Saturday, June 23, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
Lisa Koch Sings ‘Hands Off My Clam’
In a variation of the 1960′s hit country song “Stand By Your Man,” singer and comedian Lisa Koch tells the Republican Party to keep their “hands off my clam” in an incredibly funny video. The musical parody makes reference to Republican-led efforts to restrict abortion rights and their opposition to bills like the Paycheck Fairness Act. “Hands off my clam, my uterus, and ova,” she sang in this video recently uploaded to YouTube. “Yes, we need birth control, because you won’t wrap your pickle.” She also presents her own variation on “If I Only Had a Brain” from The Wizard of Oz.“I’d defund contraception, say the hell to sex prevention, cuz there’s Jesus in my heart,” she sang. “I would vote against gay marriage, and fags I would disparage, but lesbians — well, I like to watch them on porn.”
Friday, May 18, 2012
New U.S. Data Shows More Ethnic Babies Than Whites
Seems like all the anti-abortion, anti-contraception bills being drafted in red states and even the Republican controlled do nothing congress saw this coming and are trying to take proactive measures so that white remains the dominant race. Why do I say that? Statistically speaking, white women have more abortions than minorities. Turning women into nothing more than powerless fetus incubators for men is just a bonus for the radical right.
In an historic milestone, the U.S. for the first time has more minority or mixed-race kids than non-Hispanic whites.
By Courtney Subramanian
It’s an historic milestone in the ongoing U.S. demographic shift: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were more black, Hispanic and other ethnic newborns than white births in 2011. The new figures make minorities the majority among America’s youth for the first time on record. According to the data, just over half of all infants in the U.S. were minorities or of more than one race last year: 50.4 percent of babies younger than age 1, a jump from 49.5 percent in 2010. And 49.7 percent of children younger than age 5 belonged to a minority or were of mixed race, an increase from 49 percent the year before, according to the agency. The nation’s growing diversity is a trend long established among demographers, but the latest census data illustrates how starkly it will change the face of America’s next generations. Most notably, Hispanic and Asian populations have swelled by more than 40 percent since 2000, compared to the 1.5 percent increase of non-Hispanic whites over the same time period. The white demographic is on its way to becoming a “majority minority”: it now only represents 63.4 percent of the U.S. population. “This is a fundamental tipping point signaling a change in our demographic structure for decades to come,” said William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The U.S. white population is projected to become the minority – an estimated 47 percent of the population – by 2050, according to a Pew Research Center forecast. A 2009 Census Bureau report predicts the shift will occur by 2042. But an increase in minority newborns is not the only contributing factor to the shift; the non-Hispanic white population birth-to-death ratio is narrowing. Just 1,025 white children were born for every 1,000 who died last year compared to the 3,940 births to 1,000 deaths for all other minority groups, the Wall Street Journal reports. Minority women tend to start families younger and have more kids, with Hispanic women giving birth to an average of 2.4 babies compared to the 1.8 non-Hispanic white births, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The rapidly changing demographic underscores a nationwide political debate on race, immigration policy, poverty and the future of the country’s economy, one that’s even more pointed in this election year. But while some experts believe ethnic groups will maintain cultural differences among the formerly predominant white population, other demographers anticipate minorities to blend into the proverbial “melting pot.” “If you go back 100 years, groups that are now considered part of the majority white population were perceived as minorities,” Jeffry Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, told the Washington Post. “Over time, we’ll change the way we perceive these categories.”
In an historic milestone, the U.S. for the first time has more minority or mixed-race kids than non-Hispanic whites.
By Courtney Subramanian
It’s an historic milestone in the ongoing U.S. demographic shift: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, there were more black, Hispanic and other ethnic newborns than white births in 2011. The new figures make minorities the majority among America’s youth for the first time on record. According to the data, just over half of all infants in the U.S. were minorities or of more than one race last year: 50.4 percent of babies younger than age 1, a jump from 49.5 percent in 2010. And 49.7 percent of children younger than age 5 belonged to a minority or were of mixed race, an increase from 49 percent the year before, according to the agency. The nation’s growing diversity is a trend long established among demographers, but the latest census data illustrates how starkly it will change the face of America’s next generations. Most notably, Hispanic and Asian populations have swelled by more than 40 percent since 2000, compared to the 1.5 percent increase of non-Hispanic whites over the same time period. The white demographic is on its way to becoming a “majority minority”: it now only represents 63.4 percent of the U.S. population. “This is a fundamental tipping point signaling a change in our demographic structure for decades to come,” said William Frey, a demographer and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. The U.S. white population is projected to become the minority – an estimated 47 percent of the population – by 2050, according to a Pew Research Center forecast. A 2009 Census Bureau report predicts the shift will occur by 2042. But an increase in minority newborns is not the only contributing factor to the shift; the non-Hispanic white population birth-to-death ratio is narrowing. Just 1,025 white children were born for every 1,000 who died last year compared to the 3,940 births to 1,000 deaths for all other minority groups, the Wall Street Journal reports. Minority women tend to start families younger and have more kids, with Hispanic women giving birth to an average of 2.4 babies compared to the 1.8 non-Hispanic white births, according to the Pew Hispanic Center. The rapidly changing demographic underscores a nationwide political debate on race, immigration policy, poverty and the future of the country’s economy, one that’s even more pointed in this election year. But while some experts believe ethnic groups will maintain cultural differences among the formerly predominant white population, other demographers anticipate minorities to blend into the proverbial “melting pot.” “If you go back 100 years, groups that are now considered part of the majority white population were perceived as minorities,” Jeffry Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center, told the Washington Post. “Over time, we’ll change the way we perceive these categories.”
Friday, March 16, 2012
President Obama's "The Road We've Traveled"
“The Road We’ve Traveled” is an aggressively upbeat, 17-minute review of President Obama’s first term. The film streamed live online last night via the president’s savvy new-media reelection machine.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Peaceful Protestors Opposed to Virginia's Ultrasound Law Dragged Away
On Saturday, a group of protesters gathered at the Virginia state capitol to protest the Republican war on women, which peaked last week when the state GOP faced a firestorm of criticism over the transvaginal ultrasound bill. Though the language has been toned down, the bill is still a violation of women’s rights and privacy.
Instead of being allowed to peacefully protest, riot police moved in, surrounded the group and dragged them away. After watching police brutality during the OWS protests, we're now getting to see a very similar activity starting to take place as womens rights groups are trying to stop this ongoing attack on womens long settled freedoms and rights in this country. It's very troubling that "To Serve and Protect" has become "To Silence and Intimidate." Not only is this a national embarrassment, but it emphasizes the importance of all Americans joining together to protect our constitutional rights. The video below is troubling.
Instead of being allowed to peacefully protest, riot police moved in, surrounded the group and dragged them away. After watching police brutality during the OWS protests, we're now getting to see a very similar activity starting to take place as womens rights groups are trying to stop this ongoing attack on womens long settled freedoms and rights in this country. It's very troubling that "To Serve and Protect" has become "To Silence and Intimidate." Not only is this a national embarrassment, but it emphasizes the importance of all Americans joining together to protect our constitutional rights. The video below is troubling.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Maddow Explains How Birth Control Works to Limbaugh
Rachel Maddow pays close attention to Rush Limbaugh's smears of Sandra Fluke and realizes he thinks women have to take a pill every time they have sex. It's a rather long segment, if you want to skip the set-up of how one thing lead to another, go to about the 7 minute mark. Then at about the 14 minute mark is when Rachel really starts to tear into Rush's ignorance. It's quite amusing, yet it's somewhat sad that it took 3 days for anyone to point it out.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Thursday, March 1, 2012
The Rude Pundit on Andrew Breitbart's Death
This is one of those cases where if you've got nothing good to say, remain silent. So I will. However, "The Rude Pundit" is wired a bit differently.
by Lee Papa, aka The Rude Pundit
Andrew Breitbart in Hell: A Fantasia:
"Well," thought Andrew Breitbart in soul form as he descended while he watched Davy Jones ascend, "this is surprising." No, he wasn't a religious man on Earth, as he himself admitted, but surely, he thought, there was a chance for some reward at the end. In a moment of self-reflection, he pondered, "Arrogance. Pride. Yeah, those are sins, but they're kind of pussy sins."
Breitbart had been as surprised as anyone that he died. He had been retweeting every Twitter slight that crossed his feed, calling everyone he could a "putz," masochistically masturbating by slamming his dick with his iPad every time he answered one, when he had gone out to get some air and his heart just exploded. At first, he thought he was on an drug trip, it happened so fast; his soul popped out of him like a cork on a shaken champagne bottle. He saw his corporeal form on the ground and thought it was a wacky out of body experience, perhaps some flashback from the time he licked LSD off Michelle Malkin's ass cheeks, perhaps some residual peyote dream from that Western walkabout he did with Sean Hannity, when they got naked and rubbed each other with red dirt until they howled out that they wanted to kill the Indians again. Those thoughts quickly pushed out of his head as he arced and began to descend from the air and into the filthy ground below. "Fuck, I had a post to finish where I called the President a rape-enabler" was his last thought as he went underground.
As he headed deeper and deeper, Breitbart wondered what awaited him. He steeled himself to everything: barb-dicked demons raping his ass for eternity; the corpses of Reagan and Joseph McCarthy tearing off his balls and forcing him to swallow them, only to have them grow back again, with a row of dead right-wingers stretching as far as the eye could see, from Nixon to Attila the Hun, all waiting their turns to do the same; being made to exist in some liberal fantasyland, where Ted Kennedy reigned as god and everyone's wealth was shared and everyone was, oh, fuck, equal; or perhaps he'd just be fed shit, day in and day out, by the shovelful, as some kind of karmic retribution.
It was easy for Breitbart to think of such things for he had spoken ill of the dead on the day of their deaths before, like Kennedy and Michael Jackson. "Why do you grant a BULLY special status upon his death?" he had said about Kennedy, ha-ha. Fuck, he'd hoped he'd at least get to see what the fucking liberal bloggers were tweeting about. He'd love to tweet them back, and he was pretty sure his Blackberry would have reception in Hell. He'd love to find out how much loathing he inspired. He'd love to read the rants about Shirley Sherrod and ACORN, about New Black Panthers and James O'Keefe.
A man can do a lot of damage in 43 years, he knows, and he smiled about all the people he had fucked with, all the lives he had fucked up, all in the name of an ideology he saw as more important than compassion for anyone different from himself. "Shit," he thought, "better be careful. That's more pride."
And, almost as much, he'd love to hear all the leftists tie themselves in knots to say something nice about him, about his family, about who he was a "person." That's even more awesome than the tears the right was no doubt shedding. Goddamn, he needed a drink. Goddamn, he wished he could mock them for their goodness as he had so many others.
Suddenly, he entered into a light and found himself on the floor of a cold, brightly lit, all-white room with no doors or windows. He opened his mouth to call out, but no voice came out, not even a whisper or rasp. It was as if he had no vocal cords, no lungs, no means of making a sound. He didn't let himself freak out. He calmly walked the room to find an exit or crack. There were none. It was a solid box. Slowly, it began to dawn on him.
"Not this," his lips formed. "Anything but this." Bring on the rape demons, bring on the zombie conservatives, the shit, Kennedy, any fate would be better. He beat on the walls. No sound. He stomped. No sound. He slammed his head into the wall. Not only was there no noise, but he didn't even feel pain. If he could have gotten sick, he would have vomited. He collapsed and waited.
Eternity, it seemed, was going to be a long time.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/03/andrew-breitbart-in-hell-fantasia-well.html
by Lee Papa, aka The Rude Pundit
Andrew Breitbart in Hell: A Fantasia:
"Well," thought Andrew Breitbart in soul form as he descended while he watched Davy Jones ascend, "this is surprising." No, he wasn't a religious man on Earth, as he himself admitted, but surely, he thought, there was a chance for some reward at the end. In a moment of self-reflection, he pondered, "Arrogance. Pride. Yeah, those are sins, but they're kind of pussy sins."
Breitbart had been as surprised as anyone that he died. He had been retweeting every Twitter slight that crossed his feed, calling everyone he could a "putz," masochistically masturbating by slamming his dick with his iPad every time he answered one, when he had gone out to get some air and his heart just exploded. At first, he thought he was on an drug trip, it happened so fast; his soul popped out of him like a cork on a shaken champagne bottle. He saw his corporeal form on the ground and thought it was a wacky out of body experience, perhaps some flashback from the time he licked LSD off Michelle Malkin's ass cheeks, perhaps some residual peyote dream from that Western walkabout he did with Sean Hannity, when they got naked and rubbed each other with red dirt until they howled out that they wanted to kill the Indians again. Those thoughts quickly pushed out of his head as he arced and began to descend from the air and into the filthy ground below. "Fuck, I had a post to finish where I called the President a rape-enabler" was his last thought as he went underground.
As he headed deeper and deeper, Breitbart wondered what awaited him. He steeled himself to everything: barb-dicked demons raping his ass for eternity; the corpses of Reagan and Joseph McCarthy tearing off his balls and forcing him to swallow them, only to have them grow back again, with a row of dead right-wingers stretching as far as the eye could see, from Nixon to Attila the Hun, all waiting their turns to do the same; being made to exist in some liberal fantasyland, where Ted Kennedy reigned as god and everyone's wealth was shared and everyone was, oh, fuck, equal; or perhaps he'd just be fed shit, day in and day out, by the shovelful, as some kind of karmic retribution.
It was easy for Breitbart to think of such things for he had spoken ill of the dead on the day of their deaths before, like Kennedy and Michael Jackson. "Why do you grant a BULLY special status upon his death?" he had said about Kennedy, ha-ha. Fuck, he'd hoped he'd at least get to see what the fucking liberal bloggers were tweeting about. He'd love to tweet them back, and he was pretty sure his Blackberry would have reception in Hell. He'd love to find out how much loathing he inspired. He'd love to read the rants about Shirley Sherrod and ACORN, about New Black Panthers and James O'Keefe.
A man can do a lot of damage in 43 years, he knows, and he smiled about all the people he had fucked with, all the lives he had fucked up, all in the name of an ideology he saw as more important than compassion for anyone different from himself. "Shit," he thought, "better be careful. That's more pride."
And, almost as much, he'd love to hear all the leftists tie themselves in knots to say something nice about him, about his family, about who he was a "person." That's even more awesome than the tears the right was no doubt shedding. Goddamn, he needed a drink. Goddamn, he wished he could mock them for their goodness as he had so many others.
Suddenly, he entered into a light and found himself on the floor of a cold, brightly lit, all-white room with no doors or windows. He opened his mouth to call out, but no voice came out, not even a whisper or rasp. It was as if he had no vocal cords, no lungs, no means of making a sound. He didn't let himself freak out. He calmly walked the room to find an exit or crack. There were none. It was a solid box. Slowly, it began to dawn on him.
"Not this," his lips formed. "Anything but this." Bring on the rape demons, bring on the zombie conservatives, the shit, Kennedy, any fate would be better. He beat on the walls. No sound. He stomped. No sound. He slammed his head into the wall. Not only was there no noise, but he didn't even feel pain. If he could have gotten sick, he would have vomited. He collapsed and waited.
Eternity, it seemed, was going to be a long time.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2012/03/andrew-breitbart-in-hell-fantasia-well.html
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Late middle-aged male experts agree: They know everything
After former car thief and suspected arsonist Darrell Issa's all-male review of womens contraception made his panel an absolute laughing stock, Funny or Die totally nails the absurdity! Issa unwittingly also managed to light a fire under any woman in this country who was indifferent to what happens in November. Good job, Darrell.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Maddow Receives The John Steinbeck Award
On February 6, 2012, it was announced that Rachel Maddow would receive the John Steinbeck Award. Thomas Steinbeck, son of the great John Steinbeck, had this statement in the release: “My father would have adored Rachel Maddow … Listening to Rachel Maddow is like listening to Walter Cronkite. We have that kind of trust in her. When I watch Rachel Maddow, I feel like I’m part of an alliance. I hope she’s in it for the long haul, because we really need her.”
On Saturday evening, February 25, 2012 Rachel Maddow sat down at San Jose State University for a lengthy interview with Pat Thurston and a Q & A session before accepting the award. Previous recipients included Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Miller, Studs Terkel and Garrison Keillor. Rachel is the third woman to receive the prestigious award and the first recipient under the age of 40.
The interview is broken into five parts.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
On Saturday evening, February 25, 2012 Rachel Maddow sat down at San Jose State University for a lengthy interview with Pat Thurston and a Q & A session before accepting the award. Previous recipients included Joan Baez, Bruce Springsteen, Arthur Miller, Studs Terkel and Garrison Keillor. Rachel is the third woman to receive the prestigious award and the first recipient under the age of 40.
The interview is broken into five parts.
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Part 4:
Part 5:
Friday, February 24, 2012
Elizabeth Warren Takes on the GOP War on Women
Today, Elizabeth Warren penned an op-ed for the Boston Globe.
Denying women coverage under any guise is a big step backward
Maybe you saw the pictures. Five middle-age men seated at a congressional hearing table to discuss freedom of religion and contraception. And not a single woman was on the panel. Unbelievable. Do you think Congress would ever have a hearing on prostate cancer and only have women speak? Of course not.
Washington is so out of touch with what’s happening to families across this country that the Senate is about to vote on an amendment that would allow any insurance company or any employer to claim a vague “moral conviction’’ as an excuse to deny you health care coverage. Here’s the really astonishing news: Senator Scott Brown is not only voting for this amendment, he is fighting to get it passed.
What does this mean? If you are married and your employer doesn’t believe married couples should use birth control, then you could lose coverage for contraception. If you’re a pregnant woman who is single, and your employer doesn’t like it, you could be denied maternity care. This bill is about how to cut coverage for basic health care services for women.
Let’s be clear what this proposed law is not about: This is not about Catholic institutions or the rights of Catholics to follow their faith. President Obama has already made sure religious institutions will not be forced to cover contraception - at the same time that he has made sure women can get the health care they need directly from their health care insurers. Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of Catholic Health Association, said that Obama’s approach “protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.’’
I support Obama’s solution because I believe we must respect people of all religious faiths, while still ensuring that women have access to contraceptives. Brown has rejected this compromise. Instead, he has cosponsored a bill that will let any employer or any insurance company cut off contraceptive care, maternity care, or whatever they want, and leave women without coverage at all for this basic medical care.
It is shocking that in 2012, Brown and his Republican colleagues would try to pass a law to threaten women’s access to birth control and other health care. Women all across this Commonwealth should have the right to use birth control if they want to. Giving corporate CEOs and insurance companies the power to dictate what health care women can and cannot get is just wrong. Those decisions should be up to women and their doctors.
Our goal should be to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, high-quality health care. At a time when families are struggling with the costs of health care, we should be trying to strengthen our health care system - not finding ways to create loopholes that threaten the rights of women to obtain the health care they need.
Massachusetts has been a leader in every aspect of health care: increasing access, reducing costs, and engaging in the innovations and research that make higher quality care better. We need to keep moving forward - not take a big step backward.
Denying women coverage under any guise is a big step backward
Maybe you saw the pictures. Five middle-age men seated at a congressional hearing table to discuss freedom of religion and contraception. And not a single woman was on the panel. Unbelievable. Do you think Congress would ever have a hearing on prostate cancer and only have women speak? Of course not.
Washington is so out of touch with what’s happening to families across this country that the Senate is about to vote on an amendment that would allow any insurance company or any employer to claim a vague “moral conviction’’ as an excuse to deny you health care coverage. Here’s the really astonishing news: Senator Scott Brown is not only voting for this amendment, he is fighting to get it passed.
What does this mean? If you are married and your employer doesn’t believe married couples should use birth control, then you could lose coverage for contraception. If you’re a pregnant woman who is single, and your employer doesn’t like it, you could be denied maternity care. This bill is about how to cut coverage for basic health care services for women.
Let’s be clear what this proposed law is not about: This is not about Catholic institutions or the rights of Catholics to follow their faith. President Obama has already made sure religious institutions will not be forced to cover contraception - at the same time that he has made sure women can get the health care they need directly from their health care insurers. Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of Catholic Health Association, said that Obama’s approach “protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions.’’
I support Obama’s solution because I believe we must respect people of all religious faiths, while still ensuring that women have access to contraceptives. Brown has rejected this compromise. Instead, he has cosponsored a bill that will let any employer or any insurance company cut off contraceptive care, maternity care, or whatever they want, and leave women without coverage at all for this basic medical care.
It is shocking that in 2012, Brown and his Republican colleagues would try to pass a law to threaten women’s access to birth control and other health care. Women all across this Commonwealth should have the right to use birth control if they want to. Giving corporate CEOs and insurance companies the power to dictate what health care women can and cannot get is just wrong. Those decisions should be up to women and their doctors.
Our goal should be to ensure that everyone has access to affordable, high-quality health care. At a time when families are struggling with the costs of health care, we should be trying to strengthen our health care system - not finding ways to create loopholes that threaten the rights of women to obtain the health care they need.
Massachusetts has been a leader in every aspect of health care: increasing access, reducing costs, and engaging in the innovations and research that make higher quality care better. We need to keep moving forward - not take a big step backward.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Maddow and Pelosi Discuss Republicans Exclusion of Women
House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi spoke with Rachel Maddow tonight to discuss the Republican war on women's health and contraception as well as the Republican field running for president.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Springsteen Discusses the Angry Patriotism at the Heart of 'Wrecking Ball'
From The Guardian
Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'. The Boss explains why there is a critical, questioning and angry patriotism at the heart of his new album Wrecking Ball.
At a Paris press conference on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen was asked whether he was advocating an armed uprising in America. He laughed at the idea, but that the question was even posed at all gives you some idea of the fury of his new album Wrecking Ball.
Indeed, it is as angry a cry from the belly of a wounded America as has been heard since the dustbowl and Woody Guthrie, a thundering blow of New Jersey pig iron down on the heads of Wall Street and all who have sold his country down the swanny. Springsteen has gone to the great American canon for ammunition, borrowing from folk, civil war anthems, Irish rebel songs and gospel. The result is a howl of pain and disbelief as visceral as anything he has ever produced, that segues into a search for redemption: "Hold tight to your anger/ And don't fall to your fears … Bring on your wrecking ball."
"I have spent my life judging the distance between American reality and the American dream," Springsteen told the conference, where the album was aired for the first time. It was written, he claimed, not just out of fury but out of patriotism, a patriotism traduced.
"What was done to our country was wrong and unpatriotic and un-American and nobody has been held to account," he later told the Guardian. "There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism."
The tone is set from the start with the big, bombastic We Take Care of Our Own – a Born in the USA for our times – where the most sacred shibboleth of Ordinary Joe America is sung with mocking irony through clenched teeth by a heart that still wants it to be true. "From the shotgun shack to the Superdome/ There ain't no help, the cavalry stayed home." It is a typical Springsteen appeal to a common decency beyond the civil war he sees sapping America.
Like Born in the USA, which got pressed into service as the anthem of the first Gulf war, he's aware it has the potential to be hijacked by the angry right. But Springsteen says that to anyone who cares to listen to the lyrics, the message is clear.
"A big promise has been broken. You can't have a United States if you are telling some folks that they can't get on the train. There is a cracking point where a society collapses. You can't have a civilisation where something is factionalised like this."
Springsteen plunges into darker, richer musical landscapes in a sequence of breath-taking protest songs – Easy Money, Shackled and Drawn, Jack of All Trades, the scarily bellicose Death to My Hometown and This Depression with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine – before the album turns on Wrecking Ball in search of some spiritual path out of the mess the US is in.
But it is also an ode to hard work, to the dignity it brings, and the blue-collar values he claims made America:
"Freedom son's a dirty shirt
The sun on my face and my shovel in the dirt
A shovel in the dirt keeps the devil gone
I woke up this morning shackled and drawn"
Asked where the fury of this lyric had come from, he talks movingly of his father who had been "emasculated by losing his job" in the 70s and never recovered from the damage to his pride. "Unemployment is a really devastating thing. I know the damage it does to families. Growing up in that house there were things you couldn't say. It was a minefield. My mother was the breadwinner. She was steadfast and relentless and I took that from her.
"Pessimism and optimism are slammed up against each other in my records, the tension between them is where it's all at, it's what lights the fire."
Hope is there. But it is a tempered hope. Land of Hope and Dreams is a plea for America's newest immigrants, those risking their lives to ride the trains up from central America. "This train … carries saints and sinners … losers and winners … whores and gamblers … Dreams will not be thwarted … Faith will be rewarded."
Springsteen, 62, says he is not afraid of how the album will be received in election-year America: "The temper has changed. And people on the streets did it. Occupy Wall Street changed the national conversation – the Tea Party had set it for a while. The first three years of Obama were under them.
"Previous to Occupy Wall Street, there was no push back at all saying this was outrageous – a basic theft that struck at the heart of what America was about, a complete disregard for the American sense of history and community … In Easy Money the guy is going out to kill and rob, just like the robbery spree that has occurred at the top of the pyramid – he's imitating the guys on Wall Street. An enormous fault line cracked the American system right open whose repercussion we are only starting to be feel.
"Nobody had talked about income inequality in America for decades – apart from John Edwards – but no one was listening. But now you have Newt Gingrich talking about 'vulture capitalism' – Newt Gingrich! – that would not have happened without Occupy Wall Street."
Having previously backed Obama, Springsteen says he would prefer to stay on the sidelines this time. "I don't write for one side of the street … But the Bush years were so horrific you could not just sit around. It was such a blatant disaster. I campaigned for Kerry and Obama, and I am glad I did. But normally I would prefer to stay on the sidelines. The artist is supposed to be the canary in the cage."
Obama hasn't done bad, Springsteen says. "He kept General Motors alive, he got through healthcare – though not the public system I would have wanted – he killed Osama Bin Laden, and he brought sanity to the top level of government. But big business still has too much say in government and there has not been as many middle- or working-class voices in the administration as I expected. I thought Guantanamo would have been closed but now, but he got us out of Iraq and I guess we will soon be out of Afghanistan."
The album is the last on which Clarence Clemons, the legendary saxophonist from the E Street Band, played on before he died last year. "When the sax comes up on Land of Hope and Dreams," Springsteen says, "it's a lovely moment for me."
• Wrecking Ball is released on 5 March via Columbia.
Bruce Springsteen: 'What was done to my country was un-American'. The Boss explains why there is a critical, questioning and angry patriotism at the heart of his new album Wrecking Ball.
• Wrecking Ball is released on 5 March via Columbia.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Santorum's Nightmare Vision for America
I thought this was a very good look at Rick Santorum's vision for America. Be afraid.
By Lawrence Davidson via Alternet
Santorum's vision for America would combine a moralistic theocracy with free-market capitalism and perpetual war.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is a Republican presidential candidate who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican caucuses in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy? Santorum is a self-styled “true conservative,” right-wing, Christian fundamentalist of Catholic background. In 2005,Time Magazine called him “one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.” That is still certainly true today. Santorum believes that religious values (at least his religious values) should play a large role in shaping government policies. For those not sure what this means, Santorum has a list of examples:
1. Santorum wants “a blanket ban on abortions.” The fact that the U.S. had this very same prohibition up until 1973, and the result was black-market abortions that killed not only fetuses by also lots of pregnant women, seems to have escaped the former senator’s attention.
2. Santorum wants a ban on gay marriages. He would likely bring back antiquated anti-sodomy laws as well. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have a right to bigamy, you have a right to polygamy, you have a right to incest, you have a right to adultery. You have a right to anything.” When Santorum gets on the subject of homosexuality, one can’t help noting a tinge of hysteria, along with a generous helping of illogic and exaggeration. Santorum would probably try to ban other related activities, such as the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. He certainly wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. What this adds up to is that when Santorum says religious values should play a greater role in government policy, he means that there should be lots of laws regulating your personal life, particularly your sex life. This is pretty typical of religious fundamentalists, particularly American Christian ones. They just can’t leave other people’s bedrooms alone.
The Economist
On the economic side of the ledger, Rick Santorum takes a slash-and-burn approach.
1. There should be a $5 trillion cut in the federal budget (but defense spending would be held at present levels). In order to realize this, Santorum would do away with, greatly reduce or freeze the Environmental Protection Agency, healthcare reform and Medicaid, subsidies for housing, food stamps, job training, energy and education. He would “reform” Medicare and Social Security in draconian fashion and pass a balanced budget amendment. One might agree that the present U.S. federal deficit verges on the insane and still find Santorum’s cure equally crazy. For instance, just about holding exempt defense and “security” spending — when combined they make up 20 percent of the budget and are notorious for waste, redundancy and corruption — makes no sense.
2. According to Santorum, there should be an elimination of financial and other regulatory laws. This is true insanity. Regulation is the only thing that makes capitalism an enduring system. Eliminate it and you have financial crashes, dangerous sweatshop working conditions, falling wages and benefits, runaway corruption and theft and, ultimately, depression. That Santorum cannot understand this suggests that he has substituted a discredited free-market ideology for history.
3. Santorum says that as a nation Americans should “live within our means” and if we do so “future generations will have a brighter future unburdened by oppressive debt and high taxation.” These are fine slogans, but in practice they probably spell eventual revolution in the streets. If you reduce the debt by slashing expenditures Santorum-style while refusing to increase taxes, you will eliminate almost all of society’s safety nets. That means increasing poverty and all its attendant miseries. You will also make infrastructure maintenance much more difficult. Someone should tell Mr. Santorum that the U.S. population is not over-taxed. Out of 62 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of its income tax rates. It is, of course, possible to over-tax a people to ruination. It is also possible to under-tax a people to ruination – to tax so low that you can’t assist the less fortunate or fix the pot holes and keep the bridges from collapsing. If Santorum was to get his way the nation would not have his predicted “brighter future.” More likely it would be a future of more poor and more pot holes. That might well lead to disillusionment with the capitalist system among both the lower- and middle-classes. (Personally, I have no objection to such growing disillusionment. I would, however, like to minimize the suffering and violence that surely goes along with it.)
Foreign Policy
When it comes to foreign policy, Santorum is a warmonger plain and simple.
1. As to Iran, Santorum would “work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed” to put a end to that country’s nuclear weapons program. It seems not to matter to the former senator that every U.S. intelligence agency that has ever investigated this issue has determined that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
2. As to Syria, Santorum would go after the strongman (Bashar al-Assad) “covertly or otherwise.” Does that mean that Santorum act-alikes at the helm of other nations could use the same logic to go after a U.S. president?
3. As to Iraq, Santorum would “continue to stabilize Iraq” presumably by re-invading the country. This belies the fact that it was the American policy of draconian sanctions and ultimate invasion that destabilized Iraq in the first place.
4. As to Afghanistan, Santorum would set no time lines or limit resources “in the war effort.” Yet, if al-Qaeda is as weakened as Washington claims, there seems to be little point in more war. If a stable and competent Taliban government reappears in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to invite future attacks by providing a haven for terrorist organizations. On the other hand, this on-going war is almost certainly providing a breeding ground for more terrorists.
5. As to Islam, Santorum believes it is a religion that is “stuck in the seventh century.” With rare exception, such as Saudi Wahhabism, this is untrue. Actually, it is Rick Santorum who is stuck in the past. It is he who, like some political ecclesiastic, wants to regulate everyone else’s lives. If Mr. Santorum simply changed hats – from Christian to Islamic – he could be a Saudi cleric. Compared to people like him, most Muslims are much more tolerant and contemporary.
6. As to Israel, Santorum takes an uncritically approving position on the Zionist state. This makes sense when you realize that Israel is essentially a religious state – a nation on the brink of becoming a theocracy, which is where Santorum presumably would like to steer the United States.
Rick Santorum is a religious ideologue. He wants to turn the U.S. into a “faith-based” Christian country through the imposition of those “family values” he personally has decided are God-given. He believes that America’s Founding Fathers would agree because they were, supposedly, men of faith just like him.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence to prove this point, Santorum reminds us that it says that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” From this he concludes that rights come from God and not from government. Government’s role is simply to implement and protect those divine rights. The truth is that the man who penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was nothing like Rick Santorum. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a Deist. Jefferson’s phrasing was meant to impress a wider world in an age when religion was interpreted in a more literal fashion than it is in today’s United States. Jefferson certainly did not mean for Americans to take the notion of God-given inalienable rights literally. After all, he was a slave-holder.
The number of Americans who respond positively to Rick Santorum’s message is probably in the range of 20 percent. In terms of the Republican Party, they probably represent about one-third of the membership. Being ideologically driven, these people are motivated to vote. And, that is significant in a nation where voting turnout is traditionally low.
So, Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population – a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.
By Lawrence Davidson via Alternet
Santorum's vision for America would combine a moralistic theocracy with free-market capitalism and perpetual war.
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum is a Republican presidential candidate who is fast coming to the fore. He won the Republican caucuses in Iowa (albeit by only 34 votes) in early January and in February won contests in Colorado, Missouri and Minnesota. So, as the question goes, who is this guy? Santorum is a self-styled “true conservative,” right-wing, Christian fundamentalist of Catholic background. In 2005,Time Magazine called him “one of America’s 25 most influential evangelicals.” That is still certainly true today. Santorum believes that religious values (at least his religious values) should play a large role in shaping government policies. For those not sure what this means, Santorum has a list of examples:
1. Santorum wants “a blanket ban on abortions.” The fact that the U.S. had this very same prohibition up until 1973, and the result was black-market abortions that killed not only fetuses by also lots of pregnant women, seems to have escaped the former senator’s attention.
2. Santorum wants a ban on gay marriages. He would likely bring back antiquated anti-sodomy laws as well. “If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual [gay] sex within your home, then you have a right to bigamy, you have a right to polygamy, you have a right to incest, you have a right to adultery. You have a right to anything.” When Santorum gets on the subject of homosexuality, one can’t help noting a tinge of hysteria, along with a generous helping of illogic and exaggeration. Santorum would probably try to ban other related activities, such as the use of contraceptives to prevent pregnancy. He certainly wants to get rid of Planned Parenthood. What this adds up to is that when Santorum says religious values should play a greater role in government policy, he means that there should be lots of laws regulating your personal life, particularly your sex life. This is pretty typical of religious fundamentalists, particularly American Christian ones. They just can’t leave other people’s bedrooms alone.
The Economist
On the economic side of the ledger, Rick Santorum takes a slash-and-burn approach.
1. There should be a $5 trillion cut in the federal budget (but defense spending would be held at present levels). In order to realize this, Santorum would do away with, greatly reduce or freeze the Environmental Protection Agency, healthcare reform and Medicaid, subsidies for housing, food stamps, job training, energy and education. He would “reform” Medicare and Social Security in draconian fashion and pass a balanced budget amendment. One might agree that the present U.S. federal deficit verges on the insane and still find Santorum’s cure equally crazy. For instance, just about holding exempt defense and “security” spending — when combined they make up 20 percent of the budget and are notorious for waste, redundancy and corruption — makes no sense.
2. According to Santorum, there should be an elimination of financial and other regulatory laws. This is true insanity. Regulation is the only thing that makes capitalism an enduring system. Eliminate it and you have financial crashes, dangerous sweatshop working conditions, falling wages and benefits, runaway corruption and theft and, ultimately, depression. That Santorum cannot understand this suggests that he has substituted a discredited free-market ideology for history.
3. Santorum says that as a nation Americans should “live within our means” and if we do so “future generations will have a brighter future unburdened by oppressive debt and high taxation.” These are fine slogans, but in practice they probably spell eventual revolution in the streets. If you reduce the debt by slashing expenditures Santorum-style while refusing to increase taxes, you will eliminate almost all of society’s safety nets. That means increasing poverty and all its attendant miseries. You will also make infrastructure maintenance much more difficult. Someone should tell Mr. Santorum that the U.S. population is not over-taxed. Out of 62 industrialized countries, the U.S. ranks 28th in terms of its income tax rates. It is, of course, possible to over-tax a people to ruination. It is also possible to under-tax a people to ruination – to tax so low that you can’t assist the less fortunate or fix the pot holes and keep the bridges from collapsing. If Santorum was to get his way the nation would not have his predicted “brighter future.” More likely it would be a future of more poor and more pot holes. That might well lead to disillusionment with the capitalist system among both the lower- and middle-classes. (Personally, I have no objection to such growing disillusionment. I would, however, like to minimize the suffering and violence that surely goes along with it.)
Foreign Policy
When it comes to foreign policy, Santorum is a warmonger plain and simple.
1. As to Iran, Santorum would “work with Israel to determine the proper military response needed” to put a end to that country’s nuclear weapons program. It seems not to matter to the former senator that every U.S. intelligence agency that has ever investigated this issue has determined that there is no evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapons program.
2. As to Syria, Santorum would go after the strongman (Bashar al-Assad) “covertly or otherwise.” Does that mean that Santorum act-alikes at the helm of other nations could use the same logic to go after a U.S. president?
3. As to Iraq, Santorum would “continue to stabilize Iraq” presumably by re-invading the country. This belies the fact that it was the American policy of draconian sanctions and ultimate invasion that destabilized Iraq in the first place.
4. As to Afghanistan, Santorum would set no time lines or limit resources “in the war effort.” Yet, if al-Qaeda is as weakened as Washington claims, there seems to be little point in more war. If a stable and competent Taliban government reappears in Afghanistan, it is unlikely to invite future attacks by providing a haven for terrorist organizations. On the other hand, this on-going war is almost certainly providing a breeding ground for more terrorists.
5. As to Islam, Santorum believes it is a religion that is “stuck in the seventh century.” With rare exception, such as Saudi Wahhabism, this is untrue. Actually, it is Rick Santorum who is stuck in the past. It is he who, like some political ecclesiastic, wants to regulate everyone else’s lives. If Mr. Santorum simply changed hats – from Christian to Islamic – he could be a Saudi cleric. Compared to people like him, most Muslims are much more tolerant and contemporary.
6. As to Israel, Santorum takes an uncritically approving position on the Zionist state. This makes sense when you realize that Israel is essentially a religious state – a nation on the brink of becoming a theocracy, which is where Santorum presumably would like to steer the United States.
Rick Santorum is a religious ideologue. He wants to turn the U.S. into a “faith-based” Christian country through the imposition of those “family values” he personally has decided are God-given. He believes that America’s Founding Fathers would agree because they were, supposedly, men of faith just like him.
Quoting the Declaration of Independence to prove this point, Santorum reminds us that it says that people “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” From this he concludes that rights come from God and not from government. Government’s role is simply to implement and protect those divine rights. The truth is that the man who penned the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, was nothing like Rick Santorum. He wasn’t even a Christian. He was a Deist. Jefferson’s phrasing was meant to impress a wider world in an age when religion was interpreted in a more literal fashion than it is in today’s United States. Jefferson certainly did not mean for Americans to take the notion of God-given inalienable rights literally. After all, he was a slave-holder.
The number of Americans who respond positively to Rick Santorum’s message is probably in the range of 20 percent. In terms of the Republican Party, they probably represent about one-third of the membership. Being ideologically driven, these people are motivated to vote. And, that is significant in a nation where voting turnout is traditionally low.
So, Rick Santorum is certainly representative of a politically active part of the U.S. population – a dangerous, intolerant, noisy, in-your-face part. If we let him and his followers get their way, the result will be ever greater divisiveness and decline at home, and war abroad. That is a choice for the rest of us.
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