Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Wow ...
Some of god's mouthpieces are actually getting it ... you know, that Jesus never said "I got mine so fuck you":
Color me surprised.
...
Four members affiliated with the religious group Faith In Public Life held a brief press conference during FFC’s afternoon intermission to denounce the GOP’s adherence to the philosophies of anti-government, anti-religion author Ayn Rand. The leaders — Rev. Jennifer Butler, Jim Wallis, Rev. Derrick Harkins, and Father Clete Kiley — asserted that the GOP efforts to cut funding from many anti-poverty programs while balancing the budget on the backs of the poorest Americans were not in line with Christian values: [my em]
...
Color me surprised.
Great thanks to our old pal (in blog years) Skippy for the link.
Hopefully ...
The President is taking lessons:
If Mr. Obama would talk like this, he'd win in a landslide next year. This is what Liberals/Progressives want to hear. Obama should have been saying this the minute they tried to break the unions in Wisconsin.
The Republicans have declared war on unions and the middle class (the majority of Americans, by the way) and the President should be standing up for them, not working to pad the pockets of the rich by caving in to the Republicans at every turn.
E.J. Dionne:
Yeah, the "job creators". Just like WMDs in Iraq. Just another excuse to loot the Treasury on behalf of the rich and the corporations while the rest of us are left sucking wind.
If Obama keeps on his current course, even if he is reelected, he won't have much of a country left to govern by the end of his second term. Being "above the fray" (if not actually beholden to big business) ain't gonna cut it anymore. The road down which we're headed affects us all, regardless of party affiliation and regardless of wealth or the lack thereof, in a very bad way. Regardless of ideology, it's time for Mr. Obama do what people like Krugman and Stiglitz and the "professional Left" (and history) have been telling him to. He's done the opposite so far and it's obvious where that's gotten him. It's time for him to do the right thing, not what his people are telling him is politically expedient (that doesn't seem to be working either).
As some of my southern friends like to say, it's a "come to Jesus" moment for the President. It's time for him to figure out who America really is, the top 2% or the rest of us who bust our ass to buy the crap that keeps them in the style in which they're accustomed. It's time for him to stop trying to curry the favor of rich white guys because they're never gonna let him in the club. [Dr. King rolls over.]
...
[Teamsters union president James] Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wing Monday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress "sons of bitches" and said union workers are ready to "go to war" with the tea party next year and "take out" Republicans at the ballot box.
Hoffa said he'd say the exact same words all over again.
"I would because I believe it," he said. "They've declared war on us. We didn't declare war on them, they declared war on us. We're fighting back. The question is, who started the war?"
...
If Mr. Obama would talk like this, he'd win in a landslide next year. This is what Liberals/Progressives want to hear. Obama should have been saying this the minute they tried to break the unions in Wisconsin.
The Republicans have declared war on unions and the middle class (the majority of Americans, by the way) and the President should be standing up for them, not working to pad the pockets of the rich by caving in to the Republicans at every turn.
E.J. Dionne:
Let’s get it over with and rename the holiday “Capital Day.” We may still celebrate Labor Day, but our culture has given up on honoring workers as the real creators of wealth and their honest toil — the phrase itself seems antique — as worthy of genuine respect.
...
That the language of Lincoln and John Paul is so distant from our experience today is a sign of an enormous cultural shift. In scores of different ways, we paint investors as the heroes and workers as the sideshow. We tax the fruits of labor more vigorously than we tax the gains from capital — resistance to continuing the payroll tax cut is a case in point — and we hide workers away while lavishing attention on those who make their livings by moving money around.
...
Yeah, the "job creators". Just like WMDs in Iraq. Just another excuse to loot the Treasury on behalf of the rich and the corporations while the rest of us are left sucking wind.
If Obama keeps on his current course, even if he is reelected, he won't have much of a country left to govern by the end of his second term. Being "above the fray" (if not actually beholden to big business) ain't gonna cut it anymore. The road down which we're headed affects us all, regardless of party affiliation and regardless of wealth or the lack thereof, in a very bad way. Regardless of ideology, it's time for Mr. Obama do what people like Krugman and Stiglitz and the "professional Left" (and history) have been telling him to. He's done the opposite so far and it's obvious where that's gotten him. It's time for him to do the right thing, not what his people are telling him is politically expedient (that doesn't seem to be working either).
As some of my southern friends like to say, it's a "come to Jesus" moment for the President. It's time for him to figure out who America really is, the top 2% or the rest of us who bust our ass to buy the crap that keeps them in the style in which they're accustomed. It's time for him to stop trying to curry the favor of rich white guys because they're never gonna let him in the club. [Dr. King rolls over.]
Monday, September 5, 2011
Headline of the Day
America's Intellectual Deficit Is More Dangerous Than Its Financial One
To blithely rearrange an old saying about mary-ju-wanna, it's better to have brains in times of no money than to have money in times of no brains.
Rude Pundit Twofer
Absence of Labor Day
Today's Republicans vs. the United States (Part 1)
The USA they want damn sure won't be the "shining city on the hill" although there will no doubt be a few "shining gated and heavily guarded communities on the hill". Too bad the sheep who help the plutocrats pull this off won't be allowed to live in them. When (if?) they come to their senses it will be too late.
Today, on CNN's American Morning (where apparently only Ali Velshi got the day off), the question of the day was "Do unions help or hurt America?" The responses were surprisingly not insane, and a good many were pro-union. Of course, it was a stupid fucking question, being asked in a studio that probably contained union members, but, as with so many things these days, CNN was merely giving credence to the anti-worker rhetoric spouted by the right. Are unions good or bad for America? Well, shit, considering that corporations come up with ways to hire near-slaves whenever they can, it shouldn't even be a question.
Of course, if actual actions by unions got even a tiny fragment of the coverage that the Tea Party gets if it farts in a windstorm, you might realize that they really do represent the majority of Americans: the ones who want decent jobs and decent treatment and decent standards of living and who understand that the wealthy in the country (what we used to call "capital") are the very people who are trying to destroy unity in the working class through bullshit like the Tea Party.
[...] Maybe you did hear that organizers of the Pittsburgh Labor Day parade, with tens of thousands of participants, told anti-union politicians to go fuck themselves, that workers are not their props, and that they can't march.
But, if you did hear that last one, that's only because thuggish union members were being mean to the poor, poor politicians who want to strip away their right to exist. And we can't make the lapdogs of our corporate masters feel bad, can we? [...]
Today's Republicans vs. the United States (Part 1)
On last night's under-the-radar podcast/online radio venture, Cheater and the Rude, the Rude Pundit posited another way to think about the Republicans and their relationship with America. It's a variation on the abused partner metaphor, one that's a bit more extreme: At this point, Republicans have gotten so batshit and destructively irrational about their hatred of Obama and the Democrats that they've become like the psychotic boyfriend who grabs his girlfriend who's threatening to break up with him and puts a razor to her face, saying, "I'm gonna make you so ugly, no one will ever fuck you again. And then you'll only have me" before horribly scarring her.
What more can we make of a party that seems determined to wreck whatever it can in order to the nation to shit, calculating that frightened Americans will turn back to Republicans.
To take it further, this year has become about whether or not you give a shit about America. The battle that is occurring in our politics is so ludicrous that it begs belief. We are, in essence, arguing over whether or not there should be a United States of America. This ain't liberal hysteria. This comes from listening, reading, and watching the right, including nearly every candidate for president.
The USA they want damn sure won't be the "shining city on the hill" although there will no doubt be a few "shining gated and heavily guarded communities on the hill". Too bad the sheep who help the plutocrats pull this off won't be allowed to live in them. When (if?) they come to their senses it will be too late.
Oh, the irony...
Ironic Times
Now that's funny!
Getting a gun that that "fell off the assembly line" eliminates a lot of the middle men involved in getting one that "fell off a truck". Much more efficient.
I'm going to go look for video of that...
McCourt Offered $1.2 Billion for Dodgers by Chinese Government
Would be more caring, responsible owners.
Now that's funny!
REMINDER
Totally batshit crazy is the new normal.
Airline Billing Dispute Reveals Existence of CIA Rendition Flights
Detainees still owe money for in-flight drinks, meals.
Report: Weapons Manufacturers Lost More Than 16,000 Guns in Two Years
Hopefully they fell into the right hands.
Getting a gun that that "fell off the assembly line" eliminates a lot of the middle men involved in getting one that "fell off a truck". Much more efficient.
Cheney Boasts He Urged Bush to Bomb Syria
Also Berkeley, San Francisco.
Report: Climate Change Prompting Rise in Mental Illness
Particularly among presidential hopefuls.
Combination USB Drive/Vibrator Debuts
Not recommended for business meetings.
I'm going to go look for video of that...
Just a thought ...
I hear the talking heads on the TV saying President Obama has to "go big" in his jobs speech on Thursday. When asked what he should do, they all say "he has to have a plan that Republicans will sign on to."
I'll posit there is nothing the President can propose the Republicans will sign on to. The President has to "go big" and then shove it up the Republicans' collective ass. We all know that ain't gonna happen. Hopefully, there'll be a football (soccer) match on somewhere I can watch instead.
I'll posit there is nothing the President can propose the Republicans will sign on to. The President has to "go big" and then shove it up the Republicans' collective ass. We all know that ain't gonna happen. Hopefully, there'll be a football (soccer) match on somewhere I can watch instead.
Quote of the Day
The title of a post at Jill's:
It's not called "Labor Day" to commemorate the work of hedge fund managers and cost-cutting CEOs
It's only a matter of time ...
[A big welcome to Crooks and Liars and Skippy's readers! Thanks, Mike and Skippy! - F.]
Before we storm the gates. Gordon posted a piece from Greenwald yesterday and his message at the end is portentous:
In this age of the interwebs, fortunately, word gets out a lot faster to more people and it's only a matter of time before people wake up and start demanding their share. When people are starving and unemployed (especially the youth), and they see the rich living it up, they're gonna want their piece of the pie:
When they see the political class, of either party, is no longer on their side, when they hear how much the rich and corporations rake in while they can't feed their kids, when they are told what meager help they might expect from the federal government will be cut, when they don't have any hope of getting out from under, when they're told the rich shouldn't have to pay taxes and all the burden is upon the poor and middle class, when unemployment of the nation's youth reaches 30 - 40%; that will be the day when the corporatocracy will get its comeuppance.
While those in Washington look at the numbers and percentages, I'll ask you to picture 14 million desperate people in a large group, more by the time it gets really bad. Do these arrogant assholes think their private security (and their cronies in local police departments) can protect them from the will of the masses? There will be a "let them eat cake" moment (we've traveled too far down the Road of Impunity for it not to happen). Now it's just a matter of when it happens and what the American people will do at the time.
Obama had the power to stave off that moment, had he used his momentum and voter popularity just after his election to do the right thing (he could have enacted a "shit sandwich Friday" and everybody would have gladly eaten it once a week). Instead he made it worse, either by being bought, cowed, or just inept. That door has since closed.
Unless something radically changes in the next 4 years of Obama's term (if he actually gets himself reelected), we will be irrevocably set on the path to a probably violent class war. It will be then that Americans will see change. The only questions will be the form it will take and how many will survive it. Look to the East; Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, just a portent of what will happen here. People are people, all over the world, and when people get desperate, they will do whatever it takes. I hope our elected officials keep that in mind over the next few years.
Update:
D-cap sees things that way too:
Before we storm the gates. Gordon posted a piece from Greenwald yesterday and his message at the end is portentous:
...
Shorter: the government hates and fears us for our freedom*.
In this age of the interwebs, fortunately, word gets out a lot faster to more people and it's only a matter of time before people wake up and start demanding their share. When people are starving and unemployed (especially the youth), and they see the rich living it up, they're gonna want their piece of the pie:
...
So as average wages fall, and nearly 14 million people remain unemployed, America’s economic recovery has almost entirely benefited corporations. This development adds another chapter to the decline of the middle class, whose incomes are shrinking and wages are stagnating. Last year, top executives’ salaries increased 27 percent, while workers’ salaries increased only 2 percent. At the moment, income inequality in America is the worst it’s been since the 1920s, as the richest 1 percent make nearly 25 percent of the country’s income.
When they see the political class, of either party, is no longer on their side, when they hear how much the rich and corporations rake in while they can't feed their kids, when they are told what meager help they might expect from the federal government will be cut, when they don't have any hope of getting out from under, when they're told the rich shouldn't have to pay taxes and all the burden is upon the poor and middle class, when unemployment of the nation's youth reaches 30 - 40%; that will be the day when the corporatocracy will get its comeuppance.
While those in Washington look at the numbers and percentages, I'll ask you to picture 14 million desperate people in a large group, more by the time it gets really bad. Do these arrogant assholes think their private security (and their cronies in local police departments) can protect them from the will of the masses? There will be a "let them eat cake" moment (we've traveled too far down the Road of Impunity for it not to happen). Now it's just a matter of when it happens and what the American people will do at the time.
Obama had the power to stave off that moment, had he used his momentum and voter popularity just after his election to do the right thing (he could have enacted a "shit sandwich Friday" and everybody would have gladly eaten it once a week). Instead he made it worse, either by being bought, cowed, or just inept. That door has since closed.
Unless something radically changes in the next 4 years of Obama's term (if he actually gets himself reelected), we will be irrevocably set on the path to a probably violent class war. It will be then that Americans will see change. The only questions will be the form it will take and how many will survive it. Look to the East; Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, just a portent of what will happen here. People are people, all over the world, and when people get desperate, they will do whatever it takes. I hope our elected officials keep that in mind over the next few years.
Update:
D-cap sees things that way too:
...
This President is a nothing more than Richard Lugar or Chuck Hagel or John Warner - a somewhat moderate 80's Republican. He is no progressive and I don't think he is much of Democrat. In fact I don't think of much of Obama at all anymore.
... I guess we really do need a Republican to lead us completely off the cliff to finally wake the fuck up. Apparently reason, logic and presenting the facts don't work in a world competing with Justin Bieber's car accident or J-Lo's divorce.
...
*The government fears us. Period.
I can't understand ...
Why none of them are in jail, but then, we live in a rich man's world and that's as far removed from reality as anything can be:
You know what the problem is? We have too many people not producing anything; too many "middlemen". Too many people are making money in this country by doing nothing else than moving a piece of paper from one place to another.
...
You know how this works, don't you? The banksters involved pay the ratings agencies to rate the bonds. The rating agencies get paid according to the rating that they give to the bonds. So they get higher fees for rating mortgage-backed tripe AAA than they would if they rated them AA (or C).
But nations pay no ratings fees to S&P, so they don't have any qualms about how they rate nations.
...
You know what the problem is? We have too many people not producing anything; too many "middlemen". Too many people are making money in this country by doing nothing else than moving a piece of paper from one place to another.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
The decade's biggest scam
Glenn Greenwald nails it:
Read the rest. Shorter: the government hates and fears us for our freedom.
First, this wastefulness is seen as inefficient only if one falsely assumes that its real objective is to combat Terrorist threats. That is not the purpose of what the U.S. Government does. As Daniel Weeks explains today, the Congress -- contrary to popular opinion -- is not "broken"; it is working perfectly for its actual owners. Or, as he puts it, "Washington isn't broken -- it’s fixed":
Our problem today is not a broken government but a beholden one: government is more beholden to special-interest shareholders who fund campaigns than it is to ordinary voters. Like any sound investor, the funders seek nothing more and nothing less than a handsome return -- deficits be darned -- in the form of tax breaks, subsidies and government contracts.
The LA Times, and most people who denounce these spending "inefficiencies," have the causation backwards: fighting Terrorism isn't the goal that security spending is supposed to fulfill; the security spending (and power vested by surveillance) is the goal itself, and Terrorism is the pretext for it. For that reason, whether the spending efficiently addresses a Terrorism threat is totally irrelevant.
Second, while the Security State has little to do with addressing ostensible Terrorist threats, it has much to do with targeting perceived domestic and political threats, especially threats brought about by social unrest from austerity and the growing wealth gap. This Alternet article by Sarah Jafee, entitled "How the Surveillance State Protects the Interests Of the Ultra-Rich," compiles much evidence -- including what I offered two weeks ago -- demonstrating that the prime aim of the growing Surveillance State is to impose domestic order, preserve prevailing economic prerogatives and stifle dissent and anticipated unrest.
Read the rest. Shorter: the government hates and fears us for our freedom.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult
Read this. Nothing really new, but the writer sums it up very nicely.
Please God, Rapture them all away. Just take 'em. You made 'em, cop to it, fix it. Give the rest of us a Divine fuckin' break.
It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.
[...] But domestically, they don't want those people voting.
You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama. I have joked in the past that the main administration policy that Republicans object to is Obama's policy of being black.[2] Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.
It is not clear to me how many GOP officeholders believe this reactionary and paranoid claptrap. I would bet that most do not. But they cynically feed the worst instincts of their fearful and angry low-information political base with a nod and a wink. [...]
As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:
...
3. Give me that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."
...
The Constitution to the contrary notwithstanding, there is now a de facto religious test for the presidency:
...
Politicized religion is also the sheet anchor of the culture wars. But how did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism - come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?
It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.
Please God, Rapture them all away. Just take 'em. You made 'em, cop to it, fix it. Give the rest of us a Divine fuckin' break.
Saturday Emmylou Blogging
I once was lost and now I'm found...sorry, wrong song...lazy, too. Brought this one back over from Fixer & Gordon . I still ain't got no audio. Lazy.
Note: When I hooked my desktop back up I musta skipped something because I have no audio, so I posted this without being able to hear it. Lemme know if it plays OK or not.
Thanks to DrBlindopolis.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Heh ... again ...
Tengrain:
***
Off to the Recycler/Beer Distributor to trade in my empties for fulls. Heh ...
Quisling turd and holier-than-thou Senator JOE LIEBERMAN is quite angry with Kenyan Usurper Hawaiian Devil Baby BARACK OBAMA. It seems that TRAITOR JOE wants to call a spade a spade, ahem:
...
Off to the Recycler/Beer Distributor to trade in my empties for fulls. Heh ...
Heh ...
The General writes a review of Voldemort Darth Vader Dick Cheney's book:
Hint: Poke through some of the comments too.
In the days leading up to the Iraq Phase of Our Glorious and Eternal Crusade to Resubjugate The Brown (GECRB), Leader Cheney sat down with Tim Russert and spoke about our need to embrace the "dark side." This book chronicles His leadership down that sacred path into darkness, His battle and ultimate triumph over the forces of light, and His emergence as America's Dark Lord.
...
Hint: Poke through some of the comments too.
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