These Republicans (and the Democrats who similarly do the bidding of banks and corporate CEOs) are a funny lot. There are still the Bush dead-enders who still think that if they Just Work Hard Enough™, they'll be in the Rich Guys Club too someday, but an increasing number of us -- you know, those who watch that George Carlin video over and over again, know that the game was rigged thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan said that if you just give the rich enough money, the stuff that overflows from their stuffed pockets will "trickle down" to us. The saddest cases aren't the long-term unemployed who know they'll never work again and after Working Hard Enough their whole lives, now find themselves going to the church food pantry for some boxed macaroni and cheese. The saddest cases are people like the Peter Griffin soundalike who recently called Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren a "socialist whore":



This is someone who's a victim of The Big Club, but he's so invested in the Just Work Hard Enough meme that to realize that everything he believed in is a lie would probably destroy him. It's easy to forget that when these people send around e-mails of Obama with a bone in his nose, or take guns to Democratic candidate appearances, and vote again and again against their own self interest, choosing candidates who point their attention elsewhere so that the latter's corporate masters can steal the last few bucks out of the former's back pockets, they're operating out of fear -- a fear that the Big Club has spent thirty years tapping, and will continue to tap until we're all scrambling for scraps.

The politicians who do the bidding of the Big Club think they're part of it. They get invited to conclaves given by the Koch brothers and they receive the largesse that the Big Club gives them and they think that when the middle class has been successfully destroyed, they'll be on that Big Boat with the Big Club, swilling Dom Perignon from the cleavage of hookers. They don't realize that they'll be left behind too. And it doesn't matter that

And that explains why, now that they seem to have successfully stymied any attempt to rebuild the job base in this country, they're going after the unemployed (NYT editorial):

Tragically, the more entrenched the jobs shortage becomes, the more paralyzed Congress becomes, with Republicans committed to doing nothing in the hopes that the faltering economy will cost President Obama his job in 2012. Last week, for instance, Senate Republicans filibustered a $60 billion proposal by Mr. Obama to create jobs by repairing and upgrading the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. They were outraged that the bill would have been paid for by a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million.

Things may be about to get worse.

Federal unemployment benefits, which generally kick in after 26 weeks of state-provided benefits, are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. That would be a disaster for many of the estimated 3.5 million Americans who get by on extended benefits — an average of $295 a week. It would also be a blow to the economy, because it would reduce consumer spending by about $50 billion in 2012 — which would mean slower economic growth and 275,000 lost jobs. Unfortunately, given Republicans’ demonstrated willingness to ignore human needs and economic logic, it is more likely than not that jobless benefits will be a major battle in the months ahead.

There are no plausible arguments against an extension — in fact, Congress has never let federal benefits expire when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent. But there are many specious arguments, chief among them that providing benefits reduces the incentive to get a new job. The evidence says otherwise.

A recent paper by Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that benefit extensions in early 2011 raised the jobless rate by about 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points, but most of that was due to benefit recipients staying in the labor force and actively looking for work during the time they are collecting benefits, rather than, say, dropping out in despair.

Unemployment benefits are the first line of defense against ruin from job loss that is beyond an individual’s control. In a time of historically elevated long-term unemployment, they are an important way to keep workers connected to the job-search market. They are also crucial to ensuring that the weak economy doesn’t weaken further.

The Republicans blocking an extension of unemployment benefits seem to WANT there to be mass despair and a complete elimination of the middle class. They seem to think that when everyone is poor except the Big Club and themselves, that somehow they'll benefit. But there's no way the Big Club can buy enough STUFF to keep an economy this size healthy, and that's really the point. The Big Club already has its sights set elsewhere. It could be China, it could be India, it could be the Philippines, it could be Indonesia. It could be the entire Middle East, for all we know. But if you finish a Big Bulp from 7-Eleven and you're still thirsty, you buy another Big Gulp. And as long as there's another Big Gulp to be had for the Big Club, they don't care about the giant, non-bio-degradable plastic cup they leave behind.

These politicians will find this out after it's too late.

Labels: economic death watch, Greedy Republican Bastards, rant, unemployment

There are a number of reasons why I like to link to my blogroll every now and then. Some of it is sheer laziness, though clicking through and reading often takes more time than writing an actual post. Some of it is killing two birds with one stone -- linking while reading. Part of it is my ongoing participation in the tribute to the late, great Jon Swift, who would blogroll anyone who asked. I'm not quite as nice as he was, but that point brings us to reason #2, which is that linking to other blogs tends to bring in THEIR readers, and this brings in their blogrolls, and so on. Most of the bloggers I've linked to lately either have come in from Paul Krugman's comment section, or else, as today's new entry does, over the transom from a link post. So say hello to The Polygon, whom we just encountered today.

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day

For those who don't already know, we were part of the over a million people who lost power during last weekend's snowstorm. We were down until Wednesday, so of course my reading (and writing) were severely curtailed. We were comparatively lucky; our new generator at least allowed us to have heat, to let the water in the water heater get warm enough for showers, to run the furnace and fridge much of the time, to make coffee (with the fridge circuit turned off) have a light on in the living room, and charge up the cell phones. Now at the time we had this setup installed, I didn't even think about putting FiOS on the circuits, because I keep forgetting that FiOS phone lasts only eight hours on battery power, so our land line was down and we had no internet, which as you know, makes Jill something something.

So I've been remiss in reading the work of the good people who populate our blogroll, but we can remedy that quickly by posting some links to make it easy for you to read them too.

Ramona's Friday Follies starts with musings on the Fall of the House of Schuller, and runs from there.

There is ongoing fission at the Fukushima nuclear site. Did you hear about it? I didn't.

Karen Garcia on New York's Shrillionaire Mayor. (Editorial Note: Bloomberg's third term is showing that maybe he should have quit while he was ahead.)

I know, he's an easy target, but Susan of Texas takes on Ross Douthat. (Does it make me a bad person that I really, really wanted to refer to him as "Rose Douchebag"?)

If you've suffered serious financial problems (credit card issues, mortgage problems, etc.) and you live in central and northern New Jersey, Matt Taibbi wants to hear from you. Bonus Taibbi: Winning and cheating are not the same thing.

The New York Crank muses on who ratted out Herman Cain.

Tom Degan walks up to the 2012 electoral counter and orders the shit sandwich.

Some laughable Republican Stoopid from Thump and Whip.

And finally, using the LinkedIn network model, we link to This Week in the Slacktiverse over at Slacktivist.

Labels: bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day

In case you thought that we might be able to survive four years of Mitt Romney:

Speaking at the Americans for Prosperity Foundation’s annual meeting, Mr. Romney said his plan would cap spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2016, and would require $500 billion a year in spending cuts. To accomplish this, Mr. Romney explained, he would eliminate all nonessential government programs, including Amtrak, return federal programs like Medicaid entirely to the states and improve the productivity and efficiency of the federal government. He would also immediately cut all nonsecurity discretionary spending by 5 percent across the board.

Mr. Romney’s proposal for Medicare is similar to the hotly debated plan that Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, introduced in April. Mr. Ryan’s plan would replace Medicare and offer payments to older Americans to buy coverage from the private market.

Mr. Romney’s proposal would give beneficiaries the option of enrolling in private health care plans, using what he, like Mr. Ryan, called a “premium support system.” But unlike the Ryan plan, Mr. Romney’s would allow older people to keep traditional Medicare as an option. However, if the existing government program proved more expensive and charged higher premiums, the participants would be responsible for paying the difference.

He presented his plan as offering more choice — though younger Americans would need to be prepared to possibly pay more, for instance, depending on which plan they selected.

“Younger Americans today, when they turn 65, should have a choice between traditional Medicare and other private health care plans that provide at least the same level of benefits,” he said. “Competition will lower costs and increase the quality of health care.”

He concluded, “The future of Medicare should be marked by competition, by choice, and by innovation, rather than by bureaucracy, stagnation and bankruptcy.”

Yes, because health insurance companies are stumbling all over themselves to get your business, each one offering a better plan than the one before. And they're so innovative -- like the way they fight every claim just to see how long it'll take to wear you down before you stop fighting.

I've had a pretty decent health plan for Mr. Brilliant and I the last few years. We get it through my employer, so we're "only" paying about $3600 of the annual premium. It's got a $20 co-pay for preventive care, a $250 per person deductible, and covers 90% of "usual and customary" after that. Now "usual and customary" seems to be based on medical fees back in the days when Don Draper was taking little Sally to the pediatrician, but this plan has worked out OK for us.

So of course 2012 is the last year we'll have it.

After 2012, we'll be offered two plans -- an 80% plan with a low deductible, 80% coverage in-network and only 60% outside; or an high-deductible plan with an HSA. The difference in employee premiums is about $2000, so perhaps if I put that $2000 into the HSA along with the $500 the company will kick in, it'll offset most of the $2700 deductible for two people...assuming of course that we could pay for all $225 of your standard office visit out of the HSA, rather than the sixty bucks that in Insurance Delusionland is "usual and customary."

This is the world into which Mitt Romney wants to spill all the elderly. Oh he's making noise now about how there'll be a choice, but what senior citizen in his right mind would choose to try to buy an individual insurance policy instead of Medicare?

Keep in mind that Mitt Romney is worth a quarter of a BILLION dollars, and a health insurance premium is like lunch money to him.

And yet he and his buddies just can't kick even one more nickel apiece. Good heavens, no. After all, Mitt Romney worked so hard to get his money -- working hard to buy up companies, dismantle them, and throw their employees in the trash can. And the Koch brothers certainly shouldn't be asked to kick in anything else. After all, they're billionaires, which means they worked harder than we do, right? And the fact that they inherited their business from their father means nothing, right? How about the Walton children? They have $87 billion. And they made it by starting out as greeters, right? Hardly -- they inherited it from old Sam Walton. But they can't kick any more, can they? Not without extreme hardship.

After all, America has to be kept safe for the Walton children, and Prescott Bush's children, and George Romney's son, and Fred Trump's son, and so on.

And if that means that the poor and the sick and the elderly have to lay down and die, so be it.

So where does that leave us? Do we hold our noses and vote again for a President who's already shown that his futile, quixotic quest to be liked by a bunch of greedy, racist bigots is more important than anything to him? Do we stick with a bunch of corporatist Democrats who give lip service to the middle and working class but behind the scenes know full well that it's all over, and they're going to get their piece of the pie before it all goes to shit and the rest of us start killing each other for cans of baked beans?

In the past we could rely on Democrats to at least be the guardians of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, even if they sold us out on everything else. But thanks to the so-called "supercommittee", and Obama's willingness to let mandatory cuts kick in if this small group of intransigent Republians and sellout Democrats can't come up with a compromise (as if that were even possible), and this tendency they have to learn all the wrong lessons when they get clobbered and move even further to the right, it's hard to have any faith in them either.

So we're left with a choice -- we either let it all go to shit now, or have a few more tolerable years before it's all Mad Max.

Hardly what we had in mind in 2008, is it?

Labels: Democratic sellouts, despair, Greedy Republican Bastards, Medicare, social Darwinism, Social Security, The Right Wing War on the Middle Class, We Are So Screwed

...teargas and reason and plot.
I see no reason why teargas, reason
Should ever be forgot...

There's something ironic about a faction, 99% or no, that, while espousing nonviolent resistance at all costs, chooses to impersonate and make relevant again a man who'd plotted to blow up the House of Lords with kegs of gunpowder. But I'll let that percolate in your addled craniums for now.

For now, let's recap the Occupy Wall Street movement and its various and sundry analogs all over the country and at the conclusion I'll let you judge for yourself if this movement is actually going anywhere.

The day before yesterday, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker got mic-checked while he was trying to give a speech in Chicago. The bloated Republican scumbags in attendance, unlike the Elizabeth Warren heckling last week, tried to drown out the Occupy Chicago protesters until even they ran out of hot air and support for Walker.

At Occupy Oakland, Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen was shot in the face with a tear gas canister, suffering possibly permanent brain damage. Just yesterday in the same city, another Iraq War hero was beaten and injured by Oakland police then denied medical attention for hours while suffering agony for a ruptured spleen.

Also at Occupy Oakland, a driver rammed through a crowd of Occupy Oakland protesters, sending two to the emergency room. He was later released by Oakland police without so much as a slap on the wrist as a pat on the head.

Last Saturday, another motorist ran over three people at Occupy DC. The historically worthless and corrupt Washington DC police department didn't cite the driver because he had the green light. Audaciously, one of the injured pedestrians was cited for "blocking a roadway."

Right wingers, some of whom having long since (always unsuccessfully) infiltrated Occupy Wall Street (including Breitbart butt boy Jimmy O'Keefe), will play havoc and seek to discredit the Movement.

Elsewhere, Occupy Philadelphia is showing that Occupy Wall Street could easily metastasize into various Campaign Occupations such as the march on a Romney fundraiser at a ritzy hotel that helps to underscore where the true priorities of politicians lie.


And banks. They want your money and your assets, not you.

Today is merely a focal point, a means, not an end. Today is Guy Fawkes Day in Great Britain and it's also Transfer Day (here's some handy information if you live in any of these states that may facilitate the transfer of your funds out of a Wall Street Bank and into a local community bank or credit union).

This is not a mere fad, if you're paying attention, Wall Street. The Credit Union National Association (CUNA) reports that last month alone 650,000 people joined non-profit credit unions, a greater number than all of 2010. This is an estimate based on 5000 account holders they'd polled but extrapolated or no, the message is alarming if you're a Wall Street bank and the message is one that's obviously been lost on Wall Street: Enough is enough.

And the problem is that Wall Street never has enough. At a time of constant near double digit unemployment, a years-long recession if not outright depression and rampant inflation, Bank of America and others tried to extract a $3-5 monthly fee on debit card usage, a neolithically stupid, self-destructive, Kill-the-Goose-That-Laid-the-Golden-Egg tactic that blew up in their fat, jiggling faces like a giant prank cigar.

And the people are speaking. There is a run on major banks going on even as I write these words. It won't be anything like 1929 but it'll be enough to send a clear message to the banks: You are not too big to fail and we the people have options and they are community-owned banks and credit unions.

But we have to remain vigilant. Starting Monday in bank boardrooms all over Wall Street, executives will be commiserating on what tepid rewards to give whatever account holders they have left. Some will say rescinding minor fees, others might suggest an extra 1% on interest-bearing accounts, the less imaginative will suggest toasters and blenders. But whatever income they'll lose by rescinding debit card fees they still think of as theirs, as lost income, as stolen income, they'll seek to make up in other ways.

And they will think of slimier, less overt ways to get that money back whether it means upping overdraft fees or creating new ones for whatever very few services that are still free. And the worst betrayal we can commit is by getting complacent and sliding back to where are now.

This letter was written by a relative of mine who is a biologist and a Christian.

Mississippi Proposition 26 – Think before you vote.

Proposals to provide single cells with the rights of citizens is dangerous on several levels. The ongoing desire of passionate groups to eliminate the reproductive rights of women is based upon the religious belief that a fertilized egg houses a human soul. That religious belief is based upon no evidence and a great deal of misguided faith. People who believe the special nature of humans is that we have a soul entering the body at some point in development and leaving the body at death also believe that causing that spirit to leave the body is considered manslaughter, if not murder. We have accepted the idea that once the brain becomes inactive (flat-lined) and the cells of the body continue to live, that the soul has left the body and that allowing the remaining cells to die is not considered manslaughter or murder. Those of us who have been to many funerals have heard clergy of all types describe death as the soul leaving the body behind and moving on to another journey.

The question that still creates much controversy is which event allows the soul to enter the body. Keep in mind that almost everyone understands that the brain is the part of the human body that houses the soul. Co-joined twins that have two heads have two distinct personalities and are treated as two people, regardless of how many body parts they share. A baby that is born with several duplicated body parts, but one head, is considered to be one person, not several. It’s all about the brain. If you are religious, you might accept the idea that God created a human brain to be able to house a soul. Identical twins develop from a single fertilized egg which is then separated after fertilization and those two cells then develop separately into two separate bodies. Does each twin have half a soul?

Trying to determine the beginning of a human life or any other life is nonsense. Life does not begin at fertilization or at birth, it began a long time ago and continues through a series of important events. One of the things we have in common with everyone on this planet is that all of our ancestors lived long enough to reproduce and pass those living human cells on to future generations. That long line of life involves a sequence of living human cells going through a series of beginnings and endings of significant events, not the beginning or end of life. The question of manslaughter or homicide is determined by whether or not the human cells or cluster of cells houses a human soul, and if one has caused that soul to leave the body. An atheist or agnostic might use the word independent intellect instead of soul, but the same points apply. If your religious belief is that a fertilized egg or a fetus in early stages of development houses an independent soul, that belief is protected in this country and our government cannot punish you for having that belief. The same should be true of my belief that the soul enters the body at birth, the first breath of the baby. Both events are important in the continuity of human life, fertilization to create a cell with the full genetic complement to develop a human body, and birth to bring the body and spirit together and a new, independent individual into the world. If a fertilized egg houses a soul, what happens to it as that first cell divides into a ball of cells and later into layers of types of cells and finally into specific body parts? Do all the cells house the soul, or does it move into the brain later? I contend that most of society will accept the idea that a baby taking its first breath is an independent individual with a soul (or underdeveloped but independent intellect). If your religious belief is that an independent soul is present in a fertilized egg, you have the right to that belief, but you do not have the right to impose that religious belief onto the rest of society. I believe that a pregnant woman is developing a human house, but that there is nobody home until birth, when that house becomes occupied by a soul.

Imposing religious beliefs of one group on all of society is something this country has fought since before its beginning as a nation. Shall we develop laws that prohibit driving or other activities on Saturday or Sunday because some people have religious beliefs that require them to refrain from those activities? Shall we force women to cover their heads and faces because some religious beliefs require that behavior? We respect the rights of individuals to worship as they please. We do not allow the beliefs of those individuals to undermine the rights of the rest of us. The greatest danger is to promote the idea that our country needs to allow religious fringe groups to control the rest of the country. Be very careful of how much control you want the government to have over your independent decisions and individual rights, even if in this particular case the proposition under consideration is consistent with your individual religious beliefs.

If you agree, please feel free to republish this letter unedited.

David Brooks has become almost too easy a target, but when he comes up with an opinion of this level of idiocy, I just can't keep quiet. The only thing I can tell you is to keep your eye on Driftglass, TBogg, and John Cole today, as they are the Holy Trinity of Brooksiana.

Brooks is recognized among those who still have gray matter in their crania as being perhaps the most unfairly still employed man in America. I heard a colleague tell the other day of someone she used to work with -- a Ph.D. researcher -- who is working at a Target because there are no jobs for scientists. While visiting family in North Carolina recently, we encountered a wonderful waitress who is a veterinarian who can't find full-time work in her field, so she works part time in her field and supplements her income by waiting tables. She's back where she was in college, before spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on education. These are people whose talents are being wasted -- thrown away by a Washington establishment that is willing to throw them in the garbage in their pursuit of absolute power (Republicans) or corporate campaign cash (Democrats).

But Brooks is still getting paid to write stuff like this:

The U.S. now seems to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, which is the cleanest of the fossil fuels. This cleaner, cheaper energy source is already replacing dirtier coal-fired plants. It could serve as the ideal bridge, Amy Jaffe of Rice University says, until renewable sources like wind and solar mature.

Already shale gas has produced more than half a million new jobs, not only in traditional areas like Texas but also in economically wounded places like western Pennsylvania and, soon, Ohio. If current trends continue, there are hundreds of thousands of new jobs to come.

Chemical companies rely heavily on natural gas, and the abundance of this new source has induced companies like Dow Chemical to invest in the U.S. rather than abroad. The French company Vallourec is building a $650 million plant in Youngstown, Ohio, to make steel tubes for the wells. States like Pennsylvania, Ohio and New York will reap billions in additional revenue. Consumers also benefit. Today, natural gas prices are less than half of what they were three years ago, lowering electricity prices. Meanwhile, America is less reliant on foreign suppliers.

All of this is tremendously good news, but, of course, nothing is that simple. The U.S. is polarized between “drill, baby, drill” conservatives, who seem suspicious of most regulation, and some environmentalists, who seem to regard fossil fuels as morally corrupt and imagine we can switch to wind and solar overnight.

The shale gas revolution challenges the coal industry, renders new nuclear plants uneconomic and changes the economics for the renewable energy companies, which are now much further from viability. So forces have gathered against shale gas, with predictable results.

The clashes between the industry and the environmentalists are now becoming brutal and totalistic, dehumanizing each side. Not-in-my-backyard activists are organizing to prevent exploration. Environmentalists and their publicists wax apocalyptic.

Like every energy source, fracking has its dangers. The process involves injecting large amounts of water and chemicals deep underground. If done right, this should not contaminate freshwater supplies, but rogue companies have screwed up and there have been instances of contamination.

The wells, which are sometimes beneath residential areas, are serviced by big trucks that damage the roads and alter the atmosphere in neighborhoods. A few sloppy companies could discredit the whole sector.

These problems are real, but not insurmountable. An exhaustive study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded, “With 20,000 shale wells drilled in the last 10 years, the environmental record of shale-gas development is for the most part a good one.” In other words, the inherent risks can be managed if there is a reasonable regulatory regime, and if the general public has a balanced and realistic sense of the costs and benefits.

"A reasonable regulatory regime"? And just where in his Republican dreamland -- the one that's going to take place next November no matter what people who are actually allowed to use a voting machine decide, is this reasonable regulatory regime going to happen? And what is a "realistic sense of the costs and benefits" when one of the costs is this:

Two small earthquakes near Blackpool in northwest England earlier this year were probably caused by hydraulic fracturing, a technique of grinding underground rocks to extract natural gas.

It’s “highly probable” that fracking, as the process is known, at the Preese Hall-1 site caused the quakes, U.K.-based shale explorer Cuadrilla Resources Ltd. said in a report published today. The geological circumstances were “rare” and the strongest possible tremor, of a magnitude of 3, wouldn’t be a risk to safety or property on the surface, it said.

Do YOU want to rely on a Republican regulatory climate in the face of this:



Look, I live in a town where my neighbors finally got their power back yesterday. I have colleagues from Connecticut who aren't expected to have their electricity back until Sunday. I understand how dependent we are on energy. But risking mass contamination of drinking water and relying on corporate executives' assessments of safety should hardly give us confidence in their assessment of long-term and short-term risks of this practice.

Fracking is being done by corporations, one of them being Halliburton. Does that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? It shouldn't. These companies are about making a profit, and energy companies in particular have shown little inclination to have concerns about safety. Just like the rest of the companies that are determined to suck everything they can out of this country, then leave a polluted, smoking shell behind and find someplace else to plunder, these companies should not be trusted.

That David Brooks think they should is just another example of why no one should take him seriously.

Labels: American Idiots, David Brooks, fracking, hack journalism

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

I have never before pretended to speak for all liberals, but living the life of a liberal for more than a half century, I believe, empowers me to speak for all of us. Many such manifestos have been written, none of them comprehensive and all-inclusive. This one will be.

The Liberal Manifesto

Liberals fight for everyone. We fight for the 100%. Not the 1%, not the 57%, not even the 99%, but for 100% of us. Whether you're a homeless war veteran, an unemployed single mother or a Wall Street hedge fund manager, we will defend to the death your right not to be molested by the TSA at an airport, the right to marry whomever you want and the right to live a clean, safe, dignified life.

However, we are beaten, shouted down, vilified and otherwise loathed for this by self-styled conservatives, people foundering in the same icy ocean as the rest of us yet vilify those who choose to throw them a life preserver because it is in our nature.

We fight for everyone's right to free speech, freedom of peaceful assembly, freedom of the press, freedom to petition and the freedom to worship any religion, if any, that they see fit without fear of recrimination and reprisal.

We are not, however, bound by legal or moral compact to politely stand silent and pretend ignorance, racism and baseless bias is a legitimate opposing point of view. It is the moral and intellectual imperative of every liberal to shout down hatred, bigotry and ignorance and to lampoon, satirize and even vilify everyone who seeks to subtract from the store of human knowledge and to subvert rational thought. Everyone has the right to their opinion, as Sen. Moynihan once said, but you do not have the right to your own facts.

We do not seek to flee the shores of our nation in order to found our own liberal colony and say, The hell with the rest of the country. We all breathe the same air, drink the same water, eat the same food, ingest the same pharmaceuticals, use the same usurious banks and predatory HMOs. The quality of these necessities are much higher now thanks to liberals, thank you very much. A progressive tax system paid for the roads and bridges you drive over, pay for their upkeep, schools to educate your children, street lights and signs to keep traffic safe and orderly and have provided jobs to the men and women of our nation's police and fire departments and our nation's armed services who risk their lives every minute of every day to keep you and your loved ones safe from harm. You're welcome.

While being on the opposite end of the political spectrum, we will also fight to the death, GOProud and Log Cabin Republicans and other conservative gay rights groups, for your right to be treated fairly and equally, to openly serve in the armed forces without prejudice and recrimination, to love and marry as you see fit. We are not saying you cannot retain your political views, even though we are justifiably baffled by your insistence on artificially attaching yourself to a party that by and large loathes you. At the end of the day, you have to admit you have far more allies on the liberal/progressive side than you do on the conservative side.

We believe in telling the truth and sticking to the facts without resorting to thuggery, dirty tricks and character assassination. Your African Americans are no better than others nor do we say "our" to imply ownership ideological or otherwise. Slavery ended during the Civil War.

We do not champion one religion or another for supremacy. That mindset was studiously avoided by our Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution of the United States of America and, once again, the first amendment does not give supremacy to Baptists, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindis, Lutherans, Methodists, Unitarians or any other denomination. Freedom of religion was one of the biggest reasons our ancestors came to the New World.

We do not loosely call others names nor resort to labels except when they are apt. If you act like a fascist or a racist, do not affect surprise when you are called on it. We are merely exercising the same right to free speech that we fight for you to have. We are not Communists, we are not Socialists and we are certainly not racists. But when you bully gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people, when you blindly champion the same private industry that is slowly killing you, when you discriminate against one particular race or religion, you are automatically inviting comparisons to a political party that murdered 6,000,000 innocent people.

The latter day Democratic Party does not endorse racism in any way, shape or form. The Democrats of the Civil War era did and they became first Dixiecrats then Republicans. Today's Democrats have nothing in common with the Democratic Party of the infamously corrupt Tammany Hall and especially the Democratic Party of the antebellum south. That's your party you're thinking of.

We fight to keep corporate money out of not just Democratic campaigns but also Republican campaigns, to put the power of the ballot box back in the hands we the People of the United States of America. We are fighting to take back the First Amendment privilege of freedom of petition that originally belonged to the people and not lobbyists who have thoroughly corrupted the political and electoral system.

We all have to abide by and are protected and victimized by the same laws, at least in theory. We are fighting to repeal the USA PATRIOT Act for all US citizens, not just liberals. We are fighting for your right to a fair and open trial, to not have your reading tastes held against you in a secret tribunal while you silently suffer under a gag order for reasons of "national security." We are fighting for the right not to be assassinated along with our children without due process by our own government regardless of your political or ideological orientation.

While the other side insists health care should be a privilege while screaming about rationed care, we are fighting for your right for affordable, single-payer universal health care, for your parent's and grandparent's right to enjoy their golden years in dignity and free from worry.

We do not resort to broad caricaturization and bellow on behalf of the rights of the 1% to continue fleecing, unemploying and displacing us from our homes in order to brickbat the other side. We are fighting on behalf of all Americans to not be victimized by Wall Street and against gains being privatized and losses socialized. At the end of the day, you have far more allies in Occupy Wall Street than you do on Wall Street itself.

We choose not to champion ignorance, let alone be proud of it. We believe in every child's right to be well educated and for every single one of our children to have an equal chance to obtain a higher education. We fight to keep Pell grants and Head Start alive, liberal programs that have educated countless children of conservative and Republican parents.

If you are employed, chances are you work a 40 hour work week with far safer working conditions than we'd had a century or less ago. You likely enjoy personal days, workman's compensation, paid vacations and employer-provided health care benefits. You have unions to thank for that, the same unions you are now vilifying and calling "thugs." You are protected from sexual harassment. You are protected by liberal civil rights that protect you from being discriminated against on account of your gender, sexual orientation, race, color or creed. The EPA you seek to subvert and dismantle was given to you by a Republican, Richard Nixon. The rest was given to you by liberals and progressives. You're welcome again.

If you are unemployed, we are fighting to get your job back by stopping private industry, led by the US Chamber of Commerce, from outsourcing your job in the risible interests of "remaining competitive." They farmed out your job to a Chinese or Indian sweatshop laborer making pennies on the dollar because they decided it was no longer in their best interests to pay you a fair, living wage with even a modicum of benefits.

We fight for the 1% to pay their fair share in taxes so the burden for supporting the nation's infrastructure will not be shifted to We, the 99%. We are fighting for the right for you to keep your house and to not have it stolen by banks making misleading, usurious loans or banks that do not even own your home.

We want to give everyone the ability to pay their bills, to save money and to provide for their children's future without having to decide to forgo one necessity (such as health care) or another. We do not want to see anyone on welfare or any public assistance but we would like to see it available for those without ridiculous pre-conditions regardless of their political stripe.

We do not want our 11 year-old children having sex and we are not trying to "indoctrinate" them into the gay lifestyle. We do, however, insist they be given the facts in an age-appropriate manner so they can pursue their true course in life. We are fighting for your children's rights to not be bullied in school because of the sexual orientation with which they were born regardless of how you vote on election day. While the people you support seek to repeal child labor laws, we are continuing to fight to keep our kids out of the mills and factories and in the classrooms where they belong.

We are fighting for a strong national defense but not one that drains the national coffers at the expense of health, education and infrastructure and to the benefit of war profiteers, a national defense that doesn't include reckless and corporately-driven misadventurism that tarnishes our reputation abroad and kills innocents and espouses one racial, economic or religious ideology over another.

Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are liberal agendas from which many conservatives as well as liberals and independents have benefited. We do not lobby merely for the rights of our own to continue benefiting from this social safety net after decades of labor and we are fighting for your right not to see that social safety net torn apart on the craps tables of Wall Street.

We fight for everyone, whether or not they wish to be saved or helped.

Actual headline from today's New York times online:



That's the spin from the so-called liberal media.

Here's what's actually going on:

Labels: hack journalism, Occupy Wall Street, what liberal media

Say hello to Fukushima Diary. Then go read what is going on at Fukushima these days. It's bad, and you'll never hear about it on the news here.

Labels: 2011 Japan earthquake, bloggers, Blogroll Amnesty Day

So what'd I miss?

The power came back on at around 5 PM yesterday, a day after I was starting to feel very deprived because there was power three blocks west of us and two blocks east, and even at the foot of our street. We live on a dead end, which I'm sure has something to do with it, but no power starts to wear thin after three days.

Sitting in the dark, or near dark, thanks to the generator, makes one think long and hard about just how spoiled we all are. I'm fortunate that I had the $2750 to spend on a direct-wired generator setup that allowed us to switch from the furnace/fridge to the water heater with the flip of a circuit. I'm fortunate that my packrat ways (and the generator) meant a full freezer out of which I only have to throw away some ice cream and a few bags of frozen vegetables that were in the door. We even had recognizable ice cubes left in the tray. I'm fortunate that I had bought tons of batteries for the crank radio prior to the hurricane in September so we didn't have to sit there cranking in order to get weather updates. After the first night, which was dark and cold because we had never used the generator before and wanted to wait until daylight, the house never had to go below sixty degrees.

But for one evening at least, it's kind of nice to just sit in the dark with nothing to do but listen to music on the radio -- really LISTEN -- and talk about music and culture; things OTHER than politics, because the box that feeds rants into our brain every evening was out of commission. It was nice not to be bothered by telephone solicitors. It was nice to think about how many years ago this was how everyone lived, only with gas lamps and candles, and entertainment was gathering around the piano.

But I've had enough of all that now.

I remember when the first snowfall would take place in late November or early December. It would usually be just a dusting, and it never, ever stuck. This one started at around 10:30 AM and was sticking by 11, despite temperatures in the upper 40's. Driving was treacherous by 1 PM. One colleague reported to me that she was so frightened driving because of the cracking of branches and the "snow bombs" that sagging branches were dropping on her car that she abandoned her car about a half-mile from home and walked the rest of the way -- an astounding decision, given the even higher risks of walking under trees unprotected. But this was the kind of pouring-out-of-the-sky snow that we saw last January, and its path, coming out of the south as it did, followed the same path as the many foot-or-more snowfalls we had last year -- not a good omen for the rest of the winter.

But this storm seems to fit right in with the United Nations report on climate change that is shortly to be released:

The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected conclude that there is a high probability that man-made greenhouse gases already are causing extreme weather that has cost governments, insurers, businesses and individuals billions of dollars. And it is certain to predict that costs due to extreme weather will rise and some areas of the world will become more perilous places to live.

Federal climate scientists have labeled 2011 as one of the worst in American history for extreme weather, with punishing blizzards, epic flooding, devastating drought and a heat wave that has broiled a huge swath of the country. Weather related losses amounted to more than $35 billion even before the Nor'easter shellacked the East Coast.

Among the more costly events in the U.S. this year was the flooding of the Mississippi River and tributaries due to rapid melting of the Rocky Mountain snowpack and early spring rains. That event, which prompted the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to open a Mississippi River spillway and flood more than 4,000 acres in Louisiana, caused billion of dollars in direct damage.

April also spawned 875 tornado reports nationwide, well above the 30-year average for the month of 135. The "super outbreak," as climatologists dubbed it, killed 327 people.

Drought in Texas has caused more than $5.4 billion in damage to the cattle industry alone, driving up beef prices, while wildfires consumed 2 million acres. A heat wave throughout much of the country caused 29 states to issue heat advisories in July. Nationwide, the hot spell was blamed for scores of deaths.

The "Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation" will be released Nov. 18. It builds on the climate change panel's previous assessments of the Earth's climate, and is intended to help governments and policymakers boost preparedness for extreme weather events.

Even former climate change skeptic Richard Muller has changed course, though in this article he penned for the climate change-denying Wall Street Journal, he actually admits to having thought "Some places are cooler so that disproves global warming" shows that he is a scientist not above letting his politics affect his research bias when it suits him. But since he does not seem to have become a nightly viewer of The Rachel Maddow Show, we can perhaps safely assume that his gear-shift extends only to climate change, and right-wing fears that he has been kidnapped by Occupy Wall Street and turned into a liberal are probably unfounded. That global warming may not preclude some places being cooler than normal is a difficult idea for those who think Rick Perry would be a great president to fathom, but I don't think anyone ever accused the Tea Party right of being able to juggle two ideas in their heads at the same time.

So it's time to gas up the generator, buy some extra umbrellas, run the sump pump, and whatever else we have to do until we leave this mortal coil. Fasten your seat belts, folks, it's going to be a bumpy ride to oblivion.

Labels: climate change

It's been tremendously amusing to watch Republicans and their flying monkey squadron shitting all over liberals for calling out Herman Cain for his alleged lechery back in the 90's. Predictably, the same party that is at this very minute devoting millions of man hours and millions of dollars to keep African Americans from voting, the same party that had viciously attacked ACORN with selectively-edited videos just for getting out the urban vote, the same party that just three years earlier had snubbed the NAACP that had tried hosting a GOP presidential debate, the same GOP that had blamed the mostly African American victims of Hurricane Katrina for having the audacity to die on George W. Bush's watch and embarrassing him with their bloated bodies is now, we're supposed to believe, at the vanguard of the Civil Rights movement.

Even more amusing is the corollary they're using: Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings of almost exactly 20 years ago.

It was inevitable that right wing nut jobs would echo Thomas's own whining about how, after succeeding to the highest court in the land and riding a wave of Affirmative Action, he whined about "a high tech lynching." Leading the demonic Iditarod is dependable head flying monkey Ann Coulter, who went on Sean Handjob's show on the newly-centralized Fox "News" to spit venom in the eyes of liberals who "detest, detest, detest, conservative blacks" (I think the term she's looking for isn't "hate" but "are endlessly amused by" conservative blacks. Who aren't known as "blacks", anymore, but African Americans).

When he wasn't popping Viagras and Oxycontin in his jiggling puss, Rush Limbaugh said from his own bully pulpit that the MSM were using "the ugliest racial stereotypes they can to attack a black conservative."

Yeah, I thought that was funny, too, considering that for over three straight years now, Limbaugh's been obsessed with the Obamas and has sneered at every powerful liberal or centrist minority figure, with some diatribes for Haiti thrown in for good measure.

What's obviously lost on the GOP, including the women who identify with them, is that in order to protect this poor, downtrodden, multimillionaire conservative black man who's being judged on sexually harassing two women with impunity, they're opening up everyone to charges of misogynism. Not one conservative has come forth to ask, "Well, what of these alleged victims? Suppose they're telling the truth?"

They obviously can't do that because Cain for the moment is the (snicker) GOP front-runner, plus the GOP needs him to try to slough off the racism that sticks to them like their own clammy Caucasian skin, someone they can point to and say, "See? We (ugh) love blacks!" Because, you see, Herman Cain is the "good" black who thinks and feels about things like WASP Amerika. And as every right-thinking conservative American knows, we've gotta get the "bad" black out of the Oval Office and install the "good" black. As if getting a stupendously unqualified lunatic like Herman Cain in the Oval Office will somehow undo nearly 500 years of virulent racial prejudice.

Cain is their necessary lye soap that tries to scrub off the kind of racism such as the kind slyly shown by Reagan in Philadelphia, Mississippi in 1980 when he announced his candidacy in dog whistle language by talking about "states' rights." And the most common tactic used by bullies when called on their neanderthalism, homophobia and racism is turn back the charges in sort of a childish "I am rubber, you are glue, what you say to me sticks to you" kind of defense (such as when Cain asked a Politico interviewer recently, "Have you ever been accused of sexual harassment?"

No, but porn addict Clarence Thomas has. Maybe Cain can ask him for advice on how to weather this storm.

Go crazy? Damn right. There is power two blocks east and three blocks west. No power here yet. Threw away about fifty bucks in meat and leftover Chinese food this morning. Friday we'll clean out the freezer. If it weren't't for the generator giving us light, heat, and a bit of hot water, despair would be setting in. And we're lucky. We aren't trying to keep two kids entertained, we have some light, battery-operated radio, and can charge up the phones. But it's getting old already.