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Opposing birth control no political winner

Thursday, February 9, 2012

A few thoughts on the ginned up birth control controversy. First, Obama cannot win votes by caving, he can only lose them. 

From what I understand, the pundits are convinced that this is a big deal, believing as they always do that the great unwashed are too stupid and unsophisticated to do anything but side with the Bishops, never mind that the Bishops have been covering up child abuse for years and aren’t among the most popular guys around, even among Catholics. And besides, people like birth control, even Catholics. 

This reminds me most of the Terry Schiavo incident, when Republicans really thought they had a winner, and a number of Democrats, including one Joe Lieberman (he was a nominal Democrat then), immediately went into a defensive crouch, with many ready to sign up with the Republicans on the issue. Then lo and behold the people of the United States did rise up and stun the beltway pundits and the Republicans by overwhelmingly siding with the forces of reason. It was the beginning of the end of Bush’s power as president, and one of the factors leading to Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008. No one in the beltway saw it coming, (though some from the hinterland, including yours truly, did) and a number of Democrats were shaking in their boots until the public made its feelings known. 

In this case the polls already show that his people are with him, and so is almost everybody else. Let’s hope that for once, Obama sticks to his guns. He may have no choice, as the Catholics have now defined the only acceptable compromise as total surrender. 

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A suggestion for Little Ricky

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

From the Times, reporting on Romney’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day:

But from the moment Mr. Romney stepped to the podium, flanked by two teleprompters, even he knew that he was not having a good day.

A bit of advice to Little Ricky (the enemy of my enemy is my friend): You might want to tar Romney as the guy who needs two teleprompters. I know it’s meaningless, but the base seems to feel that teleprompter use somehow proves one is unfit for office.  (of course, to make sure you don’t flub your lines, make sure to use a Teleprompter.

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Catholic Bishops running interference for Republicans

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

 This is must reading. The folks at Hullabaloo make a compelling case that all the moaning and groaning from the Catholic Bishops is just anti-Obama politics. The Catholics have been paying for birth control and even abortions in several states under similar insurance mandates for years. Somehow, they’ve found a way to mollify their tender consciences. They can’t possibly argue, ala Mitt, that somehow it’s different when the feds make you do it.

On the larger issue, if the Republicans want to make this election about contraception, were I Obama I’d say bring it on. He’s not getting many votes from the anti-contraception crowd anyway, and the issue would certainly energize half his base. Anyone who wants to run in this day and age on an anti-birth control platform is seriously delusional.

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Feingold to Obama: Join me in exile and let the country suck it

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Umm, Fuck Russ Feingold. His unilateral disarmament purity position is, in part, responsible for the fact that the Senator from his old seat in Wisconsin is a Republican. Elections have consequences that we all have to live with. Russ may not mind a country firmly anchored in the Middle Ages, but I do.  I don’t like PACs, either, but the prospect of a Republican president and Congress in 2013 fills me with existential dread. Martyrs end up dead.

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The foreign workers Republicans never attack

Monday, February 6, 2012

 I saw a butchered version of the exchange referenced in this article on the Daily Show. Stewart was trying to play it for laughs, or course, so he cut off the portion about the H-1B visa issue. The basic story is that a woman asked Obama why her husband had to compete with holders of  H-1B visas. These are the folks that are increasingly allowed into this country to perform highly skilled work at low wages because, somewhat mysteriously, Americans are simply unable or unwilling to perform the work. Obama apparently seemed genuinely surprised that the woman’s husband was ready, willing and able to perform work the corporations insisted Americans wouldn’t do, which is why he asked for the husband’s resume. Whether he’ll actually follow up is another question; though he should. It would be a great campaign issue if he took these Visas on. Suddenly, we’d be hearing Republicans defend (relatively) highly paid foreign workers coming in for American jobs, while still attacking all those Mexicans coming in to take the farm labor jobs that Americans are just itching to perform.

Could it be that people like Obama have really believed the corporate bullshit justifying these Visas? I’ve written before about my sister, who worked at the Hartford, and had to train her replacement H-1B visa holder to take the job that the Hartford had decreed that she and her co-workers no longer wanted to perform. All that was news to her, of course, and to the rest of the folks who were being replaced by foreign workers. At the Hartford the whole thing didn’t work out that well, apparently, but as the linked article states, many times these visa holders are just the first steps toward full scale outsourcing.

The corporate justification for this sort of thing helps create a situation in which the lie become true. If, as in my sister’s case, you start eliminating computer analysts, then pretty soon there will be a shortage of analysts in this country, since no one is going to try to enter a field from which they’ve been barred because they are citizens of this country. If these corporations want to keep these visas, then perhaps we should consider a modification to the law. Give a right of private action to 1) any worker who can prove they were employed by a corporation, were ready, willing and able to continue to perform the job, and were replaced by an H-1B worker, or 2) any worker who can prove they were ready, willing and able to perform a job filled by an H-1B worker. Allow class actions and provide for ample statutorily computed damages, a little like the Truth in Lending Act. The law would be enforced and it wouldn’t cost the government a dime, except for the salaries of the judges hearing the cases. As things stand now, there is every incentive for these corporations to lie to obtain cheap workers. It might help just a bit to make it easy for affected workers to exact some justice.

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Yet more grifting

Monday, February 6, 2012

 A few days ago I wrote about Jan Brewer’s book buying scam. Here’s how it works. Start a PAC. Have the PAC buy multiple copies of your own book at full price. Repeat until you run out of suckers. Apparently, it’s a common scam. Christine O’Donnell, the woman who is not a witch, gave her unused campaign dollars, originally harvested from the rubest of rubes, to her new shiny PAC, which apparently became pretty much the only buyer for her book. The book, by the way, proves that she’s no witch, for if she were she could have at least cast a spell to get someone to buy it other than herself.

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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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