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Gud Wryting at the Dey

Friday, February 18, 2011

Punditry can be a demanding avocation. Today, for instance, I tried to pen something about Glenn Beck, Wisconsin, the Koch Brothers, and the infinite capacity of American’s to be deluded into voting for their own oppressors, but it just didn’t come together. All that work, and nothing to show. The article will remain forever embedded on my ISP’s server as a humble draft, never to glow on anyone’s screen but my own.

So, instead of inflicting a piece of crap on the world, I’m going to make fun of someone else’s piece of crap. Today’s Day contains an op-ed piece by one Michael A. Pace, a six term first selectman from Old Saybrook, CT., who uses up a goodly amount of choice Day real estate to defend himself from unspecified attacks from unidentified persons with an incomprehensible apologia. I read the whole thing and I can’t figure out what he’s talking about. Don’t take my word for it. Read it for yourself. If you can figure it out you’re a smarter person than me.1

But his screed is not merely content free. In the process of saying nothing, Mr. Pace brutally attacks the English language and leaves it for dead. I don’t use a grammar checker myself, but I heartily recommend that Mr. Pace try using one. Consider the following attempted sentence, picked more or less at random:

Scratch the surface and you may find those who stay out of public view, but who sponsor and contribute to bad behavior, for they have personal and political gains at stake.

Or this one, which qualifies as a real sentence, but doesn’t really say what I think Mr. Pace intends:

Well, the reality is that my administration has resolved issues that had long gone unresolved, dividing the town and costing it huge sums of money.

Personally, I can see why his opponents are complaining, if he has resolved issues by dividing the town and costing it huge sums of money.

Now, I confess, when I read this column I experienced a strange ambivalence. My first reaction was: “I hope he’s a Republican”. But I immediately checked myself. That would be an unkind thing to wish on the good people of Old Saybrook: 12 years of administration by a Republican idiot. Democratic idiots may not be great, but they’re marginally better than their Republican peers.

On reflection, though, I ended up rooting for him to have an “R” next to his name. That way, I wouldn’t have to even consider giving him a pass. Besides, I don’t live in Old Saybrook, and if they continue to elect this guy they deserve what they get. So, I resorted to the Google (the Day did not specify his party affiliation) and I found that he does indeed reside in the party of Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin, the natural home of the proudly ignorant.

I would be extremely interested to know why the Day printed this unintelligible crime against language. Were they lending him some rope to hang himself, or are there levels of meaning there that I can’t see?

  1. Let it be known that, not wanting to commit a grammatical faux pas, particularly in a piece such as this, I consulted the Google to settle the burning question of whether I should use the word “I” or the word “me” at the end of the footnoted sentence., only to find that the subject is one that is heatedly disputed. After much consideration, reading and cogitating, I decided that “me” had better support, and anyway, it sounds better.?


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We are all Badgers!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

It is not my fault that we must make common cause, at least emotionally, with a state that chose to adopt the badger as its mascot, but the contingencies of history cannot be controlled. Those folks demonstrating in the streets of Madison also cannot be blamed for a decision made long ago, though many of them can be blamed for decisions made more recently, as many of them voted for the man whose first act in office was at attempt to strip them of their rights. Who could have predicted such a thing, other than a reasonably aware sentient being? Can you say PATCO?

Maybe it takes this in your face sort of thing to finally wake up the American people. The right, aided by Democratic fellow travelers and Democratic cowards, has been systematically looting them for years, transferring wealth to the wealthy, and the American people have been quiescent, preferring to think that they will somehow, someway, share in the bounty being diverted to their betters or preferring to be distracted by hot button low idea issues of race, gender or religion.

One great thing about the right wing media, particularly Fox, is the fact that it encourages a lack of self awareness among its habitués and a general detachment from what people actually think. Thus we have Paul Ryan comparing the Madison protestors to the folks in Cairo, blissfully unaware that, other than those ensconced in the Glenn Beck parallel universe, most people sympathize with the folks in Cairo. We learn more about Ryan from his statement than we do about the folks demonstrating in Madison, though we can certainly hope he’s right, and that they will have the staying power of the Egyptian people.

While I sympathize with Malloy, I think he might deserve a bit of the Madison treatment. It wasn’t state workers or their unions that got this country and this state into the mess it is in, but it is those workers that will bear the lions share of the “shared sacrifice”, while the affluent have their taxes raised a sliver. The workers are easy targets, apparently, because they can’t afford to move out of state and Malloy can put them in jail if they strike, just as we in the middle class are prisoners here as well, which makes it easier to impose an increased sales tax on us than to impose a graduated income tax on the truly rich, who blackmail politicians like Malloy into treating them with kid gloves while he broadens the distance between the haves and have nots. Thus do we continue the transfer of wealth under both Democrats and Republicans.

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I stand 100% for English only politics

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

At the last Drinking Liberally get together I was expounding on an observation I’ve made before about Republican Presidents I can personally recall. That is, those that lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue while I have breathed the air of this dying earth.

I have observed that, over time, each Republican President makes his or her predecessors look good by comparison, the only exceptions possibly being the “accidental” Republican Presidents, Ford and the first Bush. Eisenhower was a mediocre President, who now looks extremely good and eminently sane by comparison with his successors. Nixon was bat shit crazy. At the time I thought no one could ever be worse, but Reagan beat him by a country mile. The second Bush, in turn, made Reagan look good, and odds are that if an R gets elected in 2012, she’ll make little Georgie look like a statesman of the first order. God only knows what will come next if the Republic survives the next Republican president.

One of my Drinking Liberally friends wrote me an email riffing off this idea, pointing out (and sending lots of examples) that while the First Bush may have been somewhat less awful than Reagan or his own offspring, he did start a now proud Republican tradition of murdering the English language. We don’t need to document his son’s lapses, and we’ve all got our favorites from Sarah, whose most recent incoherent comments go like this:

“And nobody yet has, nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know, and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the place of Mubarak and no, not, not real enthused about what it is that that’s being done on a national level and from DC in regards to understanding all the situation there in Egypt. And, in these areas that are so volatile right now, because obviously it’s not just Egypt but the other countries too where we are seeing uprisings, we know that now more than ever, we need strength and sound mind there in the White House. We need to know what it is that America stands for so we know who it is that America will stand with. And, we do not have all that information yet.”

But that’s coherent next to this example from Georgie’s dad:

“And let me say in conclusion, thanks for the kids. I learned an awful lot about bathtub toys — about how to work the telephone. One guy knows — several of them know their own phone numbers — preparation to go to the dentist. A lot of things I’d forgotten. So it’s been a good day.”

Now, I say, that given the Republican party’s support for English-only education, et al., that we can at least expect them to field English-only candidates. And I further say that English isn’t just words from the OED! You have to know how to string them together. That’s why my six years of German never took. I knew lots of words, but I couldn’t string them together to save my life, though at least I knew what they meant, which is more than you can say about Sarah, though she might refudiate me on that.


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Bringing back Paradise

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Life was good for the plutocrats at the turn of the last century, and the Republicans are working their butts off to bring back the good times. Missouri State Sen. Jane Cunningham is no slacker. Here’s her official summary for a bill she’s recently introduced in the Missouri State Senate to bring back our second most evil peculiar institution:

This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

Why not go all the way and bring back slavery? I know these tea party people claim to revere the Constitution, but they don’t count the thirteenth amendment as any more valid than the 16th or 17th.

But even if the damn federal government won’t get off our backs and we can’t bring back slavery, we can at least get the sons and daughters of those that should be slaves out of our schools and off our streets. It reminds me of a heartwarming poem that I heard while touring Robert Todd Lincoln’s house in Manchester, Vermont, about the golf course within sight of the factories nearby:

“The golf-links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And watch the men at play.”

Those were the days. We’re so close to bringing them back you can almost taste it.


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Once again, the money flows toward the stupid

Monday, February 14, 2011

Connecticut News Junkie points us to an on-line debate between liberal Jonathan Pelto (read his post here) and conservative Heath Fahle (I don’t link to conservatives) about Sustinet, a health care initiative championed by Connecticut Democrats, with our own Betsy Ritter, of Drinking Liberally, very much in the forefront. It promises to enable Connecticut to use the new Health Care law to maximum advantage both for the people of the state and for the state itself, as it should both increase access to health care and drive down health care costs in this state.

This is all very well, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend against it, but it occurs to me that if this is successful one serendipitious result will be that we, along with other states where reason is still a factor in politics, will become even greater net exporters of federal tax dollars. We are, of course, already exporting dollars to the states where the voters want the government off their backs as soon as it deposits all its money in their pockets. It’s a given among economists that it is out of control health care costs that are driving the long term federal deficit, because so much of the federal budget goes to pay inflated health care expenses. If we get our health care costs under as much control as the new bill allows (and, I admit, that might not be by much), we will end up, as always, subsidizing the health care costs in those states that are valiantly resisting rationalizing health care in defense of recently discovered constitutional principles.

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Editorial Judgments

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Herbert Ross of Lyme wrote an excellent letter to the Day, taking issue with its decision to run a blatantly misleading editorial cartoon. The cartoon asserted, against all the evidence, that the Social Security trust fund was going bankrupt.

Mr. Ross asks that the Day explain the way the it makes it editorial decisions regarding the cartoons that it runs, and surprisingly receives a response, which I print in full below, to avoid any charge that I am misrepresenting the Day’s rationale.

The Day seeks to publish on its editorial pages political cartoons reflecting a variety of opinions across the political scale. We recognize that the message conveyed by the cartoonists does at times run counter to our own editorial opinions. Such a clash of ideas is the very essence of political debate. As for the accuracy of the cartoon’s meaning, The Day realizes political cartoonists often paint their opinions with a wide brush and provides them the latitude to do so.

This is very noble sounding, but in fact it amounts to an abdication of the editorial role. Mr. Ross is not complaining about the cartoonist’s opinion, to which she is entitled, he is complaining about her facts, to which she is not entitled. I will observe here that, curiously, it is always right wing non-facts that get propagated in the editorial cartoons.

Here, then, is what we are free to believe goes through the head of the editors as they chose this cartoon:

Here is a cartoon in which the cartoonist asserts that she is entitled to her own facts as well as her own opinion. We have a large number of syndicated cartoons from which we can choose. We choose this one. We, however, are not responsible for propagating a lie, simply because we choose to provide a platform from which that lie can be propagated. The fact that we choose to print this merely reflects our belief that we have an obligation to inject falsehoods as well as truth into the public discourse. If lies are effectively propagated as a result, that has nothing to do with us.

This brings to mind what was possibly the best example of the Day’s refusal to exercise minimal editorial judgment. Back in January the Day printed an editorial condemning talk about death panels. The editorial sat right next to an editorial cartoon that asserted the existence of death panels. By the way, news flash to the Day: more people look at the cartoon than read your editorial pablum.

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Friday Night Music

Friday, February 11, 2011

I tried to think of the most appropriate song to celebrate Mubarak’s departure. Given the situation, I thought this was the best choice:


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Rightward drift

Thursday, February 10, 2011

The essential difference between Democrats and Republicans, and the reason why this country drifts ever rightward, no matter who is in nominal control of the government:

Steve Benen wonders who is in charge of the Republican caucus, as the (comparative) grownups, the supposed leaders (Boehner, Cantor and their ilk) have been unable to corral the votes needed to pass legislation and now seem unable to control the budget process.

The answer is simple. Among the Republican caucus, it is the extreme right that is in control, and the rest of the caucus will dance to their tune. If that means doing things that are totally insane, then so be it. The “moderate” Republicans would never think of making common cause with “centrist” Democrats to pass something.

This dynamic is, as we know, precisely the opposite of how things work on the Democratic side. If the left side of the party is unhappy about something, the Democratic leadership takes pride in that fact, and Obama tries to make personal political capital out of it. Witness the latest: taking pride in depriving the poor of heat in the winter, after failing to make the rich pay their fair share of taxes, and, to add that extra bit of insider hypocrisy, calling it “shared sacrifice”.

Better to gain a single Republican maybe than make 60 or 70 liberals happy, particularly because, unlike their Republican counterparts, the more left leaning Democrats can always be counted on to accept reality and go along with whatever ineffective piece of garbage the leadership decides to put together to satisfy Olympia Snowe, who then votes against it anyway.

Democratic congresses and Democratic presidents merely slow the rightward trend. With each year we find that the formerly unthinkable becomes common wisdom. In the weeks ahead we will see plenty of “compromises” dictated by the extreme right of the Republican party, with the Democratic Party and the Democratic Administration serving as enablers.

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Bless me Father, I have sinned. And I know exactly how many times and when.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Finally, just what all Catholics have been waiting for: an Iphone app of their own.

It’s Confession: A Roman Catholic App, which TUAW says “happens to be the first iOS app to receive an imprimatur, which is essentially a blessing from the church to publish the app.”

This is a great idea, and it looks like it has a great interface. Commandments on the left sidebar. Pick a commandment, and add a sin. For instance, if you’re getting it on with your neighbor’s wife just click on the sixth commandment, and note the date and time in the list on the right.

Too distracted to enter your sins on the go? No problem, you can use the app’s customized “Examination of Conscience”, tailored to your unique circumstances “single, married, priest or religious”. So, say you’re a single woman. Had sex? Yes? Sin! Married woman? Had Sex? Yes? Enjoyed it? Yes? Sin! Easy as pie. Just click the checkbox. Sort of like the diet apps where you keep track of what you eat.

You can even enter customized sins into your examination of conscience, in case you happen to indulge in unusual sins or sins the app developers forgot about. Based on the preview screen at the Itunes store, that’s not likely. Do you really need to be reminded to ask yourself if you have “mutilated myself through any form of sterilization”?

By the way, no need to worry that anyone but Jesus will see your sins. The app is password protected.

Unfortunately, the app developers note that you still have to physically enter the box, wait for the little door to open, and recite for the priest. Won’t he be impressed, though, when you rattle off each sin, right down to the number of times you’ve mutilated yourself through any form of sterilization. Maybe you can sort them by commandment, or by mortal and venial, or by degree of actual contrition. And, assuming you can avoid additional sins on your way to church, you might just try printing a report and just handing it to him in the confessional. Who knows, but the next upgrade might include a companion app for the priest, so you can transmit your sins securely versus bluetooth, and he, in turn, could deliver your penance by a return transmission.

I’d get it today, but my wife says I have too many apps, and for once, I’m going to listen to her.


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Grifter Nation, local edition

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Samuel Johnson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”, but surely he was wrong. It may be next but one, but surely, as Chuck Colson, John Rowland, and many others have proven, the very last refuge is religion. I submit that skipping patriotism, or at least skipping the money making side of it-politics, and going straight to religion, is a wise career move. Generally speaking, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Christine O’Donnell and Sarah Palin being glaring exceptions, you can’t make patriotism pay unless you are able to fool most of the people most of the time, while religion pays if you merely fool some of the people all of the time. Moreover, while there’s only room for a few scammers of the Beck variety, there’s room for millions of low level religious con men, and, unless you get too blatant about it, everything you do is constitutionally protected.

Consider the case of Michael Calo. The Day has documented Mr. Calo’s checkered career as a relatively small time scam artist (only the small timers get arrested, remember. The truly great scam artists get bailouts) fleecing people during the dot.com era and thereafter. Calo has now found religion and the Shoreline Church, Inc., where he has put his talents to work serving God and man:

[George] Hamberg and a couple who also complained to police about Calo dispute the notion that he found redemption when he formed Shoreline Church.

“To me, it’s like it’s a money-making thing,” said Hamberg, who filed a complaint with the Old Saybrook Police Department in 2008, concerned that his then-wife, Della, was donating money she couldn’t afford to the church.
The Hambergs were going through a divorce that involved the imminent loss of their home and business in Old Saybrook, Hamberg said, when he learned Della had donated more than $8,000 to the church. Hamberg said he was able to trace $8,000 in donations through checks but said Della gave more in cash.

“George said that Della has told family members she will no longer listen to their legal or financial advice but will only listen to Pastors Mike and Meredith Calo of the Shoreline Church,” according to a Jan. 9, 2008, police report obtained through a Connecticut Freedom of Information Act request.
Another couple told police their daughter gave nearly half of her family’s $30,000 annual income to the church.

Barry and Natalie Rand of Old Lyme said during an interview at their home last month that the more their daughter, Kelly Mastello, became involved with the church, the more she changed and the more her finances deteriorated.

The married mother of three lost her car, sold her house after pre-foreclosure proceedings had begun and moved into an apartment owned by the pastor’s in-laws, paying $1,000 in monthly rent, according to Rand’s statement in a police report and records at East Haddam Town Hall.

By all means read the full article. It’s chock-a-block with details of this guy’s colorful career. The guy is a prize, and his little wife too. I’d say he gives religion a bad name, but in this day and age, that’s pretty hard to do.

By the way, kudos to The Day for committing real journalism in this piece.

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