Saturday, June 16, 2012
The Loud, Shouty Guy
Apparently, it's the new normal to yell out at Barack X when he is trying to speak. Take a look at this ass hat.
It took me all of a millisecond to realize that the loud, shouty guy was a right wing blogger. Sadly, it seems that this breed of human is breeding like gremlins these days. All it takes is an adolescent power fantasy and a perpetual belief that "Dad" is fucking up their shit.
Certainly, there is no shortage of that sentiment!
It took me all of a millisecond to realize that the loud, shouty guy was a right wing blogger. Sadly, it seems that this breed of human is breeding like gremlins these days. All it takes is an adolescent power fantasy and a perpetual belief that "Dad" is fucking up their shit.
Certainly, there is no shortage of that sentiment!
Friday, June 15, 2012
McCain Says Corporations Are Not People
After the 2008 election and his reelection campaign in 2010, I thought John McCain had lost every shred of honesty and integrity. But, doggone it, he's making me reevaluate my opinion of him.
In an interview with PBS McCain criticized my favorite billionaire whipping boy, Sheldon Adelson, for bringing foreign cash into US elections:
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Mr. Adelson, who gave large amounts of money to the Gingrich campaign. And much of Mr. Adelson's casino profits that go to him come from this casino in Macau.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Which says what?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Which says that, obviously, maybe in a roundabout way, foreign money is coming into an American campaign -- political campaigns.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Because of the profits at the casinos in Macau?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. That is a great deal of money. And, again, we need a level playing field and we need to go back to the realization that Teddy Roosevelt had that we have to have a limit on the flow of money, and that corporations are not people.
That's why we have different laws that govern corporations than govern individual citizens. And so to say that corporations are people, again, flies in the face of all the traditional Supreme Court decisions that we have made -- that have been made in the past.McCain also said:
[Citizens United is] the most misguided, naive, uninformed, egregious decision of the United States Supreme Court I think in the 21st century.
To somehow view money as not having an effect on election, a corrupting effect on election, flies in the face of reality.and
Look, I guarantee you, Judy, there will be scandals. There is too much money washing around political campaigns today. And it will take scandals, and then maybe we can have the Supreme Court go back and revisit this issue.It's not just that the Supreme Court's is naive about the realities of money in campaigns: Justice Clarence Thomas immediately cashed in on it by having his wife set up a Tea Party lobbying organization. Why hasn't Thomas been impeached for such an egregious conflict of interest?
Perhaps I'm giving McCain more credit than he's due, given his oblivious comments about Romney and regulation in the first part of the interview. McCain is more like the conservative who used to be a liberal who was mugged, or the liberal used to be a conservative whose job was outsourced to China.
McCain experienced first hand the corrosive and corrupting influence of huge amounts of cash is in the hands of political operatives like Karl Rove. McCain was the victim of one of the worst whispering campaigns in the 2000 Republican primary, when push pollsters called voters in South Carolina and asked, "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain if you knew that he fathered an illegitimate black child?"
McCain had adopted a child from Bangladesh, but Bush's campaign operatives turned this into a blot on McCain's honor, much as they Swift Boated John Kerry four years later for his service in Viet Nam (George W. Bush had cowered on a National Guard airbase during the war, only to disappear for the last year of his service on a coke binge or political campaign, depending on what you want to call it). The South Carolina primary was probably the biggest reason McCain saw the light and sponsored McCain-Feingold in the first place.
What's even crazier is how such huge sums of money can change directions in so short a time. Adelson and his family had given Newt Gingrich's PAC more than $10 million just a few months ago, used mostly to smear Romney, and now Adelson has just given Romney's PAC $10 million.
And now Adelson says he'll spend up to $100 million of his dirty casino money to beat Obama. I can just imagine what kind of campaign that cash will pay for.
Oops!
RNC Latino Site Features Stock Photo of Asian Children
Ah, they are all brown so what's the dif?Thursday, June 14, 2012
Wow
Whether it’s done through the Affordable Care Act or done separate from that with Congress and the states — I think that things that allow you to go over state lines, certain things in terms of guaranteed issue and things of that nature. I think there are good elements. I just don’t think you need the federal government to do most of those things.---Governor Scott Walker on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
And he's not the only one. So much for repealing Obamacare.
And he's not the only one. So much for repealing Obamacare.
Out of Control, As They Should Be
A temporary truce has been called in the conservative war on women on orders from the High Command, but some men are still on the attack.
Today Gretchen Carlson walked off the set of Fox & Friends after co-host Brian Kilmeade said, "Women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now. It’s out of control." Yes, Brian, it's out of control. And it should be.
Did this guy say this by accident, or was this whole thing a setup? Is this just "entertainment" for the cavemen that watch Fox & Friends, or this guy's real attitude? Carlson didn't seem particularly peeved, but what's the deal? It amazes me that there are still men to whom ideas like this even occur, must less say aloud. In front of TV cameras. And millions of viewers.
Women are everywhere? Duh. They're 50.8% of the population. At age 65 and older, there are only 74 men for every 100 women. Among 2011 high school graduates, 72.3% of women and 64.6% of men are in college. Overall, 57% of college attendees were women in 2009. Currently in 40% of married couples the wife outearns the husband, even though women in general still only make 81% of what men earn. Given the college stats, these numbers are only going to increase over time.
We're "letting" them play golf and tennis? It's such a tragedy that all those women are tying up all the good tee times. And Bobby Riggs really showed Billie Jean King in 1973, didn't he?
Is the real reason so many conservative men are opposed to gay marriage is that they're afraid women would marry each other, rather than put up with this kind of crap all the time?
It makes me wonder how often Kilmeade unshackles his wife from her washboard and butter churn.
Today Gretchen Carlson walked off the set of Fox & Friends after co-host Brian Kilmeade said, "Women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now. It’s out of control." Yes, Brian, it's out of control. And it should be.
Did this guy say this by accident, or was this whole thing a setup? Is this just "entertainment" for the cavemen that watch Fox & Friends, or this guy's real attitude? Carlson didn't seem particularly peeved, but what's the deal? It amazes me that there are still men to whom ideas like this even occur, must less say aloud. In front of TV cameras. And millions of viewers.
Women are everywhere? Duh. They're 50.8% of the population. At age 65 and older, there are only 74 men for every 100 women. Among 2011 high school graduates, 72.3% of women and 64.6% of men are in college. Overall, 57% of college attendees were women in 2009. Currently in 40% of married couples the wife outearns the husband, even though women in general still only make 81% of what men earn. Given the college stats, these numbers are only going to increase over time.
We're "letting" them play golf and tennis? It's such a tragedy that all those women are tying up all the good tee times. And Bobby Riggs really showed Billie Jean King in 1973, didn't he?
Is the real reason so many conservative men are opposed to gay marriage is that they're afraid women would marry each other, rather than put up with this kind of crap all the time?
It makes me wonder how often Kilmeade unshackles his wife from her washboard and butter churn.
Blame Bush
A new Gallup poll shows that a majority of Americans still blame President Bush for our economic and financial woes. 68 percent of those surveyed place the blame on W while only 52 percent blame President Obama. 83 percent of that 52 percent are Republicans so that makes sense.
The interesting number is that 49 percent of the 69 percent that blame Bush are also Republicans. That gives me some hope that at least some folks on the right are willing to admit fault. Of course, on my list Bush and the GOP are number 2 as far as blame goes. The fault really lies with the financial sector of this country and their insatiable greed.
So, for those of you who whine about "blaming Bush," well...you are in the minority.
The interesting number is that 49 percent of the 69 percent that blame Bush are also Republicans. That gives me some hope that at least some folks on the right are willing to admit fault. Of course, on my list Bush and the GOP are number 2 as far as blame goes. The fault really lies with the financial sector of this country and their insatiable greed.
So, for those of you who whine about "blaming Bush," well...you are in the minority.
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Test Scores...Improving?
Despite the continued and lazily convenient narrative that our schools are falling apart and our students are all getting horrible educations, test scores in science are improving. Not only are they improving overall but the gap between Latino and black students and their white and Asian peers is narrowing.
Hispanic students made the largest gain, to 137 from 132 (out of 300), while the average score for black students increased to 129 from 126. That might seem small but believe me, it's enormous from a statistical standpoint when you consider that it was a sampling of 122,000 students from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
More interesting are the notes in the report that indicated that students do a better job if they have hands on activities rather than just reading or watching. Those who work in teams showed better and more enduring understandings. Differentiation is key here, folks, especially in today's short attention span society. Students need to be doing things and not listening to lectures for entire blocks at a time.
I'm heartened by this and many other stories I have seen from around the country since the president took office and Arnie Duncan became Secretary of Education. There is no doubt in my mind that their education initiatives are the best this country has seen since the mid point of last century.
Hispanic students made the largest gain, to 137 from 132 (out of 300), while the average score for black students increased to 129 from 126. That might seem small but believe me, it's enormous from a statistical standpoint when you consider that it was a sampling of 122,000 students from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
More interesting are the notes in the report that indicated that students do a better job if they have hands on activities rather than just reading or watching. Those who work in teams showed better and more enduring understandings. Differentiation is key here, folks, especially in today's short attention span society. Students need to be doing things and not listening to lectures for entire blocks at a time.
I'm heartened by this and many other stories I have seen from around the country since the president took office and Arnie Duncan became Secretary of Education. There is no doubt in my mind that their education initiatives are the best this country has seen since the mid point of last century.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
A Profile In Courage
Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad - they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party - and I don't - as having an orthodoxy that doesn't allow for disagreement, doesn't allow for finding some common ground.---Jeb Bush, 11 June 2012
A hard time? Try...he wouldn't have even made it through a GOP primary. Like the fiction they create regarding Obama, the Gipper has become a mythical figure that bears no resemblance to what he actually did in reality. I will give Mr. Bush credit, though, for having the guts to admit what most conservatives will not.
A hard time? Try...he wouldn't have even made it through a GOP primary. Like the fiction they create regarding Obama, the Gipper has become a mythical figure that bears no resemblance to what he actually did in reality. I will give Mr. Bush credit, though, for having the guts to admit what most conservatives will not.
Monday, June 11, 2012
Government Created Wealth
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of watching a documentary about the Grand Coulee Dam. It was part of PBS's American Experience series that I have enjoyed for many, many years. Here is the program in its entirety and I recommend watching the whole thing before you comment on the rest of this post.
My initial awe at what went into this project and the enormously positive outcome gave way to a profound sadness because a project like this could never happen today. Why? Because "the GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.." (Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein)
Before the dam's construction, the likely ancestors of the Tea Party behaved in a similar fashion as described by Mann and Ornstein, shouting all too familiar cries of dissent. Proponents of the dam were called "crackpots" and "Coulee Communists." Big private power interests fought fiercely against it. Collier's magazine downgraded Grand Coulee and, as the structure rose higher, it was labeled as "socialistic, impractical dam-foolishness." Even experts, engineers and geologists debated its usefulness. The president of the American Society of Civil Engineers branded Coulee as "a grandiose project of no more usefulness than the pyramids of Egypt." A Spokane paper sneered. "Baron Munchausen," it said, referring to the legendary liar, "thou wert a piker."
They were all wrong.
The Grand Coulee Dam, a taxpayer funded, government project, resulted in millions of dollars for the defense industry (60,000 planes and the creation of plutonium-239 were built using the power from the dam) and an explosion of agriculture in the state of Washington due to irrigation of a once arid, massive area of land in the Northwest. In fact, it provides irrigation to 2,000 farms in the area. The Grand Coulee Dam is one of the top produces in the country of hydro-electric power.Entire towns...economies...grew up around the building of the dam as thousands of people and a massive amount of materials were needed in its construction. The entire region was changed and became very prosperous as a result of the dam.
So, the Grand Coulee Dam is an example of how the government can create wealth. I realize this is sacrilege for the right wingers out there but the facts are the facts. So, why again can't we do something like this today?
Looking deeper than the reasons I listed above, one becomes even more confused. Economic conditions were worse back in the 1930s. Unemployment was higher. The private sector had been shown to be a collection of greedy buffoons who were, in essence, addicted to gambling and using the nation's (really, the world's) economic structure as collateral. People put their faith in government and it paid off. The same thing should be able to happen today, right?
No. Because the last 30 years have seen a systematic attack on the institution of government that is so egregious...so profoundly inaccurate...that I fear the national perception is forever changed. Even as little as two years ago, I have caught myself saying (in derision), "Well, this must be a government operation." It's become part of our zeitgeist to hate the government and yet we so desperately need its structure and organizational principles right now to get ourselves out of this sluggish funk. Combine this with near worship we have of the real Gordon Gekkos of our country and our federal government doesn't stand a chance.
Yet, it's terribly obvious that the private sector is not going to be able to improve our economy on its own. Their motivation is for profit. That's great when you are exclusively operating in the free market. As we have seen far too many times, the free market isn't a universal panacea for all things economical. This is especially true because the government...our government and the governments of the world...are partners in the economy. They have to be because governments can sometimes improve market outcomes. And the Grand Coulee Dam is an excellent example of exactly how this works.
President Obama has been trying to do this for the last 3 1/2 years and has been massively derided for it. He's a "big government liberal" who wants to blah blah blah...have any of the people who say this ever taken the time to see the results of a project like Grand Coulee?
In truth, we don't even have to do something as massive as the Grand Coulee Dam to get our economy moving again. We could simply start with a massive repair plan for our nation's highways and bridges. That would put people to work which would, in turn, generate revenue for the government and the private sector. In essence, I'm talking about the president's jobs plan.
Of course, the Republicans will never pass anything that could signal a success for the president in an election year. To put it simply, they, like the detractors of the Grand Coulee Dam, have a vested interest in the failure of such policies which essentially means they have a vested interest in the failure of our economy.
And, since the perception of our government is not what it was in 1933, they may very well succeed.
Watch Grand Coulee Dam on PBS. See more from American Experience.
My initial awe at what went into this project and the enormously positive outcome gave way to a profound sadness because a project like this could never happen today. Why? Because "the GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.." (Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein)
Before the dam's construction, the likely ancestors of the Tea Party behaved in a similar fashion as described by Mann and Ornstein, shouting all too familiar cries of dissent. Proponents of the dam were called "crackpots" and "Coulee Communists." Big private power interests fought fiercely against it. Collier's magazine downgraded Grand Coulee and, as the structure rose higher, it was labeled as "socialistic, impractical dam-foolishness." Even experts, engineers and geologists debated its usefulness. The president of the American Society of Civil Engineers branded Coulee as "a grandiose project of no more usefulness than the pyramids of Egypt." A Spokane paper sneered. "Baron Munchausen," it said, referring to the legendary liar, "thou wert a piker."
They were all wrong.
The Grand Coulee Dam, a taxpayer funded, government project, resulted in millions of dollars for the defense industry (60,000 planes and the creation of plutonium-239 were built using the power from the dam) and an explosion of agriculture in the state of Washington due to irrigation of a once arid, massive area of land in the Northwest. In fact, it provides irrigation to 2,000 farms in the area. The Grand Coulee Dam is one of the top produces in the country of hydro-electric power.Entire towns...economies...grew up around the building of the dam as thousands of people and a massive amount of materials were needed in its construction. The entire region was changed and became very prosperous as a result of the dam.
So, the Grand Coulee Dam is an example of how the government can create wealth. I realize this is sacrilege for the right wingers out there but the facts are the facts. So, why again can't we do something like this today?
Looking deeper than the reasons I listed above, one becomes even more confused. Economic conditions were worse back in the 1930s. Unemployment was higher. The private sector had been shown to be a collection of greedy buffoons who were, in essence, addicted to gambling and using the nation's (really, the world's) economic structure as collateral. People put their faith in government and it paid off. The same thing should be able to happen today, right?
No. Because the last 30 years have seen a systematic attack on the institution of government that is so egregious...so profoundly inaccurate...that I fear the national perception is forever changed. Even as little as two years ago, I have caught myself saying (in derision), "Well, this must be a government operation." It's become part of our zeitgeist to hate the government and yet we so desperately need its structure and organizational principles right now to get ourselves out of this sluggish funk. Combine this with near worship we have of the real Gordon Gekkos of our country and our federal government doesn't stand a chance.
Yet, it's terribly obvious that the private sector is not going to be able to improve our economy on its own. Their motivation is for profit. That's great when you are exclusively operating in the free market. As we have seen far too many times, the free market isn't a universal panacea for all things economical. This is especially true because the government...our government and the governments of the world...are partners in the economy. They have to be because governments can sometimes improve market outcomes. And the Grand Coulee Dam is an excellent example of exactly how this works.
President Obama has been trying to do this for the last 3 1/2 years and has been massively derided for it. He's a "big government liberal" who wants to blah blah blah...have any of the people who say this ever taken the time to see the results of a project like Grand Coulee?
In truth, we don't even have to do something as massive as the Grand Coulee Dam to get our economy moving again. We could simply start with a massive repair plan for our nation's highways and bridges. That would put people to work which would, in turn, generate revenue for the government and the private sector. In essence, I'm talking about the president's jobs plan.
Of course, the Republicans will never pass anything that could signal a success for the president in an election year. To put it simply, they, like the detractors of the Grand Coulee Dam, have a vested interest in the failure of such policies which essentially means they have a vested interest in the failure of our economy.
And, since the perception of our government is not what it was in 1933, they may very well succeed.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Saturday, June 09, 2012
Yep
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. ---Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein
Friday, June 08, 2012
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Should Corporations Be Accountable for What They Say?
In a democracy the business of government needs to be open and transparent: we need to see what our elected representatives are saying and doing to make sure that they have our best interests at heart.
Given that, shouldn't the process we use to select those representatives be equally open and transparent, to make sure that we know who got those representatives elected and can judge what their motivations might be?
Since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, unlimited corporate spending on political ads has become a major influence on the outcomes of elections. To make sure that the electoral process remains open and fair, the FCC recently ruled that TV stations have to put detailed information on political ad purchases on line.
But Republicans in the House are trying to prevent the FCC from enforcing that rule. For people who claim to believe in personal responsibility, Republicans sure do want to make it hard to hold people accountable for the things they say in public.
Stations are already required to make this information available, but only in paper form at the stations. These stations frequently charge a substantial fee to copy the information, making it hard for non-profit public interest groups to obtain it.
Everything about Republican opposition to this transparency rule is bogus. It's not a burdensome new regulation: they already have to provide this information in hard copy. Every TV station has a website, and it's much easier to slap data into an HTML file and stick it on the website than it is to hire someone to be responsible for producing, maintaining and copying paper documents. A web-based solution can be automated to be made cheap and effortless, while hard copy will always be expensive and personnel-intensive.
The stations claim it's bad because it allows competitors to find out what their advertising rates are. But competitors can already get the data by sending a secretary over to make a paper copy; and they can deduct any costs as a business expense.
The conceit of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision was that speech is money, and multinational corporations are people. The former is debatable, but the latter is specious nonsense: corporations are a legalistic creation of government; if you prick them they do not bleed. They do not have birth certificates. They cannot vote. Why should they be able buy political campaigns?
And why are these corporate "citizens" so afraid of being identified with the ads they're running? Why do they cower in the shadows instead of bravely speaking their minds? Why don't they want to be associated with the negative half-truths they pay to have spewed over the airwaves? Are they afraid of the wrath of well-informed voters? Or are they really shills for foreign-owned corporations (like, say, TransCanada, which is the force behind the Keystone XL pipeline)?
Due to the the lax disclosure rules after Citizens United, there's already no way to know for sure whether foreign money from multinational corporations owned by the Chinese Red Army or Cayman Island banks is influencing American politics.
And after all, the Constitution doesn't say that you have to be a citizen to enjoy free speech: the First Amendment just says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press," without mentioning anything about the nationality or citizenship of the purveyors of that speech.
Thus, the prohibition against foreign campaign spending doesn't descend from the Constitution, it's just one of those pesky nanny-state FEC regulations.
In time Republicans will come to bitterly regret the Citizen's United decision. Corporations are fickle; they are becoming increasingly stateless, owned by foreign interests and only care about money. In ten or fifteen years, when the Republican Party consists of nothing but old, white and wizened men, the dynamic new power players from Brazil, India and China may anonymously use their fiscal might to back Democrats and shout down Republican candidates on the American airwaves.
After all, it's completely legal for foreigners to do it even today. All they need is a green card.
Wednesday, June 06, 2012
The End of the Princess Fantasy?
Can you imagine? Donald Trump is involved in another controversy that has nothing to do with Barack Obama's birth certificate!
Miss Pennsylvania has stepped down because she believes Donald Trump's Miss USA pageant was rigged:
Trump claims that Monnin stepped down in protest over his decision to allow transgender contestants (one such entrant in the Miss Canada pageant forced the issue). This was echoed by the winner of this year's Miss USA contest, Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo. In the so-called "make-or-break" interview round Culpo bravely sucked up to Trump, saying she believed transgender contestants should be allowed.
This makes me wonder: why do we still have beauty pageants like Miss USA and Miss America? I don't question it because Trump's Miss USA pageant now allows those people in, in the same way some some people believe allowing gays to marry somehow negates the meaning of heterosexual marriage.
But in this day and age what is the point of lining up a bunch of women in bathing suits, then evening gowns, then have them do a little talent show, and then ask them a bunch of questions to find out if they're really as vapid as they look?
In the early days of television beauty pageants were a great excuse for TV execs to show lots of scantily clad women. But these days we've got an infinite supply of Victoria's Secret and Sports Illustrated swimsuit specials, salacious network shows, cable porn channels, and an entire Internet dedicated to serving up pictures of naked women.
In its heyday the beauty pageant was the American princess fantasy, one of the few venues where "ladies" could compete against each other. But these days women participate in sports, go to college and med school, compete with men for the same jobs in the real world and by some measures are starting to outperform them. And though I'm no fan of them, highly-produced "reality" shows like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol have supplanted the princess fantasy with dreams of success that require real talent.
Beauty contests like Miss USA are dinosaurs from a bygone era. The only apparent point of Trump's pageant is to scout for his next wife.
Miss Pennsylvania has stepped down because she believes Donald Trump's Miss USA pageant was rigged:
A posting on Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin's Facebook page claims another contestant learned the names of the top 5 finishers on Sunday morning — hours before the show was broadcast.Trump responded in his inimitable style, saying, "We're going to be suing her now," and "[F]rankly, in my opinion, I saw her barely a second and she didn't deserve to be in the top 15." And here I thought Miss USA was all about poise, talent and character.
Trump claims that Monnin stepped down in protest over his decision to allow transgender contestants (one such entrant in the Miss Canada pageant forced the issue). This was echoed by the winner of this year's Miss USA contest, Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo. In the so-called "make-or-break" interview round Culpo bravely sucked up to Trump, saying she believed transgender contestants should be allowed.
This makes me wonder: why do we still have beauty pageants like Miss USA and Miss America? I don't question it because Trump's Miss USA pageant now allows those people in, in the same way some some people believe allowing gays to marry somehow negates the meaning of heterosexual marriage.
But in this day and age what is the point of lining up a bunch of women in bathing suits, then evening gowns, then have them do a little talent show, and then ask them a bunch of questions to find out if they're really as vapid as they look?
In the early days of television beauty pageants were a great excuse for TV execs to show lots of scantily clad women. But these days we've got an infinite supply of Victoria's Secret and Sports Illustrated swimsuit specials, salacious network shows, cable porn channels, and an entire Internet dedicated to serving up pictures of naked women.
In its heyday the beauty pageant was the American princess fantasy, one of the few venues where "ladies" could compete against each other. But these days women participate in sports, go to college and med school, compete with men for the same jobs in the real world and by some measures are starting to outperform them. And though I'm no fan of them, highly-produced "reality" shows like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol have supplanted the princess fantasy with dreams of success that require real talent.
Beauty contests like Miss USA are dinosaurs from a bygone era. The only apparent point of Trump's pageant is to scout for his next wife.
Wisconsin Post Mortem
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived the recall effort and won 1,334,430 to Barrett's 1,161, 870. These results pretty much jibe with the polls and are nearly identical to the 2010 election with about 300,00 more people voting. So, what does all this say? Nikto has offered his take below and here's mine.
First of all, Walker may not have an across the board GOP legislature with which to work. In District 21, John Lehman (a Democrat) has prevailed over Van Waggaard in the town where I grew up (Racine). Of course, this matters little unless there is a special session before November when 11 of the 16 seats will be up again for election before the session next year. But it is something. The Democrats have control of the State Senate pending a recall.
In addition, I don't think this means much for the national election as these exit polls indicate people who voted for Walker also will vote for President Obama.
The president polled ahead of Mitt Romney by a wide margin – 51 percent to 44 percent, according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research
Wisconsin voters also preferred Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney to deal with the economy, 43 percent to 37 percent, according to the ABC News exit poll.
On “helping the middle class,” Obama beat Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, 47 percent to 36 percent.
The polls also show that 18 percent of the people that voted for Walker support the president. Why is this? My thought is that both Scott Walker and Barack Obama have effectively captured the perception that each of them are for the working man. Obviously, the former is not true. It will be interesting to see how or if the numbers change in Wisconsin over the next few weeks. If you click on the icon to the right, you can see the latest polls show Wisconsin to be a "Lean Democrat" with the president ahead 50 to 43 percent, according to the latest Marquette poll.
Bottom line, Romney is a weak candidate in Wisconsin and has a lot of work to do. The last time the GOP won the state was in 1984. Heck, the GOP couldn't even win it when Bush the elder beat the snot out of Tank Boy! The next few days will see a lot of hay made by the right wing media industrial complex but just like hay, it will be light in actual substance. People simply like the president more than the like Governor Romney.
Some other thoughts...
As Nikto said below, you don't run the same candidate twice. You think the Democrats would have learned their lesson 60 years ago with Adlai Stevenson. Barrett was a poor candidate.
Is Wisconsin the first state to be purchased by the Koch Brothers? In this day and age of Citizen's United, it sure does look that way. I am seriously bummed about this.
It's going to be interesting to see what comes out of this criminal investigation with Walker. Could it end up being Nixon lite? I guess time will tell...
Even though there are a few rays of light out of all of this, I'm still pretty bummed. For those of you who are happy about this, where's the victory?
First of all, Walker may not have an across the board GOP legislature with which to work. In District 21, John Lehman (a Democrat) has prevailed over Van Waggaard in the town where I grew up (Racine). Of course, this matters little unless there is a special session before November when 11 of the 16 seats will be up again for election before the session next year. But it is something. The Democrats have control of the State Senate pending a recall.
In addition, I don't think this means much for the national election as these exit polls indicate people who voted for Walker also will vote for President Obama.
The president polled ahead of Mitt Romney by a wide margin – 51 percent to 44 percent, according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research
Wisconsin voters also preferred Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney to deal with the economy, 43 percent to 37 percent, according to the ABC News exit poll.
On “helping the middle class,” Obama beat Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, 47 percent to 36 percent.
The polls also show that 18 percent of the people that voted for Walker support the president. Why is this? My thought is that both Scott Walker and Barack Obama have effectively captured the perception that each of them are for the working man. Obviously, the former is not true. It will be interesting to see how or if the numbers change in Wisconsin over the next few weeks. If you click on the icon to the right, you can see the latest polls show Wisconsin to be a "Lean Democrat" with the president ahead 50 to 43 percent, according to the latest Marquette poll.
Bottom line, Romney is a weak candidate in Wisconsin and has a lot of work to do. The last time the GOP won the state was in 1984. Heck, the GOP couldn't even win it when Bush the elder beat the snot out of Tank Boy! The next few days will see a lot of hay made by the right wing media industrial complex but just like hay, it will be light in actual substance. People simply like the president more than the like Governor Romney.
Some other thoughts...
As Nikto said below, you don't run the same candidate twice. You think the Democrats would have learned their lesson 60 years ago with Adlai Stevenson. Barrett was a poor candidate.
Is Wisconsin the first state to be purchased by the Koch Brothers? In this day and age of Citizen's United, it sure does look that way. I am seriously bummed about this.
It's going to be interesting to see what comes out of this criminal investigation with Walker. Could it end up being Nixon lite? I guess time will tell...
Even though there are a few rays of light out of all of this, I'm still pretty bummed. For those of you who are happy about this, where's the victory?
Wisconsin: a Referendum on Unions
I was expecting Scott Walker to survive the Wisconsin recall vote, and he did. There were basically three reasons:
First: money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Walker took in seven times more money than his opponent, Tom Barrett. Most of that money came from outside Wisconsin, from corporate honchos like the Koch brothers.
Second: Walker just got done beating Barrett in 2010. It was a mistake for Democrats to rerun the loser of the last election.
Third: the election was really Walker vs. The Unions. Walker won by turning the election into a referendum on unions.
Unions aren't very popular these days. Private-sector unions are nearly extinct, and people like Walker are well on their way to castrating public-sector unions. The problem is inherent: the only real bargaining chip unions have is the strike, and strikes inconvenience everyone. Strikes make union members seem selfish and obstructionist. No one remembers how company thugs, often with the help of law enforcement, beat and killed union organizers back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These days people perceive union members as thugs who threaten people at picket lines.
Unions don't help themselves by pushing for work rules that appear to be featherbedding, demanding unsustainable levels of retirement and health care benefits and opposing changes necessitated by new technologies and shifting business conditions worldwide. The past association of some unions with organized crime is a stigma that is hard to beat, no matter that corruption in corporate management is far more pervasive.
Unions are messy democratic institutions that hold elections and conduct most of their business in public. Corporations are tidy oligarchic dictatorships that do all their conniving out of the public eye, have slick PR people issuing carefully crafted statements, and plenty of money to pay off anyone who might reveal embarrassing facts (as. for example, Rupert Murdoch has spent millions upon millions of dollars in hush money to cover up the phone hacking scandal in Britain).
To survive, the labor movement has to turn public sentiment around and convince Americans that unions are a public good. As union membership has declined, so has the average worker's salary, in real terms. It's simple economics: if there are fewer high-paying union jobs, other employers will be able to offer lower salaries, which non-union workers will have to take. American workers have been in this downward wage spiral for the last 40 years.
Many people perceive union members as doing less work for more money. The truth is that union workers did work harder to earn higher salaries: they organized and used their collective power to achieve better pay and working conditions.
Most of us think of our workplaces as a home away from home and consider our coworkers to be friends or family, and some even consider employers to be like parents. But non-union workers who put all their hard work into doing the actual job in the hopes that they will be rewarded for their devotion and loyalty are making a sentimental mistake.
At the end of the day employers, particularly large corporations, don't care about loyalty. It's all about the money. I'll be the first to admit that it has to be that way. But they will fire your ass the instant it pays for them to do so. Your immediate supervisor might be a nice guy and almost like a father, but he takes his orders from the guys on top, and if he won't fire you his replacement will.
But money also perverts good corporate stewardship. Many corporations will fire your ass even if it materially harms the ability of the company to do its work, as long as it makes the stock price jump and earns the CEO a multi-million dollar bonus.
If it's okay for employers to have this mercenary money-money-money mindset, why shouldn't employees have it as well? Unions do: they're essentially employee-owned corporations that sell labor. They know that employers will pit employees against each other and pick them off one by one unless the employees are organized and stick together.
But until unions clean up their act and show Americans they are a force for economic growth and fairness, corporate surrogates like Scott Walker will continue to make unions the issue. And Americans will be forced to work longer hours, for lower salaries, under even less desirable conditions.
First: money, money, money, money, money, money, money. Walker took in seven times more money than his opponent, Tom Barrett. Most of that money came from outside Wisconsin, from corporate honchos like the Koch brothers.
Second: Walker just got done beating Barrett in 2010. It was a mistake for Democrats to rerun the loser of the last election.
Third: the election was really Walker vs. The Unions. Walker won by turning the election into a referendum on unions.
Unions aren't very popular these days. Private-sector unions are nearly extinct, and people like Walker are well on their way to castrating public-sector unions. The problem is inherent: the only real bargaining chip unions have is the strike, and strikes inconvenience everyone. Strikes make union members seem selfish and obstructionist. No one remembers how company thugs, often with the help of law enforcement, beat and killed union organizers back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These days people perceive union members as thugs who threaten people at picket lines.
Unions don't help themselves by pushing for work rules that appear to be featherbedding, demanding unsustainable levels of retirement and health care benefits and opposing changes necessitated by new technologies and shifting business conditions worldwide. The past association of some unions with organized crime is a stigma that is hard to beat, no matter that corruption in corporate management is far more pervasive.
Unions are messy democratic institutions that hold elections and conduct most of their business in public. Corporations are tidy oligarchic dictatorships that do all their conniving out of the public eye, have slick PR people issuing carefully crafted statements, and plenty of money to pay off anyone who might reveal embarrassing facts (as. for example, Rupert Murdoch has spent millions upon millions of dollars in hush money to cover up the phone hacking scandal in Britain).
To survive, the labor movement has to turn public sentiment around and convince Americans that unions are a public good. As union membership has declined, so has the average worker's salary, in real terms. It's simple economics: if there are fewer high-paying union jobs, other employers will be able to offer lower salaries, which non-union workers will have to take. American workers have been in this downward wage spiral for the last 40 years.
Many people perceive union members as doing less work for more money. The truth is that union workers did work harder to earn higher salaries: they organized and used their collective power to achieve better pay and working conditions.
Most of us think of our workplaces as a home away from home and consider our coworkers to be friends or family, and some even consider employers to be like parents. But non-union workers who put all their hard work into doing the actual job in the hopes that they will be rewarded for their devotion and loyalty are making a sentimental mistake.
At the end of the day employers, particularly large corporations, don't care about loyalty. It's all about the money. I'll be the first to admit that it has to be that way. But they will fire your ass the instant it pays for them to do so. Your immediate supervisor might be a nice guy and almost like a father, but he takes his orders from the guys on top, and if he won't fire you his replacement will.
But money also perverts good corporate stewardship. Many corporations will fire your ass even if it materially harms the ability of the company to do its work, as long as it makes the stock price jump and earns the CEO a multi-million dollar bonus.
If it's okay for employers to have this mercenary money-money-money mindset, why shouldn't employees have it as well? Unions do: they're essentially employee-owned corporations that sell labor. They know that employers will pit employees against each other and pick them off one by one unless the employees are organized and stick together.
But until unions clean up their act and show Americans they are a force for economic growth and fairness, corporate surrogates like Scott Walker will continue to make unions the issue. And Americans will be forced to work longer hours, for lower salaries, under even less desirable conditions.
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Hey, Check Out The New Sidebar
Thanks to Nikto (and me a little) we have a link to Electoral-Vote.com, the premier site for election year goings-on. Andy does a great job of keeping his polls and numbers up to date as well as offering a no nonsense look at election news. The numbers for the presidential race and the Senate change frequently so enjoy!
You will also notice The Most Popular Posts list as well as a Google share thing. Isn't the most popular one interesting? That one has had over a thousand page loads since I put it up. Crazy!
You will also notice The Most Popular Posts list as well as a Google share thing. Isn't the most popular one interesting? That one has had over a thousand page loads since I put it up. Crazy!
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