Now That They've Gone

Things learned, from the passing of another two of a generation.

At 90, Jack Klugman. Bitten by the bug at around 14

... when his sister took him to a play, "One Third of a Nation," a "living newspaper" production of the Federal Theater Project about life in an American slum; the play made the case for government housing projects.

"I just couldn't believe the power of it," he said of the production in an interview in 1998 for the Archive of American Television, crediting the experience for instilling in him his social-crusading impulse. "I wanted to be a muckraker."

He landed in Pittsburgh, where he auditioned for the drama department at Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon University).

"They said: 'You're not suited to be an actor. You're more suited to be a truck driver,'" he recalled. But this was 1945, the war was just ending and there was a dearth of male students, so he was accepted. "There were no men," he said. "Otherwise they wouldn't have taken me in."

More on career and roles of an always credible "everyman," who had an old-fashioned social consciousness—

In "Quincy, M.E.," which ran from 1976 to 1983, Klugman played an idealistic, tough-minded medical examiner who tussled with his boss by uncovering evidence of murder in cases where others saw natural causes.

"We had some wonderful writers," he said in a 1987 Associated Press interview. "Quincy was a muckraker, like Upton Sinclair, who wrote about injustices. He was my ideal as a youngster, my author, my hero.

"Everybody said, 'Quincy'll never be a hit.' I said, 'You guys are wrong. He's two heroes in one, a cop and a doctor.' A coroner has power. He can tell the police commissioner to investigate a murder. I saw the opportunity to do what I'd gotten into the theater to do -- give a message.

At 89, Charles Durning.

It sounds even more remote than the 1920s, the kind of poverty, disease, and loss his family endured during his childhood. But: another reminder of why we once had a New Deal.

The World War II experiences he survived are jaw-dropping. And then,

After the war, still mentally troubled, Mr. Durning "dropped into a void for almost a decade" before deciding to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, he told Parade magazine in 1993. The school dismissed him within a year. "They basically said you have no talent and you couldn't even buy a dime's worth of it if it was for sale," he told The Times in 1997.

He went from job to job, from doorman to dishwasher to cabdriver. He boxed professionally for a time, delivered telegrams and taught ballroom dancing, meeting his first wife, Carole, at an Arthur Murray studio. Every so often he landed a bit part in a play.

His big break came in 1962, when Joseph Papp, founder of the Public Theater and the New York Shakespeare Festival, invited him to audition. It was the start of a long association with Papp, who cast him, often as a clown, in 35 plays, many by Shakespeare.

It was decades before he spoke publicly of his war experience and how it marked him.

In the [1993] Parade interview, he recalled the hand-to-hand combat. "I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium," he said. "A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn't have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn't shoot."

They grappled, he recounted later — he was stabbed seven or eight times — until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept.

Mr. Durning said the memories never left him, even when performing, even when he became, however briefly, someone else.

"There are many secrets in us, in the depths of our souls, that we don't want anyone to know about," he told Parade. "There's terror and repulsion in us, the terrible spot that we don’t talk about. That place that no one knows about — horrifying things we keep secret. A lot of that is released through acting."

"RIP, "king of the character actors."

The More Things Change...

Via Digby, here's a bit of old history I've been reminded of too, thought about, too, and it does give a sense of déjà vu—

WASHINGTON -- On Jan. 1, 2000, the world awoke to find that little had changed since the night before. After years of hype around what was then called Y2K -- the fear that computer systems across the globe would collapse, unable to handle the year shifting from '99 to '00 -- the date change turned out to be a momentous non-event.

Next week, the United States is in for much the same, after months of frantic hype about the economic disruption that awaits if Congress and the president fail to reach a deal and the federal government goes "over the fiscal cliff." (The difference between Y2K and the fiscal cliff being that computer programmers worked around the clock to ensure the former was a non-event.)

The so-called fiscal cliff is a combination of automatic tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to go into effect Jan. 1. But the agencies responsible for implementing those changes, including the IRS and the Pentagon, are well aware that congressional and White House negotiators will most likely come to some sort of deal within weeks or months -- and so they are planning to carry on as usual, according to a broad review of private and public government plans.

In other words, there will be no cliff. There won't even be a slope. Congress and the president can have their public and private dramas, but the government officials responsible for carrying out their eventual orders have seen this movie before, and they know how it ends.

Oh well: some truth in labeling, at last. Though the "post-bipartisan" has always amounted to as much.

The libraries have wait lists for copies of this, but I have heard David Graeber's Majority Report interviews, including this.

As I remember his historical summary, cash markets evolved around military operations. When paper money came into use, a bank would lend cash to the king, who would go into in debt. The king would then lend his debt to the populace, who used it for the exchanges that make up an economy, before sending it back as taxes.

"If the king ever paid back the debt," says Graeber, "there'd be no money."

Thanks, As Usual

The Propaganda Remix Project

Robert Bork.

John Kerry.

It's That Time Again

Release of the annual list of "best countries to be born in."

Here on planet We're Number One!, it's just one week after the latest mass shooting. One horrifying enough to still be in the news and public consciousness: a massacre of twenty 6-year olds, along with women school employees who must have reminded the guy of his mother.

But: a white loner guy, not terrorism, etc., etc., blah, blah to infinity.

Subtle marketing, this.

The usual crowd set out to prove how "Everything Except Guns Kills People." And to offer their solutions, like this.

Though the Right's newly discovered interest in mental health is quite touching.

An excellent business model; too bad about the sudden bad publicity.

And nice job, National Geographic: egging on deranged "preppers." One home stockpiler of an arsenal appears to have been the late Nancy Lanza.

To think: we geezers only needed to Duck and Cover against an abstract threat. Yes, it was assumed that at some time there would be a nuclear attack—and I think many of my contemporaries grew up assuming we wouldn't live long enough to become geezers. But no generation expects to become geezers, and this threat was deep in the background: something the authorities kept vague and "survivable," and certainly not something that was present daily in our lives.

Nope: civil defense drills were occasional, and nuclear holocaust was not a presence in our lives, as the terrifying images from Newton are for children now. And, if the noise machine gets its way, children will grow up with kindergarten teachers packing heat.

The NRA kept a low profile, until today's news dump no-questions event. Though Wayne Pierre with "bats flying out of both ears" could be a good thing, as far as attracting some public notice.

It remains to be seen if activism will overcome the longstanding absence of political will. And general public acceptance of a daily toll widely accepted as what "they" get for living in the wrong neighborhood.

The Newtown massacre followed last week's Michigan notch in ALEC's belt. Anti-union measures signed and sealed, Gov. Snyder dithered a few days over this. Evidently, Dick DeVos had no particular investment in this one.

One more state wrapped up and delivered for plutocrat Xmas. National austerity on the way, for deadbeat kids, disabled, and elderly. A bit hard to envision those armed guards being installed in every school, not when we don't fucking fund teachers or supplies.

"Best countries," indeed. Who would trade an ample safety net for our Freedom here, where any disturbed person is free to buy weapons of mass destruction, but health care, both physical and mental, is a privilege.

All In A Day's Work

OK: it took two or three days, that frenzy of legislative ramming that ended the week in Michigan.

Or, make that "Michissippi," as Charles Pierce now calls it—over stuff like this.

Commenter Rick Massimo added—

Gee, the Michigan legislature is working awfully hard all of a sudden. It's like they're up against a deadline of some kind. I cannot imagine what it could possibly be.

Whatever it is that poses as representative government has quickly gone beyond words I can find. Add to it this bit of timing; emptywheel, writing December 14—

There is absolutely horrifying news coming out of Newtown, CT, where 27 people–18 of them young children–are reported dead in a gun rampage.

The President's spokesperson, Jay Carney has already said today is not the day to talk about gun control laws.

Can we talk about this, then? A bill passed in the MI legislature's last day frenzy last night will expand concealed carry to include schools, day care centers, churches, and stadia.

Reporting on the bill's "sweeping changes" for formerly "gun-free zones" here.

Digby, on the Michigan bill, and on

...a gun worshiping culture that has morphed into an unimaginable level of barbarism. And apparently we are all just the idiot victims in the boiling water not able to recognize that America is killing itself one kid at a time.

Among their many accomplishments this week, the legislature undid the voters' rejection last month of power grab "emergency managers," appointed by the governor to oust elected local governments.

In his 2010 race for governor, former Gateway CEO Snyder's "One Tough Nerd" branding no doubt played on the "Bill Gates walks into a bar" psychology—elect him, and the average Michigan income will soar. Of course, the guy was also marketed as a "moderate" and "problem-solver."

The travesty in Michigan is the same old stuff, instigated by the likes of Dick DeVos and the Kochs (through their "Americans for Prosperity"), using "model legislation" provided by ALEC. More details on the players and the "right to work" law they paid for here.

Another state; another version of Scott Walker, "the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their Midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin."

Way back here, Brother Snyder got a shout-out during Walker's chat with "David Koch"—

WALKER... I talked to Kasich every day, you know John's got to stand firm in Ohio. I think we can do the same thing with Rick Scott in Florida, I think Snyder if he got a little more support could probably do that in Michigan. We start going down the list, you know, there’s a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something, big.

KOCH: You're the first domino.

WALKER: Yep. This is our moment.

Next Order of Business

December 12, 2012: Workers' "rights" newly bestowed, the Michigan legislature turns to women's "health"—with "One Of The Nation's Most Extreme Abortion Bans."

This is the same group of medical experts who six months earlier had punished a legislator for saying "vagina.".

The Michigan of 1954 appears to have valued this sort of thing:

A good thing we're all getting over it; an educated public might be on to the meaning of "rights," "health," and other words.

Instead, it's time to do what Tengrain suggests, and heed the wisdom of Bobby Jindal—

"As a conservative Republican, I believe that we have been stupid to let the Democrats demagogue the contraceptives issue and pretend, during debates about health-care insurance, that Republicans are somehow against birth control. It's a disingenuous political argument they make."

After all, says Tengrain,

Yes, ladies, welcome the warm embrace of the party who brought you Tod Akin and Cardinal Frothy Santorum; they are at your cervix.

Ancient History

1954: a booster pamphlet published by a local Michigan newspaper could boast about this—

That publication credited organized labor, along with strong public services, as contributors to the state's prosperity.

More of those old-fashioned notions here.

Today, meanwhile: State House fait accompli.

Enacted by record stealth and speed, when January looms, and the lame [why insult ducks?] extremists would lack the votes.

Then:

Governor Snyder signed the bill in the secrecy of his office or a closet or wherever else he goes to deal with the shame of turning his state into Indiana or Mississippi or Bangladesh because he wasn't tough enough to stand up to Dick DeVos.

The latter being Michigan's version of Koch ownership.

Quel suprise; as in Koch-owned Wisconsin, "The bill passed today takes language verbatim from ALEC's model legislation."

In Wisconsin, police and firefighters understood that, even if Scott Walker promised to exempt their unions, their rights most certainly would be next on the chopping block.

Wisconsin firemen, February 2011 (photo here).

Today, Michigan state police were busy protecting the Republicans inside the Romney Building...

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

... from evildoers.

(AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

The usual suspects staged a "union thugs" incident ready for handing to the noise machine, and from there into mainstream consciousness.

After previously pretending not to push anti-union legislation, this is the current footwork:

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) defended his state's right-to-work legislation on Wednesday, saying it will lead to more jobs and give workers "freedom of choice."
"I don't believe this is actually anti-union," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "If you look at it, I believe this is pro-worker."
MSNBC's Richard Wolffe pressed the governor on the legislation, saying the it "undermines" the ability for unions to organize.
"This does not deal with organizing at all," Snyder responded. "This does not deal with collective bargaining at all. This has nothing to do with the relationship between an employer and a union. This is about the relationship between unions and workers. And this is about giving workers the power to choose."

Back in the world of facts and their liberal bias, there's this background—including some of that outmoded historical context.

Compassion

London collection box photo: Philip Watson

Why would Republicans be expected to show it?

Not when they can rev up The Base: by foiling the heinous UN plot for global wheelchair access—modeled on the Americans with Disabilities Act. And if rejection of the UN Convention on Persons with Disabilities was a slap in the face to one-time party powers like Bob Dole—and to treaty supporters like veterans' groups—so much the better.

It's all fodder for Rick Santorum's next presidential bid.

Digby's been coveried here digbysblog.blogspot.com/2012/12/black-helicopter-child-killers.html and here digbysblog.blogspot.com/.../these-zealots-can-find-controversy.html

Even if the UN Treaty was patterned after American law, the sitting, lame duck, and perennial candidate Republicans can take great pride that, in this country a state can keep an intellectually disabled man on death row over 30 years, without a valid conviction.

The Easy Part Over

It's not as if a Republican had won by a single vote; ergo, no "mandate."

It is, on the other hand, a narrow escape.

This makes no difference when the narrative is pre-determined: that The American People want deficit reduction and bi-partisanship. There's plenty of concern that the former aligns with the president's goals.

Of the latter, Obama's instinct to be "the adult" has seemed all about willingness to compromise with insatiable bullies. Charles Pierce writes at length here, about history as a river that "churns up the muck from the bottom and brings it to the surface," with "backwaters so obscure that they no longer appear on modern maps."

Given the noise machine's four-year rampage of bringing up "some of the deepest muck from the river basin," it's hard to disagree when Pierce wonders if Obama, in taking an overly flattering view of the citizenry, can realize "the bottomless thirst the country has for snake oil."

But there is also the matter of willingly selling snake oil, in the forms endorsed by the owners.

And the apparent decisions that, bully pulpit be damned, truth-telling and rule of law are just too impolitic. As Pierce suggests, the president

... has granted immunity to the country by granting immunity to many of the people who did that country the most damage, whether they were the criminals within the previous administration, who tortured without conscience or spied without warrants, or whether they were the criminals within the financial sector, who rigged the game, cheated millions of ordinary people out of their money, and then escaped back into the institutions that had been Too Big to Fail and that, remarkably, came out of the scandal even bigger than they were before.

With a House gerrymandered to stay in the grasp of lunatics, impeachment will begin in January (if not sooner). The noise machine may have been caught a bit off-guard last night, but soon enough it will function as if the election had never happened.

On the very positive side: Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin, among other wins.

And passage of marriage equality measures in four states. A truly heartening sign that demographics are changing, and that this particular wedge will lose its power for more of the electorate.

November 6, 2012

And I didn't get a sticker.

Maybe the polling place was out of them, or maybe the workers were just too overloaded to bother. The wait that has never been longer than five or ten minutes was two hours. I got there before 4:30; a few minutes later, the crowd stretched down the block. It got cold during the half hour it took just to reach the building door; ahead of me was an elderly man with walker, who refused an offer to ask poll workers about letting him ahead. After finally getting to the entrance, we had to squeeze into a triple line snaking through a very narrow corridor, in a space inadequate to the turnout.

Poll workers included the usual faces, and they were efficient enough. It's the extra ID and forms, courtesy of our Republican-controlled legislature, that were different this year. Large turnout in a precinct heavily populated by students and this year's long ballot of state and local offices also contributed to the wait, during what was not quite peak time. And this was in a Democratic stronghold where there's no apparent history of voter discouragement efforts.

He so gets to the essentials that it's hard to resist quoting great swaths of Charles Pierce's Election Day summation—

...were it not for the new political universe created by the Big Bang of the Citizens United decision, and were it not for the swiftly established metric that he who has the most money wins, the candidacy of Willard Romney would be an almost impossible burlesque. Four years after the titans of the financial-services industry nearly ate the entire world, the Republicans nominate a plutocratic maladroit who can barely wrestle a coherent sentence to a draw — "We start a new tomorrow tomorrow," was yesterday's gem — and who is entirely a creature of the very industry that had caused the misery in the first place. It is exactly the same as if the Republicans in 1932 had replaced Herbert Hoover at the top of their ticket with Andrew Mellon.

But the election is still within an eyelash, one way or the other, because Romney's money, and all the other money that lined up behind it, made him credible. Exactly forty years after anonymous corporate cash became the first loose thread that would lead to the unravelling of Richard Nixon's presidency, anonymous corporate cash is the coin of the realm....

But, recently, watching things on the ground here in Florida, I've come to think that there is an even bigger story than the money, that the money is merely the only story within the only story. I have watched at close range how very far politicians will go to use their institutional power as elected officials to deaden the instincts of self-government. It is the money that got them into place to do it, but what they're doing is something far more insidious and dangerous. Actively keeping people from exercising the franchise is bad enough. But to continue, over and over and over again, to make the process harder and harder until a critical mass of people decides that self-government is not worth the bother, I think, is far, far worse.

And yet it has to be said, that

...while the process may have been grubby, and the tone of the debate wretched, there was a genuine debate to be had here, and it was worthy of all the best instincts of self-government that had been enervated, day by grinding day, by what our politics had become. It was a debate about the very nature of self-government itself, and about the value of the political commonwealth that is its only worthwhile creative endeavor. There is one side in this election that is far too timid, and far too closely allied with far too many people it ought not to be allied with at all, but which at least does admit the existence of a political commonwealth, and at least does recognize that self-government is an ongoing creative endeavor. And there is one side that simply does neither, and that has been quite clear about why it does not, and that has worked within the institutional structures of self-government to undermine the creative soul of the democratic project. And that has been a debate worth having, and that is the debate that will conclude today.

Given that the average person tunes out politics unless bothering to vote in presidential elections, today does conclude what's dubbed public "debate."

Ending some measure of self-government, on the other hand, is not yet an entirely done deal. If Obama is re-elected, the money will go on subverting democracy by stealth. And Obama will presumably go on being "far too closely allied with far too many people ... [he] ought not to be allied with at all."

If the unthinkable happens, those who will "undermine the creative soul of the democratic project" won't tarry at their work of devastating what's left of the economy. At least they should no longer need to pander to The Base, or pretend to any concern for the non-One Percent.

A mere four years (and one black man) ago, even Republicans were frightened by the thought of Sarah Palin, a heartbeat away. Those voters have no such fear this time. If their Monopoly man and Ayn Rand fan grasp this enormous power, it will be theirs along with the Mandate due only to Republicans.

Frightful

Just change the names, and one of 2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes will serve only too well:

Halloween has nothing on Election Day. It's not only a horror that the outcome is even close, but the prospect of a Romney "win" is, well, apocalyptic.

The GOP's dough has bought plenty of Treats.

New, improved vote suppression, by such fine folks as this.

Voter intimidation, with heightened activity in, for example, Ohio and Wisconsin.

A little family investment in extra goodies never hurts, either.

An October surprise could be doubly opportune, if it not only keeps displaced survivors from voting, but also installs those who would kill off FEMA, along with all other federal agency targets.

If it's all not scary enough, consider The Base.

Any percentage of the GOP vote that's not openly racist—or otherwise demented—will endorse a bullying "job creator," something our workplace conditioning makes possible. And if the boss-knows-best brainwashing hasn't been adequate, Job Creators can simply terrorize the help.

In the public institution unit she supervises, Clever Sister has an employee who already is terrified. This woman's daughter and boyfriend were told by their employers that they'll lose their jobs if they don't vote for Willard; that if Obama is re-elected, they'll be fired or have their hours cut. I don't know about the boyfriend, but the daughter is doing home health care for the elderly; a Ryan budget should no doubt do wonders for her boss' business.

And, says CS, the woman's relatives who work at the university hospital are getting similar threats—despite this being a public institution, and having a higher echelon management that loves the prospect of more business through Obamacare.

If all else fails, CEO worship can always be dialed up. "CEO President" not only has a great ring, it's worked so very well before.

The Bosses, Yes, The Bosses

Now, this is convincing:

At my workplace, the latest Customer Service Excellence campaign is unrelenting. At 8:15 we assemble for Morning Huddle, which features our supervisor's monotone reading of a Text of the Day. Oh, it's not for lack of enthusiasm that he drones; he's really quite pleased about the new routine, as his doing it makes the higher-ups very happy with him. It's just that his daily encounter with the mysteries of the printed word is a bit of a stumbling block.

Words of more than one syllable are a challenge, as is context. One word he can never manage is comprise; any sentence containing it will be read as, "Our institution compromises many units."

No one else ever notices.

The daily sermon ends with a Quote of the Day, drawn from the endless supply of clichés recycled by every brand of consultant who has created some niche for himself. One morning it was words of wisdom about "listening," as formulated by "a pioneer in the field of Listening." Even the credulous bunch I work with raised eyebrows at that particular job description.

Sometimes the consultant consulted by the compiler of this dreck is the oracle of Brainy Quote. That's when when we hear from writers of stuff other than management buzzwords. Those mornings, the boss mumbles something along the lines of: here are some words, "by Hen-ry Da-vid ... Tho-...ro-oh...?"

Now, if this were a Japanese organization, we could sing a song and do jumping jacks, thus exercising at least a couple parts of the body.

But my only exercise is of the eyelids I struggle to keep open—what with the drivel being droned, and this being first thing in the morning.

The Theme of the Week is reiterated daily, then followed by a Question for Discussion. Before the silence becomes too painful, one or two of the most prominent suck-ups will volunteer an example of how they do things just as the printed text says.

When the Question was, "What could be improved in your area?" the meanest (read: most powerful) of the group said, "Cleanliness: garbage cans are not being emptied!"

Even if it hadn't been said in a voice full of contempt for the cleaning staff, this was one of those times when I have to bite my tongue to keep from saying: "But, Maintenance is Lean!"

(Along with Customer Service Excellence, Lean is the other ongoing management fad—one which took only about twenty years to reach this institution.)

A day or two after that housecleaning complaint, the rest rooms and lunch room on our floor were completely out of paper products; sometime later, I saw the maintenance supervisor being shown around.

Stopping next morning at the coffeemaker, I was dazzled by the gleaming lunch room floor (it was very visible, as the chairs were inverted on tables, post-mopping). Then—just my timing luck—department chairman Dr. G. Zuss appeared. Though he normally avoids interaction with non-faculty, this time he took in the scene, beamed at me, and said that this was more like it.

As I strained to think of a reply, the department administrator materialized. The relieved Dr. G. Zuss pivoted from me to his peer, and began kvetching that he used to see the same cleaner every day and service was so much better then. The administrator (to his credit) said, "It's not really the people who are the problem: it's the level of service they've been told to provide."

[Lean!]

Dr G. Zuss frowned, "Still, you'd expect them to have better Q.A. in place!"

Ah yes: Lean and Customer Service Excellence could never be mutually exclusive goals.

The daily Excellence text is institution-wide material, issued in weekly units, and written by some unknown consultant/s undoubtedly paid well for the random mishmash of slogans. Last week's theme was "Live Your Card," referring to a laminated Ten Commandments of Customer Service. Though it may have been twelve commandments, or some other magic number. I wouldn't know: instead of wearing it next to a heart beating joyously to the tune of Customer Service Excellence, I tossed this fucking moronic item upon receipt (a year or two ago, during a previous cycle of management enthusiasm).

Living the customer service dream, that's me.

Or, in Clever Sister's words: "Is this a cult? Did they ask you to sign up for this?"

It's one thing, having to race through the work of three people, while making more errors than when I was handling the work of only two [Lean!] But I have a much harder time swallowing the daily insult to intelligence.

My job is not customer service, but that's beside the point. This material is written for employees of the institution's hospital, where "customer service" is continually being made worse by outsourcing, Lean, and every other management decision. The daily brainwashing is to make hospital workers smile-smile-smile at "consumers." This, presumably, will create a branding experience so dazzling as to distract from the crappy quality of medical care. In my own non-hospital position, this kind of stuff is simply to enforce the expectation of ever higher levels of employee sucking up, in the face of ever more work overload.

But that's where we are, those of us meant to consider ourselves lucky to still have jobs. And if the boss tells you who to vote for, well, the boss knows best.

Lift Every Voice

Sitthixay Ditthavong/AP

Rick Perlstein on the Chicago Teachers' Union strike (and in a Sam Seder/Majority Report interview). Perlstein finds the strike the third milestone in events that began with the Spring 2011 Wisconsin statehouse demonstrations, then followed by the Occupy actions starting last September 17. In the MR interview, Perlstein notes the CTU did important groundwork with parents before the strike, and has strong support for its stance against "reform" focused on standardized tests and eliminating "frills," like art, libraries, and physical ed.

Along with the "liberal" political establishment's endorsement of corporation-enriching "reform," there's the "greedy teachers" narrative, and digby notes the media's current promotion of this story line. But that's business as usual, just as most national coverage chose to make Wisconsin only about unions, and to present Occupy as a freak show.

The strike also raises a number of class issues, and digby included this essay from Corey Robin. He writes of his experience attending excellent schools in upper-class professional Chappaqua, NY, schools that introduced him to and encouraged him in the multiple interests that ultimately led to his academic career. Families relocated to the town for schools of this quality, writes Robin, yet many parents looked down on teachers as losers for accepting a low-paid career, and they communicated that attitude to their children. Robin finds in this class snobbery a source of current anti-teacher sentiment.

That may well be a factor prompting elite reaction, including that of the "liberal" elite. In the Majority Report segment, Perlstein notes CTU president Karen Lewis' claim that Mayor Emanuel told her privately that "25 percent of the students in this city are never going to be anything, never going to amount to anything and that he was never going to throw money at them." Why, after all, should 25 percent of children of people not Our Kind matter?

Along the same lines, MR followed the Perlstein interview with audio of this powerful appearance by Matt Farmer. It's natural for billionaire Penny Pritzker to think music and art are for mine but not thine, when thine need only be educated enough to become the help.

During the decades of war on public education since I was a kid, I've come to see that what I once thought of as middling schools were much closer to an elite education. Imperfect as they were, those schools sometimes suggested possibilities beyond training the young to become a suitably unquestioning drones. Sure, there were mediocre teachers, but there also were those who opened new horizons.

One of the latter was a U.S. history teacher who'd grown up in a coal mining town, worked construction jobs in the summers, and was a civil rights activist in the ongoing work in the '60s for the most basic legal protections. He introduced us to current struggles, and to labor history and the battles lost and hard-won: the history missing from or glossed over in textbooks.

There were other teachers who were influential, but something that's always stayed with me was my experience in H.S. choir—and with a teacher I wasn't all that crazy about. (He wasn't exactly sophisticated in non-musical matters; I remember his referring to a synagogue as "the Jewish church...)

But he gave us the ambitious assignment of learning the choruses of the J.S. Bach "Magnificat," for a concert with professional soloists. It was a revelation to learn our individual sections' choral parts, which were stunning in themselves, and then to hear how the parts transformed into something even greater, when all were combined.

While kids generally were listening to whatever was Top 40 c. 1967, everyone became pretty awed by this process. I remember walking past the gym after a rehearsal, when someone burst into a choral part, then others joined in as we strode (seemingly bounced!) through the empty hall. There was something important we all felt, regardless of musical background (which was limited, for most). It was the combination of a powerful esthetic experience along with the act of individual voices joining to form something greater than the parts, and we responded strongly. Well, there might also be a metaphor in that, about teachers, students, community...

At the very least, the impression this kind of experience made on me also makes it impossible to forget that kids respond to what they are exposed to. Limiting the "finer things" to those with moneyed parents is a form of child abuse that's been pushed to respectability, but needs to be seen for what it really is.

Focus

Without being able to watch it, I tried catching up with what I could of the Democratic Convention, over the days that followed.

While I approached this with much trepidation, it seems that some apt messages were there, as heard from Sister Simone Campbell, Elizabeth Warren, and others.

I don't know how much beyond the big name appearances was aired in network prime time. Much of what was effective was the bully pulpit stuff the administration should have been doing from the start. As Michael Shaw says, powerful as this family's story is, it "just as powerfully hits on how the administration has come up short in framing the debate, and now, defending the [Affordable Care] law itself, in more visceral terms."

One talking point was the unconvincing boast of "ending" the Iraq war. I certainly see the political logic there. I also see the logic of boasting about killing the boogeyman—no matter how unseemly snd short-sighted it may be. That's in the context of global perceptions, as well as making murder into this banal bit of cheerleading, in a country so desensitized to violence and disappearing civil liberties.

And this miserable attempt at pandering to "faith": high-profile appearance by a (tax-exempt) political enemy and mouthpiece of a certain pedophile-protecting institution.

Whatever degree of successful PR and politicking was achieved, there was also what Pierce called "The Thing Nobody Talked About at the Conventions"—

The Democrats are caught in a bind, because they have to play in the new universe of campaign finance, too, and because they're trying to keep up with a symphony of well-financed propaganda that seeks to make voter-suppression into a good-government initiative. John Lewis is not fooled. John Lewis has seen this before. And John Lewis told the convention what he's seeing rising in the country out of his own past.

Brothers and sisters, do you want to go back? Or do you want to keep America moving forward? My dear friends, your vote is precious, almost sacred. It is the most powerful, nonviolent tool we have to create a more perfect union. Not too long ago, people stood in unmovable lines. They had to pass a so-called literacy test, pay a poll tax. On one occasion, a man was asked to count the number of bubbles in a bar of soap. On another occasion, one was asked to count the jelly beans in a jar-all to keep them from casting their ballots. Today it is unbelievable that there are Republican officials still trying to stop some people from voting. They are changing the rules, cutting polling hours and imposing requirements intended to suppress the vote. The Republican leader in the Pennsylvania House even bragged that his state's new voter ID law is "gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state." That's not right. That's not fair. That's not just. And similar efforts have been made in Texas, Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and South Carolina. I've seen this before. I've lived this before. Too many people struggled, suffered and died to make it possible for every American to exercise their right to vote.

And that is simply the way it is, and, if you don't like the truth there, you're welcome to get your brains nearly beaten out of you on the Edmund Pettus Bridge so you would begin to have the most basic qualifications to argue with John Lewis about it.

From Digby: the speech transcript.

Pierce concluded that—

If I were running the president's campaign, I'd shut the hell up about Simpson-fking-Bowles and put John Lewis on an airplane and let him tell his story in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and everywhere else this atavistic authoritarian nonsense is going down. There's more at risk here than anyone knows.

The next day, Pierce talked to North Carolina delegate Stella Adams—

Adams credited Lewis, who also addressed the entire convention Thursday night, for attempting to remain positive in the face of today's relentless assaults on civil liberties, especially voter rights. "Who would have thought this would happen in his lifetime?" she asked. "John Lewis, who was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, will see all of his work undone because we don't understand what's at stake."

"It's ancient times — we can't go back to that," she continued, her voice breaking. "How far back does Mitt Romney want to take us? To the back of the bus? To strange fruit in trees?"

On Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, Adams, who describes herself as a "Bible-toting, scripture-quoting, pro-choice, choose-life woman," will begin a fast that she plans to continue until Election Day. She may stave off hunger and join friends monitoring early voting places. She'll have plenty of opportunity. This past Tuesday, the Democrat-controlled North Carolina elections board used their advantage to buck the national trend and increase early voting opportunities for state residents.

"I've really been motivated... to protect my daughter’s future," Adams said, with a hint of new resolve in her voice. Her daughter, Danielle, a graduate student at Appalachian State University, is also a North Carolina delegate. "We will win this election, or we will lose our future."

Or, as Matt Taibbi lays out the economic terms of the 1-percenter's fast one Romney/Ryan are aiming to pull—

Obama ran on "change" in 2008, but Mitt Romney represents a far more real and seismic shift in the American landscape. Romney is the frontman and apostle of an economic revolution, in which transactions are manufactured instead of products, wealth is generated without accompanying prosperity, and Cayman Islands partnerships are lovingly erected and nurtured while American communities fall apart. The entire purpose of the business model that Romney helped pioneer is to move money into the archipelago from the places outside it, using massive amounts of taxpayer-subsidized debt to enrich a handful of billionaires. It's a vision of society that's crazy, vicious and almost unbelievably selfish, yet it's running for president, and it has a chance of winning. Perhaps that change is coming whether we like it or not. Perhaps Mitt Romney is the best man to manage the transition. But it seems a little early to vote for that kind of wholesale surrender.

Back to School, 1944

Tri-State High School Yearbook, Tule Lake, California, 1944-45

Eighty pages, full of teacher portraits, school spirit and activities, along with the faces of students who, American as they were, did all they could to be positive and to on hold to belief in a better future.

Large view.

Which, of course, fills the book with irony.

It's in the breezy, period cartoons, like this map

Large view.

The same cartoonist did the three-page schedule of events; here, here, and here.

There's the dreamy "co-ed" in a romantic bit of the arid scenery—

And this—

My sister had sent links to this yearbook a while ago. While looking for it again, I happened upon this document: scrapbooks assembled by Emily Light, an elementary school teacher who chose to teach at Tule Lake, Jerome, and Topaz camps and record the internees' experience. Along with camp newsletters she clipped newspaper stories from the outside, including any voices that spoke out about the whole thing.

Service With A (Proper To Her Station) Smile

I've been reading Jan Whitaker's 2006 Service and Style: how the American department stores fashioned the middle class. It covers a lot of commercial and social history, from the nineteenth century to the stores' heyday in the Depression. Department stores expanded after World War II, but were soon forced to move from selling unique store brands to carrying the nationally advertised brands consumers demanded. National brands sold themselves through their marketing, so that stores no longer needed to provide a high level of service and were now forced to compete with discount retailers selling exactly the same brands. Ultimately, the customer exodus to the suburbs led to the demise of many stores; others survived mainly in malls, not city centers.

As it happens, pre-Labor Day I had just finished a chapter on stores' personnel, including founders and the masses of hired staff.

Women sales clerks made up most of the workforce by the 1890s, when most major stores had evolved from dry goods businesses staffed by men. Clerks' pay was poor, and hours abusively long—

... Sixty hours a week was commonplace even in better stores. Overtime pay was unheard of, and clerks were often expected to work Sundays and holidays to prepare for sales. If they were late, they could face fines for every minute of absence. Humiliation was routine. A guard searched them for stolen merchandise each day as they left the store.

Even worse, the public suspected clerks of accepting money for sexual favors from "mashers" who hung around their counters and employee entrances. According to popular lore, saleswomen were audacious flirts who used glances and smiles to sell goods—and who knew what else?—to male customers.

... In retrospect, the issue of sales clerk morality looks like a case of middle-class vexation over the invasion of public space by large numbers of working-class young women, many of whom refused to display the degree of deference and maidenly timidity demanded by polite society.

More sympathetic women believed that if young clerks sometimes went wrong, it was mainly because pay was too low for them to support themselves. Many middle-class women undertook reform efforts, working for stronger labor laws and threatening store boycotts. Especially decrying the long hours and lack of overtime pay before Christmas, reformers asked stores to reduce night hours, and the public to "shop early." Stores did respond by ordering merchandise early and moving the start of the shopping season to early December.

By the early 'teens, says Whitaker, pay increased (but very slightly), and "leading stores" began organizing clubs and leisure activities for employees, along with calling them "associates"—a euphemism I had assumed was quite recent.

Whitaker has interesting material on how stores worked to bridge the gap between middle-class patrons and poorly educated clerks with instruction in middle-class behavior and esthetic standards. She reproduces a lesson on proper speech, including such "Wrong–Right" contrasts as—

Lady, is this your package? – Madam/Mrs. Brown, is this your package?

The party who... – The person/woman who...

I have this in four sizes. – We have this in four sizes.

This is swell/grand/nifty. – This is smart.

Stores established

Dress codes, speech correction, and "lifestyle" training… The ideal clerk was efficient, knowledgeable, helpful, and pleasantly mannered, and she could answer questions and provide assistance without inserting her "self" into the transaction. She was supposed to maintain social distance. To the status-conscious customer, nothing could kill a sale faster than hearing the clerk say, "I wear that kind myself."
...

Emotional labor was at the heart of the sales clerk's role. She was supposed to avoid showing impatience or giving offense, since customers remembered affronts and avoided stores that had offended them in the smallest way. But she was also supposed to flatter the customer and create a pleasant association with the store. Flattery required a clerk to "read" the customer, to listen with minute attentiveness, and to recall her name and preferences on later occasions.

Though, Whitaker notes, class friction could work in many ways. Clerks had to address everyone as "madame'—

including washerwomen and immigrants speaking broken English. The low-status customer could be the most demanding, almost provoking a clerk to lose her temper. Frances Donovan, a sociologist who conducted research by working in department stores in the 1920s, noticed that customers employed as servants sometimes played out a role-reversal game, treating clerks as their servants. Interestingly, as a middle-class woman, Donovan could not bring herself to call them madame.

Employers' preferred "reforms" were to provide activities for workers. There were companies that provided summer camps, organized concerts by employee choirs and orchestras, summer camps, and published regular newsletters. I enjoyed the January 1925 Hess Brothers (Allentown, PA) newsletter, which was full of positive thinking exhortations to the store's "Co-Workers," along with this—

Co-Workers and Mr. Chas. Hess Exchange New Year Greetings.

On New Year's Eve, Wednesday, 31st, 1924, the following cablegram was sent to Mr. Charles Hess who from last reports was visiting Monte Carlo, France.

Continued Good Health for 1925

Co-Workers

On Friday, January 2nd, 1925, the co-workers received the following cablegram from Mr. Charles Hess, which was dated January 1, 2 p. m.

Wishing Everybody a Happy New Year.

Charles Hess

Stores often had a cult of The Founder, which was useful for advertising and "branding" purposes. Many stores also remained for generations under family control, but Whitaker says things changed when—

Scientific management entered department stores in the 1920s and transformed them from one-man shows and rule-of-thumb operations into businesses like all others.... With the adoption of modern methods, records were kept and statisticians hired to pore over anything that could be quantified. In the 1920s, the comptroller became the most influential person in a store. Executives were hired from outside the store, while family members had to prove their worth. Founders' sons had to take business courses just like anyone else aspiring to management. Buyers [a position that had become a means of advancement for women] lost their power as personnel departments took over hiring and merchandise managers supervised budgets and buying decisions. Each department was rated on its productivity, balancing its sales volume against the square footage it occupied and the number of clerks it employed. Many store functions were contracted to outside agencies....

It wasn't until the New Deal that minimum wage laws increased worker pay, and hours became restricted to a 40-hour 5-day week. Strikes intensified in the '30s, particularly by Teamsters. Employer reaction was predictable: lockouts, along with such PR efforts as the San Francisco Retailers Council advertising in 1938 for public support against "the attempt of arrogant union leaders to Sovietize our business." Union activity united retailers into city-wide groups to oppose it. Delivery driver strikes led stores to use common delivery services, a move that boosted the fortunes of United Parcel Service.

For all the controlling paternalism of stores toward employees, it's startling how Miss Kunesh of the alterations and tailoring department could not only retire, but be given "a three-week, 10-country tour of Europe." Maybe she managed the department, or maybe not; this store was considered a luxury goods dealer that may have been extra-generous.

Retirement party for Halle's employee, 1968.
"Off to Europe-- For completing 50 years of service with Halles, Miss Anna Kulesh, 7510 Pearl Rd., was honored with a reception at the downtown store yesterday and presented a three-week, 10-country tour of Europe. Miss Kunesh is in the alterations and tailoring department." -- photo verso. Text on verso contains two different spellings of honoree's last name. The presenter is Walter Halle.

Nearly another fifty years on, the still-employed—for a paycheck and little else—are mostly service workers, thanks to The Owners' successful arrangements. Those still serving do so under the demand for a never-ending process of outdoing oneself—without ever, ever exposing any of that troublesome self.

Well, Were Their Lips Moving?

August 29: Driftglass said it, and added the perfect graphics: why there's no surprise in seeing "a Republican candidate for Vice President who gets up on the biggest stage of his life and -- in front of tens of millions of his fellow citizens -- lies as easily and unself-consciously as a dog licking its ass"—

This is all they are now. And the reason it might very well work this time even though we can see it coming right down Michigan Avenue is that the Republican system of bald-faced, pathological lying requires only two moving parts: first, a Party that, top to bottom, has gone fully sociopathic and will lie about anything, any time without batting an eye, and second, a complicit, enabling Centrist media which categorically refuse to call them on their lying.

Charles Pierce weighed in on "The Backlash to the Backlash to the Paul Ryan Speech"—

I suspect that, within a week, the consensus among the elite political media will once again settle on Who Really Knows All The Facts Anyway, and that Paul Ryan's reputation as a genial policy wonk will be re-established, and the search for "common ground" on which we can all agree to starve granny will resume apace.

August 30: The Base knows no cognitive dissonance, which would imply a capacity for cognition. Therefore, those bootstrapping "Nyah!Nyah!We did it ourselves!" convention speakers like Chris Christie. As whetstone put it in alicublog comments—

It was a wonderful night for big gummit programs: the GI bill, public transportation, Rutgers, and Ann Romney namedropping her hubby's state scholarship program (merit-based dough for 18,200 moochers this year), which isn't just free money, it's only for kids who go to public universities.

Then—as Reagan stand-in?—an incoherent elderly actor took the stage.

Driftglass' take—

Upon reflection, I must admit that Mr. Eastwood summed up the GOP base flawlessly: a cranky old white man yelling at an imaginary President about fictional problems.

Pierce says what Romney's handlers "were shooting for on Thursday night was an extended exercise in Pinocchio, You're a Real Boy Now," and that—

... On Thursday night, Willard Romney may have come as close to humanity as he needs to come. The rest is all just waiting for him out there — 8-percent unemployment, and a Democratic Party that may well spend a week talking about how much they're willing to cut and how serious they are about The Deficit. I felt a pulse on Thursday night, and I saw a certain vigorous color come to his cheeks. I think Romney's alive now, and it bothers me, because I think he's a lot closer to becoming president than he was at the beginning of the night.

Matt Taibbi points to the "hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney": his running against "debt" when—

Mitt Romney is one of the greatest and most irresponsible debt creators of all time.
In the past few decades, in fact, Romney has piled more debt onto more unsuspecting companies, written more gigantic checks that other people have to cover, than perhaps all but a handful of people on planet Earth.

By making debt the centerpiece of his campaign, Romney was making a calculated bluff of historic dimensions – placing a massive all-in bet on the rank incompetence of the American press corps.

With so corrupt a political system and a media that looks the other way, we face an election that should in no way be so close, yet is.

One voice that spoke out about that corruption is terribly missed. Matt Sullivan quoted this on her birthday—

"Either we figure out how to keep corporate cash out of the political system, or we lose the democracy."
—Molly Ivins, August 30, 1944 - January 31, 2007

Barry Friedman adds—

... her greatest line: "I'd rather someone burn the flag and wrap himself in the constitution than burn the constitution and wrap himself in the flag."

Lies, Damned Lies, and Republicans

The Republicans opened their convention yesterday in Tampa. There, says Charles Pierce, they—

... set out on an experiment to see exactly how much unmitigated hogwash the American political system can contain on a single evening. The Republican Party has set out at its 2012 convention in search of the Event Horizon of utter bullshit. It has sought to see precisely how many lies, evasions, elisions, and undigestible chunks of utter gobbledegook the political media can swallow before it finally gags twice and falls over dead, leaving the rest of America suckers all the same.

Pierce has much more to say, including how—

It was an entire evening based on a demonstrable lie. It was an entire evening based on demonstrable lies told in service to the overriding demonstrable lie. And there was only one real story for actual journalists to tell at the end of it.

The Republicans simply don't care.

They don't care that they lie. They don't care that their lies are obvious. They don't care that their lies wouldn't fool an underpaid substitute Social Studies teacher in a public middle school, who would then probably go out one night and get yelled at by Chris Christie. ("They believe in teacher's unions. We believe in teachers," he said in his speech. Yeah, you just don't believe in paying them.) They don't care that their history is a lie and that, by spreading it, they devalue the actual history of the country, which is something that belongs to us.

On the other hand, as commenter Barry Friedman points out—

Thomas Carlyle once said, "No lie can live forever," and last night, the GOP said, "We just need it to live till November."

I read Hitler: A Study in Tyranny during Karl Rove's years [to date] in the White House. Although the concept of "The Big Lie" tends to be linked to Goebbels, Alan Bullock's quotes from Mein Kampf show that it was Hitler who first grasped just how to go about it.

This passage is merely GOP 101—and the last point shows how their forerunner set Turdblossom, et. al., on their course—

The first and most important principle for political action laid down by Hitler is: Go to the masses. 'The movement must avoid everything which may lessen or weaken its power of influencing the masses ... because of the simple fact that no great idea, no matter how sublime or exalted, can be realized in practice without the effective power which reside in the popular masses.'

Since the masses have only a poor aquaintance with abstract ideas, their reactions lie more in the domain of the feelings, where the roots of their positive as well as their negative attitudes are implanted.... The emotional grounds of their attitude furnish the reason for their extraordinary stability. It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge. And the driving force which has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into action. Whoever wishes to win over the masses must know the key that will open the door to their hearts. It is not objectivity, which is a feckless attitude, but a determined will, backed up by power where necessary.

Hitler is quite open in explaining how this is to be achieved. 'The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas.... Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on the memory of a crowd.'

When you lie, tell big lies. This is what the Jews do [Bullock summarizes], working on the principle, 'which is quite true in itself, that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. ... The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.' (Bullock, pp 69-70; 1964 ed., Harper and Row)

Journalistic Integrity

I came here for the "Planet Money"/Adam Davidson low-down (via this Tbogg must-read).

Take an audience of NPR fans that tunes in for liberal marching orders.

Feed them breezy explanations that in Wall Street crime "everyone"—therefore, no one—is to blame...

Now, who would have imagined that Davidson is on the payroll of "Ally Bank (the artist formerly known as GMAC) and they are kind of bad people..." (Tbogg)

I stayed for the Malcom Gladwell exposé, and subsequent exchange with the great writer himself.

I've glanced at Gladwell's stuff in the past, and found it unreadably shallow trend-marketing. Who knew: yet another Canadian who emigrated very successfully to the wingnut welfare side of the border, and has a long, lucrative history to those connections.

Well, he certainly would have those connections, if S.H.A.M.E. is correct in naming him "America's Most Successful Propagandist."

Or perhaps Gladwell just writes the one true science (unlike, for example, the efforts of what Charles Pierce calls "the greedy, Lamborghini-driving scientists behind the Great Climate Change Hoax.")

Thank god there still is journalistic integrity in this country.

After all, the public was recently made safe from fake Bob Dylan quotes.

Company Town

Chevron refinery fire, Richmond, CA
Photo: Tom Butt, SFGate

Richmond fire, viewed from Tiburon
Photo: John Storey, SF Chronicle

Local news in Northern California.

Among other details, 4,540 residents needed medical attention—

Investigators looking into the fire at the Chevron oil refinery in Richmond suspect that heat insulation around a leaking pipe contributed to the disaster by masking the extent of the danger until it was too late, The Chronicle has learned.

By underestimating the size of the leak, initially believed to be about 20 drips per minute, officials kept operating the refinery's large crude unit, where crude oil is separated under heat reaching 1,100 degrees.

... The company has been criticized for running the plant for two hours Monday afternoon after a worker first spotted the leak....

...

...in response to an estimated 4,540 residents who sought medical care after Monday's fire, Chevron will open a claims office Friday in Richmond to process applications for payments to cover medical expenses and property damage.

Background and context, courtesy of Democracy Now.

From interviews with Richmond Mayor (and Green Party member) Gayle McLaughlin, and environmental justice activist Andres Soto, on the hazardous over hundred-year old refinery and Chevron's history with the town—

AMY GOODMAN:
Chevron occupies over 13% of Richmond’s land, and according to the California Air Resources Board, emits more greenhouse gas pollution than any other facility in California. Many who grew up in the refinery’s shadow have memories of illnesses caused by spills. Community activists have also accused Chevron of using its local economic clout to minimize taxes and skirt environmental regulations. ...
...

GAYLE MCLAUGHLIN: ... This situation is totally unacceptable that every few years we have these disastrous situations with fires and impact on the health of our community....

ANDRES SOTO: ...Realistically, what we have seen is nothing but spin out of the refinery. On the one hand they apologized to the community is how they always lead their statements off. But, realistically, they came out and they were blaming the same community and the environmentalists for them not being able to modernize and upgrade their operations there at the Richmond refinery when in fact, we know that this unit, the crude unit that actually caught on fire and blew up, it was never part of that upgrade program. They could have ensured the safety of this thing in general. But it is that mendacity, the misrepresentation of the truth that Chevron is engaging in that makes it very difficult to deal with them. They refuse to negotiate in good faith with the committee over a wide range of issues, whether it is fair taxation or whether it's environmental safety and environmental justice....

National story: "Refinery fire; price of gas to increase on West Coast."

Putting THEM On Welfare

I caught this dog whistle on NPR this morning: Republican candidate speaks: the president is a darkie; therefore, welfare queens everywhere...

"Welfare" scarcely exists for even the neediest—as anyone living in the real world the last twenty years can observe. But reality is not to be spoken of publicly; here's Charles Pierce on that, from a few months back.

The Republican whistling is a two-fer, as one of Pierce's posts today suggests : the base is hearing the darkies are on welfare—and ACORN is registering register them to vote...

Marching Orders

Charles Pierce: on Romney's missing tax returns; the venom of "journalists" against Harry Reid for mentioning the subject; and how—as the media swallowed the bait of Vince Foster's "murder" and all that followed—"the bizarre attacks on Barack Obama were rehearsed by the entire political world between the years 1992 and 2000."

Sadly, the only surprise about this was that investigators immediately deemed the massacre domestic terrorism.

But the terrorist, it turns out, was well-known to the FBI, the SPLC, and others following the activities of white supremacists. That list includes criminologist Pete Simi, who interviewed Page while researching the hate music scene. Simi notes Page's connection with the military; that's one likely reason the "domestic terrorism" designation should soon be dropped.

Digby notes who is being allowed to decide the national etiquette toward mass murders.

Athenae, on What It's Time To Talk About—

No, it is not time to talk about gun control. It is time to talk about Chick-fil-A, and whether the president is secretly a communist, socialist, or Kenyan Muslim Marxist.

...

It is not time to talk about how we can be a less fearful society, a less aggressive society, a less fucking STUPID society, because that seems to require a reach and an ambition so critically lacking in those who task themselves with leading those conversations that we might as well pray for the EASTER BUNNY to save us. It makes about as much sense.

It's not time to talk about gun control. It's time to talk about what fried chicken you should eat to honor America's freedom. It is time to talk about that.

The Olympics continue offering public distraction—and there's NBC's cheesy filler, whenever not enough Americans are in the spotlight.

And, please, let's not have to hear about the socialistic National Health Service that so oppresses the British.

Charles Pierce caught the (non-American) human interest story bumped so NBC could "lard up their coverage"

with paeans to the moment in 1983 when Ronald Reagan arranged to liberate Grenada from the clutches of Cuban construction workers. This preposterous episode was treated by the NBC crew as though it were D-Day, and, yes, I'm aware that it is now a national holiday in Grenada, but I suspect, if they'd looked hard enough, they might have found some people there who are still dubious about our glorious triumph. Perhaps the relatives of the people in the mental hospital that we accidentally bombed. We'd all have been proud of it at the time, except that the administration clamped down on any independent coverage whatsoever, including that of, you know, NBC News.

(And that is not even to mention the possibility that St. Ronnie needed a successful distraction from the fact that, two days earlier, 241 of the Marines he'd sent to Lebanon on an ill-defined mission, and housed in a base with not much of a security perimeter, had been blown up in their barracks by terrorists sponsored by Iran, a state to which he was covertly selling missiles at the time.)