November 27, 2013

Walter Rhett: Thanksgiving and the Winds of Fate

The turning of the winds bring new casts of fate. The ancients knew when the winds warned and when the winds said move, and when the winds brought the village to a standstill.

We have lost their discernment. We have abandoned their reason. We have substituted political spin.

Arguments against healthcare are made without a single image of the sick and ill in view, only the screams of the pain of dollars untethered from compassion and common sense. Arguments against employment now are made by citing a generation of unborn grandchildren. The arguments against ending the filibuster are open threats of even greater abuse when the minority party gets its turn. The argument against higher wages is that record profits will rise slower.

Spin has its own velocity of calculated turns. Is it wise for investors to value at $20 billion a company that transmits messages of 140 characters without a save or archive function, whose biggest innovation is “#” (a hashtag)?

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/27/thanksgiving-and-the-winds-of-fate/

November 26, 2013

Nance Greggs: Please Proceed, GOP

Over the past four-plus years, it has been downright mind-blowing to watch you, the GOP, rewrite history in a never-ending attempt to compare the current administration to the overwhelming failure that was the Dubya presidency – and somehow come to the conclusion that between our man and your boy, Obama is the one who is somehow found wanting.

You have compared every aspect of Obama’s term in office to the Reign of Error that preceded him. And while those comparisons have been blatantly ridiculous, the entertainment value of watching you equate the astounding accomplishments of one with the dismal record of the other is priceless.

For the record, let me remind you of history as it actually unfolded, rather than as you want it to be perceived.

Barack Obama never received a briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in the US”, which he immediately ignored, along with dismissing the constant and dire warnings of the intelligence community. The attack of 9/11 happened on your boy’s watch, and you can chalk up the resulting deaths of over 3,000 people in his column. You can, of course, count that as a win in your “war on terror” – although I doubt most Americans think of it in that light...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/26/please-proceed-gop/

November 25, 2013

Stormy Monday, 11/25/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 11/25/13

After a week that included both the exercise of Harry Reid’s nuclear capability and an interim agreement to curtail the nuclear capability of Iran, Republicans and their media henchjerks are left with continuing to bleat about healthcare.gov while the President heads to the West Coast for some heavy-duty fundraising and speechmaking.

Following Sunday fundraisers in Seattle and Medina, today finds him in San Francisco, where he resumes his quest to shame House Republicans into taking action on comprehensive immigration reform, five months after a version was approved by the Senate.

Tomorrow, he’s set to deliver a speech on the economy during a visit to Dreamworks Animation in Glendale, where he’ll discuss job creation in the entertainment industry; a major problem with that job creation will be highlighted by a simultaneous rally at nearby Griffith Manor Park, where visual effects artists will protest offshoring.

While in California, the President will also attend Democratic fundraisers at the homes of Magic Johnson, writer/producer Marta Kaufmann, and producer/media mogul Haim Saban. You can attend all three events for as little as $51,100, but that meager outlay will probably land you at the kiddies’ tables. Maybe opt instead for pricier seats and hope you can make up the difference with Black Friday savings...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/25/stormy-monday-112513/

November 20, 2013

Walter Rhett: A Triple Critical for ACA

Bio-rhythms were the inspiration to eliminate human suffering before Prozac, and it became a cliché that people complained about their triple critical days—the times when all three bio-cycles were at their lowest. The growth in American manufacturing may well be coming from pills—a story in the New York Times cites new addictions to control the old addictions; clients serviced at pill clinics run by doctors who were addicted in the new and old ways, which means blood tests are out and pill counts are in.

The lines, legally and culturally, are converging to create new vortices of future misery, even as some politicians try to substitute the politics of memoir and the politics of money.

The point is certain ideas persist in America’s pop psychology and politics, chief of which is government is bad and blacks are inept (except for the exceptional!), and the combination is lethal. The current political tragi-drama defies all common sense, and isn’t the least bit affected by evidence. More than the Affordable Care Act computer glitches, the twin pillars of hate and meanness have found a place to roost. The chickens have come home. Smug looks abound, with “I told you so-s” all around.

Amazon should have been given the job of messaging health care; they service thousands of products with all sorts of interfaces and seldom crash. Pay them a percentage and let them run banner ads...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/20/a-triple-critical-for-aca/

November 18, 2013

Nance Greggs: Good News Is No News

As though any further proof were necessary, the reaction of the mainstream media to the launch of the Obamacare website, and its attendant glitches, has become yet another example of one overwhelming truth: if there is anything that can be used to discredit this President’s competency, motives, or ability to govern, it will be discussed 24/7 on every major news outlet ad nauseam.

Could the rollout of the Obamacare website have been smoother? Duh, do ya think? Should the website have been tested more extensively before launch? I’m leaning towards the bleedin’ obvious here. Should the website’s glitches have been anticipated and dealt with to every extent possible before its launch? I think “you’re damned fuckin’ real” sums it up nicely.

All of that being said, it is still a given that had the Obamacare website been perfect from day one, had millions of people been successfully registered without a hitch within weeks of its launch, had the site’s efficiency surpassed every expectation, no one would have heard about it – because when it comes to Obama’s achievements, the MSM is only interested in reporting perceived failure rather than any actual success.

To hear the media bobbleheads tell the tale, the website’s glitches have resulted in a disaster that ranks somewhere between the attack on Pearl Harbor and 9/11 – only much, much worse...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/17/good-news-is-no-news/

November 13, 2013

Walter Rhett: The Thrum and Chum of Marketplace Speech

I read and listen to a lot of historic voices. They gave me a long view of the ongoing conversation about how we as humans live in society. I listen to them to add their ideas to the contemporary conversation, the one about how we define ourselves, order the world, create economic value, dispense justice, feed the hungry, provide for the sick, teach our children, preserve our resources, and help our neighbors—the discussion of how we express our values. I listen to how we listen. And the special power of voices in American politics and in America’s communities is being lost.

Through most of history, voices were not intended to be produced, recorded, looped and repeated, printed and handed out as a daily list of talking points, published as headlines, or digitally repeated as sound to accompany a 90-second video, with a 15-second standup close-out. We now have an entire well paid industry devoted to pushing out the traditional use of the voice to create a work product that can be polled overnight and tested by focus groups to herd ideas and tell us what to think.

None of this work is tested against truth and common sense. Rarely does it involve any real evidence. It misses the subtle touches of the Dutch masters’ paintings or the art of Paris salons. It’s billboard stuff. Brazen. Brutal. And ugly. But commonplace.

For two weeks, I’ve been listening to the voices of the jubilee; my term for the formerly enslaved, whose voices were recorded in typed narrative reports between 1934-1936. I’ve been imagining how the stories would have differed with an entire social industry engaged in shaping their message and production—with unlimited amounts of money! I think about 90-year-old elders trying to remember the events of a war that only touched them in its final days, sitting on couches of late night talk shows...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/13/the-thrum-and-chum-of-marketplace-speech/

November 11, 2013

Stormy Monday, 11/11/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 11/11/13

If you’re reading this, either the fragments of the Gravity Ocean Circulation Explorer didn’t fall on you or you have an admirably hard head. The European Space Agency satellite ran out of fuel on October 21 and was predicted to crash late Sunday or early Monday. The ESA expects it to break up at an altitude of about 50 miles, resulting in a spray of debris centered over… well, they don’t really know.

If I got to choose a location for GOCE’s crash landing, I’d be tempted to pick room 2154 in the Rayburn House Office Building. Barring such celestial fallout, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform will use the room Wednesday morning for yet another of what its chair, Darrell Issa, likes to refer to as “hearings” into the Affordable Care Act. (Far from being exercises in hearing, the proceedings have to date generally resembled the shambolic tribunal of orangutans convened to decide Charlton Heston’s fate in Planet of the Apes.)

To that end, Issa has subpoenaed Todd Park, Chief Technology Officer for the Obama Administration, to appear. Despite having nothing much to do – other than, oh, directing the repair and remediation of healthcare.gov, the site whose technical issues have caused such consternation to Issa and so many others who were completely opposed to Obamacare from the get-go – Park so far shows no sign of complying with the subpoena. It goes without saying that we haven’t heard the last of this, because of course when it comes to Darrell Issa, there is no last of this. Ever...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/11/stormy-monday-111113/

November 6, 2013

Walter Rhett: Can Anybody in Politics Get Anywhere Near the Truth?

Today, we connect the dots on three terrible moral failings and major abdications of personal responsibility within our politics that no one has come forward to claim with a mea culpa.

Let’s begin by naming three whose moral vision have weakened the national standards by diminishing integrity and encouraging a growing culture of thinking that anything goes, means justifies the means, greed is good, simple is extreme, and lies should be the foundation of national life. Theirs is the moral toxic gas they refuse to destroy, even when confronted. And in a great irony, all three assert themselves to be sentries of the high moral ground of a nation for whom their own acts of deceit and concealment accelerate the fall.

Rand Paul, Dylan Davies, Niall Ferguson. please step forward. Look into the mirror of shame and national decline. Why did you misrepresent and lie?

Rand Paul, with the infallibility of every ideologue, refuses to submit to the judgment of a system he has declared illegitimate—except for its election of him to the Senate. His lie? Repeatedly presenting the work of others as his own, in speeches going back several years. The words were not his own (or his staff’s!). They were simply his sentiments. Is that so bad?

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/06/can-anybody-in-politics-get-anywhere-near-the-truth/

November 5, 2013

Stormy Monday, 11/4/13

Jeff Rosenzweig: Stormy Monday, 11/4/13

Tomorrow, Virginians choose one of milquetoast Clintonista Terry McAuliffe or Tobacco Belt Taliban Ken Cuccinelli to succeed Bob McDonnell in the Executive Mansion. The Democrat’s lead in the polls still holds, though a low projected voter turnout suggests Cuccinelli could pull off an upset with a sufficiently large turnout of irate Teabaggers and/or plain old Republican electoral tampering. Two Obamas, two Clintons and a Biden have been campaigning on McAuliffe’s behalf, while Cuccinelli’s audiences have, deservedly, been talked at by the likes of Marco Rubio, Reince Priebus, Rick Santorum, the Duggars and Rand Paul.

Speaking of Rand Paul, expect more fun this week centering on his weakness for “borrowing” words and ideas without attribution or shame. If a few more examples of the Senator’s plagiarism turn up, he could be forced to issue a major “clarifying” statement to try and muddy the waters. If it comes to that, I hereby offer him a preliminary draft that he’s welcome to pass off as his own: “I am not a crook and I have not yet begun to fight, or to remember the Maine. It’s been the best of times, it’s been the worst of times, it’s been a date which will live in infamy, but I have nothing to fear but fear itself and I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Now, watch this drive and read my lips: no new taxes. For the rich, anyway. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what it can do for me. So long, and thanks for all the fish, and good night and good luck, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. Oh, and would somebody please tear down this wall?”

Voters in 11 Colorado counties get a chance to weigh in tomorrow on whether they want to secede from the state. One of these rural (meaning Republican) counties would supposedly become part of Wyoming, while the other 10 would form a new state called North Colorado or Brigadoon or something...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/04/stormy-monday-110413/

November 2, 2013

Take Five (We Don’t Need Another Zero edition)

Jeff Rosenzweig: Take Five (We Don’t Need Another Zero edition)

ONE: One Fling to Rule Them All…

What’s more mawkish than Republicans rallying moistly and noisily around a new standard bearer? Absolutely nothing.

While all but the most stalwart or blockheaded of the party faithful ended up too embarrassed to admit how embarrassed they finally were by George Bush and Dick Cheney, many of them shamelessly went on to embrace a succession of greasy mediocrities like Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, Bob McDonnell, Scott Brown, Paul Ryan, Sharon Angle, Christine O’Donnell, Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain and Marco Rubio.

The mass infatuations mostly dwindled miserably into scandals, lawsuits, ridicule and/or simple morning-after remorse, but it’s worth remembering that most of these intellectual pipsqueaks retain a mystifying and immovable popularity among one or more dependably Republican demographics.

Enter Ted Cruz, who aspires to be the one fling to rule them all. I confess I’d never even heard of this guy until he appeared at last year’s Republican National Convention. Even then he didn’t make much of an impression, if my synopsis of the first day of the convention is a reliable yardstick:

9:40 PM:

Texas Senate candidate Ted Cruz forsakes the podium and gives a pointless speech as he paces the stage. It’s as if he’s auditioning to be an evangelist. Or a stand-up comic. He points to the debt clock. Yep, the nation is still in debt.

Cruz bellows, “Government is not the answer,” which makes me wonder why he and his fellow Republicans are so damned keen on being elected to office...

More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/11/01/take-five-we-dont-need-another-zero-edition/