Towards the end of Michiko Kakutani’s review of Sarah Palin’s memoir, which is far more sympathetic to its “author” than Kakutani was to Clinton’s memoirs, we get a brief excerpt from the Tome Itself:
Elsewhere in this volume she talks about creationism, saying she “didn’t believe in the theory that human beings — thinking, loving beings — originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea” or from “monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”
Yes, it is truly hard to believe that such noble species as fish and early primates are the progenitors of an animal group that includes such an ignoramus as Sarah Palin.
Evolution works in mysterious ways.
By the way, if you decide to read the review, be sure NOT to read the first sentence of Palin’s book which Kakutani, to her everlasting shame, quotes in full. Unaware of the danger, I actually read it, and immediately regretted it. I’m still trying to remove the foul taste from my head.
The LA City attorney is very upset about all the medical marijuana in LA and has “interpreted” the law to mean that nobody is allowed to sell the stuff only grow it in collectives to which members pay a fee. It’s obviously a legal interpretation meant to allow the city to close down the dispensaries while medical marijuana advocates take it to court where it will likely be struck down. They will decide this week.
The real problem here in LA is that the city council pretty much punted on the entire issue and allowed dispensaries to crop up every couple of blocks — and frankly, the pot sellers were so in-your-face that it was only a matter of time before the church ladies insisted that someone put a stop to it. (When “Dr Kush” opened on the Venice boardwalk with bikini clad girls passing out cards in front yelling “the Dr is IN” I knew the jig was up.)
But that’s no reason to shut down the whole thing. Medical marijuana is legal in California. And lets’ face facts, it’s not hurting anyone, it’s just offending some people’s view of what’s appropriate. Other cities have found ways to regulate it so that it doesn’t scare the straights. But they don’t need to do this kind of draconian crackdown.
It’s a typical “lawnorder” reaction that’s going to end up hurting the people who actually need the stuff and put people out of business who are playing by the rules and contributing to society with a necessary and harmless product. It’s ignorant, know nothingness that propels these prohibition crackdowns and I think it’s a luxury this state and city cannot afford. These pot sales are subject to sales tax, after all, and every person who buys it pays 9.25% to the government. Is it really a good idea to cut off yet another source of revenue in these cash strapped times?
For those of you who are worried about your kids being propagandized about Barack Hussein Obama, here’s an antidote for you:
Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country!
features Speaker Pelosi as a Marie Antoinette-like elitist.
While Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s approval ratings may continue to sink, her favorability among children may plummet thanks to a new children’s book. Help! Mom! Radicals Are Ruining My Country! , written by author Katharine DeBrecht, slams the Speaker as an elitist, tiara-donning radical out of touch with everyday Americans.
The sequel to the bestselling Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! continues the story of two boys who open up a lemonade stand only to have the stand seized by the government. Determined to succeed, the boys open up a swingset business, but all hope is doomed when a sweaty and sputtering Congressman Fwank and a snarky Congressman Schmoozer demand that all kids should have a swingset whether they can afford them or not.
“Tell me about it, Darrrling,Speaker Queenosie primped her professionally styled hair. Little common people are entitled to a swingset just like the rest of you commoners, she jiggled a pair of jet keys through her perfectly manicured fingers,” the book describes the Pelosi-like character chastising the boys.
Queenosie and other radicals – such as a sweetheart dealmaker Senator Dudd and a cranky Senator Dontreid – run into trouble when the boys take them to task for outlandish spending on pork projectsand refusing to read the bills they pass. The radicals are forced to put on dunce-like thinking caps in order to remember what inane projects were snuck into the bills. “No, no, we cut military funding in the Popcorn Bill.” “Oh yeah! I remember! We put the Cheeseballs for Squirrels program in the Education Bill along with the funding for a study on how talk radio affects acne in fish!” “No no! We snuck that funding in the Energy Bill along with the funding for a study on how the number of holes in Swiss cheese affects whether girls aged 7-10 with curly hair use black or blue pens while doodling, remember?”
DeBrecht says the Pelosi character was essential to her book. “When Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House all we heard was how wonderful it was that a mother and grandmother rose through the ranks to such a position. In reality, that mother and grandmother has played an enormous role in ensuring that our children and grandchildren are shackled with debt for decades to come.”
Now, this is just silly wingnut welfare product of course. But it does give you insight in to the message that the right thinks will work among the neanderthals: deficit spending and pork.
People don’t know what’s causing their economic distress and the only ones who are explaining it to them in a way they can understand are the right wingers who are playing that old soothing song about government spending. It means nothing that the meltdown happened on a Republican’s watch because they have now convinced themselves that they always hated Bush’s spending as well. (I actually heard someone saying on television that Katrina was a boondoggle and that Bush should have held his ground and not “bailed them out,” which in the case of New Orleans was literally true. )
American right wing populism never goes too strongly at the malefactors of great wealth but rather points toward the “other” — and the government, which is accused of helping “the other” at the expense of Real Americans. They’ve reworked it using this deficit boogeyman because it’s familiar to Americans who recognize it as a negative economic term that everyone agrees is right up there with terrorism for sheer destructiveness. Tying it into political corruption and wrapping it in a nice sexist bow makes this little piece of wingnut offal a perfect stocking stuffer.
I am not a hunter and as an animal lover I wish that nobody hunted for sport. However, I accept that it is a revered, human ritual and for many Americans a test of manhood and skill.
So, why is it that right wing leaders like to show off their manly kill skills with lame, hunting shortcuts like Dick Cheney’s pre-captured birds and now Tim Pawlenty’s killing on the run:
Gov. Tim Pawlenty has taken a drubbing from hunters for not tracking down a deer he shot on opening day of Minnesota’s firearm deer season.
A headline on deerhuntingchat.com calls the possible presidential candidate a “slob hunter” for wounding a deer on Nov. 7 and then leaving for a Republican fundraiser in Iowa before the animal could be found.
One contributor wrote: “What kind of slob hunter goes out opening morning and shoots a deer knowing full well you won’t have time to retrieve it or tend to it? One whose presidential ambitions override his hunting ethics, that’s what kind.”
The-deer-hunting-guide.com says: “A responsible hunter, who is also an ethical hunter, will be prepared to spend hours trailing a wounded deer; even come back the next day if needed. You must make every effort to retrieve a wounded animal. It’s the right ethical thing to do.”
Mark Johnson, executive director of the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association and an organizer of last weekend’s hunt, said Pawlenty and his hunting party did everything they could to find the animal.
After the governor shot the deer at 7 a.m. from more than 200 yards away, he and his brother Dan, an accomplished hunter, went to where they last saw the animal.
Finding blood but no deer, they returned to base camp for breakfast and to consider their next move.
Due in Iowa that night for a fundraiser, Pawlenty left while others took up the search. By dusk they had found nothing and stopped. There has been no sign of the animal since.
I always wondered why John Kerry made such a big deal out of the fact that he always ate what he killed, but I figured it was part of some hunting ethos that would speak to other hunters. Obviously, wounding a deer and then rushing off to a fundraiser is a breach of such ethics, as it should be. It’s horrible to wound an animal and let it suffer. In fact it makes me sick to think about it.
If you are going to play the macho game you really need to play it right. Hunters are very serious about what they do and I’m glad to know that they are serious about not torturing animals. But it sounds like Pawlenty is more of a Dick Cheney type who doesn’t give such ethical concerns a second thought.
I’d think twice about hunting with either of these guys, myself. And I’d certainly think twice about putting someone like him in charge of national security. We know what happens when these people who care nothing for the suffering of others get hold of an imperial torture apparatus.
This is literally true: the Right’s reaction to yesterday’s announcement — we’re too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country — is the textbook definition of “surrendering to terrorists.” It’s the same fear they’ve been spewing for years. As always, the Right’s tough-guy leaders wallow in a combination of pitiful fear and cynical manipulation of the fear of their followers. Indeed, it’s hard to find any group of people on the globe who exude this sort of weakness and fear more than the American Right.
People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn’t allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country’s 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents. In Argentina, the Israelis captured Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious Nazi war criminals, and brought him to Jerusalem to stand trial for his crimes.
It’s only America’s Right that is too scared of the Terrorists — or which exploits the fears of their followers — to insist that no regular trials can be held and that “the safety and security of the American people” mean that we cannot even have them in our country to give them trials. As usual, it’s the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of “strength” and “courage” to hide what they really are.
This has been another edition of What Glenn Said.
Makes you wonder, why a blogger is first out the gate on this patently obvious response to the craven cowards – sorry, I meant the Republicans. You’d think a top Democrat would have smacked them down immediately. But that would entail a Democratic political leadership that actually felt comfortable about winning elections and leading the country.
Answering some questions:
“But what if the terrorists attack New York again?”
You think they won’t if we don’t hold trials?
Reality-check, people: Whether it is from the rightwing lunatics who consider bin Laden reality-based or the rightwing lunatics who consider Beck, Palin, et al. reality-based – or some other demented nuts who hate Americans – there will be another terrorist attack, and more Americans will die. The only questions are when, where, and whether it could have been prevented. (In fact, contrary to conventional wisdom, this country has seen some dreadful terrorist attacks since 9/11: the anthrax mailings, probably an attack on LAX on July 4, 2002, and the assassination of Dr. Tiller, for example )
“But politically, another attack would give Republicans a perfect ‘I told you so’ moment. Why court – literally- such possibilities?”
Whether or not there’s a trial, an unambiguous and spectacular attack like 9/11 won’t stop Republicans from immediately demanding Obama’s resignation. And I mean immediately, as in, “Obama must go now, he failed to keep us safe. Oh, right, I suppose that terrorist attack thingy was not fun for some people. But there’s a silver lining to every cloud ’cause now we really have a perfect opportunity to get rid of that commie/nazi you-know-what-I’m-talking-about-wink-wink-but-it’s-not-racism-that’s-unfair.”
One shouldn’t second guess authorities. After all, this is America:
Officer Bo Peters is the taser training officer on the Grand Rapids Community College police force.
He’s watched the video of a Lansing police officer firing a taser into a 43-year old man in handcuffs causing the prisoner to fall face first onto the concrete pavement.
“I’m not going to even try to guess what was going through his head at the time,” he says.
Officer Peters isn’t second guessing the actions of the Lansing police officer who fired the taser or his two-week suspension by the Lansing police chief. But he says just because an individual is in handcuffs, doesn’t mean the taser shouldn’t be utilized.
“You are using the taser to gain and maintain control,” says Officer Peters. “If they still pose a threat to themselves and others, the use of the taser could still be appropriate.”
On August 16, 2009 Lansing police were called to end a verbal argument between 43-year-old Rocky Allred and his ex-girlfriend. After escorting Allred out of the woman’s home, the situation escalated because the officer didn’t want the man to get behind the wheel. There was an angry exchange and Allred was arrested. He was tasered while standing in handcuffs surrounded by three officers.
The handcuffed man fell to the ground and broke his jaw, a tooth, and received a cut that needed eight stitches to close.
The officer made a mistake because modern torture techniques require that you not leave any marks or break anything. That would be excessive force. Shooting people full of electricity only causes horrible pain and temporary loss of motor funtion and that’s fine.
When’s the last time a person was willing to lose his or her seat in order to keep a women’s right to choose from being restricted much less advancing it.
Former Assemblyman George M. Michaels, who cast the deciding vote to liberalize New York’s abortion law in 1970, thereby ending his political career, died on Thursday at his home in Auburn, N.Y. He was 80 years old.
He died after a long illness, according to the Brew Funeral Home in Auburn.
A Democrat, Mr. Michaels represented a largely rural, mostly conservative and heavily Roman Catholic constituency in the Finger Lakes region of west-central New York.
That put him in a difficult position on the abortion issue. An 1832 state law forbade abortion except “when necessary to save a life.” In the 1960’s, legislation was introduced to make New York’s law the most liberal in the nation, allowing abortion in the first 24 weeks of pregnancy if a woman and her doctor agreed to it. The proposal became the most dramatic, contentious and emotional issue before the 1970 Legislature.
A groundswell for change in abortion laws, which dated to the 19th century, had been building in the country. In 1965, Colorado became the first state to lessen the restrictions on abortion. A Reversal of Conscience
Mr. Michaels personally favored a woman’s right to choose but had voted against the proposed law twice at the behest of the Cayuga County Democratic Committee. He did so at the beginning of April 1970 when the bill went down to a narrow defeat.
But on April 9, he realized that the measure was doomed without his support. He rose to take the microphone, his hands trembling. “I realize, Mr. Speaker, that I am terminating my political career, but I cannot in good conscience sit here and allow my vote to be the one that defeats this bill,” he declared. “I ask that my vote be changed from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’ “
His tearful reversal provided the 76th vote needed for passage. The State Senate quickly added its approval and Gov. Nelson A. Rockefeller signed the bill into law. “I found myself caught up in something bigger than I am,” Mr. Michaels said about his agonizing decision. “I’m just a small country lawyer.”
Mr. Michaels sought a sixth term that year, but piqued county leaders denied him renomination and he lost the June primary in a four-way race.
I guess that would be considered to be foolishly self-sacrificing in these days of “common ground” and looking for an easy way out. It’s just a bargaining chip for more important issues about which Real Americans feel strongly. But there was a time when it was a matter of conscience and people thought such things were worth paying a political price for.
Max Blumenthal, who closely follows the religious right, has written a must read article on the Palin phenomenon. Despite the fact that polls show she is incredibly unpopular among mainstream Americans and reviled by conservative intellectuals, her hold on the base of the GOP appears to be growing. Blumenthal explains why that is:
The answer lies beyond the realm of polls and punditry in the political psychology of the movement that animates and, to a great degree, controls, the Republican grassroots — a uniquely evangelical subculture defined by the personal crises of its believers and their perceived persecution at the hands of cosmopolitan elites.
By emphasizing her own crises and her victimization by the “liberal media,” Palin has established an invisible, indissoluble bond with adherents of that subculture — so visceral it transcends any rational political analysis. As a result, her career has become a vehicle through which the right-wing evangelical movement feels it can express its deepest identity in opposition both to secular society and to its representatives in the Obama White House. Palin is perceived by its leaders — and followers — not as another cynical politician or even as a self-promoting celebrity, but as a kind of magical helper, the God-fearing glamour girl who parachuted into their backwater towns to lift them from the drudgery of everyday life, assuring them that they represented the “Real America.”
These are the bitter enders who stuck with Junior all the way to the end, even though many of them have probably abandoned him now. She seamlessly took his place in their hearts and minds as the True Believer who would smite the liberal terrorists (are there any other kind?) and cut their taxes for Jesus.
Which brings me to this fascinating article in The Atlantic by Hannah Rosin, which I think opens up the path for mainstreaming the Palin effect, if not with her (which I agree is highly unlikely) but with someone who can properly synthesize this idea into something that the Republican establishment can use for their own purposes:
America’s churches always reflect shifts in the broader culture, and Casa del Padre is no exception. The message that Jesus blesses believers with riches first showed up in the postwar years, at a time when Americans began to believe that greater comfort could be accessible to everyone, not just the landed class. But it really took off during the boom years of the 1990s, and has continued to spread ever since. This stitched-together, homegrown theology, known as the prosperity gospel, is not a clearly defined denomination, but a strain of belief that runs through the Pentecostal Church and a surprising number of mainstream evangelical churches, with varying degrees of intensity. In Garay’s church, God is the “Owner of All the Silver and Gold,” and with enough faith, any believer can access the inheritance. Money is not the dull stuff of hourly wages and bank-account statements, but a magical substance that comes as a gift from above. Even in these hard times, it is discouraged, in such churches, to fall into despair about the things you cannot afford. “Instead of saying ‘I’m poor,’ say ‘I’m rich,’” Garay’s wife, Hazael, told me one day. “The word of God will manifest itself in reality.”
Many explanations have been offered for the housing bubble and subsequent crash: interest rates were too low; regulation failed; rising real-estate prices induced a sort of temporary insanity in America’s middle class. But there is one explanation that speaks to a lasting and fundamental shift in American culture—a shift in the American conception of divine Providence and its relationship to wealth.
In his book Something for Nothing, Jackson Lears describes two starkly different manifestations of the American dream, each intertwined with religious faith. The traditional Protestant hero is a self-made man. He is disciplined and hardworking, and believes that his “success comes through careful cultivation of (implicitly Protestant) virtues in cooperation with a Providential plan.” The hero of the second American narrative is a kind of gambling man—a “speculative confidence man,” Lears calls him, who prefers “risky ventures in real estate,” and a more “fluid, mobile democracy.” The self-made man imagines a coherent universe where earthly rewards match merits. The confidence man lives in a culture of chance, with “grace as a kind of spiritual luck, a free gift from God.” The Gilded Age launched the myth of the self-made man, as the Rockefellers and other powerful men in the pews connected their wealth to their own virtue. In these boom-and-crash years, the more reckless alter ego dominates. In his book, Lears quotes a reverend named Jeffrey Black, who sounds remarkably like Garay: “The whole hope of a human being is that somehow, in spite of the things I’ve done wrong, there will be an episode when grace and fate shower down on me and an unearned blessing will come to me—that I’ll be the one.”
Rosin’s argument is that this was a cause of the housing bubble and the subsequent meltdown and she’s pretty convincing. But I think it could also end up being the conservative movement’s salvation if people’s lives don’t materially improve fairly soon.
If there’s a path to patching over the differences between the intellectual elite, the Big Money Boyz and the base after the Bush debacle, this offers some promise if handled deftly. The populist message doesn’t come from a class basis, but a religious one and it offers not a fair day’s pay for a hard day’s work, but riches on earth and a heavenly reward. Powerful stuff. Failure, redemption,riches, heaven. Sounds like just what the witchdoctor ordered.
KIERNAN: So my beef this week has been with Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart announced after this stampede where a guy got killed on Long Island last year, they said that what they were going to do was put a number of steps in place to prevent these sorts of incidents, and their solution was, well, we’ll just open the stores on Thanksgiving and then we won’t have the rush at 5:00 a.m. I know they had to do something about the dangerous situation, but can’t we just have a day off? One day all year where the retail pie doesn’t get cut up in any way and everybody just gets to spend the day with their family.
ROMANS: I’m totally with you. I think the last couple of years if anything that we’ve learned is that the whole big crazy rush for a flat screen is just — that’s so bubble. That’s so 2003. Isn’t it nuts? To be thinking that and to hear the retailers talking about these are going to be the sales, we’ll be open up 24 hours, all night long. Wait a minute, folks, we are drowning in debt. We are all drowning in debt.
LEEB: The last thing you want to over encourage is the spending just like you’re saying. That’s what got us into this trouble. That’s why we’re still in trouble. We have way too much debt, and making us spend money — incentivizing us to spend money on Thanksgiving, I totally agree with you.
KIERNAN: Wal-Mart is not the first to do this.
ROMANS: That’s right.
KIERNAN: But Wal-Mart sets an example. I think it’s unfortunate that they’re expanding their Thanksgiving opening, not just the 24- hour super centers, but every store.
ROMANS: I agree. All right
I agree that the stampedes on Friday mornings are ridiculous. Except isn’t it the news networks that always camp out at the malls on the morning after Thanksgiving ready to pronounce doom on the all important Christmas shopping season. Will they eschew this silly ritual this year since every good recessionista knows that shopping is so 2003, or will they just start broadcasting from WalMart on Thanksgiving day instead?
Oh, and I wonder if Walmart workers get premium pay for working the holiday like most union workers do? I’d guess not.