Romneybus

Mitt Romney will go down in history, way down in history, as the presidential candidate who strapped the family setter to the roof of the family station-wagon. It turns out Romney himself is strapped to the roof of a busload of extremist interest groups whose support he needs to secure the Republican nomination. They really don’t like Romney because he is not pure enough for their causes, but he is the last man standing in the GOP race to recapture the presidency. And yet he’s still the outsider. He is the dog on the roof. To the evangelical Christian right he’s the Mormon who has too many books in his bible and too many grandmothers in his ancestry. To the fiscal conservatives he’s the guy who brought Obamacare to Massachusetts and gave Obama the blueprint for Obamacare. To blue collar conservatives he is too rich and aloof. To Tea Party purists his record is too liberal no matter how much he promises he will be the Hoover (the vacuum cleaner, not the former president) of government waste. He can ride on the roof of the Republican omnibus, but he’ll never be one of them. He will remain aloof on the roof. Thanks to the media monopoly of Rupert Murdoch and the braying of right wing pundits and commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, both of whom have been in hot water recently for questionable behavior towards victims of injustice, the blue collar masses will be continue to be badgered, brainwashed, and buffaloed into believing that right wing positions on the economy, on government, on everything are the way to economic and spiritual salvation for both the country and themselves. Instead, they will see only a greater and greater divide between rich and poor. It’s all a cruel hoax. They can’t quite fathom it, so they keep Romney at a distance outside their cramped rows of sorry seats, up on the roof. There is no better symbol for that distance between rich and poor than Mitt Romney on the roof of the conservative omnibus. He is noticeable and aloft, pretending to be in charge, but barely tolerated and relegated to a place where excess baggage is sometimes consigned. He looks like a shivering pedigreed setter rather than a greyhound. He is not the driver; he is the driven.

Rush to Oblivion

The Republican candidates for president, the Tea Party congress people, and their Murdoch-appointed public whips are rapidly alienating and igniting such a large segment of the heretofore apathetic liberal and moderate base of the American people, particularly women, it will be a wonder if there is anything left of the neo-conservative movement by November. In attempting to pinpoint and lock-in their so-called moral compass, they have managed to convince America they are nothing more than male chauvinist pigs in the usual guise of moral leaders. They are nothing more than a malevolent version of “Father Knows Best.”
It was and is one thing to attack the legitimacy of the first President of the United States of African ancestry by insisting, against all evidence to the contrary, that he was born in Kenya. It was and is another thing to pass along a racist anti-Obama joke from the U.S. Judiciary in Montana and then to apologize for it; but to attack women the way Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum and even Mitt Romney have of late has made this former independent voter more fervently committed to the re-election of President Obama. Obama has been attacked on the basis of race or origin repeatedly throughout his entire first term by all sorts of right wing attackers from Rush to Sherriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona presumably because either they do not believe some island state of Hawaii peopled by brown folks could possibly get a birth certificate right or because it must be a forgery.
Thanks to the creation of the Tea Party by the Koch brothers et al, the Republican Party has principled itself to the edge of oblivion. Its red-with-rage true color has shown through loud and clear during this presidential primary to the point that it has nowhere to go but in retreat back toward the middle of the political spectrum in the future, if it can wrest it away from the democrats. Olympia Snowe’s decision to leave the Senate because of her party’s ideological rigidity and refusal to compromise or reach across the aisle to find common ground with the opposition has paralyzed politics in America. Meanwhile, Obama, labeled a socialist by the right, has moved deftly to the center during his first term to occupy what might have been held by the Republicans had they not drunk the cool-aid of ultra-conservative orthodoxy stirred by the likes of Grover Norquist, Glenn Beck, or Rush Limbaugh, financed by the Koch brothers, and marketed by Rupert Murdoch.
George Will is already suggesting that the Republicans will likely lose the presidential election no matter who is nominated this round. He compares this moment with one back in 1964 when Goldwater clearly was going to lose his election. But if pundits and even politicians from the right continue to call women sluts, African-Americans illegitimate welfare seekers, and brown people illegal, there can never be any civil discourse let alone a renewal of real civic mindedness.
However, Will is counting on stopping Obama in congress where the Republicans can continue to block him from significant success as they have during Obama’s first term. It’s the very strategy that has brought moderate Olympia Snowe to end her career in the senate.
There are seven things that must happen if the United States is to get moving again:
1. Yes, the national debt trajectory has to begin to reverse direction;
2. The widening gap between rich and poor, executive and worker pay, needs to be reversed;
3. Corporations need to become civic-minded in a sustainable way;
4. Regulation of business needs to serve the greater good, not just itself;
5. Manufacturing in the U.S. needs a stronger magnet or incentive;
6. Entitlements need reform to be sustainable;
7. Women and minorities should not be treated as subordinates, victims, or demons.
The notion set forth by conservatives that it all can be done with no increase in taxes is nonsense. The notion set forth by liberals that taxing the rich will solve the problem of funding entitlements is equally nonsense. Some sort of all-of-the-above approach is what will work if the ideologues will kindly get out of the way so that congress can get something done. Until we send the ideologues packing, nothing will. What this country needs more than anything is more Olympia Snowes and her democratic equivalents, not fewer.

GOP: DSI*

The price of gas is rising thanks to the number one GOP sponsor: the oil and gas industry. Thank goodness they have come to the rescue of the GOP just when it looked as if they were becoming issueless. Here it is still winter and the rumors are beginning to be marketed by industry analysts who dare to suggest that the rise is because summer is coming. Ha! Other factors mentioned are the Strait of Hormuz, Iran, Nigeria, Venezuela, a new European recession’s failure to materialize, and the U.S. recovery. The main factor, however, is the deliberate jacking up of prices by U.S. refiners.
All the other possible reasons for the current rise in price are just so much hogwash. The oil and gas industry wants a Republican in the White House so that it can return to the days of Dick Cheney and the free-for-all drilling that went on during the “W” administration, “W” standing for Windfall, not wind power. The industry wants to “frack” to its heart’s content without worrying about being convicted of damaging water supplies by being required to list the heretofore proprietary chemicals they use in the process. They want to drill-baby-drill on as many public lands as possible without consequence or responsibility and with maximum profit.
Republican candidates are now shifting their focus to gas prices as a way of criticizing the Obama administration for actually making the industry drill safely. In the name of job creation (temporary as it always is) and increasing supply (until the price of crude is so low it does not make economic sense to keep drilling), the GOP is now sounding the alarm to open up public lands for yet more drilling, even though we are already currently drilling and extracting on domestic soil at an all time high level….under the Obama administration.
What the industry fails to mention is how much water it takes to “frack,” the nickname given to hydraulic fracturing. Anywhere from 400,000 to a million gallons of water is required per well. In the East, where water is plentiful, water usage may not be a huge issue. However, in the West, where water is gold, using it to extract oil and gas is of questionable overall merit. Any true cost-benefit analysis would weigh the impact of water usage against the gain in energy and conclude that as water becomes increasingly scarce, its value for the maintenance of life itself transcends all other uses. After all, water is ultimately more important and valuable than oil and gas, for it is the primary source of life on this planet. Ramping up drilling, especially in the West, for the sake of rising gas prices is only a short term fix, not a long term solution.
Therefore, when you hear another GOP politician call for more unregulated drilling, have a glass of water. Given their plans, in the future it may begin to cost you as much for that glass of water as you are currently paying at the pump for a gallon of gas.

*Desperately Seeking Issues

Churchill Downs to Add Race on Derby Day

In an unprecedented move The Kentucky Derby Corporation has announced an addition to this year’s May 5th program: a quarter mile event featuring the Republican candidates for President of the United States.
The idea came about when one of the Derby stewards noticed that candidates “run” for office. Why not see who is actually the most fleet of foot on turf rather than in mouth? He actually meant “of mouth” as in who is the fastest talker but even stewards can make slips of the tongue, not just candidates.
So far two stable owners (or is that unstable owners since the candidates are not really stabled themselves), Sheldon Adelson and Foster Freiss, like the idea and have begun training their candidates in preparation for the big day. They embrace the notion of “running-the-run” which is a faster version of walk-the-walk. “Talking-the-talk has obviously gotten no candidate anywhere.” says Adelson, owner of Newt-Fortuit, that old but still randy stallion from Georgia. Freiss, owner of Santorum (which by itself sounds like the name of a thoroughbred), is eager to enter the dark horse from Pennsylvania who is so purely conservative some think he was immaculately foaled. After all, he is the youngest of the field and is more apt to receive the benefit of divine intervention given his lifelong purity of purpose.
One problem is getting Mitt-the-Fit to the gate. That high mileage, eternally frisky, fast-talking and directionless self-gelding is backed by a posse of “One-Percenters” from Wall Street to Beaver Creek even though he is rich enough to own himself and make his own decisions. And yet there is no telling which side of the track he’ll end up on given his propensity to drift from one lane to the next.
The other problem is Paul the Revered. This horse is as old as the Revolution. He is practically ready for the glue factory, and yet a certain segment of American youth reveres him because he wants to legalize drugs as part of his libertarian platform. He is not apt to add any drama to the race because as both a libertarian and septuagenarian he will set his own pace and to hell with the Derby stewards. He has no owner, no halter, and no saddle. He is so appallingly individualistic he would run his own race, make his own silver trophy, and award it to himself.
When asked if it would be all right to invite President Obama to participate, the owners of the Republican candidates protested that Obama was not qualified to enter because he had no clearly identified owners other than large aggregates of the American people.

Extreme Masculinity in America

Like human beings themselves, nations have a male and female side to their sense of being. Healthy nations keep a balance between the two aspects, but sometimes a country gets out of balance because of external forces or internal malaise. Some are naturally or constitutionally (make-up, not parchment) oriented more one way or the other, but most cultures make their masculine and feminine sides evident in some healthy proportion.
After World War II, the United States essentially forced Japan and Germany to emphasize their feminine sides, having had enough of the hyper-masculine version of Japanese and German cultures in the form of Pearl Harbor attacks, death marches, blitzkriegs, and concentration camps. The reconstruction of both Japan and much of Germany was done mostly under the direction of a fatherly western alliance that ensured no hyper-masculine recrudescence occurred in either country for at least a generation.
Today in America we are witnessing the stern father side of our masculine-feminine continuum attempt to grab hold of dominance in the form of the Tea Party politics and impose a masculine order on what the Tea Party sees as a cultural morass of self-indulgence, spend-thrift behavior, loose morals, and irresponsibility all marinated in a cauldron of “feminine” entitlements that date back to the New Deal.
This “disciplinary action” taken by the Tea Party and their chosen Zombies, the regular Republican Party, is not unexpected. It is all part of the “correction” to the perceived imbalance between masculine and feminine elements in American culture as seen from a neo-conservative perspective. The problem is, they have it mostly wrong.
America has always been one of the most masculine nations on the planet from the outset. It has celebrated hyper-masculine men in the form of single combat warriors: Daniel Boone, Davey Crockett, and their fictional equivalents The Lone Ranger and Dirty Harry; in the form of self-made men: Abe Lincoln, Ben Franklin, Steve Jobs, and Warren Buffett; and in terms of physical giants: Paul Bunyan (fictional) as well as the entire panoply of players in the NFL and NBA.
America’s women have followed suit in producing and celebrating great athletes, space pioneers, star CEOs, and great writers. No flower arranger would ever make the top ten in America culture. In short, even America’s women are measured in terms of masculine success.
Like it or not, America is a highly masculine culture. It makes no attempt to balance traditional masculine-feminine elements. It continues to become the most workaholic, achievement-driven, wealth accumulating, body-sculpting, competitive country on the planet.
In fact, women may be winning the race to pure masculinity. They represent 60 percent of all college graduates; they are gradually closing the income gap; they are choosing to remain single in greater numbers in order to not be held back by relationships or child-bearing; they are gradually replacing men in all but the most physical arenas.
How healthy is this evolution or final frontier conquering for American culture? Will it mean that the former purely masculine spheres of American culture will be feminized and that all of this masculine hustle on the part of women is merely a means to an end? And will stay-at-home dads bring masculinity to home-keeping, cooking, diaper-changing, and Tupperware parties? Will a new synthesis emerge such that the balance of female and male will be found in the individual and the culture as a whole and not rigidly reflected in or expected from gender groups?
No telling how this will play out. Meanwhile, the Tea Party in name and concept is at least triply ironic in its mission, its make-up, and its name. It wants to remind America of and return America to a mythical golden age when the masculine discipline of individual responsibility was king. No more of this feminine social welfare crap that puts cooperation over competition or common welfare over individual achievement.
What the Tea Party will have to continue to ignore is the fact that corporations want to destroy competition and gain oligarchic if not monopolistic control of both markets and resources. The only possible defense against such control is government. Better to reform government than weaken it enough to drown it in a bathtub, as Grover Norquist wishes. The alternative to better government, which gun sales would indicate is growing in popularity, is a different kind of social security, one that produces questionable security and little sleep: a Smith and Wesson nestled under your pillow. Question: Does that mean we all become our own “head dick+” or merely dick-heads?
Today our popular culture reinforces hyper-masculine absurdity in the form of endless football games on television, grandiose, gratuitous violence passing for action movies, and Animal House behavior dominating male-oriented advertizing. Just watch any football game on television and try to find positive male role models among the ads.
America’s hyper-masculinity is so pervasive, so multi-faceted, we cannot see it for what it is: a dangerous condition that is affecting our whole culture. It is high time to bring some balance not only to our lives but to our cultural milieu. It’s going to take more than a course in flower-arranging to move us toward greater balance.

+ slang nickname for detective

Time to Remove the Conservative Appendix

The conservative perspective is like an appendix, and I don’t mean the one at the end of a scholarly book. It serves no purpose now that we walk fully erect; it can only cause trouble when irritated; and it can bring down the house if it is not removed in time. In short, it’s an old organ associated with ancient times when survival was the threshold of nobility and getting enough fiber in our diet was the least of our problems.
Conservatism is a lean and mean ethos applied by fat cats to the weak and frail. It says that success comes when you try hard enough; failure is a sign of laziness; and rich people deserve all they have. It concentrates power and wealth in the hands of the few and blames the many for their failure to achieve similar success. Its catch-all refrain, when all else fails to explain, is life is not fair, so just live with that fact.
There is a sociopathic dimension to this primitive perspective. It pins any notion of progress on survival of gauntlets, never on trying to make the gauntlet less severe. In fact, it celebrates the severity of gauntlets as opportunities to earn badges of courage. It says “I made it on my own;” therefore, you can too if you try hard enough. It’s as if the meaning of life necessitates an enormous struggle, an overcoming of great difficulties, and a self-confidence that is proclaimed to have existed only after the success is achieved. It is easy to say this when you stand atop the mountain. It’s patronizing and cruel to say it to those who will never get there even with your help.
The conservative’s notion of a stimulus package is a whip. That’s what reductions in services will feel like if conservatives have their way. By cutting aid to the poor and disadvantaged, the conservatives hope to balance the federal and state budgets without costing themselves a dime more in taxes. If you think that is fair, by all means vote Republican. If not, be sure to do whatever it takes to keep conservatives from wreaking havoc with America ever again.
Conservatives say mutual aid through organized communal action should always be local. Never mind that resources may be unevenly distributed from community to community. If you are not on your own, your community is. Take what you have and do the best you can. Never mind the fact that you don’t have the tools and wherewithal to do it.
Meanwhile, the myth of equal opportunity is promoted as if it actually exists. Beneath that myth is the game-fixing structure that keeps poor neighborhoods poor, poor schools poor and poor people poor. The poor start the race with cement shoes even if they wear ill-afforded Nikes like the rich kids. But life is not fair. That’s the way it is, says the conservative perspective.
I, for one, am sick and tired of the conservative perspective. We need to cut it out of the body politic like the useless appendix to civilization it is. We can best do that at the voting booth next November. Just pay attention to who mouths the conservative perspective and be ready to remove him or her from office or from ever holding office in the first place. It is the only hope America has at this point.

A Sign from the Fashion God

Just maybe we are in for an unconventional turn of events in the on-going saga about the world economy. Just as Ground Hog Day is used as a predictor of how much longer winter will last past February 2nd, it now seems that how high women’s heels are is no longer a measure or reflector of how well the economy is doing. In an article I just read in Daily Finance (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/11/21/low-heels-will-spike-this-winter-countering-recession-trend/) historically, high heels would “spike” during recessions, but this winter, they will go flat according to this article. Did they spike traditionally out of hope, in order to provide a longer view, in order to suggest to the stock market that it too should spike instead of redline? Who knows? What we do know is that the projected lower profile or center of gravity for women’s shoes must be a harbinger of something. In fact, it not only is a reflection of new developments on the horizon, it is very much a precipitous event that will set in motion a chain of events of global proportions.
Perhaps it is merely a reflection of the subconscious acceptance by fashion that the world is becoming flat, as Thomas Friedman predicted in his book, The World is Flat. Or perhaps it is a forecasting indicator that the haves are lowering their profile and preparing to be more like the 99% of the rest of us. Will the “one percenters” still wear spikes, or will they lower themselves and their expectations and regain their humanity in some way? Will they be shamed into being less extravagant in order to appear more modest, even if they keep their 90 percent of the wealth? In any case, low heels are in. Whether or not the well-heeled follow the trend remains to be seen. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said in ‘The Rich Boy”: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me.”
All of this may seem absurd on the surface, and no one wants to be measured by a heel let alone become one. Yet, there is something “freakonomic” about the whole idea. It is taking one aspect of human behavior and trying to apply it to a whole other context. Given the ideas and fears that send the stock market skyrocketing one day and augering in the next, a connection between the height of heels and the economy is not so far-fetched. What it suggests is the human tendency toward cause-effect as the default way secular beings “reason” when we really do not know. Religious beings simply turn to God or the “chosen text” (Bible, Koran, etc) for an answer. In any case, it will be interesting to see how many of us heel to this theory and whether or not it signals any healing in the economy.