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This country is going bananas

Friday, December 4, 2015

So today I went to my bank (Chelsea Groton, a local bank that is not too big to fail) to deposit a check. All the tellers were wearing a button that notified me that it was okay to say “Merry Christmas” to them, as they wanted to keep Christ in Christmas. The probability is that they had no choice in the matter, so I said nothing, other than to wish the teller “Happy Holidays” when I left. The buttons were provided by the Knights of Columbus, which one must imagine is an organization stocked almost solely by aging white males who are spending their golden years watching Fox News.

This war on Christmas stuff is yet another, and to my mind a significant sign, that this country is going bananas. Apparently, Christmas is not endangered by rampant commercialism, but it is endangered by the recognition that there are non-Christians in this country who deserve consideration.

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Cognitive dissonance

Friday, December 4, 2015

In case you are not familiar with the term, “cognitive dissonance” is defined as follows:

In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time, performs an action that is contradictory to one or more beliefs, ideas or values, or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values.

via Wikipedia

So here’s something akin to cognitive dissonance. Today I received an email from Joe Courtney telling me he voted to restrict people on the terrorist watch list from getting guns. I’ve differed with Joe on a couple of things lately, see here and here, but I’m totally with him on this one. Also, totally against him. How’s that for dissonance?

I’m totally with him because in any rational world the proposed legislation makes perfect sense, though it of course only scratches the surface so far as what’s needed by way of gun control.

But I’m totally against him because the terrorist watch list is stocked full of people who aren’t terrorists, and moreover, never were. They are denied any due process or method to clear their names. There’s a legal term for the process used to put people on the list: arbitrary and capricious.

Not surprising, is it? This is the U.S. in the age of paranoia after all.

So, is it fair to single these “terrorists” out? Probably not. Are the Republicans being hypocritical for failing to do so in this instance? Is there any doubt? They’d be happy to vote to put them all in concentration camps, but take away their guns? Never!

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Who’s the greatest grifter of them all?

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

The evil stepmother’s magic mirror would have a tough time with this question, but I think Mike Huckabee is making a strong run for the title. He has branched out beyond politics in his hucksterism:

Last year, a man named Brian Chambers announced a world-changing advance: An international research organization called the Health Sciences Institute had found an incredible cure for cancer hidden in the Book of Matthew. For just $74, you, too, could discover the secret.

That was the breathless pitch emailed to hundreds of thousands of Huckabee’s followers in January, beneath a “special message” from the Republican presidential candidate trumpeting “important information.” Upon closer inspection, the divine remedy—eating fewer carbs—was never recommended by St. Matthew. Chambers is not a doctor, and the studies on starvation diets he cited make no mention of “cures.”

via Mother Jones

If it’s true that there’s a sucker born every minute, Huckabee seems to want to make sure that there’s a dead sucker for every newborn. You would think he’d have a vested interest in keeping them alive, inasmuch as once they’re dead, he can’t grift them anymore. Okay, I know that Carson has also been flogging quack cures, and it’s arguably worse when he does it, given that he really is a doctor, incredible as that may seem. Still, Carson is a relative newcomer. Huckabee is a seasoned veteran, so right now, he’s my candidate for greatest grifter of them all.

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A tiny point of light

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

George the first promised a thousand of them, but they never seem to have appeared. However, there’s one point of light about this story, documenting some shady corporate entities funneling money into Jeb! Bush’s PAC:

In February, a limited liability company called TH Holdings LLC donated $100,000 to Right to Rise, the super-PAC supporting Jeb Bush’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination. That’s not extraordinary; quite a few LLCs have donated to the super-PAC, which has so far raised more than $103 million. But TH Holdings is a special case—one that represents the worst-case scenario in the post-Citizens United campaign finance landscape: untraceable corporations shoveling untraceable cash into the political system. Beyond this six-figure contribution, the company appears to have no history of doing business anywhere. And its incorporation records reveal no owners, managers, or officers.

The article goes on to detail a number of other examples of shadow corporations donating money to the Bush campaign.

So where’s the point of light? Well, at least so far as the examples cited in this article, the money is all going to Jeb!, which means it might as well have been flushed down the toilet. He’s going nowhere. If Trump doesn’t get it, it will be Cruz, who may very well be getting dark money contributions of his own. But these days, you take your points of light where you can get them.

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All together now: Just a disturbed loner

Saturday, November 28, 2015

From the New York Times:

Officials from both law enforcement and Planned Parenthood said they did not know whether the group’s Colorado Springs center had been specifically targeted. But the attack carried echoes of other violent assaults on abortion providers, and it prompted the police in New York City to deploy units to Planned Parenthood clinics in the city.

But we know, don’t we? If you’ve seen pictures of the building, you know that the words “Planned Parenthood” were written in letters about 10 feet high. You also know that Planned Parenthood has been the target of a vicious smear campaign organized from the beginning by the Republican Party, which has made charges that have been found to be bogus by investigations all over the country. There is a clear and direct line from these vicious and unfounded attacks and this incident in Colorado. We all know that.

So I ask you, WWTRD (What would the Republicans do?) if the situation were somehow reversed, and the Democrats had, let’s say, accused the NRA of being the criminal’s lobby and enabling terrorism, after which Wayne Lapierre met an oh so delicious and ironic fate?

Let’s first put aside the fact that the Democrats charges would have been true and the scenario itself unlikely (as this one was not). That’s irrelevant to this discussion. The Republicans would immediately blame Democrats, Obama first and foremost. The lines of attack would have been coordinated. Every Republican would be making statements that were variants of an agreed upon theme, and despite the fact that in this scenario the Democrats would have no moral responsibility, they would all immediately assume defensive crouches. Their response, if any, would be entirely uncoordinated, consisting mostly of mumbled half apologies.

That’s what would happen, more or less. So here’s a prediction about the Democratic response to this Republican inspired massacre. A few lonely voices will point out the connection. They will be met with a furious Republican counter-attack, both from the Republicans themselves and Fox News. Other Democrats will remain silent. The white male shooter will be written off as a disturbed loner. The lying attacks in and out of Congress on Planned Parenthood will continue, until the next disturbed loner comes along.

UPDATE: Well, good for Bernie:

In a statement, Sen. Sanders said, “While we still do not know the shooter’s motive, what is clear is that Planned Parenthood has been the subject of vicious and unsubstantiated statements attacking an organization that provides critical health care for millions of Americans. I strongly support Planned Parenthood and the work it is doing and hope people realize that bitter rhetoric can have unintended consequences.”

Via Politicus

Not quite as specific as I’d like, we really need to make it clear that it’s Republicans doing this, and lets not presume the stuff about “unintended consequences”.

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Yet another modest proposal 

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

The Black Lives Matter movement has been criticized for failing to advance concrete proposals to deal with the issues it’s raising. Here’s a suggestion that should, but won’t, give the critics pause. The group should demand the appointment of a special prosecutor in Chicago to pursue the murder prosecution of the cop who gunned down Lacquan McDonald. The elected DA, Anita Alvarez, has proven beyond reasonable doubt that she is in the tank for the cops, and will do what needs doing to secure an acquittal. If you’ve watched the video you know that it shouldn’t have taken her a year to bring charges. Once the identify of the shooter was established (and that was never in question) no reasonable person would take more than 5 minutes to make the decision it took her a year to make, and then only because a judge ordered the release of the video. The community should have some degree of confidence that the person in charge of the prosecution is actually interested in securing a conviction. The Black Lives Matter folks should really push to get Alvarez off the case.

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A history lesson

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

I know it’s a waste of time to bring up facts when talking about Republicans, but sometimes you just can’t help yourself.

Marco Rubio is quoted as follows on the issue of gay marriage:

“The debate is about how do you define an institution, the institution of marriage, which has been defined the same way for all of human history,” [Rubio] said at the Presidential Family Forum in Des Moines on Friday. “That’s what the debate is about. It’s not about discriminating against anyone. The debate is about how do you define an institution.”

via Daily Kos

First of all, let’s cut Rubio some slack, and grant that human history started on Saturday, October 22, 4004 BC, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. That still means that human history has a good six thousand years under its belt, during most of which time, in many cultures, marriage was anything but the heterosexual one Adam-one Eve arrangement Rubio espouses. If memory serves, Jacob, from whose seed all Jews are sprung, was duped into marrying poor Leah, though he much preferred her sister Rachel, who he also married in due course. He remained married to Leah, and God, being the vindictive bastard that he was in those days (he softened up a bit, we’re told, after torturing his only begotten son to death and resurrection), chose to curse Rachel with barrenness, because Jacob always liked her best. But the point is that polygamy has been common throughout history, there being multiple other instances of it in the Bible and real history too, and it is still practiced widely to this very day. Nor is same sex marriage a new thing. Just ask Nero.

This is what is called fact. It is a concept that Republicans have a hard time getting their heads around. For them, truthiness is all.

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Joe Courtney casts another awful vote

Friday, November 20, 2015

Yesterday I asked Joe to say it wasn’t so. I couldn’t believe he voted with the Republicans to keep refugees out of our country. Well, it was so. When my wife told me about the vote, she wasn’t specific, and I thought she was talking about this, mostly because I couldn’t conceive of him voting against the refugees.

I was confused because a few days ago I got an email from a prominent consumer attorney telling me that it looked like Joe was going to vote to enable racial discrimination in car loans. I wrote to his chief of staff, forwarding the attorneys email and my own hopes that Joe wouldn’t do it. So that legislation was on my mind, and I was still assuming Joe was a safe vote against the unspeakable refugee legislation. The car loan legislation is an attack on Elizabeth Warren’s creation, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been trying to root out racial discrimination in the auto loan industry:

Most dealerships are authorized to sell cars and make loans to finance the purchase. They send their customers’ financial information to a bank, which then sends the dealer an appropriate interest rate for a borrower with that particular credit profile. But banks also permit dealers to “mark up” the interest rate on the loan to a higher level, and allow the dealership to pocket some of the additional charge.

That, of course, creates incentives for the dealer to charge people higher interest rates. But lawsuits dating back to the 1990s have shown that people of color are more likely to have their interest rates marked up than white borrowers. Black, Latino and Asian-American borrowers also tend to see higher markups than white borrowers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued regulatory guidance in 2013 instructing companies on how to cope with this phenomenon. Since the markup practice tends to result in overcharging borrowers of color, the CFPB recommended that banks and dealerships ditch the practice. If they didn’t, however, they needed to ensure that borrowers with similar credit profiles weren’t receiving different interest rates due to their race or national origin.

Since issuing the guidance, the CFPB has taken action against Honda and Ally Bank for overcharging borrowers of color, forcing them to return more than $100 million to their customers.

This was apparently too much for banks and auto dealers to handle. They lobbied for a bill that would nullify the CFPB’s regulatory move. The NAACP, the Urban League, the National Council of La Raza, Americans for Financial Reform and other groups opposed the legislation. The Congressional Progressive Caucus urged lawmakers to vote against it, as did Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. President Barack Obama issued a statement saying he “strongly opposes” the bill, but stopped short of a formal veto threat.

None of the opposition was enough to counter two interest groups that wield tremendous power on Capitol Hill. No Republicans voted against the bill to curb the CFPB’s enforcement of anti-discrimination law this week, while 88 Democrats voted in favor. The legislation cleared by a vote of 332 to 96.

via The Huffington Post

Joe was among the 88.

This is troubling for a number of reasons. First, it adds to the disappointment so many of us feel about Joe’s vote on the refugee bill. Second, it illustrates yet again that we Democrats are getting shafted again and again by the people to whom we contribute our money and time. Not a single Republican voted against this legislation, which tells you all you need to know about how bad it is. I get fundraising emails from the DCCC all the time, telling me they need my money to support progressive candidates, and then they recruit the most right wing “Democrats” they can find. It doesn’t surprise me that many Democrats voted for this legislation, but it does surprise me that Courtney did. I’m hoping beyond hope that both of these votes were aberrations, but I’m beginning to fear that he’s been infected with the Beltway virus that seems to get to all Democrats, sooner or later. Joe doesn’t even have the excuse of needing to ward off a right wing challenge. So far as I know, he has no opponent.

Joe is one of the nicest politicians I’ve ever met, and it would be heartbreaking indeed if he were to go over to the Dark Side.

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Red states maintain their lead

Friday, November 20, 2015

I have from time to time advocated for the secession of New England (other blue states invited to join) from the rest of the Nation, on the general grounds that if we were not burdened by the stupid states of the former Confederacy (which, were it not for the need to eradicate slavery, we should have let go in 1860) we could build a decent country, where, right now, Bernie Sanders would be considered a centrist candidate.

Anyway, if further proof is needed, here it is. I believe I’ve already cited a study that found the stupidest states are all deep red, but, if not, it’s now covered, along with cancer rates, unhealthy diets, levels of inactivity, and obesity. The deep red states are undisputed leaders. The linked article concludes:

Every state on the list of the dumb– and unhealthy– states above, though, voted for Romney, and in many cases, by the biggest margins, so they’re not only filled with stupid people who are likely to die prematurely because of bad habits, but they are also states filled with losers. Why do normal people stay in places like Mississippi and Alabama?

via Down with Tyranny

My guess is that normal people don’t stay in those places. They tend to migrate out, leaving the dumb behind, all of whom get their “information” from Fox.

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Say it ain’t so, Joe

Thursday, November 19, 2015

I won’t go into all the reasons why this was a horrible thing to do. They have been amply covered elsewhere.  All I can say is that I’m ashamed that my Congressman has played into the hands of terrorists and contributed to a culture of fear.

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