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Hoist on their Own Petard

August 21, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Isn’t it the pinnacle of cynical political mendacity for establishment Republicans and Mitt Romney to try and shove Todd Akin out of the Missouri Senate race? First of all, he won a democratically contested primary just a few weeks ago. He got the most votes. Second, they’re not doing it because they find the views he expressed about rape and abortion objectionable. Instead, they’re trying to force him out because his ugly remark was stupid and puts them in bad odor politically. They’re trying to run away from this situation the same way they ran away from Mark Foley in the scandal involving  under-age congressional pages a few years ago. For them it’s all about appearances and how they look to women voters. It’s monumentally cynical because over the years they have clearly demonstrated how little regard they actually have for protecting women’s reproductive choices. Meantime, establishment types like John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell (who relishes the prospect of becoming Senate Majority Leader in 2013, but who may see it slipping away) have a problem on their right wing with the Family Research Council and other fervent anti-choice types increasingly alienated because of the pressure on Akin. Now that it seems clear Akin’s going to stay in the race, I expect to see a growing division at the Republican Convention among establishment types and social conservatives. It’s been reported today that the platform for their big shindig includes a plank devoted to denying access to abortion in all circumstances.

For this political observer, it’s going to be fascinating to observe them try to reconcile the conflicts in their party, and watch the gender gap continue to widen in President Obama’s favor in the presidential race. I think their Tampa convention next week may in its impact on the country come to resemble the 1992 tilt when Pat Buchanan ruined George H. W. Bush’s show, shocking the country with his noxious nativism.

Open Letter to Ann Romney from the MOMocrats

August 18, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Wow, a woman named Karoli has written and posted a terrific letter to Ann Romney slamming her attitude and refusal to release the couple’s tax returns. I urge you to read the whole letter via this link or in the screenshot I’ve placed in this post and share it with your friends and contacts, and anyone you know in the media. Here’s how it begins:

Dear Ann Romney,
I don’t like your attitude very much. It seems very entitled and imperious. You say you have done everything legally required, and there will be no more tax returns. Not only do you say it, you say it with a snarl, as if those you’re asking to vote for your husband are simply too stupid to understand what a tax return filed by a Very Wealthy Couple looks like. As if you’re saying “we’ve given all you people need to know.”
Oh wait. You actually said that.

The MOMocrats also have a cool website, where this letter was first posted. Karoli’s letter deserves to go viral, big-time.

#FridayReads, August 17–‘Somebody Owes Me Money,’ Donald E. Westlake & Essays by Nicholson Baker

August 17, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

#FridayReads, August 17–Somebody Owes Me Money, Donald E. Westlake’s enjoyable 1969 mystery narrated by Chet Conway, a wise-cracking cab driver. One day Chet gets an unusual tip from a fare–rather than a couple extra bucks for the ride, his customer offers a tip on a horse race: bet on Purple Pecunia to win. Chet does place a wager with his bookmaker, and the pony comes in, but when he goes to collect his winnings, the bookie’s been murdered. Chet wonders, who am I supposed collect from? Much delightful hilarity and chaos ensues, including a budding romance with Abbie, the daughter of the murdered man, and many clashes with rival gangs with an interest in the dead bookie’s clientele. A great reprint of a classic mystery, from the fun imprint Hard Case Crime.

Also reading Nicholson Baker’s new essay collection, The Way the World Works. He’s been one of my favorite writers ever since I read his first novel, The Mezzanine, in 1988. I met Baker when he won the 2001 National Book Critics Circle nonfiction award for for his book, Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper and we’ve emailed each other periodically since. His attention-grabbing funny and frankly sexual novels, such as House of Holes, are what he’s best known for nowadays, but I really relish his essays, such as the 1997 collection, The Size of Thoughts: Essays and Other Lumber. Not to be overlooked is Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, a remarkable book of aggregated content not Baker’s own that approximates a pacifist history of the decades between World War I and World War II. In the new collection Baker–always a writer fascinated with the physicality of things and the visceral and corporeal in everyday life–examines airplane wings, coins, earplugs, and ereading devices.

Disgrace is No Biggie, to Glenn Beck

August 17, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

TPM’s Casey Michel has an excellent report today on the declining reputation of right-wing author David Barton, at least in the estimation of serious historians, even ones that are observant Christians. As reported last week by Publishers Weekly, Barton’s latest book, The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed about Thomas Jefferson, with a Foreword by Glenn Beck, has been discredited for “factual inaccuracies and historical misrepresentations,” with Christian publisher Thomas Nelson pulling 17,000 copies from distribution and canceling publication. According to an August 10 Publishers Weekly story by Lynn Garrett, “Nelson confirmed it has severed its publishing relationship with Barton and reverted the rights to The Jefferson Lies to him. ‘Thomas Nelson does not expect to publish his works in the future.’”

Unfortunately, Michel, who wonders near the end of the TPM story if “Thomas Nelson’s decision will merely gird Barton’s supporters, rather than hurt his reputation,” already needs to update the article. Publishers Weekly reports today that Barton has bought all the recalled copies from Thomas Nelson and is “in negotiations to publish a new edition of the book with Mercury Ink, Glenn Beck’s publishing arm in partnership with Simon & Schuster.” According to Publishers Weekly, Barton added, “the new edition ‘will not include any substantive changes.'”

Reading Tom Morello’s ‘Rage’ Against Paul Ryan

August 17, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Musician and activist Tom Morello was a special guest at the annual Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize ceremony honoring advocacy journalism and activism last May, the first time I ever heard him in person, either speaking or singing. He’s a determined battler against entrenched, monied interests in our society and political culture, and also skilled at rousing a whole auditorium to sing along with him, as we did on “Union Town” and “This Land is Your Land.”

I wrote about the Hillman awards and Morello in May, a presentation that also featured Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and Ta-Nehisi Coates and so am glad to see today that Tom’s directing his voice against the Romney-Ryan ticket. Upon learning that the right-wing VP nominee is supposedly a fan of Morello’s band, Rage Against the Machine, Morello’s published an opinion piece in Rolling Stone. Here’s a selection from the opening of his column:

Paul Ryan’s love of Rage Against the Machine is amusing, because he is the embodiment of the machine that our music has been raging against for two decades. . . . Ryan claims that he likes Rage’s sound, but not the lyrics. Well, I don’t care for Paul Ryan’s sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage. I wonder what Ryan’s favorite Rage song is? Is it the one where we condemn the genocide of Native Americans? The one lambasting American imperialism? Our cover of “Fuck the Police”? Or is it the one where we call on the people to seize the means of production? So many excellent choices to jam out to at Young Republican meetings!

I recall when “Born in the U.S.A.” was released in 1984, after learning that Ronald Reagan, running for reelection, supposedly liked his album, Bruce Springsteen drolly remarked, “I wonder which song is his favorite.” I urge you to read Morello’s whole article, which pulls no punches, as he ends it by wondering if elected whether Ryan may

My hope is that maybe Paul Ryan is a mole. Maybe Rage did plant some sensible ideas in this extreme fringe right wing nut job. Maybe if elected. . . . He’ll fill Guantanamo Bay with the corporate criminals that are funding his campaign – and then torture them with Rage music 24/7. That’s one possibility. But I’m not betting on it.

Here are some more pictures from the Hillman Prize night, shots of Morello and others.

Romney & Ryan Stoking Racial Resentment

August 17, 2012 /0 Comments/in /by

Republicans should be careful, though they probably won’t be.

Stoking racial distrust and animus–as they’re gleefully doing over Joe Biden’s ‘chains’ remark this week, which I covered in a post titled Why Mitt’s Trying to Beat up on Joe Biden–may yield blowback. Their latest move is giving Artur Davis a key speaking role at the convention–he’s the African-American pol who lost his gubernatorial race in Alabama and then left the Democratic party. He’s this election season’s Zell Miller–a Southern DEM who’s claims to have been spurned by his party, only for the right-wing there’s the added benefit of him being black, so they can try and bash the president with added zest.

I recommend Jamelle Bouie’s Plum Line column yesterday that charted Davis’s political evolution.

In this over-heated political climate, with rampaging shooters targeting people every week, I fear the consequences of Republicans zealously making low information voters angrier than they are already, especially among those who believe that President Obama is ‘foreign,’ as Romney repeatedly intones to campaign crowds.

 

Why Mitt’s Trying to Beat up on Joe Biden

August 15, 2012 /1 Comment/in /by

Just posted at the Plum Line: this really excellent political opinion column by Jamell Bouie. He gives an answer as to why Mitt has over the past 24 hours tried to blow up Joe Biden’s ‘chains’ remark into such a big deal: it’s cause he’s trailing in the election, by all reliable measures. “Losing” is Boulee’s word.

Borrowing an outlook from sports, I believe that if the campaign gets into the third quarter of the race (after Labor Day, after the autumn solstice) with current trends still favoring the president continuing, the professional political operatives on board the Romney team are going to need a series of Hail Mary passes to somehow get their candidate back in to the contest. With Mitt often being his own campaign manager, I’d say it’s him driving the over the top push-back against Biden, and continuing to air ads like the one falsely asserting Pres. Obama’s ruined the welfare law. Mitt himself may have written the fervid speech he game late last night, the one raising dungeon about Pres. Obama’s character, the one the Obama campaign this morning called “unhinged.” Bouie points out that one of the underpinnings within the Romney camp has been their presumed advantage with senior voters, but the Ryan pick is threatening to erode that big time. If so, pop goes one of the legs on their 3-legged stool.

As for the Obama camp’s response to the convenient outrage over Biden’s use of a loaded word, and their response to things like the welfare ad, I think they’re doing it right. Basically, they’ve made it clear they’re not having any crap, and they won’t be instructed by an opponent whose policies would damage the middle class–the big banks, the new shacklers that Biden was talking about–and which has been making stuff up about the president since their first TV ad.

The Plum Line, where Greg Sargent and Jonathan Bernstein also post, is one of my steady political reads on the Web

Julia Child at 100

August 15, 2012 /3 Comments/in , /by

This is a real sweet blog post by Seán Collins, longtime radio person and multimedia broadcaster, recalling the lunch that Julia Child once fixed for him when he was working for WGBH in Boston. He tells the story with charm and affection, and good photographs, via this link on his blog, Commonplace Book, which carries the clever tag line, “one man’s hedge against failing memory.” He learned Julia’s own formula for making a delicious vinaigrette for the salad she served him. Here’s one of the photos from Seán’s post, an amusing shot. I couldn’t find a credit but I think it must be to WGBH, with the crew out of camera range from a TV taping.

It being Julia’s 100th today, I also want to point my readers to a charming remembrance of her from this AM on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning from Toronto. Guest Marion Kane knew her going back to the 80s, and recalls a special day when the French Chef visited Toronto, all here in 6 minutes of fond and vivid recollections via this link to today’s program.