Hullabaloo

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

 
RIP Wislawa Szymborska

By tristero

The world just became a lot less mordantly silly and quirky and profound.

A few years ago, I set this poem of hers. It was the final piece in a suite of songs that dealt with different kinds of freedoms. Miracle Fair, and so many others, have haunted me.

I agree with her friends: it was an awful tragedy that she won the Nobel Prize. For one thing, that implies that this most human and approachable of contemporary poets was somehow beyond the reach of us mere mortals. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Thank you, Ms. Szymborska, for all the beauty and joy, and for so much love.

tristero 2/01/2012 07:58:00 PM |

 

Martyr makers

by digby

Right Wing Watch is featuring some of the triumphant press releases from the religious right over the Komen Foundation's decision to defund Planned Parenthood over trumped up wingnut nonsense. One of the weirdest things about them is this common refrain:

Tony Perkins: Susan G. Komen's decision to stop funding the abortion industry is good news for women seeking help dealing with breast cancer.

Lou Engle- Let’s rejoice but let’s not stop praying! Today’s announcement isn’t given with permanence. Komen officials state they want to keep a "positive relationship" with Planned Parenthood, so that, along with their support of embryonic stem cell research, means we shouldn’t be running to sign up for a Race for the Cure quite yet, but we should positively reinforce what’s happening and thank Komen for this decision. Every step is a step for LIFE.

The destruction of one of the country's leading mammogram providers is good news for women with breast cancer. And being against stem cell research is a step for "LIFE". These people are funny.

It's possible that Tony Perkins is still advancing this pernicious lie that says abortion causes breast cancer, but if so, he's being very obscure. (It wouldn't be the first time.) But I suspect that this is just reflexive paternalism --- all women are better off if abortions are inaccessible, even the ones who might die of breast cancer because of this single-minded crusade. After all, abortion is literally worse than death for any woman who has one. Cancer victims should be happy to make the sacrifice for the greater good. As should pregnant women:

[L]est you think these people are just pandering to the fringe so there's nothing to worry our little heads about, remember this from this past year:

[T]he GOP-led House of Representatives, with the blessings and encouragement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and extremist religious groups such as the Family Research Council, passed a bill in a vote of 251 to 172 that would, among other things, allow doctors and hospitals to "exercise their conscience" by letting pregnant women facing emergency medical conditions die.

And it's entering the popular consciousness. Witness the glowing words applied to yet another sad young woman who made the decision to forego cancer treatment in order to give birth. Perhaps you'll recall this earlier case as well, as reported by Robin Marty:

Did the "pro-life" cause really need an actual martyr? The conservative website "Hot Air" has published a doting ode to Stacy Crimm, a woman who refused chemotherapy that would save her life in order to not endanger her long awaited pregnancy.

And anti-choice supporters couldn't be more proud of her.

Tina Korbe writes:

Crimm truly did have a choice: Even if abortion were illegal, she could have opted to receive chemotherapy. That she bravely chose to place her child’s life before her own recalls forcibly to mind why the phrase “a mother’s love” has such resonance. When we talk about abortion, rarely do we talk about the ache many women feel after they choose to abort their babies. Crimm’s physical suffering must have been unimaginable — and, yet, three days before she died, she was able to hold close the fruit of her choice in what Phillips said was a perfect moment. Would that her story might help all mothers see nothing is worth the sacrifice of their own child.

Crimm did have a choice, and acted out on her own wishes. But when you switch that to "nothing," including the life of the mother, is worth ending a pregnancy, well, then that's not really a choice, is it?

Evidently, the pro-life movement is now calling for women to die rather than have an abortion or even treat their illnesses if it might result in fetal death. I guess some lives are more valuable than others after all. And it isn't the woman's.

The religious right seems to be pushing hard for female martyrs to die in their crusade. Sadly, it appears that many of them aren't signing on voluntarily. But that doesn't matter:

[T]he politically-charged investigation [was] launched by Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) into [Planned Parenthood], which is greatly based on the smear campaign by Lila Rose, who recently told WORLD magazine that lying is appropriate as long as it’s for a worthy cause.

It's how they roll.

Update: Here's a good question: If Komen is required to sever all relationships with any institution that's under investigation, why haven't they severed their ties to Bank Of America?

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digby 2/01/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
Tasering: "just made of awesome"

by digby

Via Jesse LaGreca, I see that the fine, upstanding mainstream CNN political pundit who once claimed that a Supreme Court justice was a "goat-fucking child molester" has once again shown his gravitas:

Erickson: "Here is a story to make you laugh for the day, an Occupy DC protester, believe it or not these people are still occupying places. McPherson square near the White House, an Occupy DC protester was shocked by stun gun yesterday afternoon at McPherson Square . . .

They arrested him. They took him to the hospital because of a medical condition. He was charged with disturbing the peace. Now I would play the video for you because it was caught on film, it's hilarious, I mean you should just watch this video, if you go to wtpo.com you can watch it, I won't play it on the radio because the number of F-bombs the guy just starts yelling as they're tazing him . . hahahah . . ahh, but watching that hippy protester get tazed just made my day, wtpo.com, you can watch it for yourself, it is just made of awesome."

He's screaming in excruciating pain! That is so awesome! Hahahahahaha!

The video of the incident is here along with the story of what happened. Apparently, the protester was tearing down some flyers posted around the encampment and walked away from police when they stopped to question him. And in America you submit immediately to authorities and don't ask any questions. This is what makes us free.

Good thing his medical condition wasn't one of those undiagnosed heart conditions because he could be dead. (Hahahahaha! Wouldn't that be funny.)

As for that sadist Eric Erickson, I can't wait to see him on my TV "analyzing" our politics again. I'd really like to get his opinion on the torture issue. Oh wait --- he's for it, obviously. And he vastly enjoys seeing it applied to his political opponents.

If any pets go missing in his neighborhood, the neighbors know where to look first.

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digby 2/01/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
Brutality in Syria

by David Atkins

This is horrifying:

Ammar Cheikh Omar recalled the first time he was ordered to shoot into a crowd of protesters in Syria. He aimed his AK-47 just above their heads, prayed to God not to make him a killer and pulled the trigger.

Mr. Omar, 29, the soft-spoken and wiry son of Syrian parents who emigrated to Germany in the 1950s, grew up in Rheda-Wiedenbrück, a prosperous village of half-timbered 16th-century houses, where he listened to Mariah Carey and daydreamed about one day returning to Syria.

Today, he is still trying to make sense of his unlikely transformation from a dutiful German student to a killer for the brutal Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and, ultimately, a defector. “I was proud to be Syrian, but instead became a soldier for a regime that was intent on killing its own people,” Mr. Omar said on a recent day, chain-smoking at a cafe in this Turkish border town. “I thank God every day that I am still alive.”

Human rights groups and Syrian activists said he was one of thousands of Syrians who had inadvertently found themselves deployed as foot soldiers for a government that the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,000 people since the crackdown on demonstrators began in March.

What to do about situations like this is going to need to be an ongoing discussion, not just in America but around the world. The tradition of pacifism and anti-imperialism on the Left would indicate that Syrian problems are Syrian, and that nothing should be done beyond sending sternly worded letters and maybe a few targeted sanctions. The tradition of intervention on behalf of the weak and defenseless on the Left would indicate that the world has a moral obligation something to step in.

But what would stepping in look like? Would it do more harm than good? What would be the blowback? It's hard to say here that Assad is a dictator backed by the West, as has so often been the case elsewhere. In this case, it's the Russians who have strategic resource interests in Syria and have been trying to keep Assad in power. But obviously, having America act as the world's policeman hasn't worked out so well for the last 50 years or so.

These are not easy questions; no one should pretend that they are, or that anyone has all the answers. But it's hard to obsess over minor issues in the tax code or reproductive access domestically, while shrugging in helpless resignation over what's happening in Syria right now.

The world has increasingly global problems, and we should be seeking global solutions so that one day the Assads of the world can never be in a position to do this again.


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thereisnospoon 2/01/2012 03:01:00 PM |

 
The Deen of "Diabetes-Friendly" Diets

By tristero

In responding to a previous post on Paula Deen, a commenter took me to task for assuming bad faith on Deen's part, that maybe all she wanted to do was, you know, share these really great indulgent recipes with people like herself. I was - almost - prepared to consider the point a legitimate one (even if I disagreed), until Digby, via email, sent me a link to this alternet article. I have to confess that I didn't quite understand it at first- not because it is difficult to read but because the behavior, on the part of Deen, on the part of the pharmaceutical company, is so breathtakingly cynical, so horrible, and so greedy it simply defies belief.

If this article is right - and Marion Nestle, to be sure, is a very reputable nutritionist - Type 2 diabetes can be reversed by diet. But drug companies wont make money "managing" diabetes if people simply eat with anything remotely resembling sanity and thereby reverse the course of the disease. Therefore, a drug company approached Deen - get this - before they knew she had diabetes because they believed her disgusting and unhealthy food was "diabetes-friendly" and therefore good for their business.

Like so many other truly despicable players in the American public discourse, Deen comes across as a likeable, charming person. If this article is true, her charm is as fake and as cynical as her pose as just one more middle-class Southern housewife.

In reality, she's just one more rapacious, utterly repellent multi-millionaire without a clue about what it means to be part of the 99% who can't afford the kind of medical care and other luxuries she takes for granted.

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tristero 2/01/2012 01:45:00 PM |

 
Because you're worth it ...

by digby

Class system? What class system?

Frequent travelers who use San Francisco International Airport once again will be able to get through security a little faster with the return of a fee-based pre-screening program approved by the Airport Commission on Tuesday.

The CLEAR program, operated by a private company, Alclear LLC, will allow people to move to - or near - the front of the line to get their carry-on items screened. It will allow them to bypass the regular first tier of security where travelers must provide a driver's license or passport to a Transportation Security Administration employee and instead use an automated kiosk.

"It provides predictability in getting to the front of the line and getting through clearance faster," said SFO director John Martin.

Participants must pay a $179 annual fee for the special treatment. Spouses or domestic partners can be added on for an extra $50, and their children 17 years old and younger can join for free.

For a hefty fee we'll make sure you don't have to mingle with the polloi and you can jump to the head of the line for your baggage screening. Job creators like you shouldn't have to wait for such inconveniences.


h/t to reader sleon -- for the article and the post title.
digby 2/01/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
QOTD: Atrios

by digby

Suddenly everyone's jumping on the idea that maybe jobs and economic growth are a wee bit important. But, you know, all the Very Serious People were wrong for the right reasons while the hippies were right for the wrong reasons, so the VSPs were really right and the hippies were really wrong.

It's amazing how that always works.

It really is. It never pays to be right too early. They'll never forgive you for it.


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digby 2/01/2012 11:30:00 AM |

 
Robot Compassion

by digby

There's a lot of talk this morning about this Romney statement:

“I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling.”

He really has a tin ear. As Yglesias points out:

[H]e wants to cut the safety net, cut the health care part of the safety net, muck around with the federal workforce, and then cut the non-health care part of the safety net. To further clarify, he states that he "will immediately move to cut spending and cap it at 20 percent of GDP" while increasing defense spending. Which is to say he wants to cut social safety net spending. What's more "as spending comes under control, he will pursue further cuts that would allow caps to be set even lower so as to guarantee future fiscal stability," thus cutting social safety net spending even further.

There's nothing remarkable about this, really, since I don't think most Americans assume that cutting spending on poor people is what Republicans are all about. But it's extremely strange for Romney to be running on agenda of sharp cuts to the social safety net while citing the safety net's existence as a key reason to be indifferent to the plight of the poor. It's quite true that we have a safety net for poor people right now, but we won't have one for long if Romney's budget ideas are implemented.

And whether he knows it or not, and clearly he doesn't, the vast majority of the struggling middle class he purports to care so much about also depend on the government at some point in their lives and nearly all of them depend on it in retirement. Even middle class people who have a nest egg count on Social Security as a large part of their retirement and they all will use Medicare. And he wants to cut all that too!

So Mitt's idea of compassionate conservatism is to cut everything in sight but make some nice noises about how much he cares. And he's just not a good enough actor to pull off the "caring" part.

Update: I was just watching Mitt on TV and had a breakthrough.Why is it that people just don't like him? It's the obvious: he's a rich, arrogant asshole. Americans don't hate rich people in general, but nobody likes one who seems to be stifling laughter as he's turning you down for mortgage.

Like this guy:

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digby 2/01/2012 10:00:00 AM |

 
Yep, It Really Is Bad Food

By tristero

When Paula Deen admitted that she had diabetes (and that she and her family would exploit her terrible illness for huge profits), defenders of the faux-bourgeois worried that those of us who know eating passionately also means eating sanely would be practicing class warfare if we dared to criticized her:

Virginia Willis, a food writer in Atlanta, said that criticisms directed at Ms. Deen often reflect sexism and stereotyping about the South, in addition to food snobbery. “No one vilifies Michelin chefs for putting sticks of butter in their food,” she said. “But when a Southern woman does it, that’s tacky.” Contrary to popular belief, however, she said Ms. Deen’s fat-laden cooking does not represent the apotheosis of Southern cuisine.

“Paula’s food often reflects modern cooking and convenience foods more than Southern tradition,” she said. “She feels like she cooks for ‘real people,’ and for better or worse, that is how many people in this country choose to eat.”

Michael Mignano, a Long Island pastry chef who will appear on “Fat Chef,” said butterfat is a constant companion for chefs in high-end restaurants, where he has spent most of his career. “The only difference is that Paula Deen does it on TV,” he said

No, that's not the only difference. It is a matter of taste if you find disgusting Paula Deen's food disgusting. But that her food is disgustingly bad for you is simply a matter of fact.

Is there other food out there that's as godawful bad as Paula Deen's? Whether that is the case - obviously, no one would argue - that in no way makes Deen's food good food. Eating Deen's way every day - which a huge pile of Americans do (when they don't eat even worse food) - simply is not one of many equally valid lifestyle choices. Nor is strongly objecting to the quality of Deen's food and its daily consumption class warfare, sexist, or Southern stereoptyping. It's just common sense.

The comparison with "Michelin chefs" is misguided. At least for those of us who make less than Paula Deen's annual income, it's not routine to spend north of $150 per person for a dinner. In fact, it's a very rare indulgence. That is the point. It's a treat.

And of course, there is nothing wrong - nothing wrong whatsoever - in indulging yourself in whatever rocks your boat - whether it's Deen's fried chicken or Thomas Keller's leek bread budding. The problem (of course) is that unhealthy, Deen-style food is in fact the norm for an enormous number of people in this country. It's what people eat every day, and often more than three times a day.

Put simply, eating that way will kill you.

Can you die eating too much leek bread pudding? Oh, please: too much Deen food - that's the problem, not too much Keller.

And that brings us to the faux-bourgeois, a mask worn by many elites whose income depends on appearing to be "one of us." Paula Deen may have started out lower middle class, even poor, but that was a loooooooooooong time ago. She may not have as much of the green stuff as the Koch brothers, but she's way more a part of that 1% than you are - and she's been a 1 percenter for quite a while. She does not celebrate middle-class values, she merely makes money exploiting whatever she believes will make her the most money - regardless of whether they are middle class values - or even good ones.

That is not culture, bourgeois or otherwise. That is not even populism. That is simply greed and opportunism on a scale that "eltitist" chefs - no slouches when it comes to ambition and fame - can't even imagine. Oh, she may like ground chuck, she may shill for pork chops, but that bank account of hers is filet mignon - and we are fools if we let her make us forget it.

tristero 2/01/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Bain Man: do as I say, not as I do

by David Atkins

The winner of the Florida primary, ladies and gentlemen:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

It's amazing that Mitt Romney is the best the GOP can do this cycle. Jon Stewart and his team are brilliant, but these skits almost write themselves.


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thereisnospoon 2/01/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

 

Florida surge

by digby

I was going to write about the results in Florida tonight but, why bother? It's a money race and the guy with the most money is winning. Shocker.

But in case you wonder what the campaigns want you to think, TPM has a nice rundown of how the various camps are spinning it. Mittster's takes the cake:

Mitt Romney wants you to dwell on a comeback kid narrative. His camp’s version goes something like this: here’s a guy who was knocked off his game by the genie let out of the bottle by the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United ruling. Just as he was consolidating his victory in New Hampshire and his (rescinded) triumph in Iowa, suddenly a billionaire casino mogul showed up and flung millions of dollars at his bomb-throwing opponent.

And yet, the narrative goes, like a mythical hero he emerged from the flames hardened, sharpened, and willing to fight back. He raised his game in the debates and pushed back his surging rival, ultimately romping to victory by a serious margin.

Fighting, hardened, pushing and surging. We get it.

He has proved that he will spend whatever it takes to destroy his opponents and that's got to be appealing to a fair number of Republicans. But they still don't like him much. According to the exit polls, 39% are not satisfied with GOP candidates and 57% want someone else to jump in.

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digby 1/31/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 

Once we let them destroy Planned Parenthood, they'll give up

by digby

Divide et impera:

The nation's leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, is halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates — creating a bitter rift, linked to the abortion debate, between two iconic organizations that have assisted millions of women.

The change will mean a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams.

Planned Parenthood says the move results from Komen bowing to pressure from anti-abortion activists. Komen says the key reason is that Planned Parenthood is under investigation in Congress — a probe launched by a conservative Republican who was urged to act by anti-abortion groups.

And what do you know? This is likely the result of the increasingly sinister "common ground" strategy, in this situation being deployed in the private sector. Via Jezebel:

Interestingly, this brand new rule that suddenly appeared in the books of the Komen Foundation just so happened to coincide with a Congressional investigation launched by a Republican legislator, who himself was pressured by the pro-life group Americans United for Life. And last year's assault on Planned Parenthood also coincided with the addition of a vocally anti-abortion ex-politician to the ranks of Susan G Komen For the Cure.

Karen Handel, who was endorsed by Sarah Palin during her unsuccessful bid for governor of Georgia in 2010, has been the Foundation's Senior Vice President for Public Policy since April 2011. During her gubernatorial candidacy, she ran on an anti-choice platform, vowing that if elected, she'd defund Planned Parenthood. Handel wrote on her campaign blog,

I will be a pro-life governor who will work tirelessly to promote a culture of life in Georgia…. I believe that each and every unborn child has inherent dignity, that every abortion is a tragedy, and that government has a role, along with the faith community, in encouraging women to choose life in even the most difficult of circumstances…. since I am pro-life, I do not support the mission of Planned Parenthood.

She even promised to eliminate funding for breast and cervical cancer screenings provided by the organization.

How curious! A person with what looks like a personal vendetta against Planned Parenthood joins the ranks of an organization that provides funding to Planned Parenthood, and soon, that organization "defunds" Planned Parenthood.

Still, there's nothing to worry about ladies, no reason for all this hysteria over your icky parts. These people will never make any headway with this stuff in America, land of the free. Relax.


BTW: I noticed these lovely illustrations to a new folio of Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale. They really capture the feeling of the novel:

"We turn the corner onto a main street, where there's more traffic. Cars go by, black most of them, some grey and brown. There are other women with baskets, some in red, some in the dull green of the Marthas, some in the striped dresses, red and blue and green and cheap and skimpy, that mark the women of the poorer men. Econowives, they're called."

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digby 1/31/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
The big money

by David Atkins

Josh Marshall makes a good point:

The Gov. Walker recall campaign is going to cost at least $100 million. A few cycles ago that was what a presidential run cost.

In the long run, there's no way progressives can win with that kind of money being thrown around. The public just doesn't have the time, attention and energy to mobilize on large scales like that every election cycle, even as corporations make it a regular feature of their expense accounts. As it is, one of the biggest problems with government is the fact that in order to stay in office, politicians have to spend at least four hours a day fundraising. That's insane. They can't do their jobs that way, and it's no wonder the system is perpetually corrupted. Politicians are human like the rest of us. If they know that making a decision that earns the wrath of big pockets means not only taking fire and heat personally, but ensuring that they have to spend hundreds of hours on the phones and rubber chicken dinner circuits just to make up the difference, it's no surprise that many of them would rather spend that time with their families instead, and cave on important bills.

We can win victories in the short-term on the most crucial and egregious fronts. But unless something is done to nip this in the bud, it's going to be a losing battle long-term.


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thereisnospoon 1/31/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 
Self-help for frustrated rich people

by digby

So Charles Murray has a new book out called Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. And, lo and behold it appears to say that the reason for all our troubles is the bad character of poor people. What a shocker.

Greg Anrig takes a look at some of the excerpts in the Wall Street Journal and concludes that Murray is fudging the numbers. Again. And he's blaming the usual suspects for bringing us all down. Anrig writes:

Murray goes on, as always, to blame the Great Society reforms:

The creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the enactment of civil rights legislation, and programs like Food Stamps and job training set in motion a vicious cycle that led lower-income whites to stop going to church, watch more TV, and feel more alienated from the rest of the society. Even though we now incarcerate a far higher share of our citizens than any advanced country and violent crime rates have plummeted, it was laxity toward crime back in the 1960s that explains why the gap in out-of-wedlock births became much higher over that time period. The logic for those explanations may be difficult to track, and maybe Murray takes a stab at providing some evidence in support of those claims in the book itself. But if past is prologue, that evidence is likely to be highly dubious.

The solution, Murray argues, is for the upper-class to start wagging its fingers at everyone else:

The best thing that the new upper class can do to provide that reinforcement is to drop its condescending "nonjudgmentalism." Married, educated people who work hard and conscientiously raise their kids shouldn't hesitate to voice their disapproval of those who defy these norms. When it comes to marriage and the work ethic, the new upper class must start preaching what it practices.

That should work like a charm. And it's good to know that Murray has finally figured out a way to escape his racist past --- he's blaming poor whites for being too weak-willed to resist the lures of the welfare state that was designed for blacks. Perhaps that's a form of progress.

Murray has created a quiz for everyone to take to determine if they are a member of the white working class. It would seem that he believes most upper middle class Americans spend their time at the opera or watching re-runs of Alistair Cooke's America while nibbling on bran muffins with fois gras. (Not that there's anything wrong with that --- well, maybe the fois gras.)

Anyway, you can take the test yourself --- or for even more fun, you can take the test with Jay Ackroyd and Marcy Wheeler tonight on Virtually Speaking. According to my quite high score, I am among the great unwashed lower classes, or at least have traveled extensively among them. Who knew? (Except me, of course.)

Anrig notes that David Brooks is all aquiver with excitement about this book, which stands to reason. It is a reprise of Brooks' anthropological study of American culture as seen through chain restaurants and grocery store buying habits. But like Brooks' before him, Murray's latest gives away the game. The test is clearly geared toward the over-educated, upper middle class white person who would buy such a book in the first place. And its thesis about the lower orders lack of good character and bad habits is clearly designed to make those readers feel good about themselves by contrast. Basically it's Dr Phil for closet racists and wealthy pricks. I'm sure it will sell well.


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digby 1/31/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Religious Reactionaries stick together

by digby

Perlstein's column today is a fascinating recent history of religion in American politics. It's specifically about how the right will have little problem accepting Mitt's Mormonism because they always come around on this when the chips are down. Read the whole thing. I think it's persuasive.

I just want to highlight one bit of information which I don't think is common knowledge:

You may have heard of the group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Nowadays Evangelicals despise it as a heathen outfit bent on banishing God from the public square. (Here they celebrate the civil liberties victory represented by the display of a Flying Spaghetti Monster next to the Nativity scene at the courthouse in Loudoun County, Virginia.) A generation ago, however, Evangelicals were fans – back when the group was known as "Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State," and was the institutional home for those who feared the Roman church was a wicked conspiracy to colonize the United States.

Think about that. In the 1960s "Americans United for the Separation of Church and State" was called "Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State". I'm pretty sure that clearly illustrates how times have changed.

All this started changing in the 1970s. Fighting abortion had once been an almost exclusively Catholic crusade; indeed much of the work Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was devoted to fighting those attempting to ban abortion, on the grounds that such attempts sought to introduce into government "a biased religious viewpoint." Which was around the time Evangelicals began separating themselves from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They, Evangelicals, wanted to ban abortion too – and were now willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Catholics to do it. Christianity Today, the magazine founded by Billy Graham, advised its readers in 1975 not to fear joining the "pro-life" cause; it had "matured," and could "no longer be dismissed as a group of cold-hearted Catholics simply taking orders from the Pope."

Rick doesn't go into this in his piece, but it's worth pointing out here. From The Nation on the occasion of Jerry Falwells death:

While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the "pre-born." For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. At about the same time, the Internal Revenue Service moved to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until 1971.) Falwell was furious, complaining, "In some states it's easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."

Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His pleas initially fell on deaf ears.

"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."

These cross-currents are always there. And religious reactionaries seem to be able to find a way to work together when it comes to suppressing any pressure for freedom and equality from below. They just need to find that sweet spot.


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digby 1/31/2012 12:00:00 PM |

 
Deterrence

by digby

Let's put death row on an assembly line:

Republican Rep. Larry Pittman, who was appointed to the District 82 House seat in October, expressed his views in an email sent Wednesday to every member of the General Assembly. [...]

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out. Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner,” Pittman wrote in the email. “If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

I'm for drawing and quartering myself. It really sends a message.

But I don't think there's ever going to be a proper deterrent to abortion until women are publicly executed. You're never going to stop these people from getting themselves pregnant and some of them aren't going to do their duty no matter what. The only way to properly deter them is to kill them.

The good news is this fellow is just one of many kindly folks who are tragically misunderstood. We just need to convince them of the error of their ways so they'll understand that we are all in this together. I'm sure they'll see it sometime soon.


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digby 1/31/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Citizen Training

by digby

Be advised that walking your dog off leash could get you electrocuted by the authorities.

A Montara man walking two lapdogs off leash was hit with an electric-shock gun by a National Park Service ranger after allegedly giving a false name and trying to walk away, authorities said Monday.

The park ranger encountered Gary Hesterberg with his two small dogs Sunday afternoon at Rancho Corral de Tierra, which was recently incorporated into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, said Howard Levitt, a spokesman for the park service.

Hesterberg, who said he didn't have identification with him, allegedly gave the ranger a false name, Levitt said.

The ranger, who wasn't identified, asked Hesterberg to remain at the scene, Levitt said. He tried several times to leave, and finally the ranger "pursued him a little bit and she did deploy her" electric-shock weapon, Levitt said. "That did stop him."

San Mateo County sheriff's deputies and paramedics then arrived and Hesterberg gave his real name, the park spokesman said.

Hesterberg, whose age was not available, was arrested on suspicion of failing to obey a lawful order, having dogs off-leash and knowingly providing false information, Levitt said.

Witnesses said the use of a stun gun and the arrest seemed excessive for someone walking two small dogs off leash.

"It was really scary," said Michelle Babcock, who said she had seen the incident as she and her husband were walking their two border collies. "I just felt so bad for him."

Babcock said Hesterberg had repeatedly asked the ranger why he was being detained. She didn't answer him, Babcock said.

To be clear: what this means is that if a park ranger stops you for walking your dogs off leash, you are not to ask any questions or fail to carry the proper ID or you risk being shot through with 50,000 volts. This is now the way things work. Apparently, before the taser, this park ranger would have had to shoot this person in the back with her service revolver.

Tasers have turned cops into thugs who use the weapon to demand not just compliance but respect. Someone who is walking his dogs off leash is simply not doing something that would draw this kind of response for any other reason.

Get this:

Rancho Corral de Tierra has long been an off-leash walking spot for local dog owners. In December, the area became part of the national park system, which requires that all dogs be on a leash, Levitt said.

The ranger was trying to educate residents of the rule, Levitt said

Zapping citizens with a taser is certainly one way to train them. In a science fiction dystopia.

Sadly, that's exactly what tasers are doing: they are training citizens to immediately comply with government authorities on command.

Well, at least we know we're free.

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digby 1/31/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Four gutless Dems kill single-payer in California

by David Atkins

If the drama of the first two years of the Obama presidency is any indication, it's obvious that single-payer healthcare won't be coming at a national level any time soon. Fortunately, however, individual states can carry the torch where the national system is too corrupt to do so. While single-payer has passed in Vermont, the real reforms will come when big states with negotiating leverage enact it and begin to drive costs down in a big way while expanding and ameliorating coverage. California seemed like the likeliest big state to begin this process: after all, Governor Schwarzenegger twice vetoed a single-payer bill that had made its way through the legislature. So with Jerry Brown in office, it seemed reasonable to expect that the same bill would make it to the Governor's desk for a signature.

But not so fast:

California's "Medicare for all" universal health care legislation fell short of the 21 votes needed to pass the state Senate today.

Senate Bill 810 failed on a 19-15 vote during this morning's floor session, with four moderate Democrats abstaining and one voting no.

Democratic Sen. Mark Leno, who authored the bill, said the proposal would stabilize health care costs and expand access to coverage.

He called the bill, which does not include funding to cover the projected $250 billion annual cost of running the single-payer system, the first step in a "many year project" that will likely require asking voters to approve financing. He encouraged members to support the bill to allow the policy discussion to continue.

No Republicans voted for the bill. Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, criticized the proposal as an attempt to create "another costly and inefficient bureaucracy."

"There's no doubt that we need health care reform, there's no doubt that we need to improve our health care system, but members, this is not the bill to move forward," he said.

The bill faces a Tuesday deadline for passing the state Senate in the current legislative session.

That's my Republican State Senator Tony Strickland, who narrowly beat my good friend progressive Hannah-Beth Jackson by under 900 votes in the last election, and who is now running for Congress after redistricting made his Senate seat too Democratic to handle (Hannah-Beth will likely pick up the seat this year over primary opposition from anti-tax conservadem Jason Hodge.) Redistricting elsewhere in California should give us a couple more Senate seats as well going into 2013.

But the problem here isn't so much Tony Strickland. The problem is the gutless Democrats in blue districts who have nothing to lose by voting against single-payer healthcare when there's actually a chance of passing it, except for the wrath of insurance companies if they go for higher office. But rather than voting for or against the bill, they simple abstained, in the most gutless move possible. jpmassar at DailyKos has a rundown of who they are and their contact information:

Senator Alex Padilla (Pacoima/LA area)
Email: Senator.Padilla@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4020
Fax: 916324-6645

Senator Juan Vargas (San Diego area)
Email: Juan.Vargas@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4040
Fax: (916) 327-3522

Senator Michael Rubio (Fresno/Bakersfield area)
Email: Michael.Rubio@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4016

Senator Rod Wright (Los Angeles area)
Email: Senator.Wright@sen.ca.gov
Phone: (916) 651-4025
Fax: (916) 445-3712

Some of them have tougher districts than others; Padilla, for instance, is utterly inexcusable as he's in a solid blue district. But it doesn't matter. Regardless of how tough the district, and even if one grants the unlikely theory that taking a "yea" vote on single-payer would be career suicide, this issue above all is a bill to fall on one's sword for. The opportunity to really and truly pass single-payer healthcare is why one gets into Democratic politics. It's the equivalent of taking the game-winning shot at the buzzer in Game 7 of the finals, or kicking the winning field goal in the Super Bowl. And these sniveling cowards didn't just miss the shot; they didn't even pull the trigger.

Then, of course, there are the two truly awful Conservadems in the CA Senate, Ron Calderon and Lou Correa, who voted "no". Their contact information is below--though getting through to them is like talking to a brick wall:

Senator Ron Calderon
Phone: (916) 651-4030
senator.calderon@sen.ca.gov

Senator Lou Correa
Phone: (916) 651-4034
senator.correa@sen.ca.gov

Yes, there's much to fault the Obama Administration for over the last few years. But the President didn't have the opportunity to cast a deciding vote on passing single-payer healthcare for tens of millions of people. These guys did, and they blew it on the big stage.

Call them. Email them. Make them feel the heat of ten thousand suns. They deserve no less. They can still change their minds before the Tuesday deadline, but they're running out of time.

And rest assured that as long as I'm involved in California politics, this California Democratic Executive Board member will work to oppose each and every one of them in a primary for any office they might seek in the future if this bill doesn't go to the Governor's desk this year.

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thereisnospoon 1/31/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, January 30, 2012

 
Post partisan depression

by digby

Last week the political world was all agog over Ryan Lizza's New Yorker article about the administration in which he revealed that after three long years of GOP obstruction the president resigned himself to the fact that post-partisanship wasn't going to work out. It may have shifted something fundamental --- for the first time people in the Village are questioning whether their beloved bipartisanship is the only way the government can function.

Lizza reminds people that Obama had always held a starry-eyed view of the various divides in the American political culture (a concern that was so aggressively attacked by his supporters in the 2008 race that those of us who raised it were left with permanent scars from the experience.) Indeed, in this respect, Lizza's analysis seems stale to me --- it's just that it apparently took four years for it to be allowed to be aired publicly. Still, it's an important piece of political journalism that may turn out to be politically significant:

If there was a single unifying argument that defined Obamaism from his earliest days in politics to his Presidential campaign, it was the idea of post-partisanship. He was proposing himself as a transformative figure, the man who would spring the lock. In an essay published in The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan, a self-proclaimed conservative, reflected on Obama’s heady appeal: “Unlike any of the other candidates, he could take America—finally—past the debilitating, self-perpetuating family quarrel of the Baby Boom generation that has long engulfed all of us.”

Wasn't it pretty to think so? But it was always daft. This yearning to get past these "quarrels" was to make the fatuous assumption that they were the petty, transient disputes of spoiled children rather than the manifestations of America's deepest and most abiding divisions. Those "quarrels" were around war, race, imperialism, equality, freedom --- all issues that have animated our politics from the very beginning of the Republic. The country was founded on them. The fighting over these issues waxes and wanes but the fight itself is definitional. While the symbolism of the first black president was always very powerful, mistaking that symbolism for an end to all these tedious disagreements was a first degree error.

As Lizza writes:

It would be hard for any President to reverse this decades-long political trend, which began when segregationist Democrats in the South—Dixiecrats like Strom Thurmond—left the Party and became Republicans. Congress is polarized largely because Americans live in communities of like-minded people who elect more ideological representatives. Obama’s rhetoric about a nation of common purpose and values no longer fits this country: there really is a red America and a blue America...

I readily forgive the youthful supporters who always believe their parents' battles are no longer worth fighting. Why should they? They don't know yet that they are always with us in some form or another and that it's as necessary to vigilantly hold the line as it is to make progress. (Two steps forward, one step back --- sometimes worse than that.)

But what's Andrew Sullivan's excuse? He's been involved in American politics for decades. Surely he saw that the modern conservative movement has become a retrograde, obscurantist, political faction that has every intention of acting out its dystopian agenda without any thought to its opposition. Indeed, politically mowing down their opposition is what animates them. They impeached a president over a sexual indiscretion. They stole an election. They bullied their way into an war on blatantly false pretenses and dared the world to defy them. What delusion would propel an allegedly sophisticated political observer to think that these people would be so dazzled by the election of a black Democratic president that it would all magically end and we would march together into a harmonious future?

And more importantly, why did Barack Obama and his team think this? And they did. As Lizza writes:

In 2006, Obama published a mild polemic, “The Audacity of Hope,” which became a blueprint for his 2008 Presidential campaign. He described politics as a system seized by two extremes. “Depending on your tastes, our condition is the natural result of radical conservatism or perverse liberalism,” he wrote. “Tom DeLay or Nancy Pelosi, big oil or greedy trial lawyers, religious zealots or gay activists, Fox News or the New York Times.” He repeated the theme later, while describing the fights between Bill Clinton and the Newt Gingrich-led House, in the nineteen-nineties: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation—a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago—played out on the national stage.” Washington, as he saw it, was self-defeatingly partisan. He believed that “any attempt by Democrats to pursue a more sharply partisan and ideological strategy misapprehends the moment we’re in” ...

Obama wrote longingly about American politics in the mid-twentieth century, when both parties had liberal and conservative wings that allowed centrist coalitions to form.

Cheap Villager nostalgia, nothing more. Unless you define the "center" as splitting the difference between the far right fringe and the most corrupt Democrats, those days have been long gone for many years:

The Republican Party has drifted much farther to the right than the Democratic Party has drifted to the left. Jacob Hacker, a professor at Yale, whose 2006 book, “Off Center,” documented this trend, told me, citing Poole and Rosenthal’s data on congressional voting records, that, since 1975, “Senate Republicans moved roughly twice as far to the right as Senate Democrats moved to the left” and “House Republicans moved roughly six times as far to the right as House Democrats moved to the left.” In other words, the story of the past few decades is asymmetric polarization.

The idea that the permanent political establishment in DC would step in to put this crazy genie back in the bottle was absurd. They have stood by as the political system catapulted off a cliff without blinking an eye. Indeed, the centrist establishment used that partisan polarization to advance a corporate friendly austerity agenda. It was good for business. And that's what they care about.

The great rapprochement --- like the Grand Bargain --- was a pipe dream, and it was one that many, many Democratic voters enthusiastically bought into. I suppose after years of bullying from the hardcore rightwing partisans you can't really blame them. Needless to say it was never even remotely possible --- certainly not at this point in the development of the conservative movement.

Lizza says the president is chastened by his first three years. He's realized the limits of the presidency, that rather than being a "director of change" he's a "facilitator" who has learned to work the system rather than overhaul it. Lizza implies that this is simply how it had to be. But I'm not sure I agree with that. Certainly this grandiose notion of "post-partisanship" was impossible. But could he have been a "director" of change? I don't know. But the president came into office with the opposing party discredited, a large majority and a very large crisis. With a more clear eyed perspective, the art of the possible was expanded, at least for a time.

An earlier understanding of this might have led to a better outcome:

Predictions that Obama would usher in a new era of post-partisan consensus politics now seem not just naïve but delusional. At this political juncture, there appears to be only one real model of effective governance in Washington: partisan dominance, in which a President with large majorities in Congress can push through an ambitious agenda.

Lizza claims that President Obama did just that in his first two years. I think that's being very generous. He did pass a stimulus plan and the health care plan --- both of which suffered tremendously for the insistence on trying to get Republican buy-in long after it was patently obvious they were doing nothing more than watering down the bills before coming out against them. And the long delays gave the right the political space they needed to regroup and come back swinging: 2010 successfully ended any hope of a dominant partisan majority. It's hard to believe that a more realistic understanding of the partisan divide couldn't have created a better outcome.

But let's face facts. Even though the president seems to have abandoned his "post-partisan" fantasy and the right has re-surged strongly, there still persists a belief on the left that there is a magic formula that will break down all these unpleasant cultural and political divisions and bring the parties together. It's no longer the dream of an all powerful president who will heal our divisions by his mere presence. Today it's that we will be able to transcend our differences around policy.

Some believe we will forge new coalitions with Republicans on economics (a long held, never fulfilled dream.) Others think it will be around civil liberties or imperialism. And certainly there will be discrete pieces of legislation that can be passed in a "transpartisan" way. There always have been parochial and individual rationales for working across the aisle on occasion. Sometimes, rarely, even on principle. But a new political coalition? Unlikely. Particularly now, with the nation under stress and the Republicans hunkering down. The deep divisions we see in our politics were baked into the American cake from the beginning. It goes way beyond legislation. It's about identity.

Like I said, this phenomenon waxes and wanes. There are always periods of cooperation and relative peace interrupted by turmoil and partisan battle. Once we even had a war over it. Right now, after a decades long right wing assault and the total capitulation to its premises by the centrist establishment and corporate Democrats, whatever peace is attained by compromise will come at the expense of vulnerable people --- the elderly, children --- and liberalism in general.

I'm glad the president finally realized that he was trying to govern a nation that didn't actually exist. It won't make the outcome any better, but clarity is always good for its own sake. And it's good that the DC press has discovered partisanship again. Ed Kilgore summarizes the illuminating moment:

Presumably spurred by a Gallup analysis on Friday of partisan splits in approval ratings of recent U.S. presidents, both Politico (John Harris and Jonathan Allen) and WaPo’s The Fix (Chris Cillizza and Aaron Blake) devoted top billing this morning to an effort to dash any remaining hopes of bipartisan action on the nation’s major challenges before 2013 at the earliest.

This rather banal realization is interesting primarily because it has emerged from the Beltway redoubt of those most likely to harbor the illusion that Great Big Adults in both parties ought to be able to get together and cut deals that can then be sold to the rubes around the country as representing a victory for their team.

I'm sure this news is equally unpleasant to many liberals who hate this system and will make more than a few join the growing chorus which says that electoral politics are a corrupt sewer and a big fat waste of time. And they may very well be right, at least in this moment. We are probably looking at a fairly drawn out period of political trench warfare --- ugly, boring and unsatisfying. I'm all ears if someone has a better idea. (Don't start the revolution without me!) But until that glorious day, somebody should probably keep plugging away in the trenches and trying to move the dial back to the left, even if it's inch by painful inch.

To that end, you can support these people for congress. It's one way to make change in smaller increments in our battered democracy.

And if you're looking for a silver lining, Kilgore wryly provides it:

[I]t is nice to see that the illusion of easy bipartisanship is now largely limited to Americans Elect supporters who somehow think partisans are preventing the American people from embracing by acclamation an agenda of wildly unpopular “entitlement reforms” and tax increases.

Take your victories where you can. That is good news.

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digby 1/30/2012 06:14:00 PM |

 
Personal invasion

by David Atkins

This is brilliant:

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication.

"We need some gender equity here," she told HuffPost. "The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we're going to do that to women, why not do that to men?"

The Republican-controlled senate narrowly rejected the amendment Monday by a vote of 21 to 19, but passed the mandatory ultrasound bill in a voice vote. A similar bill in Texas, which physicians say has caused a "bureaucratic nightmare," is currently being challenged in court.

Howell said she is not surprised her amendment failed.

"This is more of a message type of an amendment, so I was pleased to get 19 votes," she said.

She pointed out that there are only seven women in the Virginia senate, and six of them voted in favor of her amendment, along with 13 male senators. Sen. Jill Vogel (R-Fauquier County), the sponsor of the mandatory ultrasound bill, voted against it.

Humor and counterpoint are some of the Left's most effective tools, and there's no reason they should be left just to late night comedians.

On another note, I'm increasingly convinced that electing more progressive women to office is a core strategy for the renewal of this country. There are a lot of good ones in state legislatures, ready to move onto the national stage.


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thereisnospoon 1/30/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 

Boo hoo

by digby

Tell me again why I'm supposed to care that "progressive" Catholics are unhappy that president Obama mandated that Catholic institutions that employ people who are not members of the faith have to provide birth control coverage under the health care law? I'm hearing they feel "betrayed."

Welcome to our world folks. Now you know what it felt like for the rest of us when the administration made a deal with the Church to give abortion coverage pariah status in the health care law and treat it as though it is something so dirty that decent people wouldn't even want their money to touch the money of those who bought this dirty coverage. It wasn't pleasant.

I don't pretend to understand why progressive Catholics, who I'm told practice birth control at similar rates to non-Catholics, are upset that the government is mandating low cost coverage for everyone --- for something they personally practice. That sort of hypocrisy is simply beyond the ken of a heathen like myself. But as a political matter, the President made the right decision. Pro-choice progressive women have been shafted over and over again on reproductive issues and to enable this growing anti-birth control crusade to gain traction at the hands of a Democratic president would have been a true betrayal of epic proportions. Keep in mind that Democratic women outnumber Democratic men by nearly 10 points.

In any case, it's done. I don't care if the anti-birth control minority are crying. Why should they be immune?

Nita Chaudhary and Shaunna Thomas of weareultraviolet.org write:

Today, 1 in 3 women has trouble affording birth control. The U.S. has one of the highest rates of unplanned pregnancies in the industrialized world, and studies show that women who plan their pregnancies are likely to be healthier, seek prenatal care, and have healthier children.

Given all of this, shouldn't the question be why a group of mostly men -- bishops or otherwise -- need an extra-extra special exemption from prioritizing the health of women? Sadly, this is no freak occurrence. When the Obama administration made the misguided decision not to allow Plan B to be sold over the counter, the debate focused exclusively on the way he -- "as a father" -- viewed the idea of 11-year-old girls getting Plan B with their pack of gum. The overwhelming majority of young women who were simply trying to avoid pregnancy or abortion, both far more risky than Plan B, were ignored. And when a collection of almost all men pushed the "Bart Stupak amendment," holding health reform they supposedly supported hostage for the sake of inroads on their anti-choice agenda, the actual impact their amendment would have on women was virtually absent as news coverage lionized these men's dedication to their consciences.

Shouldn't we ask why women's health, our ability to control our lives and bodies and careers, is such a popular political football? Is it because the women who actually are affected have no voice in our political system?

We need to start asking women what they think about birth control getting covered by their insurance.

You can start with us. We're glad. And if you're part of the 80% of Americans who agree with us, you can sign this card letting the administration know they did the right thing: www.weareultraviolet.org

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digby 1/30/2012 02:00:00 PM |

 
Exceptionalism!

by digby



If we can just get those taxes down to nothing and eliminate all impediments to inheritance, we should be able to successfully recreate the British aristocracy in a generation. The founders would be proud.


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digby 1/30/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
Hit me baby one more time

by digby

Ooops:

One of the biggest requests that labor had made of Congressional Dems was this: Don’t sell out unions when the long-term Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization is renegotiated with House Republicans. Unions saw this as a top prioritiy for 2012.

Well, now the verdict is in: Over a dozen unions — including a number of AFL-CIO affiliates, like the Communications Workers of America and the International Association of Machinists; and possibly the SEIU — are preparing to unleash a new letter blasting Senate Dem leaders for reaching a bad deal with Republicans on this core priority, claiming it could compromise their ability to organize in the future. They will demand that Dems pull out of the deal and insist that Dems push the GOP harder for a “clean” reauthorization that doesn’t rewrite labor law.

One labor official told me that the deal has led to "significant union discontent” with the Senate Dem leadership, which may not bode well for Dem-labor relations heading into an election year.

Sargent has the background. It's not pretty.


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digby 1/30/2012 11:00:00 AM |

 
Chipping Away At Romney's Sense of Entitlement

By tristero

Imagine how galling it must be to Mitt Romney to be lectured to by a Bush - yep, one of those Bushes, the ones born with silver spoons pre-inserted in their rears - on how important it is to "earn" Jeb's endorsement, and not simply expect it.

These are very strange and creepy people.

tristero 1/30/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Shame strategy

by digby

Oh, my goodness:

Stephen Hester, head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, gave way to heavy political pressure last night to forego his £963,000 bonus.

The final straw for the RBS chief executive appears to have been the looming threat of a vote in the House of Commons condemning the Government for failing to block the payment.

He is reported to have feared becoming "a pariah" over the controversy.

But here's the problem. He's going to be sullen and unhappy now and unwilling to create any jobs. And then where will we be? It's not like there's anyone else who can do his job. (Even worse, all the employees of the bank will be demoralized because they'll feel as if they work for the civil service. Or something.)

Big mistake folks. By not insisting that this fine fellow take his million pound bonus they've robbed average citizens of their badly needed jobs. I hope they can live with themselves.

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digby 1/30/2012 09:03:00 AM |

 
Creative decay, courtesy our corporate overlords

by David Atkins

Kurt Andersen of Vanity Fair penned a great article this month on the comparative lack of cultural innovation over the last 20 years. Andersen notes that in architecture, art, fashion, music and other aspects of popular and consumer culture, there is very little difference between the culture of 20 years ago and that of today. By contrast, think of the enormous differences between 1992 and 1972, or between 1972 and 1952, or 1952 and 1932, or 1932 and 1912. Technology has changed significantly, of course, but styles haven't:

Think about it. Picture it. Rewind any other 20-year chunk of 20th-century time. There’s no chance you would mistake a photograph or movie of Americans or an American city from 1972—giant sideburns, collars, and bell-bottoms, leisure suits and cigarettes, AMC Javelins and Matadors and Gremlins alongside Dodge Demons, Swingers, Plymouth Dusters, and Scamps—with images from 1992. Time-travel back another 20 years, before rock ’n’ roll and the Pill and Vietnam, when both sexes wore hats and cars were big and bulbous with late-moderne fenders and fins—again, unmistakably different, 1952 from 1972. You can keep doing it and see that the characteristic surfaces and sounds of each historical moment are absolutely distinct from those of 20 years earlier or later: the clothes, the hair, the cars, the advertising—all of it. It’s even true of the 19th century: practically no respectable American man wore a beard before the 1850s, for instance, but beards were almost obligatory in the 1870s, and then disappeared again by 1900. The modern sensibility has been defined by brief stylistic shelf lives, our minds trained to register the recent past as old-fashioned.

Go deeper and you see that just 20 years also made all the difference in serious cultural output. New York’s amazing new buildings of the 1930s (the Chrysler, the Empire State) look nothing like the amazing new buildings of the 1910s (Grand Central, Woolworth) or of the 1950s (the Seagram, U.N. headquarters). Anyone can instantly identify a 50s movie (On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai) versus one from 20 years before (Grand Hotel, It Happened One Night) or 20 years after (Klute, A Clockwork Orange), or tell the difference between hit songs from 1992 (Sir Mix-a-Lot) and 1972 (Neil Young) and 1952 (Patti Page) and 1932 (Duke Ellington). When high-end literature was being redefined by James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, great novels from just 20 years earlier—Henry James’s The Ambassadors, Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth—seemed like relics of another age. And 20 years after Hemingway published his war novel For Whom the Bell Tolls a new war novel, Catch-22, made it seem preposterously antique.

Now try to spot the big, obvious, defining differences between 2012 and 1992. Movies and literature and music have never changed less over a 20-year period. Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna, Adele has replaced Mariah Carey—both distinctions without a real difference—and Jay-Z and Wilco are still Jay-Z and Wilco. Except for certain details (no Google searches, no e-mail, no cell phones), ambitious fiction from 20 years ago (Doug Coupland’s Generation X, Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow) is in no way dated, and the sensibility and style of Joan Didion’s books from even 20 years before that seem plausibly circa-2012.

Andersen has a lot more evidence where this comes from in his lengthy 3-page piece. Suffice it to say that it's a fairly compelling case. The key question is why?

Andersen speculates on a number of reasons, not all of which I find convincing. But one reason occurred to me immediately while reading the piece, which Andersen does eventually address: the fact that culture and media are increasingly dominated by shareholder-interested, risk-averse conglomerates that have too much to lose by taking significant creative initiative:

Part of the explanation, as I’ve said, is that, in this thrilling but disconcerting time of technological and other disruptions, people are comforted by a world that at least still looks the way it did in the past. But the other part of the explanation is economic: like any lucrative capitalist sector, our massively scaled-up new style industry naturally seeks stability and predictability. Rapid and radical shifts in taste make it more expensive to do business and can even threaten the existence of an enterprise. One reason automobile styling has changed so little these last two decades is because the industry has been struggling to survive, which made the perpetual big annual styling changes of the Golden Age a reducible business expense. Today, Starbucks doesn’t want to have to renovate its thousands of stores every few years. If blue jeans became unfashionable tomorrow, Old Navy would be in trouble. And so on. Capitalism may depend on perpetual creative destruction, but the last thing anybody wants is their business to be the one creatively destroyed. Now that multi-billion-dollar enterprises have become style businesses and style businesses have become multi-billion-dollar enterprises, a massive damper has been placed on the general impetus for innovation and change.

This isn't exactly news to anyone who goes to the movie theater. Producers come up with sequels, prequels, remakes and reboots galore because there's built-in audience and branding for them. Doing new things and telling new stories are dangerous and potentially expensive endeavors.

It's even worse in videogames, exceptions like Portal notwithstanding. Cracked had a great article on this subject last year:

But this isn't about any lack of creativity among game developers, artists, writers or anyone else. It's about money, and the fact that the market has trapped games in a fucking creative coffin (and developers will tell you the same). Everybody complains about sequels and reboots in Hollywood, but holy shit, it's nothing compared to what we have in gaming right now.

For instance, each of the Big Three game console makers took the stage at E3 to show off their biggest games of the upcoming year. Microsoft led off with the aforementioned Modern Warfare 3, which is really Call of Duty 8 (game makers like to switch up the sequel titles so the digits don't get ridiculous). Next was Tomb Raider 10 (rebooted as Tomb Raider). Then we had Mass Effect 3, and Ghost Recon 11 (titled Ghost Recon: Future Soldier). This was followed by Gears of War 3, Forza 4 and Fable 4 (called Fable: The Journey).

Next were two new games, both based on existing brands and both for toddlers (Disneyland Adventure -- a Kinect enabled game that will let your toddler tour Disneyland without you having to spring for a ticket -- and a Sesame Street game starring Elmo).

Then, finally, we reached the big announcement at the end (they always save cliffhanger "megaton" announcements for last, Steve Jobs-style) and they came out to announce that they were introducing "the beginning of a new trilogy." Yes! Something fucking new!

Then this came up on the screen: Halo 4. Confused? So was the audience. By "new trilogy" they actually meant that there would be three more Halo games. Did I mention that Halo 4 is actually Halo 7? Which means they intend to put out at least nine Halo games before they're done? Oh, wait, they also announced they were doing a gritty reboot of the decade-old Halo to make it an even 10.

Sony came up next and announced a sequel, another sequel and then a reboot. After that it went sequel, sequel, special edition of a sequel, new FPS, sequel, new FPS, sequel, special edition of a sequel, new game based on an existing property (Star Trek), sequel, sequel and sequel. Then they introduced a new system (the PS Vita) and showed it off with four sequels.

Nintendo's list went: sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel, sequel and (hold on, let me double check here) a sequel. And you already know what those were, even if you haven't played a video game in 15 years: Mario Kart, Mario World, Luigi, Zelda, Kirby, etc. Then they showed off their new system (the Wii U) with a demo reel promising that some day it would allow us to play sequels like Arkham Asylum 2, Darksiders II and Ninja Gaiden 3.

Think about the situation with Hollywood -- movies are expensive as hell, so studios are scared to death of taking creative risks and thus we get a new Transformers movie every two years. But now take that and multiply it times five, and you have the situation with video games. Literally. A video game costs five times as much as a movie ticket, and therefore customers are five times as cautious about experimenting with unfamiliar games that might wind up being shit. Game publishers respond accordingly.

And yes, we gamers are ultimately to blame. We don't even perceive how incredibly narrow our range of choices has gotten. For instance, every single gaming forum on the Internet right now is hosting at least one passionate discussion about which is better, Modern Warfare 3 or Battlefield 3. [Emphasis added]

The videogame industry is particularly problematic in this regard. But the problem is a cultural universal with similar symptoms across the board. The malaise of large-scale corporate domination of our economy isn't just political and economic. It's cultural, too. It's the slow death of conformity and creative strangulation disguised as cool and individual expression through ironic nostalgia and the commodification of discontent.


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thereisnospoon 1/30/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, January 29, 2012

 
Virtually Speaking Sunday

by digby



6pst 9est

digby and Stuart Zechman discuss developments of the week, highlighting what’s been neglected or misrepresented on the Sunday morning broadcasts, drawing from their work of the prior week and the wickedly funny Bobblespeak Translations. Featuring CoT’s the ‘Most Ridiculous Moment’ from the Sunday morning talk shows. Follow @digby56 @bobblespeak @Stuart_Zechman.


Call in number to speak with the host(646) 200-3440

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digby 1/29/2012 05:45:00 PM |

 
What is this "democracy" you speak of?

by digby

John McCain was just born to be a tyrant. He hid it well for a few years, but it's always been under there, lurking, waiting until his ambitions were burned out and he could be himself:

“We’ve got to stop the debates,” McCain told Meet The Press' David Gregory. “Enough with the debates, because they are driving up our candidates’, all of them, unfavorability. We have enough of that. They’ve turned into mud wrestling instead of an exposition of all our candidates views. And it’s time to recognize who the real adversary is, and it’s not each other.”

Sorry, daddy.

In every election there are a bunch of people demanding that candidates drop out, to stop the debates, to end the primaries because it's hurting the ballclub. There is a very strong strain in our country (a bipartisan one, by the way) to not allow the people to decide who's going to run for president. (This is the same impulse that immediately writes off everyone but the anointed frontrunner --- anointed, by the way, by a bunch of millionaires and the Village press corps.)

I realize it's uncomfortable for everyone's chosen candidate to have to compete for votes and make his case in something besides a 30 second ad, but it's still nice to let people at least pretend that they are participating in this thing we call "democracy." Presidential Debates are just about the only thing we've done to further that cause in the past 30 years --- so naturally the establishment is clamoring to end them.

The system will survive and the eventual nominee will come out ok. Everybody should just relax.

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digby 1/29/2012 04:30:00 PM |