I received this email from FactCheck.org, right after the President’s speech:
Fact-Checking Obama's Speech
February 25, 2009
The president gets facts wrong about oil imports, mortgage aid and the transcontinental railroad, and more.
Summary
President Obama's first speech to a joint session of Congress was stuffed with signals about the new direction his budget will take and meant-to-be reassuring words about the economy. But it was also peppered with exaggerations and factual misstatements.
He said "we import more oil today than ever before." That's untrue. Imports peaked in 2005 and are substantially lower today.
He claimed his mortgage aid plan would help "responsible" buyers but not those who borrowed beyond their means. But even prominent defenders of the program including Fed Chairman Bernanke and FDIC chief Bair concede foolish borrowers will be aided, too.
He said the high cost of health care "causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds." That's at least double the true figure.
He flubbed two facts about American history. The U.S. did not invent the automobile, and the transcontinental railroad was not completed until years after the Civil War, not during it.
He claimed that his stimulus plan "prevented the layoffs" of 57 police officers in Minneapolis. In fact, it's far more complicated than that, and other factors are also helping to save police jobs.
The president also repeated some strained claims we've critiqued before.
Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:
Shortly afterwards, I sent it along to everyone on my blog distribution list. Not long after that, my friend and tor-mentor, Ron, responded thusly:
One has to wonder why his speech writers don't run their material by these checking folks BEFORE the speech is delivered.
I thought about this for a few moments, and offered these thoughts in return:
As a Dem, I would have to jokingly remark that that "would take all the fun out of it".
As a Repub, I would have to feign outrage, and yell, "You're goddam right!"
As a cynic, I would only ask, "Well, what do you expect? He is a politician"
As a skeptic, I would say that "You have to expect this sort of sloppiness in politics".
As a Libertarian, I guess I would call it "ongoing government fraud and a waste of tax payer money".
As an Oklahoma redneck, I'd have to say that "that damn n#@&^%r is lying again”.
Ron seemed to enjoy this:
Oh, shit! This is great writing! Always a pleasure to read you when you hit this level--p.s. stop drinking that coffee now before it's too late and you are unable to sleep again, forever.
Then I realized that I had missed a salient observation. I had neglected to include:
The lawyer: "Certain liberal allowances were made and concessions granted in the interest of expediency and the public good".
This all could have been avoided if President Obama had simply said:” Americans can do anything, which is how Henry Ford was able to invent the modern automobile industry in this country, enabling workers to afford responsible mortgages . This has played a significant role in making our heath care costs less than we had originally thought and helped reduce our oil consumption since 2005, because of the railroad we built right after the Civil War, which has dramatically affected the employment status of Minneapolis police officers. “
But I guess it wouldn’t have had quite the same ring to it, then, would it?
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
IT IS NOT PERMANENT
Post Script: Since this was first written, Sen. Chas. Schumer (NY) has chastised Gov. Jindal, et.al., by saying that the stimulus money was not a buffet, wherein states could pick and choose what monies they would or would not take: http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/schumer-multiple-choice/. In other words, get a life, get with the program or get lost. Sen. Barney Frank has hinted that there may well be a legal precedent for this condition, although I do not know about that: taking off-the-cuff television remarks at face value is risky.
Then the President gave a speech on the economy: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29375944/) and never directly mentioned the controversy with the governors at all…which I thought was both polite and politic. Not everyone was completely happy with some sought-after details (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090225_getting_warmer/), and FactCheck.org bemoaned some shortcomings (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29377101/), but Howard Fineman, commenting immediately after on MSNBC-TV, said the speech “exuded confidence”. And the next morning there was this: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/25/obama_speech/?source=newsletter
In the Republican rebuttal (not many “re”’s and lots of “buts”)and offered by none other than Gov. Jindal himself, there was no clear follow-up to any of the substance of the President’s remarks, but rather offered a long and rambling apology for past governmental failures and yet more supports for tax cuts. It had all of the (pardon me) “earmarks” of a lead balloon, and did not even please some traditional conservatives: (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/jindal-fox-ncot/). The basic message seemed to be that “the right is right and everyone else isn’t.”, and I was reminded of a scene from an Eddie Murphy movie, when his character responds to criticism by holding his hands over his ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you! Nah-nah, nah-nah!” As for Jindal’s reminiscence about walking down a grocery store aisle with his father, and his father making the statement, “Americans can do anything”, I thought Jindal might try walking down an aisle of a Wal-Mart and look at all of the products from China.
Most baffling, however, was a response I received to this article, after I posted it on another site (http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/), from a man from the red state of Tennessee. He told me that he had had a long, heart-to-heart talk with his congressional representative, who “educated” him in the complicated ways of government (That sounds patronizing: “Hi! I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you!”). She explained (?) to him that to accept the unemployment funds would require the state to set up laws and regulations that would later require his state to pay out funds it would no longer have. Or something. (Curiously, TN is among some red states that are broke or nearly so, and they do not have the money even now. This makes the point moot, because you cannot spend money you did not not have in the first place. Or something.). He therefore told me I should “investigate more” (I did) before I “judged” (I didn’t). I got the distinct impression that a) he got led down a primrose path by his representative, and b) he didn’t carefully read anything I said about the permanence, any more than Bobby Jindal paid careful attention to the President’s remarks.
Lately, many politicians (Jindal, Frank, Obama, Biden) have said repeatedly that we “need to be clear” and that America’s affairs should be transparent. Apparently they are nowhere near “clear”, because it increasingly appears that the only persistent condition that is permanent in America (i.e., from the understanding of my friend in TN) is that some continue to insist upon selective perception and hearing only what might soothe them. Or something.
Then the President gave a speech on the economy: (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29375944/) and never directly mentioned the controversy with the governors at all…which I thought was both polite and politic. Not everyone was completely happy with some sought-after details (http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090225_getting_warmer/), and FactCheck.org bemoaned some shortcomings (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29377101/), but Howard Fineman, commenting immediately after on MSNBC-TV, said the speech “exuded confidence”. And the next morning there was this: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/02/25/obama_speech/?source=newsletter
In the Republican rebuttal (not many “re”’s and lots of “buts”)and offered by none other than Gov. Jindal himself, there was no clear follow-up to any of the substance of the President’s remarks, but rather offered a long and rambling apology for past governmental failures and yet more supports for tax cuts. It had all of the (pardon me) “earmarks” of a lead balloon, and did not even please some traditional conservatives: (http://thinkprogress.org/2009/02/24/jindal-fox-ncot/). The basic message seemed to be that “the right is right and everyone else isn’t.”, and I was reminded of a scene from an Eddie Murphy movie, when his character responds to criticism by holding his hands over his ears and yelling, “I can’t hear you! Nah-nah, nah-nah!” As for Jindal’s reminiscence about walking down a grocery store aisle with his father, and his father making the statement, “Americans can do anything”, I thought Jindal might try walking down an aisle of a Wal-Mart and look at all of the products from China.
Most baffling, however, was a response I received to this article, after I posted it on another site (http://turn-left.hypocrisy.com/), from a man from the red state of Tennessee. He told me that he had had a long, heart-to-heart talk with his congressional representative, who “educated” him in the complicated ways of government (That sounds patronizing: “Hi! I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you!”). She explained (?) to him that to accept the unemployment funds would require the state to set up laws and regulations that would later require his state to pay out funds it would no longer have. Or something. (Curiously, TN is among some red states that are broke or nearly so, and they do not have the money even now. This makes the point moot, because you cannot spend money you did not not have in the first place. Or something.). He therefore told me I should “investigate more” (I did) before I “judged” (I didn’t). I got the distinct impression that a) he got led down a primrose path by his representative, and b) he didn’t carefully read anything I said about the permanence, any more than Bobby Jindal paid careful attention to the President’s remarks.
Lately, many politicians (Jindal, Frank, Obama, Biden) have said repeatedly that we “need to be clear” and that America’s affairs should be transparent. Apparently they are nowhere near “clear”, because it increasingly appears that the only persistent condition that is permanent in America (i.e., from the understanding of my friend in TN) is that some continue to insist upon selective perception and hearing only what might soothe them. Or something.
Monday, February 23, 2009
It is not Permanent
Filling The Room With Smoke
After listening to some Republican governors in the press for the last few days, you cannot help but wonder why some of them insist upon punching more holes in the bottom of a boat which is already sinking. Largely representing the RNC is Gov. Bobby Jindal (R. LA), there is a move afoot to decline certain federal monies from the $787B stimulus bill which just became law (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/governors-on-the-stimulus/#more-9101) .
Here is a report of some of the news on 2/23/09, the very day the President brought together a confab of affected, affecting, inflicted and inflicting economic players and decision makers at the White House: http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#url=http%253A%252F%252Fpr.thinkprogress.org%252
It goes without saying that there are far more people either unemployed or under-employed in the country right now than we have seen or experienced in a very long time (the boat is sinking). A leading (and phony, stumbling) argument for several governors pretending at fiscal heroism (Schwarzeneger and Crist excepted, to name two) is this: they claim that “strings attached” to such funds will force the states to alter their rules and regulations on the eligibility for the states’ unemployment payments, and thereby hamstring and cripple their budgets in the future, long after the stimulus funds are exhausted. It would begin to appear as if posturing, grandstanding (and an irresistible urge to obfuscate) has completely overtaken these state executives. They are puffing up their chests when they should be grabbing buckets and bailing water. Their desire for “personal gain”, political advancement and national publicity, seem to matter far more than their desire to effectively serve the constituents who so desperately need their help, right now. Indeed, HardBall, the MSNBC-TV program (Chris Matthews) on 2/23, played clips of three republican governors who as much as said they were posturing for a run for president 2012, by taking a stand against acceptance of some stimulus funds. It would seem that when your priorities are completely misguided, enabling the boat to sink quicker is somehow interpreted as a way to save lives (read: your own skin) in the immediate future: governors, high, and dry, and warm and comfortable in their mansions, apparently don’t share the same wet feet that their constituents have when the boat starts to take on water. This is especially odd when you think about Louisiana.
In some ways, I suppose, I should not be surprised at this dyslexic appraisal of our state of affairs. The recently unpregnant Bristol Palin has just been quoted as saying “abstinence is not realistic”, among teens, but the religious right sees it differently:
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/128265/. And Fox News reporters today (Countdown, MSNBC-TV) said that, despite the straightforward quote, Ms. Bristol said abstinence was “absolutely realistic” (yes, you read that correctly). You might just guess, that in the minds of many in the GOP, black is white, up is down and yes is no (and “no” seems to be a favorite GOP word, these days). For some of our illustrious leaders, even bass-ackwards seems ass-backwards. Doing the wrong thing seems to be the right thing, or so thinks the right, and these headline-grabbers are hoping you won’t remember how they made you dogpaddle, as the boat sank, when they come up for a next election…and we are “left” behind.
After today’s White House gathering, Gov. Jindal was all over the television, applauding the President’s efforts, while simultaneously attempting to hamper and stultify them. It was a photo op which did nothing to help the unemployed and disenfranchised of Louisiana. He doesn’t get it and I don’t get him. I hope no one else does, either. I think this is what you call operating without a hint of shame. If he is the rising star of the GOP, the dawn may a long time coming.
Firedoglake ran this today: http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/23/obama-on-cable-chatter-im-looking-at-you-jindahl/, and the President said (something like) this, to today’s assemblage: “ When we are talking about $7B out of a package of $787B, which is 5 ,6 , or 7% of the total, it sounds more like politics than anything else…which doesn’t make sense, when we have work to do”. He also reminded them that there was still “plenty of time for campaigning”. If this was a poker game, he just called their (the governor’s) bluff.
During all of the discussion prior to the passage of the stimulus bill, the universal descriptor for the Republican congressmen was “obstructionist”. They were also tiring and boring, and were testing everyone’s patience with their tedious linguistic pranks (Boehner was banal and Graham is crackers). They developed a party line that was anchored in the faulty mortar of more tax cuts and a lack of “real stimulus”. And now, even after they failed to stop the bill’s momentum, the governors have pretended to take up the mantle of smoky confusion to prolong the agony of tedium and empty rhetoric. To refuse needed funds out of grossly misguided principals is destructionist: has no one thought ahead to the costs of “re-construction”? Politics for politics’ sake is always expensive, down the road, and the state of the nation (and the states) has no time for peacock feathers and glory hounds. But see Jindal strut.
There are no perfect solutions for this completely imperfect economic travesty, and there is no faultless foresight concerning the crisis before us, but there is some awfully good hindsight about the last eight years of tax cuts and de-regulation that got us into the fix in which we are semi-fixed. We seem to be sitting atop a legacy of either doing nothing or doing as little as possible, and we must do something (I once had an “uncle” Alex, who used to say, “Let’s do something, even if it’s wrong”: we may be there). In some ways, the proposed delays, distractions, arguments and completely unhelpful “posturing” is akin to the environmental studies that stop needed construction projects: there is a small rabbit in the road, ahead of the bulldozer. Rather than spend a million dollars and two years’ study before the levee washes away the town, someone should stop screwing around and move the damn rabbit . It will take about ten minutes and save the local landscape from devastation the next time it rains. (Does the GOP even realize it is raining?)
This nonsense about “permanent” and/or irreversible state legislation about future unemployment policies is hogwash. These “united states” are still free to introduce legislation which augments, alters, defies or flies in the face of federal programs, whenever they like. They have certainly done so often enough in the past. I do not know what the governors are smoking, but the room is becoming hazy. Perhaps these captains of their ships of state are hoping the populace will get contact stoned from the smoke, and then somehow forget and not hold them accountable later on. But I hope we are not that gullible and short on memory. If anything should be permanent right now, it should be a determination to see that all of those we hold responsible stand up and act that way.
After listening to some Republican governors in the press for the last few days, you cannot help but wonder why some of them insist upon punching more holes in the bottom of a boat which is already sinking. Largely representing the RNC is Gov. Bobby Jindal (R. LA), there is a move afoot to decline certain federal monies from the $787B stimulus bill which just became law (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/governors-on-the-stimulus/#more-9101) .
Here is a report of some of the news on 2/23/09, the very day the President brought together a confab of affected, affecting, inflicted and inflicting economic players and decision makers at the White House: http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#url=http%253A%252F%252Fpr.thinkprogress.org%252
It goes without saying that there are far more people either unemployed or under-employed in the country right now than we have seen or experienced in a very long time (the boat is sinking). A leading (and phony, stumbling) argument for several governors pretending at fiscal heroism (Schwarzeneger and Crist excepted, to name two) is this: they claim that “strings attached” to such funds will force the states to alter their rules and regulations on the eligibility for the states’ unemployment payments, and thereby hamstring and cripple their budgets in the future, long after the stimulus funds are exhausted. It would begin to appear as if posturing, grandstanding (and an irresistible urge to obfuscate) has completely overtaken these state executives. They are puffing up their chests when they should be grabbing buckets and bailing water. Their desire for “personal gain”, political advancement and national publicity, seem to matter far more than their desire to effectively serve the constituents who so desperately need their help, right now. Indeed, HardBall, the MSNBC-TV program (Chris Matthews) on 2/23, played clips of three republican governors who as much as said they were posturing for a run for president 2012, by taking a stand against acceptance of some stimulus funds. It would seem that when your priorities are completely misguided, enabling the boat to sink quicker is somehow interpreted as a way to save lives (read: your own skin) in the immediate future: governors, high, and dry, and warm and comfortable in their mansions, apparently don’t share the same wet feet that their constituents have when the boat starts to take on water. This is especially odd when you think about Louisiana.
In some ways, I suppose, I should not be surprised at this dyslexic appraisal of our state of affairs. The recently unpregnant Bristol Palin has just been quoted as saying “abstinence is not realistic”, among teens, but the religious right sees it differently:
http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/128265/. And Fox News reporters today (Countdown, MSNBC-TV) said that, despite the straightforward quote, Ms. Bristol said abstinence was “absolutely realistic” (yes, you read that correctly). You might just guess, that in the minds of many in the GOP, black is white, up is down and yes is no (and “no” seems to be a favorite GOP word, these days). For some of our illustrious leaders, even bass-ackwards seems ass-backwards. Doing the wrong thing seems to be the right thing, or so thinks the right, and these headline-grabbers are hoping you won’t remember how they made you dogpaddle, as the boat sank, when they come up for a next election…and we are “left” behind.
After today’s White House gathering, Gov. Jindal was all over the television, applauding the President’s efforts, while simultaneously attempting to hamper and stultify them. It was a photo op which did nothing to help the unemployed and disenfranchised of Louisiana. He doesn’t get it and I don’t get him. I hope no one else does, either. I think this is what you call operating without a hint of shame. If he is the rising star of the GOP, the dawn may a long time coming.
Firedoglake ran this today: http://firedoglake.com/2009/02/23/obama-on-cable-chatter-im-looking-at-you-jindahl/, and the President said (something like) this, to today’s assemblage: “ When we are talking about $7B out of a package of $787B, which is 5 ,6 , or 7% of the total, it sounds more like politics than anything else…which doesn’t make sense, when we have work to do”. He also reminded them that there was still “plenty of time for campaigning”. If this was a poker game, he just called their (the governor’s) bluff.
During all of the discussion prior to the passage of the stimulus bill, the universal descriptor for the Republican congressmen was “obstructionist”. They were also tiring and boring, and were testing everyone’s patience with their tedious linguistic pranks (Boehner was banal and Graham is crackers). They developed a party line that was anchored in the faulty mortar of more tax cuts and a lack of “real stimulus”. And now, even after they failed to stop the bill’s momentum, the governors have pretended to take up the mantle of smoky confusion to prolong the agony of tedium and empty rhetoric. To refuse needed funds out of grossly misguided principals is destructionist: has no one thought ahead to the costs of “re-construction”? Politics for politics’ sake is always expensive, down the road, and the state of the nation (and the states) has no time for peacock feathers and glory hounds. But see Jindal strut.
There are no perfect solutions for this completely imperfect economic travesty, and there is no faultless foresight concerning the crisis before us, but there is some awfully good hindsight about the last eight years of tax cuts and de-regulation that got us into the fix in which we are semi-fixed. We seem to be sitting atop a legacy of either doing nothing or doing as little as possible, and we must do something (I once had an “uncle” Alex, who used to say, “Let’s do something, even if it’s wrong”: we may be there). In some ways, the proposed delays, distractions, arguments and completely unhelpful “posturing” is akin to the environmental studies that stop needed construction projects: there is a small rabbit in the road, ahead of the bulldozer. Rather than spend a million dollars and two years’ study before the levee washes away the town, someone should stop screwing around and move the damn rabbit . It will take about ten minutes and save the local landscape from devastation the next time it rains. (Does the GOP even realize it is raining?)
This nonsense about “permanent” and/or irreversible state legislation about future unemployment policies is hogwash. These “united states” are still free to introduce legislation which augments, alters, defies or flies in the face of federal programs, whenever they like. They have certainly done so often enough in the past. I do not know what the governors are smoking, but the room is becoming hazy. Perhaps these captains of their ships of state are hoping the populace will get contact stoned from the smoke, and then somehow forget and not hold them accountable later on. But I hope we are not that gullible and short on memory. If anything should be permanent right now, it should be a determination to see that all of those we hold responsible stand up and act that way.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Stupid...And More Stupid
From the Department of "I don't get it".
I was nearly prepared to write blog today about hypocrisy and duplicity (perhaps the new monikers of government), when this showed up in the NYT:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/against-stupidity-2/?emc=eta1
John (I picked a bad time to stop drinking)Boehner, Lindsey (nationalize the banks) Graham, Nancy( my family has money) Pelosi, Barbara(send me your tired, huddled masses and all of your money...NOW) Boxer, Sen. (I hang out in men's rooms)Craig, Sen.(I sleep around) Vitter, Rep.(I get all the facts wrong)Cantor and few others, including other assorted Republican grandstanders and state governors, just "don't get it". They rail and rant and stomp their adolescent feet in opposition to the stimulus, then they take credit for any portion of the bill that will put money into the hands of their constituents; or, as a mayor or governor, they say that even though they think the bill is bad idea (generational theft?), they want to be first in line to take the money. One person who may "get it", is Anh Cao, the Vietnamese-American Rep. who recently got elected in Louisiana, because after saying he would vote for the bill, ultimately did not: he buckled under pressure from his Republican obstructionists and now his constituents are now calling for his removal from office. Oops. And right now, some mayors and governors are saying that while they will welcome the cash, they object to being told by the Feds about how and where to spend it. They sound like the bankers who made $350B evaporate into the ether, last fall. Perhaps Hank Paulson is advising them?
Either I am missing something here, or else hypocrisy (I was for it before I was against it) or duplicity (I was against it before I was for it)are the watchwords of the day, and these professional comedians really expect us to believe them, trust them and that they will look out for us. Krugman (above) calls alot of this stupidity: he is more blunt than I like to be (you can laugh, now).
There are some other stupids:
Every study I've seen (and apparently Bill Clinton reads the same ones) from prominent economists says that tax cuts don't help in our current situation. They may not help at all, may actually be bad and that cash infusion for infrastructure, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits give back much more bang for the buck. Continued harping for tax cuts is STUPID.
GM wants umpteen billion more dollars to lay off 47,000 people and close factories. The little car company that could (Saab) has just filed for bankruptcy back home in Sweden, Hummer is on the block ( a special stupid for it even BEING in the first place)and Saturn is on the way out( the dealers are looking for a Chinese or Indian manufacturer to keep it alive?), and , finally, Chrysler is looking for another chunk of money (To give to speculative investors?) for funeral expenses (Chrysler is already dead: they are out shopping for coffins). All of this, as well as our tolerance for this foolishness, is STUPID.
Starbucks is closing many, many store and laying off 7,000 people. At the same time they are introducing instant coffee, or exactly a product they made their fortune campaigning against. STUPID.
J C Penny and Lowe's Home Improvement both say their fourth quarter sales were down 10%. Penny says their profit was down 50% as result. Lowe's says the profit drop was 60%. Who is doing these books? Are we supposed to believe this? STUPID.
Magic tricks: Bernie Madoff makes $50B disappear. Texas "Not a billionaire" Stanford makes $8B disappear. Then he disappears. Scotland's Wedgewood China goes belly up after a hedge fund makes their entire pension fund disappear. United Bank of Scotland admits to helping hide fortunes of taxable money in Swiss accounts, but pulls a George W. Bush and vows not to release details. STUPID.
The stimulus bill was signed just a few dozen hours ago and people are already claiming it doesn't work. NOTE: This document is the product of possibly the largest and slowest moving governmental body in the world. "You want it WHEN?" STUPID.
In February of 2009, in the 21rst century, we still have people trying to make the United States a Christian nation. Try looking around the world and your neighborhood: if you cannot see the ethnic and religious variations, you are just plain STUPID.
A hard-liner secular Jew in Israel is backing Netanyhu for PM and urging, among other absurdities, oaths of loyalties to the Israeli government by any of the several million non-Jews living with rocket range. Hypocritical, duplicitous and STUPID.
Prominent Israelis and defenders/promoters of Israel are decrying the new US mid-east envoy as "too fair", and "too even handed". Heaven forbid we should avoid favoritism and promote any equality of treatment. STUPID.
The new RNC chairman, Mr. Steele, is promoting a re-birth of the GOP through the use of hip-hop. We have a few thousand important issues staring us in the face, and he wants to recruit new blood into his party through the use of a musical venue which sounds as foreign to most Americans as the tone poems of Bela Bartok. STUPID.
Nearly everywhere I look, I see politicians and civic leaders speaking out of both sides of their mouths or reversing themselves over night. The ex-Reverend Ted Haggard (Colorado Springs) and ex-Gov. Spitzer (NY) are poster boys for hypocrisy. Every Republican congress member who voted "no", in lock step against the Recovery Act, then stood up to take credit for its benefits (or the pork they managed put in it, ala "earmarks are bad" John McCain)are guilty of duplicity.
And if we sit back and swallow all of this without criticism, oversight or scrutiny, then we are, sadly very STUPID.
I was nearly prepared to write blog today about hypocrisy and duplicity (perhaps the new monikers of government), when this showed up in the NYT:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/against-stupidity-2/?emc=eta1
John (I picked a bad time to stop drinking)Boehner, Lindsey (nationalize the banks) Graham, Nancy( my family has money) Pelosi, Barbara(send me your tired, huddled masses and all of your money...NOW) Boxer, Sen. (I hang out in men's rooms)Craig, Sen.(I sleep around) Vitter, Rep.(I get all the facts wrong)Cantor and few others, including other assorted Republican grandstanders and state governors, just "don't get it". They rail and rant and stomp their adolescent feet in opposition to the stimulus, then they take credit for any portion of the bill that will put money into the hands of their constituents; or, as a mayor or governor, they say that even though they think the bill is bad idea (generational theft?), they want to be first in line to take the money. One person who may "get it", is Anh Cao, the Vietnamese-American Rep. who recently got elected in Louisiana, because after saying he would vote for the bill, ultimately did not: he buckled under pressure from his Republican obstructionists and now his constituents are now calling for his removal from office. Oops. And right now, some mayors and governors are saying that while they will welcome the cash, they object to being told by the Feds about how and where to spend it. They sound like the bankers who made $350B evaporate into the ether, last fall. Perhaps Hank Paulson is advising them?
Either I am missing something here, or else hypocrisy (I was for it before I was against it) or duplicity (I was against it before I was for it)are the watchwords of the day, and these professional comedians really expect us to believe them, trust them and that they will look out for us. Krugman (above) calls alot of this stupidity: he is more blunt than I like to be (you can laugh, now).
There are some other stupids:
Every study I've seen (and apparently Bill Clinton reads the same ones) from prominent economists says that tax cuts don't help in our current situation. They may not help at all, may actually be bad and that cash infusion for infrastructure, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits give back much more bang for the buck. Continued harping for tax cuts is STUPID.
GM wants umpteen billion more dollars to lay off 47,000 people and close factories. The little car company that could (Saab) has just filed for bankruptcy back home in Sweden, Hummer is on the block ( a special stupid for it even BEING in the first place)and Saturn is on the way out( the dealers are looking for a Chinese or Indian manufacturer to keep it alive?), and , finally, Chrysler is looking for another chunk of money (To give to speculative investors?) for funeral expenses (Chrysler is already dead: they are out shopping for coffins). All of this, as well as our tolerance for this foolishness, is STUPID.
Starbucks is closing many, many store and laying off 7,000 people. At the same time they are introducing instant coffee, or exactly a product they made their fortune campaigning against. STUPID.
J C Penny and Lowe's Home Improvement both say their fourth quarter sales were down 10%. Penny says their profit was down 50% as result. Lowe's says the profit drop was 60%. Who is doing these books? Are we supposed to believe this? STUPID.
Magic tricks: Bernie Madoff makes $50B disappear. Texas "Not a billionaire" Stanford makes $8B disappear. Then he disappears. Scotland's Wedgewood China goes belly up after a hedge fund makes their entire pension fund disappear. United Bank of Scotland admits to helping hide fortunes of taxable money in Swiss accounts, but pulls a George W. Bush and vows not to release details. STUPID.
The stimulus bill was signed just a few dozen hours ago and people are already claiming it doesn't work. NOTE: This document is the product of possibly the largest and slowest moving governmental body in the world. "You want it WHEN?" STUPID.
In February of 2009, in the 21rst century, we still have people trying to make the United States a Christian nation. Try looking around the world and your neighborhood: if you cannot see the ethnic and religious variations, you are just plain STUPID.
A hard-liner secular Jew in Israel is backing Netanyhu for PM and urging, among other absurdities, oaths of loyalties to the Israeli government by any of the several million non-Jews living with rocket range. Hypocritical, duplicitous and STUPID.
Prominent Israelis and defenders/promoters of Israel are decrying the new US mid-east envoy as "too fair", and "too even handed". Heaven forbid we should avoid favoritism and promote any equality of treatment. STUPID.
The new RNC chairman, Mr. Steele, is promoting a re-birth of the GOP through the use of hip-hop. We have a few thousand important issues staring us in the face, and he wants to recruit new blood into his party through the use of a musical venue which sounds as foreign to most Americans as the tone poems of Bela Bartok. STUPID.
Nearly everywhere I look, I see politicians and civic leaders speaking out of both sides of their mouths or reversing themselves over night. The ex-Reverend Ted Haggard (Colorado Springs) and ex-Gov. Spitzer (NY) are poster boys for hypocrisy. Every Republican congress member who voted "no", in lock step against the Recovery Act, then stood up to take credit for its benefits (or the pork they managed put in it, ala "earmarks are bad" John McCain)are guilty of duplicity.
And if we sit back and swallow all of this without criticism, oversight or scrutiny, then we are, sadly very STUPID.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Everybody has their Liebermans
There is this story on MSNBC.com, this morning:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29276575/
You can read the whole article for yourself, but the by-line that got me reads like this (next to a photo of a guy who looks unsettlingly much too much like Paul Krugman):
Israel's Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who has called for the country's Arab minority swear loyalty to the state or lose their citizenship, has backed Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister.
My old Texas Instruments calculator seems to be broken, so I can’t say exactly how many people I will piss off with this comment, but that’s the way the unleavened cookie crumbles. Following in the footsteps of, and in the best traditions of, American politics, the Israelis have been busy playing the election game. This last race was a troublesome threesome, starring the venerable retread (and to some reviled) Netanyahu, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni (I still think her name sounds like an anorexic Italian sports car) and the third party, the Beitenu. This third party, the Ralph Nader/Ron Paul element, the salt-in-the-wound, itch-where-you –can’t-quite-scratch, annoying-like-a mosquito bite group, is apparently fronted by a man named...you guessed it…Lieberman!. From the photo in the article, he appears to dress much more casually and with a much nicer flair than our Connecticut chameleon, but he is very outspoken about his positions concerning what Israel “ought to do”And he is completely unapologetic about advising President Shimon Peres as to what stance to take and how the “new” government should be structured. It reminds me of the old joke:” Hi! I’m from Beitenu and I’m here to help you!”
I both know and know of many people in the US who are disgruntled, discouraged and annoyed by Joseph Lieberman and his curious impact on the last election. He dresses drably (and speaks with the same lackluster drone), muddies the waters and makes no secret of his desire to be in the limelight and garner public attention for his changing an changeable positions. I think the Democrats have been very kind to him, considering how many times he has thumbed his nose at them. I have yet to sense anything worthwhile that he has contributed to either the process or the outcome.
The (real) Israeli Lieberman frightens me more. There are too many words and phrases in this article that bother me: hard-liner, ultranationalist, government reign, threat to mid-east peace, and that ominous line (up above) about “swearing loyalty”. I am very concerned about how much obstructionist, militaristic and pugnacious thinking has risen so much to the forefront, especially when nearly the entire world is appalled by the recent genocide in Gaza. And history is littered with self-appointed “advisors” to kings, tzars and Presidents, and I don’t recall any of them promoting bright spots in world development.
But the last influence the world community needs right now is a hard-line position on Palestinians, when almost everyone would like this decades-old conflict to be ended as soon as possible. And the term ultranationalist just reminds me of the carnage, not so long ago, in the Balkans. And the simple fact is that no one needs to reign over the mid-east: somebody needs to get to the Israeli leaders and not-so-gently remind them that the days of King David are long over and democracies don’t reign.
But more disturbing than any other reference is the one about “swearing loyalty” to the government. Great and memorable(?) leaders like Adolf Hitler and kings and of the realm and their ilk have called for such measures over the centuries, and it has always been a story without a good ending. In the case of the Jews, after the Third Reich, I can’t imagine how such a phrase could even begin to roll off anyone Jew’s lips. If the Israelis are going to follow the US democratic model, they should pay attention to the fact that we ask people to “swear allegiance to the flag”, which is quite different from swearing loyalty to the government. An essential component of a vibrant democracy is the ability that we always are able to question the government ( I think Rush Limbaugh just had a heart attack).
Liebermans, Liebermans everywhere, and not a chance to think. I have been thinking a lot lately, during the foreplay and aftermath of the passing of the stimulus bill, about how totally inappropriate, backward looking and oddly askew the language and remarks of the Republicans have been, and wondering how this recent obstructionism and recalcitrance would be resolved. I have also wondered why Joe Lieberman has been relatively quiet. But now I see the world stage is like Wrigley’s chewing gum: with two Liebermans we can double our trouble and double our (not so very much) fun. I wonder if Avigdor wants the Palestinians to wear arm bands?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29276575/
You can read the whole article for yourself, but the by-line that got me reads like this (next to a photo of a guy who looks unsettlingly much too much like Paul Krugman):
Israel's Yisrael Beiteinu party leader Avigdor Lieberman, who has called for the country's Arab minority swear loyalty to the state or lose their citizenship, has backed Benjamin Netanyahu for prime minister.
My old Texas Instruments calculator seems to be broken, so I can’t say exactly how many people I will piss off with this comment, but that’s the way the unleavened cookie crumbles. Following in the footsteps of, and in the best traditions of, American politics, the Israelis have been busy playing the election game. This last race was a troublesome threesome, starring the venerable retread (and to some reviled) Netanyahu, the foreign minister, Tzipi Livni (I still think her name sounds like an anorexic Italian sports car) and the third party, the Beitenu. This third party, the Ralph Nader/Ron Paul element, the salt-in-the-wound, itch-where-you –can’t-quite-scratch, annoying-like-a mosquito bite group, is apparently fronted by a man named...you guessed it…Lieberman!. From the photo in the article, he appears to dress much more casually and with a much nicer flair than our Connecticut chameleon, but he is very outspoken about his positions concerning what Israel “ought to do”And he is completely unapologetic about advising President Shimon Peres as to what stance to take and how the “new” government should be structured. It reminds me of the old joke:” Hi! I’m from Beitenu and I’m here to help you!”
I both know and know of many people in the US who are disgruntled, discouraged and annoyed by Joseph Lieberman and his curious impact on the last election. He dresses drably (and speaks with the same lackluster drone), muddies the waters and makes no secret of his desire to be in the limelight and garner public attention for his changing an changeable positions. I think the Democrats have been very kind to him, considering how many times he has thumbed his nose at them. I have yet to sense anything worthwhile that he has contributed to either the process or the outcome.
The (real) Israeli Lieberman frightens me more. There are too many words and phrases in this article that bother me: hard-liner, ultranationalist, government reign, threat to mid-east peace, and that ominous line (up above) about “swearing loyalty”. I am very concerned about how much obstructionist, militaristic and pugnacious thinking has risen so much to the forefront, especially when nearly the entire world is appalled by the recent genocide in Gaza. And history is littered with self-appointed “advisors” to kings, tzars and Presidents, and I don’t recall any of them promoting bright spots in world development.
But the last influence the world community needs right now is a hard-line position on Palestinians, when almost everyone would like this decades-old conflict to be ended as soon as possible. And the term ultranationalist just reminds me of the carnage, not so long ago, in the Balkans. And the simple fact is that no one needs to reign over the mid-east: somebody needs to get to the Israeli leaders and not-so-gently remind them that the days of King David are long over and democracies don’t reign.
But more disturbing than any other reference is the one about “swearing loyalty” to the government. Great and memorable(?) leaders like Adolf Hitler and kings and of the realm and their ilk have called for such measures over the centuries, and it has always been a story without a good ending. In the case of the Jews, after the Third Reich, I can’t imagine how such a phrase could even begin to roll off anyone Jew’s lips. If the Israelis are going to follow the US democratic model, they should pay attention to the fact that we ask people to “swear allegiance to the flag”, which is quite different from swearing loyalty to the government. An essential component of a vibrant democracy is the ability that we always are able to question the government ( I think Rush Limbaugh just had a heart attack).
Liebermans, Liebermans everywhere, and not a chance to think. I have been thinking a lot lately, during the foreplay and aftermath of the passing of the stimulus bill, about how totally inappropriate, backward looking and oddly askew the language and remarks of the Republicans have been, and wondering how this recent obstructionism and recalcitrance would be resolved. I have also wondered why Joe Lieberman has been relatively quiet. But now I see the world stage is like Wrigley’s chewing gum: with two Liebermans we can double our trouble and double our (not so very much) fun. I wonder if Avigdor wants the Palestinians to wear arm bands?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
The Great Divide Just Gets"Divider"
“There's nothing wrong with Republicans deciding to play the role of the obstructionist opposition, and in the unlikely event that this stimulus bill does not get the economy going and additional economic recovery legislation is not passed through Congress, they may stand to benefit politically.”
I lifted this from this article:
Letting Republicans Bury Themselves
by Jed Lewison
Tue Feb 17, 2009 at 09:15:03 AM PST
Posted on
http://www.dailykos.com/
I replied to my fellow e-mailers, like this:
The writer may be correct about Obama's "covert" strategy, but I think the truth is that the less Obama fought back, the deeper the Republicans dug themselves in, trying to attract attention to themselves: they have an ad on TV already, claiming credit for portions of the very bill they voted against. They have become increasingly delusionary in recent days. When Lindsey Graham recommends nationalizing the banks, Newt vows to stop "the administration in its tracks" and Cantor leads the fight to disavow the very housing aid portion of the stimulus that he and his colleagues called for as pre-eminently necessary just days ago, they have clearly lost their way and look more ridiculous every day.
The excerpt I pulled out (above) is just plain wrong thinking. In these times, it is VERY WRONG for the Republicans to be obstructionist "just because". That they "may stand to benefit politically",whether the plan succeeds or fails is a lousy way to lead and protect the people who elected them. I am sick to death of making excuses for politicians who are more concerned about re-election than earning the checks and benefits they draw. You are supposed to enter politics to display and exercise maturity and wisdom, not become a professional grand-stander and master of double-speak.
On the whole, I found the article a bit Polyanna-like.
I may have been over-reacting to the fact that I expect pieces in KOS to have more meat on their bones, but I have been noticing for days now, as the hot-air balloon-like debate over the stimulus became increasingly hysterical, that Republicans are acting more and more disconnected and without any real sense of immediacy. As our needs become more dire, the less they seem willing to put their shoulder to wheel and help get something done.
Only recently did we manage to get the “uniter” out of office (of course we all know that that the only thing he united was a movement of people who worked hard, together, to remove him). Bush was, of course, a divider, creating anxiety, and angst and sorrow and regret, along with injustice, constitutional abuse and internal terror across the land. The United States became a land divided and one which ultimately placed great hope in the vision and energy of Barack Obama. It appeared to many that the halting and stumbling pattern of our socio-economic situation might become changed for the better.
But many in the government, Republicans by name, mostly, decided to be, almost overnight, obstructionist, both just because they could and because their self-righteous indignation over having been “hammered” in the last election seemed to give them the self-appointed right to smear, handicap and hobble the new administration. They seemed to adopt a uniform blanket of a complete lack of self-awareness about the new reality. It has been an amazing fait accompli.
Alas, the harder they seem to work at this, the more ridiculous and obscure and (nearly) obscene their claims and objections become, the more completely out of synch with the national mood they become, as well. Instead of working to close the great divide of the last years, they have made it worse…or at least tried to. They speak less and less to the subjects at hands, avoid confronting the real priorities and make every attempt to perfect histrionics, drama and sensational language. Meanwhile, Americans lose their homes and their jobs and drown in debt, bankers and hedge fund managers worry over losing their third home on the seashore, take home enormous bonuses and spend weekends on yachts in the Caymans where they have hidden bank accounts. We are also in the midst of giving out more “bail-out” money to beleaguered and inept auto manufacturers (and their suppliers) and are waiting for the next wave of organizations to mobilize for hand-outs and rescue plans, because they have over-extended, over- indebted themselves and engaged in sloppy business practices. I am waiting for us all to learn how to spell the word g-r-e-e-d.
It is impossible for me to know what the hell John Boehner is thinking when he throws an 111 hundred+ page document on the floor of the Senate chamber, feigning disgust. It may be a great display of theatre, but it does not tell me that he understands anything about its import. I don’t know what Lindsey Graham( as I said above) is thinking (a professed fiscal conservative, anti-facist, anti-socialist), when he announces it is time to nationalize the banks. It may be dramatic but it doesn’t tell me he knows anything about which he pontificates. I don’t know, when Rep. Cantor vows to be obstructionist about the housing provisions he supposedly fought for earlier, what has happened to his brain. And the obscene language being used in Republican TV commercials against AFSCME, or the Republican ads, somehow claiming credit for portions of the very bill they fought to defeat (or just would not vote for) are supposed to move the country forward, when they blatantly and stubbornly shout “No!” in the face of everything.
The divide can only become wider if the American people are supposed to ignore the complete lack of energy being put forth by the RNC to rectify our deficiencies, while touting useless tax cut programs and wasted time and energy for “abstinence only” sex education programs (even Bristol Palin says they don’t work) and simultaneously railing against family planning funding…do I need to go on? I don’t think so.
The behavioral displays of the Republicans are erratic, essentially dysfunctional and downright disturbing. There may some order in chaos theory, but there is no theory in the Republican chaos of being completely illogical and maintaining a determination to repeat the same old procedures that never work. I am astounded that they simply cannot discern the difference between forward and backwards.
I heard a commentary the other day that said that the financial crisis will not end until the bankers are happy, and the bankers will not be happy until we back large trucks, full of money, up to the doors of the banks and unload it with “NSA” , as it often says in the personals. It looks to me like the Republicans are all trying to join the Teamsters Union and get licenses to drive 18-heelers. They seem to think they don’t need to make any sense, listen to anyone or do anything else in order to get re-elected. It may have worked that way in the past, but if they persist in that attitude, the great divide will only get “divider”.
I would like to believe that this Republican act is just that: an act. But somehow I think they may really be that stupid.
I lifted this from this article:
Letting Republicans Bury Themselves
by Jed Lewison
Tue Feb 17, 2009 at 09:15:03 AM PST
Posted on
http://www.dailykos.com/
I replied to my fellow e-mailers, like this:
The writer may be correct about Obama's "covert" strategy, but I think the truth is that the less Obama fought back, the deeper the Republicans dug themselves in, trying to attract attention to themselves: they have an ad on TV already, claiming credit for portions of the very bill they voted against. They have become increasingly delusionary in recent days. When Lindsey Graham recommends nationalizing the banks, Newt vows to stop "the administration in its tracks" and Cantor leads the fight to disavow the very housing aid portion of the stimulus that he and his colleagues called for as pre-eminently necessary just days ago, they have clearly lost their way and look more ridiculous every day.
The excerpt I pulled out (above) is just plain wrong thinking. In these times, it is VERY WRONG for the Republicans to be obstructionist "just because". That they "may stand to benefit politically",whether the plan succeeds or fails is a lousy way to lead and protect the people who elected them. I am sick to death of making excuses for politicians who are more concerned about re-election than earning the checks and benefits they draw. You are supposed to enter politics to display and exercise maturity and wisdom, not become a professional grand-stander and master of double-speak.
On the whole, I found the article a bit Polyanna-like.
I may have been over-reacting to the fact that I expect pieces in KOS to have more meat on their bones, but I have been noticing for days now, as the hot-air balloon-like debate over the stimulus became increasingly hysterical, that Republicans are acting more and more disconnected and without any real sense of immediacy. As our needs become more dire, the less they seem willing to put their shoulder to wheel and help get something done.
Only recently did we manage to get the “uniter” out of office (of course we all know that that the only thing he united was a movement of people who worked hard, together, to remove him). Bush was, of course, a divider, creating anxiety, and angst and sorrow and regret, along with injustice, constitutional abuse and internal terror across the land. The United States became a land divided and one which ultimately placed great hope in the vision and energy of Barack Obama. It appeared to many that the halting and stumbling pattern of our socio-economic situation might become changed for the better.
But many in the government, Republicans by name, mostly, decided to be, almost overnight, obstructionist, both just because they could and because their self-righteous indignation over having been “hammered” in the last election seemed to give them the self-appointed right to smear, handicap and hobble the new administration. They seemed to adopt a uniform blanket of a complete lack of self-awareness about the new reality. It has been an amazing fait accompli.
Alas, the harder they seem to work at this, the more ridiculous and obscure and (nearly) obscene their claims and objections become, the more completely out of synch with the national mood they become, as well. Instead of working to close the great divide of the last years, they have made it worse…or at least tried to. They speak less and less to the subjects at hands, avoid confronting the real priorities and make every attempt to perfect histrionics, drama and sensational language. Meanwhile, Americans lose their homes and their jobs and drown in debt, bankers and hedge fund managers worry over losing their third home on the seashore, take home enormous bonuses and spend weekends on yachts in the Caymans where they have hidden bank accounts. We are also in the midst of giving out more “bail-out” money to beleaguered and inept auto manufacturers (and their suppliers) and are waiting for the next wave of organizations to mobilize for hand-outs and rescue plans, because they have over-extended, over- indebted themselves and engaged in sloppy business practices. I am waiting for us all to learn how to spell the word g-r-e-e-d.
It is impossible for me to know what the hell John Boehner is thinking when he throws an 111 hundred+ page document on the floor of the Senate chamber, feigning disgust. It may be a great display of theatre, but it does not tell me that he understands anything about its import. I don’t know what Lindsey Graham( as I said above) is thinking (a professed fiscal conservative, anti-facist, anti-socialist), when he announces it is time to nationalize the banks. It may be dramatic but it doesn’t tell me he knows anything about which he pontificates. I don’t know, when Rep. Cantor vows to be obstructionist about the housing provisions he supposedly fought for earlier, what has happened to his brain. And the obscene language being used in Republican TV commercials against AFSCME, or the Republican ads, somehow claiming credit for portions of the very bill they fought to defeat (or just would not vote for) are supposed to move the country forward, when they blatantly and stubbornly shout “No!” in the face of everything.
The divide can only become wider if the American people are supposed to ignore the complete lack of energy being put forth by the RNC to rectify our deficiencies, while touting useless tax cut programs and wasted time and energy for “abstinence only” sex education programs (even Bristol Palin says they don’t work) and simultaneously railing against family planning funding…do I need to go on? I don’t think so.
The behavioral displays of the Republicans are erratic, essentially dysfunctional and downright disturbing. There may some order in chaos theory, but there is no theory in the Republican chaos of being completely illogical and maintaining a determination to repeat the same old procedures that never work. I am astounded that they simply cannot discern the difference between forward and backwards.
I heard a commentary the other day that said that the financial crisis will not end until the bankers are happy, and the bankers will not be happy until we back large trucks, full of money, up to the doors of the banks and unload it with “NSA” , as it often says in the personals. It looks to me like the Republicans are all trying to join the Teamsters Union and get licenses to drive 18-heelers. They seem to think they don’t need to make any sense, listen to anyone or do anything else in order to get re-elected. It may have worked that way in the past, but if they persist in that attitude, the great divide will only get “divider”.
I would like to believe that this Republican act is just that: an act. But somehow I think they may really be that stupid.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Talking While Under the Influence: Lying
I am wont to think there should be some sort of etymologically-based breathalyzer test for politicians. It needs to be capable of detecting gross lies and exaggerations, mistruths and the demonic rhetoric of evil that results in the attempted destruction of intellect. It should be connected to rooftop sirens that screech in a loud and horrifying manner all across the land, whenever powered up. My guess is that it would not take long for sales of ear protectors and ear plugs to skyrocket, because any blessed silence would be gone, forever. Political ideological cacophony is deafening.
It needs to be said, at this point, that I accepted this sort of loud-mouthed behavior and criminal abuse of language and truth all during the campaign season, because it comes with the territory: you naturally expect to hear rude remarks, falsehoods, slander, evaluations and claims and counter-claims that range from the outlandish to the ludicrous. But you assume that, like having the measles or a sore throat, it will all go away, eventually. However, coming right after the last election, and escalating heavenward at an alarming rate ever since, then achieving near light speed velocities and volumetrics after the inauguration, the verbal garbage permeating the atmosphere and airwaves has become thick, like Los Angeles smog on a bad day in August.
There is an old saying about used car salesmen: how can you tell when they are lying? Their lips are moving. I know that I am not the first person to make this analogy, but politicians and used car guys have a lot in common, because neither have much “street cred” and the chronicle of history does not work positively in their favor. That little old lady from Pasadena NEVER drove that used car only back and forth to church on Sunday, and that legislative tax break being touted just before the upcoming election will not ever, ever save your job or make you and your brother-in-law rich. Controlled lip movements, to initiate the mesmerizing stupor of temporary belief in the impossible, has become an art form. I am quite certain that Julius Cesar employed this modus operandi, and we know where that got him. It just seems that our tolerance has surpassed that of Brutus, et. al. and we more readily accept mediocre duplicity.
A few days ago, I began try to keep track of and recording instances of the worst abuses of truth I could cull from the daily news reports. I finally gave up because I ran out of space, time and note paper. Suffice it to say that if you listen, even briefly, to the arrogant statements of John Boehner, the verbal flailings of Lindsey Graham or the obtuse pontifications of Newt Gingrich, or perhaps even switch over to the incomprehensible summarizations of “political progress” uttered by Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, you will get the drift of just how badly matters have deteriorated. I’m skipping Barbara “Give me more money” Boxer, for now.
But the events of the week of Feb. 9 have lowered the bar for the “highs” in contorted reasoning and the verbiage that has proclaimed it. In short, if you listen to the remarks of virtually any one member of the entire Republican delegation of congress people who make up the U.S. House of Representatives, NOT ONE of whom voted on two separate occasions for the $787B stimulus package, or…you can subject yourself to the non-stop and non-sensical floor speeches by nearly every one of the Republican Senators (save three) who followed the House vote, in lock-step.
But before I continue my critique of that litany of orally repugnant travesties, I feel compelled to bring to the forefront the speeches, claims and punditry of the right-wing press, the conservative talk show talkers and the paid-by-the-word conservative and ultra-conservative commentators on the network and cable television programs, many of whom have masqueraded as economists. Never mind, for a moment, that the bulk of the legislators deciding our monetary and financial futures right now are not economists either (most are bloody lawyers, who presumably went to college and law school, and also, presumably at least took Econ 101 somewhere along the line), the faux news anchors on networks like Fox, and the hired guns who emanate from think tanks and “research foundations” and appear with them on the six o’clock news, probably understand less about economics than Joe the Plumber (who we all know has done a great job analyzing the mid-east non-peace situation in Gaza). The dearth, girth and breadth of misunderstanding and misinformation which pours forth from these “experts” is literally overwhelming. It freaking makes my head hurt. The absolutely astounding reality of this is how many people actually believe this balderdash to be truthful and accurate. I’ll leave it to you to decide what to believe from the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, but don’t come crying to me when you discover that your intellectual underwear and underpinnings, as well as your wallet, have come up missing.
But back to the actual criminals…er, suspects. I will not even begin to assemble a complete list of examples of gross linguistic misconduct available (for reasons listed earlier), but there are just a few noteworthy examples I will cite, in order to make my point. First, there is Mr. Steele, the new figurehead and titular (and titillating) leader of the (new) Republican party. He has said that the jobs to be created under the stimulus plans are not jobs but merely “work”. The last time I had a damn job, it sure looked and felt like work to me. In a frantic and manic attempt to parse words to build an indefensible case, he has uttered the utterly absurd. Needless to say, he has been the butt of jokes on every liberal news program and caustic blog since he embarrassed himself on national television last weekend.
John Boehner has said repeatedly that this legislation was said by the President to be about “jobs, jobs, jobs”, and it has become all about “spending, spending, spending”. Some of his colleagues have complained (in a similar vein) that the effort was not a stimulus bill but a “spending bill”. The President himself has actually offered the querying retort, “What do you think a stimulus bill IS, anyway?” Then, on Friday afternoon of this week, before the Senate was to cast their vote on the package, as a sort of entertainment topper to his earlier bleating, Boehner held up the 1100+ page document (finally 1700 pages) before the assembly, in order to make the following complaint: the document had just been delivered for inspection only a few hours before, and that “no one had read it”. He asked (somewhat rhetorically) why the congress had not been given the time over the weekend, “on the plane, the train or the bus home”, to read the bill before having to vote. To begin with, I wonder how many members of this esteemed group would have gone home, anyway: they all have nice digs in DC. Secondly, I am very skeptical that any one of them would take a bus. Lastly, if that were the chosen weekend task, they all must be able to read one helluva lot faster than I can. Consider these probabilities: I am very doubtful that anyone went home for a short weekend (not like Amtrak Joe Biden, and even he lives in Washington, now), riding a bus would put any of them much too close to the proletariat they seek to avoid, and I have this hunch that almost none of them ever really read much, anyway…unless it is polling results about their chances for re-election. And BTW, as the texters and twitter folks would enter, earlier in the day, one of Boehner’s fellow obstructionists told the assembly that the document was only 800 pages, or “about a billion dollars a page”. Either someone is lying, can’t count or exaggerating or someone is doing all three. I have given up trying to figure out which is what or why. But Mr. Steele has said that this work that Boehner and his fellows are doing is not a job, or that the job they are doing is not work, but we are paying them to do it anyway. Frankly I have to wonder “Why?”
(After Boehner’s rant about being inconvenienced, he bombastically dropped the entire printout on the floor of the chamber, only making him appear more oafish and contemptible than he had been beforehand. Good theatre; poor plausibility)
There have been a thousand thousand other examples of linguistic air pollution and vocabulary abuse, but the one that has me baffled the most is the oft (now) repeated wisdom of Sen. John McCain. He has called this legislation “generational theft”. Just ignoring for a moment that this phrase is a synthetic language construct and devoid of referential logic (I can construct fluffy bullshit as well as any Washington bureaucrat), it attempts to throw blame around anywhere it can be plunked, accurately or not. This man is attempting to make the point that, as everyone should know by now, we will be borrowing every last cent of this $800B to rescue our nation’s economic future, and that by passing this bill, we will be indenturing the children of the children of the children of those of us living now to pay it back: It is not generational theft, it is debt extension. He is using this argument in an attempt to waylay, demean, sabotage and obstruct the single most important (and the largest financial) piece of legislation in the history of the world. Curiously, he has completely overlooked the trillions of military dollars previously spent by his President, and the leader of his party, to play deadly war games in Iraq, Pakistan, and the other assorted “-stans’ where the United States has been “planting the seeds of democracy” and killing thousands, on a daily basis. This “debt extension” and “generational theft” he has managed to overlook. Not only is this rhetoric and logic myopic and misguided and misleading, he is lying and obfuscating reality. It scares the crap out of me that this man could have become the President.
Granted, the few most heinous and blatant examples I have given to make my case for the polemic breathalyzer have been Republican, but at the moment, they have reigned supreme with their onslaught of evil gibberish. They seem determined to clog the machinery (the pipes of credit?) in the short run, without any concern for the outcomes and needs of tomorrow. And I will happily give you that our newest financial savior-in-chief, Mr. Geithner, has so far been just as uninspiring as Hank Paulson ever managed on a good day (he is nearly as ghoulish). Larry Summers has yet to impress anyone and seems prone to a resuscitating an old version of doublespeak, while Joe Biden has demonstrated several instances of foot-in-mouth disease.
This Orwellian, obstinate, pointlessly confrontational and contorted communication practice must be brought to an end, if we are ever to rise above the level of primitive plutocracy. We are sacrificing dignity and humanity for semantics of plastic and artificial logic, all linked to money and the very greed which has brought us to this point of “bailout” in the first place. We seem unable to learn from our mistakes but rather doomed to compound them.
OTOH, BTW, (I am forced to laugh at myself: I am torturing the very language I am striving to save), we have President Obama, and his revelatory oratory. When he first began delivering speeches, I was impressed with his choice of words and his delivery, but I was also skeptical: my pleasure may have come only from the sudden and wondrous departure from a style of vapid, short grunts of near unintelligible and meaningless faux Texan blather. This was such a cathartic revision of public oratory that perhaps I was succumbing to its charm too easily. But now I think my skepticism was ill-founded. He does reason and speak with a very welcome freshness and alacrity. The gutturally nuanced and poorly framed language of fear and doom have gone, and these Presidential words are actually pleasing to the ear.
Oddly enough, this may in fact be the “stimulus” for the opposition’s verbal toxicity. Having been confronted with both inspirational and positive nature and content of the President’s delivery, they may have been traumatized. They all may have realized, perhaps even somewhat unconsciously, that they have been cornered, and have consequently resorted to the basic instinctual choice between fight or flight. Since, in this electronic world, no one can flee very far and never successfully hide from anyone (or escape the being found out, ala Governor Spitzer); they have chosen to put up a fight. However…
My son has a tee-shirt which says:” I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man”. Methinks that that the (mostly Republican) primordial, ooze-like blustering is a revelation that they have only managed to bring “a knife to a gun fight”. They are outclassed, out-gunned, out-spoken and out-reasoned and can only manage to come after our benevolent T-Tex with a crude club. He is sipping Chardonnay and they are swilling cheap beer. As for the Dems, they may also just be overwhelmed by the power, persuasive ability and the sheer tsunami-like adrenaline rush that this President affords the general public (who are not already transfixed by talk radio), and are fumbling for words that they desperately hope will keep them on anyone’s radar screen. They must be a disappointment to the President.
In either case, both the conservative miscreants and the left-sided liberal underlings would do well not to run from, hide from or attempt to belittle the presence of some genuine and uplifting language ( even Chris Matthews has noticed that). In spite of everything else which has sounded recent sour notes within the fledgling administration, there is still an element of hope. If any of these entertainers are going to engage in talking under the influence, whether that influence be fear, ignorance or sheer incompetence, they should learn to take better cues from President Obama and stop embarrassing both themselves and their constituents, by continuing to verbally stagger around, drunk-like, across the public landscape of language, in a kind of linguistic stupor. Their inadequately thought-through lack of thinking has left their intellectual pants hanging down low, exposing the crack in their logic, like the backside of Joe the Plumber.
President Obama could well prove to be our very own renaissance man, providing impetus and stimulus to become better than we have been. If our public mouthpieces can take the proper cues, and upgrade and uplift their thinking and their vocabularies, almost anything is possible. But at the moment, the bulk of them seem to be cowering and nervous, worried far more about their self-preservation than the health of our society. It should go without saying that this continued insistence on lying will obliterate any eventual useful bipartisanship and nullify any chance for meaningful compromise. Continued talking while under the influence is certain to put us into the wall. Any right-minded NASCAR driver can tell you that.
It needs to be said, at this point, that I accepted this sort of loud-mouthed behavior and criminal abuse of language and truth all during the campaign season, because it comes with the territory: you naturally expect to hear rude remarks, falsehoods, slander, evaluations and claims and counter-claims that range from the outlandish to the ludicrous. But you assume that, like having the measles or a sore throat, it will all go away, eventually. However, coming right after the last election, and escalating heavenward at an alarming rate ever since, then achieving near light speed velocities and volumetrics after the inauguration, the verbal garbage permeating the atmosphere and airwaves has become thick, like Los Angeles smog on a bad day in August.
There is an old saying about used car salesmen: how can you tell when they are lying? Their lips are moving. I know that I am not the first person to make this analogy, but politicians and used car guys have a lot in common, because neither have much “street cred” and the chronicle of history does not work positively in their favor. That little old lady from Pasadena NEVER drove that used car only back and forth to church on Sunday, and that legislative tax break being touted just before the upcoming election will not ever, ever save your job or make you and your brother-in-law rich. Controlled lip movements, to initiate the mesmerizing stupor of temporary belief in the impossible, has become an art form. I am quite certain that Julius Cesar employed this modus operandi, and we know where that got him. It just seems that our tolerance has surpassed that of Brutus, et. al. and we more readily accept mediocre duplicity.
A few days ago, I began try to keep track of and recording instances of the worst abuses of truth I could cull from the daily news reports. I finally gave up because I ran out of space, time and note paper. Suffice it to say that if you listen, even briefly, to the arrogant statements of John Boehner, the verbal flailings of Lindsey Graham or the obtuse pontifications of Newt Gingrich, or perhaps even switch over to the incomprehensible summarizations of “political progress” uttered by Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi, you will get the drift of just how badly matters have deteriorated. I’m skipping Barbara “Give me more money” Boxer, for now.
But the events of the week of Feb. 9 have lowered the bar for the “highs” in contorted reasoning and the verbiage that has proclaimed it. In short, if you listen to the remarks of virtually any one member of the entire Republican delegation of congress people who make up the U.S. House of Representatives, NOT ONE of whom voted on two separate occasions for the $787B stimulus package, or…you can subject yourself to the non-stop and non-sensical floor speeches by nearly every one of the Republican Senators (save three) who followed the House vote, in lock-step.
But before I continue my critique of that litany of orally repugnant travesties, I feel compelled to bring to the forefront the speeches, claims and punditry of the right-wing press, the conservative talk show talkers and the paid-by-the-word conservative and ultra-conservative commentators on the network and cable television programs, many of whom have masqueraded as economists. Never mind, for a moment, that the bulk of the legislators deciding our monetary and financial futures right now are not economists either (most are bloody lawyers, who presumably went to college and law school, and also, presumably at least took Econ 101 somewhere along the line), the faux news anchors on networks like Fox, and the hired guns who emanate from think tanks and “research foundations” and appear with them on the six o’clock news, probably understand less about economics than Joe the Plumber (who we all know has done a great job analyzing the mid-east non-peace situation in Gaza). The dearth, girth and breadth of misunderstanding and misinformation which pours forth from these “experts” is literally overwhelming. It freaking makes my head hurt. The absolutely astounding reality of this is how many people actually believe this balderdash to be truthful and accurate. I’ll leave it to you to decide what to believe from the likes of Bill O’Reilly, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, but don’t come crying to me when you discover that your intellectual underwear and underpinnings, as well as your wallet, have come up missing.
But back to the actual criminals…er, suspects. I will not even begin to assemble a complete list of examples of gross linguistic misconduct available (for reasons listed earlier), but there are just a few noteworthy examples I will cite, in order to make my point. First, there is Mr. Steele, the new figurehead and titular (and titillating) leader of the (new) Republican party. He has said that the jobs to be created under the stimulus plans are not jobs but merely “work”. The last time I had a damn job, it sure looked and felt like work to me. In a frantic and manic attempt to parse words to build an indefensible case, he has uttered the utterly absurd. Needless to say, he has been the butt of jokes on every liberal news program and caustic blog since he embarrassed himself on national television last weekend.
John Boehner has said repeatedly that this legislation was said by the President to be about “jobs, jobs, jobs”, and it has become all about “spending, spending, spending”. Some of his colleagues have complained (in a similar vein) that the effort was not a stimulus bill but a “spending bill”. The President himself has actually offered the querying retort, “What do you think a stimulus bill IS, anyway?” Then, on Friday afternoon of this week, before the Senate was to cast their vote on the package, as a sort of entertainment topper to his earlier bleating, Boehner held up the 1100+ page document (finally 1700 pages) before the assembly, in order to make the following complaint: the document had just been delivered for inspection only a few hours before, and that “no one had read it”. He asked (somewhat rhetorically) why the congress had not been given the time over the weekend, “on the plane, the train or the bus home”, to read the bill before having to vote. To begin with, I wonder how many members of this esteemed group would have gone home, anyway: they all have nice digs in DC. Secondly, I am very skeptical that any one of them would take a bus. Lastly, if that were the chosen weekend task, they all must be able to read one helluva lot faster than I can. Consider these probabilities: I am very doubtful that anyone went home for a short weekend (not like Amtrak Joe Biden, and even he lives in Washington, now), riding a bus would put any of them much too close to the proletariat they seek to avoid, and I have this hunch that almost none of them ever really read much, anyway…unless it is polling results about their chances for re-election. And BTW, as the texters and twitter folks would enter, earlier in the day, one of Boehner’s fellow obstructionists told the assembly that the document was only 800 pages, or “about a billion dollars a page”. Either someone is lying, can’t count or exaggerating or someone is doing all three. I have given up trying to figure out which is what or why. But Mr. Steele has said that this work that Boehner and his fellows are doing is not a job, or that the job they are doing is not work, but we are paying them to do it anyway. Frankly I have to wonder “Why?”
(After Boehner’s rant about being inconvenienced, he bombastically dropped the entire printout on the floor of the chamber, only making him appear more oafish and contemptible than he had been beforehand. Good theatre; poor plausibility)
There have been a thousand thousand other examples of linguistic air pollution and vocabulary abuse, but the one that has me baffled the most is the oft (now) repeated wisdom of Sen. John McCain. He has called this legislation “generational theft”. Just ignoring for a moment that this phrase is a synthetic language construct and devoid of referential logic (I can construct fluffy bullshit as well as any Washington bureaucrat), it attempts to throw blame around anywhere it can be plunked, accurately or not. This man is attempting to make the point that, as everyone should know by now, we will be borrowing every last cent of this $800B to rescue our nation’s economic future, and that by passing this bill, we will be indenturing the children of the children of the children of those of us living now to pay it back: It is not generational theft, it is debt extension. He is using this argument in an attempt to waylay, demean, sabotage and obstruct the single most important (and the largest financial) piece of legislation in the history of the world. Curiously, he has completely overlooked the trillions of military dollars previously spent by his President, and the leader of his party, to play deadly war games in Iraq, Pakistan, and the other assorted “-stans’ where the United States has been “planting the seeds of democracy” and killing thousands, on a daily basis. This “debt extension” and “generational theft” he has managed to overlook. Not only is this rhetoric and logic myopic and misguided and misleading, he is lying and obfuscating reality. It scares the crap out of me that this man could have become the President.
Granted, the few most heinous and blatant examples I have given to make my case for the polemic breathalyzer have been Republican, but at the moment, they have reigned supreme with their onslaught of evil gibberish. They seem determined to clog the machinery (the pipes of credit?) in the short run, without any concern for the outcomes and needs of tomorrow. And I will happily give you that our newest financial savior-in-chief, Mr. Geithner, has so far been just as uninspiring as Hank Paulson ever managed on a good day (he is nearly as ghoulish). Larry Summers has yet to impress anyone and seems prone to a resuscitating an old version of doublespeak, while Joe Biden has demonstrated several instances of foot-in-mouth disease.
This Orwellian, obstinate, pointlessly confrontational and contorted communication practice must be brought to an end, if we are ever to rise above the level of primitive plutocracy. We are sacrificing dignity and humanity for semantics of plastic and artificial logic, all linked to money and the very greed which has brought us to this point of “bailout” in the first place. We seem unable to learn from our mistakes but rather doomed to compound them.
OTOH, BTW, (I am forced to laugh at myself: I am torturing the very language I am striving to save), we have President Obama, and his revelatory oratory. When he first began delivering speeches, I was impressed with his choice of words and his delivery, but I was also skeptical: my pleasure may have come only from the sudden and wondrous departure from a style of vapid, short grunts of near unintelligible and meaningless faux Texan blather. This was such a cathartic revision of public oratory that perhaps I was succumbing to its charm too easily. But now I think my skepticism was ill-founded. He does reason and speak with a very welcome freshness and alacrity. The gutturally nuanced and poorly framed language of fear and doom have gone, and these Presidential words are actually pleasing to the ear.
Oddly enough, this may in fact be the “stimulus” for the opposition’s verbal toxicity. Having been confronted with both inspirational and positive nature and content of the President’s delivery, they may have been traumatized. They all may have realized, perhaps even somewhat unconsciously, that they have been cornered, and have consequently resorted to the basic instinctual choice between fight or flight. Since, in this electronic world, no one can flee very far and never successfully hide from anyone (or escape the being found out, ala Governor Spitzer); they have chosen to put up a fight. However…
My son has a tee-shirt which says:” I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed man”. Methinks that that the (mostly Republican) primordial, ooze-like blustering is a revelation that they have only managed to bring “a knife to a gun fight”. They are outclassed, out-gunned, out-spoken and out-reasoned and can only manage to come after our benevolent T-Tex with a crude club. He is sipping Chardonnay and they are swilling cheap beer. As for the Dems, they may also just be overwhelmed by the power, persuasive ability and the sheer tsunami-like adrenaline rush that this President affords the general public (who are not already transfixed by talk radio), and are fumbling for words that they desperately hope will keep them on anyone’s radar screen. They must be a disappointment to the President.
In either case, both the conservative miscreants and the left-sided liberal underlings would do well not to run from, hide from or attempt to belittle the presence of some genuine and uplifting language ( even Chris Matthews has noticed that). In spite of everything else which has sounded recent sour notes within the fledgling administration, there is still an element of hope. If any of these entertainers are going to engage in talking under the influence, whether that influence be fear, ignorance or sheer incompetence, they should learn to take better cues from President Obama and stop embarrassing both themselves and their constituents, by continuing to verbally stagger around, drunk-like, across the public landscape of language, in a kind of linguistic stupor. Their inadequately thought-through lack of thinking has left their intellectual pants hanging down low, exposing the crack in their logic, like the backside of Joe the Plumber.
President Obama could well prove to be our very own renaissance man, providing impetus and stimulus to become better than we have been. If our public mouthpieces can take the proper cues, and upgrade and uplift their thinking and their vocabularies, almost anything is possible. But at the moment, the bulk of them seem to be cowering and nervous, worried far more about their self-preservation than the health of our society. It should go without saying that this continued insistence on lying will obliterate any eventual useful bipartisanship and nullify any chance for meaningful compromise. Continued talking while under the influence is certain to put us into the wall. Any right-minded NASCAR driver can tell you that.
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