The Seeds of a Poison Fruit
Posted: December 22, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: Republicans 27 Comments
Many of you may know that I was a Republican back in the day and that I even ran for office as a Republican. I was continually sent to county and state conventions by women’s groups to try to stop the party from systematically eliminating its historical positions on the ERA, reproductive health, and just general civil rights positions that once were the hallmark of the party. The position of Senator of the Nebraska state unicameral is nonpartisan which is how I got marginally beat by a combination of Michelle Bachmann/Sarah Palin whacko that had lived in the state less than a year and ran one the nastiest campaigns in the state’s history that was primarily fought from church and parish pulpits. She was brought in by the fetus fetishists who were in full on purge mode by the early 1990s. Nearly every elected official I spoke to was not very big on them but feared them and said they agreed with them just to make their re-elections easier. Having two catholic parishes, two big barn evangelical churches and some Southern Baptists run a religious witch hunt on you is absolutely traumatizing. It’s worse than dealing with the Taliban because at least the Taliban wear beards and are easy to identify. No one wants to believe they have a whacko living next to them in a suburb and that’s the hardest thing to fight about them. They used to use code words and they tried to fit in. They looked normal. After 20 years of plotting take overs and purges in state after state with no one really taking them very seriously we arrive at the position we are in today. They’ve broken their strings and no longer serve plutocrats that empowered them. We have a democracy that is a duopoly of two parties. One of our parties has gone insane. The result is complete dysfunction.
It’s not like the establishment republicans don’t deserve this. They really let it happen. They laughed at their crazies and gave them just enough lip service that they thought they’d keep them in their little corners. Now, they’ve been cornered themselves and there doesn’t appear to be much they can do about it. Andrew Sullivan has an eloquent piece about about the unhinged among them. Really, the rise of the unhinged is the poison fruit of the tree of greed. The establishment never thought they’d have a revolt on their hands. They always thought those little puppets were so dumb they would never attack their corporate establishment masters.
Between the humiliating and chaotic collapse of Speaker Boehner’s already ludicrously extreme Plan B and Wayne La Pierre’s deranged proposal to put government agents in schools with guns, the Republican slide into total epistemic closure and political marginalization has now become a free-fall. This party, not to mince words, is unfit for government. There is no conservative party in the West – except for minor anti-immigrant neo-fascist ones in Europe – anywhere close to this level of far right extremism. And now the damage these fanatics can do is not just to their own country – was the debt ceiling debacle of 2011 not enough for them? – but to the entire world.
Those of us who have warned for years about this disturbing trend toward ever more extreme measures – backing torture, pre-emptive un-budgeted wars, out-of-control spending followed, like a frantic mood swing, by anti-spending absolutism of the most insane variety in a steep recession, vicious hostility to illegal immigrants, contempt for gay couples, hostility even to contraception, let alone a middle ground on abortion … well, you know it all by now.
But the current constitutional and economic vandalism removes any shred of doubt that this party and its lucrative media bubble is in any way conservative. They aren’t. They’re ideological zealots, indifferent to the consequences of their actions, contemptuous of the very to-and-fro essential for the American system to work, gerry-mandering to thwart the popular will, filibustering in a way that all but wrecks the core mechanics of American democracy, and now willing to acquiesce to the biggest tax increase imaginable because they cannot even accept Obama’s compromise from his clear campaign promise to raise rates for those earning over $250,000 to $400,000 a year.
The worse thing is that most of the deranged think some kind of magical being is on their side and they can’t believe they’ve lost the last election and lost it badly. This has caused a lot of deranged behavior that’s hard to fathom in a first world country. If there is a gawd, she’s obviously not on their side. They don’t like the outcome and an insurrection is the only answer. Most of them have neoconfederate mindsets any way so they think bringing down our government is some how a patriotic duty.
Though it has been 45 days since voters emphatically reaffirmed their faith in Mr. Obama, the time since then has shown the president’s power to be severely constrained by a Republican opposition that is bitter about its losses, unmoved by Mr. Obama’s victory and unwilling to compromise on social policy, economics or foreign affairs.
“The stars are all aligning the wrong way in terms of working together,” said Peter Wehner, a former top White House aide to President George W. Bush. “Right now, the political system is not up to the moment and the challenges that we face.”
House Republicans argue that voters handed their members a mandate as well, granting the party control of the House for another two years and with it the right to stick to their own views, even when they clash strongly with the president’s.
And many Republicans remember well when the tables were turned. After Mr. Bush’s re-election in 2004, Democrats eagerly thwarted his push for privatization of Social Security, hobbling Mr. Bush’s domestic agenda in the first year of his second term.
New polls suggest that Mr. Obama’s popularity has surged to its highest point since he announced the killing of Osama bin Laden. In the latest CBS News survey, the president’s job approval rating was at 57 percent.
But taken together, events suggest that even that improvement in the polls has done little to deliver the president the kind of clear authority to enact his policies that voters seemed to say they wanted during the election.
A group of tin pot congressmen from gerrymandered districts appear unwilling to work the system. They want to follow the mandate of the craziest among them and drown our country in their personal bathtubs. The GOP is in utter chaos and its taking the country down with it. We can’t get even the slightest bit of sane policy. If you look at the state level, its even worse as Republican governors and legislatures work hard to bring their local school systems, health systems, and economies down to enrich their ALEC donor base.
Disarray is a word much overused in politics. But it barely begins to describe the current state of chaos and incoherence as Republicans come to terms with electoral defeat and try to regroup against a year-end deadline to avert a fiscal crisis.
The presidential election was fought in large measure over the question of whether some Americans should pay more in taxes. Republicans lost that argument with the voters, who polls show are strongly in favor of raising rates for the wealthy.
But a sizable contingent within the GOP doesn’t see it that way and is unwilling to declare defeat on a tenet that so defines them. Nor are they prepared to settle for getting the best deal they can, as a means of avoiding the tax hikes on virtually everyone else that would take effect if no deal is reached.
When Boehner tried to bend even a little, by proposing to raise rates on income over $1 million, his party humiliated him, forcing him Thursday night to abruptly cancel a vote on his “Plan B.”
“We had a number of our members who just really didn’t want to be perceived as having raised taxes,” Boehner said Friday. “That was the real issue.”
It’s hard to predict what will come of all of this. It’s pretty clear that Republicans in congress and in many states are about as interested in serving their electorate as a devout Theravadan Buddhist monk would be interested in a well cooked steak and a hooker. It’s going to take awhile to purge statehouses and congress of these problems. Some of the more obvious nuts–like Allen West–were ousted. Still, Michelle Bachmann snuck through feeling strong enough to run for speaker of the house and emboldened by the crazies in my old haunts. Can you imagine a person that out of touch with reality being third in line to the presidency?
Yes. The Republicans have problem that started with Pat Robertson’s run for the presidency and the embrace of a major political party of the American Taliban and Fascist movements in the name of garnering enough votes for greed that’s best characterized by the likes of Santorum, Perry, Buchanan, and Romney. But, it’s had a lot of negative impact already. There are a lot of folks that would be Nixonian Republicans running for office and holding office in the Democratic Party. Senator Ben Nelson comes to mind. The Republican party wanted none of him so he and the dead animal on his head went to the welcoming arms of the Democrats. His votes were still reliably Republican. Now he’s been placed by a tea party whacko. So, these are our choices these days. Republians running as democrats or theocratic fascists running as republicans. Just think of it. Eight years ago Dubya Bush was trying to ‘reform’ social security and none of us wanted any party of it. What’s going on today? We have the American Heritage Plan Health Care Law and a president who has no qualms chopping into key Democratic legislative and judicial battles from the past. The Democratic Party has become home to the Richard Nixon Republicans. This has virtually left us with a center right party and a party of the extreme right. Our discourse on policy is extremely limited. I had to choose the lesser evil but it truly sucks that we never have a better choice
So, it’s nice to think about bringing out a bowl of popcorn and watching the internecine republican fight of the century. However, living with the results of this chaos are going to be much more far reaching. I’m not sure the party will go the way of the Whigs but I’m pretty sure we’re going to be dysfunctional for at least another two years. Given the weakish state of the economy and the craziness going on in the Middle East, we just might find ourselves increasingly irrelevant in the world. After all, it’s usually by check and military might that we throw ourselves into every world event. Now, it seems there will only be a bath tub, a group of nuts, and our government trying not to drown.
Saturday Reads: The Gun Lobby and Bad-Faith Negotiations
Posted: December 22, 2012 Filed under: Barack Obama, morning reads, U.S. Economy, U.S. Politics | Tags: fiscal cliff, Jonathan Chait, Mark Ames, National Rifle Association, NRA, school shootings, Social Security, Wayne LaPierre 25 Comments
Good Morning!!
I had a tough time sleeping last night. The past couple of days’ political events have been so surreal that it feels like there’s a disturbance in the force, so to speak. I couldn’t stop thinking about that bizarre NRA press conference yesterday and the way Wayne LaPierre talked about the need for more guns in our schools while at the same time a man in Pennsylvania was “randomly” shooting and killing people and grieving families were holding funerals for first graders and school teachers and administrators in Connecticut.
If only we had a responsible mainstream media. But that’s not going to happen either. Early this morning I heard CNN reporting on Americans who are rushing out to buy more guns because they’re afraid there will suddenly be gun control laws to stop them. A man in Georgia was who was interviewed was remarking on the high cost of AR-15’s right now, because so many people want to stock up on them. He was at the store because he had long wanted one of these and was no afraid he soon wouldn’t be able to get one. The interviewer asked if he would pay the high price, and he said, “I probably will.”
Here are some more intelligent reactions to Wayne LaPierre’s so-called press conference, at which the press couldn’t ask questions.
The New York Daily News: NRA’s Wayne LaPierre was America’s mad gunman in first comments after Newtown school massacre
A week after a gunman armed with an assault rifle murdered 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and ever so shortly after the bells there tolled for the dead, LaPierre lashed out at everyone and everything but the weapons that were used to kill.
Still worse, in his arrogance and in his sense that terrible forces are out to get him, LaPierre was callous to the raw agony of the families of the slain. The hell with them — he made clear that he will fight to maintain the easy availability of assault weaponry of the kind that killed their kids.
He flayed the news media for supposedly perpetuating a culture of violence and ignorance.He blamed video games and movies for murder, as if big-screen or small-screen entertainment matters more than easily obtained machines of death.
He mocked anyone with a single new idea to prevent deadly weapons from falling into the hands of those intent on mayhem.
And, exhibiting a level of insanity that qualifies people for commitment as a danger to themselves or others, he called for stationing armed cops at every school in the United States.
The Atlantic: The Most Paranoid, Fear-Mongering Lines in Wayne LaPierre’s Call to Expand the Gun Market to Schools
Anyone expecting the NRA to be chastened at all by the shooting in Newtown, Conn., was quickly disabused of that expectation as Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the gun industry and enthusiast lobbying group, delivered a blistering speech effectively arguing today for a major expansion of the market for the product his group represents.
It was an extraordinarily tone deaf performance, but it followed a well-worn script for product sales: Provoke anxiety — and pitch your product as the one and only solution to it.
Read the examples at the link.
Dan Bigman at Fortune: What The NRA’s Wayne Lapierre Gets Paid To Defend Guns
If you’re a transparency fanatic like me, you appreciate knowing what kind of skin public people have in the game during episodes like this. So what did the NRA pay Lapierre to say that the best way to stop school shootings is to have the government put every mentally ill person in the nation on a watch list and arm school personnel to defend schools like banks?
Just under a million bucks.
That’s according to the most recent NRA filings with the IRS.
The numbers are a bit out of date. The last filing of a Form 990 from the NRA was in 2010. Still, if you’re interested in the numbers behind America’s most powerful gun lobby, it makes for interesting reading.
The organization’s mission is simply stated, right at the top: “To protect and defend the U.S. Constitution.” To accomplish this, in 2010 the NRA reported that it had 781 full time employees, 125,000 volunteers and generated revenues of $22.5 million.
BTW, as Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out last night, banks don’t use armed guards anymore, because they don’t prevent bank robberies. But LaPierre is living in the past as he showed with his pop culture references to decades-old video games and movies.
Here’s O’Donnell’s rant. It’s pretty long, but well worth watching in full.
It’s not a response to the press conference, but Mark Ames posted a great piece on the history of the NRA a couple of days ago: FROM “OPERATION WETBACK” TO NEWTOWN: TRACING THE HICK FASCISM OF THE NRA. Ames is the author of Going Postal, a book on workplace and school shooters. His article can’t be easily excerpted from, but I highly recommend you go an read it at the link.
On a slightly more positive note, here’s an article in New York Magazine about a former school principal who has been studying school shootings ever since one happened at his own school: School-Shooting Specialist Bill Bond on Why Lockdowns Save Lives
Bill Bond, specialist for school safety at the National Association of Secondary School Principals, has spent more than a decade speaking and consulting on school violence. Here, he tells assistant editor Eric Benson about lockdown procedures and the deadly shooting he witnessed himself.
Along with Columbine, my school is the reason lockdown procedures came into being. I was principal of Heath High School in Paducah, Kentucky, and we had eight shot in the lobby; three girls were killed. Back then, we had a crisis plan for the school, but what we were thinking about was a school intruder — an irate person, a mad parent, someone like that. We weren’t thinking about guns at all.
A lockdown means that all students get to the nearest classroom, regardless of whether it’s theirs or not, as quickly as possible. You lock the doors. You pull the shades. You turn the light out. You have the kids move to the back corner of the room, away from the door and windows. And you get the kids to be as quiet as possible. You want them to be quiet, because shooters react to sound and movement. If there’s someone screaming and hollering or running around, the shooter is much, much more likely to try to enter that door.
It sounds like that’s exactly what the teachers did at Sandy Hook School. Read much more at the link.
The other big story of the day is the so-called “fiscal cliff” and the way the Villagers–politicians and media–have turned this giant clusterfuck waiting to happen into an even huger and more horrible clusterfuck.
Last night Jonathan Chait posted the perfect response to the insanity of the “negotiations” between Speaker Boehner and President Obama: Obama Waking Up From Dream of Grand Bargain
In recent weeks, Obama seems to have concluded that Republicans have come around, and that it is time to sit down and hash out a deal like reasonable people. He moved his position more than halfway toward Boehner’s. Democrats in Congress are, incredibly, discussing the option of compromising even more.
But reasonable compromise to avert the fiscal cliff is impossible. Republicans, as a whole, don’t even seem capable of linear thinking about the budget. They don’t know what they actually want on spending. They don’t understand why Obama wants more revenue or what role this would play in the broader fiscal picture. They don’t even seem capable of politically organizing in a way that maximizes their fanatic principles. The House Republican caucus is simply a teeming pit of revanchist anger.
Chait is hopeful that Obama’s latest remarks on the mess in which he outlined a smaller proposed solution to the standoff may be a sign that the president has once again let go of his fantasies of postpartisan cooperation.
Obama’s remarks today indicate an apparent acceptance of the dynamic and a desire to at least steer the process toward minimizing the economic harm that would result if the contractionary policies scheduled for next year take effect. Obama is again demanding a tax cut for income under $250,000 a year, along with canceling out some of the more punitive spending cuts. He can get that if he holds absolutely firm on his income threshold. Unfortunately, his offer to Boehner confused the matter. Obama offered to lift the tax hike level to $400,000 a year. Now, he was proposing to make up the revenue through reducing tax exemptions, so he really changed only the delivery system for higher taxes rather than the end result, but this fact has gotten confused in the reporting, and Obama needs to re-solidify it. (In his press conference, he didn’t.)
The president also needs to learn about the uselessness of the corporate media.
Roll Call had an interesting insider report on the goings on during the GOP battle over Boehner’s Plan B on Thursday night.
Even his allies admit that Boehner’s stunning failure to find the votes for his “plan B” tax legislation was a major blow to his credibility, provoking befuddlement and even outrage from fellow Republicans.
But there is also considerable anger in the GOP conference directed at the conservative lawmakers that forced Boehner’s shocking defeat.
That fractured reaction — coupled with the lack of a plausible challenger — mean Boehner is unlikely to face any significant challenge to his position as speaker in the near term.
“These are people that, they don’t have a leader amongst them, and they don’t want to be led,” said a GOP member and Boehner loyalist. “He had probably 200 people lined up for him, for his position. And those 200 are pretty dad gum loyal to the speaker and pretty angry at that group.”
Read lots more at the link.
Finally, Rob Urie, who describes himself as an “artist and political economist,” writes at Counterpunch on why Obama and other Democrats are determined to cut Social Security even though it is political suicide and Republicans will use it against them in successive elections–and why we might fight back: Democrats, Social Security and the Fiscal Cliff
Why cut Social Security? The program is currently solvent, is expected to remain solvent for decades to come, and projected shortfalls in the future could be better addressed by raising the incomes of the people who pay into the program, not by cutting payments to those who depend on them. What is to be gained by ‘solving’ a problem that isn’t?
If cutting Social Security isn’t necessary, why then is it being proposed? Barack Obama provided copious evidence in prior proposals, television interviews and speeches that doing so is his intent. Congressional democrats and labor leaders quickly acceded to his proposal to do so, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi going so far as to actively lie that proposed cuts will ‘strengthen’ the program. And given the cuts will eventually put tens of millions of Americans into dire poverty from a program they paid into for all of their working lives, what rationale could possibly justify doing so?
The reason I ask is a coalition of democrats, labor, liberals and progressives just re-elected Mr. Obama and democrats in Congress to what—cut Social Security? Mr. Obama created the ‘fiscal cliff’ to first push his stacked (in favor of cutting social insurance programs) ‘deficit commission’ to develop a plan to cut government spending and second, to force the issue to be revisited immediately after the election if no plan was agreed to. And Republican threats to refuse to raise the debt ceiling for leverage to ‘force’ spending cuts are idiotic—George W. Bush and congressional Republicans just led the largest increase in government spending in modern history. And that is not a difficult point to make. (And had it been on beneficial programs, it would have been laudable).
Ultimately the entire ‘debate’ is nonsense—the U.S. doesn’t fund spending directly from taxes. As the Federal Reserve is in the process of demonstrating with its QE (Quantitative Easing) programs, it can buy an unlimited quantity of government debt with money it ‘creates’ –the ‘debt limit’ is an arbitrary misdirection.
None of this is news to any of us who went into this with our eyes open about Mr. Obama, but it’s a very good summary of what’s happening and well worth reading in full. And remember, George W. Bush did his darndest to privatize Social Security and failed miserably. Perhaps Obama will succeed, but I believe can be tripped up too. The Republican hatred of anything Obama wants will probably help–after all Social Security wasn’t even addressed in Boehner’s “Plan B” proposal.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the politicians have left for their luxury vacations (leaving unemployed people to wonder whether they’ll have any money at all after Dec. 31); so I guess we can relax for the moment and try to enjoy some peace and quiet for the next week.
I’ve focused on only two issues in this post, so I look forward to seeing what everyone else is reading and thinking about. What’s on your list for today?
Unhinged Wayne LaPierre Advocates Putting Guns in Schools as Gunman Kills 4, Wounds 3 in Altoona, PA
Posted: December 21, 2012 Filed under: Crime, open thread | Tags: guns, National Rifle Association, violence, Wayne LaPierre 50 Comments
A short time ago, NRA Executive VP Wayne LaPierre gave a press conference in which he suggested turning American into an armed camp by assigning “armed police officers” to guard every school in the country. Washington Post:
In his first extensive public remarks since last week’s mass shooting at a Connecticut school, the head of the National Rifle Association called Friday for lawmakers to take action to put police officers in all schools in an effort to curb such violence.
“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said at a news conference in Washington.
LaPierre called on Congress “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school in this nation.”
Will the money for that be coming out of the hides of elderly social security recipients along with all the other things wingnuts want to spend money on?
Simultaneously with LaPierre’s speech, an armed man in Altoona, PA began “randomly” shooting people.
Emergency officials have rushed to to the scene of a deadly shooting in Blair County, PA. Officials in Altoona, Pennsylvania say that four people were killed, including the shooter, and three state police officers were injured in the deadly shooting. According to KDKA-TV, the state troopers are not in critical condition. One trooper’s bulletproof vest stopped a bullet that struck him in the chest. Another trooper was injured in a crash, and the third was injured by flying debris, likely to be shattered glass. The troopers shot and kill the suspect, who sources say was Jeffrey Lee Michael of Hollidaysburg, Pa.
Before he died in a shootout with state troopers, the man killed two other men and a woman.
Four people are dead — including the shooter — and three state troopers were injured this morning in a shooting incident in Frankstown Township, Blair County District Attorney Richard Consiglio said.
The gunman and two other men and a woman are all dead, Consiglio said.
The woman was killed at the Juniata Valley Gospel Church, a nondenominational church outside of Geeseytown on Juniata Valley Road, sources tell the Mirror.
Two troopers were wounded during a shootout with the suspect, Consiglio said. One trooper was hit in his bulletproof vest and another was hit by flying glass when the gunman fired at his state police vehicle.
A third trooper was injured in a crash involving the suspect, Consiglio said.
No word on what kind of weapon the shooter used. Watch Wayne LaPierre’s wild and wooly press conference here.
This is a wild west, gun totin’ America-gone-insane open thread.
Solstice 2012 Morning Reads
Posted: December 21, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Barney Frank, Carl Bernstein, General Patreus, Newgrange Tomb, Romney Campaign Boondoggles, Rupert Murdoch, Solstice, winter 36 Comments
Good morning and happy solstice!
Today is the shortest day of the year!!
In Washington, D.C., the winter solstice sun reaches a maximum angle of only 27.7º above the horizon at solar noon. In the more northern city of London, the sun takes an even shorter path, climbing only 15.1º in the sky. And just south of the Arctic Circle, the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik sees the midday sun climb no higher than 2.1º above the horizon.
Here’s some other ways that humanity has celebrated the day in the past from National Geographic.
Throughout history, humans have celebrated the winter solstice, often with an appreciative eye toward the return of summer sunlight.
Massive prehistoric monuments such as Ireland’s mysterious Newgrange tomb (video) are aligned to capture the light at the moment of the winter solstice sunrise.
(Related: “Ancient Irish Tomb Big Draw at Winter Solstice.”)
Germanic peoples of Northern Europe honored the winter solstice with Yule festivals—the origin of the still-standing tradition of the long-burning Yule log.
The Roman feast of Saturnalia, honoring the God Saturn, was a weeklong December feast that included the observance of the
winter solstice. Romans also celebrated the lengthening of days following the solstice by paying homage to Mithra—an ancient Persian god of light.
Many modern pagans attempt to observe the winter solstice in the traditional manner of the ancients.
“There is a resurgent interest in more traditional religious groups that is often driven by ecological motives,” said Harry Yeide, a professor of religion at George Washington University. “These people do celebrate the solstice itself.”
I like to remind people that Mithra is the real reason for the season. Despite what Fox News says, the original happy holiday for the Romans on December 25th was the birthday of the virgin born Mithra. Vatican City was built on his huge temple. Too bad we might never get to excavate it.
Mithra, legend says, was incarnated into human form (as prophesized by Zarathustra) in 272 bc. He was born of a virgin, who was called the Mother of God. Mithra’s birthday was celebrated December 25 and he was called “the light of the world.” After teaching for 36 years, he ascended into heaven in 208 bc.
There were many similarities with Christianity: Mithraists believed in heaven and hell, judgement and resurrection. They had baptism and communion of bread and wine. They believed in service to God and others.
In the Roman Empire, Mithra became associated with the sun, and was referred to as the Sol Invictus, or unconquerable sun. The first day of the week — Sunday — was devoted to prayer to him. Mithraism became the official religion of Rome for some 300 years. The early Christian church later adopted Sunday as their holy day, and December 25 as the birthday of Jesus.
Mithra became the patron of soldiers. Soldiers in the Roman legions believed they should fight for the good, the light. They believed in self-discipline and chastity and brotherhood. Note that the custom of shaking hands comes from the Mithraic greeting of Roman soldiers.
It was operated like a secret society, with rites of passage in the form of physical challenges. Like in the gnostic sects (described below), there were seven grades, each protected by a planet.
Since Mithraism was restricted to men, the wives of the soldiers often belonged to clubs of Great Mother (Cybele) worshippers. One of the women’s rituals involved baptism in blood by having an animal- preferably a bull – slaughtered over the initiate in a pit below. This combined with the myth of Mithra killing the first living creature, a bull, and forming the world from the bull’s body, and was adopted by the Mithraists as well.
When Constantine converted to Christianity, he outlawed Mithraism. But a few Zoroastrians still exist today in India, and the Mithraic holidays were celebrated in Iran until the Ayatollah came into power. And, of course, Mithraism survives more subtly in various European — even Christian — traditions.
So, somebody needs to remind Fox News that Constantine was the one that stole December 25th from the Mithraists. They should direct their outrage at him.
Speaking of Fox News, there’s something you should read on the Dread Pirate Murdoch and his attempt to install a US President. The story gets some column space from Carl Bernstein writing for The Guardian. It’s about said dread pirate’s attempt to waylay the US presidential election by trying to get Petraeus to run. Bernstein’s big question is why weren’t the press all over this?
The Murdoch story – his corruption of essential democratic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic – is one of the most important and far-reaching political/cultural stories of the past 30 years, an ongoing tale without equal. Like Richard Nixon and his tapes, much attention has been focused on the necessity of finding the smoking gun to confirm what other evidence had already established beyond a doubt: that the elemental instruments of democracy, ie the presidency in Nixon’s case, and the privileges of free press in Murdoch’s, were grievously misused and abused for their own ends by those entrusted to use great power for the common good.
In Nixon’s case, the system worked. His actions were investigated by Congress, the judicial system held that even the president of the United States was not above the law, and he was forced to resign or face certain impeachment and conviction. American and British democracy has not been so fortunate with Murdoch, whose power and corruption went unchecked for a third of a century.
The most important thing we journalists do is make judgments about what is news. Perhaps no story has eluded us on a daily basis (for lack of trying) for so many years as the story of Murdoch’s destructive march across our democratic landscape. Only the Guardian vigorously pursued the leads of the hacking story and methodically stuck with it for months and years, never ignoring the underlying context of how Rupert Murdoch conducted his take-no-prisoners business and journalism without regard for the most elemental standards of fairness, accuracy or balance, or even lawful conduct.
When the Guardian’s hacking coverage reached critical mass last year, I quoted a former top Murdoch deputy as follows: “This scandal and all its implications could not have happened anywhere else. Only in Murdoch’s orbit. The hacking at News of the World was done on an industrial scale. More than anyone, Murdoch invented and established this culture in the newsroom, where you do whatever it takes to get the story, take no prisoners, destroy the competition, and the end will justify the means.”
The tape that Bob Woodward obtained, and which the Washington Post ran in the style section, should be the denouement of the Murdoch story on both sides of the Atlantic, making clear that no institution, not even the presidency of the United States, was beyond the object of his subversion. If Murdoch had bankrolled a successful Petraeus presidential campaign and – as his emissary McFarland promised – “the rest of us [at Fox] are going to be your in-house” – Murdoch arguably might have sewn up the institutions of American democracy even more securely than his British tailoring.
An interesting little survey result of university students put a smile on my face for a variety of reasons. It’s actually a few months old and I some how missed it. That’s to BB for letting me know why my students always looked so sleepy on the way into the lectures for all those years. I was an economics major so ….
In a survey of several thousand English undergraduates by Studentbeans.com, economics majors are more likely to have more sexual partners than their peers other fields. A budding Ben Bernanke had an average of 4.88 sex partners since college started. Compare this to the struggling Comparative Religion major who has had an average or 2.13 partners, or the mournful Environmental Science major who has slept with only 1.71 people. It is not even a contest.
Maybe it’s just be cause we’re great at data gathering and we keep count. Or maybe not.
Congressman Barney Frank in his last days in office and is giving many interviews. He talks openly about a lot of interesting things.
Later, after recounting a controversy over an attempt by a male prostitute to blackmail him, he said, “I always have thought prostitution should be legal” and said that ultimately women were “worse off” without legalized prostitution.
Frank also believes that those who vote against gay and lesbian rights but who are in the closet deserve to be outed, explaining, “Yes, I believe the policy should be that people have a right to privacy but not to hypocrisy.”
Frank discussed recent comments made by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia when asked by a Princeton student about his writing on same-sex marriage and gay and lesbian issues. “If we cannot have moral feelings against homosexuality, can we have it against murder? Can we have it against other things?” Scalia told the student.
“I was glad that he made clear what’s been obvious, that he’s just a flat out bigot,” said Frank, going on to call the explanation “quite stupid.”
This has to be the biggest taxpayer supported boondoggle in the history of boondoogles: “The Cost of Romney’s Government-Assisted Transition: $8.9 Million”.
One of the less scintillating milestones of the 2012 election was marked by the General Services Administration, when Mitt Romney became the first candidate to take advantage of the Presidential Transition Act of 2010. The Act, spearheaded by former Sen. Ted Kaufman, provides resources for major candidates to start planning for their presidency long before Election Day. Through a Freedom of Information Act request, TIME acquired documents from the GSA that show the scope–and cost–of this unprecedented government-assisted transition.
In 2010, legislators said the main goal of the Act was to bolster national security by ensuring that candidates are prepared to take office, and that they don’t shy away from transition planning for fear that they’ll look presumptuous. To that end, the law stipulates that the federal government will provide certain resources to non-incumbent candidates after their nominating convention. The GSA says final costs are still being tabulated, but the initial estimated cost for Romney’s pre-transition phase is around $8.9 million.
Last week, the Romney press corp wrote a formal complaint regarding the charges that they say far exceed any other campaign. Today, after getting no response from on high, some of the press corp alerted American Express that they are contesting the charges.
Citing examples of “exorbitant charges” for food and holding costs, the press corp detail in their letter to the Romney campaign, “Some examples: $745 per person charged for a vice presidential debate viewing party on Oct. 11; $812 charged for a meal and a hold on Oct. 18; $461 for a meal and hold the next day; $345 for food and hold Oct. 30.”
These are no small outlets fighting back against the Romney campaign; signing the letter are the higher ups from the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Agence France-Presse, Washington Post, Yahoo, Buzzfeed, and Financial Times. This isn’t their first rodeo.
They also have questions about food ostensibly provided for them but eaten by the campaign staff. “These costs far exceed typical expenses on the campaign trail. Also, it was clear to all present that the campaign’s paid staff frequently consumed the food and drinks ostensibly produced for the media. Were any of the costs of these events charged to the campaign itself, to cover the care and feeding of its staff?”
Earlier Buzzfeed reported that the campaign went all out at the viewing party, providing massage tables and lavish food and booze. Unfortunately, these perks weren’t discussed with all of the media that are now being charged for them.
That certainly sounds like the way an enterprising CEO screws their projects to me. Good thing he didn’t get his hands on the national treasury.
So, that’s it for me this morning … Carry on!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list this morning?
A Flaccid Boehner
Posted: December 20, 2012 Filed under: Breaking News | Tags: fiscal cliff, Plan B 48 Comments
We currently have a Speaker of the House that couldn’t deliver the mail with an army of letter carriers at his bid. John Boehner’s spurious Plan B has turned into fiasco. The Plan was not brought to the floor for a vote because the speaker and his limp whip couldn’t get the math straight.
Plan B had been loaded down with so many goodies that all the establishment nuts–like Grover Norquist–were putting themselves into pretzels to get members to vote. Obama had promised it veto and Senate Majority Leader Reid had said it would not pass. Boehner and cronies couldn’t do it.
Beneath the fracas on the fiscal cliff fight, the Republicans’ Plan B proposal would check off many items on the GOP’s financial services wish-list, gutting core pieces at the heart of the Dodd-Frank 2010 reform law and terminating one of the administration’s main housing relief programs, under the radar.
The bill, which would extend Bush-era tax cuts for earners who make up to $1 million a year, would erode Dodd-Frank by cutting the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s automatic funding from the Federal Reserve and subjecting it to the annual appropriations process.
Plan B would repeal a section of the reform law that gives federal regulators tools to unwind ‘too big to fail’ financial institutions, known as “orderly liquidation authority.”
The Republican proposal for addressing the fiscal cliff would check off another GOP banking goal of shuttering the Office of Financial Research, which is meant to churn analytical data from financial companies to help regulators identify and knock down emerging threats to the financial system.
The financial services measures in Plan B also include a provision to terminate the Home Affordable Modification Program, one of the administration’s main homeowner assistance programs.
In April, the House Financial Services Committee passed the same package of financial services provisions along with a flood insurance reform component as a way to come up with $35 billion in spending cuts. The package was rolled into the GOP-backed Sequester Replacement Reconciliation Act that passed the House in May.
But much of the savings from eliminating the “too big to fail” provision were attributable to a budget gimmick, by finding artificial savings, which National Journal reported at the time.
Boehner made an impassioned plea to his caucus. He begged them to for vote for the plan. There are rumors of screaming matches within the caucus meeting. This puts into question his job security and makes it more likely that nothing will be done this year. That means it’s its fiscal cliff time!
The fate of US negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff were thrown into turmoil after efforts by Republican leaders in the House of Representatives to pass their back-up plan to avert most of the tax hikes collapsed amid a conservative backlash.
After calling an emergency meeting of his own party’s lawmakers, Mr Boehner issued a statement saying there would be no vote on Thursday night on the Republican “plan B”, as planned.
“The House did not take up the tax measure today because it did not have sufficient support from our members to pass. Now it is up to the president to work with Senator [Harry] Reid on legislation to avert the fiscal cliff,” Mr Boehner said, referring the Democratic Senate majority leader.
The failure to hold a vote – after a short but dramatic arm-twisting campaign by Republican leaders – will cast serious doubt on Mr Boehner’s ability to muster support for any deal he might cut with Barack Obama, US president, leading to pessimism about the prospects for any agreement. If no budget deal is reached by January 1, the US will be hit by a series of $600bn in automatic tax increases and spending cuts next year, threatening a new recession. US equities futures markets dove sharply on the news.
The failure of plan B came towards the end of a week that had begun with widespread optimism over the prospects of a bipartisan agreement between Mr Boehner and Mr Obama to reduce the deficit and avert the fiscal cliff. Both Mr Obama and Mr Boehner had made significant concessions on both taxes and spending last weekend, narrowing their differences sharply. But they failed to close the deal, and Mr Boehner decided to take his chances and move ahead with a purely Republican proposal, in order to exert more pressure on Mr Obama and boost his leverage.
But the plan backfired, as conservative rank-and-file members balked at “plan B” – which would have raised taxes on income over $1m but extended tax rates for all other taxpayers. This would have been the first vote for a tax increase in more than two decades for House Republicans.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: The vote here is all about establishing an argument. That’s all it is about. And what Boehner will say — he said it in the clip you showed — is the president hasn’t offered anything. What he’s offering, what he spoke about yesterday in the news conference where he said ‘I’ve offered a balanced plan,’ is a swindle. There’s nothing but essentially tax hikes. And not only revenue hikes but increases in rates, where the Republicans have caved, as Obama himself has said. Boehner himself has admitted. And they have gotten nothing of any importance, any significance, on spending — whether discretionary and nothing on entitlements of any importance.
So what he’s doing by passing “Plan B” is to say we’re ready to do exactly what the president has said he wants to do. He says I campaigned on taxing, raising the rates on millionaires. Well the definition of a millionaire is a guy who makes a million dollars a year, that’s exactly what we’re passing. So, the president has no argument to justify a veto or the Senate rejection of this. And I think that is a smart move because they’re going to lose either way and at least he can now say in resisting the swindle — the deal he offered is a swindle, I can’t see him accepting it if the president isn’t going to move — at least he can say we gave the president what he wanted and what he said he campaigned on.
I’ll just add one thing. If the “Plan B” does not succeed, if he fails in the House, Boehner has a “Plan C.” That’s the Mayan apocalypse tomorrow.
Questions:
Did Cantor really work this thing or is he planning a coup?
Will the Tea Party Republicans bring down the party?
Will Dancing Dave and his Disco Party be able to inject enough media blue pill magic into the conversation to make themselves all feel better about themselves?
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