The GOP Debates: That's Entertainment

Yesterday, some 16 months before the next presidential election, the Republicans launched the first in a l-o-o-n-g series of candidate debates.  Four hours later, the second one took place.

Photo credit:  John Minchillo/AP

Because there are 17--count 'em--17 candidates already, Fox "News",the organizers of the event, decided to split the contenders into two debates.  The first one, at 5 PM EST, is being politely called "the Happy Hour" debate.  Others outside the media are calling it "the Children's Table" debate or "the Losers" debate, since the seven who polled last were relegated to a single hour in the middle of the day on a stage facing an auditorium filled with empty seats.  (They couldn't afford to hire audience members?  They couldn't use canned applause?  They couldn't at least keep the cameras from recording the sorry spectacle of a huge room devoid of real people?)

But the seven underlings gamely assembled on stage to make their case for being accepted as likely prospects for the highest office in the land: Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, and some guy named Gilmore, who apparently was or is a governor of some state.  They were the warm-up act for the Big Boys Show but you wouldn't know it by watching them.  Each of the seven, bless their hearts, answered the questions as if this were a serious audition for a real part.

They all agreed that Planned Parenthood was evil and those videos, to the rest of us so clearly doctored to put PP in a bad light, proved it.  Continued government funding of that odious organization is reason enough to, yes, shut down the government!  (Jindal, Fiorina, everyone else.)

The consensus seems to be that Carly Fiorina won the first but least debate and it must be so:  She was the first to diss Hillary and say the magic word, "Benghazi".

Lindsey Graham attacked the attacks on the unborn and then went on to suggest that, if he becomes president, the already born should be prepared to serve his cause in a war of his making, even to the point of losing their, um, lives.

George Pataki says the PP tapes show "a hideous disrespect for life" but he's okay with Roe v. Wade.

(Staying with the sex theme, in the second debate Kasich drew gasps when he said some of his best friends are gay, and if his daughter said "she was one", he'd be okay with that.)

Rick Santorum wants to cut welfare and social programs and stick with the proven:  Trickle down.

If the Gilmore guy said anything, I missed it.  Sorry.

So 9 PM rolled around and the main event began.  All I can say is:  Donald Trump.  He stole the show.  First thing, he was the only one on stage who wouldn't pledge not to run as an Independent if he didn't win.  If he should win the primary, he said warmly, he would definitely run as a Republican, but if he doesn't win, he said coldly, all bets are off.  (The audience booed, but never mind--later on, when Megyn Kelly went after him over his piggish comments about women (see below), he had them at "Rosie O'Donnell".

I so wanted to hear his answer to "If God speaks to you, what does he say?",  but before it got to him, that line of questioning morphed, oddly, into the Democrats and the VA and their terrible treatment of patients.   (No mention of the terrible treatment of the military when Republicans push for more boots on the ground while under-funding necessary , life-enhancing veterans programs.)

Marco Rubio used his last few moments to sincerely say God has blessed the Republicans with candidates while the Dems can't even find one.

The night was big and there were a lot of words. Trump and Paul nearly got into a hair-pulling fight a couple of times.  Huckabee and Cruz, as comics go, were second bananas to Trump.  Jeb Bush was there.  They all agreed that their goal was to do in the Democrats and eliminate every single program or policy put in place during Obama's eight years. (Which should have sounded scary but didn't for some reason.)

But clear winners?  You're asking the wrong person.  I'm a Democrat; they're Republicans.  I don't care.  I only came for the laughs.

More on the show:

From Vanity Fair,  The 14 Wildest Moments.

Trump says of course he won the debate!

National Memo calls it The Debate The Republicans Deserved.

What Megyn Kelly said to Trump.  What Trump said to Megyn Kelly.  Priceless.


(Also seen at Dagblog and Liberaland.)

Sarah Palin: Out. Carly Fiorina: In

In 2007, the story goes, Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol and a few GOP movers and shakers went on a cruise to Alaska  and met a certain Sarah Palin, then-governor of that great state.  It's safe to say she knocked Kristol's socks off (and his head cockeyed, though he didn't know it at the time).

The word is that Kristol fell head over heels--as much as a Republican operative can--for the sassy, smart-assy former cheerleader and did a little cheer-leading of his own.  This woman, he told anyone who would listen, will be the next Vice President of the United States!  It seemed a simple matter (maybe not to you and me. . .) and somehow they convinced John McCain, the then-presidential candidate, that if a woman would be a good choice, this woman would be spectacular!

And so it went.  McCain didn't become president and Palin didn't become vice-president, but that didn't mean Sarah Palin would just fade away.  No, indeedy.  She's still around, still giving rah-rah speeches, still going for the anti-liberal, anti-Obama laughs.  But nobody is looking to her to be the first female to sit behind the Oval Office desk.  Not anymore.  She has a semi-permanent role as the gal who dishes the diss and keeps 'em rolling in the aisles.  She never wanted to be a politician anyway.  No big bucks in it and besides that, it's work!  (For further discussion, see Game Change.)

For several years post-Palin, there were no other GOP women who showed even the slightest interest in running the country. Then along comes Carly Fiorina, with no political experience save for a couple of CPAC appearances, and it's look out, Hillary!

Carly's best CPAC line about the former U.S Secretary of State:

"Like Hillary Clinton, I too have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles around the globe, but unlike her, I have actually accomplished something. Mrs. Clinton, flying is not an accomplishment, it’s an activity. I have met Vladimir Putin and know that it will take more to halt his ambitions than a gimmicky red ‘Reset’ button."

I love watching Carly Fiorina put on her haughty face, purse her lemony lips and smile her regal smile.  I love the "air quotes" thing.  I love it when she uses her I-mean-business voice to tell us why she would make the best president of the United States of Corporate America.

 Carly has given a lot of thought to what works best when a woman goes after the highest job in the land.  First of all, forget she's a woman.  Well, not totally.  It would be cool to be the first woman president!  If you must, think tough hard-knocks broad who can slam-bang with the best of them.Take no prisoners!  Get it done!  Enough with those liberals!  They'll be the ruination of us all! (Carly to her cohorts:  Honestly, don't they want us to own this country?)

Consider her thoughts on the California drought crisis:

Carly Fiorina, former Hewlett Packard CEO, failed 2010 GOP nominee for U.S. Senate, and friend of the fossil fuel industry. . .who is considering a presidential bid, told Glenn Beck that the California drought is a “man-made disaster.” And by man-made she means it has been caused by “liberal environmentalists” who have prevented the state from building the appropriate reservoirs and other water infrastructure.

“In California, fish and frogs and flies are really important,” she said. ” … California is a classic case of liberals being willing to sacrifice other people’s lives and livelihoods at the altar of their ideology.”

Says the same presidential candidate who called off-shoring "right-shoring"; the same candidate who bragged about moving parts of Hewlett-Packard out of the country in order to avoid having to pay high taxes here; the same candidate who micromanaged the lay-offs of some 30,000 workers, sending most of their jobs overseas, labeling the move "streamlining".  The same candidate who was fired from said job for questionable practices and for losing the company, and thus the stockholders, tons of money.  ("Not so," says Carly.  But who you gonna trust?)

Carly is all business.  She sees that as a good thing.  Our political system is too full of politicians, she says.  What we need is a female president who understands management, who understands technology.  Carly says she does. (She's against net neutrality--something 80% of Americans are for.) What we need, she says, is a female president who isn't Hillary Clinton.  Don't get Carly wrong; Hillary has given her life to her work. She's just. . .

Ready?

  "Hillary Clinton must not be president of the United States, but not because she's a woman. Hillary Clinton must not be president of the United States because she is not trustworthy."

Benghazi!

Oh.

But, aside from building businesses by quashing government interference, what does Carly have in mind for her presidency, should she, um, win?  I think she's probably pretty smart.  (That's a plus when you want to be president, but it's not a qualification written in stone.) I'm pretty sure she knows she won't just be the CEO of a company, she'll be the CEO of the whole damn United States.  Of America.  That's--count 'em--50 states.  Big ones.  Lots of people. 

She must have thought beyond just being the anti-Hillary, as she's depicted (and as she no doubt relishes), but has she thought beyond being the CEO? There is a whole contingency (almost everybody) who think Carly made a lousy CEO while at HP, but Carly isn't one of them.

In her announcement video, she makes no mention of her qualifications (showing she has a sweet side), and to her credit she left out the Demon Sheep. (She lost to California Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010--by 10 points--thereby giving rise to the notion that it might take more than a phony red-eyed sheep to pull the wool over some peoples' eyes.)  But Carly thought the sheep ad was a good one.  "Some people thought it was funny," she said.

Well,  yeah, we all thought it was funny.  But was it wise?

But never mind. Carly says it might have looked like she lost big time but, in fact, she only slightly lost because in the primaries she outshone every other GOP hopeful.  She won the primary.  She WON.  The primary.)

Despite the high marks she gives herself, Carly Fiorina will not be the next president of the United States.  Carly knows that as well as I do, but what I'm seeing from Carly is a much bigger ambition:  She really, truly wants to knock that ditzy Sarah Palin off her high horse, climb onto that bejeweled saddle, and be The Witty Smart Spokeswoman for The New GOP.

Good luck with that, Carly.  But hang around for awhile, won't you, honey?  Strictly for laughs, of course.  You make it hard for us to take you seriously.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog, Liberaland, and FreakOutNation. Featured at Crooks and Liars MBRU)

No Excuses: Angry Thugs and Looters are Still Thugs and Looters

I know you might hate this, but I'm going to do it anyway.  I'm going to write this as a mother, as a grandmother, as a card-carrying citizen of the United States, as a goddamned human being.

I'm white, but if you dare hold that against me you're no better than those who hold color against anyone.  We're going to talk about those stupid vandals who rampaged through their own Baltimore neighborhood the night before last, looting, burning, destroying nearly everything in sight.  They were black kids and they used the funeral of a young black man as an excuse to raise so much hell we'll be adding Baltimore once again to the list of the worst riots in the U.S.

So far, as of this writing, there have been no reported deaths--thank the light above for small favors.  But vicious, creepy thugs willfully savaged an entire neighborhood, and I submit the only thing poor Freddie Gray's funeral had to do with it was opportunity.  It was their big chance to blaze their way in, using righteous protest as a flimsy excuse to riot.

Rumor has it that they were mainly teenagers, that they used social media to get the word out, that a movie fueled their fervor for vengeance.  There are reports that the police themselves showed up at the school campus in riot gear and wouldn't let the kids get to their buses to go home.  They went to the neighborhood instead.

Some of the people who have lived through the cop-on-black violence in West Baltimore abhorred the rioting but tried to find ways to explain it beyond simple vandalism.  TaNehisi Coates knows the area and the police activities well.  He writes:

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

 But it wasn't just the police and the politicians pleading for nonviolence.  Freddie Gray's family begged for it.  The preachers in the community prayed for it.  Neighborhood families hoped against hope for it.

If the thugs had stuck with setting police cars afire, with throwing bricks at police officers, I might have understood, but still not condoned, that kind of disrespect.  They see the police as the enemy. But they didn't stop there.  They didn't even start there.  Their intent was to riot.  To disrespect the community.

 For 48 hours, since the riot began, we've heard non-stop talk about the reasons why.  I won't go into all of them, except to say that the Baltimore police are known pigs who seem to thrive on punishing black people, and Freddie Gray, the young man who didn't deserve to die at their hands, did die at their hands.  Horribly.  They broke his spine, curled him up into a ball and stuffed him into their paddy wagon.  They ignored his need for immediate medical care. He died in their care and nobody but him has so far paid the price.

If I lived in that neighborhood and knew what I knew about the police and about this case and about the hundreds of other cases where justice was as cruelly denied, I would want someone's hide.  Not literally, of course, but I would want retribution.  I would want somebody to pay.  I would protest.  Loudly.  I would not shut up.  I would be just like the thousands of people in that neighborhood who finally have had enough and want something done now. But I, along with those thousands of others, would have respected Freddie Gray's grieving family enough to grant their wish for peaceful protest.

Freddie Gray's funeral sparked the riots, even though his parents and his twin sister begged for peace.  Begged for it.  Said it out loud many times:  "Please.  No violence.  Please."

But within hours of Freddie's funeral the mourners' remembrances of the slain young man took a back seat to the nightmarish witnessing of a full-blown incendiary riot.

The rioters (do not call them protesters) busted out windows and doors of small businesses, made off with the goods inside, and looted and vandalized a CVS drug store.  They commandeered a police car, severely injured the occupants, and set the car on fire. They rampaged through a liquor store and a check-cashing store. The CVS went up in flames. More cars burned. Then more buildings. Through the night, fires roared.

And--get this--when the fire truck arrived to put out the fires in this neighborhood where families live, one of the punks pulled out a knife and spiked the hose. Twice. The water meant to put out the fire spewed like a swell fountain into the air, far from its directed target.  I'm guessing the punks around him thought it was pretty cool, too.  Nobody--I mean nobody--said, "Uh, not the fire hoses, idiot."

Yesterday the community came together to clean up their streets.  Mothers, fathers, small children.  The elders.  They're trying to put their lives back together again. They're heartbroken.  They're ashamed.  They're angry.  They know how this will look.  NBC news correspondent Rehema Elllis reported that she saw women standing in front of the burned-out CVS store weeping--weeping--because they spent years trying to get a pharmacy to put down roots in their neighborhood. What are the odds that CVS--or any pharmacy--will build there again?

This is the harm that riots do.  Riots aren't protests. There is no good outcome from riots.  They're remembered into eternity as the crazed response to a bad situation, and when it happens in a black community it's the black community that has to answer for it.  The thugs, the vandals, the looters need to get that message.  Making excuses for their criminal behavior doesn't just let them off the hook, it gives them license to keep their destructive anger alive.

Toya Graham, the mother who whupped her son in front of the cameras yesterday to keep him from joining the looters showed us the way well-placed anger wins the day. Her raw desperation, hard as it is to watch, is about as heroic as it gets.

"'That's my only son and at the end of the day I don't want him to be a Freddie Gray'. . .

 'Graham says after she got her son home they both watched news coverage of the demonstrations and riots on television. As images of her reaction started to go viral, Graham says comments started appearing on her son's Facebook page, many in support of her.

'Friends and everybody making comments and saying you know, you shouldn't be mad at your mother, you should give her a hug,' said Graham.  [She] hopes the incident will serve as a teachable moment for her son."

Thugs will be thugs and to hell with them.  They almost destroyed this community.  Almost.  But the beauty of it, if there is such a thing, is that the people who live there aren't about to let them.  If something positive finally gets done in the community of West Baltimore, don't thank the rioters, thank the people in the neighborhoods who, in spite of the destruction, choose to rise from the ashes and work to build anew.

Addendum 4/30/15.  Since I published this yesterday I'm getting all kinds of flak about the use of the word "thug".  Yes, I must be living in a cave because I had no idea that word was now seen as some sort of code word for "black".  "Thug" is a word that has been around for over a century and is used appropriately to describe troublemakers.  There has never been a hint of color attached to it that I know of, and it's not my intent--or the President's, I'm sure--to offend anybody but the looters.

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Liberaland.  Featured on Crooks and Liars MBRU))

We Need Paid Sick Leave Because Workers Are Humans First

There's a fuss going on in Michigan over whether the state should mandate paid sick leave for all workers.  It's the Democrats who are proposing it but the Republicans dominate the government, so at this point it's not a question of winning the issue, it's a question of how far their bill gets before it fails.  (The sad backstory:  This same bill was first introduced in 2012.  The Republicans made sure it didn't get to committee for consideration. It was reintroduced in 2013.  Same story.  Now, in 2015, the Dems, bless their hearts, are trying again.)

I'm a pessimist when it comes to the Republican mode of governing anything, but I'm also a realist.  The Republicans (and, to be fair, some Democrats) will always come down on the side of business whenever the issue of worker equity comes up.  That's because business is where the money lies and money begets power. It's the climate we're in until we decide on climate change.

Source:  Wikimedia Commons

The quick statistics are these:  Just under half of all workers in Michigan now have to take sick days without pay.  The new law, if passed, would affect more than a million workers, both full and part time.  The Democratic bill about to be introduced in both the Michigan Senate and the House "would require  employers to offer one hour of sick leave for every 30 hours a person works. For somebody working 40 hours a week, that would equate to 69.3 hours or 8.7 standard eight-hour work days of sick leave per year. It would apply to both part-time and full-time employees."

We're talking, at best, about nine paid sick days a year. One nasty bout of flu could take up half of them.  It's not an outrageous proposal. 

The Republicans saw this coming and came up with an answer to the bill--the House Republican Action Plan.  The first order of business, following the governor's "relentless positive action" ( their words, not mine) is to kill the state's prevailing wage law.  (I admit I'm shocked this law is still in effect.  It guarantees certain workers the same wages and benefits as their union counterparts. I can't imagine how it was overlooked when Michigan became a Right-to-Work state, but never mind:  They've caught it now.) 

Their second O of B was to address paid sick days/leave:

Eliminating Local Ordinances That Hinder Job Creation:  Municipal ordinances governing wages and benefits known as "sick pay ordinances" institute rules and regulations on local employers in providing sick pay to their employees.  Many job providers are fearful such local actions hinder job creation.  Legislative efforts will be taken to ensure local ordinances are not more restrictive than state standard. 

So the state, as if there isn't enough to do, is now taking on the task of eliminating any local job ordinances that don't fit their idea of "none is good".   If, let's say, Solidarity City decides to consider the fact that most employees are human beings and not machines and comes up with a plan where those human beings can't be penalized for having messy lives that might require their being at home instead of at work, that's a good thing, right?  We're all for home and families, right?

As might be expected, business owners are lining up behind the Republicans, expressing their outrage at such a blatant attempt to strip them of their earnings by forcing them to pay sick people while they're sick!  (I'll just insert here the fact that there were decades upon decades wherein most employees were guaranteed paid sick days.  But we had unions then.)

In this AP story out of Lansing:

The Michigan Restaurant Association says it opposes "one-size-fits-all mandates." The group says restaurants have "thrived without the added costs and intrusions of labor unions."   

To which I say, wouldn't it be great if slavery were still in vogue?  (Hard to take any restaurant association seriously when they're A-okay with waitstaff working for $3.10 an hour plus tips.  So we'll move on.)

So let's talk a minute:

Employees, we can agree that if you need this job you're pretty much screwed if your kids get sick or if you get sick or your partner gets sick or your house burns down or someone in your family dies and your employer not only won't pay you for the days when you need to be at home, but says, "I need you here at work, and if you can't do the job I'll find someone else who can."  So hang on a minute while I go talk to your employers.  Be right back.

Employers, when you hired these employees you must have seen, the moment they entered your space, that they were living, breathing human beings with lives that fill each 24-hour period completely.  If you know anything about yourself, you could probably, if you wanted to, relate to their humanness. You have a family, they have a family.  You get sick, they get sick.  Something happens that keeps you from coming in to work.  Something happens that keeps them from coming in to work.  But here, you insist, the similarities end.  You get paid for the days you're away.  Too bad about them. 

But that's not enough, is it?  You expect such loyalty from your workers you allow yourself to believe that any calamity that might befall your employee is a direct insult to you.  How could they do this, especially now, when they know you need them right here, right now!

Where is your loyalty to them?  You've built a business that you can't run on your own.  You hire people because you need them. They come to work for you because they need you.  They don't become your personal property because you've hired them.  You have entered into a mutual agreement and that agreement requires a mutual commitment.  An obligation.  You're both human and all your good intentions may fall be the wayside now and then, but the mutual agreement still stands.  You need them and they need you.  You're in this together.

So get over yourself and open your eyes to the needs of the people who work for you.  Pay them what the job is worth and never make them have to decide between pressing personal needs and their paycheck. Trust them.  The majority will always do the right thing.

Workers, are you still with me?  There are groups that are working to get this bill passed.  They need your help.  They want your input, your stories.  Are your sick days paid?  Unpaid?  What has happened to you because of it?  Take a minute, please, and show them some support.  They're working hard for you.

In Michigan:

Mothering Justice

National:

Paid Sick Days

National Partnership


(Guest-blogged at Eclectablog.  Cross-posted at Liberaland, dagblog, and Freak Out Nation)

Resolved: To Make 2015 A Year To Remember. If I Don’t Forget

Here it is 2015 (Where did the time go, right?) and let me say once again that New Year’s Resolutions are a fun way to pass the time but are meaningless in the real world.  Not meaning to burst your little bubble on the very first day of the new year;  just telling you, in case you woke up this morning actually believing that all it takes to do something life-changing before the next year is out is to sincerely resolve to do it on New Year’s Day.

Some people believe a resolution is not legit unless you say it out loud to someone who might actually remember–and care–later on.  I’ve done it myself in the days when I couldn’t have started the year without a list of resolutions.  It was a good luck gesture I really believed in.  Sort of like not stepping on a crack to avoid breaking your mother’s back.

But over time I realized the surest way to disappoint myself in the worst way possible was to promise myself (most sincerely, because no other way would do) that I wouldn’t be a complete failure again.  This year I would finally do what I’ve been meaning to do, and this time I mean it.
Sometimes I would even make a list–actually write things down:

Lose 20 pounds.
Make a lot of money with my writing.
Travel to that place I’ve always wanted to go.
Okay, lose 10 pounds.
Okay, make any money with my writing.
Okay, at least get out of the state.

Then, thankfully, I would lose the list, and any remnants of any long ago resolution would drift away, never to be heard from again.

Well, okay, not never.  By the next New Year’s Eve those long-ago resolutions would come back and hit me like a ton of bricks.  I promised!  I resolved!  I said them out loud!  I didn’t do any of them!  (Except to get out of the state.  I did manage to do that.  But who couldn’t when you live 20 miles from the border?)

So this year you could follow my lead, save yourself a lot of headaches, and just bypass that tradition.  The world won’t come to an end.  The year will start, the days will go by, one by one, and nobody will notice that you didn’t make a resolution.

I didn’t know that when I was young.  I went along, sheep-like, because everyone else did.  I honestly thought I was the only one who didn’t keep her resolutions.  I know better now.  It’s the most freeing thing in the world to know my promises to myself are meaningless and therefore totally unnecessary.
You too can be free.  Just say no.  No resolutions!  (If you think you can’t do it, write me.  I’ll talk you down.  I’ve been there.  I know.)

So Happy New Year!  Health! Prosperity!  Love!  Joy!

Carry on. . .