invested 7000 pounds in the South Sea Bubble, doubling his money, and then plowed the entire sum back in, only to lose all of it plus an additional 20,000 pounds.

Historically speaking the South Sea Trading bubble is probably the closest analogy to our current situation: Too big to fail, it went on a buying spree, snapping up national debts with the promise of 6% return. It then "collateralized" this debt by taking itself public and selling shares on the open market. It was "can't miss" investing, except, well, it missed.

There's a sucker born every minute, and someone pops up to bleed them dry. I won't get into the gruesome details (these folks do). Suffice it to say that, if one of the three brightest men in history could be had, then anyone can be had.

It was a Ponzi scheme that would have made Bernie Madoff lick his lips. It started with good intentions, saving England, and ended destroying a generation.

Just like the current mortgage schemes. Human history is rife with stories of greed and stupidity, and the one factor the markets cannot work out in their derivatives and calculus is stupidity and greed.

Indeed, with the advent of computing power, markets are designed to feed off those emotions, which create inefficiencies that programmers can spot and exploit. Expect these market busts to come more and more frequently.

And expect more and more heartbreaking stories like the Reimers and the Grimes. Our job as liberals is to educate these people to the real enemy.

 

 

A Sop To The Right

I'm sure there will be much panty-twisting among my fellow lefties over this, but I can't say I blame Obama much:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.

The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.

Under the plan, the coastline from New Jersey northward would remain closed to all oil and gas activity. So would the Pacific Coast, from Mexico to the Canadian border.

The environmentally sensitive Bristol Bay in southwestern Alaska would be protected and no drilling would be allowed under the plan, officials said. But large tracts in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean north of Alaska — nearly 130 million acres — would be eligible for exploration and drilling after extensive studies.

OK, sounds double-unplus good for the environmental wing of the nation. After all, we're opening up pristine areas to exploration for a dirty disgusting resource that's caused nothing but trouble for the nation, once you factor out the incredible benefit our economy has gotten.

Map those leases out against population densities, and you can see that Obama has, for the most part, avoided large urban areas, and centered the exploration off-shore from some of the richest (read: Republican) communities in the nation, as well as some of the most sparsely populated areas.

Why is he doing this, and particularly, why now? Well, it looks like Wall Street is getting its revenge for the recent scoldings its endured. Not satisfied with a slap on the wrist and the threat of more oversight, Wall Street has settled Obama and his administration dead in their sites to try to topple the US government and replace it with a more business-friendly one.

OPEC countries also are convening in Mexico this week to map out a strategy for keeping prices from rising higher.

But officials may face an even bigger problem: The recent rise in prices seems to be driven by Wall Street investors — not market supply and demand.

Hm. Not fun. Of course, the cover story is that Wall Street is betting on a robust recovery, but in truth, the betting could conceivably derail that recovery, something the "smart money" has to know going in. Here's the kicker: part of this is due to the wildly successful "Cash For Clunkers" program of 2009.

After peaking at nearly 9.8 million barrels a day in August 2007, demand for gasoline has fallen steadily to a low of 8.5 million barrels day in February 2010 — a drop of 13 percent. But in the past 12 months, pump prices have increased more than 50 percent and oil prices have more than doubled.

“People are using oil as a store of value rather than as a commodity,” Beutel said. “It’s the investors who are buying.”

More oil has been available, which normally would drive prices down, but because speculators are soaking up the excess supply, prices have remained firm and begun to creep upwards. Stocks and bonds have been risky investments this past year while oil has tanked, it's a commodity that would be among the first to recover once the economy begins to tick upward, which it is showing all kinds of signs of happening now. Couple that with the dollar's volatility (oil prices are pegged to the dollar) and you can see why people would invest in oil to hedge against market fluctuations and internationalize their investments without risking money in any particular market or sector.

Oil can travel anywhere.

One possible solution, besides the showcase of drilling for more domestic oil, is to levy a surcharge tax on oil and gasoline, especially now that the heating season is ending. The tax would burden the investors primarily, but would of course harm drivers. But driving is usually a matter of choice (despite the inevitable cry of "it's my livelihood!" it usually isn't), and forcing drivers to make tough choices might do the trick of forcing the speculation to stop.

Remember, it's been speculation in housing that's caused the current economic mess we're in now, so we can see that speculation is never a good thing when it comes to marcoeconomic issues.

The other issue, and perhaps the bigger issue for Obama's administration, is the "sop" factor I mentioned in the title. It's going to be hard for the Republicans to paint Obama as a socialist (and the Democrats as a whole) and antibusiness if Obama is practically giving the natural resources that even George W Bush would not give to Big Oil.

I expect to see other givebacks to the economic conservatives (the social conservatives got a plum in the executive order with respexct to federal funding of abortions) since at this point, money is going to trump polling, and by nodding in the direction of the corporatists, Obama establishes that the rest of this first term will be about pushing the nation towards economic recovery.

Make no mistake: the healthcare victory was a big one, but perhaps the last real victory the liberal wing of the nation will see before 2013.

 

The Party Of "Whoa!"

Well, well, well...I suppose the only encouraging thing that can be said about this is that it's not money spent on little boys:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is in the hot seat after reports of a spending spree on the organization's payroll, including a controversial fundraiser at a Hollywood strip club.

It's the sort of lavish spending that sounds as though it would have taken place in better economic times -- $17,000 for private jet travel, $13,000 for limousines and car services and $9,000 for a trip to the Beverly Hills hotel.

But what the RNC is probably taking criticism for the most is a nearly $2,000 fundraiser on RNC's dime at Voyeur West Hollywood, a risque nightclub in Los Angeles. The expenses were not racked up by Steele but by staffer Erik Brown in the name of entertaining young Republicans. The strip joint is modeled on the 1999 movie "Eyes Wide Shut" and includes women acting out voyeuristic scenes in live art installations. Brown, a Republican operative and president of California-based Dynamic Marketing Inc., said he would reimburse the RNC for the $1,946.25 bill he racked up.

Nothing like starting the young'uns out early, eh? Soon, they'll graduate to the hard stuff: men's rest rooms in Minneapolis airports or Florida parks, diapers, and long walks in the forests  of Argentina.

Steele claims he had no prior knowledge of the outing...er, pardon the pun...to Voyeur. I tend to believe him. After all, you get a young aide who is suddenly flush with power and status who probably bragged to his friends the fun they could have on the party dime and didn't check with the boss because, you know, Republicans don't have to check with authority figures: they're all about being the exception to the rules.

 

Here's the curious bit, however. Brown didn't use RNC funds for the evening. He put out...er, again, pardon the pun...of his own pocket and was reimbursed by the RNC, and THEN the shit hit the fan, meaning that someone in the finance office had to review the sheet and OK the reimbursement.

 

Which makes the RNC statement all the more bizarre:

Steele "had no knowledge of the expenditure, nor does he find the use of committee funds at such a location acceptable," RNC's communications director Doug Heye said in a statement Monday. "Upon finding out of the expenditure this morning, Chairman Steele demanded the committee get to the bottom of this matter immediately."

"The committee has taken appropriate steps to address the issues relating to the reimbursement of certain expenses," Heye added. "It is unfortunate that a loyal GOP donor who has recruited other donors became involved in this incident while merely trying to help what turned out to be the improper request of a staffer who is no longer with the committee."

The expense report was filed with the FEC as part of their monthly accountability to the Commission, and it was only after that group released the report to the general public and the expense highlighted in Blogtopia (© Skippy) that the expenditure was "noticed" by the RNC and action taken. This comes at the tail end of many reports critical of Steele's spending habits, which has seen the RNC's bank account dwindle from $22 million to $10 million, despite raising over $95 million since Barack Obama took office in 2009, which is a record for fundraising by either party.

Please. Teabaggers. Don't make this party fold its tents. It's too good a source of comedy!

 

Terror Is As Terror Does

By number of passengers carried, Moscow has by far the largest subway system in the world.

 

This automatically makes it a target for terrorism, just as surely as the London Underground, the largest in terms of mileage covered, was a target on 7/7/05 and remains one today.

 

In both of these instances, the Moscow attacks today and the London attacks five years ago, it was domestic-grown terrorists that killed civilians.

 

So how far are we from a domestic Teabagger attack on the New York City subway?

 

Not as far as we would like to think, I'm afraid. Morons like Laura Ingraham will excuse the inexucsable by saying "The Left did it first!", pointing to the WTO protests-- conveniently forgetting that the first of those protests took place under a President she considers a leftist, Bill Clinton, which makes them not a left wing plot, by definition--  and at plots to assassinate President George W Bush, none of which were actively egged on by national political leaders so closely identified with a major political party as Sarah Palin's encouragements to the Teabaggers.

 

Indeed, Ingraham conveniently ignores the hundreds of credible assassination attempts and threats on President Clinton's life, thwarted by the Secret Service, placing her minions beside Al Qaeda in their hatred of America. But I digress...

 

Two wrongs don't make a right, Laura, but your two wrong facts make you a blithering idiot. So is your entire wing of a Republican party that is doomed to disaster in fairly short order, led to the grave by a quitter, Sarah Palin.

 

In short, to sum my opinion up today, we are looking at a group of people which feels it has a grudge as large as the "Black Widows of Chechen," even tho no one died when healthcare reform was passed, and who have the means and the opportunity to carry out their threats.

 

How serious is this? Apparently, the FBI is already rolling up militia groups and those affiliated with them. Frightening thought, that, an armed church militia preparing to do battle with the AntiChrist, someone identified by 24% of Republicans (presumably a significant portion of those, Teabaggers) as President Obama himself.

 

One wonders where these groups were during the Bush administration, as they espouse "freedom", a value deemed so irrelevant by that President and his cronies.

 

Still, one of the most peaceful, giving people I know, a doctor who works exclusively with poor children and incarcerated prisoners, has spoken openly of getting guns for herself and her daughter in response to the rising level of physical threats engendered exclusively by folks on the right.

 

I pity anyone who goes up against this doctor. She has steady hands. She has to.

This Just In...

State of Indiana Threatened By Terrorist Fart

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) Today is Purple Day. Help fight epilepsy.

 

2) Is Obama finally growing some stones or is this an empty threat?

 

3) Earth Hour is tomorrow at 8:30 PM (local). Give 60 for Mother Earth, please?

 

4) Pity David Frum: he goes from conservative darling as Bush's speech writer to moral outcast in the span of a weekend. But don't pity him too much. Remember, he was part of the effort to create the Teabaggers and set the Republican party back a hundred and fifty years.

 

5) Interesting quote from Frum:

"The elite isn't leading anymore. It’s trapped. Partly because of the desperate economic situation in the country, what were once the leading institutions of conservatism are constrained. I think Arthur [AEI President Arthur Brooks] took no pleasure in this. I think he was embarrassed."

Effectively, he's admitting two things: the Teabaggers have captured the Republican party's machinery and the "moderates" have been silenced by force. We take comfort in this. 

 

6) Russia has been encroaching on British airspace for the past two years. Here's proof. It's not so much that Russia violated anyone's air space that is worrisome: no one's expecting Russia to go all Crazy Ivan on us. It's that Russia is actually flying international patrols again that should raise some eyebrows.

 

7) It's about time. When I think of how many nights I should not have been driving, I'm amazed I made it to 52.

 

8) Considering all the bad blood between Palin and McCain, as well as Palin's nose-thumbing of the Republican party leadership, this is very interesting. I wonder what J.D. Hayworth did to piss her off?

 

9) Ummmmm...probably the wrong writer to assign to this story. Or at least, make him change his name.

 

10) No global warming, huh? Coyotes in Manhattan. Greenland is melting faster. Puppies eating ice cream!

MEMO To Teabaggers

Moar, please?

 

Between the death threats, the vandalism, and the bigotry, you give me and the rest of the left wing of this nation comfort in your hour of pain.

 

You can spin your viciousness and terrorism anyway you want to, but the simple truth is, you're nothing but a bunch of pantywaist little girls who lost your Barbie dolls because Mommy and Daddy decided to teach you a lesson, and gave her to the nice girl down the street who has very little to begin with.

 

Instead of viewing this as an act of Christian kindness, you choose to view it through a lens of entitlement. Instead of accepting the consequences of running this nation into the ground by supporting a dimwit conservative who wholeheartedly embraced a conservative agenda until even that low-level moron realized how much damage he had caused this once-great and powerful nation, you choose now to have some sort of "uprising," believing your positions of entitlement in the mainstream media and in low-levels of power will protect you.

 

TREASON IS TREASON!

 

And you, my friends, are committing treason. How do we know this is treason? Osama bin Laden tells us so. If you do not stand with America, stand with this President, you stand against us.

 

By all means, please dehumanize people that are duly elected and legally represent citizens of this nation.

 

To feel superior to another group of people is to be, by definition, dehumanized. It’s a relativistic notion. To the people making the threats, the other group is dehumanized by being lesser. To an outside observer, the people making the comments believe they are somehow superior to a group of “normal” people, so they have dehumanized themselves into beings differentiated by some subjective notion of being better than normal.

 

Now, the psychology for why this happens goes over my head, but I believe it because it has a ring of truth for me: you can’t dehumanize someone else without dehumanizing yourself.

 

It takes a little piece of your soul to do this. Think of it in terms of war. Soldiers have to dehumanize the enemy, else they’ll go fucking nuts over murdering people.

 

Think about that for a second: in order to actually kill someone on the other side, a soldier has to go through a process where they stifle the very human emotions of regret and fear.

 

You HAVE to dehumanize in order to get your point across and dehumanization is a very immature action.

 

You guys aren't the first, by the way. There is actually a recent precedent in American politics for the Teabaggers: the George Wallace faction.

 

They were perhaps the most powerful independent political force in the 20th century, even more influential than Ross Perot’s gang of idiots.

 

They were, of course, eventually absorbed into the Republican party, but since they’re already there now (basically the same people: angry white Southerners and Westerners), where could they go? They have no power on their own, so they will quietly fold up their tents and what’s left of them will return to the GOP.

 

You folks haven't risen to the level of the Weather Underground or even the Black Panthers, two groups who were front and center during the violence of the 60s and 70s and which were roundly harassed by law enforcement officials until they were forced to discontinue their activities.

 

Yet. But you will, that much is clear from the overheated rhetoric and incremental violence.

 

Neither the WU nor the Panthers were ever so closely tied to the Democratic Party (LBJ was, after all, a Democrat), so when they went down, they went down by their lonesome. But when YOU folks go down, you'll take an entire political party with you, along with collateral damage to Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Fox News.

 

This is why I take comfort in your desperation.

 

So, by all means, keep up the good work! We look forward to your demise and dissolution!

Time To Nut Up Or Shut Up, Progressives!

The healthcare legislation has been passed and signed and will likely be immune to any serious challenge in either the Senate or the courts.

 

OK, so now we have to start working to win elections in November.

 

We have a problem:

Millions of white men who voted for Barack Obama are walking away from the Democratic Party, and it appears increasingly likely that they'll take the election in November with them. Their departure could well lead to a GOP landslide on a scale not seen since 1994.

For more than three decades before the 2008 election, no Democratic president had won a majority of the electorate. In part, that was because of low support -- never more than 38% -- among white male voters. Things changed with Obama, who not only won a majority of all people voting but also pulled in 41% of white male voters. Suddenly, there were millions more white men voting the Democratic ticket.

Polling suggests that the shift was not because of Obama but rather because of the financial meltdown that preceded the election. It was only after the economic collapse that Obama's white male support climbed above the 38% ceiling. It was also at that point that Obama first sustained a clear majority among all registered voters, according to the Gallup tracking poll.

It looked for a moment as though Democrats had finally reached the men of Bruce Springsteen's music, bringing them around to the progressive values Springsteen himself has long endorsed. But liberal analysts failed to understand that these new Democrats were still firmly rooted in American moderation.

So here's the nut. We have to sell a moderate Congress and a moderate President as moderates to an electorate that has been brainwashed to believe he's a socialist and a Muslim and that the Congress is some Wermacht of socialism and fascism rolled into one. It's not that these white men who voted for him believe it, flat out, but they're willing to believe the lesser charge of being a progressive as a form of "well, there must be SOMEthing to these rumours!"

Look, like it or not, and most progressives I talk to do not, we cannot hold onto Congress without the votes of moderates and independents. That means we have to carefully pick and choose our fights with the administration.

Not for unity's sake, but to paint him as a moderate. We have to have a "gimme" issue where he can stand tough, as Clinton did with his "Sistah Souljah" moment. Something that white men can immediately identify as pushing liberalism to arm's length. As it stands now, we'll lose seats in Congress anyway, because that's what midterm elections usually mean (Bush was an outlier in 2002 and 2006), and the Republicans are masters of winning elections.

They can't govern for shit, but they know what it takes to get nasty and just dirty enough to attract white male voters without turning them off. Now, granted, the Teabaggers have done a lot of the grunt work towards turning anyone off, as I mentioned earlier this week, but we have to offer Obama and the Pelosians as a legitimate alternative or the midterm elections are going to come down to a referendum on Obama based on a far smaller turnout, which gives the Teabaggers an opportunity to steal some elections by voting en bloc.

We can't let this happen. We have to articulate an alternative and we have to paint Congress and Obama as necessary, vital even, to the nation's health going forward. We'll only have ourselves to blame if we screw this up.

Big Fucking Deal

At least Biden wasn't insulting a Senator when he dropped the F bomb.

Here's A Shock

Did you know the Teabaggers are bigots?

 

I know! Shocked me to read this:

When the man yelled a racial slur and spit on Cleaver, he crossed a line that was drawn in blood and tears.

To chant slurs at a gay person is another aggressive act of hate.

Interestingly enough, so far there haven't been any reports of angry Tea Party protesters shouting the "c" word at female lawmakers.

Nor have there been reports about these upset folks spitting on white male legislators who supported the health-care bill.

Who knew? Who knew that a rigidly dogmatic group of people from the lilly-white heartland of America would be, you know, hostile to people with different skin color or lifestyles?

No. Not hostile: hateful, violent, rage-gasmic, outrageous.

UnAmerican, in other words. And if you aren't with us, you are with them:

It is foolish for anyone, including the congressmen, to act as though extremists (and anyone who spits on an elected official is an extremist) are not a real threat to the president's safety.

Letting these radicals off the hook is letting them go much too far.

This is terrorism, pure and simple. Nine-Eleven changed America, and if it's terroristic to threaten a planeful of people with your underwear, it is terroristic to hold a body politic hostage to threats of violence and rage. Tantrums belong to two year olds.

 

No one is advocating the suspension of the right to assemble, even if that possibility was passed in the Patriot Act (reaffirmed, sadly, by President Obama). No one is advocating the suspension of the First Amendment, even if that possibilty is also raised in the Patriot Act and enforced by the knownothings of rightwing politics and the conservative-leaning mainstream media who have long advocated against even peaceful dissent from American policy, particularly when we are in a time of war.

 

Like we are now and will be for the foreseeable future.

 

The Teabaggers have taken it to a new level. If the Students for a Democratic Society or the Weather Underground were domestic terrorists despite not harming anything beyond property (except their own members), then these Teabaggers should properly be listed as a terror organization and surveilled closely. That the potential for injury or death to a representative of our government  (ed. note: make sure you check the comments) or a law enforcement official protecting that official exists should be more than sufficient grounds for this classification.

 

It's funny, because when Bush was president, there was no organized movement that threatened his life, merely his impeachment. Liberals live within the laws and accept that elections have consequences.

 

Conservatives, ehhhhhhhh, not so much! What a shock. Little children with big boy toys ought to have their toys taken away and their hands slapped for 12-15 in a high security jail.

The Sausage is Made

Finally.

 

Nevermind the possibility that Senate Republicans will raise all sorts of amendments to the bill in order to derail it. That's a non-starter for their election chances in November. Nobody likes a sore loser and despite John Boehner's warped reality system, most Americans want to move on now. Barack Obama has his victory, just as George W. Bush rammed a series of lethal tax cuts down the throats of Americans who objected strongly to giveaways to the wealthy in a time of war and a time of recessions.

 

Obama will sign the bill today or tomorrow and any procedural challenges the Senate Republicans can offer up will not change a law that's been passed and signed. Cry all you want, GOP, but you lost the 2006 and 2008 elections and elections have consequences. In this case, America finally, hestatingly and with barely a toe in the water, has stepped into the Twentieth Century.

 

Forget the court challenges. They will come, but they would come anyway. Barring the Supreme Court from intervening immediately (really...not going to happen...can't), the court challenges will take years to even get up to speed. Just ask Orly Taitz about the dim view courts take of obstructionist and ridiculous court challenges.

 

If the Republicans continue along this vein, they will lose seats in November. Where it once looked like Democrats might be the party in trouble, and make no mistake, they still have a hard road ahead, the Republicans desperation did not pay off and the bigoted rhetoric of their supporters in the Teabaggers has suddenly rendered this *koffkoff* "grassroots movement" null and void.

 

Stopped dead in its tracks. Yes, the leadership came out condemning the rhetoric, but here's the thing: so many positive things have been said about the Teabaggers and their moron-in-chief, Glenn Beck, that the Republicans will be covering up on the ropes, hoping the bell rings before the ref has to step in and call the fight.

 

Progress. Finally. Liberalism, triumphant, albeit barely.

 

But it's a start, a first step. Now it's up to you and I to make sure we don't stop trampling the vineyards of the grapes of wrath.

The Oz Decade

Much handwring occured up until 2009 with respect to what to call the previous decade.

 

After all, you had the Sixties, the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties, but the Oughties sounded weird.

 

Well, I propose and history will weigh in on this choice, The Oz Decade.

 

In 2000, if we only had a brain, we would have elected Al Gore.
In 2001, if we only had courage, we would have gone after Al Qaeda.
In 2002, if we only had a heart, we would left Iraq alone.
In 2009, if we only had a home, we could have avoided foreclosure and homelessness.

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) The weather in New York City is spectacular. Spring has been very kind so far, and it's not even started yet. I love this kind of weather and the addition of spandex to women's line of clothes has my, um, heart, um, pounding.

 

2) Today is World Sleep Day. Billions snore their approval.

 

3) This is weird: YouTube accuses Viacom of secretly uploading videos to the site while complaining about pirated videos. Assuming it's true, it's a pretty ineffective marketing scheme, since I hadn't heard they were making a big stink about it. But hey, maybe it's better than nothing.

 

4) He made a fine wine, too. I always got him confused with the LA Dodgers first baseman Wes Parker, who is still alive, as far as I know.

 

5) By the way, when you reach 85, unless you've been shot or died in an accident, ANY death is of natural causes. Sorry. You've lived a full life, no need to go blaming someone else.

 

6) I wonder if Hillary Clinton has to bite her tongue hard when dealing with the Israelis and Palestinians? After all, these are issues her husband worked on, nearly twenty years ago. Children mature faster than these two idiotic people. And I don't mean her and President Obama.

 

7) Note to Dems: Kick ass, take names.

 

8) I sort of feel for Rick Lazio. First, he was the substitute punching bag for Rudy Giuliani in 2000 against Hillary Clinton, and got his clock cleaned. His misogyny and near-assault of Clinton during a debate didn't help him. Now he had a clear field to run for Governor of New York, presumably against Andrew Cuomo, and here comes another Democrat, Steve Levy of Suffolk County, switching parties and almost immediately getting the party endorsement. I feel for him...but not that much!

 

9) He shot the deputy, but did not shoot the sheriff.

 

10) Finally, a new Shakespeare play has been discovered. OK, not so new, cuz, you know, 17th Century and all, and not so much discovered, since it was first performed in the 18th Century, but it looks like it might be verified as real.

Polarization

You'd think the one base that the Teabaggers would not want to piss off is the Religious Right.

 

Well...guess what?

Where shoulders once shrugged, fists now shake. Glenn Beck's comparison of social justice Christians with Nazis and Communists is a reminder of many things, not the least of which being that deep down, Glenn Beck is shallow. On Beck’s show, demagoguery reigns.

His reactionary comments were clearly intended to raise the hackles of moderates and liberals—and he succeeded.

Writing with the outrage of a biblical prophet, Sojourner’s Jim Wallis refused to attack Glenn Beck but challenged him to an open conversation about social justice, what it is and why it’s important. Beck demurred.

That Glenn Beck is a practicing Mormon only make the story more interesting.

Interesting? It came as a shock to me. I thought he was Jewish! Little did I know...but I digress:

Across the religious spectrum, Beck’s comments served as a source of puzzlement to commentators. Especially illuminating is a quote by Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University in a recent New York Times article: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.”

It was, of course, only a matter of time before the Teabaggers went from ridiculous to carnivorous. The jihad they have been on, trying to eliminate all opposition to a conservative, homogenous, rich-white-men-only society has long been a source of intrigue by the mass media, some who I believe are rooting for it to happen.

Glenn Beck hitched his star to this movement. It will be with this movement that he comes crashing down to the pavement, hard. My estimate is one year before he's irrelevant, and three more years before he's been shot to death by one of the crazies he's encouraged in a Mark David Chapman-like transferrence.

Good riddance to him, says me. But that hopeful state won't occur for a while, so let's focus on this rather curious construct he's invented.

The Religious Right has never been one for tolerance and until recently, had made alliances with non-Evangelical-Protestant groups like the neo-cons and Catholics only in the sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." That appears to be crumbling. Recently, there's been a sense of anger amongst hoi polloi on the right that, because they're so rigid and dogmatic they're being somehow oppressed even more.

Well, if laughing at someone is oppression, Bozo The Clown ought to be running terrorist camps because honestly, the Teabaggers have behaved in a way that is only comedic. Plus, I'd argue that if anything, the Teabaggers have been handled with kid gloves, much like Senator Joe McCarthy was before Edward R. Murrow got his talons in. This too is only a matter of time.

There's this warped Dispensationalist Bible that the Religious Right, including Beck, appear to adhere to. For those of you who aren't up on Biblical philosophy, Dispensationalism is another word for "God has mood swings." Rather than admit that God Himself might have evolved and learned from His creation of Man, Dispensationalists put forth the theology that God is still perfect, but, well, psychotic, in that he sometimes hates man (Genesis, Job) and sometimes loves man (The Gospels) and sometimes has slasher fantasies about Man (Revelations).

 

To me, this latest "outrage" from Beck is nothing more than Glenn Beck watching his ratings plateau and trying to figure out another controversy to drive his advertising, which from what I seen relies heavily on seed corn and gold. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...

 

Everytime Beck opens his mouth, he isolates both himself and the movement he has co-opted.

 

Keep talking, Glenn. Just, you know, put down the megaphone.

Par Value

Tiger Woods announces his return to golf with his entrance into the Masters' Tournament next month in Augusta, GA.

 

I suppose this is a good thing. While he certainly has more than enough money that he could retire today and never lift a club in anger again, he's young enough that it would make him crazy, and probably end his marriage and family for good.

 

A man needs a hobby, after all.

 

Others will reflect on whether this is a good thing for Woods or for golf.

 

I'd rather focus on why his return to golf is good for America.

Just don't make him out to be a hero if he does [win the Masters']. This isn't [Ben] Hogan coming back after almost dying in a car crash, nearly broken in half by a bus. This is a guy going back to his job after the job he did on his good name, and on his marriage.

I've often railed about the cult of celebrity we have in this country, and how we raise heroes way over our heads, only to notice the feet of clay just before they crash down on top of us. It happened with John Edwards, and the people angriest at Edwards are the people who took too him so very early on, adopting him like he was the featured boy singer on Sixteen Magazine.

When he betrayed Elizabeth, he betrayed those people too, and they were hurt. Messiahs can do that to a person.

Woods has a chance to redeem himself a little. We forget how amazing a golfer he can be. As pathetic as that sport is-- it's a little like saying he's the greatest hopscotch player-- no one can deny his talent there. If his golf skills have not eroded terribly-- and apart from the stress and pressure his personal life has now put on those skills (concentration, focus, consistency), there's no reason to think they have-- he can re-establish himself as a golf champion and golf hero.

And that ought to be enough. It should have been enough from day one of his career. He's a man. He's just a man.

And sometimes, men do really incredibly stupid things, and hurt people around them. Unfortunately, the people around him include not just his family, but his fans, the media, fellow golfers and anyone who happened to tune in a TV when this scandal was at the top of the news.

We were all injured by his clumsiness and that, my friends, is the farce of this whole thing. He's a golfer, not a priest, and so we had no business butting our noses into his personal life.

More than redemption, he needs to be put into perspective. We can applaud his skills without applauding him, just as we ought to applaud anyone who has a talent in a particular area, but we need not deify him or her either.

Humans have flaws and failings. We should appreciate that Woods struggles with infidelity just like so many Americans do. We can empathize with him, we can weigh his assets and liabilities as a person and as a person, try to determine what we would do in his circumstance. With all his money, for example, he probably shouldn't have gotten married if he had this problem and if he didn't recognize it, then the people who so carefully marketed this up-from-the-Wheaties-box athlete should have dialed it down a notch and handed us expectations he could live up to.

To have done otherwise was to do a signal disservice to Woods and then to us.

Ironically, my suspicion is after the Masters' things will go back the way they were before: we'll have Tiger out of the news for a very long time, win or lose. We Americans are as fickle in our life's choices as Tiger appears to have been with his marriage.

 

Dot-Comming Of Age

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Deep Slices Of Trouble

The last ten years have not been easy on Americans, psychologically. We've had our innocence and hubris shattered, a moron President who tried to falsely raise our spirits and hopes by raping two other nations, another President who promised hope and change but who has had troubles not only with the "loyal" opposition, but the morons in his own party who can't pass legislation if you spot them 60 votes in the Senate, and two economic crises that threaten the very underpinnings of what it means to be an American: an unlimited future.

 

And now, we're starting to see those crises work their way into our bloodstream. Literally.

 

Item 1 -

But it's America that has become the world's preeminent fat-making machine. To dismantle it we need a coordinated, comprehensive plan of attack, one that pairs individual responsibility with a social construct that fosters good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. We need to be surrounded by food that makes us well, not sick. We need schools and workplaces that reward us for exercising our bodies, not just our brains. "If you want people to make the right choices, they need to have the right choices to make," says Dr. William Dietz, director of the CDC's Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity. We need forceful and well-enforced policies, a government that invests dollars in improving the diet of school kids and puts limitations on the advertising that targets them. We need Americans to perceive obesity as a personal threat to themselves and to their children, not as somebody else's problem. We have a long way to go.

In New York State, there is a brutal ad campaign going on now that centers around the so-called "sugar tax," a tax on soft drinks and fruit juices that will be assessed based on the amount of sugar in a drink. I support this tax, just as I would support a tax on beer, wine, guns, tobacco and gambling if these did not already exist. The role of government is not to protect its citizenry from enemies foreign and domestic, and among those domestic enemies are corporations whose love of profit countermands their common sense and love of their customers.

Corporations spend billions of dollars a year on research and development of products that are blatantly unhealthy for us. While sugar is energy, too much of a good thing is no good. The problem is, drinking a sugary soft drink makes us feel good. Hell, they are marketed to us as life-improving and mood-altering substances, and there seems to be precious little difference from how a soda is sold to you and I, and how a prescription drug is sold to us. And drugs are controlled substances. Maybe it's time we were honest about soda and candy.

And because they make us feel good, we turn to them in times of crisis and need. Which brings me to item 2:

The most common assumption is that people are irresponsible and that they are not wise about their money. It's basically victim blaming … an attempt to shift the blame onto individual consumers. The other point of view on this issue is that it is primarily the fault of predatory lending practices--the "evil" credit-card companies. I'd say there's some truth to both views, but it's not that simple.

One of the most important factors is the easy availability of universal credit, plus the fact that the marketplace [is open to us during] every waking moment. Because purchases can be completed so quickly, they're very unlikely to be interrupted by a prudent thought. A third reason why people are going broke is the basic insecurity of our economy. If you have a consumer society where no one is saving—where no one is encouraged to save—and millions are in debt [and then] you hit them with a jolt to their income, they're instantly going to be in trouble.

That article, written in February 2008, has become more and more true as the months has unfolded. Right now, the crisis lurking in the tall grass is consumer credit debt: car loans, student loans, credit cards. Americans have worked hard to bring all of these down, but as incomes decay and erode due to inflation and poor economic conditions worldwide, more and more of these are going to go into default.

The best estimates of consumer debt runs around $2.5 trillion dollars, and this is debt that is secondary to things like mortgages. This represents car loans, credit cards, lines of credit, and payments on those along with mortgages equal about 13.1% of after-tax income to Americans.

The real problem lies in the fact that a substantial number of Americans make absolutely no dent in their debts: they pay the minimum balances. This type of debt is intended for short term fixes, but instead have become long-term obligations that must be paid off at some point, but not today. And they don't go away if you lose your job. There's no house to walk away from and let the bank have.

Much has been made of "underwater mortgages," mortgages where the balance owed is more than the resale value of the house securing the loan. But think about this: of that $2.5 trillion, almost none of it represents an asset that can be sold to reduce the indebtedness. It's all money that's been pissed away to pay for food, clothing, a car, toys and games.

In other words, you'll be paying in 2030 for a vacation you take this year. If you're still able to. And mind you, that's not to say we as a nation have been completely irresponsible: much of this indebtedness flows from the un- or underemployed, people with catastrophic illnesses, people who divorce, people who have unplanned pregnancies. People who meant well, but life threw them a curevball.

So if you've been wondering why all of a sudden, your "friendly banker" has been charging you fees for things you never paid for before, or has been working hard to make it deliberately harder to pay your credit card on time so he can collect late fees, or has been urging you to just spend more, well, this is why: he has to mine the good credit in order to cover his likely losses on the bad.

That's not going to improve the mindset of the people of this country. We're heading to a crisis of confidence, and in crisis, as I've discussed before, comes along the black horse.

 

 

You Can Stop Calling Him "Shirley"

RIP Peter Graves

Nobody Asked Me, But...

1) iPad pre-orders opened today. Yes, I ordered mine, despite the misgivings some have expressed.

 

2) Things are heating up in Israel and the West Bank. Three words: Stop. The. Settlements. The US cannot afford to get involved in a conflict between the Israelis and the Arab World. Or can we? One way to grow out of a recession is to launch ha full-scale war. This has to be among the options being weighed.

 

3) There's a serious problem in this nation: only 20% or so of people of college age currently will ever graduate from college. This will help improve that number, but not by much. The highest that rate has been in this country is 30%. That's pathetic for a nation where you allegedly have opportunity.

 

4) It saddens me that it took nearly ten years to decide to do the right thing by first responders at Ground Zero. That's shameful in a nation that, for eight years, was touted by the previous administration to have robust growth.

 

5) Great choices all, Mr. President!

 

6) There's a great six part series on Slate.com on an international crisis I bet you never even knew existed.

 

7) A little sour lemon with your Teabagging, sir? I wondered how much longer the ridiculous TeaBaggers movement could avoid dealing with the Jesus freaks. Get the popcorn, Mother!

 

8) The competitors in the 2010 NCAA college basketball tournament will be picked this weekend. My Cinderella pick this year is West Virginia, who I think will surprise a lot of people with how deep they get in the tournament.

 

9) Wolves eat teacher. That will become, unfortunately, a more common headline.

 

10) Facebook punked out, probably because Glenn Beck cried.