Fat jokes

The jokes and snarky jibes have been percolating forever on the social sites but the question has now gone mainstream with ABC asking, "Is Chris Christie Too Fat to be President."

They're not posing it as a health question, which would be a legitimate query. After all, numerous studies show the obese are more suseptible to chronic conditions and life threatening health events. But ABC is posing it a cosmetics issue. As in, can the fat guy win against a fit guy with good hair? Which engenders the usual academic discussions about Kennedy and Nixon on the internets.

As a practical matter, the answer is fat is an obstacle Christie learned to overcome and turn to his advantage. For one thing he's not grossly unattractive in his obesity. He still has good hair. Moreover, he's adopted a Ralph Cramden loudmouth style that endears him to the rednecks and blue collars in the GOP base. And if memory serves, Christie wasn't doing that well in the polls until his opponent attacked with fat jokes. Which led to that self-effacing quote cited by ABC and ultimately paved the road to his victory.

It's useful to remember the majority of the electorate is obese, or at least significantly overweight, and sensitive to mockery.

Tea and Cantaloupe

By Capt. Fogg

It's a perfect example of how government always interferes with the sacred market forces that keep us free, happy and doctrinally pure. That OBAHma has gone after the free and holy food producers, using that Communist agency the FDA to keep infected cantaloupes off the market -- a market that would, sayeth the Rand, regulate itself after enough people die, by scaring the survivors into staying away from fruit and eating the sanctioned BurgerfriesCoke meal like real Americans. Can you imagine? (Would you like to supersize your fries?)

I mean what greater freedom can we have than freedom from the knowledge of good and bad food and if OBAHma can tell us what to eat, he can tell us anything, that tyrant. And where does the money wasted on things like the FDA and FEMA and the FAA come from? TAXES, that's right, those fruits of our own unassisted labor of which we owe no portion to anyone much less those Commie bastards in Washington who want to give MY MONEY away to those undeserving leeches who won't work for less than minimum wage and have the effrontery to vote for Democrats.

No sir, I don't want those government schools brainwashing my kids with math and science and economics and twisted history. People are poor because they are lazy and because God put them here as an example to us, the elect and we don't need those America-hating Godless, OBAHma loving liberals telling us otherwise. No sir, my house isn't going to blow down or get washed away or burned by a brushfire and if yours does, it's not my fault or responsibility. If the roads and bridges wash out, you can fix them yourself, you lazy, tax loving bums. I mean I worked hard for everything I got and I don't owe you shit.

God Bless America.

Suspended posting

Not likely to be posting for a while. My Dad died this morning. Can't really talk about it.

Hack the vote

Now would be good time to consider verifying the vote. I remind you Republicans still own the companies that make the machines, that tabulate the results. And at this point, is there anyone who believes there is any computer based system that can't be hacked?

It's almost already too late to fix this before 2012. Strikes me that if Anonymous wanted to do something useful, they would be working on hacking the machines themselves. Not to change the totals, but to shut down the machines so we would be forced to have a paper trail. Or better yet, paper ballots and no machines.

I don't care how long it would take to count the vote. More important to protect the process than have instant results that can't be trusted.

Quick bytes

Hey that's my friend and old boss William C. Newman narrating this spot for the ACLUM CivilLibertiesMinute: "Out At the Inn"

I adore stuff like this. Amazing long exposure photos taken from the fronts of Tokyo trains.

And if you love hobbits, this is the must click of the day. My dream house. Built in a few months and cost just $3000 dollars in Wales currency. I could happily live in this house for the rest of my life.

New blog on the block

And the internets rejoice. Lot of people linking to this post at Charles P. Pierce's new blog at Esquire. And it's a good one. My favorite grafs:

It is not possible to run for president as a Republican these days without at some level having to become a parody of yourself. Running within a radicalized, self-contained universe with its own private, physical laws and its own private history, with its own vocabulary and syntax that has to be learned from scratch almost daily, requires an ongoing manic re-invention that can do nothing but make the candidate look ridiculous to people outside that universe. [...]

Kristol, of course, is the yeast behind the intellectual ferment that has produced, in order, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, and Sarah Palin. A sane country party would be wondering at this point about a party that takes this person seriously as a political thinker and a public intellectual. If Bill Kristol went to the track, he'd bet on the fucking starting gate. Nevertheless, he is what passes for a wise man in a party that has surrendered utterly to its intellectual Id.

But as I was cruising through the offerings, it was his post on Obama's Linked-In town hall that I commented on in response to some lame con who basically spewed out some crap as an excuse to promote his business.

Wouldn't normally mention a random comment but something weird happened. I'm sure I unclicked the post to Facebook button before I commented, yet when I checked in at FB there were three likes to that offsite comment listed in my mentions drop down. Far as I can see, it's not posting to my page, and I have no expectation of privacy for anything I post on the internet, but still, that's a bit too connected without my express permission, even for me.

Nonetheless, I do love me some Charles P. Pierce so he's going on the blogroll.

We might have had greatness

While I sometimes think she's being too harsh on Obama, I'm a long time fan and always consider what she has to say because she's one of the smartest political analysts on the internets. Today, Avedon responds to Melissa Harris-Perry on the latest iteration of "they hate him because they're racists" in an unusually lengthy post. Read it in full, but Avedon nails the roots of the enthusiam gap right here:

I do not believe that it was "not the time" to elect a black liberal as president. I think it would have been a terrific time to elect a black liberal as president, in fact. Yes, the right-wing would have said all the same crazy things they're saying now, but at least, if Obama had actually been one, elected with his overwhelming mandate, I believe he could have been a great president - one who actually did the work that needed doing instead of continuing to reverse us back to the 13th century. A black liberal, standing up to people who were and are hurting the nation, could have welcomed their hatred and been proud of being called the enemy of people of such caliber. A proud black liberal president could have saved the country and perhaps even earned the respect of some people who thought a black president would not help them.

This is exactly what I hoped would happen when Obama was elected. However, I didn't expect it, so perhaps that explains why I'm less disappointed in small successes than most of the liberals I know and respect. Yet it is heartbreaking to reflect on what could have been, if only Obama had been the kind of leader I had hoped for, instead of the one I was pretty sure were going to get and voted for anyway, because, worse alternatives.

Wonder where the money went...

The media just loves the "Obama's popularity in the dumper" narrative and granted there has been, and is, a legitimate enthusiam gap born out of disappointment in Obama's style. But at this point in the process, and recalling the 08 election, it seems very likely that his newly aggressive stance will buck up the base eventually. That is, as long as he keeps it up and walks this new talk.

However, the demise of the small donor is a problem not so easily fixed by mere tough rhetoric. In 2008, most people still had decent jobs and they had hope. But it seems rather apparent that they're mainly not donating because the economy sucks:

“Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to contribute anything,” said Judyann Allen, a retiree in Covington, Wash., who added that she and her husband were living month to month. “I would if I could. But I can’t afford to give anything to anyone.”

If Obama wants small donations to resurge, he might want to take Atrios' advice and give a bunch of free money to the people instead of the banksters.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

The hollow man

By Capt. Fogg

Herman Cain won the Florida Republican Straw poll yesterday, not that any of my Floridian friends or neighbors seem to have taken notice. The straw poll probably means as much as any other straw-stuffed bundle such as one might find on a pole in a corn field amusing the crows. I'm not sure how many Florida Republicans would actually have chosen him out of a line-up to be the Republican champion, even a line-up as motley and miserable as we're given to choose from at the moment, but he's preferable to Perry in a state still jealous for only being able to brag about Jeb Bush instead of his idiot brother from Texas.

But really, he might just be ideal. The perfect man to deflect the charges of racism Republicans face when making racist statements about Obama, would be the man who accused Jon Stewart of attacking Cain for racist reasons. Rovian tactics have rarely deviated from accusing the opponent of one's own glaring misdeeds, so who better to allow them to say: "you're against Cain because he's black" and "Liberals are racists."

He's just the sort of spontaneously and unwittingly hilarious clown Republicans love to vote for because what they say isn't what they said they said and so they've been for and against anything as suits the argument of the moment. "Reporters who quote me are stupid" and "compromise is killing this country" are the kinds of statements stupid and uncompromising people praise when sitting around the table, taking tea.

And of course he's made money in business, which leaves him immune to the jabs of Republican picadors such as Romney's assertion that Obama has never run a business and has spent his career in public service so he's not fit to serve the public which was asserted despite any clear indication that having been a businessman makes for a good president ( and much that says it isn't.)

And of course, the whole tea-brained idea of prosperity through parsimony is served well by recycling all that old McCain campaign material simply by painting over the
Mc and re-enlisting the delightful Mrs. Palin to distract from his unsuitability by flaunting hers. Think of the savings.

Another day in the clown car - Updated

The GOP 2012 race just keeps getting weirder. Now that everybody is pissed off at their former hero Perry for calling them heartless during the last debate, it appears Herman Cain is going to win today's Florida straw poll. Which means exactly nothing in terms of the nomination, but does nicely illustrate just how erratic the GOP base has become with their purity tests.

Meanwhile, the very serious money guys are desperately in search of a new savior. Enter Chris Christie who is now rumored to be very seriously considering reconsidering his decision to sit 2012 out. Unnamed sources from Pravda on the Potomac say they won't take no for an answer:

“They’re hesitant about Romney and Perry has not lived up to their expectations — he’s too cowboy,” said the former chair. “So they’re looking for a different feel.”

Given the current mindest of the base, what could be better than loudmouth New Jersey thuggery? I guess they forgot the gasbag governor doesn't always stick to the script. He appointed a Muslim judge, he believes in manmade climate change and he doesn't sufficiently hate on "the illegals" enough.

Of course, it's still early and he could overcome those obstacles. I mean, nobody thought McCain could win in 08 at this point in the race either. And Christie is rude, obnoxious and tries his best always to piss off liberals. Base loves that stuff. Which makes me wonder, if he did win, who would he pick as a VP?

Update: And it's official. Pizza King Cain wins the straw poll. By a lot.

World views

It's a gloomy grey day here in the little city. Not feeling very inspired by the news at the moment so here's some links I've been saving up for a while.

Think this temporary exhibit is long since past, but loved the idea. David Byrne's charming new art installation in NYC.

Not sure why I don't follow isardasorensen on the twitter. I love her photos and she posts great links to local NYC stories. Thinking I'll probably just put her blog on my blogroll where she posts just her own photos. But here's a few of her better shots: Early morning Saturday sky. And her sunset photos are always great. This sunset too.

Meanwhile in Texas, the pictures aren't so soothing. But dramatic. In case you happened to miss this one, Downtown Austin with the Bastrop fire in the background. And this video of a dust devil in Garland, Texas is the biggest one I've ever seen.

Moving on to Paris, France that is, this photo also made the rounds but it's the most incredible storm photo ever. Exact moment the Eiffel Tower was struck by a huge bolt of lightning.

I just love stuff like this. Comes with an article. Ancient bridge is engineered from living trees. Takes a long time to build one but they last forever.

This link explores the inner realms of the human mind and it blew mine. The McGurk Effect. Even if you know the trick, you can't make it stop without closing your eyes.

And to end on a somewhat lighter note, they're so not PC, but I love these old toons. I watched them all as a kid and managed to grow up without becoming a bigot. Walt Disney's version of Hell back when their toons were edgy instead of safe. Tell me the guys who drew this stuff weren't on drugs, but I won't believe you.

[Hat tips to Hudsonette, HoneyBearKelly, Terry, Moonbootica and Brian Beutler.]

Hostage taking fail?

Boehner and Cantor seem to think they can keep playing the same trick over and over again. They failed to pass an earlier version of a bill to fund FEMA disaster aid and authorize money to keep the government running because Dems wouldn't vote for their destructive spending offsets and the Tea Party frosh wouldn't vote for it because it didn't renege far enough on the agreement already struck on spending cut limits. So the dithering duo caved to their tea party puppetmasters and rewrote the bill so it was even more odious, which they managed to squeak through, and then adjourned the House and skulked out of town. No doubt cackling about how cleverly they jammed the Senate with the problem.

But holding to the newly bold Democratic stance, Reid stood them down and rejected the stupid House bill, even managing to keep together a bi-partisan majority to do it. You'll recall the Senate already passed a much better stand alone bill last week.

Rumor has it, Obama encouraged Reid to take this route and is willing to use his exec power to call Congress back into session if necessary. Having been burned so many times, admit I'm afraid to read too much into any of it, but I could get used to Democrats who act like this -- always.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Mythical muffins

I asked Mark Knoller this question on the twitter last night but Kevin Drum solved the great $16 muffin mystery this morning:

Considering the EOIR reported that at least 534 people received refreshments at its 2009 Legal Training Conference in Washington, D.C., it spent an average of $14.74 per attendee per day on food and beverages – just above the $14.72 JMD limit for refreshments.

The myth of the $16 muffin arose out of the weird accounting the hotel used to break the down the bill which did indeed include service charges and fixed gratuities. Not that the legend of the overpriced muffin will ever die now that it's become so firmly embedded in conservative mythology already. Heard some GOPer on the House floor treated the body to a rendition of "Do You Know the Muffin Man?"

Not to say that our government doesn't overpay for food at hotel conferences, but so does every organization that uses hotel conference rooms to hold events. I'd be willing to bet these events under the Bush administration provided much better chow at even greater expense if any enterprising reporter cared to check. Which even the unofficial statistician of the White House press corps apparently doesn't care to do.

Legalized murder

I posted about this last night at DetNews but that was before his final chance at clemency was exhausted. Last night at 11:08pm, Troy Davis was legally murdered by the state of Georgia. Even after 22 years of litigation, the evidence strongly suggests Troy Davis was most likely innocent. Which also means the real perp, literally, just got away with murder.

But even if Troy Davis was guilty, what purpose does killing him serve in the interests of justice? Indeed, last night a guilty man was similarly executed in Texas and in Alabama another human being is slated to be killed by our own government. The questions stands for all of them. How does having the state commit the same crime serve civil society? The answer is, of course, it doesn't. The death penalty is a barbaric form of revenge that has no place in the civilized world.

I'm reminded today of a death penalty case I worked on for years in my time at the law firm. We won that case. Our client walked off of death row. That felt good even though our guy did commit a crime. But there were mitigating circumstances. He had the IQ of a child. He was basically tricked into participating. So yes, he deserved to be punished but he did not deserve to die for it.

But even those whose crimes may be so heinous, and guilt firmly established without doubt, who may well "deserve" to die, does not give us the right to choose the hour of their death. Death dealt at the hands of the government is still murder. How can we as a civilized society condone answering a crime with the same exact crime?

And beyond that, our system is not infallible. When we justify murdering the clearly guilty in the name of justice, we open the door for the innocent to be wrongly executed. In the end, Troy Davis could be any one of us and as he said in his final statement, "There are so many more Troy Davis'." That's not just the rhetoric of a condemned man, the list of wrongly convicted death row inmates in the United States is long. That alone should tell us that this sort of savage retribution is long overdue to be abolished entirely.

Hooked on Warren

Admit while I admired her work, I haven't really followed her Senate launch all that closely until today. So I hadn't really caught the excitement until just now when I watched this clip of Elizabeth Warren on Morning Joe. The twitter didn't do the segment justice this morning. She smacked Joe Scar and his pretentious band of creepy cons to smithereens in that interview.

Meanwhile, Mika's girl crush couldn't be more apparent. A crush I've seen echoed all over the internets and in which I have now fully enjoined. Elizabeth Warren is so a rock star. She makes me want to join her back-up band.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Simple Answers

This new AFSCME ad is brilliant in its simplicity:



If you can't view the vid, this is full transcript:

It’s pretty simple. The more jobs we create now, the less Federal debt they’ll have to carry later. Because jobs not only put food on the table. They put revenue in the treasury. And money in the marketplace. More jobs equal less debt. Even our kids can understand that. Tell Congress to pass the American Jobs Act. Now. Not just for us, but for our children.

So simple even a child can understand it. Your average Congressman or conservative however... well, the jury is still out.

Class Warfare

Sorry to have disappeared without any explanation. Been suffering through a bout of blogger burnout for a few days. Seems to be passing so, easing back in with this which makes me want to move back to Massachusetts just so I can vote for Elizabeth Warren:




In case you can't see the vid, here's part of the transcript:

I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No!

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.

Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

If this is class warfare, sign me up for Warren's team. Pass it on...

A tale told by an idiot

By Capt. Fogg

Has Andrew Breitbart blown a fuse? He seems to be saying just that: raving strangely about shooting people and being under attack from "liberals." Perhaps that's true since like most of that rabble without a cause calling themselves conservative these days, a liberal is anyone you disagree with and if these dull witted bastards agree with anyone, it's with other ignorant, deluded and dull witted bastards.

" There are times when I’m not thinking as clearly as I should, and in those unclear moments, I always think to myself, ‘Fire the first shot. Bring it on.’ Because I know who’s on our side"

he said to a group of people on his side of the border of sanity, or at least those capable of listening to this without calling 911.

"We outnumber them in this country and we have the guns… I’m not kidding. They talk a mean game, but they will not cross that line because they know what they’re dealing with. "

Perhaps he's not kidding, but sorry, the"we" he's talking about really don't have the numbers and although I hesitate to tell him, they aren't the only ones with guns. The rest of us just don't wave them around and threaten other people with them so that we can get our way.

So what line are you talking about Andy? what line won't I cross to defend my country, the truth, democracy and common decency? I'm afraid I know exactly what I'm dealing with and I'm not impressed.

But still, a threat of violence is a threat of violence and I think it's worth noting that when the frustration involved in transporting the United States back to it's darkest years of poverty and exploitation gets to these people, when they find themselves confident in talking to people of like mind, the true colors come out -- and so do the guns.

Andrew Breitbart isn't a conservative. Conservatives don't dream about, talk about and apparently advocate starting violent revolutions, by definition, nor do most sane people under circumstances as we have today. Andrew Breitbart doesn't believe in Democracy, because although revolution may speak from the muzzle of a gun, Democracy does not, nor does it suppress votes, buy votes and base political power on firepower, threats or buying power.

I mean what the hell is he so desperate about? He's got money, our federal taxes are the lowest in his lifetime and it certainly wasn't witches or demons or Liberals who started a war and refused to pay for it or, as Republicans nearly always do, escalated the debt beyond all reason. What content can anyone find in his barking and hissing"? What can he explain other than to drone on and on about how Liberals are that and ConSERVatives are this like a deranged dog chasing his tail. Argument by diktat, argument by amplitude, argument by lying, shifting his terms around like some street hustler with walnut shells.

Like most of these brats and hooligans and barroom bullies, all he wants is power: the kind of power that stems from divine right, hatred and the wealth of Hades. The kind he has no qualification to hold and no following to elect him to. So sure Andy, your friends have guns and that's the only way sad, depressing losers like you and them can get noticed: hate shouting, gun waving, witch hunting and all the rest of the bellicose bullshit you try to pass of as a cause. So sure, bring it on, show everyone what kind of spoiled, petulant and democracy-hating bolshevik brat you are. I'm waiting.

Come out shooting and see how far the "liberals" let you get before you and the whole camo-clad, rebel yell shouting vermin get what you deserve.

Privatizing disaster

By Capt. Fogg

I suspected there must be something afoot when talk at the Tea table began about killing FEMA. I'm more than suspicious now. It seems our former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who according to The Maritime Executive, is announcing a 'strategic partnership' with O’Brien’s Response Management, a wholly owned subsidiary of SEACOR Holdings Inc. Bush's company, Old Rhodes Holdings now looks forward to

"helping a broader array of organizations and communities become more resilient through preparation, response, communication and recovery”

says Bush, whom Floridians will remember was the governor through the disastrous hurricanes of 2004 and 2005. How they will remember him is hard to tell and probably depends on whose house and car and boat and livelihood was demolished and how long it was before he got any significant help. As I recall, my neighbors and I felt pretty much on our own, despite Bush's alleged leadership, although FEMA certainly was here with food, water and some generators.

I played a small part in delivering food to those who had no means of getting to a FEMA distribution center -- and there are many such people here -- and also used my amateur radio license to good effect, facilitating communications between Red Cross shelters and government agencies until commercial communications and electric power were restored. The interface between need and help was public and public spirited. It was not corporate, it was neighbor to neighbor working through non profit organizations. It was restaurants sending food to police and firefighters, carpenters and roofers and others helping those who needed it.

The only time we heard from Governor Jeb and his brother, the Commander Guy was when they showed up at Red Cross headquarters for a photo op, disrupting operations for half a day, and when they posed for the cameras handing out a bag of ice for a few minutes before escaping into an air conditioned limo and the Presidential helicopter to fly off to a party in Miami Beach while we sweltered in the dark for weeks and weeks.

"Governor Bush has unparalleled experience in crisis management, as he helped guide Florida through some of the most significant natural disasters in its history"

said Charles Fabrikant, executive chairman of SEACOR Holdings. Unparalleled, of course isn't quite the same as unequaled.

Jeb is a Bush, however and the "strategic partnership" may be about a further strategy than to provide "emergency planning, disaster response, preparedness consulting, crisis communications and regulatory compliance services to corporations and governments" which is what O’Brien’s Response Management, the SEACOR subsidiary in question does. O'Brien's has been picking up people like former Coast Guard Captain Ed Stanton, who was the Incident Commander during hurricane Katrina and the recent BP oil spill. It's funny how oil and the Bush family float to the top. O'Brien Oil Pollution Service being part of the O'Brien family.

So do we have the same people who were so heavily criticized for mishandling that Gulf oil spill soon to be handling more disasters for profit while FEMA goes the way of Social Security and Medicare and the FAA and all those agencies being overwhelmed by the tidal wave of tea?

I don't mean to say that FEMA has always been what it should be or done as well as it should have done, but FEMA sits at the end of a chain of responsibility that leads to the
American public while SEACOR is ultimately responsible to its owners -- and like the former Blackwater owners, they're quite able to ignore questions as to what they did and how much they made by doing it by saying "sorry, we're a private corporation."

I do mean to be suspicious however and I'm aware that evidence of collusion and corruption and various acts of grift, graft and flim-flam are too easily dismissed as "conspiracy theories." Our history is basically a series of conspiracies conveniently mislabeled and when I hear the words, oil, Bush, and disaster used in close conjunction, and when I hear about efforts to privatize yet another not-for-profit health and safety organization, I'm more than suspicious.

People like me, who belong to well organized volunteer groups like ARES, American Red Cross, SATERN and many, many others are used to working with government agencies, not that there isn't some friction on occasion, but the prospect of mercenaries who take orders from corporate CEO's who profit from disaster aid and are motivated to control and monopolize the process, rationing help to maximize private gain, isn't a welcome one. In fact it's infuriating to think about being told what to say and do, where we can go and where we can't go by black uniformed privateers protecting turf and profit and it would tempt me to ignore them and work around them if possible the next time a storm rages ashore and Florida goes dark.

The Texas Miracle

The Texas miracle not so miraculous after all:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry's efforts to tout his record on jobs and the economy as a centerpiece of his presidential campagn took a hit today with new figures from one of his own state agencies: They show the Texas unemployment rate increased to 8.5% in August -- the highest level in more than 24 years and more than twice the rate when Perry took office in December 2000.

The new unemployment rate for Texas is still below the national average of 9.1%. But the new figures from the Texas Workforce Commission included some disturbing trends: There was a net jobs loss of 1,300 in Texas during the month of August, even worse than than the latest national figures showing zero job growth.

Their talking point is, well the economy sucks, and even in Texas they're going to feel it. But one wonders if Goodhair's clueless supporters will make the connection on why the economy still sucks. You know, because of GOP austerity mania:

While the private sector did add 8,100 jobs in Texas during August, this was more than offset by a shrinking public sector resulting in the loss of 9,400 government jobs, state figures show.

This is not a difficult concept. It's astounding that the hard core cons just can't grasp it. Their response to clear empircal evidence is always, "Duh, we can't keep spending beyond our means." As if the government hasn't been doing that for 200 years without ending the world.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Government injections

By Capt. Fogg

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

___________________

So Michelle Bachmann claims some young girl suddenly got all retarded like, after her "Government injection" of Guardasil. That's not too surprising. I know someone who got loaded on Private Reserve Brandy and voted for Bush, but one thing always follows another and that's enough proof of causation for a desperate liar speaking to the profoundly ignorant and superstitious primitives who listen to people such as she; people who see the rage of gods in every storm, lightning bolt and tectonic movement, who are terrified of mysterious rays and forces and 'toxins' and couldn't pass a 5th grade science exam.

"Government Injections" eliminated smallpox, you know, and would have done the same for Polio and other diseases if we didn't have that other pandemic in America -- ignorance. Perhaps the absence of Government fluorides in our local Republican drinking water would explain all the brown and missing teeth I see at Tea Party rallies and I don't think it has anything to do with too much Lipton's.

But hey, we're a country (and I use the term loosely) not only infested with idiots and idiocy, but one where there's a good chance someone stupider and with even less integrity than Mark Bachmann's smokescreen wife may slither into high office like one of those young snakes that wriggle under my patio doors.

Speaking of things that creep and crawl, take my Congressworm, Tom 'Looneytunes' Rooney -- please. Tom who keeps showing up on my Facebook page to remind me that Government is not only impotent but incompetent and also tyrannical -- and all without explaining how those things aren't sort of mutually exclusive and more importantly, since he's part of it, why the hell he isn't as much to blame as anyone else who's part of it. Really, I'd be pleased if he'd just follow that other anti-government, moose-eating grifter and simply fly over the cuckoo's nest and drive around the country in a bus and get rich, like some inverted and less lysergic Ken Kesey.

But no, polluted air isn't bad for you, polluted water can't hurt you, unless it has government fluoride in it and besides Florida Governor Rick Scott says we can't afford it because disease and degradation are good for business and bad for 'jobs.' But condoms don't prevent disease or pregnancy, says the gospel of Tea and vaccinations are a genocidal hoax and freedom from disease and unwanted pregnancy will promote teen promiscuity and the gay agenda and we don't need no government health insurance because when we get leukemia or Alzheimers we can go to the emergency room and the taxpayers will pick up the bill and if you can't understand that you're just a libtard elitist and part of the problem.

Busy, busy

Lot to do today. Expect I'll post something this evening. Keep an eye on the crazy for me, would you?

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

This shouldn't be shocking

Been basically offline and out of the loop for the last couple of days so I didn't even know this was coming up for a vote, but I'm pleasantly shocked to see the Senate passed a clean disaster relief funding bill.

In a surprising show of bipartisanship, 78 Senators voted against Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) plan to offset disaster aid relief and FEMA funding with cuts to foreign aid. Only 20 senators voted for it. The stand-alone funding bill will provide $6.9 billion in emergency relief funds for fiscal year 2012.

Time was this would have been so routine, it would barely rate a mention. In these times it seems almost like a miracle that the funding passed 62 to 37. And as far as I know, without any ransom demands. Would love to see the list of GOPers who crossed over.

Guilty of flying while brown

Ten years ago, on this day, I wasn't caught up in the national fervor for revenge on 9/11. I didn't feel solidarity in outrage with the 90% of America that wanted to kick some Arab ass in retaliation. I felt a profound sadness, because I "knew" this horrible attack would end up with this result. Ten years later, and this is what happens if you're flying while brown:

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. “Can I bring my phone?” I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. “No,” I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”

No one would answer me. They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

Read the whole horrific account. Apparently some passenger(s) were scared of seeing brown people on the plane and reported "suspicious" activity. The FBI agent told her there were over 50 other such shakedowns in airports around the country on this 9/11.

It's true when they say 9/11 changed everything. Me, I knew from the very first one, it wasn't going to be a change for the better.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Ten Years After - Part Two

I successfully avoided most of the 9/11 TV tributes which at this point seem mostly designed to draw ratings rather than honor the dead. But this was one moment at the Ground Zero ceremony that I really wanted to see and missed live.



I really did get goosebumps watching this. As far as I'm concerned, they could have let this stand as the whole tribute.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

No more compromises?

One always wonders how much of it is temporary feel good rhetoric, but the optimist in me wants to believe, Obama is finally ready for real fight:

Obama's top political adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday that the administration was unwilling to break up the president’s $447 billion jobs plan if Republicans were only receptive to passing certain elements.

"We're not in a negotiation to break up the package. It's not an à la carte menu. It's a strategy to get this country moving,” Axelrod said Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

And the pushback on the GOPers is surely sounding a bit more agressive. Speaking of last night's GOP clown show, a/k/a, the CNN Tea Party:

"The thing they all seem to agree on is that we need to preserve those Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, corporate loopholes for the oil industry and roll back rules on Wall Street, which seems to be how we got into trouble in the first place," he alleged.

On the bright side, as irritating as it was to see a "news org" legitimizing the most unhinged faction of our society by pairing up with the Tea Party to air the debate, they may have done us a favor with the exposure. Guessing it wasn't only the lefties who were appalled by the audience reaction last night. Polling this morning showing Obama regaining the lead in theoretical matchups between the front runners in the GOP clown car. One hopes this will encourage the White House to hold to a hard bright line in this fight.

Ron Paul: Liberal

By Capt. Fogg

Some people like to dismiss Ron Paul as a simple minded extremist loony. I don't think that's fair and not just because I'm often dismissed with the same simple mindedness by the same simple minds. Yes, I think Dr. Paul does take many things to an extreme point, but you know -- sometimes he's right and sometimes so far to the right that he comes back around the spherical universe and appears on the left.

When he was booed at last night's Tea Party "debate," he was booed as a Liberal, not as the dogmatic, theory obsessed, quasi-anarchist and not-too-bright demagogue he's been portrayed as. He was booed for not bleating and re-bleating the recorded message about why "they" hate us, which, if truth ever be told, isn't for our freedom: a thing which in fact has a larger following amongst Muslims that can be allowed by the Jingoistic braying of the party for which the jackass is not the symbol -- but for the reality.

The reality is and the reality has been that not only al Qaeda but others have hated the US government for interfering in Middle East, for rightly or wrongly supporting Israel, for building military bases in places they see as sacred and for supporting oppressive governments because they were "anti-Communist" and willing to exploit their resources for our benefit.

Who else in the Republican Party is willing to step outside the passion play and challenge the formula: they hate us because we're all good and always good and so we have to hate them -- all of them, all of the time?

“This whole idea that the whole Muslim world is responsible for this and their attacking us because we’re free and prosperous, that is just not true,”

he said last night. But what set the snarling beasts off their feed was

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,”

which quite plainly is true.

The Tea Party picture of human and natural events needs to be presented in such high contrast that any smudge of darkness on our pure white character must be erased; there are no grays or colors and one is either the favorite angel of God or Satan's most foul smelling demon. To admit that any of our sacred military endeavors was not waged in defense of our alleged "freedom" puts one on the odiferous side and so yes, the Battleship Maine was blown up by the evil, freedom hating Spanish between bouts of raping American women and God really did want us to have the continent and our conquest thereof was just like the rape of Jericho only slower. It's anathema to suggest that we were not protecting our freedom by killing millions of Vietnamese or destroying Iraq and those who think and those who know must then be devils for suggesting that anything we ever have done might ever have made anything worse for us or anyone else of God's elect.

We have to believe, as we've been told, that "liberals" would have preferred to "psychoanalyze" al Qaeda than to retaliate, that Democrats unanimously voted against the odious Patriot Act when in fact their support was (sadly) unanimous. Facts don't matter and for the Tea Party only feelings matter and the only feelings they have are greed, anger and hate. If you're not unquestionably in support of everything we do; if you don't hate enough and hate whom we tell you to; if you don't think everything we do in anger isn't ipso facto God's will, you're our natural enemy even if you're Ron Paul and even if most people think you're so far right, you're wrong.

This time Ron Paul is right and it's time to question the people who say government is always wrong when they simultaneously say it's always right.

Ten Years After

I always get into this weird, deeply reflective mood on this day. I wrestle with a million conflicting emotions about the aftermath of the WTC attack but mostly, I tend to relive the day it happened. It was so strange.

I first heard the news when I stopped to pick up my breakfast sandwich at Jakes. I thought at first they were joking, or maybe mistaken. But when I arrived at work, the entire office was standing in front of the TV that was normally only used to play videos, tranfixed in disbelief and horror. The silence was deep and unnerving. Not even the phones rang, when normally they would be ringing off the hook at that hour. We watched that endless video loop for a very long time, waiting for some explanation that might possibly make sense. Of course, it never came.

Mostly on this day, I think of my friend Harry H. McColgan. After work I stopped in the local bar for a beer, as I customarily did. Harry was there. We sat together and watched that video loop some more. I felt shattered and scared in way that felt foreign to me. I didn't want to be alone that night, so Harry came home with me. We slept in my bed, never really touching, but I can't begin to describe how comforting it was to have another human being breathing next to me that night.

I usually call Harry every year on this night, to thank him for that, but this year I can't do it. The ravages of time and ill health have taken him far from my reach and it makes me even more sad than I felt ten years ago. Still, it's time to move on and honor the dead by showing kindness to the living. So today, I think I'm not going to bitch about our crazy politics. Instead, I'm going to go out and do something nice for a stranger. Seems about as good a tribute as any.

Stupid wingnut freakouts

Now with even more stupid. Pretty sure we're going to see this faux outrage suffer an untimely death now that Charles Johnson finds numerous rightwing "gaffes" on Lincoln and the Republican party. Indeed, it will be surprising if they don't delete the posts and never mention it again.

Also, too, the alleged NPR cover-up that didn't happen.

Or, their resident revisionists might storm Wikipedia and revise the entry to conform with their pre-existing mumblings. Not like that's never happened before.

Begging the question

So apparently no amount of coffee is going to crack this exhaustion and I need to go out and buy some food. Everything in my fridge is dead at the moment. But here's a quick post on job incentives.

Haven't had the energy to watch Obama's job speech yet, but the good news seems to be at least unemployment is now the reigning topic of conversation among the politerati. From all indications, it was well received, except by the usual suspects. On the con side, and by that I mean conservatives and insane GOPers, the word is tax incentives for hiring don't mean jack to the big corporations. That of course is true. They need demand to improve before they're going to use those trillions in profits they're sitting on to do any expansions. In the interim, they're happy to use tax incentives for captial improvements that allow them to fire more workers.


However, for actual small business, ones who toughed it out during the height of the recession and didn't fire their people? Well, some of them of them are doing well and willing to expand but the big banksters won't extend them any credit to help them grow their businesses faster.

Read the link. You have one guy who's a perfectly good credit risk and is only asking for 50K and can't get a big bank to front him that little bit of cash. Then there's another couple with a great business plan, proven track record and the ability to pay off a 500K loan in less than a year from a seperate source of income. Every major bank turned them down. It was finally a small community bank that was willing to take a chance on their business. That little bank probably didn't get bailed out. Guessing they might not have even needed a bailout because they didn't gamble on derivatives. Another reason to take your money out of the Big Banks and give it to bankers who understand their function in society.

Meanwhile, the Banksters are using the crisis they're doing everything they can to keep going in order to push their ideological agenda on their so-called regulatory burdens. Atrios isn't the first person I've seen mention this, but as always he puts it so well. To paraphrase, would it too much for our media to stop simply reporting that rhetoric and actually ask these guys which specific regulations are holding back their job creation? That would be actually be -- you know -- useful to the discussion.

Thanks Rick

By Capt. Fogg

I didn't listen to the President's speech Thursday night, partly because I had a meeting to attend and partly because I've ceased caring. Of course not listening to the president's ideas about reviving the economy by putting people to work seems to a matter of pride in this part of the swamp and one squints when asked "didja listen to to President?" with that certain tone. The proper answer is of course, "hell no!" Why should I care about a country wherein this sort of idiocy is called "patriotism?"

Of course I didn't listen to Rick Scott, our Governor/Medicare Fraudmeister either -- hell no. I save such things for later and I prefer to read that kind of news rather than to be waterboarded with it. That way I can take a deep breath when I read that before the speech, he snarked that there wouldn't be anything for Florida in it and my TV was safe from having my foot through the screen when I read that it's likely he'll turn down 7.5 Billion allocated to improve and upgrade our infrastructure. That's money that would employ a lot of people who would spend their income in Florida and make Florida more attractive and accessible to the tourists upon whom our economy depends.

It wouldn't be the first time Ricky has turned away an opportunity. He refused to accept 2 billion to build a high speed rail line - you know the kind of thing other countries we feel superior to have. The kind of thing that, once again, would boost tourism and tax dollars. Oops - I used the magic word tax and Rick doesn't like taxes. Of course he doesn't like employment and he doesn't like the President and isn't about to let him do anything about employment because the only way to get out of a recession is to make sure the state doesn't take in a dime and to fire so many employees and cancel so many necessary projects that hardly anyone has enough income to require them to pay any taxes.

And then you cut costs more which puts more people out of work which means they spend less and so less gets made and companies go out of business and fire more people so there are still fewer with any money to buy anything -- and by and by everything gets better. Don't get it? you must be a liberal, or so the Teabrains tell me and I'd rather argue with a toadstool than with the kind of fungi and pond scum that make up that seething ferment. I mean, who can afford to care any more?

No really, this blog is alive

Internet access issues and pure exhaustion for the last couple of days. I'm alive and home for the moment. Posting will resume as soon as the coffee kicks in...

Never Forget

By Captain Fogg

This coming Sunday will be the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attack on Washington and New York and there's no way that anyone is going to forget it. After 10 years we're not only still mired in lachrymose and maudlin self-pity, but the incident has taken on a religious tone, complete with holy martyrs and holy relics. We still have cars with those plastic flag holders attached to the windows and we're reminded constantly that not only will we never forget, we'll never allow our grandchildren or their grandchildren to forget this dark day: the worst day in American history.

Of course I'll be condemned by some for hard heartedness, if not outright treason. I'm only arguing for a sense of proportion, but any balanced and reasonable viewpoint is so condemned in today's America. We're a radicalized, polarized nation choking and strangling on our own anger, yet cherishing it, nourishing it and hoping to preserve it in ritual, in perpetuity: a new anger for the ages. At least some powerful people hope that to be the case. Grieving people being so easy to manipulate and exploit, as some funeral directors know.


Some bits and pieces of the World Trade Center steel framework are being distributed to towns in my area. The Navy SEAL museum in Ft. Pierce now has a chunk and another arrived in my town a few days ago. The local paper printed photos of people kissing the rusty steel, touching their rosaries to it to make them extra holy and others simply hugging the metal, weeping.

The flag wrapped bits of steel arrived escorted by a motorcade over a quarter mile long. Military, law enforcement and veteran's motorcycle clubs accompanied it all the way south from the Georgia border like a funeral procession.

"Our objective is to eventually put this steel on every corner so that people never forget,"

said a retired New York homicide detective. That even includes my tiny, unincorporated crossroads town which has no other monuments of any kind. He expressed hope that one day there would be a holiday in every state honoring the policemen of New York. He promised never to forget.


Of course it wasn't all maudlin lamentation, there was plenty of anger still, even though bin Laden, most of his henchmen and all of those who perpetrated the attack are dead. Former detective Dennis McKenna promised that his son was soon going off to Afghanistan, where the perpetrators no longer dwell, to "whack one of them." Bagpipes were played, America the Beautiful was sung, Holy Water was poured on Holy Steel and then the bandwagon moved on.

"Let these pieces of steel remind us of the 2,973 men and woman who sacrificed their lives and, unknowingly, made our country and people become even stronger,"

said one Vietnam veteran. I wish it had done so, I wish all the other war memorials had made us more reluctant to make wars, but we're hardly stronger. We're far more divided, our economy has suffered from trillions of borrowed dollars turned to smoke. There is a bigger economic divide and the tear-shedders in their sackcloth and ashes want to sacrifice every bit of social progress since the 1860's, impoverishing the already debt-ridden majority while enriching the aristocracy.

Never forget that we're victims. Never remember how we victimized millions abroad in an uninvolved country. Always remember that "they" hate us and always complain when we attempt to make peace.

But how long will we actually remember and how long will we see this sad period in the same dim light? Surely half of our country no longer remembers 12/7/41 as the date that will live in infamy, nor the Battleship Maine on 2/15/98 or the burning and sacking of Washington DC on 8/24/14. People will forget. It won't be the worst thing that ever happened any more.

Some of those pre-teens who are too young to remember will absorb the tailored and fitted viewpoint they have thrust upon them at the moment, but their children will live in a vastly different world and one in which this country will not have the same status and those 3000 saints and martyrs won't really compare with the millions and millions dead in other places we wouldn't get involved in because "they hate us."

"I know that Osama bin Laden did the whole thing,"

said an 8 year old. Perhaps he'll remember that, perhaps not. Perhaps he will learn some more comprehensive history, perhaps not and it's more than likely there are events to come that will make the death of a few thousand seem insignificant in comparison. No, I'll never forget. I wont forget going to the Red Cross office to donate blood and not being able to get there for the crowd. I won't forget the feeling of national unity that was so soon hijacked and exploited and used as a tool, and excuse to wage war at home and abroad. I won't forget the overwhelming, commercially distributed fear and xenophobia and lust for battle either, but I'm old and the world belongs to the young - or soon will and the myth of 9/11 will go where it goes, not where I predict it will go.

Goodbye to All That

This is getting a lot of play on the blogs, but if you've been ignoring politics for the holiday weekend, it's the one thing you missed that you definitely read. Mike Lofgren, a veteran Congressional staffer reflects on why he left the GOP after 28 years on The Hill. This part was especially telling:

A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress's generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner. [...]

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation. Rather, this mindset seeks polarizing division (Karl Rove has been very explicit that this is his principal campaign strategy), conflict and the crushing of opposition.

But there's so much more. Seriously, read the whole thing

Changing the conversation

Krugman keeps saying the same thing, but somehow he manages to say it in a different way. Shorter: Deficit obsession is destructive, it's the unemployment, stupid. Especially like this part:

But what will Republicans agree to? That’s easy: nothing. They will oppose anything Mr. Obama proposes, even if it would clearly help the economy — or maybe I should say, especially if it would help the economy, since high unemployment helps them politically.

This reality makes the third question — what the president should propose — hard to answer, since nothing he proposes will actually happen anytime soon. So I’m personally prepared to cut Mr. Obama a lot of slack on the specifics of his proposal, as long as it’s big and bold. For what he mostly needs to do now is to change the conversation — to get Washington talking again about jobs and how the government can help create them.

As I've also been saying for a long time. We need a better narrative. Not to mention much better policy. And one thing I'm sure of is I don't want to hear him say ever again is the government can't create jobs.

Small biz owners are not worried about regs or taxes

Splintering two of the main planks of GOP demagoguery, McClatchy surveys small business owners and finds neither regulations nor the prospect of slightly higher taxes is keeping them awake at night with "uncertainty."

"Government regulations are not 'choking' our business, the hospitality business," Bernard Wolfson, the president of Hospitality Operations in Miami, told The Miami Herald. "In order to do business in today's environment, government regulations are necessary and we must deal with them. The health and safety of our guests depend on regulations. It is the government regulations that help keep things in order." [...]


None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

The results were a bit more mixed than that but basically, the only ones complaining about regs and taxes are the Chamber of Commerce and the corporate behemoths masquerading as small business for tax purposes that they represent. The real mom and pop small businesses are more worried about the human costs than squeezing an extra penny of profit out of a dollar.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Worse than Bush?

Well I'm already over the EPA smog thing but there's still a lot of grumbling going on around the internets. I figure it will mostly blow over with the next new outrage. But I guess it doesn't hurt to remind ourselves what Obama actually got done in the few months he really did have a Democratic majority to work with in the Congress.

I'm told things will never get better if we don't take a stand and let the Democrats lose again. I don't know. It's been my life experience that even the most promising progressive causes and progressive leaders often get sidelined by reality and/or corrupted by power eventually. I look at that list and think, it could be much worse and if we let Republicans win, it will be.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Better narratives, please

Yes, I'm as pissed off as the next tree hugger about President Obama backing off on the EPA's proposed stricter standard for ground smog. But to keep it in perspective, we're no worse off than we have been since 2008 when Bush eased the standard. And it's not like Obama is abandoning the whole enviromental agenda. He did push through the better mileage standards not that long ago and according to his statement there's plenty of other rules the GOPers are trying to abolish, along with the EPA itself, that he claims he's going to fight for, so it's not like there aren't going to be other, an bigger battles in the future.

As a rule, I don't get worked up into a lather over such ongoing political manuvering, particularly in the silly season. But what pisses me off much more than the walk back is the framing Obama used to justify it.

In a statement, the president reiterated his commitment to environmental concerns, but added: “At the same time, I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover. With that in mind, and after careful consideration, I have requested that Administrator Jackson withdraw the draft Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards at this time.”

This particular issue is one the GOP was gearing up to use heavily in the 2012 campaign, so I understand why the White House would want to neutralize it. But this statement is pure GOP framing. It's the sort of false talking point I spend hours every day pushing back against. As I tweeted to Obama today, why am I spending my time debunking this language if he's going to turn around and reinforce it with repetition? I find it hard to believe, with all the resources the White House has, they couldn't come up with a better narrative. To simply repeat Republican tropes is not helping.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Money Changes Everything

This was way underreported. A new CBO report confirms the Recovery Act worked:

"A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report estimates that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) increased the number of people employed by between 1.0 million and 2.9 million jobs as of June. " [...]


"The CBO report indicates that ARRA succeeded in its primary goal of protecting the economy during the worst of the recession. As the economy recovers, ARRA's effects will continue to decrease. CBO estimates that ARRA's impact on employment peaked in the third quarter of 2010, when between 1.4 million and 3.6 million people owed their jobs to the Recovery Act."

That peak corresponds to the best GDP growth, a 5.9% increase, reported in the fourth quarter of 2010. Read the link to see how it protected full time work hours and whatnot, but most interesting is which spending was identified as most effective:

"Among ARRA's most effective provisions for saving and creating jobs, according to CBO's estimates, are direct purchases of goods and services by the federal government, transfer payments to states (such as extra Medicaid funding), and transfer payments to individuals (such as increased food stamp benefits and additional weeks of unemployment benefits). CBO's estimates indicate that tax cuts are less effective job producers, and tax cuts for higher-income people have very low bang for the buck."

The report makes very clear that without the Recovery Act, the economy would have truly crashed and things would be very much worse right now. Which, of course, doesn't lend itself to a catchy campaign slogan. Sadly, for the average underinformed voter, now hopelessly deluded by the GOP's deficit demagoguery, Gov. Goodhair's messaging is likely to resonate more:

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry said Monday that no new economic stimulus package is needed to "get America working again," but he declined to give specifics about how his still-unannounced plan to jumpstart the nation's economy would create jobs. [...] "You won't have stimulus programs under a Perry presidency. You won't spend all the money."

Says the governor who spent tons of federal money to keep his state, and the myth of the Texas Miracle, afloat. It feels uncomfortably mean to think this, but seriously, this guy and his true believers can't get raptured up fast enough to save civil society for the rest of us heathens.

[More posts daily at the Detroit News.]

Not a fight worth having

You no doubt heard about the brief and bizarre wrangling over Obama's jobs speech. The emo-progressives immediately launched into bitter snark when Obama ignored Boehner's dickish manners in refusing to grant the President's request and rescheduled the speech to the next day, as the Bonehead requested.

I understand the frustration on the left at yet another apparent cave to the GOPers. But good grief, it wasn't a fight worth having. Think about it for a minute. Sure Obama could have insisted on keeping his preferred date and made a big issue of it. But there's no doubt that Boehner would loved to have that fight and more importantly, the media would have backed Bonehead up on it. They didn't want to have the speech on the same night as the stupid GOP debate either.

The immediate media response was a subtle implication Obama was being the dick for stepping on the GOPers clown show. Then they launched into he said/ he said coverage, never mentioning Boehner lied his face off about speaking on behalf of a bi-partisan consensus. Barely mentioned the unprecedented nature of refusing a sitting President's request to address Congress. And the ever demented Sen. DeMint was panting to get into the news cycle by blocking a resolution to allow Obama to speak to the Senate.

If Obama engaged in this silly skirmish, the media would spend the next week repeating GOP memes and talking about the process instead of the issue, which is you know, jobs. It doesn't matter what day he gives it and chances are great, that nobody but us poli-junkies are even aware the fight happened. The majority of the electorate is off enjoying the last week of summer and not reading the news at all. Meanwhile, the media is now reporting about the content of Obama's speech. In the big picture, that's actually a greater victory.