“Bob” This, Billo!

In light of this item (Nancy Pelosi “bobbing up and down” in Boston Harbor, huh?), I thought it was appropriate to feature this little number from Falafel Boy Dance Party’s Greatest Hits (lots of bad words and egomania ahead, people).

Prepare To Reap The Whirlwind

Congratulations to governor-elect Chris Christie in New Jersey, as well as all of the other Bucks County Republicans who won: David Heckler for DA, Dan McLaughlin for Lower Makefield Supervisor, Mike Burns for District Judge, and – ugh! – Simon Campbell and Kathleen Zawacki for the Pennsbury School Board (the school budget will be slashed, class sizes will go up, and there will be a strike within a year, all in an effort to drive PA State Rep Steve Santarsiero out of office while using our kids as pawns…take it to the bank).

In the meantime, I’ll await the numbers on the percentage of Bucks Countians who actually voted in this off-year election; I’m sure it won’t be pretty.

As for the winners, this song goes out to all of their supporters.

Update: And by the way, there is no excuse whatsoever for this…

R.T. For Two (A Musical Interlude)

Yep, he put on a great show at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ last night, opening with “Misunderstood,” which he performs here, as well as the second number, “Time’s Gonna Break You”…

…a song about this guy.

A Political Metaphor

When it comes to health care reform, think of Lucy as Sen. Olympia Snowe and Charlie Brown as Harry Reid (h/t The Daily Kos).

Update: What BarbinMD sez here…

Update 10/21/09: And I lay the blame for this right in the lap of Reid also (the Repugs couldn’t have hoped for a more milquetoast “Majority Leader” if they tried).

Update 10/22/09: Lather, rinse, repeat…

Friday Mashup (10/16/09)

I really try not to waste everyone’s time with trying to refute the nonsense of some of the right-wing media’s most visible suspects, but I have to say something about a certain Flush Limbore being denied a shot at owning the St. Louis Rams football team.

As noted here, this has provided an opportunity to assorted culprits in the wingnutosphere to claim that Flush lost out because of “political correctness,” resurrecting some quotes that may have been falsely attributed to him (such as supposedly claiming that James Earl Ray deserved a posthumous Medal of Honor and slavery keep the streets safe…or something).

Yes, well, I have an extremely hard time feeling sympathy for an individual who used some really cowardly code language to criticize Donavan McNabb of the Philadelphia Eagles (I’ve gotten ticked off at McNabb in the past, speaking for only myself, but I would never imagine that there was a “social concern” in somehow allowing him to become a top-flight NFL quarterback). And for more supposedly “color-blind” Limbore commentary, click here.

Also, aside from his typical race-baiting antics, Limbore seems to have a preoccupation with a particular portion of the anatomy (Salon.com took note of that here; I’ll merely let you choose to read the incidents in question for yourself, dear reader, to find out how truly odious an individual he is).

Beyond all of this, sportswriter Dave Zirin of The Nation tells us the following here (from HuffPo)…

(Flush’s) ownership group, led by St. Louis Blues boss Dave Checketts, dumped Rush without ceremony or pity. Checketts issued a statement saying, “It has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis. As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion.”

His comments came the day after Rush insisted on his show that they would fight this to the bitter end. But Checketts, like most owners a long time donor to right wing causes, had no desire to link arms with Limbaugh for a public crusade. You might think Rush would have gone on the air to slam Checketts’s absence of a spine. You might think he would have called out the hypocrisy of NFL owners who give prodigiously to right wing candidates and causes, but insist on doing it in the shadows. You might think he would rail against those who see their conservative support as something sordid and best done behind closed doors. You might think Rush would howl at the moon at those who think that being an open, unreconstructed right winger, actually hurts the almighty bottom line. You might think he would say that the right wing has failed a major test by refusing to back him. Or maybe you might think he would take a different tack and accept personal responsibility for why a group of billionaires wouldn’t want his presence affecting their bottom line.

But no.

Flush “accept personal responsibility”? That makes about as much sense as the Eagles continuing to run that idiotic “wildcat” formation with Michael Vick, which, thus far, has generated comic relief but not much else.

This Op-Ed on the Fix Noise site from Doug Schoen tells us the following…

The White House is making a profound political mistake by targeting Fox News and deliberately deciding to exclude them from interviews and access to the administration. And not only that, they are making a mistake on both a practical and a political level.

Frankly, it just doesn’t make sense.

Actually, what doesn’t make sense here is Schoen’s supposition that the White House intends to cut off access to the “news network”; as White House Communications Director Anita Dunn pointed out here…

“Obviously [the President] will go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. He has done that before and he will do it again… when he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point. He is going on it to debate the opposition.”

And here is more Schoen shilling for his corporate “betters” by the way (so he definitely knows about “profound political mistakes” – and it gets better with Schoen)…

Fox News’ news programs are straightforward.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Most importantly, Fox News’ audience involves a substantial number of independents and moderate Republicans who should have access to, and might be persuaded by, some of the administration’s arguments. To simply believe that you can target Democrats and some of the independents through the rest of the mainstream media, and write off an audience of between two and four million people, is just plain illogical.

I love the way that Schoen basically assumes that the “blogosphere” (still don’t like that word, but can’t think of a better one) doesn’t exist, as if our corporate media is the only means by which voters can be accessed.

And if you want to get an idea as to exactly why the Obama White House would look upon Fix Noise this way, I think this story gives a bit of a hint (and I think you can consider this as a response to Dunn’s entirely accurate comments, by the way).

Update: Good – this is all they understand.

Update 10/19/09: Yep, I think this is curious also (h/t Atrios).

Update 10/21/09: And here is some perspective on this, by the way.

Finally, U.S. House Rep Virginia Foxx wrote the following from here…

This week I introduced the Fairness in Representation Act, legislation that requires the Census Bureau to determine the number of illegal immigrants in the United States.

The decennial census is not currently required to collect data regarding the legal status of immigrants in the U.S. This means that states with high numbers of illegal immigrants stand to gain additional seats in Congress in the once-every-10-years process of reapportionment. This also means that the law-abiding residents of states with low numbers of illegal immigrants stand to lose seats to those states with high numbers of illegal immigrants.

That is not fair and equal representation in Congress.

Sooo…basically, because the Repugs couldn’t get their act together on immigration reform when they ran Congress, they decided to “punt” the whole issue of trying to find out exactly how many illegal immigrants we have in this country to the Census Bureau.

Nice; also, this USA Today story tells us about the obstacles that Senate Repugs “Diaper Dave” Vitter and Bob Bennett ran into when they tried to do the same thing as Foxx, namely as follows…

The amendment comes less than six months before 2010 Census questionnaires are mailed to 135 million households. About 425 million forms have already been printed, according to the bureau. Some are in different languages; others are duplicates that will go to houses that do not respond to the first mailing.

The Census Bureau is launching an outreach campaign to persuade Americans that next year’s national head count will be a simple, painless process.

The “Take 10″ campaign promotes the idea that the Census form has only 10 questions and should take just 10 minutes to answer. Adding questions would require designing new forms. “It’s operationally impossible,” says Steve Jost, Census associate communications director. “The forms are printed, folded. We have bilingual forms. … We’re printing 1.5 million forms a day.”

…

Some Latino groups such as the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders are calling for immigrants to boycott the Census unless laws are changed to give those here illegally a chance to gain legal status.

“Already the public fears that the Census is too intrusive,” says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, which opposes both the amendment and the boycott.

“Asking about citizenship status “would raise more questions in the public mind about how confidential the Census is,” Vargas says.

Just file this under another failed attempt at intelligent governance by this country’s minority political party in Washington, D.C. (and God help any illegals who could be victims of hate crime, since Foxx has an awful record on that score too, as noted here).

Update 10/21/09: More from the New York Times on this here…

Peddling NEA Nonsense With The “Moonie Times”

Wow, the Washington Times must be onto something in this editorial today (titled “NEA Scandal Time Line”)…

Nov. 10, 2008: A former National Endowment for the Arts chief is named to the Obama transition team. Bill Ivey, NEA head under Bill Clinton, will handle arts and cultural issues in the transition.

Jan. 13, 2009: Arts groups lobby the Obama transition team for stimulus money. As part of a larger group, Americans for the Arts, the Literary Network and Theatre Communications Group propose to the transition team that more than $1 billion be funneled through the NEA as part of the stimulus plan. All three would later endorse the Obama administration’s health care initiative. Robert L. Lynch, head of Americans for the Arts, meets twice with transition officials.

Late January: An Obama transition official proposes linking NEA grantees to the White House. “I worked hard to try to forge a link between the arts agencies and mainstream policy in the West Wing of the White House. I know that there is serious consideration being given to placing an arts-and-culture portfolio within the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Engagement in the Domestic Policy Council. I worked hard to get that done and I think that will happen,” says former NEA chief Bill Ivey.

So…am I to understand that the head of the NEA under President Clinton, who also served as a member of the Obama transition team, lobbied for more than $1 billion of stimulus funding, and then “worked hard to try to forge a link between the arts agencies and mainstream policy in the West Wing of the White House”? And did I mention that he also worked for Bill Clinton?

OH MAW GAWD!!!! SOMEBODY CALLS THE NEW YORK TIMES IMMEDIATELY!!!

OK, OK, I’m messing around a bit here. The editorial calls it a “scandal” that, allegedly through the influence of that dastardly NEA, arts groups supported the Obama administration on health care reform.

And as far as the editorial is concerned, that’s pretty much it.

Uh huh.

Well, I think what we have here is a case of wingnut media trying to work that teabaggin’ “base” into a lather over an alleged dustup with one of the right’s favorite targets (more on that in a minute).

And besides, if the NEA is really “in cahoots” as they say with the Obama Administration, then they have a funny way of showing it; as noted here, they oppose the $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” program from Obama partly because it uses test scores for evaluating teachers and calls for an increase in the number of charter schools (kind of hard for me to work up opposition to that, as long as it’s balanced with funding for more teachers and better salaries – as far as I’m concerned, if we really paid people what they were worth in this country, teachers would make more money than anyone else).

Note: Sorry the Education Week link isn’t cooperating…

But more to the point, here is a list of “stim” grants to the NEA (including such “subversive” organizations as the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville, Inc., and the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts).

And as noted here in a March story, the NEA puts people to work and keeps them in their jobs, and as a result…

The NEA says it receives far more requests than it is able to fund. During a grant cycle ended Oct. 31, 2008, one category—Access to Artistic Excellence—received more than 1,300 applications requesting $73.5 million. Of those requests, only 886 organizations received a total of just $20.3 million in funding.

“The same will happen with the stimulus fund program,” said a representative from the NEA Office of Communications. “It is very rare that an application is funded at the full amount requested.”

In Chicago, nonprofit arts and cultural organizations generate $1.09 billion in revenue, support 30,134 jobs, and deliver over $103 million in tax revenue to local and state government, according to the Illinois Arts Alliance. In Illinois, 23,643 creative enterprises employ 132,882 people, according to Americans for the Arts.

At the same time, approximately 129,000 artists were unemployed in the United States in the fourth quarter of 2008, a jump of 50,000, or 63 percent from 2007, according to NEA research.

While the artist unemployment rate is comparable to the 8.1 percent unemployment rate for the U.S. workforce in general, the unemployment rate among artists has risen more rapidly. Artist unemployment grew by 2.4 percentage points between the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008, while unemployment rates among professional workers and the general population grew by only 1.0 and 1.9 percentage points, respectively.

But as far as the NEA being a “target,” screeching from The Heritage Foundation and other conservative outlets is typical; this 1997 post tells us, with the requisite harrumphing, of an NEA-funded project called “Ten Cents a Dance,” a three-vignette video in which “two women awkwardly discuss their mutual attraction.” It “depicts anonymous bathroom sex between two men” and includes an “ironic episode of heterosexual phone sex” (funny coming from a source sympathetic to the political party of Larry Craig).

Also, I would argue that Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich’s attack on the NEA when he was former House Speaker was one of the reasons why he was removed from power – I believe people in this country, for the most part, have enough good sense to see the merit of public funding of the NEA (and, indirectly, public television).

And finally, this Fix Noise epistle tells us the following…

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, he said.”These sorts of programs (including the NEA of course) really do need to be funded by the patrons that go to the performances — not by the federal government.”

Which begs the question, who exactly do you think “the government” is?

Update 9/17/09: David Mastio, Senior Editor for Online Opinion of The Washington Times, replied today and told me the following…

“The NEA we were writing about and the NEA in the following paragraph are not the same NEA. Not that I am one to call the kettle black, cause I have written out the name of the teacher/NEA instead of the Art/NEA and then had to go back and fix it.”

I appreciate his response, but I reread the editorial and couldn’t find any reference to the NEA as the National Education Association. If I missed the reference and anyone else finds it, feel free to let me know.

Update 9/28/09: Sure sounds like the National Endowment for the Arts to me based on this.

Sunday Video

In tribute to Larry Knechtel (playing the piano)…

Bill Maher’s “New Rules” From 8/14/09

Spot-on commentary as usual (missed some of what he said about Billy Mays in the beginning)…

A Friday Night Video

Something to help us get into the mood for (hopefully) a slammin’ weekend…

The Heart Of The Wingnut “Valance” Of Power?

(Giving health care reform a break for now…)

While progressive activists are meeting at Netroots Nation in Pittsburgh at this moment (the duties of a job and family life do not permit such an endeavor for yours truly, but oh well), Kathryn Jean Lopez at The Corner has been moderating comments concerning the movie The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance by John Ford, in addition to trying to propagate wingnut talking points and narratives that I won’t dignify here (for the uninitiated, here is a pretty good synopsis of the film from Wikipedia).

Lopez addresses women primarily in her post, but I have a thing or two to say also…

In my continuing Claremont Institute–sponsored John Ford/John Wayne movie marathon here in Newport Beach, last night I watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. After The Searchers, this is the second Ford/Wayne movie I’ve ever seen (I grew up in Chelsea, Manhattan; cut me a break!). What terrified me about it — really, about us — is that Jay Marini, who watches it with groups frequently, explaining that young women increasingly like the Jimmy Stewart character, Ransom Stoddard, whereas women used to go for the Wayne character, Tom Doniphon.

God help us.

In a tribute to the Duke earlier this summer, Nicholas Tucker summed the movie up well:

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance is a story about the death of the American West. John Wayne does more than simply play the title character; he also serves as a clear symbol of the American spirit, and his heroic sacrifice in this film is John Ford’s meditation on the paradox of American individualism.

Wayne plays Tom Doniphon, the only man tough enough to stand up to Liberty Valance, the local thug. It is the arrival of Ransom Stoddard, an idealistic lawyer, that forces Tom to shoot Liberty, and in the process he sacrifices his own happiness, his own way of life, and the woman he loves.

The core of Wayne’s appeal is not his swagger or his charm, but his willingness to act and accept the consequences, even when it means the end of his own way of life. Although we see his character dead, largely forgotten, it is Stoddard’s wife who puts the cactus blossoms on his coffin, an unspoken confession of her own love for him. She speaks for us all. We may be married to the security and safety of Stoddard’s government, but John Ford reminds us that it is the cactus roses of Tom Doniphon that grow in the heart of every American.

(Lopez again) Corner ladies, tell me all hope is not lost.

I’m sure it will not surprise you in the least that I related more to the Stoddard character in the movie, who represents idealism and sacrifice (I believe) more than the Tom Doniphon character (though he undoubtedly does also – and I think it speaks volumes to wingnut insecurity generally that the fact that the sympathies of many women resting with the James Stewart character is a problem for Lopez; he is pictured above with Vera Miles).

After all, it is the Stoddard character who is continually beaten up and abused by Liberty Valance (played by Lee Marvin, one of many iconic performances in the film), though he perseveres, even building a school house to teach the town’s children (and Hallie, played by Miles, who was Doniphon’s girlfriend until Stewart showed up). As it turns out, it is her pleading that ends up motivating Doniphon to defend Stoddard in the gun fight (Doniphon, of course, is the one who kills Valance, though Stoddard is alleged to be the hero, and that’s how the legend emerges).

But as usual, in the “all or nothing” world view of most conservatives I’ve encountered in my life, it is Doniphon who is strong and Stoddard who is weak, and there is no gray area. Although, had Doniphon not interceded on Stoddard’s behalf and Stoddard had been killed by Valance, another “tenderfoot,” as Doniphon called Stoddard, surely would have come along and ultimately ended up winning over the town and advancing his political fortunes (with Doniphon acting a bit like Bogie in Casablanca by sacrificing for the girl he loves on behalf of a “greater good”…in real life, though, the politics of John Wayne and lefty Humphrey Bogart could not have been less alike).

I just wanted to chime in here and say some words in defense of the Stewart/Stoddard character in the movie, as long as Lopez had apparently taken such an affront to the sympathies of her “sisters” now residing with the emoting eschewer of violence as opposed to the strong, sturdy “man of action” (though in real life, Stewart was a hero of World War II and Wayne did not see combat, a fact for which Wayne was apparently persecuted to no end by Ford).

So that’s my movie critique for the day (and given Lopez’s attitude about Stewart in Valance, I can only imagine what she thought of him in Vertigo).