Another Quote for the Campaign Season

"If Gingrich is nominated, it won’t be because of his ideological clarity – he’s Flip to Mitt Romney’s Flop. It will be because he’s seen as the most likely to bully and humiliate Barack Obama. And that’s what GOP politics has come down to today." --Joan Walsh, "When Obama Underestimated Newt," posted in Salon, 11 December 2011.

Stupid, Mean and Condescending Stuff

First up, Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania and presently a Republican presidential candidate, has this to say about food stamps and obesity: "'If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?' Santorum asked." Joann Glamm, "Santorum: 'Town crowds are getting a little bigger," LeMars Daily Sentinel, posted 6 December 2011. 

Here are some answers, Rick Santorum, to your question, from study done by Prof. Patricia Smith, professor of economics at University of Michigan-Dearborn:

• "..[F]ood stamps’ contribution to obesity among the poor is minor, accounting for only about 5 percent of the cases of obesity among poor Americans."
• “'Food stamps may enable women to buy more calories or the once-a-month distribution schedule may lead to disordered eating patterns, tempting women to feast on calorie-dense comfort foods when benefits arrive at the beginning of the month and then fasting at the end of the month when benefits have run out,' Smith explains."
• "Smith also finds compelling evidence that poverty contributes to weight gain by limiting the poor to neighborhoods with reduced access to nutritious lower calorie foods, fewer facilities for physical activity and greater exposure to stressors such as crime and pollution."
• "In addition, childhood abuse, family violence and disability can increase both the risks of poverty and obesity, according to Smith."

And, evidently, obesity is increasing in upper-income groups, too: "Obesity Rising Among the Rich", CBS News Healthwatch, 2 May 2005.

So get your facts straight and your heart in a better place, Rick Santorum.

Next up, Concerned Women of America opposed Senator Jeanne Shaheen's amendment to the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act that would allow military women access to government-funded insurance for abortions. Since 1981, women who serve in our military have been denied government-funded insurance for any abortion that didn't "endanger" the health of the mother. In other words, women who serve our country are refused insurance in their medical plans for abortions caused by rape, when pregnancies caused by rapes are a big problem in the U.S. military.

"Women already have access to abortions at a military facility in instances of rape or incest. However, American taxpayers have not been forced to pay for those abortions," Concerned Women of America gripe in a letter signed by their CEO and president, Peggy Nance.

Oh, please....our taxes provide medical insurance for civilians who work for the federal government and for rape victims in federal prisons, medical insurance that pays for abortions caused by rape or incest. Why provide less for women who serve in the military?

But the most grievous sentences in Nance's letter are these:

"Pregnancies under such circumstances need an extra measure of compassion and support. We need to remember that these women are victims of a heinous crime. But our priorities should be placed on preventing these crimes, punishing the perpetrators, and not covering up a crime by merely dealing with the physical consequences. Women deserve better than simply being given abortion as a 'cure-all."

So condescending to women who find themselves in "such circumstances"!

Women who find themselves in "such circumstances" should be the ones to decide what course of action they should take--and they should have the means to do it, the insurance to cover the abortion if they so choose.

Oh, and a vote on the amendment was blocked in the Senate.

What gets me is that the same people who would refuse abortions to women under ANY circumstance are often the same people who fight against providing sex education and access to birth control. bleh!

Kids Can't Pray in School? Give Me a break!

So Texas governor Rick Perry has a new ad out in which he makes these assertions:

“I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

“As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion, and I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again. I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.”

My children attended Texas schools for almost four years, from 2003-2007, and I also attended Texas public schools in the 1970s, so I know something about Texas schools. Not much seemed to have changed from when I was a kid in public school and when my kids attended Texas public schools thirty years or so later. Someone still prayed in public, over the loud speaker, before the football game, and school events were often preceded with a prayer. I particularly remember one event for students and parents in which the speaker went into a long description of her personal conversion to Christianity and credited Jesus Christ for overcoming an illness. Her whole presentation was an example of proselytizing, if there ever was one, and it ended in "in Jesus' name, amen."

Not every school is as egregious in its flouting separation of church and state, but Rick Perry is lying when he says that children can't pray in schools. Children can pray anywhere. Does he really think that people's mouths have to move for God to hear their prayers? As Jesus himself said,

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou has shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6: 5&6)

So I guess Christians are the ones who should be in closets.

As for the comment about gays? Well, that's just prejudice and hatefulness. And there's nothing new about that, either.

I'm so tired of the lie that President Obama is waging a war on religion and that liberals are attacking "our religious heritage." Examples, please? 

Last year I attended a Christmas party--with Christmas tree and presents--at a U. S. GOVERNMENT facility, attended by U.S. government employees. Guess how the event began? With a public prayer from an employee who is also a Christian preacher. And, yeah, that prayer ended "in Jesus' name, amen."

So I'm standing there, thinking that this is no place for a sectarian prayer, but I'm also thinking that some of the people there with their heads bowed and eyes closed think the U. S. government is waging a war on--oh, not just any religion, but--the Christian religion.

Give me a break.

Update
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a few words to say about Rick Perry's ad: "Rick Perry and the Politics of Resentment," posted at The Atlantic, 8 Dec. 2011.

Some Quotes from Phil Nugent (on the Republican party)

"For Republicans, at this stage of the game, picking a candidate is all about the personalities involved, and what they most want is somebody whose personality is calculated to piss off or appall the people they hate."

"...[I]t is wrong to classify the contemporary Republican party as "conservative". because true conservatism, whatever its lapses, is a reality-based school of thought that respects learning, scorns flattering appeals to the stupid, and seeks to actually conserve some things besides low tax rates for millionaires and the right to call anyone who doesn't agree with you a "class warrior" if your opponent is wearing a tie and a "smelly hippie" if he is not."

"In the meantime, the man seen as the most rational and in-touch of the Republican presidential candidates, Jon Huntsman, is seen as unelectable within his own party because he's not stupid, while the other one who has been known to claim to believe sensible things is regarded as a contender because he's now willing to claim to have repudiated all those sensible beliefs. Mitt Romney is supposed to be the responsible Republican front-runner, because he says enough crazy, stupid things to be acceptable to voters within his party, and also because the media and the party professionals believe he's actually a smart guy who's just pretending to be stupid until he has his hand on the Bible and is reciting the oath of office. They're openly signaling to people on the fence that it's okay to vote for Romney, because everything he says between now and Election Day is a bald-faced lie: he really knows better! This can't be good for the children." 

All three quotes above from Phil Nugent's post, "O, Stuporman," on The Phil Nugent Experience, posted 19 November 2011

Of course, now that Jon Huntsman smells blood in the water (Mitt Romney being overtaken by Newt Gingrich in polls), he's backing off his previous smart and educated pronouncements, too.

Unlimited Detention of American Citizens

I am not an admirer of Rand Paul, but I think he has done the right thing in voting against the provision in the National Defense Authorization Act that allows  "the U.S. military to pick up and detain, without charges or trial, anyone suspected of terrorism, including American citizens, and to restrict transfers of prisoners out of Guantanamo Bay." Unfortunately, the amendment didn't pass. Read Dahlia Lithwick's article for a fuller discussion of possible consequences.


Once again, I am reminded of the importance of diversity and independence of thought in our governing leaders. Just because one disagrees with others on one issue doesn't mean there is no room for agreement on other issues. I think this is important to keep in mind when we are tempted to demonize those who don't agree with us. Our world views intersect in more ways than we might imagine.


Here is the roll call of the votes: U. S. Senate Roll Call Votes, 112th Congress, 1st session; on Amdt. # 1107  to S. 1867


h/t to Dahlia  Lithwick and to Steve Benen.

Quote for the End of a Difficult Year

Massive financial crashes always produce some inherent unfairness. For some reason, though, we were willing to overlook that unfairness when it was Wall Street that came begging, but became obsessed with it when all the rest of us came begging.

This is how 2008 radicalized me. It's one thing to know that the rich and powerful basically control things. That's the nature of being rich and powerful, after all. But in 2008 and the years since, they've really rubbed our noses in it. It's frankly hard to think of America as much of a true democracy these days.

--Kevin Drum, posted under "How 2008 Should have Radicalized Us All," Monday, 28 November 2011.

Police State?

Yes, I begin this post with a question mark, but a number of news stories over the past few months have made me wonder if I should follow such a phrase with an exclamation mark. The Occupy Wall Street movement has certainly brought the police force out in numbers in cities around our country. Yes, in Oakland, CA, a few fringe folks in a recent peaceful demonstration turned more violent, but the OWS movement is committed to peace. So why did the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security personnel infiltrate the Nashville, Tennessee OWS? 

Nashville's The Tenneseean obtained e-mails that reveal that State Highway Patrol troopers were taken off their highway duty to infiltrate Nashville's OWS. And one policeman revealed his own attitude in one of those e-mails: “If they start camping, I’m confident that a public health issue will soon develop...Then the Health Dept. can shut it down and we all look like the good guys.”

One Occupy Nashville protester wonders:  "My question in response would be : ‘Why are they messing with such a peaceful protest in such a warlike manner. Why declare war on peace?'"

This is what I think is the answer to that question: Too often it seems that the police have a pre-existing bias against groups that assemble to protest peacefully, especially if those groups are full of young people or minorities. And that attitude has been aided and abetted by Homeland Security. Ever since 9/11, police departments around the country have been highly weaponized, and I think this encourages a certain mindset--a tendency to use excess force in dealing with ordinary situations, of seeing the public as "them," even when the "them" is not much of a threat.

Just recently, a sheriff's office in Conroe, Texas, obtained an unmanned Shadowhawk helicopter that could carry a weapons payload. Yes, that's right--an unmanned drone with the potential to carry weapons. Why does Conroe, Texas, need an unmanned, weaponized drone? Nearby Cut-and-Shoot isn't that much of a threat, is it?

The drone can also look into people's backyards and has infrared capabilities to see into homes.

Police might have the best intentions, but even the best intentions can deteriorate into untenable consequences that challenge our civil rights--or worse.

Updates

• "But many law enforcement experts said Thursday that the officers' tactics appeared to be a severe overreaction." (Berkeley)-- "UC cops' use of batons on Occupy camp questioned," Will Kane, Demian Bulwa,  SF Gate, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 November 2011.

• "Portland Pepper Spray Incident Generates Iconic Occupy Photo," Las Angeles Times, 18 November 2011.

• "Pepper-Spray Brutality at UC Davis," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic,  19 November 2011.

• "#OccupyMissoula--Police Dropping Off Drunken, Hostile People," posted on Plutocracy Files 19 November 2011.  (h/t David Crisp)

• "How the War on Terror Has Militarized the Police," Arthur Rizer and Joseph Hartman, The Atlantic 7 November 2011. (h/t James Fallows)

• "Turning Patrolmen into Soldiers: How did we let this happen?," posted on James Fallows' blog at The Atlantic, 21 November 2011.

Alone but not Lonely

This morning while struggling with the beginning of a scarf I'm crocheting for hire, I heard a hawk call, very close. I keep my binoculars in a basket near the sofa in our sunroom, along with Peterson's Eastern Birds, so I grabbed the binocs and headed out into the chill that a cold front had brought to south Louisiana. There was the hawk, circling in the sky, then plunging downward to perch upon the broken limb of a dead tree. Early this summer, a pair of hawks nested in the same area and watched over their juvenile's soaring and diving in this little patch of woods near a creek, just minutes from the paved parking lots of big box stores of the nearest town of any size.

I live in an old cottage in a small town, on a road that ends near a creek. My husband and I have bought two lots on this road, and we would buy a third if the price weren't so high and we weren't worried about what the economy will be like under the next president. These days, I want space between me and the next person; perhaps I'm becoming a misanthrope. Someone who saw photos of our house told me our house and property looked like a "retreat," and it is. It's a retreat for me--a retreat from a life where I had spent my working hours (not just in the office and in the classroom)  trying to help other people write better, think better, and understand the world better through reading, writing, and thinking; a retreat from a world where we are considered "consumers" rather than "citizens"; a retreat from those paved parking lots and all the stuff we're encouraged to buy to "keep our economy growing."

I like it here, especially in the fall and winter, when the air is cooler and drier, and especially here at my retreat, where I am alone most days, but not lonely.

I know that I should get a job; I'm only fifty-four (nearly), but I have yet to decide what I want to be in my old age. I know that I don't want to teach. I don't have the patience for it anymore. At one of the last universities where I taught, a student wrote on her evaluation of my teaching that she hated that I made her read about the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 or about the ongoing genocide in Darfur, Sudan. As part of a research project, my students read an essay by Philip Gourevitch about the genocide, the public documents of a government review at the 10th anniversary of the horror, and contemporary news articles about the genocide in Darfur. This was at a Baptist University, where one would think the student population would have a deep concern about injustice in the world, but my student did not want to know and said so. Just a couple of years before, when I was teaching at a university in Georgia, my students viewed a collection of online photographs taken of people north and south of the Mexican/US border and then wrote about what they saw. One student told me that one difference between the people south of the border and north of the border was skin color. "Americans are white," she said.

No, I had more patience then, though it was wearing thin.

Here I watch the hawks, pet my cats, weed my gardens, and hope...hope that the economy doesn't tank any worse than it has already, that the person who gains the White House in 2012 won't lay off thousands of federal employees or dismantle the EPA or  de-fund education (I really don't want to be surrounded by more people such as the two students I've described above) or take away support from PBS (one of the few sources of real--and entertaining-- information these days, and much of it online) or abolish Net Neutrality. I guess that means I hope that a Republican doesn't win.

And I work at figuring out what comes next, in the afternoon of my life.  Lots to think about. No time to be lonely.

The Stupid, Stupid Scapegoating of Public Employees

So...evidently Mitt Romney has in this evening's debate of Republican presidential candidates claimed that he would "link pay of public employees to that of private-sector workers." However, as the writers at Think Progress point out, such a claim would actually require RAISING the pay of public employees. According to an article in the Washington Post, Saturday, November 5:

The federal government reported Friday that on average, its employees are underpaid by 26.3 percent compared with similar non-federal jobs, a 'pay gap' that increased by about 2 percentage points over last year while federal salary rates were frozen.

Got that, Mitt Romney, and all the other Republican talkingpoint-bots who like to scapegoat public employees? 

It's all just a diversion tactic--to get people to focus on what's NOT important and to forget what IS: the increasing income gap in this country, the over-weaning power of corporations, and unemployment.

Sick of Politics

In mid-September, my husband and I left for a two-week vacation, with Nova Scotia as our end destination. It was a great trip, in which we saw fossils of ancient trees in the cliffs near Joggins and the Bay of Fundy, watched humpback whales and porpoises up close, drove foggy roads along the Bay of Fundy, hiked in the rain, and viewed the land that my original Acadian ancestor farmed. What would my life be like now, I wondered, if the British hadn't ethnically cleansed the Annapolis Valley and the shores of the Bay of Fundy of French Acadians? What if Abraham Dugas' grandsons had remained instead of finding refuge in the swamps of Louisiana and then, later, the marshes of Anahuac and the Old and Lost Rivers of southeast Texas (where "Dugas" became "Dugat")? What would it be like to be Canadian now instead of American?

During our trip, I tried to stay away from the internet and the nastiness of our political discourse, but then one morning, a Canadian asked us at breakfast a question about our politics, and soon other people at the bed and breakfast were voicing their opinions, especially an ex-patriate from West Texas who had married a Canadian. Our hosts, however, were visibly silent; they were trying to sell their bed and breakfast so that they could spend their winters in Florida and their summers in Nova Scotia, untroubled by testy customers who wanted better views.

I was sick of politics. I just wanted a better view, not from my window but from my heart, a better view of humanity. History was not the place to find it, however. Abraham Dugas had never been compensated for the land confiscated to build a fort at what was then known as Annapolis Royal; his grandchildren were deprived of their cattle, the farmland they had improved, and their homes were burned; his descendants were transported to British colonies where many had to beg and where their daughters were taken away to work in the big houses of Protestants, where their language and their Catholicism were scorned.

Just the politics of kings: the strong taking from the weak. But how is that different from today?

It was the greediness of Wall Street--of banks and CEOs of corporations and financiers and politicians-- that brought our economy and the economy of the world to the brink of disaster, yet corporations continue to profit while laying off workers, politicians continue to cut deals, the banks are bigger, the CEOs who led those bloated financial institutions are not in jail but making more money than ever. So that's not the smoke of burning homes in the distance or of people loaded into ships with only the belongings they can carry, but, really, how different is it?

Mitt Romney can run for the highest office in the land of a democratic republic and tell voters that foreclosures should just be allowed to run their course. So what that people lost their jobs because Wall Street sold toxic derivatives and over-leveraged. So what that those people now can't keep up with their mortgages while looking for other jobs. Let those with money buy up those homes at rock-bottom prices and rent them out.  In other words, let the rich make more money off the losses and grief of the working and middle class. That's Romney's message to the people.

Or how about making federal employees scape goats for the economy? Mitt Romney, whom it is estimated to be worth up to $250 million, shows up at a steel fabrication plant, dressed in jeans and a plaid work shirt,  and tells the workers that government employees are "making a lot more money than we are." I'm married to a government employee, and, with a Ph.d., he still makes less as a government employee than he did working for a private non-profit and less (counting inflation) than he did working for a corporation over ten years ago. I bet you he makes less than some of those working in the steel fabrication plant.

Who does Mitt Romney think he's fooling? This is a man who made his fortune buying sinking corporations, laying off the workers, and re-selling what remained. And he's likely to be the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

What a joke. On us. The middle-class, the working class.

 Our houses are burning, our wealth confiscated, our voices silenced in a sea of political bullshit.

Low Information Voters and Republican Strategy

Some of the most distressing descriptions of American citizens I've read lately have been detailed by two retired Congressional staffers, one a 28-year veteran of the Republican party and the other who worked for a moderate Democrat. These are not people on the fringes of the right or left. And now that they have retired, they feel free to write what they really believe, what they have actually experienced and observed. This is what Mike Lofgren, who served 28 years as a Congressional staffer and "16 years as a professional staff member on the Republican side of both the House and Senate Budget Committees," writes :

There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters' confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that "they are all crooks," and that "government is no good," further leading them to think, "a plague on both your houses" and "the parties are like two kids in a school yard." This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s - a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn ("Government is the problem," declared Ronald Reagan in 1980).

Lofgren goes on to describe how "the long-term Republican strategy of undermining confidence in our democratic institutions has reaped electoral dividends." People who think government doesn't work decide that their vote doesn't count, too. And so they stay home while the far-right minority, "whipped into a lather by three hours daily of Rush Limbaugh or Fox News" increases its clout in elections. This strategy of weakening trust in government institutions to create citizen malaise goes hand in hand with another Republican strategy, that of disenfranchising voters who are more likely to vote Democratic:

Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies)**; by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students.

Lofgren says that other folks are very upfront about these strategies:

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 [the more recent Republican strategy to filibuster every confirmation and routine procedural motion] .... By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.

 So what Republicans cannot succeed in doing by rigorous debate of the issues and communication of those issues to constituents, they plan to win by subterfuge and destruction of democratic institutions. Again, this is not some leftie talking; this is a guy who witnessed Republican strategy for years from the bullpen and who mourns the demise of Republican virtue (if virtue exists in politics). He is no supporter of President Obama, he says, but he wanted Obama to succeed in the worst economic crisis the country has faced in years because he wanted his country to succeed. The Republicans--those leading now--want the country to fail so that Obama will fail. The country fails, millions of Americans suffer--but they will blame the current president. Why? Because they are low information voters who have no idea how government works.

The second negative description of American citizens comes from a Congressional staffer who worked for years for a moderate Democrat. This staffer wrote in response to James Fallows' post about Mike Lofgren's essay.

The mainstream media absolutely fails to understand how little attention average Americans really pay to what goes on in all forms of government. During our 2008 race, our pollster taught me (hard to believe it took me 24 years to learn this) that the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress. All the millions of dollars of TV ads, all the thousands of robo-calls and door-knocks, and it all comes down to having a message that will stick in the voters' minds during the 5 minutes before they walk into the voting booth.

 Although the pollster mentioned above is referring to Congressional races, I grimaced a little when I read how inattentive voters are in making their choices. While I understand my own ideals and how those ideals have affected my voting record in national elections and state level elections, I have been less attentive to local elections. Yet that's where many politicians get their start, in their being elected to the school board or to mayor. From the city level, they may go to the state level and then the national level--though, more often than not these days, the already-rich jump directly to representing us at the state and national level.

If anything should convince those disaffected voters to get out to vote, this should: there are people hoping that you won't vote so that their ability to whip up the anger and fear of the fringe will have a stronger impact. And that's not good for our country...or for ordinary Americans.

**I have read that the push in Wisconsin to close Department of Motor Vehicles offices has been tabled. A spokesman said that there was no intention to shut down offices in Democratic constituencies, but a Democratic spokesman said that a look at which offices were planned to be shut down counters that claim. However, a recent Wisconsin Department of Motor Vehicles memo came to light in which employees were directed to provide material when people ask for the free ID but that they should not readily provide information if not asked. So it's pretty clear what the intent is.

More on the Wisconsin voter ID conflict: This guy evidently should have used his personal e-mail to send out his message, but....."Wisconsin Employee Fired for E-mail Defying Voter ID Policy," posted on TPM. More at the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel: "State Employee Fired After Telling Co-Workers about Photo ID Policy," 8 Sept. 2011.

Antidotes for Angst and Despair

For days, weeks even, I have been thinking of trying to address as honestly and straightforwardly as I can why I usually support liberal causes over conservative causes and why I have become increasingly cynical about politics and the possibilities of change in the way we are governed.  I envisioned a series of such exploratory posts, and yesterday I wrote the first one, addressing my changing perspective on religion. And then I lost the entire post because I was using the updated Blogger interface, which evidently doesn't save drafts automatically as the older interface does. Or perhaps the loss of the post was due to some error of my own. Whatever the cause,  nothing I could do resulted in my being able to retrieve the lost essay. So I surrendered to the capriciousness of technology and took a walk instead. Later I recorded some details of that walk with photos and a post that turned out quite differently than I had originally intended.

I have found, however, that experiencing--and recalling--details of the natural world helps me maintain perspective when confronted with political landscapes where alliances are constantly shifting, where people say what they don't believe, don't believe what they say, say they believe what facts and figures can't support, or massage facts and figures to conclude what they wish from them, or just make up stuff and hope that saying it over and over will convince people of its veracity. (Unfortunately, research shows that this last strategy works.)

So a day when I get online and read that even a career Republican Congressional staffer thinks that the Republican party is now "full of lunatics" or that "the average voter spends only 5 minutes thinking about for whom to vote for Congress," I know that's a day I need to leave despair at the keyboard and get outside.

A camera can be distracting if I am constantly snapping photos so that the initial experience is distanced and delayed to later viewing. But having a camera in hand can also help me to focus on sights I might otherwise overlook: the mushroom covered in tiny brown fibers that look like furry hair, the fly with red eyes perched on an autumn-blooming flower, the photography-worthy gate to one's neighbor's yard, slender green limbs heavy with purple beauty berry, a dragonfly posing patiently on a blue-black salvia bloom. Just small moments of awe and beauty can help restore my equilibrium.

However, I'm afraid that all my antidotes to angst and despair--immersing myself in the natural world, gardening, crafting things, writing--have limited efficacy and must be administered frequently. The next news cycle requires another dose.

 For an enlarged view of the dragonfly I photographed today on my patio, click on the photo.

After the Storm

Tropical Storm Lee has finally left Louisiana after days of dropping copious amounts of rain. At our house, we received just a little less than 11 inches of rain. What remains is wind, lots of cool wind brought in by a cool, dryer front colliding with the warm moist air of Lee. Our cats can be seen sniffing the air and walking in and out the front door, which we propped open in order to enjoy this uncharacteristically cool air at the end of summer in South Louisiana.  The cooler north wind brings with it, perhaps, unfamiliar scents and a hint of fall, both welcome after four days of rain.

Like the cats, my husband and I also ventured out to sniff the air, to enjoy the cool breeze, and to appreciate the subtle signs of fall. The sky was still overcast when we left the house to walk through our neighborhood and along a paved trail, but by the time we returned, the clouds were on their way out, headed to Georgia and the Appalachians.

More Irony

I don't get cable anymore, so I'm evidently missing out on a whole host of reality television shows turned bad--not that I ever was a fan of reality shows, in the first place. First there was the poor guy who had appeared on that "Housewives" show who hung himself after his wife filed for divorce. How horrible! And now here's Stephen Seagal with his little reality show, Steven Seagal: Lawman. I mean, it's funny how actors like this (the Chuck-Norris syndrome) take themselves so seriously. Here is Steven Seagal playing lawman with that controversial sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, Joe Arpaio. Evidently, alongside Sheriff Joe Arpaio, ol' Seagal raided a guy's home for alleged animal cruelty (cock-fighting)--a raid that included driving a tank through Jesus Sanchez Llovera's front gate. (What is this, Iraq?) In the raid, Llovera's 11-month-old dog and over 100 of his roosters were killed by gunfire.

h/t TPM

Update: But maybe the dog wasn't killed after all-- "Arpaio, Seagal deny dog killing claim during raid."

Quotes for the Week (Lest We Forget)

Dick Cheney
Dick Cheney is trying to polish his image as he gets oh-so-gently interviewed on television about his new book. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, has this to say about Dick Cheney:

• "He wanted desperately to be president of the United States... he knew the Texas governor was not steeped in anything but baseball, so he knew he was going to be president and I think he got his dream. He was president for all practical purposes for the first term of the Bush administration."
  
  
• "He's developed an angst and almost a protective cover, and now he fears being tried as a war criminal so he uses such terminology as 'exploding heads all over Washington' because that's the way someone who's decided he's not going to be prosecuted acts: boldly, let's get out in front of everybody, let's act like we are not concerned and so forth when in fact they are covering up their own fear that somebody will Pinochet him." Both quotes quoted by Elspeth Reeve for The Atlantic Wire, Powell Aide: Cheney was President 'For All Practical Purposes'," posted 30 Aug. 2011.

Dahlia Lithwick reminds us that "until there are legal consequences for those who order or engage in torture, we will only be pretending. Cheney is the beneficiary of that artifice." And that's the tragedy:

Most of us do not want warrantless surveillance, secret prisons, or war against every dictator who looks at us funny. We may be bloodthirsty, but we aren't morons. On his most combative and truly lawless positions, Cheney still stands largely alone.

The tragedy is that it doesn't matter if we are all Cheneyites now. That there is even one Cheney is enough. He understands and benefits from the fact that the law is still all on his side; that there is only heated rhetoric on ours. As John Adams famously put it, the United States was intended to be a government of laws, not of men. Dick Cheney is living proof that if we are not brave enough to enforce our laws, we will forever be at the mercy of a handful of men.

And Conor Friedersdorf reminds us why Americans loathe Cheney (except those, perhaps, who frequented the cocktail circuit with him in Washington, D.C.; amazing how close proximity to power blunts the moral nerve endings--my observation, not Friedersdorf's). Friedersdorf's blog post titled "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney" is based on the investigative reporting and writing of several people, including Wil S. Hylton, Barton Gellman, Jane Mayer, Charlie Savage, and Jack Balkin. Friedersdorf ends his numerical march down memory lane with this gem:

Dick Cheney was a self-aggrandizing criminal who used his knowledge as a Washington insider to subvert both informed public debate about matters of war and peace and to manipulate presidential decisionmaking, sometimes in ways that angered even George W. Bush.

After his early years of public service, he capitalized on connections he made while being paid by taxpayers to earn tens of millions of dollars presiding over Halliburton. While there, he did business with corrupt Arab autocrats, including some in countries that were enemies of the United States. Upon returning to government, he advanced a theory of the executive that is at odds with the intentions of the founders, successfully encouraged the federal government to illegally spy on innocent Americans, passed on to the public false information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and became directly complicit in a regime of torture for which he should be in jail. Thus his unpopularity circa 2008, when he left office.

Good riddance.

[my emphasis]

Morning Reading, Morning Thoughts

My morning's reading:

• Ryan Lizza's "Leap of Faith," about "the transformation of Michele Bachmann from Tea Party insurgent and cable-news Pasionaria to serious Republican contender in the 2012 Presidential race," in The New Yorker. I found this article particularly interesting because, like Michele Bachmann, I was early influenced by evangelical Christianity; only for me, that influence was in a country Southern Baptist Church that my paternal grandmother helped establish. I also read Francis Schaeffer's works in search of an intellectual way to verify my beliefs, and for a time, the church in which I was a member focused on eschatology and most specifically on Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. So there is nothing in Michele Bachmann's far-right views that is unfamiliar to me. The difference is that I rejected those views. Brain-washing* is a peculiar thing: when you're under the influence, you don't realize that you are being manipulated--or if you suspect, as I did, you search for ways to justify your continued adherence to the views of your group while also fearing the rejection that will come when you leave the group. When you shake yourself free--not easily and not unassisted--you are appalled by your emotional and rational--and even moral--submission to views you now find untenable. Having been under the influence of far-right Christianity as a youth, I certainly don't want to experience being under that same influence as a citizen. While I find much to admire in the teachings of Jesus, I find much to abhor in how those teachings are expressed in far-right Christian theology.
  
  
• "Your Head on My Shoulder: Parasitic Twins and other Half-Formed Siblings," by Jesse Bering, in Slate--This article was interesting in its gruesome descriptions of parasitic twins, in which one twin is born healthy and another is mal-formed, incomplete, and attached to the healthy twin. And, also, the author's comments at the end connect to the current movement in this country to ban abortions. We have leaders advocating banning abortion of any kind, even if the young woman is a victim of rape or incest. Evidently, these same people would ban abortions of mal-formed twins (some of which are just a jumble of parts) though such intervention might promote the health of the fully-formed and viable twin. When Michele Bachmann and others such as she say they believe in "liberty," they don't mean the liberty for women to make their own reproductive decisions, even when those decisions are based on sound science and/or compassion.
  
  
• Dave Weigel's piece in Slate, "Republicans for Tax Hikes (Republicans have finally found a group they want to tax: poor people)"--My previous post responds to this crazy turn of events in the Republican party. But Weigel's analysis points out that there is a method to this madness: Tax the poor more so that they will support lowering taxes for everyone. That way, there is more support for keeping taxes low on the rich.

  In 2002 and 2003, long before it got Huntsman in the room, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that poor people who didn't pay income taxes were "lucky duckies." The poor slob with a low income and child tax credit would get a small or nonexistent tax bill, not one that would "get his or her blood boiling with tax rage." The problem here wasn't that the poor slob wasn't paying any taxes; the problem was that his meager tax bill failed to foment enough anger to reduce taxes on other people. Tax cuts for the rich—tax cuts for anyone, really, but the Journal has always been concerned about tax cuts for the rich—require a broad base of outrage.

  Diabolical. And I don't mean that in an admiring way.
  
  
• Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog post, "Affirmative Action for Colonial White People," on The Atlantic's website--Actually, I read this piece last night, but it seems to me that what Coates points out here about how slaves (black) and servants (mostly white) were manipulated to prevent their finding common ground speaks to how people continue to be manipulated by those in power in order to prevent those without power from uniting against that power. (See above.)
  
  ___________
  
  *"Brainwashing" may be too strong of a word to describe my experience in the Southern Baptist Church, but the message I got as a child was full of fear and loathing--loathing for the physical self, fear of damnation--and it was sometimes delivered in scary ways. We had preachers who would get all worked up about sin and hell until they were shouting and stomping around the pulpit. At the close of sermons, at what is called "altar-call," we were asked to close our eyes and raise our hands if we felt we needed forgiveness. "Don't worry," the pastor would say, "Only I and God can see your raised hands." But then, once we would raise them, he would tell us that if we had raised our hands, we now needed to come forward publicly and make a confession, implying that we fell "short of the glory of God," in the Apostle Paul's words, if we didn't have the courage to do so. Guilt was a mighty tool. And that time we were studying Hal Lindsey's books was a very dark time, full of foreboding. I had nightmares about Jesus coming back in the clouds and my feet not being able to leave the ground to join the throng of believers in the sky. And one of our pastors would get so excited when our church's gospel quartet sang "The King is Coming," that he would begin screaming. Really.
  

The Poor

My mind has lately returned to my childhood and a place that I once held very dear, my maternal grandparents' home in East Gate, Texas, on the prairie in Liberty County, near Gum Grove, Texas, not far from Huffman, Texas, and Dayton, Texas. My grandparents lived there in a wooden house built by my grandfather and his father. My mother and her siblings were reared there. And I spent many summer days there, picking peas and then shelling them in the shade of pecan trees, shucking corn, playing board games and dominoes with my grandmother, who never seemed to tire from playing those games with her grandchildren. In the evening, we would watch westerns on television or the Grand Ol' Opry with my grandfather. My grandmother would prepare food that sent us home in despair when we were teenagers; one summer one of my sisters gained ten pounds after staying a week with my grandmother. The typical breakfast spread? Fried eggs and bacon, sausage, homemade biscuits served with milk gravy and butter from the Jersey cow, fig preserves, and very black coffee. My grandmother would also prepare spice cake, lemon meringue pies, chocolate meringue pies or pecan pies for later desserts. Supper was frequently fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and a selection of vegetables we had perhaps helped pick.

My grandparents' education did not go beyond 9th grade. My grandmother told me that when she was in ninth grade, she caught flu and stayed home to recuperate. She never returned to school. My grandfather worked the rodeos, labored in the oil fields before I was born, and worked for Liberty County doing odd jobs. He raised cattle and sold cattle. He, my father, and one of my uncles herded their cattle together, with that of other friends, on government land in the marshes of Old and Lost Rivers when I was a child. I still have clear memories of my grandfather on a horse, of the sound of boots on a wooden floor, of the jangle of spurs and the whispering shush of leather chaps--and of Papa playing "Redwing" and "Orange Blossom Special" on his harmonica.

My grandmother's favorite television show was a morning show called "Dialing for Dollars." At the beginning of the show, the host would announce a password, and later in the show, the host would dial a telephone number. If the person answering the telephone knew the password, that person would win prize money. We couldn't be far from the telephone on those days that my grandmother watched; she always hoped that she would win. And I think she did win some groceries one time. Other than that, my grandmother didn't watch much television. But she loved the Houston Astros, and she would listen to games on the radio.

Only occasionally was I reminded that my grandparents were poor, especially in their old age.  My grandmother clipped coupons, counted her change, and was careful to purchase items on sale. When I was a very little child in the early sixties, she made her own cotton dresses on a treadle sewing machine. I remember the old wringer-washing machine that was in the side yard next to the house and the clothesline where we hung out clothes to dry. Later, of course, she had an electric washer and dryer installed in what we called "the back porch," rooms enclosed at the back of the house near the kitchen. I suspect that the electric washer and dryer were gifts from family, perhaps her children. The house itself lacked air-conditioning. Instead, someone had installed an industrial fan in the dining-room window. The fan didn't have a switch. We would have to plug it in and then give one of the fan blades a push to get it going.

And, then, once when I was a young adult, maybe still a teenager, we had a family gathering at which I was forcibly reminded of my grandparents' poverty. A young woman from Houston whose mother had married into the family was visiting with her fiance, a very well-off young man. As they walked under the shade of the pecan trees into the yard bare of grass and up to the un-air-conditioned house, I overheard the young woman say to her future husband, "Can you imagine living here?"

I can still feel the hot flush of anger...and shame...that I felt then, loving my grandparents as I did and also realizing that they were indeed poor, specimens of poverty in the eyes of the suburban middle-class and the Houston wealthy.

What we never lacked at my grandparents' house was plenty of love. My grandmother's freezer and refrigerator were always full of food, and she loved preparing meals for her extended family. She and my grandfather were generous and kind.

I think of them when I hear pundits sneer about the poor today, about how 51% of Americans don't pay federal income tax because they are, indeed, poor. Those pundits easily forget that those Americans pay other taxes,  payroll taxes (if they have jobs), taxes on goods, property taxes, and state income taxes in those states with such taxes.  I was enraged by Fox News pundits claiming that Democrats, President Obama, and even that really wealthy guy Warren Buffet were inciting class warfare against the rich -- and at the language used on Fox News to describe the poor as "takers" and "moochers." And I was happy to see Jon Stewart expose the hypocrisy and meanness of those who think the poor can't be poor if they own a refrigerator or a microwave or a cellphone. Watch Jon's takedown here: Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, August 18, 2011.

We owe a lot to the working poor.

Irony

Here's a bit of irony: "Karl Rove Created Rick Perry--Now Can He Stop Him?"

Karl Rove created campaign tactics to cynically appeal to the religious far-right. Now there's a presidential candidate that perfectly (and just as cynically, perhaps--who knows?) epitomizes the far-right to which Rove appealed, and Rove doesn't want that candidate to be nominated for president.  Why? Because he thinks the guy can't be elected, or that, if he is, folks like Rove won't be able to control him or the far-right that he represents. Karl Rove is Frankenstein, I guess, who has created a monster (the far-right's current influence on the Republican party, not Rick Perry, necessarily--I don't know the man personally, but I was reared in far-right country).

Interested in Rove's amoral political tactics? Read the following:

• "Karl Rove in a Corner,", by Josh Green, for The Atlantic, 2004.
  
  
• Frontline's "Karl Rove: The Architect."

And Karl Rove's political predecessor, Lee Atwater:
Frontline's "The Lee Atwater Story: Boogie Man."

University Costs

My husband and I recently moved both our adult children back to the universities that they are attending: two children in two different states. Now we're back to a two-adult household, just as we started our married lives 33 years ago--except that we still have dependents. We are essentially maintaining three households, with some assistance from our children. The undergraduate has a state scholarship based on high-school attendance in the state and on grade point average.  The graduate student just discovered that he has been assigned a Teacher Assistant position in the department where he is studying, a position that will perhaps waive out-of-state tuition (but not tuition altogether) and offer a small stipend. Both saved money from summer jobs this year while living with us to cut expenses.

What a difference I see between the time that my husband and I were in college and today.  The costs of higher education have increased significantly since 1978-1987, when my husband and I married as undergraduates and then attended graduate school. My husband and I were able to pay all our expenses with the money we made as a Graduate Assistant Teacher and a Graduate Research Assistant. Our son's  TA position will fall far short of providing for living expenses, books, and tuition. Students such as he must either depend upon family assistance or student loans. One university sent our son a letter informing him that he was eligible for a loan, of course--for $45,000 a year, essentially what comes to a $100,000 debt for a master's degree. My husband and I paid less than $100,000 for each of the first three homes that we bought between 1983 and 1993.  And we graduated with a master's degree and a Ph.D with no debt, due to scholarships, teaching and research appointments, cheap married-student housing, food hand-outs from family, and penny-pinching. Pity the kids who graduate with a $100,000+ debt and want to begin a Ph.D program, too. Or start a family.

See also: "The Debt Crisis at American Colleges," by  Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, in The Atlantic, posted 17 August 2011.

Interesting Comparisons

A recent study published by the Pew Research Center used data collected by the Census Bureau to determine the effect of the recession on certain segments of the population.  From 2005 to 2009:

• "the median wealth of Hispanic households fell 66 percent
  
• ....while the median wealth of whites fell just 16 percent over the same period."
  
• "African Americans saw their wealth drop 53 percent."
  
• "Asians also saw a big decline, with household wealth dropping 54 percent."
  
  Source: "Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest," Sabrina Tavernise, The New York Times,  26 July 2011.

In contrast, the Center for Responsive Politics has a new study out showing that:

• ... "congressional members’ personal wealth collectively increased by more than 16 percent between 2008 and 2009."
• ... "[n]early half of them -- 261 -- are millionaires, a slight increase from the previous year..."
• "And of these congressional millionaires, 55 have an average calculated wealth in 2009 of $10 million or more, with eight in the $100 million-plus range."
  
  Source: "Congressional Members' Personal Wealth Expands Despite Sour National Economy," Open Secrets Blog at opensecrets.org

Here's how the median household net worth plunged for different segments of American society:

• Hispanics:  from $18,359 in 2005 to $6,235 in 2009.
  
• Blacks: from $12,124 in 2005 to $5,677 in 2009.
  
• Whites: from $134,992 in 2005 to $113,149 in 2009.
  
• Asians: from $168,103 in 2005 to $78,066 in 2009.
  
• All: from $96,894 in 2005 to $70,000 in 2009
  Source: "Recession Study Finds Hispanics Hit the Hardest," New York Times.  

In contrast, the median wealth of our leaders in Congress and the Senate INCREASED:

• U.S. House member:  from$645,503 in 2008 to $765,010 in 2009.
  
• U.S. Senator: from $2.27 million in 2008 to $$2.38 million in 2009.
  
• ALL members of Congress, House members and Senate members: $785,515 in 2008 to $911,510 in 2009. 

Source: "Congressional Members' Personal Wealth Expands Despite Sour Economy," www. opensecrets.org

Of course, these numbers represent median wealth of groups whose members have very disparate household worth. But the comparison is stark between the median wealth of members of the U.S. Congress and those of the citizens who elected them and who are suffering the most from the economy. It is therefore difficult not to be cynical when Republicans insist on not raising taxes on the wealthy (letting the Bush tax cuts expire, as was initially planned) to help balance the budget. Two-thirds of the American people think those taxes SHOULD be raised on the wealthiest. Therefore, whose interest are Republicans serving?

Signs of the Times

• The rich hire protection from the economically-depressed masses: "These Guys will Stop you from Killing your Boss," Josh Harkinson, Mother Jones, July/August 2011 issue.
  
  
  
• Is poverty being criminalized?: "Turning Poverty into an American Crime," Barbara Ehrenreich, The Nation (originally posted on TomDispatch.com), 9 August 2011.
  
  
  
• Why is there such hatred of the poor as the poor get poorer and the richer get richer?: "Nebraska AG Jon Bruning Compares Welfare Recipients to Scavenging Raccoons," Benji Sarlin, Talking Points Memo, 9 August 2011.
  
  
  
• What is happening to the middle-class in America?": "Can the Middle Class be Saved?," Don Peck, The Atlantic, September 2011 issue. 
 
• The unemployed need not apply: "The Help-Wanted Sign comes with a Frustrating Asterisk," Catherine Rampell, The New York Times, 25 July 2011.

• London burns in riots "led by gangs of young people and organized in part via BlackBerry instant messaging." The riots began in economically-depressed neighborhoods and have spread to other cities: "London Burning: A Foreign Policy Slide Show"; also "Why London Exploded Last Night," Michael Goldfarb, Salon, 9 August 2011.
  
  
• Social media used by criminals to create flash mobs to cover for crimes: "For Flash Mobsters, Crowd Size a Tempting Cover," Eric Tucker and Thomas Watkins for Associated Press, Salon,  9 August 2011.
  
  
  
• Voluntary citizen clean-up crews in London use Twitter to organize after rioting: "Londoners Turn to Technology to Stop the Looting,", Adam Clark Estes, The Atlantic Wire, 9 August 2011.
  
  
  
  
• governmental coverups--Severity of radiation exposure downplayed by Japanese government: "Japan Held Nuclear Data, Leaving Evacuees in Peril," Norimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, The New York Times, 8 August 2011.
  
  
  
• regulation coverups--Is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the U.S. doing its job?: "Whistleblowers Say Nuclear Regulatory Commission is Losing Its Bite," John Sullivan and Cameron Hickey, ProPublica,  27 July 2011.
  
  
  
  
  just a few.....

Sunset

This is a photo of the sun setting in Mississippi yesterday evening. I took the photo while I was driving back to my home after taking my daughter, my youngest, back to university in another state. Like the sun here, I am no longer at Astronomical Noon in my children's lives. One must adjust emotionally, of course. I just hadn't realized that it would be this difficult.

Cynicism Redux

I've been following the debt ceiling debate with growing--and now matured--cynicism. Today, House Minority Leader Harry Reid has evidently offered the Republicans a debt plan that includes $2.7 million in spending cuts, with no new taxes, with the stipulation that the debt ceiling be raised through 2012. (h/t Brian Beutler at TPM). As Matt Yglesias points out, however, the House Republicans don't want to accept this plan that nominally meets their publicly stated requirements because it doesn't repeal Medicare and it doesn't take future tax increases off the table. The Bush tax cuts are supposed to expire in 2012:

In particular, the plan doesn’t cut Medicare, which means that Democratic party candidates for office in November 2012 and 2014 can accurately remind voters of the content of the Republican budget plan. In case you forgot, this plans repeals Medicare. Having repealed Medicare, it then gives seniors vouchers to purchase more expensive private health insurance. And having replaced Medicare with a voucher system, it then ensures that the vouchers will grow steadily stingier over time. It was only after voting for this plan that Republicans seem to have realized that repealing Medicare is unpopular. Since that time, they’ve been trying to entrap Democrats into reaching some kind of Medicare détente with them, which would immunize them from criticism. Reid’s plan doesn’t do that. "Harry Reid Calls House Republicans' Bluff"

Politicians hope that people won't REALLY understand what they're up to: Repealing Medicare is unpopular with the American people, so Republicans have tried to sell their voucher plan. Yet the Republican voucher plan for Medicare will increase costs for old folks and thus result in denial of services. Republicans hope that no one will notice the switcheroo in their plan. (Ca-ching--another coin in the cynicism bank)

And, dang it, those tax cuts are SUPPOSED to expire. Not only that, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data. That’s true whether it comes to their federal income taxes or their total federal taxes." "Federal Income Taxes on Middle-Income Families at Historically Low Levels."

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities also points out just what is responsible for our current debt crisis:

If not for the Bush tax cuts, the deficit-financed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the effects of the worst recession since the Great Depression (including the cost of policymakers’ actions to combat it), we would not be facing these huge deficits in the near term. By themselves, in fact, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will account for almost half of the $20 trillion in debt that, under current policies, the nation will owe by 2019. The stimulus law and financial rescues will account for less than 10 percent of the debt at that time. "Economic Downturn and Bush Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits"

And a graph in the New York Times handily compares the results of new budget policies under Bush and Obama, based on data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: "Policy Changes Under Two Presidents"--A $5.07 trillion increase under Bush and a $1.44 trillion increase under Obama.

As Steve Benen points out: "And now these same Republicans [who helped turn a large surplus into a massive deficit] claim the high ground on fiscal issues, and demand that President Obama clean up their mess immediately. Worse, they demand he do so in a way they find pleasing, or next week, they’ll crash the economy on purpose." "Blame Where Blame is Due"

Kevin Drum describes the Republican narrative that too many people are buying into:

Up until very recently, Republicans were mostly taking a hard line on the deficit and weren't shy about making sure everyone knew it. The hard line itself hasn't changed since then, but over the past few weeks they've come to realize that it doesn't make for very good PR. So now their enablers in the media are furiously pushing the story that it's really Obama who's completely intransigent and insincere, rejecting deal after deal no matter how much Republicans try to accomodate his crazed desire to punish the rich. This narrative, as near as I can tell, is now virtually unanimous among conservative commenters.

So the question is, will anyone buy this? It's so self-evidently preposterous that it doesn't seem possible, but then, I wouldn't have figured that they could successfully make the world so quickly forget that they were responsible for the deficit in the first place, nor that they were also responsible for the most epic financial meltdown since the Great Depression. But they have. Their ability to shape popular narratives can hardly be underestimated. "Republicans and the Deficit Narrative"

It's amazing to me that anyone still takes these Republicans seriously. Oh, I know that there are conservatives who are speaking out against the rash policies of these radicals, but those folks aren't in power.

It's like a bunch of whiny kids who trashed a house at a party. Another group of kids come in to clean up and have to buy supplies to do so. The ones responsible for the mess then scream about the costs of the clean-up and convince bystanders that the clean-up crew is responsible for all the costs and damages. Unbelievable.

Cynicism

My children tell me that I am very cynical, so when they confront some evidence of a younger me--in my writing or the writing of friends--who comes across as naive and trusting, they seem surprised. Of course, our children never really know us, do they? They weren't witness to many of the events (our own failings as well as the failings of others) that transformed us over time--either because they were not present or because they were too young to understand what was going on. I'll admit that a little bit of faith in humanity remains in me, but in the last several years, that bit of faith has received a beating.

The Republicans taking hostage of the debt ceiling is a big disappointment; I mean, they didn't have difficulties with debt ceilings under President Bush. Why so recalcitrant now? (That's a rhetorical question). But the treatment of Elizabeth Warren by Republican Congressmen is in a category by itself, I think. Or maybe not. Given some thought, I could probably come up with other similar examples. Here is a very smart woman who speaks plainly and who has worked to help make financial matters more transparent to consumers, that is, people such as I.

Here is Elizabeth Warren speaking on those credit card contracts that none of us can understand:
"Elizabeth Warren on Credit Card 'Tricks and Traps'," at Now, online, 2 January 2009.

Here she is talking about bankruptcy caused by medical bills and "aggressive hospital collections":
Interview 1
Interview 2

Here she is talking about subprime mortgages in 2004--raising the alarm before subprime mortgages, bundled up as toxic assets, helped to almost blow up our economy:
on "Books of our Time"

People with this kind of sense, with this kind of concern for ordinary families, evidently have no place in our government, according to the Republicans who refused to accept her as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency. Their condescending questioning and unrelenting demonization of this woman is a travesty of public service.

In The New York Times, Joe Nocera reviews Elizabeth Warren's travails with Republican 'leadership,' in this, her last week with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: "The Travails of Ms. Warren," posted on Friday, 22 July 2011.

Here is an example of Warren's own lack of cynicism. She thought that if she could make clear to Congress what the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would be, the accusations and demonization would stop:

“I’ve never been an ideologue,” she told me. “And I thought the best way to deal with that perception was to put our vision out there. The vision is clear. Consumers should be able to tell the price and risk of any credit product before they buy it. We want to mow down the fine print. I thought once that was on the table, and it was clear that we were executing on it, the accusations would go away.” Nocera, "The Travails of Ms. Warren"

But: " House Republicans regularly brought her before their committees and acted as if this were the second coming of Joe McCarthy....Republicans would cut off her answers and speak to her in tones ranging from contempt to condescension. The treatment wasn’t just disrespectful. It was ugly. And it never stopped."

As I have stated in a previous post, I would have loved having an Elizabeth Warren looking out for my interests. Unfortunately, bankers and financial institutions have far more money than I have and far more influence over those Republicans who made sure that Elizabeth Warren would never direct the agency she was responsible for helping to create.

It's a real shame. Add another coin to my cynicism bank.

Let's Remember This...

As the investigation of the phone hacking of News of the World reporters and private investigators continues, let's remember, as Christopher Hitchens reminds us, that it was a newspaper that investigated and brought to light the misdeeds of News of the World:

The prime minister's office showed itself incapable of conducting an investigation; the courts and the prosecutors appeared to have no idea of the state of the law, and the police were too busy collecting their tip-off fees. Admittedly, it isn't usually the job of these institutions to keep the press honest. (Indeed, I could swear that I read somewhere that the whole concept was the other way about.) Still, it's encouraging to record that when the press needed a housecleaning, there was a paper [the Guardian] ready to take on the job.

Other Views: Media Moguls, Rupert Murdoch

For what it's worth, here are some links to articles with a little more positive attitude toward Rupert Murdoch and British tabloids:

• Nicholas Lemann, "Paper Tigers," The New Yorker, 13 April 2009.
  
• Toby Young, "Three Cheers for Murdoch," Salon, 8 July 2011.

Darker and Deeper: Murdoch and the Phone Hacking Investigation

The investigation into how reporters for Rupert Murdoch's News of the World hacked into voicemail of murder victims and their families, members of the royal family, celebrities, and, perhaps even dead soldiers and victims of the London Underground bombing continue. Why should we care here in our bright "city on a hill"? Well, Murdoch is a media mogul whose print and cable media stretch from Australia to Great Britain to the United States (Fox News, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Post) to Asia. The woman who managed the newspaper charged with these illegal acts, Rebekah Brooks, is very close to Murdoch. He treats her almost as his own daughter. But even more importantly, as print, cable, television, and online media become more and more consolidated, under the control of one corporation or one multi-billionaire, the news we receive is all the more susceptible to being manipulated by people with immense power. I think we have to be vigilant and to fight against misuse of that kind of power.

First, a little bit of background about the despicable practices of Rupert Murdoch's reporters, from the epicenter of the scandal  [h/t to Jack Shafer for most of these links]:

• A timeline of the scandal: "Phone hacking: timeline of scandal," The Telegraph, 5 April 2011.
  
• Nick Davies and Amelia Hill, "Missing Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by News of the World," Guardian, 4 July 2011.
  
• Sandra Laville and Vikram Dodd, "News of the World Paid bribes worth L100,000 to up to five Met officers," Guardian 7 July 2011.
  
• A British reporter deconstructs Rupert Murdoch's statement about the investigation: Roy Greenslade, "Phone hacking: reading between the lines of Murdoch's statement," Guardian 6 July 2011.
  
• Andy McSmith, "Behind Rupert Murdoch's Throne: The story of Rebekah Brooks," The Independent Press, 6 July 2011.
  
• On Murdoch's decision to allow Rebekah Brooks to lead an internal investigation on the phone hacking: Helene Mulholland, "Letting Rebekah Brooks lead enquiry is 'extraordinary,' says PCC chair," Guardian, 7 July 2011.
  
• On News of the World journalists spying for murder suspects: Nick Davies, "News of the World surveillance of detective: what Rebekah Brooks knew," Guardian, 6 July 2011.  

Another connection between our shores and the shores of the white cliffs of Dover:

Peter Hutchison, "Phone hacking: Rupert Murdoch brings in Joel Klein to oversee investigation," The Telegraph 7 July 2011.

Today's headlines at The New York Times online:

• Sarah Lyall and Jo Becker, ""Woman Rises to the Top in Male Tabloid Culture," The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Sarah Lyall and Alan Cowell, "Murdoch to Close Tabloid Amid Fury over Hacking,", The New York Times, 7 July 2011.
  
• Jeremy W. Peters and Brian Stelter, "The Murdoch Style, Under Pressure," The New York Times, 6 July 2011.

Today, Jack Shafer turns the investigation into film noir on Slate: "Rupert Murdock: Film Noir Villain"

And, for background on Rupert Murdoch, The Atlantic provides a link to an article in their archives by James Fallows: "The Age of Murdoch," first published in 2003.