This is sad. I really like Paul. We agree on so many things. He’s one of the few people who is getting a clue about the myth of structural unemployment.
But with Obamacare, he’s hopeless.
I think it has to do with his own social isolation. He lives in Princeton surrounded by some of the most successful individuals in the world. Of course, all around him is the detritus of 6 years of dismantling of the R&D industry. He only has to cross Route 1 to visit the now shuttered lab where I worked for 15 years. Some of the smartest people I know are having a really hard time figuring out what just happened to them. But it’s unlikely that Krugman knows many of them, or any of the less accomplished people I know.
The current state of public opinion on health reform is really peculiar. If you’ve been following the issue at all closely, you know that the Affordable Care Act is one of the great comeback stories of public policy: after a terrible start, it has dramatically exceeded expectations. But hardly anyone seems to know that.
It’s easy to understand how that happens for Fox-watchers and Rush-listeners, who are fed a steady diet of supposed Obamacare disaster stories.
Um, I HATE Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. I consider them to be on the same par as pneumonic plague. They spread misinformation quickly and the effect is always malignant. I don’t watch cable news of any kind and I don’t listen to Rush. So, where could I have possibly gotten the crazy idea that Obamacare is a disaster waiting to happen??
Maybe it’s from my own data and observations. Maybe it’s because the plans are not so great for the price. Maybe it’s because some of us could afford the lousy premiums if we could get a subsidy but our incomes are too low to qualify (could someone please explain how that even makes sense??). Maybe it’s the persistent feeling that Obamacare is leading to a less secure job market. Maybe it’s because for some of us, it’s a choice between cashing in some of our IRA and facing a steep tax penalty to pay for our premiums or being forced into Medicaid where the state may collect our estates from our heirs when we are dead. There are a million reasons why Obamacare might not be working so well for the rest of us, 40 million approximately. If Obamacare is only reaching 7 million new subscribers, doesn’t that leave most of the 47 million uninsured still uninsured?
Here’s my take on Obamacare: It’s full of poison pills. There’s just enough in it to help people with pre-existing conditions and some self-employed people to thrill the cockles of the liberal’s heart. For everyone else, cost controls are not in place, there are no mechanisms to force competing carriers in a local market to cooperate with each other leaving the unsuspecting facing steep out of network costs, the unemployed are still mostly not covered (and they can’t afford the premiums anyway without a subsidy) and to get any kind of public option, aka Medicaid, you have to give up nearly everything you own and have spent your whole life working for.
This is not a good plan, Paul. Most people do not live in Princeton or NYC. They live ordinary lives with ordinary wages and this plan seems to have bypassed many of them. Obamacare was cobbled together by a chief executive who seemed to want to wag his penis around instead of actually pushing for a well crafted piece of legislation. Then it was severely compromised by Congress, first by Republicans who are malignant narcissists and then by Democrats who repeatedly sold out their constituents in a desperate attempt to prop up a guy who was not ready to be president. Why the push to ram this extremely flawed piece of legislation through so quickly? Why was it more important to save Obama’s ass than to ask him to do a good job? Why aren’t enough liberals asking those questions?
Don’t insult us, Paul, especially those of us who are die-hard liberals who find the right wing utterly repugnant. It’s not going to make Obamacare better and won’t help the party. It reminds me of the days when anyone who saw through Obama in 2008 was called a racist. It’s not fair and it’s beneath you.
Once upon a time in New Jersey about 20 years ago, there was a company called Merck that everyone I knew wanted to work for. The streets of Rahway were paved with gold. We jokingly referred to our own company as a training facility for Merck and Bristol Myers. The best of the best worked there for two years and then went to Merck.
At local conferences, the Merck people showed up in a pack, smug, condescending, and cast an otherworldly pool of light around them. THEY wrote their own proprietary modeling software. Even as late as two years ago, when Pharmageddon got its groove on, there was something magical about Merck people. They were like fading elves.
Alas, all good fairy tales come to an end and so it was with Merck this week where the rumor is that medicinal chemistry, that is the research part that makes your drugs from scratch, oh best beloveds, has been decimated at Merck. The rest of the story at Merck is unclear at this moment. We’re still trying to piece together whether Merck is going to outsource their synthesis to poorly paid foreign PhDs or whether management, who hasn’t synthesized anything but performance standards and political fantasy baseball for years, is going to don their too tight lab coats and nitrile gloves and go back to the lab. That should be interesting.
Once upon a time, the US had world class public research. Then the big companies decided they didn’t want to do research anymore and they would pharm out their research to academic labs. And they wrote policies about how this would be accomplished and the politicians said it was good because many of them didn’t know what the heck they were voting for. And then the Republicans decided to “drown government in a bathtub” and because they are like Godzillas in Tokyo, they were pretty indiscriminate about what they were knocking down. It turns out that the NIH keeps getting hit pretty hard and grants are harder and harder to come by with higher and higher bars to jump over and endless hours slaving over documents. That time could be used to invent new techniques but research is very expensive and someone has to pay for it. So the academic scientist spends much of his or her time begging to keep the reactions going and the lab rats paid.
The sequester hitting as it did in the middle of the year meant that about 640 grants that would have been supported and highly regarded by peer review are now not going to receive funds. And those ideas are not going to happen. And breakthroughs that they might have represented will not occur. We will not know what we’ve missed because it’s gone. Imagine 640 bright, motivated scientists on the brink of doing something powerful that could have changed the way in which we diagnose, treat, and cure cancer or influenza or diabetes or some rare disease that desperately needs an answer; it’s just not going happen. I would argue with anybody who says that’s a minor consequence. It’s not; it’s a major negative outcome and a tragedy for what had been the world’s most successful search-engine in biomedicine.
Other countries, meanwhile, have read our play book and see their future in trying to do what we used to do. As we seem to be backing away, they are increasing their support. And if people care about American leadership, they should be worried.
Unless something (it’s called C-O-N-G-R-E-S-S) stops the next set of cuts in the sequester, the problem is going to get a lot worse.
I don’t see a happily ever after ending to the story right at this minute but, you know, I’m a Tolkienist so I’m not ready to give up hope yet. The situation at the present time is this. We have private industry pulling out of research because the shareholders are like opium addicts who expect bigger and bigger quarterly hits. Long term investment doesn’t play nicely in the sandbox with an “ownership society” where everyone and their grandma is expected to put their savings into mutual funds that analysts and managers can gamble with. And we have idiots like Rush Limbaugh who yee-haw that the sequester is the best thing since sliced bread because liberals are sucking on it. I wouldn’t wish a Charlotte Corday situation on my worst enemy but I wouldn’t think twice about wishing a drug resistant version of Fournier’s Gangrene on Rush Limbaugh.
In the meantime, some of us still can’t quit science. After two years in the desert, I have to pinch myself because I now have access to all the journal articles I can eat. I’m afraid to click on the “Full Journal Article” button sometimes. It’s almost not real, like ruby slippers. {{Oh, wow, oh, wow!}} But it’s almost cruel too because it’s so uncertain these days. What is granted can so easily be taken away, like coaches that turn into pumpkins at midnight. Sometimes, I think I might have been better off if I’d taken my academic advisor’s advice and studied law. Then I think I’d rather eat glass than study torts.
So, science, yeah. You can barely make a living at it anymore and yet can’t quit the habit. The best I can do at this point is try not to frighten the new, untested, warriors in training that there be dragons out there and to pass on what a wizard once told me, “Don’t let anybody steal your bliss.”
Certain conservative and otherwise intelligent voters are resentful that someone might be leeching off of them. They all know someone who won’t pull his weight and that person becomes the template for how they see all poor people. For some reason, it never occurs to them that it might be the assholes on Wall Street who got massive bailouts and bonuses and a blank check in perpetuity to our Treasury department even after they blew up the world’s economy who are the biggest leeches of our tax dollars. THOSE are the people whose behavior we should be trying to control and who are selfishly hoarding more money, goods and stuff they didn’t earn. But we don’t hear the Republicans going after them.
No, it’s much easier to pick on people below you who can’t defend themselves. Sauron’s Mouthpieces like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck continue to feed a steady diet of resentment to Americans who are lucky enough to still have jobs and haven’t felt the full impact of the Little Depression- yet.
Let’s examine what they bought with those food stamps. Let’s take whatever joy there is left in their world, the last bits of food security, and rip that away too because it feels really good when we accuse the parents of hungry children of being lazy, stupid losers.
Some voters need to graduate from fourth grade.
The rest of us can give up our lunch today and donate our lunch money to organizations that help feed Americans who are currently suffering from food insecurity. That is especially important for growing school children. Schools out for summer and if they aren’t getting a free or subsidized lunch, many of them are going hungry.
I don’t need Michelle Obama to lecture me on childhood obesity when so many kids can’t get enough to eat. And having the Republicans selfishly and cruelly deprive these kids of food stamps is beyond evil.
The first I found at NakedCapitalism. It’s a post election summary on Real News Network about what is going to happen in the next four years. That we’re going in the direction of favelas is no surprise to me. But what most interested me was the bit in the last 10 minutes or so about what might happen in the vast sea of red in the middle of the country (and parts of Pennsylvania). We are talking about nationalism. I think the little diatribe that Rush Limbaugh went on today, as described by Matt Taibbi, suggests the germ of that is already out there. There’s a bitter resentment about how Latinos, women, the LBGT community and african americans have exerted their “special privileges”. As the economy falls deeper into recession due to ill-conceived austerity measures, we might see what seems like the sudden emergence of a true brown shirt movement. Liberals will be the ones who stabbed the good citizens in the back when they elected Obama (not me! I voted for Anderson and I have the iphone pic to prove it). Anyway, just watch it. It makes me think that the right wing conservative who watched Schindler’s List can not make the connection because liberal Democrats are not Jews.
The other video features Dave Swanson who argues that it is time for the left to start an movement/voting bloc independent of the Democratic party.
Wow! That’s original. That would be like the idea that I had that we form a federation of liberal and allied groups to organize our efforts, lobby for our causes, vote as a powerful bloc and vet our own slate of candidates.
The difference is that when Dave Swanson says it, no one accuses him of being a racist and irrational Obama hater. Now, it is chic to be critical of Obama. It’s a fricking pain in the ass to be four years too early.
Either that or it’s the penis years effect.
Now, I’ve always been the type to say that we need to stop acting like our particular issue is THE most IMPORTANT thing EVER. And I hate wordsmithing. But I have noticed that women opinion makers on the left have an extremely hard time getting any kind of recognition or invitation to express their opinions- to anyone. So, if Dave Swanson or Matt Stoller or anyone else is considering reinventing the wheel that we suggested a couple of years ago, it is my opinion that there MUST be a gender quota in the leadership and public relations department. I’m even setting the bar pretty low at no less than 34% representation of women in leadership positions and as mouthpieces on TV and internet. It’s the bare minimum. To really be secure about our rights, we need to have a representative on the finance committee Do you think I’m stupid?? The Board of Ed is not that much different than any other political institution. It’s just on a smaller scale. And we all know that Finance is where the action is. Initiatives need funding and women’s initiatives need to be taken seriously. So, no less than 34% representation on Finance.
If the left is getting the band back together, it’s time for the guys to stop bogarting the microphone.
Hillary Clinton and Harvey Weinstein at Time's 100 Most Influential People Awards
Hey, according to Rush Limbaugh, Hillary Clinton is just a secretary! And he calls us “libs” like it’s a bad thing! {{snort!}}
If Rush is going out of his way to make Hillary look like nothing more than a typist, she must be having a pretty good week. You can listen to her speech from last night’s 100 Most Influential People Awards here. Heck, she’s having a pretty good month. Was it the badass Hillary texting or was it the chill Hillary chugging beer straight out of the bottle? Or was it her phenomenal approval rating? Gosh, who knows but we haven’t seen the right this bent out of shape about Hillary since 2008. Relax, Rush, Nancy Pelosi says if we’re well behaved girls and boys, we can vote for her in 2016. And Nancy has a bridge to sell us in San Franciso.
It’s delightful. Hillary can handle Rush, I’m sure, but before long, maybe we can listen to Rush from his new home on blogtalkradio. A girl can dream.
Rush just can’t help himself. He’s on today, flinging poo again at Sandra Fluke, saying misleading statements and still implying that her level of sexual activity is economically unsustainable and she wants a bailout from other people.
At the same time, he is trying to sound contrite, no doubt because his loss of sponsors is taking a bite out of his big, fat ass. And you know, it does sound like there’s real regret in his voice- for himself. It would be so nice if we could hear even less of Rush, so keep it up, Rush. No one with a brain is buying these non-apology apologies.
But as to this “War on Women”, both parties are in on it. The Republicans whip their base into soft white peaks while the Democrats cynically try to take advantage of the outrage on the left, hoping that all the women will come flocking to them for protection. They don’t have to actually do anything. I don’t know which party is worse. Neither one takes women’s interests seriously.
If there was ever a time for women to get what they wanted, it would be now. If the “left” wants our votes, they need to prove it – before the election. Otherwise, it’s a game to them. They think we’re just a bunch of stupid girls.
What goes around comes around. The Democrats have a lot of atoning to do before any woman in her right mind should take them seriously.
***********************
One other thing: A lot of people are telling me that I wouldn’t be happy with Obama no matter what he did. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I *expect* him to do the best job that he possibly can given that he wanted this job so damn badly. However, I saw no evidence that he was taking his future responsibilities seriously before the election and I see no evidence now that he’s learned much. If I were a teacher I might have written, “Barack fails to live up to his potential”. If I were a shrink, I’d question whether he really wants to be president. If I were a person with half a brain, I might observe that he is adopting all of the characteristics of the bonus class that he serves and who funds him. I think Americans deserve better than this from our president.
But one thing you can’t say is that I haven’t been consistent. I didn’t think he was ready to be president because he didn’t have enough experience (check!), his slash and burn tactics during the 2008 election had a disenfranchising effect on the Democratic base and would wind up undermining the foundations of the party (check!) and he consistently used misogyny and sexism throughout the campaign and no one was held accountable for it (check!). Bottom line: no good ever comes of a bad seed. (check!, check!, check!)
That’s not hatred. That’s disgust and disappointment. If you expect nothing, you get nothing.
I’m taking it easy today on the blogging. No manifestos {{collective sigh of relief}}. I’m going to catch up on some other stuff. In the meantime, enjoy this very topical Mr. Deity video. And if you like this one, Mr. Deity has a series with some well loved biblical characters reinterpreted for a contemporary audience. :-^
Oh, and keep the pressure on Rush. If you don’t, he’ll just take another form, like a giant slorg, with more ranting about feminazis, gay people, muslims, liberals, etc, etc… Women may be the ones who take him down but we’re doing everyone a favor. So don’t let up.
I will now attempt to translate Rush Limbaugh’s “apology” to Sandra Fluke (aka women in general) into its original StanleyKowalskiese:
“Why are you so mad? I was only kidding. Can’t you take a joke? Why do you always make a big fucking deal about stuff? What’s the matter with you? You don’t have any reason to be angry. Are you on the rag again? {{bitch}}”
This is going to be a stream of consciousness post because I’m still trying to sort out what’s going on here. But I think what we are seeing is something like what happened with Occupy last fall. I’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s address where Obama has gone drastically worng.
The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said the president told Ms. Fluke that he stood by her in the face of personal attacks on right-wing radio. Mr. Obama believes, Mr. Carney said, that Mr. Limbaugh’s comments about Ms. Fluke were “unfortunate attacks,” and Mr. Carney called them “reprehensible.”
Ms. Fluke, 30, also drew support from the president of Georgetown University, who has differed with her in the past over the university’s refusal to provide insurance coverage for contraception.
The university president, John J. DeGioia, said in a statement: “One need not agree with her substantive position to support her right to respectful free expression. And yet, some of those who disagreed with her position — including Rush Limbaugh and commentators throughout the blogosphere and in various other media channels — responded with behavior that can only be described as misogynistic, vitriolic, and a misrepresentation of the position of our student.”
Mr. Obama phoned her just before she was to appear on MSNBC.
“He encouraged me and supported me and thanked me for speaking out about the concerns of American women,” she told the program’s host, Andrea Mitchell. “And what was really personal for me was that he said to tell my parents that they should be proud. And that meant a lot, because Rush Limbaugh questioned whether or not my family would be proud of me.”
Where to start? First, the president didn’t do this at a press conference and condemn Rush in no uncertain terms for being a evil bully. He places a personal call to Sandra. Secondly, he calls the remarks “unfortunate” and “reprehensible”. This is incorrect. The remarks were unacceptable, evil and not representative of the values and behavior we expect of a good American citizen. (You might want to take notes, Barry) Thirdly, he says that Fluke’s parents should be proud of her. Jeez, can you get any more patronizing? This is a third year law student ferchristsakes. That’s like saying that although the Flukes made a tragic error by letting Sandra out without her duena, they should at least be proud that their damaged goods has the courage to speak up and show her face in public.
But the worst thing Obama did here was assume that Fluke is the only intended target here. Rush’s comments, and now Bill O’Reilly’s, have *two* intended targets. Well, three, actually. The first obvious target is Sandra and all women in America who have ever had sex outside of marriage. That would include pretty much every woman in America. We’re all sluts to Rush. To women my age and younger (I came of age in the 70’s-80’s), we just don’t see it that way. We don’t spend our days wringing our hands about all the guilt and shame we’re supposed to feel. Many of us reasoned it out in our adolescence that those biblical rules didn’t apply to those of us born in the latter half of the 20th century. So, Rush can say slut, slut, slut til the sun comes down. Frankly, we don’t give a shit. We are angry though that he feels like he can degrade us in the minds of his second and third intended targets and get away with it.
Rush’s second intended target is men who listen to his show, and men who are like them but outwardly have too much class to listen to his show. It’s empowering to see their champion go after women who they have to deal with on a daily basis. You know, those bitches who are at work who they have to compete with for salaries and promotions. Life would be so much better if they weren’t sucking up all of the valuable resources that men used to have all to themselves a few decades ago. So, Rush is feeding this misplaced anger about economic conditions and putting the blame on the feminazis. And Rush’s beta male listeners are too cowardly to go after the real culprits, the alpha guys in the top 1% who are sitting on piles of cash and have not been rewarding working people for their productivity gains of the past 40 years. It is much easier to pick on what they consider to be weaker. It is beyond me why they haven’t asked themselves why Rush isn’t going after the guys in the boardroom. Not only are they cowards, they’re stupid.
Rush’s third target, and this is where O’Reilly comes in, is senior women. This is where the slut comments and characterization are really hitting home. As I was reading Rush’s comments yesterday, something about them didn’t seem right. Well, ALL of it didn’t seem right. But gradually it became clear to me what seemed off about them. Rush was saying that women like Sandra were having sex in the backseats of cars. Now, Rush isn’t THAT old so he should know by now that women Sandra’s age wouldn’t be caught dead having sex in a car. Ok, maybe once or twice for fun. But this is not the way we shameless hussies arrange our illicit assignations anymore. Oh, and the vast majority of women do not do drugs before sex. Most of us don’t have to get drunk either. No, adult women who are not married who enjoy sex do so on a regular basis in the privacy of their own bedrooms or their partner’s bedroom or somewhere in the apartment or in the shower. But very, very rarely in the backseat of a car. That would indicate that the woman in question was either very young, and hardly a slut, or didn’t have a place to go where they would feel comfortable. And I had to think to myself, when would that have been a normal thing? When was it the case that non-marital sex was occurring on a regular basis in cars, I mean, once you grew out of your teens.
Then it hit me that this might have been the situation back in the 50’s and early 60’s. There were probably quite a lot of women who were resorted to the backseat of the car because they had nowhere else to go. Young, working class women didn’t usually have their own apartments and if they lived at home where pre-marital sex was absolutely verboten, there were few alternatives. Not only that, but if you got caught, you really would be called a slut, sometimes by members of your own family. And they could be vicious about it too. Not only were you a slut, you were dirrrrrty. That’s another thing Rush goes on about. He makes a fun romp in the rumble seat with someone you love sound dirty, filthy and degrading.
…Now the progressive colossus is demanding payment for Sandra Fluke so that she can go through Georgetown Law School with an active, healthy social life.”
The words “go through” sounds like she’s going to “go through the football team”. In other words, because a woman like Sandra may have sex, it is a logical conclusion that she is indiscreet enough to take on multiple sex partners, at the same time or one at a time. It doesn’t matter, because she’s slept with the entire law school and they all talk about her and how she can’t get enough.
Like I mentioned before, the outrageous hyperbole doesn’t faze those of us who grew up guiltlessly having sex because we came of age in the right decade. Very few of us have ever slept with a football team or an entire college. We might have had our “Sex in the City” days but the fact that we even had a series called “Sex in the City” shows that this kind of slut shaming language has no meaning to us. But to women who watch O’Reilly, it’s like we came from another planet. The shaming doesn’t work on us, it works on THEM.
Now, why would Rush and O’Reilly put out all of the stops to call our mothers sluts and whores? Because that’s what they’re doing. They are calling our mothers sluts. They are saying to those women who are in their 70s, “If you had non-marital sex, you are a slut, you are dirty, you should be ashamed”, and digging up all of those humiliating memories that these women should have chucked decades ago, and hoping that those women will project those feelings onto their younger cohort. And it just may work.
I don’t know why they think it is necessary to do this to our mothers. Maybe they fear that our mothers will start feeling just s teeensy-tiny bit of sympathy for women who without access to contraception will have more children than they want and will miss some opportunities. Maybe it’s because the people who will get their sympathy are not the UNmarried women. Maybe the senior women have sympathy for MARRIED women. After all, a married woman has the legal document that allows her to have as much sex as she wants with her husband anywhere she wants and therefore, no church, state or pharmacist shouldn’t be restricting birth control from those women. Just because a senior evangelical female in her 70s is against sex between unmarried partners and is totally against abortion, that doesn’t mean she is against contraceptives for married women. That’s where the GOP has a weak spot.
So, the right wing is going to come down hard on unmarried women having sex with the expectation that senior women will be persuaded to join in and bash them for wanting to have sex and as a result, they will suddenly be on board restricting contraceptives in insurance policies and that will affect all women.
Now, the question is, who benefits? Well, there are several beneficiaries. Who would have an interest in making sure that insurance companies do not have to pay for contraceptives for any woman, at all? First thing that comes to my mind is – insurance companies! If some of them weren’t paying for it before and now they suddenly have to without any policy increase, well, that decreases the amount of money going to bonuses and stock values, right? Can’t increase shareholder value if some of the profits are being eaten up by a zillion women all getting their pills for free.
Who else benefits? Anyone who wants to make sure that no one sympathizes with the 99% or its constituent groups. If it looks like women might be gaining some sympathetic ears, the right will just make them look dirty like they did with the Occupy movement. Somewhere I read that the intended target of the smears against the Occupiers was not the Occupiers themselves. The targets were the young families with kids in strollers who might go to an occupy event or an average middle class female. The idea is to make the Occupiers look so unwholesome and dirty that the target audience would feel a visceral disgust with them. That would keep the curious away from Occupy events and stem the swelling crowds at marches and rallies. It worked. It kept the 99% from getting together in a unified force and exchanging notes. Characterizing women as dirty sluts keeps them at arms length from the very women who should be joining with them to push this nonsense back.
Who else benefits? The right wing keeps their crazy base and feeds them even more red meat. This makes the right wing base even more dangerous. I’m talking bordering on pre Third Reich crazy. If there is no push back, the crazy will just keep ratcheting up. If you want to see how this works, read the book, In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Eric Larson. It’s an account of the last ambassador to Germany, William Dodd, before WWII. Starting in 1933, Dodd and his family witnessed the unraveling of society in Berlin and with each fresh outrage thought that surely the German people would push back vigorously and re-establish the rule of law. The Dodds were to be sorely disappointed. With each new law against Jews and each new beating in the streets and with average Germans feeling powerful in everyday life to report on each other and take what they wanted, Germany devolved to the point where political enemies could be assassinated without much uproar. Each new event just made ordinary people more fearful and less likely to take action.
So, here’s where I think we are. The longer it takes for Obama to step up and punch Rush in the fucking nose, the more likely it will be that the next outrage will also go unchecked. Right now, Rush and his listeners are rabid dogs who are just barking. But let this go and the next time, who knows what will happen.
I already can’t believe what I’m seeing from the Obama administration. Barry’s call to Sandra was about the most tepid, ineffectual move he could ever make. I can’t wait to see Amanda Marcotte get back on her bandwagon and salivate all over Obama’s brave defense of Sandra Fluke. You know it’s coming. You know who Obama reminds me of in this situation? Michael Dukakis. Remember the SNL skit where Jon Lovitz played Dukakis and was asked the infamous question about what he would do if Kitty Dukakis was raped? And Lovitz came back with the most cerebral, weak and passionless, “I’m outraged” response. I wish I could find this on youtube but damn the copyright crap, the clip is gone. But here’s the transcript. Just try to imagine Jon Lovitz saying these words as if he were ordering more toast with his feta cheese and spinach omelet:
Sam Donaldson: [ waving frantically ] Governor Dukakis!! Governor Dukakis!!
Michael Dukakis: Sam.
Sam Donaldson: Your leadership style has been described as technotronic, cool, emotionally dead. Even your closest admirers admit that sometimes you are distant and aloof, a bit of a cold fish. Pundits are saying that one of the reasons you trail in the polls is that you are uninspiring, and seem totally devoid of passion.
Michael Dukakis: What’s the question?
Sam Donaldson: Well, I suppose the question, Governor, is do you have the passion necessary to lead this country?
Michael Dukakis: [ unemotional ] Sam, that kind of asperation to my character, quite frankly, makes me – well, there’s no other word for it – enraged. Maybe I shouldn’t say that in the heat of the moment, but I can’t control myself. I apologize for flying off the handle. And I’m just sorry my kids had to see me like this.
What exactly is the problem with Barry? Is it that he benefitted from using misogyny and sexism in 2008 so he can’t credibly quash Rush and O’Reilly now? Is he still trying to thread this needle, trying to do just enough for women while retaining some of the evangelical vote? The possible political ramifications are becoming clearer. The right wing is going to continue to ratchet up the attack on women’s rights and ping Barry to take a stand. And they know that he won’t do it because a.) he has about as much passion to defend women as Dukakis did to tear apart Kitty’s rapist b.) he thinks he has the women’s vote in the bag and c.) he’s afraid to piss off the religious. That leaves the right open to inflict an awful lot of damage to women before the election, damage that might come back to bite Barry in the ass at the polls for being fucking useless in the face of extraordinary national bullying of over half of the population.
The right isn’t going to stop with contraceptives. If you don’t smack them in the nose on this issue, even if the policy remains the same, they’re going to pick on something else next, like protecting the jobs of pregnant women or the family leave act. Yeah, I can see the family leave act getting some unusual attention next. It will be something like, “In these tough economic times, businesses need to have the flexibility to hire workers when they need them. They can’t be burdened with these regulations. Women who decide to have children will have to weigh whether that is in the best interest of their family or their jobs. And anyway, what’s wrong with women who don’t want to stay home with their babies? Their sweet, precious babies who need them. What kind of cold-hearted bitch goes to work and leaves her most valuable possessions in the care of strangers?”
You can’t see it coming? You aren’t imaginating hard enough.
Anyway, Obama has an Epic Fail on his hands right now. When Rush took to the airwaves on day two of Slutgate, Obama should have come out swinging and made absolutely sure that Rush was down long enough that he wouldn’t be able to get up. Obama could have called his connections to put pressure on Rush’s sponsors. He could have had a press conference and said he was clearing his schedule because this matter affected more than half of the population and it was that important to him. He could have said that adult men and women are not accountable to Rush or anyone else for their sexuality.
He could have done those things. But he didn’t. And so the problem escalates. The right starts calling out its second string and circles the wagons around Rush. And now its RUSH who is untouchable.
{{facepalm}}
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This sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay goes out to all women, young and old. I stand with Sandra:
I previously posted about Digby equating referring to Obama as “presumptuous” to calling him an “uppity negro.” Well, she seems to be seeing racists under her bed again in Affirmative Fool:
I know this isn’t news to anyone, but Rush Limbaugh is a sexist pig and proud of it. If he didn’t have 250 million dollars there’s no doubt he’d be a very lonely guy.
“This is the first time in his life there is not a professor who can turn his C into an A, or to write the law review article for him he can’t write. He is totally exposed. There is nobody to make it better,” Limbaugh said.
I think he’s probably speaking for a considerable number of people out there who truly believe that black people are inferior. But most of them are smart enough not to say so in public.
I loathe Rush Limbaugh and think he is a disgusting human being, so it pains me to be in the position of defending something he said. But there is nothing inherently racist in that statement.
I’m not saying Limbaugh isn’t a racist, nor am I addressing anything else he has said or done. I fully agree with Digby that he is a sexist pig. But suggesting that Barack Obama isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer isn’t racist, nor does it translate into a racist allegation about the intelligence of black people in general.
It’s a racial stereotype. Left Blogistan really needs to learn the difference between race, racism, racial stereotypes and things that aren’t racial at all.
Criticism of Obama is not racist.
Opposition to Obama is not racist.
Belittling Obama is not racist.
Mocking, jeering and/or making fun of Obama is not racist.
I will now attempt to translate Rush Limbaugh’s “apology” to Sandra Fluke (aka women in general) into its original StanleyKowalskiese:
The Confluence 
Ok, stop digging (or *keep* digging)
Rush just can’t help himself. He’s on today, flinging poo again at Sandra Fluke, saying misleading statements and still implying that her level of sexual activity is economically unsustainable and she wants a bailout from other people.
At the same time, he is trying to sound contrite, no doubt because his loss of sponsors is taking a bite out of his big, fat ass. And you know, it does sound like there’s real regret in his voice- for himself. It would be so nice if we could hear even less of Rush, so keep it up, Rush. No one with a brain is buying these non-apology apologies.
But as to this “War on Women”, both parties are in on it. The Republicans whip their base into soft white peaks while the Democrats cynically try to take advantage of the outrage on the left, hoping that all the women will come flocking to them for protection. They don’t have to actually do anything. I don’t know which party is worse. Neither one takes women’s interests seriously.
If there was ever a time for women to get what they wanted, it would be now. If the “left” wants our votes, they need to prove it – before the election. Otherwise, it’s a game to them. They think we’re just a bunch of stupid girls.
What goes around comes around. The Democrats have a lot of atoning to do before any woman in her right mind should take them seriously.
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One other thing: A lot of people are telling me that I wouldn’t be happy with Obama no matter what he did. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. I *expect* him to do the best job that he possibly can given that he wanted this job so damn badly. However, I saw no evidence that he was taking his future responsibilities seriously before the election and I see no evidence now that he’s learned much. If I were a teacher I might have written, “Barack fails to live up to his potential”. If I were a shrink, I’d question whether he really wants to be president. If I were a person with half a brain, I might observe that he is adopting all of the characteristics of the bonus class that he serves and who funds him. I think Americans deserve better than this from our president.
But one thing you can’t say is that I haven’t been consistent. I didn’t think he was ready to be president because he didn’t have enough experience (check!), his slash and burn tactics during the 2008 election had a disenfranchising effect on the Democratic base and would wind up undermining the foundations of the party (check!) and he consistently used misogyny and sexism throughout the campaign and no one was held accountable for it (check!). Bottom line: no good ever comes of a bad seed. (check!, check!, check!)
That’s not hatred. That’s disgust and disappointment. If you expect nothing, you get nothing.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Barack Obama's sweetie comment, Democrats, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh, War on Women | 10 Comments »