somewhere, rational people!

Having watched the mini-revolution in Egypt and nearby nations, I'm left with a few thoughts, one of which is envy. Apparently, these people, using massive non-violent demonstrations, have brought down the status quo.
Meanwhile, over here, the assault on the poor and the middle class continues, aided largely by the poor and middle class. Two years after the financial meltdown (where the Wall Street Banks, gambling with other people's money had to be bailed out by the taxpayers) the Republicans and tea partiers have got their base convinced that the real problem is not huge unemployment, its deficit spending. The same Republicans that quietly allowed the national debt to balloon under "W" in order to borrow to give tax breaks to the wealthy, fight two unfunded wars and create an unfunded Medicare prescription drug plan, are now in a full blown panic over the deficit.
And the solution? More war on the middle class!
Wall Street is back to making money and banker's billions in bonuses are no longer on the front burner, so its time to attack unions for trying to help the middle class.
In Wisconsin, the governor is trying to break the public employee unions over a "debt crisis" that many believe is simply made up.
I wrote some time ago about this new mantra that government workers are earning way more than their private counterparts, and its now rooted deeply into the Republican theory of governance.
Two months ago, the Republicans blocked O'Bama's attempt to let the "W" tax reductions for the rich expire, costing the Treasury $700 billion over the next ten years. Now they're in a total hissy fit because of the shortfall and have targeted the poor and middle class to make up the difference.
Think about it: The Republican meme in December against letting the Bush tax cuts for the rich expire was, "now is not the time to raise taxes on anyone!" but a couple of months later its time to cut salaries and negotiation power of the middle class and poor? Raising taxes on the rich or cutting salaries of government workers are both ways to either cut costs or raise revenue, so why would we want to place the burden on the class less able to bear it? Why the f**k can't the people of this country see what the conservatives are up to?
Wake up, people! The policies of the Democrats DID NOT get us into this mess, and this total assault on the middle class and unions WON'T get us out of it.
Taxes on the rich have not been lower in over 50 years, yet its still not enough.
The sight of those Egyptians out in the streets protesting their oppression was impressive. Here, though, our oppressors have us convinced that our middle class is making too much money, and its more likely to see the tea baggers out in the street insisting that the poor and middle class get less.

here's Paul Krugman's take from today's NYT:

www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/opinion/21krugman.html?_r=1&hp

Up really is down!

I wrote some time ago about the bottom 50% of the population being below average. Now a few reflections on what's below that.
AM talk radio was the rage of conservatives years ago, and I think its being supplanted by the internet. Its hard to argue with it, it continually blasts out its racist, bigoted vitriol on a daily basis to those who need constant reassurance that their closed minds are the way to go. However, now many have discovered the same type of outright bias can be transmitted among a group by way of the "forwarded message," a great alternative to, you know, actual thinking.
Its a way of passively entering the internet age without all the troubling research and fact finding that consumes those with a genuine thirst for knowledge- just wait and Bubba will send you your marching orders, via forwarded email.
I have a relative who's been captured by it, and its not a pretty thing to watch. Here's my theory on it:

Some Conservatives are fueling one or more "think tanks" who create the messages, sometimes original and sometimes reworking old jokes or stories. If its an old joke, they will take a main character from the joke and rewrite it to become a Democratic leader.
For example, there's this joke that originally went like this:

A guy is on an ocean cruise, boat sinks and he washes up on a deserted island only to find a dog and a female sheep there. The three become great friends and spend every evening sitting together watching the sunset over the harbor. One day, the guy is horny and starts to slip his arm around the sheep in an affectionate manner. The dog sees it and goes off, barking and acting like he's going to bite the guy until the guy stops.
One day a beautiful woman washes ashore in very bad shape. The guy nurses her back to health and she becomes a valued member of their group. One evening, while watching the sunset, she softly whispers in his ear, "You have done so much for me, I'd like to thank you somehow for all you've done. I'd do anything, and I mean anything to make you happy." He thinks about it for a minute and says, "How about taking the dog for a long walk."

So one day I get this forwarded message in my email, and its the same joke, except instead of a beautiful woman, I'll be damned if its not Nancy Pelosi! Well, that pretty much destroys the joke, since instead of some beautiful woman suggesting sex, its that crusty old Pelosi lady. The funniness of the joke hinged on the guy passing up a beautiful women for a sheep, for crying out loud! But for a mindless bottom 20er, any swipe at a democrat will do.
This other forwarded phenomenon is the perverted parable, witnesseth!:

A young woman was about to finish her first year of college. Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be very liberal, and among other liberal ideals, was very much in favor of higher taxes to support government programs. In other words, redistribution of wealth. She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, a feeling she openly expressed. Based upon this, she had participated in, and the cage and had the occasional chat with her professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored a selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his. One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs. The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professor to be the truth, and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school. Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had an "a" average and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't have many college friends because she spent all of her time studying. Her father listened and then asked, how is your friend Audrey doing? She replied, Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is popular on campus, college for her is a blast. She's always go into all the parties have lots of times, she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over. Her wise father asked his daughter, why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0? That way, you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of your GPA.
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, fired back. "That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair? I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time and hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward hers. She played while I worked my tail off!"
Her father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, "Welcome to my side of the fence."

What I love about this fable is that it is a false equivilancy on top of a false premise. Taxing the rich to help the poor is not the same thing as educational socialism. Is the story saying that the poor are poor because they choose to be, that they party and play around constantly while the rich are serious minded workers, squirrels who save their acorns for hard times? Why, we sure wouldn't want to reward bad behavior by giving the poor something, right? The moral of the story is that greed is the right thing to do.
But my favorite thing about the parable is that the entire premise of the story is a false but widely circulated belief-That the rich are constantly being bled to redistribute their hard-earned wealth to the unworthy poor, when in reality, the redistribution of wealth is going the other way, from the bottom to the top! Wealth in this country is increasingly becoming concentrated at the top. The richest 1% of the population now "earn" 20% of all money earned, the greatest disparity since the gilded age of the 1920's. Whoever wrote that mind-boggling ignorant story has got to be laughing his/her ass off every time some idiot sees it and hits the "forward to all" button.

One of the message forwarders includes the following unattributed quote on all of his recirculated emails, "When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." It has become his tag-line.

I can remember the day when helping the poor was generally believed to be a virtue and not a vice. But in the new Republican age, up is now down.

In fact, in the new testament, (1 Corinthians 13:13) the apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians, "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." The greatest of human virtues is CHARITY??? Sorry Paul, don't you know the poor don't even bother coming to class?

I bring all of this up because somehow we have arrived at a point where our conservative overlords have hijacked the discourse and turned the good into the bad. Instead of AM radio being the sole source of this crazy indoctrination/reinforcement of kooky ideas of the bottom 20%, I suspect that cynical people are hired to rewrite jokes and parables into anti-Christian themes, labeling them as the new "good" and sending them out to the faithful, knowing the message will be mindlessly forwarded to each other over and over. And the best I can tell, there is no counterpart to this phenomenon on the left, thankfully.

And instead of these bottom 20ers being taught to think for themselves (a possibility given to them by the internet) these recycled jokes and stories are just being used to validate their racial, bigoted, jingoistic and paranoid beliefs. People who are so intellectually incurious it boggles the mind.

And it drives me crazy.

She wouldn't recognize irony if it hit her in the face

I was ready to let this go, but its just too rich to ignore. Poor, beat upon Sarah Palin has now released a video comparing the media's questioning of herself to the persecution of the Jews, using the term, "blood libel."
Of course, it had to be released from the cocoon of her Facebook page, because God knows you wouldn't want to stand up and answer questions like in a news conference. Better to let your ghost-writer come up with a "poor me" speech to post somewhere that can't be questioned, lest someone be reminded that you're an opportunistic moron.
But the sweetest part is found here, from the AP release, "In a video posted to her Facebook page, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate accused the U.S. media of inciting hatred and violence after the shooting that gravely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Palin has been criticized for marking Giffords' district with cross hairs during last fall's campaign. "But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible," she said.
Except that, as I pointed out days ago, it was Ms. Gaffords (a Jew, by the way), that denounced the crosshairs LAST YEAR! As cited previously:

Giffords herself talked about this in a March, 2010 interview, saying that "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is that the way she has it is depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action."

Now I'm not saying, nor have I said, that the Tea Partiers were directly responsible for the massacre. But we have a bright, dedicated U.S. Representative who serves out full terms laying in a hospital bed with a gunshot wound to her head, but, as it turns out, Sarah Palin is the real victim of this tragedy.
Things just keep getting curiouser and curiouser.

Please, someone come to their rescue.....

Well, I figured the Palin juggernaut would try and find solace somewhere in the safe harbor of Foxworld, and she did. She sent an email to Glenn Beck complaining about how she was unfairly implicated in the Tucson mess by the liberal press.
This is so funny for a couple of reasons: First, like most conservative commentators, she can spew out hatred in huge proportions, but when comes to being called on it, she can turn from Momma Grizzly to victimized child in a nanosecond. It is absolutely hilarious how someone soooooo callous can be sooooo thin-skinned when scrutinized.
And, secondly, look who she runs to: Glenn Beck, also unfairly blamed by liberals for instigating violence. Professor Beck would never do something like that, he's a man of God!
Except, maybe, when he said, "It took me about a year to start hating 9-11 victims' families..." Because sometimes God WANTS us to hate others.
Or how about, "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself..." Turns out that the "thou shalt not kill" commandment had an asterisk next to it that was so small that only the eyes of the the gifted Professor could see it. And, to the glory of God, Beck exploited it.
And how about last year when a Byron Williams, after absorbing hours of "education" from the devout and scholarly Mr. Beck, set out to kill employees of the Tides Foundation and ACLU until pulled over by members of the Oakland Police. A shootout ensued and Mr. Williams' crusade was cut short. Mr. Beck had assailed the Tides Foundation some 29 times in 6 months before Mr. Williams set out on his holy mission.
And who can forget the benevolent Mr. Beck teaching his audience about the exploits of George Soros, who Beck claimed had helped the Nazi's send Jews to death camps.
No, these are good people, Ms. Palin and Mr. Beck. Fine people. People should stop being mean to them.
They're the true victims of the Tucson shooting. In their minds, anyway. What a pair of hypocrites.

Tea Party Nuttiness Comes to Roost

Everyone in Washington better get out of the way of the stampede of Republicans as they try and back up from their tough-talk tea party rhetoric they were all spewing of late.
And all because some nut job decided to follow the advice of our political leaders and apply some "second amendment remedy" to the Democratic representative, Gabrielle Giffords and others in Arizona.
We haven't heard from Sharon Angle yet as to whether she approves of the shooter's initiative in the matter.
"Don't Retreat, Reload" Sarah Palin has already, through a spokesperson, started the not so difficult task of rewriting history in an effort to distance herself from the fray. That map on her web site which showed crosshairs over Giffords district has already been taken down, and the spokesperson has said that they were actually "surveyor marks," apparently forgetting that Sara had previously referred to the persons targeted as "bulls' eyes."
Giffords herself talked about this in a March, 2010 interview, saying that "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list, but the thing is that the way she has it is depicted has the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that action."
Or maybe not.
The Republican candidate for New York governor angrily threatened to "take someone out" during the campaign.
And let's not forget those tea party t-shirts with that catchy phrase about the tree of liberty must periodically be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.
Texas governor Rick Perry, who claims to have gallantly shot an unarmed coyote last year talked of secession from the U.S., and we all know how that turned out the last time. (oops, we don't-in the revisionist history book it turns out it WAS NOT, repeat WAS NOT about slavery, rather it was all about states' rights, a recurring tea party theme).
I'll bet Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are glad it happened over the weekend so that their research teams can find out if the shooter ever checked out a Michael Moore movie thereby proving that Jared Loughner is a secret Librul and relieving them of any responsibility for their daily hate speech.
The Republican party loved stoking the fire of the tea baggers during the last election and it appears that a few of the Tea Party Army are awaiting further marching orders.
And while its usually the Democrats who cower at every turn, it is refreshing to see the 'Pubs squirming while trying to explain what they were, and weren't talking about last year.
Any ideas, Mama Grizzly?

Reid disses Christmas?

I had to see this a couple of times for it to sink in:

A top Republican has accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of potentially 'disrespecting' Christmas.

Reid threatened to get tough with his power over the chamber's calendar Tuesday, when he told reporters that "there's still Congress after Christmas," implying to his colleagues that he would keep the Senate in session until the start of the 112th Congress on January 4th in order to provide time to vote on a laundry list of legislative items that the lame duck Congress had planned to tackle.

GOP Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl quickly took offense to the notion that legislators might be expected to work after December 25 and accused Reid of potentially "disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians."

"It is impossible to do all of the things that the majority leader laid out without doing -- frankly, without disrespecting the institution and without disrespecting one of the two holiest of holidays for Christians and the families of all of the Senate, not just the senators themselves but all of the staff," Kyl said in response to Reid's claim that he would force the body to work through the holiday recess in order to vote on a number of key Democratic agenda items including Obama's START nuclear arms treaty, the DREAM Act, a bill that would overturn the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, and a highly contentious spending bill that would authorize federal spending for next year.

"At some point you can no longer with a straight face, I think, carry the proposition that we are going to do this whole long list of things before the Christmas recess," Kyl added.

But if Reid's warning is to be believed, "before the Christmas recess" is no longer the Senate deadline.

"So if the Republicans think that they can stall and stall and stall that we take a break, we're through, we're not through," Reid said. "Congress ends on January 4th. So we're going to continue working on this stuff until we get it done, or we have up-and-down votes and find that it can't happen that way." (from Huffington Post)

OK, I'm wanting to point out two things: First, how out of touch must you be to believe you are entitled to a two week plus Christmas holiday (don't most people take a month or two off?) and second, is asking legislators to work close to Christmas for the good of the nation really being disrespectful to Christmas?

Where do these people come from?

Letters to the Editor Part Two

July 11, 2006


Courier-Journal
Editor


One cannot help but learn amazing stuff by following your newspaper. I see in today's edition, page A3, in the article about the Southwest pilot, that the federal alcohol limit on pilots is "0.20."

No wonder they seem such a happy lot.


Very truly yours,

(NOTE TO MY READERS: the real alcohol limit is not 0.20 - it is .002)


August 16, 2006


Courier-Journal
Editor


The news this week that the British government had broken up a terrorist plot to blow up airplanes over the Atlantic Ocean was an example of good police work. The spin by our government officials to make it somehow related to the war in Iraq is bad logic used to fuel questionable propaganda.

The firestorm which the United States has created in Iraq serves terrorism recruitment and does not make us more secure. This war, based upon "ginned up" intelligence and flawed reasoning, has, at a minimum, neutralized any goodwill felt toward our country after the attack of September 11, 2001.

The ensuing "war on terrorism" is completely a misnomer. As applied, our officials have instead been waging a war of terror against us. As a child, a neighbor of mine kept is kids in line by waging his own terror war against them using an unseen boogey man. This has become the method by which our own government is keeping us in line.

Five years ago this administration got caught with its collective pants down. Ignoring warnings of an impending Al-qeda attack, we got sucker punched by a group of radical extremists who want us out of the middle east. Instead of addressing the real issues here, it has instead used its "war on terror" as a political tool against its people. Its time we wake up.


Very truly yours,



October 16, 2006

Courier-Journal
Editor

A recent Anne Northup ad is a microcosm of much that is wrong in politics.

It's first allegation states that Yarmuth favors doubling the employer's social security contribution, then shows a video clip in which he says something like, "If the employer's contribution was doubled, then ....."

When a science teacher tells her class that, "If I were to drive my car over a high cliff, it would reach terminal velocity in 5 seconds" is she actually advocating driving a car over a cliff? No, of course not, and neither is Yarmuth supporting a tax increase in the ad.

The ad's second allegation is equally disturbing. In it, Mr. Yarmuth is seen stating that he doesn't remember proposing a higher tax for gas guzzlers, then, wham! There's the video of him saying it, proving, definitively, that he didn't remember saying it, which is a different matter than denying he said it.

The problem for me is the insinuation that Mr. Yarmuth's a liar, when, in reality, he's seen first expousing a hypothetical situation and second stating that he doesn't remember something which he said. I, for one, come away with the impression that Mr. Yarmuth may not remember everything he's said or written in the past 15 years, not that he's a bald faced liar. In other words, although it may be true that Mr. Yarmuth is the biggest liar to ever roam the face of the earth, the examples cited in the ads offer no support toward that conclusion.

And therein lies my problem with the ad. Anyone with at least average intelligence and some rudimentary training in logic would see the flaw in the reasoning, but the ad is not directed at them. Rather, it is directed at those with less than average intelligence and/or reasoning skills. Now, I cannot imagine that the people who authored that ad are insufficiently skilled at their craft to honestly believe that the examples they use support the conclusions that the ad reaches.

Rather, the makers of the ad, and, I must suppose Ms. Northup herself, are guilty of at least hypocrisy in airing the ad, as they are brazenly taking advantage of viewers who lack the ability to see through the ad's intellectual dishonesty. And these are the very people who rely on the government most to treat them fairly and honestly, and, maybe with some respect. How are people supposed to trust a government which is made up of lawmakers who would take unfair advantage of those who need its help the most? I'm afraid the influence of Washington has got its grip on our Ms. Northup.




Very truly yours,






December 12, 2008
Courier-Journal Editor


A close election behind him, our very own Mitch McConnell apparently now remembers the role he so enjoys playing. Its not the warm, touchy-feely one of the campaign ads, rather its the one where he blocks all legislation which is not directed at increasing the wealth of the few who he truly represents.

Case in point is yesterday's blockage of the automobile rescue legislation. Regardless of whether one believes in the wisdom of attempting to keep the big three alive, Mitch looks at the problem and blames-you guessed it-the unions!

How dare workers band together to better their lives and salaries at the expense of Mitch's corporate buddies? Those union members are undoubtably some of the same people who recklessly borrowed money with those sub-prime loans in their attempt to bring down the financial institutions of Wall Street. Why did those greedy people want their own houses when there was still plenty of room under overpasses and in abandoned buildings?

Mr. McConnell wants legislation added to the auto bailout which would further erode the power of the UAW, but where was his moral indignation when the financial houses and mega-banks came to Washington with their hands out? What demands did he make of Wall Street before he voted billions for them?

I expect in another six years the majority of Kentuckians will be once again itching to vote for this bastion of corporate virtue even though he deplores the very principles that helped create the middle class of this nation. I guess the good news is that the soon to be unemployed poor and middle class Republican voters will have a lot more time to campaign for their man next time around.