Saturday, December 31, 2011

A Massachusetts Yankee in King Crazy's Court

A NYT story on the ground game in Iowa offers this bit of fun regarding Mitt Romney's delicate mission trying to appeal to the crazy without looking like he's in bed with it.


Of course, enough of the batshit crazy Rethuglican voters will realize that they need someone who is careful not to look like he's catering to the people he's catering to, and Romney will wind up the nominee. The big question at this particular moment is whether enough of those batshitters will get him out of Iowa with decent showing.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Ron Paul, Mr. Inconsistency



Wednesday, December 07, 2011

The Big Fib Newton

Three will get you seven (roughly) at Intrade right now if Newton Leroy Gingrich becomes the Republican nominee for President. Looks like a good bet. He's up to a 55% chance in Iowa ($5.50 gets you 4.50). Also a good bet, but one never knows with a caucus, as Ron Paul has a great ground game going in Iowa (where his claim that not forcing women to give birth is the biggest problem facing America can actually get some traction). But looking ahead to South Carolina (Newton at 60% at Intrade) and Florida (42% chance), both states where Newton Leroy is polling well, it's beginning to look like it's Newt's to lose.

Ever since Obama got elected, I've hoped that the crowd that the GOP would throw at the nomination would damage the GOP brand beyond recognition. I never expected to have a Bachman/Trump/Perry/Cain/Gingrich fail parade like this. Especially not one with 14,000 Obama commercials GOP debates. And now to have a serial adulterer/liar/fat cat/giant ego/elitist/racist/grifter as the actual nominee seems like a gift from the Gods (he says, clutching the coke bottle and looking to the skies).

I've been convinced for quite a while now that the media's incessant talk about Obama's supposed vulnerability was just ratings baiting. The weakness of the GOP field is a testament to what they see as a formidable opponent Obama is. But that weakness is also a testament to the fact that the GOP is quickly becoming a rump party. The vicious cycle that eats itself as the party attains rump status has begun now that the loons are falling for Newton's Big Fib (that he can beat Obama), and the damage to their brand increases with every word out of the former Speaker's mouth.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Small Business Saturday

The Nectar Hills Farm Store in Cherry Valley, NY

If you've recovered from being pepper sprayed, shot, stampeded, trampled, corralled, gouged, or head-butted at the hands of cops or fellow shoppers, we suggest you take a little time to patronize a small business today--Small Business Saturday.

Despite the crap you hear from Republicans about uncertainty and too many regulations being the reason businesses aren't doing too well in this post-George-Bush world, small business owners are overwhelmingly saying that it is lack of customers that is hurting their businesses.

So get out there and buy something from a small business. And try to make it a regular thing, would you? Small businesses will not succeed without customers, and Wal Mart and China could spare a few.

If you're up here in Central New York, our little village of Cherry Valley is full of small businesses that could use some help, like the Nectar Hills Farm StoreGoldpetals Natural Body Care products, or the Rose and Kettle restaurant.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

What Job and How Much?

To this:


I say Newt's living in the past with his hippie punching.

What job and how much?

Friday, November 11, 2011

Can Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party Get Along?

My old buddy Mort Mather is a great organic gardener and we usually almost always agree on politics, but in his recent post he wonders whether the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement could get along and agree on a few things. I doubt it.
Example: A constitutional amendment putting some limits on congress is a possibility that both TP and OWS people could support.
I'm afraid Mort would have to be a lot more specific on what limits to put on congress. Later in the post, he suggests that term limits might be one such point of agreement. I doubt that because many liberals, like me, don't like term limits. If I managed to get someone I like in congress, who I think does a good job, then why in the hell would I agree to some Teabagger demand that that person be automatically disqualified after a certain amount of time. If I had Sherrod Brown as my Senator, or Bernie Sanders, or Al Franken, why would I want to give that up? Well, I wouldn't.

Mort also suggests that we take Warren Buffet's advice on the budget, and "... pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election." Well, if I was a teabagger with Ron Paul as my representative, why would I want to replace him because a bunch of other freewheeleers were spending money like drunken sailors (cough, George Bush). But my big problem with this one is that as a progressive, I would actually like to see a bigger budget deficit right now.

The federal government can currently borrow money at negative interest rates. Rich people are practically begging the government to take their money and invest it in infrastructure and people. It would actually be cheaper to do it now, borrowing at negative interest, than to do it later with tax dollars. Thousands of construction workers are out of work, and materials for infrastructure are really cheap right now. And yet, because the right wing has dominated economic and monetary policy debates since Reagan, we are all talking about reducing the deficit. Despite the fact that conservatives cannot show us one example of austerity pulling a nation out of a recession, that's where we are.

I'm reading The End of Loser Liberalism by Dean Baker right now. It's an eye opening experience to learn that because of the way Fed directors are appointed, the central bank is essentially run by a bunch of bankers who want to protect rich people's money. They do this by ignoring their dual mandate to keep inflation and unemployment low. They only care about inflation. Right now we have 2% inflation and 9% unemployment, and the Fed is fiddling around with little quantitative easing programs that won't make much difference, despite the howling lies from the right that they're going to create runaway inflation. If inflation expectations of bond traders was high, they wouldn't be buying bonds at extremely low interest rates. If inflation was 9% and unemployment was at 2%, the fed would be slamming on the breaks by raising rates. So why aren't they pushing on the gas now?

Baker mentions plenty of other things liberals could demand that would help us out, but none of his ideas are anything the Tea Party would be interested in. For example, the Treasury Department could take steps to lower the value of the dollar.  A weaker dollar would make our products cheaper overseas and would lead to the creation of millions of good manufacturing jobs here in America. But a lower dollar would make imports more expensive and rich people hate that idea because they'd have to pay more for their imported cars and European vacations. And Tea Party types would see the price of cheap crap from China go up at the Wal Mart.

Well, because they're run by bankers who have convinced people like the Tea Party (mostly well-off white people) that inflation, not unemployment, is their enemy. And now, thanks to people like Dean Baker, the left is starting to learn that these bankers are not interested in helping the vast majority of Americans who's incomes stopped going up with their productivity, starting when Ronald Reagan won the Presidency.

Ultimately, the reason the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement won't work together is that they agree on basically nothing. The Tea Party is mostly an astroturfed group of well-off white people who are extremely religious, want to force women to have their rapists babies, don't believe in global warming or evolution, and who think corporations suffer from the weight of too many restrictive regulations (like not polluting the air and water). They want to eliminate the EPA, and the Education Department, and the Department of Energy. In short, they're just Republicans too embarrassed after 8 years of George Bush to admit that they're Republicans.  The Occupy Movement wants government to work for the people and not corporations.

Hell, even on the subject of getting money out of politics, the two sides couldn't be further apart. The Tea Party is run by the junction of corporate money and politics, while the Occupy Movement is all about ending that junction. So, sorry Mort. While, as usual, your heart's in the right place, I won't hold my breath for any kind of agreement between the Teabaggers and the Occupiers. But I will give you one small, shining ray of hope. Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul have a bill to audit the Fed. While Paul would like to get rid of the Fed altogether, and Sanders would rather see it follow the dual mandate and help the unemployed, they at least both agree that we should be looking into what they've been doing in secret. And that, at least, is a start.

Friday, November 04, 2011

More BS That Distracts Us From the Slow-motion Global Disaster Happening Right in Front of Us

My old friend Blaise sent me a link to a site of dubious origins, which usually means he wants me to debunk it. This time (I won't link but it's easy to find) it's "NASA Upgrades Solar Storm Warning - Learn How to Prepare."

My first problem with this is that the first mention of the "Award winning astrophysicist Alexia Demetria" there is no link or mention of what award. Then, his name is spelled "Alexei Dmitriev" near the bottom.  That spelling brings up an IMDB result: Short films...

The next closest thing I can find for that last spelling is a hockey player.

I find a lot of other results on that search that are parrots of the site you sent me. Nothing points me to an award winning astrophysicist with a name anything like that.

Snopes has nothing. So, I searched NASA, since all the sites talking about this either claim that NASA has put out a warning, or that NASA is hiding this (that dichotomy alone tells me something's up), and whadya know, nothing at all from NASA. So, either the guys saying NASA is hiding this are right, or, it's all bunk. Also, note that they want you to download the survival guide, which probably has all kinds of good stuff to purchase, like gold and freeze-dried food, a kind of Glenn Beck vision of the future.

What I do find interesting, though, is that if you go to NASA's home page, you'll find that the first item in their slide show right now is this: NASA Airborne Mission Maps Remote, Deteriorating Glaciers.

A slow-motion disaster of global proportions happening right before our eyes while Republicans want to force women to have their rapists' babies and eliminate the EPA.

I agree that we should all learn to prepare for a world with major problems and governments less likely to be able to do anything about it. I read Global Guerrillas, by John Robb.

He talks a lot about Resilient communities, which are the way to go on general principal anyway (more environmentally correct). He recently turned me onto this cool project, the Global Village Construction Set, to which we donated $8.

That kind of thing will be very important in the future.

The older I get the more I realize that one thing is extremely true: a few assholes really screw it up for the rest of us.

Whenever I hear anyone saying how it's a shame that we're so polarized, and that it's both sides fault, like Tom Brokaw's been going around saying while promoting his new book, I just want to point out to them that it's not both side's fault. One side is screwing it up for all of us. Most of our problems come from Republicans and rich people wanting to get richer. The FED could be flooding the country with money, allowing more inflation to get unemployment down, but rich people hate inflation. The Treasury Department could take action to lower the value of the dollar in the world, but rich people hate a cheap dollar because it makes their imported cars and European vacations more expensive. But a lower dollar would boost exports and put Americans to work in good jobs. The president has been trying to get a jobs bill passed that even conservative economists say would help, but Republicans would rather trash the economy and keep Americans out of work than hand the president a victory that might lead to his re-election.

Then I hear Very Serious People say we should stop fighting with each other and get along, be less partisan, and I wish I could be there to say to them: we have some very real differences in this country. For example, a very large and angry (and often violent bunch of people ) want to force women have their rapists' babies. This isn't me being partisan. This is fact. Next week in Mississippi, they're going to vote in a personhood amendment that will say a fertilized egg is a person. These same fanatics vote for Republicans who do their damndest, while people need jobs, to make it impossible for a woman to get an abortion in this country. Now, how do you propose we hold hands and get along with people like that?

Further, when I watched Enron, or Iraq, or the latest Disaster Capitalism in action (a bunch of crooks packaging crap loans and saying they were candy) I watch people get ruined, jobs lost (750,000 a month during the last months of Bush), A GDP contraction of NEGATIVE 8.9% in 4Q2008, all that and then someone says we should all just get along. Well, sure. If you're the people who got us into Iraq, let a thousand people drown in Katrina, or ignored warnings about Bin Laden being determined to attack the US, who want to deny gay people the right to marry, or continue with 50 million people not getting health care, or force women to have rape babies, well, sure, you'd want to hold hands with the liberals and "all get along" now wouldn't you?

And when those same forces would rather tank the economy than let Obama have another term, I think it's a crock to say we need to get rid of political parties. What we need is more and better Democrats. The parties represent people with actual views. The Republicans have made it quite clear what their views are. They want more war, less taxes, no safety net, no abortion, health care only for those who can afford it, and a 1% that has more wealth than they could ever need telling us the country is broke.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

No Apologies

 “I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank. “ - Barack Obama Campaign Promise – October 27, 2007

While arguing about the Iraq war during the Bush lies that led up to it, I was attacked, almost run over, sucker punched, ridiculed, and slandered by people that really hated me for my position. Even people supposedly close to me said things like I'd be toast if I were to mouth off against the president in "some other countries." I always thought this was a kind of threat, and that the person who said it really wished that we lived in one of those "other countries" so people like me could be made to shut the hell up.

Well, now the big military adventure in Mesopotamia is over, and we're trillions of dollars poorer for it. And I still haven't heard an apology from the people who treated me like shit over this. And you know what? I don't really expect one. Because I know that I'm talking about people who think that anyone who thinks the middle class gets screwed in this country is a Marxist. And I know at least one of those people openly derides the "Arab Spring" because Arabs are dogs incapable of bringing democracy to themselves, so bringing it by gun is, supposedly, just fine, even if it does cost thousands of US lives and trillions of dollars. And I know at least one of these people has rich parents, so all he's worried about is the estate tax, although I'm sure punching hippies works for him as a side-line. Maybe there's some racism in there--some new found love for the well-debunked The Bell Curve.  And I know the rest of them simply don't want to admit I was right because, by-God, that would mean they were wrong about something.

Now you've all had a chance to admit you were wrong and apologize. Instead, you're out there spreading BS about Obama, lying about the economy, deriding the OWS protesters, and protecting the very captains of industry that got us into this mess. In the end, even though some of these people who said I would be toast are pro-choice, they'd apparently rather force women to give birth to their rapists' babies than vote to raise the income tax on millionaires.

Well, at least these Marxist Kenyan anti-colonialist socialist dirty fucking hippies have the right idea. George W Bush lied us into war, put foxes in charge of hen houses, and ran the world economy into the ground. And now you fucking losers want to blame Obama for the mess you created. And you know what? If there really was some justice in this world, you and all the rest of you Bush apologists would be toast.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Best Elements in the Country Are Not on the Right

"We are free today substantially but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nation to the changed conditions." -- James Madison, quoted by George Seldes in The Great Quotations: The Wit and Wisdom of the Ages.
George Seldes was the uncle of my friend Marian Seldes, the great actress. He was a journalist whose early work on the dangers of tobacco were suppressed by the tobacco industry. His political newsletter, In Fact, went after many powerful interests, especially the National Association of Manufacturers. This is from his wikipedia page:
Among the favorite targets of In Fact was the National Association of Manufacturers. Defense analyst Daniel Ellsberg, who subscribed to In Fact while an undergrad at Harvard, said, "I heard about the National Association of Manufacturers first from Seldes and more from Seldes than I ever heard again. If you were to read the mainstream press, you'd hardly become aware that such organizations existed, that businessmen worked together to pursue their own interests." In fact [sic] also attacked Charles Lindbergh for his Nazi sympathies, the American Legion for helping to break strikes, and labeled many captains of industry as "native fascists." Consumer advocate Ralph Nader said, "[Seldes] used the word fascism to reflect an authoritarian state of mind that tended to stifle free speech and dissent and also tended to believe that might was right."
Whenever I hear wingnuts saying that liberals are the real fascists, I think back to Seldes's day, when people really understood what fascism meant. As someone who was assaulted by Bush supporters many times because I dared to say that we had been lied into war in Iraq, I'm damn sure that it's not the left trying to stifle free speech and dissent. I was called a traitor by people I'd known for a long time because I wouldn't get on the bomb-Muslims bandwagon.

And now, those same people who were so wrong about Iraq, and about Bush's tax cuts to the rich creating jobs, or deregulation creating jobs, or lax oversight from Federal Agencies (foxes guarding hen houses) creating jobs, those same people are belittling Occupy Wall Street. Those same people are spewing supply-side crap about the lowest taxes in 60 years being too high, about Obama causing all the debt that was really caused by Bush, about regulations being the reason rich people won't spend all the money they're sitting on, and I'm just glad that George Seldes isn't here, because I'm afraid his head would explode if he was.

Seldes was, of course, called a communist because he dared to stand up against the rich and powerful (because to the right, there is no middle, you're either with them or you're a commie). He was a gadfly and a muckraker, something we could sure use more of today. Of course, there are some respected media critics in today's world who follow in Seldes footsteps, like Dean Baker. It's just that no one reads them, which, of course, was a problem for Seldes too. The big difference, of course, is that for Seldes, it was actual censorship and Joe McCarthy that stopped people from hearing what he had to say. Today, you can read Dean Baker's Beat the Press any time you want.
"A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press." -- George Seldes
But you can't just have a free press. You have to pay attention. When someone tells you that both sides are the same, that Obama is creating as much of a mess as George Bush, don't hit them like they would you. Just point them towards the truth. And keep reading it yourself.

h/t Rick Unger

Friday, September 23, 2011

If I Were a Rich Man

The rent is too damn high.


If the market is so damn efficient, then why isn't some wealthy REIT-type company buying up all these cheap, foreclosed houses, fixing them up, hiring superintendents to maintain them, and renting them? They could lock in very low long-term interest rates on mortgages, immediately start making profit, and have a long-term land speculation investment to boot.

I guess if the invisible hand of the market is really God, as Republicans seem to think, then God doesn't want people to have affordable housing.

Monday, August 22, 2011

The Democratic Nominee in 2016?

Maybe Jon Huntsman is running for the 2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination?

Seriously, where else is a "sane" Republican going to go?

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Sitting Out an Election Should Never Be an Option

I might have missed a couple of school board elections, but for the most part I've voted in every election I could have. As my wife says, it'd take an army to keep me away from the polls. And not once has there been a Republican worth voting for. Never. And I live up here where they supposedly still have Liberal Republicans. Never seen one.

Of course, even with the Upstate New York Republicans sounding as crazy (or crazier, see Palladino) than the national Rethugs, there were enough of them to elect a tea bagger as my congressman in 2010 (NY-20). Consider the old joke from up here: if you throw a rock, you're more likely to hit a deer than a Democrat.

I often wonder what kind of person sits around lamenting the fact that no one in Washington cares about the little guy and then votes Republican. I'm fairly certain, and some evidence has shown as much lately, that people in that situation take their cues from social policy. Take a typical religious guy who thinks abortion is murder and therefore forcing women to have their rapist's baby is the only Right thing to do. That guy's going to say, Democrats don't care about me as a working guy anyway, because they're spineless and appoint Wall Street fat cats to their cabinents just like Republicans do, so, I'll go with the abortion thing. Or a union guy who's convinced Democrats (who have run away from gun control faster than you can say "gun show loophole lets terrorists get guns") are going to send the jack-booted thugs to take all your guns (almost three years into the Obama administration and you still have all those guns). So, they vote Republican. Or, say you're a racist or a bigot, hell, you're not going to vote Democrat! You've been voting Republican since LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.

So, these people who have been economically beaten about the head and torso by the Republican party for years vote Republican. It's what's the matter with Kansas. It's what's the matter with a lot of places.

Polls show that most people actually agree with the Democrats on almost every single economic issue. We like our services, we hate our wars, we blame Bush and Cheney, we think we spend way too much on defense (we do) and on foreign aid (we don't). Americans might not know a lot of specifics, but they seem to get the gist of it. Single issue voters, and the fence sitters who really lean way one way or the other, they get out there for the Republicans. And what do the rest of us do?

Well, judging from the collective freak out from the left over the debt ceiling, they stay home on election day. That's what happened on election day 2010. A bunch of liberals acted like they were going to punish Obama and let the tea baggers run the House of Representatives. How's that working out?

Whichever gay hating, Muslim hating, tax hating, gun-totin, union busting, poor hating, Hooverville-creating hippie puncher makes it out of the GOP Primary clown car, we'll have the same choice that we had in 00 and 04. We can elect a guy who lets us down a little, or we can let the next Supreme Court nomination go to President Perry. We can elect a guy who believes in unions, and a safety net, and infrastructure, and education, and science, and climate change, or we can elect George W. Bush on steroids.

Seems like enough to get me off my liberal ass.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Republicans Won't Vote to Cover the Debt they Voted for

Ezra says:


That's right. All but five of the current House Republicans voted for a budget that causes almost $2 trillion in debt, but they won't vote to pay for that debt.

I am so sick of the "both sides do it" bullshit. There is only one side that is refusing to raise the debt that they actually approved. Only one side is being so childish that they would sink the freaking boat rather than make one single billionaire get his hands wet by bailing out the water.

The fact that more white people are identifying as Republicans now, when Republicans are really showing off their stupid, just proves that it's racism that's driving the Republican hatred of Obama. What else could be driving white people (not minorities) to self-identify with a party that votes for debt then refuses to cover it, that denies global warming and evolution, that starts trillion dollar wars based on lies, and thinks anyone who doesn't believe in Jesus is going to burn in hell for eternity?

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Bachmann's Headaches

I think Michele Bachmann will be the GOP nominee. She will likely get Palin's endorsement. She can raise serious money from the tea bagees. And she's as far right as the rest of the Republican base, therefore a natural fit. The only thing that can stop her would be a bunch of evangelical nutcases and genocidal maniacs holding their noses and voting for the rich Mormon because they think he has a better chance of beating Obama.

But I don't think that having migraines means she shouldn't be president. And if a bunch of knuckle draggers in the GOP can ignore their own arguments about Obama's lack of executive experience, then by all means they should nominate the woman.

But the fact that she does get migraines got me to thinking. If there is a God, maybe he/she/it is talking to her. Maybe the migraines are a sign that she's got all this God stuff wrong. Maybe God is trying to tell Bachmann, by giving her such painful headaches, that she shouldn't be such a bigot.

Just a thought.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Ken Go Predicted this Years Ago

A long time ago, at the beginning of the Bush era (the age of irresponsibility), my old friend Ken Go, a southern California mortgage broker, told me that a frighteningly large chunk of consumer spending was being fed by home equity. He said when this stopped, it would be disastrous for the economy.

How the Bursting of the Consumer Bubble Continues to Hold the Economy Back -

"Earlier this year, Charles M. Holley Jr., the chief financial officer of Wal-Mart, said that his company had noticed consumers were often buying smaller packages toward the end of the month, just before many households receive their next paychecks. “You see customers that are running out of money at the end of the month,” Mr. Holley said.


I haven't asked Ken what he's been seeing in his crystal ball lately, but I'm sure it's not good. My guess is that a lot of demand is building up in the system as cars and refrigerators get old and need replacing, but who knows how long we could go before that demand starts seeing its way back into the system. I certainly don't see it happening until people who are upside down on their mortgages get right-side-up again.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

The Last 11 Years of Republican History

Disenfranchise voters. Steal election. Deficits don't matter. Deregulate everything. Ignore terrorism. Bullhorn promise. Tora Bora. Eliminate Surplus. War of lies. Eliminate middle class. War crimes. The rich get much richer. Ignore Bin Laden. Heck of a job. Financial disaster. Little Depression. Millions of foreclosures. Children left behind. Blame Obama.

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Bachmann's Dog Whistle Politics: Concern Trolling Black People

Michele Bachmann jumped at the chance to sign Bob Vander Plaats's Marriage Vow, which includes this ear piercing statement:


Any time a Republican talks about slavery, you should pay close attention. And, what's up with singling out Obama for the time frame reference? Has the rate of single parent black families gone up since Obama became president? According to the Annie E Casey foundation's Kid's Count, 67% of African American children lived in a single parent household in 2009.  In 2008, under President Bush, it was 65%. Not a really big difference, so why mention Obama? Maybe Vander Plaats has some of these suddenly politically involved people working for him:


To be kind to Vander Plaats, I suppose his group is simply trying to state, in stark terms, how bad it is that so many black children have to grow up with only one parent these days. It's so bad, in fact, that it should be compared to the "disasterous impact" of slavery. Sure, it's hyperbole, but they're trying to use "facts" to make a point. Since Republicans aren't used to working with real facts, I will try to help them out.

First of all, the footnote to that dog whistle sends one off to an Institute for American Values publication, The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans. Since no page number is given, I looked at all references to slavery and could only find data referring to 1880. So, right off the bat, it seems Vander Plaat has done what Republicans love to do: he made shit up.

Also, consider the source. The Institute for American Values was founded by David Blankenhorn, who made the news just the other day with this gem that many Mormons will just love:

David Blankenhorn, founder of the Institute for American Values in New York, said polygamy was more in line with core values than same-sex marriage. At least polygamists, he said, were faithful to the concept of a union between man and woman.

How is marrying many women faithful to the concept of a union between a man and a woman (singular)? Maybe because regular sex with different women is less icky to him than gay sex. Of course, the Bible has all kinds of fun marriage types that are approved by God, and polygamy is one of them.

Next, it seems that Vander Plaats completely ignored the question of mixed race children of slaves, of which there were many.

The Southern author Mary Chesnut wrote in her famous A Diary from Dixie of the Civil War-era about the hypocrisy of a woman's recognizing white men's children among the slaves in every household but her own. Fanny Kemble, the British actress who married an American slaveholder, wrote about her observations of slavery as well, including the way white men used slave women and left their mixed-race children enslaved.

It's obvious that, since the master and father of this slave didn't live in the slave housing with the mother, this child was not living with both parents.

Actual facts about slavery put the Vander Plaats quote in some context. Since it seems that what he and Presidential candidates Bachmann and Rick Santorum believe is that children are better off with two parents in the house: so much better off, in fact, that a child born a slave in 1860 would be better off (because she had two parents) than a child born today who is living with only one parent. So, here are a few facts about slave children that will make it obvious to anyone what a huge dog whistle this is (note that just a few days ago, I predicted Bachmann would start blowing the dog whistles):

Most infants were weaned within three or four months.
Half of all slave babies died in the first year of life--twice the rate for white babies.
The average birth weight of slave infants was less than 5.5 pounds.
Children entered the labor force as early as 3 or 4. Some were taken into the master's house to be servants while others were assigned to special children's gangs called "trash gangs," which swept yards, cleared drying cornstalks from fields, chopped cotton, carried water to field hands, weeded, picked cotton, fed work animals, and drove cows to pasture.
By age 7, over 40 percent of the boys and half the girls had entered the work force. At about 11, boys began to transfer to adult field jobs.
Nearly a third of slave laborers were children...

So, things really sucked for slave children in 1860, but, hey, they were living with both parents! Yay! Ponies and glitter! On a side note, the current Republican Governor of Maine might like the child labor practices of that day, and Bachmann's dislike of the minimum wage law certainly seems like a hearkening back to the day when the job creators weren't hampered by pesky regulations regarding the welfare of the workers.

Anyone aware of the southern strategy will know damn well what Vander Plaats and Bachmann are up to here. Remember what Lee Attwater said:


Lee Attwater's boss in the Reagan administration, Ed Rollins, is Michele Bachmann's campaign manager. So, it's not much of a stretch to realize that when they "sit around saying" black children had a better chance of having two parents when they were slaves, they're not being very abstract at all.

Monday, July 04, 2011

A Radical Republican Didn't Want Future Congresses Defaulting on Our Debt

Yglesias, in asking who our political heroes are, suggested the Radical Republicans of the 1860's and 70's deserve a little more mention. So I found it interesting that, when I was reading Jack Balkan's piece about how section 4 of the 14th Amendment came to be, I came across this quote from Senator Benjamin Wade, a Radical Republican from the Reconstruction Era:

[The proposed amendment] puts the debt incurred in the civil war on our part under the guardianship of the Constitution of the United States, so that a Congress cannot repudiate it. I believe that to do this wil give great confidence to capitalists and will be of incalculable pecuniary benefit to the United States, for I have no doubt that every man who has property in the public funds will feel safer when he sees that the national debt is withdrawn from the power of a Congress to repudiate it and placed under the guardianship of the Constitution than he would feel if it were left at loose ends and subject to the varying majorities which may arise in Congress.

Now, today's radical Republicans (who are really quite the opposite of the ones from the 1860's) love to talk about the original intent of those who wrote the Constitution. Of course, they will not look into the intent of Sen. Wade, because it suggests that their little temper tantrum in regards to the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. Of course, today's Republicans aren't big fans of the 14th Amendment in general (e.g., Rand Paul, who has promised to filibuster the debt ceiling bill), so I'm sure they'll either ignore this inconvenient fact, or just lie about it.

Balkan lays the whole thing right in their modern laps:


Because sending this thing to Anthony Kennedy to decide would be too much for Wall Street to bear, I figure the Democrats will cave to Republican hostage taking and pay the ransom (trillions in cuts to the middle class and poor, while the rich get richer).  What a shame that we're not on better financial footing right now, because this is one constitutional showdown that really should happen. Either we're good for our debt, or we're not, and leaving that up to the whim of people who, like Michele Bachman, have a tenuous grasp of history and economics at best, is just stupid.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

John Jay was a Founding Father against Slavery

Michele Bachmann should look up John Jay. But she won't. He was one of our founding fathers who, along with Hamilton, advocated for a strong, centralized federal government. He co-wrote the federalist papers. So, apparently, the Republican rule of Never Praise a Big Government Liberal is in effect here, although Bachmann's example of an anti-slavery founder (even though he wasn't a founder), John Quincy Adams, isn't exactly someone modern conservatives would like:


Bachmann's statement that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery is, of course, wrong. The majority of the FF's voted to continue slavery, as we see enshrined in the Constitution's three-fifths clause. John Jay didn't sign the Declaration of Independence and didn't attend the constitutional convention. But he was a founding father. And he was against slavery.

Jay was a leader against slavery after 1777, when he drafted a state law to abolish slavery; it failed as did a second attempt in 1785.[63] Jay was the founder and president of the New York Manumission Society, in 1785, which organized boycotts against newspapers and merchants in the slave trade and provided legal counsel for free blacks claimed as slaves.[64] The Society helped enact the gradual emancipation of slaves in New York in 1799, which Jay signed into law as governor.

The interesting point here is that Bachmann could easily put this to rest with a little research, but instead just makes shit up. That makes her a typical Republican.

This is, of course, the obligatory slavery bashing from a member of the Confederate Party who is desperate to sound like she's not a racist. Now that she's assured us that she's against actually owning people, I suspect this means there's going to be a tirade of tall tales to come regarding Kenyan anti-colonialism, welfare queens, affirmative action, hate crime legislation, and assorted Willie Hortonisms. This bumbling bullshit from Bachmann is the equivalent of her saying, "I'm not a racist, but..."

Then she will proceed to blow the dog whistles as loudly as she can, while cleaning up in the heavily Evangelical southern primaries (where she will not mention slavery, of course). If she can keep raising money as well as she has been, she will be the GOP nominee. And, having gotten that whole opposition to slavery thing out of the way already (lest anyone doubt that she detests that which the Bible says is OK), she will be free to advocate more prisons, harsher federal sentencing laws, cuts in social programs for the poor, union-busting, pro-corporate deregulation and privatization schemes, and a whole host of other GOP greatest hits that got us where we are today: a country of prisoners and wage slaves.

“It's really an extension of what they've always been trying to do since slavery—to find a way to get the cheapest labor legal or illegal so they can make the most profit possible,” argued Mr. Muhammad.


Of course, if she did get elected, followed the dictates of the corporate overlords, and got rid of the minimum wage, she may have to rethink that whole opposition to slavery thing.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Republicans Care More about Beating Obama than They Do about Your Job








Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Republicans Who Never Worked Hard Want to Cut Social Security







Saturday, June 18, 2011

Reading Can Expand Your Mind: Idiocracy Edition

Hunter, as usual, is worth the read:









Thursday, June 16, 2011

Death in the Streets





Tuesday, June 14, 2011



And that's the New Testament!


Friday, June 10, 2011

The "Both Parties Suck" Mentality is Really Bad for Workers







Sunday, June 05, 2011

Republicans are Stubborn: James Arness Edition

RIP: James Arness.





Thursday, June 02, 2011

Flaming Feces: Romney Lies about the Bush Economy





Saturday, May 28, 2011

Wonder Who Bush and Cheney Left Burrowed in the Food Regulation Bureaucracy

Molly Ivins used to say that if you really want to see the difference between Republicans and Democrats, look at food safety.  Republicans were in charge of the federal government for 8 years and now the Democrats for a little over two. In the game of staffing the federal bureaucracy, Obama has a long way to go to even undo the damage the Cheney administration did.

Like unemployment and food stamp use, a lot of what comes out of the government in terms of regulation is a kind of lagging indicator. So, yes, we are still seeing results of the Bush/Cheney administration.When you inherit a government that Bush/Cheney had de-fanged when it comes to regulatory prowess, what's a guy supposed to do?

With that in mind, this piece in the NY Times tells me that even a basic thing like food identification has become a difficult thing for the government to enforce. And with austerity becoming the buzzword in Washington, I don't expect Obama to be able to do much to reverse the damage any time soon. Even a lot of Democrats are suckling on the Big Ag teat, and it's hard to regulate businesses when they basically buy the politicians and write the laws.

I recently read about meat glue that they use to put pieces of lesser cuts together into a T-bone. There's all kinds of food safety horrors that evolved during lax regulatory years of Republican corporatocracy. Fits right in with the lax environmental regulation, financial regulation, and all the other things that government is supposed to do that Republicans would rather do away with.

These are things that happen because George W. Bush and Richard Cheney hated regulation and did everything they could to make sure the government either didn't do it, or did it badly. And the Bushistas had 8 years to put cronies in charge regulating their old frat buddies' businesses.

Generally speaking, Republicans are from rural areas that produce food and giant ag companies that want to slip shit past the consumer, and Democrats are from cities, where the consumers are. So, there's that.

The Bushies (i.e. Cheney) were especially adept at putting foxes in charge of hen houses, and then the industries that got helped hired the very people who helped them.

Some people even got left behind, so-called "burrowing" that Cheney was doing at the end of that nightmare.

Additionally, before leaving office, the Bush administration aggressively placed political appointees into permanent civil service positions as part of a process known as “burrowing.” Some of the burrowed former political appointees have close ties to Cheney, such as Jeffrey T. Salmon, who was a speechwriter for Cheney when he served as defense secretary. In July, he was named deputy director for resource management in the Energy Department’s Office of Science.

So, yeah, Cheney's dark forces really did a number on a lot of things like this, especially for energy companies. Remember, these are the boys that brought you everything from Enron to Iraq to most of the debt they're trying to blame on Obama.

Follow the money.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Does Jesus Know Everything?

Perhaps a better question is: why do so many Christians ignore their own book?

in reference to:

- SAB, Mark 13 (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Argument from Ignorance

Ezra Klein makes the argument that there's no evidence that higher taxes on the wealthy hinder growth. In fact, there is evidence to the contrary, as Ezra points out with this graph:

When has the absence of evidence (or even evidence to the contrary) ever stopped a Republican from doing (or not doing) something (See: Iraq, Global Warming, et al)?

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." --Donald Rumsfeld


Herein lies the rub. Republicans don't care about facts.  They are not constrained by reality or science. They make up whatever they need and ignore everything to the contrary. So why do we try to reason with them logically? Seems like a waste of time.

One answer is that they must be mocked, ruthlessly and endlessly, for ignoring facts. This is why Stephen Colbert is so funny and necessary. Under Citizens United, facts mean even less, and money even more, which benefits the party that is weak on facts and strong on money. 

Sunday, May 15, 2011

George Bush is Responsible for the High Rate of Food Stamp Consumption

As someone who's depended on food stamps a few times in his life, I'll start by saying it's a great program that really helps people who most need it. It is a valuable stitch in a safety net Republicans love to unravel and denigrate. And Newt Gingrich, who has certainly studied his Lee Atwater, certainly knows that the mere mention of food stamps conjures up, for many white Americans, images of black people taking advantage of the program (young bucks buying T-bones is the racist image here). Here's Atwater quote:


So when Newt Gingrich calls Obama the Food Stamp President, he knows damn well he's blowing the dog whistle.

But it's more than just racism here. This is Newt's shifting of the blame for the economy on Obama. Newt knows damn well what most Americans don't: food stamp consumption is the Ultimate Lagging Indicator in a bad economy.

Have a look at the ebb and flow of food stamp consumption and you'll see that the economic lag can be 2 to 4 years. It actually makes sense for this number to begin peaking at this moment, 7 quarters from the trough of business activity. It probably gets worse before it gets better, but it holds no sway over the prospects for our recovery.

Fact is, a whole lot more people are hungry (and homeless, broke, without health care, unemployed, and all the other bad things that happen during recessions), because Republican ideology, implemented by President George W Bush, ruined the US economy. Tax cuts for the rich didn't create jobs, and deregulation led to the Inside Job that was the Wall Street Fiasco.

Watch for Newt and the rest of the Insane Clowns to keep trying to shift the blame for Bush's debt, and Bush's economy, onto Obama. And note that under the dog whistle of the southern strategy, the GOP's got a whole lot of blame shifting going on.

So much for the party of responsibility for your actions.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Rand Paul Doesn't Care About Slavery

Rand Paul has equated a right to health care with enslaving doctors. For an eye doctor, he really doesn't see things very clearly, so I'm going to spell it out for him in a way he can understand.

Under universal health care, doctors still get paid. They are also free to leave the profession if they find obeying their hippocratic oath too much of a burden in exchange for making very good money. They would also be entitled to receive said health care, as they are people too.

Contrast that to, say, some black men from Africa coming to his house, capturing him, shipping him and a bunch of other white guys in a torture chamber of a ship to Africa where he is treated as property, tortured daily, and forced to work (of course, working as a doctor is much better than working in the fields or mines). Oh, and he would barely be fed enough to keep him alive, be forced to live in a shack, his wife and daughters regularly raped, and his children could be bought and sold by his master.

That Senator Paul would make such a grotesque comparison proves that he has forgotten what actual slaves went through (assuming he believed it when he was taught it, which assumes that he was taught about slavery), and that his argument against health care as a right has reached a point of such strained metaphor that it is revealing his true perspective on matters of race.

Because, really, could he be so ignorant of the history of slavery? Doubtful. Even dumbasses know what real slavery is like. Senator Paul is just pushing his usual bullshit hyperbole, and he doesn't care if it's insulting to the descendants of slaves, or anyone else who cherishes human rights. He only cares about getting and keeping everything he can into the hands of rich people (who happen to mostly be white).

So, if you're stuck working for next to nothing with no health care, living in a shack, getting beaten by cops for no reason, or thrown in prison on a bullshit charge that white people get away with all the time, Rand Paul thinks it's your own damn fault, and that if you dare suggest, as the Pope does, that basic health care is your right, then you are just trying to enslave him.

It takes a special kind of assholedness to argue something like that, the kind that apparently makes the good people of Kentucky vote for you. Which, of course, proves that southerners really do want to see the south rise again.

in reference to:

- ThinkProgress » Rand Paul: If You Believe In A Right To Health Care, ‘You Believe In Slavery’ (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

IOKIYAR is Pretty Common

Oh, and Ted Nugent sucks.

in reference to:

"As it turns out, Common could apparently dispose of this part of the controversy rather inexpensively. Departed NWA rapper Eazy-E, for whom violent rhetoric about police constituted a pre-breakfast warmup, scored an invite to an event headlined by then-President George H.W. Bush on the strength of some charitable donations. The National Republican Senatorial Committee’s then-Director of Communications, Wendy Burnley, said of E’s appearance, “Democrats, eat your hearts out!”"
- Sean Hannity | Common | Ted Nugent | Mediaite (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, May 06, 2011

Children Suing to Protect the Future

I've always wondered why our children haven't sued over what we're doing to the planet. We're leaving them an environmental mess. Once upon a time, even conservatives thought the government should protect the environment.

Those conservatives are long gone. They've been replaced by a party of vicious thugs (Ayn Randians who think the poor, gays, minorities, and even the old are parasites) funded by richer thugs who tell them what to do.

They pass laws gutting regulations, appoint their own regulators, and control the courts, so they can go on polluting, pillaging, and accumulating wealth, while shifting the real costs on to future generations.

And yet the Republicans seem so smug when they, the ones who created most of the debt, suggest that we shouldn't pass that down to the kids. Sorry, but there goes your future retirement and health care, kiddos. You keep paying in now, and all you'll get back when you're old is a coupon for something you can't afford.

Sorry kids. Some of us are trying to do the right thing, but this is a corporatocracy. And the corporate class is winning the class war.

You have one hope: sue us. Law suits sometimes attract corporate attention. If the legislature won't get you justice, your only hope is with the courts.

Of course, this is the most corporate Supreme Court in history. So, good luck with that.

Oh, yeah, and if you'd really like to make an impact on protecting the environment and the economy? Don't vote Republican, and be sure to vote in every election (even those mid-terms).

in reference to:

- Young Activists Sue U.S., States Over Greenhouse Gas Emissions - (view on Google Sidewiki)

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

These are the people Republicans want to leave behind

It's small change by US budget standards, of course, but this is the kind of "bleeding heart" stuff Republicans hate, and would cut, leaving these people to die in the streets. Go read the whole thing and note the numbers on veterans who are homeless--is this the way we treat people who fought for our freedom? It is if your support of the troops ends with putting a bumper sticker on your car.

in reference to: Homelessness Is Not Just About Housing (view on Google Sidewiki)

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Racism by Inference

Michael Eric Dyson nails The Donald with this devastating fact that Trump can never understand, followed by a body blow to the gasbag's ego. Ouch. Welcome to the big leagues, Trumpies. Good luck in the primaries!

in reference to:

""Skepticism about black intelligence and suspicion about black humanity have gone hand in hand throughout the history of this country in feeding the perception that black people don't quite measure up." "The reality is that Barack Obama has been called to account by a man who has nothing near the intellectual credibility or the social standing that the president has,""
- Dyson: Trump propagating "racism by inference" - Face The Nation - CBS News (view on Google Sidewiki)

Friday, April 29, 2011

More Anti-union Crap from Republicans



in reference to:


Saturday, April 23, 2011

Republicans Turn to Wall Street for Protection from Angry Voters







in reference to:


Friday, April 22, 2011

Excess People









Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The federal government should spend when times are bad...

...and cut when times are good.





For more, see:

and many recent postings to my recommended reading list.