Context Is Everything

When you look at this headline, don't you want to ask, "In relation to what?" Or, at the very least, define "crazy" in Republican terms...

Dispatch from Republican Heaven

Known in other (normal) circles as "Hell":

We here in Texas have taken extra steps to making food stamps really hard to get, which can lead to situations like this.

TBogg gives us his inimitable take:

On the plus side, Rachelle Grimmer didn’t abort her kids, no one appears to be gay, and the 2nd Amendment, once again, provided a simple solution to a complex issue. Win-win-win.

By the way, the little girl died early this morning.

Occupy

Good for Williams.

"rotting from within from unexpiated sins"

This seems to me to be just as applicable to the Penn State horror as to the purported topic, though Pierce and others have written eloquently on that subject as well.

I have ordered Greenwald's book, as I've always been drawn to the theory that it was a huge, honking FUBAR to pardon Nixon and that we've been paying for it, in spades, ever since.

Part of me wants to feel bad for the kids at Penn State who are acting so badly now as they circle the wagons around their beloved football program and its iconic figurehead. After all, they are just kids, and it's in their developmental structure to be fiercely tribal in their loyalty. But it also seems like this is a teachable moment that SOMEONE with responsibility at Penn State ought to take advantage of, fergawdsake. They are a University, right? Firing the president and Paterno most definitely was not enough. Someone from the Board of Trustees, or perhaps the new interim president, should take a ballsy stand and inform these kids about what the proper behavior at this point in time should be, and it isn't a shallow display of piety while continuing the football program.

I suspect that there are reasons that the powers-that-be at Penn St. are not following my armchair quarterback's advice. I suspect that it might have something to do with the fact that those people have a very clear-eyed view of what is in store for them, and that to provide the kind of leadership as I have suggested now would not only highlight how lacking that leadership has been up to now, but also would be a rather abrupt wake-up call to students and their paying parents as to how rapidly and how far the value of their diplomas are likely to plummet.

UPDATE: Well, really, who else would want the job?

A Belated Happy Birthday

Chuck Berry's birthday was a couple of days ago, and I didn't get around to commemorating it. Now I understand from Halle that he was a big-league jerk, but there's no denying that he was a guitar-playin' fool, and IMHO, any black guy that can get away with singing "My Ding-A-Ling" to an audience full of white chicks, even in the early 70's, has got something worth commemorating - even 2 days late!

Who Do You Love?

Can't help but wonder how Barbara feels about sounding just like the NY Daily News. As I've read different blog posts and watched the media response to OWS, I keep thinking about Greenwald's first post on the subject in which he speculated about what was behind all the progressive sniping of the protesters. 'Course the rightwingers motivation is easier to understand - not much mystery there. Anyway, as these protests pick up steam and spread, it's interesting to keep an eye on who says what. I saw a segment on BBC this morning in which a protester and some rightwing British gob from Manchester were intereviewed together. It was distressing to see that the protester guy was pretty lame, and I wondered if he was chosen for just that reason. I wish they had gotten this guy. But the Manchester tool couldn't have been more of an asshole, and at least I can say that the BBC interviewer challenged him fairly aggressively on some of his more blatant BS. I tried to find a video of it, but couldn't. The segment was marginally better, at least, than this kind of fare that our US media spews.

Anyway, I find my sympathies much more in line with Jared Bernstein who patiently explains:

Protest movements are often born of two interacting injustices: the lack of opportunity and the lack of accountability by the persons perceived to be blocking that opportunity.

Given the facts of the income distribution, the trends in real middle-class incomes and poverty, the failure of policy to do much to change these trends, the government bailouts of the only class that’s benefitted from the recovery so far, the absence of clear punishment/accountability for the financial and political institutions that helped inflate the debt bubble that continues to squeeze economies across the globe, and the dysfunctionality of the current political system (they’re arguing more about whether they can keep the lights on than whether they can help solve the economic problems), the more interesting question is what took so long for such protests to show up?

Exactly. And don't miss the link at the end of that post.

Then again, there's this.

UPDATE: And, um, this. The arrogance is pretty amazing, isn't it? These people have absolutely no fear at all that they will ever be held accountable. Ever. It's unthinkable to them.

RIP Marv Tauplin

The Motown sound was driven by such great talent.