Thanks For Caring...

... enough to shed oh so many fake tears—in the noise machine response to the CBO forecast that a raise in minimum wage could lead to job losses.

Fewer jobs projected, because people might not have to hold down three to survive? Surely that would put us on the road to becoming less Exceptional.

Edroso here, citing more wingnut concern for working stiffs.

How Many...

Ta-Nehisi Coates interview of Jordan Davis' mother. More Coates here, and after the verdict.

Charles Pierce.

David E. makes some connections, including a musical one.

Because if it were ever about race, we might have to ask, "how many little Einsteins, cut down while in their prime?"

Huddle Muddle, Toil And Trouble

It's an unpalatable brew, served up daily.

Well, more of a bout: Supervisor vs. Printed Word ...

The challenger is not so proficient at reading comprehension, and he first encounters the script when he comes before the congregation. The result is much stumbling and garbling, and intoning of such things as—

"All knowledge has its oh...rí-gens... in our perceptions."

—Ley...o...narda... dah Vinci

The script's writer needs to pad daily slots, 52 weeks a year (year, after year, after year...), so nationally branded weeks offer easy filler. Hurrah for National Random Acts of Kindness Week, February 10-16... Although group eyebrows were raised at that one, with its implication of doing something without gain.

Consultants take care of most other weeks.

Recent guidance from those fine professionals has included "Stop Multi-Tasking." Here's a version of what we heard, as going around the Intertubes.

A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of 10 points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night's sleep. For men, it's around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis. While this fact might make an interesting dinner party topic, it's really not that amusing that one of the most common "productivity tools" can make one as dumb as a stoner.

Wonder how how long until the morning script writer fills a week by encouraging us to multi-task.

But, It's all good. Or so I keep hearing.

At our office even rubber bands have inspiring slogans...

Freedom's Most Fervent

Roy Edroso goes over the latest—

Last week the Congressional Budget Office issued another report on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Its most widely-reported revelation was that 2.3 million Americans may leave their jobs because Obamacare would make it inadvisable to them to keep them.

We should say "widely-and-variously-reported," because our rightblogger friends first publicized the news to mean that Obama was going to fire all those people; then, when even the normally hapless American press started explaining that this was not so, came up with other explanations, most of which boiled down to this: Under Obamacare, you no longer have to keep a despised job to have health insurance -- which is terrible, since keeping a job for the insurance is the American Way.

Or, as Edroso puts it here—

...about the CBO finding that, since Obamacare lets Americans quit jobs they no longer need for insurance, 2.3 million of them might do so, and the outrage this engenders among rightbloggers. Yes, freedom's just another word for -- actually, at this point, who knows?

Of course, there won't stop at that, when there will always be another meme to grasp at. Edroso helpfully presents this one—

...in 2010 Nancy Pelosi said something about the Affordable Care Act: That citizens who'd been keeping jobs (first, second, or third) just so they could keep health insurance that went with it would, thanks to the ACA, have a chance to drop it and try to become "an artist or a photographer or a writer."

Pelosi also said Obamacare left citizens free to "start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk," but none of the brethren heard that -- their brains were too inflamed by visions of dirty bohemians spending their taxpayer dollars on Gauloises, Moleskins, and beret cleaner.

Ergo: right launches War on Poetry. Which at least brings entertainment, courtesy of Edroso's commenters...

RogerAiles

Rick Santorum stands ready to condemn man on doggerel text.

dex

so much depends
upon

a red faced right blogger

glazed with freedom

beside the white
chickenshit voters.

Meanwhile: promising they shall "overcome," and that "the whole world is watching," capitalism's biggest boosters threaten a private corporation—which dared endorse an 'Un-American' union election be held in the South.

Now here's a happy employee...

Dollar store display
Photo: Clever Sister

"Pete Seeger was a great American because he dared to be thought otherwise"

The quote is from Charlie Pierce's eloquent obit.

... Seeger spent his life in the most honorable way possible -- he tried to teach America about itself. First, he helped teach it about itself through all the music it had forgotten, a darker and more fascinating place than the America that was selling itself Brylcreem on the TV...
...

Then he tried to teach it by his example, by being a gentle presence in the issues of the day, from Civil Rights to Vietnam to nuclear power to environmentalism, to adventurism in Central America, to the Occupy movement... And he did it with a smile...

Good comments; a reminder of Seeger's involvement with the GI coffeehouse movement was followed by another commenter noting a revival since W. Bush's wars. Which got Pierce looking into it, and finding this.

Roy Edroso on Seeger the musician.

He was a lefty Brahmin who took up hill country music, and that mix could have and maybe should have been ridiculous, like a Puritan trying to swing. But it isn't, in him; Seeger felt the music... His singing was like John Carradine playing Casy in The Grapes of Wrath -- a performance, a bit stagey, but absolutely shot through with the true feeling of a time and a people. And with something timeless, too, that can still speak to us.

Digby, remembering some Seeger testimony before HUAC. And here: "How the private sphere coalesced with the public sector to destroy lives with the anti-communist blacklist." The latter links to Corey Robin, on the First Amendment stance Seeger took with HUAC—

While invoking the Fifth was not without its perils—most important, it could put someone on the blacklist... it had the advantage of keeping one out of jail. But the cost of the 5th was clear: though you could refuse to testify about yourself, you could not refuse to testify about others.

So Seeger invoked the First Amendment instead. A far riskier legal position—the Court had already held, in the case of the Hollywood Ten, that the First Amendment did not protect men and women who refused to testify before HUAC—it was the more principled stance. As Seeger explained later, "The Fifth means they can't ask me, the First means they can't ask anybody." And he paid for it. Cited for contempt of Congress, he was indicted, convicted, and sentenced to a year in prison. Eventually the sentence got overturned.

At Seeger's 90th birthday, Springsteen's words were perfect.

And Woody's "That side was made for you and me": as moving as ever.

Big Boss' Big Week

Monday morning Clever Sister heard this on NPR: "Christie 'Heartbroken' Circle Of Trust' Was Violated." What really caught her attention was Steve Innskeep's lede—

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave an epic press conference yesterday. It went on for almost two hours, almost as long as the traffic jams that prompted him to meet with the press in the first place.

"... almost as long"? When this was four days, of emergency vehicles unable to pass, children unable to get to school?

Media and pundits just can't quit him, as Steve M. has been following. And it's not only Republican operatives eager to pretend Christie is "a moderate."

This would explain the infatuation, as Chris Hedges puts it—

Christie is the caricature of a Third World despot. He has a vicious temper, a propensity to bully and belittle those weaker than himself, an insatiable thirst for revenge against real or perceived enemies, and little respect for the law and, as recent events have made clear, for the truth. He is gripped by a bottomless hedonism that includes a demand for private jets, huge entourages, exclusive hotels and lavish meals. Wall Street and the security and surveillance apparatus want a real son of a bitch in power, someone with the moral compass of Al Capone, in order to ruthlessly silence and crush those of us who are working to overthrow the corporate state. They have had enough of what they perceive to be Barack Obama's softness. Christie fits the profile and he is drooling for the opportunity.
...

Wall Street was unable to mask Mitt Romney's cloying sense of entitlement and elitism, along with his Mr. Rogers blandness. But Wall Street sees in the profane, union-busting New Jersey governor the perfect Trojan horse for unfettered corporate power. Christie, eyeing a bid for the presidency in the 2016 election, has been promised massive financial backing by the Koch brothers; hedge fund titans such as Stanley Druckenmiller, Kenneth C. Griffin, Daniel S. Loeb, Paul E. Singer, Paul Tudor Jones II and David Tepper; financiers such as Charles Schwab and Stephen A. Schwarzman; real estate magnate Mort Zuckerman; former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso; former AIG head Maurice "Hank" Greenberg; former Morgan Stanley CEO John J. Mack; former GE Chairman Jack Welch; and Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone. David Koch has called Christie "a true political hero" and said he is "inspired by this man." Rupert Murdoch, whose ethics seem to align with Christie's, is similarly besotted with the governor.

Christie is pitched to the public, as was George W. Bush, as a regular guy, someone who speaks bluntly and candidly, someone you would want to have a beer with. But this is public relations crap. He is and has long been a hatchet man for corporate firms and big banks. He began his career as a corporate lobbyist in Trenton, N.J., working for clients such as the Securities Industry Association. He has done their bidding ever since. His wife, Mary Pat Christie, is a bond trader who has worked at JPMorgan Chase, Fleet Securities and Cantor Fitzgerald and is currently a managing director at Angelo Gordon, an investment firm in New York.
...

Christie's large public entourage always includes a videographer who captures the governor’s frequent public humiliation of those—public school teachers are his favorite targets for ridicule—who have the audacity to question his judgment. These exchanges are immediately edited and uploaded to YouTube. There are now more than 600.

And so on.

David E. posts some of the teacher-bullying videos.

More from Steve M. about possible motives for punishing Ft. Lee; on the 13th

... I'd like to see a lot more attention paid to the theory of Bridgegate outlined by Steve Kornacki on MSNBC over the weekend: that it was an attempt to put a scare into Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich as he struggled to finalize funding for part of a billion-dollar development in his town under the George Washington Bridge -- a development for which an easy commute to Manhattan via the bridge is a principal selling point. Watch the segment, read the follow-up at Talking Points Memo, and see if it doesn't make sense. (Yes, I think it makes more sense than the Rachel Maddow theory that the traffic tie-up targeted the majority leader of the state senate, a Fort Lee resident, because of a dispute over judicial appointments: why would the emails on this subject say nasty things about he "little Serbian" -- Mayor Sokolich is of Croatian descent -- if he weren't the target?)

There's plenty to be investigated, and Steve M. added this yesterday—

On MSNBC this morning, Steve Kornacki reported on allegations by Hoboken mayor Dawn Zimmer that the Christie administration withheld Sandy relief fund for her city -- 80% of which was flooded by the hurricane -- because the city was reluctant to approve a redevelopment project in a form that helped Christie allies...
...

Kornacki's previous -- and, to me, highly persuasive -- scoop was the linking of the Fort Lee lane closures on the George Washington Bridge to another redevelopment project, in Fort Lee, which was struggling to get funding at the time of the closures, and which was premised in part on the selling point that Fort Lee offers easy access to New York City through the very bridge lanes that were closed.

As an Italian-American, I sometimes think it's simple-minded to compare every shady Italian guy to Vito Corleone or Tony Soprano. In this case, though, I give my blessing. The Christie mob clearly feels it has total control over New Jersey redevelopment -- you don't do it in a way that crosses the Christie mob's interests. You recognize that the Christie mob makes your redevelopment possible, and when the Christie mob asks for something in return, you owe. And woe to you if you don't pay up -- whether it's an endorsement for Christie's reelection or preferential treatment for Christie's pals.

In another context, TBogg says about the newest Southern congressional candidate/rape expert—

So let us extend our heartfelt congratulations to the GOP on another fine recruiting season. Dick Black looks like he is a keeper and even though he will cause conservatives excruciating pain and shame and embarrassment as he is thrust into the national media limelight over and over again, they should keep in mind that it will all be over soon and they should probably just lie back and enjoy it in the meantime.

If only because their body politic lacks the ability to shut these kind of things down.

A good one. But there's not so much to laugh at when our entire body politic lacks the ability to shut down all kinds of things in need of shutting down.

Of the Christie story, at best the mockery of him on national TV by his idol may be a bit wounding

.

Trust

Surely we can trust them.

Some aging "terrorists" recently came forward to remind us of some earlier abuses of authority.

The speech today.

Weirdly enough, the speech happened to be delivered on the anniversary of "Beware the Military Industrial Complex." So Digby observed; part of her take on today's speech

... the president and others' insistence that Snowden is a traitor while simultaneously patting themselves on the back for reforming, changing, investigating, extolling and criticizing the secret surveillance state based entirely on his revelations is now beyond fatuous. There was no mechanism in place aside from the one he chose, obviously, and it's exactly the reason we have freedom of the press in this country in the first place. It is time for these powerful government officials to grow up and recognize that the mere fact that they are making changes proves that he is a whistleblower and at least allow him to obtain long term legal asylum in a foreign country. We are strong enough to allow our faults to be exposed without persecuting those who expose them. In fact, doing that is downright unAmerican.