George Will: The Clintons squeeze the pockets of the rich

What's that?  George Will, the conservatives' incarnation of  Solomon, has dissed
Bill and Hillary Clinton as being the takers in a maker society.   Adding to the growing Republican alarm that Hillary might well be the Democrats' presidential nominee, the columnist  hissed that the Clintons are nothing more than career politicians who have borrowed  from the rich "all their entire life"  to sustain their quest for public office.

That profound insight,  of course, ignores President Obama's predecessor, George W.
Bush, who was repeatedly bailed out by rich oilmen as his investments went awry in Texas when  his father was president.

Will's snooty political scholarship continues to fail him as a denier of climate change and as the fellow who predicted a 10-point victory for Mitt Romney. Y'think he oughtta go back  to Oxford for a refresher course in credible punditry?  Either that, or write a book on how as a managing partner of the Texas Rangers he let Sammy Sosa get away.

Marcia Fudge: Much work to do, including voting rights

Reposted from Plunderbund:  

In her  recent talk at an Akron Press Club/ Bliss Institute program,  Rep.Marcia Fudge covered the entire spectrum of  the unfinished business of combatting racism in America.  A Democrat who chairs  the Congressional Black Caucus,  she represents Ohio's  new 11th District stretching south from Euclid to Fairlawn - graphic evidence of the liveried Republican map-drawers' free-wheeling ability to redefine the upside of hometown politics.

A compelling speaker, Fudge surveyed  the legacy of Martin Luther's King's  place in today's world that has met with no more than mixed results in a nation  that is more polarized than at  any  time in a  generation.

As we have mentioned many times, the seating of an African-American in the Oval Office has inspired his opponents to the excesses  not seen during the two terms served by George Bush.  From being the alleged peacemaker with the invasion of Iraq, to the amassing of public debt by a guy who had no inclination to cap it, we allowed Dubya  to comfortably enjoy his dream-swept environment.

The political right has been so traumatized, in Ohio and elsewhere,  by Obama's successive victories so soon after the Civil War, that it has spent a lot of its time determined to have Obama suffer a similar trauma rooted in a disgraceful legacy.

One of its biggest contracts  is  called voter repression.  And you'd think that by now the Republican public officials who are working deep into the night to purify the vote would at least confess the motives of the their scandalous schemes.

"Cutting back on our voting options has a disproportionate negative effect on certain populations,  among them communities of color, urban voters, students,  elderly and low income, not just minorities," Fudge told her audience.

There've been too many  attempts to stymie the voters  with the  clumsy efforts of people like Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted  to shape the electoral outcomes according to his party's needs. From cutting back early voting periods, to voter IDs, to shortening voting days to align with  business hours, to rearranging precincts - even the failed  attempt to blockl third-party candidacies to protect Gov.  Kasich in November . Etc. etc etc.

State Sen. Nina Turner, Husted's Democratic opponent this year, summed it up with one word: "Immoral."

Without being tempted to predict the outcome of the November balloting,  I can vouch for one absolute that will be a leading issue in the campaigns  It's the  various ploys, sometimes peddled as eradicating voter fraud (Huh!), that will be driven home on the stump from Cleveland to Cincinnati.

You can take it from there.

 Oh.  And let the honest votes fall where they may.

Shouldn't they first check the pulse?

In the lead-in to President Obama's State of the Union Speech, the tag on the  TV screen told us:

         Live 
         U.S. House of Representatives

Since when?

Away with those TV intestinal commercials!

Do you spend much time these days trying to figure out how you can survive the End Time of TV commercials?   As the  polar freeze drives us indoors for longer periods of
paid  advisories to ask my doctor about alleged remedies with names no one should have to pronounce, I have become particularly churlish about one invading the  privacy of my bowels.

C'mon.  You know the one.  It features a cheerful young woman popping up, say, on a bus, inquiring whether anyone uncomfortably  in her midst is constipated, or has gas or diarrhea.  Yep, on your TV screen, possibly just  before dinner.

Should that be in everybody-in-the-world's business?  It is as disagreeably intrusive as Mahatma Gandhi's obsessive interest  in whether his guests had a proper bowel movement.  Regularity, he believed, was not only a  matter of official business but the pathway to a cleaner bathroom,  which he considered to be a temple.

I guess I shouldn't be too harsh about the pop-up girl selling elixirs to a healthier life.  I do wonder, however, how she explains her day job to her friends during an after-hours  fast-food sitdown.  OK.  Yes, it helps pay the rent.

 

At least, they're not being asked to beat up their wives

OK, guys.  It's time we muscled up and strong-armed  all of the media talk going around that  we live in a "feminized" culture  that denies  men from being, well... men.  And by men, I'm talking about  an old fashioned  free-swinging, snorting  hulk of masculinity, sort of the Marlboro  man before we learned that even tough guys can die of lung cancer.

There was the funereal  lament, for example, of  Brit Hume, the Fox news analyst,  who traced Chris Christie's problems not to the George Washington Bridge but to the decline  of hard-assed bullies like the governor  who find it more and more troublesome these days to operate effectively in a patsy-fied  culture.

Said Hume:  "In this sort of  feminized atmosphere in which we exist today, guys who are masculine and muscular like that in their private conduct, kind  of old-fashioned tough guys, run some risks." (Hardly as risky, I'd  say,  than  your people  closing down the lanes to that bridge.)

Next, we find Nick Adams, the Australian author who has written a primer on how cowering men have been demasculated by feminists. (That sort of takes care of the Viagra cure, don't you think?)

Real men , he believes,  shoot guns.  It gets worse.   In his interview on Fox  & Friends, Adams was even asked by a worried Elisabeth Hasselbeck whether feminism and  the endangered male was a serious threat  to our national security  and "strong presence globally". Adams said he was absolutely sure of that, without a doubt.

As one who spent  some time in my childhood  watching a couple of burly cousins  arm-wrestling on the kitchen table to total exhaustion as one of Saturday night's lighter moments,   I must say I now prefer a gentler, kinder role for my guys.  Being manly about it,  I'll take my chances on National Security.





                                

Do only Democratic women have rampant libidos?

(Reposted from PLUNDERBUND:

 With a fresh batch of silly putty, the artisans  at the Ohio Republican Headquarters gave us a quick demonstration of how you can bravely attack a major national organization without actually naming it.  But it wouldn't take a savant to know  that  it was referring to Planned Parenthood, which has heard it many numbing times before.

In a terrible mood after the reproductive health counseling agency endorsed some state Democratic candidates, Ohio GOP Chairman Matt Borges completely lost it in a press release this week, hoping to morally tower above those Democrats who received the endorsements while, on the other hand, the anti-abortionists engaged in the March for Life. (As if anybody is bent up when, say, the Ohio Manufacturers  Assn. endorses friendly lawmakers  that protect the OMA's  rear.)

Get this:

"It is beyond the pale that on the day that thousands of Ohioans [!] and Americans[!] are participating in the March for Life that Ohio Democrats are being endorsed and holding an event with supporters of more abortions.  The Democratic ticket stood  with an organization [Wanna guess who?] that performs hundreds of thousands of abortions every year and advocates for late-term-abortions."  OUCH!  

Borges further accused Democrats of saying that "those who believe in life are not welcome in the Democratic Party or in a state they would govern."

The comedy shtick ended there, leaving the reader to wonder whether Borges believes Republicans would exclude every pro-choice voter from its ranks.   Or what the hell is he really saying to score points with his shrinking base?

Not elegantly stated, as Mitt Romney once said of his own verbal meandering.

Anyway, it wasn't a good week for the Republicans pledge to reach out to women and anyone else that would dare come to one of their bake sales.  A year ago, let me remind you,  no higher party savant than national chairman Reince Priebus was preaching as national policy the samaritan gospel of embracing racial minorities, women and gays in the party's hospitable carnival big top.

The past week also brought us the ubiquitous  preacher with another hopeless presidential candidacy on his mind, Mike Huckabee.   He virtually closed every lane to women voters when he denounced contraceptives as federal assistance as female weakness of the flesh. The former Arkansas governor  hotly attacked the notion of his party's War on Women   by declaring "It's not a war on them.  It's a war for them"  OK.   Shouldn't the party chieftains, for their own safety,  now  give him a free ride back to a gas station where old guys hang out for hours on the only chair?

Sorry, but Huck doesn't think women are clever or morally disciplined enough to control their libidos.

I suspect that if he should run again for the White House, we will witness  billboards with voluptuous women  sharing space with  lascivious men with the bold caption:

 Hey, girls. Only Slutty Democrats (sex class 101, per Limbaugh] suffer the agonies of   uncontrolled libidos. Vote Republican! 

The Plain Dealer's new survival plan; Good luck on that

 Just received a spritely booklet from the University of Illinois College of Media in which  I learned that the old School of Journalism is now called the Department of Journalism.  If I remember correctly  I got a journalism degree from the school a long time ago.  So if I had a nostalgic twitch upon reading the pages (with a donor envelope tucked in!) I hope you'll understand.

Journalism is seldom mentioned as a profession these days in the tectonic shift from newspaper print to electronic conveyances of what you could unfold and read at the breakfast table.  Some schools are now boasting of studies in "electronic arts".  Besieged by drops in circulation and advertising, more and more papers (those that haven't already  expired) have  eliminated several home delivery days, many absent from wash-day Mondays.

But let's stick to that paper on the lake - the Plain Dealer - that Titanic-like has drastically rearranged itself with big cutbacks in staff,  shrinking its home deliveries and creating an   office maze that is as  challenging a weave as the maddening pattern of Venetian streets.

Columbia Journalism Review has  the gory details:

"As a major reorganization  of the Cleveland Plain Dealer takes shape, veteran reporters are adjusting to ' backpack journalism,'  the division of staff into two companies, a looming move to a new office, and demands to post stories more quickly."

The concept appears so bizarre to some reporters that one told CJR "this used to be a.... newsroom", adding,  "newsroom culture is gone".

While  scattering the staff to divided venues, CJR writer Anna Clark reports, the new PD will equip reporters and editors with  iPhones and laptops, "along with actual packpacks so they can work from home or cafes."

In the new setup, some staffers will work out of from the current Superior Ave. offices, some flung out to the paper's distribution center in the suburbs and another cadre in the Tower City Center  above the Cleveland Hard Rock Cafe.

One reporter told CJR:  "They are very much encouraging us to be mobile, to not claim particular place and not keep a lot stuff there," which sounds a lot like what the Browns must tell their prospective  head coaches.

Andrea Hogben, president of the Northeast Ohio Media Group, explained to  CJR that the rationale for the upheaval  is to  "showcase our digital capabilities and promote a culture of innovation  and creativity".

But never at my doorstep on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. It will be darkly interesting over the next year or so to see how the survival plan by Advance Publications, the owners who are exercising the same concept at some of its other papers, works out. As I struggle from the murky deep to understand all of this, I must first decompress.

Can preachers be uncivil, too?

Apropos of my previous post on civility, Dallas megachurch pastor  Robert Jeffress  turned up on Bill O'Reilly's show to dismiss Christian concerns that President Obama is the Antichrist.  On the other hand, the preacher/author  did say that Obama's actions in the White House are making it much easier for the Antichrist to return,  which casts the president as an unwitting confederate of Satan.   Who knew? 

LaRose/Celeste civility crusade faces huge odds

Civility in  politics.  That's the laudable  goal of  two men who have engaged the subject with earnest hopes of  ending  the toxic trash talk by some politicians  and their dobermans within hearing range.

State Sen. Frank LaRose, the Copley Twp. Republican ,  and Ted Celeste, a Democrat who once served in the Ohio legislature, recently delivered  their ongoing bipartisan message to Akron Roundtable to lay out their vision of a gentler political class.

While commending them, I think the idea has as much chance of working in the real world as Rush Limbaugh confessing that he's a closet socialist.

Having worked the trenches of  political combat for more years than I care to remember, I bring to the witness stand no evidence that political discourse is anywhere near  the Sunday pulpit.  I can also report that it's  even worse in the back rooms and there's not a damn (Sorry!) thing anybody can do about it.  The stakes are too high, the partisan grievances too aflame. And since a black man entered the White House,  the notion that all men are created equal is too besieged to survive pervasive racism in the souls of some combatants who can't contain their primitive biases. I should add from all of that there are too few profiles in courage from wannabe achievers .

Has it ever been different?  Not really.  Should we  remind ourselves that in May 1856 Sen. Charles Sumner, Massachusetts Republican who opposed slavery, was savagely  caned on the Senate floor by Rep. Preston Brooks,  a  South Carolina  Democrat.

A half-century earlier in 1804, Aaron Burr fatally shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel (wouldn't TV have loved that one today?) In Fiorello LaGuardia's day, it was not uncommon to see his enemies quoted in the press assailing him as a "little Wop".   And much later, didn't Rep. Joe Wilson, the South Carolina Republican, erupt with a
"You lie!" as President Obama addressed a joint session of Congress?

Or how about Rep. Steve King's  reference to  Latino children with calves as  big as cantaloupes swollen with smuggled drugs.  Or Limbaugh calling a young woman a "Slut" because he knew he could.  Damn right he did.

Even as the congressional denizens refer to each other as "the distinguished senator  from...."  they  are already in gear to consign the colleague to hell.

You could fill a book.  And fill another book with  the incivility of politics that has become more than empty lore.

Now, up in Michigan,  the Republican national committeeman, Dave Agema, a nasty  human being to put it kindly,   continues to stir up his GOP nest with repeated sliming   of gays and Muslims, accusing gays of being "filthy" and the critics of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson's anti-gay remarks "LBGT Gestapo speech police."

Michigan's GOP National Committeeman said that?  

If LaRose/Celeste really want to dig into the problem with a living  target,  do you think they should invite Agema to lunch?  A very long lunch.

When a story didn't make it to BJ's crossword puzzle

Saturday's Plain Dealer ran a story and photo across the top of the front page that reported Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ed FitzGerald had chosen a running mate: Sharen Neuhardt, a lawyer from the Dayton area .

On the other hand, readers of the Beacon Journal didn't see a word of it unless it might have been a clue in the crossword puzzle.  FitzGerald's action  had been making the media rounds by early Friday afternoon.

Oh, I see.  The story arrived on the BJ's online  Ohio.com page by late afternoon. Sorry, I'm still trying to get used to the idea that news really isn't  printworthy until it appears on my computer.  Maybe  I had better first double-check the crossword puzzle.