The recovery will not be televised

Throughout the rule of Dubya, the game was about denying the cancer eating at the economy: the lack of job growth, the exploding debt, the declining revenue. We saw articles proving that it was the "Liberals" who were endangering the economy with their gloomy predictions. Fox told us that the predominance of negative economic reports was proof, not of negative economic implications, but of the Liberal bias of the media. When a certain amount of reality was unavoidably showing through the flimsy screen, it was Bill Clinton's fault.

As with the 11 year sunspot cycle, each resurgence of activity arrives with a reversed magnetic polarity and of course the game now is to show that any signs of recovery that can't be ignored, repressed or misrepresented will be buried under hyperbole and deceitful numbers. Since employment levels only begin to fall long after a recovery, we will hear no end of talk about it from the fair and balanced folk and of course we will hear about reckless government spending -- as we always do under a Democratic administration, even when the budget is balanced. The recovery will not be televised, if it's acknowledged at all.

The bulls are loose on Wall Street following increased consumer spending and investor confidence in the recovery. Banks are beginning to lend to small businesses again. Leading indicators are up for three consecutive months now, the wild and reckless TARP program is returning a profit while the folks who brought about the nosedive are still howling about Nancy Pelosi's Job Killing Bill, making fictitious claims about spending levels and other hypertrophied hyperbole as though we hadn't lost more jobs and shipped them overseas when they last had the reins and were telling the Liberals to stop 'whining.'

They're never going to admit that a catastrophe has been avoided, that we could have had 25% unemployment again or a decade of deep depression and a poverty level we haven't seen since the 1930's. No, not until they get back into power, that is and we can return to administrative bloat, runaway defense spending, borrowing against the fatuous promise of increased revenues from top bracket tax cuts and giving Wall Street and banking pirates, mining, drilling, food and drug and insurance companies free reign. Things will be all right then and we can be sure that doing what caused 1929 crash and the more recent crash will not happen again even if we do the same things that caused both. Only a stupid liberal would believe such a thing.

Chasing Bubbles With A Butterfly Net

For someone like me with a well-developed startle response and a self-imposed posting deadline, the last few days in the news have been exhausting. It's the silly season in America, of course, with just days to go until the mid-term elections and the culmination of all our anxious imaginings, regardless of our political starting points. But it isn't just any election and it isn't just an America in isolation; it's a globe in transition 'midst an era of revving change. Back peddle? Plunge forward? Stand up on the or accelerate--with or without a prayer? Shit or go blind? (Do NOT fuss at me; that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term with a rich, fertile history.)

The week's been either a blogger's dream or her worst nightmare: more material than I could ever want, flitting past me far too fast, and me with only a sieving mind to capture it. I wake up every morning to chase the tantalizing NYTimes headlines, browse among the big, syndicated blogs, and find it impossible to choose a spot on which to land--a hummingbird on a sugar high.

Should I go with the eerie tolling in my brain from Angela Merkel's "Multikulti has utterly failed" statement? No matter how the Germans are spinning that one today, my head still rings. I've finally gotten so old that a first-hand knowledge of history is more than just a Trivial Pursuit advantage. Swell.

CITIZENS UNITED

Credit:  The Wizard of Whimsy.

If not us, who?  If not now, when?

The invitation reads: “That question was posed by a member of our network of business and philanthropic leaders who are dedicated to defending our free society. We cannot rely on politicians to do so, so it is up to us to combat what is now the greatest assault on American freedom and prosperity in our lifetimes” [my bold].

The secret meeting will be held January 30-31, 2011, at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort in Rancho Mirage, California.  Among the rumored list of attendees:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas
Charles Koch (Koch Industries)
David Koch (Koch Industries)
John Childs (hedge fund trader)
Cliff Asness (hedge fund trader)
Steve Schwarzman (hedge fund trader)
Ken Griffin (hedge fund trader)
Phil Anschutz (AEG and diverse energy holdings)
Rich DeVos (co-founder of Amway)
Stephen Bechtel (Bechtel Corporation)
Kenneth Langone (Home Depot)

What are they planning?  Another White House Putsch?  This is not your friendly poker game.   Maybe more like cashing in their chips.

No matter how you party, it's still 2010

When Reagan bailed out Chrysler, although it may or may not have been the best thing for the auto industry in the long run, it wasn't Communism, because Reagan wasn't a Democrat and because the Republican technique of calling things their opposites wasn't employed against him. And of course the loan was repaid, with interest. Jobs were preserved, a small disaster was prevented, or at least postponed for 30 years. Of course principle was involved, which means it was contrary to the doctrine that must not be tested, since it always seems to fail in predicting outcome.

Bailouts and secured loans you see, are not quite the same as nationalizing the means of production, but certain parties having had so much of a good time waving warning flags over the years, cries of COMMUNISM come as naturally to the lips as an obscenity might when you stub your toe at 4:00 AM.

When the Democrats do it: when Democrats do anything including winning an election, it is of course Communism because -- well because you win elections saying idiotic things like that and popularity is the test of truth, is it not? Value perceived is value received and if something succeeds, and there's no Republican there to insist it didn't, it never happened.

Anyway, I digress. What I wanted to mention this morning was an article in that Lefty web site Bloomberg.Com (or is it a Righty site?) telling us that the Wall Street Bailout that self taught economists who slept in a Motel 6 last night tell us was an example of extravagant Government spending, has so far returned an 8.2% profit: a cool 25 billion, 200 million bucks. Sure, the long term consequences are not certain. Most long term projections are not, but

"Two years later TARP’s bank and insurance investments have made money, and about two-thirds of the funds have been paid back."

says Bloomberg and although you can consider the source, you must in turn consider the sources screaming about Communism, demonic possession, masturbation, moose hunting, grizzly bears and Kenyan tribal politics -- and their nearly 100% failure to predict what we've been through in the last three years even with all those "liberal" voices prophesying doom.

I'm not trying to make too much of this, but it seems that reality differs quite a bit from the boiler plate hyperbole, which makes semantic sense if nothing else, since that's how hyperbole relates to objective reality. But Citigroup has payed back $33 billion of the $45 billion it received, leaving the Treasury with a profit so far of $8.2 billion, or 18% payback, mostly as a result of selling its stake in the lender at a higher price, according to data analyzed by Bloomberg. Bailouts for Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have returned 14% and 13% respectively. Not the Promised land, really, but not communism; not a "Government takeover." It certainly isn't the Great Depression redux it certainly would have become had we elected to let it all fall down, blame the country for laziness and wanting something for nothing and recommend austerity like old Herbert Hoover.

In terms of harming the country it can't compare with the swashbuckling spending on invasions and hugely inefficient government agencies of record size and the wild borrowing on the promise of big revenue increases from tax cuts to millionaires that never appear no matter how many times we're promised it will.

Again, I'm not trying to call it a recovery, but I'm not trying to call it any of the things the Tea Partyers and those riding their coattails are calling it, even the very, very few who have the slightest idea of what's going on. If they do know, they're careful not to pass it on to the "party like it's 1773" crowd who still think their taxes went up and their guns are going to be confiscated and the masses must arise to shake off the chains of democracy. It would interfere with the program of making them think they're smart and knowledgeable as they dress up as overweight John Hancock impersonators, making asses of themselves.

No, what it is, is waking up in the wreckage after you disregarded the advice of your friends not to let your drunken big brother drive; blaming them for the wreck, blaming the air bags for your injuries and blaming the EMT's for not instantly repairing your broken ribs - with no cost to you.
How's that same old shit working out for you?

The Tea Party: Full of Insignificant Sound and Fury

I find myself again needing to wash my mouth out with soap, having engaged in another round of WTF with no expletives deleted. When I was a child my mother temporarily banned me from watching Lassie. I would cry so hard every time Timmy got lost, fell down an abandoned mine shaft, or was otherwise in peril (pretty much a weekly occurrence) that my mother was concerned about my emotional well being. I'm thinking that maybe I should ban myself from watching or reading any news; my vocabulary is in danger of becoming that of an old sailor.

My latest round of profanity was in response to Tuesday's debate between Christine O'Donnell (R) and Chris Coons (D), both candidates for Delaware's U.S. Senate seat. Although nominally a Republican, O'Donnell has aligned herself with the Tea Party platform. During the debate, held at Widener University Law School, the subject of religion and the law arose. Coons asserted that the separation of church and state provisions of the Constitution prohibits teaching Creationism in public schools (O'Donnell prefers the term Intelligent Design). O'Donnell countered with, "Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?"

The audience, consisting mostly of law students gasped in horror but before you join them, take a gander at O'Donnell's follow-up observation to Coons assertion that the First Amendment establishes a separation of church and state, "The First Amendment does? ... So you're telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase 'separation of church and state,' is in the First Amendment?" (emphasis added)

Technically, O'Donnell is correct. The text of the first amendment does not include the phrase "separation of church and state." The phrase is not found in the U.S. Constitution at all. The First Amendment states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

O'Donnell is a nut job but already the conservative media has put a different spin on her remarks, declaring that O'Donnell was pointing out the lack of any specific phrase in the Constitution proclaiming that there is to be a separation of church and state. I doubt that O'Donnell was really parsing out the language of the Constitution but was instead clueless as to the consistent interpretation of the 1st amendment. Technically, the phrase "separation of church and state" does not appear at all in the Constitution. The concept of separation of church and state is derived from the Establishment Clause of the 1st amendment. I wish that Coons had countered with that observation rather than sparring with O'Donnell as to whether the First Amendment literally contained the words separation of church and state; it doesn't.

I'm not just nitpicking. I've been thinking about how the far right has commandeered this election year and determined the parameters of the issues up for debate. I think that we have to reframe the argument. We can't afford to be sloppy with language.

O'Donnell didn't lose any votes because of her gaffe. If Coons had acknowledged that the precise phrase is not in the Constitution but that the language that is there was interpreted in the writings of no less than Thomas Jefferson to mean that there is a wall of separation between government and religion, then he would have deflated O'Donnell's argument and her ego. Many historians and students of the law trace the phrase "separation of church and state" to a letter written in 1802 by Thomas Jefferson in which he observed that the First Amendment built "a wall of separation between Church and State." There is also a couple of hundred years of jurisprudence that has consistenly interpreted the language of the First Amendment regarding religion, aka the Establishment Clause, as calling for the government to refrain from being in the business of promoting or censoring religious belief or lack thereof. In spite of O'Donnell's protestations to the contrary, separation of church and state has long been established as a valid Constutional interpretation solidly grounded in the First Amendment.

Of course the audience of law students scoffed because they understood the jurisprudence interpreting and applying the 1st amendment, but has the average American even read the Constitution outside of a cursory reading in some middle or high school civics class, let alone studied it? Even if they have read the Constitution, it's likely that they will agree with O'Donnell that there is no mention of separation of church and state in the Constitution. To understand the meaning of the U.S. Constitution takes more than simply reading the words.

Die hard Tea Party members are not likely to be persuaded to change their beliefs no matter how succinct and valid the argument. However, there are a lot of people who are angry with the status quo and bewildered by all the voices claiming to offer solutions. They need clear, straightforward information that they can use to make jugments as to which voices speak with truth and honesty. O'Donnell speaks as if she's their friend and there are a lot of disenchanted people who are anxious to believe that she has their best interests at heart.

The left needs to take a lesson from Toto and pull back the curtain to reveal that O'Donnell is just a bad magic act, hiding behind a curtain, pretending that she's the Wizard of the Right. To do that we have to stop merely shaking our heads in laughter and declaring O'Donnell and her political cohorts to be appropriate objects of ridicule. We need to offer people another reality by exposing that the Tea Party rhetoric is filled with sound and fury but signifies absolutely nothing.

Stop the Universe, I want to get off

So Stephen Hawking tells us there may be a nearly infinite number of universes. I had to wake up in this one, this morning.

Illegal immigrants should be shot on sight, says one Republican. It's like Stopping Hitler, you know -- worth the price.

President Obama looks like a Demon, says Rush.

"And I don't say this lightly. There are a couple pictures, and the eyes, I'm not saying anything here, but just look."

Of course there's no separation of Church and State, says Constitutional Scholar and former witchcraft dabbler, Christine O'Donnell, who in spite of her publicist's best efforts, isn't me.

Nancy Pelosi is a puppy killer says the GOP.

O'Donnell isn't a nut job, says John McCain -- because she won the Republican primary.

You know, I'm not even going to comment on all this. Too busy packing my bags.

Quantum mechanics, immigration and the elite.

So who's really the softie on the subject of illegal immigration? As with all things in America the answer will be found in the alternate reality you prefer and not necessarily the one in which 'is' means 'is.' Being elitists (because some of them are rich) the party of the working man is usually accused of being "soft on immigration" although what that means is hard to tell, but I'm taking the words of the other side for it, because they and their corporate sponsors can't have all that money and be wrong.

Those corporate sponsors however are pouring large sums of money into Republican candidates who may be expected as quid pro quo to go along with their requests that immigration quotas be substantially increased or dropped entirely. Sponsors such as --you guessed it -- Rupert Murdoch who according to the propaganda from the party he gives millions to and those who believe it, isn't a Republican or an elitist. Then there are the Barons from Marriott, Texas Instruments, Hilton, and Intel and many, many, others who want to bring in more immigrants too. Some might be persuaded by the fact that they're universally Republicans who donate to the GOP and to their think tanks and own propaganda outlets for Republican viewpoints that they are Republicans. Welcome to America. Here we do not address such things as facts -- we take polls and the polls, even when they contradict each other tell us Rupert Murdoch is not a Republican or an elitist.

To be sure and to try to keep in touch with sanity as much as possible, I have to say that Republicans differ on the issue of quotas and there is resistance in those quarters to the idea of increasing them. Both skilled and unskilled workers in sufficient quantity will depress wages and more surely because the idea of a minimum wage is also under attack from the same parties that want to open the gates further. Owning all the money and wanting much more at the expense of the struggling classes hardly makes them elitists though, nor is it class warfare -- not if the polls say otherwise.

I guess that favoring the welfare of the corporations at the expense of workers isn't considered elitist any more, while advocating a decent minimum wage is, but that being true, the word becomes awfully hard to define unless those tiny curled up dimensions mathematicians like Calabi and Yao assure us probably exist, come into play here. Reality is a very complex thing. After all if a particle can be both wave and solid and if as Dr. Feynman said, with a nod to Messrs. Bose, Einstein and Heisenberg, that photon has been everywhere in the universe along it's path from the sun to you, perhaps one can be an elitist regardless of one's position as long as one other disagrees with him. Then too, things are relative as Einstein proved, Jewish elite liberal that he was. If you skipped school like Ms. O'Donnell, it's probably just as much a myth as evolution and who is to say she's wrong? That would be elitist which is much worse than being right.

Certainly being for 'smaller government' means being in favor of more agencies and more employees and more interference with private matters and morals while covering it up with Orwellian equivalences. Wasn't a farleftliberal and potential antichrist president the only one to actually shrink government amidst overwhelming protest from the small government howler monkeys? By the way, if they evolved into Obamahaters, are they still doing it? I don't know for sure, perhaps Eisenhower did too, that lefty, but as Reagan and Cheney, amongst others, said: Debt doesn't matter and perhaps as has been demonstrated with photons, there is no unique history. Everyone's right, left, liberal, conservative and yes, elitist depending on your framework. The same goes for smart. Even the suggestion that the guy with Doctorates makes a better doctor than someone not quite qualified to be a Union plumber is elitist although the perception is that being elite themselves, the smartest guys in the room have the least credibility. ( are you getting all this, camera guy?) That makes everybody else the real smart people, doesn't it? People like Christine O'Donnell and Sarah Palin and the host of Tea Party "experts" on history, economics, paleontology and nearly any other discipline that is supplied by matriculating through a night at a Holiday Inn Express. They must be the real smarties because the polls say so.

In the history that seems apparent from my viewpoint, the people with the most and most expensive lobbyists and creative propagandists want more green cards issued and want to pay the lowest wages possible. I should probably state that the other way around because that's the way the vector of causation points, from my elitist point of view. One might be expected to think that the guys ( and most of them are guys) with the lion's share of the nation's wealth would be elitists and likely to view the "masses" as little more than customers to be milked and the labor they use as a commodity to be bought as cheaply as possible. One does know that they view having to pay more in taxes as a result of the privileges that allowed them the power to get so rich is Communism although Adam Smith advocated it and Marx did not. That doesn't make them elite though, since the less than scrupulously washed sign carriers out in the street who just had their taxes cut are demanding even lower levels for Mr. Marriott and Mr. Murdoch, so again, we can't really assign an absolute value or definition to the term, leaving it to be used ad libidum and as it appears in the vernacular, it simply means anyone you're jealous of. Republicans tend to be a jealous lot. They struggled for everything they have, you know, while others had it handed to them: lazy shiftless others - and elitists.

Of course this is a populist, mob motivated culture, isn't it? Polls determine what is true and truth is opinion -- even if the opinions of that mob correlate more heavily to the opinions they're required to have to expedite their oppression and build the wealth of Marriotts and Murdochs, friends to the common man. So if the mob believes that the Democrats are "elitist" by dint of having just as much money and perhaps a less tenuous connection with education, so it is. It's a relativistic world. It's a quantum world. the history and nature of what we call reality will always have been what it needs to have been to maximize power and wealth. If the Republicans win the presidency again, it will always have been some other way. The uprising of the oppressed masses will be both Marxist and Free Market fundamentalism, the underdog the elitist, the Czar and the peasant indistinguishable; hard and soft, yin and yang: it all blends together in some uncertain, cimmerian mist and quantum foam.

Eugenics Redux: Sloppy Research Again Masquerading As Significant

I just read the following headline which made me go, "WTF!" followed by additional expletives: Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids. Walter Schumm, a family studies professor at Kansas State University, has released a study proclaiming that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. His study appears to support the theory of right wing zealots that people can be taught to be gay.


I've done a great deal of research in my professional career, and I can tell you this, the questions that you ask have a direct correlation to the answers that you find. According to Schumm, he was looking for a connection between parenting and sexual orientation, "His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay. 'I'm trying to prove that it's not 100 percent genetic,' Schumm tells AOL News."


Schumm's research methodolgy consisted of reviewing other people's studies on gay parenting. In his meta-analysis of 10 such studies, Schumm extrapolated data that adult children of gay men and/or lesbians are statistically more likely to identify themselves as gay.


Whoop-di-do! This anecdotal evidence proves nothing except that children who grow up in a straight household may be far more reticent to self-identify as gay. In other words, a child who grows up in a home with two loving parents who are gay may feel more comfortable in acknowledging their own orientation. This so-called lighting bolt of insight is nothing more than the logical result of growing up in homes where sexual orientation is not a basis for disowning or ostracizing one's children.


Think about the number of people who are gay and stay in the closet for years, afraid of the reaction from their parents and other family members. That the adult children of gay parents are more likely to identify themselves as gay is not an indicator that sexual identity is determined by parenting; growing up in an accepting environment just means that you don't spend part of your life denying your authentic self.


I might actually read Schumm's study when it's released. I'd like to know if he addresses the conundrum that there have always been gay people. Who taught them how to be gay? What about gay children with straight parents? Did the straight indoctrination just not take?


This isn't research. This is a man who read a lot of books on gay parenting and then drew conclusions based on the answers collected by a variety of other studies. There is no control group, no methodology for isolating relevant data, or to account for variables because Schumm didn't interview any of the people on whose responses he bases his conclusions. Were the respondents in each of the ten different studies asked the identical questions, phrased in the same exact language, and under the same conditions? I doubt it; each of these studies produced its own independent report. Schumm just read them all.


Studies like this grab headlines. I find such studies to be the height of irresponsibility, feeding into the prejudice and hysteria of homophobia. Ultimately they are shown to be meaningless but the harm has already been done.


In the late 1960s and well into the 1970s, well credentialed researchers such as Arthur Jensen and William Shockley produced studies that proclaimed that intelligence was predetermined by genetics and that Black people were intellectually inferior to Whites. However, Jensen also concluded that Asians were intellectually superior to Whites. Although these studies were later largely discredited they still influenced policy makers in making decisions regarding public education.


Jensen and Shockley were not a one time anomaly. In 1994, Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray published a book in 1994 clearly directed at policy, just as Jensen and others had in the 1960s and 1970s,The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. Herrnstein and Murray posited among many theories about IQ that Blacks were genetically inclined to have lower IQs than Whites. They also advised that the government "stop encouraging" poor women to have babies and contaminating the gene pool. In 2007, James D. Watson, 79, co-discoverer of the DNA helix and winner of the 1962 Nobel Prize in medicine, told the Sunday Times of London that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."


Research can be used to support any position and its validity is only as good as the methodology of the researcher. The harm done by pseudo sociological research is like a tsunami; it hits the shore destroying everything in its path and then recedes but the damage it leaves behind is catastrophic. WTF were you thinking Mr. Schumm?

The Dino Voter's Brief and Simple Guide to This November's Elections

Reading the accounts of the Coming Electoral Apocalypse – or so the pundits are forecasting, if one takes them seriously – is an exercise in frustration for anyone who values basic rationality.

I can understand someone being a Republican born and raised and always voting that way by force of habit or perceived affinity of interest, but anyone who thinks handing over control of even part of the government to the Grand Old Pachyderm is going to restore equilibrium or "shake things up" fails to understand the nature of that particular elephant. It's sort of like handing over your ship to a passing crew of pirates because you're dissatisfied with the way your captain runs the boat.

I suspect that underlying the shake-em-up rationale is the notion that the Republicans know best how the economy works. Nothing could be more distant from the truth – as a general rule, THEY UNDERSTAND ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT HOW A SUSTAINABLE CAPITALIST ECONOMY WORKS, which you can see by the way most of them behave every time they gain a working majority in Congress. They act like pirates, slashing and hacking the tax base and raiding the public treasury for the benefit of their wealthiest backers before the dullards who voted them in start to catch on, however fleetingly, to what's happening. If the Republicans regain the House, I'll not trouble myself much with politics for the next few years because I think I've come across this script before, and it's just not worth hearing or watching.

So here's the simple-dino line: O Human Democrats, quit nattering and yammering, just vote. Vote, and thereby limit the damage Republicanist piracy can do -- for the umpteenth time -- to our country. Doesn't matter if you're dispirited or not entirely happy with the Dems, just do it.

An unbalanced truth

Seems like yesterday when criticizing George Bush was close enough to treason that the police would get involved. I remember people walking out of a Jon Lovitz stand-up routine when he made some mild crack about Bush's garbled English. I remember tirades on TV when Streisand aired her opinions of the president. I remember grumbling in the movie theater lobby after a showing of "W" about how "you shouldn't criticize a president like that." There were the Dixie Chicks, and there were the Radio bloviators out there bashing liberals as though freedom of speech were some Marxist plot. The word treason, the accusation of "emboldening" and giving aid and comfort to some amorphous enemy was given enough air time to warm the climate for real.

I remember audiences for Bush's town hall meetings being vetted to make sure flattering questions were the only ones asked. I remember protesters being herded into "free speech" zones behind barbed wire and miles from anywhere the President might be. I remember people being escorted from the premises by armed policemen simply because of a bumper sticker on the car they arrived in.

Many people persist in telling us that such things are common on "both sides" yet I do not remember anyone being escorted away from the current president for carrying signs advocating killing "his ugly wife and stupid children" nor for carrying guns. It's perhaps the most false of the false equivalences that constitute political dialogue today.

Of course if you want to tell me the courts share the blame, I'll agree. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of two Colorado residents who were excluded unwillingly from a speech by President Bush in 2005 because White House aides saw them arrive in a car with a bumper sticker that proclaimed: “No More Blood For Oil.”

Do we attribute this slap in the face for the First amendment to the Bush Police State? Certainly it wasn't the only one, but Bush is gone and the highest court seems to think we won't care that they don't care enough to hear the case.

So is it now that the freedom to have a bumper sticker on your car -- that is the freedom to criticize the government, to petition the government, to print your opinions for all to read can simply be washed away by a government that can't be bothered to listen to it? Stare decisis?

I don't know about you, but no matter how conservative, libertarian or just plain ornery you are, I don't see a way to pin this one on Obama or to try to pull a fast one with the "both sides do it so its not so bad" sidestep. If you agree that this kind of presidential power is inappropriate, you'll have to agree that getting away with it because the courts don't care is worse. So can we shut up about "liberal active courts" and recognize that this one at least has come down on the side of the police state and the Liberals had nothing to do with it?

So where's the anger? where's the admission that yes, we supported this administration and its policies and WE WERE WRONG!

Fox is Republican? That's crazy!

Well, there you have it. There is no center any more and objective reality is defined as a manifestation of insanity. Bill O'Reilly says people who think Fox News supports the Republican party are "Crazy left wing loons" because although the corporate owners are all Republicans, save those who are Saudi Royalists; because Fox stages rallies for the Tea Party, publicizes and and funds them along with Republican think tank and propaganda groups; Because Fox gives million dollar contributions to Republican candidates and nothing at all to others; because virtually all important employees there are lifelong Republicans, because much of the editorial staff have worked for Republican presidents and even such lefties as Karl Rove can and will be publicly browbeaten into supporting promising to support any and all Republican candidates including Christine O'Donnell -- only a loony would think they're Republicans. No, that's not the gutter, that's right down the center. No, that's not Thule Greenland, that's Paris. That's fair and balanced. Crazy as a Fox.

It's only another word for "you're in my way" in O'Reilly speak. So in response to President Clinton's mention that Fox's rhetoric was whipping Republicans into a "white heat" Balanced Bill replied with:

"What he's trying to do is demonize Fox as carrying the water for Republicans. That's a theme Democrats have been using for months."

Months? You sure are right on top of things Mr. O'Reilly. And of course if Democrats use it, it can't be true, because they're not fair and balanced like you: they guy whose obviously not a Republican. Demonize? Are Republicans horned and forked tongued demons then? Is that why you don't admit to it?

You're the guy that invented a story about Saginaw Michigan banning red and green because they were God hating Liberals at war with Christmas. That was five years longer ago than "months." Fox is the News Network that twisted a story about a small town using cumulative voting for village trustees into an Obama communist campaign to give extra votes to illegal aliens and disenfranchise white people.

Mr O'Reilly, you've excused every Republican action from starting a war under false pretenses, to torture, to warrantless spying, to libertine and deviate sexual excesses and called everyone who ever disagreed with your hyperbole a pin head, an idiot and insane. You're a Republican, you support Republicans exclusively and your network will punish anyone who deviates from utter devotion to any Republican candidate no matter how grotesquely unqualified. Why are you afraid to admit it?

You lie sir. You lie a lot. You're a radically extreme extremist with a total disregard for truth and Fox pays you a fortune to balance your farcical contradictions and concocted stories on your nose like a trained circus seal. You reported, the world has decided. You lie.

AN IMPULSIVE POST IN THE FACE OF OVERWHELMING TEMPTATION

Credit: Bill O'Reilly picture by preemiememe of the Democrats

Hat tip from AZRainman’s PhotoShop Satire

I return you to our regularly scheduled Captain Fogg Program.

New signs of the same old thing

I believe it was the Architect Frank Lloyd Wright who once griped that Florida, being the lowest part of the United States, everything loose had slid down into it, but whether he did or didn't, there are many unsavory things down here in America's bilges. Not that we're all that unique. One can turn over rocks anywhere and find the same sort of things that turn up in the Sunshine state, but here they're more likely not to bother hiding.

So I'm leaving the local car parts store yesterday, coming up empty handed in my search for a transmission shift cable bushing and right next door in the seedy strip mall containing a barbecue joint where the ancient, blackened smoker sits in the parking lot and a pawn shop in front of which a weathered 1950's pickup truck has been moldering since I moved here 9 years ago.

These times are good for the pawn shops and I happen to be a fan of History Channel's Pawn Stars featuring a shop in Las Vegas operated by some funny characters and stuffed with real treasures, so I decided to have a peek. I'd been there before. It was about 6 months after President Obama took office and the two men seated inside in front of a large screen TV where Fox News was raging away were declaring that that damned Commie in the White house had had 6 months to fix the economy and had failed miserably. Little has changed, except for the worse. Same two men, same TV, same dark, gloomy, mildewed interior filled with the seedy detritus of sad lives and one hell of a lot of guns. Same suspicious glower. All that was new was a sign saying "I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." underneath which was the name Barack Hussein Obama - "from his book Audacity of Hope."

There's been a rash of newspaper comments about such things appearing in stores all over town and of course, that quote is gross misinterpretation of what the book really said.* Other stores have offended customers with entirely fictitious quotes by the First Lady. The real quote of course showed his promise of support for American citizens if such things as the internment of Japanese-American citizens should happen again.

I have to admit that the sheer firepower displayed there made me decide to vote with my feet and not shoot my mouth off and I simply left. But of course, to the devotees of the Obamahate religion, such heresy as any bit of truth I might have offered would not have been well received or credited. What's the use? No newspaper editorials debunking this disgusting garbage are effective, since newspapers are "Liberal" as we all know. The religious symbols of Obamahate are becoming as widespread as those chrome fish and other religious declarations scrawled on Mom's dump truck. It's not new, it's just a new sign in the old pawn shop.

Of course they can't find enough real criticism, even though there is plenty. That would require more in terms of intelligence and education than they possess -- nor can they simply say what they really mean, thanks to what they call "political correctness" which to me, is a cynical name for common decency: decency, at least as it relates to the cult of nativist and racist bigotry, being a Liberal affectation rather than a virtue. So they make up stories about the president. Easier than discussing the likelihood that TARP 'spending' will prove to be a net gain or whether financing a war on the prospect that a disproved scheme will generate sufficient revenue. Call him a Kenyan tribesman, a somehow Communist Muslim fanatic. Call his wife a gorilla. Safer than using the N word and revealing what you really are.


*They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction."

Does The Middle Still Matter?

I actually wrote this blog post below when I was home in the US over the summer and fully exposed to American politics. Keep in mind that prior to that, it had been a good 2 years since I was fully immersed in the wonderfully chaotic intenseness that is the American political system. Now after being back in Europe for a couple of months (while continuing to follow the next round of elections...we always seem to be voting in America), I'm wondering if what I wrote a few months ago still holds true: does the middle still matter? For the sake of America, I certainly hope so. Original post below:

My political beliefs are a bit of a hodgepodge. In general, I’m a middle-of-the-road person, not terribly prone to extremes on either side of the political spectrum. Since I find that most political issues are too nuanced to simply come down hard as a righty or a lefty, I generally tend to reside somewhere in the middle and normally refer to myself as a moderate (not a “fence straddle” as one of my friends put it). There are of course several exceptions to my moderate views (I have both liberal and conservative tendencies…just ask me my views on abortion or fiscal responsibility if you want to see how I make the conservative and the liberal peacefully co-exist in my mind), but for the most part I’m firmly in the middle. Which, for me is an awesome and interesting place to be.

As Congressional races heat up and the claws come out, I’m starting to wonder if my old political mantra still rings true. What is my political mantra you ask? The middle matters. In my rather limited time as a voting adult (10 years and counting baby!), I can’t think of too many political campaigns (with the notable exception of some local GA races) where appealing exclusively to one’s hard right or hard left (or hard Libertarian/Green/Independent) base actually resulted in a victory. Sure politicians need to secure their party base. And if you happen to live in a congressional district that has a sh*t ton of folks from you’re party’s base, then you’re golden.

But let’s consider for a second something a bit large, such as a national political contest. Let's say Sarah Palin, for example, decides to run for president (*shudder*). Sure she’s very popular with her hard right conservative base. But that doesn’t mean jack sh*t. Those numbers aren’t enough to get a majority of the votes (I hope). And the hard lefties wouldn’t vote for her regardless of what she says or does. She would need to be able to convince those moderates like myself that she wouldn’t bring about one of the following: World War III and/or Armageddon/the Apocalypse. Frankly I’m not convinced she wouldn’t. Joking, joking (not really).

The same rings true for President Obama when he runs for re-election. His hardcore supporters will vote for him regardless (I mean unless he does something like turn into the second coming of Ronald Reagan and even then I'm pretty sure I can find some liberals who would vote for him). Those vehemently opposed to him (I’m looking at you Tea Party and Take Back America crowds) wouldn’t vote for him anyway (even if he out-Reaganed Reagan). So where would he pick up the needed votes? In the middle with us moderates (and I’ll go ahead and throw the undecided in there as well).

The same basic principle applies to the upcoming Congressional elections as well. Sure Rand Paul and Christine O'Donnell managed to win their respective primaries with their base of Libertarian and/or Tea Party supporters. But that alone won't necessarily be enough to carry them through the doors of Congress. They need to convince us pesky fence-straddlers moderates that they're up to the job.

But now I fear that with a crappy economy, a crappy housing market and pissed off people looking for an easy target to scapegoat blame that the middle, as so often happens during political campaigns, will be ignored…at least by the mainstream media. Too often the focus is on the more diehard left/right voters. Rarely will you hear a sound bite from moderate, middle-of-the-road voters. Instead he who can shout the loudest with the most extreme viewpoint is more likely to get airtime (and in the case of political pundits, get paid handsomely for it). Perhaps it’s more entertaining to watch polar opposites argue on political points that they’ll never agree on. But for me, I’d prefer to see some moderates have an honest discussion on the nuances of government policy and do something radical...like come to a compromise and resolve it. But I suspect Glenn Beck will retire his blackboard and stop crying on cue air while renouncing his fanboy devotion to Sarah Palin while voting for Obama before that happens.

Thoughts?

P.S. For my fellow Americans abroad: don't forget to request your absentee ballot for the upcoming elections. Don't know how? Well click this link...unless you plan on voting for a Tea Party candidate...I kid, I kid. No but seriously, don't click that link if you're going to squander your vote on the Tea Party.

P.P.S. Before I get any comments accusing me of "not getting" the Tea Party/Take Back America crowds or being a mindless liberal/progressive/communist/socialist/nazi/facist (actually, if you accuse me of the latter, you clearly weren't paying attention to the blog post...but I digress), trust me when I say I've done my homework on both. Don't believe me? Check out the following posts:
An Open Letter to Tea Parties/Anti-Big Government Crowd
Random Musing on Tea Parties
Taking Back America
Tea Party! An(other) Open Letter


Cross-posted from American Black Chick in Europe.

Scare Factor

It's been many decades since I read Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi, but I remember his description of the man up in the bow of the riverboat measuring the depth with a lead line. When the line wasn't long enough to reach down to the river bed, he'd call out "nooooo bottom!"

I could hear that call yesterday when I read about the latest from Sharron Angle and David Vitter's campaign ads fincluding a picture of a trio of Mexican men used to imply that if their opponents were elected, these scary, swarthy, hostile and decidedly non-Aryan aliens would be sneaking about your back yard leering at the womenfolk, giving Marijuana to your toddlers forcing you to pay them social security benefits our of your contributions and spreading leprosy. The oldest of ploys, really and I'm trying like hell not to invoke that jerk Godwin and his damned laws, but of course everyone uses it from biblical prophets to today's iteration of the 19th century Know-Nothing party.

That the picture of three Mexican farmers taken in the far south of Mexico -- that's Mexico, not New Mexico -- and back during the Bush administration, may have been illegally used and do not actually portray aliens, illegal or otherwise, means nothing to these candidates or their supporters since anything they do in the name of the cause, even if they have no idea what that is, is justified. That is, of course, the very policy they attribute to Islamic terrorists, but never mind, only liberals would make an issue of it, you know. Liberals ( and that means anyone who opposes them) are "soft on illegals," love illegals, want more illegals and want to pay them Social Security benefits ( says the ad) and that makes Lou Dobbs a liberal along with that arch liberal George W. Bush who even speaks a few words of Mexican or whatever scary and incomprehensible-to-regular-folk language it is they speak down there. Of course that claim is as misleading as the photograph filched from the Getty Archives, but my experience proves that teabag zealots would rather pass along any lie than bother to check the facts.

There's no bottom to this muddy river. There never has been for any extended time in our history. The dream of a country run by white Protestant, preferably Anglo-Saxon males with guns (God and Guts) and their subservient families is still strong and apparently well armed. It's rapidly becoming a smaller minority and that of course only makes it an angrier bunch of dreamers with an ever greater number of unscrupulous opportunists and yes, idiots and the logically impaired. Few of them are smart enough to understand that their increasingly irresponsible extremism, the incompetent, morally unscrupulous tribe of candidates they support, harms the ability of rational conservatives -- and yes, liberals and even Libertarians -- to control the immigration rate, deal with the undocumented in a decent, American way and most of all to end the support they have from American industry as well as individual hypocrites like Dobbs and Whitman.

At first glance, it may appear that with the rise of the neo-Know Nothings, Liberal principles are under renewed assault once again -- and they are, but the real danger, in my opinion, is the death of principled conservatism and a dedication to efficient, honest government rather than one that looks good in theory but fails every test.

I have a certain amount of faith that the public will recognize the danger of the Christine O'Donnels and the Sharron Angles, the Pallidino's, DeMints and Vitters, but I have far less faith that we'll ever be able to survive the ability of Global corporations to steer us in any way they want, particularly since they are so good at keeping us fighting ourselves that we don't notice.

Steve Pearce - Mindless GOP Zombie

OK, so I've spent a lot of my time here in New Mexico ignoring Steve Pearce. I know the name, but he's been in the Second Congressional District for all my time here (Albuquerque, after all, is in the more resplendent First Congressional District, so I don't really have to pay attention to him).

(See, it's true - we Democrats are elitist. We can't help it. It's in our nature: we want the "elite" - the smartest, best and kindest - to be in charge. Why is that bad?)

Most of what I knew about Steve Pearce was that he was a featureless Republican rubber stamp, with no real personality and limited reason to exist. A wholly-owned subsidiary of the oil companies. A faceless, balding cipher who never had an original thought that wasn't given to him by Turdblossom and Associates.

Articles stolen from the Heritage Foundation were printed under Pearce's byline in small newspapers across New Mexico back in 2005. (His press secretary took the fall for him, so A+ for loyalty, but a big F for, you know, honesty and the like...)

He really only had one accomplishment to justify his existence. When the execrable Heather Wilson decided to give up her seat in the House of Representatives and try to jump into the Senate, Pearce kicked her butt, and then had the good grace to be defeated by Tom Udall (D-NM).

He's been endorsed by Sarah Palin, which might just be the kiss of death for him. Of course, with that nomination comes the requirement, apparently, to say blatantly ignorant crap, like refusing to admit that Obama is an American citizen.



If you're in a hurry, the lady's meds are wearing off, and she rambles on for the first 90 seconds of the video, trying to sound rational as she asks "Isn't the world about to end because we elected a Black Foreigner to a White House?" At about the 1:31 mark, Pearce tries to sound rational with "Barack Obama raised the most significant issues himself," and repeats the debunked lie that Obama traveled to Pakistan when it was illegal for Americans to be there.

Sorry, Stevie. No such ban ever existed, but the fact that you think there was... Well, a good Birther isn't willing to give up on a lie just because reality is rude enough to disagree, right?

If things follow their usual course with Stevie, he should be saying that Obama is a Muslim who pals around with terrorists next. He's a good follower; he'll say whatever he's told to say.

But that's not the only lie he wants to push forward. You wander around his website, and you find this page, where Stevie, or his Campaign Plagiarism Manager, writes:

Christians are just sick and tired of turning the other cheek while our courts strip us of all our rights. Our parents and grandparents taught us to pray before eating, to pray before we go to sleep. Our Bible tells us to pray without ceasing. Now a handful of people and their lawyers are telling us to cease praying.

God, help us. And if that last sentence offends you, well, just sue me.

The silent majority has been silent too long. It's time we tell that one or two who scream loud enough to be heard that the vast majority doesn't care what they want. It is time that the majority rules! It's time we tell them, "You don't have to pray; you don't have to say the Pledge of Allegiance; you don't have to believe in God or attend services that honour Him. That is your right, and we will honour your right; but by golly, you are no longer going to take our rights away. We are fighting back, and we WILL WIN!"

Sorry, Stevie, that's another lie. Nobody is trying to "take (y)our rights away." You just don't get to pay for it with the government's money.

I mean, I could be snide and point out that the vast majority of America used to have no problem with enslaving blacks, either. Instead... well, since you brought up what the Bible says about prayer, how come your mindless ilk can never seem to remember what else it said?

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:5-6)

Yeah, sorry, Stevie. That's Jesus that just called you a hypocrite, not me.

Oh, and you know that six years in the House of Representatives? Just think of it as your reward. We're done with you now.

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!"

Sane Enough to Know I'm Not: Depression

Please link to ParsleysPics (HERE) if you are interested in reading this installment. This has turned out to be a much larger - and longer - series than I had anticipated and I'm not comfortable hogging all the space on The Swash Zone. Thanks.

The Angle of reflection

A significant part of the Republican "message" has been that our secular laws derive from a largely mythical "Judeo-Christian" system of values. Yes, the adage about strange bedfellows is true, but politics and religion, being in bed together, tend to spawn strange offspring and to dress them up as reason and decency.

Of course it's true that a great number of our laws do reflect religious prohibitions, biases and attitudes and those laws often criminalize behavior that involves no harm to people or property and interferes with personal liberty, but those taboos seem to be shared by a great number of cultures which adhere to religions from Animism to Confucianism. There's little that's unique about our alleged Christian values and from the start, many of those values were at odds with our independence and our freedom. Yes, it's hard to think of a religion of any kind that has no rules of behavior but we're talking about Americans -- the people at the center of the universe who don't really think much about thinking or the necessity of reason.

So when we pass laws forbidding dancing on Friday, the observation or rejection of Christmas, the reading of certain books: when we make laws concerning who may live together, have sex together and in what way, we have illustrations of religious law intruding into secular life in America. Such things are slowly eroding and always changing, of course, but the prospect of a group that has always composed a small minority in the US: The Muslims, supporting certain religious rules within their own congregations and amongst their adherents, seems to have all the bells in the national belfry ringing in discord.

Islamic religious law, says Sharon Angle, is "taking hold" in some American cities and that's a "militant terrorist situation." No, really. I suppose it's wildly different in a terrorist sort of way for Jews to forbid Pork and Lobster or cheeseburgers or to require prayer at certain times and even to mandate beards or distinctive clothing. I suppose it's not the same thing for Catholics to forbid divorce and require celibacy of certain people and distinctive clothing for the clergy. The special Mormon underwear? Prohibitions against alcohol and coffee? Is the Church of Latter Day Saints "taking over" Utah and the constitution taken to the shredder? No, there's no militant terrorist situation there. Is there really a chance that the constitution will be supplanted by the Amish Ordnung even if an area has a majority of that peaceful faith? So why are we afraid and what are we really afraid of? Why does Sharon Angle say:

"It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States?"

Well, of course we wouldn't pay any attention to such a person as she if she weren't outrageous, but if we were a nation that could notice that these religious rules are in no respect taking hold of municipal governments and in fact are optional personal choices in a nation that allows us to make such choices freely, perhaps Sharon Angle would be all alone in some little room raving at the walls and not on national TV farting out her fallacies, misrepresentations and hysterical lies -- and God help us, running for the US Senate. Sure there would be something fundamentally wrong, but more certainly: it isn't happening here. Religion, say the courts, gives no license to break the law whether that faith demands we strangle a wayward daughter or drag a gay man behind a pickup truck or poison our congregation with cyanide.

The key word here is "Foreign." Although virtually all our religions are imported and many religious groups immigrated simply so that they could have communities with their own religious rules, Angle wants to reinforce the chauvinism of a certain kind of self-styled Christian who would be quite happy with a massively powerful government intent on substituting their own 'Christian' restrictions for our secular constitution. She is, most ironically, the best example of what she wants us to fear. Muslims and certain other people will always be "foreign" and most of us will never pause to reflect upon the horrible consequences that xenophobic, nationalistic bit of European bigotry had in the last century.

But we're not a nation of critical thinkers; at least not enough of us to give reason or even common decency a fighting chance. Bigotry, our real national religion, forbids it after all and we make demons out of people who don't want to participate or worst of all, don't want any religion forced on them.

Angle would like to pass on her contagious nightmare and indeed I know too many people who share it and who will refuse to be persuaded that even if we someday have an Ayatollah of Texas, he's not going to be able to use force to punish reprobates and infidels or have any more secular authority than an Archbishop or TV evangelist. They refuse to remember when Roman Catholics were a "foreign" religion to be feared for inquisitions and foreign rule over Americans. Somehow that "hopey-changey" thing did work our fairly well for them and for the many others who have had to contend with the Know-Nothing nativists and the Sharon Angles of their day.

What's in your wallet?

The prospect of foreclosure is frightening enough to the many people who are having trouble making mortgage payments and who fear losing their homes. It's frightening enough without the prospect of strange men crashing through the back door in the middle of the night.

Even worse for some people here in The Sunshine State, folks who are simply a bit behind in payments but who are not in foreclosure have been treated to a surprise breaking and entering by representatives of one of those banks that love to advertise how they're on your side. Listen to the 911 call from one frightened woman and put yourself in her position and ask yourself what you would do if the man in black kicked in your door. I certainly know what I would do and what the law allows me to do to a possibly armed unannounced midnight caller. It would involve more than an angry letter to J.P. Morgan.

The hired thugs of our friendly banking industry have done worse than frightening people half to death in a way Pauly Walnuts could only envy. There are stories of home invasions at wrong addresses and one Jason Grodensky from nearby Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with the good fortune to have no mortgage at all had his house foreclosed on by Bank of America. What's in your wallet?

The publicity has been bad enough that major banks are curtailing foreclosure viking raids or freezing foreclosures entirely for the moment. Nancy Pelosi and some 30 Democrats in the house are calling for an investigation in their typically socialist way and Attorney General Eric Holder has announced he will be looking into it. Bloomberg News reports that some 7 states are investigating charges that false documents and signatures have been used to justify hundreds of thousands of possible fraudulent foreclosures and their attendant Viking raids against surprised and terrified homeowners.

So it's all going to be taken care of right? The Democrats are on the side of the people and against those huge, ugly hordes of corporate Visigoths and their paper battering rams, right? They control the Senate and the House and they'd never let the Republicans rubber stamp the right of Corporate Huns to lie, cheat and bypass every code of human decency since the Code of Hammurabi and the Proclamation of Telepinu -- right?

Don't be too sure, because a bill that may do just that now sits on President Obama's desk that somehow oozed through our lefty, anti-business, death-to-Capitalism Congress. Stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democratic Senator Robert Casey used some obscure procedure to take the bill away from the Senate Judiciary committee and the Senate then immediately passed it without debate and by unanimous consent. There was no one in the gallery to sing Whose side are you on.