“The Republican Party should be less worried about its image and more worried about its substance. No party that dismantles the American Jobs Act, blocks the Violence Against Women Act and defeats the DREAM Act can expect to win the hearts and minds of mainstream America, let alone a governing majority.
For crying out loud, Republicans in the chamber couldn’t even manage to stand up and applaud for protecting voting rights and helping kids go to pre-school. Instead of continuing to oppose everything Democrats stand for, Republicans should explain to the American people why the only thing Republicans seem to consistently stand for —- more tax cuts for the rich —- didn’t create jobs and ward off our financial crisis when those cuts were in place.”
Ezra Klein: Imagine, for a moment, that President Obama managed to pass every policy he proposed tonight. Within a couple of years, every four-year-old would have access to preschool. The federal minimum wage would be at $9 — higher than it’s been, after adjusting for inflation, since 1981. There’d be a cap-and-trade program limiting our carbon emissions and a vast infrastructure investment to upgrade our roads and bridges. Taxes would be higher, guns would be harder to come by, and undocumented immigrants would have a path to citizenship. America would be a noticeably different country.
Daily Intelligencer: Joe Biden loved it when Obama suggested that Congress “pass the rest” of his jobs legislation.
“We are citizens. It’s a word that doesn’t just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes the way we’re made. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.” — President Obama, SOTU 2013
Twenty-two Congressmen invited people whose lives have been touched by gun violence, in an effort coordinated by Jim Langevin, Democrat of Rhode Island. Counterbalancing those invitees is a Texas congressman who invited Ted Nugent. Nugent was investigated by the secret service after saying that if President Obama were reelected he, Nugent, would end up “dead or in jail.” Turned out the answer was c) at the state of the union. — guardian.co.uk
Photos of Shitty Pants Nugent during the SOTU here and here and here.
“You can choose a future where more Americans have the chance to gain the skills they need to compete, no matter how old they are or how much money they have. Education was the gateway to opportunity for me. It was the gateway for Michelle. And now more than ever, it is the gateway to a middle-class life. …And now you have a choice – we can gut education, or we can decide that in the United States of America, no child should have her dreams deferred because of a crowded classroom or a crumbling school. No family should have to set aside a college acceptance letter because they don’t have the money. No company should have to look for workers in China because they couldn’t find any with the right skills here at home. Government has a role in this. But teachers must inspire; principals must lead; parents must instill a thirst for learning, and students, you’ve got to do the work. And together, I promise you – we can out-educate and out-compete any country on Earth. Help me recruit 100,000 math and science teachers in the next ten years, and improve early childhood education. Help give two million workers the chance to learn skills at their community college that will lead directly to a job. Help us work with colleges and universities to cut in half the growth of tuition costs over the next ten years. We can meet that goal together. You can choose that future for America.”
Huffington Post: URBANDALE, Iowa, Sept 1 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama tried to bolster his re-election campaign on Saturday with a fierce critique of the Republicans’ convention and a plea to supporters to cast their ballots as early as possible.
“Speaking to a crowd of 10,000 in the battleground state of Iowa, Obama said rival Mitt Romney and his fellow Republicans had offered no new ideas when they held the national spotlight for three days during their convention in Tampa.
“”What they offered over those three days was more often than not an agenda that was better-suited for the last century,” Obama said. “We might as well have watched it on a black-and-white TV.”
“Obama criticized Romney for failing to mention the war in Afghanistan or his plans for veterans care in his speech, and said he had failed to outline a credible plan to boost the economy.
“”There was a lot of talk about hard truths and bold choices … but no one ever actually bothered to tell you what they were,” Obama said.
“Obama is gearing up for his own star turn next Thursday at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he will lay out his argument for re-election in a football stadium that can hold almost 75,000 people.
“The speech is likely to offer few surprises: Obama has been arguing since June that the election is a choice between continuing the policies he enacted in his first term, such as keeping his health reforms in place and bolstering education spending, and returning to policies enacted under Republican President George W. Bush that hollowed out the middle class in order to cut taxes for the wealthy.”
Rewriting history to suit your personal comfort level is doubleplusgood.
Charles Johnson reports that Teabaggers in Tennessee are demanding that school textbooks leave out America’s history of slavery:
“…a group of Tea Party activists in Tennessee has renewed its push to whitewash school textbooks. The group is seeking to remove references to slavery and mentions of the country’s founders being slave owners.
“According to reports, Hal Rounds, the Fayette County attorney and spokesman for the group, said during a recent news conference that there has been “an awful lot of made-up criticism about, for instance, the founders intruding on the Indians or having slaves or being hypocrites in one way or another.
“[...] The group called for textbook selection criteria to include: “No portrayal of minority experience in the history which actually occurred shall obscure the experience or contributions of the Founding Fathers, or the majority of citizens, including those who reached positions of leadership.”“
Far right conservatives are beside themselves over Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision on the ACA, leading Glenn Beck to make some money on Justice Roberts ‘Coward’ T-shirts and spawning the following rightwingnuttiness and teameltdowns:
Newsflash for Republicans: Romneycare works exactly like Obamacare – Romney’s mandate also works as a penalty, which blunts the charges critics leveled at Obama.
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) likened the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Democratic health care law to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Former Town Councilor Mike Malzone, the founder of the Merrimack Tea Party, said Thursday in a Facebook post reacting to the Supreme Court ruling on health care, “I hope the (5 supremes) get colon cancer.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who joined the majority opinion, was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and had pancreatic cancer ten years later.
Of all the right-wing meltdowns following yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, this statement, encouraging open revolt against the federal government put out by the chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party may take the cake…
Slate compiled several other funny and over-the-top reactions from prominent conservatives, like Sarah Palin who thanked God for firing up “the troops,” or Breitbart.com’s Ben Shapiro, who tweeted that the decision “is the end of America as we know it. No exaggeration.”
The House Republicans 2009 “alternative” to Obamacare was no alternative — but that won’t stop Eric Cantor from still trying to push it to this day.
The DOJ won’t prosecute AG Holder over the Fox Entertainment / NRA political boondoggle-extravaganza known as the Fast & Furious investigation, so Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) said on Fox “we could have Attorney General Holder arrested.”
Despite the Republican Party’s best efforts at stalling, obstruction, and doing nothing, Congress on Friday approved legislation that will extend federal highway programs through 2014, a low interest rate on student loans for one year, and the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) for five years. The final bill does not include language that would require approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.
The unwashed conservative base, who so desperately want to vote Obama out of the White House (no gay marriage! no contraception! more guns!), have to embrace the candidate who’s been chosen for them, Mr-Plutocrat-One-Percent-Mitt-Romney, AND his ideas, like only those who can pay for an education deserve an education. Mitt is telling us proletarians to suck it — corporations look forward to all the minimum wage workers our country can create.
WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY—————————–—
The Truth About Governor Willard and Education – “President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses and unwilling to stand up for our kids,” Romney charged, citing hundreds of millions of dollars contributed by teachers unions to Democratic campaigns as the cause. “We have to stop putting campaign cash ahead of our kids,” he said to applause. First of all, our kids? You mean Tagg and Bagg and Bogg and Quagg and whoever, who already have $100 miilion trust funds to send their kids to prep schools? Whatchoo mean “our,” extremely white man? But, the point here is that, while he was governor, he didn’t let cash of any kind get ahead of the “kids” in the public schools of the state where public education was pretty much invented. In 2006, he cut $37.8 million from the state’s higher education budget. Fees skyrocketed, as they did generally throughout the state. In 2003, he tried to cut $100 milion from that same budget while raising tuition by $50 million at state colleges and universities. He also wanted to slash job training initiatives and workforce training funding. Things were rather worse at the primary and secondary level, where Romney passed down budget cuts and left cities and towns holding the bag. And that’s the way it was. – Charles P. Pierce
Mitt Romney’s campaign bus rolled into one West Philadelphia community on Thursday, but his appearance was less than welcomed. Hecklers shouted at him to leave, and a sign featuring Romney’s “I’m not concerned about the very poor” comment was raised. — Washington Post
Mitt Romney regrets saying that he likes being able to fire people. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Romney said he got frustrated whenever he made flubs like his line, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me,” last winter in New Hampshire. — ABC News
Polluters Ran Amuck Under Romney, Says Watchdog – Just weeks after taking office in 2003, he announced a plan to centralize the state’s legal services and lay off as many as half of its attorneys, including many within the Department of Environmental Protection. In rolling out the plan, Romney’s chief legal counsel Daniel Winslow singled out environmental positions as a target for cuts in an interview with Lawyers Weekly. Critics said the move would limit the state’s ability to prosecute environmental crimes, as the DEP was already “chronically understaffed” and would likely have to drop some cases. In the end, Romney’s reorganization plan was stymied by opposition from enviros, unions, and residents. [...] His administration also cut the DEP’s budget by almost a third, and temporarily closed its Northeastern Regional Office in Wilmington, Mass. [...] In 2004, Romney’s administration was accused of suppressing a report that detailed problems within the Massachusetts Environmental Police (MEP), which enforces laws related to pollution, wildlife and marine safety. – Mother Jones
Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney — Presidential politics has always been a rich man’s game. But now, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United that upended decades of limits on campaign donations, financing a presidential race is the exclusive domain of the kind of megadonor whose portfolios make Mitt Romney look middle-class. “I have lots of money, and can give it legally now,” Texas billionaire and top GOP moneyman Harold Simmons recently bragged to The Wall Street Journal. “Just never to Democrats.” – Rolling Stone
Romney wants to stop Congressional work on the economy until he’s sworn in — In an interview with Time magazine on Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he wants Congress to deal with major issues to keep the U.S. from going over a “fiscal cliff” after the January swearing-in. Romney said he wants permanent legislation to deal with those problems instead of a temporary effort. Government analysts say the economy will shrink if Congress doesn’t act to prevent the expiration of two major rounds of tax cuts along with automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and domestic programs. – NYTimes.com
The same Senate Republicans who pushed for massive spending cuts are now hitting Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid for insisting that Congress abide by them. — Politico
NO WASTEFUL SPENDING:The Missouri House “spentmore than $1,100 in taxpayer money on a security camera to keep watch over a new bronze bust of conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh.” The small-government conservative talk show-host was inducted into the Hall of Famous Missourians during a closed-door ceremony last week. — Think Progress
Yes, that’s Mitt Romney’s signature on the poster of birther Donald Trump asking you for a $3 donation. As recently as two days ago on May 22nd, Donald Trump tweeted to ask what President Obama’s college applications say about his place of birth. That’s not merely a wink and a nod, it’s an accusation of fraud. Does this mean birtherism is now an official component of the Romney campaign? — JM Ashby
WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————
Obama has to Explain Why Fairness is Essential to Growth (and Why Some Democrats Have to Stop Believing Otherwise) – Fairness isn’t inconsistent with growth; it’s essential to it. The only way the economy can grow and create more jobs is if prosperity is more widely shared. The key reason why the recovery is so anemic is so much income and wealth are now concentrated at the top [that] America’s the vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power necessary to boost the economy. The richest 1 percent of Americans save about half their incomes, while most of the rest of us save between 6 and 10 percent. That shouldn’t be surprising. Being rich means you already have most of what you want and need. That second yacht isn’t nearly as exciting as was the first. It follows that when, as now, the top 1 percent rakes in more than 20 percent of total income — at least twice the share it had 30 years ago — there’s insufficient demand for all the goods and services the economy is capable of producing at or near full employment. And without demand, the economy doesn’t grow or generate nearly enough jobs. – Robert Reich
Here is the much-talked-about TED talk on income inequality given by billionaire venture capitalist Nick Hanauer, and his discussion of the negative impacts of income inequality on the economy. — AFL-CIO Blog
… Maddow: Union-busting about making Wisconsin permanently Republican — “Killing the unions is the strategy for turning Wisconsin red, not just for now, but for generations to come in an irreparable way,” she said. “This is about partisan politics. It is about destroying Democrats’ chances of competing with Republicans.” Maddow noted that while Republican candidates are disproportionately funded by corporate and pro-business groups, Democratic candidates are disproportionately funded by public service unions — the very unions that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker targeted in his budget repair bill. “It’s not about some year’s budget, it is not even about jobs,” Maddow continued. “Since he wiped away union rights in Wisconsin, Scott Walker has racked up the single worst jobs records in the entire country.” – Raw Story
Forever Herding Cats: A coalition of liberal interest groups is pushing back on a proposal by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to extend the Bush tax cuts for individuals earning less than $1 million a year, instead pushing a proposal from President Barack Obama that would draw the line at $250,000 a year in income. — Roll Call
Pelosi urged Speaker John Boehner to bring up a vote on extending tax cuts for middle-class income earners “as early as next week,” when the House returns from recess. — Roll Call
Sen. Charles Schumer on Thursday responded to conservatives who had compared his Ex-PATRIOT Act to laws imposed by the Nazis. “I know a thing or two about what Nazis did,” Schumer, a Jew, said on the Senate floor. “Some of my relatives were killed by them.” [...] “Saying that a person who made their fortune specifically because of the positive elements in American society in turn has the responsibility to do right by America is not even on the same planet as what the Nazis did to the Jews,” Schumer said. – Raw Story
Campaign comparison to meeting ‘The Donald’ – via: demnewswire
Meeting a President is a once-in-a-lifetime experience—how about an evening with two: http://OFA.BO/UWiWts
“Republicans approve of the American farmer, but they are willing to help him go broke. They stand four-square for the American home—but not for housing. They are strong for labor—but they are stronger for restricting labor’s rights. They favor minimum wage—the smaller the minimum wage the better. They endorse educational opportunity for all—but they won’t spend money for teachers or for schools. They think modern medical care and hospitals are fine—for people who can afford them. They consider electrical power a great blessing—but only when the private power companies get their rake-off. They think American standard of living is a fine thing—so long as it doesn’t spread to all the people. And they admire of Government of the United States so much that they would like to buy it.” – Harry S. Truman
Charles P Pierce: The Romney Replacement Bus Is at the Station - Here’s Senator Jim DeMint (R-Wingnuttia), talking about likely presidential nominee, Willard Romney and the rest of the Republican field: “I just hope at some point they’ll realize whether they can win or not. If they can’t, the best thing they can probably do is to help the one who is going to win.” Feel the fire! Here’s The Washington Post’s list of some people from whose lukewarm approval Romney would benefit in the near future. Personally, I wouldn’t hire any of them to park my car, but that’s just me. Honestly, now. Princess Dumbass Of The Northwoods? Senator Aqua Buddha of Kentucky? The zombie-eyed granny-starver? Is there anyone on that list who doesn’t make independent voters scream and run wildly for the tree line? This isn’t a party establishment. It’s the people sitting on the bench that you avoid in the bus station. And even they have to be coaxed and wheedled and pleaded with to support the only candidate in the party who, at this advanced moment on the calendar, has a chance of winning the nomination? I’m telling you, by the time Willard gets up to give his acceptance speech in Tampa, the national committee’s going to be paying people on the sidewalks outside 20 bucks to come in and cheer.
2) SANTORUM: FEAR and LOATHING on the campaign trail
Video: Rick Santorum’s Insane New Fear Mongering Ad: Welcome to OBAMAVILLE! - Taking right wing fear mongering to an insane new level, here’s Rick Santorum’s latest web advertisement. Notice at about 39 seconds in: the image of Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad flashes to President Obama for a split second.
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3) NEWT! Pass the smelling salts and my blankey
Gingrich Says Robert De Niro’s ‘White First Lady’ Crack Is ‘Inexcusable’ - “What De Niro said last night was inexcusable and the president should apologize for him. It was at an Obama fundraiser, it is exactly wrong,” Gingrich said. WHAT DE NIRO SAID: “Callista Gingrich. Karen Santorum. Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white First Lady?” De Niro asked, according to a pool report from the fundraiser. The report said the crowd roared and someone yelled “No!” as De Niro asked, “Too soon, right?” Piers Morgan explains De Niro’s joke to Gingrich - “This is the whole point,” [Morgan told Gingrich]. “The whole point of De Niro’s comment, his joke, was precisely because many, many people were saying that kind of thing very seriously about Michelle Obama.”
Newt Gingrich calls Obama comment on Trayvon Martin ‘disgraceful’- Most observers took President Obama’s comment that the killing of Trayvon Martin hit him particularly hard because “if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” as a very normal human reaction. However, at least one person — Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich — found it “disgraceful” and “appalling” that Obama was “trying to turn” the death of the African American teenager “into a racial issue.” “Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him?” Gingrich asked during an appearance Friday on The Sean Hannity Radio Show. “That’s just nonsense dividing this country up,” he continued. “When things go wrong to an American, it is sad for all Americans. Trying to turn it into a racial issue is fundamentally wrong. I really find it appalling.”
Gingrich: It’s Obama’s fault people think he’s Muslim - “I have said publicly several times that I believe Obama is a Christian. He went to a Christian church for over 20 years. He was listening to the sermons. The fact is I take him at his word. But I think it is very bizarre that he is desperately concerned to apologize to Muslim religious fanatics while they are killing young Americans, while at the same time going to war against the Catholic Church and against every right-to-life Protestant organization in the country. I just think it’s a very strange value system… It should bother the president. Why does the president behave the way that people would think that? You have to ask, why would they believe that? It’s not because they’re stupid. It’s because they watch the kind of things I just described to you. When you have every bishop in the Catholic Church say this administration’s at war with their religion, you don’t think that has an impact?”
4) REPUBLICAN WAR ON WOMEN
Patty Murray Releases Video Urging John Boehner To Drop Birth Control Fight - Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) released a new video on Friday urging House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to abandon his plans to continue the fight in the House against contraception coverage. Minutes before Sen. Roy Blunt’s (R-Mo.) amendment, which would have allowed all employers to refuse to cover contraception for their employees for “moral reasons,” failed in the Senate on March 1, Boehner vowed to take up the fight in the House. “I think it’s important for us to win this issue,” Boehner told reporters at the time. He said the Obama administration’s new contraception rule requiring most employers to cover birth control with no co-pay for their employees violates religious liberty.
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5) DOOSH Limbaugh
Media Matters Releases Radio Ads Against Rush Limbaugh (AUDIO)- Media Matters launched its campaign on Thursday, stating the company planned to spend at least $100,000 on anti-Limbaugh radio ads. The ads use audio from Limbaugh’s attack on Fluke and criticize stations that still air his program. The group called their ads “community service announcements.” Listeners are urged to call the local station that carries Limbaugh to say “we don’t talk to women like that” in our city. (see link for both ads)
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Limbaugh hires a crisis management consultant – It seems he has now hired a crisis management consultant to try and stop the bleeding before Mike Huckabee comes and steals his time slot (and affiliates). Brian Glicklich has been acting on Limbaugh’s behalf since at least March 8. Glicklich is a former vice president at Premiere Radio Networks, and currently heads the firm How Handy Is That, which specializes in reputation and crisis management and “gadfly defense.” He previously worked as counsel to a firm that provides crisis management to clients like David Copperfield and Paris Hilton. Glicklich also has an extensive relationship with Glenn Beck, and is thanked in the acknowledgements of several of Beck’s books.
6) THE 21ST CENTURY REPUBLICAN-TEA-PARTY-CLOWN-SHOW
Utah demands federal government return public lands to state - The state of Utah, long resentful that some 60 percent of its territory belongs to the U.S. government, says the time has come to reclaim the millions of acres it gave up more than a century ago for admission to the union. Governor Gary Herbert signed into law on Friday a bill demanding the federal government relinquish ownership of roughly 30 million acres of public land in Utah by 2015 or face a state lawsuit challenging its continued control of that property. Shrugging off warnings from state attorneys that the legislation, backed primarily by Republicans, is likely unconstitutional and could lead to a protracted but futile legal battle, Herbert called such a dispute “a fight worth having.”
INSANITY: TENNESSEE: Senate Passes Bill Allowing The Teaching Of Creationism - The Tennessee Senate has approved a bill that will allow teachers to advocate for creationism and against climate change. The bill’s wording is couched in terms of “protecting the right to open discussion.” Senators voted 24-8 to pass a bill that says schoolteachers cannot be punished for “helping students to understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories” taught in public schools. The measure has drawn strong opposition from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Center for Science Education and the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it is cover for teachers who want to teach creationism or intelligent design. Supporters said the measure would give teachers more guidance to answer students’ questions about science topics. “The idea behind this bill is that students should be encouraged to challenge current scientific thought and theory,” said state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson. ||| RELATED: U.S. students behind in math, science, analysis says – CNN - In math, U.S. high schoolers were in the bottom quarter of the countries that participated, trailing countries including Finland, China and Estonia. [...] In science, the United States falls behind countries such as Canada, Japan and the Czech Republic.
Rick Santorum’s weird and narrow-minded religious vendetta presidential campaign, which is based entirely on GOP conservative values and HIS interpretations of Biblically-based social guidelines, seems to highlight his personal desire to take our country “back” to some golden, shiny moment in recent history. What Santorum and the GOP don’t want to understand is that returning to any point in the past would be a dream shared only by other white, conservative men (who are primarily of a certain age).
Below, Donna Trussell describes it as Santorum’s “Rockwellian” America. In reality, this is Santorum’s “Completely Fictional” America, because of the many problems that only society and taxes, progress, science, education, and equality solved for people who weren’t born wealthy, white, and male all at the same time.
In Santorum’s “Rockwellian” America, men stand by their devoted wives and delightful children. They all work hard, go to church on Sundays, do their homework. Then the parents launch their competent, well-educated kids into a world eager to employ them. Everything is copacetic in Sweater World.
So what’s the problem with having a kid, even if the pregnancy was unplanned? The baby will give you a reason to settle down, or stay together. Even if the father has disappeared, that’s okay. Your family and community will bundle you up with love and support. That kid will be the best thing that ever happened to you.
It’s not like the parents are unemployed, or the boyfriend is beating up the girlfriend and molesting his stepdaughter. It’s not like a girl or boy has to perform sex acts on adults just to survive.
Oh, if only.
As cornball as Norman Rockwell’s illustrations were, their sentimental scenes would be a welcome break from the violence, uncertainty, poverty, rape and sexual abuse that besets the lives of many women and children.
Let these pro-life Republican men who are so concerned about innocent lives put their money where their mouths are. Let them beef up the welfare system by way of a special tax on the wealthy. Let’s put aside a mandatory trust fund that will pay for decent housing, schooling and food for 18 years of each new life created.
But that’s not what the GOP has in mind. Republicans want to control the actions of women and girls, not provide for them. Continue…
It’s difficult, if not impossible, for a patriarchal system to control the minds and lives of women, when women know they can easily control their own fertility (or lack thereof). There will be no going back, no matter how much Mullah Santorum fearmongers about the Bible and Satan and the ‘dangers’ of contraception in this year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twelve.
And with regard to people in this country who aren’t rich or white or male, if we could just move the Republican Party’s traditional, knee-jerk viewpoints from the Old Testament over to the New Testament, we might actually experience some progress toward a golden, shiny moment in our country’s future instead of reminiscing over fictional tv reruns and the good times that never were for a majority of people.
I completely agree with Stephanie Coontz below. It’s important for women to fully understand HOW THINGS USED TO BE before we can fully understand how things are now — and why we still, unfortunately, have to fight for things like contraception, choice, equal pay and opportunity, education, etc. I mean, just look at Liz Trotta’s opinions for this week’s unfortunate example of why we still need to fight (there’s a GOP / Fox “News” woman for you!).
GOP presidential candidates like Rick Santorum, who want to impose their religious / social views on the lives of others, are a threat to society and to progress generally, and to women in particular. You don’t have to label yourself a ‘feminist’ to realize we’ve got it better today than they had it in the ’60s and other than white males, seriously, who would want to go back to all that?
“Mad Men’s” authentic portrait of women’s lives in the early 1960s makes it hard for some women to watch. Over the course of its first three seasons, I interviewed almost 200 women from the same era for a new book on the Greatest Generation’s wives and daughters. Many had suffered from the same numbness that plagued Betty Draper in the first season. They had seen psychiatrists who were as unhelpful and patronizing as the one Don Draper hired for his wife, or they had been married to men who displayed a sense of male entitlement similar to Don’s. Those who had worked, whether before or after marriage, had experienced the same discrimination and sexual harassment as the female employees at the show’s ad agency.
Yet to my surprise, most of these women refused to watch “Mad Men.” Not because they found its portrayal of male-female relations unrealistic — in fact, many recounted treatment in real life that was even more dramatic and horrifying than that on the show. It was precisely because “Mad Men” portrayed the sexism of that era so unflinchingly, they told me, that they could not bear to watch.
The rest of us, however, should tune in for a much-needed lesson on the devastating costs of a way of life that still evokes misplaced nostalgia. We should be glad that the writers are resisting the temptation to transform their female characters into contemporary heroines. They’re not, and they cannot be. That is the brilliance of the show’s script.
“Mad Men’s” writers are not sexist. The time period was.
While our media focuses on the drum circles and dread locks, here’s a survey of who actually comprises those Americans who are sympathetic to and/or active in the OWS protests:
Who are the protesters? The media calls them hippies or rich kids or slackers or yuppies. The protesters call themselves the 99%…the people who are in the bottom 99% income bracket in the United States. The top one percent of the country earns 35% of the wealth. The top 10% of the country earns over 70% of the wealth. The rest of us get the scraps. Presumably, the 99% would represent every demographic, including those in the upper incomes.
Hector R. Cordero-Guzman, Ph.D., School of Public Affairs, Baruch College Ph.D. Programs in Sociology and Urban Education City University of New York, examined data from the web traffic at occupywallstreet.org.
Traffic on the Occupy Wall Street site averaged about 400,000 visitors a day during the sample week (October 7th), which represents more than 10% of the population. 1619 people completed the survey.
Age: Not surprising, nearly 2/3 of the protesters are under 35. But one in three is over 35 and one in five is over 45.
Education: Only 7.9% of respondents lack at least some college. 27.4% have some college (but no degree), 35% have a college degree, 8.2% have some graduate school (but no degree), and close to 21.5% have a graduate school degree.
Employment Status: 70% of respondents had jobs. 50.4% worked full time. 20.4% worked part time. Only 13.1% are unemployed.
Income: 47.5% of the sample earns less than $24,999 dollars a year and another quarter (24%) earn between $25,000 and $49,999 per year. 71.5% of the sample earns less than $50,000 per year. 15.4% of the sample earned between $50,000 and $74,999. The remainder 13% of the sample earn over $75,000 with close to 2% earning over $150,000 per year.
Let’s take a quick look at the views on education / the Dept. of Education between President Obama and the GOP presidential candidates and their fan base:
President Barack Obama said improving the nation’s public schools is crucial to the U.S.’s economic recovery as he highlighted his decision to let states sidestep the No Child Left Behind law by raising education standards.
“Education is an essential part of this economic agenda,” the president said today in a weekly radio and Internet address that urged Congress to pass his $447 billion jobs plan that includes money for teachers and schools. “It is an undeniable fact that countries who out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow. Businesses will hire wherever the highly skilled, highly trained workers are located.”
If the U.S. is “serious about building an economy that lasts” and strengthening the middle class, “we had better be serious about education,” Obama said. “We have to pick up our game and raise our standards.”
Now compare the ideas from the Fox “News” GOP debate this past week:
“I am going to promise to advocate the abolishment of the federal Department of Education.” — former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson.
“What I would do as president of the United States is pass the mother of all repeal bills on education. Then I would go over to the Department of Education, I’d turn off the lights, I would lock the door and I would spend all the money back to the states and localities.” — Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann
“You need to dramatically shrink the federal Department of Education, get rid of virtually all of its regulations.” — former House Speaker Newt Gingrich
“In 1980, when the Republican Party ran, part of the platform was to get rid of the Department of Education. By the year 2000, (that issue) was eliminated, and we fed on to it. Then … Republicans added No Child Left Behind.” — complained Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas
While Herman Cain said he would eliminate the EPA on TV, online viewers answered the same question on the YouTube.com/FoxNews channel, and they overwhelmingly favored eliminating the Department of Education (by 47%!!). Via: Google Public Sector blogspot
In summary:
The result of [Roger Ailes] concerted campaign of disinformation is a viewership that knows almost nothing about what’s going on in the world. According to recent polls, Fox News viewers are the most misinformed of all news consumers. They are 12 percentage points more likely to believe the stimulus package caused job losses, 17 points more likely to believe Muslims want to establish Shariah law in America, 30 points more likely to say that scientists dispute global warming, and 31 points more likely to doubt President Obama’s citizenship. In fact, a study by the University of Maryland reveals, ignorance of Fox viewers actually increases the longer they watch the network. That’s because Ailes isn’t interested in providing people with information, or even a balanced range of perspectives. Like his political mentor, Richard Nixon, Ailes traffics in the emotions of victimization. — Tim Dickinson | Rolling Stone
JUST TO CLEAR UP THIS DELUDED THOUGHT PROCESS: There’s no difference between Republicans and Democrats! Just like Bush! Doesn’t matter IF you vote or who you vote for!
…because like you and I, they’re working- and middle-class people and retirees who depend on safety net programs and federal services like the rest of us — the 99%.
“The reason that the Republicans deliberately destroyed the balanced budget and created unprecedented government debt was precisely in hopes that at some point they could use the debt as an excuse to destroy social security, medicare, and myriads of educational and health programs. They represent rich people, and the rich don’t want to be having to bear their fair share of the national burden. What better way to get out of having to pay those pesky taxes than making sure the government doesn’t do anything for anyone but the rich.”— Juan Cole
“The aim of the corporate state is not to feed, clothe or house the masses but to shift all economic, social and political power and wealth into the hands of the tiny corporate elite. It is to create a world where the heads of corporations make $900,000 an hour and four-job families struggle to survive. The corporate elite achieves its aims of greater and greater profit by weakening and dismantling government agencies and taking over or destroying public institutions. Charter schools, mercenary armies, a for-profit health insurance industry and outsourcing every facet of government work, from clerical tasks to intelligence, feed the corporate beast at our expense. The decimation of labor unions, the twisting of education into mindless vocational training and the slashing of social services leave us ever more enslaved to the whims of corporations. The intrusion of corporations into the public sphere destroys the concept of the common good. It erases the lines between public and private interests. It creates a world that is defined exclusively by naked self-interest.” — Chris Hedges
“Fascism is when corporations become the government” ~ Bill Maher
Maddow: Union-busting about making Wisconsin permanently Republican — “Killing the unions is the strategy for turning Wisconsin red, not just for now, but for generations to come in an irreparable way,” she said. “This is about partisan politics. It is about destroying Democrats’ chances of competing with Republicans.” Maddow noted that while Republican candidates are disproportionately funded by corporate and pro-business groups, Democratic candidates are disproportionately funded by public service unions — the very unions that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker targeted in his budget repair bill. “It’s not about some year’s budget, it is not even about jobs,” Maddow continued. “Since he wiped away union rights in Wisconsin, Scott Walker has racked up the single worst jobs records in the entire country.” –
Gingrich Says Robert De Niro’s ‘White First Lady’ Crack Is ‘Inexcusable’
Newt Gingrich calls Obama comment on Trayvon Martin ‘disgraceful’
Limbaugh hires a crisis management consultant
Utah demands federal government return public lands to state
“Mad Men’s” authentic portrait of women’s lives in the early 1960s makes it hard for some women to watch. Over the course of its first three seasons, I interviewed almost 200 women from the same era for a new book on the Greatest Generation’s wives and daughters. Many had suffered from the same numbness that plagued Betty Draper in the first season. They had seen psychiatrists who were as unhelpful and patronizing as the one Don Draper hired for his wife, or they had been married to men who displayed a sense of male entitlement similar to Don’s. Those who had worked, whether before or after marriage, had experienced the same discrimination and sexual harassment as the female employees at the show’s ad agency.
Yet to my surprise, most of these women refused to watch “Mad Men.” Not because they found its portrayal of male-female relations unrealistic — in fact, many recounted treatment in real life that was even more dramatic and horrifying than that on the show. It was precisely because “Mad Men” portrayed the sexism of that era so unflinchingly, they told me, that they could not bear to watch.
The rest of us, however, should tune in for a much-needed lesson on the devastating costs of a way of life that still evokes misplaced nostalgia. We should be glad that the writers are resisting the temptation to transform their female characters into contemporary heroines. They’re not, and they cannot be. That is the brilliance of the show’s script.
