Kavanuts

The title of one opinion piece is, "How We Know Kavanaugh Is Lying."  I don't bother to read more than the lede because the answer is obvious: his mouth is open.

Republicans are standing by their man.  They set out to find a SCOTUS justice who will overturn Roe, protect Trump from investigation, and destroy workers' rights.  No way they were surprised when a pig applied for the job.  Who else would appear?  Bill Kunstler? It was also a given that the pig would show up carrying pig baggage.  A bit inconvenient, but not surprising.  He is, after all, a pig.  It was just another week for the Republican PR machine. 

If the Senate votes Kavanaugh down, then the Republicans will nominate Kavanaugh 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0.  Hundreds, maybe thousands, of them are waiting for the call.  And, somewhere a factory manufactures even more soul-less, Kavanauvian droids and programs them to protect the wealthy by riling the rubes. Think of the truck loads of pods in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." 

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. 

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.

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

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.

Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong again

Every response to every conservative comment must begin with a list of right wing failures. The Republicans got it wrong about the economy, wrong about deregulation, wrong about Iraq, wrong about torture, wrong about taxes, wrong about civil rights, wrong about global warming, wrong about Medicare, wrong about Social Security, and wrong about the environment. Why listen to them now? Why give them air time? Why imply any credibility?

Dick Cheney is a chronic liar. Nothing he says can be trusted. Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel at McClatchy describe some of his recent lies here. Yet, Cheney goes unchallenged in interview after interview. Why?