2011 archive
Not Your Father’s Oldmobile 0
The Oldsmobile was a middle-of-the-road middle of the price range car, sort of a Pontiac without any of that GTO pizzazz.
The Oldsmobile is no more. So too is your father’s Republican Party.
I believe that many persons, especially older persons (a demographic that includes me) who consider themselves Republicans (a demographic that excludes me) don’t realize how little today’s Republican Party shares with the Republican Party of their upbringing, the party that included Everett Dirksen, John Heinz, and Edward Brooke, just to mention a few.
I sense a longing for their fathers’s Oldsmobiles among leading members of the professional commentariat, especially the two Davids (Brooks and Broder).
Broder, indeed, has given a name to an condition: High Broderism, a syndrome which includes the willingness to sacrifice moral outcomes on the altar of the appearance of conciliation. As the Booman points out, High Broderism postulates that compromise is a one-way street: Democrats give; Republicans take.
Nothing I have read recently so illustrates how delusional is their faith in the existence of their fathers’ Oldsmobiles than Shaun Mullen’s remembrance of Russell W. Peterson, Republican Governor of Delaware from 1969 to 1973. Shaun’s conclusion:
Russ Peterson was 94 when he died on Monday night at his Wilmington home. It is sadly ironic that as a moderate Republican he would have stood no chance of being nominated today in a state where Christine O’Donnell was the party’s 2010 standard bearer, let alone become an environmental torchbearer for a party that eschews moderation and is an avowed enemy of the environment.
Several years ago, before it became a real prospect, I heard someone propose, “General Motors should just stop making Oldsmobiles and see whether anyone notices.” (Eventually, General Motors did and car buyers didn’t, but that’s another story.)
The Republican Party no longer makes Oldsmobiles and lots of folks still haven’t noticed.
Virginia Beach Democratic Committee Fourth Saturday Breakfast 0
Date: Saturday, February 26th
Time: 9-11 a. m.
Special Guest Speaker: Louisa Strayhorn, the last African American to serve on the Virginia Beach City Council
Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (Map).
Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 $6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a pretty good buffet, too–plenty of variety).
More information here.
Dis Coarse Discourse, Twits on Twitter Dept. 0
I think part of the problem is that some of these clowns have watched too many Dirty Harry movies and really do believe that solutions flow from the end of a gun.
Mother Jones had the twit’s twits in a twist:
According to the online article , Jeff Cox tweeted “Use Live Ammunition” in response to a Mother Jones tweet reporting riot police had been called into the state capital to remove protesters.
Via Balloon Juice.
The Tea Is Out of the Bags 0
Michael Tomasky explains in the Guardian that it’s all about the monied. A nugget (emphasis added):
At the state level, most notably in Wisconsin but in other states too, conservative governors are using the financial crisis – created by Wall Street bankers and the deregulation-mad politicians who serve them – to give the bankers even more power, in effect, by trying to crush the strongest countervailing force against them in our political system – unions.
Lucy Johns, a letter writer in The Nation (vol. 292, no. 9, Februay 21, 2011, p. two, letters available online only to subscribers), discusses, a bit cynically perhaps, the movement of jobs and markets overseas as interpreted by the plutocracy. An excerpt:
Whatever motive impelled Henry Ford to pay a living wage or others of his status to tolerate government subsidies of middle-class life (the GI Bill, mortgage deduction, college tuition aid, union protection), it’s gone now. We’ve all thought such subsidy is what America was about. Not. It was about maintaining demand . . . Don’t need that demand anymore. The policies that enabled its growth are nothing but a diversion of profit to the undeserving.
Nothing To Do, Nowhere To Go 0
Drinking Liberally Virginia Beach 0
Struggling start-up needs your help.
When: Thursday, February 24, 6 p
Where:
-
One Fish Two Fish
Long Point Bay Marina
2109 West Great Neck Road
(Four blocks south of Shore Drive)
Virginia Beach, Va. (Map)
Showing up (and paying your own check) is the only qualification for membership.
Facebook Frolics (Updated) 0
State of Maryland demands prison guard job applicant’s social networking login information and reads his posts and messages.
This goes beyond being careful, which is wise, to being creepy. The State of Maryland is confusing itself with the TSA.
The ACLU has more details, plus a petition to the Secretary of Public Safety of Maryland for you to sign.
Addendum, the Next Day:
The policy has been suspended for 45 days pending review.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness is breaking out all over.
Police received a chilling phone call late Monday afternoon from a 15-year-old boy telling them his friend had been shot.
Officers arrived at the scene to find a 16-year-old girl with a fatal gunshot wound to the chest, Clayton police spokeswoman Tina Daniel said. The shooting occurred in a wooded area behind a home in the 4100 block of Dunn Road in Ellenwood.
Cuts for All 0
An open letter from the Republican Party. Read it all the way through.
Poor people, we are going to cut food stamps, Medicaid, family services (including Planned parenthood), HEAP, and many if not all other programs that you use.
Teachers, social workers, Police, firemen – we will be cutting your numbers, pay and benefits.
Students (and parents of students), we will be cutting financial aid (and of course the above mentioned teachers).
Veterans, we will be cutting veteran services, health care and mental health assistance.
Disabled people, we will be cutting support services and staff used to provide those services.
Senior citizens, we will be cutting social security and Medicare, along with assisted living support and the above mentioned HEAP.
And finally, for the wealthy, we will be cutting your taxes. Everyone has to give up something in these trying times.
Signed, The GOP
P.S. for our corporate friends, we will not just cut your taxes, but also cut many of those rules and regulations also. We appreciate your sacrifice.
Trickle Down 0
You can look at this chart to see what is trickling down:
More charts at Mother Jones.
Via Michael Tomasky.
Correlation 0
Shaun Mullen finds some interesting statistics. Follow the link to see what conclusions they lead him to.
South Carolina — 50th
North Carolina — 49th
Georgia — 48th
Texas 47th
Virginia — 44thGot that? Meanwhile, the states with the highest ACT/SAT rankings all allow collective bargaining:
Iowa — 1st
Minnesota and Wisconsin — 2nd
Kansas — 4th
Nebraska — 5thStatistics can lie, but these are unambiguous. States that allow teachers to bargain produce better students, and by inference better teachers.
Doing the Bristol Stomp (Updated) 0
A dance party may be in the future for tea party darling Christine O’Donnell.
The Delaware Republican — who lost the Senate race in November to Chris Coons — says she’s been invited to be a contestant the TV show “Dancing with the Stars,” but she’s not sure if she’ll do it.
She says she can’t dance.
Lack of competence has not stopped her before.
Addendum, the Next Week:
It stopped her this time.
So she’s staying out of “reality” TV and in her fantasy world.
Pulling the Plug 0
John Jon Stewart, in the video embedded at this Talking Points Memo item (check out the comments), said that there was nothing in common between the Wisconsins gathered in Madison and the Egyptians who gathered in Cairo.
He has a point, certainly as regards the severity of grievances.
Nevertheless . . .
If you are in the Capitol attempting to access the internet from a free wifi connection labeled “guest,” you cannot access the site defendwisconsin.org. The site has been used to provide updates on what is happening, where you can volunteer, and where supplies and goods are needed to support protesters. Administrators of the website were notified on Monday that the page is being blocked. Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Mike Tate says that the site was put on a blacklist typically used to filter out pornography sites so that protestors inside the Capitol could not access this key site.
Via The Richmonder.
The Rewards of Incompetence . . . 0
. . . are nil.
Dean Baker, writing at the Guardian, points out that many of those who today crusade against the growing deficit are the same folks who championed the policies of that led to the housing crash, which in turn led to . . . the growing deficit.
A nugget:
Now that we are experiencing an economic disaster – 25 million people unemployed or underemployed, millions of people facing the loss of their homes, more than 10 million underwater with their mortgages – as a direct result of their incompetence, these same people are telling us again about the urgent need to cut social security and Medicare. The deficit hawks somehow think that their case is more compelling because of the damage done by their incompetence.
It should not work this way. In most lines of work, incompetence is not a credential; it should not be one in designing economic policy either.
On! Wisconsin, Lessons Learned* Dept. 0
The Rude One extracts some learnings. A sample:
4. Remember: if Republicans in the Senate abuse the rules that run their house by filbustering or putting individual holds on nearly every single bill or nomination from the House or the White House, refusing to even allow them to be considered, even if it affects the actual functioning of the nation, that’s just brave men and women standing in the way of Democrats enslaving the American people. But if Democrats in Wisconsin deny the Assembly a quorum by leaving the state, that’s just arrogant politicians refusing to do their jobs.
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*Hip buzzword of the day for getting consultancy gigs.