Seen along the highway to Hell...

Can Glenn Beck & Sarah Palin Save Us?

Himmler, Barney, Goebbels & Andy

"...I could hear her in the drawing room, comparing the attorney general to a pair of Nazis. She was particularly dramatic on the issue of privacy, becoming visibly exercised regarding her confidence that right now someone was preparing to peek in her bedroom and plotting to pull her library card. "Terrifying!' she kept saying. 'Terrifying to have these people in power!' Fair enough, and pass the brie. But my interest was piqued when five minutes later she declared she didn't understand why -- if people had to own guns -- why they would be loathe to submit that information in written form and accept some 'reasonable government oversight.'

Suddenly Himmler and Goebbels are Andy and Barney..."

Michael Perry
Truck: A Love Story (2006)

Rhetorical Soaring

“In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.”

Lincoln Kirstein

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.”

William Butler Yeats

Let It Flow

"...You learn not to pretty these things up. You learn to take them as they are. I go to (he culvert every so often and just sit quietly. I’m not looking for angels in the tag alders. I just watch the creek flow out the galvanized tube. Around the bend. When I was a kid I yearned to follow that water — on a raft, in a canoe, maybe just barefoot with a stick, Now I just sit there with my feet dangling, and I throw pebbles while the cold spring air makes my nose run, and I watch Beaver Creek slide smooth and quiet until it reoccurs to me that the world is constantly trying to bring everything level..."

Michael Perry
Coop: A year of poultry, pigs and parenting (2009)

RIP: J. D. Salinger 1919-2010

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write "Fuck you" right under your nose."

Holden Caufield
Catcher In The Rye
by JD Salinger


Read Salinger's obit @ New York Times

RIP: Howard Zinn 1922-2010

"What matters is not who's sitting in the White House. What matters is who's sitting in!"


"Yes, dissent and protest are divisive, but in a good way, because they represent accurately the real divisions in society. Those divisions exist - the rich, the poor - whether there is dissent or not, but when there is no dissent, there is no change. The dissent has the possibility not of ending the division in society, but of changing the reality of the division. Changing the balance of power on behalf of the poor and the oppressed."

Read Zinn's obit @ New York Times.

A Poem

I found this beautiful winter poem and thought it might be a comfort to you.
It was to me and it's very well written and I hope that you enjoy it too:

WINTER

by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre

Shit,
It's cold.
The End

Goin' Down: Obama Meets Reagan

Last Tuesday, Scott Brown won a special election for the Senate seat left open by Edward Kennedy's death. The victory by Republican Brown set the Democrats political hair on fire. Should be be surprised? Yes, if we ignore history. No, if we study history.

Below are some quotes and a link to a Time story from November 1982 when the Republicans got taken to the cleaners in the 1982 mid-term election. I expect the Democrats to suffer the same fate this November...unless of course the economy makes a miraculous about-face and we are all eating rainbow stew and drinking free Bubble-Up. Statistically speaking, there appears to be an inverse relationship between the unemployment rate and a President's popularity...

"I have no interest in sugar coating what happened in Massachusetts. There is a lot of anxiety in the country right now. Americans are understandably impatient. The truth is Democrats understand the economic anger voters feel, that's in large part why we did well in 2006 and 2008."

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez
Democrati (New Jersey) January 2010

"We've listened and learned, and we will take what we've learned back to Washington. There will have to be some adjustments, some modifications in the things we are doing. No question about it."

Robert Michel
Republican Congressman
November 1982



"...If there was a dominant issue in the election it was Reaganomics, not only because the Democrats tried to make it so, but also because Reagan, against the wishes of some G.O.P. candidates, took to the stump to defend his policies. Particularly hi the dispirited Midwest, where Reagan's handling of the economy was a major concern, Democrats racked up large margins in many races for the House, Senate and governorships. According to surveys taken as voters left the polls, 40% said they had been personally hurt by the economy and 70% told pollsters that they saw their congressional votes as a "vote for or against Ronald Reagan." But Republicans drew on a pool of patience among voters who felt that Reagan's programs might work in time, that the blame for current economic problems was not essentially his but went back to Democratic Administrations, and above all, that the Democrats offered no persuasive alternatives. Some 55% of voters held the Democrats responsible for the staggering economy, and they were evenly split on whether Reagan's policies would eventually help restore prosperity..."

Read Election '82: Trimming the Sails @ Time


"It is a disastrous defeat for the President..."There has to be some bending on both sides."

House Speaker Tip O'Neill
November 1982

"We are very pleased with the results...There have been concessions and compromises in both directions on all the major issues and we expect to continue to work with the Congress in that way."

President Ronald Reagan
November 1982

Bailout Deja Vu

"...Economic power in this country does not rest in the mass of the people as it must if a democracy is to endure. Wealth is not equitably distributed nor do its owners in the main even manage and control it. On the contrary, wealth has become so great and so concentrated that as a matter of fact, it controls those who possess it.

About one-half of the wealth of this country is in corporate form, and over one-half of it is under the domination of 200 corporations, which in turn are controlled by what Ferdinand Lundberg in his recent book referred to as “America’s 60 Families.”

Eight years ago America’s 60 families had held in their hands, since the close of the World War, complete dominion over the economic and political life of the country. They had lulled the American people into the conviction that if the people would grant conditions in which these 60 families would have confidence that they would do as they pleased, the 60 families would put capital to work; enterprise would boom, wages would rise, stocks would soar and there would be two cars in every garage.

The people gave the 60 families this confidence; gave the 60 families this trust in their benevolent despotism—in short, gave the sixty families then what they ask for today, and what happened? Out of their divinely claimed genius as managers of private enterprise the 60 families promptly led the American people into the worst peacetime catastrophe ever known.

Then the disillusioned people changed the government.

The new government bailed the 60 families out of the consequences of their own mesmeric miscalculations and their unintelligent leadership of the system of private enterprise of which they had pretended to be master managers. It preserved the corporate structures in which their capital was invested from going through the wringer of bankruptcy and reorganization and stock assessment..."

Harold Ickes
Secretary of the Interior
January 8, 1938

Read more...

Hey Rush, Who's Your Neighbor?

"A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan..."



An earthquake hits Haiti:

"This will play right into Obama's hands -- humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, credibility with the black community, in both the light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made to order for him."

Rush Limbaugh
Conservative Radio Talk Show Host


Obama calls for donations to help earthquake victims:

"Would you trust that the money is going to go Haiti? But would you trust that your name's gonna end up on a mailing list for the Obama people to start asking you for campaign donations for him and other causes? Besides, we've already donated to Haiti. It's called the U.S. income tax."

Rush Limbaugh

"...But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'"

Luke 10:25-37

Get A Clooney...

The US State Department has issued digitally-altered photos showing how Osama Bin Laden may look now, aged 52.

Its 1998 file image of the al-Qaeda leader has been adapted to take account of a decade's worth of ageing, and possible changes to facial hair.

The digitally-altered photos on the State Department's website show three options for how he may look now - one with a full beard, one without and one with the stubble field sported by Hollywood liberals appearing frequently in Cohen brother movies.

Contractions & Contradictions -- American Democracy

"America is in travail. A new America is developing in the womb of time.

What kind of new America will it be?

Will it be an America which has learned how to fit an economic system of private enterprise to the traditions of our democracy?

Will it be an America which will attain economic freedom for the average man so that the political freedom of the Bill of Rights will become a reality and reach out in spirit to meet new conditions in the modern world?

Or will it be another kind of America—an America in which a system of free enterprise has failed so badly as a method of distributing goods that a disgusted people will welcome as a substitute one of the new-fashioned “disciplined” economies in which political liberty is regarded as a disruption of discipline and an intolerable luxury—an American in which the unsatisfied mass will yield democracy to a dictatorship either of the Right or the Left “in exchange for the illusion of a living”?

Here in America it is the old struggle between the power of money and the power of the democratic instinct..."

Harold Ickes
Secretary of the Interior
January 8, 1938

Read more...

"The American Way of Life"

"We hear on every side that the American Way of Life is in danger. I think it is. I also think that many of those who talk the loudest about the dangers to the American Way of Life have no idea what it is and consequently no idea what the dangers are that it is in.

You would suppose, to listen to these people, that the American Way of Life consisted in unanimous tribal self-adoration. Down with criticism; down with protests; down with unpopular opinions; down with independent thought. Yet the history and tradition of our country make it perfectly plain that the essence of the American Way of Life is its hospitality to criticism, protest, unpopular opinions and independent thought. A few dates like 1620, 1776 and 1848 are enough to remind us of the motives and attitudes of our ancestors. The great American virtue was courage...

...The great American word is freedom, and in particular freedom of thought, speech and assembly. Asserting the dignity of man, and of every man, America has proclaimed and protected the freedom to differ. Each man is supposed to think for himself. The sum of the thoughts of all is the wisdom of the community. Difference, disagreement, discussion decided by democratic processes are required to bring out the best in the citizens. America has grown strong on criticism. It would be quite as consistent with the American Way of Life to offer prizes for the most penetrating criticism of our country as it would be to offer prizes to those who have done the best job of advertising it.

The heart of Americanism is independent thought. The cloak-and-stiletto work that is now going on will not merely mean that many persons will suffer for acts that they did not commit, or for acts that were legal when committed, or for no acts at all. Far worse is the end result, which will be that critics, even of the mildest sort, will be frightened into silence. Stupidity and injustice will go unchallenged because no one will dare to speak against them..."

Robert M. Hutchins
Chancellor of Chicago University (1950)

Read more...

Political "Death Tax?"

Do you see any similarities between what Obama and FDR inherited from the predessors? The following is from the April 22, 1935 edition of Time:
---
In 100 days Napoleon gained and lost an empire. In 100 days the 73rd Congress patched together the crumbling U. S. banking system, set up the $2,000,000,000 Home Owners' Loan Corp., created NRA, substituted beer for Prohibition, confiscated all the gold in the U. S., appropriated $3,300,000.000 for public works, established CCC, TVA, FERA. AAA, cut veterans' pensions and, for good measure, put J. P. Morgan on the witness stand and a midget on his knee.

In 100 days, ending last week, the 74th Congress had passed only one Administration measure: the $4,880,000,000 Work Relief Bill. The rest of the time it spent on oratory and routine appropriation bills. The Administration measures which Congress has not acted on include:

1) Renewal of NRA.

2) Social security.

3) Regulation of holding companies.

4) A banking bill.

5) Ship subsidies.

6) Regulation for railroads, trucks and busses.

7) Pure food & drugs.

8) AAA amendments.

Blame The Doctor...Not The Monster

"The proper role of the financial sector is to support innovation and enterprise elsewhere in the economy. But during the past 20 years or so, it has grown into Frankenstein's monster, lumbering around and causing chaos."

John Cassidy
How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities

Diversity's Bootstraps

"...President Barack Obama is on track to name more Hispanics to top posts than any of his predecessors, drawing appointees from a wide range of the nation's Latino communities, including Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans and Colombians..."

"It says a lot about our country that these people have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and have obtained a high degree of success. It is an American success story."

Michael Camunez
Special counsel to President Obama
Harvard graduate
First member of his family to attend college

Read more of Obama naming Hispanics to top posts at record pace

Give Glenn Beck A Hand

"We are really truly stepping beyond socialism and starting to look at fascism."

Glenn Beck
on The O'Reilly Factor


"Most people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The truth is that they also surround words, ideas, desires, deeds, impulses and memories."

Elie Wiesel
Holocaust Survivor


"When they're done with Fox, and you decide to speak out on something. The old, "first they came for the Jews, and I wasn't Jewish." When you have a question, and you believe that something should be asked, they're a -- totally fine with you right now; they have no problem with you.

When they're done with Fox and talk radio, do you really think they're going to leave you alone if you want to ask a tough question? Do you really think that a man who has never had to stand against tough questions and has as much power as he does -- do you really believe after he takes out the number one news network, do you really think that this man is then not going to turn on you? That you and your little organization is going to cause him any hesitation at all not to take you out?

If you believe that, you should open up a history book, because you've missed the point of many brutal dictators. You missed the point on how they always start."

Glenn Beck
FOX News Journalist


"We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe."

Elie Wiesel
The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident

Snap, Cackle, Populism

"...the problem with populism is not just that it stirs prejudice against the "big cities" where most Americans actually live, or against the academies where many of them would like to send their children. No, the difficulty with populism is that it exploits the very "people" to whose grievances it claims to give vent..."

Christopher Hitchens

According To The Quill of The People

"Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren," said during the 2006 debt-ceiling debate. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better."

Senator Barack Obama in 2006



"...Democrats ridiculed Mr. Bush as "the most fiscally irresponsible President in history," but then they saw him and raised. They took an $800 billion deficit and made it $1.4 trillion in 2009 and perhaps that high again in 2010. In 10 months they have approved more than $1 trillion in spending that has saved union public jobs but has done little to assist private job creation. Still to come is the multi trillion-dollar health bill and another $100 billion to $200 billion "jobs" bill..."


"...There is surely bipartisan blame for this government debt boom. George W. Bush approved gigantic spending increases for Medicare and bailouts. He also sponsored the first ineffective "stimulus" in February 2008—consisting of $168 billion in tax rebates and spending that depleted federal revenues in return for no economic lift..."

...from the Audacity of Debt at the Wall Street Journal

---
An interesting point for politicians to remember is to be careful what you say. It will be used against you. In 2006, new housing starts were 1.9 million; in 2010 they will be approximately 0.5 million. In 2006, the unemployment rate was 4.6 percent; in 2010 it's over 10 percent.

The political choices seem to be to do something, e.g. stimulus packages, bank bailouts, tax credits, or do nothing...which is what the Republicans seem to be advocating. Actually, Republicans are afraid to say anything, because they know doing something will get them hauled up on the TEA Party gallows with a rope around the neck of their political future. Or the politicians can choose to do something and end up hanging themselves.

Of course, time will tell how the ropes twists. If the economy starts to turn around in mid-2010 and the numbers start going positive, the Republicans are going to find the do nothing approach didn't work.