Cheating Our Children

Laurie Abraham's long article, Teaching Good Sex, in the Nov 20th New York Times Sunday magazine is a powerful reminder of what we have lost to the right wing's pro-ignorance agenda.  Read the article and try to imagine if it described a typical American school.  Imagine the tangible results of fewer abortions, less sexually transmitted disease, and fewer teen pregnancies.  And, then think of the intangible results of a happier, confident, plain spoken, and less neurotic young men and women.

Instead, we have let conservative crazies have their way for years.

Reality -- for nearly everyone -- is sickeningly far from Friends Central School's normalcy.  Start with the obvious.  An openly gay teacher is a red flag to right wing America; and one who teaches human sexuality to teenagers would bring out the torches and pitchforks.  Principals would be forced to resign and school superintendents would recite profound apologies.  Then, there's the reality of Friends Central having small discussion classes led by a highly respected teacher when the rest of the country's schools endure increasing class sizes, narrowing curricula, and teacher union bashing.

Enough.  True education places critical thinking and intellectual rigor above all else.  To hell with worse-than-mediocre bland substitute that is given our children.  To hell with the sieves formed by standardized tests.  To hell with morons who rank religion above biology.  Creationism ain't science no matter how much lipstick you smear on a bible.  To hell with all censors and book burners.  If Twain's Huck Finn says, "Nigger," then nigger it be.

Cherchez Les Rapports Annuels

Thanks, once again, to Matt Taibbi  and to the Professional Left podcast for correcting Republican nonsense about the financial meltdown.

Taibbi took on New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg for repeating the lie that, "It was not the banks that created the mortgage crisis. It was, plain and simple, congress who forced everybody to go and give mortgages to people who were on the cusp."  Not only is this a favorite Republican misdirection, but Taibbi points out that everyone on Wall Street knows it to be a big lie.

Driftglass and Bluegal slap down Congressman Joe Walsh for emitting the same blame-Congress nonsense.  Walsh deserves the reprimand even though he may not be smart enough, nor mentally balanced enough, to separate truth from Republican battle orders.  

Here's one more point.  Nearly all of the companies consumed by the mortgage-related conflagration were publicly traded.  The list includes Countrywide, Washington Mutual, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America and on and on.  Business risks due to Congressional mandates should have been described in their annual reports to shareholders.  Yet, none of the reports from all of those publicly traded companies during the decade preceding the implosion mention those risks.  Not one damn word.  

The next time anyone does a Flip Wilson Congress-made-me-issue-those-bad-mortgages shtick, ask to see the risk assessments in the annual reports.  

Kate Smurthwaite

Kate Smurthwaite spoke truth to insanity on the beeb, and I just love the collective gasp.  She actually implied that people who believe in heaven are idiots.  Can you imagine?  And, she did the math on the Muslim's Jan and Dean heaven that promises two girls for every boy.  Where do all those extra women come from? 

The clip is great; see for yourself:



 As always, the arguments in favor of god are just piss weak.  There's the guy claiming that money doesn't really exist.  Where's a 16-ton sack of coins when you really need one?  His thinking is so polluted by religion that he can't distinguish different meanings of the word "faith."  Face it, bro.  Would you rather own Treasury bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States, or just by the full faith in god? 

I also love the pompous boring old fart who pronounced Ms. Smurthwaite's comment rude.  OK?  Is that supposed to prove the existence of heaven?  If so, how?  Please explain in 250 polite words, or less. 

Envy

Time to again laugh at the right wing's worthless comments about OWS.  CNN set National Review's chump of the month against Matt Taibbi.  Shallow, unsubstantiated opinion against facts and research.

NR-Boy accuses the marchers of deadly sinfulness: they are motivated by envy.  The 99% want the 1%'s riches.  Outrage over illegal Wall Street deals does not resonate with the Boy; nor does money's de facto and de jure corruption of American politics.  Envy -- nasty green envy -- is the protesters' driving force.  He knows what OWS really wants because...  OK, he just knows. 

Imagine a group of people protesting because they want to rid their neighborhood of drug dealers.  The citizens are outraged.  Drug deals take place in the open.  Cops are paid off.  Politicians blame the protesters for not just moving away.  The dealers also shake down local businesses by demanding protection money.  Mom and Pop groceries go bust as long-time customers are frightened off.   And, on TV, the National Review's chump of the month sneers:  protesters, he says, envy the drug dealers' money.  Crime is secondary.  The rabble wants the fancy cars and fine clothes.  The Boy just knows it. 

Remembrances of things past

In space-time it is 2 miles and 40 years from Occupy Wall Street and I am a junior in high school and Nixon has invaded Cambodia and college kids are dead in Ohio and Mississippi and there is a big protest in Union Square and the crowd near me is shaped by cyclone fencing and vertical 4 x 8 sheets of plywood because the streets are torn up for a big subway renovation and a man who looks my father's age but is in blue jeans and a work shirt steps onto the podium as he is introduced.  Joseph Heller.  I need to tell my friends that Heller is the author of "Catch-22," even though most of them claim to have read the novel.  Heller mostly says expected things about Vietnam and Nixon.  None of it survives in my memory until he refers to South Vietnam's leaders as, "Those bastards, Thieu and Ky."  The word was a surprise.  "Bastards" was, in 1970, hard unexpected language to utter in prepared public speech by a middle-aged man of letters no matter his attire nor the content of his great novel.

Then, the follow-up that anchors the strong memory bridge across these 40 years where the crowd images and tone of voice and Heller's head turning toward his right are forever alive, "I call them bastards," he added, "Not because I hate them, but because they are illegitimate." 


I am not donating money for pizza today.  Instead, this is my gift to the brave ones in lower Manhattan.  Think Martin Luther King, jr.  Think Gandhi.  Non-violence is the only effective path to change.  But, you can still call the opposition, "Bastards."  Not out of hate, but because they are illegitimate.

Mississippi Squirming

Mississippi is the 49th or 50th state in damn near every quality of life statistic.  Now, a band of freaks -- long on religion and short on common sense -- wants to create one more datum anchoring the Magnolia state to the national cellar.  They are campaigning to amend the state constitution:

Be it Enacted by the People of the State of Mississippi: SECTION 1. Article III of the constitution of the state of Mississippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof." This initiative shall not require any additional revenue for implementation.

Don't these people know anything about female icky bits?  At least 50% of fertilized human eggs fail to implant in the uterus.  Those eggs have, typically, divided several times to form a hollow ball of about 150 cells called a blastocyst that is between 0.1 and 0.2 mm in diameter.  Or, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.

Obvious segue:  all of those loser, non-implanted blastocysts become part of the woman's menstrual flow.  If Mississippi's nutcases get their amendment, the outflowing blastocysts are legally stillborn babies.  Deaths must be recorded, micro-corpses buried or cremated, and death certificates issued.  It gets ickier.  Lots ickier.  Every tampon and sanitary napkin used by every fertile, sexually active woman in Mississippi will need to be examined for dead blastocysts.  After all, you can't allow women to toss 'persons' in the trash or flush them down the toilet.  The old needle-in-a-haystack metaphor will be replaced by something like finding-a-period-in-a-period. 

Mississippi morons may say they can implement personhoodness without, "requir[ing] any additional revenue for implementation."   Right.  Funding the Mississippi Tampon Police (MISSTAMPOL) and the testing laboratories is gonna cost a bundle.  Maybe the new agency will be paid by a tax on feminine hygiene products which will, in turn, create a black market as entrepreneurs truck in cheaper products from neighboring states.  More work for law enforcement in a state that can barely afford its public servants.

Can these zealots think at all? 

Never happy

Nothing makes me happy.  Last week I complained because mainstream news outlets were not covering the Wall Street protests.  Yahoo blocked email messages about the event.  Searching "Wall Street protest" on the New York Times web site turns up four entries in the newspaper's City Room blog.  Rupert Murdoch's NY Post dismissed the first day of the rally as a "fizzle," then followed up with a small photo gallery.

Today, I'm annoyed because the NY Times is finally covering the protest.   The article emphasizes the protester's lack of knowledge about the system they oppose.  The demonstrators are better at street theater than history or economics.  And, that's why I'm pissed off.  The article is, I suspect, correct.  I was hoping for Abbie Hoffman or Tom Hadyn; lower Manhattan, instead, got Wavy Gravy.

Too bad that Ms. Ballafante didn't make the obvious connection:  the protesters despite their shortcomings all sound like fucking geniuses compared with the participants in last week's Republican presidential debate. 

Let 'em die

Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever forget.  The Tea Party has forever been with us.  The names have been changed to protect the guilty. 

Bin Laden Determine to Strike in US

Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
The British government has learned that 
       Saddam Hussein recently sought 
       significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
Aluminum tubes.
Mobile biological warfare labs.
Stuff happens.
We don't do torture, we never have.

Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
They are, if you will, just a bunch of dead enders.
Pain accompanying serious physical injury,
     such as organ failure,
     impairment of bodily function,
     or even death.
Bin Laden will be taken dead or alive.
I truly am not that concerned about him.

Bin Laden determined to strike in US.
Bring 'em on.
I don't remember.
I forget.
Bin Laden determined to strike in US.

Vindication and Vindictiveness

Yesterday, Ed Schultz did his MSNBC show from Toledo, Ohio. 

Toledo lost 39% of its manufacturing jobs in the last decade.  I assume that's on top of a gizzillion blue-collar jobs lost prior to 2000.  Although Ed's guests included the head of the steelworkers' union, it seemed, that most of the crowd were not factory workers (or ex-factory workers), but were teachers, cops, firefighters, and other unionized government employees targeted for impoverishment by Ohio's Tea Partying guv, John Kasich.

I, too, despise the third world trajectory plotted by Kasich and his fellow members of the Koch Brotherhood.  I support the unions.  But, I also want an apology.  I want all those macho schmucks and angry women to admit their role in bringing America to this awful point.  All of them -- who voted for Reagan then shrugged off his firing of the air traffic controllers, who voted for W (probably twice) and waved oversized Old Glories when we invaded Iraq and raged at "traitors" criticizing that absurd war, who claim a moral high ground but are silent on torture, who have been suckered by anti-gay and anti-immigrant dog whistle distractions -- owe the rest of us a big apology. 

Admit it; the liberals were right, and you were wrong.  You should follow the AA example by making amends to the millions of people you harmed during your forty year conservatism binge.  Admit that the broken furniture, smashed windows, and depleted checking account are your goddamn fault.  Your fault; the booze and the coke and the Republican whores are not to blame.  You are. 

Centrists

Krugman is worth reading, today. But, I find the best part of his column is the italicized sentence at the very end: David Brooks is off today.

An Abundance of Caution

Chris Christie, Governor of NJ, had trouble breathing earlier today:

“Out of an abundance of caution," the governor, who suffers from asthma, went to be checked out at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, the statement said. "In line with someone dealing with asthma, he is being given routine tests as a precautionary measure."

How many of the governor's constituents enjoy such abundance? CC not only gets an abundance of money, abundance of privilege, abundance of food, abundance of idiotic ideas, abundance of repugnant cruel thinking, abundance of Tea Party bird droppings, and abundance of press coverage, the Governor gets to have an abundance of caution. Praised be.

A Different Charlie

Last year, an Argentine cab driver gave me his definition of a third world country. "It is a place," he said, "Where you cannot plan six months ahead."

Sound familiar?

Plus c'est la meme chose

Here's Steinbeck:

She wore a ferocious smile and pushed her way through the milling people, holding a fistful of clippings high in her hand to keep them from being crushed. Since it was her left hand I looked particularly for a wedding ring, and saw that there was none. I slipped in behind her to get carried along by the wave, but the crush was dense, and I was given a warning, too, "Watch it, sailor. Everybody wants to hear."

Nellie was received with shouts of greeting. I don't know how many Cheerleaders there were. There was no fixed line between the Cheerleaders and the crowd behind them. What I could see was that a group was passing newspaper clippings back and forth and reading them aloud with little squeals of delight.

Now the crowd grew restless, as an audience does when the clock goes past curtain time. Men all around me looked at their watches. I looked at mine. It was three minutes to nine.

The show opened on time. Sounds of sirens. Motorcycle cops. Then two big black cars filled with big men in blond felt hats pulled up in front of the school. The crowd seemed to hold its breath. Four big marshals got out of each car and from somewhere in the automobiles they extracted the littlest Negro girl you ever saw, dressed in shining starchy white, with new shoes on her feet so little they were almost round. Her face and legs were very black against the white.

The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did not look at the howling crowd but from the sides the whites of her eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her around like a doll, and then the strange procession moved up the broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite because the men were so big. Then the girl made a curious hop, and I think I know what it was. I think in her whole life she had not gone ten steps without skipping, but now in the middle of her first skip the weight bore her down and her little round feet took measured, reluctant steps between the tall guards. Slowly, they climbed the steps and entered the school.

The papers had printed that the jibes and jeers were cruel and sometimes obscene, and so they were, but this was not the big show. The crowd was waiting for the white man who dared to bring his white child to school...

No newspaper had printed the words these women shouted. It was indicated that they were indelicate, some even said obscene. On television, the sound track was made to blur or had crowd noises cut in to cover. But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate. In a long and unprotected life I have seen and heard the vomitings of demoniac humans before. Why then did these screams fill me with a shocked and sickened sorrow?

...Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowsy women with their little hats and their clippings hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heartbreaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.

The full title of the book is, "Travels with Charley in Search of America." The event occurred in New Orleans in 1959 or 1960. It has taken me two sittings to copy Steinbeck's words because I cannot stop crying and cannot unclench my teeth.

I first read Travels thirty-five years ago. Some scenes -- including the one I copied and abridged for you -- have stayed with me. But, it was not until last night when I again opened the book did I recognize the power and prescience of these old words to define oh so clearly America's great divide. Steinbeck wrote the Tea Party: crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.

We shall overcome.

Plus ca change

Today, a three-way confluence of history and politics. I traced a link from Hullabaloo to this item from the Douglas County Oregon News-Review:

A small political gathering of about 18 liberal thinkers at River Forks Park Sunday afternoon erupted in conflict when about 35 members of the conservative tea party intruded upon the meeting, waving flags and holding signs accusing the rival group of being communists, Marxists and socialists.

The liberal group — organized by MoveOn.org — decided to leave the park and move its potluck to a nearby home. Members of the conservative group followed, parking at the entrance of a private lane leading to the home to continue their protest.

Roseburg Democrats Dean and Sara Byers said Monday they told tea party members who followed that they were not welcome to drive down the lane to their home.

The Byerses said they got out of their car to stop vehicles from entering the driveway and one tea party member almost ran them over.

Sara Byers said she was so shaken she called 911. She said a Douglas County deputy called about an hour and a half later and said he had been unable to respond because of other incidents. Byers said she was still considering filing a criminal complaint against members of the tea party for harassment.

A leader of the tea party group, Rich Raynor of Roseburg, disputed the liberal group's version of events.

“They are liars,” said Raynor, director of Douglas County Americans for Prosperity. “That is what communists do.”

Members of the smaller group said Monday they were intimidated by the tea partiers, whom they accused of violating their constitutional right to peacefully assembly.

Roseburg resident Lillen Fifield, 70, called the group's actions an “act of domestic terrorism” and said she was appalled that a peaceful gathering — mostly of women older than 65 — was interrupted.

“It is not OK to go around and intimidate and threaten people. That is not acceptable in a polite society,” Fifield said.

Conservative organizers defended their actions and said they will continue to protest similar gatherings.

“We were there to find out what they had to say and to bring a notice to the public that this kind of thing was going on. Quite honestly, if they have it again, then we are really going to make it well known,” Raynor said.

Raynor said the group believes MoveOn.org is a communist front and said he would not stand for America becoming a fascist nation.

Then, I glanced at the opening of a Calvin Trillin piece in this week's New Yorker. He describes an encounter at a meeting in Santa Fe with a woman who, when five-years-old, integrated a New Orleans public school. That was fifty years ago. Trillin covered the story for Time. He was on the “Seg Beat” as the civil rights movement gained momentum. In the New Yorker piece, Trillin describes standing among jeering protesters as they spewed hatred towards the young black children escorted into school by US marshals. “Black ape,” was one of the most memorable epithets.

The New Yorker article, in turn, triggered my memory of “Travels with Charlie.” Near the end of that book, Steinbeck describes watching a similar (the same?) scene. I think he was in New Orleans, but it could have been Little Rock. Steinbeck was fascinated by the women in the screaming mob. He noticed that most lacked wedding rings and were, he assumed, childless as well as unmarried. Their hatred and vile rants were all the more surprising because they had no direct role in the dispute.

There is a straight, unbroken, 50-year-long line from screaming southern segregationists to Oregon tea partiers. Nothing new. Just reblended ignorance, fear, anger, and stupidity. Who else could label MoveOn.org as communists and, at the same time, inveigh against fascism? What a bunch of losers.

The fire this time

Here in New Mexico, June was a hideous month of smoke and fire. The mountains -- mostly National Forest land -- burned. I could see from my back yard aerial tankers flying low over rugged terrain and through blinding smoke to drop fire-stopping slurry. Helicopters carrying vast water buckets flew circuits all day from lake to fire and back. Athletic fields at the edge of Santa Fe were tent cities housing firefighting crews brought in from other states.

I tried to imagine the response to wildfires in a Randian/Tea Party world. Surprise! What they call freedom becomes a country dominated by insurers and litigators. The Las Conchas fire – which is now the largest wildfire in New Mexico history – is a good example. The blaze started on a privately-owned ranch when a power line was pulled down by a falling tree. Fire spread quickly across public, private, and tribal land. In Randworld, of course, all of the involved land would be privately held and all firefighting privately paid. The ranch owners where the fire started would need insurance against damage to their own property plus coverage in case their fire spread to neighboring property. The bank holding the mortgage would also insist on coverage against fires due to uninsured neighbors. This would be similar to auto policies covering uninsured drivers. Insurance premiums would skyrocket in times of drought – meaning now – as fire risk increased. And, there, once again, is the big hole in Randite logic. Why would any private insurer risk catastrophic losses from large wildfires? Expect them, instead, to cancel existing policies outright or indirectly by demanding exorbitant premiums. Think of a cancer survivor trying to buy health insurance.

The Randite market may be wise, but it is not stable. Without insurance, property values plunge. Banks will call in mortgages. Land owners may abandon their holdings, but can not escape their responsibilities. Coping with fires – whether due to lightning, felled power lines, or carelessness – remains the land owner's responsibility. Neighbors, who likely also hold canceled insurance policies, can try to help put out the flames or can help pay professional firefighters. What if that's not enough? The Las Conchas fire went from start to 43,000 acres in half a day. Imagine a raging fire three times the size of Manhattan. It is now close to 150,000 acres. The firefighting costs tens of millions of dollars. Will the newly destitute sue the newly destitute? Will land owners turn over their mutually charred property to the bank or firefighting company? How many Mediterranean Avenues can anyone want?

Try a different scenario. Your privately-owned mountain paradise is parched by drought. Fires are demolishing thousands of acres of similar land near home and in adjacent states. You are like a rancher whose cattle are dying of thirst, or a farmer tending withered crops. You have been a conscientious steward of your property. You cleared tinder-dry underbrush from the forested areas. But, that's not enough. Living trees are so badly desiccated that fire can jump easily from crown to crown. In the Las Conchas fire, trees tops burned so fiercely that fist-sized burning embers were blown up to half a mile ahead of the fire line. Yes, you must destroy your land in order to save it. Cut down the trees and haul the logs away. (To where?) Cool mountain forest is transformed into rocky, sun-blanched high desert. The fire, if – or when – it comes, will rage around or over whatever remains. Breathe a sigh of relief. But, what happens when the rains come or winter's snow piles high? The water you craved in fire season is now the enemy. Nature serves up erosion, avalanches, and mudslides. Your fate – and bank account – are again entwined with your neighbors' after run-off from your property floods a neighbor's house, or barn, or buries their pick-up truck with sixteen tons of muck.

In the Randian United States, e plurbus unum is replaced with Go Fuck Yourself. Unrestricted selfishness generates endless bickering, threats, and counter-threats. Limited-imagination Randites believe that guns and more guns can maintain peace. They don't get it. The big problems will start when routine commerce operates without the guarantees now provided by government. Every Main Street transaction will needed to be hedged against the newest, ugliest economic catastrophe. If libertarian bozos complain now about lawyers getting in the way of everyday life, just wait until all buying and selling requires hold-harmless agreements, arbitration requirements, and specifications for a myriad of other contingencies. Insurance companies and litigators will inherit the earth.

Open Letter to Meghan McCain

Dear Ms. McCain,

What did you expect? Really. You are a Republican party shill. A conservative hack. You have criticized the obviously criticizable. That's your shtick. An inherited dollop of maverickism. You remain, however, the obvious product of your privileged upbringing. Your mother's inherited family fortune -- always huge -- has grown and grown and grown under 30 years of voodoo economics that has punished 90% of Americans. Have you complained about this inequity? No. Instead, you blast Wisconsin's unionized public employees and their supporters in the state legislature. Quelle surprise!

Republicans -- and you are one -- have been consistently wrong about the economy, taxes, the environment, global warming, energy, education, civil rights, women's rights, abortion, separation of church and state, Iraq, terrorism, Osama bin Laden, labor, the President's birthplace, the President's religion, unions, regulation, workplace safety, and Wall Street. You try claim a distinct identify by tugging at the edges: Sarah Palin and her clones, DADT, and California's Proposition 8. We get an ounce of sanity among a ton of crazy. Big deal.

Now, you have been burned by a right wing bomb thrower. Welcome to the club. Beck, Limbaugh, and the rest are the Republican party's brown shirts. Your crowd has long benefited from their lies and bullying. So don't expect us to share your outrage and indignation until you first speak up for every other victim of Glenn Beck's cruelty. I am waiting

How Much Is Enough?

Robert Greenwald has created a Facebook page asking for answers to, "What would Abbie Hoffman do to stop the Koch brothers?" Hoffman had a terrific sense of guerrilla theater. I don't; but, I can do math and am trying to create imagery and understandable statistics that compare the Koch family to the merely rich. Maybe someone else can find Abbie-Hoffmanesque inspiration from the grotesque size of the Koch family fortune.

Forbes reports Charles and David Koch's combined wealth at $43,000,000,000. How much money is forty-three billion dollars? It is a stack of $100 bills that is 29 miles tall and weighs 474 tons. Moving that much weight would require 18 tractor trailers. The next time you see a truck roll by try to imagine it loaded with $100 bills. Then include another truck and another and another until you have a fleet of eighteen tractor-trailers.

Now, take a standard airline carry-on bag and fill it with fresh, crisp $100 bills. The bag will hold four million dollars, or less than one hundredth of one percent of the Koch family fortune. Yet, $4 million would rank your wealth among the elite top 10% of all Americans. If you invested the money conservatively, you would collect $180,000 every year for the next 50 years and have a million dollars left for your children to inherit. You would not have to work. Just walk to your mailbox and pick up $15,000 every month for 50 years. Thanks to George Bush and his cronies, your money would be taxed at only 15% after one year.

What's that? You're worried about inflation? One-hundred eighty-thousand bucks a year is a lot of money today, but might not be worth much in 50 years. I agree. So, as long as we are playing imagination games, assume that you have ten airline carry-on bags each stuffed with $100 bills. Now, the Koch brothers are only a thousand times wealthier than you are. You may feel poor next to David and Charles, but, you've hit the big time; you get $1,800,000 a year without having to work. Every single day including weekends and holidays someone puts $4,900 into your pockets. Your earnings put you among the top 1% of all Americans. After a half century of high living -- champagne, caviar, first class travel, fast cars, slow horses, your kids in private schools -- you or your heirs will still have $10 million to play with.

Never forget, though, that even with $40 million in the bank, the Kochs make your family look like pikers, poor relations, chumps, schnorers, Beverly Hillbillies, fly specs, and people directed to the servants entrance. Your wealth is Koch brothers rounding error. The stuff they toss to mean-streaked tapioca-brain teabaggers like Scott Walker and Chris Christie.

Ask the question. Not the one about Abbie Hoffman , but the bigger question: How much is enough? The Kochs are not an example of the American dream. Far from it. They have created an American nightmare in which wealth and political paranoia bring all of us down. It is enough to make this Jewish atheist turn to the New Testament, "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." (1 Timothy 6:10)

Dog Bites Man!

From the newspaper of record:

The 2008 financial crisis was an “avoidable” disaster caused by widespread failures in government regulation, corporate mismanagement and heedless risk-taking by Wall Street, according to the conclusions of a federal inquiry.

What a big surprise! We needed a 10-person elite Federal panel to figure it all out. In this modern age of incompetence and conservatopian fantasy, only a six panelists could see what was written in big bolded text. The others, meaning the Republicans, are doing the cockroach scurry blaming everyone except Wall Street's giant vampire squids.

Why Liberals Are Wrong

There are false equivalences and then there are false equivalences. "Both sides do it," is widely known. Less so -- but equally wrong -- is the idea that conservative thought or morality is a mirror image of liberal ideology.

Krugman falls into the trap here

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty

Lawrence Davidson of Reader Supported News fails here (my italics):

The United States is, once more, increasingly a house divided. It is not divided by "slavery agitation" though some of the issues have their roots in that era. It is divided over fundamental differences in the meaning of the nation's Constitution and the very nature of government. These differences bring with them feelings that are just as emotional and inherently divisive as was slavery.

There are a growing number of Americans who no longer believe in the modern interpretation and application of US Constitution. They insist that the way Constitutional interpretation has evolved over the past half-century is a betrayal of true American principles. Many of these Americans are apparently enamored of the 19th century outlook that the only government that is legitimate is that which sees to the police, the military and the law. Everything else should be a private concern. If you tax them for programs that have to do with social equity or economic justice (even in its pitifully weak form), or even to maintain public functions such as education, transportation and social services, they consider it theft and imagine that they are subject to a new tyranny. In addition, many of them are not willing to go along with any election that might run counter to their outlook. Some are very close to advocating sedition, and a few are obviously already gunning for their imagined "tyrants."

Krugman and Davidson are looking down into a cesspool and think they see dirtied reflections of themselves. No, they are looking at a cesspool.

Let's start with Prof. Krugman who says that conservatives have a moral code different from liberals. Well, he is correct only in the sense that nothing is different from something. Morality requires thought. An ability to evaluate different ideas. Training a dog to behave politely -- to sit on command, come when called, and walk without tugging at the leash -- does not make the dog moral. It just makes the dog behave as its master chooses. The same dog could next be trained to snarl, bark, and bite, and would do so without contemplating moral distinctions between the two types of behavior. So goes American conservatism.

Davidson also assumes too much. Have you ever talked to Tea Partiers? They are indiscriminate ignoramuses unable to answer the simplest questions about their beliefs. Remember, they are the same people who are frightened of government involvement in Medicare and Social Security. The same people who can't understand that investing excess Social Security funds in government securities is good and reasonable. Self-righteous patriots who enthusiastically support our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but can find neither country on a map. Think of all those polls showing American's staggering lack of knowledge about history, science, politics and geography. The worst of the worst, the most ignorant of the ignorant, are the conservative base.

For years they have tried to make legitimate their gun fetishism by shouting "Second amendment. Second amendment." Knowing one-half of one tenth of the Bill of Rights is not constitutional scholarship. Nor is expanding their parroted phrase list to include "original intent." These are people who are wrong by a full century when asked to put the Civil War on a time line. People who confuse the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution. People who can't name the three branches of federal government, and can't explain how the US government differs from that of Britain. Michele Bachmann -- congresswoman, Tea Party call girl, and Presidential aspirant -- goes deep stupid when talking about slavery's legal history.

The right wingers can't tell the difference between intellectual conversation and speaking in tongues. Enough.

Madness

Yo, Republicans!

This is one of yours, not one of ours. He is a registered Republican. He really believes the right wing blather about returning to the gold standard and government mind control and self-protection through grammatical absurdities.

Forget all the pundits debating vitriolic talk, climates of hatred, and nudge-nudge wink-wink incitements to violence. We must instead realize that ideology built entirely of lies and cruelty can succeed only by attracting this guy and thousands like him. Who else is going to buy that crap? Who else can be goaded into sputtering apoplectic rage about a heath care law that guarantees insurance coverage to children despite pre-existing conditions, allows parents to keep their children insured until they are 26, and repairs the "doughnut hole" in Medicare drug payments? For crying out loud, the designated hitter rule is more controversial. Except to this guy and his Play-Doh-brained ilk.