A Home Truth or Two

Terrance, Republic of T:

Maybe facing the possibility of living in poverty does add a much needed dash of adventure to one’s old age. Maybe programs like Social Security and Medicare are depriving people — old and young — of that adventure. Maybe worrying about where your next meal is coming from, or how you’ll get medical care makes life less dull. Maybe programs like food stamps and Medicaid sap life of its suspense and mystery. Maybe getting medical care in a livestock stall is more interesting than getting it in a community clinic or doctor’s office. Maybe health care reform is making life a little less interesting less interesting.

[...]

If anything the safety-net programs Ryan, Romney and the Republican party are wont to portray as beachheads for a brand of communism that hasn’t existed in any form large enough to threaten the “American way of life” in decades, are all that stands between the one percent and and real trouble.

And the people in red states are more dependent on government benefits.  Because in fact we are interdependent.  That's Terrance's conclusion.  Bet you can't prove him wrong.

New Term

In, actually, operaramblings' laudatory review of a production of La Clemenza di Tito, the reviewer notes an oddity:

Meanwhile a very gorgeous, rather exotic looking woman; clearly Berenice (who otherwise doesn’t actually appear in the opera) [i]s drawn across the stage in a giant baked potato. ... Why the potato? ... I have no idea. But at least it provides us[ ]with the useful term a Berenice’s potato to describe such things in future.

And it turns out he got the concept from The Earworm reviewing the same production (video).

I am not applying it to Mr. Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention, because I saw the video and I have to believe that he believed that Mr. Obama has a magic wand somewhere (ahem) because all those things he was citing as Mr. Obama's failures are things the Republicans oppose.

More on the Medicare/Affordable Care inability to clarify the money situation.  Mr. Somerby additionally calls out the Washington Post for highlighting the fact checkers of Mr. Ryan's speech rather than fact checking Mr. Ryan's speech.

Speaking of Prevarication

Driftglass' Master Class.  With videos.

Froggy, It's Getting Warm in There

• Book review about conservative lack-of-humor.  (Dennis Miller was not the only comic to go conservative/unfunny after 9/11; James Lileks, who had one of those amusing blogs about his job and family, also began dropping right-wing talkpoints into his writing.  The blog is still running, at least when I last looked, and he is still amusing about his family and curmudgeonly about change in the Twin Cities, but I jump over anything else he has to say.)
• Several people have used the term "lies" about Paul Ryan's speech, including Fox News, which lies all by itself:
• Mills River Progressive, who relied on the noise machine and was not wrong;
• Shakesville's RNC 2012 Discussion Thread, with a link to the direct Fox News quote;
• The Daily Howler on dishonesty and misdirection.  And lies;
• Welcome Back to Pottersville, which mentions Isaac.  The storm Isaac;
• ETA:  Pandagon at Raw Story adds another data point.
• Jurassicpork on enabling vs. doing the right thing.
• Jesse Curtis on Mitt Romney's racebaiting. 
• Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) on Romney's time at Bain Capital, which includes this paragraph so you can have no doubt:

  By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps. The result has been a brilliant comedy: A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place. That same man then runs for president riding an image of children roasting on flames of debt, choosing as his running mate perhaps the only politician in America more pompous and self-righteous on the subject of the evils of borrowed money than the candidate himself. If Romney pulls off this whopper, you'll have to tip your hat to him: No one in history has ever successfully run for president riding this big of a lie. [Emphasis added.]

• Let's have another war!  Thanks, I already have one.
• Just because:  Jon Carroll on authors' looks.

And More Again

• We begin the day, as the newscasters say, with Mr. Somerby, who addresses "The Medicare Muddle" in which the conservatives blather about Mr. Obama looting Medicare to pay for the Affordable Care provisions while liberals are using almost the same language (except calling it "savings") and the pundits are not clarifying matters (possibly because they don't understand it either).

  It doesn’t occur to someone like Dean that older white voters (and others) may believe these GOP claims because they’ve heard very similar claims from the White House itself; or because he and Schultz did a very poor job explaining what is wrong with the claim; or because we’ve all been swamped in disinformation about the federal government’s “trust funds” for the past forty years, with zero attempt at clarification from our liberal leaders.
  
  Zero; nada, none.
  
  For the past forty years, conservative disinformation machines have spread a massive amount of confusion about the Social Security trust fund. The current muddle about Medicare’s trust fund is, in part, one fruit of that larger effort.

• Vouchers?  Vouchers?  Pandagon (Amanda Marcotte) at Raw Story:

  That’s always what Republicans have been on about when they talk about “rationing” and “death panels”. The concern is that if more people get insurance, then they’ll also get to have access to health care and that means you have to share. I’ve said this from the beginning, but much of the conservative discourse around health care is blowing dog whistles. If you translate their concerns into non-euphemism, they’re mostly worried that they’ll have to share waiting rooms with poor people. But what’s really annoying about all this is that Republicans are sweeping the elderly white people vote, and so they’re getting votes from people on Medicare who basically want to keep everyone else from getting coverage for fear of having to compete with them for resources. This, of course, makes no sense, since the fear is based on an incorrect assumption that younger people need as much medical care as older people. But that’s why I think race- and class-baiting is the underlying subtext to the concern-trolling about “rationing” that Republicans have been doing with their base. That’s how you get people to stop thinking and start fearing. Because they have to turn their brains completely off to think replacing a program that pays for their medical care with coupons is a good idea.

• Also from Mr. Somerby:  Journalism's elite corps in search of epiphany.
• Driftglass:

  And you know. in a way the social issues of 2012 bears some eerie similarities to the Iraq War circa 2004-2005. Once again, the GOP has painted itself into an ideological corner that is violently at odds with reality. Once again, to get out of the noose, the Party of Personal Responsibility resorts to and all-out campaign of slander and lies. Once again the spineless press simply transcribes and transmits the slander and lies verbatim. Once again, the roof they have thatched together out of pure fraud and bullshit works for awhile...and then starts to collapse right on top of their victory parade.
  
  And then comes the Holy Shit moments as the scam falls apart.

  Followed by several of the Holy Shit moments.
• Riposte to comment on Mr. Ryan's offensive statement.

Why Aren't People More Upset?

Via Avedon Carol at The Sideshow, Down With Tyranny!'s posting about the fight to break up Too Big To Fail banks.

The big banks are Romney's world and they're the toxic world his campaign is being financed by. Erickson's analysis might sound off-kilter-- and it should; it is-- but the route the right takes is bringing them to the same goal sane people want as well... breaking up the big banks. Robert Reich has been talking about it for a long time. And the most trustworthy man in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders has as well.

Via skippy, The Street's discovery that Iceland has succeeded by not following the world's advice:

Now in what may be the greatest economic "mea culpa" in history, we have the media admitting that this government/banking/propaganda-machine troika has been wrong all along. They have been forced to acknowledge that Iceland's approach to economic triage was the correct approach right from the beginning.

What was Iceland's approach? To do the exact opposite of everything the bankers running our own economies told us to do. The bankers (naturally) told us that we needed to bail out the criminal Big Banks, at taxpayer expense (they were Too Big To Fail). Iceland gave the banksters nothing.

I had accounts at a smallish bank with five branches in the late '70s. It went through a couple of mergers, issued stock for a while, then went private. I stopped using them because shortly after I moved away, they decided that everyone needed a new PIN. Which had to be done in one of the branches. Hahaha. I opened an account at a smallish bank with three main areas of branches. Which got bought by another bank. Which got bought by a monster bank. Which still has my money because it has convenient branches in either of the places I normally travel and some of the others, too. And which sends new ATM cards every couple of years (this is hilarious because I never remember until the ATM rejects the expired card), although I have successfully fought off their desire to saddle me with a debit card.  Um, NO.  But I'd prefer a small bank on a large network.  Large banks too often believe that because they have custody of your money it is theirs.  The mattress is looking excellent.

(By the way, did our legislators learn nothing from the savings and loan debacle back in the late '80s-early '90s?)

Why Aren't People More Upset?

Bustednuckles charts the decline of the American middle class both personally and via Business Insider:

They are proudly killing off anything, and I do mean anything, that would help the average American in any way.

If it doesn’t help big business or their corporate overlords then it isn’t going to happen and these people have been proven to be unable to govern this country repeatedly yet they will look you in the eye and tell you that they alone know what this country needs to prosper while they give away another billion dollar subsidy to their buddies in Big oil and then after lunch kill a successful program that helps single mothers.

Warning for strong, not-child-safe language.

Why Aren't People More Upset?

Jesse Curtis quotes from an interview with John Lewis by Andrew Cohen in The Atlantic.

As a people and as a nation, we are too quiet. All of us should be up on our feet. There should be public outcry. There should be a sense of righteous indignation over what is happening during this election season. We should not just roll over and allow it to happen.

Anyway...

History lesson from Alan Grayson via Mills River Progressive: A coal miners' strike.

"It'll Cost Ya"

If voter ID is enacted in Minnesota, the equipment alone will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Follow the links at Mercury Rising.

Living By the Book

Part 5 and Part 6 of Jesse Curtis' series on American Christianity, touching on adoption and casting one's lot with the poor.

Who Could Have Known?

Pennsylvania voter ID.

In Memoriam

Neil Armstrong has died.

"Tesky Prohesky Can Dance!"

That was the dream.  It had a tune.  There were several dreams that interwove and this is the only bit I remember because I wrote it down and then fell back asleep.

Some food grown in Japan is dangerous.

The Daily Howler pokes at unasked-in-the-media questions.  For example:

Might we suggest another “dark moment” from Romney’s life which might “offer clues into his character?” This moment led to very bad outcomes for people not in his family.

We’ll suggest the moment we’ve mentioned all year—the looting of GS Technology, the story the New York Times has simply refused to report. Our question: How did workers’ pensions get “underfunded” at this company while Romney was lugging off big wads of cash? Why was Bain unable to meet its obligations regarding these people's health care?

The New York Times has refused to report this story, even though Reuters offered a detailed report on this episode all the way back in January. The Times still hasn’t reported this “dark” episode—although this morning, Stolberg offers us two dark moments which we might find inspiring.

I ran across a comment somewhere suggesting electing Romney because he's a bigger crook (not the original phrasing); *twitch*

Musical background:  Gary Numan, "Are Friends Electric?"  Make of that what you will.

Remembering: Howard Zinn

An appreciation of the author of A People's History of the United States by Anthony Arnove at AlterNet.

Howard had that rare ability to step back and help us understand our topsy-turvy world primarily because he approached politics and history from the standpoint of someone who thought it was possible to turn our world right side up — to put people before profit, the environment before the interests of mining companies.

(I haven't read it, by the way, and I ought to, if only to see what he gets wrong.)

Well. There It Is

Gawker, of all publications, has obtained 950 pages of documents that spell out the Byzantine holdings and corporate shells that Mitt Romney uses to avoid having to pay a fair tax rate on his obscene amounts of wealth. They’ve published the documents and briefly described them, but there’s a lot more analysis to come after the lawyers look over it. So far, the big reveal is that Romney is a dedicated tax-dodger, willing to use every trick in the book to avoid paying what he owes to a country that has given him so much. Regardless of the legality of it all, the immorality matters.[Emphasis added.]

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon, with a little about who survives scandals and why.  Direct link to Gawker and its links.

Middle Relievers and Wide Receivers

Lance Mannion on the National Geographic, continental drift, and maps of the ocean floor.

Frankly, after the recent conservative dingleberry display, I need to read about intelligent people.

Standing in the Slide Zone

• Part 3 and Part 4 of Jesse Curtis' series on American churches, Christianity, and Biblical exhortations.
• The Daily Howler:

  That said, Lyons made a direct statement: Obama didn’t rob, steal or otherwise remove that money from the trust fund. Obama hasn’t taken a dime from the fund, Lyons directly said.
  
  Indeed, Obama has extended the life of the Medicare trust fund, Lyons directly said. It’s hard to know how Obama could do that if he’s been stealing the trust fund's money. [Emphasis Added.]

  Apparently there's a rumor about money stolen from the Medicare fund. Apparently it is a false rumor, but the MSM don't seem to want to talk about it.  Mr. Somerby is citing Gene Lyons here.
  
• Ta-Nehisi Coates has two pieces up today, one of which is in the hardcopy edition of The Atlantic:  "Irony of a Black President," which functions as introduction, plea for subscriptions, and teaser, and "Fear of a Black President."  I will post a tiny taste, but you really need to read the whole thing:

  These cultural cues became important during Obama’s presidential run and beyond. Obama doesn’t merely evince blackness; he uses his blackness to signal and court African Americans, semaphoring in a cultural dialect of our creation—crooning Al Green at the Apollo, name-checking Young Jeezy, regularly appearing on the cover of black magazines, weighing the merits of Jay-Z versus Kanye West, being photo­graphed in the White House with a little black boy touching his hair. There is often something mawkish about this signaling—like a Virginia politico thickening his southern accent when talking to certain audiences. If you’ve often been the butt of political signaling (Sister Souljah, Willie Horton), and rarely the recipient, these displays of cultural affinity are powerful. And they are all the more powerful because Obama has been successful.

• Via Mills River Progressive, Alex Baer of TV News Lies.org on the subject of Republicans above their competence.
• On the occasion of Twisted Sister objecting to Paul Ryan's use of "We're Not Gonna Take It," SFGate offers a slide show of "Musicians vs. Politicians."

It's On Back Order

So I apparently missed this article by Sara Robinson on the people needed to get a revolution under way (or as I keep saying, "We don't need a revolution, but we do need a change."), and I wish I could find my musings on the topic a couple of years ago.

Media not in cahoots with power would also help.

Skirmish

From Pandagon, which is actually under the aegis of Raw Story:

But for conservatives, of course, it’s all about Punish the Bitches. The official stance is to feign compassion for women while bleating about the fetus, but it takes very little to scratch the surface and find the roiling hatred towards women. Specifically, the sexy young women of their imaginations who are out having fun that excludes them, and therefore must be punished. (That abortion bans also affect women they don’t find attractive, aren’t jealous of, don’t identify as women, and are boring married ladies in their 30s and 40s doesn’t seem to matter.) Resentment of others perceived as getting away with something is the primary motivating force behind modern conservatism.[Emphasis mine.]

"Clearly, the Phrase 'Pro-Life' Is Ironic"

Feathers from the Flying Pig

As I wrote a couple of years ago, these deals are common in states that have been the epicenter of job loss. That includes rust belt states hit by the recession, which have become new sources of cheap labor, as the very offshoring that Romney helped pioneer led to a decline in union membership and the loss of good jobs that unions won, and that gave workers a shot at upward mobility, and a chance to give their families the advantages of middle-class economic security. It also includes the Southern states that became the last stop for jobs headed overseas, after offshoring killed the Southern textile industry.

Terrance Heath, Republic of T, talking about modern welfare queens.  With sources.

Coincidence. Of Course It's a Coincidence

1. Bartolo Colon is suspended for 50 games, having tested positive for (presumably, "excessive") testosterone.  Well, there goes the Wild Card.
2. Department of You Can't Make This Up:  This morning there was a commercial.  For testosterone.  On the radio.  "After 30, your levels of testosterone decrease."  They offer a thirty-day supply.  I wish I remembered the code trade name for it.  It may well be prescription, but the ad didn't sound like that (no disclaimers, no "see your doctor").  ETA:  The ad just ran again.  Name of the substance sounds like Proteem.  There's a phone number to call (no, I didn't catch it) for the thirty day supply.

Southern Beale Asks a Question

The question being:  Why aren't we in the streets and otherwise committing Serious Fomentation and Riot?

I know I sound like a broken record, but seriously: when is the fucking march? When is the rally on the National Mall? Where is the bra barbecue? I’m ready to sign up, show up, you name it. Someone tell me where to go, when to be there, what to do. I just don’t know why we aren’t better organized. This Akin shit is stirring the outrage and no one seems to be capitalizing on it. Do we not have the infrastructure?

I don’t want to sign a fucking petition. I want to kick some ass.

I know that Americans--people in general--are highly complacent. I know that writing blogs on the Internet is a safe catharsis as such things go.  So far, anyway.  I know about the boiled frog and denial and sheer disbelief.  Really.  When I was 16, I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  I am never going to be able to sit through The Garden of the Finzi-Continis because I'd be screaming like someone in a horror movie.

I would rather not wait around for Nehemiah Scudder.  (No, I don't think the candidates are preachers-turned-dictators.)

I'm not interested in revolution.  I used to be, but too many of them end badly.  I recognize we've all got lives and concerns preventing marching.

(And, by the way, where are the Tea partiers protesting the abrogation of the First Amendment?  Hmmmm?)

But really, where are the organizations who used to rally large numbers of people?  Because mostly turnout and marching don't happen by themselves.

(Don't even think it.  I am old and cranky and suggested a couple of years ago somewhere that something new was needed in the get-people-fired-up-for-mass-action department, having burnt out in 1972.)

Comic Relief

1. The Onion on the real apology of Mr. Akin.
2. Jesus' General on an empty chair and skinny-dipping.

And Four to Go

• Second part of Jesse Curtis' series on American Christian giving.
• Red Sox pre-mortem, courtesy of jurassicpork.
• Comrade Misfit notes a small problem in the attempt to get Mr. Akin to quit the Missouri Senatorial race and offers la phrase juste about the Chavis Carter case.

Walking the Walk

A Christian contemplates his faith and American practitioners thereof.

A very tiny taste:

I believe that there are millions of American Christians who want to be challenged, who want to be told to be more, do more, give more, and to be told that this is not expected just of the radical few but of the very ordinary masses, those of us without precocious talents or spiritual superpowers. Where are the leaders to challenge us along these lines?

Which dovetails with Melissa McEwan of Shakesville Expecting More.  (Sometimes searches work.)

In Memoriam

• Scott McKenzie, singer/songwriter ("San Francisco [Wear Some Flowers],"/"Kokomo").
• Joey Kovar, actor
• Tony Scott, director (Top Gun, Unstoppable).
• ETA:  Phyllis Diller, comedienne and actress

On a [Kaiser] Roll

• Via Skippy, a collection of Beltway pundits' partisan "faith sentences" so that you won't have to read those journalists any more.  (Batocchio also does the annual Blogroll Amnesty Day and has other neat posts including this dissection of Paul Ryan.)

  Members of the chattering class tend to be well-educated, and it's not that they're stupid per se, but they mistake pedigree and status for merit. They're also lazy and really don't like to do policy analysis. The Beltway Conventional Wisdom is socially determined, not a matter of careful thought and analysis. As a class, pundits are shallow, careless people, and most of their opinions are issued after putting a finger in the wind and judging what will play well with the other club members. [...] Many Beltway pundits do not really think per se as much as they regurgitate unreflective class attitudes; their pronouncements are based on cosmetics, not substance. The Emperor's New Clothes isn't just a parable; it's the eternal ethos of the ruling class.

  ETA: And Mr. Somerby holds a new writer at the New York Times up to ... scrutiny. That's why, o Good People, they won't employ you.
  
• The best bagel in the Bay Area is Schmendrick's.  Also, the most expensive bagel in the Bay Area is Schmendrick's.  Probably still a sweet roll, though.  (They didn't run it past my mother the bagel maven.)
• s. e. smith at Tiger Beatdown on the vanishing paid sick day.

They're Getting Naked, And It's Not Pretty

Via Jill at Brilliant at Breakfast, Ohio voter suppression.

It's infuriating that the Republicans aren't even trying anymore to hide that they plan to steal yet another presidential election through vote suppression and dirty tricks -- and all we hear is crickets and half-assed attempts at fighting back from the Democratic side of the aisle.

Hello? WAKE UP OUT THERE!!!!!

In Memoriam

• Frank Godden, developer of resort for African Americans.
• William Windom, actor.

[crossposted]