So Good

Banksters Win Again

So, a "settlement" has been reached between major banks and Attorneys Generals of 49 states over charges of outright fraud in illegal foreclosures.

For having fabricated millions of purportedly legal documents to support foreclosing on millions of mortgage loans in America (a criminal act; something you or I would be indicted for and arrested in a heartbeat), and no one responsible goes to jail. The banks will collectively pay $25 Billion dollars. The total of all mortgages in the United States either in forclosure, delinquent, or whose owners are 'underwater', is estimated to be $700 Billion.

The bulk of the settlement, about $20 billion, would go to one million American homeowners [wrote Nelson Schwartz and Julie Creswell in the NYT] who would have their mortgage debts reduced or their loans refinanced at a lower interest rate. It also includes $1.5 billion for roughly 750,000 people who lost their homes to foreclosure between 2008 and 2011, with each receiving between $1,500 and $2,000.

And, the media is putting a positive spin on developments: Homeowners benefit! Well, some of them do; yeah! People are helped! Justice is served, kinda!

• The New York Times headline was, "Homeowners Get Bulk of the Benefits From Mortgage Plan (...Under the settlement, nearly two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks").
• The Los Angeles Times headline was, "Foreclosure deal to help 2 million with loan trouble (... The nation's five largest lenders will pay $25 billion to partially compensate those who lost their homes)".
• The Guardian UK wrote that "Obama Praises $25b Mortgage Deal (... Millions of people could have mortgage debt cut as America's top lenders agree deal over alleged abuses in housing market)".

“The effect of this settlement will be catalytic,” Shaun Donovan, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, said in an interview.

He predicted it would spur more loan modifications through existing government programs as well as principal reductions — when loan debt is written down for borrowers who owe more than their home is worth — as well as additional mortgage relief provided by banks.

So, let's recap -- approximately one million homeowners will receive some relief through restructuring in their mortgages. Approximately 11 million households need their loans modified in order to keep from being forced out of their homes.

Approximately 750,000 people who were evicted, lost their property and in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars; marriages, and jobs, could receive monetary compensation in the amount of ... between $1,500 and $2,000.

Fortunately, they don't waive any rights to file future legal action against their former mortgage lenders if they demand that two grand -- but is the compensation more than a token? Is it just? Or, an insult? It reminds me of the "compensation" offered by Austrian courts to the families of Holocaust survivors attempting to reclaim their lost art.

The banks, which were facing the possibility of criminal investigations and civil actions in at least 25 states, including California and New York -- will effectively not be further prosecuted by the Attorneys General of 49 states (Oklahoma would not join in) for their actions. They could be investigated and prosecuted for violations of Federal law... but what is the chance of that happening?

And, as HUD Secretary Donovan said to the NYT, the "settlement" would move the major banks to 'act better', provide further loan modifications and reductions in principal for affected Americans (the 11 million other mortgageholders facing foreclosure not assisted by this "settlement"). And the banks would do this, because they're just nice guys.

Remember? The Bush and Obama administrations gave them hundreds of billions of dollars. The expectation was that the money would spur the Nice Guys to lend money to small businesses, prime the pump to get the economy moving. The banks took the money, kept it, and used it (among other things) to provide themselves huge bonuses for their executives and board members. Why would they behave differently, give the Rubes they steal from public any assistance, now?

The banks precipitated a gigantic, global financial crisis -- which is far from being over. They forced millions of Americans from their homes, illegally. They disrupted and even destroyed lives. And unless the States' Attorneys General or the Department Of Justice go after them in force, the banks are effectively getting a Mulligan.

They walk, by ponying up a relatively small amount of cash -- which will simply become a tax write-off as a business expense. I understand that the "settlement"'s cheerleaders tout this as a first step, a move in the direction toward reforming the financial industry. But as one critic noted, the total is a "drop in the bucket". It smells like a band-aid for a dysfunctional system that still rules.

The amounts from individual banks were linked to their share of the servicing market. The biggest, Bank of America, would provide $11.8 billion, followed by $5.4 billion from Wells Fargo, $5.3 billion from JPMorgan Chase, $2.2 billion from Citigroup and $310 million from Ally. Bank of America would contribute an additional $1 billion for Federal Housing Administration loans.

And if nine other major mortgage servicers join the pact, a possibility that is now under discussion with the government, the total package could rise to $30 billion.

Banks stocks were mixed in trading Thursday, but shares of Bank of America rose 0.62 percent to $8.18, its highest level since September. Much of the money to pay for the settlement has already been reserved, and investors expect the settlement to remove at least one legal worry for Bank of America.

Ha Ha Ha Ha. Why not just say it? They won. Again. I'm not surprised at all.

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MEHR Mit Schweineri: The War Criminal Washington Post declared in it's usual tarted-up, Villager manner that the settlement was "rough justice — very rough — in a case of rampant, but essentially victimless, alleged law-breaking."

And, Avedon Carol weighs in from a different vantage point in the UK, courtesy of The Great Curmudgeon (paragraphing added for emphasis):

For a moment it seemed like there was good news when I saw this: "Schneiderman's Last-Minute Cancellation Spells Trouble for Foreclosure Fraud Settlement."

But then it seemed it was more like this: "49-State Foreclosure Fraud Settlement Will Be Finalized Thursday."

(And Jesus Christ, Ezra [Klein], why on earth is it good news that this deal will "help a lot in protecting banks from lawsuits"? These people stole people's homes, and you think a check for a couple of grand is some kind of compensation?

(If you get caught selling a lid of grass they confiscate every damn thing you have, but if you steal someone's house you just pay pocket change in compensation out of billions you made from cheating people? That's really nice for you - if you're a banker.

(But, you know, we don't need bankers like that! And we need to put those banksters in jail so they won't do it again - and doing more of it seems to be just what they have in mind, thanks to this deal.)

Avedon has more. Follow the links. Now.

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No-Brainer

The Randy Man, Resurgent



Watching the Rethug debate Live! From Iowa! with George Stephanopolis and The Lovely Diane Sawyer moderating. I've been in and out; surfed to watch La Povira ("The Octopus") on MHz Networks' 'International Mystery' for a while (Mafia soap-opera, in Italian), and went down the hall for a bag of M&M's (Tasty), and then came back to Ames, Iowa, and an audience of people who want, most of all, to turn America back -- to the values of Ronald Reagan, Ward Cleaver, and Cornelius Vanderbilt.

By the end of the debate, what I witnessed has essentially been what I expected: An overly-intellectual Newt versus a rambling, flustered Mittster.

There were a few odd comments from Raving Loon© Ron Paul, and Mssr. Le Gouvernour Placard Perry ("We need a part-time Congress"), with Crazy Lady telling us her family "are coupon-clippers, even today" -- proving she is in touch with the pain and uncertainty of "ordinary" Americans.

Why, even Newt said he lived above a gas station as a boy, and that his Tiffany-jewelery wearing spouse runs Gingrich Productions ("a small business"), and they both know how hard running a small business is, which puts them in touch with the ordinary simple working people of these United States, too.

Right.

I didn't see it, but heard later that the question was put to Newt about his past 'infidelities', and he took it head-on, saying, "I've made mistakes at times -- I'm also a 68-year-old grandfather and I think people have to measure what I do now."

Rrrrright.

That's Jenga™

I did see Stephanopolis hit Newt with another question, and he raised it with Raving Loon© Ron Paul first: Was Gingrich's comment yesterday, that the Palestinians were 'an invented people', incendiary?

When George got to Newt and asked the question, Gingrich took that head-on, too: No, he wasn't sorry; further, he said, "Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists." (Stephanopolis stared at Newt, mouth open, as if he'd just admitted being a nazi).

"Is [his statement] historically correct? Yes," The Randy Man said. "... the current administration tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process. Hamas does not admit the right of Israel to exist and says publicly, 'not a single Jew will remain'... It's fundamentally time for somebody to have the guts to stand up and say, 'Enough lying about the Middle East.' "

Romney called Gingrich's comment about the Palestinians "reckless"; Mittster and The Randy-Man traded barbs for two minutes or so, and ABC let them -- this is, after all, what people came to their teevees to see.

This could have been Romney's moment to stop Gingrich's rise. You would expect that Mittzy's handlers had taken him through practice sessions in anticipation of such an opportunity -- and given his slipping in Rethug polls, that Romney should seize it with both hands. But to have done so, he would have had to be a completely different person.

Instead, like a man slipping on ice, arms cartwheeling for balance, Romney fumbled through a semi-coherent string of remarks. "As President, I will exercise sobriety," Romney sputtered (Newt replied in his trademark faux-academic manner that when he called the Palestinians an 'invented people', "I was speaking as a historian").

At at one point, Romney even said that Newt would agree that he (Gingrich) was wrong. Newt stood looking at the moderators, shaking his head (at one point in the exchange, ABC's camera's caught him winking at the audience -- presumably at his wife, or possibly at the next Mrs. Gingrich).

All he had to do to win was appear the more collected and reasonable, respond calmly but firmly, and Romney would come off looking like a chump. I'm paraphrasing, but Gingrich ended the exchange with something like, "It's time we told the truth about the situation in the Middle East," with a riposte to Romney, "And leave other explanations for the timid".

Ah; Mitt? That's Jenga.

No-Brainer

So far, there have been no other major 'incidents' from Des Moines, but it's been amazingly painful, watching Romney flounder no matter what he's been asked. This was the "Newt Debate"; it was his to lose -- all he had to do was hold his own in a field of inconsequential, delusional, or religiously-fueled idiots. It's a no-brainer, in this line-up at the Cretin's Ball, who appeared the most 'Presidential'.

Barring some unforeseen occurrence, Gingrich very probably will be the Rethug candidate for President. He isn't the best they have; he's the only candidate they have.

Newt is a corrupt, serial adulterer who was once as tightly wired into the Washington power structure as a Speaker of the House can be. He whored as a lobbyist because there was money in it for him. He's lied about being a "historian"; wrote a turgid, unreadable novel about the Civil War (However, better than the dribbling, putrescent excuse for a "book" that was ghostwritten for Little Glenn Beck. Just two monkeys in a room with a typewriter could have crafted a better work than Glenny's 'The Overton Whatever').

Newt, rejected by the Mensa Society, wasn't smart enough to know that he couldn't screw whomever he wanted in Washington and not have it used against him: His previous political career was done in by his own Randy Antics, and his committing a breach of Congressional ethics; malfesance.

He is just smart enough to know what the Presidency is for Republicans -- and he wants it. It's a figurehead position, possessing certain kinds of power; in the end you're an elder statesman and set for life. Name in the history books; no matter what they said about you in Newsweek and rolling Stone, you were President Of The United States and will be called 'Mr. President' by everyone as an honorific from the moment you leave office -- all this, what Newt believes he should be destined for.

Newt always reminds me of a certain kind of smart kid in grade school -- the one who always sounds like he knows all the answers. The kid who expects to be appointed Hall Monitor, because Teacher lets him polish her apple. He gets the job, turns you in for some infraction and smirks at you when the teacher isn't looking -- and he never, ever seems to get a comeuppance, no matter what nasty shit he pulls. He's a manipulative, self-satisfied little prick, and always will be.

2012: The Talking Pestidental Candidate

But that isn't what frightens me about Gingrich. It's that he can talk. And talk. And talk. And talk. He sounds as if he has all the answers. In politics, that's often all it takes.

Obama is intelligent, too; he speaks well. His background is in Constitutional law, and can probably hold his own in debates with Ol' Newt. But if the economy takes a nose-dive because Little Angela wants her Austerity, past a certain point no one will listen to what Obama says. People will tune him out; in their minds, he got it wrong, and is to blame, which will only be half true.

And, as I don't feel most Americans give a rat's ass about whether they live in a Democratic Republic or Corporate Fascist state so long as they have ESPN and their cars, I'm concerned that who talks good will be all they'll care about rolling into the 2012 election. That, and the Democrats just seem too hesitant, too namby-pamby, too much the Victim, to really want to win, compromised by feeding from the same trough of money as the Republicans.

It won't matter if Obama dredges up bin Laden and orders him killed, again. It won't matter that he tried to reach a Grand Budget/Debt Bargain and the Rethugs are the bad guys. In the public's tiny mind, Newt won't have Obama's baggage -- and suddenly (after Little Rupert's idiot factory repeats things over and over and over and over...), Newt will begin to sound so smart; Ahhh; let's give him a chance, people will say. They're all crooks; we don't have any power, anyway; who cares... doesn't matter...

The End

As their final statement, Stephanopolis asked the candidates to answer the question Is it possible for all of you on stage to work together? And who on stage tonight can you compliment and why? Newt thanked a role-model governor, and tipped his hat to Ron Paul's supporters ("They're always there with signs...freezing in the cold"). Crazy Lady, living up to her name, talked about Herman Cain. Ricky Santorum talked about Newt, remembering that he listened in the 1990's to a set of cassette tapes of Gingrich's speeches (sold by selfsame Gingrich productions, no doubt).

Romney just answered it by saying we'reatacrossroads and Americaneedsintegrity and that I'mthebestchoice -- and ignored Stephanopolis' question entirely. That, and the expression on his face while he was doing it; brain shorting out, his language wandering, convoluted -- a man rising to the level of his own incompetence, on national television.

It was another painful moment, like watching someone soil themselves in public, knowing they are only dimly aware they have boo-booed in their shorts in front of a live audience. In a panic, already fading in Rethug polls going into this debate, Romney repeated whatever closing speech he'd memorized because, unlike Gingrich, Romney is almost incapable of thinking on his feet.

ABC's commentators, post-debate, are giving Gingrich a win; "He's the one to beat", says Jake Tapper -- so, it has to be true.

Oh, and after final statements, there was a commercial ABC aired for some company selling "reverse mortgages" for "Persons 62 and older". Former Rethug candidate Fred Thompson was the pitchman; how fitting for a right-wing presidential debate.

And that's the Republican party: Cretins, pols, and former candidates hawking financial products benefiting private business (Why hang on to that big house? Get cash now, the financial security that you need in uncertain times!).

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Afterword

(I want to repeat a few points I'd made in a post about The Randy Man from August, 2010:)

Please pay attention to this part, because it will be on the final: If, despite plentiful evidence about his character, Newt still becomes one of the GOP front-runners (if not their candidate) for President in 2012 -- then I would become very, very afraid.

Look: ... The "recovery" has stalled. The Republicans in Congress will do nothing, and the Democrats can't seem to do the right thing because they've sold their soul to the Fed and the Banksters. Communities are laying off teachers, firefighters, police; roads are being plowed back to gravel; they're talking about doing away with Social Security and Medicare -- and [As of August, 2010, when I wrote this] no one is out in the streets raising their voices about any of it.

The possibility of a Gingrich Presidency would be as bad as Lil' Boots Bush (the only difference is, Gingrich has a better command of spoken English) -- but if such a thing ever becomes possible, it will be because -- even with clear evidence of what kind of man he is -- it would not matter to voters.

It would be more proof (if you needed it, that is) that the game is rigged; the fix is in; that it's Chinatown -- and that Americans will prefer government by sociopaths; and proof that the lowest common denominator in this country will have suddenly fallen to depths unimaginable even twenty years ago.

If you want to stop and consider that for a moment, it's what many thinking Germans must have felt when their country mutated into something clearly and unmistakably malignant, right in front of their eyes.

And That's Jenga.

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All In

It's Always Been About Saving The Banks And Their Shareholders

There's been a lot of quick-take summing-up about the way in which Our Great Leaders all around the globe have chosen to deal with the titanic amount of toxic debt created by America's financial whorehouse and casino community, giving the rest of the world so many more reasons to love us and want us to be carpet-bombed have soft lives and treats.

Krug Man did it the other day. He said what has happened in the current European debt situation, "it turns out, is that by going on the Euro, Spain and Italy in effect reduced themselves to the status of third-world countries that have to borrow in someone else’s currency, with all the loss of flexibility that implies."

The Euro represents not just a currency, but also, too, the idea of A United Europe. If the Euro dissolves, everyone goes back to a multi-currency system. There will be chaos in the international markets -- how do you value shares of Grosser Hund Am Tisch GMBH™ In Neues Duetschmarks? In Francs? In Dollars? In the Japanese and Chinese Yen? What are the relative values of all the new (old) currencies? Tourists, on vacation abroad; what are all their British and Irish Pounds worth in Drachmas, or Thai Bhat?

Even more important, what are all those U.S. and Greek and Italian Treasuries worth in this newly-valued world? Ones the Chinese and the Saudis and the Japanese have (in the case of U.S. Treasuries) been buying like crazy for twenty years? What about all the major currencies each country's central bank has purchased; suddenly, what's it all worth? What happens in companies large and small, from Lisbon to Warsaw, who all have contracts with buyers and suppliers, in Euros?

Well, the European Union headquarters in Brussels would remain open ... for a while, before it's sold to Rupert Murdoch; because the political European Union will effectively be broken, and Konrad Adenauer will roll over in his grave.

Therefore, the major players in Europe have gone All In, staking everything (including their own political futures) on the fate of the Euro.

And that is why the Austerity demands, which accompany loans to Greece, and now Italy, and who knows who's next, must be accepted. If the populations in Europe just submit to having the quality of their lives reduced for more than a decade to save rotten-to-the-core financial institutions (and The lucky One-Per-Centers) -- then what Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sarkozy and the international Bankster Brigade are doing might work. We'll all be living in yurts, watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

If the people don't submit, and instead complain and protest, and riot, and eventually vote out the governments who are in favor of saving rotten-to-the-core financial institutions -- then the Euro is toast; the global financial structure goes all higgledy-piggeldy; and we will all be living in yurts watching our children play with toys made of dried animal dung.

A lot of people, such as The Krugster, see what all this is about, and have summed it up pretty succinctly -- it's all about saving the banks, their shareholders, and bondholders.

So, too, also The Great Curmudgeon:

Consensus

Well the consensus seems to be we need to just install bankers as the leaders of all the countries, and the only way any of us can survive is if all the richest countries of the world are turned into 3rd world hellholes after the middle class gives all of their money to rich people.

The frustrating thing is that we could just give free money to rich people. Every time banksters light a pile of money on fire, the ECB and the BOE and the Fed can just say, oh, no worries chap, here's another pile. At least try to get down to the dog track this week instead of just having a bonfire with thousand dollar bills. This isn't my preferred option, but it's a better option than making poor and middle class people suffer just because.

by Atrios at 09:00
42 Comments

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The Trouble With Harry: Still Here, Too

World Does Not End; Chtulu Unimpressed



You may recall that this past May 21st, Harold Camping, the 89-year-old leader of the Orthogontal Tirebiter Church Of Chtulu's CheeseWhiz (okay; we made that up, but only a little), was "flabbergasted" that his prediction of the Xtian Rapture and beginning of the end of the world as foretold in the Big Book Of Revelations did not occur on that day.

Camping had originally predicted The Same in 1994; when it did not happen, he went back to his Magic Decoder Ring and found he had been off by seventeen years (Professor Frink: "Hu-HAH! Ahhh; forgot to carry the one").

Through a network of xtian radio stations he owns, Harry spent the next 17 years spreading the Bad News that the world was ending, and that people had better Get Right with god -- because after May 21, 2011, no plea for forgiveness would be answered, and the vast majority of humanity would burn burn burn burn burn forever, and the rest would praise praise sing sing praise the all-loving god amen.

The end did not come in May. Many people, who had sold their possessions and stopped making rent or house payments, were a little peeved. So were others who had sent Harry a lot of money over the past seventeen years. Harry was "flabbergasted"; going back to his Magic Decoder Ring, he told The Faithful that he had been slightly off: "And Moab went down to the Land Of The Canaanites and there was this other thing, and the hey hey hey, and the other thing and Hoooo, boy; are we overtime".

Sadly, on June 9th, Camping had a small stroke, but has recovered to a degree since.

According to Harry, the Rapture had taken place -- but, it was invisible. And, contrary to a whole bunch of scriptural interpretation, the world would just end in fire and Badness on October 21, 2011. Period. The end; no more discussion, or Jiff Peanut Butter, or next week's G20 conference, or naughty thoughts about the girl in the taco commercial. Or, naughty thoughts about the G20 (yeah; they have sites like this).

[The Rapture had been] of the spiritual variety, rather than his original vision of earthquakes and other disasters leading to five months of hell on earth, culminating in a spectacular doomsday on Oct. 21.

And, we're still here. The End would have required something on the order of a full-on thermonuclear exchange between Russia, China, the United States and all the nuclear EU nations -- or, Ronald Reagan's reappearance to become the Right's presidential candidate. Camping had said the Bad People would just expire, leaving the world, presumably, to the Chosen Few:

[In a recent radio broadcast] The tone of his message is more mild than his previous declaration. Shying away from talk of wrath and judgment, he says “the end is going to come very, very quietly probably within the next month . . . by October 21. Probably there will be no pain suffered by anyone because of their rebellion against God...” he said. “We can become more and more sure that they’ll quietly die and that will be the end of their story.”

The Chosen Few would presumably, however, have had to dispose of the rest of us -- before we began to smell up the planet and spoil all the praise singing and hosannas, thanking a merciful god that so many billions of hated liberals and foreign-types and terrorist blasphemers were killed... so that the world was given to them, the "Righteous Ones".

This sounds like a bad, made-for-teevee-movie starring Bert Convy, Garner Ted Armstrong, and "Mr. T". With that, we invite you to enjoy your weekend, brought to you courtesy of the Enlightenment™, and Scientific Proofs ©.

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Part Of The One Per Cent? Rich? Bored?

Once Only The Concern Of Porn Stars



If you're a woman, I'd like you to think, for just a moment, about the spectrum of challenges that the human species, male and female, currently faces -- ecological, economic; cultural and political. Think hard. Think about all the various requests for financial support that have moved you to give money this past year.

Now; instead of these concerns, think about focusing on this (as reported in the Guardian UK). Think about spending thousands of dollars and a significant amount of personal discomfort -- on buying a new vagina. Because someone (not you) thinks you should.

...This newish industry consists of doctors and their clients (clients, not patients, because these surgeries are cash-only elective procedures) who believe the female nether area can be improved upon or remediated. Procedures offered include labiaplasty (trimming or completely removing labia), vaginal rejuvenation (tightening), hymenoplasty ("revirgination") and clitoral "unhooding" – among others.

...Designer vagina surgery is big business: according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, in 2009 female consumers spent an estimated $6.8m (£4.4m) on these procedures (the figure counts only plastic surgeons, not gynecologists). Its popularity is rising in the UK, too – in 2008, the NHS carried out 1,118 labiaplasty operations, an increase of 70% on the previous year. And figures released this year show that plastic surgery company the Harley Medical Group received more than 5,000 inquiries about cosmetic gynecology in 2010, 65% of them for labial reduction, the rest for tightening and reshaping.


You Must Work Hard To Keep Your Man; What Else Is There?

...In the US, cosmetic gynecology may have the official sanction of reality TV (doctors have performed it on the wildly popular plastic surgery makeover show "Dr. 90210") but the same cannot be said of the peer organizations.

The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) deems such procedures medically unnecessary, possibly unsafe, and is "concerned with the ethical issues"; while the accrediting body, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG), refuses to recognize cosmetic [gynecology] as a legitimate sub-speciality.

This means no entry barriers for the physicians, as there are no board-certification requirements. Consumers may not realize that it's a bit of a wild west out there, with doctors working out the kinks, as it were, as they go.

Try and save the Polar Bears; work to rein in Wall Street. Send your money to Progressive politicians -- or, have your already perfect privates remade in an image dreamt up by obese right-wing polticos or producers of fuck movies (there's little difference between the two; trust me), or Type-A, "I'm A Job-Creator" husbands who will leave you for Trophy Wife No. 2 anyway.

Your choice.

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Grand TurtleBear Bachmann Graces Cover Of Newsweek; DJI Plummets Over 600 Points, $1 Trillion Lost

Love Jesus Or You Won't Know What Hit You

Bringing Love And Light. And Brotherhood. And Homophobia, And
An Abiding Hatred Of Science And The Wondrous Feeling You Get
From Condemning Others And Demanding They Believe As You Do,
Or Else (Photo: Newsweek ©, A Classy™ Publication)

There's not much to say about Little Michele Bachmann, Grand TurtleBear of the Church Of I Kill You, beyond the observation that every time she opens her mouth, she becomes classier and classier in every way; a true Poster Girl.

Ray Lizza, writing in The New Yorker, recently reported that the Grand TurtleBear likes to read, too -- and if you accept that what a person chooses to read reflects their interests, and assumptions about the world, this should be interesting to all of us.

(I came to Lizza's piece via an article in TPM by Benjy Sarlin, who quotes Lizza below.)

...Bachmann traces her conversion to evangelical Christianity to a series of films by theologian Frances Schaeffer entitled "How Should We Then Live?" condemning everything from the Italian Renaissance to modern day government conspiracies.

[Ray Lizza writes] The iconic image from the early episodes is Schaeffer standing on a raised platform next to Michelangelo's "David" and explaining why, for all its beauty, Renaissance art represented a dangerous turn away from a God-centered world and toward a blasphemous, human-centered world. But the film shifts in the second half.

In the sixth episode, a mysterious man in a fake mustache drives around in a white van and furtively pours chemicals into a city's water supply, while Schaeffer speculates about the possibility that the U.S. government is controlling its citizens by means of psychotropic drugs.

Bachmann also highlighted Schaeffer follower Nancy Pearce's recent book, "Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity," as a "wonderful" read. Per Lizza, the book urges readers to be skeptical of any non-Christian ideas, because even though they may be right some of the time "the overall systems of thought constructed by nonbelievers will be false" unless built on "Biblical truth."

I can't wait for the Grand TurtleBear to be appointed Queen of America; can you? We'd have the kind of fun few Western cultures [principally, in Europe and Russia] have experienced since the 1930's and 40's. Though Cambodia and Rwanda and the Sudan have come close.

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Future

Tin Foil Hats May Not Be Required

A Cartoon By Mr Fish (Image: Fish)

Want to know how much God loves the 'Bible Belt' and what all these evangelicals are preaching? Just look at the change in weather patterns over the South -- and Texas now has over one hundred days a year, with temperatures at or over 100 degrees? He loves them so much He's going to bake them first. Good eatin' that way.

-- El Rog The Magnificent

Governor Rick Perry of the independent nation state of Texas held a rally in Houston's Astrodome today; temperature inside the covered sports arena was approximately 70 degrees, and outside a partly cloudy 97. The New York Times reported that in the arena (capacity 71,500) approximately 20,000 people appeared for the Prayvagaza:

Mr. Perry came up with the idea for the event in December but did not make an announcement about it until June. In letters to his fellow governors and in other statements, Mr. Perry used Bible verses to describe the rally’s purpose: He wanted to humbly ask God to intervene on behalf of the troubled nation, to provide spiritual solutions to the country’s problems and to bless and transform the lives of Americans. The governor repeatedly stressed that the gathering would be apolitical and “open to any member of the public who wants to join with us in prayer,” as his letter to Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama stated.

The rally was promoted and entitled "The Response" -- to what, exactly, wasn't said. Perry and the organizers of the event -- all evangelical christian leaders, some with their own money-making megachurches in the South and Midwest -- claimed it was for "people of all faiths" to attend.

But Christianity dominated the tone of the prayer service and the religious affiliations of the crowd. The event is shaping up to be one of the biggest tests of Mr. Perry’s political career, coming on the cusp of his decision about whether to seek the Republican nomination for president...

In addition to Mr. Perry, several influential Christian conservatives were scheduled to either lead prayers or read from the Bible, including Dr. James C. Dobson, a psychologist who founded Focus on the Family; Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council in Washington; and Dr. Richard Land, the conservative president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Preach It: Jesus Loves The Tea Partei (Julian Beck In Poltergeist II)

It's just one Dog's opinion, but since the intrusion of christian evangelism in American politics (beginning in the early 1980's with the so-called Moral Majority that became the 'Christian Coalition'), the push by these groups to eliminate any lines between church and state have increased.

The goals of these groups are no different from any other revolutionary organization in a quest for political domination of a society. It doesn't matter whether it's Marx, Lenin, Jesus, Mohammed, or some invented psycho-social theory -- each group demands their beliefs should shape, control and drive the world and the lives of individuals.

Personally, I believe in a multiplicity of views and opinions, beliefs and their free expression -- so long as no others are harmed in any way in the process. It's called "Democracy". I believe in observable facts, in the truth of data, and in scientific methodology.

I do not know what the Universe is. I do not know where it came from. I do not know what happens to us when we die. I do not know whether "God" as two of the three major religions of the world (i.e., Christianity; Islam; Buddhism) define that, exists or not.

The one thing I do know is that no other human being knows the answer to any of these questions, either. The ones who claim they do know, that faith and belief are superior to skepticism or doubt, are not being honest with themselves or anyone else. Case in point.

But the Robertsons, the Reeds, Fallwells, Swaggarts and Warrens, the Dobsons and Perkins and the Terrys, do claim to know. They know what is best for the United States and every person in it -- because, they claim, god has told them. They have faith and a structure of belief which, if everyone would just live from it and in it, all the Bad would go away -- and the Bad is Sin, which can only be removed by believing as they do.

Of course, along the way, these white men become wealthy. Churches are tax-exempt. They become powerful within the christian community -- only, now these groups are politically organized, and they want policy and political decisions to reflect their, uh, values. They want one belief leading the nation and all its people -- and because they believe a deity speaks through them, they will make the decisions for all.

Jonestown, Guyana; November 1978 (Photo: TIME.com)

This, incidentally, is not Democracy. It's Theocracy.

I don't know if these people will ever-- as Margaret Atwood saw in her 1984 novel, The Handmaid's Tale -- see the United States as so awash in sin, so 'in rebellion against god' that they will believe god (somebody's god, anyway) has directed them to overthrow the government in some fashion and purge the sin and the Bad from the country. In order to save it, and lead it in righteousness.

And in the process, the evil, personified in specific groups and individuals, must be purged and punished. And in human history, any truly radical shift from one social order to another is always, always, backed up by the threat of imprisonment or execution.

Where Revolutionary Intolerance Always Ends: UN War Crimes

Commission Investigators At Mass Grave Of Muslims Near

Sbrenicia, Serbia, 2007 (Photo: Dalje.com)

I don't know. But with the increasingly fractured and stalled nature of our two-and-a-half political-party process, the continuing deterioration of the global economy as Trillions of dollars in CDO and Credit-Default-Swap debt can no longer be swept under the carpet, the future looks more and more unstable. It's why I keep saying it could look more like the 1930's than we realize.

There have been ideas of coup d'etat in Ameica before -- during the Civil War, when Lincoln was looked upon as a virtual dictator; in 1933 and 34, when a group of our wealthiest citizens decided Franklin D. Roosevelt was destroying the country through New Deal economic policies that would lead to communism. There is some opinion that JFK's assassination (and later, RFK's) changed the political direction of America, abruptly.

There was a phrase people used to use in the 1930's, when discussing the rise of Fascism in Italy, then Germany, and Japan: It Can't Happen Here, the title of a book by Sinclair Lewis about an America where a Fascist ideology and leader does appear -- except, Lewis' novel was about politics.

He didn't envision the possibility that the deeply conservative, babbling-in-tongues, tent-revival religious leaders of Lewis' day could become the slick, well-dressed and organized religious leaders of air-conditioned megachurches -- or that they would begin to hunger after political power to lead all people toward god (well, somebody's god, anyway) -- whether they might want to or not.

'Dangerous' Not To Believe? (Screencapture: CNN online)

Lewis didn't see these same clever men of faith (someone's faith, anyway) might receive serious financial contributions from wealthy, non-religious conservatives, at the same time they raked in the donations of the faithful: Harold Camping's Oakland, California-based organization pulled in over $80 Million with the claim that god Camping had predicted the christian 'Rapture' and end of the world. Politics, now -- like so much else -- is about money, and 'christian' evangelical leaders are awash in it.

Can "It Happen Here"? I don't know. It depends upon how desperate our times become; on how delusional some people may be. It really depends upon how much we take for granted the freedom to act as wish under law, and to think and believe as we will; how much we cherish our individual selves and respect the same rights for others. This is the America I live in, and believe in.

Ultimately, Rick Perry's little roadshow probably says more about his "redefining his brand", about keeping his political viability alive among extremely conservative and evangelical christians. Texas -- or Oklahoma, or other parts of the American South -- is not the United States, and people like Perry or the other so-called christian leaders he invited to join him this morning are not a majority in this country.

My point is that we don't know what the future holds -- and history is full of difficult times, in which a very focused and organized minority has often taken political control of a society in turmoil.

The Tea Partei very much see themselves in the role of outsiders, bringing America back to fiscal sanity, to 'Greatness'; and it's most visible spokespeople are Little Sarah Palin, and Grand Turtlebear Michele Bachmann, both of whom are very open about leading America to -- somebody's god, anyway.

For our own good; of course.

---

True Colors

Hopey-Changey: I'm Done

A Cartoon By Mr Fish (Harper's magazine online)

It isn't just his continuation of the Bush-era signing statements and expansion of Presidential power; his continuation of secret electronic surveillance programs very possibly in violation of the Constitution; his refusal to place additional stimulus (e.g., job creation) over giving the Banksters whatever they want; his refusal to use infrastructure rebuilding projects across the country as a means of jump-starting the economy by providing jobs; his continual giving in to the Rethugs, seeming determined never to stand up to them -- as if he were a caricature of a spineless, liberal politician.

America since December of 2000 has been little more than a string of failures, of manifest greed and judgement so poor as to be truly evil -- an anti-American dream, ending in poverty, inequality and the end of Law and Reason. Our Republic seems bound (our karma? Who knows) to continue spiraling down into a shadow of what we could have been: The beginning of the End Of Empire.

Instead of real leaders, we'll end up being led by a succession of squalid, vicious, anti-intellectual tools of of the Owner class, the Palins and Bachmanns, dreaming of "restoring our greatness" -- as the gulf between the fantastically wealthy and everyone else in America becomes more nakedly apparent than it has been since the late 19th century. Our laws will continue to be determined by men who are (like the blighted Clarence and the smug, rabid Tony) poor scholars and narrow ideologues.

What makes it even more bitter is the past two years of wasted opportunity to Do Right, when the Right was so clear. And Obama's stubborn, even enthusiastic, willingness to do Wrong, when the Wrong was so obvious.

Now, as a continuation of the same pattern of behavior, Obama has said publicly that Medicare and Social Security will be cut (though he doesn't use that word) in reaching a "compromise" with the Rethugs as they threaten to implode the American economy.

If that's so (and I have no reason to believe otherwise, given the evidence of his past behavior), he'll give the Thugs whatever they want, as he gave the Banksters -- but he'll do it without my vote.

(Cartoon: Mr Fish, Harper's)

From Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo:

Multiple senior House Democratic aides tell TPM that caucus members were caught off guard by news stories about President Obama's push for deeper deficit and spending reductions -- and particularly about the White House's willingness to cut Social Security as part of a grand bargain to raise the debt limit.

Paul Krugman in the New York Times noted,

It’s getting harder and harder to trust Mr. Obama’s motives in the budget fight, given the way his economic rhetoric has veered to the right. In fact, if all you did was listen to his speeches, you might conclude that he basically shares the G.O.P.’s diagnosis of what ails our economy and what should be done to fix it. And maybe that’s not a false impression; maybe it’s the simple truth...

...it’s hard not to get the impression that he is now turning for advice to people who really believe that the deficit, not unemployment, is the top issue facing America right now, and who also believe that the great bulk of deficit reduction should come from spending cuts. It’s worth noting that even Republicans weren’t suggesting cuts to Social Security; this is something Mr. Obama and those he listens to apparently want for its own sake.

And, reposted from The Big Picture, by Barry Ritholtz:

On election night [in 2004], I wrote The Tragedy of the Bush Administration. In it, I despaired that:

Once in a generation, the stars align for a political leader. There is this perfect moment – too often based on some enormous danger of long-lasting consequences for generations to come.

Once every half century, the perfect combination of leadership and threat, of challenge and response meet. The leader – imperfect, fallible, yet ready to rise to the occasion – grabs the brass ring.

Think Winston Churchill fighting the global threat of the Nazis, Thomas Jefferson writing the Declaration of Independence, JFK’s dare to send a man to the Moon...

The rest of that piece went on to lament how George W. Bush was granted that rare opportunity to grab the brass ring, to rise to the occasion — and failed miserably.

Here we sit, not half a century later as originally surmised, but a mere six years later. I once again find myself lamenting the opportunities wasted by a US President in response to a great cataclysm. In the case of President Obama, it was his response to the financial crisis. The opportunity for greatness presented itself, and was ... ignored.

The President was swept into office on a wave of Anti-Bush sentiment. The stock market was in freefall, credit was frozen, the recession already 13 months old. As Rahm Emanuel said, “Never waste a good crisis.” A strong leader would have taken advantage of the moment, of the opportunity...

... as the finance sector got larger and more important, it was paradoxically under ever less scrutiny, supervision, and regulation. With that new found freedom from oversight, the banks promptly blew themselves, and the global economy, to smithereens.

What did [Obama] do in this scenario?

• He appointed two of the architects of the crisis to major White House economic positions: Lawrence Summers as CEA Chair, and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary.

• He made the enormous tactical error of focusing on Health Care Reform, while the banking crisis was still in full flower.

• He failed to marshal adequate resources to respond to the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

The first item damned him to a mediocre economic team, one that failed to respond strongly to the banks that created the crisis. The second error earned him the enmity of the opposing party. The third error was political, and likely cost him the House, and possibly the Senate.

(Cartoon: Mr Fish, Harper's)

The great irony is that the man who ran on the campaign slogan of Change failed to deliver it in any meaningful way — at least, where the public wanted it — in getting the reckless runaway banks under control, and in stimulating the moribund, post-credit crisis economy...

The opportunity existed to get the renegade banks under control — to reduce their leverage, their recklessness, and to get their hands out of the taxpayers pockets.

That opportunity was squandered, and Obama ended up as a defender of the banking status quo. It is where his presidency could have achieved lasting greatness, and instead was turned into just another elected official, who over promised and under delivered . . .

---

Still Here

At 6:01PM (or, 12:01PM, depending on the news agency) PDST on May 21st, the world was supposed to end, and the Rapture of (depending on who you talk to, only about some 144,000) Faithful And True Xtians to their heavenly reward, leaving behind their clothing and appearing before god (or, somebody's god, anyway) in "the altogether". They will then spend eternity praising and communing and more praising and communing, and then more praising. In the nude. Forever. Not even a g-string.

The majority of humanity would be Left Behind, muddling through about five months of (as Dr. Peter Weckman told us in Ghostbusters) "Basically the worst parts of the Bible" and a return to a pre-Internet culture, before the Earth would be horribly destroyed. The Billions still on Earth who perish will be cast into a pit of eternal fire and damnation, where they will be damned and in the fire forever, and Lloyd Blankfein and Angelo Mozilo will try to sell other damned souls Ice water Futures. Forever.


One Of The Millions Of Handbills, Preaching The Bad News™:
You're Damned, Because You Did A Bad Thing God Knows About

All this was utterly made up prophesied by the Reverend Harold Camping of Oakland, CA, just across the Bay from where I have my rug and dog bowl. And, international media have already reported that this wasn't Camping's first attempt at predicting Judgement Day: He had done so in 1994. When The End didn't occur then, either, Camping went back to his drawing board and came up with May 21, 2011 (Professor Frink: "Ah, sorry; forgot to carry the '2'!") as the really correct and accurate it's-for-real-this-time date.


Harold Camping Says Even If Jesus Doesn't, Chtulu Loves You.

No one knows how many years Camping had asked for money before the 1994 Judgement Day did not happen -- but after coming up with the 2011 "for-real" date, he had seventeen years to sell this concept and obtain more money from his more easily influenced fundamentalist Xtian followers.

Through his network of Family Radio stations (it's FCC licenses alone are valued at approximately $50 Million), Camping broadcast his message of The End Times, and his (always) urgent request that the Faithful send money. Lots of it. To do the good work.


Julian Beck As That Wacky Reverend Kane In Poltergeist II (1986)
Do I Really Have To Spell It Out, Or Did You Make The Connection?

And, send it they did -- approximately $80 Million since 1994, a large amount spent on printing leaflets and billboards from sea to shining sea, announcing The Bad News that the world was ending and that after 6:01PM PDST on 5/21/11, there would be no possibility of salvation If you weren't Raptured, you were damned -- Jesus would turn a deaf ear to your plea for forgiveness. Harold said so.

As the good people at Blazing Alcoholic Beverage point out,

Actor 212 said,

Revelation specifies that Jesus would choose 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel... so that's 144,000 people, all Jewish, presumably.

Now, while one might be tempted to go see if Israel... had an unusual spike in mysterious deaths yesterday, the Diaspora and subsequent immigrations has probably dispersed those Chosen over the entire planet. 144,000 deaths in a population of 7 billion wouldn't even show up in a statistical analysis of the third order.

So it could have happened.

I have the temerity to ask: Providing you believe in the possibility of a comic-book or Hollywood special-effects kind of religion; what kind of deity provides salvation for only 144,000 out of 6-plus billion people or provides no mechanisms or rules by which to increase that number; thereby ensuring that the majority of humans will perish in the everlasting lake, etc. Huh? What Kind?


Your Punishment For Buying Glenny's Line: In Hell, He's On Every Channel

Harold Camping's deity, apparently. Harold was reported as being "in seclusion" in his split-level home in Alameda, CA, and told the local ABC affiliate, KGO-7, that he was "honestly perplexed" and "doesn't understand why [the Rapture] didn't occur" as he had determined.

Possibly he will go back to the drawing board and come up with a new absolutely correct and for-real-this-time-we're-really-sure Rapture Date in, 2030, say. Another nineteen years of gathering the faithful, bringing in the sheaves and shearing the sheep. It's old-school banking, baby.

Camping will have passed away by then, but if his Family Radio is a Camping family business (as many evangelical schemes tend to be), then he'll be leaving a wonderful legacy of fund-raising for his children, along with attempts to raise some of the dead.


The Rapture: A Completely Believable Premise, With Flamingos

---

Noch Einmal:

Radio Host Who Predicted End of Days To Speak
"Flabbergasted" Harold Camping says he will make a statement on his radio station at some point today -- By GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press

Harold Camping declined Monday to immediately comment to The Associated Press at his home, but said he'll make a full statement in a radio broadcast later in the day... The 89-year-old Camping told the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday he was "flabbergasted" his doomsday prophecy did not come true.

Some of Camping's followers say they are surprised they were not swept up to heaven... Along with the disappointment, believers who spent their savings to advertise the world's end are now facing more earthly concerns.

Noch Einmal, Mit Schwein:

The New York Times reports that Harold Camping says October 21st is the absolutely, definite, real and honest-to-somebody's-god true date for... something. Possibly, the emergence of a new form of Latte from the mind of Starbucks™.

Yesterday, Camping told his radio audience of six people and a Parakeet that still listen to him that May 21st had been an "invisible Judgement Day" -- just because you could not see it, you of little faith, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

What [Camping] decided, apparently, was that May 21 had been “an invisible judgment day,” of the spiritual variety, rather than his original vision of earthquakes and other disasters leading to five months of hell on earth, culminating in a spectacular doomsday on Oct. 21 — something he had repeatedly guaranteed.

On Monday, however, Mr. Camping seemed satisfied with his new interpretation, which apparently spared humankind its months of torture for a single day of destruction.

“The world has been warned,” said Mr. Camping, who said this would be his last interview... “We don’t have to talk about this anymore,” he said.

At the same time, it raised concerns that some believers might do themselves harm rather than face Mr. Camping’s promised apocalypse, something he refused to take responsibility for on Monday. “I am not the authority,” he said.

But Mr. Camping said his company — which is a nonprofit — would also not return donations given by his followers in advance of the May 21 prediction. “We’re not at the end,” he said, “Why would we return it?”

Why, Indeed.

---

Future Crazy Rising

The Echo Chamber Rules


"We will forcefully resist people imposing their will on us":
Person Carrying Assault Rifle At Event In Phoenix, Arizona,
Where President Obama Touted Health Care Reform, 2009

David Kurtz writes at TPM that for newly-elected members of the House of Representatives, "their first week on the job will forever be marked by the attack on Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ)". That another line had been crossed with that event, and how the new House reacts to it is anyone's guess.

"Beginning in August 2009 [Kurtz writes], when the tea party movement began disrupting congressional town halls in districts across the country", Democrats experienced a sudden, in-your-face attack by people with no anger management skills and every intent to intimidate the Democratic politician being 'targeted'.

I remember news coverage of various Democratic Senators and Representatives, in video clips showing them standing, trying to talk reasonably with people who had been sent to Town Hall meetings to be angry -- to "shout out", disrupt and dominate, any of the Democrat's Town Halls with the Righteous Anger of True American Patriots: the so-called tea party movement.

It was to provide a focus for Nightly News video, which everyone knows follows the loudest noise or shiniest object. Television news viewers across America and the world saw clips of angry people, shouting at a Democratic politician (on some occasions, even inches away from their face, as happened to Senator Arlen Specter), publicly accusing them of being a "Socialist" with "Washington's Socialist Agenda" for "Socialist Health Care".


'Rocking The Town Hall', 2009; Shown By Fox As Just "Concerned
Americans", Only Exercising Their First Amendment Freedoms

Spread out in the hall... towards the front, stated an organizing memo, "Rocking The Town Hall", written by one of the 'founders' of the Tea Party movement, Bob MacGuffie. The objective is to put the rep on the defensive with your questions and follow-up... The The rep should be made to feel that a majority... [of the] audience opposes the socialist agenda of Washington... The goal is to rattle him, move him off his prepared goal and statements... stand up and shout out... Look for opportunities...

This wasn't about promoting actual discussion of an important issue at the community level. It was a beer-hall tactic, to derail discussion and provide images to be spun over and over on television. It was to give an impression that a majority of people in America were angry over a "Socialist" Health Care reform plan. It was about silencing, not promoting, constructive debate.


(Right Principles PAC memo by Bob MacGuffie, a founder of the Tea
Party Nation, June 2009. Photo/Text: HistoryCommons.org)

Most people sighed, watching such clips (rebroadcast over, and over on CNN and the Little Rupert channel, which was exactly what the Rightist PACs wanted), and shrugged... it's all getting so crazy; but, what're ya gonna do....

At that same time in 2009, the number of violent threats against Democratic House members rose sharply. "Despite Republican claims that Democrats were milking the threats and exaggerating them for political gain," Kurtz writes, "the threats were deeply troubling to Democrats privately. They were forced to rethink holding town halls and to recalibrate the risks associated with being a public official."

Unlike the House leadership, regular Members do not receive security details -- and from that perspective, Democratic Representatives were shaken by the tea party crazies. They saw Rising Crazy on the Right as leading to some kind of an incident, where they were were targets vulnerable to physical harm.

"But things had calmed down for the most part since the passage of health care in the first part of 2010. As the ...midterm campaigns heated up, the political tenor grew sharply more volatile again," Kurtz wrote.


Little Sarah, Plain And Tall, With A Treasured Friend

During the Health Care Reform debate in 2010, if an attack on a Democratic House member had occurred, Kurtz stated, "or [in] the run up to the elections, no one would have been shocked. But [after the midterm election] the heat of the moment seemed to have dissipated."

Kurtz noted that the kind of community meeting which Representative Giffords held yesterday in Tuscon is the "bread and butter" of a Member of the House when they are away from Washington. It's considered essential, a duty of elected office. However, the entire House of Representatives (including the 94 newly-elected Members) now knows from their first week on the job that unless they pay for their own security, they are vulnerable to The Crazy.That in the future, any one of them, or their staff, could be a target.

No one knows whether what happened in Tuscon will make Representatives without security less likely to meet, up close and personal, with their constituents in future -- and whether that makes the political process more, not less, centered on the insular little riverside village where America concentrates its politics.

---

Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old gunman apprehended at the Tuscon shooting yesterday (indicted on charges of assault, murder, and attempted nurder today), is already being described in the Rightist blogosphere as a Leftist crazy -- primarily because the Tea Party wants to put as much distance between themselves and Loughner as possible.

Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee made an unsolicited comment to the press today, saying, "What we know about [Loughner] is that he was reading Karl Marx, and reading Hitler, and burning the American flag. That's not the profile of a typical tea party member if that's the inference that's being made."

(It's a theme on the Right, by the way, that Hitler was a leftist -- that 'Mein Kampf' was a 'Socialist' tract, and that the National Socialist German Workers' Party was a leftist movement. It's true; they really want to believe that.)


Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo In Middle Of Blog Rant

With all this a prologue, my prediction is, after some kind of interval (not necessarily decent) following yesterday's shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, that there will suddenly be a rise in announcements by Republican House Members -- all talking about threats against themselves and their families... from Leftist crazies.

It'll be the same type of claim the Right has made, falsely, for two decades: That the mainstream media is owned and dominated by liberals and the Left.

As if to prove that old claim a lie, Little Rupert's Fox will pick up this talk of New Threat From The Left, and broadcast it; spin, and repeat... Broadcast; spin, and repeat. Broadcast; spin, and repeat; the claim that the Right is more threatened by the possibility of an armed Left. And, it'll be picked up by Lard Boy, Bill-O, Drudge, Little Glen Beck, and the rest of the Echo Chamber: Broadcast; spin, and repeat. Broadcast; spin, and repeat.

By the Autumn of this year, Gabrielle Giffords will have become the new Rethug poster child for fears of violence -- from the Left, when none exists. It will be just another step in the Echo Chambers' process of demonizing anything Liberal or Progressive, confusing public understanding of the realities we're facing, and further polarizing American society when we can least afford it.

But as I've said, Little Rupert and the rest of the Echo Chamber could care less for all the harm they're doing by fabricating and escalating conflict and division. It's all about money and profit, for them; nothing more.

So; what're ya gonna do. Sometimes I think that as Americans, we deserve everything we're all going to end up getting. Collectively, we're that stupid.

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

---

Crazy

New York Times January 8, 2011, By MARC LACEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

TUCSON — Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat, and 18 other people were shot just north of Tucson on Saturday morning when a gunman opened fire outside a supermarket where Ms. Giffords was meeting with constituents for a “Congress on Your Corner” event.

Ms. Giffords, 40, was described as being in very critical condition at the University Medical Center in Tucson, where she was operated on by a team of neurosurgeons. Dr. Peter Rhee, medical director of the hospital’s trauma and critical care unit, said that she had been shot once in the head, “through and through,” with the bullet going through her brain.

“I can tell you at this time, I am very optimistic about her recovery,” Dr. Rhee said in a news conference. “We cannot tell what kind of recovery but I’m as optimistic as it can get in this kind of situation.”

Truly shocking; a tragedy; a nine-year-old girl and a Federal Judge killed. Which, of course, the floating scum of the Rightist echo chamber will remind us, could not have been foreseen, and for which no one (aside from the gunman and any co-conspirators) can be blamed.


Commentary By Gummo At The Great Curmudgeon

At a press conference, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik said that

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government -- The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the Capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry... vitriol might be free speech, but it's not without consequences.

(NOTE: I originally thought ABC had reported that Gifford's husband, U.S. Navy Captain and Astronaut, Mark Kelley, had replied to a reporter's question that the Tea Party was to blame for the attack on his wife. That's what I believed I'd heard; I tried to find transcripts for both the ABC World News and CBS Evening News, but they haven't yet been released for today's broadcasts. After watching clips of both programs, I believe the reference was actually to the Pima County Sheriff.)

Unfortunately, Speaker Boner, President Sessions and President Cantor won't blame any of this, or of the increasingly violent rhetoric and acts in America, on the Rethug hate machine: Like Little Glenny Beck, Lard Boy; Bill-O; Little Mikey Weiner; Little Rupert, and Little Annie Coulter; I've written about it before.

Individually and collectively, for nearly twenty years, they and others who mimic them have all made a great deal of money by demonizing the Left, creating a public vomatorium of hatred -- because it sells (Lard Boy himself admitted that the controversy he creates with his hate speech "allows me to charge confiscatory ad[vertising] rates").

"Second Amendment solutions" "Tea Party Justice" "We didn't bring guns -- this time" [Handmade signs from photos of tea party rallies]; "Why don't [terrorists car-bomb] the New York Times" [Coulter]; "We are at war with this president" [Limbaugh]; "The Revolution is Now" [Beck]; "You fags should get AIDS and die" "Only ...resistance to this baby dictator, Barack Hussein Obama, can prevent the Khmer Rouge from appearing in this country" [Weiner]; "At what point do the people march down to their state legislator's house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp?" [Erik Erikson, Red State]


Map Of Democratic 'Targets', From SARAHPAC Website, 2010
(Giffords' is third in the Arizona map, on the lower right)

Like the crosshairs on Little Sarah Palin's website map of Democrats "targeted" in the midterm elections. Giffords herself told CBS News in an interview (replayed on the CBS Evening News tonight) during the 2010 elections that Palin's use of "crosshairs... looks harmless, but can have real consequences".

Little Sarah, Plain and Tall, posted a brief comment on her Facebook site, My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today's tragic shooting in Arizona... we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

Peace? No. Like a person who provides the weapon, The Little Sarahs of the world thrive on fear and conflict to make a profit. When someone uses the weapon for a violent attack, the Little Sarahs and Glennys, Lard Boys and Mikey Weiners say Hey; we're not responsible for what some nut case does!

Justice? No. They won't be blamed.

A commentator at The Great Curmudgeon's site noted that in Weimar Germany, violent right-wing rhetoric, and actual violence including political assassination defined that pre-Hitler era, adding, "What we're seeing is nothing new".

The Right in this country -- like the Right in Europe of the 20's and 30's -- can't be divorced from its pustulent rhetoric. They rely on it to define themselves; by contrast, the Left in America doesn't respond in kind. And violent words lead to progressively more violent acts. Only a fool will refuse to see that.

Only a fool believes that currents in history never repeat themselves. But the Right, which eagerly laps up the vomit of the Becks and Limbaughs and O'Reillys, aren't much concerned with History. And ignoring the past is to walk down an incline which is almost impossible to climb up again, without paying a heavy price. Ask the Germans. Ask the Spanish.

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

---

New Normal

The New Normal (NYT, 12/08/10)

The 'deal' orchestrated by President Obama and his 'team' with the Rethugs is already being debated. Last night, Charlie Rose had four commentators in round-table discussion (more or less; only one was actually in the studio): U.S. Representatives Jan Schakowsky (D - Illinois) and Anthony Weiner (D - NY), Kenneth Rogoff (Thomas D. Cabot Professor of Public Policy, and Professor of Economics at Harvard University), and Al Hunt, the Managing Editor for Bloomberg News.

Rogoff and Hunt were the Center-Right guests; Schakowsky and Weiner (who is one of the Democrats' most articulate and energetic spokespersons) were Progressive-Left. While Rogoff pooh-poohed it all with a well-so-what? attitude, Schakowsky and Weiner were absolutely clear: This 'compromise' adds hundreds of billions of dollars to the National Debt in order to provide tax breaks for billionaires (That, nearly a direct quote from Weiner).

Hunt noted that his reporters tell him the Republicans were willing to make more compromises, if the President and his administration had made a harder fight -- and were amazed when they received everything they wanted, allowing them to give Obama only one real concession: Extension of unemployment benefits.

Hunt related that the Republicans had instructions to give ground on everything except provisions in the Bush Tax Cuts involving the Estate Tax (of most benefit to only the wealthiest Americans with extremely large personal fortunes) -- that they would give Obama everything except that.

Rogoff concluded that there were many provisions in the deal that assisted the working poor and families; Representative Weiner responded that this was important, and that compromise in Washington is expected -- but, he asked, where was the President we voted for? He didn't define the debate for the country, allowing the Rethugs to do that.

Weiner asked, "People expected that [Obama] was going to roll up his sleeves and fight for America's middle-class working families." Why didn't he do that? Why does he say now this deal was the "best" he and his team could do -- when that is so obviously not true?

In the end, Weiner added, the people who benefited the most from the 'deal' were the 10,000 or so members of America's First Families, the top two per cent of the population. Legislation which allows them to protect their billions is long-lasting -- as befits the Rethug perspective that this is the "Owner" Class, the true source of jobs and prosperity in a trickle-down world.

For the rest of us, the 'deal' will provide short-term benefits; they are supposed to be a second 'Stimulus Package' without being openly labeled as such. But 'stimulus' is just that -- a short pulse, like using a defibrillator to restart the heart of a dying patient. Unlike the continuing fortunes of the First Families, it's disposable; it isn't meant to last.

Representative Schakowsky added that other Rethugs are now appearing in the media, crowing, on the strength of having gotten the Democrats to cave so easily -- and that now, they're announcing next year in Congress, we're going to vote on spending cuts. "They're going to take this momentum and go after programs like school tuition and help for families; programs that benefit the middle class."

This has always been their agenda, she added, and the President has given them every indication he won't stand up to them.

In looking at the New York Times this morning, what caught my eye was not the analysis in their main article about the deal: It was the caption below a photo accompanying the article: ...The unemployment rate, now at 9.8 per cent, is expected to be near 8 per cent by the end of 2012.

Please look at the job seekers in the accompanying photograph -- young and middle-aged black women, and an older white man. In most places in America, this is predominantly the face of unemployment: Young and black, or older and white.

8 per cent unemployment. With televisions blaring advertisements about luxury cars and vacations, sports and images of upward mobility for all; telling us everything is fine; just go back to sleep...

This is the 'new normal we're being asked to swallow. And this is acceptable?

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