Money and Worry

By Andy on October 18, 2011

“I remember catching Born Rich back when it aired on HBO. …. But what really haunted me about the film and the people it depicted, what frankly still haunts me, is that while every character in that film seemed to be basically a human being with all the good and bad that implies, they were free from one aspect of the human experience that is totally universal to me and everyone I’ve ever known: Worry. There was a lot of the obvious (and not untrue) musing about the things money couldn’t buy, but in the end, what it could buy was totally clear: Freedom from worry. Freedom from being concerned about what would happen in life. I can’t even imagine what that would be like. And I think that from their side, that’s probably the aspect of the 99-percenter experience that the genuinely wealthy have the hardest time intuitively understanding—that most people live lives with the constant background awareness that all it takes is a little bad luck to put you in a place where you’re totally fucked, where there is nothing you can do, full stop. The wealthy cannot imagine being out of options.”

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Unsavvy People

By Andy on October 6, 2011

“[A]fter three years in which Very Serious People refused to hold the financial industry accountable, there’s a real grass-roots uprising against the Masters of the Universe. There will, of course, be the usual attempts to dismiss the whole thing based on trivialities. Look at the oddly dressed people acting out! So? Is it better when exquisitely tailored bankers whose gambles brought the world economy to its knees — and who were bailed out by taxpayers — whine that President Obama is saying slightly mean things about them? Or, why don’t they try to work within the system? Well, how’s that been going for those who did indeed try? When palace intrigue undermined the likes of Elizabeth Warren even within the Obama administration, and Republicans have thrown their full backing behind the malefactors of great wealth, why shouldn’t protesters go outside the usual channels?”

Paul Krugman, Unsavvy People – NYTimes.com.

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Freely Available Contraception Will End Civilization

By Andy on August 4, 2011

Republican Congress Member Steve King of Iowa on the new requirement for coverage of women’s birth control in health plans:

If you apply that preventative medicine universally, what you end up with is you’ve prevented a generation. Preventing babies from being born is not medicine. That’s not—that’s not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below the replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization.

Because the only reason to use birth control is because you hate children and women that are on the pill could never possibly want to have children at a later time when they have the relationships, support, income or resources to raise them in the best fashion. Just like every woman that terminates a pregnancy is a single skank that will never have children later on in life and certainly never a woman that has already had children and does not wish to strain herself, her family or her household with more children or simply doesn’t want to go through the health risks associated with pregnancy. All sex must have consequences.

Tea Party BFF, Congress Member Allen West of Florida:

We need you to come in and lock shields and strengthen up the men that will go into the fight for you, to let these other women know on the other side—these Planned Parenthood women, the CodePink women, and all of these women who have—that have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness—to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do. Because if you don’t do it, then the debt will continue to grow.

via Democracy Now, Women Hurt Most by Debt Deal Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Tuition.

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Let’s Have Bake Sales for Women’s Health

By Andy on August 4, 2011

BILL O’REILLY: Leslie, how are you feeling today? How are you feeling?

LESLIE MARSHALL: I’m feeling great.

BILL O’REILLY: OK.

LESLIE MARSHALL: But I’m not feeling great about these cuts—

BILL O’REILLY: No, no, Leslie. Just take it one at a time.

LESLIE MARSHALL: —with Planned Parenthood, though.

BILL O’REILLY: I’m a simple man with simple questions. You’re feeling great? Are you feeling great, Leslie?

LESLIE MARSHALL: I’m feeling great.

BILL O’REILLY: OK, good, because I was worried about you and Erica, because there is an all-out assault on women’s health. And I wonder if that has reached you, if your health is being impacted by the fiscal responsibility debate?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Mine isn’t, but I’m not one of—and I have been—the lower-income women that I feel that this attack has affected and clearly will affect.

BILL O’REILLY: What attack?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Remember, Bill, that—

BILL O’REILLY: What attack?

LESLIE MARSHALL: Well, the finances of Planned Parenthood, two-thirds of the federal money that Planned Parenthood has and uses is for preventative care, whether it’s screening for cancer in breasts, the ovaries, the cervix, the uterus—

BILL O’REILLY: That’s a very worthy—

LESLIE MARSHALL: —whether it’s prenatal care, infertility counseling.

BILL O’REILLY: That’s a very worthy thing, is it not? Isn’t it very worthy?

LESLIE MARSHALL: It is very—it is very worthy.

BILL O’REILLY: Well, then why—

LESLIE MARSHALL: And Congressman Pence and others on the right want to cut it.

BILL O’REILLY: If it’s worthy—and I agree with you that, you know, any kind of advice we can give to make people’s lives better—why can’t you raise the money privately? I’m sure you could have a big party at your mansion and get all your liberal friends in L.A. to give a lot of money. You know, we raised for the Fisher House in two days a quarter of a million dollars—and I’m going to tell people about that later on—for the military families. Well, you could do that, and Erica could do that. You could raise all that money privately.

From Democracy Now, Women Hurt Most by Debt Deal Cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Tuition.

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The Giant Robot Theory of the Presidency

By Andy on August 2, 2011

“[I]t fits with what I’ve been calling in my head The Giant Robot Theory of the Presidency (and, to some extent, some other offices, public and private). I suspect that occupying the white house is to no small extent a lot like climbing into the cockpit of a large and complex piece of anime mecha. It mediates your senses, your reality is “augmented” in a number of ways, you have information being fed to you from various subsystems. You’re also somewhat isolated by the cockpit, too, and it’s easy for me to imagine that you start to think in terms of what those feeds are telling you and in terms of the controls in front of you… at first because it’s all so new and awesome and exciting, later because you’re used to it. The system itself shapes your perceptions and thinking… you start to think less like what you were before you climbed in and more like the system. Ellsberg’s perspective is crucial to minimizing the isolation. I’m not sure Obama has it. But Ellsberg might even be implying that it’s really only in the next year or two you could expect most intelligent mortals to actually be picking it up.”

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The Tea Party, the Debt Ceiling, and White Southern Extremism

By Andy on August 2, 2011

“Contradicting the mainstream media narrative that the Tea Party is a new populist movement that formed spontaneously in reaction to government bailouts or the Obama administration, the facts show that the Tea Party in Congress is merely the familiar old neo-Confederate Southern right under a new label. The threat of Southern Tea Party representatives and their sidekicks from the Midwest and elsewhere to destroy America’s credit rating unless the federal government agrees to enact Dixie’s economic agenda of preserving defense spending while slashing entitlements is simply the latest act of aggression by the Solid South. In light of this recent history, it is clear that the origins of the debt ceiling crisis are to be sought, not in generic American conservatism, but in idiosyncratic Southern conservatism. The goal, the methods and the passion of the Tea Party in the House are all characteristic of the radical Southern right. From the earliest years of the American republic, white Southern conservatives when they have lost elections and found themselves in the political minority have sought to extort concession from national majorities by paralyzing or threatening to destroy the United States. As white Southerners, upset with the Democratic Party’s racial and social liberalism, migrated into the post-Goldwater GOP, they brought their Dixiecrat attitudes into the party of Lincoln. The Kemp-Roth tax bill of 1981, which inaugurated the policy of creating permanent deficits by slashing taxes without cutting spending, had its strongest support among Southern and Western members of Congress and the least support in the fiscally conservative Northeast. The debt ceiling crisis is the latest case in which the radical right in the South has held America hostage until its demands are met. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln refused to appease the Southern fanatics. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress chose not to follow their example and instead gave in. In doing so, they have encouraged the neo-Confederate minority in Congress to find yet another opportunity in the near future to extort concessions from America’s majority by sabotaging America’s government.”

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism – War Room – Salon.com.

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Serving Up a Shit Sandwich

By Andy on August 2, 2011

“The one big problem I’ve always had with Obama, is that he refuses to educate the public – and to me, that’s the primary function of a president. That’s what the bully pulpit is all about. How does he refuse to educate the public? Because he lies. He refuses to call things as they are. To me, there was no greater example of this than the aftermath of the unemployment benefits + bush tax cut extension debacle. Instead of saying as clear as day, that he’s only going along with the egregious tax breaks for the richest, because the Republicans are holding millions of unemployed Americans hostage, Obama makes it sound like a fantastic bipartisan deal. When you serve up a shit sandwich, and claim it’s great tasting and you and the other cook are in agreement, well, you lose credibility with the diners – because now, they see no reason to pick you over the other cook – and further, you lost the opportunity to educate the diner as to why the shit sandwich is shit when you refuse to disclose that the other cook was demanding to put ground glass and arsenic in the sandwich. And you enable the movement of the Overton window. That’s a monumental failure of a president – the inability to clearly draw lines and educate the public. He should have always pointed out – “we now have no choice but to cut this important program for you, the voter, because of who has been voted into congress – elections have consequences, and this is one of them – please remember this next time you go to the polls”. Call out the Republicans publicly, every single time. And make it clear to Joe-Six-Pack that if he votes like a jackass, his lot in life will be that of a jackass. You can’t mollycoddle the voter. Please treat voters like adults. You earn respect and credibility. But that demands honesty, all the time – even when it’s painful for your position. But such honesty is seen by some as poor politics, because you want to preserve an option to lie to the voters, i.e. keep being the average politician – who will be trusted as much as a used car salesman.”

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Standard & Poor’s Drives the Knife

By Andy on July 27, 2011

“In other words, Standard & Poor’s is threatening that if the ten-year budget deficit isn’t cut by $4 trillion in a credible and bipartisan way, you’ll pay more – even if the debt ceiling is lifted next week. … Who is Standard & Poor’s to tell America how much debt it has to shed in order to keep its credit rating? Standard & Poor’s didn’t exactly distinguish itself prior to Wall Street’s financial meltdown in 2007. Until the eve of the collapse it gave triple-A ratings to some of the Street’s riskiest packages of mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. Standard & Poor’s (along with Moody’s and Fitch) bear much of the responsibility for what happened next. Had they done their job and warned investors how much risk Wall Street was taking on, the housing and debt bubbles wouldn’t have become so large – and their bursts wouldn’t have brought down much of the economy.”

Robert Reich

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Malignant Revolutionary Entity

By Andy on July 27, 2011

“These folks aren’t in the business of doing Wall Street’s bidding. They’re in the business of bringing the system down to create their own new order, no different from a Maoist or Leninist revolutionary on the other side of the aisle. It’s a market fundamentalist cult. They are a sizable and growing minority of the Republican caucus, and the ones who don’t toe their line are terrified their heads will be the next to fall before the Tea Party guillotine. Digby wondered earlier whether the Tea Party were more political construct or real grassroots movement. I guess the best answer is that it doesn’t really matter. The Tea Party has always been fear-based mobilization of the ignorant on whatever issue Rove, DeMint, Limbaugh, the Kochs, etc. wanted it to be about. It doesn’t have to be grassroots movement for rank and file Republicans to fear a primary challenge if they step at all out of line. As much as there has been “good cop, bad cop” bipartisanship played over austerity (and there has been), there can be no doubt that the GOP is transforming from a corporatist entity slowly hollowing out America’s middle class, to a truly malignant revolutionary entity. Meanwhile, the pundit class continues to whistle past the graveyard and act as though this is all partisan politics as usual. One would think that David Brooks and George Will would know enough history to realize that when revolution hits, people like them are usually the first ones to be culled, both politically and physically.”

From Hullabaloo.

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The GOP Can’t Control the Tea Party

By Andy on July 27, 2011

“the gop made the same mistake that some on the left did in their perception of the tea party - they thought it was a top down, cynical manipulation of people, similar to what the gop has accomplished with the evangelical vote – a demographic that could be farmed for votes without having to deliver all that much of anything, whose elected leaders could be taken in hand when they got to washington and taught the real rules of the game … no, it’s a real grassroots movement with real dedicated leaders who actually MEAN it – and they’ve brought our government to a grinding halt – and the gop can’t control them … the republicans are splitting – if they go for a reasonable compromise, they lose the tea party – if they go for the tea party’s line, they lose wall street and much of main street’s business community … obama may have set them up beautifully – but the problem is that now we have an ungovernable country until 2012 and maybe after”

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