Dear Al Gore:
This is all your fault.
The sniping, the griping, the blaming, the shaming, the bickering, the snickering, the derision, the division, the fighting, the biting, the sneering, the jeering, the whining, the maligning, the name-calling, the caterwauling, the excuse-making, the deal-breaking, the constant complaining, the GOP framing, the misrepresentations and recriminations, the shucking and jiving and look at her crying, the she's periodically feeling down and he's lucky to be a black man-about-town, and every other imbecilic expression of stark illiberalism and intolerance which has turned this Democratic primary season into a frighteningly juvenile and ferociously nasty exercise in national ignorance, a complete clusterfucktastrophe of mythic proportions, with the compelling draw of a train wreck and nearly as much carnage—every last bit of it is all your fault.
If you had just run like I asked you, none of this would have happened.
You would have sailed through the primary season, beneficently slaying your opponents with the gentle lance of your undeniable superiority as a candidate, and winning voters' hearts by warming them with the golden glow from your Oscar, Emmy, and Nobel Prize. The American media, collectively once your mortal enemy, would have bowed to your wisdom: "My god!" they would have cried. "You've been right on everything from the climate crisis to the Iraq War—and we were wrong on it all! Forgive us, sir, and speak of what thou willst today, and we will not rip it from its context and call you a serial exaggerator!" Recalling how you were robbed of the presidency, despite having won the popular vote, the GOP would have celebrated your return to politics with a promise to run a clean and fair campaign: "This election will be about the issues!" John McCain would have insisted, then, upon realizing he couldn't actually beat you on the issues, would have promptly conceded. Congress would have made way for your quick ascension to your rightful position by impeaching President Bush and passing new law allowing for a special election, in which you would have received a good 70% of the votes from a grateful nation.
By now, you would be president. And by November 4, when we will be desperately watching returns to make sure that the Democrats haven't fucked it up yet again and accidentally allowed a McCain presidency to become a horrifying reality, you would have already engineered world peace, solved the climate crisis, ended global poverty, found cures for AIDS and cancer via well-funded stem cell research, legalized same-sex marriage, and been well on your way to a working model of the flying car we were supposed to get with the new millennium.
But no. You had to go and not run for president. Selfish jerk.
Love,
Liss
P.S. That was all irony. It's no fucking wonder you didn't want to run.
P.P.S. Even knowing that, I still desperately wish you were my president—and to this day can't think of the moment when I heard on the news that you'd lost Bush v Gore without blubbing.
P.P.P.S. Do you have a tissue?
I Write Letters
Happy Blogiversary...
...to Resist Racism, celebrating one year of (I know, so obvious) resisting racism, and helping other people to do the same.
Welcome to Weimar Wesley Acres
AP:
From the ground, the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home looks like any other building. But fly over in an airplane, and the outline is unmistakable: It's one big swastika.I'm sure that the top-notch architect on the job really did think that this looked good on paper. As Shakesville Heeb Laureate, I thought it would be appropriate to visit the facility to see what's going on.
Upon entrance, I could've sworn I saw some goose-stepping. Ah, never mind. Crutches. The people generally seem ok, even though some of them look at me kind of funny. I noticed a nice older woman knitting in her room, so I thought I'd take a quick look and say hello. When I saw the half-completed yellow star in her lap, I wished her a guten tag and ran down the hall.
What's this? Looks like one of the new wings they added to accentuate the swastika shape.
The "Leni Riefenstahl Wing."
Hmm. Well, I suppose they could've named it after worse people. Apparently, this is the on-grounds cinema. Well, that's kind of cool. I mean, it gives folks a chance to go to the movies without having to deal with the google-plex theatres these days. Let's see what the schedule says.
Triumph of the Will on a loop?
OK, that's enough of that. All of this propaganda is starting to make me a little hungry. Where's the cafeteria in this joint? I walked for seemed to be an endless time around the swastika-like maze of the place. Hope was almost lost until I finally found what I was looking for.
Man-O-Manischewitz that was tough, but now I knew where to grab some grub. There was a big board in front that listed today's specials:
- BratwurstKnackwurstWeisswurstWiener SchnitzelJaeger SchnitzelSide dish: Fritz's Gritz and Sauerkraut
I found the doctor's office; it just said "Dr. M." I went in and told him that Fritz done me wrong at lunch time. He just looked at me curiously and said, "You're here a little early - the experiment session doesn't start until after the arts & crafts. Say, you don't have a twin, do you?"
Keeeeeeeeeeeeeep runninggggggggggggggggggggggggg!!!
Phew... (pant pant). That was close. Well, I think I've seen enough of this place to know where they stand on things. I think my next stop will have to be the architect's home. My guess is that it's probably shaped like a Reichsadler (with a bunker downstairs).
Quote of the Day
"Yes, I worry about it. And I know they pay attention because of the intercepts we have of their communications."—John McCain, confirming he has "concerns that anti-American militants in Iraq might ratchet up their activities in Iraq to try to increase casualties in September or October and tip the November election against him."
Immigration Reform: From Orwell to Kafka
by Shaker Constant Comment
Background: On February 28, 2008, Representative Sam Johnson (R-Texas) introduced "The New Employee Verification Act" (H.R. 5115), legislation that will reform the nation's approach to worksite enforcement. The bill will replace the current I-9 process used to verify whether employees are work-authorized in the United States with a mandatory electronic employment verification system that is "adequately funded and vigorously enforced," said Johnson. The timetable for employers to register in Johnson's mandatory Electronic Employment Verification System (EEVS) to verify the eligibility of all new hires would be within three years of enactment of the bill. The legislation would also strengthen enforcement through tougher employer penalties. Separately, the proposed bill would also create a voluntary Secure Electronic Employee Verification System (SEEVS), which employers could choose to use as an added level of security. The SEEVS would include a standard background check and the collection of a biometric technology—such as a fingerprint or eye scan—to secure an employee's identity, work authorization and prevent future fraudulent use of a Social Security number for the purposes of illegal employment.
In the wake of the federal government's failure to enact broad immigration reform, congressional advocates and the Bush Administration will try to attach a mandatory electronic employment verification (EEV) system to any immigration bill it considers, according to a recently released policy analysis written by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute. Intended to strengthen internal enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, the EEV is an Internet-based employee vetting system that the federal government would require every employer to use. The Cato Institute is a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, DC.
In Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification: Franz Kafka's Solution to Illegal Immigration, Harper argues that a mandatory EEV system, which would create privacy issues for law-abiding Americans and increase the likelihood of identity fraud, would be "ineffective, invasive and costly."
Although an earlier Cato Institute study, written more than a decade ago by John J. Miller and Stephen Moore, alerted and educated policymakers who were then considering a national identification card system as a first step toward the reduction of illegal immigration, a pilot program now threatens to resurrect the system they warned against. Harper's analysis notes that, during last summer's congressional debate on immigration reform, a national identification system was "treated as a matter of consensus agreement," remaining a viable, if not prominent, policy option.
Harper predicts that creating an accurate and mandatory EEV would require a national identification system with substantial costs incurred by American taxpayers—an estimated $20 billion to create and hundreds of millions more per year to operate. Moreover, he contends, a nationwide EEV system "would send a substantial number of workers—native-born and legal immigrant alike—into labyrinthine bureaucratic processes, preventing them from working until the federal government deemed their papers to be in order." With regard to employees who believe they have been wrongfully refused the right to work, Harper notes that the current E-Verify program has no process for appealing final nonconfirmations. "A nationwide EEV system would wrongly give thousands of eligible American workers final nonconfirmations each year, with no apparent appeal process, blatantly depriving them of due process and, of course, their livelihoods."
The analysis also foresees a huge cost in the loss of Americans' privacy when both employers and the government collect and store personal employee data. "Kept in digital form for long periods, this personal information could be readily converted to untold new purposes," Harper said. In addition, because the EEV process uses social security numbers, data could be easily correlated with tax records at the Internal Revenue Service, education loans in the Department of Education and health records at the Department of Health and Human Services, he warns. "Unless a verifiable data destruction policy were in place, any EEV system, however benign in its inception, would be a surveillance system that tracked all American workers," Harper said.
Another important issue to consider in this debate is security against forgery, fraud and tampering. While some government-issued identification documents are resistant to this, Harper notes that things necessary to make a system impervious to forgery and fraud could "convert it from an identity system into a cradle-to-grave biometric tracking system—a national ID and surveillance system."
While acknowledging that proponents of internal immigration enforcement stand on a sound principle—that people should enter the country legally—Harper is worried that current immigration law is a greater threat to the rule of law than people crossing the border to come here to work. With nationwide EEV, he contends, "the United States would move to a regime where the last word on employment decisions would not be with the worker and employer but with bureaucrats in the federal government." Harper's policy analysis can be found here.
And we thought the whole telecom/FISA issue set a terrible precedent. Why do I have the feeling we ain't seen nuthin' yet? I’ll be sure to post updates on this; in the meantime, we need to do all we can to head this off before it’s too late…
Megan Williams Update
In September of last year, Megan Williams, a young black woman was held for days by three white men and three white women, during which time she was sexually assaulted and tortured until authorities rescued her after an anonymous tip. Williams was then charged for writing bad checks before her injuries had even begun to heal.
In February, defendants Alisha Burton and George Messer both pleaded guilty to assault and kidnapping and were each sentenced to 10 years. Yesterday, after pleading guilty, Frankie Brewster (who owned the trailer in which Williams was held captive and is the mother of another defendant, Bobby Brewster) was sentenced to 10-25 years for second-degree sexual assault, and Karen Burton (Alisha's mother) was sentenced to 10 years for violating Williams' civil rights and two 2-10-year sentences for assault, which will be served consecutively.. Brewster will be eligible for parole in 10 years, and Burton after 6 ½.
Needless to say, the sentences hardly seem sufficient, not only because of the duration and horror of what Williams was put through, but also because of the defendants' criminal histories. At the time, Logan County (West Virginia) Sheriff W.E. Hunter said: "They all have previous records and have been arrested numerous times. They are familiar to law enforcement." Frankie Brewster, for example, had already served five years after pleading down a first-degree murder charge to manslaughter.
I'm not certain why the decision was made to accept lesser pleas in this case, especially since the original prosecutor (who's recently gone on active military duty) said at the time he would seek maximum sentences. Any concerns about Williams, whom some reports have identified as mentally disabled, being an ineffective witness surely should have been mitigated by the facts that law enforcement rescued her from the scene, which was described as straight from "a horror movie," and that the defendants were hardly upstanding citizens. It also should have been weighed against the value to the entire community of keeping the defendants off the streets as long as possible, but it whiffs strongly of having been weighed instead against the embarrassment to the community of keeping such a racially-charged rape story in the (inter)national news during a trial.
Conceivably, the decision is also a commentary on prosecutors' concerns about their ability to find a jury who would convict, which is a truly appalling thought.
Danny Combs and Bobby Brewster (Frankie's son) still face felony charges including kidnapping and sexual assault.
Florida Lawmakers on Crack
The Florida Legislature is supposed to be dealing with some very weighty matters, like school funding, property taxes, and the budget deficit left behind by Jeb Bush, but apparently the most pressing issue for them is how teenagers wear their clothes.
A bill to punish students who wear sagging pants that expose their back ends or sexual organs passed the Senate Thursday 28-11 after the two sponsors said it was needed to send kids a signal that they need to dress for success.No wonder the voters have such a low opinion of their elected officials when they spend their time on such half-assed measures as this.
''I believe we must send a clear message that there are rules in this society that dictate that if you intended to get a job in a professional environment, you will not get that job with your underwear hanging over your trousers,'' said Sen. Larcenia Bullard, a Miami Democrat and co-sponsor of the measure.
The bill requires that schools enforce the following penalties: first offense, a verbal warning from the principal; second offense, three days of in-school suspension; third, 10 days in-school suspension; fourth, 10 days out-of-school suspension.
The tone of the Senate debate was more serious than it was on Wednesday, when jeering and jokes provoked talk about the bill ''opening the door just a little crack'' and senators' comments being ''brief.''
But sponsor Sen. Gary Siplin, an Orlando Democrat, called it a ''pro-family, pro-education, pro-employment bill.'' He said the fad began in prisons among inmates and kids should not be repeating it.
Opponents said they didn't like the bill because they believe parents should be their children's clothes police, not schools.
(Cross-posted.)
Everyone Needs Mentors
Earlier this week, Karl Rove appeared on the Charlie Rose Show, where he was asked about his mentors. Rove replied that he learned how to be loyal and trustworthy and honest and straightforward from George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.
That's such a coincidence, because I learned how to be an astronaut from my cat!
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Maurinsky: What does a day in your life look like?
I lead a terribly boring and corporeally solitary life, for the most part. If you told me I were really a ghost, I might be inclined to believe you, but for the existence of my flesh made certain by Mr. Shakes' kisses on my neck to awaken me each morning.
A day in my life looks quiet and plain and still.
Hmm
The three most widely-read bloggers by members of the media are Andrew Sullivan (conservative), Glenn Reynolds (conservative claiming to be libertarian), and Mickey Kaus (conservative claiming to be bipedal).
That darn liberal media!
What I want to know is why they don't read Shakesville, when I write them such nice letters?
Bush: Legacy of Waste
Mr. I-Loves-Me-A-Big-Strong-Dollar sure knows how to come up with more ways to throw those dollars away.
Last year, a proposed budget rule came down the pike that requires U.S. contractors to report all fraud and abuse that they come upon during their work for the government. Little did people realize, only until recently, that the published rule which came out late last year contained an interesting exemption:
But in a twist that has evolved into a Capitol Hill mystery, the proposed rule that the White House's Office of Management and Budget published late last year includes language that would exempt from such reporting all U.S. contractors who do work overseas.
Yes, that red flag you see is the all-inclusive "WTF!" on a proposed ruling that would effectively allow overseas contractors to waste all kinds of fucking money, while we're shoveling funds down the shitter at the rate of $12 billion a month. The Justice Department and Congress are pretty pissed off at this, both wanting to know who slipped this exemption in and and what the hell can be done to get it out of there. Given the White House's stance on the matter, I don't think we have to look very far to see who's involved in the slip:
A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews contracts policy, said comments about any part of the proposed crackdown "will be taken into full consideration." She would not specifically discuss the overseas exemption or the investigation it prompted.What in the Sam Hill is that dumb ass vague-speech supposed to be? Taken into full consideration? Thorough deliberative process?
"Federal agencies and OMB have taken the initiative in strengthening accountability in contracting with this proposed rule," OMB spokeswoman Jane Lee said in a statement. "The public, Congress and all agencies have the opportunity to review and comment during a well-established and thorough deliberative process."
The White House has declined to say whether the loophole, first reported last month by The Associated Press, will remain in the plans when they are finalized later this year.
See Jane obfuscate.
Seriously, this is such a no-brainer. For someone who is saying nothing else lately but "I'm sure when history looks back on this administration...", he keeps finding ways to ensure that history will look at his administration and repeatedly smack him on the head and kick him in the junk for all of the stupid shit he has done during his tenure. How is that generous economic stimulus package going to offset all of the waste that would theoretically not have to be accounted for during all the contract work in Iraq? I mean, shit - he's not even using the good PR opportunity that's being thrown in his stinking lap! All he would have to do right now is lie and say that he knew nothing about the exemption rule and that there's no question it should be out. Instead, he lets the OMB act as if the removal of the exemption is something for them to mull over from an item someone threw into the suggestion box to improve the office decor.
Long live the legacy!
Important Announcement
Bush is still our president, still a mondo fucko, and I still hate him with every ounce of my being.
Sometimes it just needs to be said, lest my head explode. That is all.
Carry on.
Caption This Photo
"Irony, thy name is Killer."
Rocco poses in the Leo tux, inspired by one worn by actor Leonardo DiCaprio to the Oscars, at Little Lily in Los Angeles, California February 18, 2008. Pet fashion label Little Lily has designed a range of dog clothes inspired by the actual gowns worn by A-listers on the Oscar red carpet. REUTERS/Phil McCarten (UNITED STATES)
Two-Year Toilet Update
There are new details in the story Petulant mentioned this morning, and about which I wrote earlier this afternoon, of a woman spent two years sitting on her boyfriend's toilet until she became literally attached to the seat.
The woman, 35-year-old Pam Babcock, had become phobic, according to her boyfriend, 36-year-old Kory McFarren, largely as a result of a physically and emotionally abusive childhood during which she was kept inside the house after her mother died."It just kind of happened one day; she went in and had been in there a little while, the next time it was a little longer. Then she got it in her head she was going to stay -- like it was a safe place for her," McFarren said.
Provided McFarren is telling the truth, or something very close to it, it's possible that he thought he was doing the right thing for her. It can be difficult for the partners of traumatized people, for whom trauma has left them feeling unsafe, to know the right thing to do; often, indulging whatever routines they develop as coping mechanisms seems loving—and what starts out a minor indulgence of a fairly harmless idiosyncrasy can, slowly and incrementally, turn into a crippling enablement. What once looked like support twists into a fun-house mirror version, resembling nothing so much as abuse. After awhile, you kind of get used to it.
But McFarren said she moved around in the bathroom during that time, bathed and changed into the clothes he brought her. He brought food and water to her. They had conversations and had an otherwise normal relationship -- except it all happened in the bathroom.
…McFarren, who works at an antique store, said he has been taking care of Babcock for the 16 years they have lived together. He insisted that he tried to coax her out of the bathroom every day.
"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,"' [Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple] said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."
…"She is an adult; she made her own decision," said her boyfriend, Kory McFarren. "I should have gotten help for her sooner; I admit that. But after a while, you kind of get used to it."
Possibly the boyfriend was abusive, but I'm willing to bet he was inured by small degrees to how bizarre and unhealthy the situation had become, which was once not so.
If that's the case, the worst thing that either he or Babcock ever did was have the terrible foresight of being born into a country where mental illness and trauma are more likely to be the butt of a joke than a topic someone knows, or cares, anything about.
UPDATE: Sheriff Whipple has recommended that McFarren be charged for mistreatment of a dependent adult. The sheriff said that judging by the woman's condition - she had open sores on which the toilet seat would stick - it appeared she likely sat on the toilet continually for at least a month.
It looks like the sheriff is trying to find some middle ground between throwing the book at the guy, who doesn't sound like he was capable of making the best decisions, and doing nothing, which risks communicating that it wasn't necessary to seek help on Babcock's behalf. I'd be grateful if any of our Shakers with legal backgrounds could provide some thoughts on how serious a charge "mistreatment of a dependent adult" might be. [H/T for update to Shaker Not A Morning Person, in comments.]
"She would have to be sleeping on the toilet," the sheriff said.
..."The unfortunate thing is this truly is a case of two people, in my opinion, with diminished mental capacity," Whipple said.
The Wright Stuff
I was firmly resisting saying anything about the latest round of ZOMG Surrogatez!1!! at the center of which is video of Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, giving a fiery sermon in support of Obama, which is heavy on race-centered rhetoric. My position is that, despite my disagreement with some of the things Wright says (including his feminist-piquing statement that Hillary "ain't had to work twice as hard just to get accepted"—please, it hasn't been a stroll through a rose garden for her, either, and can we not stop playing that game already?), I'm just bloody done with posting about anything said by any "surrogates" who are not part of the campaigns.
The problem is he's as much a part of Obama's campaign as Ferraro was of Clinton's, holding a "largely honorary, advisory" position on Obama's African American Religious Leadership Committee, and the Obama campaign "couldn't immediately say whether he'd remain on the committee."
Shockingly, not only is Obama not a zomg monster for this zomg outrageous refusal to zomg instantly push Wright from an honorary position, but, somehow, it's still all Clinton's fault. Josh Marshall:
[T]he simple fact is that we wouldn't be seeing this stuff now if it weren't for the fact that this is the kind of campaign Hillary Clinton's campaign has decided to wage -- often directly and at other times indirectly by not reining it in in her supporters when it crops up on its own. Wright is news today because Ferraro's been news yesterday.Ah, I see. So Hillary must take responsibility for her surrogates and campaign staff, as well as Obama's surrogates and campaign staff, and neither Obama nor Wright have to take responsibility for anything. As long as we're clear on that, then.
That explains why I've never gotten a satisfactory response from the Obama campaign about its co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr.'s sexist and race-baiting statements about Hillary back in January, before the South Carolina primary. I should have been directing my complaints to Hillary this whole time.
And in case my dripping sarcasm hasn't made it abundantly clear, I would not like to see Obama treated as unfairly as Clinton has been; I would like to see Clinton treated as fairly as Obama has. The world is not ending, nor is Obama being treated like evil incarnate because of this situation. I wonder if we could give Clinton the same respect.
O M F G
by Shaker TS
Our Chimp-in-Chief appeared on PBS's Nightly Business Report last evening (transcript and video here).
I wasn't aware that program was supposed to be a comedy.
Just two gems from this latest Bushie Treasure Chest of Stupidity and Denial:
"If you want me to say we're in a tough patch, having a tough time, it's bad -- times are rough -- I'll say all those three, because that's the truth."...(However, Bush) refused to declare a recession, "because there's a definition for the 'R' word, and we haven't reached the definition."Tough times, Mr. President? What, did the Country Club raise its greens fees again? Please step outside the Beltway for just a moment and take a look around. When the dollar is at an all-time low, major banks are on the verge of collapse, gold, oil, gasoline and food are at all-time highs, and people are losing their homes and jobs at ever-increasing rates, it might be time to expand the narrow definition of 'the R word'.
Oh, and this one takes the cake:
Bush said he favored a strong dollar because a stronger dollar would reduce inflationary pressures, especially for energy.And you hope to achieve this 'stronger dollar' by printing up 150 billion more of them so we can all get a $300 check? Sorry Mr. President, but you're confusing your military policy with your monetary policy. "Strength in numbers" doesn't work on a national scale with currency (but thank goodness it's working so well in Iraq... oh wait).
313 days remain. Still. Fucking. Clueless.
With Great Power . . .
During this primary cycle, I've been a petulant, narcissistic little bitch because I've been profoundly disappointed with various Democratic candidates' choices to play with fire in terms of race- and gender-baiting, fear-mongering, cuddling up with homophobes, and generally playing politics in ways that I think are anti-progressive.
I'm old enough, savvy enough, and cynical enough to know that these tactics are not "accidental", and I've heard all the arguments that these are just "temporary" strategies of immediate necessity, which will be discarded once the Democratic nomination is settled.
However, I remain principled enough to find such tactics extremely disturbing – not just because of the personal dilemma it creates for me --"Hmmm. Vote for someone who will stoop to race-baiting, or someone who will stoop to gender-baiting? Hmmmm." -- not just because I believe that it threatens the chances of a Democratic presidential win in November – but most importantly, because I think that these tactics damage real people in real ways, and that this damage will resonate far beyond this presidential campaign, regardless of who is nominated, and finally, elected.
Please . . . Open Wide
When Ferraro spouts obviously racist statements (this is a nice way of saying: Drops a big old racist turd in the middle of the living room carpet), and the Clinton campaign does not vigorously distance itself from her immediately – it sends the message: "This is OK!" (or at the very least) "It's not that bad!"
The core of Ferraro's message: "Reverse racism exists! Black people are picking on white people!" – conveyed through a voice of power – a voice of power strongly associated with the word "Democrat" – will, I believe, resonate into the years to come, and will infiltrate the cultural consciousness as some kind of perversely validated viewpoint, and it will impact the daily lives of people of color who are already fighting a mountain of racism . . . . unless . . .
. . . unless it is rejected unequivocally, immediately, and vigorously by all people who identify themselves as Liberal, Democrat, and/or Progressive.
This is the slippery slope that I worried about from the beginning -- when Obama chose to "keep an open ear" to someone like Donnie McClurkin, when Cuomo "shucked and jived" while keeping an unmelted butter-cube in his mouth and claimed it was all about Teh Boxing, when Jackson managed a stunning double-whammy gender/race-bait with "her appearance brought her to tears, but not Hurricane Katrina", when Bill Clinton figuratively patted Obama's head with words like "kid" and "fairy-tale", and Obama figuratively patted Hillary's fanny with a phrase like "periodically feeling down".
However "subtle" these tactics are supposed to be -- or (stretching my imagination to to the extreme outer edges of the known Universe, and then out to the edges of any directly-adjacent Universes) however "unintentional" they were – they are all precedents -- precedents set by powerful people who are considered, by and large, to represent some part of the liberal end of the political spectrum – and they are, in my opinion, awful, horrible, no-good, very-bad treacherous precedents to set.
Actions and words from those in power which say: "It's OK to discount someone else based on their sex or race, as long as you don't really get caught -- and it gets you elected!" can too easily be translated to: "It's OK to fire someone based on their sex or race, as long as you don't really get caught -- and it helps your bottom line!"
And has anyone else noticed that the eroding slope of "liberal ethics" seems to be getting slipperier, and slimier, by the day?
If you don't buy my "Precedents of the Powerful" theory, try thinking back eight years.
Could you, then, even have begun to imagine the erosion of Constitutional Rights that we face today, and the culture of political corruption that is now so commonly accepted that we barely bat an eye when yet another politician is exposed as a hypocrite and a liar?
Rome didn't fall in a day, you know.
The incremental creep of neo-con precedent has, I believe, penetrated deeply into our culture – Confederate flags in Senatorial offices have turned to nooses on college campuses and schoolyards.
I believe that this creepy, creepy creep has also made headway into the heart of the Democratic Party, and that the people who will ultimately suffer will not be the rich and powerful.
Instead, this is who will suffer:
The black man who complains about racism in his law-school classes, who will hear: "You're just attacking me because I'm white! You wouldn't even have gotten in here if they weren't looking for minorities," and who will confront the statement of a noose hung over his door-knob when he returns to his dorm.
The gay kid who protests the inclusion of a homophobic minister at his high school assembly, who will hear: "We're just trying to give an ear to all sides," and who will confront the bullies lingering just outside the school property-line after sixth period.
The woman in a non-traditional job who gets justifiably angry when she's being harassed daily by her co-workers who will hear: "What? Are you 'periodically down' again? Maybe you don't have what it takes -- or maybe you're just trying to manipulate us!", and who will confront the caricature of herself "takin' it doggy-style from the whole crew" pinned to the bulletin board in the break-room.
Those who would be leaders must lead us in a direction that we want to go, and show us how to be better, not worse --
Because shit (unlike economics) actually does "trickle down".
Senator Who?
A moment of silence to mark the passing of former Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio, cranky millionaire and liberal champion. And now a question: what about this “Senator No” business?
During 18 years on Capitol Hill, from 1977 to 1995, Metzenbaum came to be known as “Senator No” and “Headline Howard” for his abilities to block legislation and get publicity for himself.
Okay, fine. Except that I’d heard that this moniker had been associated with a decidedly different lawmaker.
There’s probably room for two Senator Noes in history (or is that Senators No?). But there doesn’t seem to be room for both in the collective memory of the media. Weird.
(Cross-posted.)
