CPAC ended yesterday with the traditional burning of the Reichstag. That has nothing to do with anything else I'm typing; I just wanted to put it out there.
Full disclosure: my father was born in Steubenville, Ohio. Despite that, there have been no suggestions that he ever raped anyone.
However, some high school football players in Ohio filmed themselves raping a woman, and, surprisingly, were convicted (as juveniles, but hey, that's more justice than we usually get); the Right Wing, continuing their outreach to women, explained that it was her fault, because she wasn't wearing a burka and staying locked in the house like a dutiful girl should. Oh, and slut slut SLUT!!!
And across the country yesterday, thousands of men celebrated Irish stereotypes, drank heavily in public, and weren't raped. And the GOP failed to see the irony in that.
Monday, March 18, 2013
Shit-kicker conservatives?
If there's anything as loathsome to me as racism, it may be the way
that many and perhaps most of us like to use stereotypes to demean a
group, arguing ad lapidem or using a stereotype designed merely
to unite a disparate group for the purpose of disparagement. It's one of
the things Bill Maher does sometimes, that Rush and Hannity and others
do all the time. It's a sin few of us are free of.
If he's right in saying that many small groups can, often with the assistance of the fair and balanced media achieve a level of influence that belies their small membership, I'd prefer that he'd do so without the cheap stereotypes.
I have severe misgivings for instance, about the facts behind many of the pet straw men of the right and left and sorry, there's no shit on my boat shoes -- besides, the greater issue is far too non-funny to treat in this way. There are fewer opportunities for burlesque when describing what may be a larger plurality in America -- the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatic and the analytical. And so we either ignore them or try to force them into a category we know how to mock, because too often mockery, hyperbole and stereotypes are all we have.
If there's humor in the street theater we get instead of news, I'd have to bring up the crowds waving angry signs and shouting slogans like "no weapons on airplanes" in response to the TSA's decision to allow golf clubs and tiny knives so small that a diminutive Gerbil could carry an 'arsenal' in one cheek. One "fact kicker" activist found it worthwhile to wave around a large and lethal hunting knife for the cameras recently in hope that the sort of liberal Maher characterizes as never having met a regulation they didn't like, would identify one with the other and fail to ask how someone would take command of a jetliner with a putter or lacrosse stick much less a "weapon" hardly big enough to sharpen a pencil. Are these people a majority or would they all fit into a VW beetle? They'd like to make you angry enough so that you won't ask. Does it help to dismiss the right wing faithful as "shit kickers" while we bang on the ban drum about making soft drinks illegal and prosecute parents for photographing their kids in the bathtub? They don't miss a chance to stereotype us and we make it easy for them.
Will it take some sort of Buddha to remind us that there is a middle path, that Agnew was wrong and extremism is pretty much a vice all the time, that mockery is as much the tool of the bigot and racist and liar and crook as well as of anyone, that cynicism and sarcasm and the throwing of stones are dangerous techniques for those not beyond reproach? Maybe, maybe not and perhaps that Buddha would risk crucifixion -- it happens.
If he's right in saying that many small groups can, often with the assistance of the fair and balanced media achieve a level of influence that belies their small membership, I'd prefer that he'd do so without the cheap stereotypes.
"From the NRA to “One Million Moms, powerful conservative lobbies that don’t reflect the values of the American people can somehow dictate what politicians on both sides are willing to stand for."Well yes, but so can lobbies in general, that's what they're for -- and so can lobbies that don't "kick shit" but can and do kick the facts around just a bit. I don't think we can assume for instance, that because the NRA has only four million members it doesn't reflect something similar to what a great deal more than four million voters believe to an extent -- rightly or wrongly.
I have severe misgivings for instance, about the facts behind many of the pet straw men of the right and left and sorry, there's no shit on my boat shoes -- besides, the greater issue is far too non-funny to treat in this way. There are fewer opportunities for burlesque when describing what may be a larger plurality in America -- the moderates, the centrists, the pragmatic and the analytical. And so we either ignore them or try to force them into a category we know how to mock, because too often mockery, hyperbole and stereotypes are all we have.
If there's humor in the street theater we get instead of news, I'd have to bring up the crowds waving angry signs and shouting slogans like "no weapons on airplanes" in response to the TSA's decision to allow golf clubs and tiny knives so small that a diminutive Gerbil could carry an 'arsenal' in one cheek. One "fact kicker" activist found it worthwhile to wave around a large and lethal hunting knife for the cameras recently in hope that the sort of liberal Maher characterizes as never having met a regulation they didn't like, would identify one with the other and fail to ask how someone would take command of a jetliner with a putter or lacrosse stick much less a "weapon" hardly big enough to sharpen a pencil. Are these people a majority or would they all fit into a VW beetle? They'd like to make you angry enough so that you won't ask. Does it help to dismiss the right wing faithful as "shit kickers" while we bang on the ban drum about making soft drinks illegal and prosecute parents for photographing their kids in the bathtub? They don't miss a chance to stereotype us and we make it easy for them.
Will it take some sort of Buddha to remind us that there is a middle path, that Agnew was wrong and extremism is pretty much a vice all the time, that mockery is as much the tool of the bigot and racist and liar and crook as well as of anyone, that cynicism and sarcasm and the throwing of stones are dangerous techniques for those not beyond reproach? Maybe, maybe not and perhaps that Buddha would risk crucifixion -- it happens.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Ryan Pours Out the Budget Snake Oil, Again
Well, here we go again: another year and another cynical, phony "budget" produced by Paul Ryan for the Republicans.
The two chief features of the Ryan budget are the reduction of the top tax rate from 39% to 25%, and the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. It is vitally important to notice that this is nothing but a massive giveaway to the rich, beyond anything we have seen proposed before, even by corrupt Republicans. You would have to be a fool to think that this has anything to do with decreasing the budget deficit- in fact it would explode it, and add trillions to the national debt.
Now, for the feature that is nowhere to be found in the budget: As has been Republican practice for the last several years, this document claims to balance the Federal budget by resorting to Republican promises about "closing loopholes" and "eliminating fraud and waste." But in fact, nowhere will Ryan (or any other Republican) identify which "loopholes" they want to close, nor provide evidence of fraud and waste that amounts to anything but a minuscule fraction of what would be needed to cover current deficits, let alone the massive new giveaways that they are proposing to provide to the rich.
Unfortunately, we all know that what Republicans are talking about when they cite loopholes are the mortgage interest deduction and health care deductions- which would massively punish middle class taxpayers in order to subsidize the lowering of tax rates on the rich- the only thing this ludicrous proposal is really about.
Finally, this document contains repeated malicious claims that regulation has to be done away with and the right of ordinary people to hold corporations responsible for the damage they do be curtailed; again, the same lying cant we have heard from Republicans for decades.
In fact, this "budget" is nothing but a rich person's wish list, which could have been written any year since the fifties. It has absolutely nothing to do with dealing with the deficit, which Republicans do not care about in any way, and everything to do with further enriching the wealthy backers who pay to keep Republicans in office, at the expense of everyone else. That is all Republicans ever care about, because they have long ago sold themselves into slavery to the rich. This has been true for a hundred years, and shows no sign of ever changing, no matter how much damage their behavior does to the rest of the country, and no matter how they fare in elections.
Well, there you go. Just one more cynical demonstration by Republicans that they don't give a God damn for anyone but the rich, and one more attempt to shove a deceitful, criminal theft of the nation's resources down the throats of the American people. Nevertheless, it will be hailed by far too many in the mainstream press as a bold, serious attempt to deal with our nation's financial situation, massively increasing the chances that the country will slit its own throat by enacting any of this disingenuous, vicious nonsense.
Note: this is a cut down version of a piece I posted on my blog, where I list all of the actual provisions of the Ryan budget, and go through them one by one. If you care, you can find it here.
The two chief features of the Ryan budget are the reduction of the top tax rate from 39% to 25%, and the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. It is vitally important to notice that this is nothing but a massive giveaway to the rich, beyond anything we have seen proposed before, even by corrupt Republicans. You would have to be a fool to think that this has anything to do with decreasing the budget deficit- in fact it would explode it, and add trillions to the national debt.
Now, for the feature that is nowhere to be found in the budget: As has been Republican practice for the last several years, this document claims to balance the Federal budget by resorting to Republican promises about "closing loopholes" and "eliminating fraud and waste." But in fact, nowhere will Ryan (or any other Republican) identify which "loopholes" they want to close, nor provide evidence of fraud and waste that amounts to anything but a minuscule fraction of what would be needed to cover current deficits, let alone the massive new giveaways that they are proposing to provide to the rich.
Unfortunately, we all know that what Republicans are talking about when they cite loopholes are the mortgage interest deduction and health care deductions- which would massively punish middle class taxpayers in order to subsidize the lowering of tax rates on the rich- the only thing this ludicrous proposal is really about.
Finally, this document contains repeated malicious claims that regulation has to be done away with and the right of ordinary people to hold corporations responsible for the damage they do be curtailed; again, the same lying cant we have heard from Republicans for decades.
In fact, this "budget" is nothing but a rich person's wish list, which could have been written any year since the fifties. It has absolutely nothing to do with dealing with the deficit, which Republicans do not care about in any way, and everything to do with further enriching the wealthy backers who pay to keep Republicans in office, at the expense of everyone else. That is all Republicans ever care about, because they have long ago sold themselves into slavery to the rich. This has been true for a hundred years, and shows no sign of ever changing, no matter how much damage their behavior does to the rest of the country, and no matter how they fare in elections.
Well, there you go. Just one more cynical demonstration by Republicans that they don't give a God damn for anyone but the rich, and one more attempt to shove a deceitful, criminal theft of the nation's resources down the throats of the American people. Nevertheless, it will be hailed by far too many in the mainstream press as a bold, serious attempt to deal with our nation's financial situation, massively increasing the chances that the country will slit its own throat by enacting any of this disingenuous, vicious nonsense.
Note: this is a cut down version of a piece I posted on my blog, where I list all of the actual provisions of the Ryan budget, and go through them one by one. If you care, you can find it here.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The Man Who Videotaped the "47%" Comment ...
... will be interviewed Wednesday night (March 13, 2012) at 8:00pm on MSNBC. For a background on why the man decided to release the tape, click here. This interview may develop into an important "tell-all" story.
Extreme
Extreme is one of the words that defines our time. Extreme
sports, for instance -- ordinary sports just aren't enough, but it's not
just popular entertainment that needs to be as wild and crazy. The
safer things get, the more we seem to need the excitement of battling
danger with passion and with that passion come extreme precautions, and
extreme laws -- and extreme stupidity.
Take the danger of child abuse -- it's real, but really, do we need to define the normal and harmless so that it can't be told from the abnormal and harmful? Of course we do because so much depends, in our totally politicized nation, on hysteria, on showing everyone that we're "proactive" and that any grotesque manifestation of our crusading nature is justifiable "if only one ____ is saved."
It's hard to know what was saved when 7 year old Josh Welch of Baltimore was suspended from school for having chewed his Pop-Tart into something that looked to a teacher like a gun, but it's not unique. Kids get into trouble for things that seem to someone of my age as if teachers are simply looking for any bizarre excuse to define a nail clipper as a "weapon" or a cough drop is "drugs." As with so many indefensible things, it's usually defined as "protecting the children."
Again it's hard to know who was protected when an Arizona couple had their children taken from them and their lives arguably ruined for taking bath time pictures of their three toddlers on a towel, hugging each other. Some Wal-Mart watchdog saw the photos and called the cops. Although a judge eventually determined that the parents weren't thinking about sex when they took the pictures (that's apparently all that's needed) the kids were traumatically "protected" by being put in foster care and the parents on one of those "sexual offender" lists that essentially render one an outlaw and unable to live near civilization for the rest of their lives.
So do we wonder that some people think it's not really silly to think that in some ways we have an intrusive government? Can some be excused for speculating about having lost some essential freedom because extremism in defense of some thing or another is no vice? The hell it isn't! Those who argue that the ends sanctify the means and never mind who gets hurt, can't rightly be called Liberals or Conservatives. I call them cowards when I'm trying to be gentle and understanding, but I've pretty much run out of those two things these days.
Take the danger of child abuse -- it's real, but really, do we need to define the normal and harmless so that it can't be told from the abnormal and harmful? Of course we do because so much depends, in our totally politicized nation, on hysteria, on showing everyone that we're "proactive" and that any grotesque manifestation of our crusading nature is justifiable "if only one ____ is saved."
It's hard to know what was saved when 7 year old Josh Welch of Baltimore was suspended from school for having chewed his Pop-Tart into something that looked to a teacher like a gun, but it's not unique. Kids get into trouble for things that seem to someone of my age as if teachers are simply looking for any bizarre excuse to define a nail clipper as a "weapon" or a cough drop is "drugs." As with so many indefensible things, it's usually defined as "protecting the children."
Again it's hard to know who was protected when an Arizona couple had their children taken from them and their lives arguably ruined for taking bath time pictures of their three toddlers on a towel, hugging each other. Some Wal-Mart watchdog saw the photos and called the cops. Although a judge eventually determined that the parents weren't thinking about sex when they took the pictures (that's apparently all that's needed) the kids were traumatically "protected" by being put in foster care and the parents on one of those "sexual offender" lists that essentially render one an outlaw and unable to live near civilization for the rest of their lives.
So do we wonder that some people think it's not really silly to think that in some ways we have an intrusive government? Can some be excused for speculating about having lost some essential freedom because extremism in defense of some thing or another is no vice? The hell it isn't! Those who argue that the ends sanctify the means and never mind who gets hurt, can't rightly be called Liberals or Conservatives. I call them cowards when I'm trying to be gentle and understanding, but I've pretty much run out of those two things these days.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Defending the Faith
I hesitate to write about this, since everyone and his horse will
undoubtedly pick up on the latest Republican hilarity. It's an easy
target, but it says so much about what the Republican party has been
party to: the degradation of truth, logic, decency and freedom. Yes, we
have another Republican telling us that women probably can't get pregnant from being raped.
Denial, as I've been saying ad nauseam, is the flip side of belief and every belief requires a denial. Denial of what you know to be true, is hypocrisy and to avoid hypocrisy, too many Republicans will defend what they know to be false and tell themselves it's heroic; tell themselves that lies are not lies if they're useful in defending the faith. Some of what one needs to defend in order to gain party support is immoral, indecent, mean-spirited and nasty too. Much of it is just a series of damned lies, but that's another story.
There's just no truth to the idea that God or biology protect a rape victim from pregnancy but the creed demands that one oppose terminating a pregnancy, whether unwanted or repellant or dangerous, so you -- forgive my technical jargon -- have to make shit up in order to defend the belief and deny the truth, be it incontrovertible truth about evolution, cosmology, geology, economics, law, mathematics or history. In many cases, being a Republican requires that you park not only your brains, but your honesty, your decency in the alley behind the GOP bar next to the dumpster, lest any of the clergy see it.
I won't deny that I take a certain satisfaction in presenting this one small, relatively unimportant demonstration of the mental processes that produce and direct the American Opera Buffo. I delight in airing their dirty laundry, not because I like the rancid smell of batshit, but because it's time to burn it and bury the ashes. It has been time forever.
Denial, as I've been saying ad nauseam, is the flip side of belief and every belief requires a denial. Denial of what you know to be true, is hypocrisy and to avoid hypocrisy, too many Republicans will defend what they know to be false and tell themselves it's heroic; tell themselves that lies are not lies if they're useful in defending the faith. Some of what one needs to defend in order to gain party support is immoral, indecent, mean-spirited and nasty too. Much of it is just a series of damned lies, but that's another story.
There's just no truth to the idea that God or biology protect a rape victim from pregnancy but the creed demands that one oppose terminating a pregnancy, whether unwanted or repellant or dangerous, so you -- forgive my technical jargon -- have to make shit up in order to defend the belief and deny the truth, be it incontrovertible truth about evolution, cosmology, geology, economics, law, mathematics or history. In many cases, being a Republican requires that you park not only your brains, but your honesty, your decency in the alley behind the GOP bar next to the dumpster, lest any of the clergy see it.
I won't deny that I take a certain satisfaction in presenting this one small, relatively unimportant demonstration of the mental processes that produce and direct the American Opera Buffo. I delight in airing their dirty laundry, not because I like the rancid smell of batshit, but because it's time to burn it and bury the ashes. It has been time forever.
Thursday, March 7, 2013
TSA backs off
So you think the TSA has finally come to its senses and smartened up
its ban on deadly weapons like nail clippers and pool cues? Most
people, if they bother to think about it, aren't all that terrified that
some 12 year old carrying his Little League bat or hockey stick is
going to commandeer a 747, nor is the woman with that tiny Swiss Army
knife on her keychain. The TSA has at least recognized that the
hijackings of 9/11/01 were facilitated by cabin doors without locks,
thanks to the refusal of our regulatory agencies to force that level of
security on private business. Box cutters were secondary.
Your tiny knife with tweezers and nail file isn't really going to allow a terrorist incident or some adolescent to take over an airplane with a plastic hockey stick and so the TSA is going to acknowledge the laughter and relent -- in some cases. In customary ban-it writing style however, the descriptions of the newly permitted items seem to have been written by people being forced to relent at gunpoint or people from Mars who have never seen and are terrified of sharp objects.
So what can you take on the plane that you couldn't last week? Cigarette lighters, although you can't smoke, up to two golf clubs, ( three would somehow be too dangerous) toy bats or other sports sticks and small pocket knives with blades up to (wait for this) 2.36 inches. 2.37 is too scary to allow and a fixed blade is out for some reason known only to Martians and most mysteriously, if the handle has any curve to it, it's still a terrorist assault weapon and prohibited. My tiny mustache scissors? Sorry Osama, you and your beard don't get on the plane.
Box cutters? Even though the evidence from 9/11 really doesn't support the newspaper story, a 1" box cutter blade, half the length of Uncle Fogg's Victorinox is just too al Qaeda for the TSA.
You'll suspect that I'm going somewhere with this, but I don't need to, you already guessed that I think people who write and most passionately defend regulatory descriptions tend to be fond of tin foil haberdashery, or at least that's my opinion -- and I'm sticking with it.
Your tiny knife with tweezers and nail file isn't really going to allow a terrorist incident or some adolescent to take over an airplane with a plastic hockey stick and so the TSA is going to acknowledge the laughter and relent -- in some cases. In customary ban-it writing style however, the descriptions of the newly permitted items seem to have been written by people being forced to relent at gunpoint or people from Mars who have never seen and are terrified of sharp objects.
So what can you take on the plane that you couldn't last week? Cigarette lighters, although you can't smoke, up to two golf clubs, ( three would somehow be too dangerous) toy bats or other sports sticks and small pocket knives with blades up to (wait for this) 2.36 inches. 2.37 is too scary to allow and a fixed blade is out for some reason known only to Martians and most mysteriously, if the handle has any curve to it, it's still a terrorist assault weapon and prohibited. My tiny mustache scissors? Sorry Osama, you and your beard don't get on the plane.
Box cutters? Even though the evidence from 9/11 really doesn't support the newspaper story, a 1" box cutter blade, half the length of Uncle Fogg's Victorinox is just too al Qaeda for the TSA.
You'll suspect that I'm going somewhere with this, but I don't need to, you already guessed that I think people who write and most passionately defend regulatory descriptions tend to be fond of tin foil haberdashery, or at least that's my opinion -- and I'm sticking with it.
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Suffer the Children?
Want to know what ticks me off? Of course you do -- it's that so
many of us who think we're out of the woods because the Republicans lost
the last two presidential elections have resumed the idiotic
posturing and bickering, hyperbolizing, fear mongering and in-fighting
about our often worn out liberal issues. Does anyone really think that
right wing extremism has slunk away like the loser in a dog fight?
Is the Democratic party going back to being the ban-it party, the baby-on-board ' can't trust anybody party that can't agree with each other enough to get anything done? Are we back to 'ban-the-bomb' naïveté while real evil marches on? Of course, that's what we do, but guess what bucky, Limbaugh still draws ratings and the Fox is still alive -- or at least undead.
Remember when Obama's little talk about patriotism to schoolchildren was "just like Pol Pot?" Well when Obama cancelled some White House tours, it was only so that he could "maximize the pain" for children says grimacing Gretchen the witch of Fox News. "Can we be adults about this?" she asked while meanwhile back at the fortress of evil, a Republican (Texas of course) Rep was proposing that Obama can't play golf again until the Republicans say so. Is Louie Gohmert old enough to remember when Eisenhower was accused of playing golf while the Russkies missle-gapped us?
Meanwhile, while Carlson and the Doocebag are trying to Fox Block Obama, inquiring minds are asking whether the Evil Empire will discuss the effect the sequestration gambit will have on American Children. That's right, children. They're such useful tools and they're great for breakfast too. Just ask the Fox.
Is the Democratic party going back to being the ban-it party, the baby-on-board ' can't trust anybody party that can't agree with each other enough to get anything done? Are we back to 'ban-the-bomb' naïveté while real evil marches on? Of course, that's what we do, but guess what bucky, Limbaugh still draws ratings and the Fox is still alive -- or at least undead.
Remember when Obama's little talk about patriotism to schoolchildren was "just like Pol Pot?" Well when Obama cancelled some White House tours, it was only so that he could "maximize the pain" for children says grimacing Gretchen the witch of Fox News. "Can we be adults about this?" she asked while meanwhile back at the fortress of evil, a Republican (Texas of course) Rep was proposing that Obama can't play golf again until the Republicans say so. Is Louie Gohmert old enough to remember when Eisenhower was accused of playing golf while the Russkies missle-gapped us?
Meanwhile, while Carlson and the Doocebag are trying to Fox Block Obama, inquiring minds are asking whether the Evil Empire will discuss the effect the sequestration gambit will have on American Children. That's right, children. They're such useful tools and they're great for breakfast too. Just ask the Fox.
Disheartening Defense of a Crime of Violence Against a Woman
I was fully aware of the steep decline in journalistic integrity that has plagued the once respected weekly TIME magazine, but was not ready for this disgusting piece of yellow journalism. TIME sort of plays the thing from all sides. The most obvious side being that the white ruling class in South Africa must protect itself from the violent, criminal masses yearning to break into their private compounds, or laagers, read gated and heavily armed communities or clusters of mansions. I think that the photo of Pistorius on the cover will sell very well at the grocery store and drugstore checkout stands across the U.S., but TIME magazine may not be ready for the negative fallout that they will receive after publishing this sickening apology and justification for the cold-blooded murder of an innocent girlfriend by a gun-wielding, yet insecure, egomaniac.
The entire article seems to be a plea to accept Pistorius's implausible explanation of shooting his own woman through a bathroom door. Absolutely disgusting.
As Pistorius serves out his term in prison, he won't have to worry about killing anyone else with a gun again.
I hope that my link to the article works.
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