As expected, the weekend mass murder in California has brought out the usual suspects on the pencil-penis right. I'm not even going to go into the kinds of things that are being said by the sociopathic Elliot Rodger wannabes out there in the "pickup subculture" who think that their very existence entitles them to sex provided by beautiful women that they can then spit on later for being sluts, evil, or whatever bile they choose to spill to cover up their deep self-loathing.

I'm here this evening to look at the so-called "mainstream" of wingnut thought on this question; the NRA acolytes who seem to honestly believe that without their guns they have no penises. First we have the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch's useless Big Apple rag, which yesterday showed everything that's wrong with the subculture that fueled the shooter's rage:



It's all here -- a photo of a pretty blond girl -- exactly the kind of girl that Rodger hated for rejecting him -- her finger half in her mouth, a hint of cleavage showing, a look that could be interpreted by sad sack losers as "come hither" -- and the subheadline "Childhood snub set me off, madman seethed." I'm sorry, Rupert, but you can call him a madman all you want; this cover shows what you REALLY think, and it's vile...disgusting. How do you sleep at night?

Meanwhile. the male Sarah Palin, Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurtzelbacher, seeking another moment in the sun, penned an "open letter to the parents of" those killed. An excerpt:

I am sorry you lost your child. I myself have a son and daughter and the one thing I never want to go through, is what you are going through now.> But:

As harsh as this sounds – your dead kids don’t trump my Constitutional rights.

Richard Martinez, whose son (Christopher) was among the murdered, choked back tears at a news conference, blaming politicians the next day: “The talk about gun rights. What about Chris’ right to live?” Martinez said – and much more.

There are no critical words for a grieving father. He can say whatever he wants and blame whoever he’d like – it’s okay by me. You can’t take a step in his shoes – at least I can’t.

But the words and images of Mr. Martinez blaming “the proliferation of guns”, lobbyists, politicians, etc.; will be exploited by gun-grab extremists as are all tragedies involving gun violence and the mentally ill by the anti-Second Amendment Left.

Is Wurtzelbacher saying that everyone who has opined in the aftermath of this that "The bitches had it coming" is mentally ill? Or just those who BECAUSE THEY HAVE ACCESS TO GUNS go out and kill women?



While looking for the video above, I came across a number of Alex Jones-style tinfoil hat videos insisting that Richard Martinez is a tool of the anti-gun left, that the shooting was an Obama false flag operation designed to take away the guns of good patriotic 'muricans who just want to know that they could take out the black man in the White House iff'n they had a mind to. No surprise there either, but it makes me wonder -- what WILL it take to change enough minds so that we demand action; that we INSIST on it? We had twenty dead six-to-eight-year-olds dead because of guns and still we did not cry out.

So I'm going to say something that will no doubt piss a lot of people off:

We need to see more grief.

Yes, there are those who will continue to insist that Newtown and Santa Barbara were false flag operations. Those people are beyond hope. But what about the people who sort of marginally care but hey, Dancing with the Stars is on tonight and we need dog food and the car needs an oil change? How do we get them to realize what a bunch of men with penis size anxiety are doing to our country?

We need to see more grief.

Yes, it makes us uncomfortable. That is why people have needed to try to paint Michael Martinez as something other than a grieving parent. After all, we don't see much raw, live grief. We saw the Newtown parents clutching photos of their dead children, telling Barbara Walters or Ann Curry or some other faux-carer of the media what their child was like. We saw their jaws quiver and their eyes fill with tears -- all very tasteful, all very sanitary, all very seemly.

What we didn't see is the times when the cameras were turned off, and they went into the bedrooms of their lost children and collapsed onto the floor screaming. We didn't see them break down in the supermarket for no particular reason after they've been fine all day. We didn't see them close the door on a room that is now a shrine, or pack up toys and clothing that will never be worn again....Christmas presents that will never be opened. We didn't see them wake up in the morning even now, and for one brief moment pretending it was all a bad dream before realizing it's real. We don't see what grief looks like.

Grief is supposed to be something linear. You're supposed to cry for a week, or two, or even a couple of months -- and then buck up and move on; "get over it", because there's work to do and people to not make uncomfortable. The problem is, that's not how it works. For every time you see someone collapse in screams upon hearing the terrible news that their child or spouse or sibling has died, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people who leave the accident scene, or the hospital, or the nursing home, in a state of shock and numbness. We look fine on the outside for a while, just like those poised Newtown parents. But after a while the numbness wears off and the waves start. And they can last a very long time. But since we have not adhered to some external timetable, we do our grieving behind closed doors, alone. I guarantee you, the Newtown parents do it. The families of the women George Sodini killed in 2009 do it. Trayvon Martin's parents do it. The families of the others killed by Elliot Rodger will do it too. Because that is just how it works. After all, we mustn't make other people uncomfortable. It would be unseemly.

Well I say bullshit to that. Death is part of life. Loss of loved ones happens. It is horrible and it sucks royally, but it happens. People get sick. They die. People also get murdered by punk kids with a false sense of entitlement who think beautiful women owe them sex because of some delusion of grandeur they have. Those of us who arguably had time to prepare, to try to wrap our minds around something that is unfathomable until it actually happens, well, we will continue to have to grieve behind closed doors because we make people uncomfortable. But a parent whose son got killed while at work, or whose daughter was in a sorority house, or whose son was coming back to his father's house with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea; a husband whose pregnant wife was gunned down while she was teaching aerobics at a gym -- we owe it to them and to the memory of their horrific losses to witness their grief; to hear the screams of the nightmare that will never end; to witness their legs give out from under them.

Photographs of pristine, healthy, adorable children didn't do it. Lovely, dignified, stoic parents trying to be brave for the cameras didn't do it. Perhaps seeing what pure, raw grief looks like MIGHT get through. And we have to allow them to show us no matter how long it takes for the numbness to wear off. Because no, Samuel Wurtzelbacher DOESN'T know what Richard Martinez is going through, because he gets to tuck his kids in at night. Wurtzelbacher lacks the empathy to even TRY to imagine. So perhaps people need to start showing him.

Labels: grief, gun nuts, misogyny, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

So yesterday we heard that our esteemed governor, Chris Christie, had been completely exonerated of any wrongdoing by lawyers who are his political allies, that he paid for with a million dollars of New Jersey taxpayer money. What a surprise. What was at least a little surprising, was the misogynistic viciousness of the report, which blamed the closing of local lanes to the George Washington Bridge last September on Alex Forrest Bridget Kelly, as some sort of irrational, psychotic payback to her alleged former lover, Christie ally Bill Stepien. Or something. And then there's Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer, painted by the report as a delusional liar.

Hey 57% of women who voted for this thug last November -- how do you feel about him now?

I've been wanting to move to North Carolina for years. It's not that I love the climate, Goddess knows I don't. But I've been tired of New Jersey for a long time. The road rage. The traffic. The potholes. The big hair and chewing gum and the lack of realization that the characters on "The Sopranos" were NOT people you were supposed to want to emulate. People who say "Down the shore." Springsteen and his ersatz Woody Guthrie schtick composed in his bigass house in Rumson. I've lived here since 1958, and I've had enough.

Back in 2005, I survived a layoff where I was working. In a way, it was the worst thing that could have happened to me. Mr. B. was unemployed at the time, it was the top of the housing market, and we could have sold the house and headed south without looking back. But I did survive, and then he got a job, and so we stayed. He never really wanted to go anyway. He always refused to believe me when I came home from my sister's and talked about all the geeky aging hippies down there who thought the way we did, and about the venues that had more of the music we like than New York City had, and how yes, you could get good Indian food in Durham. He just could never get past Jesse Helms. Now granted, we'd be moving to the Triangle, not to the areas where they still marry their sisters, but even that area was still represented by Jesse Helms.

It's not that it's so much better now, especially since 2010, when disappointed Obama voters stayed home in droves, allowing a wingnut contingent that makes the teabaggers look sane to take over the statehouse in Raleigh and the governorship. They've enacted one of the most restrictive voter registration laws in the country, tried to enact a law that would allow the state to establish a state religion, and introduced legislation to ban making scientific predictions of sea level rise. Governor Pat McCrory is a puppet of Duke Energy. The state is a workshop for the worst kind of retrograde legislation, to the point that a once-hot destination for high-tech companies is in danger of becoming another Alabama.

But not if Moral Mondays has anything to say about it.

Whether the Moral Monday movement, which started in North Carolina but has spread to Atlanta, can be effective or if it is just another bunch of white progressives marching with signs, remains to be seen. If there's a place where even bad Democrats are better than any Republican, it's in North Carolina, where another four years of wingnut rule could very well turn North Carolina into another polluted, ignorant southern cesspool. Maybe the state needs me.

Or maybe I'm just looking for an excuse.

Because right now I feel like an alien in my own life and in my own house. When Mr. B. was here I used to say that the time before I met him felt like someone else's life. Now the thirty years I spent with him feel like someone else's life, and I am trespassing on it. The Job That Ate My Life, the house that's now eighteen years into the five-year remodeling plan and still needs another $40,000 worth of work just to get it ready to sell -- none of it feel like mine anymore. The man-cave still has a fair amount of Mr. B's effluvia in it -- the stuff I didn't donate or toss when I was still numb enough to do it. Nine suits in 42L and 44L waiting to be donated. Dressers that are falling apart and need to be dragged downstairs and put out for pickup day. Three boxes of comic books that need to be triaged to see what's worth selling and what is just junk. Records. CDs. Bits of a life now gone for good. The upstairs bedroom has a bed frame but no bed, the bed having been carted away by ServPro as hazmat nearly five months ago. His size 13 sneakers are still in the hall. In the linen closet are a dozen sand-color towels to be donated because when I have the upstairs bathroom done, it won't go with sand-color towels. So much stuff from a life that is now compleely alien to me. And that's why I feel the pull -- to get off this insane merry-go-round of impossible deadlines and office politics and 7-day work weeks, to head south and find a place that doesn't have three unused rooms -- maybe a house with a front porch and a screened porch in back and a deck and pine trees and a shed where I can set up a commercial kitchen and make 20 flavors of granola to sell. To set up a widows/widowers meetup group for old hippies. To sleep more than five hours a night. To stop and smell the flowers. To breathe. To live.

Because one thing I've learned is that none of us knows what tomorrow will bring. When I stood at my mother's graveside in December of 2012 with Mr. B. at my side, I could not have fathomed that less than a year later he would be gone too. I look through the boxes of photos that I still haven't organized from my mother's house and get smacked in the face at how many of the people in them are gone. Mom. Lionel. Generations of pets. Mr. B. And those of us still left aren't getting any younger. In a way it's a relief that when I'm gone, they can just light a bonfire and burn the whole mess if they want to. Because after a generation or two, who remembers who is whom in family photos? And after that, who even cares? All we have is now. I want to have some contentment in my now. Because EVERYTHING in life is only for now.



Power-mad thugs like Chris Christie should think about this.

Labels: Chris Christie, personal musings, wingnuttia

The Soweto Gospel Choir, in a flashmob tribute to Nelson Mandela:



What strikes me most about this video, other than the beauty of the music and these people, is watching all the white people applauding a group of black people singing and ending with their fists in the air. Can you imagine what Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson and the other pearl-clutchers of Faux Noise would do at the sight of something like this here in the US?

Apartheid began to be dismantled in South Africa in 1990 and ended once and for all in 1994. That's less than twenty years ago, and the races in South Africa have learned how to live together in a harmonious, mutually-respectful society. Here in the US, slavery ended in 1865 -- over 140 years ago -- and we are having cable news anchors having the vapors over black Santa Clauses. What the fuck is wrong with us?

Labels: Fox News, Nelson Mandela, wingnuttia

Perhaps the best moment of the 2012 campaign was this one, when President Obama deftly set a trap into which Willard Rmoney blindly stepped:



We've heard a great deal over the last four years about 11-dimensional chess and how this president plays the long game. Many on the progressive side have despaired as this president folded on issue after issue, while others have clung to the idea that Obama was playing some sort of 11-dimensional chess; that he knew very well what he was doing. You could argue that the fact that he was inaugurated again yesterday, in the middle of an economy that's still struggling, is evidence of that long game. You could also argue that he had the good fortune to run against arguably the most inept Republican nominee in our lifetime. I've long been inclined to regard this president as at best a moderate Republican, even back when most of my friends were insisting that Barack Obama was the "true" progressive candidate in 2008. But now I'm starting to wonder if this 11-dimensional chess might have been the real deal, especially after reading this:

As the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision takes place on Tuesday, a majority of Americans – for the first time – believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

What’s more, seven in 10 respondents oppose Roe v. Wade being overturned, which is the highest percentage on this question since 1989.

[snip]

According to the poll, 54 percent of adults say that abortion should be legal either always or most of the time, while a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal – either with or without exceptions.

That’s the first time since this poll question was first asked in 2003 that a majority maintained that abortion should be legal. Previously (with just one exception in 2008), majorities said abortion should be illegal.

In addition, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose the Roe v. Wade decision being overturned, including 57 percent who feel strongly about this.

That’s up from the 58 percent who said the decision shouldn’t be overturned in 1989; the 60 percent who said this in 2002; and the 66 percent who said this in 2005. By comparison, just 24 percent now want the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, including 21 percent who feel strongly about this position.

Much of this change, the NBC/WSJ pollsters say, is coming from African Americans, Latinos and women without college degrees -- all of whom increasingly oppose the Supreme Court decision being overturned.

Now note that this poll doesn't say that the majority who support abortion rights are African Americans, Latinos and women without college degrees, it shows that this is the source of the CHANGE. Think about the right wing over the last few years. Think about the birthers and the "Newtown truthers" and Ted Nugent and Wayne LaPierre and Joe "You Lie!" Wilson and Louie Gohmert. Think about Governor Bob "Vaginal Probe" McDonnell in Virginia. Think about the criminal governor Rick Scott of Florida, and the cold, dead eyes of Scott Walker in Wisconsin. Think about Rush Limbaugh's ranting about sluts and how about women who want abortion should have them done with a gun.

The more outrageous the right's claims get, the more Obama greets them with some equivalent of, "Please continue, governor." And today we find that after decades of erosion of support for abortion (because it's easy to support forcing women to bear children they don't want or can't afford when it's an abstract concept), we now find that a majority support keeping Roe v. Wade as it is. We now find that support for gay marriage, though it has a long way to go, is on the rise. Fewer Americans are knee-jerk supporters of religious doctrine. Now it may very well be that these things are simply organic outgrowth of changing demographics. I'm not counting on it, but it may also be that in not answering the most vile things said by Republicans over the last four years, we may find that Barack Obama's "Eleven-Dimensioners" just may have been right.

Labels: 11-dimensional chess, President Barack Obama, wingnuttia

Fox News can get people killed:

A Lake Park man “obsessed with Fox News and the Republican party” is in jail today after he allegedly said that he felt he was going to have to kill his girlfriend because she was a “liberal.”

David A. Kappheim, 60, is being held at the Palm Beach County Jail without bail. He was arrested Tuesday and the arresting Palm Beach County Sheriff’s deputy placed Kappheim under a Baker Act. Kappheim is facing charges of domestic battery, aggravated assault and criminal mischief.

Kappheim’s 59-year-old girlfriend, whose name was withheld in the report, told the deputy a number of incidents happened with him before Tuesday.

On Saturday, Kappheim showed up at her friend’s house uninvited and “stark naked,” she said, according to the arrest report.

She said he tried strangling her the next day.

The couple lived together but she asked him to move out. On Tuesday, Kappheim asked to borrow her car so he could move his belongings out. The woman said she agreed but asked him to drive her to work first.

Throughout the ride, the woman said Kappheim drove “recklessly.” When she asked him not to kill her, he allegedly responded by laughing out loud. On Wednesday, she called the sheriff’s office for help.

When Kappheim was approached by the arresting deputy, he said “he was very conservative and (his girlfriend) was a liberal.” He also told the deputy that “he felt that he was going to have to kill her,” the report said.

Labels: right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia, You can't make this shit up

At Addicting Info, a screenshot from the Being Liberal Facebook page demonstrating that for an alarming number of gun nuts, it's not at all about deer hunting or protecting their TVs.

At Media Matters: Rush Limbaugh sez Robin Hood was a Tea Party activist.

Americablog: Fox News decided Gabby Douglas wasn't patriotic enough.

Down With Tyranny: It isn't just coming from Republicans: The DCCC is participating as well in the War on Women.

Raw Story: Rep. Steve King says "Why do it piecemeal?" Let's just repeal in one fell swoop everything Obama has done." Also, this.

The General on Jerome Corsi's latest fever dream about Obama.

The New York Crank on Texas Republicans' quest to outlaw the teaching of critical thinking in schools in their state.

At Vagabond Scholar: No, both sides DON'T do it.

OK, back to trying to meet impossible deadlines, which is how I spend all my waking hours these days.

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day, wingnuttia

As a card-carrying, if nonreligious, Member of the Tribe, I'm appalled by the spectacle of Willard Rmoney claiming the right to declare American policy towards Israel while on a money-grubbing trip overseas. The worst fears of those who believe that U.S. foreign policy is dictated by Israel were realized this weekend when Rmoney, doing the bidding not just of Bibi Netanyahu, but of Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who has vowed to do whatever it takes to put his Mormon BFF in the White House, announced that not only would he move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, but that he'd be perfectly happy to look the other way while Israel unilaterally attacks Iran. NYT:

The speech, delivered at dusk overlooking the Old City, was short on policy prescriptions, as Mr. Romney tried to adhere to an unwritten code suggesting that candidates not criticize each other on foreign soil. But there were subtle differences between what he said — and how he said it — and the positions of his opponent.

While the Obama administration typically talks about stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, Mr. Romney adopted the language of Israel’s leaders, who say Tehran must be prevented from even having the capability to develop one.

And while President Obama and his aides always acknowledge Israel’s right to defend itself, they put an emphasis on sanctions and diplomacy; Dan Senor, Mr. Romney’s senior foreign policy aide, went further on Sunday, suggesting that Mr. Romney was ready to support a unilateral military strike by Israel.

“If Israel has to take action on its own,” Mr. Senor said in a briefing before the speech, “the governor would respect that decision.”

One of the things that makes me nuts about my people is that we are a highly intelligent bunch, but when it comes to Israel, we tend to lose our intelletive capacity and respond with the same reptilian brain that the right uses towards just about everything. I may think Israel is necessary because when push comes to shove, and things get bad enough, someone with power is going to stand up and blame the Jews. When criticism of Israel goes beyond people like Netanyahu and starts becoming a critique of the entire nation, my gut twists up. It's not an intellective response, but a visceral one. At least I recognize that.

So, despite all of Willard's appalling and inflammatory rhetoric, do most American Jews, who are still solidly behind Barack Obama. Gallup (no liberals they):

While Republicans may look favorably on Romney's visit to Israel, another group with keen interest in U.S.-Israeli relations -- Jewish Americans -- solidly backs Obama in the election.

Gallup Daily tracking from June 1-July 26 finds Jewish registered voters favoring Obama over Romney by 68% to 25%. That is essentially the same as Gallup's prior update on Jewish voting preferences.

Although one goal of Romney's Israel visit could be to attract greater support among Jewish voters in the U.S., Jewish Americans have been a traditionally strong Democratic group, so they are unlikely to become much more supportive of Romney regardless of the outcome of the trip.

I'm sure that Rmoney's rhetoric will play well on the West Bank and among American Evangelicals, who can't wait to sit on the couch and share a Coors and a plate of loaded nachos with Jesus while Jews who don't convert are tormented on Judgment Day. But last I looked, they were not voting in the U.S. election. Fortunately, most American Jews are like me and are capable of stringing two coherent thoughts together.

Labels: American Jewry, Israel, wingnuttia

Remember this creepfest from 2009?



That's Jonathan Krohn, age 13. You may have seen part of this clip on Real Time last Friday. Now, if you're a normal person, you probably saw that and thought that it was a kid parroting what he'd seem his parents watching on Fox News...either that or someone trying out for the Billy Mumy role in the remake of the "It's a Good Life" episode of The Twilight Zone. And you'd be right. But at the time, conservatives were salivating like Jerry Sandusky in a Chuck-E-Cheese bathroom room at this bright, poised little brownshirt of the future.

Ah, but they grow up so fast, don't they? Today young Mr. Krohn is seventeen and singing a different tune:

Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009’s Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.

Now 17, Krohn — who went on to write a book, “Defining Conservatism,” that was blurbed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett — still watches that speech from time to time, but it mostly makes him cringe because, well, he’s not a conservative anymore.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Krohn won’t go so far as to say he’s liberal, in part because his move away from conservatism was a move away from ideological boxes in general. “I want to be Jonathan Krohn,” he said, “and I’m tired of being an ideology, and it’s not fun and it gets boring and it’s not who we are as individuals.” But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Welcome to the world of thinking individuals, Mr. Krohn. I'm sure you'll figure it all out...on your own.

Labels: Don't Kids Say the Darnedest Things, ex-conservatives, wingnuttia

You may see more of these between now and October.

TBogg reveals just who at CNN got the Supreme Court ACA decision wrong.

From the "What Was MSNBC Thinking?" file, BlueGal takes on S.E. Cupp (whom I suspect would be doing the weather in Kalamazoo if her last name didn't sound like a brassiere).

Attaturk compiles tweets from wingnuts so upset at John Roberts that they're considering moving to Canada. Where they have universal health care.

Oh yeah, baby. Just go read James Wolcott, who does it like nobody else can.

Heather at C&L shows how the batshittery isn't JUST about the Supreme Court decision.

Digby makes it clear that with these people it always comes down to wanting to shoot stuff, doesn't it.

Pam has yet another compendium of hysteria.

Our very own jurassicpork was so inspired by the pearl-clutching that he didn't even wait till today to put together a special addition of Assclowns of the Week Day.

Further proof that once you leave the Research Triangle area or Asheville, North Carolina is still full of yahoos: Andy Ostroy reports on actual Republican candidates for the 11th District.

And finally some seriousness...

Comradde Physioproffe warns us not to get excited, for all this decision did was to keep the credibility of the Roberts Court hanging by enough of a thread for it to do some REAL damage in the future.

And Michael J. W. Stickings gives some snark-free analysis from the Land of Universal Health Care.

Labels: batshit crazies, bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day, health care, wingnuttia

Paul Krugman writes today about how the mini-scandal surrounding New Jersey Governor and bullying wet dream VP candidate of the 24 x 7 news-o-tainment cycle Chris Christie's ties to a corrupt and ineptly run private system of halfway houses. The poor job being done by many private companies that handle activities that used to be handled by government is the great untold story of the conservative doctrine. As Krugman notes, when a company is given government money in a no-bid contract, or when a company is chosen from multiple bids because of its ties to lawmakers, the much-vaunted "free market" is hardly in place.

But of even more significance than Krugman's column, and what it says about the Randian dream nation that surely awaits us under the presidency of Willard Rmoney and his dressage horse, is a mention in the comments section of the Powell memo of 1971.

I wasn't familiar with this memo, but the miracle of Teh Google revealed it to me. It's a mark of how insane the Supreme Court has become in recent years that Lewis Powell is now remembered as a moderate. But in 1971, just months before Richard Nixon nominated him to the Supreme Court, Powell sent a letter to U.S. Chamber of Commerce director Eugene Sydnor, Jr. Reading this memo today, we can see that this letter, which pre-dates Ronald Reagan's presidency by nearly a decade, is the seed corn for the social Darwinist, out-of-control corporatist culture and government which we see today. Powell focuses on what he believed to be the pernicious influence of higher education in fomenting the then-ongoing rebellion against corporate interests.

Some excerpts (the rest is here):

The overriding first need is for businessmen to recognize that the ultimate issue may be survival -- survival of what we call the free enterprise system, and all that this means for the strength and prosperity of America and the freedom of our people.

The day is long past when the chief executive officer of a major corporation discharges his responsibility by maintaining a satisfactory growth of profits, with due regard to the corporation's public and social responsibilities. If our system is to survive, top management must be equally concerned with protecting and preserving the system itself. This involves far more than an increased emphasis on "public relations" or "governmental affairs" -- two areas in which corporations long have invested substantial sums.

A significant first step by individual corporations could well be the designation of an executive vice president (ranking with other executive VP's) whose responsibility is to counter-on the broadest front-the attack on the enterprise system. The public relations department could be one of the foundations assigned to this executive, but his responsibilities should encompass some of the types of activities referred to subsequently in this memorandum. His budget and staff should be adequate to the task.

The assault on the enterprise system was not mounted in a few months. It has gradually evolved over the past two decades, barely perceptible in its origins and benefiting (sic) from a gradualism that provoked little awareness much less any real reaction.

Although origins, sources and causes are complex and interrelated, and obviously difficult to identify without careful qualification, there is reason to believe that the campus is the single most dynamic source. The social science faculties usually include members who are unsympathetic to the enterprise system. They may range from a Herbert Marcuse, Marxist faculty member at the University of California at San Diego, and convinced socialists, to the ambivalent liberal critic who finds more to condemn than to commend. Such faculty members need not be in a majority. They are often personally attractive and magnetic; they are stimulating teachers, and their controversy attracts student following; they are prolific writers and lecturers; they author many of the textbooks, and they exert enormous influence -- far out of proportion to their numbers -- on their colleagues and in the academic world.

Social science faculties (the political scientist, economist, sociologist and many of the historians) tend to be liberally oriented, even when leftists are not present. This is not a criticism per se, as the need for liberal thought is essential to a balanced viewpoint. The difficulty is that "balance" is conspicuous by its absence on many campuses, with relatively few members being of conservatives or moderate persuasion and even the relatively few often being less articulate and aggressive than their crusading colleagues.

This situation extending back many years and with the imbalance gradually worsening, has had an enormous impact on millions of young American students. In an article in Barron's Weekly, seeking an answer to why so many young people are disaffected even to the point of being revolutionaries, it was said: "Because they were taught that way."10 Or, as noted by columnist Stewart Alsop, writing about his alma mater: "Yale, like every other major college, is graduating scores' of bright young men ... who despise the American political and economic system."

As these "bright young men," from campuses across the country, seek opportunities to change a system which they have been taught to distrust -- if not, indeed "despise" -- they seek employment in the centers of the real power and influence in our country, namely: (i) with the news media, especially television; (ii) in government, as "staffers" and consultants at various levels; (iii) in elective politics; (iv) as lecturers and writers, and (v) on the faculties at various levels of education.

Many do enter the enterprise system -- in business and the professions -- and for the most part they quickly discover the fallacies of what they have been taught. But those who eschew the mainstream of the system often remain in key positions of influence where they mold public opinion and often shape governmental action. In many instances, these "intellectuals" end up in regulatory agencies or governmental departments with large authority over the business system they do not believe in.

If the foregoing analysis is approximately sound, a priority task of business -- and organizations such as the Chamber -- is to address the campus origin of this hostility. Few things are more sanctified in American life than academic freedom. It would be fatal to attack this as a principle. But if academic freedom is to retain the qualities of "openness," "fairness" and "balance" -- which are essential to its intellectual significance -- there is a great opportunity for constructive action. The thrust of such action must be to restore the qualities just mentioned to the academic communities.

The Chamber should insist upon equal time on the college speaking circuit. The FBI publishes each year a list of speeches made on college campuses by avowed Communists. The number in 1970 exceeded 100. There were, of course, many hundreds of appearances by leftists and ultra liberals who urge the types of viewpoints indicated earlier in this memorandum. There was no corresponding representation of American business, or indeed by individuals or organizations who appeared in support of the American system of government and business.

Every campus has its formal and informal groups which invite speakers. Each law school does the same thing. Many universities and colleges officially sponsor lecture and speaking programs. We all know the inadequacy of the representation of business in the programs.

It will be said that few invitations would be extended to Chamber speakers.11 This undoubtedly would be true unless the Chamber aggressively insisted upon the right to be heard -- in effect, insisted upon "equal time." University administrators and the great majority of student groups and committees would not welcome being put in the position publicly of refusing a forum to diverse views, indeed, this is the classic excuse for allowing Communists to speak.

The two essential ingredients are (i) to have attractive, articulate and well-informed speakers; and (ii) to exert whatever degree of pressure -- publicly and privately -- may be necessary to assure opportunities to speak. The objective always must be to inform and enlighten, and not merely to propagandize.

What Can Be Done About the Public?
Reaching the campus and the secondary schools is vital for the long-term. Reaching the public generally may be more important for the shorter term. The first essential is to establish the staffs of eminent scholars, writers and speakers, who will do the thinking, the analysis, the writing and the speaking. It will also be essential to have staff personnel who are thoroughly familiar with the media, and how most effectively to communicate with the public. Among the more obvious means are the following:

Television
The national television networks should be monitored in the same way that textbooks should be kept under constant surveillance. This applies not merely to so-called educational programs (such as "Selling of the Pentagon"), but to the daily "news analysis" which so often includes the most insidious type of criticism of the enterprise system.12 Whether this criticism results from hostility or economic ignorance, the result is the gradual erosion of confidence in "business" and free enterprise.

This monitoring, to be effective, would require constant examination of the texts of adequate samples of programs. Complaints -- to the media and to the Federal Communications Commission -- should be made promptly and strongly when programs are unfair or inaccurate.

Equal time should be demanded when appropriate. Effort should be made to see that the forum-type programs (the Today Show, Meet the Press, etc.) afford at least as much opportunity for supporters of the American system to participate as these programs do for those who attack it.

Other Media
Radio and the press are also important, and every available means should be employed to challenge and refute unfair attacks, as well as to present the affirmative case through these media.

The Scholarly Journals
It is especially important for the Chamber's "faculty of scholars" to publish. One of the keys to the success of the liberal and leftist faculty members has been their passion for "publication" and "lecturing." A similar passion must exist among the Chamber's scholars.

Incentives might be devised to induce more "publishing" by independent scholars who do believe in the system.

There should be a fairly steady flow of scholarly articles presented to a broad spectrum of magazines and periodicals -- ranging from the popular magazines (Life, Look, Reader's Digest, etc.) to the more intellectual ones (Atlantic, Harper's, Saturday Review, New York, etc.)13 and to the various professional journals.

Books, Paperbacks and Pamphlets
The news stands -- at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere -- are filled with paperbacks and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on "our side." It will be difficult to compete with an Eldridge Cleaver or even a Charles Reich for reader attention, but unless the effort is made -- on a large enough scale and with appropriate imagination to assure some success -- this opportunity for educating the public will be irretrievably lost.

Paid Advertisements
Business pays hundreds of millions of dollars to the media for advertisements. Most of this supports specific products; much of it supports institutional image making; and some fraction of it does support the system. But the latter has been more or less tangential, and rarely part of a sustained, major effort to inform and enlighten the American people.

If American business devoted only 10% of its total annual advertising budget to this overall purpose, it would be a statesman-like expenditure.

This manifesto then goes on to discuss how business can foster its own interests in government, in the court system, and by marshaling stockholder power. It is a stunning call to arms in which we can see the birth of what we see today -- corporate-owned media, "conservative" think tanks which provide pseudo-intellectual cover for radical right-wingers who at the time this letter was written were regarded as John Bircher kooks, the rise of so-called "Christian colleges" who parrot the corporatist line as much as they inculcate retrograde moral "values". And then finally, there's Willard Rmoney -- the perfect embodiment of Lewis Powell's dream.

Labels: corporatism, Supreme Court, wingnuttia

The New York Times style section goes for necrophilia today with a fetishization of the late Andrew Breitbart.

Somebody please call Rick Santorum. There's REAL perversion going on there.

Labels: ghoulishness, wingnuttia, you can't buy publicity like this

Put down your drink first, then go read this from Tbogg.

Labels: bloggers, Teh Funny, wingnuttia

What can one even SAY about this:

"I’m here to save America from communism,” the former "Saturday Night Live" cast member and Tea Party activist Victoria Jackson said at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend in Washington. As she walked the corridors she was treated like a rock star by CPAC attendees who raised their fists to her, shook her hand and thanked her for her far-Right political activism.

"The people of California voted that they did not believe that gay marriage -- no gay marriage," she explained to HuffPost Gay Voices. "They voted that. A judge, probably gay, activist judge, overturned that. That’s what I’m talking about -- communism."

She explained further that it could lead to living in pods. "Do you know what the housing is going to be like when we all live in a pod?" she asked. "And we all take public transit? It's going to be Russia. It's going to be Cuba."

As CPAC attendees who passed by expressed their gratitude to her for, as one described it, "speaking the truth," Jackson offered her thoughts on Barack Obama: "This president was raised marxist. His parents, his grandparents, his college professors, his whole life, he’s been immersed in marxism, even his church. Jeremiah Wright did not preach Christianity. He preached black liberation theology, which is marxism disguised as religion."

And she’s not happy with the Republican field either: "Republicans and the Democrats are looking the same these days. Newt Gingrich and Mitt are socialists. I think Santorum is the only conservative."

Labels: American Idiots, assholes, dumbassery, morons, Teh Stoopid, We Are So Screwed, wingnuttia

Perhaps we can stop pretending now that the reason for Newt Gingrich's support is because he's a smart fella who understands the plight of the working man and recognize that it's because he's the living, breathing talking id of the voter whose primary motivation is racial, ethnic, and religious hate.

Nate Silver notes (NYT link) that the more Newt Gingrich invokes poor {black} people with no work ethic and {black} food stamp recipients, the more support he has. And when he makes even a feeble attempt to be a "statesman", his support plummets:

At Monday’s debate in Tampa, Fla., it was Mr. Gingrich who pulled his punches, adopting a subdued approach and declining opportunities to attack the other candidates. His strategy, like Mr. Romney’s a week earlier, perhaps looked good in the playbook: the initial polls after South Carolina had shown Mr. Gingrich surging to a lead in Florida, and perhaps Mr. Gingrich thought he could look more like a front-runner by adopting a less combative and more magnanimous approach.


But Republican voters, once more, did not react well: Mr. Gingrich has since lost considerable ground in the polls and now trails Mr. Romney in Florida. It is not necessarily clear that the debate was the only cause of this. Nevertheless, Mr. Gingrich entered Thursday evening trailing Mr. Romney in the polls and needing a win in the second debate.

Instead, Mr. Gingrich seemed to be playing for a draw. He passed upon several opportunities to push back at Mr. Romney, despite being expressly presented with opportunities to do so — on health care, on Ronald Reagan’s legacy, on immigration, and on Mr. Romney’s personal finances among other issues. The only exception came when Mr. Gingrich alleged that Mr. Romney had invested in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — but this was met with a strong rebuttal by Mr. Romney, who seemed well prepared for the attack.

I strongly suspect that Mr. Gingrich will extend the losing streak for this passive debate strategy. There aren’t any post-debate polls yet, but the betting market Intrade might provide a preview of them. By the time the evening was done, Mr. Gingrich’s chances of winning Florida had plummeted to 10 percent from 25 percent in the market, and his chances of winning the Republican nomination had dropped to about 5 percent from 10 percent.

Of course there are four full days left before Tuesday's Florida primary, so Gingrich has plenty of time to toss out meat and bone and sinew to the hatemongers who are still so busy pointing down the ladder at those who are still further down than they are to notice the guys up above them hungrily eyeing the last two bucks in their pockets.

Labels: 2012 election, Newt Gingrich, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

Jan Brewer must be a real hero among wingnuts today for "putting the President in his place":

Labels: assholes, right-wing hatemongers, wingnuttia

And you thought that we'd have a break from Teh Crayzee now that the GOP has left Iowa for New Hampshire.

Screw the Constitution: Long live the Magna Carta!

New Hampshire Republicans are taking textual originalism to a whole new level: three lawmakers have proposed a bill that requires that all legislation find its origin not in the U.S. constitution, but an English document crafted in 1215.

When the legislature reconvenes this month, Republicans want their colleagues to justify many new bills with a direct quote from the 800-year-old Magna Carta:

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.

The Magna Carta, while famed as the first major declaration of rights under English monarchy, is a bit outdated in its actual prose.

The Magna Carta is indisputably an important historical document, with ideas about liberty that inspired America’s founders. But as the Concord Monitor points out, the substance of the document is fixated on the tedium of feudal times, and has little if any relevance to modern American life.

Maybe now it doesn't. But once the Republicans get through with us, it will be perfectly relevant.

Labels: A Giant Leap Forward Into the 13th Century, batshit crazies, feudalism, wingnuttia

Teabagger Rep. Joe Walsh forgets for whom he works:



Now I know I get a bit cranky when I'm hungry, but then I'm not a United States Congressman. Color me skeptical when Walsh tries to explain his rant by claiming it's because he was in need of a pancake. That $132,329 in campaign contributions from banks and financial companies had nothing to do with it.

Labels: nutjobs, right-wing economic terrorism, snark, wingnuttia

Well, I've already run over Maggie's tail with the chair casters, so today's not off to a great beginning. And to make matters worse, she insists on sitting on the floor in the same place. Life is like that around here sometimes as Maggie heads into her dotage, one that finds me trying, far too belatedly, to correct her incessant yowling before she get senile and it never stops.

So what's going on?

A week without Driftglass skewering David Brooks ls like a week without sunshine. (WARNING: Some seriously disturbing Photochopping to be found at the link.)

Once upon a time, two nice young men had a blog called Pandagon. Ezra Klein may have gone on to Pundit Stardom, but the OTHER original Pandagonist, Jesse Taylor, does a nice job of pointing out how Herman Cain's Say No Three Times in German plan will make people more expensive to employ. Can we say "Job-Killing Tax CUTS" now?

I really, really, really hate to link to anything at HuffPo, but this is a good one (and Amanda Terkel DID used to be with ThinkProgress): Scott Brown may have plagiarized his web site from Elizabeth Dole, but Herman Cain may have lifted his from Sim City. (More on this from Southern Beale.)

Michael J.W. Stickings blogs even earlier than I do, this time on Rush Limbaugh's War On Romney.

Laffy sets the record straight.

CheezWhiz: The Occupy movement need look no further than FDR's 1944 State of the Union address.

Some "Elsewhere" from the You Can't Make This Up file: The son of the late Bo Diddley, who carries his father's name, was arrested last night as part of Occupy Gainesville (FL), in Bo Diddley Park.

Rick Ungar on Congressional Republicans' relentless drive to kill women.

And on that same subject, I'll leave you with Congresswoman Jackie Speier from last night's Rachel Maddow Show, telling it like it is on the Republicans' war on women:

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day, David Brooks, Greedy Republican Bastards, Occupy Wall Street, The Republican War on Women, wingnuttia

On Friday Nate Silver wrote about the monetary cost of a storm like the one currently battering the east coast:

The procedure I have used to estimate economic damage — this is going to get a tiny bit technical — is to regress the logarithm of economic damage on three independent variables. The first two variables are the storm’s wind speed, and the distance of the storm from New York City, at its closest approach to Manhattan. The third variable is how many fatalities the storm caused in the Southern United States (these were significant in the cases of Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and Hurricane Floyd in 1999), which is used as a proxy to segregate out damages caused in the South from those in the Northeast in the case of storms that made multiple distinct landfalls. The figures I am going to show you, therefore, reflect estimates of the economic damage to the Northeast from various types of hurricanes, including but not limited to the New York City metro region.

Click through to the article to see the full-size chart. But we are talking about $3.5 to $5.6 BILLION in economic damage from a storm just like this one. And that's just damage to the city, not to anywhere else. The numbers for damage in the range of this storm, by the time it's over, will be staggering. After wreaking havoc from North Carolina to Maine, it's almost unimaginable.

Of course thanks to Eric Cantor, whom President Obama lacks the courage to confront, we're all going to be on our own after this one, because King Eric refuses to give one dime of Federal aid unless it's offset by spending cuts elsewhere -- and presumably he's going to want those spending cuts to come out of Social Security and Medicare. So if you're, say, in your late fifties or early sixties, you might get federal aid to repair your house, but you're going to pay for it later on.

Even if you don't think you're going to need help because you have insurance, you might want to guess again, particularly if you do not have flood insurance (and most of us who don't live in a designated flood plain don't, though I am seriously reconsidering that).

And that of course brings us to Ron Paul, who thinks FEMA isn't necessary and we should go back to the good old days of the Galveston Flood:

Citing the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that obliterated much of the Texas coast, the libertarian-leaning congressman said Americans were able to rebuild their cities and put up a seawall without the federal government's help.

Yup, thems was the good ol' days, yessirree:

The citizens of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers set out by rail and ship for the island almost immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city completely destroyed. It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island's population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. Most had drowned or been crushed as the waves pounded the debris that had been their homes hours earlier. Many survived the storm itself but died after several days trapped under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear the screams of the survivors as they walked on the debris trying to rescue those they could. A further 30,000 were left homeless.

So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.The dead bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible. The dead were initially weighted down and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. The authorities passed out free whiskey to sustain the distraught men conscripted for the gruesome work of collecting and burning the dead. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2009. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

There's a part of me that says, "Yes, let's let the Ron Pauls and the Eric Cantors of the world run things. Let's have the country run by people whose staffers call the police when their constituents try to get a meeting with them, and who charge $15 per question and who assume that everyone who lost his/her job because the CEO ran the company into the ground or outsourced everything to low-wage countries is a drug addict. Let's have a country where the people in this Daily Show segment are in charge:



The one problem with this is that once the teabaggers get a taste of the country for which they clamored, they'll scream bloody murder to have their programs reinstated. But it will be too late.

(For those who didn't get the title reference...)

Labels: batshit crazies, Eric Cantor, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, right-wing economic terrorism, Ron Paul, we ar, wingnuttia

Perhaps this is the definition of irony.

Back in the days when I was able to start my day with a good healthy dose of comedic cynicism with "Morning Sedition", Marc Maron would open the show with "Good morning geniuses, philosopher kings, working class heroes, progressive utopians with no sense of humor..." If you're familiar with the Maron oeuvre, you know that humorlessness on the left is an integral part of his work when he ventures into the political realm (which he doesn't do much anymore, since as he said on Real Time with Bill Maher this weekend, political rage is just about being angry in your own head, something he's been workinig on with his WTF podcast, which is itself a kind of atonement for the way he treated people in comedy when he was a self-destructive asshole, instead of just the garden-variety asshole he is today.

But now Marc Maron finds himself with a notoriety he would have killed for a few years ago, because of an offhand remark he made during his appearance on Real Time -- one which for anyone who knows his work, is another example of the kind of raw, rip-your-head-open-and-dig-out-the-muck musings that are an integral part of his schtick.

I'll be the first to admit that Marc Maron isn't everyone's cup of tea. At one time I'd have said that you have to be a neurotic Jew with food issues and unresolved childhood self-loathing to really "get" what he does. But there are few stand-up comics who, after a radio show that lasted only a year and a half and ended over five years ago, has kept the show's fan base to the point of breaking down the wall between comic and audience. Whether it's his live stand-up shows or live WTF broadcasts, Seditionisti and WhatTheFuckniks shower him with gifts relevant to his chaotic life and cultural references -- vegan cakes, non-vegan cookies, full butterfat ice cream, and of course cat toys. There are always cat toys, because if you've followed Maron's career since three feral stray cats were dumped almost literally in his lap in Astoria, Queens in 2004, you know about Boomer the Dirt Cat (who the now-loathed ex-wife left behind and took the much nicer Moxie the Astoria Cat in their very bitter divorce), Monkey, and LaFonda, you know that he's a Cat Guy. And another thing the fans do is create the artwork that shows up now on WTF swag.

Marc Maron has this peculiar thing that he desperately wants to be liked, but he's suspicious of anyone who likes him. If you don't necessarily like him as a person (and he's far more accessible than most stand-ups are), you should at least appreciate his work. But the thing you have to realize about Marc Maron is that when he gets up on a stage, or puts on the headphones in his garage and starts a monologue, he's not doing it for you. He's doing it for himself, because without it he'll go slowly nuts just from living inside his own head. You either get that or you don't.

Unfortunately, appearing on a popular show like Real Time means that this weekend Maron was out of the comfort zone of people who still miss Lawton Smalls and the Presidential Palm Pilot and who remain hopeful that Current will somehow put WTF on television. And now he's Public Enemy #1 on the right for an offhand remark he made (2:33 into the video below) about hoping Marcus Bachmann (who's widely reported to be a closet case, which of course, as Stephen Colbert would say, makes it "fact-esque") takes out all his rage and anger about his closeted existence into the bedroom with his wife, GOP Republican presidential candidate Michele, and has "hate sex" with her.

Watch for yourself:


I'm waiting for the feminist blogosphere to weigh in with trigger warnings and all the rest of the fragile flower baggage that comes with framing your entire life and entire being around having been a victim of rape at one time. But so far it's mostly on the right that the outrage is taking place, which is hilarious because for a year and a half, Marc Maron was on terrestrial radio for fifteen hours a week during morning drive time, being FAR more inflammatory to the right wing than an offhand remark on one episode of a show on premium cable, and the right never bothered to listen and never uttered a peep. But let him muse for ten seconds about something that probably goes on in many bedrooms around the country (incluing probably many Republican bedrooms), and the right goes nuts.

What's funny is that the right, often justifiably, has poked fun at the political correctness of the left. What you don't see in the video clip is Marc Maron explaining how he gave up talking about politics because of the humorlessness of the left, and how he'd say something and someone would say he didn't really get into the concerns about the transgender community. For decades the right has railed against political correctness, saying vile and hateful things about Hillary Clinton and Michele Obama and Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic high-profile women. But let a comedian make an offhand remark about a Republican woman, and they go nuts.

What Marc Maron does by digging into his own head is take us to places that most people don't want to go. He rips aside the curtain of American hypocrisy and pokes fun at it, and he does it without Jon Stewart's need to be nice. It's what all the great stand-up comics of the last half-century have done. It's what Carlin did, it's what Pryor did, it's what Lenny Bruce did. Maybe you've never had "hate sex". But you can bet your life that all the people on the right who are having the vapors today have. And if they haven't, they sure as hell want to.

Labels: Comedians, double standards, Marc Maron, Real Time with Bill Maher, wingnuttia