These decorations are an easy, relatively inexpensive way to acknowledge the holiday. They require little or no thought beyond which one to buy and where to buy it. The set-up is easy, so is the clean up and off-season storage.

Easy is good.

The unfortunate trade-off is that most inflatables are hollow caricatures of tradition and a lousy representation of the individuals upon whose lawn they are displayed.

I took three classes in college with a professor who made every class read George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The essay warrants contemplation. The criticisms he makes of modern writing can be made of most modern pursuits. Holiday decorating for example.

He writes:

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. [...] If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don’t have to hunt about for the words; you also don’t have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious.

When you use ready-made decorations, you don’t have to untangle lights, build scarecrows or hang bats from trees. Just “gum together” a ghost and pumpkin that’s “already set in order by someone else” and you’re good to go. The result is cute, maybe. Mostly it’s uninspired and unremarkable.

The trouble with such thoughtlessness, Orwell writes, is that it feeds on itself:

[...] an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

It is rather the same thing that is happening to all arenas of our life. The more we choose to rely on the convenience of prefabricated expressions (of thought, holidays or anything else), the less effort we put into all aspects of our lives, and the more we become generic caricatures of ourselves.

Look at what passes for political discourse these days. The majority of people are vehemently arguing about which inflatable lawn ornament is better for the country – your goofy-grinned liberal scarecrow or my fat conservative, Disney witch.

The good news is that the condition is reversible – without taking a BB gun to the neighbors yard:

One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase [...] into the dustbin, where it belongs.

I suppose that means I’ll go outside and make a scarecrow.

What’s weird is his reason for not answering the question. Basically, he says there’s no way he can define “white culture” without getting himself in trouble. And that begs the question…why make a statement that claims Obama has a deep seated hatred for it? I mean, if you’re defending white culture, why would there be any reason to not define it?

Check out this cringe inducing video…

Let me clue you in to what Beck means when he talks about white culture: money. Because by making these idiotic claims he can tap into a small, but dedicated base of folks who think that the white culture is under attack from all sides and they’ll buy his books, watch his TV show and listen to his radio screeds.

In the end, Beck’s certainly no dummy, but if he’s not smart enough to navigate a simple interview with Katie Couric, well, he’s probably not long for this media world.

( Editor’s note: If you come over here and start claiming things about Beck that aren’t true or defend Beck with a bunch of vulgar language and throw insults around, your comment will be deleted. Do us all a favor and just don’t comment. )

Well, now we’ve got an analog to that and it comes in the form of this shameful screed by one of MSNBC’s newest commentators…

The Republicans lie! They want to see you dead! They’d rather make money off your dead corpse! They kinda like it when that woman has cancer and they don’t have anything for her…My God, Democrats, what’s wrong with you?! You can’t deal with these people, at all!

Isolated incident? Well, here’s more Ed unplugged a while back…

MSNBC is becoming unwatchable these days. I still like Hardball and Morning Joe, but good lord…what the hell is wrong with these people?

(h/t: NewsReal)

This is a difficult post to write. But some issues, no matter how distasteful, must be faced squarely. Sadly, the numbers speak for themselves. Racism is on the rise in this country.

Why the dramatic rise in racism now? I cannot answer that. Perhaps the problem was here all along and we simply chose not to see it. It was easy to ignore in the months following the election when Obama’s favorability rating was over 70%. In the euphoria of his election, many of us became too complacent about racism. With a 70% favorability rating for the President elect, we were all too willing to overlook the 30% of racist Americans who remained. It was an easy mistake to make, the racists were outnumbered by more than two to one.

Few now remember that November 2008 to January 2009 was the golden age of the new post-racial post-partisan America, ushered in by the election of our new President. Our pundits in the mainstream media helped us to understand and appreciate the deep import of the election, and the possibility of finally turning the page on our racist history.

Maureen Dowd – Nov. 9, 2008:

Joe Klein in Time – Nov 5.2008:

Keith Olbermann – Nov 5, 2008:

Jimmy Carter on Jim Lehrer – August 25, 2008

“But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there’s a spirit and a bright, new hope for America within this country and around the world. And if Obama is elected, which I think he is going to be, then I think that will be the transforming race for the end of racism, and prejudice, and hatred between races in this country.”

As always, Jimmy Carter was far ahead of the curve, predicting the golden age of a post-racial America months before it came into being.

That was then. This is now. What happened? Perhaps it was just too easy to pretend the problem was not there.

Here are the facts. Racism has been rising steadily over the last few months. In recent polls, President Obama’s approval number has dropped from 70% to 50%. This means the percentage of racists in this country has risen from 30% to 50% – a 67% increase in only eight months! Even more alarming, close to one out of two Americans are now racist. We have reached a tipping point. If this trend continues, the racists will soon be in a majority. Now, more than ever, we need the pundits and sages of the mainstream media to speak out. Racism is so insidious, so deep rooted, that we may not even know whether we are racists, unless or until bloggers and pundits make that determination through psychoanalysis.

Some of those same strong media voices who were sweeping the racism problem under the rug in January, are finally sounding the alarm now that the full scope of the problem has been recognized.

Dowd – Sep 13. 2009:
Representative Wilson shouting from the floor? = Racism

Bravo. How brave, this extraordinary willingness to make specific accusations of racism on the basis of nothing more than the imaginary voices in her head. Of course, it would be even braver if Maureen lived in a country, where, unlike here, she and her paper could be sued for slander. Sadly, some do not appreciate her principled stand against imagined racism. What are we to make of those such as blogger Clifton, who shamelessly asserts: “There is enough real racism in the world as it is; you are not helping anyone by making sh*t up!” Clearly Clifton is a racism denier.

KLEIN on Scarborough – Sep 11. 2009:
Protests in opposition to Obamacare? = Racism

Joe, keep speaking out. The administration is in denial over the real reason for the opposition to their policies. Your clear dispassionate analysis may yet snap them out of their dangerous delusions. What could they be thinking? Could anyone really believe that – a President who signs an earmark stuffed budget that quadruples the deficit, pushes through an almost $1T pork laden stimulus package that does not stimulate, takes over car companies, bails out investment bankers, institutionalizes the Bush/Cheney unitary executive, is pushing massive new energy taxes and wants an additional $1T in new health care entitlements – would raise strong opposition? Nonsense. Who could be opposed to such enlightened policies? The opposition is obviously racist. That is the only rational explanation.

OLBERMANN – Sep 8, 2009 “[video]:
Forced resignation of Van Jones? = Racism

I cannot sufficiently express my gratitude to Keith Olbermann for stepping up yet again. The attack on Van Jones was so clearly rooted in racism that one must assume anyone who would suggest otherwise is also a de-facto racist. In this context, it was particularly shocking to me that Willie Brown, Democrat, former Mayor of San Francisco, frequent MSNBC contributor, and a man who worked directly with Van Jones would sadly be revealed to be a racist. From his column Sunday:

Willie Brown – a racist. Who knew?

Jimmy Carter – September 16, 2009
Joe Wilson outburst, Protests, Obamacare opposition? = Racism

NYT – “The former president first weighed in on Tuesday during a question-and-answer session at the Carter Center in Atlanta. Mr. Carter responded to a question about Mr. Wilson’s eruption by saying that he did believe it was laced with racism. Coupling the Wilson remark with the images in recent weeks of angry demonstrators wielding signs depicting Mr. Obama as a Nazi or as Adolf Hitler, Mr. Carter said: “There is an inherent feeling among many in this country that an African-American should not be president.” He lamented the tone of disrespect toward the current president, adding: “Those kind of things are not just casual outcomes of a sincere debate on whether we should have a national program on health care. It’s deeper than that.”

Only Jimmy Carter could speaks with sufficient moral authority to attribute Joe Wilson’s outburst, tea party protesters and health care opposition all to racism. We need that clarity now more than ever. But the more these thought leaders speak out, the more racism deniers come out of the woodwork. As if they would know better than Jimmy Carter what real racism looks like. And again, the administration refuses to face reality.

With the ex-president adding his voice to the media voices speaking out loudly and clearly, perhaps we can beat back the scourge of racism once again. While we may never again return to the golden age of November 2008 to January 2009 when only 30% of the country were racists, perhaps we can at least reverse the trend and insure that the racists remain a minority of the voters in this country. Before it is too late – like – before the next election.

^{Notes on this post: As is often the case with my posts, the idea for this piece emerged from a recent comment thread here at the Donk. A version of this post was cross-posted at Divided We Stand United We Fall where it garnered some interesting comments, and was subsequently linked at The Crossed Pond generating an even longer and more interesting comment thread.}

And yet this will become the highest rated show on cable television. Guaranteed.

*sigh*

Updated:
Some folks in the comment section have told me that he was just playing a joke, misspelled it on purpose, etc.

Yeah, that’s why in the first clip he spelled Oligarchy and in the second clip below he’s spelling Oligarch.

Yeah…right…what happened to that Y the next day?

Good times.

Given how intellectually dishonest she was in the past, especially about issues like the Bridge to Nowhere, you knew something like this might pop up.

Apparently she made the following proclamations during Healthcare Decisions Day in Alaska in April 2008.

Here’s the relevant text…

WHEREAS, Healthcare Decisions Day is designed to raise public awareness of the need to plan ahead for healthcare decisions, related to end of life care and medical decision-making whenever patients are unable to speak for themselves and to encourage the specific use of advance directives to communicate these important healthcare decisions. [...]

WHEREAS, one of the principal goals of Healthcare Decisions Day is to encourage hospitals, nursing homes, assisted living facilities, continuing care retirement communities, and hospices to participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information to the public about advance directives, as well as to encourage medical professionals and lawyers to volunteer their time and efforts to improve public knowledge and increase the number of Alaska’s citizens with advance directives.

WHEREAS, the Foundation for End of Life Care in Juneau, Alaska, and other organizations throughout the United States have endorsed this event and are committed to educating the public about the importance of discussing healthcare choices and executing advance directives.

And so it goes…

By the way, Palin posted some more about end of life counseling on her Facebook page, and this time she’s trying to justify her previous post by suggesting that just because end-of-life counseling can be offered if a patient comes into a facility with serious enough conditions to warrant it that this somehow means that the government would be in the business of putting people to death.

Ugh.

Seriously, I don’t get this dumb strategy of painting town hall folks, whether they’re astroturfers or not, as Un-American, like the KKK, etc. It’s not only counterproductive, it’s completely lazy. You could easily marginalize purposefully rowdy people with the facts of the debate and yet this is what we get?

As I’ve said before, if health care reform fails I’m laying the responsibility for that right on the doorsteps of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. This systematic demonization of protesters is ridiculous as they had absolutely no problem with anti-war protesters 3 years ago.

More as it develops…

I think that they are all correct in their assessments.

I do want to highlight one thing that Willie Geist touched upon. Around the five minute mark, Geist posits the idea that, had some commentator on the left made a similar comment about George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, that Mika et al. might not have been as upset. I think that is an eye-opening question and should be given some thought.

Personally, I think Beck is way out-of-line for his comment if for no other reason than Barack Obama was raised by white folks. His mother and grandparents, about whom he writes and talks at great lengths, were far and above the largest contributors to his upbringing. So, for Beck to merely suggest, much less bluntly state as fact that the President has a ‘deep-seeded hatred for white people or the white culture’ is nothing short of irrational.

I do wonder whether Lawrence O’Donnell is correct; will Glenn Beck own up to his statement? Will he admit that he accused the President of racism? Or, as O’Donnell suggests, will Beck claim that he never made the remarks?

[cross-posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

Here’s the clip…

At a certain point, even if you are Fox News, you really have to start wondering if Beck is all there or is just making stuff up for the sake of ratings. Because, either way, he is such a hack of a commentator that you’d think they have a hard time allowing him on air.

By the way, like my Ann Coulter policy, I’m getting close to never posting anything Beck says ever again. I’m almost there. Wonder what will push me over the edge.

So their argument is basically, “Because Universal Health Care brings about more diversity, it’s more likely to attract terrorists because Muslims will fit in and not be noticed. Best to have private practices where white, Christian doctors make up the majority. That way they’ll spot the Muslims who are likely to be reading jihadist web pages at work.”

Fox News: Breeding Ground For Morons?

So if you desert you should die? I understand being brought up on charges if you leave and then lie about it, which is possible what’s going on here, but the last time I heard anything about a court martial for deserting, the punishment didn’t include death.

There are few things I hate, but this type of nonsense is one of them.

Ugh.

Matt Drudge creates the news so you don’t have to…

As the summer begins, White House watchers have spotted a new look by President Obama: The Evil Eye!

Staffers have joked about the menacing glance, which comes when the president meets with world leaders who are not aligned with his progressive view.

White House photographers have captured the “evil eye” in recent weeks, during sessions with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Colombia’s Alvaro Uribev.

I love the smell of partisan hackery in the afternoon…

While I understand just what the folks at OpenLeft.com are doing, I think it’s downright lame.

When Bill O’Reilly sends out his goon squad to harass people with whom he disagrees, it ain’t right. [I've railed against it before] It’s also ain’t right when someone who disagrees with Bill O’ (and Fox News in general) does the same thing. Stooping to the level of ‘ambush journalism’ is wrong — regardless of political ideology.

[cross posted at ThePajamaPundit.com]

By the way, most of you know I don’t make it a habit to embed clips from Olbermann’s show on the site, but this is a notable exception because that’s the venue Muller chose to disclose the information. And I think he comes off rather well in comparison to Olbermann’s sullen partisan soldier routine.

Rush keeps slinging the silly…

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh Wednesday that if former Secretary of State Colin Powell is going to keep criticizing the GOP, he may as well leave the party and become a Democrat—adding that Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was “purely and solely based on race.”

“He’s just mad at me because I’m the one person in the country that had the guts to explain his endorsement of Obama,” Limbaugh said on his radio show. “There can be no other explanation for it.”

“What Colin Powell needs to do is close the loop and become a Democrat, instead of claiming to be a Republican interested in reforming the Republican Party. He’s not. He’s a full-fledged Democrat,” Limbaugh said.

I’m sure Democrats would love to have Colin Powell, but I don’t think that’s likely. If anything he’d simply leave the Republican party and become an Independent. And in many ways he already has.

Thoughts?

If he weren’t such a cult hero, I wouldn’t even bother, but the following is insane…

Parents deserve educational choices; choice is what this country was founded upon. Government’s controlling and monopolizing education is just another avenue for usurping power and control on the slippery slope to socialism. And it’s unbecoming for our republic, whose Founders created a system of freedom, choice and minimal government intervention.

Is it merely coincidental that the private choice of home schooling was outlawed by the Soviet state in 1919, by Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1938, and by Communist China in 1949?

Is America next?

Yes Chuck, America is next.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

One moderate Republican apparently wasn’t enough.

From CNN:

Conservative host Rush Limbaugh said Tuesday he isn’t sorry to see Arlen Specter leave the GOP — and that many Republicans wish the Pennsylvania senator would take a few others with him when he goes.

“A lot of people say, ‘Well, Specter, take [Sen. John] McCain with you. And his daughter [Meghan]. Take McCain and his daughter with you if you’re gonna…” he told listeners, dissolving in laughter.

“…..It’s ultimately good. You’re weeding out people who aren’t really Republicans,” he said.

Well, I’m sure Olympia Snowe is on his list now too.

Nevermind that moderate Republicans represent true Republican ideals instead of the far right strain that Limbaugh subscribes to and has pushed the past 30 years.

Good times.

Janeane Garofalo…

(UPDATE: Apparently the first video was taken down. In it Garofalo argued that the tea partiers were racist, and it was mixed with a clip from 2003 where she said that ALL dissent was patriotic. So that was obviously a case of intellectual dishonesty. However, now I’m simply going to embed the clip from last week where she talked about the protestors being racist. That’s damning enough.)

Stephanie Miller…

This morning, I listened to about 10 minutes of the Stephanie Miller Show on Air America as I ran out to get a coffee.

During the mind-numbingly inane banter (Miller’s show makes Fox & Friends sound like the Oxford Union Debating Society), Miller and her sidekicks started talking about a sign at one of the tea party protests that apparently said, “Don’t Tax Me, Bro.”

Okay. Not very funny. But Miller’s take?

“Isn’t ‘Bro’ pretty clearly a slang reference to African-Americans?”

Miller’s sidekick: “Yeah, it’s pretty thinly-veiled racism.”

Ed Schultz…

Schultz actually said that Fox News anchors were secretly hoping for shots to be fired, for government officials to be killed, and for an ensuing violent overthrow of the government. He strongly implied that tea party organizers want Obama to be assassinated. He equated Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s statement in support of the 10th Amendment this week as akin to support for a bloody revolution.

This guy isn’t fringe, either. DCCC chairman and Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen was one of Schultz’s guests today. Schultz also has an evening show on MSNBC, where Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs will be his guest tonight.

There’s no doubt that there was a fair amount of unreasonable anti-Obama sentiment on display last week, but to see folks like Garofalo, Miller and Schultz paint tea party participants with such a broad brush is simply indefensible.

And shame on those in the left wing media who don’t call out their counterparts when they spread nonsense like this.

UPDATE:
The video from above is back up…

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning…

Take this segment from Your World with Neil Cavuto where a guest host just flat out says it’s his “duty” to promote the tea parties.

What does one say to this except how can Fox call themselves a news station anymore? Because between this and Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the channel has become a 24/7 anti-Obama activism machine. It is CRAZY.

What’s more, and as the title suggests, I think they’re actually destroying any credibility the tea parties could hope to have because who’s going to believe that these are actually grass root gatherings? I mean, who does Fox really think they’re fooling? Do they genuinely believe they can snow the rest of the electorate into buying this? Independents are laughing at this.

However, let’s face it, if you really scratch the surface on who’s organizing these events you’ll find a who’s who list of traditional right-wing money folks like Richard Mellon Scaife, etc. So these were never grass roots events in the first place. And, to their credit, it’s not like they’re hiding any of these facts. So good for them for being being transparent, but somebody needs to to tell them they can’t fake the grass roots. Because ultimately it’s nothing more than a glorified media event with no true passion behind it.

And that’s the difference between something like this and the Ron Paul movement last year. That had passion behind it. Ultimately Paul was revealed to be a fairly flawed messenger, but his message still inspired. What message is inspiring the tea party folk? Obama is a socialist? More tax cuts? Again, there’s no “there” there because it wasn’t created by the grass roots. And Fox News covering these events like they’re conservative “love ins” only guarantees that failure will come quicker as the hungry mouth of the right wing media rips away any pretense of authenticity.

So maybe I shouldn’t be frustrated by Fox after all. Because in their hurry to make the tea parties their own, they’re unwittingly destroying them.

Moving on…

So then, it looks as if the founder of Daily Kos and one of its contributors has gone WAY over the line when it comes to tying conservatives to a recent shooting in Pittsburgh.

Tommy Christopher of Political Machine took this screencap of the tweeting and re-tweeting that went on…

Christopher’s reaction…

When I saw his re-Tweet, I was stunned, and I hadn’t even heard about the Pittsburgh shooting yet. I thought he was talking about the shooting in Binghamton. When I looked back at Houle’s Tweet, and I found the story of the three policemen who were killed yesterday, I could not believe my eyes. As you can see, I tried to get Markos to explain his re-Tweet, unable to believe that these two would be joking about this at all, let alone hours after the tragedy. [...]

Maybe there’s something wrong with me, but I think this is shameful. This is the kind of thing I would probably delete at Political Machine. I don’t even see the humor in it, even setting aside the heartless ghoulishness involved.

More broadly, I’m starting to feel like a lot of the liberal blogosphere is forgetting what it means to be a liberal, or maybe I’m using the wrong word. After 8 years of mortal kombat with the right, we’ve swung too far, become too belligerent.

I stopped reading Daily Kos a long time ago because I got sick of the constant, divisive rhetoric that clogged every post, and such is the reason why a blog like ours exists. But taking it to the next level and using the broad brush to say that conservatives are cop killers is beyond the pale. And the Cheney joke was in extremely poor taste.

In other words, dumb knows no party and we’re provided examples of that every single day.

I wrote a post earlier today about this very thing, cautioning top right wing voices from throwing out irresponsible conspiracy theories lest it poison the debate. Does it surprise me that the left has equally irresponsible voices? Of course not. Conflict sells on blogs and nobody knows that better than a guy like Markos. But hopefully people will start growing tired of it and stop reading them altogether.

Seems unlikely, but a guy can hope.

(h/t: Captain Ed)