Obama can sit there and let all the tax [cuts] lapse, and then the Republicans will have enough votes in the Senate in 2014 to impeach.
He spends a lot of time in this interview lying, claiming that things that the Republicans caused are Obama's fault (such as the "not working together" whine), but the boldness of this is breath-taking. But I'm glad he said it, because a lot of Beltway media is happy to convince themselves that the 1998 impeachment was an anomaly that was unique to the Clinton White House. Instead, I'd say that we're better off assuming that Republicans feel that it's always an option they're eager to take when an "illegitimate", i.e. Democratic, President is in the White House. That his race and family background causes conservatives to panic only makes the whole situation worse.
Republicans simply believe the White House belongs to them, and one party should hold it in perpetuity. Unfortunately, this idea that a Democrat holding that office is somehow an interloper has subtly seeped into the unconscious of people who would probably even voted for Obama. I've noticed a maddening habit in the mainstream media of claiming that Republicans are seeking to "reclaim" the White House, as if it was theirs to begin with. I haven't heard that verb used with relation to Democrats, who tend to merely "win" that election. Perhaps I'm paranoid, but I do listen carefully for these things. Subtle things like that end up reinforcing conservatives' belief that they're the only "real" Americans, and that therefore the White House is their property.
What's funny, of course, is that they just get more shrill about how they're the only "real" Americans when the people who have the markers of the tribe---white, Christian suburbanites who adhere to more traditional gender roles---are dwindling in numbers compared to the rest of us. Unfortunately, we need to realize that their panic over this is only going to make them more determined to impeach Obama the first chance they get on the thinnest of made-up charges. It's not like Republicans in Congress have anything better to do with their time. All they ever do is try to get more tax cuts for the wealthy and push anti-choice legislation. That's not really a full time job, giving congressional Republicans lots of time to concoct ways to impeach the President.
Most mornings, except weekends, at Casa del Marcotte, we get up in the morning. The first thing on our minds is work. I make coffee and get right to it on my computer, since I work at home. My dude gets dressed, walks to the subway, and takes the train to his office. Often we both work late---really often. Like most Americans, our lives are basically consumed by work. Unlike a lot of Americans, we're lucky because we have fulfilling jobs, for sure, but they are still work. Like most Americans, 100% of our income is from work, except maybe like the occasional birthday or Christmas card from relatives with a check instead of a present in it. Americans work more hours than our counterparts in Western Europe and have fewer vacations. (Being a freelancer, I haven't really taken a vacation-vacation where I completely unplug, I think, ever, actually. But being unable to unplug is increasingly a part of even salaried and hourly employees' lives.) Because most non-retired Americans are dependent on work for 100% of their income, losing a job is devastating, often worse that a divorce. Because most of us derive 100% of our income from working, taxes are a legitimate burden, though one most of us---except a few extremist wingnuts---believe is part of the responsibilities of being an American.
Contrast that with what we've learned about Mitt Romney from his tax returns: 1) He pays a low rate in taxes, lower than many of us who derive our income from working 2) His work income is pocket change compared to the money he makes sitting on his ass paying other people to make money for him and 3) He makes more in a day doing nothing than your average American makes in a year of life being consumed by work.
The critical words here are DOING NOTHING. Romney jokes that he's "unemployed", when in fact the proper term is the "idle rich". He was employed at one point, sure, but it's laughable to say that his wealth is the result of "hard work", as every wingnut apologist mindlessly says. Most Americans don't have the option of making more money sitting on their ass than working. Retirement is usually associated with terms like "fixed income", not "exploding amounts of wealth". But the claim from Republicans is that by taxing money you make by not working, you're somehow discouraging productivity, so we need to lower taxes on money made from not working, and shift the burden to those who actually work for their money. I hope it's clear what a giant pile of bullshit that is. If we actually want to adjust taxes to encourage productivity and discourage idleness, we need to jack the rates up on people like Mitt Romney and possibly even lower them on those of us whose lives are occupied by work from the time we get up in the morning to, if we're lucky, sometime after dinner. (And many of us work harder than that.) You know, those of us who contribute something.
Romney has said he was unemployed. He's right. He actually does nothing to earn most of his income. He's just in possession of a giant pile of cash. He pays some people to do stuff with that giant pile of cash so it earns a rate of return. And because we are ruled by horrible people who think the lives of the 1% are more important than everyone else, the tax rate on any money that pile of cash earns is much lower than it is on the money earned by people who actually work.
He snipes that those of us who work and want those---like him---who don't because they can just live like kings off investments to pay more taxes.....well, we're consumed with "envy". Perhaps. Or perhaps it's just that we actually believe, unlike Republicans who just pay lip service, to the concept of work, and we want the people who actually do it to get their fair share of the pie, instead of feeding it all to those who just feed off the money others actually make.
I expected, going in to the Republicans having a debate on MLK day in the first state to secede and fire shots in the Civil War, that there would probably be a few jaw-dropping dog whistles blown to race-bait a crowd that's got a lot of people still bitter about a federal holiday honoring the civil rights movement. Seems to me that the whole point of the scheduling by Fox News was to stoke racial hostilities and keep Republican enthusiasm for kicking the black President out of office high, especially since Romney's presence is hurting Republican enthusiasm in the polls. So I was a bit surprised that Juan Williams broke the rules that require race to be discussed through dog whistles and insinuations, and tried to get it all out on the table. I mean, his personal motivations for that are obvious---the whole scheduling thing plus the candidates' increasingly racist rhetoric is just plain offensive, and the urge to call bullshit must have been high---but considering how much Fox pays him, I was still mildly surprised that he decided to use the debate to actually provoke the candidates into being more blunt. Of course, the flip side of that is that he had to have known that if he did provoke one of them into saying something super racist, his picture would be on the front page of every newspaper today.
Turns out that worked out better than even the most ambitious debate moderator could have hoped, because the crowd's naked hatred of Williams for daring to bring up race, instead of letting conservative candidates talk about it in euphemism, guaranteed he'd be the talk of political media today. Most of the coverage I've seen is of Gingrich taking the opportunity to really pull the string and let the asshole out in full force.
Of course, Williams dropped the ball, because there's a number of ways to challenge Gingrich's lie about the President "putting" people on food stamps. You can ask, for instance, if he's saying that the better solution is for poor people to starve. You could ask how people are going to make it to that job training he's so up about if they're going hungry. You could ask him if he sincerely believes that we have 9% unemployment because people prefer to get $150 a month in food stamps rather than have a job, and if so, why did the number of people that he believes "choose" not to work has doubled in the past four years. You could ask him when he's getting a job, instead of living off direct mail donations. There's many fun ways to go about this.
That said, I honestly don't blame him for dropping the ball. It's got be unnerving being dressed down by a soulless monster while booed by a blood-hungry crowd of Southerners who are still pissed about the 60s and are looking for torches to light. And honestly, I don't care about why or how Williams went about this. I'm just glad he tried. The Republicans have really come to believe that they are entitled to race-bait without anyone calling them out on it, or even asking them an honest question about it, and they simply aren't. Someone needs to call bullshit on that.
In a report last week, NBC revealed that Romney’s great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, had fled to Mexico with other Mormons to escape persecution for polygamy. Romney’s father, George, was later born in the northern Mexico colony of Colonia Dublan.
When this was brought up, the audience booed simply at the mention of being born in Mexico. It was a naked moment of irrational hatred. What, do they think that the soil itself taints you? Would they refuse to travel there for fear of getting cooties? I'm rarely surprised at the ugliness that percolates below the surface in much of conservative politics, but even I was taken aback by how the mere mention of Mexico and being born there set them off. Interestingly, the Romney family and mine have this in common---my grandfather's parents were British citizens but my grandfather was born in Mexico and then moved to the U.S. as a child---and my grandfather is all about this Tea Party stuff. Wonder if they'd boo him, too.
Romney's stock answer---that he supports immigrants who can claw through the mountains of paperwork and obstacles put in their way to move here legally---tends to satisfy a lot of people, but his family's story should really show why it's not good enough. It's not just that, but for Native Americans, we're all descended from immigrants. It's that most of them got here in ways that would now get them labeled "illegal". Moving back and forth between the U.S. and Mexico was actually really common back when the Romney's were doing it, mainly because you could do it without getting tied up in mountains of red tape that is now there because our government has decided to make it nearly impossible to legally immigrate here. And that doesn't even touch the problem of people who, like the Romneys when they were living in Mexico, are probably not looking to lay down permanent roots. Looking at the past with clear eyes makes it obvious that the purported dangers of having more permeable borders are just so much nonsense, and that increasing restrictions on immigration is pretty much always tied to racist hostility, which is why we've had laws aimed, at different points in time, at keeping out Germans and Irish, Italians and Eastern Europeans, then Asians, and now Mexicans and South Americans.
Video chosen, because like Ron Paul, I hope we can all day be Austrians.
Even though he took back his endorsement of Ron Paul, I think it's safe to say that Andrew Sullivan is still deeply in love with George Wallance-cum-Dale Gribble. After all, the general tone of his retraction was, "Wah, I'm right that the man is like Mr. Totally Not A Racist, just like my 'Bell Curve'-loving self, but pouty pout the readers are making me." Seriously, he said things like, "It seems to me that even though I don't believe these old screeds reflect Paul's own beliefs....", despite the heavy of the first person in those screeds. It's clear Sullivan would be denying that Paul wrote them himself if someone dug up a picture of Paul writing them. But he continues to blog about the awesomeness that is the resident black helicopter crank in the race, and so I thought it would be a fun time to grab one of the more fun "NUH-UH RON PAUL IS TOTALLY NOT A RACIST" quotes, by way of this link from LGM.
Chuck Todd notes that Ron Paul voted for the MLK national holiday. Gingrich voted against. I find the notion that Ron Paul is a racist to be preposterous.
Ta-Nehisi Coates pushes back, pointing out that Paul explained his reasons for disliking the King holiday in his newsletter, and guess what! It's not because he's Mr. Peace, Love and Understanding. Here is Paul, in his own words, on the MLK holiday:
Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.
Cue the chorus of people claiming that we can't actually believe that someone using the first person and signing his name to a document could have possibly written it. Next you'll be saying Duncan Black is Atrios. Can we be sure that it's Andrew Sullivan writing the preposterous claim that it's preposterous to believe Ron Paul wrote some stuff that he said he wrote? Why not suggest no one ever be treated like the author of that which they authored, since fundamentally, we can never know for sure.
It's worth pointing out at this point that supporting Ron Paul, even just a little, appears to infect the supporter with Crank's Disease, where they're making conspiratorial claims that we can't assume that someone writing, "I, _____, am totally writing this," actually wrote it. The longer you chew on that belief, the more likely you are to find yourself, a year from now, wearing camo and shooting up beer cans while complaining about a one world currency, which is of course, a totally different thing than your desire that the entire world trade in gold.
I digress, however. (See, it's infecting me!) My point in writing this blog post is to point out that Sullivan, in his desperation, appears to have used Newt Gingrich as his standard-bearer for not-racism. He did this two days ago, in fact, which puts this comment after the blogosphere erupted with this comment made by Newt Gingrich:
And so I’m prepared if the NAACP invites me, I’ll go to their convention and talk about why the African American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.
Rick Santorum has been having fun implying both that all black people are on food stamps, and that all food stamp recipients are black, as well. In fact, the single largest racial group in the SNAP program is.....wait for it......white people.
According to 2010 census numbers, about 26 percent of food stamp recipients are African-American, while 49 percent are white and 20 percent are Hispanic.
I also want to digress a moment and denounce the very notion that there's something shameful about using SNAP. There's something shameful in the fact that our society has so many people living in poverty that we need to offer so much food assistance, but there's no shame in taking it. In fact, food stamps are the best form of economic stimulus our government is currently engaging in, generating $1.73 worth of stimulus for every dollar spent. The worst problem with food stamps is that the shame and hassle of applying discourages many eligible people---imagine the boost the economy would get if everyone eligible was using food stamps. Just sayin'.
Digression over. The point is that I think it's perfectly sensible and evidence-based to say that Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich both rejected the MLK holiday out of racial prejudice, which both men have routinely displayed and which has helped both men in gathering large numbers of supporters. Any other conclusion is basically throwing red herrings and trying to confuse the situation. The racial resentment boat is a big one, and there's lots of room on board, especially for those catering favor with the Republican base.
It is possible that Sullivan was merely complaining that Gingrich isn't getting the same attention for his no vote on the MLK holiday. To which I say, well, he probably should, but the "he's guilty, too!" thing is no defense, especially if your man is polling much better than the equally guilty.
First, I (@pandagon) and Amanda (@amandamarcotte) will be offering up commentary on the Iowa Caucuses on Twitter tonight. Follow us for fun and hilarity and idle ruminations on how awesome it would be if a giggly-drunk Rick Perry showed up at Romney's victory party and offered to weed his garden, if you know what I mean.
Second, a bit on what to expect tonight:
People you've never seen before, but whom news networks will assure you are Iowa political experts, will very solemnly lead you through the complex political topography of Iowa, such that by the end of the night you'll be having debates over what the returns from Cedar Rapids signify.
You should decide what you want the post-Iowa narrative to be by late afternoon today. Say it loudly, and you can be Chris Matthews. Say it in an even-keeled voice and then ask David Brooks if that's right, and you can be David Gregory. Roll around on the ground in a blonde wig and spit up your oatmeal, and you can be Victoria Jackson.
Your Ron Paul-supporting friends on Facebook will say something insufferable, no matter what happens.
After nearly a year of candidates running for President of Fox News, yo-yoing up and down the polls at dizzying rates and barely showing any recognition that running for president is a thing that requires more forethought than a glorified professional wrestling promo, the top four campaigns coming out of Iowa will be the best-organized: Romney, Paul, Santorum and Perry.
Look out for lots of old people and lots of young white dudes saying things that only young white dudes say.
Casseroles out the ass. If we ever go back to the Articles of Confederation, the coin of the Republic of Iowa will be casserole.
Irin Carmon at Salon* has an interview up with Merle Hoffman, abortion service pioneer and author of a new and quite interesting memoir Intimate Wars: The Life and Times of the Woman Who Brought Abortion from the Back Alley to the Board Room. This is the sort of article that many a political geek will glaze over, thinking it has nothing whatsoever to do with the horse race that's going on today in Iowa. (Which is wrong in and of itself, as I argue at RH Reality Check.) But once again, I have to point out that dealing directly with anti-choice fanatics is the best lesson imaginable in understanding how the right wing mind works, since their image of themselves as righteous holy warriors causes the filters to come off. Right off the bat in this article, Merle recounts a story to Irin that sums up beautifully the forces that are at play in the Iowa caucus right now.
Recently, Merle Hoffman gave a copy of her forthcoming memoir, “Intimate Wars,” to Sister Dorothy, a regular protester stationed outside Choices, the Queens, N.Y., abortion clinic that Hoffman founded.
“You know, it’s so honest,” Sister Dorothy told Hoffman after reading it, “but sometimes Satan cloaks himself in truth.”
"Satan cloaks himself in the truth." I can't think of a better summation of right wing attitudes about basically everything. No matter if truth conflicts with their ideology, because Satan is behind that truth. If you see how the candidates are campaigning, you'll see that "Satan cloaks himself in truth" is basically their mantra. Everyone is clawing past each other to see who can demonstrate their fealty to right wing myth over truth.
In fact, the more outrageous your myth-making, the better. One reason that Romney bores the right and causes them to dislike him so strongly is that he's not very good at spinning fantastical bullshit. Like I note at RH Reality Check, it's hard to imagine Romney busting out a whopper about doctors throwing a live baby in a bucket and leaving it there to die. Romney is mealy-mouthed about global warming, claiming (falsely) that we don't know what causes it,** which conservatives feel is a bare minimum requirement. But it's not exciting, like suggesting that there's an international conspiracy to invent global warming that scientists perpetuate because they're all secretly communists.
You know how it is when someone is telling a really juicy urban legend---perhaps that P&G is in league with Satan?---and you correct the record, telling them that didn't happen? You know how, as often as not, they respond with resentment that you're a dreamkiller, what with your facts and truths? Well, being a right winger is basically like spending all your time telling urban legends, putting anyone you suspect knows the truth into a bucket of people you dislike for ruining all the fun. The fear that Romney is only pretending to play along is driving a lot of resentment against him. He plays the record backwards, claims he hears Freddie Mercury say, "It's fun to smoke marijuana"***, but you suspect that he doesn't really care, and he's probably not going to burn his Queen records when he goes home, no matter what he says.
*Irin has been kicking ass at her new gig at Salon. I interviewed her for the last podcast of 2011 about the year in reproductive rights, which you can listen to here. There's also some mockery of the sexting panic.
**Not knowing something with 100% certainty isn't a qualification for knowing something, or else people would be unable to function. We know better that emissions are causing global warming than say, that you know your spouse is faithful or that your children love you.
***The link is totally worth it. You'll be writing love letters to that link if you click it.
The white Chevy station wagon with the wood paneling was overstuffed with suitcases, supplies, and sons when Mitt Romney climbed behind the wheel to begin the annual 12-hour family trek from Boston to Ontario......
Before beginning the drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.
The ride was largely what you'd expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the ''white whale.''
I want to pause to note the various details that make it clear that this car was a large station wagon, and not a compact car that might make packing a large dog in it truly impossible.
As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.
It's always tough to know how to take these stories. On one hand, they feed the cult of personality built up around politics that has become rather toxic in the past few decades. On the other hand, behavior like this can also be a remarkable, easy-to-understand symbol for a candidate's larger worldview and approach to the world. True, there's a number of examples of people who were great liberals, policy-wise, but absolute monsters in private. It doesn't always follow that someone who is an unempathetic asshole will automatically be a bad leader. But as a symbol of the conservative worldview, strapping a dog to a car roof for 12 hours, and then simply hosing him down when he shits himself, but then pointing to a "windshield" as evidence that you're not a total monster? If it were a novel, you'd be indicating that the character was an irredeemable monster, with no self-awareness to boot. In real life, it works well to encapsulate the way the strict hierarchies of conservatism play out. When talking to voters, making it clear that Romney is the kind of guy who thinks dogs should be strapped to cars and then basically ignored until it's time to take them out and play with them again could help boil a complex message down to a simple one.
Look, I have a pet who shits herself in terror at basically nothing. Whenever she goes into her (soft, comforting, towel-lined) cat carrier, there's about a 50% chance that she's going to shit herself in terror. She's just a scaredy cat. I think it's kind of funny from a distance, but when you're actually in the thick of it, it's actually not that funny. You feel sorry for her. You try to prevent it by calming her down beforehand and trying to get her to go before the trip to the vet. You stuff the carrier with towels so if it does happen, you can pull one out and throw it away. If it does happen, you clean her up while petting her to calm her. You certainly don't turn the hose on her and then go along your merry way. Or, that's what I do, because I'm a liberal, and I emphasize with this cat's suffering. I don't see her as merely an object that I have to keep up so I can play with her, but who can be shoved aside when it's inconvenient for me.
"Uh...," Romney said, clearly caught off guard by the question. "Love my dog."
"That’s all I’ve got for ya."
Asked about the idea that his treatment of the animal had been cruel, Romney replied, "Oh please. I’ve had a lot of dogs and love them and care for them very deeply."
With that, an aide abruptly ended the interview.
This story resonates because it neatly captures the cruelty at the heart of the paternalistic conservative worldview. Now some conservatives are just openly hateful, thus the whooping and hollering from the crowd at the idea of just letting uninsured people die at a Republican debate. But then there's the "compassionate conservatism" mentality, where arguments about depriving people of legal protections, rights, and a social safety net are framed as somehow loving and compassionate. You see it everywhere, from arguments that taking away the social safety net toughnes people up, or taking their Medicare somehow gives them "choice", or that taking abortion rights is somehow good for women because it keeps them from "regretting" an abortion. (As though regretting a child isn't much worse!) All this strongly resembles Romney arguing that he "loves" his dog. It's about viewing others as objects to be manipulated and used for your ends, not as people (or dogs) in their own right. In Romney's mind, what's good for him---to have a 12 hour drive without a slobbering dog in the car---is just good for the dog, and evidence that it's not is dismissed out of hand with a few noises about how he doesn't intend to hurt anyone. You see the same thing in play, in an even uglier way, with Ron Paul's defenders trying the "he's not racist in his heart; he just signed off and probably wrote a bunch of unbelievably racist rants" number. It's this imperious demand that we take them at their word when they say they care about and love others, and ignore their actions.
I'm not trying to equate dogs and people here. Obviously, there are huge differences. But this story about Romney resonates because his treatment of his dog perfectly encapsulates how he's likely to treat the people he wishes to govern. He'll swear up and down that he loves this country and loves Americans, but if it's in his best interest---and the interest of his rich friends---he'll strap us to a car roof and when we shit ourselves in terror, he'll hose us off and leave us wet and shivering as he takes us back into the unforgiving winds.
Right on schedule, Rick Santorum is getting a push in Iowa amongst people who probably don't know how to use the googles anyway. He's polling at 10%, but as Steve at Salon explains, a bunch of evangelical leaders have endorsed him, which might put him over the top in Iowa. It's important to remember that while Iowa wingnuts are wingnutty in all the usual ways, they prioritize "bitches ain't shit" way more than the Republican voters do in other states, and so Santorum's puppy dog-like excitement for portraying women as life support systems for uteruses and nothing more will probalby help him in Iowa. It's the main reason that Huckabee---who was less noisy in his opposition to contraception than Santorum, but who still was perceived as the most gleefully misogynist Republican contender last time around---won the caucus. Perhaps next cycle, we'll see a candidate who has supported legislation to paint scarlet letters on sexually active women's clothes pull ahead in Iowa.
I just don't see why there's so much fuss over Iowa. Yes, it's the first game of the season, as it were, and sports fans are always eager to get this shit going already, but whoever wins Iowa doesn't really matter, does it? Huckabee won last time, and then went nowhere. Iowa is just a many month battle for Republicans to compete for the title of Who Hates Women the Most. Honestly, I'm surprised it's not Bachmann's turn again, since she adds an extra-special layer of bile to the misogyny Olympics in a sea of guys whose sexism is rooted in a bit of cluelessness. Skepticism that women really need protection against cervical cancer is just special when it's coming from a woman who has had to endure the banal indignities of gynecological care and knows what a nightmare even having pre-cancerous cells could be. The rest of them have a solid dose of "don't know/don't care". If you're really mired, as the Iowa Republicans are, in the notion that any use of the vagina for anything other than pushing out babies is seriously wrong and needs to be punished severely, you'd think that Bachmann's willingness to go there, even though she has a much better idea of how serious that could be, would do it for you. But maybe anxieties about voting for a woman are drowning that out.
Point is, a little ritualistic fealty to the gods of fucking over the ladies, while disgusting, doesn't seem to have that much of an impact on who eventually gets the nomination. I'm a little inclined to wonder why we all care so much about the Iowa polls. Romney's going to have it in the bag after South Carolina, I'm sure.
I'm just going to say Tim Pawlenty should have hung in. He would have cleaned up in Iowa, and maybe that would have meant something for once going on to the primaries that matter.
Every year in June in Austin, a sea of bikers converges on the city for the weekend, parking their expensive Harleys and chopped-up cruising motorcycles 5 deep on each side of 6th St. They prance around wearing leather jackets, bandanas, and various combinations of the U.S. flag and the Confederate flag. There's beer-drinking and loud noises and bikinis. It's called the Republic of Texas Rally, and it's both amusing and annoying, all at once. And, when Monday comes around, all those tough-looking bikers return to their suburban homes, put on their khaki pants and return to their jobs as accountants and dentists. After all, it costs a lot of money to buy just a basic Harley off the lot, much less one of the chopped bikes that draws so much attention at the ROT Rally. My sister called them "rubbers", for Rich Urban Bikers, but while that has a nice ring to it, they're really Rich Suburban Bikers. Good luck finding a pleasant acronym for that. There's a reason there's yawningly huge Harley dealerships in the suburban areas of Texas.
These rubbers are, as you can imagine, largely Republican. They are definitely the sort of people who find the Tea Party compelling; I'm guessing that many motorcycles since I've moved have been updated with "Don't Tread on Me" logos, as well as more Confederate flags, as a talisman to keep the reality that we elected a black President from penetrating their consciousness. (Don't worry; the realization sneaks up on them in their sleep, and they wake up screaming.)
I bring this up, because the entirely predictable thing is happening in the primary polls: Newt Gingrich is losing his allure. I realize it was SOP in pundit circles to think he ever had a chance against Romney, because it is true that your average Republican voter likes him way more than they like Romney. After all, they believe he pisses off the liberals, since that's what they remember happening last time they tuned in to what liberals were actually thinking in 1995. Pissing off the liberals is the fundamental urge of the wingnut, after all. It's a primal urge that fills in the holes where your sex drive used to be. But just as even the horniest person knows that they have to keep their pants on in public, wingnuts know that there's a time and a place for supporting exciting so-called leaders who seamlessly blend the concepts of "nutty" and "asshole". And that time and place is not the Republican primary.
(Anti-choice nuts are excluded from this, of course. They are like subway masturbators. They know they're inappropriate, and that's what gets them off.)
That's what Newt Gingrich was. And Herman Cain before him. And Michele Bachmann before them: the ROT Rally. It was taking a weekend and fantasizing about What If, before returning to your normal life selling mutual funds. Rick Perry was a little like imagining what'll be like when you retire and can finally live the biker lifestyle on the road, before you realize that actually, now that your bones are starting to ache a little, it's probably not wise to sell the house just yet. These candidates were all the fantasy of rebellion against some imagined liberal power monopoly, a temporary finger thrown in the face of the people who thought it was A-OK to vote for someone with a weird name like "Barack Obama". But Monday comes around, and you need those people as customers/voters, and out goes the eagle-emblazoned leather jacket and your wife in a halter top, and on with the tie and a nice family picture on your desk of everyone in Christmas sweaters. Mitt Romney is a tie and a picture of you in your Christmas sweater. Not as fun, but gets the job done.
All of which is to say that I have nothing against motorcycles, per se. I find them a lot of fun. Just so long as you're not riding with someone with an American flag bandana and "questions" about Obama's birth certificate.
If you want to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2016 (and I know you do), then here are some handy tips for rocketing to the top of the polls for two weeks:
1) When you're polling poorly, it's because the mainstream media is shutting you out.
2) When you're polling well, it's because you managed to get around the mainstream media's filters.
3) When you make a mistake, it's a setup from the mainstream media.
4) When someone else makes a mistake, it's not being covered because of the mainstream media.
In the 2012 race, we've seen this pattern over and over again. But Ann Coulter, who appears to be receiving regular deliveries of the chilled souls of the innocent from the Romney campaign in exchange for support that manages to be both tepid and vitriolic at the same time, is running a new version of this scam. It's like Ocean's Eleven, except the other ten people can't stand to actually be around Ocean, so they just politely retweet the article and move on.
The mainstream media keep pushing alternatives to Mitt Romney not only because they are terrified of running against him, but also because they want to keep Republicans fighting, allowing Democrats to get a four-month jump on us.
I'm pretty sure that everyone else in the Republican field would be surprised that they're being pushed by the mainstream media. Rick Perry, for instance, would gladly tell you why that's wrong, once he rouses from his slumber. Herman Cain will tell you why you're wrong after he pushes a paper clip around on a table for two seconds and repeats your assertion excruciatingly slowly. Michele Bachmann will just assume you've gotten a Gardasil injection. Newt Gingrich...well, Newt Gingrich knows he's smarter than Ann Coulter, the mainstream media, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, Leonardo DaVinci, the Almighty, and Tom Brady, and will gladly tell you why so long as you're a female reporter.
The only consistent quality that's marked the GOP race this year is the search for the biggest victim of the mainstream media. Donald Trump was savaged by the media for his simple insistence that Obama show his already-released birth certificate. Sarah Palin is, of course, Sarah Palin. Bachmann was a nice Christian lady besieged because she was the walking version of an e-mail forward you get from your uncle that was cribbed straight from the blockquote beneath a "False" on Snopes. Perry was just like George W. Bush, and we know how they hated him. Cain was a black conservative - black, people! - and that made him perhaps the greatest victim the party could provide.
And now, we reach Mitt, the bland, telegenic frontrunner that everyone in the media has assumed will be the nominee since the moment he awkwardly called himself unemployed. He's a victim of the mainstream media in a manner even more insidious than all the other made-up ways the other candidates were: the very fact that this field of losers is competitive with him is prima facie evidence of bias against him!
That mainstream media, what a pack of wily and utterly, nonsensically contradictory scamps.
The relatively good election results on Tuesday are mainly due to the hard work of organizing and educating of liberals supporting everything from labor to reproductive rights. But it's also true that Republicans are kicking ass in the art of burning out all your political capital by being complete and total assholes. At this point, if House Republicans put together a resolution to celebrate Kick A Puppy Day, no one would really be surprised. Republicans have completely forgotten that the meanness that turns on their base repulses everyone else.
The most recent example is this whole situation in Michigan with an anti-bullying bill, which state senate Republicans amended at the last minute to create a "religious exemption". In other words, it's okay to harass and bully if you claim you're doing it in the name of that notorious gay-basher, Jesus Christ. (You didn't know that Jesus spent his adolescence pantsing kids for being queer? It says so right in the Bible, right between that teaching at the Temple story and the time Jesus started the first Christian rock band, whose name was shamelessly stolen in the 60s by The Zombies.) This, of course, was intended to make the bill toothless, especially with regards to sexualized and homophobic bullying, which are often the worst kinds that involve the least amount of recourse for victims. If anything, it turns the bill into an endorsement for gay-bashing and sexually harassing girls deemed "sluts". Democrats are now saying they're going to be able to take the exemption out of the bill, which I believe because it's either that or it dies.
But let's step back and think about what this basically comes down to: Republicans are willing, nay eager, to stand up for bullying. They went out of their way to legalize it. They love bullying so much they turned a bill intended to ban it into a bill that gave the gold stamp of approval to harassing kids, as long as you can pull a pious face and claim you're worried about them going to hell for being queers and weirdos. If you're like me, this story probablly made you think of the kids who roamed the halls, getting their jollies by making life a living hell for kids who didn't live up to their arbitrary standards, and come to the realization that most of those asswipes probably grew up to be Republicans. This whole situation is also blowing the doors off the claim that bullies have parents who are blissfully unaware of what evil asswipes their kids are. Seems that some adults eagerly support high school bullies, and that's where the support for rewriting this bill came from.
It's an intensely clarifying moment. We're so used to right wingers trotting out the piety act, claiming that they don't want to hurt anyone, just that their deep religious convictions cause them to have to bash women's reproductive rights and gay rights, amongst other things. But it turns out that they're just bullies. Well, I say that like I'm surprised, but obviously I'm not, since rarely does a day go by these days that I don't have some bullying tweets aimed at me from wingnuts who've been trained to see any woman who is opinionated and unashamed of her sexuality as a target. But I think a lot of people have yet to grasp how much the Christian blather is just a fig leaf for some ugly attitudes. You take this personhood amendment thing---for the people who came up with the idea and got it on the ballot, the idea that it would turn women of reproductive age into a criminal class under constant suspicion was a feature, not a bug.
But since the 2010 election, the mask has really come off. The reasons why are complicated, but this bullying situation is a crystal clear example. They're losing their ability to deflect attention for the sadism.
In case you didn't just get to watch Herman Cain destroy any chance he ever had at becoming President or being in a room alone with a white woman again, a brief summary:
"The Democrat Machine of America is throwing these terrible allegations at me, although I cannot say who did it, precisely. As you heard from the lawyer who introduced me, because that's always a good sign, real victims of sexual harassment and assault do everything differently, even the stuff they did that's the opposite of the other stuff they did. Now, stop talking about Herman Cain sexually harassing people, because of the grandkids."
All I have to say is that if Herman Cain is getting high-tech lynched, I'm pretty sure everyone in history who's been low-tech lynched would gladly trade places with his black ass.
This primary season has really been remarkable, in terms of exposing the fantasies and motivations of the right, especially with regards to the strange enthusiasm for Herman Cain, even though he's probably not really running at all.
Even though a thorough examination leads to the conclusion that Cain is running a faux campaign for reasons that we can only speculate about, he's wildly popular with the base now, because reactionaries frequently have ill-developed senses of humor plus an all-consuming rage at liberals that obliterates common sense, and thus can be easily pulled in to agreeing with Poes. As many people predicted, the sexual harassment charges aren't hurting him. Interestingly, the fact that there's so much evidence that something happened---I continue to arch my eyebrows at the notion that "innocent until proven guilty" is a factor in a situation where there's already a settlement (next we'll be asked to assume innocence after a guilty verdict---hey, you didn't prove-prove it!)---seems to actualy be making this better for Cain. Since denying that it happened is basically off the table for conservatives, denying that it matters is their only real gambit. They're far more comfortable scolding women to endure sexual harassment and abuse with a smile than quibbling over the facts, since doing the latter requires reluctantly conceding that men shouldn't grope and leer at their colleagues. Calling women who complain about sexual harassment hysterical bitches is emotionally easier for them, since that's what they meant to say all along.
Still, I think there's a counter-explanation for why GOP base voters could be rallying around Cain in light of these revelations beyond a simple disbelief that he said or did anything. After all, Cain hasn't really been so great at outright denials, and, of course, there's the problem of the National Restaurant Association settling with the women involved. My alternative explanation is that many conservatives have still not come around to agreeing that there's anything wrong with men saying lewd and harassing things to women they work with.
Remember, we don’t know what happened, beyond the fact that several employees came forward with complaints and received cash settlements. That’s not a lot of information. Cain defenders could have stopped there. Instead, great swaths of them have opted to assert that there could never be a valid sex discrimination claim because the whole thing is just a racket. And they went even further: The same folks criticizing the National Restaurant Association employees who came forward with claims that they were uncomfortable in their workplace are willing to deploy the most archaic and gender-freighted stereotypes to get there. Sexual harassment can’t be “real” because the women who claim it are money-grubbing, hysterical, attention-seeking tramps.
This one took a while to come out. It’s a hard conversation to start. Conservatives don’t like to admit it. But hell, time to say it: They just don’t think that the stuff Cain was accused of was all that bad.
This week on Reality Cast, I interview Corey Robin, the author of The Reactionary Mind. His argument is fairly straightforward: reactionaries, who we call "conservatives", are people who angrily reject any attempt to make society more fair and equal. They cherish strict hierarchies. I recommend listening to the whole interview (and buying his book!), because he has a fascinating take on why liberals who distinguish between women's issues and labor issues are missing the point---for conservatives, it's all one and the same, because bosses and men both are seeing their supposed right to exert control over labor and and women threatened. With sexual harassment, you really see the two issues intertwined. At the end of the day, sexual harassment doesn't really make sense to conservatives. The point of having women, especially women down the food chain from you, at your job is so you can get your jollies with petty power plays, and if they knew their place better, they would take it with a smile. In the reactionary mind, sexual harassment isn't the problem, it's uppitiness. That Cain isn't going to be able to slip away from this situation with heavy denials is probably a relief to many; time to drop the pretense of giving a shit about sexual harassment in lieu of demanding a return to a workplace where you could pants your female coworkers and they couldn't do anything about it.
So, after a day of floundering, Herman Cain has decided to respond to the revelations about sexual harassment complaints in the past with the "hysterical bitches" card. When outright denial isn't possible and claiming that she consented and regretted is implausible, the "you know women, always overreacting to every little thing, amirite, guys?" card is coming out. It comes with an attempt to downplay what happened, usually speaking. Anyone who reads MRA stuff regularly has seen this in action, though it's often more of the "it was just a scratch, I don't know what she was complaining about" variety. (This excuse came into play in the suicide letter of the MRA who set himself on fire at a courthouse. He minimized the fact that he punched his 4-year-old daughter in the face hard enough to bust her lip, and portrayed his ex-wife as a hysteric for taking that incident seriously and divorcing him.) This is Cain's version:
"And then I did recall one mention in the formal complaint that my general counsel shared, and that was, one day I was gesturing standing near this lady that she was as tall as my wife," he said, gesturing to his own chin. "Five feet tall. Because my wife comes up to my chin, and I was gesturing to this lady, standing next to her, almost shoulder to shoulder, saying you're about the same height as my wife. That was mentioned in the allegation, to my surprise. And so that was the only thing I could recollect that was mentioned as one of the possible things."
It's possible, of course, that's all he said to her. If so, that would be really strange. Most of the time, a one-off comment about someone's height isn't so elaborate. Elaborate discussions of height come up in the context of other kinds of talk, such as if you were trying to lure an unwilling woman into a sexual conversation about how height plays into the act of sexual intercourse, such as the sort you have with your wife. Just a guess. Until we get more details, we can't really know what was going on. I mean, Cain is a strange dude. Perhaps he roams the countryside coming up with reasons to compare people's heights to his wife. Who knows?
As for the Republican base that everyone is so anxious about, I know that this won't hurt him. Nona explained the 10-step process for getting people to side with the accused, even if they think he's guilty (see: DSK, Clarence Thomas, Roman Polanski), and this process works better on Republicans than anyone. Conservatism is about siding with the powerful over the oppressed, and that means that their natural preference is to side with men over women, unless they're trying to score political points against that man. Since Cain is their guy, there's no doubt how this is going to go. Plus, his entire image is based on this goofy notion that he's some sort of rebel against the supposed liberal establishment. Since they believe women and feminists especially control everything, someone who pisses off feminists by sexually harassing colleagues until they have to leave rather than deal with him is poised to be a hero. They won't say it out loud, but the "boys will be boys" excuse is how that belief will be communicated.
I have one major complaint about the media coverage of this. The incident that's been dug up is being called "the accusations". This may be true in a technicality sort of way, but it really conceals what's going on here. It implies, falsely, that the women are only now coming forward about something that happened years ago, which allows conservatives to apply a Clarence Thomas framework, aka claim that they're only coming forward now because they're political operatives. In fact, the original story made it clear that the women came forward at the time, long before Cain was a politician, and that they got some kind of settlement in exchange for letting the whole thing go away. Which, considering when the incidents supposedly happened, was exponentially more than most sexually harassed women could have dreamed of. Honestly, it's more than most can dream of now, no matter what legal protections are technically in place. I'm not entirely clear on if the women involved have even been spoken to by any journalists. The Politico coverage of it refers to "multiple sources", but the only ones that are named are people who worked with the women. The women, in fact, are cited as having signed a non-disclosure agreement to protect Cain from them telling people what happened. My feeling is they probably did speak to the women---they have their names---and fleshed out some details from them, but because of the NDA, they can only report what non-involved people heard about it, as well as what was in the documents detailing their departures.
From these reports, we get a very different picture than what Cain's saying. It seems mostly that the women claimed that he came onto them in lewd and aggressive ways while they were on the road, perhaps figuring he could use away-from-the-wife-time to get some strange, but going about it in a way that was more alienating that seductive. If the allegations are true, then I'm really not surprised at all. He comes across as a creepy dude, and I have no trouble picturing him thinking he could harass someone into bed. This is a surprisingly common belief amongst creepy dudes, and probably it works occasionally, if the women they target start to believe the safest way out of the situation is to give him some sex so he'll quit bothering you.
Politico's running a little story about Herman Cain - he allegedly sexually harassed two women while running the National Restaurant Association.
Will this hurt Cain? Almost certainly not. The reason? The GOP base doesn't give a damn who they nominate as long as the person is as conservative as humanly possible. If Cain had sexually harassed women while attempting to unionize them, then his campaign would be effectively over. But at this point, any black conservative who faces allegations of personal impropriety is a victim of a high-tech lynching until he accidentally blurts out something about the minimum wage being worthwhile.
Does the Mitt Romney dog story matter? To refresh, here's the story from 
Right on schedule, Rick Santorum is getting a push in Iowa amongst people who probably don't know how to use the googles anyway. He's polling at 10%, 
Every year in June in Austin, a sea of bikers converges on the city for the weekend, parking their expensive Harleys and chopped-up cruising motorcycles 5 deep on each side of 6th St. They prance around wearing leather jackets, bandanas, and various combinations of the U.S. flag and the Confederate flag. There's beer-drinking and loud noises and bikinis. It's called the Republic of Texas Rally, and it's both amusing and annoying, all at once. And, when Monday comes around, all those tough-looking bikers return to their suburban homes, put on their khaki pants and return to their jobs as accountants and dentists. After all, it costs a lot of money to buy just a basic Harley off the lot, much less one of the chopped bikes that draws so much attention at the ROT Rally. My sister called them "rubbers", for Rich Urban Bikers, but while that has a nice ring to it, they're really Rich Suburban Bikers. Good luck finding a pleasant acronym for that. There's a reason there's yawningly huge Harley dealerships in the suburban areas of Texas.
If you want to run for the Republican nomination for President in 2016 (and I know you do), then here are some handy tips for rocketing to the top of the polls for two weeks:
The relatively good election results on Tuesday are mainly due to the hard work of organizing and educating of liberals supporting everything from labor to reproductive rights. But it's also true that Republicans are kicking ass in the art of burning out all your political capital by being complete and total assholes. At this point, if House Republicans put together a resolution to celebrate Kick A Puppy Day, no one would really be surprised. Republicans have completely forgotten that the meanness that turns on their base repulses everyone else. 
So, after a day of floundering,