Went to CEATEC today. Lots of cool stuff. Heard one piece of news that may make me change over: WiMAX, already tempting as an Internet-everywhere solution for $50/mo. for (theoretically) 40 Mbps, will be converting to WiMAX version 2 in 2012. The speed of the new wide-coverage wireless Internet? 330 Mbps. Yep–three times faster than current fiber-optic speeds offered in Japan. (Again, theoretically.) And it’ll work when you’re at high speed, like when the bullet train you’re on is going faster than 300 km/hr.

The portable, battery-powered WiFi converters (which take the WiMAX signal and translate it into WiFi emanating from your backpack or pocket) also are available, meaning you can have a mobile WiFi signal with you all the time (that you’re not underground) for your laptop, iPad, and even the iPhone if you want to keep the data plan charges to a minimum.

More on this later.

Christine O’Donnell aired an ad recently, one which some in the punditry feel will work for her. The commercial has her appearing in a dark room and saying soothingly:

I’m not a witch. I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you. None of us are perfect, but none of use can be happy with what we see all around us. Politicians who think spending, trading favors, and backroom deals are the way to stay in office. I’ll go to Washington, and do what you’d do.

Well, as it happens, I got a copy of the original script for that commercial, the “extended version,” if you will. I believe it was drafted under some full-disclosure act or something. Here’s how it reads:

I’m not a witch. Nor am I a Hare Krishna. I’m nothing you’ve heard. I’m you. Yes, just like you, I’m a hard-right-wing homophobic Creationist. I have credibility–I know, because I audibly heard God tell me so. And like you, I would never lie, not even to Nazis looking for Jews hiding in my attic–though I did kind of lie about my college education on several web sites. And on my resume. And, oh yeah, in a lawsuit. Just like you.

And like you, I failed to pay my tuition, legal fees, mortgage, and taxes until an IRS lien and the lawsuit from the mortgage company forced me to sell my house to my lawyer boyfriend. Like you, I haven’t had a steady job in years, and have been illicitly paying personal expenses with my campaign credit card. And like you, I filed a $6.95 million lawsuit for gender discrimination when my conservative employer didn’t give me the job I wanted after I was on national TV and everything.

Like you, I believe that homosexuals have an identity disorder, are attacking our freedom, and are getting away with nudity, lasciviousness, perversion, and blasphemy. Like you, I believe that condoms spread AIDS and that scientists are creating mice with fully functioning human brains. Yes, like you, I am a hardcore Catholic who believes that masturbation is adultery and school shootings are caused by lack of prayer. No, I’m not a witch, but like you, I believe that Gen-X’ers are Satanists, and that co-ed college dorms might as well be orgy rooms. And I find Middle Eastern censorship refreshing because they don’t have smut all the time, like we do here; like you, I believe we should be more like them when it comes to sexuality.

And politically, I am just like you: I believe that Bush did a great job with the economy and that Iraq had WMD but hid them all before we got there. And like you, I have classified intelligence telling me that China is plotting to invade America. And that Obama has death panels and women in the military cripple defense readiness.

Just like you.

None of us are perfect. Especially not me. But you should ignore all of that crap about me because bad stuff is happening, and despite the fact that people like me caused it, you should just mindlessly vote against Democrats. And despite the fact that all politicians are the same on this, think only about the Democrats when I remind you that politicians think spending, trading favors, and backroom deals are the way to stay in office. Like Sharron Angle, with DeMint’s juice all over her!

Yes, I’m you. And I’ll go to Washington, and do what you’d do. Exactly what that might be, I’ll leave to your imagination.

I believe they had to cut it down for time reasons.

And yes, all of the quotes and facts are real. A few general truths were tossed in, but that’s mostly O’Donnell’s own words in there, mixed in with verifiable facts about her. Sources: here and here.

Let me see if I have this straight. A number of people in conservative circles are suggesting privatizing retirement savings and doing away with social security, and similarly getting rid of Medicare and other public health care initiatives. They wish to lower taxes for the wealthy, already at historic lows; deregulate businesses and finance; do away with the minimum wage and unemployment insurance; and to fight against unions while leaving the door open to shipping jobs to poor countries with few if any labor laws. All in the name of liberty and freedom and the individual.

They wish to do away with the public version of social security, leaving only private retirement plans which could leave millions broken when the markets tumble (as they have a tendency to do), with the sentiment of “tough for them.”

They wish to do away with Medicare, and health care in general, and leave the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to do and charge whatever they wish, leaving tens of millions either uninsured or just as bad while paying for it. Caveat emptor and all that.

They wish to lower tax rates on the wealthy and on corporations, already capable of evading the nominal tax rates, to levels well below the historical average, even doing away with some taxes altogether, and erase most regulations that keep these people from being excessively predatory on the poor and the weak. Because a person with wealth always gains more wealth by the sweat of his brow, not by taking advantage of others before whom he can dangle the carrot and always get more than he gives. No, their money is always earned fair and square, with no help from anyone else, and asking for them to give back to the society they earned it in is, well, socialist and evil.

They wish to discourage or otherwise break up unions, discard the minimum wage, and do away with unemployment insurance. Because if your job went overseas to someone who will work for a dollar a day and your family is starving, then it’s your own damn fault for being so stupid for not being a successful, self-made businessman, and you should expect to receive no handouts and no help.

These are all pretty much the policy ideas coming from various areas of the right wing these days, especially from Tea Party candidates and groups.

Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds like a horrific world they wish to create. Might as well just take the next step at the same time and strike child labor laws, set up debtors’ prisons, and maybe even officially bring back indentured servitude and the road that leads to. After all, if you can’t make your way, what right do you have for any favors from the government?

Andrew Breitbart, who helped James O’Keefe spread his ACORN smears by giving him a forum on his web site, now thoroughly disapproves of O’Keefe’s plans to punk a female CNN reporter by getting her on to a “pleasure palace” boat and seducing her in front of a camera, calling it “patently gross and offensive.”

Because dressing himself up like a 70’s pimp and a female associate as a whore and parading in to a variety of offices trying to solicit help in committing tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution; selectively editing the videos to make them look incriminating; and then spreading them so as to destroy an organization which worked to provide voter registration, health care, housing, and neighborhood safety for lower-income families… well, that was just a class act. Breitbart says that he “proudly” stands by the ACORN fraud, which he called a “groundbreaking investigation.”

And O’Keefe’s attempt to illegally enter the offices of a Democratic senator by fraudulently claiming to be telephone repair workers, then asking for access to the office’s “phone closet” (but, they claim, not so they could tamper with it, no, they’d never do that)–well, that was just a big misunderstanding, all they wanted to do was to force some kind of situation that would embarrass the people involved. Breitbart, apparently, thought that was just fine, and vigorously defended O’Keefe on his site.

But seducing a CNN reporter on camera? Well, that just lacks the professionalism and finesse of O’Keefe’s earlier work.

I have to say, the right wing is just brimming with sophistication and integrity.

Another reason to get out the Democratic vote in November: Republicans are making no secret of the fact that if they get the gavel back in the house, they will “bombard the Obama administration with subpoenas.” Do not doubt that for a millisecond. Think that Republicans will jump right on stuff like jobs and the economy? Then you’re not very observant. They have other priorities, the same ones they’re been displaying for years now. They won’t change.

Most people think back on the 90’s and remember only Monica Lewinsky–and forget that Republicans were subpoena-happy back then, starting investigations at the drop of the slightest rumor. Every hint of scandal got a special prosecutor assigned, it seemed, and every rumor and conspiracy theory generated more hearings. Personal issues of staffers, hirings & firings, fundraising, investments–actual convictions were almost non-existent, but Republicans were probably happy spending most of their time abusing the legal system to search and dig and search and dig some more for any new dirt on the Clintons. For eight years, pretty much from day one to the day Clinton left office and beyond, Republicans engineered a non-stop barrage of smears, accusations, and prosecutions. Think I’m exaggerating? Republican Rep. Dan Burton issued more than a thousand subpoenas against Clinton and/or Democrats between 1997 and 2002.

The Democrats investigated the Bush administration only with great reluctance and deference, allowing them to testify without being under oath even with incredibly serious issues to deal with–torture, violating the Constitution, a complete failure to act to stop 9/11 despite a good deal of warning and evidence it was coming. Bush was never investigated for a host of very serious and very real scandals that dwarf the Clinton investigations in scope and scale. The fact that the Dems, despite having both houses of Congress and the White House, pretty much completely laid off the Bush administration after it departed, will have absolutely no influence on Republicans should they gain the House and the power to start another 90’s style tidal wave of phoney-baloney investigations. My guess is that they privately see the Democratic reluctance as idiotic weakness–a weakness they do not suffer from.

Already many have promised the return of the non-stop investigations–Darrel Issa, Michele Bachmann, James Clyburn, Jim Sensenbrenner and more–including the man who would be speaker, Boehner himself–have pledged outright that the barrage will start from day one, and they’re serious. And we’re not talking about real stuff, remember; unlike the Clintons, Obama doesn’t have much in the way of actual scandal. So the Republicans are going to sink even deeper into conspiracy-theory territory than they did in the 90’s. Obama’s birth certificate? Subpoenas! ACORN? Who cares if it doesn’t even exist anymore? More subpoenas! Remember those “Climategate” emails that were debunked? There will be investigations! The Stimulus? Subpoenas! Health care reform? Subpoenas! TARP? Subpoenas! Wait, aren’t those just Obama’s policies? No, they’re Obama’s scandals!!

Investigate! Investigate them all! Subpoena every piece of paper in D.C.! You think Obama doesn’t have any scandals? Well, just you wait–we’ll make it seem like he does! People will say, “With all those allegations, he’s bound to be guilty of some of them!” And who knows, maybe we’ll get lucky and actually find something they did wrong–and then we’ll make the investigations before that look like a freaking boy scout jamboree! If there’s one thing Republicans are good at, it’s smearing and creating the impression that something or someone they don’t like is corrupt. With legal powers to issue subpoenas, they will be gaining a weapon of credence to make those smears look like legitimate legal claims.

Now, ask yourself–is this an equivalency thing? Are the Dems just as bad? Let’s see: when Obama and the Dems took office, did they immediately start to investigate Republicans and abuse their subpoena power to discredit Republican policies? Hell, no. They jumped out the starting gate and passed the stimulus–and saved millions of jobs.

If you vote for the Republicans because you think the Democrats have failed and the Republicans will get results, then I’m sorry, but you’re a flaming idiot. There is simply no kind way to put that, but it must be said. Republicans will investigate (ample evidence above), they will grandstand (pass bills they know will fail, and never make realistic compromises), and they will obstruct (use the House in addition to the filibuster), and make things even worse than they are now.

Democrats, get off your asses and vote. I don’t give a crap if you’re disappointed–if you fail to vote, to vote in great numbers, then you will be horrified at the depth and scale of your error a year from now.

The choice is clear: one party is trying to dig the country out of the ditch, and the other one is trying to dig the ditch deeper so the ones trying to get us out look bad. Which way do you want to go?

By the way, feel free to copy, re-use, and distribute the above graphics. Attribution would be nice but not necessary.

I have long held that in Japan, you can stop almost anywhere on any street and spot at least half a dozen cigarette butts in various stages of decomposition. While Japan is a relatively clean country, and although smoking rates have fallen in recent years, cigarette butts remain the #1 litter problem in the country.

I remember back in the 80’s seeing a Japanese letter-to-the-editor translated and published in the English paper, in which an older Japanese woman complained about people eating while walking in the streets, the main criticism being that such behavior prompted littering. At the time, I thought that while this could be true, I didn’t (and still don’t) see many people in Japan eating while walking–but you saw (and still see) people smoking and walking all the time, and using the street as an ash tray–rather liberally, I might add. It’s not just butts, either. I have seen, more than once, a smoker crumpling up and tossing on the ground an empty cigarette pack as he walked up to a vending machine to buy a new pack, even though the machine had a built-in trash receptacle.

I was reminded of that this morning when walking to the train station. A guy in front of me slowed down suddenly and so I started to go around him–and almost got hit with a lit cigarette as the guy flicked it away, behind him and to the right, without any attempt to glance at where he was flicking. I made an annoyed sound as I passed him and he started and immediately apologized as I passed–but the thing is, that did not represent an isolated action. That’s habit. In Japan, they call it poi sute, “poi” being the onomatopoetic sound for flicking something away, and “sute” being short for throwing trash away.

Which is not to say that many smokers in Japan are not polite or considerate; many, of course, are. But the ones who are not do stand out a tad. Using the street indiscriminately as an ashtray remains a strong habit. On my way into school, prompted by the near-miss with the flicked butt, I did a few random stop-and-counts, and got the same depressing results as always. I even spotted a lit cigarette on the street, the owner no longer in sight. Whether he (or she, though maybe 2/3rds+ of Japanese smokers are men) dropped it by mistake or wastefully discarded it before it was even partly smoked I don’t know–but it makes for good art at the top of the post. I snapped the shot and then ground it out. It may have been dropped or thrown from a vehicle; despite having ashtrays, many drivers in Japan still discard to the street, something which more than annoys me when driving a scooter.

Japan is less of a “smoker’s paradise” than it was before, but still remains more than a little friendly to the nicotine-inclined. Back in the 80’s, it was horrific–I remember the 10-hour flights over the Pacific where smoking was allowed, making the “non-smoking” areas rather a poor joke, especially the seats close to the smoking area. Smoking was allowed on trains, in all offices–well, really, everywhere. Even at home it was hard to get away from it, as smoke pours from the windows and balconies of neighbors. I bought a dining room table used once, and wondered what the reek was after I got it home; it took months before the smoke smell stopped being a pain.

Even after smoking was banned on trains in Japan (though until recently and, for all I know, still today, smoking is allowed on some cars on long-distance trains), the platforms were still havens. Recently, they are much better, but even as of 5 years ago, smokers defiantly disregarded the smoking areas. I think it’s mostly better now that most platforms allow no smoking at all.

Non-smoking areas in eateries were just as bad a joke, with the border between sections more a matter of imagination than of actual segregation–but that remains mostly true even today, with most normal restaurants being smoker-friendly and “non-smoking” areas, when they are offered, still (a) not significantly separate enough to make them actually smokeless, and (b) more often than not in the bad seating areas. McDonald’s has, for a long time, relegated non-smokers to the poorer seating areas. If there are seats in the basement and on the 2nd floor, there was usually no question about the smokers getting the 2nd-floor area, with the non-smokers usually getting only half of the basement–which is to say, not really any space at all.

Beginning the change to non-smoking establishments were places like Starbucks, which completely banned smoking inside, and later some Subway sandwich chains. McDonald’s started to get a bit better more often, and now plans to ban smoking at one-third of its outlets as they are renovated over the next several years. (But only one-third, and slowly; the shops near train stations will remain smoking areas.) Some places, like Narita Airport, and even a prefecture now (Kanagawa) are beginning to impose eatery bans and other restrictions. Many busy streets in Tokyo ban smoking among pedestrians, thought the ban is still ignored and even the smoking wardens (usually pairs wearing no-smoking bibs) rarely if ever fine anyone for breaking the rules. The photos taken above, including my discarded-butt count, were on a no-smoking street.

Nobody is pretending that the paradise is no more, but the smokers here are beginning to feel the pinch more and more.

Steven Benen got me on this one (emphasis mine):

Just a few months ago, the American Enterprise Institute’s Norm Ornstein, not exactly a raging leftist, said House GOP leaders “are becoming the Bart Simpsons of Congress, gleeful at smarmy and adolescent tactics and unable and unwilling to get serious.”

Ornstein may have thought of that as a throwaway line, but I’ve considered it rather devastating. He didn’t just say Republicans aren’t serious; he said they can’t get serious and don’t even want to try. That’s not only a powerful critique, it has the added benefit of being true.

Early last year, as the GOP’s descent into nonsense picked up steam, there was some rejoicing on the left, and I understood why. As Republicans took on the collective persona of angry, over-medicated children, it seemed highly unlikely American voters would reward them with power. The GOP was becoming a national embarrassment, progressives assumed, and would need to come to its senses before it could return to the big kids’ table.

But that satisfaction was misplaced. Sure, Republicans abandoned the pretense of credibility, seriousness, reason, and thoughtful policymaking, but they’re nevertheless poised to make significant gains anyway. Voters care less about the GOP’s radical recklessness and more about a struggling national economy.

He’s right. Looking back at my posts from about 18 months ago, it’s almost painful how naive I was, smugly certain that people would see through the most transparent of political plays, and that the GOP would marginalize itself to obscurity. Of course, that was before the Obama and the Democrats truly revealed how weak-kneed and surrendering they could be with the GOP, but it’s not as if Democrats had never acted that way before. It’s also not as if demagoguery never worked before. But seriously: I had a much higher opinion and expectation from the centrist American voter a year and a half ago than I have now.

However bad the economy might be, it should be clear to any idiot that:

• It was primarily Republican policies that got us into this mess;
• While the economy is still bad, it is far, far better than it would have been thanks to the stimulus;
• Democrats, for all their failings, have had better and more responsible policies;
• Republicans are acting like deranged, idiotic maniacs who are mostly incapable of telling the truth;
• Unless you’re wealthy, the Republicans are not on your side; and
• Republicans don’t have any ideas worth listening to, certainly none that hold up to close inspection.

So, naturally, voters are set to sweep them into office–because with the massive damage left by Bush and the GOP, and the Republicans going all-out, balls-to-the-wall in obstructing every move the Democrats try to make, the Dems have only been able to partly undo the damage the GOP has done.

If campaign slogans had to be truthful, then the GOP would have to run with: “We’re Crazy and Destructive, but the Other Guys Are Ineffective at Stopping Us.”

Sometimes the Democrats just make me want to barf. They had a golden opportunity. No, they had the golden opportunity. In a pivotal election season where they need every advantage they can get, they had the entire Republican Party dead to rights, caught in a political trap that could have devastated them. It was an awesome chance to show how the GOP is beholden to the rich, and how they don’t in fact give a crap about the middle class. It would not have been a trick or any deception–it was Democrats for 98% of Americans, and Republicans against 98% of Americans. And it would have taken place right before the election.

The Republicans had made one of the worst mistakes in recent history, pledging openly to vote against a tax cut for the middle class if it did not also include a deficit-exploding tax giveaway for the rich, at a time when revenue is badly needed and the GOP plan goes 100% counter to their own promises to shrink the deficit.

The Democrats supported a plan to maintain tax cuts for the middle class, and even on the first $250,000 made by every single American–a tax cut for all Americans, including even the rich! But aimed at the middle class.

This was a no-brainer. All the pundits said the Dems should do it. All the supporters told the Dems to do it. All the polls showed it would be political gold if the Dems did it.

All the Dems had to do was to hold a damned vote.

It was 1st down and goal to go on the one-yard line, and the Democrats punted. Or more like handed the defense the ball. Politely.

Like I said, it makes you want to barf.

Ironically, this should not deter any person from voting for Democrats. Not because you want to show your approval and support for such magnificent stupidity, of course. No, it’s because it would be even more magnificently stupid to respond to this by electing the Republicans who are so openly against the interests of the American people. The Democrats may be strategically retarded, but for the most part, their hearts are in the right place, and their interests are the interests of most Americans; the Republicans in power would do even more damage than they are doing right now, which is a lot.

Remember, the Dems only fumbled the strategy, not the moral high ground. They still want the right tax plan, and the Republicans still favor the rich over the middle class.

What this should, logically, make you want to do is to elect as many Dems as possible this year, because they are still far better than the alternative, then re-organize within the next two years, and then identify every single damned Democrat who contributed to this debacle and vote them out in the Democratic primaries in 2012. (And in the Senate in 2014 and 2016. And for crying out loud, why is Harry Reid still in control of the Senate??) We must not vote for the Republicans now, but vote for better Democrats the next chance we get.

It’s a relatively sucky choice, but the best choice currently available. Not that it’ll even happen, but it’s what any good, reasonable, halfway-intelligent Democrat should do.

We constantly say that we deserve the government we elect, that we should make intelligent choices. Well, we should. It’s not like we’re forced to vote for these ninnies in the primaries. We can vote for anyone we damned please.

But for god’s sake, don’t vote for the Republicans, this year of all years, and don’t let this dampen your resolve to get out there and vote. Suck it up and do what’s right for America.

If you’re a conservative, you probably hate Obama’s stimulus and health care plan, right? You see them as wasteful spending on a scale that busts the budget and explodes the deficit.

What if Obama were to propose a fiscal plan that would cost four times what the stimulus and health care bill cost, combined??? You would probably burst at the seams, and rant about how Obama is trying to destroy the nation.

Well, exactly such a plan is being proposed.

By Republicans.

From WaPo:

Even as they hammer Democrats for running up record budget deficits, Senate Republicans are rolling out a plan to permanently extend an array of expiring tax breaks that would deprive the Treasury of more than $4 trillion over the next decade, nearly doubling projected deficits over that period unless dramatic spending cuts are made.

The measure, introduced by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) this week, would permanently extend the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts that benefit virtually every U.S. taxpayer, rein in the alternative minimum tax and limit the estate tax to estates worth more than $5 million for individuals or $10 million for couples.

Aides to McConnell said they have yet to receive a cost estimate for the measure. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently forecast that a similar, slightly more expensive package that includes a full repeal of the estate tax would force the nation to borrow an additional $3.9 trillion over the next decade and increase interest payments on the national debt by $950 billion. That’s more than four times the projected deficit impact of President Obama’s health-care overhaul and stimulus package combined.

So, are you infuriated by the GOP yet? No? Gee whiz, what a surprise.

Four hours is all it took. The Republican “Pledge” to help small businesses died a quick death. Four hours after House Republicans released their plan to save America, complete with a whole section on how they want to help small businesses with tax breaks, they voted against a bill to give small businesses $12 billion in tax breaks, and $30 billion in loans.

Why did they oppose it? Supposedly because the lending program smelled too much like TARP, which, despite its failure to secure answerability, transparency, or policy-correction from the banks who used it, turned out to have been fairly successful. And the CBO reports that at the completion of the program, the deficit would be reduced by about a billion dollars. No, the GOP would like the Dems to drop the small-business assistance bill, and instead let the GOP pass their $750 billion deficit-ballooning tax cut extension for rich people. Because they’re fiscally responsible and all that.

So, House Democrats propose a bill which will give a huge boost to small businesses in a revenue-neutral way–and Republicans vote to kill it. Four hours after pledging to turn things around and help small businesses.

This is their “Pledge to America.” Like I said, sabotage anything that Democrats do, no matter how productive or reasonable, so they can claim that the Dems aren’t doing anything productive or reasonable.

Want a clue about how to vote? If you approve of helping small businesses, then keep in mind that they would not be getting this help were the Republicans to have a majority in the House.

The new Republican “Contract on America” “Pledge to America” is out. Guess what? Republicans are promising to do all the things they have been promising to do for years, but didn’t do despite having control of the House, Senate, and the presidency for several years.

And what Republican legislative proposal would be complete without a pledge to cut spending without specifics as to how they’ll do it? Oh, and they also won’t promise to stop using earmarks, the GOP’s signature spending-spree tool when they had control last time. Whee!

Of course, they say they’ll restore jobs, like they did when they drove unemployment up to 10%. And they had strong words of condemnation for Obama’s job-creation skills:

Mr. Boehner described the administration’s policies as “job killing” and said “the American people are asking, ‘Where are the jobs?’ ”

Well, let’s take a look at the jobs reports from that last half year of the Bush administration followed by the first year or so of the Obama administration:

Oh, hey, there are the jobs!

They were created by the stimulus, although the stimulus was–as predicted from the outset–too small, and so it ran out of gas before the job was completely done. And who cut the stimulus down in size? The Republicans! Yeah, let’s put them in charge of creating jobs!

In fact, the Republican plan actually says it will kill the remaining stimulus funds! The same funds that Republicans have been trying as hard as they can to take credit for with their constituents!

Yes, I am sure that keeping taxes for millionaires lower than they’ve been in living history while the government starves for revenue will do the job perfectly. After all, if you don’t repeal the Estate tax and Paris Hilton gets only a ginormous fortune instead of an even more ginormous fortune, millions of Americans will lose their jobs.

Let’s see some of their proposals:

“Stop job-killing tax hikes”–that would be the Republican-mandated return to tax levels we had during the 90’s, when we had the greatest job creation surge in recent history.

A “small businesses tax deduction”–Hmm, interesting, as the Republicans did their best to kill a $30 billion tax cut for small businesses just a few weeks ago. Sounds like they’re dedicated to this.

“Require congressional approval for any new federal regulation that would add to the deficit”–you mean, like the hundreds of billions of dollars they added to the deficit and the trillions they added to the debt? Yeah, that’ll happen. Especially since they’re going to bring back earmarks full-force.

“Repeal and Replace health care”–yeah, because the Republican health care plan we saw last year was so great, costing way more than the Democratic plan with far fewer benefits. Good idea.

…you get the idea. The rest of the list is here, along with the full text and link to the PDF of the whole thing.

All of this is BS, of course; the GOP won’t pull off a two-house takeover, and they only thing they’ll do is (a) start time- and money-wasting investigations and hearing over Obama’s birth certificate and equally lame stuff, (b) make empty legislative gestures they know will never get anywhere but they can claim were great things killed by Democrats, and (c) obstruct even more than now, even to the point of shutting down the government.

That’s their actual agenda, no matter what crap they claim in their latest PR scheme. And I promise you this: it will kill jobs, not create them.

The answer is as it has been, bolstered by real, actual numbers:

Especially in the 2008 elections, Fox made a pointed claim: if a Democratic politician did not grant Fox full access, or if Democrats refrained from joining a debate hosted by Fox (essentially placing themselves in the hands of a network dedicated to destroying them and giving every advantage to the other side), they were “afraid of the media” and unwilling to answer honest, straightforward questions. If the Democratic candidates didn’t appear on Fox talk shows as much as Fox wanted them to, then they were afraid to “talk to journalists.” Even when Obama gave unprecedented access to Fox, appearing on Bill O’Reilly’s show (can you imagine Bush or McCain going one-to-one with Olbermann or Maddow?), he was still “afraid to come on Fox” because he didn’t give them more chances to take swings at him live on the air.

And yet, since Sarah Palin more or less blacked out the media for the most part of the 2008 elections, it now seems to be the standard with the new brand of conservative politicians to do exactly that: block out the entire mainstream media, and only speak through Fox News. And it’s not just restricting themselves to Fox–because there are perhaps a few people even on Fox who might not be 100% sympathetic–but certain personalities on Fox. Christine O’Donnell canceled out on a Fox interview last weekend because it was Chris Wallace, who sometimes will challenge right-wingers. So instead, O’Donnell is going to appear on Hannity, who is well-known as a go-to guy for cases like this.

Even more to the point, Palin even spelled out this strategy publicly, encouraging O’Donnell to do exactly that, to “speak through Fox News” and avoid the rest of the media.

And, of course, we have not heard more than the slightest peep about candidates being “afraid of the media” or unwilling to “talk to journalists” from Fox or the other right-wing sources that shouted about Democrats being that way in 2008. Even the rest of the media is somewhat mute: Palin’s outright statement of this practice was virtually ignored by the major outlets, appearing mostly on political blogs.

Since this is now becoming a new standard for right-wing politicians, it should be pointed out more. Avoiding a “news” organization that is so biased that it would be politically damaging to put yourself in their hands is one thing. But to speak only to news sources biased in your favor is something completely different–something which I am certain right-wingers–and probably more than a few on the left–would agree with if, say, a Democratic politician only agreed to appear on TV if it was with Maddow or Olbermann on MSNBC.

There has always been an attempt to cow, maneuver, and manipulate the media, but it has been a two-sided game, with the media at least usually trying to fight back. But now the game has changed, and with it the fundamental aspects of political answerability to the public.

The press is supposed to be our bulwark against tyranny, as it is in principle unafraid to challenge politicians and speak truth to the people. Thanks to Fox, right-wing politicians now have an out: their very own “news” media arm willing to campaign for them and against their opponents. And our primary defense against tyranny crumbles.

The smell of the grill wafts up and down the street from the fan blowing just behind the lantern, making it sway deliciously. Chicken on a stick. Ahhh.

There they go again.

Republicans are, once again, trotting out the Democrats-are-going-to-devastate-small-business lie. Of course, they do this all the time. And it’s the same every time any issue comes up affecting wealthy corporations: the GOP wants to protect their patrons, but knows that it doesn’t look so good if they come out and say so too much. So they do what they always do, what they have done for a long time now: they trot out the “small business” owner, claim that their tax cut or whatever is going to help people like this, or that the Democratic initiative is going to hurt them somehow. And the claim is always false; when it comes down to it, the Republicans are just as liable to kill something that’s good for small business if it suits them, or to put down small businessmen if the situation calls for it.

Just two months ago, Democrats proposed $30 billion in tax cuts aimed directly at small businesses; Republicans tried to kill it. Naturally. Because they’re the champions of small businesses, right?

Or take the case of the little kid who spoke up for the S-CHIP health program, who the right-wingers savaged in an attempt to claim the program did not actually help people in financial trouble. They blasted the Frost family for not deserving help because, among other things, the family ran… you guessed it, a small business. If they’re swimming in that kind of small-business dough, they reasoned, you shouldn’t ask the government to help you out.

So when it comes down to it, they will just as easily slam the small businessman. But when it comes to passing something for Big Business, for the rich–repeal the estate tax, extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, or stop another minimum wage hike–they always trot out the small businessman and say “we’re doing it for them!”

Bullshit must be called.

The GOP has been hitting the small-business meme again about Obama’s plan to uphold the Republican-authored law not to extend tax cuts for people making over $250,000, thus increasing the tax on income made over that amount by a few percent. (Sounds devastating when put in honest terms, doesn’t it!) “That’s 750,000 to 800,000 small businesses!” Orrin Hatch exclaimed; “That create most of the jobs in our society!” Boehner’s office released a statement which said, “The bottom line is that Washington Democrats’ tax hike would hit 750,000 small businesses across the U.S., which constitute 25 percent of our small business workforce.” But a large number of those “small businesses” they refer to are either “pass-through” businesses–large, billion-dollar firms who hide their incomes with a tax dodge where they claim it via individuals working for them–or are “small” businesses with huge receipts, nearly 20,000 of them with receipts over $50 million.

Only 1.9% of actual small business filers report income over the $250,000 level. Most of them will pay only a few hundred bucks more in taxes, at most. The ones who will get taxed more than that are more than wealthy enough to afford it.

No, “small businesses” will be just fine. The GOP is not trying to protect them. The GOP tried to kill $30 billion in tax cuts for them. The GOP is interested in only one thing: protecting people who are a lot wealthier than mere small businessmen.

I have noted this “small-business” sham many times in the past–because Republicans use it so often. Just a few months ago, I wrote:

They don’t give a flying frack about small businesses. They use small businesses as a front whenever they want to give something excessive to the rich, saying that if they don’t get what they want, small businesses will suffer. Similarly, if Democrats want to do something they don’t like, such as raising the minimum wage or strengthening regulations–even when small businesses are made exempt–Republicans trot out small business owners and try to claim they will be hammered by those nasty Democrats and their anti-regular-American-small-businessman ways.

Whenever you hear a right-winger say anything about “small businesses,” let that be a red flag, make it set off your BS detector, and look closely–you’ll almost certainly see a boon to rich people and corporations thinly disguised behind the suckered sap they have gulled up to the press conference podium to stand in as the face of small businessmen.

Just as I flagged it at the end of last year:

You know there’s a scam afoot when some big entity wants something enacted which will profit them handsomely, but holds up a sympathetic face as the “real” benefactor of the scheme. Wealthy people and corporations do this all the time through politicians–whenever there’s a tax cut for huge corporations, for example, the “small business owner” is always trotted out as the real reason the tax cut is being proposed. But in reality, small business owners end up getting reamed because the real benefactors, big business, become more engorged and able to crush the small business owners.

Just as I did three years ago, when I wrote about the minimum wage:

Their long-standing objection is that a minimum wage hike would hurt small businesses. Now, the term “small businesses,” when used by Republican politicians, should make a lot of flags go up. It is used by right-wingers as an excuse to defend big businesses, the huge corporations and industries that really stand to have their interests damaged. It’s a natural political maneuver; after all, one cannot garner much sympathy by saying that something will make a dent in the huge profits of giant corporations. No one would give a damn. So the small businessman is trotted out to say how he’ll be devastated by whatever new proposal is being opposed. Or he’ll be shoved in front of the cameras to talk about how this new tax cut for the rich will let him keep his business afloat, which would otherwise fall into bankruptcy.

And five years ago, when I wrote about the attempt to kill the Estate tax:

House Republicans passed a repeal of the Estate Tax, with Senate Republicans primed to sweep the bill through just as unanimously among their brethren. Of course, they posit the bill as being aimed at small businesses and small farmers, but we all know that this is utter bullshit: only a few hundred such entities are effected by the tax each year. […] And despite their claimed concern for small businesses and farmers, they did not take the plainly obvious route of exempting just small businesses and farmers. The reason, of course, is obvious: this is not a tax cut for small businesses and farmers. It’s a tax bill for (surprise!) the super-wealthy. The Walton family, for instance, were big Bush and GOP contributors, and they have been pushing relentlessly for the tax cut. By themselves, they will save tens of billions of dollars on top of the many tens of billions they will already get. This is the “small business” that the bill is truly aimed at.

It is commonly pointed out that Democrats get money from the wealthy as well, and vote to protect the interests of big corporations as well. This is true–but only to an extent. Democrats will vote for specific wealthy interests, some of the time–but when it comes to protecting the middle class, the poor, the little guy, the small business, why is it that it’s the Democrats doing this almost all of the time, with the GOP rallied to oppose them, again almost all of the time? And when it comes to cutting taxes for the rich and cutting breaks for big business already making obscene profits, why is it only ever opposed by Democrats?

And the crazy keeps on coming. Glen Urquhart, the GOP candidate for Castle’s vacated House seat, said this:

Do you know, where does this phrase ‘separation of church and state’ come from?“ Urquhart asked at a campaign event last April. ”It was not in Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. … The exact phrase ‘separation of Church and State’ came out of Adolph Hitler’s mouth, that’s where it comes from. So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis.

Urquhart has since tried to back away from it a bit, and I myself think the accusation that Urquhart said that Hitler “invented” separation of church and state is unfair–he was claiming that it more significantly came from Hitler, not originally in terms of who said it first or who created the concept. Not that he had a point–he was being a real ass in saying what he did, intellectually and politically dishonest.

It used to be the common idea that “whoever mentions Hitler first, loses,” meaning that invoking the image of Hitler was by and large a bogus scare tactic used when one had nothing more of reason to say. However, that rule seems to have disappeared as scores of Tea Partiers now use Hitler in an almost steady stream of comparisons to anything and everything they dislike.

The whole Hitler thing is a bit complex. The man was hardly consistent, and things he said or did were not always clear in their sincerity or motive. One could probably use him to cast aspersions on a wide variety of groups, even opposing ones. Over time, he made or was said to have made statements for and against religion; you can find many examples where he persecuted Christians but also made rather clear attacks against atheism.

So when we see statements like Urquhart’s, or the endless “Obama is Hitler” claims by his compatriots, it’s easy to fall back on the “whoever mentions Hitler first, loses” rule of thumb. This is true in a variety of arguments, about religion, gun control, and a broad range of other topics where Hitler analogies use distorted logic, out-of-context examples, or just plain ad hominem spew to attempt to use perhaps the most potent historical demon to bolster one’s point.

The problem is, then, because of dickheads abusing the Hitler analogy, we stand to lose one of the richest and most valuable historical lessons available to us. Just because Hitler is used so much as a fallback false analogy does not mean that cogent and authentic comparisons cannot be drawn and the lessons bringing us wisdom. I remember that back in the early Bush administration, when the drumbeat to war in Iraq was in full force, a very apt Nazi analogy was made, one echoed just today by a commenter, and one I made back in 2003, along with many other people who saw the parallels with this Hermann Goering quote:

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”

This wasn’t some knee-jerk “Bush is Hitler!” ejaculation, it was noting something that was all too real and relevant. In the state of fear after 9/11, the country was maneuvered into war in Iraq, using exactly the tactics Goering outlined. Furthermore, the analogy was not drawn to say that Bush was a Nazi, or that the Bush administration was identical in any other way to the Nazi regime–but rather to simply make the point that this is a dishonest manner of manipulating the public, used effectively by some very bad people. And yet this analogy got shot down under the “whoever mentions Hitler first, loses” rule.

The sad point is, as I was reminded upon Troy’s reiteration, we still see echoes of it today, in statement’s like Gingrich’s Sharia ban proposal. We’re being attacked by Islam, and the people who are defending these terror mosque jihadists are putting us in danger. I would not go so far as to suggest that Gingrich is going to suggest forcing all Muslims to wear a star-and-crescent armband or something of that nature. But to note that a certain tactic is being used is quite instructional, in terms of how it is used and to what ends. It is instructional in that people should remember, understand, and be immune to its effects. After 9/11, Republicans discovered that this tactic–the combination of stoking fear, claiming ownership of patriotism, and accusing the other side of being traitors who are endangering the country–won elections. And they have not given up on it.

Alas, the very people who should be sitting up and taking note are the same ones who scream about Obama being the New Hitler because he wants to nudge health care a few inches more towards a public model.

The Hitler rule, apparently, is now amended: “Whoever mentions Hitler first to denounce liberals, wins.”

Our country has come to a state where if you’re crazy, people will vote for you–but if you’re in therapy, they won’t.

It’s the right wing, mostly. You look at the people they have in the spotlight right now–Sarah Palin, Jan Brewer, Rand Paul, Christine O’Donnell, Sharron Angle, Michele Bachmann–as well as people at the local level, like that guy who screamed his speech, or the Colorado guy who believes that a local bicycle-sharing program is an evil U.N. plot to destroy our freedoms.

Our country has come to a state where you get wild support if you say stuff which is out-and-out stupid, and I mean wildly idiotic–but if you say smart, responsible stuff, people feel threatened by you.

I mean, seriously. The last Republican vice-presidential candidate actually claimed that she was well-versed in foreign policy because she lived in a state where if you went to its farthest reaches, you could just barely make out the farthest outlying reaches of Russia, the government of which was located thousand of miles more distant. And it wasn’t a gaffe–she repeated it. And a lot of right-wingers echoed her on it, and few if any seemed to think it was something to be concerned about. It’s as if a red flag was waved, and now the crazy is all over the place. Headless bodies peppering the Arizona desert, the president is a Kenyan Socialist, Jesus rode a dinosaur, the Sufi community center is a terrorist victory mosque, we should apologize to BP, Obama Death Panels are gonna kill Grandma–and if we don’t win the election, it’s time for “Second Amendment remedies.” Maybe I’m just romanticizing the past, but I do seem to recall a time when saying batshit crazy and dumbass stuff like that was actually considered a serious problem for a campaign.

In the right-wing today, Dumb is Folksy, Crazy is Concerned, Hysterical is Thought-provoking. And invoking armed insurgency if you don’t get your way is patriotic.

As regular readers may recall, a conservative commenter recently asked that the Koran-burning pastor not be considered a right winger (something I had not even expressed in the post he was commenting on), as if going to that extreme somehow meant he was no longer among the right-wing population. The thing is, wherever you yourself may be right now, Dumb and Crazy are where the Republican Party is right now. They’re the ones being elected by Republicans, which makes them the mainstream of the movement you’ve associated yourself with. You may even consider them a freak show, but you’re still in the same tent.

I am reminded of a former colleague who was a regular watcher of Fox News; he looked me straight in the eye once and said with all casual innocence that he truly thought Fox was a balanced, serious, non-partisan news organization. Just as our recent guest could look at Glenn Beck and insist that what he says is “accurate.” Just as people can email photoshopped images of Obama as a pimp or a witch doctor and get angrily indignant when someone points out how racist that is. News Flash: it ain’t just a river in Egypt. Most if not all of these people get upset when those on the right wing that they disagree with are grouped together with them, because those guys are nuts, they’re not in the mainstream. The fact is, though, they’re just a slightly different kind of nuts; today, the crazies are the mainstream in the right wing. Whether it’s about Obama building FEMA concentration camps to enslave right-wingers by using census data, or 9/11 being caused by gays and abortions, or there’s a war on Christmas; whether it’s Bachmann or Paul or Beck or Palin or O’Donnell or Miller or Buck or O’Reilly or Barton or Angle or Brewer or Limbaugh or–you get the idea. There are simply too many strong examples of this to deny it. Too many of the stupid and crazy ones are winning primaries, too many of the “extremists” are too popular among the mainstream Republicans.

This is not a case like Glenn Beck taking an extremist Black Panther from ten years ago saying “kill all white people” and painting most progressives with it. This is not taking the most extreme of the extreme and trying to smear the mainstream with it. This is simply today’s GOP.

If you elect the Stupid, then you own the Stupid.

Update: Newt Gingrich just announced that he wants to ban Sharia law in the U.S., as if there’s a real danger that it’s going to be imposed.

See?

Leave it to Stewart & Colbert to use zany comedy to Do The Right Thing. Beck promised a rally to restore “Honor” (something right-wingers seem stuck on doing over and over again) but seemed to fall just a teensy bit short, as “honor” is nothing more than a buzzword for these people. The Comedy Channel duo, on the other hand, promise to restore sanity, and you know they’re going to do their job a hundred times better.

After a lengthy, persistent Internet campaign started by users of the site Reddit that raised over $200,000 for charity, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have relented. They will host opposing rallies on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on October 30.

The announcement started last night on The Daily Show, when Stewart announced his Rally to Restore Sanity, a call to the nation to “take it down a notch for America.” The name, of course, mocks Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally — so naturally, Stewart compared his choice of date to Beck’s choice of the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech.

“Now you’re probably saying to yourself, October 30, 2010, that rings a bell … the 36th anniversary of George Forman [sic] and Muhammad Ali’s Rumble in the Jungle in Zaire! Yes! But that’s not why the date is significant. I’ll tell you the significance of October 30th. You see, The Daily Show’s actually already going to be in Washington doing shows.”

As his segment drew to a close, Stewart provided some sample protest signs for the realistic, sane ralliers to carry. They included, “I disagree with you, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Hitler.”

But naturally, Stephen Colbert wasn’t going to take that lying down. On The Colbert Report, he lashed out against Stewart’s call for reason, noting that “reason is just one letter away from treason.” So to counteract Stewart, he announced his own rally, “to fight Jon Stewart’s creeping reasonableness, [and] to restore truthiness.”

Colbert’s rally, The March to Keep Fear Alive, will also occur on October 30 in Washington. Colbert, naturally, used fearmongering to get people to attend. “People should definitely book their hotel rooms now,” he said, “or their children might turn gay.”

I just love it. The “Rally to Restore Sanity” vs. “The March to Keep Fear Alive.” Perfect counterpoints. There are reports that they have indeed reserved public spaces; if it is in fact for real, there could be a huge turnout for this. [Having now watched the show, I can’t believe it’s not real; Stewart was insistent.]

What would be so great, just a perfect cap to all of this, would be if they had way bigger crowds. I mean, way bigger, so big that Fox could not possibly deny Whose Crowd Was Bigger, as they seem to really get off on that kind of thing. I wish I could go–my diaper is all ready to go–but I don’t know if the Friday evening flight from Tokyo would get me there in time.

And gee whiz, what’s that with the timing? Three days before the midterm elections? What a coincidence!

You know, my only hope in all of this is that the polls are in fact wrong, that there’s a dynamic being missed here. That too many Tea Party radicals are getting too much attention; that the polls are not counting “registered voters” in their prediction of Republican landslides; that Dems bunch up their pantyhose and actually push the Tax Break for People Who Are Not Rich and force Republicans to either vote for it or vote against it, either one being a good thing for Democrats. That Obama will be as effective on the campaign trail as he was two years ago. That the sane moderates, even the ones who say they don’t like the Democrats, will, when faced with a voting machine, wake up, come to their senses, realize the insanity they face, and do what they did in 1992–vote the way they know is the only reasonable way.

Sarah Palin on how the latest whackjob Tea Partier, Christine O’Donnell, is going to have to campaign:

She’s going to have to learn very quickly to dismiss what some of her handlers want. Remember what happened to me in the VP. […]

So she’s going to have to learn that, yes, very quickly. She’s going to have to dismiss that, go with her gut, get out there, speak to the American people. Speak through FOX News and let the Independents who are tuning in to you, let them know what it is that she stands for, the principles behind her positions.

Yes, she should go the Palin route and simply avoid any media organization that will ask her questions she doesn’t want to answer. (“In what way, Charlie?”) And it’s not because Fox News is a biased source which will only empower her, ignore or dismiss her negatives, and trash her opponent. It’s because Fox is the only fair and balanced news organization out there who won’t join the liberal media campaign to unfairly malign any reasonable conservative who comes along, by asking them savagely biased “gotcha” questions like, “What newspapers do you read,” or “What are your foreign policy credentials?”

The magical powers of perspective should not be misunderestimated.

I have complained often in the past about how the airlines are slowly squeezing the seats together in Economy class so they can get yet another and another row of seats they can get a bit more money out of every flight. Domestic flights are bad enough, but for international flights, it’s sheer torture, even without the other usual hazards of airline travel (people who sit next to you being second on the list).

I remember way back when “Economy” seats were far enough apart that you could have a window seat, and with passengers in the two seats next to you, you could still stand up and exit the row without them getting up. After a few years, you had to squeeze by, and they had to angle their knees to help you. Today, it is a physical impossibility to exit without your neighbors getting out of their seats (unless you are five years old or have the ability to pass through solid matter).

Well, they’ve got their game plan to make it even worse. Witness the next generation of airline seats, the “SkyRider” design:

28 inches between seats. Keep in mind that there are a lot of people who are more than 28 inches from back to front. (One has to wonder if there are laws which do not allow you to charge people a premium for transportation based on their physical makeup, especially if it entails progressively squeezing people to get more money from them.)

I saw this a few days ago, but seeing Sean post on it brought it back to mind. Note that in the illustration above, they do not depict a person between the rows, and for an excellent reason. Forget not being able to open your laptop, this design will make it impossible to get out your iPad. Or get out of your seat without an complex system involving cables and a hoist.

As it happens, I have special connections within the industry, and have acquired a design schematic of the next generation seat design after the SkyRider, borrowing from “classic” models:

OK, slight exaggeration. But you know they would if they could. How far are we evolving, where we are on track toward paying for this.

The Internets strike again:

It always astonishes me how baldly people against same-sex marriage can continue forward despite the blindingly obvious logical fallacies inherent with their position. That somehow, gays getting married will ruin the definition of marriage, when a two-thirds divorce rate, sham marriages, spousal abuse, adultery, and so many other ills among heterosexual marriage apparently are not as difficult as problems–at least not so bad that these people would suggest banning marriage for those who cause these problems. No, it’s just the gays, apparently, that need to be stopped.

That the form of “traditional marriage” can be defined as “one man, one woman” when for so much of history it was not, or that its purpose can be defined as being for procreation, when for so much of history it was not. Words like “tradition” and “procreation” seem like excuses, terms of convenience, ways to define marriage so as to specifically exclude gays, rather than to sum up a consistent view of the institution. If I do not intend to have children, should my marriage be banned? Or as a heterosexual, do I get a bye?

Sadly, they do seem to be right in one sense: historically, in the United States, at least, marriage has often been defined by exclusion, as a way of shutting out those people and practices that the “less progressive” disapprove of. (Shhh! We can’t call them “bigots,” that’s intolerant.) Slaves were not allowed to marry (even though they were one-man-one-woman and usually bonded with procreation as a result), and interracial couples were not allowed to marry (same note in this case as well). One consistent tradition of the institution of marriage as defined by the “less progressive” has been its use as a social weapon, reserving it only for those we want to include in our little club.

Which is how Jesus intended it.