Deny, Deny, DeMint

If 2012 was the end of an era, I haven't noticed. The era of denialism is still rolling along, thank you very much and the ridiculous Right is getting better with practice.  The 2012 Election you see, didn't accurately reflect public sentiment at least the sentiment as viewed through ruby red glasses. 

Jim DeMint seems to think the Right didn't get a fair hearing, even though the echo of their primal scream still is as detectible as the Cosmic Background Radiation.  And besides it's just not fair.  In a fair and balanced world elections don't count, you know, because the true voice of the people is only communicated in Gnostic fashion by a mystical connection, not by those lying ballots.  In a Fair and Balanced world people wouldn't notice that Jim strongly endorsed Romneycare in 2007: they wouldn't notice that the voters elected someone who promised health care reform and re-elected him over the guy who couldn't stop inventing reasons why it was no longer good now that the Democrats endorsed it. They wouldn't notice that the Supreme Court endorsed the legality.

Of course Jim and all the GOP DeMintos hope you don't remember the era of "the silent majority" whose silence was the result of their not actually being there because he seems to be offering the same pathetic Nixonian explanation for the rejection of his own imaginary majority. But of course we do remember, we do notice and even the Sultan of Slime, Karl Rove himself seems bewildered by the insanity he's nourished into full monsterhood, shuffling toward Fort Sumpter to be born.

No, October first won't be the end of an era either, since some eras go on as if in a parallel universe, close to but separate from ours.  It may be the beginning of one however; an era in which the burden of illness and the cost of healthcare won't be a drag on upward mobility and entrepreneurship, but the old one will continue like some antique and grotesque paganism and people will continue to profit from the hysteria. More appeals to stock up on emergency supplies, special vaults in which to hide your guns and ammunition (stock up now before Obama takes them away) for the coming apocalypse and the horrible hordes of marauding minorities. . .

The Voice of the People

Tom Paine advocating the adoption of an American Constitution, urged cool and deliberate heads to prevail, lest some rabble rouser

". . . may hereafter arise, who laying hold of popular disquietudes, may collect together the desperate and discontented, and by assuming to themselves the powers of government, may sweep away the liberties of the continent like a deluge."

He was thinking of a 17th century uprising in Naples, a populist and tax revolt that ended badly because of the failure to control the mob and left Naples under the control of the Spanish Crown.  It's not a unique story. It's easy to think of more before and after that one. Can I help but to think of the mad remnants of the former Conservative party now spending endless millions on endless lies -- infuriating, frightening and focusing the anger of Americans against our constitutional and duly elected government, for the benefit of it's would-be overlords?  Can I help it when listening to Ted Cruz begging Americans to go back to Industrial Revolution era health care practices now when it costs far more than it did then?  A hundred years ago, if a worker had to miss a few weeks because of an injury incurred on the job, in a job that demanded 12 hour days and 6 day weeks and that demanded the worker live in filthy tenements, he was evicted and his family dumped out on the street, forced into crime or prostitution, disease and untimely death. Today, we have frustrated overlords spending millions and millions to dress that up as "traditional Values"  "Family" Values and telling us we can't afford health unless we have wealth.  It's too expensive. We can't afford to have "takers." 100 years ago when what passed for middle class meant squalor, a time when most people died in poverty and disease, it was enough that a tiny few made a fortune often using business practices that would make us wince -- unless we're Republicans.

Direct Democracies have usually succumbed to those desperate and discontented elements no matter how well off they may be, often led by cooler heads of the greedy and hungry for power.  Perhaps the kind of tactics now practiced by those who spend massive monies appealing to the public to take direct action against things that will benefit them and harm the aristocracy are simply following an ancient script.  That's why we were supposed to be a Republic, to have educated, enlightened professionals of our choice to make choices for us. Now the men who would be kings encourage Joe the Plumber - a man of the people who like so many men of the people just aren't smart enough, educated enough and are easy to rile up, delude, enrage and control. That's just what Congress was not supposed to be about; spokesmen for self justifying power.

"The Imbecile bourgeoisie of this country make themselves accomplices of the very people whose aim is to drive them out of their houses to starve in ditches" 

Wrote Joseph Conrad, back when we were starting to move toward the modern era, perhaps thinking that would ever change.

It's just a question.

Spread it around. See who has an answer.

Attention America, meet our demands or else ...

Mr. Cruz goes to Washington

My nonagenarian father has been having problems keeping his blood pressure up.  I suggested watching Ted Cruz reading Dr. Suess.  Perhaps I should have titled this Green Eggs and Spam, but all in all, it really isn't funny. No attempt by a bought and paid for, zealot for hire to block the democratic process with endless impassioned idiocy is really funny.  Unfortunately it isn't rare or unique any more.

But if you're feeling calm or tranquil and even happy with life
If the day is fair and sky is blue
And that bothers you
I've just the thing you'll want to view:

Unhealthy, Hungry States

Why do the red states that are run by conservative governments fail their citizens?  

These 10 conservative states have the hungriest in their population:

1.  Mississippi
2.  Arkansas
3.  Texas
4.  Alabama
5.  North Carolina
6.  Georgia
7.  Missouri
8.  Nevada
9.  Tennessee
10. Ohio


The recent vote by Republicans in the House to slash funds to SNAP will affect the poorest in the poorest states--those states run by Republican governors and/or legislatures.  Why would the GOP do that to their own constituents?


The states with the lowest food security, not surprisingly, are among the poorest in the country. In all 10 states, the median household income was less than the national median of $50,502. In Mississippi and Arkansas, the two worst states for food security, median income was less than $40,000. Of the 10 states with the lowest food security, eight had the highest poverty rates in the country. 

 Ross Fraser, spokesperson for hunger-relief charity Feeding America, explained that having low food security does not necessarily mean families are starving. While people may feel full after eating, nutritious food is expensive. “Often, people have to make unfortunate choices about what they put in their stomachs.” Fraser added. 

 Indeed, according to a 2012 Gallup-Healthways survey, people in nine of the 10 states were less likely to eat healthily on a daily basis than the nation as a whole. Missouri and Tennessee were third and second worst in the country by this measure. 

 It may surprise some that, in fact, the majority of the 10 states with food access problems have higher-than-average obesity rates. Mississippi and Arkansas had the second and third highest obesity rates in the country in 2012. 

“The lack of healthy food among families in these states,” explained Fraser, “is one of the reasons you have very poor people who are obese. It is because they’re not able to afford nutritious and high protein food.”

More here.

If conservatives believe conservatism is the better of the two political ideologies, why do the conservative red states come in as the poorest, the hungriest, and the least educated in studies?

Also, while we're looking at stats, the states that promote abstinence only programs to prevent out-of-wedlock pregnancies are failing as well:

Abstinence-only education does not lead to abstinent behavior, UGA researchers find


"...prescribed abstinence-only education in public schools does not lead to abstinent behavior," said David Hall, second author and assistant professor of genetics in the Franklin College. "It may even contribute to the high teen pregnancy rates in the U.S. compared to other industrialized countries." 

Along with teen pregnancy rates and sex education methods, Hall and Stanger-Hall looked at the influence of socioeconomic status, education level, access to Medicaid waivers and ethnicity of each state's teen population.

 Even when accounting for these factors, which could potentially impact teen pregnancy rates, the significant relationship between sex education methods and teen pregnancy remained: the more strongly abstinence education is emphasized in state laws and policies, the higher the average teenage pregnancy and birth rates.

 "Because correlation does not imply causation, our analysis cannot demonstrate that emphasizing abstinence causes increased teen pregnancy. However, if abstinence education reduced teen pregnancy as proponents claim, the correlation would be in the opposite direction," said Stanger-Hall.

 The paper indicates that states with the lowest teen pregnancy rates were those that prescribed comprehensive sex and/or HIV education, covering abstinence alongside proper contraception and condom use.

States whose laws stressed the teaching of abstinence until marriage were significantly less successful in preventing teen pregnancies."

States with ‘abstinence-only’ sex ed programs rank highest in teen pregnancies



 The two states with the highest rates of teen pregnancies are Mississippi and New Mexico. 

 Neither state requires that sex ed be taught in schools. 

 Mississippi law stipulates that when sexual education is taught, that abstinence be the main method of contraception proscribed by educators, whereas New Mexico has no rules about reproductive health criteria at all. 

 The state with the lowest rate of teen pregnancies is New Hampshire, which requires comprehensive sex ed in schools that includes information about condoms and other forms of birth control in addition to abstinence."

***************

Willful ignorance is not a remedy for out-of-wedlock pregnancies; and cutting back on needed funds for feeding needy Americans is not a way to get people out of what the GOOPers call a comfortable hammock to find work. It's difficult to do anything when you and your family are hungry.

One wonders what sort of values the so-called "American Values Party" really promotes when it turns a blind eye to our most vulnerable citizens and when it pretends that abstinence only programs will prevent more hungry babies from being born into more poor families.

There'll be a hot time in Stockholm tonight

Everyone knows there are two sides to every story and so things generate their own opposites if only to fulfill the expectations, and so light creates dark, even if dark is nothing at all. 

It's a trivial notion, of course, but the practice of using the shadow of a thing to discredit or obliterate that thing has consequences that are far from trivial, because the nothing we give a name to can, at least in the emotional logic the public loves and public passion feeds on, cancel out something. Every assertion that must be blunted or countered or denounced can be reversed in sign, so to speak and used to cancel the assertion. At least it can  in a world, in an inner universe of the mind where people don't think too much or too well and can be convinced that one's image in a mirror can cancel itself out if we don't like what we see.  There must be two sides if we're to reduce a question of fact to a matter of opinion and that's just what the game is.

There must be two sides, even if all the data is on one of them. Each side has it's adherents and even if the question "is it raining?" can be answered more reliably by those standing outside, those inside an inner room with no windows have to be given equal credibility if the 'two sides' hypothesis is valid.  So when we look at the question: is the average temperature of the Earth getting higher or the question are human activities contributing substantially, the advantage to the side with the data; the side the atmospheric paleontologists, the geologists, the paleo-climatologists are on, is minimized, if not cancelled out  by the side that has the money and political connections.  We have the side with massive pertinent information and we have the Republicans, the Coal, Oil and Gas cartels who own them and a handful of  people with  dubious scientific credentials  crying hoax.

This is not a scientific problem, there is no scientific controversy, it's  class warfare, and the success will depend on things other than data and there's a battle in Stockholm today.  There's a battle here in America too, where there are always two sides and thus equal credibility independent of evidence and where questions of chemistry and physics are questions of which party you belong to, where motivated reasoning passes for objective analysis. The goal of the argument is to minimize risks to the international cartels and to the party they own.  It's not about science, it's about allegiance.

Opponents don't take these things to the laboratory, to the peer reviewed publications, they look only at selected data and cast stones at the rest.  They take it to Joe the Plumber. They take it to the Republicans. They take it to Congress. They purchase opinions. They take it to the huddled masses yearning to sound knowledgeable by crying hoax  at every bit of truth they can find and in a way there are two sides to the climate question.  The one with the trillions and the side with the data.

Do Not Call Up That Which You Cannot Put Down

-The famous maxim of Howard Lovecraft. 

Here is something I've believed about Lovecraft, which has been largely ignored by his devoted readers (I am one too).  Lovecraft's work was actually very prophetic and politically significant.  From the early 1920's Lovecraft was virtually the only writer to envision a rapidly approaching time when one person or a small cabal would have the power to destroy humanity.  Nuclear science made this a military reality within ten years of his death, but advances in communication and propaganda technology, coupled with the concentration of previously inconceivable wealth in the hands of a few, have now made it possible politically.

Over the last half century, and with ever increasing intensity, the Republican party has set about creating in the United States a cadre of living zombies, people filled with rage and hunger, and immune to any kind of introspection or critical thinking.  Like any Lovecraft villain, the leaders of the Republican party were absolutely sure they could put down this army of the mentally undead whenever it suited their purpose.  And like all Lovecraft villains, they were wrong.

We have seen a long succession of leaders now, who have nothing in the world to offer except their willingness to pander to the mindless, voracious minions they have created, telling themselves at every step that they are in control and that the minions will do whatever suits the interest of their betters.  Palin, Bachmann, Ryan, both Pauls, Gohmert, Alan West, and now perhaps the most vicious of them all, Ted Cruz, who openly states that he believes the entire Senate should consist of 100 people like the unrepentant race hater and corupt corporate tool, Jesse Helms.

Today, we are confronting an ugly reality- similar to, for example, the one faced by Weimar Germany in the 1920's- it is far easier to destroy democracy than it is to create it.  The hordes of ignorant, greedy, hate-filled intellectual zombies the Republicans deliberately called up out of the swamps of American dysfunction are now running things, and those oh, so wise grifters like Gingrich, Boehner and McConnell are now helpless captives on a runaway train, with disaster the only conceivable future.

Now, this disaster may be only days away.  Paul Krugman (as usual):

"...at the moment, it seems highly likely that the Republican Party will refuse to fund the government, forcing a shutdown at the beginning of next month, unless President Obama dismantles the health reform that is the signature achievement of his presidency. Republican leaders realize that this is a bad idea, but, until recently, their notion of preaching moderation was to urge party radicals not to hold America hostage over the federal budget so they could wait a few weeks and hold it hostage over the debt ceiling instead. Now they’ve given up even on that delaying tactic. The latest news is that John Boehner, the speaker of the House, has abandoned his efforts to craft a face-saving climbdown on the budget, which means that we’re all set for shutdown, possibly followed by debt crisis."

And a very real likelihood of a collapse of the world economy.   Here's some more Krugman:

"...this story is all about the G.O.P. First came the southern strategy, in which the Republican elite cynically exploited racial backlash to promote economic goals, mainly low taxes for rich people and deregulation. Over time, this gradually morphed into what we might call the crazy strategy, in which the elite turned to exploiting the paranoia that has always been a factor in American politics — Hillary killed Vince Foster! Obama was born in Kenya! Death panels! — to promote the same goals. 

But now we’re in a third stage, where the elite has lost control of the Frankenstein-like monster it created."

Frankenstein's monster, only because he didn't think of comparing it to its real literary equivalent:  Cthulhu- a single entity with the capacity to destroy all humanity.  Krugman suggests that the momentum behind this apocalyptic fit of destruction is now inevitable- the Republican party we have today is, against all rational self interest, intent on pulling the house down around them.  Well, I guess that is what I believe too.  At this point, as I said recently, they may as well get on with it and do all the damage they can, and then we can either exterminate them like the vermin they are and get on with repairing the damage, or we will succumb to their violence and irrationality, and the United States of America will vanish from the world like Rome, Assyria, Babylon and so many other great civilizations that exist today only as vague dreams of a distant glory.

-Cross posted from my own blog

Sunday Afternoons and Old Dogs

Waiting for someday.

The beam moves across the floor.

Look how the time goes.

No one can nap like an old dog, sprawled in the sunshine, dozing as I sip lemonade, reading poetry by the pool or curled up on the Persian rug in the library; me writing at my desk with a black fountain pen, my sanctuary of sorts. Things about me; old books and photographs. Things of science, things of art; mementos, the treasured baggage of a  life slowly fading in the sun

The dog enjoys his life, his snacks, his meals always on time - his naps. Relieving himself by the curb in the morning, sniffing the summer breeze for hours, sitting in the shade of the porch as I sigh and lament with black ink on lined paper.

Who's the happier? Our futures are uncertain in length, mine more uncertain in content, his certainly shorter. It doesn't bother his sleep. Our knowledge is pain, our mortality cuts like a choke collar, pulled too tightly and oh, that leash! We suffer into truth and sometimes into beauty, sometimes into joy but always it passes and we sigh and lament. He sleeps unworried on the soft rug, woven by women's hands, smoothed by long fingers in distant places,  his lost youth unmourned, mine displayed, formulated on the wall, while I listen to the brass clock tick, the gold nib scribbling on paper.

Do not attempt

I just saw it again in a movie - our protagonists frantically one step ahead of a superhuman pursuer jump on to a motorcycle in desperation, but pause to put on a helmet. I say again because it's certainly not the first time.  Panicked fugitives stop to put on seat belts leaving any of the audience who had been carried along by the plot behind as if all the phone numbers beginning with 555 haven't already.

A car rolls slowly down a beautiful leaf strewn autumn road, while the massage crawls across the bottom, admonishing us not to to do this yourself and that there is a trained professional at the wheel and the road is closed. Of course that's less ridiculous than when the same warning is presented as the car drives out the back of an airplane, or off a bridge.  Who are we warning and would a warning have any effect on the guy who thinks his Toyota can fly?

Watching a show about asset recovery agents - repo men - who specialize in stealing helicopters and jets and even megayachts from people who have stopped making payments. I of course, see the same warning. "Don't do this yourself, trained professionals." Damn, and I had my leather helmet and goggles on already.

Funny thing that we don't see these things with movies about criminals or people who invade foreign countries - Trained professional bank robbers, etc. or people who land on the moon, (Don't try this yourself) but hey.

I've already complained about instruction manuals for everything from q-tips to digital cameras that have 10 pages of warnings for every paragraph explaining how to use it. Don't use a hammer to clean your ears, don't stand on a wet floor and stick your tongue in a light socket while using this camera.

The stuff that's actually dangerous?  Not so much. Yes, I think one of the ceramic knives I bought for my wife said something like "don't cut yourself" but that's mild in today's America and of course it doesn't tell you to hire a chef and leave the cutting to her. No warning that "contents may be fattening" on my fridge or "don't use in the shower" on the toaster but then I didn't read the manuals. My cars' instruction books didn't suggest getting a chauffeur and there's no sign on my lawn relative to not cutting it myself. I'm willing to bet more people are hurt by power mowers than by cameras but none of this is about objective reality, is it?  But I could be wrong.

Maybe  I'm just reckless and irresponsible.  Maybe I should be more cautious about life in general. I'm considering putting up a sign over the front door - facing inwards.  How does "Don't go out  by yourself.  It's a jungle out there, for trained professionals only."