Reflections on Wisconsin and Japan, Free Markets and Class Wars

The events of the past few days have led to the conclusion that Ayn Rand was an idealistic nut. The thesis of all her novels and philosophical tracts can be summed up thusly--let the rich, smart, and ambitious get all the power they want and don't let the government do anything to restrict or restrain them in any way. No taxes, no regulations, nothing. An entirely free laissez-faire system will take care of all those pesky collusions or unfair trusts. She actually believed a free market would regulate itself and all injustices would even out because the public would stop buying the product of an unfair manufacturer.

What's been happening in Wisconsin demonstrates what happens when the super-rich want to get super-richer and no one has the guts to tell them, hold it a minute, you can't just take everything. Corporate interests like the Koch Brothers are out to diminish the power of public-worker unions so that forces friendly to them will stay in office. If the state doesn't take out the union dues there'll be less money to contribute to Obama and the Dems.

As I understand it, the unions gave in the governor's demands and yet he still insisted on stripping them of their right to collective bargaining. The Fox News crowd played along by painting the unions as corrupt fat cats getting enormous salaries for lazy slobs. Ann Coulter on Sean Hannity cited bus drivers making six-figure salaries. The strategy is clear, Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes are kowtowing to their corporate overlords by selling the Fox audience the idea that the unions are against the unorganized workers at Walmart, etc. See, they say, look at the red bastards stealing your money and giving it to those gold-bricking school teachers who get a whole summer off. Fox and their ilk are the ones waging a class war, pitting the working classes against each other--unions against unskilled, unorganized labor. If the Repubs and their rich cronies really wanted to balance the budget, they'd get the millionaires to pay taxes in proportion to their income.

Rand's philosophy and that of Glenn Beck and his cohorts is if you are smart and hard-working you should make and keep as much money as you possibly can and pay as little tax as you can get away with, forget the rest of society or the common good. If some poor slob who isn't a ballsy entrepeneur and can't get insurance, then goes broke because of one hospital visit, that's his tough luck.

Speaking of the common good, as I was watching the horrible scenes from the tsunami and earthquake in Japan, I was reminded of similar footage from New Orleans and Katrina. The difference was the people in New Orleans were stranded by their government, both in preparedness (faulty levees) and help after the disaster, and the people in Japan seemed to be getting aide right away and there was no looting or panic. The looting in New Orleans can be attributed to taking avantage of a bad situation, BUT they were also people who had no food or medicine and there were no sign state or federal authorities were going to help them. In fact, many conservative commentators said it was the citizens own fault for living near so much water and relying on the government for help.

Beck Speaks for God Now

I hope Glenn Beck has finally gone too far. But I fear he'll just dial it back a bit and keep his show with its seed and gold advertisers. This guy is like a cockroach, you just can't kill the bastard. I am speaking, of course, about his call for all Christians to leave their church if the words "social justice" are mentioned on the church website. Glenda claims this is code for Communism or Nazism--and they're basically the same thing, right? Do you believe this, America? And if you do, I've got a some loan derivatives, a bridge and some swamp land to sell you. I recall that Joe McCarthy finally crossed a line when he accused Eisenhower's church of being filled with commies. That tore it!

Christian bloggers and media figures began voicing their protests and some even called for a boycott by Christians of Beck's shows on TV and radio. The next day Beck amended his statements--just as he did with the climate change thing--saying he was talking about churches which were for big government programs to help the poor.

It's all so offensive and meaningless. He attacks the very core of Christian faith and Christ's teachings--that you should help those less fortunate than yourself, not be primarily concerned with material wealth, and work to stop the defects in society which make people poor--and then backs away and none of his zombie followers are outraged.

My feeling is charity and compassion are the only things organized religion are good for. I think a lot of religion is about fear of death--one of Beck's biggest bargaining chips for viewers and their money. The selling point of most churches is: If you go to my church every Sunday and drop a few bills in the collection plate, you'll go to heaven, float on a cloud, and play a harp all day. The really imporant thing is to be kind to others while you're alive and I don't think you should be forced into it by the threat of hellfire. You should because it's the right thing to do. I hate the idea that if you don't have Christian values then you have no moral values at all because God the policeman is not there to keep you in line.

But back to Beck, his whole message is--I overcame my alcoholism and crawled out of the dungheap to become this raving success, so you should never lend a hand to anyone who's in trouble. You should be afraid that Obama and the commies and the lefties are going to take away every penny you've spent your life earning and give it to lazy undeserving black and Hispanic people. And you'd better be ready for the Apocalypse because it's coming any minute, so buy up these seeds and gold my advertisers are selling you.

What sort of church does Beck want? One where you worship at the altar of the almighty dollar, keep out those who are different, and praise the mighty bomb which protects us all--kind of like the one in Beneath the Planet of the Apes where the mutated humans including Victor Buono worshipped in the subway system. At least that would be somewhat entertaining.

Failing the Purity Test

Repubs continue to eat their own. Newly elected Mass. Senator Scott Brown voted with the Dems on the jobs bill (along with Collins and Snowe from Maine and the guy from Ohio). Immediately Glenn Beck and the right-wing horde pounced on him for betraying their trust. Reportedly Brown's facebook page was inundatded with hate comments from Tea-baggers. I couldn't comment myself unless I became a fan. So I did, though I am not a fan in the strictest sense, I just wanted to tell him how I felt. So this is what I wrote:

"Scott, I became a fan just so I could say this: I am a NY Democrat and hated it like hell when you won against school librarian Cokley. But I'm glad you voted with the Dems on this and it shows you are not just a rubber stamp Republican. You want to get things done and don't want to just say "NO!" to everything Obama does in order to make him look bad--which is all Bohner, McConnell and their pals want to accomplish in this congress. Good for you. Like Republican governors Crist and Schwarzenegger, you realize that it's okay to support the prez when you think he's right and not just toe the party line and be Glenn Beck's lap dog."

The reference to Repub governors is about how Arnold Schwarzenegger and Charlie Crist both came out and said it is a lie that the stimulus package did not create one job, because both of their states benefited from it and they aren't afraid to say so. The GOP is cracking with people like Michelle Bachmann wanting to get rid of Social Security and Medicare calling for the heads of reasonable people like Arnie and Charlie.

Beck's CPAC speech is a further example of extremism pushing and shoving its way to the center of the conservative movement. He says no more "big tent" in the Republican Party, America is not a circus or a clown show. Yeah, Glenn, just have everybody think exactly like you: no taxes, no government regulation, no laws, everybody owning their own home with all the money they save from all those taxes they save. But no trash collection, state parks, highways, public libraries you like so much (OK, I got that one from The Daily Show), no regulation on big business, etc.

Look, CPAC-ers, I am a chablis-drinking, brie-munching, NPR-listening, show tune-lovin' gay boy and I am just as much a part of America as you. We're equal. As Aunt Eller sang in Oklahoma: "I ain't sayin' I'm better than anybody else/But I'm be danged if I ain't just as good!"

Huff vs. Ailes and Beck: Do Words Matter?

It's getting so I don't have to even watch TV anymore. All I have to do is go to Huffington Post or YouTube and I can watch little three-minute videos of all the latest media chatter without having to view the whole program. I had stopped watching all the Sunday shows because of my disgust with spineless Democrats. So I was able to see the few minutes of This Week on Huffpost in which Arianna challenged Roger Ailes on Glenn Beck's inflammatory language. And I didn't even have to sit through windbag George Will's stern lecturing as if all America were a fifth-grade class guilty of talking out of turn during algebra.

The pity is the whole argument is down to a squabble over whether or not Beck used the word "slaughter" in describing what the Obama administration wants to do to the American public. Beck said he never used that word. Huffington played the tape where he said it. Beck says of course he didn't mean it literally. The whole thing is petty. I wish they would debate the tenor of fear and paranoia Beck is creating rather than nitpicking over a single word. This just makes Arianna descend to Fox's level and the argument becomes "No I didn't say that." "Yes you did."

Keith Obermann is becoming just as bad for his over-the-top slamming of Senator-elect Scott Brown of Mass. by taking minute details and blowing them up to label Brown as racist, sexist, homophobic, and advocating violence against women. Most of the time I agree with him, but he just went too far this time (and Jon Stewart called him on it.)

McCain Tacks to the Right

John McCain showed his true red-state colors today. When discussing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, he's always said if a military leader said we should reconsider this shameful policy, then he would do so. But today he went back on those words. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in full uniform told the armed services committee, the policy was wrong and Mccain went out of his way to say--"Hold on a minute, the Congress decides these things, not you military guys. We need to study this thing for at least 25 years and then I'm not even sure it should ever change, cause you know us straight guys don't want no show-tune-singing nancy boys seeing our junk in the shower."

It was obvious why he said that (OK he didn't say exactly those words, but that was his subtext). He's facing a challenge for re-election in the Arizona Republican primary from a tea-bag type. If he appears the slightest bit moderate, they will jump on him--"He lost us the White House. His daughter just loves those gays! His wife posed for that ad in favor of gay marriage--and here we thought she was the perfect Stepford robot! He may as well be having a Cosmo at a piano bar. Damn, you cain't trust nobody these days! Brother Glenn Beck says he's more dangerous than Obama. He's brainwashed our Sister Sarah into endorsing him."

But the Joint Chiefs chairman basically said the policy was wrong and it should end. Oh and BTW, Colin Powell just said DADT should end as well. So that's two major military people on our side. More on Beck and Arianna Huffington and Roger Ailes at their set-to in a further post. It's very late.

Truth and Illusion, George, You Don't Know the Difference.

The title of this blog is a quote from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and applies to too many people these days. Some mix up the two--truth and illusion--in search of fame. The father of the balloon boy perpetrated a hoax in order to gain publicity and has probably damaged his son's perception of reality in order to get on reality TV.

Another example is Fox News' resident whacko Glenn Beck who can't tell TV images from real life. Or at least his television persona can't--I don't think he believes half of what he says. In a recent segment of his show, he called on America to harken back to the days when we all got along and believed in the same basic principals. To illustrate his point, he showed two TV commercials from the late 60s-early 70s when he was a boy: the Coke ad with Mean Joe Green taking the beverage from a young fan and then rewarding the kid with his sweaty, stinky jersey; then the Kodak commercial with Paul Anka singing "Good morning, yesterday/You wake up and time has slipped away..." while home movies of Christmas and other holidays unspool.

There is something basically screwy about using TV commercials to illustrate an ideal past. They're advertisements used to sell a product. They create an idealized, unreal image in order to get you to associate that warm fuzzy feeling with the product so you're plunk down your two dollars and get the soda or the film (now obsolete) or whatever. Plus, it wasn't that ideal a time anyway.

Beck is about my age, maybe a little younger. I can remember that era and America was torn apart by Vietnam and Watergate. We weren't all holding hands and singing "Kumbaya" (except for my younger brother who liked to croon that tune because he knew it annoyed the hell out of me). Also, blacks, Hispanics, women, gays and other minorities groups weren't exactly dancing a jig over how wonderfully and equally they were treated.

Beck then proceeded to tell a long convoluted metaphor about America being like a teenager who disobeys his parents' curfew and is now at a party where everyone is drunk and he knows he's going to be punished. He'll have to spend the next Saturday night grounded (read be more fiscally responsible). Okay, I'll concede it's a legitimate point, but it's corporate America that's been overspending, not the average citizen whom Beck was addressing. Then he actually began to cry (again!) I can tell he's acting when he tears up like that. He's almost as bad an actor as Spencer on The Hills.

This goon has also compared the Obama administration to Mao's China for advocating volunteerism with the cooperation of Hollywood. So volunteerism is evil all of a sudden? That's a bit of a leap. And here's another one--Obama is giving too much power to these psychos by launching this "war" against Fox. He should just ignore them. By targetting them and freezing them out of certain stories he's driving up their ratings and giving Murdoch and Ailes a legitimate beef.

Mad Tea Party

(Sung to the tune of "Edelweiss" from "The Sound of Music"):

Right-wing goons

Looney tunes

Every tea party you show up

Flat earth

Obama's birth

You make me want to throw up

That little ditty occured to me last week as the coverage of the Sept. 12 Tea Party march on Washington unfolded and the inflated numbers were rolled out. I got especially enraged when I saw that Fox was promoting the event as if it were the Second Coming and then had the nerve to take out a full-page ad in the Washington Post asking the rhetorical question: "How could ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and MSNBC miss this story?" Forget the fact that all five of those networks coverd the event to one degree or another, what really made my blood boil was remembering when I marched on Washington--TWICE--as part of a gay rights protest and we got almost NO coverage from anyone--zip, nada, snoozeville. Our numbers were given short shrift by almost every news outlet--the ones that did cover us--and I will bet you any amount of money that if there were some objective, reliable way to count the marchers, we drew just as many people, if not more, as these loony birds. How come no one said "How could you miss that story?" And when gay people march again later this month, there will almost no coverage--AGAIN. You know why? Because we're not backed by big political interests like the Tea Pot Domers are (I just coined that one, like it?)

And now it's revealed a Fox producer was directing the crowd in one of her shots to cheer and yell. OK, maybe they would have been excited anyway, but Foxy lady, you're not supposed to manipulate the story you're covering--in any way. That's called titling the story towards the outcome you want--not being fair and balanced, you know, your network's motto.

It's late at night and I may ramble a bit here: I don't think Carter was right saying an overwhelming motive behind the anti-Obama vitriol is rooted in racism. Some of it is for sure. But a lot is based on fear that the repubs are ginning up. Fear that this big bad boogie man Obama will take away their insurance and cars and guns and country music and grits and NASCAR races and fatty foods and trips to Disneyland. They'd do that if Obama was white, but his being black adds to the fear for some people.

I heard Glenn Beck say he thought John McCaine would have been worse for the country than Obama. What? He said Mccain was a crazy progressive like Teddy Roosevelt. What a whacked out sense of history. Teddy broke the trusts and helped the average working man--the people Beck supposedly loves and wants to elevate. Now we see his real agenda--keep the proles in line, let the corporations control their lives, as long as it's not big government. Also these tea baggers may form their own third party. Oh please, oh please, do it! Do it! Split the conservatives right down the middle and give the Dems the White House and Congress for sure. This was based on an iterview with some former Rep strategist who believes this whole nutbag movement is based on frustration and dissatisifcation with government in general.

Obama explained it really well on Letterman tonight: this whole economic and health care mess is the result of too little government regulation in the first place (under repub adminsitrations) and now these dimwits think as little government as possible is the answer. Just let private enterprise and capitalism run wild and do whatever the market will bear. You know where that will lead? back to the 18th century before unions, anti-trust laws, Medicare, Social Security, etc. etc. right where Fox, Beck and O'Reilly want us.

Racial Healing Through Bud Lite? and Other Observations

With the beer summit over and everyone enjoying their teachable moment, questions still remain about what really happened at Prof. Gates' home and why he was arrested in it. Officer Crowley stated there were no apologies from either side during the conversation but the meeting was cordial and constructive. Gates issued a statement thanking God for freedom of speech and for police to protect us. What I want to know is why Gates was arrested once he had established his identity. The charge was disorderly conduct. But what does that mean? Was he causing a danger to anyone or interfering with Crowley's duties? Isn't it a police officer's job to keep a cool head and not arrest someone just for answering back?

It may have been that Gates was arrogant and a little heated, but was he a threat? Crowley may have following procedure, but isn't it at the police officer's discretion to arrest someone and shouldn't he as a professional show restraint?

What a shame that all people falsely arrested can have the President settle the matter with a few brews at the White House.

Other recent observations: Glenn Beck is a lunatic. Surprise! "The president is a racist...but I'm not saying he doesn't like white people."

Lou Dobbs called Rachel Maddow a "teabagging queen." Huh? Does he even know what that means? If he means the political kind of teabagging, she would be the exact opposite since she's a liberal and has a working brain. If he means the sexual kind, it doesn't work because she a lesbian. So Dobbs has exposed himself as utterly clueless.