Dude Time

            Ah, yes, it’s Dueling Dude Time out on the old campaign trail. My grandfather was poorer than your grandfather.  Yeah? Well mine dug coal.  Yeah, well mine were poor Mexican Mormon campesinos planting and harvesting tortillas under the tropical sun.  So Romney dons a manly red Datona 500 jacket and tours the Datona International Speedway in Florida, Ah, I love the smell of gasoline in the morning, it smells like . . . my wife’s two Cadillacs.  And Santorum started cranking on about his un-elite-ness and ragging on the evils of big government, declaring (without irony or a glimmer of self-awareness) that he grew up in public housing on VA grounds, raised by parents who worked for the Veterans Administration, all of which are evil government entities funded and paid for by the taxpayer.

            Then, pushing ahead into the phony class wars, Santorum accused President Obama of being a “snob” for wanting everyone to get a college education.  He further elucidated his faux outrage that Obama would diss kids who didn’t want to go to a four year college or wanted to go to trade school or study as an apprentice.  Huff-huff-huff.

            Fortunately, I watch the Daily Show and the busy little video-snippers there gleefully juxtaposed Santorum’s fake outrage with the clip of what Obama actually said, which was to encourage all kids to get at least one year of college or more or go to community college or to trade school or study as an apprentice. None of which could possibly be considered to be “snobbish,” unless you were standing four-square behind a program of keeping your kids stupid.

            Which, I’m afraid, seems to have become a right wing, conservative Republican virtue and is fast becoming a treasured American narrative: America the Dumb.  We resent Presidents who are smarter than we are or act like it.  Instead, we want Presidents we can have a beer with, Presidents who are like us – poorly educated, full of provincial resentments, xenophobic know-nothings.  That’s the ticket!

            A friend of mine who occasionally writes conservative riffs for the on-line American Spectator,(http://spectator.org/archives/2012/02/24/catch-22-revisited/ ) recently sent along a piece discussing Obama’s “otherness” problem.  And cites some of the things that apparently define that otherness to his fellow conservatives: being born in Hawaii, saying that the “Muslim summons to evening prayer [is] ‘one of the prettiest sounds on Earth,’ and being the first President “to host a ‘White House Poetry Slam,’ among other things.

            As anyone who’s followed politics, any one of those descriptives is often given a dog-whistle negative spin by the folks who can’t stand the guy.  Born in Hawaii?  That place is too exotic, too foreign.  It’s not like, well, someplace normal, like Indiana.  And the muezzin’s prayer, awwww God, what kind of weird guy would think that was anything but some foreign, anti-Christ, terrorist jihadi  thing.  Poetry Slams?  Too black.  Waaayyyy too black.  Which is “different,” which is “other,” which is BAD. In short, my friend found that Obama was “vulnerable” to attack because he was “insufficiently grounded in traditional American values.”  When I questioned what that might mean, the reply was what I call the old “America the Dumb” response: If you’re not fully grounded/schooled/raised/immersed and buy into baseball, hot dogs, Nascar, “Christianity,” and the full complement of fake American Myths, well then, you’re simply not one of us and will be vulnerable to attack as not quite American.  Which, while indeed true, is also, indeed, a sad commentary. But a perfect illustration of what Richard Hofstadter in the 1950’s described as passions held by what he identified as right-wing “pseudo-conservatives” that demonstrate an “undercurrent of provincial resentments, ‘popular’ and ‘democratic’ rebelliousness and nativism.”  To which list, I would add xenophobia, racism and know-nothingness. Such a sad, limiting brew for such a hearty, roiling, rich, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious country. Plus Hawaii. 

            But here it is again, as it always is in presidential politics, playing out before our eyes.  Dueling Dudes at Datona, varoom! Varoom! Coal miner-wannabes up to their eyeballs in fake coal dust, gobbling hot dogs, soothing nativist fears, evoking the class war cards (no one here but us dirt poor millionaire working men), decrying a Harvard education as snobbism, and biting the government-run Veterans Administration hand that fed and clothed one candidate so he could hit the campaign trail and bash the evils of government.

Meanwhile, Here Come da Judge      

            The Supreme Court, the Roberts activist court, is about to take up a case that should be interesting:  from the L.A. Times:  “Two years ago, the Supreme Court said corporations are like people [my friend] and have the same free speech rights to spend unlimited sums on campaign ads.  Now, in a major test of human rights law, the justices will decide whether corporations are like people when they’re sued for aiding foreign regimes that kill or torture their own people.

            “It would ‘create a weird paradox,’ if the corporations are people when funding campaigns but not when they violate human rights, said Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York.”

            Weird paradox?  The Robert’s activist court? 

            The case to be heard involves the Royal Dutch Petroleum and its Shell subsidiary in the U.S.  It’s accused of aiding a former Nigerian regime to carry out torture, rape and murder. And the lawsuit is simply asking that company, which was fully complicit in those murderous outrages, be held accountable.  Just like a person fully complicit in murder and rape and torture, are supposed to be held accountable.

            Yes.  I can hear you laughing from here.  My bet is this:  The Robert’s court will continue a long, sacred U.S. tradition: Privitize Profits and stick the public with the liabilities and accountability.  In short, I’m betting Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Alieto will rule that corporations are “people” only when it comes to accruing benefits. Liabilities are disallowed or shoved off onto governments, which will make the public pay or ignore all justice with absolute impunity. 

            After all, that’s the American Way.  Everyone knows that equal justice under the law for all only applies to some people.

Take Two Aspirins and Don't Call Me In The Morning

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for February 22, 2012

            It was a stunning moment.  Congressman Darrell Issa, the Grand Inquisitor of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, thought he’d found the perfect ginned-up issue – the deliciously rhetorical, preordained “investigative” hearing titled, “Lines Crossed: Separation of Church and State.  Has the Obama administration trampled on Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Conscience?”  It was to be Issa’s perfect, political-points photo-op moment – the grand inquisitor’s dais filled with a long line of somberly suited and/or Roman-collared men opining on . . . . . female birth control.

            When up popped Democrat Carolyn Malone (D-N.Y.) who asked, “What I want to know is, where are the women?  I look at this panel, and I don’t see one single individual representing the tens of millions of women across the country who want and need insurance coverage for basic preventive health care services, including family planning.  Where are the women?”

            And suddenly, Issa’s best laid plans to make political hay by pretending he was discussing weighty matters all went kerflooey as his Grand Inquisitor Table of Men went viral. And women across the country rolled their eyes.  Isn’t that just like a man, they said.  Discussing my private parts in public while I’m not even allowed in the room. Boooo!  BOOOOOO!

            And, before you knew it, here came Rick Santorum’s money-bags PAC donor, the interestingly named Foster Friess, a goofy smile constantly plastered on his face, who stunned the interviewing Andrea Mitchell into silence when he noted that he found this birth control issue all nonsense.  Sayeth Friess, “Back in my day, they used Bayer aspirin for contraceptives.  The gals put it between their knees and it wasn’t that costly.”  Heh-heh.  And THAT clip went viral and even more women rolled their eyes.  Aspirin? Knees?  Boooo!  BOOOOOO!

            While clips appeared of Santorum stumbling through a muddled explanation of his interpretation of conservative Catholic doctrine that birth control is bad because it allows people to engage in . . . well, behavior that they shouldn’t be engaging in or at least engaging in behavior with no consequences, since sex should have consequences, like punishment and suffering and hell fire and damnation and, oh, never mind.  And more eyes rolled as it was pointed out that a Pew poll showed that over 90% of Catholic women practice some form of birth control, including using the pill.  And anyway, who’s listening to a morally bankrupt Catholic hierarchy that repeatedly chose their assets over protecting their children.  Boooo! BOOOOO!  

            And before the furor could die down, the newly passed Virginia ultrasound law came up on the radar.  If signed into law, women wanting or needing an abortion would be forced to have a sonogram, which can require a medically unnecessary invasive vaginal procedure that involves a dildo-like wand being inserted into her body.  This from the conservative Republican FreeDOM! FreeDOM! Crowd.  WTF? What’s with these Republicans and their obsessive need to poke into women’s vaginas?  Booooo!  BOOOOOO!

            And suddenly the long game began taking shape out of what first looked like an incoherent muddle of oxymoronic politics and comic photo-op pratfalls: Reassertion of the white male prerogative, the sweet return to state enforced religious dogma, and, ultimately, total conservative control over all branches of government.  Patriarchy redux, Torquemada Darrell Issa of the Auto de Fe Holy House Oversight Committee, the “severe” conservative’s theocratic swirling wet dream of privilege, power, dildo-wands, knees, aspirins, and uppity women finally silenced and hobbled and sent to the back of the church.

            Where we belong.  Right.

            As if. 

             

           

             

Spending Spree

Calhoun’s Can(n)ons for February 3, 2012

Happy Days are heeeeere again, The sky’s of blue are cleeeeear again

            Oh, thank goodness.  We’re saved!  Our economic woes are finally over.  The worst crash and burn since the Great Depression is about to lift.  We’ll soon be rolling in money.   The mighty economic engines of our various newly formed political super PACS have been unleashed in the recent Republican primaries and if the waterfall of moolah keeps up at the same pace it did in Florida, we’ll all be on Easy Street.

            Who would have thunk?  Here we’ve all been mooning around begging for Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! Begging somebody, somewhere to plueeeze, plueeze bring manufacturing back, restore our great Rust Belt, put people to work. And all the while, there it was, staring us in the face all along --the greatest Rain Maker in history, thanks to the Supreme Court.  Yes, the Super PACSs!

             Mitt Romney’s “Restore Our Future” super PAC blew through nearly $17 million in Florida alone, while Newt Gingrich’s “Winning Our Future” super PAC got a good run at spending its $10 million donation from gambling tycoon, Sheldon Adelson. Talk about Trickle Down.

            And look what all that money bought: Ron Paul mostly skated outside the thundering elephant rumble, poking the candidates with sharp pointy “issues” questions that nobody wanted to address. Rick Santorum was exposed as a dead-baby-hugging, gay-on-dog homophobe loony who can’t wait to nuke Iran to keep it from getting nukes. Mitt exposed his primary rival as a hypocritical, bloviating, philandering, sleazy, untrustworthy Washington lobbyist whack-a-doodle who wants to colonize the moon.  Newt exposed his rival as a flip-flopping, hypocritical, wooden-headed, tin-eared, job-destroying, blood-sucking Bain Capital predator Mormon who loves to fire people.  Oh, and a . . Massachusetts Moderate.

            Well, who knew?  In total, the GOP candidates and/or their PACS have spent about $53 million, with $25 million on TV ads alone. Oh, lucky Florida and South Carolina!  Heck, even comedian Stephen Colbert’s PAC has reported out that it raised $1.02 million and spent a nice chunk of that in Colbert’s South Carolina faux campaign. All that nice money raining down on the primary states.  Keep that up for a few more months – next up, Nevada! Arizona! - – and single-handedly the Republican PACS will lift the economy, state by state, all without raising a single tax. 

            And soon, President Obama’s campaign war chest and PAC, which is nearing $82 million in donations, will meet up with “American Crossroads,” Karl Rove’s Pac, which already has over $51 million, with more coming in, and you’re looking at a real job-creating economic engine of unimagined power.

            Think of all the trickle-down jobs what will be created – precinct walkers, phone callers, mailer stuffers, poster printers, Quick Response Teams of copy writers, rumor mongers (and rumor blockers), and all those jobs required to create TV ads stuffed to the gills with innuendo, spin, flat out Swift-Boaty lies and scary music.

            And what will we get for all that money?  Well, we’ll learn that President Obama is a Kenyan muslim socialist who wants to make abortion mandatory, kill old people with his “Obama Care death panels,” give rich people’s money to dirty, lazy, undeserving Saul Alinsky poor people, become a surrender monkey by appeasing Iran and turn America into . . . France.  While Mitt Romney will destroy the unions, reduce the minimum wage to zero, turn the major corporate players of American business into one big Bain Capital predator which will devour all small business, destroy Medicare and Social Security, fire the 99% to further enrich the 1% (his peeps) and make Mormonism the official national religion.

            And frugal little Ron Paul with his tiny war chest will nimbly keep dancing just off stage asking annoying “issues” questions that nobody will answer.

            But, really, who cares if all that money is basically going to be wasted on sheer crap?  Or that the American electorate is about to be badly served, at best, or grotesquely misled, at worst. Or that the voters still seem blissfully unaware that Congress is still the dog that wags the presidential tail; unless they change Congress, they’ll just end up with more do-nothingness.  Which is what happens when the focus moves away from imperfect real people imperfectly trying to solve real problems and becomes the faked-up persona in thrall to the deadly Cult of Political Purity  – election autos-de-fe, American style.   

            No, nobody cares about all that.  It’s raining money and for a few minutes, which seems to be the maximum extent of our attention span, happy days are here again. Until the political money rain stops and it becomes clear once again that despite the billions, the balloons, the confetti, the clowns with their toootle horns, the wolf is still on the doorstep.         

Snack Time

               Ummm, grab your knives and forks.  It’s time for a feast.  The Republicans are dining on one another and Iowa is just a preview of what’s to come in South Carolina. Ummm.  Delicious. 

            Consider, Newt Gingrich whining because Romney’s PAC was running ads that said mean things about Newt.  Newt whining?  Newt is the father of the PAC and the father of formalizing mean things to say that will demonize your opponent.

            And, surprise, Rick Santorum “wins” Iowa and is now chugging off, suddenly a serious candidate.  Rick Santorum?  The guy who went from the topic of gay marriage straight to man on dog sex in zero steps.  What kind of mind keeps that connection rattling around in his brain so in no time he can go there?  I mean, before I’d be able to make that connection and come to that kind of  conclusion, I’d have to make a whole bunch of steps and think seriously to find anything resembling the “six degrees of separation” connections needed to make that leap.  But not Rick.  Nope.  Apparently equal marriage rights for gays equals man on dog sex.   Eeeuuuuu.  Creepy Brain Time.

            Well, South Carolina should be a hoot. We’ll have our Man On Dog Santorum, Can’t Remember S—t Perry, PAC-man Newt, and “Lurch” Romney.   And LOTS of secret corporate money, none of it accountable to the public, thanks to the Robert’s Supreme Court.

            Does it get any better than this?

What If?

            Interesting article in the L.A. Times by Marc Lifsher reporting that about “a dozen companies are the first in state to apply to become ‘benefit corporations.”

            “A dozen companies committed to maximizing social good while turning a profit have filed papers with the state to become California’s first ‘benefit corporations.”  Amazingly enough, California has a new law that “gives companies a way to legally structure their businesses to consider social and environmental efforts as part of their missions.

            “While that may sound like marketing hype, it’s important from a legal standpoint because it helps shield benefit corporations from lawsuits brought by shareholders who say that company do-gooding has diluted the value of their stock.

            “California becomes the seventh state to adopt this relatively new corporate structure.

            “Until now, California corporate law mandated that shareholders’ interests trump those of all other parties. . . . . Benefit corporations offer for-profit companies a way to do well and do right, said Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) . . . ‘There is a way to create jobs and grow the economy while raising the bar for social and environmental responsibility.”

            If you want to understand one reason why we have, as a country, been heading down the drain, it’s because our corporate structures are legally required to put maximum profit ahead of all other considerations.  That focus on profit above all is the source of so many of our woes. That and the total focus on quarterly reports as opposed to long-term business/economic health.

            In short, we have set up an economic system now that behaves like a bad germ – a virus that kills its host too quickly.  In nature, the goal of a smart germ, like a smart parasite, is to keep its host alive as long as possible so it can feed and reproduce.  A dumb germ/parasite, gobbles it all, kills its host to soon, and therefore dies as well.  That’s been our model – gobble and die.  Not smart.

            But a benefit corporation?  Ah, that allows a corporate parasite a good way to feed heartily but still keep its host alive for years and years.  Think what a transformation would happen in this country if long-term planning and social/environmental considerations became part of the business mix – companies that understood, for example, that keeping their employees healthy and happy paid off financially.  Companies that understood that toxic waste actually is a resource that’s worth money and can be profitable for them.  Corporations that were allowed to factor in long-term thinking instead of simple Grab ‘n Run greed.  

            The story finishes thusly:  “The growing interest in benefit corporations reflects a sense that there’s a better way of doing business out there,” said John Montgomery, a Melo Park lawyer who helped draft the new California law.”  . . .  “Patagonia [one of the the new benefit corporations] is trying to build a company that could last 100 years . . . Benefit corporation legislation creates the legal framework to enable mission-driven companies like Patagonia to stay mission-driven through succession, capital raises and even changes in ownership by institutionalizing the value, culture, processes and high standards put in place by founding entrepreneurs.”

            Imagine that.

On the Other Hand    

           

            Of course, creating a decent society may be all moot.  According to some folks, the Mayan Calendar tells us that the world will in 2012, so why bother?

            It never ceases to amaze me how in love with World Death so many people are. Apparently the earth is such a hideous place for them that it becomes a deep-seated need to fantasize about and long for its violent end.  Armageddon! Mayan Calendars!  Wheeeee, destroy it all!  Even the hummingbirds and sweet-smelling lemon blossoms.  Wipe them all out.

            I don’t get it.  If those folks are so in love with world destruction, there’s a quick shortcut to that end: Suicide.  One bullet and your whole world ends.  Problem solved, while still leaving this beautiful, magical, extraordinary place intact for others to enjoy.

A reminder

            Well, since the world won’t end, despite what the Mayans say, on Wednesday January 18 from 6 pm – 7 pm at the Monarch Grove Elementary School, 348 Los Osos Valley Rd) there’ll be a public meeting to review “The restoration of your neighborhood streets and roadways following the installation of the waste water collection system,” wherein you’ll see a 45-minute overview of the repair, restoration and enhancement efforts for your streets.”

            With any luck, maybe everybody will speak up and push for “low impact” type pavement that will help get every drop of rainwater back down into the ground instead of having it all flood down the street.  Though on my street, we do end up with some quite spectacular lakes that you can float a boat on.  Which is great entertainment for the dreary winter months.