Effective tax rates of relevant Presidential contenders:
BOOM! Suck it all you millionaires! I’m in your bidness not paying your tax rates!
Or something…
In case you haven’t heard, Kansas Speaker of the House Mike O’Neal sent an email to fellow Republicans asking them to pray Psalm 109 for President Obama.
Psalm 109 goes something like this, starting at verse 8:
8 May his days be few;
may another take his place of leadership.
9 May his children be fatherless
and his wife a widow.
10 May his children be wandering beggars;
may they be driven from their ruined homes.
11 May a creditor seize all he has;
may strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
12 May no one extend kindness to him
or take pity on his fatherless children.
13 May his descendants be cut off,
their names blotted out from the next generation.
14 May the iniquity of his fathers be remembered before the LORD;
may the sin of his mother never be blotted out.
15 May their sins always remain before the LORD,
that he may blot out their name from the earth.(1)
Let’s jump back up to verse 9. May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow. Does that not sound like Speaker O’Neal is wishing death to the to President of the United States of America? It’s not a threat, precisely, but it sounds like insurrection as defined by U.S. Code Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 15, Section 2383
Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto
And what’s the punishment for insurrection?
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States. (emphasis mine)(2)
We’ve gone well beyond calling the President a liar.
Representative Wilson was made to apologize to President Obama and the House passed a resolution of disapproval. Maybe that wasn’t enough, but it’s pretty easy to assume that Rep. Wilson was caught up in the moment.
I can’t make that case of Speaker O’Neal. He didn’t suffer an outburst; he’s suborned his fellow Republicans to pray for the death of the President. He should be removed from office. Immediately.
In the meantime, here is Speaker O’Neal’s contact information:
785-296-2302
620-662-0527
mike.oneal@house.ks.gov
Feel free to say to him what you will. For my part, if there’s one part of Psalm 109 I would wish upon him, it’s verse 12:
May no one extend kindness upon him.
Well, Michelle Bachmann announced today that she will “step aside” from the Presidential race. She finished sixth in Iowa and there just aren’t many options available to come back from that. Especially when you’re batshit crazy.
In what is bound to be another ‘oops’ moment, Rick Perry is skipping New Hampshire and focusing on South Carolina. Or least that’s what his Twitter feed indicates. I’m pretty sure it’s his feed, though the accompanying photo looks a bit more like Gary Busey than Rick Perry.
So but anyway, Perry is all but out at this point. Skipping New Hampshire will take him out of the news for a week or so and South Carolina will likely be split heavily amongst the non-Romneys so much that Romney will come in first again.
As exciting as this is – exciting because all I’m really after is having fewer crazies running for office – Rick Santorum, Mister Batshit Crazy, got an unhappy boost in Iowa, finishing just behind Mitt. I sort of like keeping Senator Santorum around just so I can occasionally look up his last name and giggle. But he’s precisely the kind of crazy I’d rather not be in office:
During his time in elected office, Rick Santorum fought for the preservation of the traditional American family and for the protection of the most vulnerable in our society. (From his website.)
Basically that means Rick won’t let gay couples marry and won’t let women get abortions. But the part that gets me is his ‘protection of the most vulnerable in our society.’ He means, I think, unborn babies, but to call them vulnerable and in the same sentence ignore another marginalized part of our society is just crazy. He’ll defend the rights of the unborn and take away the rights of adults. Again, that’s exactly the kind of crazy I’d rather not have in the Oval Office. So I can only hope New Hampshire treats him poorly, which it probably will since he’s spent all of his time and money in Iowa.
Of course, that could leave us with John Huntsman. Or Ron Paul. Or Newt. It’s not a great time to be a Democrat right now, but the Republican offerings read like even Kathy Griffin’s D-List.
Eesh.
It’s incredibly interesting – and I’ll even go ahead and call it cool – to live in a swing state. I can sum it up with one simple fact: at 36 years old I have personally laid eyes upon four U.S. Presidents. That averages to once every nine years. Back in 2007 I cut a conference I was attending to go listen to a fiery young African-American first-term junior senator who had the audacity to run for president. I managed to shake his hand. If didn’t live in Ohio, I don’t know that this would have happened. Sure maybe it amounts to nothing more than contrived speeches and empty rhetoric, but there’s something cool about seeing the President.
In other words, the attention is nice.
There’s a downside, though. Until a few weeks ago I thought that the worst part of living in a swing state is being responsible for the extra four years of President George W. Bush and the postmodern ridiculousness that is Joe the Plumber, who after finding himself a sudden media sensation after he challenged Mr. Obama with a tough question and was whisked away on Senator McCain’s doomed campaign, insists that his fifteen minutes are not, in fact, up and is considering a run for congress.
I’ve learned of late that I was incredibly naïve. There are far worse things about living in a swing state, especially when the Republican Party has decided to play dirty pool.
What’s at stake in Ohio is nothing short of the people’s right to vote. The past several months have seen several bills signed into law by Gov. Kasich(1) that are very clearly aimed at suppressing the vote. They have cut the time for absentee voting from 35 days before the election to 21 and early voting from 35 to 17 days. Just yesterday, Ohio Secretary of State John Husted, a Republican, said that early voting would end at 6PM on the Friday before the election, even though most polling places in Ohio are incredibly busy on the Saturday before Election Day.
Current Ohio law requires poll workers to direct voters to their correct district to vote. A new law would leave that option up to the worker. But if you vote in the wrong precinct, your vote won’t be counted, giving poll workers the power to influence elections. Another provision in the same law states that the voter, not the election officials, are at fault in any legal proceeding or administrative review of any voter error, essentially making the voter guilty until proven innocent.
And perhaps the silliest change: if a voter fills in the oval for a candidate and also writes in the name of the candidate, the vote won’t be counted. Two positives make a negative I guess is the failed logic here.
The reason given for these changes has ostensibly been to prevent voter fraud, though there really isn’t much in the way of voter fraud going on that anyone can see. Not on this side of the voting booth. But it’s clear that these changes are meant to restrict and disenfranchise exactly the primary demographics – the young, the elderly, the low-income – who voted for President Obama.
I don’t understand how this is okay. I don’t understand how Governor Kasich can look himself in the mirror. They are purposefully aiming to take away one of Americans’ primary rights: the right to vote. I don’t understand how the entire Republican Party has not been taken to task for this.(2)
But I mostly certainly do not understand how Mike Huckabee can come to Ohio and cracked a joke about it.
“Make a list…Call them and ask them, ‘Are you going to vote on Issue 2(3) and are you going to vote for it? If they say no, well, you just make sure that they don’t go vote. Let the air out of their tires on Election Day. Tell them the election has been moved to a different date. That’s up to you how you creatively get the job done.”
This is horrible, not because Huckabee made the joke, but because other people laughed. People in Mr. Huckabee’s audience laughed with his suggestion – not at it, mind you – because everyone knows that’s what the Republicans are trying to do. It’s only funny because a) he said it aloud, and b) because it’s true. So by laughing they admit that stripping people’s basic American rights is perfectly acceptable.
People in other countries literally put their lives on the line to have a say in who runs their countries, and this after going to war to secure that right in the first place. But here, in Ohio, we laugh at the idea of taking that right away. We laugh at the thought that this is an effective strategy. We laugh at having found a whole new way of stealing office, at stripping away people’s rights.
I guess this is nothing new. The pursuit of happiness is a right many homosexuals do not have. Not to mention women. And the under-privileged. The right to live without fear is something that anyone bullied in school does not have. The right to marry the person you love is at risk – or non-existent – all over this supposedly great land for wildly varying reasons. So whittling away the right to vote is just one more thing to take away from those who don’t have much anyway.
Living a swing state isn’t cool any more. It’s shameful. Today I’m ashamed to be an Ohioian. For the first time ever, I really want to leave. I’ve defended this state to people for years. I feel like a fool.
A little while ago, Google News started awarding badges according to the types of news stories a user may read. So if you read about, say, Apple products, there’s an Apple badge you would get after reading a certain number of articles.(1) With each badge there are also levels: bronze, silver, gold….(2)
I’ve noticed a slight problem though:
I am not a Republican.
Really. I’m not. It’s just that I find Republicans these days especially crazy. Reading about their antics and unfair play feels somehow urgent, as though I need to be as informed as possible. I’m not sure that Democrats have the balls nor the organizational skills to keep President Obama in the White House another four years, so it feels critical that I know which kind of crazy we’ll be dealing with post-2012.(3)
Anyone who judges me by my Google News badges, though, will think I’ve on the same Crazy Bus as the Tea Party nutjobs. Seriously. I have a silver star on the Republican badge! That means I can see Russia from my back door, right?!
All I can ask is that you not judge me by what I read. My ‘fashion’ sense? Sure. Undying love of Taylor Swift? Go right ahead. Just don’t put me on the boat with Bachmann and Palin and Perry and Gingrich. Please.
(4)
On my way to the store this afternoon, there was one of those over-sized pick-up trucks in the right lane. The truck had a metal U.S. flag affixed to it, just above one of those fake scrotum things that people with issues I don’t even want to understand hang dangling off the end of the hitch. There was one large man looking incredibly severe in this out-sized abomination.
In the left lane, the was a cutely rusted smallish car with a bumper sticker that read "I Heart Teddy Bears." There were three twenty-somethings in the car, each of them skinny and laughing and generally behaving as though nothing could be better than this moment right now.
We were all stopped at a red light.
And I thought, “Man, I couldn’t think of a more perfect visual metaphor for our current American political climate if I tried.”
David Foster Wallace, in his satiric novel Infinite Jest,[1] has, as President of the U.S.A., a former Vegas crooner named Johnny Gentle. A consummate entertainer, Gentle is the “first U.S. President ever to swing his microphone around by the cord during his Inauguration speech.” He awards even cabinet members the epithet ‘babe.’
One of the points of satire in the novel is American culture’s drive for perfect and/or constant entertainment, and obviously Johnny Gentle is an extension of that. But every satire contains at least some truth.[2]
We’ve been electing entertainers in public office for decades. From Sonny Bono through Jesse Ventura right up to Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ever four years people start rallying for Jon Stewart to run,[3] and in 2008 Stephen Colbert actually announced he would run. In possibly the state’s most intelligent and/or divisive move since withdrawing from the Union, South Carolina refused Colbert’s application and his bid was over before it really began.
But not before he released this campaign graphic that tells you everything you need to know about Stephen Colbert.
So while having former entertainers in the occasional public office is nothing new for the good ol’ U.S. of A., these days there’s a trend that worries me greatly: that those running for office must be entertaining.
Consider Sarah Palin. She quit being governor seemingly so she could star in a reality TV show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska.[4] Just as everything else she does, her purpose for starring this show seems to have been showing the American voters what she wants them to know about her when they go to the polls in 2012.[5]
Consider Donald Trump. For years Mr. Trump was mostly known as the richest man in the U.S., many people only vaguely knowing the guy in any other way. Put him on a reality TV show and now everyone knows him.[6] He announced that he was thinking about running and for a while there it seemed he would.[7]
But then another entertainer stepped in the way: President Obama. Mr. Trump was slammed again and again during the Correspondents’ Dinner as Mr. Obama reminded us that part of the reason we elected him is that he can be really, really entertaining when he wants to be.
The current crop of Republican presidential candidates is certainly less than entertaining. The newest member of the field, Tim Pawlenty, actually addressed this on Today this morning:
Matt Lauer: “People often look at you and say: ‘Is there enough charisma for Tim Pawlenty to beat Barack Obama?’ What’s your answer to that?”
Tim Pawlenty: “I’m not running for Entertainer-in-Chief. These are serious times and they need serious people with serious solutions. So if you’re looking for the loudest, or a comedian in the race, vote for somebody else. I’ll fix the country.”[8]
And you know what? For the first time ever I’m seriously considering a Republican candidate. Maybe I’m just getting old or something,[9] but just to hear a candidate acknowledge and respond against the notion that the people running our country – the people in charge of its millions of citizens – should be people who themselves are as entertaining as possible has me thinking that maybe this guy is worth considering.
But then again, that’s pretty much the only thing I know about this guy right now. Probably it’s better than I learn what he stands for and what he intends to do than to base my vote on one thing.
I’m certain that the company providing this infographic, Online MBA, has some kind of agenda in presenting it. Nevertheless, assuming the information is true, it’s incredibly interesting. The part in which foreign subsidiaries save corporations enough in taxes to pay for the federal defense and healthcare programs is simply shameful, since every single American relies on these two programs for their everyday well-being.
Via: OnlineMBA.com
Yet let’s remember that corporations are not responsible to citizens, only to stockholders. Social responsibility is merely an initiative to them, not a purpose. If we want any of the above to change, we have to make it happen ourselves. No corporation is ever going to change anything simply because their money-saving practices are shameful. We have to step up and elect people who will change the laws and plug the loopholes, and then we have to make those elected officials keep their promises. Because that’s the biggest problem: accountability. People in power will get away with exactly everything that the people over whom they hold sway will let them get away with. I suggest that we be less tolerant of the Charlie Wrangles and Meredith Attwell Bakers out there.
After fighting an angry stomach1 all weekend, I called off work today. My stomach still feels off, and I’m very, very tired. Now I’m afflicted with another issue: sick-time guilt.
A good number of gainfully and honestly employed Americans do not get sick-time. If they are ill enough to miss work, they simply don’t get paid that day. It’s this larger, socialistic awareness that always has me feeling terrible when I call off for a day.
I don’t have this issue with vacation. I view vacation as the workplace rewarding me for getting out of bed every weekday and choosing to go to work. My guilt is somewhat assuaged by the fact that the reward is so mathematically disproportionate.2 And plus part of the aim of vacation is to have fun.
Sick-time, though, isn’t about having fun.3 It’s about your body not working the way it’s supposed to work and you therefore can’t work the way you’re supposed to. So even though I feel like crap, I feel like I have to do something with my sick days because otherwise I’d be taking advantage, or at least sticking it in the face of all those who don’t have sick-time.
So I clean the house. I read, as opposed to watching TV. I don’t play video games. I try to do something educational. Basically, if a non-sick-time-possessing person asked me tomorrow what I did with my free day off today, I’d be able to say that I honestly didn’t waste my time.
Which of course means that since I feel impelled to do all this stuff, I’m not doing the one thing I’m supposed to be doing with sick-time, viz, convalescing. So am I really using my sick-time appropriately?4
I suppose this is a very typical, white-man, middle-class guilt sort-of thing and I feel lame even feeling it. But it doesn’t come from a place of selfishness. In fact, I wish there were some sort of national or state-level sick-time bank into which I could deposit the vast quantities5 of sick-time that I don’t use every year for people who don’t have it. But I can’t. It’s probably for the best I suppose because who knows what might happen down the road. But if I could vote to change it, I would.
As opposed to Ohio Senate Bill 5, which on the surface seeks to abolish collective-bargaining rights amongst public employees – such as yours truly. But there are all kinds of little pieces of bullshit in this bill, the primary concern for me being that they want to limit employees to no more than ten sick-days per annum. I doubt that the amount of sick-leave I take every year adds up to more than ten days, but:
Say, for example, Ashley and I were married. The bylaws of the university would allow me to take sick-time to care for her, if necessary, for as long as I have the sick-time to cover the absence (and as long as I follow the Family Medical Leave Act). As someone caring for a post-double-lung-transplant patient, this is always a possibility. But the state wants to say that I only get ten days, total. To care for me and/or her and/or any kids, if we had them. This is main part of SB5 that really chaps my ass. Gov. Kasich and most of the Republicans in the Ohio legislature seem to think that limiting sick-days will somehow save the state Madoff-quantities of money, which is the point of this whole bill since Ohio can’t even pay the interest on the Federal money we borrowed.
If this passes, I hope Gov. Kasich has to experience the double-bind he’s put public employees in with this law, what with he himself being a public employee. Because the governor is an example of the problem: upper-class Americans pulled all kinds of financial shenanigans and in time the rug was pulled from under them. Banks crashed. Money was lost. And how they’re making middle- and working-class Americans pay for their mistakes. To say nothing of the poor. This is the kind of thing that really makes me sick.
Yesterday the world discovered that Sarah Palin is her own biggest fan.1
This surprises exactly no one.
Here’s the skinny: One of Mrs. Palin’s former aides is circulating a manuscript, ostensibly about how she’s not exactly the best or the brightest person.2 In this manuscript someone had forgotten to take out a Gmail address and so someone else noticed it and did a bit of detective work. The address traced, surprisingly, to a Facebook account for someone named Lou Sarah.
Lou Sarah, it seemed, was a big Palin fan. He/she ‘liked’ pretty much everything Mrs. Palin posted. Lou was also friends with a few of the Palins, not to mention Bristol’s Dancing with the Stars partner.
By all reckoning, this is an account that Sarah Palin established for seemingly the sole purpose of ‘liking’ Sarah Palin’s actual Facebook posts.3
Now: I’m not going to get into the underhandedness of this whole thing. The fake account is curious and perhaps somewhat underhanded. Mrs. Palin has sort-of denied that it belonged to her:
On a side note, there’s always buzz about fake Sarah Palin Facebook and Twitter accounts. Please know that this is my only authentic Facebook account and SarahPalinUSA is my only authentic Twitter account. Pay no attention to the fake accounts and their fake messages.
Obviously this isn’t any type of real, viable denial. She’s in no way saying that Lou Sarah wasn’t her account. While lame and, again, underhanded, I don’t take issue with this either. Politicians don’t answer questions, at least not in America.4
What gets me about Mrs. Palin’s tactic is how wholly unnecessary it was.
We’ve live in a post-postmodern, post-deconstruction world in which everything is self-aware.
Think about it:
It’s not just cool or hip. Being meta is a fact of our culture. Being self-aware has become as American as apple pie baked in the shape of the Greek letter pi. And it’s funny to point it out.
This is why Mrs. Palin’s fake account is so astoundingly unnecessary. She could have simply ‘liked’ her own posts.6 Yes, people would have caller her self-absorbed, narcissistic, and perhaps kitschy.
But they do that already anyway.
She could have tied it into her whole ‘folksy’ PR façade. If pressed by media outlets, she could simply have said, “You betcha! Why wouldn’t I like what I say?” She could have been up-front and honest without doing anything to her oh-so-carefully-constructed image.
But she chose a different route.
This concerns me greatly – not so much that someone who will likely vie for the office of the president chose the under-handed method over one that did no harm. What bothers me is that she’s not enough aware of American culture to know that ‘liking’ your own stuff is totally okay.7
