Me too: Every woman has her story.

With the not-so-shocking sexual revelations about Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, Bill Cosby, Anthony Weiner, James Toback, and, yes, our current president, Donald Trump, comes even more revelations from women who have suffered in silence for years and have now come forward, loud and clear.

Women's March, Washington DC, January, 2017

In recent weeks the hashtag #MeToo has become our social networking battle cry--our admission that it happened to us--but the story of its inception needs to be told.  When Tarana Burke, founder of JustBeInc, was a young camp counselor she often counseled young girls who had been abused or neglected or both. One encounter in particular ended badly and Tarana begins her story this way: "The me too Movement™ started in the deepest, darkest place in my soul." 

It's a troubling but familiar story many of us know all too well: some stories are so painful, so close-to-home, we find ourselves turning away when we're needed most. Tarana built a movement on her shame.

As a young girl, as a young woman, I had my share of sexual harassment--leering men, provocative gestures, unwanted, uninvited touches or grabs, ugly invitations to perform sexual acts. None of us, I venture, were immune.  I fended off rape twice, but don't consider myself lucky or blessed. If the boys in question hadn't stopped I would have been just one more among those vast numbers of rape victims. (One I never saw again; the other I ran into from time to time, both of us pretending it never happened.)

There are many ways to violate but none are as demeaning, humiliating, and harsh as rape. And because rape is so horrific, we tend to underplay or diminish those sexual acts that insult, that defile, but don't quite penetrate. As ugly and disgusting as the encounters are, we breathe deep. We were spared. We go on.

Many of the #MeToos have been harassed, solicited, violated, and raped by men who hold power over them. It's far different from a casual, unwelcome advance by a stranger or co-equal. Our normal response to the latter is a sneer, a laugh, a flick of the finger. There is no real threat.

And there's the difference.

We live in a culture where we women are supposed to be able to take care of ourselves, but if we can't it's our own fault. It's what comes from the "freedom" reluctantly given to us by men who reserve the right to make more restrictive rules if we try to go beyond their chains. We see it in government, in corporations, in the church. We see it in all situations where men hold power and use it as privilege. They may grant us our wishes, but we'll have to pay a price.

Our silence condemns us: "Why did she wait so long? How do we know she's telling the truth?" 

Speaking out condemns us: "What did she do to provoke him? How do we know she's telling the truth?" 

Seeking a legal remedy condemns us: "She just wants money. How do we know she's telling the truth?"

Our sisterhood, our solidarity will save us, but so will the millions of decent men who understand and work at keeping us from sexual harm. It takes courage to speak out. We'll commend the brave and stand by the challengers. We will not stop until every last man with the power to diminish or break us understands we will not be silenced, we will not be broken.

And that includes everyone--from a Hollywood mogul, to a boss, to a family member, to a church leader, to the President of the United States. They are no longer safe from us.


(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks & Liars)

Something Wicked This Way Comes

Photo:  Jesse Walker

 Trump again. I know. I'm obsessed with who he is, how he got here, where he's going, and who's going down with him. Day by day, in every way, it's as if the planet has tilted and those of us still upright are experiencing an existential vertigo.  (In other words, "What the hell is happening??")

In a matter of a precious few months Donald Trump vanquished more than a dozen barely worthy but infinitely better opponents and now he's as astonished as anyone that it's looking less like a political coup and more like a damned junta!

He's the general in charge of an army of rapscallions and scalawags just itching to start the looting and pillaging. But forget all that!  He, Donald J. Trump of Donald J. Trump fame, gets to be the general!

It's the power of positive thinking gone ballistic. It worked! The man is at the top of his game--a bigger con game than even he, Donald J. Trump, could imagine, and he'll do anything to stay up there. It's not about them. It's not about us.  It's about him, him, a thousand times him.

So let's talk about how he got here. (This won't take long.) He got here because the American press and the TV pundits put the last remnant of journalistic ethics in mothballs in order to whoop it up with a goofy blowhard who could be counted on to give them stories that practically wrote themselves.

When Donald Trump won his party's presidential nomination and promised to go after Hillary Clinton with a vengeance the world has never seen, nobody-- not even the alert, ever-ready (cough cough) press corps--thought he actually meant "with a vengeance the world had never seen."

When he took to calling her "crooked Hillary" everyone on his side got a huge laugh out of it, while  our side--the Hillary side--did a kind of "ho-hum, that's all you got?"

It was the press that wouldn't let it go, the press playing the willing foil to Trump's childish attacks on them, the press settling in and going along, no matter how low the road would take them.

Now Trump's attacks have moved from the silly "crooked Hillary", from the astonishing "Hillary Clinton is a bigot", to the outright bald-faced lie, "the Clinton Foundation is a scam".

Just last week, Trump, struggling to follow along with the hated teleprompter, said, about the Clinton Foundation, that "access and favors were sold for cash." That's a lie.

In the same on-the-cuff speech he said, "Clinton used her private email to cover corruption".  That's a lie.

Everyone, including the press, knows by now that any words surrounding "I", "I'm", "she", "they", and "the people" will form as if by magic into outrageous, slanderous lies.  He lies.  Of course he lies.  But the crowds!  The polls!  The ratings! 

Not so with Hillary Clinton.  They grab onto every word, waiting for the moment when what they're hearing can be pulled out and molded into something you might expect from the murky Hillary character they've so carefully crafted over a quarter of a century.

Nobody could be happier than Donald that he gets away with it while Hillary doesn't. So it's not surprising that Trump would latch onto a recent Associated Press story about the numbers of Clinton Foundation donors who were able to have an audience with Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State and claim he knew it was crooked all along.

The article began like this:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- More than half the people outside the government who met with Hillary Clinton while she was secretary of state gave money - either personally or through companies or groups - to the Clinton Foundation. It's an extraordinary proportion indicating her possible ethics challenges if elected president.  (My bold)

The perception, the article explains, is that Hillary Clinton has been selling access to the State Department, the price being a substantial donation to the family foundation. The AP has been on this for a long time, it said, working to bring out the truth about how the Clintons might have profited by using both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation for their own personal gain.

There is nothing in the article to suggest the two reporters working on the story found the answer.  Nothing that would raise new questions about the Clinton's ethics or bring to light the need for such a lengthy investigation. (The Clinton Foundation is a 501(C)(3) not-for-profit foundation. Their records are public.)  But Donald Trump, ever the opportunist, weighed in on it as if the evidence against the Clintons was obvious.  From that same AP article: 

Trump fiercely criticized the links between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department, saying his general election opponent had delivered "lie after lie after lie."

"Hillary Clinton is totally unfit to hold public office," Trump said at a rally Tuesday night in Austin, Texas. "It is impossible to figure out where the Clinton Foundation ends and the State Department begins. It is now abundantly clear that the Clintons set up a business to profit from public office."

Well, no, this story does not prove Hillary Clinton is unfit to hold public office, and it's not abundantly clear that the Clinton Foundation was set up for anyone's profit. What's unclear (with abundance) is the reasoning behind the AP's decision to publish an article devoid of any actual research, based solely on what it might look like.

Nancy LaTourneau writes in the Washington Monthly:

But here is where the AP blew their story. In an attempt to provide an example of how this becomes an “optics” problem for Hillary Clinton, they focused much of the article on the fact that she met several times with Muhammad Yunus, a Clinton Foundation donor. In case you don’t recognize that name, he is an economist from Bangladesh who pioneered the concepts of microcredit and microfinance as a way to fight poverty, and founded Grameen Bank. For those efforts, Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006, the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 2010.
The connection the AP tries to make is that SoS Clinton met with Yunus because he was a Clinton Foundation donor. What they didn’t mention is that their relationship goes back over 30 years to the time Hillary (as first lady of Arkansas) heard about his work and brought him to her state to explore the possibility of implementing microfinance programs to assist the poor.

(Note: I'm taking bets on how many times the anti-Hillary opportunists will use that original AP story against her.  Add it to the long list of dubious ammunition.  File it under "I got nothin. Hey! What's this. ..?")

But where is the mea culpa from the press? When will they admit they had a hand in building up Trump's popularity and an equal hand in creating Clinton's unpopularity?  The press reports and the people listen.  We depend on them to give us facts to help us make decisions. Politics can be entertaining but there's a reason it's not categorized as "entertainment".

(I leave you with this breaking news: Hillary Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin has just announced she is separating from her husband, Anthony Weiner, presumably over another sexting incident. At MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell is asking Ann Coulter what she thinks Donald Trump will make of this, while. at CNN, a four-person panel is waiting for the commercial break so they can discuss what Donald Trump will have to say about this. Seriously.)

(Cross-posted at Dagblog and Crooks and Liars)

The Nothingness of Donald Trump

This will be short.  My eyes, dammit, are still bothering me, but not nearly as much as Donald Trump bothers me.  I HATE writing about Donald Trump, adding to the list of people who make him deliriously happy whenever we mention his name, but he hit a new low the other day, even for him, when he went after Hillary Clinton's aide, Huma Abedin, and then went after Hillary's aide's husband.

Abedin (Or "Ooma" as Donald calls her), as everybody knows, is the wife of former congressman Anthony Weiner. ("Did you know that?" Trump shouted to his audience, "Did you know that?")  So after insulting both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin with unsubstantiated claims of underhanded collusion to hide some emails produced on an in-home server, he decided it would be a real crowd-pleaser to go after "Ooma's" husband, too.

Well, yes.  It was.  The crowd went wild!  During that speech and over the next couple of days he accused Abedin of giving national secrets to her husband, who, according to Trump, is a "perv", "psychologically disturbed" and "one of the great sleazebags of our time."  (Weiner's "crime", I don't have to tell you, was to tweet a couple of lewd pictures to women who weren't his wife.  Naughty, naughty, to be sure, but a perv?)

Trump has a masterful way of suggesting something bad is going on without having to prove it.  When he talked about the Mexicans coming over the border who were rapists and murderers, he added, "And some of them are good people, I'm sure."  As if, in the middle of his sentence, his brain finally engaged and balked a little, giving him the means to soften what he just said without having to take any of it back.

When he said McCain was only a war hero because he was captured and he, Trump, didn't like people who were captured, his brain must have been asleep at the time, forcing him, as often happens, to go it alone.  Later, when he knew he had to backtrack, he said, lamely, "I'm sure McCain is a hero."  There.  All done.

So when he took to talking about Hillary's emails, and Huma Abedine's role in what's turning out to be another Clinton non-scandal, it was, again, a masterful demonstration of speechifying without really saying anything:

"So how can she be married to this guy who's got these major problems? She's getting her most important information, it could be, in the world. Who knows what he's going to do with it? Forget about her. What she did is a very dangerous thing for this country, and probably it's a criminal act."

 Well, of course, the press went nuts, as it usually does whenever they latch onto non-stories as juicy as this one.  They went after Trump, practically begging him to keep it up:

Washington (CNN) Donald Trump on Saturday stood by his charge that disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner is a "perv," adding that he "obviously is psychologically disturbed" and alleging that his wife, Huma Abedin, a top adviser to Hillary Clinton, is passing sensitive information to him."I think it's a very fair statement that I made and a lot of people have congratulated me," Trump said after an event in Nashville, Tennessee. "(Abedin) is receiving this very, very important information and giving it to Hillary. Well, who else is she giving it to? Her husband has serious problems, and on top of that, he now works for a public relations firm. So how can she be married to this guy who's got these major problems?"

You know what's sleazy?  A man like Donald Trump having so little respect for our American system of government that he would use his guise as candidate for the presidency to spread his laughable malarkey, to push his one agenda, his own self-aggrandizement; to mock and insult anybody who isn't fawning over him and who dares to get in his way as he moves toward what he wants when he wants it.

You know what's perverted?  The notion that a man like Donald Trump could be considered for the job of President of the United States.  Right now, as I write this, he polls at the top of the Republican contenders.  He's a panderer who hasn't given an honest thought to the needs of the citizens of this country EVER.  He's a man who admits he'll do anything to get a deal.  He's a ruthless businessman who prides himself on not knowing anything about politics or foreign policy and sees that as a plus for his side.

He's a flim-flam man and proud of it.  A flim-flam man whose only cause is to keep his popularity going.  He's running for president of the United States and at least some of our citizens are hoping they'll get the chance to vote for him.  If you ask them why, they'll repeat the phrase embroidered on Trump's trademarked baseball cap:  To Make America Great Again.

Such is the state of our nation.

My head hurts.


(For the record, I have written about Anthony Weiner here and here, and about Huma Abedin here.)


Addendum:  Kevin Drum shares another example of the artistry of the Trump word salad.  Nothing leads to nothing leads to nothing. . .  And seeing is believing.  (H/T to my friend Linda Tilsen for finding and sharing.)

Huma Abedin is not Anthony Weiner

There is a part of the American feminist movement that drives me nuts.  It's the part where all women who call themselves feminists have to be smart and sassy and so damned tough any public sign of vulnerability or weakness, particularly where men are involved, is reason enough to drum them out of the corps.

The unwritten compact says women warriors do not stand by any man who shows himself to be a shit.  I would submit that that description applies to every man.  It also applies to every woman.  We've all been total crapheads many times over the course of our lives.  We're all imperfect in ways the rest of the animal world can't even imagine.  The rest of the animal world goes on the attack mainly because the victim looks tasty and they're hungry.  We, on the other hand, have devised a million different ways to make our victims feel bad about themselves before we chew them up and spit them out.

So, about Huma Abedin. For reasons many of us may not be able to fathom, she has chosen, at least for now, to stay with and profess love for Anthony Weiner.   She has a child with Weiner.  They have a marriage.  Weiner is running for mayor of New York City.  In a press conference that most of us will agree went terribly, terribly wrong, Abedin took to the podium and tried to ease the city's fears about Weiner's abilities to do the job. She said she forgives him, she loves him and she believes in him.

She might as well have built her own bonfire, doused herself with gasoline, stood in the middle of the pile and struck the match.  She is toast.

Because, Huma Abedin, you see, is no ordinary wifey.  She is smart and sassy and strong.  She knows Hillary Clinton so well there are hints that Huma went to Hillary, a victim of her own husband's maddeningly public sexual exploits, for counsel when the story broke about Anthony's underwear undoing.  And because she knows and has worked closely with Hillary, she is. . .what's the word?

Ambitious.

So there has to be more to her devotion to her husband than she's telling.  She wants to live in Gracie Mansion. She loves living in the public eye and has her sights on her own political career. She, beautiful, gracious Huma Abedin, couldn't possibly love a man like Anthony Weiner.

Sound familiar?  Yes, they're the same arguments we heard so many years ago about her friend and mentor, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The same Hillary Clinton who shares a successful and seemingly happy life with the man who, by all accounts, including hers, put her through hell.  Somehow, Hillary and Bill have learned to live with the constant reminders of that trumped-up impeachment trial over Bill's embarrassing sexual hijinks in the Oval Office, reported down to the last icky detail. 

Hillary Clinton stood by her man but still became her own woman, going on to become a U.S senator. a formidable presidential candidate, and, by all accounts, an effective Secretary of State.  Still, she speaks highly of her husband.  She stands with him when she stands beside him.  I have no doubt that Hillary loves Bill and that Bill loves her back.

I don't know what will happen with Huma and Anthony, but I do know this:  Whatever happens has to happen between them.  Huma didn't open the floodgates into a deep and thorough analysis of their personal lives by announcing that she believes him, she loves him and she believes in him.  The press did.

This from Sally Quinn in the Washington Post:

Up until Weiner’s cringeworthy news conference Tuesday, I had felt sorry for his wife, Huma Abedin, even though I couldn’t understand how she was able to condone his online antics in the first place. I have nothing against Abedin. I like her: She is a lovely, gracious, intelligent woman. I ache for her need to come to the rescue of this man who has betrayed her so often and will likely do it again. I ache for all women who find themselves in this position. And yet, there she stood in front of the cameras, this modern American career woman, by her man, saying she had forgiven him, loved him and believed in him. Just what exactly does she believe in? The only thing she can believe in for sure is that he will continue his infidelity.
Though her friends say she is strong and resolute and defiant, sadly she makes all women look like weak and helpless victims. She was not standing there in a position of strength. It was such a setback for women everywhere

From Lisa Bloom over at CNN:

Isn't it time to call the spectacle of the suffering political wife, standing by her man in the media glare as he admits to his latest sexual offense against her, what it really is: spousal abuse?
Huma Abedin has the right to make any decisions she wants about her life, just as a victim of domestic abuse has the right to return for more -- but we don't have to stand silently by and condone it.

And this incredible bit of reasoning from Maureen Dowd:

WHEN you puzzle over why the elegant Huma Abedin is propping up the eel-like Anthony Weiner, you must remember one thing: Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated worse by men than anywhere else on the planet.

Hogwash, hooey, and bullshit. Those few words she spoke publicly didn't give any of us permission to judge her or to give her advice about her personal life.  I don't live in New York City and have no stake in this race.  Turns out there are about 305 million of us who don't live in New York City.  So why is the marriage of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin so important to so many people?  For days now that's all we've heard--and it's more about Huma than it is about Anthony. At some point we have to ask ourselves why we care so much.

Why do this to Huma?  What buttons is she pushing that causes this much anger at her?  She is not her husband.  She is her husband's helpmate, but beyond that she is a smart, sassy woman tough enough to withstand the expected onslaught she knew would come when she stood by him.  I have nothing but admiration for her.  That took guts.

FRIDAY FOLLIES: On the Dalai Lama, Thurber, Michael Scott and Mitt

I've always dreamed of someday meeting the Dalai Lama (hasn't everybody?); sitting down with him, picking his brain, asking him the questions of the day:  What do you think about war and famine and global warming?  If I knew I was actually going to have the chance, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be working up a joke to tell him.  But then I'm not Australian anchor Karl Stefanovic, who had been saving his best joke (I'm guessing) for his best interview ever only to find it painfully lost, in translation and everywhere else.  Watch this.

On Target:  So I found that funny Dalai Lama link above at Gawker, a fun place to go when you want a laugh or two, but then I had to hang around long enough to find this disturbing bit of news:  Target says their people don't need no stinkin' unions.  They're so sure they really don't they've put out an anti-union video that's shown to all new employees.  At Target!  Yes, Target. Where anything a union can do they can do better.  Gawker says you won't find this in many places, so here it is in all its glory.  Thank you, Gawker. Always great to end the week on a low note.

As if Anthony Weiner's presser wasn't low enough.  The deeds, the resignation, the heckling at a press conference. . .it's a strange new world out there.  I wish it hadn't happened--any of it--but it did and it ended last week.  So there it is.  But I would rather remember Rep. Weiner like this.

Mitt Romney, a millionaire times a couple hundred, took all kinds of flak this week for commiserating with the jobless by telling them with a twinkle in his eye that he's out of work, too.  But here's the thing:  If Romney never, ever had a chance at a position of power I could kind of like the guy.  I mean, doesn't he remind you of Michael Scott, Steve Carell's character in "The Office"? The genius of Carell's "Michael" is that, while you're seeing all measure of a completely clueless "bad boss", there's that underlying pathetic need for acceptance, that clumsy begging to be liked that might just be tugging at your heartstrings if you could overlook all the overlying damage that comes with it.   Those Romney moments are like that.

Moment of Sublime:  A rare interview with James Thurber on "Omnibus". I've probably read everything Thurber ever wrote (my favorite is "The Years with Ross", probably because I thought I would be writing for The New Yorker some day. . .) and I admit I've spent endless minutes studying his cartoons, trying to make sense of why I'm laughing when they make no sense, but I can't remember the last time I've seen a clip of him actually talking.  (It could be I never actually have before.  When the memory goes, it's a terrible thing.  Unless you're able to forget that you had once remembered.)

That clip of Thurber being interviewed by Alistair Sim comes from a piece by Bob Mankoff, who wrote about Thurber in The New Yorker, Thurber's home away from home, which I read (after finding a mention on Twitter) courtesy of KenInNY at Down with Tyranny, who writes about attending a Thurber Celebration where Keith Olbermann spoke--along with Thurber's daughter, Mankoff, and Calvin Trillin. This is the beautiful beauty of the Internet.  If I hadn't come across the tweet on Twitter I never would have followed the wonderful paths to the video and I wouldn't be sharing any of it here.  That would be just pitiful.

Cartoon of the week:

James Thurber - The New Yorker magazine - 1929

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FRIDAY FOLLIES: on Palin's world, Trump's fence, and, more important, remembering Les Paul

Sarah Palin knows her history.  It's our history that throws her.  Go ahead and laugh if you want to. Sarah still says Paul Revere was warning the British, and if you can't figure out why, it's your problem not hers.  People who like her (or maybe it was people whose bread she butters) even tried to change the Revere story on Wikipedia to more closely reflect Palin's version.  It didn't happen, but it doesn't matter.  She's just so darned cute, idn't she? Golly.

 Is Donald Trump still thinking of running for president?  Or is he setting his sights even higher?  Here's his latest warning:

 “I am watching very carefully. If the wrong person is nominated you watch what happens with Donald Trump and what he does, because we have to beat Obama. This country cannot last any longer with Obama as our president.”

I don't know.  Here's another goofball we like to laugh at, but sometimes while we're laughing larger forces are at work and we end up having to turn that smile upside down.  Last Week Jonathan Turley wrote about third-person Donald's actions in far-off Caledonia, where he's building a huge golf course complex:

In Scotland, Trump is bullying a Scottish couple who have had the temerity to refuse to surrender their home to his development. Trump is reportedly not only seeking governmental order to acquire the land but he encircled the home with a fence and then charged the couple with half of its cost — hitting David Milne, 46, and his wife Moira with a bill for £2820 for a fence they do not want. 

So when Trump says he's not running for president but he's going to do something drastic if Obama wins again, doesn't that sound like a threat?  What could he mean?  Shouldn't we be pressing him for more details?  I mean, it's not like he's going to clam up over one little question.

Hey you kids!  Republicans in charge here.  Just go home.  Now!  Student representatives in Iowa got a chance to go before the state education appropriations committee last week to put in their two cents about rising education costs.  This is what they heard from Shawn Hamerlinck, the ranking Republican on the committee:

“I do not like it when students actually come here and lobby me for funds. That’s just my opinion. I want to wish you guys the best. I want you to go home and graduate. But this political theater, leave the circus to us OK? Go home and enjoy yourselves. I want to thank you for joining us and though I have to concede, your time speaking before us is kind of a tad intense. It’s probably a pretty new experience. You probably prepared for it for days and you sat there in front of us trying to make sure your remarks were just right, and that’s a good thing. But actually spending your time worrying about what we’re doing up here, I don’t want you to do that. Go back home. Thanks guys.”

 (Thanks to Eclectablog, where I first found the story.)

Another Weiner speaks out:  It ain't funny.   Writer Eric Weiner has had enough of the jokes at his expense.  He may not be an Anthony but he's still a Weiner:

 The truth is I don’t know how to feel about my namesake, caught recently with his pants (nearly) down. On the one hand, as a fellow Weiner, I feel his pain. On the other hand, he has given us Weiners a bad name, and let’s face it: we didn’t have a great one to begin with.

 Pringles inventor Fredric Baur is canned for the last time.  Time reports that Baur's ashes were poured into two Pringles canisters and buried.  Much thought went into which flavor canister would be most appropriate, but in the end the Original won out.  (Good choice.  What else, actually?)

Moment of Sublime:  Yesterday Google paid tribute to Les Paul on what would have been his 96th birthday by creating a guitar-like instrument that plays notes when you mouse over the strings.  Once a tune had been created, it could then be recorded and sent to Google.  It was so popular, they're leaving it up through today.  I watched Rachel Maddow plunk it and play last night, but when I try it I don't get any sound.  I can move the strings and they color up, but they won't sing to me. (The computer hates me and it always has.  I'm too much in love with it to give it up now, but this relationship borders on SM and that's just crazy.  But never mind my little rant here.  The point is, I've lost any chance at being a published composer, an achievement I didn't even know I wanted, but now it seems I desperately do.)

 Cartoon of the Week:

Walt Handelsman, Newsday

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Men, power, reckless sex: Why? What are we missing?

I don't always read or agree with Maureen Dowd, but I do have her on my blogroll and now and then a title grabs me.  Yesterday she wrote "Your Tweetin' Heart".  Yes, I knew it was going to be about Anthony Weiner, but I read it anyway because sometimes her take on odd things like that is refreshingly different.

She talked not just about Rep. Weiner, but about what has been bothering me for so long about the men (it's been men so far)  we liberals count on to help solve the country's problems.

First there was Gary Hart, who practically begged the press to catch him with a babe on a boat and got caught. Bill Clinton fooled around with women (whose appeal caused some real head-scratching for most of us) and got caught.  Then it was John Edwards, who co-created a child with a woman who was not his wife and got caught.  Now it's Anthony Weiner, who got down and dirty in words and pictures and got caught.

(In earlier times it was FDR, JFK and Lyndon Johnson, but, while rumors flew, they didn't get caught.  And who knows how many others there were?)

They were all supposed populists -- my kind of people.  Their ability to speak up convincingly for the poor and disenfranchised is what got them where they were.  Their inability to tame their penises is what brought them down and ended any chance for us to count on their intelligence, their compassion, their flair for skewering the lies.

Dowd says:

Often powerful men crave more than love and admiration from The Good Wife. Sometimes they want risk, even danger. Sometimes they’re turned on by a power differential. They adore a fan reaction like the one from Lisa Weiss, the Vegas blackjack dealer, who flirted with Weiner on Facebook: “you are sooo awesome when you yell at those fox news” pundits, and “I bet you have so many chicks after you! you are our liberal stud.”
In her book, Elizabeth Edwards wrote that she would have bet her big house that her husband would not fall for a cheesy line like the one Rielle Hunter tossed at him: “You are so hot.”

But clichés work. As Weiner wrote to Weiss: “What are you wearing?”
Meagan Broussard, a 26-year-old college student and single mom from Texas, wrote on BigGovernment.com, conservative Andrew Breitbart’s site, that her relationship with Weiner began when she wrote on his Facebook page that one of his speeches to construction workers was “hot.”

“Within an hour,” she wrote, “we were sending messages back and forth.”

So what is it?  What happens there?  Isn't the chance at saving the country a big enough ego-driver?  What is it about power that makes it such an aphrodisiac?  These are all men who worked long and hard to get to the top.  They're men who prided themselves on their willingness and their ability to help those who can't help themselves.  Their passion for progressive causes made them heroes in the eyes of millions of people.  We trusted them to help us move mountains.  Was that too much to ask?

They're men, not Gods.  I get that.  They don't always want to be the Good Guys.  But there are easier, more dignified ways to end a career than to self-destruct with your pants down.

So I'm asking:  Why?  Why do they do it? 

Anybody?

FRIDAY FOLLIES:On Jockey shorts, Palin's bus, Christie's 'copter, and Stone dead alligators,

We were all a-twitter last week by the big news that a close-up photo of a suggestive section of a pair of gray jockey shorts was sent to a young follower from Rep. Anthony Weiner's Twitter page.  Weiner denies sending the Tweet but seems reluctant to answer the question:  Boxers or briefs?  Yours or Andrew Breitbart's?  Weiner jokes abound.  Weiner snarls.  The Right Wing breaks out the champagne, pours it over Breitbart's head.  Yee Haw!  Done and DONE!

Sarah Palin's Magical Mystery Bus Tour:   What's it all about?  She has a pizza date with Donald Trump.  The press goes wild!  (and so does Jon Stewart).  She crashes Mitt Romney's presidential bid party in New Hampshire and pooh-poohs it with "just a coincidence" in signature sweet-sticky-Sarahness.  Stephen Colbert explains it all. 

Addendum:  With emphasis on the "dumb":  Palin giving a history lesson about Paul Revere's ride.  Can we please stop pretending this person is a grown-up ready to be president?  My God.  We're talking about the presidency.  Of the United States.  It's not funny!!   (Click here.)

New Jersey governor Chris Christie took a government-owned helicopter to his son's baseball game last week -- the same Christius Rex who spends his throne time figuring out ways to slash funding going to poor people with their own ball-playing kids -- and got haughty-hot when confronted with the fact that there might be the slightest impropriety there.  Come on, people!  With all they do in his family ("family values"), there's no way they could do it all with just a car!

(Note to Gov's son:  In the future you might want to hide the team schedule and avoid all the fuss.  Any dad who arrives at his son's game in a government-issue helicopter isn't there to watch his son play ball, anyway.)

Now, I really like Missouri.  It's a beautiful state.  The greatest father-in-law in the entire world (mine) was from there.  And from the looks of things, they've got a pretty progressive governor --  though his bio page works hard at keeping secret his party affiliation.  I had to work a bit to glean from clues that he must be a Democrat.  (His name is Jay Nixon. He won, anyway.)  So I do hesitate to even bring this embarrassing episode to light, but what is one to do when a story like this presents itself? Especially when it comes from the "Show Me" state?

Okay.

Police in Independence got a call that a huge alligator was seen in the woods.  They don't get many calls about alligators in Missouri, but when you live in the "Show Me" state, you check out everything.  And sure enough, when they got there, there was indeed a huge alligator lying on the ground.  Here's the story:

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. -- Police responding to an alligator sighting in a suburban Kansas City pond took quick action to dispatch the big reptile. It wasn't until after the second rifle shot bounced off the beast Sunday that the three Independence officers realized it was a concrete lawn ornament. Independence police spokesman Tom Gentry said the department received a call from a man who said a gator had been spotted in the woods. Gentry said the alligator was in the weeds near a tree by a pond and it looked real. An officer shot the gator twice in the head -- per instructions from a conservation officer -- before realizing it wasn't moving. Gentry said the landowner told officers he put the fake gator there to keep children off his property.

I couldn't find a picture of the actual alligator in question, but for future reference, here's a photo I took of a couple of real alligators:

In Michigan, where they drastically slashed public education funds but left prison funding alone, the Ithaca, MI school superintendent had an idea.:

Consider the life of a Michigan prisoner. They get three square meals a day. Access to free health care. Internet. Cable television. Access to a library. A weight room. Computer lab. They can earn a degree. A roof over their heads. Clothing. Everything we just listed we DO NOT provide to our school children. This is why I’m proposing to make my school a prison.

See?  All it takes is a little imagination.  We can do this!

Moment of Sublime:  Bubble-smith Sterling Johnson creates giant beach bubbles.  Stinson Beach, California:

Cartoon of the week:

Tom Toles, The Washington Post

FRIDAY FOLLIES: On Click and Clack, Coulter, The Donald, and the question of Looting

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Normally I'm not that thrilled with loudmouths from New York but with Anthony Weiner I make the grand exception.  When he gives up his Good Fight gig in Congress, he could take over Late Night and give Leno and Letterman big time runs for their money.  Here he defends the already puny government funding of NPR by talking about my favorite Car Talk guys, Click and Clack:

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And normally I'm even less thrilled with loudmouths like Ann Coulter, and almost never mention her here, but when Annie tells Billo that scientists say more radiation is good for you in a voice that could kill a cat, it's hard to pass up:

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 I guess you've heard that Donald Trump is thinking about a run for the presidency?  The Donald sees all kinds of problems here in these United States and the quadruple-bankrupted mop-head mogul thinks he's the only one who has the solutions.  He may had set his campaign back a bit the other day, though, when he couldn't quite bring himself to side with the people who believe our president was born in the U.S.  He'll deny he's a birther, but only a birther (or someone who wants badly to run for president as a Tea Party favorite) would still be waffling over the biggest non-issue of our time:
 

Barack Obama's Birth Certificate

Barack Obama's kindergarten picture - Courtesy of Wini Otagaro, Hawaii

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I might be the last to discover her, but I found Sally Kohn the other day through a link from a link from a link, I think.  She's a progressive grassroots organizer and frequent contributor to Fox News (uh huh), where she mixes it up with people who actually think they're winning when they go up against her. 
Sally Kohn explains our budget using home-made circles and the hair of a darling dog.  Makes sense to me:

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Jack Cafferty can be as irritating as a burr in my sock, but every now and then he comes up with a quotable or a comment that actually stops me in my tracks.  This is one of them:

Why is there no looting in Japan?

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Cartoon of the Week:

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Breaking News! A People Person Discovered in Congress!

It's the morning of the Day After Weiner Socks it to Congress, calling the Republicans a "wholly-owned subsidiary of the insurance industry", and the video is going viral--I can only hope.  I'm going to do my part today to pester everybody in America about it, and I'd better not be the only one.  I'm asking--no, begging--everyone who cares about putting an end to the corporate takeover of our once-great country to join forces with the good congressman from New York.  (Okay, it's New York.  I know, I know. . .we here in the hinterlands don't CARE how they do it in New York.  But this guy gets us.  He cares about us.  He actually is--dare I say?--one of us.)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (Big D-NY) has been one of my heroes for a long time now.   His passion, his outrage over corporate excesses and governmental indifference is inspiring and always entertaining.


He is smart and funny and absolutely sure of his positions on everything.  He wants Single Payer and he makes no bones about it.  Medicare for All.  But he's open to a Public Option, if that's what they're going to settle for.  As long as it leads to Single Payer.  What he's totally, rabidly against is Business as Usual.  Oh,  how he's railed against it.  Sometimes he gets close to looking like Jimmy Stewart at the end of that long filibuster scene in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", and I suffer with him.  Life can be hard for defenders of the people these days.

But my man Anthony rose above even himself yesterday, and today I celebrate and revel in his outrageously over-the-top outrage.  It's about time.  I love that man!

So in this clip are my two favorite people's people:  Anthony Weiner and Rachel Maddow.  The very nature of this video ensures hate mobs going after it with a vengeance.  Who cares?   This is for US:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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This Wretched, Reckless Approach to Health Care: It's Killing Us

We may be slow learners, but the rest of the industrial world has figured it out: Universal, single-payer or national health care systems. That's the reason why all those other countries cover everyone, have better patient outcomes, cause no one to declare bankruptcy or lose their homes because of medical bills, and spend less than half per capita on health care than we do.
We could do it too, by reducing the starting age for Medicare from 65 to 0. There's still time to act.  -  Michael Moore,  Huffington Post, 9/29/09 _____________________________________________________________________

 It doesn't matter what you say.  It doesn't matter what I say.  It doesn't matter what Robert Reich says.  It doesn't matter what Bill Moyers says.  It doesn't matter what Wendell Potter says.  It doesn't matter what Michael Moore says:



It doesn't matter what Jay Rockefeller says.  It doesn't matter what Anthony Wiener says.  It especially doesn't matter what Barack Obama says.

What matters is this:  We, the citizens and taxpayers, may win a skirmish or two, but in the end Big Business will win the battle.  They owned us yesterday, they own us today, and unless we finally get wise and get tough, they'll own us tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

They own us because they've ceaselessly, endlessly, without thought of the consequences, bought and paid for the loyalties of the majority of our elected officials.

We haven't quite come to terms with it yet--mainly because we can't quite believe it. We expect that sort of maneuvering by the Republicans.  Going against the Common Good in favor of the capitalists is in their DNA.  They apparently can't help it.

But the Democrats?  The Democrats.   The Blue Dogs--those dirty dogs--have sold us out. But the Blue Dogs aren't the only ones.  Not by a long shot.  On the Senate side, Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper all voted against the public option.  Not surprisingly, they've all had their fingers in the Health Care honey pot.  According to Raw Story, those five senators have up to now received some 19 million dollars from the opposition to health care reform.  That opposition being, of course, the Health Care industries.  Those industries, I have to remind myself, that are devoted to caring for our health.

Sixty votes is the magic number.  Sixty Senate "yea" votes means a filibuster-proof passage.  It's the number that, if it isn't there, stops everything.  Convenient, isn't it?  It means even those who side with the insurance companies but don't want to admit it have an easy out.  "Can't vote yet because we don't have the 60."  Okay.  So what?

Where are the Dems who, if they're too cowardly to go for Single Payer, will at least put the vote for Public Option out there?  If it's voted down, after jawing about it for hours or days or weeks, then start all over again.  Put it out there again.  And then again.  Wear those filiblustering bastards down.

Millions of sick people are without a safety net.  People who could be saved are dying here. There is no reason, save greed, that we don't have a government-sponsored health care system.  I know it.  You know it.  We all know it.  If it's not in our budget, then shame on them.  They built that bloated budget on taxpayer money coerced from us through fear and outright lies.  Now that we need it for actual Common Good, they're going to pretend it's asking too much.  No.  They've asked too much of us for too long.  Now it's payback time.  They owe us.

So what are we going to do about it?  How long does this conversation go on?  There are people in our government who are intent on holding this up, and they're out there openly, blatantly, recklessly, holding this up.  We know who they are.  And they know we know who they are.  And they don't care.

So what are we going to do about it?  Good God. . .are you as sick of this as I am?  Enough, already. There are some enormous asses out there for the prodding, so. . .where the hell is my pitchfork?

Ramona

(Cross-posted at Talking Points Memo here.)