Month: June 2010

Salt Of The Bare Unmarbled Earth

by digby

Think Progress reports on the latest Nikki Haley news the South Carolina Governor’s race. Evidently, despite the fact that Haley has gone out of here way to separate herself from her Sikh upbringing and emphasize her Christian faith, some of her lovely fellows in the Republican party aren’t convinced:

This evening in an interview with Pub Politics, state Sen. Jake Knotts (R-SC) — who is supporting a different candidate — slammed Haley by using a racial slur:

We already got one raghead in the White House, we don’t need a raghead in the governor’s mansion.

I can’t help but be reminded of Kathleen Parker’s recent paean to the good ole boys of South Carolina. Remember this?

It is probably safe to say that this is not Obama country, even though plenty of Cantey’s clients and friends voted for the president. These days, most think Washington doesn’t have a clue. They think the Tea Partyers might.

The evening’s conversation circled recent events — health care, spending, etc. — which may be summarized as follows:

“Do they have any idea up there what’s going on out here?” one fellow asked me.

“Nope.”

“Wasn’t Scott Brown a hint?”

“Shoulda been.”

Heads shake.

Then it was my turn: “Do you guys see the November election as a big turnout day?”

“You better believe it.”

There’s something grounding and instructive about sitting in the woods on a cool spring night, away from the green rooms and talk shows. It is important to touch the bare, unmarbled earth now and then, something too few inside Washington do often enough.

At the risk of sounding patronizing, the camo-boys at Canteyville are the “ordinary Americans” whom pundits and politicians love to invoke while utterly ignoring them. The resulting anger recently on display is not only political theater. And the conversation at Joe’s pavilion isn’t rare.

No doubt. And I’ll bet Senator Jake Knotts’ conversation isn’t rare either.

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The Horror

by digby

The pictures BP doesn’t want you to see:

More at the link.

CNN’s been running footage of this all day. The sight of these beautiful Pelicans struggling mightily to breath through this oil is so horrifying it’s almost impossible to watch.

Has everyone read the book A Clockwork Orange? Remember the scene where Alex was forced to watch violence with his eyes propped open? I’d think maybe all those people who gleefully chanted “drill,baby,drill” as a tribal chant would benefit from a little of that aversion therapy. Of course, just like the doctors in the book, even thinking such a thing makes me like them in some regard. It’s a problem because I don’t know what to do with my feelings over this. The mojitos aren’t working anymore.

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Neocons Join The Tea Party

by digby

Regarding the news that one of the activists killed in the flotilla was an American citizen, Powerline writes:

The facts are not entirely clear, but it appears that Dogan was born in the United States to Turkish parents who returned to Turkey not long thereafter. (The ABC story says he was two years old.) Apparently Dogan had lived in Turkey with his family since that time. He apparently was, in other words, a “birthright citizen,” solely by virtue of the fact that his parents were residing in the U.S. when he was born.

If that is the case–and, again, the facts are not yet entirely clear–it is silly to call him an “American of Turkish descent.” He, like the other members of his family, was a Turk. The idea that his presence among the dead raises a special diplomatic problem is absurd; if it does, it shouldn’t.

Coincidentally, Scott Rasmussen published a poll this morning that found 58 percent of voters favor the abolition of birthright citizenship. I think the majority is right on this issue. Birthright citizenship is an anachronism, and in some respects a dangerous one, in an era when millions of people travel internationally and millions more enter the U.S. illegally, some for the specific purpose of having a baby here.

As for Dogan, it is reported that he was shot five times at close range, four times in the head. If that is correct, it is reasonable to infer that he was one of those attacking Israeli soldiers with a club, knife or other weapon and was shot in self-defense. The Times quotes his brother saying, on behalf of the family, “we were not sorry to hear that he fell like a martyr.”

Wow, there’s a lot to consider in those paragraphs. First there is the idea that actual American citizens under current law, shouldn’t be called Americans. I don’t know who will decide which Americans deserve the designation, but perhaps the next teabagger convention could set up a system for the press so they’ll know what’s appropriate and what isn’t. (No profiling please!) This is followed by the use of the phrase “birthright citizen” which I haven’t heard before. Is it the politically correct version of “anchor baby?” If so, why would proudly politically incorrect right wingers bother? Call ’em all terrorists and let’s be done with all the subterfuge.

And it sounds as though he is suggesting that it’s dangerous for people to be having children in this country. Is this because terrorists are planning ahead for future invasions from within? Or is it just that Hispanics are “dangerous” by their very nature? Either way, the idea of tying this particular story to the anchor baby issue is a bold new step in the right’s overarching narrative. I’ll be looking for more of it.

Probably the most amazing statement in all this is the last paragraph which says that it’s “reasonable” to infer that that this person was attacking one of the Israeli commandos with a knife and was shot in self-defense? I suppose it’s possible, but one would hardly naturally assume that in the middle of a melee someone amazingly gets shot four times in the head. I knew those IDF commandos were skilled but I didn’t know they were that skilled. Indeed, the reasonable inference is usually something quite different. (I’m not making a judgment about the facts in this particular case beyond the four shots to the head, which I don’t know, only whether or not it’s obvious that a “reasonable inference” of self-defense can be made of that.)

The old neocon “spreadin’ democracy” we’re all one big happy family of wingnuts is really out of fashion if even the Bush loving Powerline is pushing the 14th amendment repeal line.In fact, even the Bush administration didn’t try to make the argument that American citizens who were born of foreign parents shouldn’t be accorded their rights. We are seeing a joining of the neocons and the teabaggers in the spirit of shared nativism. It figures. When you strip them down to their essence they are all garden variety paranoid, neo-confederate birchers and not much more. It’s all a matter of emphasis.

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Contestmania!

by digby

Howie has a fun contest today. It requires no money (although Blue America is happy to take contributions anytime) but you need to send in your answers to downwithtyranny@gmail.com ASAP:

Every answer is the name of someone running for Congress in 2010. Just send your answers to downwithtyranny@gmail.com, and if you’re the first one to get ’em all right, you win the box of brand-new cool CDs (all genres). Are these CDs any good? Sure– and if there are any you don’t like… there’s always eBay. Yes, that simple!

* This candidate’s opponent is not just a congressman but also a real estate speculator who bought some worthless land, earmarked an $8 million dollar road to his new property and then sold it for a $450,000 profit a few months later.

* Now a multimillionaire, he knows more about auto theft than anyone in Congress since he has stolen so many autos himself.

* What candidate wrote a book about a famous rapper?

* His opponent, a Christmas-tree farmer, got into Congress and immediately offered a resolution to commend… yes, Christmas tree farmers.

* This roly-poly incumbent was arrested in his car with a drug-addicted prostitute giving him head.

* This unimportant congressional figure spent nearly one day in three on the links for all of 2009.

* This candidate is a direct linear descendent of a Prophet of God.

* Her opponent was disqualified from being the head of the Intelligence Committee because she was caught in an act of espionage for another nation; still not arrested, though.

* Her opponent was the chair of Lieberman for President, but she doesn’t put that on her resume much.

* This 16-term congressman steered hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks in exchange for contributions to his campaign committee and PAC but had the clout to get rid of two consecutive U.S. attorneys looking into the little matter.

* This guy was just denied a contest against an ex-congressman arrested while driving drunk to visit his second family in the Virginia suburbs. (Hint: there are no Mormons in this story.)

* He’s the only member of the Republican House leadership who voted against Bush’s no-strings-attached bailout for Wall Street banksters on both September 29 and October 3, 2008.

* Several Democrats can say they were Bush’s “favorite Democrat,” but only this one agreed to co-sponsor his bill to gut Social Security.

* Tuesday there’s a bona fide progressive running against a conservative corporate shill in a closely contested runoff for an Arkansas House seat. Who’s the conservative corporate shill?

* A staunch advocate of “Drill, Baby, Drill” and a protector of Wall Street banksters, this far right Republican managed to beat a blind rabbi in 2008 and will face an active member of the New York Guard this year.

* Another Palin-endorsed candidate flopped spectacularly Tuesday night. Who did Palin want her sadly underperforming candidate to run against in November?

* Which Democratic congressman in New York has drawn the most primary challengers?

* There are quite a few rock musicians in Congress, but this is the only one who was ever in a big band with a real smash hit (which he wrote).

* In 2008 this clown almost lost his election to a no-nonsense Democrat who is challenging him again. So this year fear got the better of him, and he just changed to another district.

* When it comes to key issues and tight votes, this guy has crossed the aisle to vote with the Republicans more frequently than any other Democrat.

So there you have it. Google is allowed. The first person to send all 20 correct answers wins the box of CDs. This contest is brought to you by Blue America, and if you want to donate to any of our candidates, here’s the endorsement page. You don’t have to donate in order to win.

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Mean Streak

by digby

Media Matters interviewed Glenn Beck’s biographer:

Q. What surprised you the most from your research?

I wasn’t prepared for the depth of Beck’s mean streak. He’s still known for personalizing disagreements in a vicious way. This is something that goes all the way back. Along with his ambition, it’s another striking constant in his life and career. This is a guy who called a competing deejay’s wife live on the air and mocked her for having a miscarriage. More than one former colleague described him as a “sadist,” the kind of guy who enjoys humiliating people, who pulls wings off of flies. I don’t doubt that he could enjoy hurting animals. He still sells a shirt on his website that features a picture of a baby polar bear with a target on it and the tagline, “Drill through their a** for cheaper gas.”

The idea that Glenn Beck “became a better man” when he found Jesus is one of two major self-serving myths out of which he’s built his brand. The other being that his public super-patriotism is reluctant and full of self-sacrifice.

Q. There is much discussion of past emotional problems. What exactly occurred and how has that affected Beck’s actions?

A. Beck had his share of tragedy in his youth. A divorce followed by the death of his mother. Then a half-brother killed himself. How much these things contributed to the Beck we know today, I have no idea. But Beck is clearly full of hatred to this day, for himself, for the world, for his political opponents. More than one former colleague believes he was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder in the 90s, likely bipolar, and that he took lithium on top of his recreational drugs and booze until he went clean in mid-90s. So you start with that as a baseline, together with a history of depression, throw in some megalomania and ADHD, for which Beck takes Big Pharma speed, sprinkle it with some dry drunk fairy dust and an instinctive paranoia, and you have a recipe for a freak show.

Q. Is this related to his crying, or is that even real emotion?

A. Beck has been fake crying for at least a decade. At his Top 40 station in New Haven, his ex-partner told me he’d get emotional, cut to commercial, dry up to order a bacon-and-cheese, then start crying as soon as he was on-air again. One of his colleagues in Tampa told me the same thing. This is not to say that Beck is not an emotional wreck who cries a lot. He definitely does. But I think the way he incorporates it into his performance is a combination of embarrassingly deep emotional neediness and a shameless desire to manipulate his audience, which apparently is willing to give him a pass on the crying because they think at bottom he is authentic. And it’s worth noting that the neediness seems to cut both ways. Often Glenn Beck feels like nothing so much as an episode of Mr. Rogers.

There’s also a bit of a Mormon thing going on with regard to the cheap theatrics and tortuous sentimentality in Beck’s shtick, which I talk about at length in the book.

I can’t wait to read it.

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Now They’re “Bad at Politics”

by digby

Just the other day when the mindless Villagers realized that their favorite shiny new non-scandal turned out not to be based on anything illegal, they immediately turned to the next rationale. Here it is in its full glory:

A series of recent missteps just keeps getting worse for Barack Obama’s political operation, already under fire from inside the party for losing its golden touch.

The second-guessing of the White House political shop — which is coming in part from top House Democrats — was sparked anew late Wednesday by news that the White House tried and failed to coax another Democratic Senate candidate out of making his race by dangling administration jobs in front of him.

In a possible repeat of the Joe Sestak episode in Pennsylvania, insurgent U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff of Colorado said deputy White House chief of staff Jim Messina reached out to him — with a wince-inducing e-mail that is now public — with three possible jobs in September 2009. Obama wanted to keep him out of a race against Sen. Michael Bennet, the White House’s favored candidate.

Taken together, the Sestak and Romanoff cases suggest a White House team that is one part Dick Daley, one part Barney Fife.

This part’s really funny:

Trying to put the fix in to deny Democratic voters the chance to choose for themselves who their Senate nominees should be is hardly consistent with the idea of “Yes, we can” grass-roots empowerment that is central to Obama’s brand.

Yeah, they’re very concerned about Obama’s image of “yes we can” grassroots empowerment. In fact they found it so odd that they forgot to write more than a passing sentence until the Republicans started spooning the scandal into their open mouths. Are we to assume that the GOP s similarly concerned about Obama’s grassroots “yes we can ” image?

I happen to be one who does think the party establishment should stay out of primaries, but I’ll take a wild leap and assume that never occurred to 99% of Villagers until they read this piece.

Aside from their deep concern about the DFH’s and Obama image, the other rationale they’ve generously given themselves for their obsession with a practice that wasn’t a scandal until five minutes ago, is much more revealing:

And bungling that fix is at odds with the Obama team’s image — built around the likes of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Obama himself — as shrewd political operatives who know the game and always win it.

So not only is the administration shrewd and cynical where it should be idealistic, it isn’t shrewd and cynical enough. Tough gig.

Obama’s “grassroots” image — or the idea that people get offered jobs in Washington — is hardly something anyone has ever shown the slightest concern about before. This second critique is the one that really animates the villagers. It’s the losing that puts the blood in the water and gets the sharks riled up. GOP chum is just what they needed to go into a feeding frenzy.

The press will always give themselves an excuse to follow a pre-digested storyline fed to them by the GOP. And some of those excuses individually will even make sense. Good reporters will be content to uncover facts and then move on. But the phenomenon that allows these manufactured scandals to take off is a willingness by the press to be led along by the nose and then finding a way to rationalize their behavior as the Politico has done here. They have moved beyond the original question of illegality which justified their probe. Virtually no one can find anything illegal or even unusual in what happened. So now it’s a “political” problem. That’s all it takes to keep it running until it either peters out on its own or they manage to find a hook to require official intervention.

If the Republicans take the House next fall, there will be no necessity to find hooks because they will turn themselves into a full time scandal generating machine. And the Politico won’t even have to justify its coverage — it will be the official business of the US Congress and the full time assignment of the DC press corps. Everybody’s just flexing their muscles and getting into shape for the Big Show. Can you feel the excitement? I knew that you could.

Update: Jamison Foser has more.

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Same As It Ever Was

by tristero

There’s a new survey out of the teabaggers, this one courtesy of U of Washington and Bruce Bartlett which separates out those who are hardcore from those who are at least partially sane. Guess what? The Tea Party is just another name for the standard Republican base, having the same standard obsessions with black people getting more than their fair share; fear and intolerance of immigrants; and restricting marriage to couples whose love they approve of.

Who knew this was just the same old Republican rightwing bigots at it again and not some genuine post-partisan, multi-party, multi-ethnic populist uprising declaring a pox on all houses and the corrupt politics-as-usual? Well, actually, most liberals knew. As we knew about the madness of Bush/Iraq and the dangers of offshore drilling, to name just two that popped to mind.

From Bartlett’s post:

A new University of Washington poll sheds light on these observations by separating TPM agnostics, who may somewhat approve or disapprove of the TPM, from those that strongly approve of it. Released on Tuesday, it sampled 1,695 Washington State voters—a large sample—and asked them to define themselves as strong TPM supporters (19% of the sample), those that somewhat approve or disapprove of it (26% of the sample), and those that strongly disapprove (27% of the sample; not included below).

What I think this poll shows is that taxes and spending are not by any means the only issues that define TPM members; they are largely united in being unsympathetic to African Americans, militant in their hostility toward illegal immigrants, and very conservative socially. At a minimum, these data throw cold water on the view that the TPM is essentially libertarian. Based on these data, I would say that TPM members have much more in common with social conservatives that welcome government intervention as long as it’s in support of their agenda.

That’s basically how I see it, the one area of disagreement – ie, I think there is only an academic distinction between libertarians and conservatives, at least in this context – isn’t worth a tea drop of difference to argue over.

Can we please stop seeing seemingly sensible people pretending these people aren’t the bigoted rightwing nuts they so clearly are? Can we also please see at least the semblance of skepticism towards the latest Republican/corporate re-branding of their boilerplate bullshit? “We told you so” really gets boring, you know. Ehhh….”No” and “No?” I thought not.

Same as it ever was.

Two Letters From The Times

by tristero

The Times has some astute letter writers:

To the Editor:

Re “Once More, With Feeling,” by Maureen Dowd (column, May 30):

Where is it written that the president of the United States should be everyone’s “daddy”?

We elected a president, and this one, for a change, is bright, articulate and coolheaded, and appears to work very hard to understand the troubling problems confronting the United States and most of the world.

This country’s leaders and its people are not participants in a TV reality show or Facebook “friends.” There are many serious issues to be addressed and we do not need a weepy, angry, emotional president “feeling” his way to solutions. It is a dearth of critical thinking, contingency planning and discipline that has brought us to our present sorry state.

Barbara Hood
Louisville, Ky., May 31, 2010

•

To the Editor:

It’s discouraging to see many calling for the president to “get angry” or show more outward emotion regarding the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. What would that accomplish?

The president is not some puppet that must lash out as some in the public might find appropriate. He’s the president. And you know what? He’s acting like one.

Dylan J. Taatjes
Boulder, Colo., May 30, 2010

To those amongst my dear readers who simply cannot abide a blogpost that defends Obama without also dissing him, I”m sorry to disappoint you but these letter writers are, imo, 100% right.

I think I have a pretty good idea of the importance of emotional connections and expression. My “job” composing music – it is hardly that, more like a necessity, sometimes an albatross, more often a source of unalloyed joy – depends upon my ability to express and act upon my feelings. I rely upon gut instincts, hunches, wild experiments, and the fluctuations of my mood – well, actually I’ll try anything at all – when I’m composing.

I know many people find this difficult to believe, but leading the United States (translated: the world, at least in the early 3rd Millenium) requires a slightly different skill-set and emotional makeup than composing string quartets. Gut instinct just doesn’t cut it: reason does. Emotional lability leads to erratic, bizarre decision making. You really want someone calm, cool, and collected as president. You most certainly don’t want a hothead like Bush or – just as frightening – McCain. In short, you want someone smart and in control of his emotions – if not Obama, then someone with equal or greater ability for rational thought and – unavoidably – someone capable of deep political calculation.

Ummmm…Heh, alright. I’ll come clean. I was very misleading right now and, in order to set the record straight, I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret about music, all music making and probably any artistic endeavor, that historical Ground Zero for expressing your feelings.

Emotions have very little to do with it. Don’t get me wrong: You absolutely must be in touch with how you feel, but that is the famous 1% inspiration in the formula that emphasizes 99% perspiration. One example:

I’ve heard stories about the making of The Who’s classic albums, of Pete Townsend, John Entwhistle, and Keith Moon rehearsing for hours getting the interplay between the bass drums, the bass guitar, and the guitar exactly right. I’ve heard stories that even then, Townsend wasn’t satisfied and would spend unspeakably long hours in the studio with an engineer, adding bass drum beats or deleting them, to get them to lock together in a way that sounds completely and utterly spontaneous. That’s The Who, people, the folks who made a career out of onstage “rage” – it was faked, duh – that ended in smashing their instruments to bits (not fake, but less damage was done than it looked).

I could tell similar stories about every band, every orchestra, every songwriter, every composer. Even jazz, you ask, that has to be, by definition, in the moment? Folks, I met Teo Macero and asked him. I know what went into producing those straight from the heart “free” improvisations on the classic albums. Hint: lots and lots of editing for one thing.

In other words, even in the most emotion-laden activities, high, consistent achievement on a world-class level requires enormous amounts of experience, a tremendous amount of foreknowledge, and a very reasonable head to meticulously parse, examine, and choose among those emotional expressions as coldly as a surgeon.

So these calls for Obama to behave like a Big Daddy to rage and weep are worse than stupid and embarrassing. They’re ignorant and dangerous. As I see it, it is to Obama’s great credit that he has made a point, since he was president, not to play the populist rabble rouser. Genuine governance is ill-served by some power freak who’s trying to tap into America’s inner Tom Friedman and goes around saying, and far worse, believing this is the way a president should think:

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit

Slowly, The Light Dawns

by digby

Charles Babington examines the strange notion that the voters are becoming even more partisan even as they say they want more bipartisanship. Whatever can these stupid people be thinking?

Well …

In a January poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, 93 percent agreed there is too much partisan fighting between Democrats and Republicans. In a March Associated Press-GfK poll, 84 percent said it was important that any health care plan have support from both parties in Congress.

Voters’ behavior, however, often works against such sentiments.

“People will tell you they don’t like partisanship, but their solution is, ‘The other side should give in to us,'” said Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz, author of “Voice of the People: Elections and Voting in the United States.”

Uhm yes. They want their agenda to be enacted and they don’t like the idea that their opponents are standing in the way. When one party say, wins a super-majority, they think they have a perfect right to expect that it will happen. It’s a mistaken idea they learned back in civics class in high school, I imagine.

Now, Republicans have good reason to define bipartisanship as Democrats capitulating because there is a history of doing just that. Democrats, not so much, but that’s no reason they shouldn’t think that “two way street” might be defined as the Republicans doing the same thing when the Dems are in the majority. (Alas, they have learned the hard way that this is not going to happen.) I fairly sure it’s only the vaunted “centrists” who define bipartisanship as a Chinese menu or splitting the baby. Everyone else thinks that elections actually mean something.

But here’s a very interesting little twist at the very end of that story that made my heart swell:

With partisanship surging, Abramowitz sees two possible routes for Congress. One involves continued gridlock and all the public anger and frustration it generates.

The other is a revived effort to change the Senate’s filibuster rules, a daunting task that would make it easier for the majority party to enact bills despite unanimous minority opposition, as the House often does.

Leaders of both parties say Republicans probably will gain House and Senate seats this fall, narrowing, if not wiping out, the Democrats’ advantage.

“That can only lead to more polarization,” Abramowitz said, “and more pressure to change filibuster rules.”

The pressure may grow, but a closer Democratic-Republican divide in the Senate will make a rules change even harder to achieve

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Not if the politicians pay attention to their constituents it won’t.

Seriously, even the fact that mainstream news organizations are beginning to entertain this as a serious notion is very good news. It means that we are finally seeing a reluctant acceptance of the idea that this isn’t just a “naturally” center right nation that always prefers the congress to enact conservative policy. It seems to be dawning on at least some people that the nation actually is polarized and we are going to have to fight this out rather than simply relying on conservatives like Ben Nelson to be our true north.

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Lucky Duckies On A Bad Trip

by digby

Here’s a happy story about the lucky ducky long term unemployed who politicians keep suggesting are refusing to look for work because they want the government to come across with some more of that cushy easy unemployment money:

The job market is improving, but one statistic presents a stark reminder of the challenges that remain: Nearly half of the unemployed—45.9%—have been out of work longer than six months, more than at any time since the Labor Department began keeping track in 1948.

Even in the worst months of the early 1980s, when the jobless rate topped 10% for months on end, only about one in four of the unemployed was out of work for more than six months.

Overall, seven million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and most of them—4.7 million—have been out of work for a year or more.

Long-term unemployment has reached nearly every segment of the population, but some have been particularly hard-hit. The typical long-term unemployed worker is a white man with a high-school education or less. Older unemployed workers also tend to be out of work longer. Those between ages 65 and 69 who still wish to work have typically been jobless for 49.8 weeks.

[…]

“The consequences are worse for those who can’t find a job quickly,” said Till Marco von Wachter, a Columbia University economist. They extend from atrophying skills to a higher likelihood of unhappiness and anxiety. Workers out of work for a long time tend to find it more difficult to find a job, and “the longer people are unemployed the more likely they are to eventually give up searching and thereby drop out of the labor force,” Mr. von Wachter said.

[…]

While blue-collar and construction workers have been battered by the recession, they aren’t the only ones hit. Unemployed production workers, including toolmakers, woodworkers and food processors, have been out of work for a median of 38.1 weeks. Unemployed workers whose most recent job was in management, business and financial operations have typically been out of work for 32.3 weeks.

Yeah, they’re just a bunch of stoners living high off the hog on their 300 a week. These lazy bums just don’t want to work. And congress apparently believes this too. I’m guessing all their big money donors are complaining about it.

Lazy bums like like this:

Richard Moran of Ortonville, Mich., the state with the highest U.S. unemployment rate, hasn’t had a job for two-and-a-half years. The 57-year-old, who was laid off from a testing and design job for Chrysler Group LLC, suspects his age is working against him.

Mr. Moran has attended two free training programs. The first, to become a corrections officer, ended at roughly the same time that Michigan was closing prisons amid tightening budgets. He recently finished an auto-parts design course to refresh his skills. “The certificates are piling up,” said Mr. Moran, who also has a four-year college degree in mass communications.

While education is helpful, college graduates have also fallen into the ranks of the long-term unemployed. They represent 15.9% of the long-term jobless, compared with 14.9% of all unemployed workers. Those with high school degrees who haven’t been to college comprise 40.7% of long-term unemployed, compared with 37.8% of all unemployed workers.

Luckily his wife is still working.

And the really good news for fellows like Moran are that not only did they lose equity in their homes and suffer a huge hit on their 401ks (if they had them), they now can’t find a job to start saving again and the government wants to cut their social security. Good times all around.

You couldn’t actually blame these people if they did decide to become stoners and just let the world pass them by. Anything to stop the dull ache of knowing that you’ve worked your whole damned life only to wind up in broke and unemployable through no fault of your own. It’s the American Dream turned into a bad trip.

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