Rearranging lawn chairs for the apocalypse

(The only pic of a lawn/deck/porch chair.)

Or something like that. Listening to Brian Lehrer's fill-in today, and was struck by just how ridiculous budgetary/austerity/taxes (no, I mean, revenue)/default discussion has become. Actually, they were talking about the potential effects of the recent EPA-empowerment by the Supreme Court. (Yes, that SCOTUS, the conservative one; still, Kennedy, the swing vote, seems to "go both ways" almost equally, and here's an example of his liberal-lean.)

(Detroit)

Offering up the conservative viewpoint, as WNYC/NPR hosts are wont to do in the name of balance, but also to be batted down by the usual left-leaning guest, Andrea Bernstein conflated two common refrains from the right (talk about taxes/regulation "hurting job creators" and "killing jobs") into one delicious, if not menacing, concern: government intervention is "killing job creators."

(That's what happened at Coney Island, right? Nah...)

Now, I'm pretty sure she didn't actually mean to say conservatives think the government will start executing small business owners (funny how the right usually only mentions them...) or CEO behemoths (no, that's only Obamacare and senior citizens... but they're not "producers," so who cares?). But she can be forgiven given the ferocity of conservative objections to any austerity decisions based on reasonable economics (spending cuts AND tax--uh, I mean, revenue--increases) that make it seem like anything but cutting the size and scope of the government will destroy the economy--or at least the part of it who are still doing extremely well.

(Chernobyl apparently didn't have enough regulation...)

Perhaps this was too cynical (and/or petty) a thing to bring me out of my blogging-hibernation, but these days, on the brink of--again, already?--Armageddon or at least the end of America as we know it, we could all use a good laugh.

(Creepy abandoned island)

Wailin' on Palin

One sentence to Glenn Beck. So says Brian Lehrer.

He just read it on air--it's as rambling (as one sentence can be) as the stuff I've heard from Laughner. This isn't the first such non sequitur from Palin since she's been tweeting. But it wasn't a tweet. Why not? And, of course (?), it's just in defense of herself, equating the safety of ALL of our children with "anyone" who is blamed for inciting violence. Yeah, Palin, who put a gun sight on Giffords' district.


Oops, there was more from Palin to Beck, but that's just the clip he read and the media has picked-up on. This is the second time I've heard it. Ah, a problem with live posts. Corrections.

We don't know much about the guy except that he's obviously crazy and no type of politically organized conspirator like McVeigh--but that doesn't mean he didn't have similarly conspiratorial ideas about society and the government in particular. There was the guy who got stopped on his way to shoot-up a non-profit, caught with black-helicopter lit suggested by Beck on his show.

Let's be clear: this guy was probably no tea-partier. Yes, they're loud and petulant and perhaps get off on the violent imagery of revolution--as Che shirts on Leftys illustrate too--but they haven't actually been violent.

This was indeed a political act. A premeditated murder of an elected official at a, though relatively minor, political event. He had been to something similar where apparently he was snubbed when he asked her an incoherent question.

[Or perhaps not so incoherent:

Loughner was not just spouting jibberish around grammar - see this article today from Gawker, which describes the right wing conspiracy theory around grammar.

"The Southern Law Poverty Center's Mark Potok, whose job it is to keep track of the various crazies this country breeds and nurtures, links Loughner's bizarre fixation on language and grammar to the theories of a man named David Wynn Miller—or, as he styles himself, :David-Wynn: Miller. When Politico's Carrie Budoff Brown contacted Miller, he said he "absolutely" agreed with Loughner's assertion that "the government is implying mind control and brainwash on the people by controlling grammar." Miller told The New York Times that Lougher had "probably been on my Web site."

Why Is Jared Loughner Obsessed With Grammar?So who is David Wynn Miller? According to Miller himself, he is a "Plenipotentiary-Judge" (and the King of Hawaii); he's also a 62-year-old former tool-and-die maker from Milwaukee. Miller's been selling his particular (and particularly bizarre) strain of the right-wing anti-tax "sovereign citizen" movement/conspiracy for years now, and gotten more than a few people thrown in jail for trying to use his theories. A visit to his website gives you a glimpse into the world of "QUANTUM-MATH-COMMUNICATIONS":"

Jan. 11 2011 11:51 AM]

So this was personal. The personal becomes political when paranoid delusions subsume politicians--and perhaps buttressed by an environment where dehumanizing political opponents in an Armageddon-ish battle for our country's soul is commonplace.

(Yes, from the Left too.)

Now Palin's taken down the crosshairs from her website. I'll take that as at least a tinge of guilt.

Best comment during a Lehrer guest trying to get at the mental state of the shooter otherwise marred by his virulent anti-pot bias (to ridiculous to get into--basically blaming schizophrenia on pot (!)):

Tricia from Brooklyn

It's time to discuss our culture which celebrates the cult of personality of murderers who do this for the notoriety. Can we talk about this man's actions without mentioning his name or plastering his face all over the media as a murdering celebrity? Can we stop enticing deranged people with the promise of instant celebrity?

Jan. 11 2011 11:41 AM

I heart Carl Paladino (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Hot Carl)

OK, not really. But I love that we finally have a tea-patsy (I'll get to that later*) who makes no bones (he probably uses this phrase, because, you know, he "works in construction") about his flagrant prejudices--against everyone who’s not male, white and right--and total lack of governing skills. This tells us two things, at least, about the people who support him: they are equally prejudiced and have no interest in making government any better, only negating its existence.

It also wakes us (or maybe just me) from the somnambulism that this is New York City and "it can't happen here," in such a progressive northern metropolis. (Well, actually it can't, but, for better or worse, we're not just us. We’re a big-ass state full of rural and suburban upstate communities where this guy has all his support. It was Rick Lazio that took the Republican vote in the downstate counties.) We can't be blamed for this indulgence, after the usually status quo-loving Mike Bloomberg recently came to the defense of the downtown Islamic center (and Constitution and reason), and lulled all of us (or just me) into thinking the divisive moment had passed--north of the Mason-Dixon, anyway. But apparently it hasn't, at least until November 2nd.

But is he really a racist/sexist/general scumbag? The jokes, the comments, the idiotic ideas. But let's focus, as most are, on the jokes, emails actually, that he "forwarded" to a "select group of friends.” (Must not have been too select if they got out, huh Carl?) Defenders, calling into Brian Lehrer on WNYC (two out of three, aggravatingly and surprisingly, were women), claimed they don't make him anything, except maybe someone with a sense of humor. I'd agree, only, for one of the cartoons mentioned, it's a racist sense of humor, thus making him a racist.

Why not “call a spade a spade,” as one caller offered what she thought was one of Paladino’s attractive qualities? She suggested this right after denouncing the specific charge of racism from the email; Lehrer commented on her choice of words. Was she so oblivious to the fact that that expression shares a very common racial epithet for blacks, making her an idiot, or was she purposefully using thinly veiled language to tout his, and her, racist leanings?

All of which is a good distillation of the conundrum we find ourselves in, gazing into the psyche of these tea-freaks: either they really are that clueless, and that’s what passes for being anti-establishment these days—in part, now that The Man es moreno—or they’re not as dumb as we’d be comfortable believing. Paladino knows his audience; hell, he might’ve leaked the damn emails himself.

Hot Carl, by M. (thanks!)

“I’ll take you out!”

And if to prove my point, Paladino is now on video threatening, goomba-style, a journalist who had the gall to challenge him about unsubstantiated attack on his opponent, Cuomo, concerning something he himself is admittedly guilty—out of wedlock fatherhood. And, more tellingly, the reporter was from The New York Post, the super-conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned city’s daily. Paladino doesn’t have a problem with just the left-wing media conspiracy, but with ANY media.

Both of these, the threat and that it was against an ostensible ally, bring out the larger point—it’s not so much the obvious hypocrisy involved, but that it reveals what people who like him don’t care about. This isn’t about politics or, what conservatives might usually call, morals; it’s about tearing down the system, which to them represents, and is represented by, progress of any kind. This is the extreme-libertarian ideology.

However, despite the tea-partisan antipathy toward their institutional brethren, Republicans, as Paul Krugman points out in The New York Times, the latter shares their anarchic lack of policy or any real agenda, at least when it comes to fiscal policy. I would argue that the tea-partiers have necessitated the Republican’s shift rightward into pure platitude, devoid of the desire to help the country or even “make sense.”

“So how did we get to the point where one of our two major political parties isn’t even trying to make sense?

The answer isn’t a secret. The late Irving Kristol, one of the intellectual godfathers of modern conservatism, once wrote frankly about why he threw his support behind tax cuts that would worsen the budget deficit: his task, as he saw it, was to create a Republican majority, “so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government.” In short, say whatever it takes to gain power. That’s a philosophy that now, more than ever, holds sway in the movement Kristol helped shape.

And what happens once the movement achieves the power it seeks? The answer, presumably, is that it turns to its real, not-so-secret agenda, which mainly involves privatizing and dismantling Medicare and Social Security.

Realistically, though, Republicans aren’t going to have the power to enact their true agenda any time soon — if ever. Remember, the Bush administration’s attack on Social Security was a fiasco, despite its large majority in Congress — and it actually increased Medicare spending.

So the clear and present danger isn’t that the G.O.P. will be able to achieve its long-run goals. It is, rather, that Republicans will gain just enough power to make the country ungovernable, unable to address its fiscal problems or anything else in a serious way. As I said, banana republic, here we come.”

I got your cartoon right here, Carl.

(A still from a cartoon remake of Night of the Living Dead.)

Callers also said that everyone gets these kinds of emails "nowadays." That's not the case for me. The few times I have, I either spammed the sender, or, if I knew them and didn't just want to just dismiss them (family or friends), I would tell them to "cut the shit;" perhaps not always in those words. Of course, nowadays prejudice (except for Muslims, at the moment) isn't as overtly bandied about in mainstream speech; it's coded in more appropriate ways, though sometimes not very much, as with this guy.

For one thing, humor, as it is for many touchy subjects, can be a chief mode by which extreme speech, whether you agree with it or not, can gain social acceptance. Where I grew up just below the M&D line, in a MD suburb, one of a few Jews until high school, I was hardly ever called a kike or Christ-killer (thought it happened), but I did hear a whole hell of a lot of Jew jokes. Both made my heart flush and my throat swell just the same, and yet I knew, even at the time, that there was a difference between the two.

Was one preferable to the other? Sure. I’d go so far as to say that the relegation of racism to jokes told on playgrounds and at water-coolers (do offices still have those?) is in itself a sign of progress. But was it ever cool? Hell no. Did I let it slide? Not if I thought I had a chance to get a few punches in, or more, before I got my ass kicked or it was broken up. And this was a fairly progressive era, the 80s, and area of the country.

Satire, especially, for good reason and effect, can engender discussion about uncomfortable topics that can easily get mired in undemanding silence--or it can be a, sometimes not so subtle, cover for hate. Not to realize the difference is either ignorance or wink-and-a-smile acceptance tantamount to collusion.

I just had to.

*Finally, why would I call Paladino a patsy, or any of these folks who are running for office or voting for them, for that matter? Because, as the Right have been doing for years, by appealing to the concomitants of fear and anger, thereby obfuscating any talk of substantive issues, they have managed to get people to vote against their own interests. But so too the politicians, using the term broadly here—and I’m no politico lover—are for the most part dupes for bigger interests of deregulation and privatization (see the Koch brothers, et al.).

Carl, himself has made his fortune in large part by state and local government largess up in Albany, as reported by The Village Voice—and he wants to “throw the bums out”? He was one of the bums, from the other side of it. Maybe he’s thinking of expanding into defense department contracting or “clean” coal. Maybe he’s so stupid he doesn’t understand the ramifications of his own rhetoric. Or maybe he knows, like the rest of us, probably nothing much will no matter who’s in office. In that way, then, he’d windup gaming the system form both sides. Yeah, he’s racist—like a fox.

[My apologies to all non-racist foxes, such as the enjoyable Fleet Foxes.]

Taking it to the air-waves, again.

The lines below are from another comment posted to WNYC, this time to The Brian Lehrer Show, my fave. They were asking submissions for an Economic Villains Final Four or sorts. This was my recommendation, that oddly no one else mentioned:

Oh, c'mon. Uncle Milty (Milton Friedman) gave all these people an ethos, ethics (or lack thereof), and an excuse for indulging in their more base instinct.

We all became complicit in valuing the "creation of wealth" and making rock-stars out of bankers and financiers.

Then today, Brian was talking about street art/graffiti of late concerning the financial crisis. (Btw: We need a good name for this thing, financial/economic/banking crisis/mess/meltdown, etc. But, usually, I think, these things get named after the fact. Did they call it the Depression during the Depression? WWI used to be called The War to End All Wars, until it wasn't. That would've been pretty cynical to call it WWI before WWII had happened.)

Though I didn't get on myself, what I told the screener did get passed on to Lehrer to mention: since it hadn't been mentioned yet, Shepard Fairey, now of Obama Hope poster fame, has been doing political, and specifically ills of capitalist/consumerism, street art for years--and better than most. So, you're welcome, Shepard. God knows you need the press.

Also posted this pic. Had posted it here, already, but what the hell: you probably didn't see it the first time, slacker.

I'm proud of my country.

According to Brian Lehrer, on WNYC, President Obama's address/news conference the other night was viewed by more people than "American Idol"--if that's not Change We Can Believe In, I don't know what is. Way to go America.