Football vs. Politics

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I was ruminating on some of the comments we typically get when we don’t join in the latest Palinpalooza Wankfestivus. Then a football analogy occurred to me.

Both football and politics are popular spectator sports. The actual players make lots of money and have little in common with their loyal fans. They both use violent imagery, but football has far more actual violence.

Both football and politics are team sports, but football fans are allowed to be objective without having their loyalty questioned. If you say that the other team’s quarterback is a first-ballot lock for the Hall of Fame nobody accuses you of wanting the other team to win.

Now let’s say the other team has a great quarterback and two great wide receivers but no running game. But your team decides to commit to stopping the run, daring their quarterback to throw the ball. So you scream at your team’s coach, “Are you insane? You’re playing to their strength!“

Do you think the other fans would consider you a traitor? Not likely.

Not only that, but if the instant replay clearly shows that the other team’s wide receiver caught the ball with both feet in bounds, nobody expects you to insist otherwise. When your team’s players screw up you’re allowed to curse and boo them.

Politics is different. You are expected to insist that your team’s players and strategies are better than the other team’s, whether they really are or not. You are required to claim the other team’s players are all talentless losers. You’re also obligated to protest every call that goes against your team, no matter what really happened. And you never, ever admit that your team deserved to lose.

Worst of all, you’re supposed to keep buying season tickets even if your team keeps losing, year after year.

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Do you think Steve Benen might be a tad biased?

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Seriously:

HALF-TERM GOVERNOR BREAKS HER SILENCE…. As tempted as I am to simply ignore former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin’s (R) latest statement, I suppose there’s no point in pretending it’s not of some interest to the political world this morning.

Palin has been unusually quiet since Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, and as interest in the toxicity of political rhetoric has grown more intense, her role in cheapening and dragging down our discourse has generated a fair amount of attention.

Today, Palin broke her silence issuing a video, which is nearly eight minutes long. It’s a standard tactic — the right-wing media personality can’t subject herself to questions or muster the confidence to deal with cross-examinations, so to communicate, Palin’s forced to hide behind statements others write for her, and then upload them. It’s not exactly the stuff Profiles in Courage are made of.

In any case, the statement/video is about what one might expect. Palin, speaking from Alaska with an American flag over her right shoulder, has no regrets and no apologies to offer. Instead, she’s concerned about “blood libel.”

“If you don’t like a person’s vision for the country, you’re free to debate that vision. If you don’t like their ideas, you’re free to propose better ideas. But, especially within hours of a tragedy unfolding, journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”

I don’t imagine Palin actually knows what “blood libel” means, but historically, it’s referred to the ridiculous notion of Jews engaging in ritual killings of Christian children. More commonly, it’s a phrase intended to convey the suffering of an oppressed minority.

In other words, Palin is apparently feeling sorry for herself, again, using a needlessly provocative metaphor that casts her as something of a martyr.

Benen uses the phrase “half-term governor” at least three times in his post. That right there indicates that maybe he’s not being entirely neutral and objective.

I like the “breaks her silence” jab too. On Saturday, soon after the news of the shootings broke, Sarah Palin posted this statement on Facebook:

My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

She then went about her business. Various people have been criticizing her for not saying more, specifically for not admitting it was all her fault, apologizing and promising to never show her face in public again.

Of course if she had been giving interviews she would have been criticized for trying to steal the spotlight for herself.

Apparently Benen hasn’t got the memo that Sarah was dogwhistling to her fundiegelical supporters when she used the words “blood-libel.” He thinks she’s just a stupid girl who was using words she didn’t understand.

As for the flag reference, I wonder what Benen thought when candidate Obama gave his Greatestest Speech on Race EVAH with about 10 American flags behind him?

That’s it for another episode of “Look over there! It’s Sarah Palin!“

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Who do we blame for THIS nut?

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HuffPoop:

Shawn Christie, Alleged Sarah Palin Stalker, Reportedly Causing New Concern In Alaska

Shawn Christy, a 19-year-old Pennsylvania teenager who has had a restraining order issued against him by the former Alaska governor, is causing anxiety in the Frontier State with reports that he has planned a visit to Wasilla.

TMZ reports:

19-year-old Shawn Christy has told family members he plans to travel to Wasilla in the hopes of removing the restraining order issued against him last year after Sarah and her close friend Kristan Cole proved he sent them threatening emails and letters.

According to TMZ, Cole has mounted a legal effort to ensure that Christy won’t be able to combat the restraining order.

AOL News reported last year on the case:

Judge Colleen Ray issued a 20-day protective order against the 18-year-old McAdoo, Penn., man after Christy sent Palin an e-mail informing her that his plane had landed in Alaska. A hearing on Oct. 13 will decide if a longer-term restraining order is necessary.Palin testified by phone during the inquiry, The Associated Press reported. “Bottom line, he is crazy and could kill me,” Palin said, according to the court transcript.

The Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reports that Christie claims to have had an affair with Palin, and that he had made reference to a purchase of a weapon and a future visit.

“When someone sends you proof that they’ve purchased weapons. Proof that they know where you live. And said that they are looking into purchasing a one-way plane ticket to Alaska and then calls from a cell phone with a 907 number, it’s over the line and we need protecting,” Kristan Cole said at the time, according to the Frontiersman.

If Sarah Palin is responsible for Jared Loughner, who is to blame for Shawn Christy?

Barack Obama? Andy Sullivan? Who should be apologizing for something they said about Sarah?

Jezebel:

Sarah Palin emailed Glenn Beck to refudiate her possible responsibility for inciting the Tucson shooting. Meanwhile, did you know she has her own stalker, news of which just conveniently resurfaced? Poor, map-surveying Sarah.

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About those “death panels”

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I was reading an article at Conservatives4Palin that points out (correctly) that when the former Alaskan governor made her infamous “death panels” post on Facebook she wasn’t referring to end of life counseling.

This is what Sarah Palin said:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Health care by definition involves life and death decisions. Human rights and human dignity must be at the center of any health care discussion.

I know this will surprise those people who are convinced (or pretend to be convinced) that because I refuse to demonize Ms. Palin that I am infatuated with her but I disagree with the former Vice Presidential candidate.

Before I explain my disagreement I want to clarify what Sarah Palin actually said. Contrary to the assertions of Ezra Klein and others, Palin never claimed that Obamacare would euthanize anyone. She claimed that Obamacare would result in rationed health care and that bureaucrats would decide whether or not to pay for treatment based on subjective criteria like the patient’s “level of productivity in society.”

While there is a nugget or two of truth in what Palin said we’re hardly talking about exterminating “useless mouths.” What we’re talking about is the kind of cost-benefit analysis that people already have to make every day.

Despite what some people think none of us has a “right to life.” On a long enough timeline the mortality rate is 100%. As Clint Eastwood said, “We all got it coming.”

As we saw during the Terri Schiavo case, the general consensus in this country is that at some point it is acceptable to terminate life-support. The real question in cases like that is who (other than the patient) can make those decisions and when they should be made.

But “death panels” cases aren’t about whether or not to pull the plug on someone, they are about the limits, if any, on the payment for health care services.

Forget the specifics of Obamacare for the moment and assume we adopted some version of single-payer like all the other industrialized nations have done. Call it Medicare For All. As the cost goes up and the prognosis grows more grim, is there some point at which we should say “enough is enough?”

Let’s say we have a patient in his eighties who is diagnosed with cancer. Treatment will cost approximately $1 million, the chances of success are less than 10% and he has already exceeded his life expectancy so even if the cancer doesn’t kill him he isn’t gonna celebrate many more birthdays anyway.

Should we pay for his treatment? What if he had diabetes and tuberculosis too? What if he’s already in a persistent vegetative state? Is there any point at which we should draw the line?

The fact is those decisions are already being made, but the decision-makers are health insurance company bean-counters and profit-minded executives.

I think that if we are going to control health care costs one thing we need to do is set limits on how much health care we will pay for. The factors considered in setting those limits should include cost but also a number of other factors, including prognosis and quality of life.

But those limits need to be determined in an open manner by people answerable to the public. There needs to be an open process and a way to appeal the decisions that are made.

What do you think?

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Sunday News

Good Morning Conflucians!!!

Hope you’ve recovered from your Yew Years celebrations. Or at least have an ice pack on your head and ear muffs to keep down the noise. I tend to watch the Rose Bowl Parade despite it being riddled with conservative leanings in numerous aspects of its organization and choices. This year there was a 100 year tribute to Ronald Reagan. Fine, but you won’t see one to a Democratic president. In fact among the 1/2 dozen or more presidents who have marshaled the parade, none have been Democrats. They have a bit of history of that. But I still watch it because I liked the floats, I like the bands, and well, I just like a parade. So sue me. I also like gay pride parades, saint patrick’s day parades, and most any other parade. Nothing like a street party, organized or not. Some of the football games were pretty good too. The Rose Bowl game was great. TCU beat Wisconsin in a game that got really exciting right at the end. On the other hand the Fiesta Bowl between UConn and Oklahoma (UConn got a shellacking) showed what a joke the whole BCS system is.

Other than those distractions, some news actually has been happening. Some new provisions from the health insurance bailout and kabuki bill go into effect. Changes include closing the “donut hole” and restricting insurance companies to spend 80% of the money they get in premiums  to either be for insurance claims or, get this, any activities that may improve the customers health. Yea, a bit open ended. Let’s see, activities, well, there’s advertising. There’s “educating” doctors and their own staffs. And of course retreats to well, do more education. Oh, and studies, I’m sure there will be studies. And of course there is no budget to actually enforce any of that. You know, budget cuts.

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It appears that Carol Moseley Braun has become the frontrunner among black candidates for the Chicago mayoral race. And apparently, when we say mayoral race, that’s the most important thing, your race:

But now that she is in the spotlight, Braun will have to answer questions about her qualifications, as well as problems that led voters to boot her from the Senate in 1998 after one term and why voters should hand City Hall’s keys to someone who hasn’t been elected to anything for years.

She trumpeted her own resume Saturday at a rally with U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, who announced on New Year’s Eve that he was withdrawing from the race, and state Sen. James Meeks, another African-American who gave up his own run for mayor days ago.

[...]

On Saturday, Braun did not mention Emanuel, or two other prominent candidates, former public schools president Gery Chico or City Clerk Miguel del Valle, by name. But in recent days she has signaled that she plans to portray Emanuel as an outsider and not a Chicagoan. Emanuel beat a challenge to his residency, with an elections board decision to place his name on the ballot — a decision that is now being challenged in court — but Braun is not about to let the issue go.

After Davis groused about former President Bill Clinton’s decision to campaign for Emanuel, Braun did the same — adding her own dig at Emanuel.

“What we have is an outsider running for mayor and bringing outsiders in to help him,” she told reporters a few days ago.

Somehow it’s really hard to get excited about that election. If it’s a battle between recent race card player vs. a new race card player, I really hope there’s an alternative to both.

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Brazil elected their first woman president, Dilma Rousseff,, and she just got sworn in:

After signing the oath of office, Ms Rousseff began her 40-minute inaugural address by noting that this was the first time in Brazil that the role of president had been given to a woman.

“I know the historical significance of this decision,” she said to widespread applause. “Today, all Brazilian women should feel proud and happy.”

Nine of her 37 ministers will be women – a record for Brazil.

Ms Rousseff then said this was “just the beginning of a new era” for Brazil, and promised to protect the most vulnerable in society and “govern for all”.

Wonder what that’s like. Of course remember that she’s an evil former Marxist guerrilla:

The daughter of a Bulgarian immigrant father, Rousseff studied economics in college. She was tortured in the 1970s for her membership in a leftist guerrilla group opposed to the military dictatorship that then ruled the country. Before joining the Lula government, she held state posts focusing on energy.

The Workers’ Party candidate takes control of an economy that is expected to grow 7.5% this year and to lead the region out of the global recession. She also takes the helm of a nation that gained enormous visibility and prestige under Lula’s presidency.

Relations with the United States are in flux, with the Obama administration pleased with Lula’s regional leadership as a counterweight to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez but upset over his attempt last year to broker a deal ending Iran’s international isolation over its nuclear program. On Sunday, Chavez will be the first foreign leader with whom she meets.

That will be interesting to watch.

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And speaking of things to watch, the pipeline between Russia and China is now operating. This is a big thing:

The first oil pipeline linking the world’s biggest oil producer, Russia, and the world’s biggest consumer of energy, China, has begun operating.

The pipeline, running between Siberia and the northeastern Chinese city of Daqing, will allow a rapid increase in oil exports between the two countries.

[...]

The project cost $25bn ($16bn) and was partly financed be Chinese loans.

Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer in 2009.

China surpassed the US as the world’s largest consumer of energy last year.

“The operation of the China-Russia crude oil pipeline is the start of a new phase in China-Russia energy co-operation,” said Yao Wei, general manager of Pipeline Branch of Petro China, as he pushed a button near the Russia-China border to start the flow of oil.

Feeling nervous yet? While they’re doing that, we’re suffering with heartbreaking unemployment with no end in site and now hearing the drumbeat of war with Iran helped along by Wikileaks. Why are the supposed progressive blogs that should be screaming about the banks (and why no secrets have leaked out about them) or about the escalation of violence throughout the middle east, or about the epic failure of Obama and a Democratic supermajority leading to a GOP landslide in the House, instead worshiping Assange or if not that, still swooning about the great feminist and brilliant leader in the WH. And have you noticed both of those efforts seem like the same sort of religious craziness and have the same effect of keeping people distracted and apart. Um, you people might want to wake up.

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OK, for some humorous, ironic news, the North Korean leader sends a message of peace:

North Korea, in a New Year message, said tensions with South Korea should be defused while calling for “intense combat training” for the North Korean army.

“The danger of war should be removed and peace safeguarded in the Korean Peninsula,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported, citing a New Year editorial carried by newspapers including Rodong Sinmun and Joson Inmingun. “If a war breaks out on this land, it will bring nothing but a nuclear holocaust.”

The jokes write themselves.

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Meanwhile, it’s Hasta la vista baby for Schwarzenegger:

When he leaves office, Mr Schwarzenegger has said he hopes to write books, specifically the autobiography that he says publishers have been urging him to write for two decades.

He has also pledged to continue his work on public policy, although he has not been specific about working with any organisation.

One theory is that he could try to become a global ambassador as an environmentalist.

The nightmare appears to be coming to a close. Well, it wold except the state is in deep shit that will take some time to recover from. Let’s see what gov. moonbeam can do. While we’re on the topic of deep shit, here’s a good slide show of Detroit in ruins as symbolism of the decline of America.

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There have been a number of notable deaths this year. Here are a few I’ve noticed (in no particular order): J D Salinger, Tony Curtis, Lynne Redgrave, Dennis Hopper, Elizabeth Edwards, Leslie Nielsen, Gary Coleman, Tom Bosley, Barbara Billingsley, Dorothy Height, Rue McClanahan, Teddy Pendergrass, Jill Clayburgh, Don Meredith, Blake Edwards, Stephen J. Cannell, Eddie Fisher, Ted Stevens, Patricia Neal, Mitch Miller, George Steinbrenner, Robert C. Byrd, Jimmy Dean, Art Linkletter, Lena Horne, Dixie Carter, John Forsythe, Robert Culp, Fess Parker, Peter Graves, Alexander Haig, Charlie Wilson, John Murtha, Pernell Roberts, Robert Parker, Richard Holbrooke, Ted Sorensen, and of course Paul the Octopus. I’m sure there are a lot I missed, but that’s a heck of a lot. May they all RIP.

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There are a lot of year in review pieces out there. What are the biggest stories of the year for you? Certainly the top few would have to include the BP oil spill, the only beginning Wikipedia stories, the Tea Party movement, and the GOP historic win in the midterm elections. In addition I’d add that a big story of the year has been the changes in social media, especially facebook, but also twitter and others. And another story has been the further domination of mobile computing and tablets in all their forms. It seems to be an app world and a social media world. One other area we’re just seeing the beginnings of now that I think will continue to move and dominate is all about streaming media. That includes video to mobile devices of course but also to new efforts to move into the TV space.

On those last couple of topics, here’s a good summary of changes in both mobile platforms and social media from WaPo:

The year 2010 began with a herd of manufacturers chasing Amazon’s Kindle. It ends with some of the same companies in pursuit of Apple’s iPad. In between those tablet-computing crazes, we’ve all been challenged to keep up with the expanding universes of social networking and smartphones.

Nothing illustrates what makes the tech business both fascinating and frustrating as well as the rise of Facebook.

The social-networking site crossed the 500 million-user mark and debuted numerous features, such as an upgraded e-mail service and options to share your location with friends and get discounts from nearby retailers.

On the topic of streaming, a good article on the topic can be found at TechCrunch:

You can extrapolate from this streaming culture in several directions. In the home, television and gaming are now virtualized. The content comes in via various services, is attached to the streaming network, and is consumed and metadata-tagged across devices before being pushed back out on the mobile network. As we vote for these services with our clicks and device shuttling, the amount of revenue will grow to a meaningful share of delivery models. That in turn will drive advertisers and companies seeking relationships with audiences toward an equitable business revenue stream on both sides.

As a result, Netflix will be able to produce useful metadata that can be mined to reduce the cost of customer acquisition, in their case Hollywood windowed content. This produces interesting economic effects, such as AT&T losing customers to a Verizon iPhone but saving even more overall by lowering the expensive acquisition costs of the iPhone subsidy. Similarly, if Apple TV/Netflix customers present a more influential cloud of metadata across the same recent/archive content base as Comcast provides, the media cartel may decide to lower the cost of their premium content to preserve a direct connection to the targeted audience.

Put in dollars, we spend $350 a month on Comcast (triple play including broadband and something called a land line I have no use for) and perhaps $30 or so on on demand movies. Let’s say $140 of that is for broadband (50 megabits downstream) and basic cable, so add $8 for Netflix and $50 for Apple TV recent movies and shows. There’s about a hundred bucks delta there, which will probably convince Comcast to unbundle some of their premium network shows to tap the new Airplay audience without losing a percentage of those customers. Seems counter intuitive but look what Google does with Maps, Google Voice, and Gmail. Trade lock in for a bigger slice of a broader targeted market.

The real competitor is Facebook, which faces the same calculation as Netflix in expanding revenue to keep the balance of value while growing the streaming audience. The DVD market is already dead, but BlueRay will not replace the revenue. Once we move to realtime acquisition and deployment of content, we’ll never go back. Simply put, the quality (or lack of it) of television and first run movies will encourage us to wait for the majority of it to hit the download or streaming venue and cherry pick the hits in the theaters. And those cable or satellite services that count on us not switching will find the rich metadata moving away from them even if we keep both services until the shakeout runs its course.

Worth reading the whole piece. Some things to ponder.

That’s a bit of what crossed my desk. Chime in with what you’re finding out there. Or just what’s on your mind. OMG, I didn’t even mention Sarah Palin. Oh dear, I just did.

Never doubt the Clown

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Salon reports what I predicted a year and one-half ago:

Doubting Sarah
A chorus of criticism and doubt about Sarah Palin is emerging from an unlikely and telling source: Republicans

Sarah Palin is widely considered to be a leading candidate for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination. And while an October story in Politico made a splash (and drew Palin’s wrath) by quoting anonymous Republican “insiders” attacking Palin, we’ve noticed a different, striking pattern in recent weeks: More and more prominent Republicans are publicly voicing doubts about Palin.

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June 18, 2009:

Secondly, I didn’t say that everything being thrown at Sarah comes from the left side of the political fence. Before Sarah will have a chance to face a Democrat in a national election again she will have to win the GOP nomination, and there are several men also vying for that prize. Although they have to be more circumspect because of her popularity with the GOPer base, the Republicans invented the bitch-slap theory – Josh Marshall just gave it a name.

So you’re gonna see Sarah get attacked from every direction, often unfairly and sometimes outrageously. But how she should respond is problematic. The conventional wisdom of the Village Idiots is that such attacks should be ignored. Ask Michael Dukakis how well that strategy works.

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Now the conventional wisdom on the left is that the GOP establishment is attacking Palin because they are afraid that if she is the 2012 nominee she will lose in the general election. That’s wrong.

They are scared shitless that she’ll win.

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Wrong Emphasis

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Sarah Palin Uses Info Gleaned From ‘Treasonous’ WikiLeaks To Pen Op-Ed On Dangers Of Iran

Sarah Palin sought to build her foreign policy credentials on Tuesday, with a new op-ed arguing that the Obama administration needs to “toughen up” on Iran based on information from leaked diplomatic cables that she had earlier denounced.

Their point:

Sarah Palin hypocritically uses WikiLeaks information to gin up war with Iran.

The important point:

Sarah Palin hypocritically uses WikiLeaks information to gin up war with Iran.

When are progressives gonna figure this shit out?

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What's the matter? Don't you like clowns?

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Sunday News

Good Morning Conflucians!!

What a week we’ve had with our Democratic majority in both houses and a Democratic president. With an initial super majority and later with a near super majority, most of their accomplishments would be great successes if they were Republicans. Here’s a quote from Jay Leno from last week that sums things up:

It looks like the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy will continue, thanks to the courage of a strong Republican leader, Barack Obama.

In fact, today, Obama changed his slogan from “Yes, we can” to “Yes, we caved.”

Sad but true. To pressure from a small minority, the president caved. You’d think he had no political or policy experience at all. Oh wait, he didn’t have any when he was selected as the Democratic candidate by the super delegates, that is, mostly members of the very same supermajority in congress. Oh, then it’s not a surprise at all. In fact, we… oh, never mind. No one listened then. Here’s an interesting op-ed in the Chicago Tribune that echo’s what we’ve been saying:

Smart women know that if a guy is sending mixed signals — promising to call but never getting around to it, making dates and then canceling, professing warm feelings but not introducing you to his friends — it can mean only one thing: He’s just not that into you.

Liberals keep wondering why Barack Obama so often disappoints them. But if he truly cared about not disappointing them, he wouldn’t. He disappoints them because his heart is somewhere else.

It took a while, but thanks to the tax deal he reached with Republicans, it seems to be dawning on those in the left wing of the Democratic Party that he is not one of them and never will be.

[...]

So the tax cut deal came as a bitter surprise. But why? Obama has made it plain that he sees liberal priorities as sometimes congenial but always expendable.

He signed a stimulus package far smaller than liberals wanted. He dropped the “public option” from health care reform while protecting the interests of insurance companies. He bailed out big banks.

He stuck to George W. Bush’s policy in Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan. He hasn’t gotten around to closing the Guantanamo detention camp. He signed a free trade deal with South Korea.

[...]

A few weeks ago, liberal Democrats were up in arms about the recommendations of deficit commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the plan “simply unacceptable.” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an avowed socialist, denounced it as “absurd.”

What no one seemed to notice is that the commission came about only because of an executive order by Obama, who also appointed the leaders. Could it be that Obama selected them because he knew, and liked, what they would propose?

[...]

Liberals and conservatives have one thing in common: They have both persisted in believing that Obama, in his heart of hearts, is a man of the left. But by his fruits, they — eventually — shall know him.

That’s kind of it in a nut shell. Judge him by his actions. Any progressive holdouts that still think Obama is on their side, the message is clear, he’s just not that in to you.

But we’ve all been very happy to see a real government official doing what he’s hired to do, push hard on the values he holds dear. Bernie Sanders has become a hit filibustering the bad tax bill. The NYTimes seems to have another story up about it (after deleting an earlier one because, well, because it showed the MSM’s chosen ones to be fools). And Salon has a good one up as well. From Salon:

His epic rant — perhaps one of the most extraordinary critiques of how the American economy has been managed over the last several decades delivered in living memory — is an endless sequence of connecting the dots from one outrage to another. Even as I wrote this paragraph, he segued effortlessly from trade policy to Wall Street.

“But it is not just a disastrous trade policy that has brought us where we are today. The immediate cause of this crisis, and it gets me just sick talking about it … is what the crooks on Wall Street have done to the American people.”

Sanders then delivers a capsule history of deregulation, blasts Alan Greenspan, notes that in the late ’90s he had predicted everything that ultimately happened, but failed to rally legislative support to stop the runaway train — “and the rest is, unfortunately, history.”

From there, a class warfare sideswipe: “Understand, that in this country when you are a CEO on Wall Street — you can do pretty much anything you want and get away it.”

“And what they did to the American people is so horrible.”

And a bit from the NYTimes:

“I’m not here to set any great records, or to make a spectacle,” Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, said Friday, about a minute into his speech on the Senate floor. By the time he stopped talking, nearly nine hours later, Mr. Sanders was an ascendant, if unlikely, Internet star.

Mr. Sanders’s monologue, a marathon riff against the Obama administration’s plan to continue the tax policies of George W. Bush, stirred Twitter users to a roar over the course of eight-plus hours, putting his name atop the social network’s “trending topics” by Friday night. It garnered even more attention than when he was elected to the Senate in 2006 and was considered the first senator ever to identify himself as a socialist.

“I was a little bit nervous having never done this before,” Mr. Sanders, 69, said Saturday in a telephone interview from Burlington, Vt. “I was afraid that after two or three hours I’d have nothing more to say or I’d be tired or have to go to the bathroom. But I was pleased. It was very strange walking on there when the longest speech you’ve ever given in your life is an hour and a half.”

Bernie, you rock! You’re the best thing going in congress. Please, please, keep up the good work. If you need anyone to bring water, sandwiches, whatever, you need only ask.

Meanwhile Obama in his radio address says it’s a good deal for Americans and will likely pass:

President Obama said Saturday that the compromise he reached with Republicans on tax cuts was “by no means perfect” but a “good deal for the American people.”

Obama, in his weekly radio address, said the middle class had been hit hardest by the recession and that “taking money out of the pockets of working people is exactly the wrong thing to do to get our economy growing faster.”

Economists say the tax hikes that would result if Congress failed to act could cost “well over a million jobs,” Obama said.

And if anyone understands how to count jobs and what things will effect them, it’s Obama. Oh wait, no, he’s been wrong about jobs and unemployment every time. I think when Obama says it will be a good deal for the American people, I think he has a different definition of American people than the rest of us have. I think he means the kinds of people he knows and hangs around with, the super rich. The rest I presume can just eat cake.

In other legislative efforts, it looks like the Dream act will be shelved:

The measure that passed in the House on Wednesday is unlikely go anywhere in the Senate, and the House is unlikely to revisit the issue once the new Republican leadership takes over.

Groups like The National Council of La Raza and other Hispanic and immigrant advocacy groups know the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform are dim for the time being. So they’ve turned their attention to a measure that they believe will spark more sympathy from most Americans, bringing with them a coalition of labor groups, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and even Defense Secretary Robert Gates. And come 2012, advocates say, Spanish-language media will be filled with ads slamming lawmakers who voted against the Dream Act.

Good luck with that. I’m afraid Obama’s just not that into you guys either.

A couple of items covered yesterday are worth another mention. Richard Holbrooke had heart surgery yesterday. And Elizabeth Edwards’ funeral was yesterday.

An interesting twist in the stock market this week, the S&P dropped NYTimes and added Netflix:

Netflix was added to Standard & Poor’s S&P 500 index, which lists large-cap public companies, mostly from the U.S.

[...]

It’s also a sign of the times as an old media giant, The New York Times, officially loses the large-cap company title and starts slumming with other mid-sized companies.

One outlet brings you fiction, the other movies. Yea, I couldn’t resist that one. But in truth, I quite like the paper. I wish they would revisit that old tradition of journalism now and again though.

Another bit of interesting news this week is that life expectancy has gone down the US, though it’s up for black men:

Overall U.S. life expectancy dropped a tenth of a year to 77.8. It’s down by a fifth of a year in white men and women but up to 70 years for black men — an all-time high.

[...]

This isn’t the first downtick in U.S. life expectancy — there have been three others since 1980, the most recent in 2005. It’s too soon to say whether the current slight decline is the beginning of a plateau or whether American life span will resume its upward trend.

[...]

Infant mortality in the U.S. dropped 2.4% to an all-time record low of 6.59 deaths per 1,000 live births.

So mixed news. Follow the link for more details that only an actuary could love. Well, and the people on the cat food commission.

In the corner of the newspaper Obots follow most closely, there are some updates with Sarah Palin. First she went down to Haiti to add to the focus and attention to the cholera epidemic. If you want a good chuckle, take a look at WaPo’s coverage. They talk about what she wore and about the security involved in her visit. No, I’m not kidding. Hilarious. And while on the subject, Palin’s reality show last week involved her and her dad and a friend hunting. Pretty straightforward hunting trip to any familiar with hunting. But of course the usual crowd has gone apeshit over the episode. Here’s an interesting take on how normal the event was and how crazy the coverage has been (warning, WSJ):

The other and more interesting discovery, at least for me, is how little most people who criticized the episode know about Alaska, guns, wildlife, and hunting. The Hollywood swell Aaron Sorkin started the ball at the Huffington Post by misidentifying Palin’s quarry, the caribou, as a moose.

I mean, I know Sorkin wrote “The Social Network” (OMG! 2 cool!) and all that, but boy, does he know zilch about animals (including, presumably, the ones that provide his Santa Monica dinners). I suppose he doesn’t understand that he’s a predator in his own right – who else would label a woman documenting a hunting trip with her father, Chuck Palin Sr., as a “witless bully?”

But never mind that. Friends have told me that even some hunters have criticized the show on various grounds. After watching the episode, I suspect it’s simply because those critics are among that distinct minority that hunts but also suffers from Sarah-phobia. The show accurately represents an authentic hunting experience; in fact, it does so with greater honesty and integrity that you find on your typical Saturday morning “antler porn” hunting show.

Palin’s hunt opens the window on a fiercely beloved (mostly) rural tradition with surprising grace and sensitivity (as demonstrated by the inclusion of those can’t-miss extras, like the red-tailed hawk in flight, roiled skies, and campfire banter). The show is often touching, not least because of the father-daughter bonding elements that seem staged in direct proportion to the degree of animosity you feel toward Palin. I feel none, so they work for me.

There’s a lot more detail and coverage of various issues critics have brought up. I watched the episode and thought it was great. The woman who lives alone was truly amazing. And the hunting part was handled well. Of course I understand if you’re a vegetarian that it will not be to your liking. There was a bumper sticker on one of the trucks used that says “Vegetarian: An old indian word for poor hunter.” I have to admit, I also liked the episode because I knew exactly the kind of reaction it would get from the usual suspects. Just cracks me up.

Let’s leave you with one more bit of humor. Jimmy Fallon on his show this week had this to say:

President Obama has reached a deal with Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts in exchange for extending jobless benefits. The Republicans in Congress say they’re thrilled with the tax cuts, while Democrats leaving Congress say they’re thrilled with the jobless benefits.

There you have it. A bit of what’s happened this week, and what’s going on today. Chime in with what you’re finding.

In re Sarah Palin

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Anytime I post ANYTHING having to do with Sarah Palin or one of her progeny I always seem to see two typical responses along with whatever other comments are made.

The first one is some version of “Zomg! Sarah Palin is a conservative Republican and I would never vote for her.” Sometimes the commenter leaves the impression that they thought we were unaware of this fact.

The second one is based on wishful thinking and asserts that Sarah Palin is more moderate than her rhetoric, or would govern that way. While it is true she governed Alaska in a somewhat bi-partisan fashion that is not a basis for thinking she would do the same if she reached the White House.

Some people question why I write so many posts about Sarah Palin. There have even been a few who claimed to be offended by my choice of subject matter and worried that they would become permanently tainted by association with these toxic Palin posts.

Some people need to get a grip.

Sarah Palin is a political celebrity. Everything she says and does is news. Well, not really but the media act as if it’s news. I don’t see any sign that the situation will change anytime soon.

Ignoring her might have worked two years ago but that’s not possible now. She’s got a hit show (by cable standards) and she’s a commentator for FOX News, she does talk radio and gives speeches around the country, and she’s currently on tour promoting her new book, which looks to be another best seller.

Her postings on Facebook and Twitter get more attention than White House press briefings and even her children’s Facebook posts make the evening news occasionally.

A few people have made comments to the effect that if I’m gonna write about Sarah Palin I should focus on issues and write some really boring policy analysis demonstrating that her ideas would be bad for our country.

What would be the point? OF COURSE her ideas are bad for the country.

She’s a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN.

Blogging is not my occupation, it’s my hobby. Nobody is paying me to do tedious policy analysis. I doubt if anybody would pay me to do that crap anyway. Riverdaughter only keeps me around because I work cheap.

I write about stuff that interests me. Sarah Palin interests me.

First and foremost Sarah and the reactions she causes are entertaining as hell. I’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s some kind of mass insanity. The people that hate her the most are the ones that are obsessed with her. And she has a whole bunch of people that hate her, including the media, the GOP establishment and the Obamacrats.

That right there is a big plus in my book.

Sarah Palin is something this country hasn’t seen in a long time – a bona fide populist. Unfortunately she’s a right-wing populist.

Ever since the day that John McCain announced that he had selected Sarah Palin as his running mate there has been a lot of effort directed at destroying her personally and politically.

That effort has not only failed but backfired. She has grown stronger politically and manged to get rich too. The harder her enemies try to destroy her, the stronger she gets.

I’m a liberal Democrat but I don’t feel any particular obligation to say bad things about Sarah Palin. I disagree with the notion that if you can’t say something bad about her then don’t say nothing at all. I’m not going to hate her just because I disagree with her.

Her life story is an inspiring American success story. She didn’t come from a wealthy background, she didn’t go to Ivy League schools and she didn’t get where she is by sucking up to the rich and powerful. While Barack Obama was ingratiating himself with the Daley Machine Sarah Palin was taking on the “good old boy” network and making her bones as a reformer.

As far as her resume I find it hilarious that supporters of Barack Obama have the temerity to point out her lack of experience. Hey guys, she gave a great speech and wrote two books! Okay, maybe she didn’t write them herself but Obama didn’t write his either.

She is not stupid nor ignorant, nor is she “anti-intellectual.” She won the governor job by kicking ass in debates (and she pimp-slapped Biden in the VP debate too.) Unfortunately she’s a conservative Republican. She supports conservative Republican candidates and says conservative Republican things. From everything I’ve seen she really believes what she says.

But if Sarah Palin was a pro-choice liberal Democrat the media, the GOP establishment and the Obamacrats would hate her just as much or more than they do now because she would still be just as much a threat to them. If you don’t believe me just ask Hillary Clinton.

I don’t know how this tale will end, but I am certain of a couple things.

The GOP presidential nominee in 2012 will be a conservative Republican. That person will be pro-life, anti-tax and will advocate smaller government. They will be hawkish on foreign policy, xenophobic on the issue of immigration, skeptical about global warming and generally opposed to government regulation.

The GOP nominee will pay his or her respects to all the “right” people and groups, including the religious right, the neocons, the nut-job billionaires and the Tea Party. How sincere those respects are will be debatable.

Regardless of who the GOP nominates the Democrats will attempt to portray them as crazy and stupid. That strategy worked so well in the midterms they will surely use it again, probably with the same results.

Unless the economy improves dramatically in the near future the GOP nominee will probably be our 45th President. He or she will almost certainly have a friendly majority in Congress.

I will not be voting for Sarah Palin or any other Republican. If Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee (and he almost certainly will be) I will not be voting for him either.

I saw most of this coming two years ago. That’s when I was running around with my hair on fire trying to warn people. But they didn’t listen.

Here’s the hard truth: Things are going to have to get worse in this country before they get better. That’s just the way it is.

Things got worse for eight years under George W. Bush and the country was ready for a change. 2008 should have been the biggest political sea change since 1932. All the pieces were in place.

But not everybody wanted change. There is a small but very powerful group of people who like things they way they are. You can call them Corporatists, Robber Barons or Malefactors of Great Wealth.

They went to a lot of trouble and expense to make sure change didn’t happen. They spent hundreds of millions of dollars to put Barack Obama in office. They told their employees in the media to help him. They won, and the American people lost,

The window of opportunity is now past. It will be at least six more years before we get another chance. Even if Hillary were to run and win in 2012 she would be facing a GOP majority in the House and Senate. She would spend her time playing defense, not advancing new policy initiatives.

We won’t get another opportunity to make real change until 2016 or 2020.

As for me I plan to keep doing what I’ve been doing since the Big Dawg left office. Hang in there, keep my sense of humor and be a voice crying in the wilderness, hoping it doesn’t get any worse than it has to.

I’m willing to be proven wrong, but I’m not gonna waste my time and energy hating the wrong people for the wrong reasons.

As far as Republicans go Sarah Palin is better than most. She’s a populist (which is good) and she’s not beholden to the establishment (which is better.) She’s not crazy, at least not compared to some of the other contenders. She’s got a fan base that is already angry and semi-organized. If the GOP establishment tries to pull what the Democrats did to Hillary her supporters will go from Tea Party to lynch mob in half a nanosecond. Some of them are almost there already.

Win or lose, her candidacy will be entertaining.

Since I can’t do nothing about it anyway I’m gonna enjoy the show.

So until somebody starts paying me to write something different I’m gonna keep writing about whatever I feel like writing about. If you have a topic you are interested in my fees are reasonable. (No checks, small, unmarked bills only)

I am, or course, speaking solely for myself. Riverdaughter and my co-bloggers are opinionated and outspoken types (it’s a job requirement) and they are stubborn and hard-headed just like me. If you want to know what they think you’ll have to ask them.

Monday Morning Palinpalooza

I am almost as sick of hearing about and seeing Sarah Palin as I am hearing about and seeing Barack Obama, but the news is awful, the weather is boo boo, and as a liberal fem I am apparently supposed to go into a screaming emotional PMS induced rant every time her name is even brought up. Why fight it?

I don’t plan on reading or buying her new book. Do any of you? I didn’t think so. But Historiann has the scoop.

Don’t miss Michelle Goldberg’s analysis of the feminist history in Sarah Palin’s new book, America by Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag. Apparently, it gets worse after the diabetes-inducing title.  I agree with Goldberg that “[i]n some ways, it’s a good thing that Sarah Palin calls herself a feminist. It means that, even among conservatives, women’s equality has become a normative position, the starting point for debate. It means that feminism has gone from something that the right wants to destroy to something it wants to appropriate. That’s progress, of a sort.”  This is indeed a new development–Phyllis Schlafly’s days are over, for now, and it would be even too intellectually dishonest for Palin to pretend that feminism had nothing to do with shaping the possibilities of her political career.

As an optimist I am also pleased that a woman politician at least has to call herself a feminist to get anywhere, much less conservative woman. But this step forward is not to Bible Spice’s credit. A woman in politics has to call herself a feminist now because of the treatment a certain plucky Secretary of State received not just in 2008 but throughout her entire life in public service. Just sayin’. Let’s continue.

However, Palin is all wet when it comes to American history in general, and as Goldberg explains, feminist history in particular:  she claims Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a devout Christian–a woman who once said that “[y]ou may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded women,” and who wrote her own version of the Bible.  (Truly, this is more laughable than the people who try to re-claim Thomas Jefferson as a godbag.)  Palin repeats the flimsy lie that Susan B. Anthony was anti-abortion, and she repeats the distortions of Margaret Sanger’s work and career by claiming that she advocated “Nazi-style eugenics.”  (She cites the esteemed historian Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism on Sanger.)

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and another fun fem, Amelia Earheart, also rejected the usefulness of remaining faithful to their husbands. Amelia even passed a petition about it around. Hillary wasn’t the first classy lady to question standing by her man. So far that’s Hillary: 2 Sarah: 0.

Sarah Palin is a huge disappointment.  She could have countered her detractors the right way and continued working for the people of her beloved Alaska, but instead she has allowed herself and her family to be turned into celebrity jokes. Marketing yourself as a pundit on Fox News and giving yourself a reality show on TLC is not the way to prove you’re Presidential material. So much for all that maverick talk about Middle America. She should have taken a leaf out of that crazy bra burning feminist Hillary Clinton’s book instead of Barack Obama’s. Now she and him are like the American Idol clones of Presidential Politics. If they are both running in 2012 we won’t even be able to take a break and watch an episode of House or Dexter without one of them guest starring. They and their brands will be EVERYWHERE. God help us all!

I still don’t believe you have to be liberal or pro choice to be a feminist, but Caribou Barbie stopped caring about standing up to the good old boys a long time ago. It was probably some time in between the grand finale of Dancing with the Stars or a deep philosophical connection with Dick Morris while he was ghostwriting her new book. At least now she is caught up to the President and has managed to write two autobiographies without actually accomplishing much of anything.

Either way, from now on she’s on her own.