South Of Heaven

What's important to investigate

Here.

Professional wrestling and Congress

When I say that politics in America today are like professional wrestling, this is what I meant.

This week even D.C insider Matt Stoller, former policy advisor to Rep. Alan Grayson, has gone public with the theme in a comment he posted at Yves Smith’s Naked Capitalism blog.  What he said is not uncommon, but as Yves points out, it’s important because he’s a well-known D.C. insider.

Citing Jimmy Carter’s administration as the beginning of Democratic elites ‘financializing the economy’ and ‘breaking public sector unions’ (deregulating the airline industry), Stoller continues:

“Obama continues this trend. It isn’t that he’s not fighting; he fights like hell for what he wants. He whipped incredibly aggressively for TARP, he has passed emergency war funding (breaking a campaign promise) several times, and nearly broke the arms of feckless liberals in the process. I mean, when Bernie Sanders did the filiBernie, Obama flirted with Bernie’s potential 2012 GOP challenger. Obama just wants policies that cement the status of a[n] aristocratic class, with crumbs for everyone else (Republican elites disagree in that they hate anyone but elites getting crumbs). And he will fight for them.

There is simply no basis for arguing that Democratic elites are pursuing poor strategy anymore. They are achieving an enormous amount of leverage within the party. Consider the following. Despite Obama violating every core tenet of what might have been considered the Democratic Party platform, from supporting foreclosures to destroying civil liberties to torturing political dissidents to wrecking unions, Obama has no viable primary challenger. Moreover, no Senate Democratic incumbent lost a primary challenge in 2010, despite a horrible governing posture. Now THAT is a successful strategy, it minimized the losses of the Democratic elite and kept them firmly in control of the party. Thus, the political debate remains confined to what neoliberals want to talk about. It’s a good strategy, it’s just you are the one the strategy is being played on.

A lot of people think that Obama is a bad poker player, but they miss the point. He’s not playing with his money, he’s playing with YOUR money. You are the weak hand at the table, he’s colluding with the other players.” [snip]  (bold mine)

GeorgeWashington’s blog yesterday repeated Bernanke’s statement that the Fed will not help failing states and cities with loans, while continuing to throw massive amounts of money at the Big Banks, both overtly and covertly.  The list and amounts add up to an obscenity.

What would be nice would be to find people on the Right who actually understand what is actually happening. But they don't. The Right is effectively under the spell of magical thinking. One could point to the "trickle-down" theory of economics as a shift in political thinking that has undermined the logic of the Right. And it's true that much of the shift of the nation's wealth to the wealthiest has required increasing magical thinking in order to justify the status quo. More scapegoats are needed. People of color. Sexual minorities. Religious minorities. More blood libel. More bombs at parades. More union-bashing. More public employee-bashing.

This is the future of America. The Left, left without a true choice to vote for, the Right, further disconnected from reality. And, of course, it's not even Left v. Right. It's top versus bottom, but discussing that would be class warfare. And that's not allowed to be discussed.

The power of a metaphor

It's two days after the Tucson massacre and the internet is filled with rhetorical battles between the right and left.

Maybe the right has no memory but having lived through the sixties it is simple common sense that public figures don't make jokes about shooting politicians. People with lesser intelligence and the mentally ill have trouble understanding the difference between a metaphor and reality.

That is why when McCain, Kelly, Palin, Angle et al used metaphorical phrases involving the shooting and/or murder of Democrats to remove them from office there was widespread concern. This event was utterly predictable. In fact, it was predicted although the conservatives didn't see it coming and pooh-poohed the idea as an impingement on their right to free speech. Now that what was predicted has come true the comments section is filled with apologists for those who used the language of hate and eliminationism.

Using metaphors for eliminating perceived problems is rhetorical shorthand. It plays well in the hinterlands. To say, "Let's deport all illegals!" is a lot easier than deporting twenty million illegals. Deporting that many people requires identifying them, having law enforcement arrest twenty million people, having twenty million deportation hearings in courtrooms, having places to hold twenty million people before deportation, having a means of sending twenty million people to countries that are willing to accept them without consequences, and ensuring that those twenty million people don't return to the U.S. Metaphors don't explain what you do with the children of illegals who were born here. Do you deport them? Under what law? Do change the Constitution to eliminate the citizenship of people who are already citizens? Do you support the wives, husbands and children of spouses who had been supporting their families before they were deported or let them starve? Do you treat them differently than hungry people who weren't married to illegals? Ah, but with a metaphor you can solve problems simply, although you don't actually solve anything. But it's easy.

There is a poem by W.H. Auden about Hitler, "Epitaph on a Tyrant", which he wrote in January 1939, long before the Nazis had done most of their dirty work:

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Utterly predictable. A poet predicted it.

So various Republicans over the last few years used the rhetoric of elimination to attack Democrats and commentators warned what would happen. And it happened.

Sorry, I'll accept an apology from a Kelly, a Palin, an Angle, that they are truly sorry that they used that dangerous rhetoric if that apology comes with an understanding of the consequences of their misbehavior.

But pathetic mouthbreathers who say, "He was just a nut" still don't get it. Nuts listen to Sarah Palin too. And little children died in the streets.

 

Unfortunately, it was utterly predictable

About a week into the Obama Administration this was predictable. Obama held some hope because he wasn't John McCain or Hillary Clinton. The Clintons were DLC Democrats and so, it appears, is Obama.

The key to Obama was his flipflop on the FISA bill in 2008. It showed his fealty to the intelligence services.

In fact, I don't think that true progressive politics can ever get a foothold in American politics. One day I'll write a mega-explanation of how the system is rigged to keep progressive politics out of power and how the system exploits fear and bigotry to keep the white hoi polloi nervous and angry. When a significant percentage of white Americans think that Obama is a Kenyan muslim who is trying to destroy America we are in deep doodoo. Utterly predictable.

But at least it looks like California went Dem.

This was the wrong year to stop drinking.

Who owns our candidates

Look who's spending all that money on that money of election ads.

Here in California Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO who's running for governor against Jerry Brown, will have spent $160 million of her own money (don't fret for her, she's a billionaire) on her campaign has fallen to about ten points behind in the polls. At least in her case, besides the actual issue, I think that people are actually just sick and tired of her commercials. She often has this terrible good-timey banjo music in the background of her hit pieces against Brown. Maybe if she ran pictures of Brown with a banjo in his lap or Brown saying something like, "I sure like ricky-ticky goodtime banjo music," but no, I think that the banjo music is stuck on her.

Plus, she looks like the Quaker Oats Man. The Quaker Oats Man playing a banjo is not going to get elected, even with a billion dollars.

Same scriptwriter?

Right now Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggar's approval rating among California voters is around 20%, while voters saying that the state needs to move in another direction is over 80%.

Meg Whitman, the billionaire who's funded her own campaign to the tune of around $150 million so far, has been keeping her distance from Schwarzeneggar. However, many of the catch phrases that come out of her mouth are strangely familiar.

Watch this. You will laugh. You will cry.

Christine O'Donnell, the git that keeps on giving

Really. Americans need to stop having sex.

Delaware Republican Christine O'Donnell once wanted to stop everyone in America from having sex, and proudly declared it on television. The tea party candidate for US Senate also once told an audience that she believes evolution is "a myth" that is easily negated by asking why monkeys aren't currently evolving into humans.

With old video clips like these, who needs a democratic opponent?

Videos of O'Donnell making the bizarre statements are the latest in a series of embarrassing revelations about the candidate, whom many have compared to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

HBO's liberal talk show host Bill Maher kicked off the bizarre clip parade, featuring late-90s footage of O'Donnell admitting to a past interest in "witchcraft." Maher threatened to show another clip of the candidate making bizarre statements every episode until she appears on his show. O'Donnell, a longtime conservative activist, ended up making light of the remarks, passing off her history in witchcraft as mere youthful indiscretion. The video became a toast of the media for the entire week.

Maher had previously shown a 1998 clip of her telling an audience that school shootings happen because public schools do not force children to attend Bible studies. She's also said that masturbation is a sin, and worried that scientists may be creating "mice with human brains."

More fun stuff, so read the linked article. Yeah, but what are those mice with human brains doing now? What is wrong with the Republicans of Delaware?

Most Americans think healthcare reform didn't go far enough

Most Americans think that healthcare reform didn't go far enough. And most Americans are opposed to the Republican position on healthcare.

President Barack Obama's health care overhaul has divided the nation, and Republicans believe their call for repeal will help them win elections in November. But the picture's not that clear cut.

A new AP poll finds that Americans who think the law should have done more outnumber those who think the government should stay out of health care by 2-to-1.

"I was disappointed that it didn't provide universal coverage," said Bronwyn Bleakley, 35, a biology professor from Easton, Mass.

More than 30 million people would gain coverage in 2019 when the law is fully phased in, but another 20 million or so would remain uninsured. Bleakley, who was uninsured early in her career, views the overhaul as a work in progress.

The poll found that about four in 10 adults think the new law did not go far enough to change the health care system, regardless of whether they support the law, oppose it or remain neutral. On the other side, about one in five say they oppose the law because they think the federal government should not be involved in health care at all.

So how can a Republican get elected this fall? Because people aren't informed on the issues. Considering that Republicans want to privatize Social Security and Medicare, it's laughable what teabaggers think.

Why am I not surprised?

Remember when one of Queen Elizabeth's spawn went to a costume party dressed as a Nazi? Bad taste, right?

How about this?

This past weekend, the National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) “held its annual fall Board of Directors meeting in Charleston, S.C.” In attendance at the event were major Republican leaders throughout the state, including Gov. Mark Sanford, who spoke to the audience gathered there.

One shocking moment at the NFRW meeting involved a special event called “The Southern Experience.” In this event, attendees dressed in clothing reminiscent of the Civil War and the antebellum South. As FITS News reports, South Carolina Senate President Glenn McConnell (R) participated in the event by dressing up as a Confederate General, and at many points posed with African Americans dressed as slaves:

The National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) held its annual fall Board of Directors meeting in Charleston, S.C. last weekend – a decision the organization is likely regretting after several controversial pictures from one of the meeting’s sponsored events began surfacing on the internet. One of the pictures shows S.C. Senate President Glenn McConnell – who FITS readers will recall enjoys dressing up as a Confederate General – posing in his Rebel garb with a pair of African-Americans dressed in, um, “antebellum” attire.

The event in question – dubbed “The Southern Experience” – was held last Friday evening at the Country Club of Charleston. Hosted by the South Carolina Federation of Republican Women, it was included on the national conference’s official itinerary. In addition to McConnell, S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford attended (and spoke at) the event – although it was not listed on his weekly public schedule. S.C. Republican Attorney General nominee Alan Wilson also attended.

Apparently, Governor Sanford didn't regale the audience with tales of Appalachian trail-hiking, though.

Another Tea Party fail

In Colorado.

The Republican Party is walking away from Dan Maes, a small-time businessman and political novice with "tea party" backing who captured Colorado's GOP gubernatorial nomination, scrambling the race less than seven weeks before election day.

Maes has been disavowed by pillars of the Republican establishment — including former Sen. Hank Brown and current U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck. The chairman of the state Republican Party flatly said Maes is not running a professional campaign and called on him to drop out before ballots were printed Sept. 3. The Republican Governors Assn. refuses to help fund his campaign.

Several tea party groups have withdrawn their backing after it was revealed that Maes misrepresented how he left a Kansas police department, incurred record campaign fines and called Denver's bike-swap program a United Nations plot.

The question now is who will benefit from Maes' hemorrhaging support — his Democratic opponent, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper, or former GOP Rep. Tom Tancredo, who is running as a third-party candidate because he thinks Maes is unelectable?

"What may happen is that, with a bit of time, Tancredo becomes viewed as the other major candidate," said Kenneth Bickers, a political scientist at the University of Colorado, who added that he is still reeling from the latest twists in the race. "I didn't see this coming 10 days ago."

Janet Rowland, a Mesa County commissioner who is active in the tea party movement, was one of nearly two dozen Republicans who announced recently that they were switching allegiance to Tancredo.

She said in an interview that this is the first time she hasn't backed a GOP nominee. The entire saga, she added, is a cautionary tale for the insurgent tea party.

"There is a belief by people who are fed up with government that, if they get somebody who hasn't been in politics, they will somehow be more pure," Rowland said.

Maes spokesman Nate Strauch said the establishment's abandonment of the candidate was worrisome.

"The Republican Party in the state has a very specific process for how it chooses its nominees," Strauch said. "It's a process that Dan Maes won fair and square." To turn around and say the votes of those 200,000 people who voted for him "don't count, to reward someone who circumvented the process, sets a dangerous precedent."

Strauch added that many tea party groups still supported Maes.

Maes was a long shot in the Republican primary, up against former Rep. Scott McInnis. He touted himself as a successful businessman, but tax records showed that some years he made little money. A supporter said Maes asked her for help paying his mortgage. He received a record $17,000 campaign fine for paying himself more than $40,000 from his campaign contributions for mileage.

Still, when McInnis acknowledged that he plagiarized a paper on water issues that he was paid $300,000 to write, Maes' support surged. He won the nomination by about 1% of the primary vote.

Two weeks later, the Denver Post reported that Maes' story about how he left a small-town Kansas police department was false. Maes had said he was fired because he had been working undercover for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, but Kansas officials said Maes never worked for them.

Right away, prominent Republicans began calling for Maes to drop out of the race before ballots were printed, including state party Chairman Dick Wadhams. Maes refused. He raised only $50,000 in August — less than a quarter of Tancredo's haul and an eighth of Hickenlooper's.

In an interview, Wadhams noted that Maes is still the party's nominee but worried that he has yet to assemble a professional campaign team. "To run a real, competitive race in Colorado, you have to have a real campaign," Wadhams said.

Strauch said Maes was not planning to hire any political professionals: "He won the nomination on a shoestring and he's using a similar strategy in the general."

Bay Buchanan, a veteran Washington, D.C.-based operative who is now Tancredo's campaign manager, contended that the onetime congressman, best known for his hard-line stance against illegal immigration, is the only real conservative opposition to Hickenlooper. "We've had enormous movement in the last five to six days," she said last week.

Hickenlooper spokesman George Merritt said the Democratic nominee "is focused on creating jobs, finding ways to support Colorado business, and promoting education."

Former Democratic Sen. Gary Hart, who teaches at the University of Colorado-Denver, said that as the GOP nominee, Maes will inevitably receive a large number of votes in November and split the conservative electorate, handing Hickenlooper a victory.

"Tancredo is whistling past the graveyard," Hart said. "What's interesting about the race is the disarray in the [Republican] party in general. It sought to embrace the tea party movement. When it did, it bought a whole lot of trouble."

Is Denver's bike-swap program sort of like black helicopters that they pedal?