Palin Embraces North Korea, Bombs Michelle Obama on Turkey Day

Palin Gives Lip Service to N.Korean Allies

We are having a hard time getting ourselves up and organized. We spent the morning halfway sleeping through New York's Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, what with Carrie Underwood urging us to "Undue It," and a creeping suspicion that the balloons are getting lower and lower each year. Eventually, they will just be dragged down the street, weighted floats, to prevent any accidental crashing into skyscrapers and the liability that can theoretically be caused when Mickey's head smooshes some family observing from above the streets.

Over on the internet the main news seemed to center around North Korea, and their holiday bashing of South Korean territory, but this little bit of expected hostility was overwhelmed by Palin's take on the matter:

When asked by Beck how she would handle a situation like the one that was developing in North Korea, Palin responded: "This is stemming from, I think, a greater problem when we're all sitting around asking, 'Oh no, what are we going to do,' and we're not having a lot of faith that the White House is going to come out with a strong enough policy to sanction what it is that North Korea is going to do."

It is unclear whether Palin is talking about sanctions against North Korea, or U.S. sanctioning -- i.e. approving or supporting -- its actions.

Palin continued: "Obviously, we gotta stand with our North Korean allies," when Beck interrupted and corrected her to say "South Korea." 

"And we're also bound by prudence to stand with our South Korean allies, yes," she responded.

(ABC News)

You can search that stack of hay for the needle of a solution, but there is none. The problem is not really the slip of the tongue. Bush did that all the time, and even Obama has had his share of speaking gaffs. The real issue is that Palin has nothing to offer as far as a solution. It's typical of her. She has tried recently to weigh in on things--Fed policy a week or so back, North Korea today-- but she really has no understanding of what she is talking about. It's all very kiddie pool. It would generous to assume her range of thought is dumbed down by design in order to reach the impatient and simplistic expectations of her most ardent supporters, but that would require at least an initial display of intellectual weight. We've yet to see something so hefty. The so called patriots that her support demand so little, liking their turkey without substantial dressing.

Palin didn't limit her criticisms to Obama's foreign policy. She found time to also take issue with Michelle Obama's focus on childhood obesity.  She questioned the idea of government interfering in the better judgment of parents. I would agree that the rights of parents to raise and instruct their children is the noble default position. But that position does not preclude me from understanding that any number of government initiatives have taken place to make up for human irresponsibility. The actual facts on obesity show that enough Americans have struggled with, or ignored making, the correct choices as far as their kids are concerned. And like seat belt laws, or child labor laws, sometimes the government can step in with a few encouraging words or a push in the right direction. The number of private sector initiatives that resulted from government funding is vast, and conservatives often ignore the fact that government can and does take care of things that we often neglect.

On days like this, I have to wonder who is the real turkey.

American Express Wishes You a Happy Diwali

I don't like to get too anything on this blog. I hope that we hold some sort of middle perspective, and one defined by truth. Getting singularly unhinged over an issue and spouting wild opinion is something we pride ourselves in not doing most of the time. No culture wars here.

Earlier today I couldn't help feeling a bit of holiday cheer rolling in like the smell of a hot pretzel on a Manhattan street.. At work we played a brief snippet of Alvin and the Chipmunks as a lark, and were quickly shouted down. "Turn it off, turn it off! I had to hear Christmas music over and over at Macy's on the weekend," said the tempestuous temp. I wanted to respond with something biting like, "Well, just because you got to hear music on your main job does not mean that I don't get to hear music on my main job ya know?" Or, and more condensed, "You do realize you are just a temp right?"

But I held my tongue.

Later at home I was on the American Express website checking out their assortment of gift cards. It's the ideal gift when one feels a bit lazy or when people are not cooperating by telling you want they like or want. Amex has a nice collection of cards, and you can customize them with your own images if you choose to do so. What caught my attention was the utter lack of cards with a basic Merry Christmas message.

My question is this. How is it that I can get a card celebrating Diwali, that actually says, "Happy Diwali" with a burning flame, or a Hanukkah card with menorah, and yet I still have no card with a simple Merry Christmas?

Nor can I upload my own religious photo for a custom card because among the many restrictions on custom cards, religious imagery is one of them. Huh?  American Express actively promoting other religious holidays while preventing me from promoting via a custom photo card my own holiday, here in, uhm, America? I thought perhaps that I was wrong and turned to Wikipedia, the great leveler that has made all of us into internet gurus and geniuses. Maybe there was no religious aspect to Diwali. Maybe I was getting all riled, all high horse, for no reason.

The first day of the festival, Naraka Chaturdasi, marks the vanquishing of the demon Naraka by Lord Krishna and his wife Satyabhama. Amavasya, the second day of Deepawali, marks the worship of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth in her most benevolent mood, fulfilling the wishes of her devotees. 

(Wikipedia)

Hmm. So Diwali, or Deepavali,  is a whole mess of myth and spiritualism rolled together, symbolizing light overcoming darkness. I can get with that, to a degree. I can get with that to the degree that I don't have my own actual holiday which symbolizes to me, here in the United States, light overcoming darkness, and good overcoming evil. Funnily enough I do have a holiday though, and it's called Christmas.

As for the card with the menorah, apparently American Express overlooked the fact that the designer of that symbol, beautiful as it is, is actually... wait for it... God. Not so familiar with Exodus, that Amex crowd.  I have less problems with the menorah card, probably because I grew up in NYC where you got Jewish holidays off. Hanukkah growing up seemed like an extension of Christmas, much in the way that Christians (probably to Jewish annoyance) view Christianity as an extension of Judaism. That said, the menorah card poses the same problems as the flaming Diwali Amex card.

The real problem is not that other traditions are being celebrated, but that one original tradition celebrated by almost everyone in the United States is being shortchanged. If I can enthusiastically by a Diwali Amex card for my Hindu friends and wish them a Happy Diwali, I certainly should be able to find a card, secular or religious that expresses Merry Christmas. I am not content with increasingly secular, and now increasingly vague Christmas greetings. In the past you could be as vague (Seasons Greetings) or as religious (Jesus is the Reason for the Season) as you wanted to be, with everything in between. That choice is slipping away.

Given American Express's deep experience with Indian culture via outsourcing, perhaps it's not a surprise to see a Diwali card, but given the actual name of the company, they should remember their place and traditions too.

Kochs, Meet DB Norton. DB, meet the Koch Brothers. You Guys Should Talk.

There is nothing new, just variations on a theme.

As we head into the holiday season, our favorite time of year, we get the opportunity to re-watch, and make all those around us watch or re-watch, some of our favorite films. This would include It's a Wonderful Life, with Jimmy Stewart and Christmas in Connecticut with Barbara Stanwyk. If you combine the director of the former (Frank Capra) with the star of the latter (Ms. Stanywck) you end up with Meet John Doe.

Wikipedia:

Meet John Doe is a 1941 comedy drama film directed and produced by Frank Capra and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. The film, about a "grassroots" political campaign, created unwittingly by a newspaper columnist and pursued by a wealthy businessman, became a box office hit and was nominated for an Academy Award for best original story (for Richard Connell and Robert Presnell Sr.) 

It's a great film that plays both light and deep and with wonderful performances by its leads. It's also a holiday film, if marginally so, but with a powerful speech about redemption and the role of Christ in dying so we don't have to. But it's a religious film at all. It's a film about populism, about the press, about businessmen, about earning a paycheck, and about manipulators in benefactor's clothing, seeking to control all.

Not so much different from this long piece in New York Magazine about the Koch brothers. David and Charles have spent portions of their vast fortune trying to destabilize President Obama. They are libertarians and pursue a philosophy that fits quite nicely with their business interests. They want lower taxes, fewer environmental restrictions and regulations, and the general dismemberment of a Federal structure. It's amazing that they have managed to actually match (and mask) these goals to a group of people willing to blindly smoke their gas pipe.

The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement. Bruce Bartlett, a conservative economist and a historian, who once worked at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a Dallas-based think tank that the Kochs fund, said, “The problem with the whole libertarian movement is that it’s been all chiefs and no Indians. There haven’t been any actual people, like voters, who give a crap about it. So the problem for the Kochs has been trying to create a movement.” With the emergence of the Tea Party, he said, “everyone suddenly sees that for the first time there are Indians out there—people who can provide real ideological power.” The Kochs, he said, are “trying to shape and control and channel the populist uprising into their own policies.”

(N.Y. Magazine)

One might think we have an anti-capitalist bent, or harbor some resentment against billionaires, but you would think wrong. While we find George Soros, the AntiKoch, mildly disturbing with his one world utopian chatter, he has at least worked to bring down totalitarian governments (as opposed to accidentally propping them up per Koch history). People like Gates and Buffet have contributed to American greatness in the public and private sectors. In the back of our heads we wish were James Simons, who from New York City and Long Island overseas Renaissance Technologies, an investment group that has richly rewarded its individual and institutional investors over the years (some, ahem, more than others).

But much of what the Koch brothers stand for is at odds with what might be good for the United States. The fact that they veil their patronage under euphemistic names does not help matters. We hardly imagine that those "foot soldiers" out there raising hell at town halls and rabidly emailing and calling freshman GOP members are fully cognizant of the extent to which they have not merely been co-opted, but outright seduced into ideas not of their own creation.

You can ask a child if they want an apple or a pear, by way of not asking if they want any of the other 50 items in the household. The child will see the presented choice as the universal set. He will never say I want it all, necessarily. It's a mind game, where you limit the choices between what you want someone to have, and what you want someone to have even more.

Many of the ideas propounded in the 1980 campaign presaged the Tea Party movement. Ed Clark told The Nation that libertarians were getting ready to stage “a very big tea party,” because people were “sick to death” of taxes. The Libertarian Party platform called for the abolition of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., as well as of federal regulatory agencies, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Energy. The Party wanted to end Social Security, minimum-wage laws, gun control, and all personal and corporate income taxes; it proposed the legalization of prostitution, recreational drugs, and suicide. Government should be reduced to only one function: the protection of individual rights. William F. Buckley, Jr., a more traditional conservative, called the movement “Anarcho-Totalitarianism.”

(N.Y. Mag)

This world that the Koch family mafia wants is not nearly what we need to have, or what people will imagine they are getting once they have got it. This is not a benign or pure libertarian stance, since the Kochs and those of that ilk would effectively superimpose their own corporate interests atop the population. They want a type of freedom from any constraints, as though governments have not evolved as they have due to past applications of unchecked power in the private sector.

At the end of Meet John Doe D.B. Norton is shown to be the manipulator and fascist that he is. Gary Cooper very nearly commits suicide in the process of trying to keep discourse pure. It's a remarkable contrast of those getting played, and those playing, and we can only hope our fellow citizens wake up in time.

Republican House Leadership Joins the Strip Club, Enjoying Every Moment

If you thought Republicans were the party of authentic family values, watch them as they eagerly join the strip club in an effort to repeal health care in  the most underhanded fashion, by defunding it. I am not sure what they call this. Strip and dance? Defund and destroy? Somewhere along the way they have suggested that after all this peeling away, that they will improve and replace, but you kind of have to have a lot of faith that the two birds deep in the thorny bush are worth what we have in Obama's hands.

One hopes that people will smarten up when this battle heats up, but it requires those who support the law to stand up and fight for something worthwhile. The new House leadership is wasting no time in showing us where their hearts lie.

The House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, described the strategy this way: “If all of Obamacare cannot be immediately repealed, then it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece, blocking funding for its implementation and blocking the issuance of the regulations necessary to implement it.”

“In short,” Mr. Cantor said, “it is my intention to use every tool at our disposal to achieve full repeal of Obamacare.”

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said he, too, wanted to shut off money for the new law.

(N.Y. Times)

*

It's also fun to note the use of language by the unstructured conservatives (as I don't want to paint all conservatives with the same brush. We are talking about a certain type). They have converted the name of the legislation into "Obamacare," and while it is used now as some sort of destruction by association, it will be interesting to see how quicly they abandon this moniker if the legislation unfolds and begins to benefit people in a noticeable way. At that point it will suddenly revert back to being called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act".

In any case, remember the date it was signed into law. March 23, 2010. That is a date that will stand alongside other great legislation that has moved America forward and guaranteed quality of life. We didn't pull kids out of factories, or insure basic environmental practices, or labor and construction standards, or the rights of blacks or women to vote, with action that was universally praised at the moment the idea germinated. There was always an opposition that could make the argument against reform.

When you look at videotape of people during the 1950's and 1960's yelling at blacks as they got hosed, or shoved on their way to school or to eat or protest... well many of those people are anonymously alive today, short of memory and hiding their strong, righteous stand on the wrong side of history.

Obama Does Business, Republican Leaders Do Fantasy Island

UK Guardian: Obama Talks Business

Now that the election is over the Republicans presumably can move forward by actually telling us what they will do. They ran on the idea that the "American people," (who seem to live like Keebler elves inside the mouths of Republican leaders), are sick and tired of the economic situation. They ran on the theory that Americans were seeking the dismantling of health care reform, the cutting of taxes for the wealthiest, the reversal of regulatory efforts, and the implementation of fiscal austerity.

Most of the rhetoric has been to accuse Obama of extreme mismanagement. "It's not a communication problem. It's that Americans don't want what you have to offer," we have been told with great seriousness by some very unserious people.

Now that they are in office, early interviews seem to verify that lack of seriousness. The most vocal Republicans have but one main goal and that is to defeat Obama. The great fear is that you finally have a man in office who is willing to do a few unpopular things in order to benefit the majority of the people, and that eventually will see the economy and their lives improve, and realize which way the sun rises. If he succeeds, Republicans lose a lot of power and support.

The task has been to stop or delay or caricature the man, the message, and the legislation. One might think that eventually you will have to stop, present your own policies, and demonstrate how they differ and actually accomplish the goals that you have criticized the president for not achieving. One would think wrong. The policy solutions on offer, like budget deficit increasing tax cuts for the top 5%, don't harmonize with calls for financial prudence or unemployment reduction. People are not likely to rush out and spend any tax cut when corporations refuse to hire (while flush with cash and profits). What will Republicans then do? They will offer fantasy.

J. Boehner (R-OH)

Republican and Tea Party types have so far refused to say exactly what they will cut. People like Rand Paul have suggested across the board cuts, which will not nearly happen in anyone's lifetime. It's a rhetorical/mental trick to suggest the drastically impossible when you are afraid to undertake the realistically doable. They know voters won't pay attention to the lack of detail amongst the details. They know the voters won't listen to anything else if they can keep them sufficiently enthralled to alarmist rhetoric.

You have a politician on one of the news shows today relentlessly suggesting that Obama wants to raise taxes (by letting the Bush temporary tax cuts expire on the wealthiest 5%). Ah, tax increase. And because Obama is already the Socialist, the Islamic shill, the huckster, the birth certificate hiding thief of Republican birthrate (you little Jacob you), it's really not necessary to listen to his side at all. You might discover things. You might discover that his first budget year came in below Bush's last budget year. You might discover that his use of drones on terrorism far exceeds that of Bush. You might discover he is better educated than most of his critics (unless you are of the ilk that there is no practical difference between elite education and being raised by grizzly bears), and used that education to help college students get more direct funding for their educational efforts. You might discover that his stimulus included tax cuts, and that Bush had passed stimulus as well without too much negative blowback.

You might discover a lot if you listened to both sides. But people would rather believe the lie, and politicians would rather tell the lie, spread the lie, like the reporting of his trip to Asia. Republicans have ignored the mission (one of jobs and improving relations in the region where we are war) to find the fantasy, suggesting that the President is somehow on some high spending junket of unprecedented nature.

With this new crowd in office we will get platitudes and the politicians telling us what the people want, while doing nothing and blaming President Obama for artificial outrages. Meanwhile the economy continues to improve, slowly, in the aftermath of the worst slowdown in modern history.

Meg Whitman Loses Wallet During Election Day Frenzy!!

"Oh Crap, I just lost my wallet!"

And that, my dears, is the extent of our election day coverage. It was largely a non news day, with everyone who was expected to win, pretty much winning. History repeats, with the opposite party picking up seats in the off year. No mystery.