Recent Polls Demonstrate Why We Are So Fucked:
A recent poll of 863 registered voters, conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson (which also happens to be one of the Rude Pundit's nicknames for his penis) University's Public Mind showed that 44% of Republicans believe "that an armed revolution in order to protect liberties might be necessary in the next few years." The overall number, 29% of respondents with 18% of Democrats and 27% of independent voters believing the same, is alarming enough. But that nearly half of Republicans think that they might have to take up their AR-15s of freedom in order to go to war with their government? Man, a bunch of people are living in the kind of fantasy land where their giant beer bellies are seen as sexy and that the greatest threat in the world comes from a black Kenyan in the White House. Partly, the Rude Pundit thinks, "Oh, c'mon, motherfuckers. Wheeze yourselves out of your scooters and just try it. You'll be drone missiled into a red paste in no time." But mostly, he just feels sad.
44% of Republicans think we're gonna need armed revolution. Christ. That's more Republicans than those who believe in evolution (36%). That's more Republicans than those who believe climate change is really happening (27%). This nation is long past the point where we have got to start saying that some people hold beliefs that are so ludicrous, so appalling, so ignorant that they shouldn't even be considered part of the conversation. Or they're Louie Gohmert. When a third of Republicans believe that "Some people are hiding the truth about the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in order to advance a political agenda," then it's time to treat them like the pariahs that they are. The inmates shouldn't run the asylum. The stupid kids shouldn't get to teach the rest of the school.
Republican Senator Pat Toomey admitted that the chances of getting his gun background check law passed was nearly zero because, simply, his own party colleagues just didn't want to vote for something that President Obama wanted: "In the end it didn’t pass because we’re so politicized. There were some on my side who did not want to be seen helping the president do something he wanted to get done, just because the president wanted to do it." Just a reminder: 80-90% of people, including a large majority in the GOP, supported expanded background checks. However, 64% of Republicans believe that President Obama is "hiding important information about his background and early life," so, yeah, how can he be trusted despite being elected twice? Seriously, it's like the GOP is a bunch of whoremongers driven mad by syphilis, refusing any medical treatment because penicillin is from the Devil and they'd rather scrawl filthy manifestos against Obamacare in their shit and howl at the moon and call it "genius."
Speaking of the Affordable Care Act, another poll came out that'll make you wanna bang your head against the wall until you're so brain-damaged that it doesn't matter anymore. The Kaiser Family Foundation discovered that 42% of Americans don't know what the status of the ACA is, with some thinking it's been repealed or overturned by the Supreme Court. 59% of people who make under $30 grand a year, or, you know, the very people the ACA would help, don't know that it's still the law of the land. And while that number is not broken down by party, another one is: 68% of Republicans don't want to expand Medicaid.
We are so very fucked because Americans are so fucking dumb, especially the Americans belonging to one particular political party. When a large number of a nation's citizens are more willing to entertain armed insurrection than providing health care for the poor, well, it's pretty goddamn hard to make the case that we're the Greatest Country in the History of Everything.
Wednesday, May 01, 2013
Sources for Today's Tale of the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant of 1913:
Today, the Rude Pundit told you a true story from the history of the American labor movement, about a time when unions were truly in-yer-fookin'-gob in their actions. While much of the info on the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant came from contemporaneous accounts in newspapers and magazines, here's other sources for the tale:
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World by Melvin Dubofsky
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917 by Philip S. Foner (Volume 4 of his epic History of the Labor Movement in the United States)
The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike, 1913 by Steve Golin
New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant by Martin Green
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed by Robert A. Rosenstone
Due diligence done. Regular rudeness resumes tomorrow.
Today, the Rude Pundit told you a true story from the history of the American labor movement, about a time when unions were truly in-yer-fookin'-gob in their actions. While much of the info on the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant came from contemporaneous accounts in newspapers and magazines, here's other sources for the tale:
We Shall Be All: A History of the Industrial Workers of the World by Melvin Dubofsky
The Industrial Workers of the World, 1905-1917 by Philip S. Foner (Volume 4 of his epic History of the Labor Movement in the United States)
The Fragile Bridge: Paterson Silk Strike, 1913 by Steve Golin
New York 1913: The Armory Show and the Paterson Strike Pageant by Martin Green
Romantic Revolutionary: A Biography of John Reed by Robert A. Rosenstone
Due diligence done. Regular rudeness resumes tomorrow.
For May Day: The Story of the Paterson Silk Strike Pageant of 1913:
(Note: The Rude Pundit is putting on his scholar's cap today. This year is the 100th Anniversary of the Paterson Silk Strike, one of the seminal events in American labor history. On June 7, 1913, a massive consciousness-raising and fundraising pageant of the strike was staged in Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, 21 miles away, by John Reed -- you know him as Warren Beatty in Reds -- and hundreds of participants. This is the story of that great and sad moment in radicalism in the United States. Grab a bottle o' beer: this is a long one.)
In Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World, considered the most radical labor union of the period, had their greatest success defeating mill owners during a strike. In Lawrence, one major mill, the American Woolen Company, dominated the town. Once it fell, all the smaller mills followed. By contrast, Paterson, New Jersey, had 300 small silk mills, with none dominant, so that there was even greater competition. As a result, and because they feared being overwhelmed by competition, unsympathetic employers paid their workers little and treated them poorly. When the mills in Paterson shifted from making high quality silk to cheap silk in order to compete with mills in Pennsylvania, the employers hired less skilled workers, mostly women. With technological innovations, a worker could tend four looms instead of two; at the same time, since the workers were paid per thread in a pattern, cheaper silk, which had fewer threads, meant less pay. The silk worker labored ten hours a day for an annual income of $580, lower than that for any other industry in New Jersey. They worked in unheated mills surrounded by a fog of steam and acid fumes from the dye. Many workers died at an early age from tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.
When the Paterson strike finally occurred in 1913, unskilled immigrants went out first, followed by the skilled English-speaking immigrants. The American Federation of Labor tried but failed to organize the workers in the United Garmentworkers Union. The moderate approach offered by the AFL was too little too late for workers primed by several years of IWW pamphlets and materials circulating around Paterson. The IWW also earned the respect of the workers because of the willingness of their leaders to go to jail. As in Lawrence, the success of the IWW stemmed from its ability to organize those unskilled workers the AFL either failed or refused to bring into their union. While the IWW led the strike of 25,000 workers, at the time of the strike only 1000 workers were dues-paying members, more than likely because of the economic conditions of the workers.
Possibly the greatest appeal of the IWW was its ability to bring together all the ethnic groups of workers. This unity was hard to achieve. John Reed, a young reporter only a few years out of Harvard, spoke to immigrants who were discontent because they were picketing whereas native-born Americans were not. IWW speakers, though, sought to transcend prejudices, preaching "solidarity . . . [and] instilling class spirit, class respect, [and] class consciousness," writes labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky. IWW leaders at the strike, including Carlo Tresca, William Haywood, Patrick Quinlan, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, organized strike committees that were run by Paterson workers. They made sure outsiders were not negotiating with the employers. Flynn especially urged only outsider support and organization skills, and she preached nonviolence, as did all the strike leaders.
However, employers refused to negotiate with the organized workers, primarily because they were Wobblies. As John Fitch points out, while the employers were against any kind of union, they might have negotiated with the AFL, but because of the reputation of the Wobblies as "hoodlum, radical, un-American unionists," they would not sit at the bargaining table with the union. Interestingly, the public had a more violent reaction to the IWW than any violence the Wobblies ever committed. In an article unsympathetic to the Wobblies, Fitch cites several cases of such vigilantism. In Lawrence, two Wobbly leaders were charged with a murder they did not commit, while a soldier who openly bayoneted a striking worker was never even arrested. In San Diego, the IWW was banned from speaking on street corners. When the Wobblies kept returning, they engendered open hostility from the citizens who "tortured," beat, and sent the defiant Wobblies into the desert. The events at Paterson followed much the same pattern: the Paterson Press implored its readers to help rid the town of the IWW "no matter how it is accomplished." Others called more explicitly for violence, including one Civil War veteran who urged that new cemeteries "be filled with just such people as those who are now making this disturbance -- the first graves to be filled with Haywood and his crowd." Strikebreakers beat and killed Wobblies yet were never arrested. Only strikers were arrested and their leaders, like Quinlan, were brought to trial. Reed was radicalized even more when he was jailed by police for refusing to clear the streets. In jail with Tresca and others, he was impressed by the way the Wobblies kept up their spirits by singing and educating themselves.
The city officials of Paterson tried to get the AFL to come in once again to organize the workers because the larger union would presumably lead the strikers to a more peaceful and more accommodating resolution of the situation. In a meeting that was already filled with a sense of the theatre that would come later, the AFL organizers arrived and attempted to hold a rally in Turner Hall; they hoisted an American flag, an act that was booed by the workers who, in response, all thrust their red union cards into the air.
This theatricality would, of course, lead to the Pageant, which came into being, according to the memoirs of both Mabel Dodge Luhan and Hutchins Hapgood, when, at a gathering at the apartment of his mistress, Haywood complained to Mabel Dodge about the lack of publicity for the strike outside of the immediate area. Dodge suggested, "Why don't you bring it to New York and show it to the workers?" Haywood liked the idea but had no concept of how to do so until Reed stepped forward and said, "I'll do it! My name is John Reed. We'll make a Pageant of the strike! The first in the world!"
The Pageant, therefore, was the idea of Reed, the former Harvard cheerleader, who, according to Dubofsky, hoped "simultaneously to save the strike from certain defeat and to make the IWW the link between New York's radical "new" intellectuals and the "new" working-class revolutionaries, who together . . . would leap out of their times, transcend the prevailing structure of society, and transform the values of bourgeois America."
The goal of the Pageant was to let the workers in New York City get a fair impression of the strike and the strikers. In this way, money might be generated, but the more immediate goal was, as Hutchins Hapgood wrote in the New York Globe, "to give the whole of New York an idea and the meaning of the great industrial and social happenings which are taking place in Paterson and all over the country." For the IWW, therefore, the Pageant was an organizing tool, while, for the Greenwich Village intellectuals like Reed, it was a culmination of their artistic efforts to that point.
In casting the Pageant, Reed chose over 1000 workers to participate. These workers contributed to Reed's basic scenario and, in a sense, were coauthors of the piece; they evolved the details of the scenes from the incidents of their own lives while Reed's emphasis was on the revolutionary aims of the Pageant. As outsiders, Reed and the other organizers were able to gather pieces from the workers' existence and demonstrate the very real pattern of class struggle. Reed brought in intellectuals, artists, designers, directors, voice experts, and others to drill the workers into a theatre company in less than three weeks.
During rehearsal, music became a key part of the Pageant, with songs from the participating ethnic groups becoming part of the Pageant. The IWW was justly famous for its songbook, which ably demonstrated the use of song as a weapon in class struggle. Reed himself contributed to the musical aspect of the program. Dodge noted after seeing a rehearsal led by Reed: "One of the gayest touches, I think, was teaching them to sing one of their lawless songs to the tune of 'Harvard, old Harvard!'"
Despite the open rehearsals and the inclusion of many prominent intellectuals, Haywood was correct in his complaint against the press; other than the socialist newspapers, the New York press paid very little attention to the strike and the Pageant prior to its performance. In the Sunday New York Times of June 1, an announcement of the Pageant appeared at the bottom of page 8 in section 7, the drama and fashion section, after several vaudeville announcements.
On the evening of the performance, according to the Times, the old Madison Square Garden was filled with 15,000 people and red IWW flags and signs. No desecration of the American flag was allowed; in fact, the Sheriff threatened to shut down the proceedings if such an event occurred. Wobbly reputation notwithstanding, the organizers of the Pageant attempted to keep the evening as noncontroversial as possible. When two workers not associated with the Pageant openly placed at one end of the Garden the anarchist sign, "No God, No Master," which had been displayed prominently in Lawrence, one of the strike leaders immediately tore it down. Because they were trying to forge a unity between workers and audience, the Wobblies did not want the clergy to turn against them as they had in Lawrence.
The audience inside Madison Square Garden was greeted with a spectacular set. Designed by Robert Edmond Jones, it featured a huge stage and an enormous backdrop of life-sized silk mills. Through the center of the Garden, a wide aisle representing a street bisected the audience. This aisle would become one of the most potent tools of the Pageant in merging the audience and the workers. At nine p.m., the Pageant began.
Episode One, "The Mills Alive--The Workers Dead," according to the program, opened with the band of workers playing a strike march followed by the whistle of the mills. Then the workers trudged to the mill, walking through the wings of the theatre and down the center aisle as if "ill-fed" and talking about the impending strike. This crowd of workers included older people as well as children, and their muttering merged with the whir of looms coming from inside the mill where electric lights glowed through the backdrop. "Everything indicated industrial peace and contentment," remarked the New York Times without a hint of irony. Then, "The Workers Begin to Think," as the program reads, and the men and women gathered in small groups in front of the mills and pantomimed a discussion about going on strike. At this moment, an excited mob of workers burst out of the mill doors -- the backdrop had an opening wide enough to allow thirty people through at once -- all shouting, "Strike! Strike!" The stage was crowded with mobs of men and women, all intoxicated with sudden freedom. The whir of the mill died, and the band played "La Marseillaise" as the workers left the stage and the mill and marched down the entire length of the aisle through the Garden as the audience cheered.
In Episode Two, "The Mills Dead--The Workers Alive," the workers picketed the mill, where the lights were off to indicate its closure. The workers were on the alert for scabs; when the police escorted in a scab, he was booed by the workers but was nevertheless able to enter. At this point, the workers turned on the police and booed them, and the audience joined in the booing. The police then charged the strikers and beat the crowd. Forty strikers were arrested, and one worker, Valentino Modestino, was killed by a stray gunshot while standing on the porch of his house with one of his children in his arms. The police marched their captives down the long center aisle as a crowd of noisy strikers followed, with the audience joining in the cheering and booing.
Episode Three, "The Funeral of Modestino," began with a funeral procession accompanied by a death march. The audience hissed at the policemen leading the march. When the empty coffin was carried in, draped with a red Wobbly flag, the strikers covered it with red carnations, "the crimson symbol of the workers' blood," dropped one by one by the strikers passing the coffin. Reed had obtained the permission of Modestino's family before staging this scene, and the family members watched from a special box in Madison Square Garden. Tresca and Haywood gave the same orations as they did at the actual funeral: Haywood vowed on the blood of the slain man to protect Modestino's widow and children, and Tresca, speaking in Italian, promised blood for blood. Then the funeral procession led the coffin down the center aisle.
This most gloomy episode of the Pageant was followed by the most joyful, the "Mass Meeting at Haledon," which re-created the meeting run every Sunday in the town next to Paterson by a socialist mayor who opened the town to the workers. The performers enacted the regular Sunday program of support for the strikers, and the episode featured singing in Italian, German, and English. All the leaders of the strike spoke, climaxing with Flynn. Haywood called on the strikers to condemn the convictions of Quinlan and Alexander Scott, the editor of the Paterson socialist newspaper, for inciting a riot. The audience assented as readily as the performers, and the episode became a sing-along, with the audience joining with the strikers to sing the "International" and "La Marseillaise." After the episode, Haywood asked for funds to support the strike.
Episode Five was comprised of two parts: "May Day" and "Sending Away the Children." The episode began with a re-creation of the May Day parade, with bands, red flags, and celebration. Then, as they had on May Day, the mothers of Paterson sent away their children to live with "strike mothers" who would take care of the children so "that their parents might go on and fight and starve and struggle unhampered by their little ones." The hundreds of children participating wore red sashes or ties or both. They gave their mothers farewell embraces, and Flynn spoke to the weeping mothers, "dwelling upon the solidarity of labor in this vividly human episode." After Flynn spoke, Haywood took the podium once more to affirm the strike's validity.
In the final episode, "Strike Meeting at Turner Hall," a hall in Paterson closed to the strikers, Tresca, Flynn, and Haywood spoke once again. The strikers debated and passed a measure calling for an eight-hour work day, with the audience joining in the voting. During his speech, Haywood stood at the rear of the stage, facing the audience. The strikers stood on stage in front of him with their backs to the audience, transforming the setting into a vast meeting. Haywood spoke in front of the dead mill, which had loomed over the entire evening. He asked the audience to rise in protest against the conviction of Quinlan. All there did to listen to Big Bill Haywood in full roar.
After the Pageant, all involved agreed that it was an artistic success, but it quickly proved a financial failure. How much it affected the strike is disputed by historians. Flynn believed that the raised expectations among the workers, as well as the action of taking people off the picket lines, weakened the strike. Additionally, Flynn claimed that the casting of some workers over others created jealousy among the ranks of picketers.
The Pageant did succeed in raising consciousness about the strike and the goals of workers. In only one performance, the possibility of raising a significant amount of money above the amount invested was fairly low, although, heady with success, Haywood mentioned that the Pageant might be staged again. However, the community of workers created by the Pageant did not last. Eventually the unity among the workers broke down, as the skilled workers decided that the strike should be settled shop by shop. Once the workers were divided, the employers refused to take back workers except under pre-strike conditions. The failure of the Paterson strike marked, then, a downturn in the fortunes of the IWW in the eastern United States.
(Sources for all of this will be posted later today because you gotta give credit where it's due.)
(Note: The Rude Pundit is putting on his scholar's cap today. This year is the 100th Anniversary of the Paterson Silk Strike, one of the seminal events in American labor history. On June 7, 1913, a massive consciousness-raising and fundraising pageant of the strike was staged in Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, 21 miles away, by John Reed -- you know him as Warren Beatty in Reds -- and hundreds of participants. This is the story of that great and sad moment in radicalism in the United States. Grab a bottle o' beer: this is a long one.)
In Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1912, the Industrial Workers of the World, considered the most radical labor union of the period, had their greatest success defeating mill owners during a strike. In Lawrence, one major mill, the American Woolen Company, dominated the town. Once it fell, all the smaller mills followed. By contrast, Paterson, New Jersey, had 300 small silk mills, with none dominant, so that there was even greater competition. As a result, and because they feared being overwhelmed by competition, unsympathetic employers paid their workers little and treated them poorly. When the mills in Paterson shifted from making high quality silk to cheap silk in order to compete with mills in Pennsylvania, the employers hired less skilled workers, mostly women. With technological innovations, a worker could tend four looms instead of two; at the same time, since the workers were paid per thread in a pattern, cheaper silk, which had fewer threads, meant less pay. The silk worker labored ten hours a day for an annual income of $580, lower than that for any other industry in New Jersey. They worked in unheated mills surrounded by a fog of steam and acid fumes from the dye. Many workers died at an early age from tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.
When the Paterson strike finally occurred in 1913, unskilled immigrants went out first, followed by the skilled English-speaking immigrants. The American Federation of Labor tried but failed to organize the workers in the United Garmentworkers Union. The moderate approach offered by the AFL was too little too late for workers primed by several years of IWW pamphlets and materials circulating around Paterson. The IWW also earned the respect of the workers because of the willingness of their leaders to go to jail. As in Lawrence, the success of the IWW stemmed from its ability to organize those unskilled workers the AFL either failed or refused to bring into their union. While the IWW led the strike of 25,000 workers, at the time of the strike only 1000 workers were dues-paying members, more than likely because of the economic conditions of the workers.
Possibly the greatest appeal of the IWW was its ability to bring together all the ethnic groups of workers. This unity was hard to achieve. John Reed, a young reporter only a few years out of Harvard, spoke to immigrants who were discontent because they were picketing whereas native-born Americans were not. IWW speakers, though, sought to transcend prejudices, preaching "solidarity . . . [and] instilling class spirit, class respect, [and] class consciousness," writes labor historian Melvyn Dubofsky. IWW leaders at the strike, including Carlo Tresca, William Haywood, Patrick Quinlan, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, organized strike committees that were run by Paterson workers. They made sure outsiders were not negotiating with the employers. Flynn especially urged only outsider support and organization skills, and she preached nonviolence, as did all the strike leaders.
However, employers refused to negotiate with the organized workers, primarily because they were Wobblies. As John Fitch points out, while the employers were against any kind of union, they might have negotiated with the AFL, but because of the reputation of the Wobblies as "hoodlum, radical, un-American unionists," they would not sit at the bargaining table with the union. Interestingly, the public had a more violent reaction to the IWW than any violence the Wobblies ever committed. In an article unsympathetic to the Wobblies, Fitch cites several cases of such vigilantism. In Lawrence, two Wobbly leaders were charged with a murder they did not commit, while a soldier who openly bayoneted a striking worker was never even arrested. In San Diego, the IWW was banned from speaking on street corners. When the Wobblies kept returning, they engendered open hostility from the citizens who "tortured," beat, and sent the defiant Wobblies into the desert. The events at Paterson followed much the same pattern: the Paterson Press implored its readers to help rid the town of the IWW "no matter how it is accomplished." Others called more explicitly for violence, including one Civil War veteran who urged that new cemeteries "be filled with just such people as those who are now making this disturbance -- the first graves to be filled with Haywood and his crowd." Strikebreakers beat and killed Wobblies yet were never arrested. Only strikers were arrested and their leaders, like Quinlan, were brought to trial. Reed was radicalized even more when he was jailed by police for refusing to clear the streets. In jail with Tresca and others, he was impressed by the way the Wobblies kept up their spirits by singing and educating themselves.
The city officials of Paterson tried to get the AFL to come in once again to organize the workers because the larger union would presumably lead the strikers to a more peaceful and more accommodating resolution of the situation. In a meeting that was already filled with a sense of the theatre that would come later, the AFL organizers arrived and attempted to hold a rally in Turner Hall; they hoisted an American flag, an act that was booed by the workers who, in response, all thrust their red union cards into the air.
This theatricality would, of course, lead to the Pageant, which came into being, according to the memoirs of both Mabel Dodge Luhan and Hutchins Hapgood, when, at a gathering at the apartment of his mistress, Haywood complained to Mabel Dodge about the lack of publicity for the strike outside of the immediate area. Dodge suggested, "Why don't you bring it to New York and show it to the workers?" Haywood liked the idea but had no concept of how to do so until Reed stepped forward and said, "I'll do it! My name is John Reed. We'll make a Pageant of the strike! The first in the world!"
The Pageant, therefore, was the idea of Reed, the former Harvard cheerleader, who, according to Dubofsky, hoped "simultaneously to save the strike from certain defeat and to make the IWW the link between New York's radical "new" intellectuals and the "new" working-class revolutionaries, who together . . . would leap out of their times, transcend the prevailing structure of society, and transform the values of bourgeois America."
The goal of the Pageant was to let the workers in New York City get a fair impression of the strike and the strikers. In this way, money might be generated, but the more immediate goal was, as Hutchins Hapgood wrote in the New York Globe, "to give the whole of New York an idea and the meaning of the great industrial and social happenings which are taking place in Paterson and all over the country." For the IWW, therefore, the Pageant was an organizing tool, while, for the Greenwich Village intellectuals like Reed, it was a culmination of their artistic efforts to that point.
In casting the Pageant, Reed chose over 1000 workers to participate. These workers contributed to Reed's basic scenario and, in a sense, were coauthors of the piece; they evolved the details of the scenes from the incidents of their own lives while Reed's emphasis was on the revolutionary aims of the Pageant. As outsiders, Reed and the other organizers were able to gather pieces from the workers' existence and demonstrate the very real pattern of class struggle. Reed brought in intellectuals, artists, designers, directors, voice experts, and others to drill the workers into a theatre company in less than three weeks.
During rehearsal, music became a key part of the Pageant, with songs from the participating ethnic groups becoming part of the Pageant. The IWW was justly famous for its songbook, which ably demonstrated the use of song as a weapon in class struggle. Reed himself contributed to the musical aspect of the program. Dodge noted after seeing a rehearsal led by Reed: "One of the gayest touches, I think, was teaching them to sing one of their lawless songs to the tune of 'Harvard, old Harvard!'"
Despite the open rehearsals and the inclusion of many prominent intellectuals, Haywood was correct in his complaint against the press; other than the socialist newspapers, the New York press paid very little attention to the strike and the Pageant prior to its performance. In the Sunday New York Times of June 1, an announcement of the Pageant appeared at the bottom of page 8 in section 7, the drama and fashion section, after several vaudeville announcements.
On the evening of the performance, according to the Times, the old Madison Square Garden was filled with 15,000 people and red IWW flags and signs. No desecration of the American flag was allowed; in fact, the Sheriff threatened to shut down the proceedings if such an event occurred. Wobbly reputation notwithstanding, the organizers of the Pageant attempted to keep the evening as noncontroversial as possible. When two workers not associated with the Pageant openly placed at one end of the Garden the anarchist sign, "No God, No Master," which had been displayed prominently in Lawrence, one of the strike leaders immediately tore it down. Because they were trying to forge a unity between workers and audience, the Wobblies did not want the clergy to turn against them as they had in Lawrence.
The audience inside Madison Square Garden was greeted with a spectacular set. Designed by Robert Edmond Jones, it featured a huge stage and an enormous backdrop of life-sized silk mills. Through the center of the Garden, a wide aisle representing a street bisected the audience. This aisle would become one of the most potent tools of the Pageant in merging the audience and the workers. At nine p.m., the Pageant began.
Episode One, "The Mills Alive--The Workers Dead," according to the program, opened with the band of workers playing a strike march followed by the whistle of the mills. Then the workers trudged to the mill, walking through the wings of the theatre and down the center aisle as if "ill-fed" and talking about the impending strike. This crowd of workers included older people as well as children, and their muttering merged with the whir of looms coming from inside the mill where electric lights glowed through the backdrop. "Everything indicated industrial peace and contentment," remarked the New York Times without a hint of irony. Then, "The Workers Begin to Think," as the program reads, and the men and women gathered in small groups in front of the mills and pantomimed a discussion about going on strike. At this moment, an excited mob of workers burst out of the mill doors -- the backdrop had an opening wide enough to allow thirty people through at once -- all shouting, "Strike! Strike!" The stage was crowded with mobs of men and women, all intoxicated with sudden freedom. The whir of the mill died, and the band played "La Marseillaise" as the workers left the stage and the mill and marched down the entire length of the aisle through the Garden as the audience cheered.
In Episode Two, "The Mills Dead--The Workers Alive," the workers picketed the mill, where the lights were off to indicate its closure. The workers were on the alert for scabs; when the police escorted in a scab, he was booed by the workers but was nevertheless able to enter. At this point, the workers turned on the police and booed them, and the audience joined in the booing. The police then charged the strikers and beat the crowd. Forty strikers were arrested, and one worker, Valentino Modestino, was killed by a stray gunshot while standing on the porch of his house with one of his children in his arms. The police marched their captives down the long center aisle as a crowd of noisy strikers followed, with the audience joining in the cheering and booing.
Episode Three, "The Funeral of Modestino," began with a funeral procession accompanied by a death march. The audience hissed at the policemen leading the march. When the empty coffin was carried in, draped with a red Wobbly flag, the strikers covered it with red carnations, "the crimson symbol of the workers' blood," dropped one by one by the strikers passing the coffin. Reed had obtained the permission of Modestino's family before staging this scene, and the family members watched from a special box in Madison Square Garden. Tresca and Haywood gave the same orations as they did at the actual funeral: Haywood vowed on the blood of the slain man to protect Modestino's widow and children, and Tresca, speaking in Italian, promised blood for blood. Then the funeral procession led the coffin down the center aisle.
This most gloomy episode of the Pageant was followed by the most joyful, the "Mass Meeting at Haledon," which re-created the meeting run every Sunday in the town next to Paterson by a socialist mayor who opened the town to the workers. The performers enacted the regular Sunday program of support for the strikers, and the episode featured singing in Italian, German, and English. All the leaders of the strike spoke, climaxing with Flynn. Haywood called on the strikers to condemn the convictions of Quinlan and Alexander Scott, the editor of the Paterson socialist newspaper, for inciting a riot. The audience assented as readily as the performers, and the episode became a sing-along, with the audience joining with the strikers to sing the "International" and "La Marseillaise." After the episode, Haywood asked for funds to support the strike.
Episode Five was comprised of two parts: "May Day" and "Sending Away the Children." The episode began with a re-creation of the May Day parade, with bands, red flags, and celebration. Then, as they had on May Day, the mothers of Paterson sent away their children to live with "strike mothers" who would take care of the children so "that their parents might go on and fight and starve and struggle unhampered by their little ones." The hundreds of children participating wore red sashes or ties or both. They gave their mothers farewell embraces, and Flynn spoke to the weeping mothers, "dwelling upon the solidarity of labor in this vividly human episode." After Flynn spoke, Haywood took the podium once more to affirm the strike's validity.
In the final episode, "Strike Meeting at Turner Hall," a hall in Paterson closed to the strikers, Tresca, Flynn, and Haywood spoke once again. The strikers debated and passed a measure calling for an eight-hour work day, with the audience joining in the voting. During his speech, Haywood stood at the rear of the stage, facing the audience. The strikers stood on stage in front of him with their backs to the audience, transforming the setting into a vast meeting. Haywood spoke in front of the dead mill, which had loomed over the entire evening. He asked the audience to rise in protest against the conviction of Quinlan. All there did to listen to Big Bill Haywood in full roar.
After the Pageant, all involved agreed that it was an artistic success, but it quickly proved a financial failure. How much it affected the strike is disputed by historians. Flynn believed that the raised expectations among the workers, as well as the action of taking people off the picket lines, weakened the strike. Additionally, Flynn claimed that the casting of some workers over others created jealousy among the ranks of picketers.
The Pageant did succeed in raising consciousness about the strike and the goals of workers. In only one performance, the possibility of raising a significant amount of money above the amount invested was fairly low, although, heady with success, Haywood mentioned that the Pageant might be staged again. However, the community of workers created by the Pageant did not last. Eventually the unity among the workers broke down, as the skilled workers decided that the strike should be settled shop by shop. Once the workers were divided, the employers refused to take back workers except under pre-strike conditions. The failure of the Paterson strike marked, then, a downturn in the fortunes of the IWW in the eastern United States.
(Sources for all of this will be posted later today because you gotta give credit where it's due.)
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Fear the Chemical Plants, Not the "Terrorists":
So much of what we argue about in our politics in the United States is just so much noise and distraction, like a magician trying to misdirect an audience's attention so they don't see the bullshit behind the trick. Sometimes, the Rude Pundit imagines super-rich fucks in some luxurious penthouse high, high above the streets, sucking down thousand dollar bottles of wine, snorting cocaine, and laughing, laughing, laughing as they watch on TV as we down here in the world of the rabble fight over the scraps. Abortion? Guns? Gay rights? Oh, yes, yes, these are very real and very important issues. But they are, despite being gut-level meaningful, merely the symptoms we're trying to get under control because we can't fight the disease: the withering, overwhelming siege of democracy by corporations. That's where the life and death battle needs to be waged, but it is the battle we are incapable of engaging because "Look over there - it's a terrorist."
You gotta think that the owners of fertilizer and other plants around the world, like the Koch brothers, were incredibly relieved that the explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company in Texas happened just a couple of days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Americans, and our media had to go nutzoid over "terrorism," because the saga of the Tsarnaevs totally subsumed the story of a neighborhood wrecked by a preventable explosion that killed four times as many people and far, far more property than the Tsarnaevs pressure cooker bombs.
The town of West was failed by multiple governmental agencies, but it was the insidious influence of industry money, often from multinational corporations like, you know, Koch Industries, that watered down regulation and enforcement. That's a goddamn shame. But the fact that the plant had 1350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate, the shit that blows up, that was reportable to the DHS to ensure it's safe and secure? That's a goddamn crime, a crime far more important to the well-being of Americans than whatever those assholes in Boston were up to and a crime that ought to be punished by more than the lawsuits now being filed against plant owner Adair Grain, Inc.
Of course, it's not like you'd know that. Indeed, it's not like you'd know anything, at this point, other than the Boston bombing is the Most Significant Event Ever Since the Underwear Bomber. There's been a kind of creepy media near-blackout of the West story.
At his press conference today, President Obama was asked two questions related to the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, that bullshit rallying point for increasingly crazed conservative conspiracy-mongering. Obama was even asked if Americans should feel unsafe about going to public events because they might have douche-bombers attacking them. Doesn't it seem, intrepid CNN reporter Jessica Yellin, that the more reasonable question is "Should the millions of Americans who live near goddamn chemical plants worry that that fucking things are gonna go armageddon on their asses?"
The last most of us will probably ever hear about West is that Obama made a stopover in Waco last week to be hugger-in-chief at the memorial service to the firefighters killed. In a boilerplate "buck up" speech, Obama extolled small town virtues and good ol' American come-togetherness. He did not say a single word about making sure the next West explosion doesn't happen, that more than a dozen people don't die.
There's a bill in Congress right now that will ensure that more do die. It waters down the EPA's ability to regulate chemical sites. As Mother Jones reports, it's supported by "two dozen industry groups, including the Fertilizer Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration." That's also known as "A Cabal of Motherfuckers." It's pathetically hilarious that Congress will gladly strip away individual rights in the name of hunting down a few jack-offs who wanna be the Joker, but burden a capitalist with some oversight so that shit doesn't burn your town down? That's government over-reach, you socialist bastards.
This is not to mention that 14 new ammonia plants are proposed to be built in the next 3-5 years, after a 20-year lull. That's because of the availability of cheap natural gas, which is pumping up the production of ammonia, which is one of the prime ingredients in, hey, look, ammonium nitrate, which blew the fuck out of West, Texas.
Yep, those imaginary rich people, tripping balls at their rooftop orgies, are laughing hard. And they're walking to the edge to piss off the side on the rest of us.
The liberal press (the real liberal press) needs to stay on this story and not get distra--oh, hey, look, a basketball player said he's gay...
So much of what we argue about in our politics in the United States is just so much noise and distraction, like a magician trying to misdirect an audience's attention so they don't see the bullshit behind the trick. Sometimes, the Rude Pundit imagines super-rich fucks in some luxurious penthouse high, high above the streets, sucking down thousand dollar bottles of wine, snorting cocaine, and laughing, laughing, laughing as they watch on TV as we down here in the world of the rabble fight over the scraps. Abortion? Guns? Gay rights? Oh, yes, yes, these are very real and very important issues. But they are, despite being gut-level meaningful, merely the symptoms we're trying to get under control because we can't fight the disease: the withering, overwhelming siege of democracy by corporations. That's where the life and death battle needs to be waged, but it is the battle we are incapable of engaging because "Look over there - it's a terrorist."
You gotta think that the owners of fertilizer and other plants around the world, like the Koch brothers, were incredibly relieved that the explosion at the West Chemical and Fertilizer Company in Texas happened just a couple of days after the Boston Marathon bombing. Americans, and our media had to go nutzoid over "terrorism," because the saga of the Tsarnaevs totally subsumed the story of a neighborhood wrecked by a preventable explosion that killed four times as many people and far, far more property than the Tsarnaevs pressure cooker bombs.
The town of West was failed by multiple governmental agencies, but it was the insidious influence of industry money, often from multinational corporations like, you know, Koch Industries, that watered down regulation and enforcement. That's a goddamn shame. But the fact that the plant had 1350 times the amount of ammonium nitrate, the shit that blows up, that was reportable to the DHS to ensure it's safe and secure? That's a goddamn crime, a crime far more important to the well-being of Americans than whatever those assholes in Boston were up to and a crime that ought to be punished by more than the lawsuits now being filed against plant owner Adair Grain, Inc.
Of course, it's not like you'd know that. Indeed, it's not like you'd know anything, at this point, other than the Boston bombing is the Most Significant Event Ever Since the Underwear Bomber. There's been a kind of creepy media near-blackout of the West story.
At his press conference today, President Obama was asked two questions related to the consulate attack in Benghazi, Libya, that bullshit rallying point for increasingly crazed conservative conspiracy-mongering. Obama was even asked if Americans should feel unsafe about going to public events because they might have douche-bombers attacking them. Doesn't it seem, intrepid CNN reporter Jessica Yellin, that the more reasonable question is "Should the millions of Americans who live near goddamn chemical plants worry that that fucking things are gonna go armageddon on their asses?"
The last most of us will probably ever hear about West is that Obama made a stopover in Waco last week to be hugger-in-chief at the memorial service to the firefighters killed. In a boilerplate "buck up" speech, Obama extolled small town virtues and good ol' American come-togetherness. He did not say a single word about making sure the next West explosion doesn't happen, that more than a dozen people don't die.
There's a bill in Congress right now that will ensure that more do die. It waters down the EPA's ability to regulate chemical sites. As Mother Jones reports, it's supported by "two dozen industry groups, including the Fertilizer Institute, the American Chemistry Council, and the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration." That's also known as "A Cabal of Motherfuckers." It's pathetically hilarious that Congress will gladly strip away individual rights in the name of hunting down a few jack-offs who wanna be the Joker, but burden a capitalist with some oversight so that shit doesn't burn your town down? That's government over-reach, you socialist bastards.
This is not to mention that 14 new ammonia plants are proposed to be built in the next 3-5 years, after a 20-year lull. That's because of the availability of cheap natural gas, which is pumping up the production of ammonia, which is one of the prime ingredients in, hey, look, ammonium nitrate, which blew the fuck out of West, Texas.
Yep, those imaginary rich people, tripping balls at their rooftop orgies, are laughing hard. And they're walking to the edge to piss off the side on the rest of us.
The liberal press (the real liberal press) needs to stay on this story and not get distra--oh, hey, look, a basketball player said he's gay...
Monday, April 29, 2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to Snort Meth Off a Dumpster Lid:
That's the apartment complex that was destroyed by the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company on Thursday, April 18. What happened in the redundantly named town of West, Texas, is far, far more important than anything to do with Boston bombs, Tsarnaevs old and young, and innocent Mishas. If we truly gave a shit about being safe in our homes in this America, we'd be talking endlessly about West, not Boston.
The Rude Pundit will have much more to say about this tomorrow, but he wanted you to see this image so you can understand that something truly awful happened in West, a story that has been buried with almost conspiratorial swiftness.
So far only 3 out of the 157 homes in the blast zone have been deemed habitable. You can imagine that these apartments were not among them.
That's the apartment complex that was destroyed by the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company on Thursday, April 18. What happened in the redundantly named town of West, Texas, is far, far more important than anything to do with Boston bombs, Tsarnaevs old and young, and innocent Mishas. If we truly gave a shit about being safe in our homes in this America, we'd be talking endlessly about West, not Boston.
The Rude Pundit will have much more to say about this tomorrow, but he wanted you to see this image so you can understand that something truly awful happened in West, a story that has been buried with almost conspiratorial swiftness.
So far only 3 out of the 157 homes in the blast zone have been deemed habitable. You can imagine that these apartments were not among them.
Friday, April 26, 2013
A More Realistic Bush Museum:
The highlights of the new George W. Bush Library and Abattoir of History are many. The building itself is shaped like a giant hand with a middle finger thrusting out, obviously pointing towards the heavens, where the former president found the strength to deal with the many crises of his two terms in office. The statues out front of drunken sisters Barbara and Jenna Bush welcome you inside because, indeed, what is life but a party?
- The first space is the "How-the-Fuck-Did-This-Guy-Become-President" Room, and it deals with Bush's early years. Exhibits include the megaphone Bush used as a school cheerleader, a pile of cocaine and bottle and bottles of tequila, and, of course, a wrecked car or two. You'll learn about how Bush succeeded in destroying nearly every business he ever came near, except for the Texas Rangers, which didn't require him to play an active role. You'll gaze in wonder, perhaps nodding and thinking, "How the fuck did this guy become president? Sure, maybe governor of Texas because, well, fuck, it's Texas. But the whole goddamn country? Twice?" Then you see the final glass case: stacks of cash from the Bush family's overseas accounts.
- The next room lets you have fun recounting ballots from Florida. What kind of mark is that? How's that chad hanging? You get to figure it out. Be careful though. You have a timer on you and before you're done, rowdy GOP operatives will appear on a screen to distract you and an animatronic William Rehnquist comes rushing in to put an end to it.
- The heart of the Abattoir of History is the Chamber of Horrors. Here, wax figures represent the various victims of George W. Bush's belief in the greatness of the United States.
You get to stand in front of a bed that contains a brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Oh, wait. That's not a wax figure. It actually is Terri Schiavo, secretly kept alive by machines to remind us that only God can decide who lives and dies.
Further in the Chamber of Horrors, you'll see the Lab of Scientists, a diorama showing people who have studied subjects like medicine and climate attempting to solve the problems that plague humanity. Never fear: Dr. Stem Cell and Professor Inconvenient Truth won't get far attempting to kill snowflake babies in order to fill the ozone layer or whatever it is they're doing. George W. Bush will stop them from their "reality-based" work.
The Titty Room will remind you of the important breasts of the Bush Administration: the boobs on the statue of Justice that Attorney General John Ashcroft had covered and the national scandal of Janet Jackson's pierced nipple fleetingly displayed on television. These things mattered because the children.
On we push into the Chamber, and it gets a little more grotesque here. There's a display of a flooded Canal Street in New Orleans. Yes, sure, there's an alligator about to eat the corpse of that black woman, but it still feels like the Big Easy.
And then there's the display of dead Iraqis, who were Shocked and Awed and Surged and Fallujahed into loving America. Never fear: it's the George W. Bush Library. You won't have to see any bodies of Americans. Yes, there is a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's execution, but, no, Osama bin Laden isn't here because, you know, who really spends time on him?
- The Subjects Is Hard Room is devoted to George W. Bush's disdain for things like reading and math. There's the daily briefing that said, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." It's still unread after all this time. There's the tax cut bills Bush signed, one of them even after the wars had started. There's Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill's report that said that taxes needed to be raised and spending cut. Next to that is the letter informing O'Neill that he would no longer be needed in the White House.
- There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures. And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.
- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.
Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.
The highlights of the new George W. Bush Library and Abattoir of History are many. The building itself is shaped like a giant hand with a middle finger thrusting out, obviously pointing towards the heavens, where the former president found the strength to deal with the many crises of his two terms in office. The statues out front of drunken sisters Barbara and Jenna Bush welcome you inside because, indeed, what is life but a party?
- The first space is the "How-the-Fuck-Did-This-Guy-Become-President" Room, and it deals with Bush's early years. Exhibits include the megaphone Bush used as a school cheerleader, a pile of cocaine and bottle and bottles of tequila, and, of course, a wrecked car or two. You'll learn about how Bush succeeded in destroying nearly every business he ever came near, except for the Texas Rangers, which didn't require him to play an active role. You'll gaze in wonder, perhaps nodding and thinking, "How the fuck did this guy become president? Sure, maybe governor of Texas because, well, fuck, it's Texas. But the whole goddamn country? Twice?" Then you see the final glass case: stacks of cash from the Bush family's overseas accounts.
- The next room lets you have fun recounting ballots from Florida. What kind of mark is that? How's that chad hanging? You get to figure it out. Be careful though. You have a timer on you and before you're done, rowdy GOP operatives will appear on a screen to distract you and an animatronic William Rehnquist comes rushing in to put an end to it.
- The heart of the Abattoir of History is the Chamber of Horrors. Here, wax figures represent the various victims of George W. Bush's belief in the greatness of the United States.
You get to stand in front of a bed that contains a brain-dead Terri Schiavo. Oh, wait. That's not a wax figure. It actually is Terri Schiavo, secretly kept alive by machines to remind us that only God can decide who lives and dies.
Further in the Chamber of Horrors, you'll see the Lab of Scientists, a diorama showing people who have studied subjects like medicine and climate attempting to solve the problems that plague humanity. Never fear: Dr. Stem Cell and Professor Inconvenient Truth won't get far attempting to kill snowflake babies in order to fill the ozone layer or whatever it is they're doing. George W. Bush will stop them from their "reality-based" work.
The Titty Room will remind you of the important breasts of the Bush Administration: the boobs on the statue of Justice that Attorney General John Ashcroft had covered and the national scandal of Janet Jackson's pierced nipple fleetingly displayed on television. These things mattered because the children.
On we push into the Chamber, and it gets a little more grotesque here. There's a display of a flooded Canal Street in New Orleans. Yes, sure, there's an alligator about to eat the corpse of that black woman, but it still feels like the Big Easy.
And then there's the display of dead Iraqis, who were Shocked and Awed and Surged and Fallujahed into loving America. Never fear: it's the George W. Bush Library. You won't have to see any bodies of Americans. Yes, there is a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's execution, but, no, Osama bin Laden isn't here because, you know, who really spends time on him?
- The Subjects Is Hard Room is devoted to George W. Bush's disdain for things like reading and math. There's the daily briefing that said, "Bin Laden determined to strike in the U.S." It's still unread after all this time. There's the tax cut bills Bush signed, one of them even after the wars had started. There's Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill's report that said that taxes needed to be raised and spending cut. Next to that is the letter informing O'Neill that he would no longer be needed in the White House.
- There's so many rooms that it would be hard to see them all in one visit. The "Gitmo Yourself" experience lets you put on an orange jumpsuit and get waterboarded, feared up, and forced into stress positions, all while assuring you that you're not being tortured because America doesn't torture. There's Halliburton Hall, devoted to all the money given to contractors and subcontractors for nearly every support aspect of the wars. There's the Wall Street Rules room, which is empty, but there's a check at the end. There's the artifacts room: the flight suit from the Mission Accomplished aircraft carrier landing; the plastic turkey Bush served to troops in Iraq; the dog pillow Tony Blair slept on at the foot of Bush's bed; and the funding promised but never delivered on No Child Left Behind. This is not to mention the interactive exhibits, like Can You Tell When Ari Fleischer Is Lying? (hint: the answer is "Always"), Is That a War Crime? (hint: the answer is always "No"), How Would You Punish Joseph Wilson?, and Would You Call the Air Around Ground Zero Safe? (Christine Todd Whitman gives a thumbs up). Of course, there's a bunch of t-ball pictures. And a piece of the fallen Twin Towers because Never Forget.
- The final room is a simple space. Rows of chairs are aligned in front of a screen. In the center of the seat is a dildo molded, in detail, on Karl Rove's penis. You are asked to position yourself so that the dildo enters your anus, the better to feel like an American during the early years of the new millennium. On the screen, a series of people tell you how misunderstood George W. Bush is: Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, Jack Abramoff, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, Bill Frist, and more.
Next to your chair is a small whip. That is for people who voted for Bush at least once. They are encouraged to beat themselves, leaving scars and welts on their back, so that they walk out bleeding, asses reamed, in order to remember all the harm they did to the rest of us.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
The George W. Bush Library: A Place to Contemplate One's Existential Worthlessness:
Yessirree, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Whitewashatorium of Wonders is opening in all its Panglossian glory, forcing us to look backward and think, "Aw, schucks, that dumb shitkicker wannabe was just doing the best his little ol' brain could do. He didn't mean to set the nation on the path to its imminent doom." Truly, it's like creating a library to a gorilla that wasn't quite as gentle or articulate as Koko. Well, look, here's a pile of kitten corpses it petted to death, but, goddamn, wasn't it adorable to watch them together briefly. And at least it could use sign language to say, "Me throw poop now." You might have to duck, but don't say you weren't warned.
Beyond the exhibits (like the chance to see if you are smarter than George W. Bush "Decision Points" computer games), there's the "artifacts," a bunch of objects from the Bush presidency that are supposed to make you nostalgic for the first decade of the 21st century.
Like, hey, look, there's the bicycle from noted cheater Lance Armstrong that Bush rode for more time than he spent in the office, injuring himself multiple times.
There's a statue of a bull sauntering without a care over a pile of shit. Of course, that was in the Oval Office for Bush's entire term.
Seriously, how fucking useless a man do you have to have been for the museum devoted to your eight goddamn years to contain an exhibit of the state dinners from one's time in office. How pathetic and low do you have to be for the place meant to commemorate your accomplishments to have this picture:
That's the dessert tray from the 2008 National Governors Association dinner. Since it was 2008, you can pretty much assume that those are Republican testicles covered in powdered sugar since they were about to have their balls handed to them.
Let's not even get started on the series of photos from the White House t-ball games, which Laura Bush herself mentioned as one of the accomplishments of the administration this morning on NPR (the Rude Pundit swears to you he is not making that up).
And there's a section on the dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley. Hopefully, the museum will feature their stuffed corpses so we can admire their dead-eyed adorableness and think about how Barney now rots in hell. By the way, the Rude Pundit searched the Clinton library website. He did not find a biography of Socks the cat.
The whole thing seems designed not just to cover-up for every horrible thing done to the United States under Bush. Actually, it reflects the essential emptiness of the man who led the country as an incurious figurehead, a meat puppet with Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's hands up his ass at different times. In recent interviews, you can hear the reporters trying to get Bush to have a scintilla of self-awareness, a moment when he says he regrets something or made a wrong decision. He doesn't, though, because he can't. He can't because he was never secure in anything but his rightness, no matter how much of a failure he was.
Now, though, George W. Bush wants to be forgotten. He has disappeared because he is incapable of doing anything. He bumblefucked his way into history. His library merely represents his non-entity status. And it costs 16 bucks to see it.
Tomorrow: What an honest Bush library would look like.
Yessirree, the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Whitewashatorium of Wonders is opening in all its Panglossian glory, forcing us to look backward and think, "Aw, schucks, that dumb shitkicker wannabe was just doing the best his little ol' brain could do. He didn't mean to set the nation on the path to its imminent doom." Truly, it's like creating a library to a gorilla that wasn't quite as gentle or articulate as Koko. Well, look, here's a pile of kitten corpses it petted to death, but, goddamn, wasn't it adorable to watch them together briefly. And at least it could use sign language to say, "Me throw poop now." You might have to duck, but don't say you weren't warned.
Beyond the exhibits (like the chance to see if you are smarter than George W. Bush "Decision Points" computer games), there's the "artifacts," a bunch of objects from the Bush presidency that are supposed to make you nostalgic for the first decade of the 21st century.
Like, hey, look, there's the bicycle from noted cheater Lance Armstrong that Bush rode for more time than he spent in the office, injuring himself multiple times.
There's a statue of a bull sauntering without a care over a pile of shit. Of course, that was in the Oval Office for Bush's entire term.
Seriously, how fucking useless a man do you have to have been for the museum devoted to your eight goddamn years to contain an exhibit of the state dinners from one's time in office. How pathetic and low do you have to be for the place meant to commemorate your accomplishments to have this picture:
That's the dessert tray from the 2008 National Governors Association dinner. Since it was 2008, you can pretty much assume that those are Republican testicles covered in powdered sugar since they were about to have their balls handed to them.
Let's not even get started on the series of photos from the White House t-ball games, which Laura Bush herself mentioned as one of the accomplishments of the administration this morning on NPR (the Rude Pundit swears to you he is not making that up).
And there's a section on the dogs, Barney and Miss Beazley. Hopefully, the museum will feature their stuffed corpses so we can admire their dead-eyed adorableness and think about how Barney now rots in hell. By the way, the Rude Pundit searched the Clinton library website. He did not find a biography of Socks the cat.
The whole thing seems designed not just to cover-up for every horrible thing done to the United States under Bush. Actually, it reflects the essential emptiness of the man who led the country as an incurious figurehead, a meat puppet with Dick Cheney's and Karl Rove's hands up his ass at different times. In recent interviews, you can hear the reporters trying to get Bush to have a scintilla of self-awareness, a moment when he says he regrets something or made a wrong decision. He doesn't, though, because he can't. He can't because he was never secure in anything but his rightness, no matter how much of a failure he was.
Now, though, George W. Bush wants to be forgotten. He has disappeared because he is incapable of doing anything. He bumblefucked his way into history. His library merely represents his non-entity status. And it costs 16 bucks to see it.
Tomorrow: What an honest Bush library would look like.
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Our Gun Laws Don't Care If You Might Be a Terrorist:
Look, the Rude Pundit knows that the Tsarnaevs didn't get their guns from the shop at the corner or the Wal-Mart. But let's try a thought experiment.
Wrap your head around this: Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aka "The Dead One," was on the terrorist watch list (or, you know, one of the super-secret watch lists), and that fact alone wouldn't have stopped him at all from legally buying any gun he wanted. It wouldn't have even slowed him down. You can be forced to leap through hoops and have your anus probed in order to board a plane. But being on the list that's supposed to, you know, give us the illusion of safety cannot, by law, be used to even slow someone down if he or she wants an AR-15.
The Rude Pundit thinks the watch list is bullshit and a violation of at least three constitutional protections, but, hell, it exists and it affects nearly half a million people, hindering them in various ways. Not if you want a semi-automatic rifle with a large magazine, though. Again, think about it, particularly if you're a gun owner: Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have walked into a gun store. He would have had to pass a background check, but that background check could not take into consideration that he was on the goddamn terrorist watch list. Nothing could happen because of that. No extra phone call to authorities. He would have been treated like anyone else. What might have hindered him was his domestic violence incident and that he was denied citizenship. But not for being on the terrorist watch list. And, you know, at a gun show? Fuck, go for it. (Wanna bet we find out that that's where he got his guns?)
You want a fact? Here ya go: "Data from the Government Accountability Office show that between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times. They succeeded in more than 90 percent of those cases, or 1,321 times." Are you cool with this, average gun owner?
Simply put, if you support the idea of a terrorist watch list, if you support the idea of monitoring people who you think might one day attack the United States, but you don't think they should receive extra scrutiny when purchasing a fucking gun or a bunch of fucking guns and bullets, then you are, at best, a pathetic tool of the NRA; at worst, you're aiding and abetting violence against Americans. No matter what, you are the worst kind of motherfucker: the kind who fucks his own mother and is proud of it. Let's just call you "Lindsey Graham" for short.
On Sunday in Seattle, five people were shot dead after a domestic dispute. Today, in an Illinois town of less than 300, five people were shot dead.
In Boston, yes, many were injured and property was damaged. But so far only three people have died. The media is filled with articles and reports introspective and knee-jerk about What Could We Have Done to prevent the bombing or What Can We Do to prevent future attacks. None of those ideas involve preventing people from having access easy access to weapons and explosives (you know, gunpowder?).
No, the Seattle and Manchester, IL murderers are not analogous to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But they each killed more people. And we're not going to have a single discussion about how to stop those kinds of mass killings because, like in our national failure to do anything after Newtown, the right answers are off the table.
Look, the Rude Pundit knows that the Tsarnaevs didn't get their guns from the shop at the corner or the Wal-Mart. But let's try a thought experiment.
Wrap your head around this: Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, aka "The Dead One," was on the terrorist watch list (or, you know, one of the super-secret watch lists), and that fact alone wouldn't have stopped him at all from legally buying any gun he wanted. It wouldn't have even slowed him down. You can be forced to leap through hoops and have your anus probed in order to board a plane. But being on the list that's supposed to, you know, give us the illusion of safety cannot, by law, be used to even slow someone down if he or she wants an AR-15.
The Rude Pundit thinks the watch list is bullshit and a violation of at least three constitutional protections, but, hell, it exists and it affects nearly half a million people, hindering them in various ways. Not if you want a semi-automatic rifle with a large magazine, though. Again, think about it, particularly if you're a gun owner: Tamerlan Tsarnaev could have walked into a gun store. He would have had to pass a background check, but that background check could not take into consideration that he was on the goddamn terrorist watch list. Nothing could happen because of that. No extra phone call to authorities. He would have been treated like anyone else. What might have hindered him was his domestic violence incident and that he was denied citizenship. But not for being on the terrorist watch list. And, you know, at a gun show? Fuck, go for it. (Wanna bet we find out that that's where he got his guns?)
You want a fact? Here ya go: "Data from the Government Accountability Office show that between 2004 and 2010, people on terrorism watch lists tried to buy guns and explosives more than 1,400 times. They succeeded in more than 90 percent of those cases, or 1,321 times." Are you cool with this, average gun owner?
Simply put, if you support the idea of a terrorist watch list, if you support the idea of monitoring people who you think might one day attack the United States, but you don't think they should receive extra scrutiny when purchasing a fucking gun or a bunch of fucking guns and bullets, then you are, at best, a pathetic tool of the NRA; at worst, you're aiding and abetting violence against Americans. No matter what, you are the worst kind of motherfucker: the kind who fucks his own mother and is proud of it. Let's just call you "Lindsey Graham" for short.
On Sunday in Seattle, five people were shot dead after a domestic dispute. Today, in an Illinois town of less than 300, five people were shot dead.
In Boston, yes, many were injured and property was damaged. But so far only three people have died. The media is filled with articles and reports introspective and knee-jerk about What Could We Have Done to prevent the bombing or What Can We Do to prevent future attacks. None of those ideas involve preventing people from having access easy access to weapons and explosives (you know, gunpowder?).
No, the Seattle and Manchester, IL murderers are not analogous to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. But they each killed more people. And we're not going to have a single discussion about how to stop those kinds of mass killings because, like in our national failure to do anything after Newtown, the right answers are off the table.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Boston Distraction: Republicans Are More of a Threat to America Than Bombers:
There's something that's been deeply bugging the Rude Pundit lately in the wake of the continued, seemingly unstoppable Republican obstructionism in the Senate (and leaving aside whatever the hell goes on in the House, which has just become a stage for a weird psychodrama between John Boehner and the wacko right-wingers). By making the threshold for any bill 60 votes, a pretty hard mark even in times of comity and genuine compromise, the Republicans have declared that the minority backseat drives the Senate. Now, if Republicans take back the Senate in 2014, and assuming they don't knock down the filibuster rules, Democrats will be able to do the same, and, even if they can't, President Obama could still veto.
So Republicans have said, through their actions, that the only way the federal government can function is if they rule it. All of it. This is not a blithe assertion. Even when bills are crafted in a way to make the GOP happy (like the background check legislation or, going back to 2009, the bank bailout), even when they are in the room writing the damn things, even when they get to propose a bunch of amendments, they filibuster or threaten to vote them down. And don't get them started on Obama's judicial and other nominees.
While any party wants to have total control of the processes of government, the periods of that are rare (and Democrats can thank enormous piece of shit Senator Max Baucus, among others, for blowing the 2009-2010 shot at it. Baucus should be pantsed, spanked bloody, and forced into the streets of DC as his retirement send-off). But it's something else entirely for one party to assert that they will not allow government to function unless they are in charge. That is new. That is insidious. That is frightening. And it is more of a threat to the United States than a dozen Bostons.
The Boston Marathon Bombing is not that significant an event. Unless you're a victim, it's just not. The West, Texas chemical plant explosion is far more important to our personal security. But not Boston. It's not 9/11. It's not Oklahoma City. It's not Sandy Hook. It's a crime that has been solved. With few loose ends, it is already over. But the GOP just absorbed it into their bloodstream, using it as an inoculation against doing anything, on guns and, ultimately, on immigration. Goddamn, how jubilant Republicans must have been, inside, yes, for the most part, when it happened so that they could bray and point and say, "Look, look, Obama can't keep us safe." Christ, the 2014 ads that'll say, in essence, "Come back, come back to our savage conservative arms and we will protect you." But until they are voted back in, with a supermajority in the Senate, they will simply not allow the nation to move from an enforced stasis.
We are their hostages. Their price is our capitulation.
Today, the Bush Library-o-tarium of Lies and Exaggerations will open. It will no doubt whitewash most of George W.'s crimes against the nation. But it will list all the things he wanted that he got, from tax cuts to wars to No Child Left Behind to the prescription drug plan, many with Democrats on board. At this point, the Obama Presidential Library will feature a series of decent ideas that were left on the cutting room floor.
(Note: To be sure, the Obama administration will use the Boston bombings to keep on with the surveillance programs and drone attacks, but that's a topic for another day.)
There's something that's been deeply bugging the Rude Pundit lately in the wake of the continued, seemingly unstoppable Republican obstructionism in the Senate (and leaving aside whatever the hell goes on in the House, which has just become a stage for a weird psychodrama between John Boehner and the wacko right-wingers). By making the threshold for any bill 60 votes, a pretty hard mark even in times of comity and genuine compromise, the Republicans have declared that the minority backseat drives the Senate. Now, if Republicans take back the Senate in 2014, and assuming they don't knock down the filibuster rules, Democrats will be able to do the same, and, even if they can't, President Obama could still veto.
So Republicans have said, through their actions, that the only way the federal government can function is if they rule it. All of it. This is not a blithe assertion. Even when bills are crafted in a way to make the GOP happy (like the background check legislation or, going back to 2009, the bank bailout), even when they are in the room writing the damn things, even when they get to propose a bunch of amendments, they filibuster or threaten to vote them down. And don't get them started on Obama's judicial and other nominees.
While any party wants to have total control of the processes of government, the periods of that are rare (and Democrats can thank enormous piece of shit Senator Max Baucus, among others, for blowing the 2009-2010 shot at it. Baucus should be pantsed, spanked bloody, and forced into the streets of DC as his retirement send-off). But it's something else entirely for one party to assert that they will not allow government to function unless they are in charge. That is new. That is insidious. That is frightening. And it is more of a threat to the United States than a dozen Bostons.
The Boston Marathon Bombing is not that significant an event. Unless you're a victim, it's just not. The West, Texas chemical plant explosion is far more important to our personal security. But not Boston. It's not 9/11. It's not Oklahoma City. It's not Sandy Hook. It's a crime that has been solved. With few loose ends, it is already over. But the GOP just absorbed it into their bloodstream, using it as an inoculation against doing anything, on guns and, ultimately, on immigration. Goddamn, how jubilant Republicans must have been, inside, yes, for the most part, when it happened so that they could bray and point and say, "Look, look, Obama can't keep us safe." Christ, the 2014 ads that'll say, in essence, "Come back, come back to our savage conservative arms and we will protect you." But until they are voted back in, with a supermajority in the Senate, they will simply not allow the nation to move from an enforced stasis.
We are their hostages. Their price is our capitulation.
Today, the Bush Library-o-tarium of Lies and Exaggerations will open. It will no doubt whitewash most of George W.'s crimes against the nation. But it will list all the things he wanted that he got, from tax cuts to wars to No Child Left Behind to the prescription drug plan, many with Democrats on board. At this point, the Obama Presidential Library will feature a series of decent ideas that were left on the cutting room floor.
(Note: To be sure, the Obama administration will use the Boston bombings to keep on with the surveillance programs and drone attacks, but that's a topic for another day.)
Monday, April 22, 2013
A Few Things Regarding the Aftermath of the Boston Marathon Bombing:
The Rude Pundit didn't really think he'd be so glad to be away from the United States for a week. In Germany, he watched and read about, in bits and pieces, the enormous freak-out in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, seeing it from a distance, above it, staring down, like some Wings of Desire angel, except instead of gazing mournfully from the Berlin Victory Tower at how touchingly tragic humanity is, he'd have been slapping his head while watching everyone shit themselves while the media ran around like slapstick clowns, slamming into each other and hitting each other with fish.
(Note: The Boston PD and other authorities in the manhunt are left out of the parade of morons because, you know, they got the fucking job done with admirably little other damage, except to the alleged bombers. Note to the note: Yeah, the lockdown was a bit heavy-handed.)
You're gonna hear conspiracy heaped upon conspiracy, from the evil Moooslim connection to the wacky Chechen/Russian/Kyrgyz cover-ups of something or other to, inevitably, the Lizard People, but here's what we all know happened: A couple of brothers, one with a wife and kid, who were ball cap-wearing bros watched too much jihadi shit on the internet, perhaps met a person or two in a visit to the homeland, and decided to act stupidly, which is what stupid young men do. And, oh, hey, an older brother got his younger brother to go along with a plan because it's cool to blow shit up. We won't find out anything useful from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was an isolated incident, no different than Newtown, Columbine, or any other crime where assholes got a shit-ton of guns and bullets, something that makes them awfully American at this point. Hell, if their last name had been Smith, we wouldn't even be talking about it as anything more than one more tragedy in our carousel of carnage, another time we won't learn or do a goddamn thing.
The Rude Pundit doesn't say this to diminish the pain and suffering of those who were attacked. He does this to diminish the pain and suffering about to be inflicted on the rest of us because two dicks made bombs that work. Once again, we’re going to act like a couple of worthless fucks are a threat to the freedoms of the United States, thus turning them into a threat to the freedoms of the United States. We did it with 9/11, when we elevated Osama bin Laden from the sick boss of a few dozen goat-fuckers to Hitler-level evil genius. We did it with the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the nonstop excuses to whittle away and whittle away at true freedom until it's nothing more than the shadow of liberty.
We have been on edge in this nation since 9/11, almost fetishistically tearing at ourselves, knowing, just knowing, that Something Bad would happen again. And finally, thank fucking god, it did. But here's the thing: Something Bad always happens, whether you're anticipating it or not. You are judged by how you react to it. And from the reaction to this, we are fucked beyond fucked.
The Rude Pundit will talk this week about a few of the ways we fucked it all up, but let's start with this: Get Tsarnaev a lawyer. He's an American citizen. Treat him like he's supposed to be. Enough with this bullshit "public safety exception" to reading him his Miranda rights. We found the stash of weapons and bombs almost immediately. Obama campaigned against this very kind of approach to "terrorism," but now he embraces it with the force of Dick Cheney's mechanical heart-type machine.
It's goddamn embarrassing to see the Senate's prettiest debutante, Lindsey Graham, more or less standing at Tsarnaev's bedside, cock out, ready to fuck the bullet hole in the guy's neck while Kelly Ayotte and John McCain fondle each other and watch as Peter King jacks off in the corner, all sweaty in anticipation of a declaration that Tsarnaev's an "enemy combatant" so he can be Gitmo'd or some such shit.
It's depressing beyond words to hear people say, as Graham did, that "The homeland is the battlefield" and call for surveillance, more surveillance, on the ground, in the sky, surveillance of every space, every orifice, give up more freedom, always be a suspect, always make sure the authorities are watching. Who gives a fat monkey fuck about your Fifth Amendment rights when there might be a single terrorist out there?
Oh, except for one thing. Guns. We can't keep a national database of those purchases. Nope, no surveillance of legal gun buys. Too bad the Tsarnaevs didn't make fertilizer bombs. Yeah, purchases of certain kinds of farm products - infused shit, if you will- could be reported and tracked. But not guns or gunpowder.
Now, we're gonna have another freak-out over Who Knew What When, with the FBI's questioning of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 becoming the new Benghazi.
Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue.
The Rude Pundit didn't really think he'd be so glad to be away from the United States for a week. In Germany, he watched and read about, in bits and pieces, the enormous freak-out in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing, seeing it from a distance, above it, staring down, like some Wings of Desire angel, except instead of gazing mournfully from the Berlin Victory Tower at how touchingly tragic humanity is, he'd have been slapping his head while watching everyone shit themselves while the media ran around like slapstick clowns, slamming into each other and hitting each other with fish.
(Note: The Boston PD and other authorities in the manhunt are left out of the parade of morons because, you know, they got the fucking job done with admirably little other damage, except to the alleged bombers. Note to the note: Yeah, the lockdown was a bit heavy-handed.)
You're gonna hear conspiracy heaped upon conspiracy, from the evil Moooslim connection to the wacky Chechen/Russian/Kyrgyz cover-ups of something or other to, inevitably, the Lizard People, but here's what we all know happened: A couple of brothers, one with a wife and kid, who were ball cap-wearing bros watched too much jihadi shit on the internet, perhaps met a person or two in a visit to the homeland, and decided to act stupidly, which is what stupid young men do. And, oh, hey, an older brother got his younger brother to go along with a plan because it's cool to blow shit up. We won't find out anything useful from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. It was an isolated incident, no different than Newtown, Columbine, or any other crime where assholes got a shit-ton of guns and bullets, something that makes them awfully American at this point. Hell, if their last name had been Smith, we wouldn't even be talking about it as anything more than one more tragedy in our carousel of carnage, another time we won't learn or do a goddamn thing.
The Rude Pundit doesn't say this to diminish the pain and suffering of those who were attacked. He does this to diminish the pain and suffering about to be inflicted on the rest of us because two dicks made bombs that work. Once again, we’re going to act like a couple of worthless fucks are a threat to the freedoms of the United States, thus turning them into a threat to the freedoms of the United States. We did it with 9/11, when we elevated Osama bin Laden from the sick boss of a few dozen goat-fuckers to Hitler-level evil genius. We did it with the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber, the nonstop excuses to whittle away and whittle away at true freedom until it's nothing more than the shadow of liberty.
We have been on edge in this nation since 9/11, almost fetishistically tearing at ourselves, knowing, just knowing, that Something Bad would happen again. And finally, thank fucking god, it did. But here's the thing: Something Bad always happens, whether you're anticipating it or not. You are judged by how you react to it. And from the reaction to this, we are fucked beyond fucked.
The Rude Pundit will talk this week about a few of the ways we fucked it all up, but let's start with this: Get Tsarnaev a lawyer. He's an American citizen. Treat him like he's supposed to be. Enough with this bullshit "public safety exception" to reading him his Miranda rights. We found the stash of weapons and bombs almost immediately. Obama campaigned against this very kind of approach to "terrorism," but now he embraces it with the force of Dick Cheney's mechanical heart-type machine.
It's goddamn embarrassing to see the Senate's prettiest debutante, Lindsey Graham, more or less standing at Tsarnaev's bedside, cock out, ready to fuck the bullet hole in the guy's neck while Kelly Ayotte and John McCain fondle each other and watch as Peter King jacks off in the corner, all sweaty in anticipation of a declaration that Tsarnaev's an "enemy combatant" so he can be Gitmo'd or some such shit.
It's depressing beyond words to hear people say, as Graham did, that "The homeland is the battlefield" and call for surveillance, more surveillance, on the ground, in the sky, surveillance of every space, every orifice, give up more freedom, always be a suspect, always make sure the authorities are watching. Who gives a fat monkey fuck about your Fifth Amendment rights when there might be a single terrorist out there?
Oh, except for one thing. Guns. We can't keep a national database of those purchases. Nope, no surveillance of legal gun buys. Too bad the Tsarnaevs didn't make fertilizer bombs. Yeah, purchases of certain kinds of farm products - infused shit, if you will- could be reported and tracked. But not guns or gunpowder.
Now, we're gonna have another freak-out over Who Knew What When, with the FBI's questioning of Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011 becoming the new Benghazi.
Our repellent ride of self-inflicted wounds will just continue.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Back in Full Flower on Monday:
Boston on lockdown, Texas town blown up, Illinois town washed away. What the fuck? The Rude Pundit can't leave you people alone for a week without you fucking up the entire joint? He doesn't want to think what getting through customs at JFK is gonna be like tomorrow.
The cocksuckery is getting thick out there. And the Rude Pundit will be back on the clock on Monday.
Boston on lockdown, Texas town blown up, Illinois town washed away. What the fuck? The Rude Pundit can't leave you people alone for a week without you fucking up the entire joint? He doesn't want to think what getting through customs at JFK is gonna be like tomorrow.
The cocksuckery is getting thick out there. And the Rude Pundit will be back on the clock on Monday.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
The Spirit of Occupy Wall Street Is Alive in Berlin:
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While the scheisse eaters in the Senate are cowards beyond belief, the Rude Pundit remains in Germany. Here in Berlin, he walked past an encampment devoted to people who were protesting for gay rights, as well as against racism in Berlin. The encampment was not only allowed to stay in the park where it was set up, but the residents there were taken care of by health officials. Because that's what the fuck you do when you're a society.
Also, here's a photo of an Occupy collage of protesters and their signs that's in a gallery. The Rude Pundit's favorite is "Fuck your unpaid internships."
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While the scheisse eaters in the Senate are cowards beyond belief, the Rude Pundit remains in Germany. Here in Berlin, he walked past an encampment devoted to people who were protesting for gay rights, as well as against racism in Berlin. The encampment was not only allowed to stay in the park where it was set up, but the residents there were taken care of by health officials. Because that's what the fuck you do when you're a society.
Also, here's a photo of an Occupy collage of protesters and their signs that's in a gallery. The Rude Pundit's favorite is "Fuck your unpaid internships."
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Still in Berlin:
The Rude Pundit will have something to say about the bombing in Boston when he gets back to the bleeding United States from his German walkabout. So instead of all of us coming together, something, something, blah, blah, false unity, here's a picture of his foot on Ronald Reagan's stupid fucking face near the Brandenburg Gate:
The Rude Pundit will have something to say about the bombing in Boston when he gets back to the bleeding United States from his German walkabout. So instead of all of us coming together, something, something, blah, blah, false unity, here's a picture of his foot on Ronald Reagan's stupid fucking face near the Brandenburg Gate:
Monday, April 15, 2013
Republicans Solidify Their Base in Florida:
From NBC News, we hear of how Republicans in the Sunshine State have expanded their base of voter support. Said GOP Governor Rick Scott, "This is what we wanted to do: diversify our party. Our new voters are with us on every one of our issues except our refusal to support limits on salt."
(Note: the Rude Pundit is on a walkabout in Berlin, here to do amusing and disturbing things under the influence of beer and opium. So blogging will be limited to a few bits now and then for the week. Maybe he'll put up or shut up and post a picture of himself near something German.)
From NBC News, we hear of how Republicans in the Sunshine State have expanded their base of voter support. Said GOP Governor Rick Scott, "This is what we wanted to do: diversify our party. Our new voters are with us on every one of our issues except our refusal to support limits on salt."
(Note: the Rude Pundit is on a walkabout in Berlin, here to do amusing and disturbing things under the influence of beer and opium. So blogging will be limited to a few bits now and then for the week. Maybe he'll put up or shut up and post a picture of himself near something German.)
Friday, April 12, 2013
Photos That Make the Rude Pundit Want to OD in a Poppy Field:
That's a picture of a woman named Nuria. She's in prison, with the son she gave birth to while there, in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the United States of America is wrapping up a great and mighty war for freedom. Or something. Who knows at this point. She committed a moral crime. That is, she asked for a divorce from her husband whom she was forced to marry. She wanted to marry another man, one she is in love with. That man is in prison now, too. Nuria says that, even though she was offered a chance to leave if she returned to her husband, she would rather serve out the rest of her sentence.
Two hundred women are in the fairly new prison, most for moral crimes. An activist for women in the nation says, "We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig in deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed."
If the Rude Pundit remembers correctly, one of the ways that we were sold the war in Afghanistan was that it would liberate (or, more accurately, re-liberate) the women there from the punishing treatment imposed on them by the Taliban and others. It was a cause that even Laura Bush was behind (as were many of us who were supporting that cause even before 9/11).
Failing in that means that, on one of the most basic ways you can measure it, even the supposedly "good" war was a heartbreaking waste of life and money.
That's a picture of a woman named Nuria. She's in prison, with the son she gave birth to while there, in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the United States of America is wrapping up a great and mighty war for freedom. Or something. Who knows at this point. She committed a moral crime. That is, she asked for a divorce from her husband whom she was forced to marry. She wanted to marry another man, one she is in love with. That man is in prison now, too. Nuria says that, even though she was offered a chance to leave if she returned to her husband, she would rather serve out the rest of her sentence.
Two hundred women are in the fairly new prison, most for moral crimes. An activist for women in the nation says, "We have the appearance of everything, but when you dig in deep down below the surface nothing fundamentally has changed."
If the Rude Pundit remembers correctly, one of the ways that we were sold the war in Afghanistan was that it would liberate (or, more accurately, re-liberate) the women there from the punishing treatment imposed on them by the Taliban and others. It was a cause that even Laura Bush was behind (as were many of us who were supporting that cause even before 9/11).
Failing in that means that, on one of the most basic ways you can measure it, even the supposedly "good" war was a heartbreaking waste of life and money.
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Obama's CPI Chains:
Let's give people credit for a brief moment when they are not motherfuckers. So President Obama proposes his latest great-and-mighty Idea That Won't Go Anywhere: a budget that's a mix of some tax increases, infrastructure spending, and spending cuts in other areas, including changing how Social Security benefits are measured, from CPI-W to chained CPI (no, the Rude Pundit won't explain it. Go somewhere else for that). Chained CPI will end up cutting benefits to seniors to the tune of $130 billion over ten years, so, yeah, it's a shitty way to try get some street cred as Compromiser-in-Chief. But entitlement cuts are something that Republicans have been slavering for, and chained CPI in Social Security pleasures them. Well, most of them.
Sure, one way to look at Republican Representative Greg Walden's comment to CNN's Wolf "Who Dares Touch the White Mane?" Blitzer that Obama is "trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors" is that it's the usual GOP chicanery (see the "Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare" non-debate from 2012). But Walden, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was immediately kicked in the balls by the senior-hating right, with the Club for Grover Norquist's Wallet's Growth condemning him. But give Walden points for consistency. On November 15, 2010, on Fox "news," he was asked about cutting Social Security, and he said, "Look, there's a lot we can cut before we get to Social Security. How about not raiding the Social Security funds to begin with? I mean, there are lots of things we can do, but there is so much waste across the government, every agency, every program needs to be evaluated." Indeed, the Rude Pundit searched for a time when Walden said he supported chained CPI and instead found Walden fairly consistent, at least when discussing cuts to Social Security. Walden is actually going against his leadership. John Boehner wants the chained CPI vote outside of any larger budget deal.
President Obama's Rose Garden address introducing his budget yesterday ended with one of the most pathetic moments of this awful year. He had promised throughout that, no, really, this budget is really, really good and serious and "not controversial" with "not a lot of smoke and mirrors" and with ideas that he didn't think were "optimal," but that he'd accept if he the other side would really, really make a deal. It was depressing, seeing Obama have to constantly state that he has good intentions. Then he concluded by saying, "And if we can come together, have a serious, reasoned debate -- not driven by politics -- and come together around common sense and compromise, then I’m confident we will move this country forward and leave behind something better for our children." He didn't even sound as if he believed the words coming out of his mouth then, like a great actor doing a role in a shitty movie just because he owes some child support.
Michael Tomasky lays out pretty much what the Rude Pundit is sure is going to happen: "First the GOP is going to say no no no no no, because Obama’s budget calls for $580 billion in revenue (by the way, it proposes $2 in cuts for every $1 in revenue, for a total of $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction). The sequestration cuts are going to continue. Then will come mid-May, when Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling again. The Republicans will probably extract more cuts there. But as they will never accept more revenue or do anything to give Obama a political victory, we will just keep limping along through this year and into next with Congress funding the operations of government on an ad hoc basis."
But Tomasky thinks that this failure and the failure of Democrats to win back the House of Representatives will unleash a truth-telling Obama who will say what we really need: a hike in the taxable income cap. That hope is almost as unreasonably optimistic as Obama believing that offering entitlement cuts will bring Republicans to the table on revenue increases.
It's just disheartening as hell to watch Obama constantly believing that somehow, through some persuasive magic of moderation, he can bring Republicans back into the act of governing. It's predictable but funny, less like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy yanks away and more like when Charlie Brown would try to fly a kite, but that goddamned kite-eating tree would gobble up his good intentions and leave behind nothing but limp string.
Let's give people credit for a brief moment when they are not motherfuckers. So President Obama proposes his latest great-and-mighty Idea That Won't Go Anywhere: a budget that's a mix of some tax increases, infrastructure spending, and spending cuts in other areas, including changing how Social Security benefits are measured, from CPI-W to chained CPI (no, the Rude Pundit won't explain it. Go somewhere else for that). Chained CPI will end up cutting benefits to seniors to the tune of $130 billion over ten years, so, yeah, it's a shitty way to try get some street cred as Compromiser-in-Chief. But entitlement cuts are something that Republicans have been slavering for, and chained CPI in Social Security pleasures them. Well, most of them.
Sure, one way to look at Republican Representative Greg Walden's comment to CNN's Wolf "Who Dares Touch the White Mane?" Blitzer that Obama is "trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors" is that it's the usual GOP chicanery (see the "Obama is cutting $700 billion from Medicare" non-debate from 2012). But Walden, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was immediately kicked in the balls by the senior-hating right, with the Club for Grover Norquist's Wallet's Growth condemning him. But give Walden points for consistency. On November 15, 2010, on Fox "news," he was asked about cutting Social Security, and he said, "Look, there's a lot we can cut before we get to Social Security. How about not raiding the Social Security funds to begin with? I mean, there are lots of things we can do, but there is so much waste across the government, every agency, every program needs to be evaluated." Indeed, the Rude Pundit searched for a time when Walden said he supported chained CPI and instead found Walden fairly consistent, at least when discussing cuts to Social Security. Walden is actually going against his leadership. John Boehner wants the chained CPI vote outside of any larger budget deal.
President Obama's Rose Garden address introducing his budget yesterday ended with one of the most pathetic moments of this awful year. He had promised throughout that, no, really, this budget is really, really good and serious and "not controversial" with "not a lot of smoke and mirrors" and with ideas that he didn't think were "optimal," but that he'd accept if he the other side would really, really make a deal. It was depressing, seeing Obama have to constantly state that he has good intentions. Then he concluded by saying, "And if we can come together, have a serious, reasoned debate -- not driven by politics -- and come together around common sense and compromise, then I’m confident we will move this country forward and leave behind something better for our children." He didn't even sound as if he believed the words coming out of his mouth then, like a great actor doing a role in a shitty movie just because he owes some child support.
Michael Tomasky lays out pretty much what the Rude Pundit is sure is going to happen: "First the GOP is going to say no no no no no, because Obama’s budget calls for $580 billion in revenue (by the way, it proposes $2 in cuts for every $1 in revenue, for a total of $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction). The sequestration cuts are going to continue. Then will come mid-May, when Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling again. The Republicans will probably extract more cuts there. But as they will never accept more revenue or do anything to give Obama a political victory, we will just keep limping along through this year and into next with Congress funding the operations of government on an ad hoc basis."
But Tomasky thinks that this failure and the failure of Democrats to win back the House of Representatives will unleash a truth-telling Obama who will say what we really need: a hike in the taxable income cap. That hope is almost as unreasonably optimistic as Obama believing that offering entitlement cuts will bring Republicans to the table on revenue increases.
It's just disheartening as hell to watch Obama constantly believing that somehow, through some persuasive magic of moderation, he can bring Republicans back into the act of governing. It's predictable but funny, less like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football that Lucy yanks away and more like when Charlie Brown would try to fly a kite, but that goddamned kite-eating tree would gobble up his good intentions and leave behind nothing but limp string.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
"Accidental Racist" and Not Tolerating Intolerance:
So shitkicker singer Brad Paisley has this song out you've probably heard about, "Accidental Racist." If you haven't listened to it, you should know, before any interpretations of the thing, that it sucks. It sucks so hard that if it was a whore, it would be the most popular one in the brothel. It's lugubriously slow with shitty instrumentation and faux meaningful lyrics and an embarrassing rap by LL Cool J that is somewhere between bad Schoolhouse Rock and Uncle Tom freestylin'.
The premise of the song is simple: White guy says, "I ain't racist. I just like wearing racist shirts." Black guy interjects, "Hey, you misunderstand some things about me. Can't we all get along?" That's pretty much it, except it goes on for five goddamned minutes of tedious repetition.
The problem with the song is the things it equates. In the most absurd part, LL Cool J raps (within the whiny lyrics Paisley is singing like he's got a mouthful of tobacco or cock), "If you don't judge my do-rag/I won't judge your red flag/If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains." And then J follows it with a rousing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah." Oh, wait, no, instead he says, as Paisley sang earlier, "Can't rewrite history, baby." The implication being that we should just forgive and forget.
"Accidental Racist" starts with Paisley wearing shirt that he says shows his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd: "The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south." You got it wrong, he says, "I'm just a white man comin' to you from the southland" and "I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done." Except here's the deal: if you're wearing a Confederate flag, you're saying you're proud of a nation that went to war with the United States so it could keep black people enslaved. That's not accidental racism. It's just racism. Accidental racism would be something like a misinterpretation of the word "niggardly."
Paisley's defense of the ignorance of white southerners isn't the greatest sin of the song. It's the idea that somehow African American fashion that whites might find offensive is equal to support of racism. It's this notion that we have to tolerate intolerance. When the fuck did this happen? When did we have to be careful about offending the racists?
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was on The Stephanie Miller Show, discussing a piece he wrote where he says, flat out, if you oppose same sex marriage, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter where you got that belief, be it church or political organization or your parents. You are intolerant and a bigot. A caller was outraged, outraged, damnit, that we would dare say that he is a bigot because he follows his church's teachings on gay marriage. The Rude Pundit wouldn't back down, telling the caller that his church was bigoted against gays and lesbians. "You're persecuting me," he said. "You're persecuting me for my beliefs." No, the Rude Pundit said, he wasn't being persecuted. He's allowed to belong to any hate group he wants. But the rest of us are allowed to say it's a group of bigoted fucks.
This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.
The sad part is that the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men have been winning this argument, through rhetoric or force.
What has the Republican approach to governing been? Has it been to allow votes on things and then run on whether or not those things that pass succeed or fail? No. It's been to not even allow votes on most of the things the President wants or that the Democrats wanted pre-2010. It's been to say that they, the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men know best and how dare you attempt to do things differently than what they allow.
And it's been to the Democrats and especially President Obama's shame that they've gone along with this approach, validating it along the way, all in the name of some nonsensical "working together" shit. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying it: when the nation didn't prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration for war crimes and prosecute and regulate to death the criminals on Wall Street, the Democratic argument for change was lost. You don't build your house on top of the shitpile left behind by the previous owners. You clean that out, no matter how much trouble it is, and start from scratch.
Which gets us back to "Accidental Racist."
No one needs to "understand" why white southerners wears a rebel flag. Fuck them. They lost that argument back in 1865. It ain't the same as droopy pants. It ain't the same as a Malcolm X t-shirt. In fact, there is no equation, except for maybe a swastika tattoo. And Paisley's song is oh-so-earnest in reaching out for sympathy and harmony where there should only be condemnation.
We don't make great leaps forward anymore for fear of upsetting someone, some previously powerful group or some corporation or some industry or some herd of drooling idiots. Instead, we get milquetoast, overcompromised baby steps. The politics of politeness is the politics of capitulation.
So shitkicker singer Brad Paisley has this song out you've probably heard about, "Accidental Racist." If you haven't listened to it, you should know, before any interpretations of the thing, that it sucks. It sucks so hard that if it was a whore, it would be the most popular one in the brothel. It's lugubriously slow with shitty instrumentation and faux meaningful lyrics and an embarrassing rap by LL Cool J that is somewhere between bad Schoolhouse Rock and Uncle Tom freestylin'.
The premise of the song is simple: White guy says, "I ain't racist. I just like wearing racist shirts." Black guy interjects, "Hey, you misunderstand some things about me. Can't we all get along?" That's pretty much it, except it goes on for five goddamned minutes of tedious repetition.
The problem with the song is the things it equates. In the most absurd part, LL Cool J raps (within the whiny lyrics Paisley is singing like he's got a mouthful of tobacco or cock), "If you don't judge my do-rag/I won't judge your red flag/If you don't judge my gold chains/I'll forget the iron chains." And then J follows it with a rousing "Zip-a-dee-doo-dah." Oh, wait, no, instead he says, as Paisley sang earlier, "Can't rewrite history, baby." The implication being that we should just forgive and forget.
"Accidental Racist" starts with Paisley wearing shirt that he says shows his love of Lynyrd Skynyrd: "The red flag on my chest somehow is like the elephant in the corner of the south." You got it wrong, he says, "I'm just a white man comin' to you from the southland" and "I'm proud of where I'm from but not everything we've done." Except here's the deal: if you're wearing a Confederate flag, you're saying you're proud of a nation that went to war with the United States so it could keep black people enslaved. That's not accidental racism. It's just racism. Accidental racism would be something like a misinterpretation of the word "niggardly."
Paisley's defense of the ignorance of white southerners isn't the greatest sin of the song. It's the idea that somehow African American fashion that whites might find offensive is equal to support of racism. It's this notion that we have to tolerate intolerance. When the fuck did this happen? When did we have to be careful about offending the racists?
Yesterday, the Rude Pundit was on The Stephanie Miller Show, discussing a piece he wrote where he says, flat out, if you oppose same sex marriage, you're a bigot. It doesn't matter where you got that belief, be it church or political organization or your parents. You are intolerant and a bigot. A caller was outraged, outraged, damnit, that we would dare say that he is a bigot because he follows his church's teachings on gay marriage. The Rude Pundit wouldn't back down, telling the caller that his church was bigoted against gays and lesbians. "You're persecuting me," he said. "You're persecuting me for my beliefs." No, the Rude Pundit said, he wasn't being persecuted. He's allowed to belong to any hate group he wants. But the rest of us are allowed to say it's a group of bigoted fucks.
This notion that Christians or whites or straights are persecuted or under attack is utter bullshit. Is anyone taking away any rights from you? No? So you're equating "persecution" with someone saying "you're wrong." The thing is that white, straight, Christian (mostly) men are shit-scared of their power dwindling so they have to make themselves into victims. They have to shut down progress because they see it as just an attack on them.
The sad part is that the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men have been winning this argument, through rhetoric or force.
What has the Republican approach to governing been? Has it been to allow votes on things and then run on whether or not those things that pass succeed or fail? No. It's been to not even allow votes on most of the things the President wants or that the Democrats wanted pre-2010. It's been to say that they, the white, straight, Christian (mostly) men know best and how dare you attempt to do things differently than what they allow.
And it's been to the Democrats and especially President Obama's shame that they've gone along with this approach, validating it along the way, all in the name of some nonsensical "working together" shit. The Rude Pundit's said it before and he'll keep saying it: when the nation didn't prosecute the criminals in the Bush administration for war crimes and prosecute and regulate to death the criminals on Wall Street, the Democratic argument for change was lost. You don't build your house on top of the shitpile left behind by the previous owners. You clean that out, no matter how much trouble it is, and start from scratch.
Which gets us back to "Accidental Racist."
No one needs to "understand" why white southerners wears a rebel flag. Fuck them. They lost that argument back in 1865. It ain't the same as droopy pants. It ain't the same as a Malcolm X t-shirt. In fact, there is no equation, except for maybe a swastika tattoo. And Paisley's song is oh-so-earnest in reaching out for sympathy and harmony where there should only be condemnation.
We don't make great leaps forward anymore for fear of upsetting someone, some previously powerful group or some corporation or some industry or some herd of drooling idiots. Instead, we get milquetoast, overcompromised baby steps. The politics of politeness is the politics of capitulation.
Tuesday, April 09, 2013
Bobby Jindal Has Not Learned a Thing:
Please, motherfuckers. When will you learn? When will you learn that there is no such thing as a Republican giving up on an idea once he has started humping it? Those bastards are like male elephant seals, who will beat the living shit out of you if you try to take one of their dozens of seal bitches away. And elephant seal fucking is goddamn disturbing; the giant ass bull just flops its huge gut on the much smaller female and starts fucking away. So goes the harem of GOP ideological stances. They protect it and then take out a concept and fuck it until it's knocked up. It's nature, man.
So Louisiana Governor and winner of the "Largest Adam's Apple" award, Bobby Jindal, just a month ago, made a grand and mighty economic proposal: get rid of the state income tax on individuals and corporations and make up the money through various other taxes, like higher sales taxes and an eminently rational tax on internet purchases. Conservatives around the nation danced a grotesque jig in celebration and sacrificed a goat by drowning it in a tub as a robed Grover Norquist intoned ancient, guttural prayers of thanks to Mammon. However, most everybody else said, "Whoa, wait, what the fuck?" Because, see, they realized that the tax plan, which was designed to be "revenue neutral," would shift the burden to the poor and middle class. And Jindal saw his approval rating plunge to below 40%, which means he's perfectly suited to be the savior of the Republican Party.
Well, yesterday, saying that he had "listened" to the people, Jindal announced to the legislature that he was going to "park" his plan.
Now some on the left saw that as a defeat for the governor. It is a "collapse" of Jindal as a presidential aspirant. The plan crashed, and scrapping it is a "bitter pill."
Bullshit. Jindal is doing nothing of the sort. What's happening is that he has turned it over to the state legislature, which is led by Republicans, and they are going forward with what Jindal really wanted: elimination of the state income tax, phasing it out over a few years. In fact, "Eliminating a tax requires the support of a majority of each chamber, a far less ambitious goal than seeking the two-thirds support that would have been required for the full package he was proposing." You can look at the idea and say, "Well, that would be stupid, to scrap the income tax without any way to make up for the lost funds." And the Rude Pundit would say, "Yeah, sorry, but this is Louisiana, and 'stupid' would be a step up from the way that the government is usually run."
In other words, it's way too premature to declare that the Paul Ryan-like approach to slashing taxes has suffered a setback. It's merely suffered a brief pause while the Republicans in Louisiana try to figure out how to put a new bacon flavor into their shit sandwich for the poor.
And it's all founded on a lie about taxes making Louisiana unfriendly to business. As John Maginnis points out, "Last month, the governor interrupted his statewide tour bashing the income tax in order to herald IBM's decision to locate its regional software development center in Baton Rouge, creating 800 high-paying jobs and forming an invaluable partnership with LSU's computer science department. It's the biggest private deal for the capital since Mr. Rockefeller chose to locate his Standard Oil refinery there over a century ago." Which means that taxes didn't chase them away, no?
But supply-side economics is part of the harem. And you can bet that Jindal will be humping it hard even as he seems to undulate away.
Please, motherfuckers. When will you learn? When will you learn that there is no such thing as a Republican giving up on an idea once he has started humping it? Those bastards are like male elephant seals, who will beat the living shit out of you if you try to take one of their dozens of seal bitches away. And elephant seal fucking is goddamn disturbing; the giant ass bull just flops its huge gut on the much smaller female and starts fucking away. So goes the harem of GOP ideological stances. They protect it and then take out a concept and fuck it until it's knocked up. It's nature, man.
So Louisiana Governor and winner of the "Largest Adam's Apple" award, Bobby Jindal, just a month ago, made a grand and mighty economic proposal: get rid of the state income tax on individuals and corporations and make up the money through various other taxes, like higher sales taxes and an eminently rational tax on internet purchases. Conservatives around the nation danced a grotesque jig in celebration and sacrificed a goat by drowning it in a tub as a robed Grover Norquist intoned ancient, guttural prayers of thanks to Mammon. However, most everybody else said, "Whoa, wait, what the fuck?" Because, see, they realized that the tax plan, which was designed to be "revenue neutral," would shift the burden to the poor and middle class. And Jindal saw his approval rating plunge to below 40%, which means he's perfectly suited to be the savior of the Republican Party.
Well, yesterday, saying that he had "listened" to the people, Jindal announced to the legislature that he was going to "park" his plan.
Now some on the left saw that as a defeat for the governor. It is a "collapse" of Jindal as a presidential aspirant. The plan crashed, and scrapping it is a "bitter pill."
Bullshit. Jindal is doing nothing of the sort. What's happening is that he has turned it over to the state legislature, which is led by Republicans, and they are going forward with what Jindal really wanted: elimination of the state income tax, phasing it out over a few years. In fact, "Eliminating a tax requires the support of a majority of each chamber, a far less ambitious goal than seeking the two-thirds support that would have been required for the full package he was proposing." You can look at the idea and say, "Well, that would be stupid, to scrap the income tax without any way to make up for the lost funds." And the Rude Pundit would say, "Yeah, sorry, but this is Louisiana, and 'stupid' would be a step up from the way that the government is usually run."
In other words, it's way too premature to declare that the Paul Ryan-like approach to slashing taxes has suffered a setback. It's merely suffered a brief pause while the Republicans in Louisiana try to figure out how to put a new bacon flavor into their shit sandwich for the poor.
And it's all founded on a lie about taxes making Louisiana unfriendly to business. As John Maginnis points out, "Last month, the governor interrupted his statewide tour bashing the income tax in order to herald IBM's decision to locate its regional software development center in Baton Rouge, creating 800 high-paying jobs and forming an invaluable partnership with LSU's computer science department. It's the biggest private deal for the capital since Mr. Rockefeller chose to locate his Standard Oil refinery there over a century ago." Which means that taxes didn't chase them away, no?
But supply-side economics is part of the harem. And you can bet that Jindal will be humping it hard even as he seems to undulate away.
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