Category Archives: Politics

Harry Reid and fantasy putdowns

Politics

I am sent or bump into crazy stuff about Obama all the time, He is a Socialist, He was born in Kenya, He is anti-American, and on and on. There is no way to argue with this kind of shit, let alone discuss it, so I sort of retreat into the fantasy of saying something equally stupid about Romney. Maybe, He is a polygamist would do it. I never actually do say anything like that because What is the point? I don’t believe it, I am sure that I am not going to convince anybody else, and somebody who thinks Obama was born in Kenya is a little unhinged anyway.

When Romney refused to release most of his back taxes, like alot of people, I wondered what he might be hiding. He seems he must be hiding something that would result in making him look even worse than refusing to release his taxes makes him look. Maybe not, though; maybe he is just stubborn. Maybe he got caught cheating and made a deal, maybe he paid so much he is embarrassed. Nobody really knows and what to say about it never entered my fantasy putdown pantheon.

Then along came Reid and his announcement that Romney paid No taxes during the period that he – Romney – won’t release his returns. Reid says he heard this from an anonymous source at Bain. This is really better than any of my fantasy putdowns.  The Romney camp – Romney, his surrogates, Republican politicians, right-wing pundits – understandably, but foolishly, has gone apoplectic. But there is no way to prove that Reid is lying without releasing Romney’s taxes.

If Reid is lying – and it is still an IF because we don’t really know the truth any more than we know it about Romney’s taxes – he is doing something that I should be condemning as immoral but I can’t help but admire. It is just too brilliant, tactically. First, even if we suspect he is lying, the only people that really know – besides Reid – are on the Romney side and Romney would have to release his taxes to prove that Reid is lying; then it has resulted in Romney being engaged in a fracas with somebody lower – politically – than Obama and that demeans Romney; because Reid is powerful enough to have a national soapbox from which to speak, it keeps the taxes question open and in the headlines; and Reid is in a different branch of government than Obama so Obama can’t, really, be held responsible.

The whole thing is just brilliant. It is no wonder that Reid is Speaker of the Senate.

A thought on the Olympics and Patricia Schroeder

Americana, Politics, Sports


I am not a big fan of women’s gymnastics. I think I was soured when I first saw  Nadia Comăneci. She was just  a child, dressed like an seductive adult and looking at her gave me a JonBenét Ramsey feeling: sort of a cross between feeling slightly perverted and dirty and feeling slightly superior for not feeling even more than slightly perverted. The movie Little Miss Sunshine captures it as well as anything I can think of. It is not that the seductive look is an accident, it is the point.

So, while Michele sat down to watch the  women’s gymnastics, I washed the dishes. Then Michele would say something like Wow, you have to see this, it is incredible. And it was and after a couple of trips back and forth – and the dishes were finished – that I sat down to watch the Women’s Team Gymnastics. To my eye, Gabby Douglas was the best but they were all superhuman. They all did tricks that, if Batman had done them in The Dark Knight Rises, it would have made the movie seem less realistic (I am 95%  sure that there were no Computer-generated imagery [CGI] during the actual Olympic  event).

Gabby Douglas seems older, more womanly, less child-like, than Nadia Comăneci did in 1976. Or, maybe I am just older. Eeither way, it didn’t seem as prurient. In seeing a picture of the awards ceremony, I was struck by how our gymnastics team looked liked what I want to believe America wants to be. It reminded me of a speech I once heard by Representative Patricia Schroeder, an outspoken women’s rights and minority rights advocate.

Schroeder had gone to India on some official business, at this point, I don’t remember what the official business was but because it was official she was provided with an Air Force plane. As she told the story, as a sort of air Force RF, her ground crew was made up of all minorities (counting women in this context as minorities). After she got back from what ever she was doing with her India escort, her plane was serviced and standing tall. Her India escort took one look at the crew and said something along the lines of That is why America is the greatest country in the world, all those different people working together as Americans. No other country in the world can do that. 

I think that Indian was right, what makes us great is our diversity.

 

 

Gordon Parks

Photography, Politics

The New York Times has a slide show of some unusual Gordon Parks photographs that I would like to recommend. To go out on a limb – a little – Gordon Parks was the most important, black, visual, artist of the 1950s and 60s. He became famous – and, therefore, influential – during the disgusting Jim Crow era. It was a time when everything was segregated – at least in the south all the way north to Washington D.C. – everything, not just public schools and parks and public transportation, but restaurants and restrooms. Even drinking fountains.

Black people were kept out of sight and Parks’ photos helped change that. He started out photographing for the the Farm Security Administration where he took the powerful picture above, and eventually became a fashion photographer for Vogue where he published the pictures below. 

But it was his work published in Life Magazine – the premier photo-magazine of the day – where I first saw him and his seemingly naive photographs. They seem so straight forward, and they pack such a powerful punch. Check out the slide show and you will not be disappointed.

 

 

Why some people – at least me (I, ?) – get mad at the government

Americana, Politics

Michele Leohart is an administrator in the DEA and, maybe, she is stoned and that is her excuse for her ridiculous answers. But I doubt it, I think the real reason is the Washington culture that actually prevents honesty and introspection. In this case, thanks to Congressman Jared Polis for doing what our Congresspeople should actually be doing.

Everything I believe about inequality is wrong

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

Every time I read about the rich getting richer and everybody else slowly getting poorer, I get pissed. Every time I read about Bain Capital buying a company – say KB Toys, worth $302 million by putting up $18 million and borrowing the rest – driving it into staggering debt and, then, bankruptcy, and walking away with a an $85 million dividend taxed at a special low rate, I get hot, sweaty, pissed. It seems so unfair, first the making of money by closing down a company, by eliminating jobs, and then, to compound the unfairness,  to pay less taxes than the people who work for a living.

It is unfair, but when I drive by Pyramid Lake and see the RVs crowding the shore, I am beginning to think that the unfairness may be better for the planet. Actually, I know it is better for the planet and I am just beginning to admit it.

In 2005, because of a long drought and for other – more endemic – reasons, the lake level of Lake Powell dropped low enough to expose the Cathedral in the Desert. Michele and I went to Lake Powell to go see it. We were blown away, but I was even more blown away by the long line of 4wheel drive trucks towing elaborate ski-boats at the boat ramp. It was an early weekend in May and the line to get in the lake must have been longer than a mile, one 4X4 after another each with a trailer carrying a heavy duty skiboat. Each rig owned by a middleclass American living the Dream.

When I hear about Scott Walker busting unions, I get enraged, but I am starting to think he is right. Union people, the vaulted and abused middle class of the American Dream, make too much money – well, to be more accurate, they don’t make too much money, they spend too much money, they buy too much shit – and it is not good for the long term, health of our planet.

In the Scott Walker case, it is not like the state workers will starve. They will still have jobs, they will just get paid less and get a smaller – maybe much smaller – retirement. Yes, they might not be able to have a big 4X4 and a skiboat, but they will still be wealthy by almost any historical measure. The tenants of modern trailer parks live in more, real, luxury than Roman rulers. Every one of them has access to unbelievably good health care, they all have cars, they all have televisions and heated houses, and – probably – air conditioning. Even after their Unions have been busted and the American Dream is dead, the workers Scott walker went after will be living a life of almost unimaginable wealth by even 1960’s standards.

That is not to say that Scott Walker isn’t a asshole; he is, after all, commanding others to sacrifice without having to sacrifice himself, asking others to sacrifice while probably enriching himself. If the test of a moral assertion is where its burden falls, Scott Walker flunks. That is my problem with conservatives, they are always demanding change that makes life harder for others, never for themselves. But that doesn’t change the basics; we can’t continue to live like this.