Red States, White Popes, Blue-bloods: It is to Laugh

In almost every war, there are those moments when soldiers have to sit back and laugh at the absurdity of it all.  Think "Mash", "Stalag 17", "Catch-22", "Slaughterhouse Five".  Like that.  In the war of the Red States against American Women, while the scale may be worlds smaller, and while there's actually been no official declaration, the time has come.  To laugh, I mean.  Honest to God, it is to giggle.

Could even the wildest, zaniest futurist have predicted these hysterical days, when lawmakers in a dozen red states would be falling all over each other to see who could come up with the nuttiest demand to probe into the sex life of Femalus Americanus?

Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett capped last week's antics, turning the usual Republican clown show into an Extravaganza de Burlesque with his lame punchline, "I don't know how you can make anyone watch. . .you just have to close your eyes",  after a reporter asked the Governor if state-sanctioned ultrasounds for women seeking abortions "went too far".

This clip from the Rachel Maddow Show shows the madness in a nutshell:   

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

ThinkProgress Health does another recap, this one with an interactive map showing the states that either are planning or already have hardline, punitive anti-abortion laws in place.  (Okay, this one isn't funny. . .not funny at all.)

But then there's Rick Santorum.  Rick Santorum is running for president, I guess you know.  But is he?   His speeches are sermons and his sweater-vests are the closest he could come to a cassock without drawing attention to his real hope for the presidency.  But listening to him pontificate, don't you just know he's itching to wave at the crowds from his Rickmobile and turn the White House into a papal palace, where he can do what every American president should have been doing all these many years, which is to work tirelessly at saving us sinners from ourselves?

What The Great Santorum doesn't seem to understand is that most of us don't want to go back to the Dark Ages.  Inquisitions are so yesterday.  Self-flagellation hurts.  And women might be ladies but they'll never be chattel again.

So, given that Rick Santorum can't stop showing his inquisitor's hand, in all likelihood Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential candidate.  Mitt Romney can't help that he was born a blue-blood, but somebody needs to tell him his impression of Thurston Howell III is wearing thin.  It was funny at first--even hilariously funny--but verbal pratfalls from haughty billionaires have never a president made.

Blue-blood presidents, from Washington to Jefferson to Roosevelt to Kennedy,  at least pretended to be egalitarians.  Equality is what our constitution is all about.  The president, as leader of the country, is a representative for the people, not a bottom-line, for-profit CEO.  Maybe this Mitt Romney needs to go back to his Massachusetts governor roots. That Mitt Romney could at least, every once in a while, be convincing in his role as public servant.

And Newt Gingrich.  Where is poor Newt?  As hard as he might try to insist otherwise, he's on the outside looking in.  Delusions of intellectual grandiosity failed to impress his peeps. They yawned and moved on.  Color him green.

Women of GOP Land: What do you see in those men?

Hello, women of the Republican Party:  Democratic female of the liberal persuasion here. I know it looks like we couldn't be any farther apart when it comes to ideology, but I know us. I know when it comes to the big issues--our futures and the well-being of the ones we love--we're sisters under the skin.

We should talk. I mean really talk. I don't mean the usual chit-chat, the talk about kids and work and what's for dinner. I mean about politics. When we're together we do everything we can to side-step the issue and it does keep us friendly, but you must have noticed that the upcoming presidential election is becoming the bull elephant in the room.
 
I know you won't want to hear this, and I hear you when you tell me it's none of my business, but for a couple of weeks now I've been especially worried about where you're going with the men in your life. It strikes not just me but a lot of us that the relationship is becoming, well--abusive.

At the moment these four men--Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul--are vying for your affections and from where I sit no matter which one you choose it'll be bad news for you. And, okay, if any one of them wins, it'll be bad for me too. But it's you who has to take control of the situation. When any one of the four tells you he's going to work hard to take away a woman's right to free birth control it's really disheartening for the rest of us to have to watch you applaud and cheer, as if he is God's gift and aren't you lucky to have him?

At least one of them, Rick Santorum (father of seven, no surprise) doesn't believe in birth control in any form. He says birth control can actually be "harmful to women", suggesting that it promotes sex outside of procreation, which apparently, even for those of us not still living in Medieval times, is a bad thing:

  "One of the things I will talk about, that no president has talked about before, is I think the dangers of contraception in this country.... Many of the Christian faith have said, well, that's okay, contraception is okay. It's not okay. It's a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be."

He blames "radical feminists" for taking women out of the home and into the workplace, yet he's done nothing to help improve the economy enough so that women who want to stay home can stay home. In his book, "It Takes a Family: Conservatism and the Common Good," written in 2005, he wrote: "Sadly the propaganda campaign launched in the 1960s has taken root. The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness."

Ron Paul, a former OB/GYN and a Libertarian to boot, said, “Forcing private religious institutions to pay for contraception and sterilization as part of their health care plans is a direct assault on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty. On my first day as President, I will reverse this policy.”

Sexual harassment in the workplace?  No problem, women. Dr. Paul says just quit:

'Employee rights are said to be valid when employers pressure employees into sexual activity. Why don’t they quit once the so-called harassment starts? Obviously the morals of the harasser cannot be defended, but how can the harassee escape some responsibility for the problem? Seeking protection under civil rights legislation is hardly acceptable."

Newt Gingrich believes strongly in a Personhood Amendment that says life begins at conception--a loony view with ramifications for everything from the Morning After pill to in vitro fertilization. In his bid to destroy Planned Parenthood he lied when he said the organization's main thrust was performing abortions. He went so far as to pull a fantastical number out of the air--90% of all services were abortions--when the truer number is three percent out of nearly 5 million visits a year.  In truth, only 34 percent of visits to Planned Parenthood are for reproductive services.

Mitt Romney wants to cut off contraceptive services at Community Centers as well, and if he had his druthers he would kill Planned Parenthood entirely. Even after all the evidence to the contrary, he is still trying to convince you that nothing good comes out of Planned Parenthood, when we all know that in so many communities they've become an essential health care lifeline, not just for women of reproductive age, but for men and women of all ages.

My question is, what is it you see in those men?  When you're out there applauding and encouraging men who want to take womanhood back to the status forced on us even as late as the middle of the 20th century, does it bother you even a little bit that you're egging them on, knowing--because they've told you in every way possible--they want to own every little piece of you?


(Cross-posted at dagblog, where the men outnumber us but they never try to outsmart us)

The Catholic Contraceptive Controversy: Where's the Health Care Part?

Effective August 1, thanks to a provision in the Affordable Care Act, most working women will have their contraceptives fully paid for, without a co-pay. That's the good news. The bad news (you knew there had to be bad news, right?) is that the unenlightened among us see it as nothing more than an unconscionable threat against virile manhood.  Especially Catholic virile manhood.

The U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops, all male at last count, have decided amongst themselves that they will not be pushed into reversing their age-old hoo-haw laws forcing Catholic women to have as many babies as their wholly-owned bodies can produce. (The laugh's on them:  Most Catholic women use artificial birth control.  The Guttmacher Institute says it's as high as 98%.)  When was the last time you heard a Catholic woman talking about the rhythm method, except to marvel at how crazy that whole notion was?

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the USCCB, sharply criticized the decision by the Obama administration in which it "ordered almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans....Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

We're talking about birth control here.  We're talking about a woman's right to choose when the time is right to carry and bear a child.  This is not baby-killing, it's responsibly managing an event as life-changing as it's ever going to get.  It's the smart, sane way of controlling the use of our own bodies and, oh, by the way, preventing the birth of unwanted children.

We're talking about birth control products already approved and already a part of most insurance policies. The only mandate is that insurance providers will now be required to provide those products without additional cost to all women who want to use them.  The mandate isn't for the use, it's for the availability and the cost.

This is a manufactured Right wing controversy designed to kill yet another positive outcome of "Obamacare", and the Catholic Bishops are more than happy to become the spark that creates yet another phony firestorm.

Mitt Romney, Republican candidate for President and a Mormon who, until now, apparently had no problem with that particular provision in the Affordable Care Act, has jumped on the bandwagon and is now on the side of the Catholic Bishops, taking this grand opportunity to rail against his opponent, Barack Obama. about an issue he clearly doesn't even begin to understand:

"I’m just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights, the First Amendment of the Constitution provides the right to worship in the way of our own choice,” Romney said to nearly 3,000 people gathered in the gymnasium of Arapahoe High School, in Arapahoe County, an area known as a so-called “swing county” that Obama won in 2008.

“This same administration said that the churches and the institutions they run, such as schools and let’s say adoption agencies, hospitals, that they have to provide for their employees free of charge, contraceptives, morning after pills, in other words abortive pills, and the like at no cost,” Romney said. “Think what that does to people in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience.

“We must have a president who is willing to protect America’s first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience,” he said.

 In addition to Romney, two other manly men candidates for Obama's job, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, are outraged that women should be able to get free birth control. (It only adds to their outrage that women should have the audacity to think they can control their own bodies):

Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for Mitt Romney, said in an e-mail that he regarded the administration’s rule requiring religious employers to furnish birth control as wrong. “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,” she said. Mr. Romney has also pledged to end a federal program, Title X, that provides family planning services to millions of women. 

Mr. Santorum has taken the position that health insurance plans should not be required to cover birth control. He also favors allowing states to decide whether to ban birth control. He and Mr. Gingrich both support “personhood” initiatives that would legally declare fertilized eggs to be persons, effectively banning not just all abortions but also certain contraceptives, including IUDs and some types of birth control pills. 

Mr. Gingrich wants to withdraw government money from Planned Parenthood because it performs abortions in addition to providing contraceptives, though the federal money cannot be used for abortion.

A lie dressed in Pink

I wonder how they feel about Viagra and other male enhancement "medications"? Say there was a group who believed with their whole entire hearts that workplace insurance coverage of male sex tool enhancement was not only outside any notion of "health care", it was maybe even "unconscionable".  Should that group be exempt from providing it?

And if those bishops had wombs would they be open to letting someone else tell them what they could do with them?  (It's a rhetorical question.  No, they wouldn't be open to letting someone else tell them anything.)

Addendum:  Catholic hospitals and universities already provide contraceptive coverage:  Here it is.  What's their excuse now?

Fighting the vast Right Wing with Pea Shooters, Part One: Books and Bookmakers

We progressive types are working overtime these days marching, rallying, sitting, petitioning.  We place ourselves prominently on Twitter (with our #p2, #OWS, and #CTL hashtags) and on Facebook.  More and more of us have taken to writing political blogs.  Our blogrolls feature other bloggers, other writers who work as hard or harder than we do, trying to sort out the truths behind America's astonishing decline and the Rightward drift that led us here.  Our job is to rout out the bad guys, to expose them and make sure justice take its course.  Some days we actually think we're winning.

Silly us.

This is not David and Goliath, with the little guy getting a chance at saving the day through luck and pluck.  Not anymore.  This is Goliath stomping David into the ground. There's David, bleeding and broken--but look!  He's still breathing!  David's crowd takes that as a sign of victory and moves on. The next time they'll try peashooters.

 In the 21st century--a century only slightly over a decade old and already the leading contender for "modern century most likely to return to the Dark Ages"--we the people are millions of little Davids and Big Business is one huge Goliath. We wee Davids actually thought if we worked hard and built up our troops and used truth as a weapon, we might some day be able to take Goliath down. We thought we might be able to survive and maybe even thrive without too much breakage or damage to our dignity.  We thought we could do it not by might (because we aren't the mighty ones, they are) but by using corny throwbacks like common sense and good will and solidarity.

 Again, who were we kidding? 

I'll give you one small example of Goliath's power and why we don't stand a chance:

Ever been in a Books-a-Million store? I hadn't either until I came south, and I went in innocently enough, as anyone would. It's a bookstore, after all, and I do love bookstores. But I didn't have to spend much time there before I began to see a trend: I am the kind of person they hate. I am the enemy. Me!

 I realize I'm in the south and the south is hostile to avowed liberals, but come on--let me at least get to the humor section before the attacks begin.

 This is what I encountered mere feet inside the door the other day:
 

 

At Books-a-Million, Myrtle Beach 1/25/12

This is an end cap in the main aisle. The titles change periodically, but the lean to the right never goes away. (I apologize for the poor photos. I took them with my kindergarten grade cell-phone camera, quickly so nobody would notice, because I was, after all, standing in plain view, because that's where these hostile books can best be seen.)

There is another Books-A-Million outside a huge mall a few miles from this smaller mall. They have an all-rightie-all-the-time end cap in their main aisle, too, so this is not just some Bubba manager's idea of fun, it's store policy. (In case you're wondering, I've looked all over for the liberal end caps.  They're not there.)

So then it came to me that if I buy something in a BAM! store (that's their nickname), I'm aiding the enemy. So I don't. Now I plan my trips to Books-a-Million as one would a reconnaissance mission, a stealth activity: Let's see what rotten propaganda they're pushing now.

Once I get past that ugly end cap, I spend a few refreshing minutes in the "Politics" aisle rearranging books so that the few liberal or even moderate books cover much of that junk. (Pathetic, I know, but it's the best I can do ever since I took that stand against vandalism.)

Then I grab something to read and sit at a table in their Joe Muggs Cafe (My own little sit-in I call it, since I read their books and magazines and never buy anything, but it's not as satisfying as it should be, since, so far. no one seems to notice.) 

I should mention that BAM! publishes a monthly Book Page magazine highlighting their latest books.  Mark R. Levin, a Right Wing radio personality and "the #1 bestselling author of Liberty and Tyranny and regular Fox News contributor"  is on January's cover. (Last month it was Glenn Beck). Levin has a new book out called, "Ameritopia, The Unmaking of America".  Before I saw that cover, I confess I had never heard of Mark R. Levin. (Am I the only one?  I don't know.  I only know that I was much happier before I knew that his new book, "Ameritopia" is at the top, the very tip-top, of this week's New York Times non-fiction bestseller list!   )

So I took a look at the new book by this guy who--my god! NYT Best Seller!--I really should have heard of by now. I turned page after page and, okay, as a new Mark R. Levin reader who is also a liberal, I'm as biased as biased can be.  But even I am shocked at how badly this book stinks!  

Let me tell you, he's no Glenn Beck.

From the Introduction:

In Ameritopia I explain that the heart of the problem is, in fact, utopianism, a term I discuss in great detail throughout the book.  Utopianism is the idealogical and doctrinal foundation for statism. While utopianism or statism or utopian or statist are often used interchangeably, the undertaking here is to probe more dceply into what motivates and animates the tyranny of statism.  Indeed the modern arguments about necessities and virtues of governmental control over the individual are but malign echoes of utopian prescriptions through the ages, which attempted to define subjugation as the most transcendent state of man.

Oh, my gawd. Huh? What?

But, wait...the first lines of the first chapter, "The Tyranny of Utopia":

 Tyranny, broadly defined, is the use of power to dehumanize the individual and delegitimize his nature.  Political utopianism is tyranny disguised as a desirable, workable and even paradisiacal governing ideology.  There are, of course, unlimited utopian constructs, for the mind is capable of infinite fantasies.  But there are common themes.  The fantasies take the form of grand social plans or experiments, the impracticality and impossibility of which, in small ways and large, leads to the individual's subjugation.

And it goes on.  And. . .on.  And. . .on.

This book, I remind you, is NUMBER ONE ON THE NEW YORK TIMES NON-FICTION BEST SELLER LIST.  The book came out on January 17--less than two weeks ago--and already over 1200 people have reviewed it on Amazon, 876 of them giving it Five Stars. 

It's a runaway best seller and from where I'm sitting (In BAM!s Joe Muggs cafe) I'm concluding that something besides this book is stinking to high heaven.

Consider this:

After the closing of Borders Books in 2011, Books-a-Million became the second largest bookseller in the United States, behind Barnes and Noble.   They operate some 200 stores in the south, the northeast and in the midwest.  They've now taken over dozens of empty Borders stores and opened Books-A-Millions in their space.

And they sell millions of books on their website.  If you go on their site and click on the "Political Science" category, as I did yesterday,  on the very first page you'll find a mess of right wing and conservative books, from the current to the moldy old.  Glenn Beck is prominent, as is that guy, Mark R. Levin.  Laura Ingraham is there; so is Sarah Palin.  So is Bill O'Reilly, not for his most recent book about Lincoln, but for his memoir, published way back in 2008.

Bill Clinton and Zbigniew Brzezinski are there, too, but from what I can tell, they're mere tokens. (Unless maybe they said something bad about Obama. . .)  But I have to wonder why old books by the Righties, some more than three years old, are at the top of their list when so many other, newer  books might better deserve to be there.

Mark R. Levin's "Ameritopia" is his second book for Threshold Publishing, a Simon and Schuster imprint that exclusively publishes conservative books, many of which rise to the top of the NYT best seller list.  Levin's book, "Liberty and Tyranny" (There's that word again) also hit the top of the NYT bestseller list, and now he, along with Glenn Beck, is Threshold's star.  Mary Matalin is its Editor-in-Chief.  (I looked hard for a liberal arm of Simon and Schuster (a CBS company), or any other publishing company, and--no surprise--there are none.)

In a telling article about Threshold in Politico, July 21, 2009, it's clear that any liberal expecting to write a best-seller might better stick to fiction:

Adam Bellow, executive editor at HarperCollins, noted that conservative publishing first took off in the 1990s, with the New York houses initially resistant — until the possible payoff became obvious for books taking shots at liberals. (Bellow edited Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” for Doubleday.) Now, going forward, he notes there are challenges ahead for upstart imprints like Threshold.

“If you’re setting up an imprint, you’re taking on a real financial challenge,” Bellow said. “You have to have screaming commercial best-sellers. You have to keep delivering them year after year. The success at Threshold, which took a while to find its legs, has been largely to do with Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. And the success of those books is that these authors have enormous media platforms.”

Bellow, who’s editing Sarah Palin’s much-anticipated memoir, said he expects that at least through Obama’s presidency, publishing houses will stay committed to churning out conservative books for at least one reason sure to keep publishing executives — whether right, left or in between — pleased. “Feeding that market will continue, because it’s going to be profitable,” he said.

So what's to stop a big bookseller like BAM! from manipulating the market?  (They also own a book distribution company.) What's to stop Threshold?  What's to stop any of the Right Wing top guns--the Koch Brothers, say-- the people with all the money?  What's to stop them from buying up tens or even hundreds of thousands of these books and sitting on them?  (It's been done before on a smaller scale.  Remember the fuss about Newt Gingrich during the congressional hearings just before they gave him a big, fat noogie?  Seems he got some Big Guys to put up $150,000 to promote and/or buy up his book, Window of Opportunity to make it look like people were actually reading it.)  And what's to stop 800+ stooges from churning out magnificent reviews for a book that nobody in their right mind would actually read through to the end?

Does anybody really believe that the average reader is clamoring for more of the same from Mark R. Levin?  (That same Mark R. Levin who gushes his thanks to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity in his Ameritopia acknowledgements?)  Unless you're hopelessly in love with the words "utopianism", "statism" and "tyranny", there's nothing juicy in there, no matter how hard you look.  It's one endless, dry paragraph after another.

Just as radio and TV stations can promote their own and manipulate their viewership into believing that their way is the way it is, the way it should be, and ever will be, so can book stores, simply by advertising and placement.  But this appears to be beyond simply leading a horse to water.  Somebody is buying up and pushing those books, and it ain't the general public. 

But to be fair, in that same BAM! store I managed to find a slim volume called "What it means to be a Democrat",  written by George McGovern and published this past November by Blue Rider Press, a new imprint from Penguin.

Sen. McGovern's book was one of first on Blue Rider's list to make it to the bookstores.  It's a tribute to publisher David Rosenthal (fired by Simon and Schuster after 13 years), who chose a book so important in its own way, but with virtually no chance at bestsellerdom.  That little book, so honest and true, so meaningful to those of us who work to make the Senator proud by living by his ideals, will never reach the top of the NYT best-seller list.  And what a crying shame that is.

Above all, being a Democrat means having compassion for others.  It means putting government to work to help the people who need it. 

It means using all available tools to provide good health care and education, job opportunities, safe neighborhoods, a healthy environment, a promising future.

It means standing up for people who have been kept down, whether they are native Americans or African Americans, women, immigrants, or the homeless.

It means taking care of the mentally ill, of seniors, of vulnerable children, of veterans--and making sure all people are treated with respect and dignity.

(Introduction to "What it Means to be a Democrat" by George McGovern.) 

Out with the Good and In with the Bad: It's Just So Yesterday.

Here it is nearing the end of January and at long last, after 17 Republican debates--count 'em, 17!--we're down to two actual contenders and a couple of valiant bench-warmers. While Ron Paul and Rick Santorum work hard to make some headway, it looks like it's Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, neck and neck, fighting it out for a chance to clobber the current White House occupant and show this country what a real president looks like.

Brian Blanco/European Press Photo Agency

 Mitt the Peacemaker, the soft-spoken everyotherman, knows going in he'll never be able to out-mean Newt.  Newt the Hysterian has perfected condescending bulldoggedness until it's a veritable political art form. Nobody does it better.  His opponents drool at the scope of his talents, awestruck by his ability to use those tools to sidestep any attempt at a messy question.  Bad Newt!  Bad Newt!  And (sigh. . .) the crowds love him.

Mitt Poor Mitt stammers, stutters, fast-talks until he's blue in the face, ripping into Newt with all he's got, and nobody cares.  So the decision has been made:  No more Mr. Nice Guy!  He goes for the jugular in the Tampa debate but barely strikes a nerve.  It's anybody's guess where he'll need to go from here.  It won't be pretty--a thought that goes against gentle Mitt's Bain--um, grain, but it's not as if he hasn't had to take people out before.

So there goes Good, off to fend for itself while the candidates get their Bad mojo going so they can become crowd-pleasers, too.  Rick Santorum tried it the other day when a woman in his audience went off on President Obama's legitimacy.  She wouldn't call him "President" because he shouldn't be there.  “He is an avowed Muslim," she said, "and my question is, why isn't something being done to get him out of our government?”

Santorum could have done what candidate John McCain rightly if reluctantly did in 2008 when a woman in his audience repeated that same "Obama is a muslim" mantra.  To McCain's everlasting credit, he stopped the woman dead, saying, "No ma'am, that's not true."  But Santorum side-stepped it, feeding the woman's fears with, “Believe me … I’m doing everything I can to get him out of the government.”

When the press called him on it later, he Gingriched it, huffing and bluffing, “It’s not my responsibility as a candidate to correct everybody who makes a statement that I disagree with. There are lots of people who get up and say stuff in a town hall meeting and say things that I don’t agree with, but I don’t think it’s my obligation, nor should it be your feeling that it’s my obligation to correct somebody who says something that I don’t agree with.”  (And he's appalled that they would even suggest such a thing.  Appalled!  Wait--frankly appalled!)

Ron Paul says the housing mess is "all government manufactured.  The best thing you can do is get out of the way."  This from a man who wants to be president. Of the United States.  Because the last thing we need is some huge honcho giving us advice. Or telling us what to do.  So if you elect him, rest assured that he will not do his job.

But then, not 24 hours after that last debate in Tampa, Barack Obama gives his State of the Union address.  It's an elegant, impassioned plea for fairness, a love song to the people, a nudge back to sanity.  It's more than a promise to get things done, it's an outline of how it will happen. The scorched earth is greening up.  Hope is on the horizon. And Gabby Gifford's smile lights up the universe.

AP photo/Saul Loeb

  Krauthammer concedes that "Obama has set the right tone."  Daniels rebuts with faint praise.  The Twitterverse goes wild!  Good is off the mat and on its feet, ready for another round.

And Four Horsemen can be seen riding off, their banshee howls echoing, then fading, then gone.

It's Our Anniversary, Barack's and Mine. I Hope it's not our Last

 January 20, 2012.  Today marks the beginning of Barack Obama's fourth year as president.  Three years ago today he stood out in the cold and said, "Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America."  He promised "an open government" and "a new beginning."   I've been around for many televised inaugurations, starting with JFK's when I was but a mere child/adult and, for me,  this one equaled or might have even surpassed that one for good, old-fashioned stirring moments.

In most circles this has probably gone unnoticed, but today is my anniversary, too.  Three years ago, on this exact day, because Barack Obama stirred my soul and gave me hope, I began writing this blog.  I didn't even think about actually doing it until around mid-morning, when it suddenly came to me that this was one of those portentous days that I shouldn't let go by unnoticed.

I was heady with joy but understandably reluctant to go whole hog predicting the end to all our troubles.  We were not anointing a savior, even though eight years of hell seemed finally to be at an end.  I was trying to remain calm; trying to keep in mind all of the promises made by politicians over the years that had never been kept, either because there had never been any intention or because they didn't know what the hell they were getting themselves into.

I started it this way:

Today is January 20, 2009. Inauguration day for Barack Obama, and it can't have come soon enough. It's true that he's been de facto president since November, 2008, when George W. Bush unofficially, without fanfare or hesitation, turned the job over to him, but today it became official. What a day it's been! They're estimating the crowds at 2 million strong, a sight unseen on any Presidential First Day in modern history.

And ended it like this:

I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country, just as I have no illusions about the impact my words will make in the overall scheme of things.  I'll admit that I'm  overwhelmed right now with the events of the day.  I'm feeling more than a little inarticulate and possibly even shy about expressing how it feels to have our country back.   It may not be the best day to start a blog after all.  But start it I have, and now I'll give this day over to the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama, America's new president.  The bands are playing, the sun is setting and all's right with the world.   For now.

On January 20, 2010, in the blog marking our mutual first anniversary, I wrote this about last year's blog:

Oh, the joy in my heart as I wrote those words.  Take THAT, you lousy, bloated, insufferable faux-Capitalists.  The Sheriff's saddling up and the posse's not far behind.  We're off to save the ranches!  Widows and orphans, help is on the way!

But lest you think I was totally naive, I also wrote:  'I have no grand illusions about a rapid return to health for this country.'   No, I had no grand illusions, but I did have dreams...[Ed: About the repetition of those words "grand illusions":  I didn't even notice until now that I had repeated them in two blogs a year apart. I must have seriously meant it.]   

...I keep reminding myself that the Good Man took on what amounted to a national nightmare.  There were no easy fixes, and nobody pretended there would be.  But I would have slept better this past year if only I had been able to see the president as a 'people person'.   Was he ever that?  I don't know.  We might have made him into our own images, taking much needed comfort in an illusion of our own making.  Maybe he is what he is.  But what is he?  After a full year of hosting him in The People's House we're no closer to knowing where he stands, or, more importantly, where he's going.

Last year, on January 20, 2011, I wrote this:

I knew this anniversary day was coming and that I would want to write about it, but what would I say as I stood beside Obama saying farewell to Year Two, heading into Year Three?  That all of my wishes came true?  That all of my fears were justified?  That nothing much has changed?  That I now know what kind of man my president is?

I can't say any of those things.   I am at times proud of my president, disappointed in him, enraged by his actions or inaction, fearful of the direction he is taking us.

I'm impatient and feeling increasingly impotent as I'm forced to watch more and more jobless citizens give up, more and more home-owners become homeless, more and more of the sick and dying having to give over their lives to insurance company paper-pushers.  I want the wars to end.  I want the corporate giants to finally understand the consequences and do something about their destructive practices.  I want the GOP and certain members of the Democratic Party to fulfill their obligations to the citizenry--the entire citizenry--in a time of unparalleled crisis, and act like a responsible governing body.  I want our president to be a leader of the people.

Are you sensing a trend here?  Are you thinking that my enthusiasm is taking a downhill slide and that this year should be the one where I finally admit I was wrong about the whole thing?  Well, think again.  After watching the clown shows passing for the GOP debates over the past few months, I'm more determined than ever to help make this current president the next president of the United States.

My God, did you see that mess last night?  Have you been watching the remaining Four Horsemen in action?  Is there a serious contender among them?  Would you really, sincerely want any one of them leading this country?  (If you can answer "yes" with a light heart and a straight face, I think you're in the wrong place.  I would point you to the right place, but I don't think there is one.)

I'm still disappointed.  I'm still impatient.  The slow pace of change is maddening.  But there is no denying there is change in the air, either because of President Obama, in spite of him, or because of forces having nothing to do with him--take your pick--and I'm hanging in there for the long haul.  Finally, the people are awakening.  Our people.  We're on the move and we're not turning back.

I'm with my party and my president and if I have to slap them upside the head once in a while to get their attention, there's a far better chance at success with them than with that other bunch.  (You know that bunch is trouble when the moderates in their party are ostracized and/or banished for thinking even slightly good thoughts; when the ones that remain feel the need to make it clear they're only going after the job as leader of this fair land to make it easier for the marauders to take over completely.)

So that's where I am on this, our third anniversary.  Sure, I was hoping the honeymoon would never end and the gifts would keep on coming, but there it is.  Reality strikes.  It hasn't been all roses, but it hasn't been all thorns, either.  Progress has been made.  I'm looking forward to the year ahead, and I'm going to work hard to get Barack Obama re-elected.

That's where I'm headed. Just so you know.
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In other news:  FactCheck looks at the truthiness of the GOP debate last night.  It's here.

And I found this on their sidebar:

Q: Does Obama plan to deny emergency brain surgery for patients over 70?

A: No. A man claiming on a radio talk show to be a brain surgeon lied about that, and about a meeting of two associations of neurological surgeons, those associations say.

 See what we're up against? 

Attention: The job opening is for POTUS. Dilettantes need not apply.

When I was a little girl during FDR's time, I remember people in my family talking in hushed, reverent tones about the President of the United States --  as if he were someone so special you mustn't use your normal, everyday voice.  I grew up thinking there was no one in our beloved country who could top the President when it came to being all-wise and all-caring.  I believed that there was something other-worldly, even God-like about Presidents, and I felt safe.

I came of age in the 1950s, in the midst of the McCarthy witch hunts, and all childish notions about the government as citizen protector flew right off the newborn TV screen and into the wild blue yonder.  The Army-McCarthy hearings were televised live, and for the first time in my life I knew real, hair-raising fear.  I understood then the latent, potentially evil power of the government and it terrified me.  Eisenhower was president, and, while my concern over his seeming disengagement from the whole vile circus nearly got the best of me, it didn't deter me from my original thoughts about the presidency in general.

There is the president and then there is the presidency.  One is fleeting, the other is our most cherished institution.

I've worked my way through many presidents since then and even the worst of them haven't been able to move me away from that belief.  We have certain built-in expectations of our presidents, tempered always with the recognition that they're only human.  They will not always do our bidding.  They will often make mistakes.  They will sometimes fail in the most spectacular fashion.  But the underlying hope is that when they wake up every morning in the White House -- the house on loan to them by the people -- they'll remember who they're supposed to be and resolve at the very least to do no lasting harm.

But what I'm seeing now is that venerable institution moving further and further away from any kind of special honor and more and more into celebrity/CEO status.  It is no longer cherished, no longer looked on as both a rare privilege and a breathtaking responsibility.  For proof, take a hard look at the Republican Party's current lineup of  potential presidential nominees.  Unless something major happens, the president's opponent will be one of these frontrunners:  Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, Rick Perry, or Michelle Bachmann.  

Look deeper: There is not a serious candidate among them.  They make it understood that they want to be known as presidential without the annoying duties historically relegated to the presidency.  "Duties" is the one word in the job description that gives them the most grief, and the one they're each aiming to adjust once they're in office.  What I'm getting from their debate discussions is that they're falling all over themselves to see who can diminish the office of the presidency the fastest. (The possible exception might be Mitt Romney, but he's keeping mum, waiting to see which way the wind will blow.)

 I don't know.  If one cared, one might want to pass along to them that this is not your ordinary CEO gig.  Yes, there may be some question about whether the President of the United States is still looked on as the leader of the free world, but there's no argument that he (and someday, she) is the sole keeper of the Executive branch of our government.  When you have a country the size of ours (over 300 million people spread out over almost four million square miles) mired in unnatural disasters of epic proportions,  the last thing any serious candidate for the highest government office in the land should be advocating is an end to government interference.  Yet in the course of some 16 debates so far, that seems to be the recurrent theme.  It's as if, in all the grand hoopla, they've forgotten just which job they've applied for.

If they talk at all about joblessness, homelessness, uncovered illnesses, or any other deliberate misery cast upon certain segments of the 99%, it's to place the blame for such predicaments squarely on either the existing governmental busybodies or on the millions of affected people who have the gall to think they're the victims here.  Their fix is to turn the country over to God and the private sector -- neither of which, it should be pointed out, the president will have any control over if their dearest wishes come true.

Their goal, the destruction of a central government, is one that no president before them would have considered, even in the wildest wanderings of their most vivid imaginations.  It's not the kind of remedy past seekers of the office were inclined to entertain.

On the other hand, it's exactly the kind of thing we came to expect from someone like Herman Cain, a guy with way too much money and ego,  a guy who only just wanted to sell his book and thought the way to do it would be to run for, Holy Pokemon!  President!  Of the United States!

But okay, this did not get past me:  Through no great feat of his own, and despite gaffes that might suggest "astonishingly bad comedian" rather than "honorable POTUS",  Cain rose to the top of the GOP nominees list and stayed there for a frightfully long time before toppling.  That means there are a whole lot of people out there who just aren't getting what I'm saying here.

That is just painful.

Newt to 'Really Poor Children': Buy Your Own Damn Ice Cream

Newt Gingrich is obsessed with the plight of poor kids these days. He's been all over the place talking about them, and I have to confess, the jollier he gets about his remedies for their plight, the more nervous I become.  It's an odd turn of events and one rife with suspicion.  It's Newt we're talking about.  Newt, who eats mean for breakfast and swallows the seeds.

Newt, who put a contract out on an entire nation, namely ours, and is still fretting over the insistent existence of a labor movement that was scheduled to die circa Reagan.  (He's got another, bigger contract ready to roll on Day One.  Fair warning.)

Newt, who sings "Only I can make this world seem right. Only I can make the darkness bright.  Only I and I alone can thrill me like I do and fill my heart with love for only me."

And encores with the stirring, "For what is a man, what has he got?  If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels.  The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!"

That Newt.

(Let the record show Newt has so far ignored the first lines of the above tune.  The part where it says, "And now the end is near and so I face the final curtain...".  Yesterday, in fact, Newt told ABC's Jake Tapper he WILL BE THE NOMINEE.  I guess that means all debates are off now?) 

Ordinarily I wouldn't care about Newt's $60,000 per speech blabbings about stupid child labor laws and how really poor kids from really shiftless families will resort to stealing unless he steps in and puts them to work, but after some lengthy and intense investigation, I find I have barely an ounce of faith in this current century's sanity.  That dimpled nasty man could very well be running things come January, 2013.

 
 There are some who defend him by reminding us that there's nothing wrong with kids doing a little work. The kids feel good about themselves and the upside is that, as Newt says, they can buy their own ice cream someday.  Nice, really, that.  In a sane world we might actually picture our sweet darlings helping out and getting paid a tiny reward, leaving everybody happy, happy, happy.

But that's not what Newt means and that's not how he put it.  This is how he put it:

“Start with the following two facts. Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.

I come around to this question. You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school. They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they come in? What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian?  What if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

That's not helpful, that's hateful.  And full of hidden meaning.  What does it mean when Newt says, "You have kids who are required under law to go to school"?  Will there be an addendum to Newt's 2ist Century Contract on America abolishing school attendance for "really poor kids" so they'll have more time to do all that rewarding work?

When the kids take over as assistant clerks and assistant librarians and assistant janitors, what does that do to the work hours of the real clerks, librarians and janitors?  I'm reading between the lines and seeing part time jobs with no bennies for everyone as part of Newt's grand plan.  He's Newt, after all, clearly not Mr. Empathy.  If you've followed Newt at all you know how strongly opposed he is to equality of the masses -- the kind of thing any signs of empathetic weakness might very well lead to.

Lots of kids work after school and weekends now, even amongst the "really poor".  It's what kids do when they get old enough.  They baby-sit, they do paper routes, they cut lawns, they wash cars, they run errands.  What they don't do any longer is work in sweatshops under conditions that could maim or kill or rot the spirit.

From Utata Tribal Photography:  Lewis Hines, photographer, 1906  "Hines kept detailed notes on the children he photographed, including comments they made as he interviewed them. The twelve year old boy in the [above] photograph was unable to read or write. He'd been employed by a textile mill in Columbia, South Carolina for four years, since the age of eight. He told Hines, 'Yes, I want to learn, but can't when I work all the time'."

 Any student of history will tell you the reason we aren't allowed to work kids like that any more is because the laboring masses organized and put a stop to the exploitation of children by the privileged few.  Newt the Historian seems to have forgotten that.

But on to other things Newt, because, again, there's a mighty strangeness afoot:  The Great One told Sean Hannity over at Fox, apropos of nothing, that, "I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress.”

And, okay, I have to ask:  How many communists were there in congress?  Were they as hard on us as the teabaggers in congress today?  Can you give us a few tips on how to get rid of subversives?

In an Era of Super-Villains we need Super-Heroes

Since the dawn of man there has always been the need for a healthy society to smack down villains.  Villains are the human version of opportunistic rats:  There is no compunction about doing us in if that's what it takes to keep their kind going.  If their population is allowed to grow and thrive, their numbers will take us over.

In this country we're finally waking up to the evidence before us: our home-grown rats have blind-sided an easily distracted population, speedily metastasizing into super-villains.   For over two centuries they've been working on doing us in, taking us over, and now they own us.

They've commandeered our congress, corrupted our governors, pirated our airwaves, and swayed our elections, recently spending untold millions to create a phony, astro-turfed movement with no real goal except to destroy whatever safeguards are left to keep us safe, civil and healthy.

They own us.

Who are they?  We all know who they are.  They know who they are.  They take pleasure in their mischief-making, periodically rubbing our noses in it, lest we forget.  Their goal, as stated, is to destroy Barack Obama and the Democrats so fully there will never, ever be another Democratic majority.  Not ever.  Their goal is to turn all public works over to private interests and to keep it that way for all eternity.  Their goal is to dehumanize the worker bees and make them dependent on the benevolence of their bosses.  Their goal is to lead us into temptation and make sinners of us all.

They are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  They are the Heritage Foundation.  They are the Religious Right.  They are Dick Armey and FreedomWorks.  They are the Koch Brothers.  They are Fox's Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes.  They are Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.  They are John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  They are the same people you knew they would be.   The same bunch we've outed hundreds of times before. The same bunch still moving forward unimpeded, more bloated, more dangerous, less likely to look back.

The last thing they want or need is the presence of a Super-Hero.  But not to worry.  They're breathing easy, sleeping well at night, knowing there are no Super-Heroes on the horizon.  They're safe from us.  While they've been forming legions of followers, we've been looking in vain for our 21st century redeemers.

Where are this century's Mother Joneses?  The Walter Reuthers? The Martin Luther Kings?  The larger-than-life figures deep in the trenches, laying down their lives for causes that seem beyond any reasonable hope for success?  Where are the men and women who accept that they'll be jailed or bloodied or both but do what they need to do because it's the right thing at the right time and somebody has to do it?

Martin Luther King - March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, 1963

 
Where are the leaders who understand that a country can't survive without livelihoods, without dignity, without fairness and justice?  Leaders who understand that there are promises to keep, obligations to fulfill?  Who understand that what is happening in our country is all wrong and something must be done now?

(There are a few bona fide heroes, such as the good senators Bernie Sanders and Al Franken. [And Elizabeth Warren.  Added 3/13]  They're working hard but they can't do it alone.  They could use a few Super-Heroes.)

So that's it, then.  Let me know if you find one.  I'll keep looking, too.

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FRIDAY FOLLIES: On Gingrich and Dust Devils and Supply Side Jesus.

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Possible presidential candidate and every parent's nightmare of a potential son-in-law, Newt Gingrich,  revealed on the CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network) that we're not the only ones who think he's been a bad boy:  "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate."

Hard work and love of country--it'll do it to you every time.  Thank God for our lazy, unemployed America haters.  That's all we need--to be awash in infidelity on top of everything else we've got going on.

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You can call me Red, you can call me Fred, but don't call me a BANKER!

The Guardian reports:  The controversial former bank chief Sir Fred Goodwin is the latest high profile figure to obtain a superinjunction, it has emerged.
The existence of the measure – which bans the press from reporting that an injunction has been obtained – can be revealed after a backbench Liberal Democrat, John Hemming, raised the issue in the Commons.
"In a secret hearing this week Fred Goodwin has obtained a superinjunction preventing him being identified as a banker," said Hemming, the MP for Birmingham Yardley.

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Warning, sacrilege alert:  By way of Blogging Blue (a great liberal site from Wisconsin) here is Al Franken's "Supply-side Jesus" (from his before-senator days, but worth resurrecting again).   From Al's lips to God's ears--if we're lucky.

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 I've mentioned a couple of times that I fight the Right Wing with the kind of passive resistance that most people would say is more than just passive, it's a snoozer, but I've convinced at least one other person that stealth shelf shuffling can be loads of fun.

Here's how it works: 
If you find a bookstore that promotes Right Wing books over the more liberal kind (by placing them prominently on tables by the doors or at eye level facing forward on the shelves), you pretend you're checking out Our Good Books and then, instead of putting them back on the bottom shelves or behind the RWNJ books where you found them, you casually place them where they belong:  on top of or instead of the stinkers.  Note that there are cameras on the ceiling, hence the "stealth".  And remember not to buy anything while you're there.

Anyway, I saw this story about a guy who stocks Walmart shelves with obscene photos of himself in drag, and I realized that when it comes to really making waves, I'm pathetic.

FREMONT -- The Toledo man who told police he placed naked photographs of himself inside and outside Fremont's Walmart store will face felony charges.
Fremont police arrested Rodney Kunkel, 44, after store employees called at 7:45 a.m. to report they recognized the man's car in the parking lot while reviewing video footage from earlier in the week. Fremont Detective Sean O'Connell said the store was able to identify the man because the obscene photos found at the store were developed by its photo center.

So in case you're ever looking for a place to develop your obscene photos, Walmart's the place.  But don't go looking for liberal books there.  You won't find them.  They only carry the RWNJs.

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I found this amazing video on The Political Carnival, another great liberal website.  A slow dust devil creates a gorgeous ballet with plastic sheeting covering strawberry fields in Germany.  It needs music badly.   I chose Aaron Copland's "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Spring.  You might hear something entirely different.

Martha Graham performing in Appalachian Spring, 1944.

© Jerry Cooke/Corbis

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Cartoon of the week:

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