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Brooks runs interference for racist scum

Monday, February 6, 2012

Not being able to stomach David Brooks, I was unaware that he was touting a book by racist pseudo-social scientist Charles Murray. Apparently Murray has discovered that the white working class is also genetically inferior-hence income inequality. A blogger named Peter, at Ph.D. Octopus (disclosure: he shares half my genes) says all that need be said.

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Fox Coming Around to Romney?

Saturday, February 4, 2012

I came upon this post at Politics USA via Angry Black Lady Chronicles. It’s about a Fox News contributor defending Romney’s “I don’t care about the poor remark” by basically arguing that the poor never had it so good because some of them get gout.

This is standard Fox stuff, but what I find interesting is that it’s being spewed in defense of Romney.

From what I understand (and I admit, as a non-Fox watcher, this is all hearsay) Fox has been an anyone but Romney network since the beginning of the race. It was a given that at some point they would, once he became a lock, quickly transfer their allegiance, grant him semi-divine status (as they did to W) and consign all previous criticism to the memory hole. Looks like that process is beginning, so we can presume that Fox has declared Newt dead.

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Republicans attack the Fed

Saturday, February 4, 2012

 From the Times:

Republicans Sharply Question Bernanke for Fed’s Focus on Job Market


Summary:

 

Why are you trying to block our attempts to tank the economy? Don’t you know we have an election to win?

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Friday Night Music-with Commentary

Friday, February 3, 2012

The furor over the Susan Komen situation has gotten a lot of people upset and has raised a lot of questions. It got me thinking of the ACORN fiasco a few years ago.

Recall that ACORN then, like Planned Parenthood now, had, for reasons having no rational basis, become the whipping boy for the right wing. Most of the ills of society, it seemed, could be traced to the pernicious folks at ACORN, people (like Saul Alinsky) most of us had never heard of before.

When James O’Keefe put out his lying video, Congress voted en masse, Republicans and Democrats, to defund ACORN, sans hearings, sans proof, sans everything. There was no public outcry; no letters from Senators; no Mayor Bloomberg coming to the rescue; no mass revulsion on social media.

ACORN was not the first organization destroyed by the right and it won’t be the last. Only a few weeks ago we saw major American corporations backing off from sponsoring a show about American Muslims because one right winger was upset.

I’d like to think that something has snapped in the American psyche, that we’ve had a collective gag reflex and we’re simply not going to take it anymore. A sliver of our society has been calling the shots. Every time we try to placate them, they simply demand more. Maybe with the attack on Planned Parenthood, and the transparent lies the Komen folks have been telling about the decision, they have finally jumped the shark.

On the other hand, maybe all the furor is because the right made the mistake of using what had been considered an upstanding non-political institution to attack what most people perceive as a middle class institution. Perhaps if the attack was on another ACORN, the type of organization mostly serving the poor and the not-white, there would have been another collective yawn, and while the Democrats might not have joined in, like they did with ACORN, they would also not have done much to push back.

But, despite what some people I know might say, I am at heart an optimist. I think this is a collective retching by the American people. We’re sick of being ruled by the oligarchs, and we’re sick of having our personal lives policed by a bunch of right wing hypocrites. In short, we’re not going to take it.

And that brings us to our Friday Night Music selection, in line with the new policy that the selected song will have some connection, no matter how remote, to the events of the week. To be honest, at first I was going to go with the Who, but I actually think the lyrics of this song by this very silly band are more apropos.

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The Death of Satire

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Take this, Stephen Colbert:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) launched a special fundraising political action committee in October, pledging to use the money to fight illegal immigration and take on other issues she believes in. But based on financial disclosures filed this week, she has so far used it to do little more than buy copies of her own book.

The governor had raised only about $22,000 for Jan PAC by the end of 2011 and spent nearly a quarter of the cash, buying books from Amazon and paying a bill at the luxurious Waldorf Astoria hotel in Orlando, Fla. The rest of the money is still in the bank.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that you can mock about the corrupt campaign financing system that these people don’t do in all seriousness. Of course Jan’s a piker next to Sarah, but in her defense, she’s only just started.

One advantage we have is that while we don’t have the billionaires, we also don’t have nearly as many of the grifters, who will soak the funds from these right wingers and divert them away from politically productive uses.

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Newt defends the poor

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Newt’s still in it. Sarah says that a vote for Newt will annoy a liberal and all I can say is that I’ve never enjoyed being annoyed so much. You have to love the guy. He lives in the eternal present, totally lacking in self awareness or shame. Today he lectured Mitt Romney for saying he didn’t care about the poor:

GINGRICH: I’m fed up with politicians in either party dividing Americans against each other…the Founding Fathers wrote that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, among with are life and the pursuit of happiness. The Founding Fathers meant all of us. Let me shock the Wall Street crowd. The Founding Fathers meant the 1 percent, who they called Americans. The Founding Fathers meant the very poor, who they called Americans. My goal is to find steps for every American to have a job, every American to work, every American to buy a house. I believe America was founded on a dream that we are in fact created equal and we have a chance to go out and have a chance to pursue happiness and that nobody of any background should be denied

Tomorrow he’ll be reminding everyone that he ended welfare. The next day he’ll be defending Wall Street. Whatever it takes, it’s all good, and what does it matter what he said yesterday. Yet they aren’t flip flops in the Romney sense. There’s something sui generis about Newt. May he run long and prosper, at least until August. 

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High principle lives on

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

 Back in the 60s, I used to watch a TV series called The Defenders, about a father-son team of defense lawyers. I remember in one show the father quoted an aphorism to his son to the effect that it was better that 1000 guilty men go free rather than one innocent man be convicted. Of course we’ve put such old fashioned thinking behind us, but the mathematical principle apparently live on throughout the land, as we have apparently decided that it is better that thousands of legitimate voters be turned away rather than one invalid ballot be cast. 

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A new argument against gerrymandering

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

This is interesting:

 

.. [I]n Illinois, the bipartisan League of Women Voters is challenging gerrymandered districts based on a new legal claim: that it violates free speech. While a district court already dismissed its claim, the League of Women Voters can—and has—appealed to the Supreme Court. Because it’s a redistricting case, the court will have to rule on the matter.

“This is the first time a really bipartisan group has challenged gerrymandering as a regulation of speech,” says Thomas Geoghegan, the attorney for the group. “What’s really shocking is that in front of our eyes for years the states have been moving people from one place or another based on the views they have expressed not in the polling place…but because you have identified yourself as a Democrat or a Republican.”

The legal argument takes advantage of the Supreme Court’s recent and controversial Citizens United ruling, in which restrictions on corporate spending in political campaigns were deemed restrictions on speech. According to the court, concerns about fairness and balance were not enough to warrant the campaign finance laws.

According to appeal, similar concerns about fairness and competition are used to justify gerrymandering in Illinois. “In ostensibly acting to ensure competitive campaigns,” reads LWV’s appeal, “the state relocates citizens to new or different districts with the specific purpose of countering or offsetting speech in favor of one political party with speech from the other.” Furthermore, the appeal goes, the determination is based on people’s activism and vocal identification as Democrats or Republicans—what’s known as a “content-based” regulation of speech as opposed to a neutral piece of criteria.

 

(Quibble: the League is non-partisan, not bipartisan. There is a world of difference.)

 

The argument they’re making is certainly a compelling one. If anything should be unconstitutional, it’s gerrymandering, particularly in its modern form. When Elbridge (sp?) Gerry walked the land, the tools he had at hand were crude. Today, given computers, etc., a party so disposed can turn a transitory majority into a permanent one so long as they are in power in the legislative cycle of any year ending in zero. For us Democrats, it would be a great help to see the court rule in favor of the League, since we have a habit of losing big in years ending in zero (some might almost conclude its intentional) and even when we don’t, we have another habit of wanting to play fair with our opposition (witness Connecticut, which almost bent over backward enough to insure a Republican House member).

I’m way too lazy to do the research or read the briefs, but it seems to me that a court that holds that the First Amendment protects the rich from state funded response by the lower 99 might have a difficult time explaining why the state can be allowed to dilute or strengthen the votes of a group of voters based solely on their beliefs expressed in their voting registration and in their votes. If the state can’t provide public funds to match private spending because doing so tips the scale against the shouters, why should it be allowed to referee ideas in another forum and make decisions about redistricting using ideas as a criteria.

Of course, this argument, which might appeal to the justices if it benefitted Republicans, will get nowhere, and they’ll have no trouble finding distinctions that allow the ghettoization of Democrats while still upholding the rights of corporations to buy elections in the name of free and unfettered speech, free of government involvement. This court is probably the most intellectually dishonest in history, so even if the result the League seeks were literally compelled by their prior rulings, they’d find a way to rule for the Republicans. Nonetheless, a noble effort. Seems like good fodder for a Colbert “attack”.

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Two Nations, (One) under God

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Someone passed this graphic along to my wife, and I, in turn, feel compelled to pass it on. It illustrates the predominate term used in various parts of the nation for carbonated beverages. What struck me is how similar the pattern is to other, less trivial local variations, such as religiosity (hence, the title of the post), illegitimate birth rates, divorce rates, and…well, you name it, you’ll see pretty much the same pattern reflected in this map.

Photo

I don’t need to tell my readers that once again our region comes out ahead. For any folks from the red area that may come across this blog, the correct terminology is “soda”, followed by the almost equally correct “pop”. “Other”, whatever that may be, has to beat out “Coke” as a generic name for soda.

So even on such a trivial issue, we see the country breaks down in a somewhat meaningful way. Of course there are anomalies. Utah has no business being blue. At first, I thought to be reassured by what looked like red in what I believe are the more populated regions of that benighted state, but on closer inspection those regions actually appear to be purple, indicating a lack of data. Maybe Mormons aren’t allowed to drink soda, or, they aren’t allowed to drink what they would, if allowed, probably call Coke. We must also wonder about Southwestern Illinois and Eastern Missouri. I mean, Missouri was a border state, so while it wouldn’t surprise me to see the ramparts defended by a lighter shade of blue, it does indeed surprise and delight that the Show Me State has taken a strong stand with “Soda”.

UPDATE: a commenter (always a surprise, and always appreciated) asks how I could know that the term “soda” is most correct, followed by “pop”. Well, apart from those New England prejudices upon which I at first solely relied and which have never yet steered me wrong, I find support by referring to my Oxford Dictionary of English. Yes, I will let the Brits decide, as it was their language first, before we improved it. In that infallible tome the terms “soda” and “pop” are defined as sweet carbonated beverages, while the uncapitalized term “coke” refers to that stuff that runs through your brain. Nary a mention of carbonated beverages, though the capitalized term refers to Coca Cola only. For those who prefer an American authority, I refer them to the American Heritage Dictionary, 5th edition, which agrees its English cousin. 

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A bit of quibbling over semantics

Saturday, January 28, 2012

 We’ve been hearing a lot about Romney’s tax return lately. I personally have been struck (stricken?) by the number of times I’ve read statements, even from left wingers, to the effect that Romney earned $21 million last year. Here’s one example, but it shouldn’t be hard to find more. This appeared to me to be a misuse of the word earn, so I went to a few dictionaries to see if I had a point, and I think I do. Here’s the definition from the Oxford Dictionary of English (not to be totally confused with its big brother, the OED):

Verb (with obj)

1. obtain (money) in return for labour or services: he earns his living as a lorry driver; (with two objs) earn yourself a few pounds;

 (with two objs) (of an activity cause (someone) to obtain money; this latest win earned them $50,000 in prize money; 

(of capital invested) gain (money) as interest or profit.

2. gain deservedly in return for one’s behaviour or acheivements: through the years she has earned affection and esteem.

The American Heritage Dictionary (5th Edition, recently dearly purchased):

tr.v.earned, earn?ing, earns

To gain especially for the performance of service, labor, or work: earned money by mowing lawns.To acquire or deserve as a result of effort or action: She earned a reputation as a hard worker.To yield as return or profit: a savings account that earns interest on deposited funds.

Now, one can make a rather strained argument that you can apply the term “earn” to the money Romney acquired last year, but it really is a bit of a stretch. The definitions above, when speaking of individuals, apply the term to reward obtained for contemporary effort. I earn my paycheck. When I retire (if I ever can afford to retire) I will live off of my 401k and my Social Security benefits (if guys like Romney have not destroyed the Social Security System). Assume the combined amount I get in a given year from these sources is $20 million dollars. Would anyone say that I “earned” $20 million in retirement benefits last year, though I surely earned the capital and paid the taxes from which that income is derived. When the term is applied to interest or investment income, it is the money that is earning the income (see the third American Heritage definition), not the person who owns the money. 

 

This is no small thing. We on the left have let our language be hijacked by the right, and have all too often adopted right wing slanted terminology without a second thought (e.g. “pro-life” rather than “anti-abortion”, though the latter is a more accurate description of this war mongering, execution loving crowd), thus implicitly agreeing to play on their field. The word “earn” implies effort; Romney exerted no effort in order to get his $21 million dollars last year, and that’s precisely the reason why most people, who make their money by the sweat of their brows, feel it’s unfair for him to pay a tax rate lower than theirs on his income. It would be more accurate to call it unearned income; manna from heaven in amounts most of us will never see in our lifetime.

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