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.

Screeching Liberal

Charles, Charles, Charles. What did I do to deserve such treatment?

The far left is foaming at the mouth.

The near-apoplectic level of agita within the liberal screeching class over President Obama’s tax-cut compromise has exposed a seismic crack in the Democratic monolith — outspoken liberal Democrats on one side and barely audible moderate Democrats on the other.

Screeching Liberal. Wow! Driftglass and Blue Gal had it easy. "Professional Left" could be co-opted proudly. Lucky them. But, Charles, you really did it. Screeching liberal is such a put down. No turnaround is possible. My tonsils hurt from just reading the label. Imagine what will happen when I watch YouTube clips of Bernie Sanders mini-filibuster while shouting, "Screeching liberal. SCREECHING LIBERAL. SCREECHING GODDAMN LIBERAL."

I don't know if I can keep going for all 8 1/2 hours. No matter. The first 13 minutes shown here should get me good and hoarse. Hell, Big Brother only required two minutes a day.


Then, maybe, I could have a meaningful, but whispered, conversation with one of Charles Blow's moderate Democrats. We could pop a couple of brewskies. Sure would be good for my sore throat. I would even be willing to reach across the class divide and drink a Bud Light instead of one of my usual bicoastal, effete snob beers like Ol' Liberal or Screeching Pale Ale or DFH Porter. It would be a two-guy beer summit. And, we could watch Bernie Sanders Senate speech together. It would be fun. We could laugh at his ethnic Brooklyn accent. We could speculate about his need to pee, or wonder what would happen if he let go of the lectern. And, we might just listen the words. And I would ask the barely audible moderate Democrat if he disagreed with the Senator on anything. If he thought it at all reasonable to maintain -- or increase -- the economic divide. Or, how much he would give up so that Sam Walton's family could inherit all of Mr. Sam's money. And, I would ask him to point out the un-American radicals: are they the people who think like Bernie Sanders, or people who support the Republican agenda.

As to Charles Blow, I remind him that screeching liberals have watched the right-wing lie machine grow for 30 years. We have watched real wages in America decline. The middle class hung on by its fingertips. For a while, the shift to two-wage-earner families kept the wolf at bay. Then, the middle class went into debt by extracting the ever-increasing value of their homes to pay monthly bills or send kids to college. All the while, conservatives promised that reducing taxes on the wealthy would benefit everyone. The economy would grow. More jobs would be available. Thirty years of lies. American productivity increased. Nearly all of the gain was extracted as business profits. Almost none was returned to employees. People worked longer hours for less money.

Every careful study showed that Reagan and his ilk were wrong. Cutting taxes for the wealthy benefits only the wealthy. The money is not re-invested. It is saved. The national debt increases; the middle class falls further behind.

Speaking this truth to power -- including to the President of the United States no matter his political circumstance -- is fully justified. I offer this example from Martin Luther King, jr's, letter from Birmingham jail in 1963.

One of the basic points in your statement is that the action that I and my associates have taken in Birmingham is untimely. Some have asked: "Why didn't you give the new city administration time to act?" The only answer that I can give to this query is that the new Birmingham administration must be prodded about as much as the outgoing one, before it will act. We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor. will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of civil rights. My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.

Where are the Clergy?

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