Go On, Read About it!

Tags

Books, debt crisis, Donald Trump, education, GOP, Herman Cain, Humor, Michele Bachmann, Mike Huckabee, Muslims, Obama, reading, Standard & Poors, teabaggers

Or don’t. As it turns out you really can’t teach a love of reading. It seems something that you either do or don’t. And it has little to do with opportunity either. Over time, the number of “readers” hasn’t changed a great deal. And readers lament the same problem (so much to read, so little time) over the centuries. A great little read over at The Chronicle, called “We can’t teach students to love reading.” Go see where you fall.

♦

 

All roads seem to lead to the financial crisis these days. With Standard & Poors lowering the rating of the US, everybody is wondering what ensue.

Whatever you position (and plenty of folks don’t credit S&P with much savvy), their report was pretty clear in laying the blame. Although they spoke about the gridlock in Washington in general, their greatest finger-pointing went to the GOP’s delinquency-prone child–the TeaNutz®. While the National Journal report didn’t explicitly say Republicans, there was little doubt that they felt that the political brinksmanship of holding the country hostage and failure to consider revenue increases as “possible” were largely to blame. This link has a link to the full S&P report as well as some other good links.

♦

Meanwhile Michele (I make it up as I go along) Bachmann was at it again. She just days ago, was a no vote on the debt ceiling bill. She of course went much further, claiming that the threats of the credit agencies to downgrade the US’s  rating were nonsense and of no consequence. Now that that has happened, she spins on the proverbial GOP plug nickel and screams that Obama is responsible, and he must return to Washington “immediately” and address the American people with a plan to pay down our debt by “trillions”, and this too immediately. Oh if wishes could come true, Ms. Idiothead will be the candidate and as Governor Rendell suggested, the “no slaughter” rule would be invoked at the Obama-Bachmann debate ten minutes in.

♦

Speakin’ of the Palin replacement, there is a great article at the New Yorker Magazine written by Ryan Lizza called Leap of Faith. Lizza traveled with Bachmann for some time as she moved between Iowa and New Hampshire and has done a good job of peeling off the whitewash that masks a lot of uncomfortable truths. Bachmann’s background is just chock full of extremists whom she has embraced and taken as her personal gurus. Her dominionist beliefs cause her to take extremist views on subjects such as gay, abortion, and even slavery. She’s going to have a very difficult time distancing herself from all this now. And it’s full of more of her twisting and contorting facts and outright lying to present herself as something she very much is not. Do read it.

♦

Drew Weston has written an important opinion piece in the NYTimes. It blasts Obama pretty badly frankly. I tend to feel like a pinball when it comes to the President. I am constantly disappointed and hopeful, careening between those two points. He’s more conservative in reality that I want, and less a master of the message that I expected. Weston points out how he failed miserably in this debt ceiling crisis, and frankly, I can’t disagree. “What Happened to Obama?”

Weston calls it ” his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time. . . .” It’s hard to not agree.

♦

Don’t forget your late night humor from Political Irony. Always a lovely way to relax and enjoy some political truths tongue-in-cheek. And if you humor runs religious, here’s a mighty cute little story that we found from our new friend, LOLgod.

♦

When will it get through the American psyche that the debt is only a symptom of the problem and not the problem itself as the ignorant TeaNutz® erroneously believe? Robert Reich once again tries in very plain English to straighten out the issues. Reich always is clear. We are heading toward another recession. Will we act in time? Bets are definitely divided.

♦

Oh and did ya hear this one? Mikey (I like money more than my country) Huckabee has called for the appointment of Donald Trump as a new Secretary of the Treasury. I guess this should come as no surprise. If you’ve seen Huck’s shameless lying and misleading innuendo commercial about “Obamacare” then you know this dude is simply another huckster ala Newt “how long will you support me” Gingrich. Just another grifter. Huck has pretty much given up any pretense of being a “Christian” leader. Any idea Mikey how many times the Trumpster has declared bankruptcy?  . . .I thought not.

♦

Herman Cain is getting more lessons on how to be a good house Negro. The teaNutz® have made it clear that Cain will be back to being “part of the problem” along with all other darker than lily-white citizens, if he keeps going around apologizing to Muslims for his racist remarks about them. After posting his apology on Facebook, he got some really unfriendly responses from his “peeps”: (H/T to The Grio for the link)

“it’s all or nothing with the muslim religion…no means no…please stand firm Mr Cain please or run on the democrat ticket”

“what in heaven’s name are you doing? Don’t you know you can’t trust ONE WORD that comes from their mouth? they’re lying to get on your good side, Mr. Cain! :/”

So, listen up Mr. Cain. Ain’t it nice being owned, Sir?

 

Related articles

• U.S. Downgrade Ripples (thedailybeast.com)

You’d Be Snarky Too if You Dropped Your Sandwich in the Tub!

Tags

Allen West, Barney Frank, budget, debt crisis, GOP, Iowa, Joe Walsh, life in the meadow, teabaggers, weather

Okay, so that really didn’t happen. I’m not eating in the tub. . .yet. I am reading in it, and otherwise spending a good deal of time each day lolling in it. I change it about every third sploosh.

There is an art to splooshing. Technically it’s not a sploosh at all since a sploosh is a getting all wet and then getting out. It’s a drive-by bath.

No, I call it splooshing because I like the word. But it involves an extended visit to the tub, remaining submerged as much as possible to the neck, and for at least twenty minutes. I find this the optimum time to take down the core temperature.

We here in the meadow always felt pretty darn superior in our gutting out the dog days of summer without air conditioning. Who wanted to shut up the windows and doors and remain in the house during nature’s outpouring of beauty? Not we.

We managed the occasional day of fierce heat with the sploosh and the fan. We survived.

We are barely surviving this unrelenting punishment however. We are in day five of 95° or better temps. The heat index is 110° or better. Some days, there has been not a whisper of a breeze. Some nights the air is simply oppressive. I have taken to my bath at 3 am for relief.

We are eating from a giant bowl of pasta salad, supplemented by hard-boiled eggs, various lunchmeat sandwiches, and a quick burger before it gets too hot.

So, all this is meant not to engender your sympathy. We could have hooked up the air and we chose not to. It is meant to identify  the causation of today’s snark. I’m hot as hell, and I’m gonna take it until Mother Nature chooses to relent.

I’m gonna keep these short, because there are so many hellaciously idiotic morons knuckle-dragging their way through America today. Follow the links to read more of course.

♦

I’m often told that the TeaPeople are not universally racists and hate-mongering bigots. Mostly I don’t believe it, although I suspect a fair number of them do. It’s one thing to disagree with a person’s politics, but when you continue in your screed to make thinly veiled references to a person’s sexuality, well, I think we can safely call you a homophobe. Read more about Tea Party Nation’s attack on Barney Frank.

♦

To continue from yesterday, when someone tells you “we have a spending problem,” calming tell them, “no, we have a revenue problem. Ten years ago, the GOP pushed through the Bush tax cuts, reducing revenue to all time lows, and requiring us to borrow to pay off the spending spree that Dubya then went on. Now ten years later we are still waiting for the money to ‘trickle’ down our way.”

♦

If you didn’t already know it, Allen West, (R-FL) is one horse’s ass. He seems to glory in making outrageous statements such as “I have a higher Pentagon clearance than the “unbelievable” given his districts heavy use of Medicare. West responded by calling names: He called Debbie: vile, unprofessional and despicable, a coward, characterless, and no lady. He told her to shut up, and called her out. Laughably, he said he was turning over a copy of his e-mail to his party’s leadership presumably so she could be properly chastised by them. What a dick.

♦

So many dicks, so little time. (And no, that was not a call for wanton sleeping around!). Joe Walsh? Heard of that Peter Principle in action? He’s one of the new TeaPeople congressmen and from Illinois. He thinks he’s a tough guy and his people are in charge, so he calls the President a “liar”. Walsh seems intent on out-stupiding the likes of Steve King and Joe Barton. Well he was on Chris Matthews and may a screaming jackass out of himself, yelling “hey Chris” about 57 times in three minutes. Mr. Concrete Head said that the CCB bill had a “great” chance of passing into law (uhuh) and that he was not ruled by Grover Norquist, “because he has signed plenty of pledges”. He could not answer one simple question: where are the specific cuts in CCB? Instead he referred to President Obama as “your” president.

♦

Today’s Rethuglian doublespeak: It’s Obama’s debt. Since he has been in Washington, (six years),  the debt has increased by 50%. Read: Obama is now responsible for the entire 4 years of Bush’s second term. I can just imagine the conversation each morning: “Hello Barack? George here. What are your orders my future President?” When all the polls are against ya, well make the lies even bigger.

♦

Does anybody care that Tim (boring, boring boring) Pawlenty is making a last-ditch stand in Iowa? Nope, didn’t think so.

♦

Well, it’s over 90° and I’m off to my bath and book. Keep cool.

Related articles

• Congressman Joe Walsh Stomps Mud Hole In Obama (caseyhendrickson.wordpress.com)
• Ballsy Statement from Congressman Joe Walsh Calling Obama Out (thegabriellahoffman.com)

Just One More Thing. . .

Tags

budget, debt, debt crisis, economics, economy, GOP, Grover Norquist

The name Grover Norquist is a lot like that of Orly Taitz, you figure it’s a symbolic cultural name, like Kilroy, and can’t possibly be a real person.

Unfortunately, in the case of Norquist, he is all too real. He’s got decent creds, a BA and MBA from Harvard, and he’s put in the time to learn his conservative ways. And he owns the Republican party pretty much.

How he came to do that is not my concern here. Suffice to say, he’s managed to get the pledge-hungry GOP to sign off in overwhelming numbers not to raise taxes under any, and I do mean any, circumstances.

He appeared on Chris Matthews yesterday, and as I listened to him twisting this whole debt crisis to a “we have no choice but resist the intransigence of the President and his obsession with raising taxes.” Chris managed to elicit from Grover what all already know, “NO TAXES EVER FOR ANY REASON.” When Matthews points out that the GOP was offered a 3-to-1 deal of $3 of spending cuts for $1 of revenue, Grover, replied with what has become a GOP mantra: Tip your head to the side, look confused, and then offer:

Why on earth would you raise taxes when we have a spending problem?

Over and over in the weeks and months that have led us to the edge of the abyss, we hear that phrase. We have a spending problem. This is often coupled with “everyone knows that you don’t raise taxes when you are in a recession.” I guess somebody ought to have told “near-God Ronald Reagan  that fact, for he surely did just that.

In any event, my focus is on the notion that “we have a spending problem.”

I realized that this claim was almost always going unchallenged. The proper response to this nonsense is to ask: “Why do we have a spending problem?” And you can expect that the answer will be: “Because we have a 14 trillion-dollar deficit. Duh!”

Sounds right doesn’t it? If you are in debt, you might well conclude that you have spent too much. And perhaps you have. Or perhaps you really haven’t.

Look, quite simply there is no rule that says that a deficit means that you have spent too much. It simply means that spending out-paces revenue. There are two ways to address that deficit. As purists, one can address it from either the spending or the revenue side, OR, anything in between.

The Republicans are fond of likening the woes of the federal budget to that of an American family budget. And they argue, that if you are in debt, the family sits down and starts looking for ways to cut its spending. Entertainment expenses are curtailed, fewer clothing purchases are made, cheaper food is eaten.

That is their analogy and they leave it at that. But is that the only solution?

Of course not. Members of the family can take on part-time jobs, or look for higher paying jobs. They might decide to spend even more (an example of spending oneself out of debt) to seek additional training that might garner a bigger pay check in the long term.

Yet the GOP has decided that this way (increasing revenue) or spending to improve one’s salability if you will, is not allowed. No reason why, just not allowed.

But indeed there is a reason. Just one they don’t want to exactly advertise.

When social security was passed decades ago, the Republicans were against it, and have continued over the ensuing years to limit it, cut it, and otherwise damage it. They ideologically have no interest in government safety nets. The same is the case with Medicare and Medicaid. The same is true of welfare in any form, whether it be food stamps or meals for poor kids at school. They are not interested in helping poor kids get to college. They are not interested in anything that purports to be a government handout to those who have not earned the reward, as they believe they have.

By insisting on a “spending cuts only” solution to the debt problem, they insure that deep and destructive cuts will occur in all social safety net programs. It is their true plan. The Republican party has become (arguably it almost always has been) the party of business. In their view government is in place for only two things: provide for the common safety from aggressive nations, and ensure through legislation that business is unfettered and allowed to operate without restraint.

Government can thus fiddle with international trading to ensure that American businesses are competitive in foreign markets to the degree that they wish. It can ensure that no state interfere in a way that creates a road block to profit.

It by definition doesn’t impose safe working conditions, consumer protection laws, pollution controls, minimum wage constraints and stuff like that.

History of course shows how this all plays out. Unrestrained free markets lead inevitably to slave wages, unsafe working conditions, and a growing underclass of near serfdom, all the while the gilded rich, who shrink to smaller numbers, live in wealth so great as to be obscene. Corporations erect cheap housing and company stores. Every dime made by the worker goes to pay for housing and food. Life for most grows mean and ugly.

This is what always happens when business is allowed to proceed unregulated. The pursuit of profit is the only goal. As Gecko said, “greed is good.”

It’s only a “spending problem” if you vision the world from Norquist land.

Related articles

• Dan Bimrose: GOP in a Box with No Easy Way Out (huffingtonpost.com)
• GASP! Anti-Tax King Grover Norquist Wants A Debt Deal That Raises Taxes (businessinsider.com)
• CNN’s Ali Velshi Challenges Grover Norquist On Tax Pledge ‘More Important Than Health Of Economy’ (mediaite.com)
• What I’m reading … Guy Cecil (ynative77.wordpress.com)
• The ‘dismal’ new debt ceiling poll: 5 takeaways (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
• Cut, Cap, and Kill (duanegraham.wordpress.com)

Are We All Nuts?

Tags

Casey Anthony, debt crisis, gay rights, GOP, justice, Media, Michele Bachmann, paleontology, science, wombats

The latest in our public obsession with sensational murder cases has ended. Casey Anthony was found not guilty of all of the major charges, and those she was convicted of, well, she has basically already served the sentence.

Almost all of the talking heads had it as a slam dunk for the prosecution. I too expected that she would be convicted of the less serious manslaughter offense. I also suspected there was a fair amount of error in the record and a reversal might also ensue.

So it was a shock to most, and immediately all the cable stations went into a full-court press about this unbelievable outcome. That horror of all horrors, Nancy Grace must have pulled out every hair on her head. Her “reports” which I assiduously avoided as best I could, fairly boiled over with venom and snarling accusation. No doubt she is busy screaming travesty in her shower this morning.

What didn’t surprise me were the hoards outside the courtroom and in various locations where cable TV was running (Applebee’s anybody?), and their reaction. Unspeakable moans, tears, and all manner of fist shaking was seen. How could this have happened?

And while I expected this reaction, part of me shook my head in wonder. What is wrong with these people? How do ordinary? people become invested in these cases when they have no personal involvement with any of the participants? I’m told people planned vacations around this event, and traveled hundreds of miles to be in on the trial theatrics.

Are these people just nuts? Do they not have lives? Are they sick? I sat there, sanctimoniously I might add. I am a lawyer by training and I would not hazard an opinion on this one. But that was because I rather intentionally avoided watching it. I realized that some of these poor souls had in fact watched every blessed moment, and they felt entitled to an opinion.

I then recalled an embarrassing truth. I had watched a fair amount of the OJ trial. I surely had an opinion, and to this day, am quite certain of his guilt. So am I any different? I have to wonder.

So my arrogance was deflated.

Questions arise. Do we infuse these cases with something they are not? Are these exceptional cases? Or only media induced high-profile circuses? Does the wild attention given them contribute to incorrect findings? Does everyone perform to the intrusive camera? Does this change the entire dynamic of a trial?

I suspect there are plenty of psychologists asking those very questions and formulating experimental models to test those hypotheses that seem reasonable.

So what do you think?

♦

I must say, that as more media attention comes Michele “Crazy” Bachmann’s way, I get happier. She has a trail of anti-gay wackoness that is stunningly sick. She claims that her own half-sister who is gay leads a “sad life” and is in the hands of Satan. That will get you so far down the road with the rational American public.

Her hubby is even worse if that is possible. His “Christian” therapy center is widely understood to try to de-gay folks, and it’s entirely possible that he has received Medicaid monies to do so.

When you add it all up, the queen of the Teanuts will be destroyed in a general election, but she might be like a certain little girl who wandered into a house and found one bed “just right”. If the wackonuts continue to control the GOP, she could be “just right” with them.

♦

 Climate change is the culprit! I know there are deniers out there, but Australian scientists think that the demise of the giant wombat was caused by climate changes, and not from over-hunting. The mega-marsupial, about the size of a four-wheel drive car, was a plant eater, so don’t get your knickers in a twist if you are headed to Aussieland for a vacation.

Still and all, if you wander around Queensland, be sure to keep an eye out for more skeletons of this humongous creature, that passed out of existence some 50,000 years ago.

Cutie doncha think?

♦

I think the GOP is in big trouble. Their boy the budget czar, Ryan, is about the third most hated Rethuglian in the country only behind Newt and Sarah. Everybody, except the extremely crazy are running from him as fast as they can. They are sort of getting the idea that Merika wants nothing to do with Medicare or Medicaid tinkering.

Saner heads, if there really are any, are sickened by what has happened to the once proud party of Lincoln. I can’t say that I agree often with David Brooks, the conservative columnist, but I have to say I do agree with his assessment of things in his latest op-ed in the NYTimes, The Mother of All No-Brainers.

Basically, Brooks argues that the GOP may well squander the best of all opportunities, in the name of rabid ideological protest. In other words, let the country go down the drain if it means we can eradicate that awful “otherness” that inhabits the White House.

Brooks is spot on here. His words are the harshest I’ve read from a conservative, while Bachmann, in Iowa on the 4th, taunted her Teanut fans that they were being likened to hillbillies by the Democrats. Brooks might argue that the Teanuts are far far below the intellectual level of your average hillbilly. Read the editorial, and you may well agree that the GOP has stepped in its own elephant poo.

Related articles

• Even the right is pissed at Republicans (capitolhillblue.com)
• GOP needs to learn how to declare victory (dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com)
• Nancy Grace On Casey Anthony Verdict: ‘In The End, Tot Mom’s Lies Seemed To Have Worked’ (mediaite.com)
• Nancy Grace’s Coverage of the Casey Anthony Trial Posts Record Ratings for HLN (aoltv.com)
• Nancy Grace a Disgrace (newsy1.wordpress.com)
• Fall From Grace: CNN’s Nancy Grace Denounces Dancing Devil After Anthony Verdict (jonathanturley.org)