Bad Banks and Buttheads

The sad and sorry events that conglomerate to make up The Great Recession are not remote or removed from us. They are not hypothetical or academic. They are happening to me, to you, to people we love and know and meet. This is--ultimate irony-- an illiberal and unprejudiced set of setbacks; open to all comers, the just and the unjust alike. Doesn't that make it just so impossible to grasp the rationale behind policies and pronouncements from the reactionary right?! I'm almost speechless, but only almost. A couple of personal stories and a well-earned award--just got to get these off my chest.

The first thing a young man of my distant acquaintance found in his brand new mailbox during his first orientation week at college in late '90's was an application for a credit card--Holy Magic Crap, free money! The Grail. College definitely had the shit beat out of high school. He hid the application away in a drawer under his new Abercrombie boxer shorts for a few days, pondering whether to ask his parents about it or even whether it was safe to handle.  He took it out once and filled in the information blanks, then put it away. He took it out again and signed on the bottom line; the card company only asked for his signature--could that be right?--and hid it away again. There was the fine print, the interest rate, but those numbers had no meaning yet. Finally, he queried some of the less obviously insane freshmen on his dorm hall, and heard, "Dude, you haven't sent yours in yet?! Mine's already come. My roommate got an application at a booth at orientation. Check it out!"

Who Will Hold Them Accountable?

CPAC is looking a lot like the national Tea Party convention in Nashville a couple weeks ago, which is to say, three days of hating on President Obama from the far-right fringe. And that’s pretty much all they’ve got.

The rhetoric that comes out of these conservative gatherings is alarming. At the Tea Party we had immigrant-bashing, gay-bashing, conspiracy theories, birthers, and a lot of anti-Obama anger framed in apocalyptic terms. CPAC follows the same script, it’s just different scenery. Here’s Darrell Issa, doing his best to fan the fear:

“I intend to use every resource of my office to make sure that this Administration does not escape serious, thorough, and consistent oversight of its policies, its use of taxpayer money, and its aggressive determination to impose a foreign ideological vision on the people of the United States," he says in his prepared remarks.

What “foreign ideological vision” would that be? We don’t know, because the reporter never asked, or if he did, he didn’t get an answer.

Now here’s Jim DeMint framing the national situation as

"a battle between the American people and Democrats.”

A “battle.” Huh.

What I heard on TV was DeMint call the Democrats to task for their “unprecedented power grab.”

What? You mean the election? The one your side lost?

This is nothing new. The conservative language is one of fear, one that incites action, and it’s well thought out. Here’s Jim DeMint from last year’s CPAC conference:

Earlier this week, we heard the world’s best salesman of socialism address the nation.

Obama had been president all of five weeks.

Five weeks.

Let that sink in for a minute. It certainly set the stage for the next eight months’ worth of “Obama is a Socialist” rhetoric.

How do they get away with this constant drum-beat of anti-Democratic Party, anti-liberal, anti-Obama bile at conservative gatherings? Back in 2004 I remember liberals being criticized--constantly--for being “too angry.”

How come no one outside of a few liberal bloggers and the occasional journalist points out this hypocrisy? How come no one ever calls these folks on their angry rhetoric?

How come no political leader--the head of the DNC, perhaps--ever steps up to say, “what are you people smoking? Socialism? You cannot be serious!”

You know, if no one on the national stage ever challenges this right wing lie factory, then the point has been ceded. You’re letting them get away with the lies. You have allowed them frame you.

Maybe it’s not the media’s job to call the CPAC/Tea Party crowd to account for their rhetoric (at least, not 100% of the time). But someone needs to. Liberals need to stop being so damn polite and worried about "decency" all the time and start realizing that it’s a damn war to the other side, so time to start acting like it’s a war on your side.

Are you afraid Rush Limbaugh will have a sad? Will Glenn Beck have an even bigger sad? Limbaugh said today that

Joe Stack "sounds just like any liberal Democrat," writings "almost word for word" like Obama, Pelosi, Reid

That's a pretty outrageous claim. Has no one stepped up and said, no, it's not true? Not close to true?

Glenn Beck poured “gasoline” and lit a match to demonstrate his take on what Obama was doing to “the average American.” This wasn't challenged because, I guess, of some lame idea that to address it was to validate it. But people, it's been validated already. It's out there.

This constantly-unchallenged over the top rhetoric is dangerous. It fans the flames of populist anger. We're dealing with a low-information populace, and if no one ever challenges the idea that “Obama is a socialist” then the talking point is left out there to fester. Ultimately it creates right wing nutballs who burn their McMansions down before flying a private plane into the IRS building.

It results in people like Warren "Gator" Taylor who took hostages at a Virginia post office.

It encourages the Timothy McVeighs and James Von Brunns and Scott Roeders and Eric Rudolphs. You can’t scream “Obama is destroying the country, Democrats are evil baby killers, everything wrong with the country is the fault of liberals” 24-7 and not expect something to happen.

So what I want to know is: who is going to counter this hate speech? Who is going to step up on the national stage and say enough already?

Why haven’t we done it yet?

Jews, Guns and Jim DeMint

"There is a saying that the Jews who are wealthy got that way not by watching dollars, but instead by taking care of the pennies and the dollars taking care of themselves,"

said James S. Ulmer Jr. and Edwin O. Merwin Jr. chairmen of the Orangeburg and Bamburg county, South Carolina GOP.

There are a lot of "sayings" about the Jews. In fact there are a lot of "sayings" about all kinds of groups in South Carolina; real or fabricated but I suspect that these gems say more about South Carolina, the rest of the Bible Belt and it's prevalent mentality than they say about anything else.

Of course to substantiate an item of bigotry, one only has to show other bigots one example and I'm sure one could be provided, but I know a large number of Jews, rich and otherwise and those who have money seem to have acquired it by the same means as anyone else -- from inheritance to hard work and if I have to include myself, I'm notorious for letting the pennies fall where they may and other acts of negligent squanderation. I can't remember the last time I bothered to balance my checkbook and the luxury of not having to think about money is far more enjoyable than the big house and the boat and the sports cars.

Anyway these two party Chairmen wrote in a letter to a local newspaper that criticism of Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) is unfair because he is like a penny pinching Jew for not bringing in federal dollars for projects in South Carolina. I hate to accuse the Republicans of being stupid, small minded and ignorant bigots, but they are in South Carolina. Imagine being dumb enough to print such things, not knowing how outrageous it is, not caring because there probably aren't enough Jews in those places to matter or enough decent people to be offended. They were wrong, of course but the comments at The Palmetto Scoop post decrying the letter are loaded with trollish anti-Semitic diatribes so scurrilous I'd be hard pressed not to gun down the writers in cold blood, given the chance. Well maybe not so cold.

In fact this prompted me to renew my membership in JPFO despite the furious anti-Obama rhetoric one sees there. It's obvious that despite over 150 years of family involvement in American life which includes a confederate great-grandfather, I'm still a hated member of a foreign conspiracy to the toothless, unwashed, tattooed and unlettered Republicans of the State where the Civil War started. It's a bit too soon to put away the weapons and maybe time to acquire some more.

Anyway, I'm already more than prepared to discuss "old sayings" with such redneck Republicans as may trickle down here like dog pee from a hydrant. Sometimes discussion just isn't enough though. Sometimes 9mm just isn't enough either.

COMING TO A POST OFFICE NEAR YOU

These are the good old boys who refused to bailout the American auto industry. They deserve a prominent place in every U.S. Post Office from coast to coast. Their anti-union, anti-labor views are so perverse, they don’t mind taking down the entire U.S. economy. They would rather support foreign car assemblers in their home states than save our iconic industries ... and an estimated 3.5 million jobs. Criminals! Traitors!  Here is Octo's list of public enemies:






















SENATOR KIA
Saxby Chambliss (R) Georgia






















SENATOR HONDA
Richard Shelby (R) Alabama






















SENATOR TOYOTA
Mitch McConnell (R) Kentucky























SENATOR BMW
Jim DeMint (R) South Carolina























SENATOR NISSAN
Bob Corker (R) Tennessee
Although camouflage is a natural endowment, it is easier for an octopus to take out one's aggressions in Photoshop, morph these enemies of the people with liquify tools, and show their true faces. Now, if only there were a Voodoo button ...