You'd think he'd have learned from last time:

NBC 4’s reporter-anchor Craig Melvin is a tall African-American. Which apparently led to this exchange with former Sen. George Allen, according to Melvin’s Twitter account Tuesday night:

“For the 2nd time in 5 months, fmr. gov. and sen candidate George Allen asks me,”what position did you play?” I did not a play a sport.”

Allen has apologized via Twitter, saying ".@craigmelvin sorry if I offended, ask people a lot if they played sports Grew up in football family found sports banter good way to connect"

Especially when you have cognitive dissonance caused by a black guy who didn't play a sport.

And this racist fuckwit moron is ahead of Democratic opponent Tim Kaine for the Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb by 13%.

Labels: American Idiots, morons, racism, Republican Confederate Party, Teabag America

Sometimes the snark just writes itself:

A New Jersey boy who cried on a YouTube clip that he’s too small to be governor was all smiles as Gov. Chris Christie made him honorary chief executive.

Christie signed a proclamation Wednesday making 5-year-old Jesse Koczon, of Old Bridge, honorary governor for the day and his fraternal twin brother, Brandon, honorary lieutenant governor.

The boys, dressed in collared shirt, ties and trousers, appeared at a news conference with their parents, Jon and Dawn Koczon, Christie and Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno.

Christie, who has four children in elementary through high school, said he “related as a father,” when he saw the video clip of the boy crying.

On the video, Jesse’s mother asks him why he’s upset. Jesse replies, “Cause everyone tells me I’m too small to be the governor of New Jersey.”

Christie responded on Twitter: “Don’t worry Jesse, people gave plenty of reasons why I couldn’t be governor, though being too small wasn’t one of them.”

Christie said Jesse may be a natural for the state’s top job.

Especially now that Chris Christie has demonstrated that throwing a tantrum when you don't get your own way is the most important qualification.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Chris Christie, kvetching, whining, You can't make this shit up

Sometimes I forget how much being able to listen to Marc Maron on the radio used to keep me sane.

Labels: comedy, Marc Maron, WTF

Republican media darling du jour (because the bar has become so low that any Republican who isn't batshit crazy or a Mormon can be a media darling) Tim Pawlenty has some 'splainin' to do about the people he hires:

ANKENY, Iowa -- A 15-year-old girl found a campaign worker from Alabama banging on her Ankeny family's back door early Wednesday morning.

Chloe Steward told KCCI she heard her dog barking around 3 a.m. and went to investigate. She said she found a man trying to get into the back door...

"His arm was in my back door, trying to get in and I screamed and went upstairs to my parents room and I continued screaming," said Chloe Steward. “He shoved his arm in here and kept touching the wall, looking for something. I don’t know what he was looking for."

Dad grabbed his gun from a safe and went downstairs.

“The guy was still trying to come in when my husband had a gun on him. My husband must have realized that something is not right – he’s drunk of something,” said Stacey Steward, Chloe’s mother.

Stacey called 911.

“My husband has a gun on him,” Stacey told the dispatcher.

“Your husband has a gun on him?” asked the dispatcher.

“Yeah, my husband’s in our house because he freaked out our daughter. My daughter came upstairs streaming because the guy’s at the back door trying to get into my house,” Stacey told the dispatcher.

Stacey’s husband held Foster at gunpoint until police arrived.

“He kept telling my husband, ‘I’m trying to find Johnson, Johnson.’ He kept saying Johnson. Well, I find out he’s trying to get to Johnston (the town,” said Stacey. “He was so drunk, he thought he was at his friend’s house – is what he told officers.”

Foster isn't just an over-the-transom volunteer, he's a paid staffer. The article doesn't say if Foster is an evangelical Christian. If he is, then it's all good. After all, that would mean that Jesus went through unspeakable torture so that Ben Foster (not the amazing actor Ben Foster, but a chump with the same name) could get so shitfaced that he doesn't know where he is.

But even if he isn't, he doesn't have to worry. Because Foster is only 24, which means that when he runs for Congress himself in five years on a platform of moral restraint, he can call his youthful indiscretion a youthful indiscretion and not sound utterly ridiculous doing it.

(via)

Labels: 2012 election, assholes, Republicans

Labels: truth

I knew that we Jews have all the money and control the financial system and Hollywood. But who knew that one of our own could cause natural disasters? Has Glenn Beck ever considered that George Soros might be actually the second coming of Jesus?

I admit it. We'll miss him.

Labels: batshit crazies, Glenn Beck, lunacy, utter horseshit

Remember how Republican politicians talked about those who had lost their jobs, couldn't find new ones, and had run out of unemployment benefits? Imagine the squawking there would be among the newly-minted Tea Party congressmen and women if they were among the government workers whose paychecks will be stopped if there is a government shutdown tomorrow.

Last November, one of the first things that Maryland Republican Teabagger Andy Harris did after his election was scream that he wanted his government-paid health insurance NOW after campaigning against health care reform that would cover everyone. Imagine what he would say if his paycheck were stopped because of a shutdown due to Republican intransigence -- including his own.

Fortunately for Andy Harris and the other Teabaggers who would destroy the economic recovery, anemic as it is, solely in the interests of their own power, their own government paychecks will continue, as Nicholas Kristof notes today in a column about the Hooverites of the Tea Party:

If we careen over a cliff on Friday and the American government shuts down, hard-working federal workers will stop getting paychecks, but the members of Congress responsible for the shutdown are expected to be paid as usual.

That’s partly because Congressional pay is not subject to the regular appropriations process, and partly because of Constitutional concerns. The Senate passed a bill proposed by Barbara Boxer of California that would suspend Congressional paychecks in any government shutdown, but the Republican-controlled House has blocked it. House Republicans approved a similar pay suspension, but it was embedded in legislation that has zero chance of becoming law.

The upshot is that federal workers who do important work for the public — cleaning up toxic waste, enrolling sick people into lifesaving medical trials, answering medical hot lines, running national parks, processing passport applications — risk being sent home and going unpaid. But members of Congress would continue to receive $174,000 a year. As the humorist Andy Borowitz wrote in a Twitter message:  “That’s like eliminating the fire dept & sending checks to the arsonists.”

So the people who hate government so much that they fought like hell to get government paychecks are perfectly willing to shut down the government -- because THEY will get paid regardless, and that's all that matters, right? Just ask Andy Harris.

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, scumbaggery, Teabag America

Today's honoree: Karen Garcia of Sardonicky, on "pathological zombie politician Paul Ryan".

Money quotes galore, I'll just pick one:

The obvious point of the Ryan plan is to Scare Us All To Death, as well as start a generation war between Millennials and their grandparents. Ryan is fine with leaving Medicare alone for the 55-plus crowd around today, but if you're in the unlucky below-55 age group, you will only get a few thousand bucks to buy crappy junk insurance when you retire. Meanwhile, you'll be paying to keep old geezers on life support through your payroll deductions. It's the tried and true "divide and conquer" formula all bosses and overlords use to keep their disgruntled workers and subjects in their places. Pit colleague against colleague, private sector versus public sector, young college graduate minimum wage McDonald's hamburger flipper against the Grandma living in retired "comfort" on his FICA/Medicare deduction dime. Destruction of the social safety net is the goal.

Labels: bloggers, economic death watch, social Darwinism

Paul Ryan thinks he can buy my vote by keeping me, at age 55, in the current Medicare system when I'm old. Of course those who are 55+ and think they can heave a sigh of relief because they won't be part of the group that's given vouchers to buy health insurance on the private market that will cost in the high five figures even if they can get it are fooling themselves. If you think resentment by screwed-over private sector workers towards not-yet-screwed-over public sector workers is ugly, wait till you see what happens when you have one segment of the elderly population that has Medicare and another that's paying $25,000/year for health insurance (if they can even get it).

But if you have a soul, you can't look at those a few years behind you on the continuum and feel any kind of relief, particularly people like Steven D. of Booman Tribune, to whom I've linked on a number of occasions and who posts about his own predicament over at What Used To Be Known As The Great Orange Satan Until John Boehner Took That Title Away:

The Republicans have a plan to destroy Medicare.

If enacted I will likely die an early death as will my wife.  

A little background: I have a chronic autoimmune disorder that forced me to retire from my profession over ten years ago.  The drugs I take each year (and I take mostly generic versions of those medications) cost roughly $5,000 last year.  With insurance, the amount I paid for those drugs cost about $1,200.

My wife is not so lucky.  She is a pancreatic cancer survivor (since 2006) who, as a result of the chemotherapy drugs she received, suffered permanent brain damage.  The details regarding the cognitive problems she struggles with are described in this post at Booman Tribune for those who are interested.  She is also a Type 1 Diabetic since the cancer and cancer treatments effectively destroyed her pancreas.  The drugs she takes for her health issues are much more expensive than mine.  They cost roughly $16,000 last year of which we paid roughly $4,000.  

>My wife, as a fully disabled person who receives SSD benefits, was shifted to Medicare A for doctor visits, etc.  Her drugs (as are mine, my daughter and my son), however, are still covered under the group insurance plan of her former employer.  The cost of those premiums is roughly $7000 per year and we pay the full amount.  Though the premiums have increased each year (roughly 5% give or take), we manage.  In this we are fortunate, since if we had to buy individual policies for health care the cost would be much higher.

In New York, where we live the average cost of an individual family health care plan in 2009 was a little under $14,000, but due to my wife's chronic condition (Type 1 diabetes and organic brain disorder), my chronic autoimmune disorder, and my daughters' chronic ADHD condition and anxiety disorder I suspect the cost of an individual health care plan for our family would be significantly higher if we had to purchase one on the open market in 2011.  

At present, including the costs of insurance premiums, drugs, dentist visits, doctor visits and other forms of medical treatment for our family we pay out of pocket roughly 21,000 per year.

Neither my wife or I will turn 65 before 2021, when the Republican voucher system would go in place and also at which time the eligibility age for Medicare would be raised to 67.  As an aside, I don't know what would happen to us at 65.  I can only assume our health insurance from my wife's plan would terminate but we would not be eligible for vouchers, leaving a two year gap.  I am presently 54 and my wife is 52, by the way.

At 67 (or 65), my wife and I will no longer have the luxury of relying on her former employer's group health care plan.  Under the Republican plan to eliminate Medicare and replace it with a "voucher" system we will be screwed.  Whatever insurance plan we might be able to buy would either cost far, far more than the voucher provided to us or not be worth the paper its printed on (i.e., the deductible would be so high that the insurance would be essentially useless).  But don't take my word for it.  Here is what the Congressional Budget Office had to say about the Republican plan to kill Medicare:

Voucher recipients would probably have to purchase less extensive coverage or pay higher premiums than they would under current law, for two reasons. First, most of the savings for Medicare under the proposal stem from reducing the amounts that the federal government would pay for enrollees on a per capita basis, relative to the projections under current law. Second, future beneficiaries would probably face higher premiums in the private market for a package of benefits similar to that currently provided by Medicare.

So we would have no choice.  We could eat or buy extremely crappy health insurance.  In the event of a health crisis, it is highly likely that the person with the health issue would die because we could not afford the cost of even barely adequate health care such as we have today.  Certainly that would be the case if my wife suffered a recurrence of her cancer, or my condition worsened from merely a chronic condition to one that is life threatening.  

At that point the only rational decision for either of us might be to forego any medical treatment and die so as to salvage whatever savings and life insurance payments for our children we can, who lord knows will need all the help they can get in the coming years of this century.  Luckily, we have some savings and some life insurance that could be passed on to our children if we don't raid it to pay for health care, shelter and food we could no longer afford.

If you can read about Steven and his wife and still feel relieved that you'll get yours, you'd better go find out what happened to your soul.

Labels: economic death watch, Greedy Republican Bastards, health care, social Darwinism

While the "birthers" are insisting that they won't believe Barack Obama wasn't born in the U.S. even if the Archangel Gabriel himself comes down from heaven with an army of winged cherubs playing trumpets and hands it to them, they are peculiarly silent on another set of documentation that really IS actually missing:

There's a Mike Huckabee mystery that won't go away.

Send a public records request seeking documents from his 12-year stint as Arkansas governor, as Mother Jones did recently, and an eyebrow-raising reply will come back: The records are unavailable, and the computer hard drives that once contained them were erased and physically destroyed by the Huckabee administration as the governor prepared to leave office and launch a presidential bid.

In 2007, during Huckabee's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, the issue of the eradicated hard drives surfaced briefly, but it was never fully examined, and key questions remain. Why had Huckabee gone to such great lengths to wipe out his own records? What ever happened to a backup collection that was provided to a Huckabee aide?

Huckabee is now considering another presidential run, and if he does enter the race, he would do so as a frontrunner. Which would make the case of the missing records all the more significant. These records would shed light on Huckabee's governorship—and could provide insight into how a President Huckabee might run the country. Meanwhile, observers of Arkansas' political scene—including one of Huckabee's former GOP allies—say the episode is characteristic of a politician who was distrustful and secretive by nature.

In February, Mother Jones wrote to the office of Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe seeking access to a variety of records concerning his predecessor's tenure, including Huckabee's travel records, calendars, call logs, and emails. Beebe's chief legal counsel, Tim Gauger, replied in a letter that "former Governor Huckabee did not leave behind any hard-copies of the types of documents you seek. Moreover, at that time, all of the computers used by former Governor Huckabee and his staff had already been removed from the office and, as we understand it, the hard-drives in those computers had already been 'cleaned' and physically destroyed."

He added, "In short, our office does not possess, does not have access to, and is not the custodian of any of the records you seek."

"Huckabee just absolutely doesn’t trust anybody," says one former high-ranking Arkansas Republican. "In my experience, if you don't trust people, it's because you're not trustworthy."

Perhaps focusing on Huckabee is as pointless as focusing on the suddenly-invisible Sarah Palin, or the media's latest favorite MILF, that crazy-ass Michele Bachmann, under the doctrine of These Nutjobs Cannot Get Elected. However, if you think that a mean bastard with Gomer Pyle's aw-shucks manner like Huckabee can't get elected, or an aging high school mean girl like Palin who can't accept that she's not the prettiest girl at the prom anymore can't get elected, or a crazy bitch like Bachmann who wants Congresspeople investigated for un-American activities can't get elected; you're forgetting two things. One is the power of the media, which cares more about who makes the best copy to fill the giant maw of the 24-hour newsotainment cycle than who is capable of running the country. The other is this: that Republican state houses nationwide are rushing to pass laws to address the NONEXISTENT issue of "voter fraud" that would essentially disenfranchise three groups that are most likely to vote Democratic: students, minorities and the elderly:

According to data from the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, at least 27 state-level voter ID bills -- from Alaska and Arizona to Wisconsin and West Virginia -- have been proposed in recent months.

"It's unbelievable, probably half the states in the country have bills in play and more than a dozen are seriously in the pipeline," Tova Wang of the left-leaning think tank Demos told TPM in an interview. "It's really unprecedented in terms of geographic scope. I've never seen anything like it certainly since I've been working on voting rights issues that voter suppression bills would be introduced in so many places at the same time."

"Definitely students are a target here. It's totally clear to me that you saw in 2008 this unprecedented historic turnout among African-Americans, Latinos and young people -- and those happen to be the exact groups of people that are being targeted by these laws to disenfranchise them, and that's really sad," Wang said.

Wang said the most restrictive bills are in Ohio and Wisconsin, which Wang said require identification issued by the DMV. "Perhaps most interestingly, it doesn't even include student ID even from schools that are public universities," she said.

"This apparently concerted effort on the part of Republicans in state legislatures nationwide to effectively suppress voting is as disturbing as it is un-democratic," said Carolyn Fiddler, spokesperson for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, an arm of the Democratic Party charged with boosting the number of Democrats in state governments. "Additionally, these restrictive measures are often costly and do nothing to balance state budgets and create jobs, which are the top priorities in statehouses across the country right now."

Of course these measures do nothing to balance state budgets or create jobs, because that's not what Republican legislators are about. From the lowest councilman in a town like mine that has been Republican for thirty years in elections that are almost always uncontested to the Presidency, Republicans are about one thing -- gaining and keeping power, and rigging the system so that no one who disagrees with them can ever be elected again.

Right now there is a voter ID bill winding through Scott Walker's legislature in Wisconsin. It would require anyone wishing to vote to present one of three types of identification: a driver's license, a military or state identification card or a certificate issued by (for some reason) the Wisconsin Department of Transportation. A passport would not suffice, even though it is a better proof of citizenship than a driver's license, which can be obtained by non-citizens as well. Consider this while pondering such a law: Yesterday there was an election for the state Supreme Court in Wisconsin. With 98% of precincts reporting, the race is too close to call, with the Democratic challenger, Joanne Kloppenburg, having been given no chance until Scott Walker turned his state into a dictatorship, within 1900 votes of Teabag Republican David Prosser. A recount is likely, and the election could still go either way. What do you think happens to an election like this when the young, the elderly, and minorities are blocked from voting?

Still think Huckabee, Palin, Bachmann, or God Help Us even Donald Trump can't get elected?

Labels: corruption, It's OK if You're a Republican, Mike Huckabee, Republican brownshirts, vote suppression

Sometimes reading what's going on in this country makes me want to just crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.

From the "I'll find a way to get knocked up for $262,000" file, a teen abstinence advocacy program funded by Candie's shoes paid teen mom Bristol Palin seven times what they devote to, say, actual pregnancy prevention programs.

He's only THREATENING a veto? Obama is only "threatening" to veto an anti-EPA bill. I'll believe it when I see it, after all, if he vetoes it, Republicans will say mean things about him.

Why don'tcha get a REAL job, you lazy-ass slacker? James O'Keefe is begging for money again.

Now they're telling us that estrogen replacement LOWERS cancer risk. I give up.

I won't be satisfied until Driftglass succeeds in driving David Brooks out of the punditry business.

That's it. There's only so much outrage one person can take in a day.

Labels: America Gone Mad

Meet Brian Deschane:

Just in his mid-20s, Brian Deschane has no college degree, very little management experience and two drunken-driving convictions.

Yet he has landed an $81,500-per-year job in Gov. Scott Walker's administration overseeing environmental and regulatory matters and dozens of employees at the Department of Commerce. Even though Walker says the state is broke and public employees are overpaid, Deschane already has earned a promotion and a 26% pay raise in just two months with the state.

How did Deschane score his plum assignment with the Walker team?

It's all in the family.

His father is Jerry Deschane, executive vice president and longtime lobbyist for the Madison-based Wisconsin Builders Association, which bet big on Walker during last year's governor's race.

The group's political action committee gave $29,000 to Walker and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, last year, making it one of the top five PAC donors to the governor's successful campaign. Even more impressive, members of the trade group funneled more than $92,000 through its conduit to Walker's campaign over the past two years.

Total donations: $121,652.

That's big-time backing from the homebuilders.

The younger Deschane didn't respond to questions about his job.

(via)

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, government for sale, incompetence, scumbaggery, Wisconsin 2011

I need some of this tonight. How about you?

Labels: cute things, dogs, things that make you glad to be alive

When I first started going to visit my sister in North Carolina, I flew on 737 jets. Then American Airlines started flying smaller regional jets into Raleigh-Durham. Now you can't even get a regional jet into there; instead you get a prop plane that we now know after the Buffalo crash of 2009, is probably piloted by someone making less in salary than your average manager of a Dunkin' Donuts.

Last time I went, I flew USAir into Charlotte, rented a car, and then drove the 2-1/2 hours to Chapel Hill -- anything to fly an actual 737 jet piloted by a Real Pilot.

Except now those 737 jets may be suspect too:

Federal aviation authorities said on Monday that they would order airlines to inspect some early Boeing 737 models after Southwest Airlines found subsurface cracks in three aircraft during checks that were conducted after a five-foot hole ripped through the roof of a 737-300 jetliner on Friday.

The Federal Aviation Administration said that it would issue an emergency directive on Tuesday requiring inspections for fatigue damage. The action would initially apply to about 175 aircraft worldwide, 80 of which are registered in the United States, and mostly operated by Southwest Airlines.

“Safety is our No. 1 priority,” the Transportation secretary, Ray LaHood, said in a statement. “Last Friday’s incident was very serious and could result in additional action depending on the outcome of the investigation.”

The statement came shortly after Boeing said it was preparing a service bulletin that would recommend “lap-joint” inspections on certain 737-300’s as well as the 737-400 and 737-500 models.

Friday’s incident unfolded at nearly 35,000 feet with the sound of an explosion during a flight involving a 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 carrying 118 passengers from Phoenix to Sacramento. Some passengers reported feeling dizzy during the swift loss of cabin pressure. Oxygen masks were released and at least two people passed out as the pilot guided the plane to an emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station in Arizona. No one was seriously injured.

The F.A.A. directive would require initial inspections using electromagnetic, or eddy-current, technology in specific areas of the aircraft fuselage on Boeing 737 aircraft in the -300, -400 and -500 series that have accumulated more than 30,000 flight cycles — one takeoff and one landing. It would then require repetitive inspections at regular intervals.

I already refuse to fly Southwest because I have no desire to be kicked off a plane and publicly humiliated for Flying While Wearing a Size 16. But what assurances do we have that USAir's, or any other airline's 737s are in any better condition?

Amtrak, here I come. Or perhaps even Greyhound.

Labels: air safety, corporatism, FUBAR

Think about it: How would you rather check out of this God-forsaken level of reality? Would you rather be in a warm bed somewhere, perhaps lying on sheets nice and warm out of the dryer, with the sun streaming in your window and soft music playing into your room, perhaps with the aroma of peppermint, or fresh bread, or whatever your favorite aroma might be, while a doctor slips a needle into your arm and you wooze into a delightful drowsiness and then unconsciousness, and then another needle containing the drug that stops your heart is administered...or would you prefer to die out in the street, old, sick, and alone, huddling from a bitter wind, because you have no home, no shelter, no food, and no medical care?

I know which one I'd take.

But it's hard to imagine that the GOP will be kind and compassionate enough to offer the elderly the first one, not if the current House majority gets its way:

House Republicans are preparing to introduce a 10-year budget Tuesday that will eliminate Medicare and replace it with a private insurance system that closely resembles the new health care law, and end Medicaid as an entitlement program all together.

This plan, which also will include major restructuring of the tax code and cap discretionary spending, will reduce the deficit by over $4 trillion in 10 years, according to House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Here's what this means if you're elderly, disabled, or poor.

Low-income Medicaid beneficiaries will lose their guaranteed benefits altogether. Currently, Medicaid is jointly financed by the federal government and states, which are required to provide comprehensive health care benefits to people in poverty. Ryan's plan turns the program into block grants for the states -- states get a bunch of cash from the feds and have to make the best of it. For many states, that will mean severe benefit rollbacks.

Seniors, and others on Medicare, would be in a slightly different predicament. Currently seniors 65 and over are guaranteed a defined benefit program: taxpayers finance the system, and the government agrees to pay for seniors' health care services (though seniors have to pitch in too). Ryan's plan would leave that system intact for anybody currently on Medicare, or expecting to be on Medicare within 10 years. For everyone else the program would be radically overhauled. Future beneficiaries would no longer have a single payer system to rely on. Rather, they'd be given a menu of private insurance plans to pick from, and subsidies to help pay their premiums. If those premiums skyrocket, that's on them. If the insurers themselves aren't required to pay for whatever the doctor orders, then the guaranteed benefits will erode.

I'm going to be fifty-six years old this year, so it's possible that I may just sneak in under the wire. But because I'm not a Republican, I don't subscribe to the "I Got Mine And Fuck You" doctrine. I take no comfort or satisfaction in the reality that my friends and colleagues who are in their twenties, thirties, and forties -- or who are fifty-four right now, are going to be consigned to the latter option described above.

It's probably too late to stop this plan -- or something even worse. The executives of major corporations -- the ones whose multimillion dollar annual compensation packages already assure them of that nice warm bed only with no doctor slipping them a needle -- own this country. They own both parties, Democratic and Republican. The Republicans are more expensive whores, because they demand to be paid more to do the billionaires' bidding, whereas the Democrats have long been content to settle for the scraps. But we've already seen what calls for "shared sacrifice" mean -- they mean sacrifice for everyone EXCEPT those who already have more money than they AND their heirs can spend or use in a thousand lifetimes.

I still have a soul. And it grieves me to think of my friends, who simply because of a few short years are going to be left clutching coupons they're supposed to use to buy health insurance that doesn't promise to be there when they need it -- while billionaires continue to rake in ever more cash, because no amount we let them have seems to be enough.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, Greedy Republican Bastards, scumbaggery, social Darwinism

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the significance of those who are not in professional jobs, of those who are not in the so-called big jobs. But let me say to you tonight that whenever you are engaged in work that serves humanity and is for the building of humanity, it has dignity and it has worth. - The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Memphis, TN, April 3, 1968

Less than 24 hours after uttering these words to an over-packed hall in Memphis 43 years ago, Dr. King was shot dead by an assassin's bullet.

Dr. King was actually more of a Renaissance man than people thought he was. If one mentions Dr. King's name, you'll likely think of civil rights marches, Dr. King's arms linked with those of his aides and supporters. Yet Dr. King didn't merely advocate on behalf of other African Americans but widened his compassionate scope to all Americans and even all people. He was also a vocal and eloquent critic of the Vietnam War.

And, as in the case of Memphis, he was also a vocal and impassioned supporter of the labor movement.

By early April, Dr. King was tired and weary. He didn't want to go to Memphis to speak on behalf of the city sanitation workers who'd been on strike. After all, he had several other projects going on, was flying back and forth the US between speaking engagements and meetings. Plus, he'd been in Memphis just the month before on behalf of sanitation workers who wanted to be recognized by AFSCME. A demonstration less than a week prior to King's return had turned violent when protesters used their signs to break windows of businesses. Looting ensued, 60 were injured, many arrested and one demonstrator was even killed. However, realizing that his voice was needed, the civil rights leader went, anyway, and stepped into tragic destiny.

Specifically, King was there to argue on behalf of the workers' right to collectively bargain. Here's Archives.gov's brief backstory of how this speech was precipitated:

During a heavy rainstorm in Memphis on February 1, 1968, two black sanitation workers had been crushed to death when the compactor mechanism of the trash truck was accidentally triggered. On the same day in a separate incident also related to the inclement weather, 22 black sewer workers had been sent home without pay while their white supervisors were retained for the day with pay. About two weeks later, on February 12, more than 1,100 of a possible 1,300 black sanitation workers began a strike for job safety, better wages and benefits, and union recognition. Mayor Henry Loeb, unsympathetic to most of the workers' demands, was especially opposed to the union. Black and white civic groups in Memphis tried to resolve the conflict, but the mayor held fast to his position.

The shabby treatment of city union workers and the complete nonchalance of worker safety was as much predicated on Jim Crow racism as on basic anti-union sentiment. Loeb came from a business background and was a staunch conservative, exactly the kind of person who would be utterly unsympathetic to the rights and safety of workers.

Loeb was as obstinate as Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and refused help from other unions to mediate and even from President Lyndon B. Johnson. He stubbornly insisted the strike was illegal, operating on the sleazy Catch 22 argument that a city sanitation worker had no right to go on strike because they weren't allowed to join the AFSCME union. He tried to hire scabs and used the Memphis police to brutalize the 1100 striking workers.

It took King's tragic and shockingly sudden assassination to force a temporary resolution to the standoff but to his own dying day, Loeb was proud of not standing down to what he insisted was an illegal strike and never seemed to acknowledge that he was the mayor of the city in which America's greatest 20th century civil rights leader was murdered. Essentially, if Loeb wasn't so inflexible, Dr. King wouldn't have had to go to Memphis and he could probably still be alive today.

And if he was, Dr. King would be appalled to see all the hard work that brought about the change with which we'd all grown up. King would be rubbing his eyes, scarcely believing that other white right wingers are nakedly trying to catapult us back into the 19th century by smashing public unions, stripping them of collective bargaining rights, forcing them to contribute more heavily to their own benefits, raiding their pension funds then sending out layoff notices to those who didn't knuckle under.

He'd be stunned beyond belief that white conservatives are actually trying to undermine or outright eradicate even child labor laws especially during a time when the labor pool is 5 times larger than the job market.

Dr. King would also be appalled at this latest round of adventurism in Libya and backwards slide of the civil rights movement that had reared its ugly head in 2000 when, in typical white Republican fashion, Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair Katherine Harris hired a data-mining company called ChoicePoint based in Dr. King's home state of Georgia to draw up a list of nearly 100,000 names of mostly African Americans. This list formed the basis of these people being denied the right to vote on Election Day 2000. Had these reliable Democratic voters been allowed to vote, the election's result never would've been in any doubt, the SCOTUS never would've been able to get involved, our country, and the world, would be much different today.

But Jena, Louisiana and the virulent, post-Jim Crow Tea Bagger racism we've seen since Barack Obama got elected President would've informed Dr. King that it's as if his legacy and life, all his hard work, never happened. It's almost as if Dr. King never existed, an anachronism that offered an all too brief and temporary stay against the mindless hatred, cruelty and racism that roils beneath the red, white and blue of Old Glory like a festering cancer never quite in remission.

Thom Hartmann explains how the ORIGINAL Tea Party was not at all about "small government", or about abortion, or about crushing liberalism, or about any of the pet causes of today's self-styled "Tea Party". It was actually in response to a government that was totally in the pocket of a giant corporation, the East India Company:

And you can rest assured that the original Tea Party wasn't funded by corporate interests the way today's is.

(There's another video, embedded over at Politics USA, but I can't get that one to play. So enjoy this one instead. Or in addition to the other. Then go tell your Tea Party friends the truth (not that the truth has ever mattered to these people if it flies in the face of their ideology...)

Labels: history, Teabaggers, truth

That's right, my little Ned Beattys. When you start hearing banjos in the distance, it means only one thing: Republicans are forming exploratory committees to see just how unelectable they are in the upcoming presidential race.

And it's pretty telling that the names we're hearing most often from Baggerville are Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann, proving at the very least that there's no way Obama can lose except if they dig up Reagan, attach cables to his limbs and make him a roadside attraction.

But others, some hardcore lunatics who have long since proven their Republican bona fides and others just trying, for some unfathomable reason, to attach themselves to the Republican brand. So let's look at the top ten Republican presidential hopefuls in a thumbtack Assclowns of the Week, shall we?

10) Donald Trump

The most interesting thing about Donald Trump is when his elaborate combover will finally give way and how many junior executive hangers on will be killed in the avalanche. Trump recently made the news by resurrecting the long-discredited birther conspiracy regarding the President's birthplace. This, obviously, is all the Republicans have to offer beside homophobia, Islamophobia, and a loathing for the Civil Rights Act, unions and child labor laws.

In a prime example of carrying coals to Newcastle (or bullshit to RNC HQ), Trump was paid money and given national exposure he didn't need by NBC for a nasty show called The Apprentice, sort of a Lord of the Flies/Animal Farm hybrid with styling gel and gabardine. Once good at building skyscrapers and naming them after himself, he's now reduced to rehabbing birther conspiracies in the air. And when Glenn Beck laughs at you, you know you haven't got a Giants fan's chances in LA.

9) Newt Gingrich

The former House Speaker had somehow achieved the miraculous in the last month: A way to support our invasion and bombing of Libya while somehow blaming the black guy for it all. Once almost handed his ASWF Entrepreneur of the Year Award to a DVD porn superstore until discovering that Burst Media was stimulating more than just the economy. No stranger to passion, Gingrich is so patriotic that he blamed Uncle Sam for falling into vaginas not belonging to his wife.

A recipient himself of the Franklin Graham Islamophobic Asshole of the Year award for two years running, this hypocritical serial adulterer made national headlines by screaming about Sharia law in the US and the erecting of the Cordoba Center two blocks from Ground Zero. The anti-Nostradamus, Gingrich has been wrong about everything yet still vacuums up enough money from mindless, racist minions every year to form exploratory committees that invariably tell him he's unelectable.

8) Herman Cain

Another Georgia lunatic? What's in the peaches down there? Seriously, who the fuck is this guy? Herman Cain at this point serves two purposes in Wingnuttia: A token to whom the Tea Baggers can point to as proof they're not really racist and the only Republican in America who's even more obscure than RNC Chairman Prince Remus Rice Prius Rinsed Penis.

In true conservative fashion, Cain was the CEO of a pizza joint named in honor of Carl Paladino. Through his work for Burger King and Godfather's pizza, has single-handedly contributed to American obesity more than transfat and sugar combined. For good measure, he also sabotaged the Clinton Health Care Plan 18 years ago out of fear it would induce Americans to eat less burgers and pizza. Dismissed by Jonah "Loadpants" Goldberg of the Weekly Standard by writing, "(I)t’s hard to imagine him amounting to more than an exciting also-ran." Another Islamophobe, he became a Tea Bagger darling a la Mitt Romney by saying he would never appoint any Muslims in his Cabinet. Currently slightly more popular among mainstream Republican voters than month-old anchovies.

7) Mitt Romney

If Caucasian blandness had an IPO or hedge fund, Mitt Romney would be richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. In '08, was one of many Republican presidential hopefuls, then Republican vice presidential hopefuls, then Republicans hopeful of retaining some iota of relevance to come out swinging against Muslims. His grounds were that Muslims don't represent more than 2% of the US population, even though this was coming from a guy belonging to an overrated cult centered around a Golden Bible no one's ever seen and believes in Good (or White) Jesus and Bad (or Black) Jesus.

The political Max Headroom, Romney triangulates more than a GPS with ADHD, sucking up to evangelicals, gun nuts, racists and other right wing fringe loonies. In the end, they decided on the crazy woman from Alaska who was even more glassy-eyed and devoted to killing animals than Romney while praying for the quick death of President McCain.

6) Mike Huckabee

An evangelical windbag who's so bland even this ordained minister and bona fide fundie can't lock up the evangelical vote. His biggest asset is being the Republican who's hardest to loathe. Even when he talks about a "state's right" to fly the Confederate flag or any of 100 other lunacies, you look at that "Aw shucks" Gomer face and cut him slack in a way akin to making allowances and proffering support to a failed Special Olympian.

May have a chance at winning an Iowa straw poll next year if he promises to make his cool Stratocaster bass guitar his running mate.

5) Haley Barbour

If former Attorney General John Ashcroft had a stupider, fatter, older brother sculpted out of hog lard, you'd get Haley Barbour. Just looking at the governor of Mississippi makes even ascetic Yankees crave biscuits and gravy. A former lobbyist now posing as a lobbyist posing as a governor, Barbour once shot a tourism ad exhorting people to swim in the Mississippi Gulf waters in spite of Deepwater Horizon tar balls washing up just out of camera range.

More recently, Barbour stated he didn't recall an offshoot of the KKK as being all that bad, certainly not racist but more like pro-white. Meanwhile, all over the neo-Confederacy, Tea Baggers and other bigots grabbed their loving cup ears and began doing hillbilly jigs. Most recently, Barbour's ex press secretary resigned when it came out he thought the trio of disasters in Japan was funny.

4) Tim Pawlenty

The only Republican in America who makes Mitt Romney look and sound more exciting than Dick Vitale on an acid trip during March Madness, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty once wrote a book called Courage to Stand. It proved to be an unintentional aid to the Obama health care bill by forcing Lunesta maker Sepracor into bankruptcy.

Pawlenty became a flavor of the day favorite to the Andrew Breitbart/James O'Keefe wing of the GOP by uniting with Bobby Jindal to cut state aid to ACORN, despite the fact that ACORN received no aid from Minnesota. So boring both personally and politically, his political rallies wind up looking like mini Jonestowns.

3) Jim DeMint

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint is so conservative and tight-assed you couldn't pull a pubic hair out of his ass with a tractor. Thinks as long as it snows in winter, global warming is a hoax and Al Gore is a fraud. Late last year, DeMint said that gays and unmarried, pregnant women should not be allowed to teach in public schools.

Claimed on Fox that Obama's job-creating stimulus bill was "an attack on people of faith" after begging for tens of millions in earmarks stimulus funds for South Carolina. So conservative he makes fellow redneck bigot George Wallace look like Woody Harrelson by conspicuous relief.

2) Michele Bachmann

Joining Sarah Palin and Christine O'Donnell as aging stars of political porn, Michele Bachmann somehow continues to get reelected in Minnesota's 6th congressional district without any noticeable chapping of her lips. Indeed, this most notorious example of the Land of a Million Flakes will one day serve as required reading in political science classes in the future: The ability of the mentally handicapped to obtain and retain political power.

Once called for Obama and all liberals to be investigated for "unAmerican" activities despite HUAC and Joe McCarthy being dead for decades. Thinks the American Revolution began in New Hampshire instead of Massachusetts. Thinks John Quincy Adams was a Founding Father and that our slave-owning forebears were committed to abolishing slavery. Oh, yes, please, let's all help put her finger on the Big Red Button.

Bachmann once exhorted her Tea Bagger followers in Colorado to commit suicide if Obama's health care initiative were to become law. Then the Sylvia Plath of politics threatened suicide in Colorado again. One suspects that Bachmann's ability to attract huge Tea Bagger crowds is connected to the truism that if you promise the people what they want, they'll come out for it.

1) Sarah Palin

Yes, Sarah dearest, there are lots of dogs in this Special Olympics Iditarod and you're not even the lead dog, anymore.

Once the hottest Republican on the planet earth, Sarah Palin's approval ratings among even Republicans had dropped faster than a bar of soap at a Greenwich Village bathhouse. Ah, where to begin with Sarah's unfittitude for the presidency? She does to the English language what Catholic priests do to 12 year-old altar boys, she's a hypocrite in her brief but happy political life, in her ghost-written books for which she was paid millions, on her reality show and everywhere else.

Like Newt Gingrich and all other Republicans, tells lies from her Mooselini cyberbalconies of her Facebook and Twitter pages that then become de facto truth and wisdom. Has turned the once-contemptible, sneering Valley girl head cheerleader stereotype into an actual debating style, snipes at the "lamestream media" until she has to pimp a new ghostwritten shredder fodder or TV show. Shamelessly uses her children as props and human shields like another politician we can think of.

Those who know me are well aware that I have no great love for the Newspaper Guild. My own experience with the Guild was a right-wing dream.

In 1983, I took an administrative assistant job in the department at Standard & Poor's that publishes the Register of Corporations. S&P at that time (perhaps it still is) was a screwy amalgam of Guild and non-Guild jobs. Because the part of the company in which I worked was primarily a publisher of financial information, it was a Guild shop. By 1985, my boss wanted to promote me to a marketing manager position -- and the Guild rep blocked my promotion. Even though I would be replaced with a Guild employee, the rep refused to allow me to leave the union as long as I was working in that department. And there was no union title or level that was appropriate for me to move ahead. So no promotion. I ended up leaving the department in 1986 for the IT group, which was NOT covered by the Guild, and the rest of my career is history.

From 1998 to 2005, I wrote movie reviews online. I first wrote for a now-defunct site called Virtual Urth, that I saw was looking for reviewers. I wrote for free, because I was new to the web and wasn't ready to set up my own shop. About a year later, I went off on my own, was admitted into the Online Film Critics Society, started another site jointly with my friend Gabriel, and was a co-founder of the Cinemarati film discussion community (which has been revived, in a sense, on Facebook and as a Meetup group in London, where another co-founder, Mary Ann Johanson, is now living. Every now and then, I'd receive an e-mail from a larger site (sometimes only marginally larger), offering me a gig posting reviews there, for the "valuable exposure" I'd receive. These were all people looking to make money with advertising, and my work would presumably bring in eyeballs that would help them sell more ads. They would make the money, not me. So I invariably said, Thanks, but no thanks.

Even now, I receive e-mails like this from people trying to set up aggregation-type sites, and I always refuse. Established businesses that want to syndicate links to my posts and pay me a percentage of the click-throughs, fine. But you're not going to make a living off of my work. I don't even make a living off of my work, but then I haven't really tried to turn B@B into a significant revenue generator. I do take blog ads (that I screen for appropriateness when they come in; you won't see any of those "Like Donald Trump? Take the Poll" ads that you see on far too many progressive blogs. I make about ten bucks a year from being an Amazon affiliate. And I do take donations, which are few and far between and which these days I tend to send to jurassicpork, who does yeoman work of covering here when I'm just too busy and whose economic situation has made him the living embodiment of the casualties of the Greed Economy. But while I write for my readers, in the hope that you will either learn something, or find comfort that you're not alone, or that you'll find resources to pass on to your friends, I mostly do this because it's the one thing in my life that's MINE.

I provide all this background to give personal context to this post on the Newspaper Guild's call for Huffington Post writers to withhold their work in support of Visual Arts Source's decision to "strike" HuffPo until the site agrees to 1) initiate a compensation schedule for writers, and 2) stop posting paid promotional content alongside actual editorial content.

I'm sure that the Newspaper Guild sees the now-AOL-owned HuffPo as being ripe for the picking for members, but there's a larger issue here about Huffington Post. It was one thing when Arianna Huffington was using her fame and media access in service of progressive causes. HuffPo started out as a vanity project for Arianna's friends to blog about their pet causes. But over time, the site became less about news and more about gossip, fashion, and medical quackery -- and less valuable. But as long as Arianna's heart seemed to be in the right place, there was a sort of quid pro quo about the progressive community's relationship to the site -- we'll overlook that you don't pay anyone because you're providing a valuable service. But after pocketing $350 million of AOL money, Huffington has already become squishy in the progressive part, and having to build the business is no longer an excuse for not paying writers.

The promise of "increased exposure", as I knew back in my relative Web infancy, is as empty a promise as "I'll pull out in time." Finding an unpaid gem at HuffPo requires an investment of time that most of us don't have. But it's really about the principle: If I can throw a few bucks at JP when I can, do you mean to tell me that Arianna Huffington, with $350 million plus whatever she got in her divorce from Mike Huffington, can't afford to pay her writers even twenty-five bucks a pop?

And this is why, no matter how much I might want to link to something Sam Stein might have to say, not only do I no longer link to articles at HuffPo, I refuse to give the site my eyeballs. The Guild's support of Visual Arts Source's strike/boycott may be all about seeing potential union dues, but that doesn't in any way negate that boycotting HuffPo is the right thing to do.

And if I haven't convinced you, perhaps Huffington's own words will:

Huffington, speaking alongside AOL chief Tim Armstrong at PaidContent’s 2011 Conference in New York on Thursday, dismissed the notion that all bloggers should be paid, given the wide platform HuffPo gives them.

She argued that blogging on the Huffington Post is equivalent to going on Rachel Maddow, Jon Stewart or the “Today” show to promote their ideas.

And, she said, there are plenty of people willing to take their place if they do.

“The idea of going on strike when no one really notices,” Huffington said. “Go ahead, go on strike.”

Shorter Arianna Huffington: "Let them eat cake."

Labels: Airanna Huffington, bloggers, greed, hypocrisy, worker protections

Who says you never hit the trifecta:

1) Paul Farrell, at of all places, Marketwatch, on the new Civil War.

Money quote:

Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.

2) Joseph Stiglitz at Vanity Fair, on a nation Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%.

Money quote (just one, because the entire article is worth your time):

America has long prided itself on being a fair society, where everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead, but the statistics suggest otherwise: the chances of a poor citizen, or even a middle-class citizen, making it to the top in America are smaller than in many countries of Europe. The cards are stacked against them. It is this sense of an unjust system without opportunity that has given rise to the conflagrations in the Middle East: rising food prices and growing and persistent youth unemployment simply served as kindling.

And last, but my no means least, Driftglass (who is fundraising, and you should throw him a few shekels if you can), who rips the curtain aside and exposes the Reagan legacy.

Money quote:

Reagan was the first mountain of coke the Right piled onto the national coffee table; the first, chilly bottles of champagne bought with stolen credit cards being popped. Reagan was the promise that the peak moment of frenzied, stomping, tribal, rage-drunk Wingnut Worldfuck -- the moment when everything was beautiful, and everyone was gonna get laid -- could be made to last forever and ever if they all just clap-clap-clapped loud enough, hated hard enough, and all agreed to never under any circumstances look back at the ruin they were leaving in their wake.

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day, economic death watch, greed, income inequality

Jersey Shore's Snooki is getting paid $32,000 by Rutgers University for a speaking engagement... $2,000 more than Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison.

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Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, not once but twice turned down the chance to make a dying child happy through the Make A Wish Foundation before relenting and offering her services. The family told her to sautee in Hell.

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Teabagger Republicans like Mike Lee and David Burns and Jane Cunningham and self-confessed candy thief Paul LaPage and Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli are actually trying to repeal and/or undermine child labor laws.

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Paul LaPage can't distinguish between the Maine Labor Bureau and the Maine Chamber of Commerce.

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The United States is defending the interests of Libyan radicals who had engaged and killed our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2007.

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Republican Rep. Judy Biggert was all for talking about jobs before she was against it.

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A 14 year-old rape and assault victim in Bangladesh was convicted of adultery, sentenced to 101 lashes and whipped to death. The initial autopsy report ruled her death a suicide.

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It's now April and central Massachusetts has 9 inches of snow 48 hours after a 54 degree day.

And none of these, folks, sadly enough, are April Fool's jokes.

From ThinkProgress:

Last week, Rep. Rob Woodall held a tele-town hall meeting with his constituents, allowing them to call in and ask questions. At one point, a constituent called in and challenged Woodall’s belief that all we need is spending cuts to move towards a more balanced budget. The caller pointed out that closing corporate tax loopholes on big companies like Exxon Mobil — which paid zero federal corporate income taxes in 2009 — and Google, which only paid a 4.2 percent rate in taxes, would do a lot to help balance the budget as well.

Woodall replied by saying he’s “not a fan of class warfare” and that the only people who’ve ever employed him are rich people. He then went on to say that corporate taxes are really taxes on the customers of these companies and that we need to get “corporate taxes as low as we can in this country”:

CALLER: I have a quick comment and then a question. I certainly agree with moving towards a balanced budget, and containing costs, and cutting where we can, including the Defense Department, which I think is terribly bloated, but I just don’t think it’s feasible to balance the budget with cuts alone. I think you’ve got to also include income and place a fair tax on the wealthiest two percent and closing corporate loopholes that allow huge corporations like Exxon to pay no taxes. For example, Google earned eleven billion dollars last year overseas and paid 4.2 percent in taxes. So I think a fair tax on the wealthy and those who can chip in a little more has to be part of the bigger picture.

WOODALL: Bill, I absolutely agree with you that we can’t do it on spending cuts alone. [...] Now you talk about raising taxes. Now I’m not a fan of class warfare. Now the only people who’ve given me a job in my life is rich people. I’ve never had a poor man offer me a job. [...] At the end of the day, it’s going to be one of us, individuals, that pays every nickel in corporate taxes. I want use to get corporate taxes as low as we can in this country. Which means businesses don’t want to be here, they don’t want to provide jobs here. [...] We have to attract new businesses to our shores, the way to do that is with the lowest corporate tax rate we can get, to make sure folks want to come here.

This guy has clearly forgotten that he is supposed to now be a "public servant", which means that he is an employee of the people of his district. I'm sure some of those people are poor. Now, is he saying that rich people gave him his current job as a legislator? If so, is he saying that they bought him a Congressional seat and that he is a bought and paid for Congressman?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Labels: assholes, Greedy Republican Bastards, hypocrisy, lazy-ass suckers at the public teat, Teabag America

Just look at these tens of thousands of hundreds of Teabaggers converging in Washington DC yesterday:


I saw more people than this gather for a Peter Karp concert in Tenafly a few years ago.

Jed Lewison braved Faux Noise for coverage, where the meme was that the bad weather kept people away. Remember, these so-called tea party patriots are the same guys who dress up in three-cornered hats and invoke the Founding Fathers; they give lip service to worship of Our Brave Military, yet they are too wussy to get a little bit wet and a little bit cold in the service of their Noble Cause.

Frauds. Every last one of them.

Labels: faux masculinity, faux moral outrage, Teabaggers