Top-Feeders

A comment I just read over at Greg Sargent’s Plumline Blog (Washington Post) made the suggestion that the blue-collar demographic is sliding towards Obama and away from the GOP because they increasingly perceive the GOP as “bottom feeders”.

Now, it’s always fun to use that particular derogation against those one doesn’t think much of but in this particular case I think it not merely an imprecise metaphor but one that points in exactly the wrong direction. Though I’m quite messing up the metaphor, I think we’d be much closer to the truth of things if we went with “top feeders” instead. Let me explain.

The most fundamental narrative theme used by the right to describe Obama has been that he is “the other” – black, Kenyan, professorial, ivory tower, arrogant, Harvard, doesn’t love America, socialist, etc etc. This isn’t merely or even mainly a consequence of his race because it is the same strategy used with some variations all the time (Kerry, Gore, Pelosi). Race is just one aspect which can be and has been used (Limbaugh, notably) to make citizens think Obama isn’t like them, doesn’t understand them, and doesn’t care about them. Nothing unusual in the GOP trying to paint Dem candidates as snooty elitists and their own candidates as truck-drivin’, plaid shirt and bluejean-wearin’ regular folks. That’s boilerplate. Parasitic elite versus hard-working and victimized Joe Regular.

Take the marketing of Dubya. They even went so far as to buy a frigging ranch for backdrop (parodied wonderfully here… http://bit.ly/wDNFII ) which when he left office was replaced with a house in the snooty, rich-guy part of Dallas where he lives now. They knew his real life and real “top feeder” social position was exactly what they had to avoid in getting voters to identify with him.

Which gets us to Romney v Obama.

Particularly now, where almost all citizens are hurting financially while a few at the top are rolling in it even while many up there contributed to this economic disaster (and often helped it along for their own gains) Mitt Romney is just about the worst character the GOP could advance as a “voice of the regular guy”. Everybody knows that’s baloney cut an inch thick. And he’s not helped by being such a social maladroit who cannot help but portray himself as Richie Rich – born into great wealth and power, lived a life in social circles of others like himself, really NOT aware of nor familiar with the circumstances of almost everyones’ real lives.

By comparison and contrast, Obama’s life and values are really far closer to that of almost all Americans and we get that intuitively. Add in Obama’s naturalness with people, his humor and friendliness, his dedication to his kids and family and you’ve set the stage for the blue collar demographic to swing away from the GOP and towards the Dems in November.

To put this in a more concise manner, who and what almost all Americans are beginning to understand they need to reject is the continuing abuse of their life situations and opportunities by the top-feeders.

Michael Gerson on Newt

Washington Post columnist and former Bush speechwriter, Michael Gerson, who really doesn’t want Newt to stand astride right wing continents, is getting downright nasty. Here’s his opening sentence this morning…

“The epochs of Newt Gingrich’s public life are defined by the books that have revolutionized him — generally of the type that sell well at airports. “

Actually, I think that might be the best line I’ve read from Gerson, combining the delicious malice of, say, a Hunter S. Thompson and the intellectual elitist snootiness of, say, a Michael Gerson.

Now, he’s right, of course. No arguing that. The airport bookshelf is barely a step up from supermarket-checkout offerings – those dismaying racks of gold fonts and motivational-shyster smiles…Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Herman Cain, Sean Hannity. Ann Coulter, Paul Gigot. “Hurry past these strange nightmares!!” something inside us cries out.

And Gerson is right too on the matter of Sharia and this modern instance of the paranoid style of American politics and pathological theologies. So, tip of the hat, Michael.

But most of all, I want to celebrate Michael’s final line, a fitting bracket for his first…

“But those views demonstrate a disturbing tendency: the passionate embrace of shallow ideas.”

Yes! And the important discernment – indeed the critical discernment – that Michael makes here is identifying how, within the modern conservative movement that Michael has done his part to create and forward, Gingrich stands unique in the embrace of shallow ideas.

Treat yourself to Michael’s column here… http://wapo.st/s8DyAL

(ps… that’s for you John, in case you peek in)

Graphic Greed

http://bit.ly/nZX7mS

The tragic tale of oppressed billionaires

Glenn Greenwald has a must-read piece on Continetti’s apologia thingy to the Koch brothers in the Weekly Standard regarding how influential billionaires are being cruelly victimized by bloggers and the like. It’s a tragic tale. http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2011/03/27/koch/index.html

And Benen quotes Charles Koch and comments…

“”His father was a hard core economic socialist in Kenya… So he had sort of antibusiness, anti-free enterprise influences affecting him almost all his life. It just shows you what a person with a silver tongue can achieve.” 

Now, Koch’s vast wealth proves that one need not be intelligent to get rich, but remarks like these are still just embarrassing.” http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2011_03/028649.php

Not merely embarrassing in getting details wrong, I’d point out. Consider the stunning lack of self-awareness here. Obama is profoundly influenced by a father who was absent and played almost zero part in Obama’s life. On the other hand, the Koch boys who were raised by and gained their millionaire to billionaire fortunes from a co-founder of the John Birch Society, that’s invisible to the dork.

Wikileaks

Here’s a very good primer on the Wikileaks project.

Assange is in the cross-hairs of a lot of very large and powerful entities including various governments and corporate interests. In fact, it is difficult to think of a precedent case of so much activity from so many quarters bent on suppressing or destroying a publishing enterprise (which is what Wikileaks is, of course). The reason that Assange and Wikileaks have gained such an unprecedented level of attack is because they pose a profound threat to existing power structures in the world. Watch and, I would ask of you if you think this important, to pass it on to as many others as you can.

The Future, maybe.

The following Mitch McConnell quote has been much discussed and I’d like to add a thought on it…

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”

That’s honest, as everyone acknowledges.  We can even presume that this intention is founded not on a blind and unthinking need to hold power but on a belief that a liberal President will inevitably fail the country.  If that’s correct statement of belief, and everything suggests it is, then another way to say the thing would be:

“Our primary duty is to ensure that liberalism is kept out of power”

Two observations can be made from this.  First, “liberalism” has replaced the prior “destructive and un-American other” Manichean pole which was held by “communism”.

The second observation, or prediction, would be that once these Republicans (who hold this belief or ideology) do regain the WH, the single most important thing they will wish to achieve is the elimination of instances of liberalism in government which are, per the ideology, the necessary causes of things wrong in the nation.  An immediately subsidiary goal will be to prevent the possibility of future instances of any liberal President regaining power or of liberals having power in the other branches of government.

It should be clear that this ideological stance leads straight to one permissable ideology of government and one-party-rule.

Feathered thing

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Without Feathers – Tomasky version

Mike Tomasky writes for The Guardian and maintains an excellent blog there. And any readers familiar with the New York Review of Books will have come across his dependably bright, tempered and well-written essays on the US political world.

On his blog today, he responds to a question put to him in the comments section. The question and answer in full  (I’ll comment later):

Commenter ravcasleygera (are you new? welcome) asked me on the last thread:

Just out of interest, Michael: do you ever actually think, ‘I give up?’ Have their been moments in this spectacularly depressing period since about six months into the Obama presidency where you have just thought: ‘American democracy is broken beyond repair?’, or, ‘the slow dismantling of the state is unavoidable?’

I’m not being facetious, I just genuinely wonder. People seemed so convinced the 2006-8 results meant some sort of leftward swing, the end of the Reagan era…. now that energy seems to have been replaced by libertarianism, of all things? Do you think it’s hopeless? Do others?

Well, no, I don’t give up. But my darkest fear goes something like this. Historically speaking, the conservative movement started in the late 1950s. It took a long time but it seized real power in 1980. Results were mixed, it retreated for a bit (Clinton), then roared back to power in 2000.

Living these events in real time, the general view of them, I think, has been, well, those were their two best shots, and now they’re bound to lose steam. You didn’t have to think that the 2008 election signaled a liberal renaissance (and I did not) to think that a 50-year old movement that hadn’t produced a truly new idea in a long time was running out of gas.

But now I think: taking the longer historical view, it may well be that the Reagan and Dubya years were just warm-up acts, and that the conservative movement has yet to behold its triumph. The amount of money corporate titans can now pump into politics, the level of activism, the utter inability of the media to call lies lies, the weakness of the Democrats…we may be in for a 40-year descent, until there is no Social Security and there are no environmental regulations and so on and so on, and it’ll take a couple of generations for Americans to see the grim effects of that kind of country and decide that pension security and regulation weren’t such horrible ideas after all, and America will have to spend 20 years, from about 2050 to 2070, rebuilding an apparatus of state that was built a century before but dismantled. Worst of all, of course, is that according to the actuarial tables, I will die during the descent.

As with Tiny Tim’s empty chair in the corner, it doesn’t have to be this way. But it might. I’m answering the question ravcasleygera asked.

Without Feathers

It is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how the US is going to avoid further decline, both economically and politically. The gears of governance are being jammed and corrupted, quite purposefully and often quite explicitly, by those who stand to gain in wealth and power from the negation of the institutions which have been constructed for the precise purpose of preventing such isolated and undemocratic accretions of wealth and power as these people now have and wish to increase.

Anyone detached from the mythologies which presume that America will, axiomatically – as a consequence of the perfection and magic of its constitution or as a consequence of God’s discriminating grace or because of some fount of ‘common sense’ – be exempt from frightening internal turmoil or degradation into serious and widespread poverty (or both of those along with oppressive police-state controls which modern technology might so easily facilitate)  can’t be at ease with what we are witnessing.

My argument is not that these things will happen but rather that they could. And that such possibilities are nearer than most suppose.

Over the next while (though time is scarce) I will try to lay out why I’ve come to such a negative perspective here. Can we grant right off the top that I may well have some of this wrong?

Art. I know it when I see it.

h/t crooks and liars

Thank you, Ma’am

GA Woman To State Judiciary Committee: DoD Implanted A Microchip Inside Me

You debate an odd bill, you hear some odd testimony. But this…

The Georgia House Judiciary Committee took up a bill last week that would “prohibit requiring a person to be implanted with a microchip,” and would make violating the ban a misdemeanor. According to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, one exchange from the hearing could have been ripped right from Dr. Strangelove.

The Journal-Constitution reports that things started getting weird when a woman who described herself as a resident of DeKalb County told the committee: “I’m also one of the people in Georgia who has a microchip.” Apparently no lawmaker took this as a warning sign, and she was allowed to continue her testimony.

“Microchips are like little beepers,” the woman told the committee. “Just imagine, if you will, having a beeper in your rectum or genital area, the most sensitive area of your body. And your beeper numbers displayed on billboards throughout the city. All done without your permission.”

“Ma’am, did you say you have a microchip?” state Rep. Tom Weldon (R) asked the woman.

“Yes, I do. This microchip was put in my vaginal-rectum area,” she replied.

No one laughed. State Rep. Wendell Willard (R), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, asked her who had implanted the chip.

“The Department of Defense,” she said.

Willard thanked the woman for her input, and the committee later approved the bill.

Technical term for this device, we presume, is “the Sprite”.

Ill Fares The Land

This is from Tony Judt, a regular contributor to the NYRB, one of the smartest people around and an excellent writer. This is highly recommended.

Something is profoundly wrong with the way we live today. For thirty years we have made a virtue out of the pursuit of material self-interest: indeed, this very pursuit now constitutes whatever remains of our sense of collective purpose. We know what things cost but have no idea what they are worth. We no longer ask of a judicial ruling or a legislative act: Is it good? Is it fair? Is it just? Is it right? Will it help bring about a better society or a better world? Those used to be the political questions, even if they invited no easy answers. We must learn once again to pose them.

The materialistic and selfish quality of contemporary life is not inherent in the human condition. Much of what appears “natural” today dates from the 1980s: the obsession with wealth creation, the cult of privatization and the private sector, the growing disparities of rich and poor. And above all, the rhetoric that accompanies these: uncritical admiration for unfettered markets, disdain for the public sector, the delusion of endless growth.

full piece here

Duets

Regardless of all the rest of the cases, there are those instances where a male and female doing a song together just really works magically.  Here’s two.  The second has no visual but that will be easy to ignore.  Both real gems.

The changing times. Or not.

Here’s an interesting comparison of pro-labor posters from 1923 and now.

labor posters

These images are quite rich, really.  The main trope in both is also the same one that Reagan famously used with his “I’t s anew dawn in America!” slogan.  The rolled-up shirt sleeves is typically used by multi-millionaire politicians like Bush Jr. to hopefully draw parallels to da woikers .  And Brownie, of Katrina-failure fame, as he was about to give a televised interview in the midst of that crisis, was advised by the PR people doing the filming to roll his sleeves up for the sake of this imagery.

But an interesting difference here is where the dawn is rising – the city in the first and anywhere-but-the-city-please in the second.

h/t Andrew Sullivan

Addendum: Notice the differing scale of the humans and backgrounds.   The first figure is imposing over the background.  If this guy doesn’t end up doing something heroic, he’ll think himself to have failed (though his wife will forgive him).  The second fellow seems to be hoping that he might be able to turn things around with his new career in real estate sales.  And that second graphic looks rather like a brochure from a bank, don’t you think?  Whereas the first poster is THE visual representation you’d never find on a bank wall.

Michelle Bachmann, the Pink Elephant

Sarah Palin, in her joint appearance with Michelle Bachmann at a big fundraiser/cross-burning shindig in Minnesota, said…

“I knew we would be buddies when I met her [in Alaska] and she said that we should ‘drill here, drill now.’ And I replied, ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ And we both said, ‘You betcha.”

She also said…

“Someone had better tell Washington that that pink elephant is on the move, and Michele is leading the stampede,”

Let’s pull all this another way. This world we’ve woken up to here in modern America is too much like the one portrayed below…

It really is quite an extraordinary bit of animation and music composition to match the visual portrayal/subject, isn’t it?   (h/t Balloon Juice)

Not sure how to think about all this

Babe Ruth and George Bush senior in a photo taken the year I was born

I’d thought that by now I’d have built a railroad.  Or a time machine.

Teabonics

One of very many examples of the emerging lingua patriotica (see here)

But a tip of the hat to this famous earlier example which does set a very high standard…

The Very Thing

Why the seeming impossible is

This was carried in Ha’aretz yesterday. Israeli peace group, Peace Now, translates an interview in Israel’s Yedioth Aranoth with Moshe Ya’along, Israeli Vice PM and Minister for Strategic Affairs:

Gestures, statements, negotiations—nothing will come of it in the end. That is the bottom line as far as Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe (Bogi) Yaalon is concerned. The former Mapainik, who has become a right-wing marker in the government, looks at the lame efforts to resume the negotiations with the Palestinians and at the gestures made by Prime Minister Netanyahu—from the announcement of the two-state solution to the decision to freeze construction in the settlements—and suggests that we not become confused. It is all maneuvers. “And I say so out of knowledge,” Bogi says. “Nobody in the forum of seven thinks that we can reach an agreement with the Palestinians.”

Q. So why all these games of make-believe negotiations? It’s possible to announce that we will not reach an agreement, and that is all.

“Because in the political establishment there are pressures. Peace Now from within and other elements from without. So you have to maneuver. But what I’m saying now has to be given over to the Americans, and I hope that they will understand.
“Some of what we have to do is maneuver with the American administration and the European establishment, which are also nourished by Israeli elements, which create the illusion that an agreement can be reached. If the leader of the opposition gets up on stage and says that she is in favor of peace, unlike the prime minister who is against peace, then honestly. Come off it.”

Hold Your Plums

Take a few moments and listen to this episode of Britain’s Hold Your Plums/