Republicans Accelerate War Against the Poor, Working & Middle Classes

E.J. Dionne has coined the new oxymoron for 2006 and beyond: "personal responsibility among Republican leaders."

The spirit of Scrooge has never been more alive and well-represented in the halls of power and religiosity. Dionne's WaPo column deserves wide coverage:

Lord knows, a housecleaning in the Capitol is definitely in order. But the Abramoff scandal is just part of the corruption of our political system. There is another level of special-interest influence that cannot be handled by prosecutors: Only the voters can render a judgment on a politics of favoritism that has created a new Gilded Age. It's clear that the national government has placed itself squarely on the side of the wealthy, the privileged and the connected.

Rarely does a single action by Congress serve as so powerful an example of how the system is working. The recent budget bill, which squeaked through the House and Senate just before Christmas, is a road map of insider dealing. It shows that when choices have to be made, the interests of the poor and the middle class fall before the wishes of interest groups with powerful lobbies and awesome piles of campaign money to distribute.

...the agreement hammered Medicaid recipients with $16 billion in gross cuts over the next decade.

... Medicaid cuts include increased co-payments and premiums on low-income Americans, and the budget assumes savings because fewer poor people will visit the doctor. As Kevin Freking of the Associated Press reported: "The Congressional Budget Office has concluded that such increases would lead many poor people to forgo health care or not to enroll in Medicaid at all..."

Ah, say their defenders, but these cuts will be good for poor people. According to the New York Times, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Tex.), an architect of the Medicaid proposals, said the higher co-payments were needed to "encourage personal responsibility" among low-income people. Spoken like a congressman who never has to worry about his taxpayer-provided health coverage.

...that is just one instance among many of corporate interests being shielded from cuts, while child support enforcement and foster care programs were sliced. ....Republican leaders, at the insistence of a group of GOP lawmakers from Ohio, dropped a $1.9 billion cut that would have changed Medicare payments to oxygen equipment manufacturers. The main beneficiary of this change was Invacare Corp. of Elyria, Ohio.

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) opposed the original, milder Senate budget bill but turned around and voted for the final, harsher bill. According to Congress Daily, Coleman backed the final budget "after negotiators took out cuts affecting his state's sugar beet growers." Coleman told the paper: "Karl Rove called me and asked what I wanted. A few hours later it was out of the bill."

The good news is that this budget is not law yet. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) used a clever procedural maneuver to force it back to the House for one more vote next year.

When this 774-page behemoth hit the House floor shortly after 1 a.m. on Dec. 19, many members were not fully aware of what was in it. Now that they know, maybe some of the moderate Republicans who caved to their leadership and voted for it will save their party's honor by killing this special-interest mess. If I may borrow from Mr. Barton, doing so would definitely "encourage personal responsibility" among Republican leaders.

Today's Wapo editorial zooms in on the the Bush administration's non-benefits to workers (not simply this year, but every year since he was installed as president):

....on one important measure, the economic news hasn't been as good. The majority of workers have not felt the benefits.

...signs that market forces may be making it hard for workers to win pay gains raise fresh questions about President Bush's tax strategy. Mr. Bush has cut taxes on capital, even though capital has increased its share of the proceeds from the economy; the cuts may ultimately force a compensating increase in taxes on workers, whose incomes haven't done as well. This amounts to common sense inverted. Rather than counteracting a troubling aspect of the economy, Mr. Bush's policy makes it worse.

A million new jobs doesn't count much toward economic health when they're all at Wal-Mart or McDonalds. Let me reiterate: The nasty, hateful, greedy, sociopathic spirit of Scrooge has never been more alive and well-represented in the halls of power and religiosity.

Political History of the American Rich

The Hopeful Legacy of Samuel Mockbee

Of note: NYT article about Samuel Mockbee's legacy in southern rural anti-poverty anarchist architecture. He was the visionary founder of "the Rural Studio, an ever-changing troupe of architecture students who bring their tools, tenacity and talent to impoverished western Alabama. The 13-year-old program, under the auspices of Auburn University, is sometimes called the 'redneck Taliesin.'"

Under Mr. Mockbee, who died in 2001, students identified the poorest of the poor, and built them modest dwellings. Materials were rudimentary - whatever they could beg or borrow - and so the students made their mark with quirky details: a window inserted on a 30-degree angle, a concrete wall studded with soda bottles to let bits of light through. One house has walls made of car tires; another is made of hay bales; yet another of stacks of carpet tiles.

...Many of the Rural Studio buildings recall the work of Frank Gehry (who built a house in the 1980's with angled chain link fence and corrugated metal), with an added layer of down-home informality.

...Newbern [Alabama], a town of about 200, is the studio's headquarters, and probably the last place you would expect to see contemporary architecture. But there, among abandoned farm buildings and modest Greek Revival churches, are half a dozen buildings with the high-tech surfaces and odd angles of architecture's avant garde.

Lately, the studio has turned much of its attention from houses to such public spaces as senior centers and playgrounds. The reason, according to Andrew Freear (who took over from Mr. Mockbee as the Rural Studio's director) is simple: community leaders ask for help. "And how can I say no?" he said.

We need more Samuel Mockbees & Andrew Freears in every aspect of American life.

Irving Berlin's White Christmas = American Christmas

Love this thoughtful, push-back-at-the-faux-news-demagogues column by WaPo's Harold Myerson on 12/21 about (Jewish, immigrant, American) songwriter/artist Irving Berlin's "achingly nostalgic ballad" -- arguably the contemporary American standard of the holiday season: the 64 year-old, still-meaningful White Christmas.

...the American Christmas song was about staying warm in winter, about staying connected to loved ones and traditions. It also practiced separation of church and song.

...the message of this musical [the film Holiday Inn] is that we are all Americans and these are our holidays. ...Christmas belongs to all of us. ...the composer of "God Bless America" preferred to celebrate a common national identity, complete with common holidays that had nonsectarian meanings. ...

Berlin kept Christmas in the public square and, more than anyone before or since, sent it out over the public airwaves. But it was an American, not a Christian, Christmas.

...Now the Fox News demagogues want to impose a more sectarian Christmas on us, supplanting the distinctly American holiday we have celebrated lo these threescore years with a holiday that divides us along religious lines. Bill O'Reilly can blaspheme all he wants, but like millions of my countrymen, I take attacks on Irving Berlin's America personally. If O'Reilly doesn't like it here, why doesn't he go back to where he came from?

So there!

I love how he turns one of the radical right's typical demagogic cries -- anyone who doesn't believe exactly the same, behave in the approved ways, anyone who isn't 'with us is agin' us' -- back on the jerk -who-shall-remain-nameless-in-my-writings.

Myerson (also of the LAWeekly) is a breath of fresh courage!

Even so, I continue to (mostly) love the diverse holiday music of the season -- even the traditional hymns and classical cantatas I was raised with in the Southern (and Southern Baptist) systems of fundamentalist indoctrination (and from which I am still recovering). Happy Holiday Music to all!

PS: HILARIOUS Holiday Humor Plus If you're also in the mood for unrivaled Holiday Humor, you can't beat David Sedaris' classic, (first heard on NPR) SantaLand Diaries, part of a greatest hits compilation:

The Christmas-themed Holidays on Ice is the gem of the collection. It has his greatest hit, "SantaLand Diaries," a chronicle of his stint as an elf at Macy's, covering everything from the preliminary group lectures ("You are not a dancer. If you were a real dancer you wouldn't be here. You're an elf and you're going to wear panties like an elf.") to the perils of inter-elf flirtation. Other hits feature the crazed newsletter "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!" and the prostitute coworker his sister brought home one Yuletide, giving "the phrase 'ho, ho, ho' whole different meaning."

Robo-Public-Servants (aka slaves to authority figures)

Once again, certain inquiring minds in print media -- Froomkin, Hoagland, and Leibovich at the WaPo and Jehl at the NY Times -- are on to something. Froomkin quoting Leibovich:

Bush scanned the room for Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary.

" 'I want to especially thank Scotty,' the president said, looking at his aide. 'I want to thank Scotty for saying' -- and he paused for effect. . . .

" ' Nothing .' "

Leibovich's story about McClellan, the man who "has been credited -- or blamed -- for taking the craft of party-line discipline to new heights, or depths" suggests that his penchant for robotic repetition of meaningless stock phrases is just a matter of following orders.

Hoagland:

The kind of secrecy and obsessive concern about the powers of the presidency for their own sake that this administration showed even before Sept. 11, 2001, are inconsistent with the workings of American democracy

Call it a requisite for the mindset of this administration that for so long has been acknowledged by mainstream media, but rarely plumbed in depth.

What is it? It's been termed "loyalty", "silence", "secrecy", "towing the party line", "RNC talking points", etc. But it really comes down to OBEDIENCE to AUTHORITY (Stanley Milgram, Philip Zimbardo, Lawrence Kohlberg), GROUPTHINK (Irving Janis), and an utter lack of independent critical thought, which translates into lack of a spine, lack of courage, and a fear-based 'soldier-taking-orders' mentality, philosophy and actions (as specified above) . All followers, no real leaders -- especially not Bush, not Cheney for they serve the military industrial complex and neocon philosophy which mandates OBEDIENCE TO AUTHORITY and GROUPTHINK as their foundational philosophies.

Of course, the Dems aren't exactly stellar examples of speaking truth to power either as noted in Jehl's NYT article, entitled "Congressional Leaders: Among Those Told of Program, Few Objected" ...

At least seven Democratic lawmakers are known to have been briefed about the program since its inception in 2001, and only two, Mr. Rockefeller and Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, are known to have expressed written concern about it.

Book: Perspectives on Obedience to Authority. More options:

Thesis Thief Thwarted; Trailed to Trash-bin

Such a great outcome for an ulcer-inducing situation. Entire story from WaPo merits posting:

Student Finds a Stolen Thesis by Thinking Like a Thief
By Susan Kinzie
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 22, 2005; A01

When Linda Cerniglia went back to school, it took her almost seven years to get through all the prerequisites, the labs, the research. And it took a thief just moments to grab her purse, with the only copy of her master's thesis stored on a tiny jump drive inside.

For anyone who's ever obsessed about a project but forgotten to back up the data, watched a computer screen fizzle just before a deadline or left crucial documents in a cab -- here is a story about backing up, and moving forward.

It's about how Cerniglia almost went crazy, then took a deep breath and thought like a crook, acted like a cop and ended up in a big trash bin -- all in pursuit of her master's degree.

Grad school never came easily to Cerniglia, who majored in dance as part of the University of Maryland's Class of 1986, became a personal trainer and returned to the school in her forties for a master's degree in exercise physiology. She designed an experiment, analyzed CT scans, ran statistics, studied research and -- slowly -- began to write her thesis.

"It was so painful," she said. "I would rather go outside and dig a hole all day long than write."

She tried to trick herself into working on it, by going to a coffee shop or finding a sunny picnic table in the park. She could use a computer anywhere, because she had all the research on a jump drive, a tiny, portable memory-storage device about the size of a cigarette lighter.

Another student, Neil Doldo, told her to back up the data: He had lost his jump drive with his almost-finished thesis, spent three sickening days retracing his steps searching for it, until finally his dogs Zeus and Mela tired of it and left it on the floor near the dog bed.

Marc Rogers, Cerniglia's thesis adviser at U-Md., remembers everyone making carbon copies of their typewritten theses when he was a graduate student. People said, " 'Oh yeah, I had a backup copy. It was in my freezer in a little plastic bag because if the apartment burned down, it's still okay,' " he said.

"When you're writing one of these," Rogers said, "your whole existence depends on this thing."

One afternoon in September at Carderock Park, after doing some perfectionist tweaking of her almost-finished thesis, Cerniglia locked her things in the car. She went for a run along the C&O Canal, reveling in how great it felt to be almost done.

An hour or so later at her home in Bethesda, she realized her purse was gone. Her bank cards, driver's license, Social Security card, $1,000 worth of checks from clients -- she didn't care. But the jump drive was in the purse. And she still had not made a backup, even after hearing Doldo's "the dog ate my thesis" story.

She could hardly breathe. She felt sick. She raced to the police, who told her she would never find it; it could have been pawned, it could have been dropped, run over, flushed. "Million to one odds," said Officer Charles Whiteman of the U.S. Park Police. "It doesn't happen."

As the officer inspected her minivan that evening, she told him, "It's absolutely imperative that you do the best fingerprinting possible -- we must find this. We must find this ." He was nice, she said, but she knew what he was thinking: "This crazy broad is never going to see that thing again."

As the two of them called to cancel her credit cards, Cerniglia found that one had already been used, at 2:37 p.m. at a Target in Greenbelt. "This guy drove like a bat out of hell," she said; she had left the car at 2 p.m. and within 37 minutes he had pulled a tiny side window off its hinge, squeezed into the car, swiped the bag, driven more than 20 miles, found a $481.85 vacuum cleaner and paid for it. A few minutes later, another charge popped up. Another Target, another vacuum cleaner. Then another.

That night she couldn't sleep, tortured by visions of her lost jump drive. The next morning, Cerniglia began to think about what she would do if she were the thief. Get out of there fast, speed out on the Beltway, then dump the purse.

There was a chance, just a chance.

She was going to retrace his steps, go to every store he hit. She would talk to security guards, check lost-and-found, scour the parking lots.

So that day, she drove to Greenbelt, and as soon as she parked she saw a big trash bin behind a Wendy's, like a beacon. It was perfect. "It was open. It was hidden. I thought, 'That's it -- if it's going to be anywhere, it's going to be there.' "

She started pulling out broken-down boxes. She didn't care about the trash, even if it was greasy slop from a fast-food place. "No cockroach, no rat, no creature from the dark was going to keep me from my jump drive," she said. "Nothing is as bad as the thought of rewriting that thesis."

She saw a flash of aqua cloth. Her heart pounded -- it looked like her workout pants. "Then I see my gym bag. I jumped into the dumpster. I'm throwing things out of the way. I see my driver's license."

And there, at the bottom, was her black leather purse. She unzipped it, reached in, and felt her fingers close around -- her jump drive.

People driving by stared: A 5-foot-4 43-year-old woman jumping up and down in a trash bin, screaming.

Cerniglia is done. She will get her master's degree today, with more than one copy of a thesis her adviser described as "exemplary."

The thief wasn't quite so smart, leaving fingerprints and showing up on store security cameras. Police say they know who took her purse. And they've got the tape to back it up.

Whew! What a relief, not to mention tenacity and great problem-solving/sleuthing skills. Orig WaPo story here.

GILLIAN ANDERSON for the Holidays: Bleak House DVD

Regarding my earlier Gillian Anderson post, the BLEAK HOUSE DVD is now available here.

Buy the BBC Dickens Drama Bleak House starring Gillian Anderson on DVD

Don't forget to check the "Gillian Anderson's New British Accent Files".

And, there's always the nostalgia of the newest X-Files Mythology: Abduction DVD.

Must-See Streaming Video: PANDA CAM

Speaking of Moms, I don't know why it's taken me so long to think of posting this link (doh!) to the most precious and charming show on the internet these days. Just in case you could have missed it amidst all the buzzz, check out the live, 24-hour Panda Cam sponsored by Animal Planet at the Smithsonian National Zoo in D.C.

Wonkette has some of the most delightful commentary about the panda cub Tai Shan, nicknamed "Butterstick."

Even my highly selective, refined feline companion, Jupiter, is smitten with Butterstick! He loves to watch the antics of this fast-growing, clumsy and ADORABLE panda toddler.

Yeah, there's lots of hype, but it's hard not to fall in love with Butterstick despite what the humans are doing. He (and mom) are much more interesting than their two-legged exploiters.

12/21/05 PANDA CAM / BUTTERSTICK UPDATE!
Butterstick's first outside adventure! ... panda-cam afficionados (addicts) were not notified!!!!!

12/23/05
awwww ... tired little pudgy baby panda ... fell plumb asleep while playing. zzzzzzz

MoDo: Media & Mommies

Leave it to Maureen Dowd to come up with one of the sharpest, most profound (and insightful -- or is that being redundant?) throw-away lines of the century (past or present):

By the time women get to take over something - like Hollywood or Bush administration diplomacy - the thing is already devalued beyond recognition.

Entire post of her recent column here (FREE).

Why is Bush Afraid of the Press?

An interesting factoid from an online discussion with the inestimable Dan Froomkin at the Washington Post:

For the record, Bush has only had one press conference in six months, and he hasn't had a prime-time press conference since April, 2004. (Is that right? Wow.)

Yeah -- wow. I wonder if anyone has done a count of how many 'staged', hand-picked, administration-approved setups and speeches Bush, Cheney and others have done in the same time period?

GOP Corruption + Incompetence = Great Big Messes to be Cleaned up for Years to Come

Wapo on the ongoing FEMA incompetence (not to mention the continuing lack of accountability).

....Federal Emergency Management Agency's response to the evacuee crisis in the months after Hurricane Katrina is[n't] going any better than that first, panicked, non-response to the hurricane itself three months ago.

This and more from the party that:

• promised to dismantle 'big government' and transfer as much wealth as possible to the already obscenely wealthy,
  
• has created the largest deficits ever,
• has more crooks and liars than you can shake a stick at (and those are just the elected officials),
  
• has presided over ongoing dismantling and erosion of the American working middle class (don't even think about poor people),
  
• has created an even larger windfall profit scheme for pharmaceutical corporations under the guise of an incomprehensible medicare drug discount program and
• knew two years ago that the DeLay Texas redistricting scheme was likely illegal, and certainly discriminatory but the Ashcroft Justice Department hid it ...

Just a little more to be thrilled about in this pro-commercialism Holiday Season happily endorsed and proclaimed a 'cause' by religious and right-wing nutters like that Bill idiot on Faux News.

Bah Humbug.

Okay -- a little good news on the horizon: Americans Want Different Type of President Next Time, Poll Says from Bloomberg News.

And, at least Keith Olbermann of MSNBC is not afraid to be a truth-teller.