Distressed Gentlefolk: January 2012

The End of Jane Addams Hull House in Chicago

This is a tremendous blow to the community and to the overall history of the city of Chicago. This effectively snuffs out one of the few remaining links that people have to their past.

When someone brings up "the good old days," remind them that women used to live in routine fear of being beaten to death by alcoholic husbands and that children were routinely neglected and abandoned. That's what went on in the good old days, and that's what still goes on today, and that's what Jane Addams Hull House fought against for 122 years until the money ran out and the lights got turned off.

Tomorrow, someone is going to be in need of assistance, and this organization won't be there. What a tragedy.

Politifact Rolls Over and Goes Belly Up

Once a wingnut shill shack gets caught trying to stink up the place with crazy ideas, it's over. Politifact is just that sort of place and I'm ashamed to have ever linked to them. The idea of presenting ratings and assessments for the statements made by politicians is an excellent one, but in the hands of hacks it becomes a joke. Politifact made itself into an irrelevant joke with this issue, and I'm done with them.

I think that the idea is a good one, but it needs a level of truth and honesty that is rare. It isn't enough to be bipartisan since being bipartisan in the modern sense means tolerating the "working the refs" efforts of a good many liars on the right and the purity trolls of the left. Where are you going to find another mega-blogger like Nate Silver? That's what an idea like this needs. It needs someone with the political acumen to spend 12 or 15 hours a day in the weeds on this issue.

Politifact tried to be like Nate Silver. Instead, we got Confederate Bob's Beauchamp Boogaloo.*

*Yes, I got that here.

Senator Rand Paul Does Have Some Points Here

I find myself in agreement with what Doug Mataconis is saying here. What happened to Senator Rand Paul is very much a comment on how the way we travel and secure ourselves is broken. But, there is a part here that is fairly dangerous and that's the third paragraph that I've posted above, which is where he goes off on a tangent. To say that he "knows" why the machine didn't go off the second time is laughable. That's pure conjecture on his part. How do we know that he didn't remove an item from his pocket the second time through?

Is Senator Paul qualified to assess the technology now? As far as that subject is concerned, Senator Paul should be careful about asserting his opinion as a fact.

But, there is one thing I don't get from this story and that is the sense that Senator Paul felt "entitled" or "special" and that's to his credit. There are plenty of people who go ballistic when they are asked for identification or when they are asked to submit to a routine search, and members of Congress are famous for the stock rhetorical question, "do you know who I am?"

Senator Paul is taking a very hand-on approach to this subject, and, out of his indignation, there might be a good debate on these issues. It is a broken process. He should have a choice about being scanned or patted down. He definitely should have been informed of his rights if he was, in fact, detained or in some sort of custody. And everyone needs to be treated fairly and respectfully.

If there's anything good to come out of this, I would say that an assessment of the whole security theater apparatus is long overdue.

There Is Nothing Wrong With Using a Cougar as a Mascot

Technically, Courtney Cox is not a cougar. She just plays one on television.

Now, this is ridiculous:

For a school in Utah to use the cougar as a mascot is entirely appropriate. This is a lot better than dipping into the issue of Native American names as mascots; and it's a lot better than calling yourself the turds or the magic underwear brigade.

The problem here is that these adults have applied something that applies to them to their children; they have applied the term "cougar" to children. There's nothing wrong with a school using a cougar as a mascot. I think people are smart enough to realize that the high school mascot uses the large feral cat and not the oversexed forty-something adult female.

Perhaps this incident says more about the maturity of the parents than anything else. Who are these people and how is it that they have the time to sit around and worry about such things?

I Can't Tell if This is Good or Bad

This is another one of those indicators that attempts to say something about our economy. The trouble is, there are good things here as well as bad things that defy an easy explanation.

When people are out of work, it becomes a serious drag on the economy. Their wages aren't going towards future enhancements, like new cars and new products (or upgrades of older ones). They're not paying taxes on their income and they're not paying sales taxes on what they buy. This, in turn, causes the government to come up short. What you put into the machine sustains the machine; thinking that you can stop putting money into it and get the same results is not a serious way in which to proceed. But, yes. You do have to keep things running at a sustainable level.

So, with older cars on the road, you see two things--one good and one bad. What's good is that cars are more dependable and of a high enough quality to stay on the road, on average, for at least ten years. The cars they were making back in the 1980s weren't that good; many of them were of such inferior quality that it was a stretch to get them to last seven years. What's bad is that there will be fewer and fewer new cars sold, and that, in turn will lead to cutbacks in the auto industry and maybe layoffs.

In any event, there isn't an easy answer. I do think we need to be less consumerist in nature and that we need to cut back on some of the things we consume. But I'm not a purist--we do need some consumption and some turnover or our economy will suffer.

These Jobs Are Headed For America

This is one of those rare examples of how jobs can be relocated into the United States as opposed to out of it. But are these good jobs?

I don't think Americans want genetically modified crops, either. In fact, this is probably going to end up being another "not in my backyard" situation. Either that, or they'll produce the genetically modified crops and sell them overseas. Well, except not in Europe, of course.

Statistics That No Republican Would Believe

If you tried to explain to the American people that their tax dollars are NOT being wasted when they go to help people in need, how many of them would actually believe you?

Jared Bernstein calls out Mitt Romney on his outrageous lies. Watch for Romney's people to start working the refs. It is "unfair" to expect a Republican to tell the truth about anything, ever, when it gets in the way of their Galtian ideology.

Statistics That No Republican Would Believe

So Much For Beating and Macing the Protesters

Even the indifference of the national news media couldn't make a dent in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Where are all the heavy-handed cops now? Where's the mace? Where are the rent-a-cops and their bigoted insults?

This is going to be an interesting election year. People are going to flock to the OWS banner in the spring, if not before, and make their voices heard.

If it was ever time for a movement to die of neglect and disinterest, it would be now. That does not appear to be happening.

The Cautious Nature of the German Gentlefolk

Don't expect me to be too harsh here--the article implies waste but I don't think you can call it a waste of money when it does, in fact, bring peace of mind.

The Germans appear to be a very cautious and careful group (there are exceptions of course). Based on living in Southern Germany now for about two years, I think there is an admirable trait expressed in planning and care for a "rainy day." We live in the Black Forest region; cutting and stacking wood appears to be a regular hobby with many people. It is common to see wood cut precisely and stripped of bark and dried and stacked and covered virtually everywhere. Over the course of two years, the same wood piles that were in place two years ago are untouched. Apple trees are groomed and harvested with regularity; apples are rarely wasted. Bricks and stones and anything of excess is saved and reused.

I think there is a cultural belief at work here; waste is wrong. Waste is to be avoided. But the act of doing things that, seemingly, don't save money is mitigated by the fact that doing these things brings peace of mind.

Towards a More Permanent Underclass

There are a lot of things to despise about this.

First of all, it hits poor people harder than anything else. And the poor are not the problem--the predatory financial class is the problem. Few, if any, are not creating jobs, they are destroying the American economy by gaming the system, and they know that they can buy their way out of political or legal trouble.

Second, it inflates the cost of education even more in this country to the point where it forces people to chase diplomas and certificates and pay the ever-increasing costs associated with them. If you have left high school, who do you have to pay in order to get GED training? That's right--a for-profit company that will cash in on the desperation created by this bill. And if you want to climb above the level where people are scrambling and competing and improve your situation, it makes it more expensive to get above the GED level because, after all, no one is just going to give you a degree. Especially if it is a for-profit outfit that, hooray, can now go on screwing people even more, thanks to this Congress.

Third, it wrongly cuts off unemployment insurance to people who have worked and who have earned their insurance benefits under the system. It allows the unemployment insurance system to keep money that was paid into it. It's not going affect the people who don't need unemployment, of course. They would be the ones walking away from their job with a buyout, a pension, and a golden parachute.

If the Democrats want to win this fall, they have to isolate and highlight issues like this--issues where the Republican Party, once again, screws the working poor and create a permanent underclass of people who are trapped and desperate and are made even more so by the prospect of losing their unemployment benefits simply because they don't have a GED.

Let the Irresponsible Speculating Begin

If this book amounts to anything more than secondhand fluff, I would be amazed.

It's not that I have a problem with the subject--far from it. I think the subject is ridiculous. I never cared when the stories about George and Laura Bush came out and I certainly didn't care in the 1990s. Using speculation to write about the marriage of two people who are in the public eye is like teaching brain surgery to kids with instructions derived from episodes of Jackass--it might look fun, but you don't want anyone to try to come up with their own version of what really goes on at home. But what does anyone expect from sources that probably aren't going to want their names associated with the little details they have leaked out to Jodi Kantor? Beyond what little she probably got from Eric Whitaker, does this even merit a book? Does the material in the book rate any sort of consideration given that it doesn't seem to be rising above the level of gossip?

Books like these are going to arrive on a regular basis now. They are intended to "enlighten" but what they really do is cheapen the office of the President. Do I care what goes on in someone else's marriage? No. I guess that's my failing as a citizen. Things that aren't my business don't interest me.

Does anyone really need to get inside the marriage of Barack and Michelle Obama?

Keith Olbermann is Unemployable

At some point, it is going to dawn on either Keith Olbermann or his employers that the only option they have left is to let him go and start his own company and be his own boss and make all of his own decisions.

As much as I admire Olbermann's abilities, he cannot sustain gainful employment with any company for very long. In the television world, his career looks fairly normal because no one lasts for very long; extended tenures are actually somewhat rare. But Olbermann is unemployable, and I don't think that those people at Current actually believed he would be blasting them like this. I think that they really believed he would be a willing partner in the ascendancy of their channel, and now they know otherwise.

This is a sad development because there are few, if any, options for people who want to have their voice heard. Olbermann was initially very much in tune with the Occupy Wall Street movement and champions causes that are left by the wayside by the traditional media. Where does he go from here? Into a bunker underneath his home, doing a puppet show while a lamp falls over?

Would This Be a National News Item if it Happened in Cleveland?

This seems to be a story driven more by where it is happening rather than what is actually happening. Criminal damage to property like this happens in a lot of American cities, but I don't think it would get this much attention (and thus, likely, fuel more car burnings through copycats and whatnot) if it hadn't gotten so much media attention.