There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear.....

Since my last post, Occupy gatherings have garnered national and international media attention. For some silly reason, the corporate media can't seem to read the signs people are holding and can't figure out what we, the 99%, want.
Dahlia Lithwick wrote a good article on this very phenomenon. You can read it here.

Think, for just a moment, about the irony. We are the most media-saturated 24-hour-cable-soaked culture in the world, and yet around the country, on Facebook and at protests, people are holding up cardboard signs, the way protesters in ancient Sumeria might have done when demonstrating against a rise in the price of figs. And why is that? Because they very wisely don’t trust television cameras and microphones to get it right anymore. Because a media constructed around the illusion of false equivalencies, screaming pundits, and manufactured crises fails to capture who we are and what we value.

Matt Taibbi has a detailed, long but worth it article on the 'Texas Miracle' the corporate media thought (before he opened his mouth) would be the GOP 'saviour'. (And doesn't that beat everything? the baggers (fire and tea) like to think those who support our current President think of him as a 'saviour'....amazing projection skills.) Go read The Best Little Whore In Texas here.

Another bit of the glorious bagger legislating in my own little home state, there's this....the one bill where Governor Bev Purdue's veto didn't matter. The federal judiciary put a hold on the worst part of this entirely anti-woman legislation in their quest to live in my uterus. Shameful. It just amazes me that there are people out there who don't see the false claims during the health care debate about government getting in between you and your doctor, yet they want to make it legal to get between my doctor and my uterus. I swear, maybe there is something in the water, other than fluoridation. You can read about the NC legislation that gets all in my uterus without my consent here. And now that I feel oh so dirty, let's move on to more educational posts, shall we?

One of my Facebook friends writes for Mother Jones and The Washington Monthly. You can read his historical view of what the Founding Fathers would think about the Occupy movement here. And what is that you say? There is an inaccuracy? What?! Look in the comments and you will see what an actual journalist does when he realizes their is an inaccuracy. That's what you never see in corporate media.

My friend Chez had this quote from Jon Stewart about Pat Robertson calling out the field of GOP Presidential candidate. Seriously. Pat Robertson calling others too crazy....it really is a moment of surreal reality.

James Fallows thinks Herman Cain's new ad is the Best Ad Yet. Again, surreal reality.

How have we gotten to 2011? It really is amazing, scary, funny and lots of other adjectives I won't write. If you are the 1%, you aren't reading this so that makes you the 99%. Call your congresspeople, call your governors, call your friends and family....if you can, go to an Occupy event. You can find one where you are here.

So that's what I've been up to this week. The title of this post is an oldie but a goldie and seemingly more relevant than when it was released. How quaint the late 60's and early 70's seem today. So enjoy the video.....

Another Must Read.....and bonus! a rant

One of the pages I follow on Facebook posted this earlier and I must say, it blew me away. Remember a while back, when I said that I don't think the Civil War ended? What I didn't do was say it nearly as well as Charles P. Pierce does in this article. 

It really needs to be spread far and wide to every one who really wants to hold us together long enough to repair the damage and the wounds of the last 150 years....hell, from the pilgrims forward truth be told.

With our corporate media rushing to blame Islamic terrorists for the recent horrible events in Norway  when it turns out he is a blond, blue-eyed Nazi-type nationalist, makes me remember all the right wing nationalist attacks on American soil that no one talks about with any semblance of rationality. It's all about who wins and who loses the media day and the ratings and the whining from the very people who encourage and support these same ideas for political gain and power and wealth. Greed basically. All these christo-facists who will reap the rewards by the people too dumb or lazy or apathetic  to really pay attention that the 'religion' they all espouse is nothing but a facade to keep or gain power and money. And here they are ready to plunge the entire fucking world back into the worst depression any of us have ever seen, worse than the Great Depression of my grandparents era, by using peoples faith.
That worldwide depression led to the rise of Hitler, a world war and a cold war. World War II may have brought the United States out of depression, but what did we get for it? A literally divided world between free people and not free people. For 50 years we lived like this. Many innocents suffered in the undeclared wars of the 50's and 60's into the 70's. Korea, Vietnam, Hungary, Germany, Romania, Czechoslavakia, Iran, Iraq (funny, that) and another fun trip back in time in Afghanistan and on and on and on.....
Then the Cold War ended. (I have to say that as a military brat, the youngest of 4 girls, during the 60's and 70's that my sisters had no idea what the Cold War was....I was and still am, astounded by that. For those of you who share my sisters ignorance, go here.)  
So what happened after that? We turned on each other. Funny thing about us humans, we have to have an enemy. I don't know why, but I wish evolution would hurry up, we'll never get to the 24th Century that Gene Roddenberry envisioned and I want. Anywho, the entire era of the Cold War, it was politically advantageous for republicans to win elections by painting the democrats as weak on foreign policy. The reason they could safely have that ground was because they would actually cross the line and do things that democrats wouldn't. But on the other hand, the dems with the Gulf of Tonkin, some dems would and could. Which may be the genesis of the 'both sides do it' meme that is so familiar today. Then Nixon came along and did what he did and got away with it which enabled people like Donald Rumsfeld, Roger Ailes and Dick Cheney to do what brings us to the United States electing a black man for President. Can you imagine? It wasn't supposed to be like that at all....they have to have been so disappointed when that happened. But then, they got together at a Koch Brothers event in Palm Springs or somewhere equally posh and thought up the wonderful world we live in now. Just writing that feels like a conspiracy theory and maybe that's by design? Because there wouldn't be people out there who would deliberately want to destroy the entire nation and economy on purpose....right?
Well, I don't really think so.....I think their motives were, and are, greed and power and money. I don't think they realized the economic situation in the country....and really, how could they? They live in a world that knows no limits, none. They don't live in the world that the rest of us do. Where people like me have to budget the $20.00 co-pay to see the doctor. They don't worry about people out there who have to wonder, should I pay the electric bill or put gas in the car? They didn't know that was there when they started I don't think. Maybe they thought it was like 1992 and all we needed was a little political wrangling to get them more. I don't know. What I think is that they didn't realize the economic situation or, and this is the important part, the level of fear that they had been fomenting for years with faux news and rush and all the others....they had control before, why would this be any different?
So here we are, on the brink of default. Yay for us.

My question then is this, what do they do now? They have made compromise of any sort impossible with their behavior during President Obama's tenure. So what happens? They give? The President gives? I honestly cannot believe they have put him in this position. And it won't matter who will 'win' this battle. The politicians win. The corporate media wins. The losers? Me, you, the entire world that isn't in the top 2%. And the people who have brought us here? Only 27-33% of the Grand Old Party of the United States of America. The people who have been shunned, rightly, by civil society. The people on the fringe. This time though, the corporations had media holdings to bring the people too dumb, lazy or apathetic a story they could accept and make themselves feel better.
That doesn't seem like a fair deal. At all.

That's it. Rant over. But go read Charles P. Pierce's article which brought us all here. :) You can read it here.

Must Read

Amen Brother Steve, Amen......

The problem with the 112th isn’t a structural impediment; it’s the result of a radicalized Republican Party that has no use for compromise, evidence, or reason. We have a congressional GOP abandoning all institutional norms, pushing extremist policies, rejecting their own ideas if they enjoy Democratic support, and engaging in tactics that were once thought unthinkable from policymakers who put the nation’s needs first.

as usual, he nails it....read it here.

It's a disease.....

I titled this a disease because it is a virus that attacked us in the 80's and has now taken over. Politics has gone 'celeb-reality'. Our media have failed us by accepting and propagating this veneer. It's a disease because it can be cured. By us.

Mark Halperin is a dick. Not only a dick, but a stupid one who couldn't find his way out of a paper bag. Yet, he remains one of the far too many 'experts' who mislead and downright lie to us. For what? Money. Power. Greed. Call it what you like, I am going to call it a disease.

Greg Sargent nails it......

I care less about Halperin’s use of the word “dick” than I do about the argument he and Joe Scarborough were making — that Obama somehow stepped over some kind of line in aggressively calling out the GOP for refusing to allow any revenues in a debt ceiling deal. This notion that Obama’s tone was somehow over the top — when politics is supposed to be a rough clash of visions — is rooted in a deeply ingrained set of unwritten rules about what does and doesn’t constitute acceptable political discourse that really deserve more scrutiny. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Michele Bachmann says deeply insane things about us not needing to raise the debt limit, but it should be seen as an enormously newsworthy gaffe when she commits a relatively minor error about regional trivia. This set of rules has it that it should be treated as a matter of polite, legitimate disagreement when Republicans continually claim that Dems cut $500 billion in Medicare in a way that will directly impact seniors, even though fact checkers have pronounced it misleading, but it should be seen as “demagoguery” when Dems argue that the Paul Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it.

Go read it here.

What she said.....

This is a must read. I agree completely with Desert Crone. Please go read it here.

Yet, still Olbermann and other critics frequently go to great lengths to give President Obama advice on how to do this or that. The fact that Obama is a pragmatist and a Constitutional scholar with a brilliant mind leads me to believe that his positions on issues are not based on his religious beliefs or political scheming but the most pragmatic, quickest way to do the right thing for people of the United States. Thus, he has used and is using his executive powers to make it easier for unions to organize, to implement parts of the DREAM Act, and to obtain civil rights for LGBT’s. If Congress won’t get the job done, then Obama looks for other avenues.

Bravo Desert Crone! Bravo.

So go read it and share it.

must reads

This isn’t government we’re watching; this is junior high.

It’s unclear where the adults are, but they don’t seem to be in Washington. Beyond the malice of the threat to shut down the federal government, averted only at the last minute on Friday night, it’s painful how vapid the discourse is and how incompetent and cowardly our leaders have proved to be.

 What does all this mean? That we’re governed by self-absorbed, reckless children. Further evidence comes from a new study showing that American senators devote 27 percent of their press releases to “partisan taunts” rather than substance. “Partisan taunting seems to play a central role in the behavior of many senators,” declared the study, by Justin Grimmer of Stanford and Gary King of Harvard.

 Read it here.

must reads

Wake up America. You are under attack. Stop kidding yourself. We are at war. In fact, we have been fighting this Civil War for a generation, since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. Recently Buffett renewed the battle cry: The “rich class” is winning this war. Except most Americans still don’t realize they’re losing, don’t see the prize at stake.

read it here

must read....

The most casual participant in the political process knows exactly what they will get when they vote for and elect Tea Party types and the more extreme right Republicans in general. No, he never came out and said "Hey, I'm gonna ream you public employees so hard you won't walk right for years!" on the campaign trail. He might even have said a lot of sweet sounding things to the contrary. Only a voter lying to himself or completely ignorant of politics, however, would actually believe it. It's time to stop being angry with Scott Walker, which makes no more sense than being angry at a dog for barking and chasing cars. Instead, our anger is more fairly directed at the swing voters who decide American elections – the kind of mushy, ill-informed "independent" who would vote for him and then be shocked to learn how extreme his brand of governance is. People like Walker will continue to get elected so long as there are voters who are willfully ignorant of what candidates really stand for or so easily duped that a few sound bites can overwhelm all available evidence that the Governor-to-be supports an agenda of the kind of corporate cronyism and pathological hatred of government that defines people of his ideological stripes.

via Gin and Tacos

a cautionary tale....

You must read this.  Driftglass compares a recent David Brooks column regarding the violent rhetoric in our political debate and an older David Brooks column (in which he contradicts himself) about Islamic extremists. This reaffirms my belief that religion, organized religion, is something to avoid. Driftglass shows the hypocrisy of the republican party and the right wing media and for a little flavor, also reminds us that this is all about ideology of religion. not even good or evil, just 'my religion has a bigger penis and therefore you suck and must die in the most horrific fashion', which the christian fundamentalists in the United States have given us....slowly, like Chinese water torture. and actual torture. so what does all the vitriol in our current culture have in common?


Let's begin with reading what Mr. Brooks has to say about the recent horrible events in Tuscon and the violent rhetoric employed by the right...

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

The good news is that there were a few skeptics, even during the height of the mania: Howard Kurtz of The Daily Beast, James Fallows of The Atlantic and Jonathan Chait of The New Republic. The other good news is that the mainstream media usually recovers from its hysterias and tries belatedly to get the story right.

So, get that? Now read what he says when it's Islamic fundamentalists.....

The Arab world, though famous for its bazaars, has not defined national glory economically, Greenfeld adds. Instead, the rising radical groups today define greatness negatively through acts of anti-Western defiance.

Superseding market entrepreneurs, there are terror entrepreneurs competing to see who can issue the most militant call and perform the most galvanizing act of violence. They are driven by resentment toward the West, but also by the internal competition for prestige and standing.

Worse, more and more people are falling for the Grand Delusion — the notion that if we just leave the extremists alone, they will leave us alone.

That's your corporate media doing what it does best...telling you that there is a liberal bias when, if you can reason and think, can clearly see that instead of the media hating palin and the teabaggers they are enamored by her/them...and yep, you guessed it, because she's "politically inflamed". Because our corporate media and the right wing media are only interested in giving us 'the news' because it brings in the advertisers. Money. Greed. Power. That is your corporate media. And if they can do that by donning the fake skin of christianity so they can get away with it...even sweeter.  

must read....

You must read these essays....they are not light reading, so you should bookmark for after the holidays if you don't wanna ruin the holiday buzz you may have.....