Month: April 2014

QOTD: CNN

by digby

As hard as it is to believe, CNN actually ran a story about this:

New way for the KKK?

[Imperial Wizard] Ancona, who lives in Missouri, insists there’s a new Klan for modern times — a Klan that’s “about educating people to our ideas and getting people to see our point of view to … help change things.”
He said he and those like him can spread that message without violence — a sort of rebranding of the Klan.

The idea may sound absurd, but is it conceivable?

A reporter checked it out and the PR professional consensus is no.

Good thing CNN is on this, though, or they might have spent a whole bunch of money on repackaging and advertising
only to have people reject their tainted product.

Best to start from scratch. After all, there’s always a “market” out there for white supremacy.

.

Sally Quinn’s odd notion of “faith” 


by digby

I don’t think “faith” means what Sally Quinn thinks it means:

Do the participants at the seder really believe that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt, were passed over by God, and escaped to their own land? A lot of them don’t.

Do I believe in God? I’m not sure what I believe would mean the same to others. Do I believe Jesus was the Son of God? Who am I to say? Do I believe Jesus was resurrected from the dead? I don’t know.

It really doesn’t matter whether the Jews at the Seder believe. Nor does it matter that the Christians at Easter believe. What matters is the overwhelming sense of community that all of these rituals inspire.

That’s nice. I like togetherness and a sense of community too. But I just have a sneaking suspicion that an awful lot of the people who are celebrating Passover and Easter actually do believe in their religion and it does matter to them. In fact, a bunch of them might just find it a teensy bit presumptuous of Sally Quinn to dismiss their beliefs on one of the most important religious days of the year in favor of some bourgeois Sunday brunch celebration where everybody feels good about themselves.

But hey, who am I to venture an opinion? I’m not religious. But then apparently neither is Sally Quinn who writes a column in a newspaper called “On Faith.”

Why does Sally Quinn write a column in the newspaper called “On Faith” anyway?

.

Sunday Funnies: Eat the rich edition

by digby

Doonesbury:

Tom Tomorrow

The rich kids of the rich and famous

by digby

Following up on my post here and David’s here, I thought I should check in with the Rich Kids of Instagram. It’s been a while and since I’ve recently been informed that the future of the world depends on their largesse it’s a good way to see what they’re interested in so we can all tailor our hopes and dreams around their hopes and dreams.

Basically, kids, don’t go to college, go to butler school:

Christopher Ely is prone to philosophizing about his life’s work. “You should be invisible, to a certain point,” he explains carefully, wearing a navy blue pinstriped suit and well-polished shoes. “You exist, of course, but you don’t.” Ely, of course, is describing the secrets of the manservant trade. As one of New York’s most famous butlers, he’s enjoyed a storied career that began as a footman at Buckingham Palace and led to a job as the butler and estate manager for philanthropist and power widow Brooke Astor. Ely, 48, does not use the term “manservant.” The word, he says, “has such connotation to it.”

This is one of the many tips Ely is preparing to pass on to the next generation of butlers, housekeepers, chauffeurs, governesses, housemen, personal assistants, laundresses, and chefs. This week he and Manhattan’s French Culinary Institute inaugurate the Estate Management Studies program. Tired of hearing people tell him, “We couldn’t get good staff,” Ely says, he set out to reinvigorate the entire domestic-service industry with a curriculum that combines its ancient hallmarks—efficiency, decorum, and discretion—with what the institute calls the “contemporary skills necessary to manage modern-day residences.”

Update: Also too, apparently this peek inside the lives of the rich and shameless “old money” of Charleston South Carolina has the old guard all in a tizzy. They don’t like to have their (lazy children’s) dirty laundry exposed on national TV.

Frankly my dear, these heirs to Antebellum gentility really don’t give a damn.

It reminds me of this earlier peek into the rich and shameless youth of New York City, featuring PC Peterson, the worthless heir to Pete Peterson, the man who openly admits he’s trying to save the country for his grandkids. He doesn’t tell us that his plan is to turn the nation into a feudal state.

Peter Cary “PC” Peterson, 18 years old and a senior at Dwight, is sitting at Philippe on the Upper East Side, talking about the way the world works, based on his extensive experience. “Everything in New York City is about connections,” he explains, his eyes glinting and head lolling back. “It’s who you know and how much money you have. It’s really sad. And I am not saying I’m like that. But that’s what New York is: money and power.”

.

Bundy bar-b-que blather

by digby

I happened to catch this exchange between a Nevada Republican officeholder named Michelle Fiore and Chris Hayes Friday night and almost had to admire the combination of arrogance and aggressive ignorance the woman shows in the interview. She is clearly very impressed with herself.

First she insists that the government never sends in men with guns to collect an “unpaid bill.” That’s ridiculous. Men with guns come and arrest people all the time for failing to pay their taxes and their property is often confiscated. Suspected drug offenders often don’t even get a day in court — the government just seizes their property, auctions it off and keeps the money, regardless of the outcome of an arrest. People are removed from their homes by armed police every single day for failing to pay their mortgage or their rent.

What does she thinks backs up every law in this country? Men with guns who can come to your house, arrest you and seize your property if you don’t abide by them. If she’s an anarchist who doesn’t believe in this system, she ought to admit it.

Now I happen to agree (as does Chris) that this particular approach by the BLM was over the top. The truth is that they could have done this with garnishments on the sale of the cows rather than trying to take the cows themselves. They were making a point and it backfired. But the underlying power of any law is the government’s ability to use force to compel a citizen to observe it. I realize that’s a bit abstract for this woman’s obviously self-serving ideology, but she’s an elected official and somebody needs to clue her in.

And self-serving it is. She’s all for the government using force in other cases — such as the border, which she repeatedly mentioned as a legitimate place for the government to get trigger-happy. And her pals in the Tea Party were anything but sympathetic to Occupy protesters:

“They seem to be more in favor of anarchy than they are in favor of working out problems through the Constitution,” Jenny Beth Martin, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, said about the Occupy forces.

“We have worked very hard to be respectful of the laws,” she said in an interview. “We protest and complain, but we’re also trying to work within the system. It’s frustrating to watch people who have an utter lack of respect for our form of government.”

Yeah.  Frustrating.

Chris patiently tried to discuss the issue logically and the women talked over him with the usual non-stop irrelevant gibberish. But he did manage to finally ask her if she would similarly stand with a person who called together a thousand armed supporters to resist the DHS deporting a loved one after all the legal avenues had been tried. Her reply? It’s so infuriatingly absurd you don’t know whether to laugh, cry or scream:

Fiore: Are we talking about cows or illegal immigration? Because I’m talking about cows, Chris

Hayes: I’m talking about human beings, which seem to me to be even more important

Fiore:…human beings, thank God that did not get slaughtered, but cows did get slaughtered out here.

It went downhill from there.

I know you’re supposed to say that we have to listen and we have to understand and we have to be compassionate and yadda,yadda, yadda. But seriously, you’d have better luck talking to the cows than trying to have a real conversation with these self-serving jerks. You can’t make common cause with people whose “principles” only apply to themselves.

.

Homemade peeps and Hallelujah!

by digby

Your Easter traditions explained: they’re mostly rebranded pagan rituals.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that:

The symbol of the egg may have origins in pagan rituals celebrating the spring season. The religious symbolism is the resurrection of Jesus.

Decorating eggs for Easter dates back to at least the 13th century, according to the History channel. Dying eggs red symbolized the blood of Christ.

One theory is the Easter bunny also comes from pagan rites of spring, brought to the U.S. by 18th-century German settlers in Pennsylvania.

These settlers prepared nests for the bunny in their gardens or barns and waited for Easter Eve for the rabbit, known as “Oschter Haws,” to lay eggs, according to Christianity Today.

Not to worry though. Some things are All American, 20th century … I don’t know what:

Peeps, the marshmallow candies now synonymous with Easter have their origins in a candy company created by Russian immigrant Sam Born. Born first opened a factory in the early 20th century in Brooklyn before moving his operations to Bethlehem (yes, Bethlehem!), Penn., in 1932.

Starting in the 1950s, a marshmallow Peep was made by hand-squeezing marshmallow through pastry tubes.

You can even make your own peeps although I can’t think of a good reason to do it. It’s not as if homemade is more “healthy.”

Anyway, for those of you observing the holiday, Happy Easter. It’s the big kahuna of Christian holidays and even if you’re not religious you can’t help but be inspired by this:

For those who are looking forward to the special, post Lent feast, today’s is very special. It’s also 420 day. So enjoy those peeps!

Update: More on the pagan origins of Easter rituals here.

.

Beware the new inherited aristocracy

by David Atkins

If you missed it yesterday, go read Digby’s post on the scions of the new aristocracy.

Now watch Paul Krugman on Bill Moyers:

“Those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on. You’re living in the past. You’re living in the ’80s. You think that Gordon Gekko is the future,” he says, referring to the character in Wall Street, who became a symbol of unrestrained greed.

“[R]ight now, what we’re really talking about is Gordon Gekko’s son or daughter. We’re talking about inherited wealth playing an ever-growing role,” he concludes.

A lot of people don’t understand the significance of this dynastic aristocratic phenomenon. The world has always been more about whom you know than what you know. Inequality trends make it worse. This is happening even in the world of progressive politics. If you want a decent job in political organizing you usually need to know a wealthy someone with an “in”, and you need to be prepared to help write pitches that pull in more money. If you want a decent job in climate change action in California, your best bet is to get connected to billionaire Tom Steyer. If you work to hold government accountable to public transparency, you had best hope to catch Pierre Omidyar’s eye.

But it gets even worse when it comes to the children of wealthy scions. Consider the fact that over 3 million Americans are in the top 1% of incomes making over $364,000 a year. Consider the fact that on average each of them will have around two kids. The math there is tricky for a number of obvious reasons, but let’s put down a conservative estimate of 4 to 5 million children in America whose parents make over $364,000 a year.

Remember that estate taxes have been shredded to minimal levels. Remember also that cash-only sales consitute nearly half of all home purchases. How much real estate wealth is actually going to legitimately change hands, rather than be passed down from one generation to the next? How many spots at America’s universities are being taken and about to be taken by these 4 million trust funders? How many of the unpaid internships that lead to powerful and influential jobs do they have and will they continue to take into the future?

If you do not belong to this lucky subset of Americans, then your best bet for a decent future doesn’t lie in becoming a self-made entrenpreneur. After all, the vast majority of new businesses fail within the first 5 years–and it’s not as if the United States has a safety net that catches risk-taking entrepreneurs. Instead, it has a system that rewards the very few who succeed with untold sums of wealth, usually as a product of having caught the eye of or gone to school with a wealthy angel investor or their kid.

Given the horrible job market for new college grads, the biggest reason to go to college isn’t to find a good career. It’s to find a few rich kids, grab onto them for dear life, and beg them for a job.

It’s Great Expectations, American-style.

.

If you like Ole Blue Eyes you’re going to love this Blue America contest

by digby

Check it out:

Frank Sinatra started Reprise Records as a haven for artists who didn’t want to be pushed around by corporate dictators, an ethos that epitomizes Rick Weiland’s “Take It Back” Senate campaign in South Dakota. We’re offering an RIAA-certified plaque that was made when Sinatra’s greatest hits album, The Very Good Years, went double platinum… two million records sold in the U.S. This gorgeous, historical collector’s item will go randomly to one contributor this week who helps get Rick’s first television spot up on the South Dakota airwaves.

The winner will be chosen at random. It doesn’t matter how much you contribute. Click here to enter. The contest ends on Monday so don’t put it off.

Now, about Rick Weiland. I’ll let Howie introduce you:

On the day Blue America-endorsed Rick Weiland, the prairie populist and progressive candidate for the open U.S. Senate seat in South Dakota, he visited tiny Hudson (pop. 296) which made him the first candidate to have ever visited every one of the state’s 311 incorporated towns and cities. And this morning he released a song about doing it.

Joined by his daughters, Taylor and Alex, and brother Ted, Rick re-worked the Johnny Cash classic “I’ve Been Everywhere” (written by Geoff Mack in 1959). Weiland and his family like getting together and playing music– his son Nick shot the video– but, as good as it sounds and as inspiring as the film is– his motivations for this one weren’t purely musical.

He talks about he growing up on stories of another prairie populist, George McGovern, standing in the family living room telling his dad, Bud, how he would break the GOP’s stranglehold on the state by taking his compassionate populism directly to the people. He believes the U.S. is due for another course adjustment, like it was when McGovern represented South Dakota in the Senate. “Big money has stolen our government and turned it against us,” Rick says, “and I’m trying to set the caring of my friend George McGovern, and the wisdom of a woman I admire very much, Senator Elizabeth Warren, to a modern tune, and sing it in a voice ordinary folks will hear.”

Here are Rick’s lyrics:

I was on my way to meet with voters at the local coffee shop
When my opponent called and said “when are you gonna stop?”
All this listening to what voters say
Don’t mean a thing, you know my money will rule the day
I said you can raise all your millions by the sack
The time has come for us to take our country back

Chorus: I’m goin’ everywhere, man I’m goin everywhere
Our country needs repair, man
Gotta make it all more fair, man
I’m runnin’ ‘cause I care, man
I’m going everywhere
I’m going to:
Millboro, Flandreau, Lodgepole, Bloomingdale Provo, Roscoe, Dakota Dunes and Yale Scenic, Frederick, Smithwick, Red Shirt Black Hawk, Dimock, Hitchcock, Holabird Dupree, Hurley, Emery, Westerville Selby, Gregory, Goodwill, what a thrill –

You can donate to Weiland’s campaign here — and get a chance to win the Sinatra Platinum record at the same time.

By the way, if you want a prairie populist in the Senate who also has some amazing ideas about climate and the environment, you should support Rick Weiland.

.

Yes, the stupid is strong.

by digby

I caught this on twitter earlier today:

Yikes.

This piece by Paul Rosenberg on climate deniers delves into the underpinning for this fools delusion:

One of the aspects of conspiratorial thinking is — paradoxically — that it gives people a sense of control because it gives meaning to apparent randomness. It may be more comforting to some people to think that 9/11 was an “inside job” than accepting that it was a fairly random event triggered by a few fanatics.” Even more in line with Armstrong’s thinking, he added, “I also think that there is a lot of identity politics in this, e.g., if Republicans generally think that climate change is a hoax, then it becomes a ‘tribal totem’ for others to pick up on this.”

As a further refinement, I noted that conspiracist ideation thrives on creating specific malicious others as a particuarly powerful form of meaning-making. “Yes, absolutely,” Lewandowsky responded. “There is this tension between ‘victim’ and ‘hero’ within the conspiracist worldview that leads to those contradictory positions. On the one hand (the ‘hero’ frame) it is permissible to accuse scientists of fraud and harass them, but by the same token (‘victim’ frame) scientists must do nothing to cast aspersions on the accusers or to defend themselves. Arthur Koestler has referred to those people as ‘mimophants.’ It is crucial for the public to understand this.”

Unfortunately, this represents a whole lot of the public. And not just right wingers.

.