October, 2012 archive

Turning it back, that is. Eugene Robinson:

When Republicans vow to “take back our country,” they never say from whom. But we can guess.

Issues of race, power and privilege are less explicit this year than in 2008, but in some ways they are even stronger.

Four years ago, we asked ourselves whether the nation would ever elect a black president. The question was front and center. Every time we see the president and his family walk across the White House lawn to board Marine One, we’re reminded of the answer.

The intensity of the opposition to Obama has less to do with who he is than with the changes in American society he not only represents but incarnates. Citing his race as a factor in the way some of his opponents have bitterly resisted his policies immediately draws an outraged cry: “You’re saying that just because I oppose Obama, I’m a racist.” No, I’m not saying that at all.

Follow the link to find out what he is saying.

This one is not as funny as her usual bits, but is more disturbing. The undercurrent of racism in one of the interviews–well, just watch it. It’s slightly longer than two minutes.

At Bloomberg, Stephen L. Carter ruminates on “principles.”

I can’t say that I agree with all his conclusions or examples, but I do think it’s worth a read. Here are two snippets:

When politicians and their supporters refer to “principles,” they usually don’t mean it in the sense that Aristotle or my father did. “I’ll preserve Social Security” or “I’ll never raise taxes” aren’t statements about fundamental beliefs. At best, they are examples of conclusions to which one might reason from fundamental beliefs. Probably, however, they aren’t even that — they are simply lines that have tested well with focus groups.

(snip)

Too much of life nowadays revolves around the notion that self-interest is a principle. It isn’t. It’s just an animal instinct — a useful one, to be sure, in the functioning of markets, but a dangerous one to unleash on an entire society. When we fret about the epidemic of academic cheating, for example, what we are really seeing is the predictable result of the abandonment of principle by we adults who are supposed to be setting an example.

President Obama on Ayn Rand, via TPM (emphasis added):

Have you ever read Ayn Rand?

Sure.

What do you think Paul Ryan’s obsession with her work would mean if he were vice president?

Well, you’d have to ask Paul Ryan what that means to him. Ayn Rand is one of those things that a lot of us, when we were 17 or 18 and feeling misunderstood, we’d pick up. Then, as we get older, we realize that a world in which we’re only thinking about ourselves and not thinking about anybody else, in which we’re considering the entire project of developing ourselves as more important than our relationships to other people and making sure that everybody else has opportunity – that that’s a pretty narrow vision. It’s not one that, I think, describes what’s best in America. Unfortunately, it does seem as if sometimes that vision of a “you’re on your own” society has consumed a big chunk of the Republican Party.

This is consistent with the comment I heard from a lady who said that, when she was in college, she learned quickly to avoid dating men who were reading Ayn Rand.

Via Bartcop.

Via Mother Jones.

Via Bartcop.

As usual, in Onion there is truth.

Via The Commander Guy.

Jay Bookman wonders why Mitt the Flip has suddenly decided to trumpet the navy and reaches a conclusion:

In Romney’s view, the fact that 4 percent of the world’s population controls a mere 50 percent of the world’s naval firepower, almost five times the amount of the second-ranked power, leaves that 4 percent dangerously vulnerable.

. . . Why is Romney stressing naval expansion in his campaign remarks? Take a look at the map of swing states. Virginia is critical to his election hopes. Virginia is also home to Newport News Shipbuilding, which with 21,000 employees is a major contractor with the U.S. Navy.

Leonard J. Pitts, Jr., considers the undercurrents of Mitt the Flip’s binders full of women and finds himself transported back in time:

A pattern takes shape here. Between Romney’s binders full of women, and Rush Limbaugh branding a woman a “slut” because she thinks contraception should be part of her health insurance package, between Rep. Todd Akin’s belief that the uterus somehow filters out unwanted sperm and Rep. Allen West’s chastisement of an opponent’s failure to act like a “lady,” it becomes increasingly obvious some socially conservative men are stuck in a time warp. Akin, West and Limbaugh hunker down like Davy Crockett at the Alamo, behind modes of sexist condescension that were getting old when the Beatles broke up. Romney tries to show he “gets it” by disinterring a trope from the era of Jheri curls and Max Headroom.

When’s the last time any of these boys had a date?

In the world outside their time bubble, women run states and nations, fight fires and litigate cases, perform surgeries and grab rebounds. And yes, they still tend boo-boos and fix meals, too.

Back in time is, natch, where these folks want to be, back in the Never Never Land that never existed of Leave It to Beaver* (never mind that Barbara Billingsley was a working mother).

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*I couldn’t stand that show, probably because my brother liked it.