Media morphine for a grieving society

It was the shock of seeing two research maps of Toronto, the first showing the income diversity of the city in 1970 and the second showing the changes 30 years later, that woke me up. The middle class in Toronto has vanished like an endangered species, replaced almost entirely by low income groups and the poor. And slowly expanding urban enclaves for the wealthy in the very best locations, of course.

Is this true across the country or out here on the East Coast? I don't know. I do know that when we were leaving Ontario seven years ago, there was a significant migration of middle class people moving out of the city to the rural suburbs. So perhaps other cities are experiencing similar shifts.

What I do know is what I see on second hand TV, most of it American. Online, I've scanned a whole new batch of shows dealing with the collapse of the American Dream. Saving Grace, Weeds, Breaking Bad, Jericho, Dexter and Lost are all are variations on post-apocalyptic themes. Here, good people are driven to do bad things in the face of bad times or end times.

The police and authority figures are either shadowy, or partially corrupt heroes fighting the after effects of the collapse. Or either blindly honest or totally corrupt dumb stooges.

To be clear, these dreary sagas aren't exploring new creative territory, they're reflecting the fears of the public, especially the lower middle and working classes, in the wake of 30 years of socio-economic decline. It seems that there's only so many home foreclosures, and so much unemployment and minimum wage survival that ordinary people can take before society disintegrates completely.

At least that's the picture being portrayed metaphorically in these TV dramas. For a change of pace, one could tune-in to reality TV or the news, though these are may be even more depressing in a cultural sense. But in the end, none of the dots seem to get connected in the mainstream media.

After the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shooting, movie critic Roger Ebert told us that the shooter, James Holmes, was just another insane publicity-seeker who wanted to see himself on the news. While Ebert extolled gun control (which, ironically, seems to the the last thing Americans want as evidenced by the rush topurchase handguns in the wake of the Aurora shooting), he self-servingly shied away from making the connection between real life violence and screen violence but goes on to cite the main character in Taxi Driver as an example. And with that observation he makes my point. Movies project who we are and where we are. It's a circular, symbiotic relationship: us to the screen and the screen to us.

And just where are we? Canadians and Americans are now trying to disengage from the longest war in our histories. Afghanistan is in its tenth year. And now our forces are advising in Libya. We don't publicly call these wars in the Middle East what they are: a race to beat the Chinese to the largest oil reserves on the planet.

So if our TV shows have lost their moral compass, there's an underlying reason. The West itself has lost its moral compass.

Here at home our government is following the American pattern. It's getting rid of social statistics, the long-form census. Among the reasons for doing that could be that the government suspects that the economics of ordinary people are nosediving across the country, and the less said the better, with the exception of Alberta, of course. And to get ready for the social fallout and the cutting back of the social safety net, it's getting tougher on crime, building new prisons and ramping up our military forces.

Speaking of which, Canada is now setting up seven new mini-military bases around the world, micro-mirroring the American strategy. According to Gen. Walter Natynczyk, we're building them in order to have the "ability to project combat power/security assistance and Canadian influence rapidly and flexibly anywhere in the world."

Now, why in hell would Canadian peacekeepers want or need to project combat power anywhere in the world? What does this have to say about our basic international civility?

Meanwhile, the federal government is running a wide open resource economy, deregulating restrictions to that sector as fast as it can. The U.S. and China need oil and we're happy to oblige, including selling off ownership to Chinese state-owned companies (like the CNOOC-Nexen deal now in the works). Closer to home, the provincial government is eerily neutral on gas fracking, while, ironically, Irving Oil's partner, Repsol, is bailing out of its new LNG facility due, in part, to a glut in the market of cheap natural gas.

On the other side of the resource issue, as we've read, Canada has been clawing back its environmental protection services with massive cuts to front line staff in Environment Canada, while muzzling the rest of its science staff. The focus is on resource extraction while our manufacturing industries, especially in Ontario, are still in the tank. And that spells more unemployment and an ever-shrinking working middle class.

And if they won't go back to work for minimum wage driving taxis, we'll cut off their employment insurance and import immigrants who will. It's now the perfect system: a Third World reality in the middle of our own.

In the end what few of us are willing to admit is that it's all connected—from Wall Street deregulation to the next Travis Bickle waiting across the street.

But what can we do? Until the working middle classes, like the government's knowledge workers—Canada's scientists and environmental protection workers—find the courage to walk off their jobs and join forces with the protesters, ordinary people won't stand by them.

They, and we, are still paralyzed by fear, and still too willing to take our narcotics via television to tune our minds back into reality. Or perhaps we haven't had our very own personal wake-up call yet.

All's fair in fraud and felony

Voter suppression -- there's nothing new about it, but when the support for it comes from people who think testing city water for arsenic is "too much government" you have to expect odd, snarling  noises from the cynics.  Pennsylvania's latest attempt to reserve the right to vote for the landed gentry, posing as a reaction to voter fraud that might possibly occur but actually does not seem to have, has Pandagon snickering and me barking  -- and for good reason. Government intervening in the free exercise of a constitutional right is different I guess, because the goal of keeping Pennsylvania for "real" Americans sanctifies a little bit of  double-think.

". . . the argument seems to be that the state can impair a constitutional right because…well, because they can. It doesn’t really matter why, it just makes a kind of instinctual sense, like  how vaccines cause autism or how evolution can’t exist because I’ve never seen a thing evolve in front of my eyes despite staring at it and chanting “evolve” for hours on end." wrote Jesse Taylor yesterday.

Meanwhile, back in Florida, where excluding "undesirables" from the voter rolls is a tradition of long standing, former Florida Republican Party Chair Jim Greer is suing the “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” that filed  criminal fraud charges against him in 2010 in a plot to force saner Republicans including former Governor Charlie Crist out of the party and suppress the African-American vote by once again purging voter rolls.



Florida of course, bans ex felons from voting for life for those without good connections in the GOP, like Governor Scott of the Fourteen Felonies, so if one wrote a bad check in 1956 or was found with an ounce or so of Cannabis in 1968, one can go fish forever.  In fact if your name sounds like someone else who did, and you live in Florida, you may have been illegally banned from voting in the 2000 election by a similar voter roll purge that targeted minority voters and probably put George Bush in the White House.  You may be banned once again and you won't likely know until you show up at the polls.


It's funny how consistently the voter fraud circus parade neglects to mention the voting machine "problems" in Ohio.  Again, I'm a cynic so I find it easy to believe that GOP tampering is treated differently in the Post Bush, Tea Party era.  Remember those "unhackable" Diebold machines that took only minutes to hack, delivering more Republican votes than could be accounted for by registered voters  -- and delivering Ohio for Bush, as the CEO openly boasted before being forced to resign over accounting fraud?  I wonder if he's still on the voter rolls.

...As if one dries/The streams from off my face.

Almost a year ago, a young woman named Savannah Dietrich (now 17) went to a party, drank too much, and passed out. That's not, perhaps, the smartest behavior, but it's not something she should have to pay for the rest of her life.

While she was unconscious, two other teenagers, Austin Zehnder and Will Frey, raped her, took pictures, and emailed them to friends. That's a crime, and should be punished.

But the boys struck a plea deal last month, pleading guilty to felony sexual abuse and misdemeanor voyeurism. Their sentencing hearing is scheduled for next month. But one other legal action was taken: Ms Dietrich was hit with a gag order, telling her that she couldn't talk to the press or reveal the names of her attackers.

The punishment for that could be six months in jail (not 100 days, as the video below claims) and a $500 fine, probably more than the boys would have received: juveniles tend to recieve lighter sentences, and their names aren't released to the public - apparently in the theory that they never learned that rape is wrong.

But Ms Dietrich decided to fight back. She tweeted their names to everyone she knew and opened her Facebook page to the public; she followed the court order to the point that she never revealed what the proposed sentencing was, but said that it was "a slap on the wrist."

Thanks in part to the public outcry, charges against Savannah Dietrich have been dropped. The judge has managed to muzzle the press, though, so while we know the name of Savannah Dietrich, the names of her attackers, Austin Zehnder and Will Frey, are nowhere to be found on the mainstream media. What the judge hasn't been able to control, though, is the internet.



It doesn't take much to google their names, where you can discover that they play lacrosse for a community team. You even get to see what these two douches look like.

Frey
Zehnder

There are some stories that need to be told. Over and over again. Until society stops trying to blame the victim.

On the Mass Murder in Aurora, Colorado

Another senseless mass murder in America, this time in Aurora, Colorado. Twelve good people have been cut down, leaving family and friends behind in the most unbearable way, and over fifty have been wounded, some no doubt to suffer permanent physical and emotional damage. I'm profoundly sorry for them, though of course the phrase means next to nothing since there's nothing any of us can really do at least for now: what's done cannot be undone, and that's no doubt all that matters to the victims' families and friends. Most of my own family are long departed, but not in a violent way – they passed from natural causes. If any had been taken from me in such a massacre, I believe my rage and anguish would know no bounds.

The current event seems distressingly similar to others: an undeniably intelligent but extremely disturbed individual decides – in fact plans for months, it would appear – to put an end to his life or his current way of living with a bloody splash across the news pages. He trades whatever futurity he might have had for a week or so of murderously ill-got fame. The fact surely is that our violent, sick culture has provided such people with a new social form: a rage-fueled, novel way of breaking through their thick wall of despair. It's almost, we might say, an alternate career path for the angry and the twisted.

Of course the newscasts and Internet rags all oblige the malcontent, mentioning his name and flashing his image every chance they get, itemizing all his weaponry and telling us everything they can find out about him, even as they print anguished calls from the victims' family members and friends telling them not to do such inexcusably batshit-insensitive things. Neither is it helpful to hear the repetitive and insensitive use of the term "shooter" to characterize the coward who commits such a crime – this one couldn't even mow down a cinema full of unarmed, unsuspecting people without dressing in riot gear and rendering himself invulnerable. How about we stop calling these people shooters? It's an irritatingly neutral, decontextualized word that marks a retreat from ethical terms such as "killer" and "murderer" and a movement towards appreciation at the merely technical or mechanical level: a "shooter" is simply someone who pulls the trigger of a gun. Not only is the word symptomatic of an anesthetized, genuine communication -impoverished culture, it also ends up conferring a twisted confraternal status that attracts fame-seekers. It implies that one who does this sort of thing isn't simply a vicious criminal, a vile piece of flotsam, etc. No, you see, he's a "shooter." Well look at him, then! My advice? Please stop using that word if you've picked it up – listening to the so-called news' breathless, mindless effusions spawns bad habits all too easily.

I also refuse to play into any of these killers' hands by mentioning their real name. If there were any justice in the universe, if and when such a person is convicted, his fate would be to stare at a whitewashed wall for the rest of his miserable life until he drools into his tepid bowl of gruel. No communication with others, no mention of his sorry exploit or any continuing coverage of it in the media. Just dead silence: the certainty that his pathetic "me" has been perpetually razed from the book of life and that there will be no ego-stroking feedback from the society he harmed so gravely. These people think they are going to be famous and stay famous. What if we just don't say a damned thing about them in any personally identifiable way, beyond perhaps a brief initial mention, if that? It might have a positive effect, making others less likely to join the club, so to speak. We live in a culture that seems increasingly unable to distinguish between what is justly "famous" and what is "infamous" (people routinely use the words interchangeably) so according any sort of respect and status to bloody murderers is doubly unwise.

The terrorists within

Perhaps now that John McCain is no longer running for president, he doesn't have to be so afraid of every little thing he says  to the point where he says and does some incredibly stupid things.  Choosing Sarah Palin, for one thing and telling us in all snarkiness that the economy is robust and those lying liberals are talking it down because they hate America or Capitalism or whatever, he made himself foolish to the point where, had he been a Democrat, Republicans would be vilifying him for the next three hundred years.

At least and at last, he has recovered some character and a little dignity yesterday by describing the attacks by such unworthies as Michelle Bachmann and Florida  District 18 Representative Tom Rooney against Secretary of State Clinton's deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin  as having "no logic, no basis and no merit."  Abedin, of course has relatives "tied to" the Muslim Brotherhood which of course makes Clinton a "serious security concern."  It takes some kind of person -- and I use that term loosely -- to think that our Department of State shares an agenda involving "destroying Western civilization from within," as the raving Bachmann wrote and all because of some tenuous and contrived "links" with organizations somehow associated with other organizations by virtue of being Muslim with other groups who may or may not be enemies.  It's as obscenely contrived as Rooney's obsessive efforts to impeach the President for treason.

Someone watching all this from Mars might find it very amusing and probably would have found it all rather predictable that the party that since the beginning of the 20th century has manufactured support  by manufacturing enemies, would still be grasping for new evil empires to scare us with; with stories of  Sharia law being instituted in New Jersey and government plots to hand the country over, now that the Communist threat seems almost ludicrous to all but the galaxies far, far away, to some grand worldwide Caliphate. They've been desperate for credible enemies since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Yes, certainly we have had some very, very real enemies, but I seem to recall that during the Rise of Hitler, the Republicans were advising us to ignore the Nazis and the Empire of Japan because of the far more important Communist threat at home.  Curiously similar to what Hitler was telling the Germans.  Most of those reading this won't remember Joe McCarthy who made a fool out himself and out of America by overplaying his hand - stuffed with blank pieces of paper claimed to be lists of Communists in the State Department and the "Jew Dominated" movie industry. It was shameful, but as with much of rewritten history, Joe is back and his lies have been whitewashed and he has become a model for such equally shameless whores as Tom Rooney and Michelle Bachmann.  Here we go again.

Indeed, since Florida has been redistricted, my Mr. Rooney will no longer be representing us and the massive support of his would be replacement, the reprehensible and disgraceful Allen West who claims that 80% of Democrats in Congress need to be deported and that Obama supports slavery, is astonishing.  How many politicians have failed by overestimating the ignorance and stupidity and gullibility of the American voter?

How is it, I have to ask, that we have a whole party, a vastly wealthy party, dedicated to terrorizing the American public out of their freedom -- until they give up their rights -- and nobody sees them as terrorists? Communists, Muslim radicals, welfare mothers and of course Liberals - anything to keep the rubes afraid and angry to the point where the real enemy can take over.

How Best To Consider the Current Election Cycle?

I keep hearing that "no president has been re-elected since the 1950s with unemployment rates this high," or words to that effect, but I think a different pattern may well apply to the 2012 elections – 1936 and 1940.  People voted FDR back in even though the country was still suffering through the Great Depression and unemployment (though down from 1932-34's stunning over-20% figures) remained distressingly high.  They probably voted for FDR because they had memories extending back at least a bit more than, say, five minutes, and they understood that the Republicans had nothing to offer except soup lines and a return to the policies that had at least in part resulted in the Great Depression, which was a worldwide phenomenon, just as the economic distress today is global.  When you have la merde smeared all over your tie, you can't get away with telling everybody it's chocolate ice cream.  At least not for a while, anyway.

Current polls show clearly that a big majority of Americans (something like 67%) do NOT blame the president for the economy.  It is stupid to toss a president out on his ear solely because of how the economy is performing, unless you have rock-solid evidence that his policies are contributing to the problem.  Presidents' control over the economy is limited in spite of the claims they feel compelled to make when they're running for election, so the question is whether the current leader is doing the only things that can be done, given the circumstances.  In the present case, that pretty much means advocating intelligent policies since, of course, congressional cynics, liars and knaves have blocked most of what the president has tried to do.  They have disregarded just about every known ameliorative strategy since the advent of modern economics, for a reason it's hard to construe as anything other than the thoroughly despicable one of ensuring President Obama's failure.

But on the whole, what I'm suggesting is upbeat: we may be looking at an election in which millions of voters make their decision and carry it out more along the lines of the 1936 and 1940 cycles than anything we have seen recently.  That would make sense because the downturn we have been going through is widely acknowledged to be the worst economic trouble the country has suffered since the Depression itself.  Mitt Romney is a poster child for the sort of predatory capitalism that scares the hell out of a lot of working people.  He seems to me to be ideologically sympatico with the ultra-privileged Wall Streeters who caused our troubles in the first place.  What's not to not like about such a candidate?  The more people know about him, the less they're taken with, or taken in by, his usually genteel manner and always elegant appearance. 

There are some signs that the Obama campaign is a lot tougher than some previous Democratic ones: the Bain ads strike some people as mean (mostly whiny disingenuous Republicans and mush-mouthed otherpundits), but they're exactly the sort of thing successful candidates do: define opponents as something unflattering before they know what hit them, and then it's too late for them to define themselves. 

Besides, the heart of the matter with regard to Romney's tenure at Bain isn't SEC forms or anything like that, it's the fact that the man wants to take credit for the experience he had with that firm, but only selectively.  And why is he doing that?  Well, because, like all market mythologists, he's eager to acknowledge all the good stuff a person can say about capitalist enterprise, and determined to disavow any connection with the not-so-good stuff.  These guys treat capitalist economics like a god, and of course that means you give "god" all the credit for positive outcomes, and lay the blame at somebody else's door for negative or disturbing events.  The deeper implication of the above is that the GOP isn't in the least concerned to face up to reality: as usual, they're selling snake-oil as a cure for serious ills and mocking their detractors because those detractors won't extend full faith and credit to their preposterous quack prescriptions for nirvana.

All that said, I might as well admit that every election these days seems to be a referendum on just how uninformed we are as a nation, so all we can do is donate some dino dinars or cephalodupois sterling (or that human-made green paper everybody swears by in this degenerate geological epoch), help out physically if possible, and keep whatever kind of digits we have crossed. 

Finally, keeping abreast of the voter-disenfranchisement efforts being carried out all across the country also seems vital: if the devious right-wing faction in various states get their way, they will outright steal this election, disenfranchising potentially hundreds of thousands or even millions of overwhelmingly Democratic voters on the pretense of preventing "voter fraud," which phenomenon is beyond sane doubt almost non-existent in America.  What's being attempted now, I believe, goes far beyond any ordinary attempt to confuse and abuse the electoral process and the voting public: I view it is a sinister attempt at taking down the entire system of representation by specifically preventing massive amounts of voters in one political party from voting.  A viable republic cannot allow that to happen.

The continuing destruction of our Mother Tongue

So, here's the thing. I understand that English is a living language: it grows, it evolves, it changes over time. But the thing is, there's evolution, and then there's mutation. Or to be more accurate, there's evolution, and then there's de-evolution.

(Are we not men?)

I've noticed an unfortunate tendency for internet slang to creep into language. When it's written, that's fine. But actively pronouncing the letters to WTF or LOL is more than a little stupid.

Think about it: "What the fuck?" Three syllables. "Double-you tee eff" Six syllables (five if you cut it down to "dubya.")

On top of which, you've gone from a brief exclamation of shock to actively considering what you're going to say, and choosing the one that makes you look as much like a douche as possible. Good choice.

Worse, though, is when someone tries to actually pronounce them: there doesn't seem to be any agreement on whether LOL (Laughing Out Loud) is pronounced "lole" or "loll." I've heard both.

This is particularly important (if anything about this rant qualifies as "important") in that, based on its internet usage, "LOL" actually seems to mean "I think this is funny, but I have nothing to say about it."

On a barely-related note, in Dutch, the word "lol" means "fun" ("lollig" means "funny"); likewise, in Welsh, "lol" is a word meaning "nonsense." Because there's no such thing as coincidence.

Other terms are finding other ways to slip into IRL usage. ("In Real Life," in case you missed that one.) "LMFAO" (Laughing My Fucking Ass Off) has become the name of a "musical" group (if by "music," you mean "a drum machine, a couple of looped notes pecked out on a keyboard by a drunk pigeon, a little sampling from talented musicians, and the stupidest lyrics ever recorded - and I include the lyrics to I've Got A Loverly Bunch of Coconuts in that list.")

I mean, there's no better way than this album to say to the world, "If we weren't close relatives to Barry Gordy, we wouldn't have careers."

However, do I have a point to this little diatribe? Yes, yes, I do. I believe that what I'm trying to express can, like everything else on the internet, be best expressed by cats.

Thou shalt not laugh

Is it bigotry?  Or shouldn't the greater question be: "is it true?"  It's no secret to anyone who has read my blog posts that I don't hold religious belief to be any more unassailable, any further off limits than any other opinions and beliefs people hold and since nearly every nasty thing humanity has done has employed some sort of belief to justify it, I think it's dangerous to refuse to question the influence of any particular religion or creed that presents itself to the public, whether it's personal or institutional.



Yes, our founding document does guarantee that the government not interfere with the "free exercise" of religion but that such non interference does not convey license to ignore the law doesn't need to be restated every time some group decides it's exempt from restraint ( or subject to taxes.)



Certainly I am not opposed to the right to build churches or attend them and I am very much opposed to a government suggesting or forcing anyone to attend or not to attend or to worship or to recite allegiances to belief systems or gods -- and I suppose I'm not in a minority in that respect, unless we're discussing Islam.  In fact I've frequently irritated people by defending Muslims from unfair criticism and bigotry. I've also irritated many by insisting that my freedom of speech and my freedom of belief trumps their efforts to keep me from criticizing their saints and deities and highly criticism worthy personages like Joseph Smith and Elron Hubbard.



It's often be explained to me that Islam is a "transcendental" religion, attempting to convert the world and so is dangerous, while religions like Christianity are not of that sort and so "Christian" or more ludicrously, "Judeo-Christian" law is the basis of our constitution and perhaps takes precedence.  Sharia law alone is a clear and present danger say so many Americans.  Can we really say that the enormous efforts Mormons make to convert the planet are different than other Christian efforts? 



So why are there accusations of bigotry against Businessweek and Caroline Winter's article  How the Mormons Make Money,  which examines the finances and enterprises of the LDS?  It's an

"in-depth look into the business side of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, with much attention given to the tax
benefits the church enjoys and the extent of its holdings of property
and stock in multinational corporations"  

says Dan Merica at CNN Belief Blog. And why is that off limits?  Why is the anger more justified than the anger against pictures of Mohammad with a bomb in his turban?  Of course a spokesman for the Church of Later Day Saints was quick to tell us the article was in poor taste and intended to insult Mormans, but then I haven't noticed the same attitude as concerns the Book of Mormon and its vile insults against American Indians and people of color nor the same sort of thing as concerns Jews in the Gospels. Unfair and often vicious criticism isn't exactly uncommon in religion or religious texts.



The LDS is a Church, but also in fact, a huge international business enterprise claiming special treatment and  special exemption from inquiry or criticism as a religion.  It's not unique in that respect but I don't think any church is off limits when it comes to business interests and the obligations that obtain. Is freedom from taxes on income and capital gains and the right to secret dealings really part of the protection of free exercise?  No more than the freedom to traffic in underage girls. We have the right to criticize, to contradict, and yes to laugh.  As an old friend of mine used to say  "one man's religion is another man's belly laugh."



As the Businessweek article says,

"A recent study by Ryan Cragun, a sociology
professor at the University of Tampa, estimates the church receives
around $8 billion in tithing from members each years and is worth around
 $40 billion."  

They don't have to report it or disclose it and they do get to spend it on influencing Congress to make our laws more in line with their sometimes abhorrent moral doctrines.  To me that puts them in the same category, only with more money behind them, than those American Muslims, a few of whom would like to see our laws more in line with Sharia. 



Was our bill of rights intended to protect the right of belief, of worship or was it intended to allow organizations to operate as separate countries within our own, free to tamper with our laws, but exempt from taxes and from criticism?  I don't think so and I'm far more offended by money they earn at the taxpayer's expense being used to deny freedom to others then I am by a cynical magazine cover.

Dream on

Dear Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR

Forgive me for shredding your name, but as your letter of July 6th was in the same format, I assumed you would find it preferable if I used the same scheme.  It's best to assume it was done deliberately rather than being the product of the same method you use to formulate your political positions from one minute to another.  Thank you for your letter reminding me that I may legally contribute an amount greater than the average American family income to your campaign, but I suggest that if you can't run a campaign with the hundreds of millions the corporate aristocracy has given you, you might not be the frugal sort of leader you'd like us to believe you are.

I'm glad to hear that

 "Growing up, I was fortunate to have been an eyewitness to the American Dream." 

but I suggest that your vantage point might have been different from that of the actual

"people [who] worked hard, seized opportunities, and hammered out a legacy of prosperity and hope for their children and grandchildren."  

Most of them didn't have multi-millionaire parents who served as governors and Presidential cabinet members and of course very few of them ever realized the kind of success you had handed to you.   But I have to ask how you have arrived at the notion that people can no longer work hard or seize opportunities -- after all you're currently engaged in at least one of those activities and I have no doubt that you've spent many hours campaigning.  I see absolutely nothing in "Obama's policies" that have interfered with your or my or anyone else's endeavors. Perhaps you could enlighten me as to what policies you refer.  Doing that would at least set you apart from your colleagues and staff writers since not one of them seems to know or acknowledge that those policies have either been thwarted or in many cases are policies inherited from the previous administration along with its unprecedentedly expensive wars. Obama has lowered taxes for most of us -- wasn't that supposed to be the Republican panacea?  Where were all the jobs that tax structure was supposed to create?  Why did we have 8 years with zero private sector job growth which then began to grow under "Obama's policies?" Without some actual economic policy suggestions that might somehow pay off the massive debt Mr. Bush left us -- I mean suggestions other than making our government more like the weak and ineffectual government of India so as to import a wage scale like theirs, without ideas like eliminating Social Security and Medicare and the very health care plan you wrote yourself -- without some real ideas that a moment and a contribution won't reverse, all we can do about opportunity is dream.

Anyway Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I remember too.  I remember solid growth and high employment levels and a land of opportunity when we had a 90% top tax bracket and strong unions.  My grandparents remember a time when that wasn't so and 12 hour work days and 6 day work weeks with no vacation or benefits and mostly the rich and the Caucasian went to college was the way it should be according to Republicans -- and you were a communist if you didn't agree. 

I remember when I couldn't live in many neighborhoods, when I would be a felon in Florida and most of the south for marrying outside my race -- a time when many jobs and many schools were not open to me and other minorities and when firehoses and dogs were turned on women and children who may have disagreed with your fictitious views of our immediate past.  I remember the "conservative" opinions and I don't see that they've changed all that much.  For all our problems - for all the problems Republican policies have caused - Today my children and my grandchildren are closer to their dreams than I could have been and  it's still a better country than it was when you were born.

In terms of upward mobility and opportunity, in terms of education and health our country has been sinking for a very long time, with perhaps the exception of the all too brief Clinton years.  I'm sure you remember Clinton, the fellow your ilk branded as being against Capitalism and business and the "American Dream" and many other absurd and dishonest charges you now try to pin on Mr. Obama.

I'd also be interested to know what your policies actually are other than to beat Obama at any cost and undo the health plan you wrote for Massachusetts. I'm asking how you're different because I and most of the economists I know feel that no matter who is elected, the only way Republican generated debt ( be honest now, the biggest borrowers and spenders in your lifetime have been Republicans and much of the "spending" you accuse Democrats of consists of paying Republican bills) the debt will finally be settled by devaluing the Dollar and evaporating the savings of Americans, leaving us with the kind of America I dream about and wake up screaming. There's nothing you can do to change it.


So no,  Mr. Romney Willard Mitt Willard Romney WMR, I won't be putting a stamp on the return envelope to spare your billionaire budget, but as as a measure of my esteem, I am enclosing an envelope sized piece of 1/8th inch rolled steel for ballast. It's American made steel. It's a piece of history. Use it as a reminder of how the greedy liars on the right exported opportunity. Use it as a paper weight for all that money Daddy Kochbux gives you.

Sincerely,

Capt. Fogg Fogg Capt RG banana fanna fogg . . 

Republican Logic

Now, remember, children. Here's how it works. This is something you should make fun of.

This is something you should not make fun of. Ever.

Two terms for you to look up: "active sport" and "riding bitch." (Incidentally, don't make fun of their ridiculous, elitist equestrian activities, either. It makes them cranky.)

Are we clear on that now?