August, 2011 archive
Both Sides Now 0
- The young fellow timidly entered the office of the tough sales director.
“Wou-would you maybe think about considering maybe buying a life insurance policy?” he stammered.
The sales manager looked up. “What the hell kind of sales pitch do you think that is!” he bellowed. He wound himself up into a long lecture on the art and science of sales pitches, eventually talking himself into buying a $300,000 policy.
He finished up with, “So, remember young man, you have to have a toolkit full of different sales pitches and be ready to chose the right one for each prospect.”
“Oh, I do,” replied the young man, locking the signed application in his briefcase. “You just saw my stock sales pitch for tough sales managers.”
I’ve mentioned before that right wing politicians and commentators will say anything, regardless of how it contradicts what they said yesterday and or what they might say tomorrow. They can stand on both sides of any issue if it suits their tactics of the day.
The latest example is Texas Governor Rick “Fastest Lethal Injection in the West” Perry’s campaign’s responses to Perry’s own book. Eugene Robinson comments:
These and other wild-eyed views are set out in Perry’s book “Fed Up!” His campaign has already begun trying to distance the governor from his words, with communications director Ray Sullivan saying last week that the book “is a look back, not a path forward” – that “Fed Up!” was intended “as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excesses, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto.”
One problem with this attempted explanation is that the book was published way back in … the fall of 2010. It’s reasonable to assume that if Perry held a bunch of radical, loony views less than a year ago, he holds them today.
How can right wingers contradict themselves so fluidly?
They have only two allegiances: Winning and Wall Street.
All the rest is sales pitch.
Cantor’s Cant 0
Steve Benen finds another example of Cantor just making stuff up. A nugget:
The ratings agency hasn’t exactly kept the reasoning secret: congressional Republican expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default; they undermined confidence in the American political system; refused to compromise; they ruled out additional revenue; and they deliberately played a radical game with the full faith and credit of the United States. S&P didn’t leave much doubt about which side of the aisle the agency considers responsible.
This isn’t ancient history. This just happened and should still be fresh in everyone’s memory. For Cantor to blame Obama for Republicans’ borderline-criminal misconduct, hoping that we won’t remember the events of July and August, is pathetic.
Primary Election Day in Virginia 0
If there is a primary in your district, don’t miss it.
And Now for Something Completely Different 0
Reseg 0
As a follow-up to my previous post, segregation, like slavery before it, was at heart an effort to steal the labor of its targets by forcing them to work for subsistence, under slavery, then for pittance, under segregation. Dennis G. of Balloon Juice explained how that worked several months ago.
Here’s another of those attempts to legitimize theft of labor.
“The Help” 0
For several days, I’ve kept a tab open in my browser pointing to a column by Joanna Weiss, because I’ve been toying with posting about The Help, despite not seeing the movie and, indeed, have no desire to see it.
I first heard of the book from a “Readers’ Review” episode of the Diane Rehm Show. The show was at times enthralling and affecting, not so much from the discussion of the book itself, but from the phone calls: it evoked the listener callers, many raised in the South during the time in which the book was set, to tell engrossing and sometimes disturbing stories from their own pasts.
What has struck me is the reaction of black bloggers and writers whom I respect to the movie: it has ranged from ambivalent, illustrated by this from Leonard Pitts, Jr., to derivisive, as these from Chancey de Vega and Field. (I commend de Vega’s, in particular, to your attention.)
So I shall content myself with quoting Alberta Brooks, whose memories of working as “a help” are discussed today in the Chicago Trib. Here’s a snippet:
We knocked on the front door and when the lady answered, she directed us to go around to the back door.
On the farm in Arkansas, we had always entered the white people’s house through the front door. I guess it was because we lived on their property and they had known us all their lives. In fact, one of their young daughters gave me my name when I was born. She named me after herself, Alberta.
Now that I was up North, I never expected that white people would send you to the back. Nevertheless, I did what I was told because I had no other choice.
They were evil times.
And some would bring them back.
Drinking Liberally Wednesday in Virgina Beach 0
New location: We are still checking out locations to find a place with a good mix of menu, location, and layout.
Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.
When: Wednesday, August 25th, 6 p
Where:
The Jewish Mother
600 Nevan Road (Map)
Facebook Frolics 0
No, he isn’t 40 years old. Only half that:
(snip)
The woman said she doesn’t remember ever meeting Suka, but Thompson said Suka admitted to creating fake Facebook accounts to send her messages because he thinks he overheard the woman call him a virgin.
The Invisible Hand . . . 0
And this surprises us how?
“The management of Moody’s, the management of Moody’s Corporation and the board of Moody’s Corporation are squarely responsible for the poor quality of previous Moody’s opinions that ushered in the financial crisis,” he wrote.
“The track record of management influence in committees speaks for itself — it produced hollowed-out (collateralized debt obligation) opinions that were at great odds with the private opinions of committees and which were not durable for even a short period after publication,” he added.
Great Dismal Fire 0
Yesterday, the smell of fire was as strong as if it were next door.
“We saw smoke out there, so we knew we had a fire,” Craig said.
They didn’t know, however, that it would become the largest fire since the swamp became a national refuge in 1974, swelling to roughly 6,000 acres, or more than 9 square miles, and costing nearly $4 million, so far.
Repealing the 20th Century . . . 0
. . . and going back to the 19th.
MSNBC attempts to untangle the financial trail behind the efforts to resegregate the Wake County, North Carolina, schools:
Pouring Oil in Troubled Waters 0
Carl Hissan discusses the destructive insanity of the Republican Party’s war on the EPA. A nugget:
The corporate mentality toward pollution has changed because the alternatives are heavy fines, criminal penalties and savage publicity. A reminder of why we still need the EPA was last month’s oil spill on the Yellowstone River, which affected ranchers, farmers, fishing guides and rafting companies. It also occurred seven months after Exxon Mobil insisted that its pipeline would never rupture because it was buried too deep.
I remember the bright orange eye-burning noontime summer skies of Washington, D. C., smog alerts.
Returning to those days, as Republicans seem to want, is not a good idea.
Letting the Foxes into the Henhouse 0
Matt Taibbi on how the SEC buried its investigations:
The Presidential Race 0
No, not the horse race.
It seems to me that the incidence of overt racist conduct and comments has increased in the past two years; I don’t have the resources to do a valid study, but I do believe that a cursory reading of the news during that period supports my impression.
The election of President Obama, rather than signaling an America transcending racism, has shown how deeply invested are some folks in perpetuating and propagating bigotry.
Chancey de Vega explores this in a long article. I’ve excerpted his descriptions of two of the concepts he uses in his analysis, because I think many white folks just don’t want to look at the evidence.
If they don’t see white sheets and burning crosses, they don’t see racism.
The second concept is symbolic racism. Because racism has evolved over time from the classic slavery, hood and sheets type known as dominative racism, to the more contemporary “colorblind” variety, the language and theory has had to shift as well. These types of White racism often overlap, and one does not necessarily preclude the other. I would suggest that as we unpack the hostility of the White Right and the Tea Party GOP to President Obama, symbolic racism, and its auxiliary white racial resentment, remain the most revealing and useful frameworks for making sense of the foolishness we are witnessing.
Racism is much more than white sheets and burning crosses.
I recommend that you click to read the rest.
Rhince Cycle 0
Chris Matthews grills Republican Party Chairman Rhince Priebus on the anti-intellectualism and hypocrisy of the Republican Party.
Priebus’s ability to avoid giving direct answers to direct questions is awe-inspiring.
Excerpt:
“Do you have a hard time with the fact that your party left this country in wreckage?” Matthews said. “…You think you left this bed all made for him.”
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Via Bob Cesca.
