Dog Whistle Politics and the Age of Angry White Men

Way back in 1980, right after his successful anointment at the Republican convention, Ronald Reagan chose to give the first kickoff speech of his campaign in Philadelphia. Okay, sure, makes sense – large seaport city steeped in history, birthplace of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, and home to Star-Spangled Banner seamstress Betsy Ross. Yeah, Philly's a great idea.

Wait, what? Wrong Philadelphia?

It was Philadelphia, Mississippi??!!

Philadelphia is a small town in central Mississippi that had fewer than 7,000 citizens in 1980. What would possess Reagan and his campaign handlers to give his first speech there, of all places?

Well, let's turn the clock back again, just an additional 16 years, to June of 1964, when three young civil rights activists, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Cheney, were brutally murdered by white supremacists. In Philadelphia, Mississippi. Does that ring a bell? It might. The story was made into a gripping 1988 film called Mississippi Burning.

[click here to see a larger version]

In that speech Reagan went out of his way to state that he was a supporter of "states rights". States Rights means that the Federal government has no right to interfere in the running of the government of a state; in case you've were home-schooled, that was the reason the South cited as their justification to erupt from the Union, try to form their own nation, and start the Civil War.

To the neo-Confederates in the South and Racist Republicans everywhere it could not have been clearer that Reagan used this opportunity to let white citizens know that he was on their side and wouldn't tolerate any "uppity Negroes" demanding things like, I don't know, being able to vote, for example.

States Rights was regularly trotted out over the 20^th Century whenever those black people wanted to go to integrated schools, wanted to get paid a decent wage at a job with safe working conditions, wanted to walk down the street without fear, wanted to vote. The good ole boys in the South would get outraged and scream that supporting and encouraging those actions violated their sacrosanct concept of States Rights.

This speaking in code is called "Dog Whistle Politics", and the Republicans have elevated it an art form. You know how dog whistles operate: You blow in it and only dogs can hear it. The science of psycholinguistics can identify phrases and words that are used as a kind of secret code to let the inner circle know that what you are saying perfectly feeds into the world view that you are trying to create. That's how their use of coded words and phrases work.

Remember the Chicago Welfare Queen? She was routinely trotted out by Reagan, her with her numerous children (all of them "illegitimate", of course) which she popped out regularly in order to cash in on generous AFDC payments and increased Food Stamps, cruising around in her brand new Cadillac, all paid for out of the hard-earned taxes of "real" Americans. It didn't matter that she never really existed – all that was necessary was for the racist portion of the American public to picture her, an overweight black woman with a dozen kids, a new El Dorado, and an overinflated sense of personal entitlement.

It's older than Reagan. Richard Nixon's call for Law and Order came on the heels of the media's sensationalistic coverage of rioting blacks in America's inner cities. It's newer than Reagan. The 1988 campaign of George HW Bush against liberal Democrat Michael Dukakis was epitomized in the infamous Willie Horton ad, which according to Lee Atwater, its architect, put a murderous black prison escapee into America's living rooms and frightened people into voting for Bush. And it worked. Sadly, these things generally do work, which is why they keep doing them.

At the Republican convention, Mitt Romney said "…when the world needs someone to do the really big stuff, you need an American", was that a not-so-subtle dig at Obama for being somehow "foreign", not one of us, someone not even born in the USA, someone who was – gasp –  black? You be the judge.

The Crimes of Ronald Reagan

You could probably guess that I was never a fan of Ronald Reagan, not even when he was a "B" movie actor lamenting his missing leg in King's Row or playing straight man to a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo.

When he ran for president the first time, in 1976, challenging and losing the nomination to the incumbent, Jerry Ford, I thought it was some kind of sick joke. Sure he had been governor of California, but everyone I knew in California thought he was a joke even then, what with the inane comments like his "if you've seen one redwood you've seen them all", his "trees cause pollution" and his answer to student protests, "let the bloodbath begin".

Then in 1980 when he swept out of near-oblivion and not only won the nomination but also the fucking presidency, it was like I woke up in a bad dystopian science-fiction movie. But "the Amurrican peeple" apparently disagreed with me. They LOVED them some Ronald Reagan, and even then he was being deified as a living god.

Even in the latter years of his presidency, when he looked to me like someone's doddering and senile grandfather, rambling on about nothing, pissing his pants and drooling food out of the corners of his mouth at the dinner table, everyone pretended not to notice and still just LOVED him. Not everyone, of course, but there were enough St. Ronald idolators around to quash any criticism of him, and even today there are people will mutter a sotto voce "bless-ed be his nay-um" whenever he is mentioned.

It didn't really come as a surprise to me when it was announced, several years after he left office, that he had Alzheimer's. Suddenly a lot of his distracted behavior, his lack of memory about certain aspects of, say, Iran-Contra, made sense. It really was a case, to paraphrase Senator Howard Baker about Richard Nixon, "What did the president know and when did he stop knowing it?"

Reagan enablers/apologists insisted that he did not have it while president, but his own son disagrees.

Recently I rewatched the terrific 1985 movie, Salvador, which I still think is Oliver Stone's best film. If you haven't seen it, make sure that you correct that oversight. You can get it from Netflix if you can't find it elsewhere. Be sure to watch the documentary "making of" feature on the DVD as well.

Anyway, that movie does a number on American foreign policy in El Salvador and touches on how the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 signaled to the corrupt leaders of that country that they could wantonly kill as many of their "rebels" as they wanted to, with no repercussions from the United States. Major Bob, unleash the Death Squads.

And you already saw my "pallin' around with terrorists" photo of Reagan and the Taliban yesterday. Coincidentally, a writer for Listverse, a site which I read daily, came up with a list of 10 Reprehensible Crimes of Ronald Reagan. It's quite a spread, from the casting of mental patients out of hospitals into the streets to tacitly approving South African apartheid to openly supporting Latin American genocidal terrorists. It's all there and it's a healthy antidote to the fawning lickspittles who still cross themselves when He is mentioned.

Also be sure to glance through the comments. There are people even now who are just frothing at the mouth to spew a stream of invective against anyone who dares to profane The Name of The Prophet Saint Ronald...

Deifying Saint Ronald

Everyone who reads this blog knows that I am not a fan of Ronald Reagan.

But now with his 100th birthday in the offing (or has it already passed? I'm too lazy to look it up), there seems to be even more of the sainthood-politicking for RR, which is normally seen in the Vatican to promote to sainthood a particular "holy person" -- you don't have to look any further than the drumbeat to elevate to sainthood the most recent pope, whose post-mortem "miracles" defy all reason.

As Ann Davidow recently pointed out on Buzzflash:

As we take note of what would be Ronald Reagan's one hundredth birthday it remains a mystery why he is revered by so many Americans and held up as an icon by the Republican Party. Everyone in the GOP takes a crack at explaining why he is a splendid example of everything a leader should be and a patriot par excellence.
. . .
In the area of civil rights alone he trampled on basic values by using the "Southern Strategy" to promote his political fortunes. He kicked off his 1980 presidential campaign in Neshoba County where Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman had been lynched some years before as they worked to establish voting rights for black southerners - a despicable exercise in gutter politics. Asserting "I believe in states' rights before a "white, and at times, raucous crowd of perhaps 10,000" (Bob Herbert, the NY Times, 11/2007) Reagan shamelessly made the case for bigotry and exclusion in his pursuit of the White House. Everyone got the message, especially in the South, and as President he consistently vetoed programs that sought to level the playing field for minorities.
. . .
How is it that a man of such monumental failures is celebrated on the right as something of a political saint? Republicans and many others refuse to replace the myth with facts, and we are in danger of repeating many of the same deceptive practices in the conduct of our political life today.

Indeed. Even at the time I had a lot of trouble understanding the magnetic attraction of Ronald Reagan.

I still do. And I guess that there still is a movement to do a little "plastic surgery" on the face of Teddy Roosevelt on Mt. Rushmore and turn him into Ronald Reagan. After all, who the fuck was Teddy Roosevelt, who became a traitor to his class and demand social justice and an end to the capitalist fuck-everyone-beneath-me-and-that-means-you system of trusts and monopolies?

I mean, really. Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican??? Come on.

More on the Debate

BTW, it was also a disgusting charade, a spectacle of how many people could kiss a dead president's ass in less than two hours. Even elderly moron Ron Paul, who so famously told Reagan to kiss his ass back in the 80s, and not in a good way. He was right there sucking at the Holy Dick of Saint Ronald along with the rest of that sad pack of political porkchops.

Of course, to be fair, it was held at the so-called Reagan Library, and some praise of the dead saint and his "revolution" was probably thought to be de rigueur, seeing as how it was taking place under the suspended corpse of a plane reputed to be Air Force One. Okay, maybe it really was, but at any given time there was more than one "Air Force One" in the nation's arsenal. In practice, there were several, if not many, and each would get its designation as Air Force One only when the president was actually aboard... And did you see Nancy Reagan the couple of times they cut to her? If she actually knew where she was and what she was doing there, you couldn't tell it from that spaced-out look she had. She's either on some good meds, or Alzheimer's turned out to be contagious in Reagan World.

Anyway, I digress. The most appalling -- the most chilling -- moment came when Brian Williams, the moderator, made mention of the fact that serial-killer Rick Perry had been the executive in charge when 234 people had been killed by the state. Before Perry had a chance to stroll out his smug canned response, the room erupted in applause.

Applause. These are all presumably kind of mainstream-ish Republicans, and they applaud the fact that the Texas governor has killed 234 people.

But keep it in perspective: The current governor's body count is negligible compared to that of his predecessor, Baby Doc Bush, whose total body count, direct and indirect, is in the hundreds of thousands, maybe even by this time the millions, nearly rivaling that of Pol Pot.

But, as Orrin Hatch (R-Underwear) said one time, without a hint of irony or sarcasm, "the death penalty is how we show our respect for human life"...

Worst President Ever?

Okay, Baby Doc Bush immediately leaps to mind, followed closely by James Buchanan. But according to Robert Parry, Saint Ronald deserves to be added to that list.

Yep, Ronnie Ray-gun himself, idolized by the teeming millions of mindless sheeple, canonized by wingnut radio, and lionized by a right wing that, if he were still alive, would not really welcome him into that shrinking tent that's become the Rethug Party.

Granted, the very idea of rating Reagan as one of the worst presidents ever will infuriate his many right-wing acolytes and offend Washington insiders who have made a cottage industry out of buying some protection from Republicans by lauding the 40th President.
But there’s a growing realization that the starting point for many of the catastrophes confronting the United States today can be traced to Reagan’s presidency. There’s also a grudging reassessment that the “failed” presidents of the 1970s – Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter – may deserve more credit for trying to grapple with the problems that now beset the country.

I've been saying for nearly 30 years not that I don't get it when it comes to the glassy-eyed adulation that has been heaped on The Gipper. I always thought it was one of those "emperor's-new-clothes" things, and that eventually everyone would sober up and realize what awful things Reagan did to this country.

As usual, Robert Parry nails it. Read the entire article -- it's well worth the time.

Rusty Limpdick another "Hanoi Jane"?

God, I love it when the rightwing starts to devour itself -- for example see my previous post about the McCain daughter attacking mAnn Coulter.

Now over at the Huffington Post, Frank Schaeffer, a former wingnut evangelical Rethug and now fulltime member of the Reality-Based-Community, tells it like it is when it comes to the current state of affairs in the Party:

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!
With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal...
When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."
For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Go ahead and read the whole thing. It's a very telling examination of the new Rethug Party. Of course Schaeffer will be excoriated as a "traitor" himself -- it's really all they have now to fall back on.

Salutegate: More from My Wackjob Cousin

Even though I've taken some time off, my wackjob cousin hasn't. Here's one of her latest:

Disgusting absolutely disgusting. A few minutes ago Mr. Obama left the White House to board Air Force 1 helicopter. Upon approaching the helicopter the Marine in his dress blues snapped to attention and saluted Mr. Obama. Mr. Obama showed total disregard or respect for the marine refusing to return salute. Mr. OBAMA THE MAN JOINED THE MILITARY AND WOULD PUT HIS LIFE ON THE LINE FOR YOU ANY DAY OR ANYTIME . Out of respect you deserve to return that salute. ACTIONS speak louder than words. We know how you feel about our constitution and our country.

What a lie you tell. And where is he headed, to FT Bliss to parse the military, what an idiot.

Really? Well, you know -- and she should have known -- that I just couldn't let this slide by without a response:

Jesus, that's what you are going with now? Now I must conclude that your visceral hatred of Barack Obama knows no bounds.
Oddly enough, the same people who are now slavering over this alleged "disrespect" are the very same ones (WND, Faux "News", Free Republic, etc., i.e., all of the "regular" sources which you seem to cite routinely) who said that Bill Clinton had NO RIGHT to return that same salute because he was a "draft dodger" who had never been in the military.
Really?
If you want to consider a REAL affront to the military, take a listen to Romney's speech last night (here's the full transcript, from Fox News so you know it hasn't been edited: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/30/transcript-mitt-romney-speech-at-rnc/, in which you will find exactly ZERO references to the troops in Afghanistan, even though he had a virtually unlimited amount of time to speak.
Mr. Romney, those men joined the military and if you were president, they would put their lives on the line for you any day or any time. Don't they deserve at least a passing mention, if not a loud and enthusiastic "shout out" of appreciation for their service?
How about that?

Okay, so after a couple more emails back and forth, one of which addressed the Romney-ignoring-the-troops thing by her saying dismissively that Romney is a busy man and the troops didn't mind:

Funny thing on that whole salute business, but I can find no record of any president doing it before Ronald Reagan, not even Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had more right than any other president with the possible exceptions of Washington and Grant. I remember the discussion in my VA "rap session" rehab group around the time that Reagan whipped out that first salute in 1981. No one had ever seen it happen before (and our ages ranged from vets from WWI on up through WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and we were somewhat divided over whether it was proper or just more of that famous Reagan showmanship.

But at the end of the day, the consensus was reached, as I recall, that no civilian, not even the commander-in-chief should salute a military person. Here's our reason why: One of the great concepts enshrined in our Constitution is that the military is always under civilian authority, command and control, and for a civilian, even the CIC or the SECDEF (Secretary of Defense), to salute a military man tends to blur that sharp distinction. For more on this topic, you might want to take a look at an interesting and lively forum discussion on this topic among some current and former service members on Military.com from several years ago, before this became a big current affairs issue: http://forums.military.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/409192893/m/9150000112001.

BTW, you can't tell me with a straight face that, if the tables were turned and it was Obama who "forgot" to mention the troops in Afghanistan in a similar speech that you would be all right with that. I don't for a second believe that. And, on what the troops themselves thought of Romney's omission, we seem to be in disagreement -- you think they didn't mind, and I think that they did. Since neither of us is a mindreader, we'll have to let this one drop, except for me to add that when I was in the Army and in Vietnam, it was nice to have our commander-in-chief acknowledge our service and our sacrifices. It contributed greatly to morale and esprit de corps, and both Johnson and Nixon, consummate politicians that they were, knew that.

Hell, yeah, I'll play the Vietnam Card!  In a New York minute!

Well, as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed never tires of reminding me, you can't argue with stupid and you shouldn't argue with crazy... Yeah, true enough, but Jeez, sometimes it's just so goddam much fun!

Apparently Only Democrats Can "Appease"

Over on The Facebook, a labeled photo of Ronald Reagan is making the rounds amongst the Moron-American Voting Bloc:

My question to the original poster was this:  "So has everyone forgotten that Ronald Reagan ordered the withdrawal of forces from Lebanon after 241 Marines were blown up by terrorists? How was that NOT 'appeasement'?"

It didn't take long to draw this response: "Spoken like a true communist traitor!"

To which I replied: "It's funny that when someone can't answer a question they start with the name calling. But that's okay, I have thick skin. So explain to me how Reagan's pullout from Lebanon was not 'appeasement'?" 

After three hours I've received no response. Like that's a surprise. In the words of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men, "The truth? You can't handle the truth!"

As I say, it would appear that only Democrats are capable of "appeasement"... God forbid that Saint Ronald could do any wrong... 

Bush the Impostor

When even your rightwing base turns on you, you'd better give up. But that's not in the makeup of the Empty Sleevejob.

Bruce Bartlett was a Reagan Republican and he paints a no-holds-barred picture of Baby Doc that those of us out here in the part of America that doesn't count have been seeing -- and commenting on -- for years.

Bush is no conservative, by any stretch of the imagination or any creative use of the word, but it takes a true conservative like Bartlett to say that to anyone who will listen. His book Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy holds that Bush has been a total impostor, a fraud, a wolf in conservative's clothing, who has deliberately set out to dismantle the Reagan legacy and bankrupt America.

It's fascinating reading (despite the fact that I disagree with Bartlett on any number of important ideological points, but never mind that--I can disregard all of that for that delicious rush of schadenfreude I get from seeing Baby Doc get raked over the coals by a real conservative), and well worth the time to see the true face of the anti-Americanism of the fascist neocons who have taken over our country, and who are the controllers behind the Baby Doc Meat Puppet.

It is also both surprising and appalling to see the number of conservatives who still blindly follow our corrupt misleader as he continues, at several million dollars an hour now, to drive our country into fiscal -- and moral -- bankruptcy. And as long as those Koolaid-drinking blind followers keep enabling the little fucker, the more damage he will do.

Bartlett's book ought to be mandatory reading for every conservative who has not yet examined Bush's alleged conservatism and found that it is wanting in nearly every facet.

A Midget Among Giants

Normally I don't pay much attention to "beauty contests", but when I saw the list of finalists for The Greatest American, I felt something had to be done. There is a midget amongst giants on the list.

The finalists are: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and...(drumroll) ... RONALD REAGAN. The same Ronald Reagan who sent Donald Rumsfield to Iraq to sell Weapons of Mass Destruction to Saddam Hussein.

Please go to the Greatest American website at
http://tv.channel.aol.com/greatestamerican
and cast your vote for who YOU think ought to get this honor. You may vote three times (!) for your favorite, or you can spread your vote around. It's probably best, though, to concentrate on one person.

You probably figured that my favorite is NOT Ronald Reagan. Weapons to Saddam Hussein, Iran-Contra, burgeoning deficits, clueless leadership, more corruption than any other administration except the current one and possibly that of Ulysses S. Grant ... the list goes on and on.

I know and you know that the radical right wingnuts are going to try to stuff the ballot boxes for their hero. Let's counter that. Tell everyone you can to cast their vote and dilute the presence of the wingnuts.

Cast your vote for who you think is "The Greatest American" at
http://tv.channel.aol.com/greatestamerican -- time is short and the voting will end in just a few days.

Don't let them stuff the ballot boxes AGAIN!!!

A Sleepless Night

I really shouldn't let my imagination run loose when I'm trying to go to sleep. Here are the nightmare scenarios that kept me up until the wee hours.

Setup:

The next president dies in office, and his vice president, under the US constitution (which is still more or less in effect, even though it's currently on life supports), becomes president.

Scenarios:

John McCain, the apparent front-runner in the Rethug race, would be 71, making him the oldest president ever, at the the time he is sworn in next January. (By comparison, Saint Ronald was a youthful 69 at the time he took office.) Despite the fact that McCain regularly keeps trotting out his doddering 95-year-old mother to prove that he has longevity genes, he's already had skin cancer and his body has to be a lot less than 100% after his wild youth (I "generally misused my good health and youth" -- source) and those five-and-a-half long years of torture and lack of medical care as a guest of the North Vietnamese.

In order to shore up his support among the mouthbreathing knuckledragging Fundo Xian branch of the party, McCain chooses Huckleberry Hucklebee as his VP. McCain dies and Huckleberry starts in on his campaign to restore Christian principles to the US constitution and, with the compliance of the spineless Blue Dog Democrats and the Dominionist-packed Supreme Court, slides us into theocracy.

And the Dems? Barack Obama is a prime target for assassination (a Google search for "assassinate obama" turns up some 14,000 terrifying hits). Let's face facts: Anyone who does not believe that there is a deep-seated and virulent strain of violent racism lurking just beneath the surface in many parts of this country is living in a fool's paradise. The current wide-eyed comparisons between him and JFK are downright scary when you remember what happened to Kennedy.

If Obama is the nominee, he will just about have to choose Billary as his VP running mate (and vice-versa). By the time of the Democratic Convention the party will be badly wounded by the current infighting that's going to only get worse. The best way to try to heal up those wounds would be to choose your enemy as your running mate and pretend that you have always been best buddies (as Reagan did with "Poppy" Bush, and JFK seems to have done with Lyndon Johnson). Then Obama dies in office. She is president, and she will continue the slide into fascistic corporatism that was started by Ronald Reagan and sadly continued, in large part, by Bill Clinton.

Jeez, I think I need a Xanax/Ambien cocktail...

1960s Scare Video -- An Actual Commercial

This one is making the rounds amongst the wingnuttery with a shrill "See, Ronald Reagan knew the truth way back in the 1950s [sic]!" Actually it was the 1960s, but I'm not going to be picky...

"Oh, if only we'd listened to him", they cry in their shrill chicken-little voices. "We'd never be on the road to socialized medicine the way we are now!"

Jesus, people, are you really that fucking stupid? (Never mind, asked and answered already today.)

Here's the video. See what you think:

Okay, what they never mention when they forward this shit is that Ronald Reagan was a paid meat-puppet for the American Medical Association, and the commercial was made at their direction because they were opposed to ... Medicare!

And that's why, whenever your IBIL* or some other moron forwards you this with the usual frantic warnings, point them in the direction of the Teabagger Anti-Socialist Pledge and tell them to give up their Medicare or be branded a hypocrite.

And then, for good measure, you can also remind them of what their god incarnate, Joshua bar Joseph, had to say about hypocrites...

[* IBIL=Idiot Brother-in-law]

Inconvenient Truths about John McCain

That's the title of a must-read analysis by a guy named Doug Bandow, over at Anti-War.com. Here's an excerpt:

Sen. John McCain is a man of physical courage and personal honor. He's also a warmonger, with little concern for those who would die in his military adventures. The Democrats won't say that. But it's the truth.
. . .
Anyone willing to go to war with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Serbia is prepared to fight anyone. Most people lean toward peace and believe that only dangerous necessity can justify loosing the dogs of war. Not McCain, who appears to be in permanent "yes" mode. If that famous 3 a.m. phone call came into the McCain White House, he likely would yell "bomb them" into the receiver, then wait until the morning to ask who we had attacked.

There's a lot more -- check it out.

And this Bandow guy? He's gotta be some compsymp radical-islamofascist-enabling liberal, right?

Nope, not quite. He is, among other things, a Robert A. Taft Fellow with the American Conservative Defense Alliance who served as a special assistant to St Ronald Reagan and was a senior policy analyst in the 1980 Reagan for President campaign. I'd say that his conservative credentials are pretty impeccable.

So take that, Grampaw McCain. Everyone else, dig down, buckle up and prepare yourselves for the coming battle between The Empire and the Jedi Knights.

Does a Rising Tide Lift All Boats?

We've been spoon-fed an economic concept since the Reagan administration, as part of that whole "trickledown economics"* thing, that a "rising tide lifts all boats". Well, it does seem to work that way in the real world of Budd Bay, one of the farthest-south reaches of Puget Sound, about a mile from my house. But, since boats that are lying on the bottom and stuck there don't get lifted, using that as a metaphor for anything except the rise and fall of water in an arm of the sea is kind of stretching it.

But that what's rightwing economists have tried to do since Reagan, and they are still at it, despite 30 years of facts -- inconvenient things, those damn facts -- proving the exact opposite when it comes to that "trickledown" bullshit.

BadTux the Snarky Penguin, whose blog I always read, has a startlingly simple analogy of his own, which involves the sellers of oranges. A lot of sellers of oranges coupled with just a few buyers. It illustrates a concept which was new to me, oligopsony, but which makes a lot of sense.

It's definitely worth the read, especially since it comes from a smart guy who is actually in a boat that's rising but who still sees the necessity to help those boats that are stuck on the bottom.

Dammit, now I'm using that metaphor... But never mind that. Go read his trenchant analysis of the whole thing.

---

 * Also known as the "don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining" school of economics.

Obama as Hitler. Again.

Jesus, will somebody give this a rest? In Sunday's edition of our local newspaper, some moron wrote a screed on that favorite wingnut topic, Obama is like Hitler Because...

Here's the full text of the letter (without the dope's name -- I don't want him to get any more publicity than is necessary -- but it does rhyme with "dunce"...):

A recent Olympian article by Leonard Pitts, columnist for the Miami Herald, strongly objected to comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler.
Hitler was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer. Obama definitely exercises the same skill levels.
Hitler acquired his following through his ability to arouse street crowds with his speeches. Obama, with his teleprompter, accomplishes the same.
Hitler and Obama began their political careers with small groups; Hitler with the German Workers Party, later becoming fuhrer (leader) of the Nazi Party. Obama, with the infamous political group ACORN, as a community organizer and now a U.S. president.
Hitler organized his private army of hoodlums known as storm troopers and later the SS or Schutzstaffel. Obama has expressed his demand for a civilian youth corps equal to our military. Kindergartners next? Why?
Hitler involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture. Why? Obama destroys our infrastructure, demanding government intrusion into our financial world, industrial capacity, labor unions, energy, health care, education, communications. Why? Obama is making fools of us all.
For every "why" the answer: Conquest, power, control, mind manipulation — socialism. Hitler demanded a strong socialistic central government. Obama, demanding the same, is still in the process of implementing his socialistic master plan for America. Where will it end?
History will judge.
Hitler in hating Jewish people became a racist monster, spreading death as no man before.
All true Americans, blessed by our Constitution, freedom and liberty, absolutely must keep this nation a free republic, for our children and future generations.

God, I am so fucking sick of this shit, and this one was the last straw. So here is my response to this dickhead, submitted to the paper that same day. On Monday I got called with the usual questions (i.e., "did you write it yourself?" "Is it a form letter?" etc.), so it ought to be in print within a week.

Fox News followers and lockstep Limbaugh listeners (aka "dittoheads") can apparently parrot the "Barack Obama is like Adolf Hitler because…" crap endlessly, with reckless abandon, as we saw in Sunday's letters. And sadly, the reasonable-sounding sophistry of this specious "proof" can have a certain superficial appeal.
While you can use those same arguments in a comparison between pretty much any politician and Adolf Hitler, I am particularly amused by applying them to a much different icon of the US Presidency, Ronald Reagan.
Reagan, too, "acquired his following through his ability to arouse … crowds with his speeches"; "involved himself strongly in labor unions, business, industry, agriculture"; "was a skilled schemer, politician, organizer"; and "began his political career with small groups" (e.g., the Screen Actor's Guild and the GE board of directors, at whose bidding he once railed unsuccessfully against the freedom-killing "socialist slavery" of Medicare).
Those who blindly follow the rightwing's marching orders, without exercising a single iota of critical thinking, are the sheep that the true wannabe dictators of this nation can happily call on to bleat on command whatever absurd talking-points they want them to spout.
Thus we have a litany of "Obama is not an American; Obama is a socialist; Obama is a fascist; Obama is a communist" etc. etc. Who knows what'll be next, but I don't think they can do much better than their "Obama is a fascist-communist-socialist-racist-atheist-Muslim-Kenyan-radical" rant.
About the only thing left is "Obama is a War-of-the-Worlds Martian".
Watch for it.

While I was pretty much free to choose most any politician as representing those talking points, I was more than happy to apply them to Saint Ronald, in a blatant attempt to piss off the letter writer and the literally dozens of Rethugs that we have in the liberal bastion of sanity (mostly) that is the state capital.

OOO-WEE-OOO! Tinfoil Hat Time

Okay, students. Time to make your own tinfoil hat and settle back to wait for Armageddon:

If I recall correctly, Numerology is one of the "lost science" ideas of the Dark Ages (so called for a reason...), especially so since the advent of easily-available computer time (fellow geeks, do you remember the 70s?).

With a modern computer (I'm talking basic desktop now, not a Cray supercomputer), any hacker geek worth the title can come up with a combination of numbers based on the numerological "sciences" that will ultimately, with enough pushing, come down to...

666!

OMFG, it's the Number of the Beast!!!!!! Henry Kissinger? The Beast. Pepsi Cola? The Beast.

My favorite was, of course, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Ronald = six letters; Wilson = six letters; Reagan = six letters! Put 'em together and whattaya got?

666!!!

The fucking Number of the BEAST, right there in the fucking White House!!!!!!!!!

Eeeeeeeee-owwwwwwwwww! No no no no no no no no!!!!!!!!!!

Taking It to the Streets

In 1981, during the late and unlamented reign of Saint Ronald, the VA health care system was in a shambles and had been for years. But the "trickle down" economic theories ("voodoo economics", according the description of one George Bush, who had a sudden epiphany to the contrary when he became St Ronald's sidekick) served to put the hobnail boots to it.

Descriptions of the VA hospitals in those days sound eerily familiar to today's readers: Moldy walls, dirty floors, a swarm of vermin, and complete denial by the administration that there was anything wrong.

Back then it took a catalyst to bring change. A man named Jim Hopkins, a real pissed-off veteran, drove his Jeep through the doors of the VA's Wadsworth Medical Center in LA and opened fire with an AR-14 into the photos of Reagan and Carter on the walls, and then to make it even more dramatic, also shot off a pistol and a shotgun.

Fortunately no one was injured, not even Hopkins when the police hauled him off in shackles. But he was shouting that Agent Orange was destroying his brain.

Back then we still had a media with some balls and a concept of investigative journalism. The Hopkins case turned into a national focus on the administration's denial of veterans, and specifically Agent Orange, PTSD and cuts in VA health care funding.

Hopkins died under mysterious circumstances in May of 1981, and his death sparked first a sit-in at the Wadsworth Center and then, after Reagan callously dismissed them as a bunch of whiners, it turned into a hunger strike.

When the strikers were ejected from the center by force, they regrouped in front of the White House and garnered international media attention that forced the world to focus on the shabby and unconscionable treatment of veterans in this country.

It was only after the embarrassment was too much for St Ronald that Congress negotiated a settlement.

And the result of that settlement as recognition of Agent Orange poisoning and PTSD.

Is it going to take another hunger strike on the part of this nation's veterans to bring about change to the VA health care system? Are we going to have to take it to the streets?

Oh, and you might want to remember the actions of St Ronald the next time one of your pinhead neocon reactionary friends tries that "Republicans take care of America's veterans" lie on you.

Source: See Killing Our Troops Slowly: Deja Vu All Over Again by Michael O'McCarthy.

Liberal Ronald Reagan Criticizes -- Republicans!

This is priceless. Take a listen to this radio address from Saint Ronald himself, back when he was still a human being:

Listen to him talking about, among other things, the evils of the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act, the horrors of tax breaks to the wealthy and the nightmare of reducing milk subsidies to public school children.

Even back then he had the basics down to be the Great Communicator. Too bad he later sold his soul to the devil for a mess of pottage.

It's sad, really, to see how completely Saint Ronald went to the Dark Side, after being a liberal way back in 1948.

Book of the Month: The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!

Way back in 1974, Otto Bettmann, of the world-famous Bettmann Archive of photography and images, wrote The Good Old Days - They Were Terrible!. It was intended as a nostrum against what Bettmann saw as an erroneous -- even dangerous --
reliance on the golden years of the past, a nostalgic longing for an America that was somehow...better...than the one of the early 1970s. It turned out he was right, for this longing for a better America past resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and we all know what happened after that.

Now that the Republicans and their Teabagger enablers appear to be in ideological ascendance, and want to "take the country back", this book will provide a sobering look at the kind of country they want to take us back to. Wealthy and corrupt corporations with their tentacles spread over the nation, child labor, horrific working conditions in unhealthy environments for low pay, the absence of food and drug laws that prevent the corporations from poisoning children and women, the suppression -- the outright murder -- of union organizers. It's all in this book, and much more, and it is profusely illustrated with contemporary illustrations from the vast library of the Bettmann Archive.

This book ought to be required reading for every American who longs to take us back to "the good old days"... But, as in most things, I am afraid that the people who really need to read it won't. And even if they did, they would most likely, against all odds, relate to the capitalist pigs who brought about such destruction and not to the vast majority of people who suffer under it. Jeez, just like they do now...

Hangin' With the Stars

I did manage to take some time out of my busy politickin' to attend a "listener forum" thrown by KPTK 1090 AM, the Seattle liberal talk radio station.

Here I am with some of the most talented -- and funniest -- liberal talk radio hosts: L to R, Norman Goldman, Thom Hartmann, Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy, Stephanie Miller, me, and Ron Reagan.

[Note that VIP badge I'm wearing around my neck - Woot!!]

I had already met Randi and Thom on the Air America cruise in 2008, but it was great to see them again, and really terrific to meet the others. And this was pretty much an informal chat session, where they all got to kind of let their hair down, and man-oh-man was that gang funny! They had us rolling in the aisles. Well, actually, rolling on the ice, since it was held in the hockey and ice-show center. Fortunately they had covered up the ice so geezers like me wouldn't slip on it.

Note that Thom Hartmann and Stephanie Miller seem kind of hors de combat, what with the leg cast and the arm sling. I asked them if they got mugged when they got off the plane, but they assured me that it was due to totally separate issues.

Coincidentally, this was the day after Stephanie "came out" on her radio show, and I told her that she had managed in about five seconds to break the hearts of literally millions of men in this country.

She's a good sport, of course, and laughed at the comment. At least I think she was laughing at the comment, and not at me...

Randi made what I thought was one of the pithest and most memorable comments of the evening: "When someone tells you that not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims, shoot back that not all White Christians are KKK, but all KKK are White Christians."