Probably the greatest musical expression of unbridled joy is the “Ode to Joy”, the fourth movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks, so some versions of the Ode to take you soaring and lift your spirits.
Well, I think I’ve just reached my level of bullshit tolerance.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Barack Obama sliced and diced the assembled luminaries, depicting them as trivial ratings chasers more eager to pursue a scoop so as to drive ratings and sell more advertising, than serious practitioners of the art of journalism, plying their craft as a public trust so that free citizens in a free republic can be fully informed about the issues of the day so as to render sober decisions about their own lives.
The poster child for this frivolous “journalism” is Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, who seems to have upped her Obama-dismay to 11 over the past few weeks. The President’s take down of her article saying that he was nothing like Andrew Shepherd, fictional president in “The American President”, is a beauty to behold.
Maureen Dowd said I could solve all my problems if I were just more like Michael Douglas in “The American President”. Michael, what’s your secret, man? Could it be that you’re an actor in an Aaron Sorkin liberal fantasy?
Obama’s entire WHCD speech was a master class in telling a captive audience just how useless they were to the wider country’s problems which needed urgent solutions.
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
—Theodore Roosevelt, in a speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910
If one were to read the usual—and not so usual—quarters, one would be led to the conclusion that President Barack Obama orchestrated the entire deal which vacated the sequester on the FAA, while leaving intact the sequester on every other segment of our government. One would be forgiven for thinking that Obama signed legislation which had been passed in the teeth of stern Democratic opposition, siding with Republicans and perhaps a rump of conservative Democrats.
One would not learn from reading in these quarters that the FAA “fix” passed by unanimous consent in the Senate.
Now, this is more Senate Newspeak, so what does it mean? Simply put, the measure was put before the Senate, and not one single Senator voiced an objection to it. Not Bernie Sanders. Not Elizabeth Warren. All the paragons of the Left signed off on the bill.
The middle of the week brings us the continued terrorist attacks which occur on our streets every day due to gun violence and the easy availability of Time to turn the world rightside upguns. The Senate took up a measure to expand background checks for gun purchases. Although it had majority support, it didn’t have the magic number of 60 yeas, and thus died. (Also killed outright were bans on assault weapons and large magazines. More on that later.)
Let’s not kid ourselves: the background check legislation was, at best, a small step. As Brad Plummer writes in the Washington Post:
The Manchin-Toomey compromise bill was a scaled-back version of earlier proposals to extend background checks to unregulated private gun sales. Many gun experts argued that the slimmed-down proposal would have only marginal effects on gun violence. But even that small step couldn’t get through the Senate.
“But even that small step couldn’t get through the Senate.”
Let that sentence sink in. Our political culture is in such straits that a minor, flawed reform to gun laws could not get through the Senate. Never mind the stricter legislation on magazine size and a ban on assault weapons—legislation which went down to decisive defeats before the background check bill came up. And, of course, the GOP-controlled House has consigned Newtown to the memory hole. It has played no meaningful role in trying to ameliorate the gun violence epidemic infecting the nation; it’s quite happy allowing the carnage to continue. It is, a priori, the price of “freedom”.
It would be quite easy to throw in the towel. A significant chunk of politicians are bought and paid for by deep-pocketed special interests—and at a very cheap price. The worst among them sail to re-election time and again, thanks to that flow of money, and to an electorate which, let’s face it, is too stupid to realize that the men and women for whom they vote couldn’t give a damn about their real needs. Or, maybe they do realize it, but they hold those needs beneath the need to maintain a fiction of a country that never existed and is threatened by the hordes of “Others” about to swamp them.
We don’t know if he was a Christian, a Muslim, or a Jew.
We don’t know if he was left wing or right wing.
We don’t know if it was done with a political purpose in mind, or if his mind merely snapped, lashing out at a society of which he wasn’t a part.
At this point, we know nothing about the bomber at today’s Boston Marathon.
But I will not cower in fear.
I will not listen to the ones with the megaphones who are already using this as an excuse to settle political scores.
I will not hide in my room, or acquiesce to give up a bit of freedom for safety. Giving up one rarely secures you the other.
I will not pound my chest and say that the answer is more guns on the street, so that we’re all deputized, armed, dangerous.
I will not let hatred blind me.
I will run towards the danger, like hundreds of citizens did in Boston.
I will open my home to those who suffered and lost.
I will stay resolute that fear will not prevail.
I will trust that this country will feel its way towards doing the right thing. It always, eventually, does.
Our instinct is to give up on our fellow humans. One of my first reactions was to root for global warming to do its worst.
But that hopelessness is the one thing which will condemn us to extinction.
Hope is what keeps humanity going; it’s the only thing keeping us from falling into the abyss. Once we’ve lost hope, we’ve lost what makes us human.
I will not lose hope.
We don’t know what prompted the bomber to commit his act. But one thing we can assume with a clear certainty is that hope was lost in him.
I will not be that man.
I will not succumb to the thought that humanity is a cesspit, doomed to fall. One man bombed a race. Hundreds raced towards the explosions, to help out their fellow human beings. I’m with them.
According to Think Progress, the state of Tennessee is prepared to pass a law that ties welfare benefits to the academic achievement of recipients’ children. As the article states:
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, and Rep. Vance Dennis, R-Savannah. It calls for a 30 percent reduction in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits to parents whose children are not making satisfactory progress in school.
If one does a search on Google News for “drug testing for welfare”, one learns that at least 36 states have passed or introduced legislation requiring drug testing for welfare applicants. (The GOP controlled House is also mulling similar legislation.) The first state to do so was Florida. The ACLU took the state to court and had the law blocked; its future is uncertain. But the purported purpose of the law—to save money—didn’t quite achieve its goal.
In the four months that Florida’s law was in place, the state drug tested 4,086 TANF applicants. A mere 108 individuals tested positive. To put it another way, only 2.6 percent of applicants tested positive for illegal drugs — a rate more than three times lower than the 8.13 percent of all Floridians, age 12 and up, estimated by the federal government to use illegal drugs. Now might be a good time to remind folks that in the debate over the bill, Gov. Rick Scott argued that this law was necessary because, he said, welfare recipients used drugs at a higher rate than the general population.
None of these laws have been passed or proposed with an eye towards helping welfare recipients get off the dole and move into work. The case of Florida shows that the stated purpose has no relation to reality. But what these laws in fact do is reinforce one of the Right’s favorite bogeymen: the unworthy poor, the welfare queens, the takers leeching off the makers.
