Yesterday morning,  after watching “Up with Chris Hayes” (My never-miss-if-I-can-help-it, hands-down favorite political show on TV maybe ever — except for “The West Wing” and Rachel Maddow), I was aimlessly flipping channels, looking for something equally smart and fun (as IF!) when I got to what I thought should be C-Span but realized it couldn’t be because I thought I saw a wizard.

But I did!  I did see a wizard!  This particular wizard (on C-Span) looked like a bearded Harry Shearer and talked suspiciously like Harry Shearer would talk if he were playing a bearded wizard pretending he was running for president in the foremost state of New Hampshire.

This wizard was wearing a wide-shouldered mustard-colored, oddly flecked jacket and a very very very tall black wizard’s hat with what looked like a boot sticking out of the top of it.  He was seated on a dais along with five other white guys who claimed to be Democrats and who all had managed to get their names on the primary ballot in that all-important-if-you-want-to-be-president state of New Hampshire.

(NOTE:  It doesn’t take much to file for POTUS candidacy in the Granite state.  You have to be 35 years old and have lived in the U.S for 14 years.  You have to be able to put up a $1,000 fee, unless you’re indigent and can prove it, in which case the fee is waived. And you have to be able to convince two other people to serve as your delegate and alternate at the convention.)

This wizard’s name is Vermin Supreme and let me tell you, he’s no Harry Potter.  Not unless you think Randall Terry is Voldemort and he deserved what he got at the end of this vital forum, so important for all those white guys, Republicans and Democrats alike, who can’t get on the debate stage with the Big White Guys in order to tell the country why they should be president.  Of the United States.

But I’ll get to that.

So. What I had caught on C-Span three days before Tuesday’s first primary election in the entire country  was the last few minutes of a re-broadcast of a two-hour program called “Lesser-Known Candidates in New Hampshire Presidential Primaries”.  There are 44 candidates for president on the 2012 ballot in the crucial state of New Hampshire and in order to be fair to all of them, 32 of the least known (those who were not a part of a national debate) were invited to hold forth in the auditorium of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at St. Anselm College in Manchester on December 19, 2011.

The Republicans held the first hour and the Democrats the second.  (A smart move on the part of the planners who no doubt remembered Vermin Supreme from when he ran before, in 2008, in the exquisitely positioned state of New Hampshire.   Who wouldn’t want to make sure he was the last thing anyone would see before the cameras turned off, hoping against hope that everyone will have left by then, anyway?)

There were 10 Republican presidential candidates on the stage, pristine in their whitebreadness and raring to go.  The first, Bear Betzler, started things off by announcing that he’s “not that into politics”, but he did believe that the most important thing this country needs to do — the very most important thing — is balance the budget.

Timothy Brewer is running on the “Afterlife is possible, everyone lives forever, you can’t be destroyed” platform.  Mr. Brewer announced that something big is going to happen on December 21, 2012 and if you elect him president he’ll be in a position to fix it.

Dr. Hugh Cort is a famous counter-terrorism researcher and his message to the people is that Iran is planning a nuclear attack in the near future–16 months or less–and if you want to know more about it you can Google “Hugh Cort American Hiroshima”.  The end.

Randy Crow posted over 600 articles on his website before he himself brought it down. . .
. . .planes were flown into the World Trade Center by remote-control bombs. . . something, something.

John Davis told the audience that a couple of years ago God spoke to his heart to run for president.  He (John) wanted to do something nobody had ever done before so he decided to visit every county in the United States.  So far he has visit 1712 of them and the message he’s getting from the people he’s been speaking to is that people aren’t happy.  He’s “pro-God, pro-family and country, pro-second amendment, pro-doing the right thing.”  Oh, and “We can’t have God’s blessing when we kill a million babies and take prayer out of schools.”

Christopher Hill was next and talk about a duck out of water!  He’s working for “people in the middle class that are watching it disappear and homeless people that need our help.”  In a broken voice he said, “We’re called the lesser-known candidates.  Well, tonight we stand for the lesser-known Americans”, and my heart went out to him.  Someone needs to tell this good man that if he wants to be president and a Republican both, he’s going to have to stifle that kind of talk.

Jeff Lawman (aptly named, as he will tell you) says he follows the “traditional Republican platform” which, to him, means “the role of the capable is to assist the needy.”  He’s running a zero-dollar grass roots campaign.  (Oh, Jeff.  Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.  See last sentence in above paragraph.)

Benjamin Linn:  “The reason why I’m running is because America is in a big mess right now.”  He’s pro-life and pro-family and pro-marriage between a man and a woman because “marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is not normal.”

Michael Meehan: “I am not a politician, I’m a real estate broker and there’s no work so, uh, let’s go into politics, right?”  He’s been traveling the country and what he’s finding is that “yes, people are scared but I’ll let you in on a little secret.  People are nervous.”  He asks questions, and, “They don’t answer me stupid.  They think about it before they say it.”

And then there’s Joe Story:  “The 10 Commandments served as the basis of our common law when America was born as a nation.  Christian principals defined our existence.  The supreme court affirmed that we’re a Christian nation with liberty of conscience to all man, yet today America is in trouble.  We’ve failed to hold our elected officials accountable and we’ve become spoiled by the benefits that a government with unlimited funds have provided to us.  We have to take control and pray.”

And that, wrong-headed as it may have been, was the closest anyone on the stage came to remembering why they were on the ballot in the Number One State of New Hampshire.

So then came the second hour and it was the Democrats’ turn.

Ed Cowan (edcowan2012.com) is a writer-thinker who has been published on three continents.  Go to his website to see what he stands for.

Bob Greene:  “I have a Ph.D in Physics.  I have some very good news for you.  I’m here to tell you about thorium, an overlooked energy alternative.  A lifetime supply for a single person is about the size of a golf ball.  Go to greeneforoffice.org to learn all about it.”

John Haywood, Durham, NC, is for replacing for-profit health care with a public plan modeled on the British health care system.  Their system is run on about 42% of our cost and what we would be looking at is a savings of over a trillion dollars a year.  John is totally sincere, and I’m with John, of course.  Really nice meeting you, John.  John??

Edward O’Donnell followed John and I was finally beginning to think there was something real going on here.  Ed said, “We need love, kindness, tolerance, friendliness, forgiveness, second chances, and old-fashioned kindness.”  Ed is so passionate about this he says no guns, ever, anywhere.  Not even for hunting.  And while we’re at it, how about a non-violent foreign policy?   That was sweet and so refreshing.  So long, Ed.

So now we come to Vermin Supreme, the bearded guy with that impossible wizard’s hat. His opening statement started like this:  “Gingivitis has been eroding the gum line of this great nation long enough and must be stopped.  For too long this country has been suffering a moral and oral decay in spirit and incisors.  Our country’s future depends on its ability to bite back.  We can no longer be a nation indentured.  Our very salivation is at stake.  Together we must brace ourselves as we cross over the bridgework to the 23rd century.” (For full Vermin coverage, see video here.)

Vermin happened to be seated next to conservative Right Wing “Democrat”, Randall Terry, who warmed up the audience even more by saying, “I just want to know what did I do wrong, God, that I have to be on after that!” and then went on to attempt to answer his own question:  “Barack Hussein Obama may well go down as the worst president we have ever had.  The worst.  He is at war with life, liberty and justice. . . (something here about an unelected oligarchy). . .We’ve come to the insane place as a nation where we have killed over 52 million of our own children by abortion and that blood, like the blood of the slave, is crying out to God for judgment.  We will nevverrr restore the greatness of this nation while we are killing our own offspring.”

Poor John Wolfe (Chattanooga, TN) came next and I admit I was still dazzled by those other two and didn’t pay much attention.  I did catch that he believes our policies “are favorable to Wall Street and not to Main Street”, and “We need a progressive.”  Well, yes we do, John, and more power to you for getting it.  Too bad about the wizard and the wacko and your placement on the stage.  It’s the luck of the draw.  It’s how it goes.

And so it went.  Until we came to the Grand Finale, where Vermin the Wizard glitter-bombed Randall Terry after singing a campaign song to the tune of The Chicken Dance, thereby proving once and for all (or until 2016, whichever comes first)  just how very important  these First-In-The-Nation New Hampshire primaries really are.

(Oh, by the way, I don’t want to have to watch that two-hour debate again, so if you happen to watch it in its entirety could you count the times anybody mentioned the word “jobs”?  The closest I could come to a count was when the real estate guy said he was out of one.)

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

Newt Gingrich is obsessed with the plight of poor kids these days. He’s been all over the place talking about them, and I have to confess, the jollier he gets about his remedies for their plight, the more nervous I become.  It’s an odd turn of events and one rife with suspicion.  It’s Newt we’re talking about.  Newt, who eats mean for breakfast and swallows the seeds.

Newt, who put a contract out on an entire nation, namely ours, and is still fretting over the insistent existence of a labor movement that was scheduled to die circa Reagan.  (He’s got another, bigger contract ready to roll on Day One.  Fair warning.)

Newt, who sings “Only I can make this world seem right. Only I can make the darkness bright.  Only I and I alone can thrill me like I do and fill my heart with love for only me.”

And encores with the stirring, “For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels and not the words of one who kneels.  The record shows I took the blows and did it my way!”

That Newt.

(Let the record show Newt has so far ignored the first lines of the above tune.  The part where it says, “And now the end is near and so I face the final curtain…”. Yesterday, in fact, Newt told ABC’s Jake Tapper he WILL BE THE NOMINEE.  I guess that means all debates are off now?)

Ordinarily I wouldn’t care about Newt’s $60,000 per speech blabbings about stupid child labor laws and how really poor kids from really shiftless families will resort to stealing unless he steps in and puts them to work, but after some lengthy and intense investigation, I find I have barely an ounce of faith in this current century’s sanity.  That dimpled nasty man could very well be running things come January, 2013.

There are some who defend him by reminding us that there’s nothing wrong with kids doing a little work. The kids feel good about themselves and the upside is that, as Newt says, they can buy their own ice cream someday.  Nice, really, that.  In a sane world we might actually picture our sweet darlings helping out and getting paid a tiny reward, leaving everybody happy, happy, happy.

But that’s not what Newt means and that’s not how he put it.  This is how he put it:

“Start with the following two facts. Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works, so they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash’ unless it’s illegal.

I come around to this question. You have a very poor neighborhood. You have kids who are required under law to go to school. They have no money. They have no habit of work. What if you paid them part-time in the afternoon to sit at the clerical office and greet people when they come in? What if you paid them to work as the assistant librarian?  What if they became assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”

That’s not helpful, that’s hateful.  And full of hidden meaning.  What does it mean when Newt says, “You have kids who are required under law to go to school”?  Will there be an addendum to Newt’s 2ist Century Contract on America abolishing school attendance for “really poor kids” so they’ll have more time to do all that rewarding work?

When the kids take over as assistant clerks and assistant librarians and assistant janitors, what does that do to the work hours of the real clerks, librarians and janitors?  I’m reading between the lines and seeing part time jobs with no bennies for everyone as part of Newt’s grand plan.  He’s Newt, after all, clearly not Mr. Empathy.  If you’ve followed Newt at all you know how strongly opposed he is to equality of the masses — the kind of thing any signs of empathetic weakness might very well lead to.

Lots of kids work after school and weekends now, even amongst the “really poor”.  It’s what kids do when they get old enough.  They baby-sit, they do paper routes, they cut lawns, they wash cars, they run errands.  What they don’t do any longer is work in sweatshops under conditions that could maim or kill or rot the spirit.

From Utata Tribal Photography:  Lewis Hines, photographer, 1906 “Hines kept detailed notes on the children he photographed, including comments they made as he interviewed them. The twelve year old boy in the [above] photograph was unable to read or write. He’d been employed by a textile mill in Columbia, South Carolina for four years, since the age of eight. He told Hines, ‘Yes, I want to learn, but can’t when I work all the time’.”

Any student of history will tell you the reason we aren’t allowed to work kids like that any more is because the laboring masses organized and put a stop to the exploitation of children by the privileged few.  Newt the Historian seems to have forgotten that.

But on to other things Newt, because, again, there’s a mighty strangeness afoot:  The Great One told Sean Hannity over at Fox, apropos of nothing, that, “I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress.”

And, okay, I have to ask:  How many communists were there in congress?  Were they as hard on us as the teabaggers in congress today?  Can you give us a few tips on how to get rid of subversives?

For a couple of months now, we on the left have been marking the heady, exhilarating, organic spread of the Occupy Wall Street Movement and getting it that something unstoppable seems to be happening.  Think of it: The dedication, the precision, the impossible successes coming from a movement organized by ordinary hoi polloi. No backing by agenda-driven billionaires, no pseudo-intellectual input from think-tanks, no take-over by shady cabals.  It’s the stuff of miracles.

It’s the kind of citizen-driven wildfire effort we haven’t seen in this country since the days of the Civil Rights Movement.  Just as the march on Selma was the catalyst for a nationwide awakening to the need to end the rampant, blatant, often lethal, civil rights abuses in the South, the occupation of Wall Street woke us up to the possibility that change could come to the poor and middle classes suffering from decades of ruthless economic abuses perpetrated by the power brokers.

As we already know from past history, change of this magnitude takes vast crowds of hopelessly burdened people finally coming to the end of their patience, finally committing to a cause so essential to their well-being the only acceptable outcome is success.  It takes crowds so huge they can’t be ignored.  Crowds, in this case, not just on Wall Street but spread across the country in every city, every town, every public square.

What we couldn’t foresee was that the OWS Movement would move as quickly worldwide.   With that revelation came a clearer sense of responsibility, of stewardship, even in a movement that strives to remain leaderless.  (Remarkable, considering how easy it would have been to give in to egos, to celebrity, to the kind of fame that inevitably drags down instead of lifting up or moving forward.)

When ordinary Wisconsin citizens stormed the State House in Madison in the dead of winter early this year to protest the attempted theft of their bargaining rights, the die was cast.  They overtook the castle and they stayed.  Their occupation of the Peoples’ House opened doors to those in other beleaguered states–Michigan, Indiana, Ohio–and when attention had to be paid, when concessions, however slight, were made; when recalls were threatened and then carried out, it was like manna to a starving nation.  It energized us all.

But there comes a point when every such movement goes from simmer to a rolling boil, requiring an ever-watchful eye in order to prevent it from spilling over and ruining the entire project. With the OWS movement, it was only a matter of time before the cops would get pushy, before the city fathers would lose patience, before the opportunists with agendas of their own would infiltrate.  Past history dictates that much of the purity of any grand movement will be lost to influences beyond the movement’s control.  The ones that succeed are ready for whatever comes and take steps to move past it.  They succeed because they never take their eyes off the prize.

Huge movements like these — Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War, OWS — begin with and are sustained by a red hot anger.  It takes a hefty resolve on the parts of many to keep the anger laser-beamed to the source without allowing it to resort to the kind of rage that turns violent.  It’s an uphill battle, never made easier by time.  As the days and months go by without some kind of resolution, one side or the other is going to blow.  It happened in Oakland last week after a month-long confrontation with police.  Increasingly, we’re seeing police in riot gear, warranted or not.  Rubber bullets, tear gas and pepper spray are the weapons du jour.

Different factions are losing patience and are disrupting Occupy meetings, even when the organizers are on their side, as happened in Seattle with the “mic check” shout-out.

Winter is coming and the Movement is in danger of losing momentum.   Freezing temperatures will empty parks and squares within weeks and much of the activity will be moving indoors, out of sight.  It can’t come soon enough for a host of mayors, including NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg, who held a presser this AM announcing the plan to get the protesters out of Zuccotti Park so that crews can give it a good cleaning.  He took the opportunity to announce also that, while he’s a big supporter of First Amendment rights, he won’t be allowing overnighters at Zuccotti anymore.  Before the presser, the police were taking box cutters to the tents and arresting protesters who had been lulled into thinking it was okay to just hang around for a while.  A court order, issued soon after Bloomberg spoke, rescinded his actions, giving the use of the park back to the OWS bunch.  Bloomberg’s office says they’ll go back to court.  For now, Zuccotti Park is empty and any clear vision of the First Amendment is muddied once again.

Update:  The park is open but no more camping.  No more tents.  Sometimes you take your victories in smaller doses than you had hoped.  Onward.

So where do the Occupiers go from here?  Protesting in parks and on the sidewalks outside buildings, carrying predictable signs, remaining lawful within established confines — is that all there is?  How long before those efforts become ho-hum and easily ignored?

Is it time now?  Is this the point where the actual revolution begins?  Occupy Wall Street is planning a MASS NON-VIOLENT DIRECT ACTION on Thursday,. November 17.  It’s the next step for them and, as with any step forward in the revolutionary process, it’s not without its risks.

Poster by R Black.

So where will they go from here?  Are there real Anarchists out there?  Infiltrators?  If so, how many?  How are they when it comes to stamina?  Will violence erupt?  Will wiser heads prevail?  Will a clear leader emerge?

What will it take for this Movement to succeed?   Every report of infighting (and there is and always will be infighting), every report of concerted efforts by detractors (and there are and always will be detractors) needs to be offset by reports of solid consequential successes.  Every move needs to be shining a spotlight on the goal.

The goal is to rescue the country from the One Percenters and their enablers so that we can revive it and rebuild it. Anything else is ineffective, unproductive diversion, of no good use to the 99 percent who are finally beginning to see that change they can believe in is not only possible but probable.  What cruelty if, after all this, we veer off and let ourselves down.

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

Thursday, April 28 10 PM:  Is anything else going on these days besides the Wedding of the Century, The marriage of Katherine ( Kate) Middleton and William (Will) Mountbatten-Windsor?  (This time the wedding of the century really is the wedding of the century–the century is young and until another big wedding comes along this is it.)

Tonight the Big channels–E!,  MSNBC, CNN, BBC America–have all put together specials on tomorrow’s big day. The background, the real stories, the life histories of both Will and Kate,  as well as interviews with their families and anyone who has ever known them, from class-mates to haberdashers and hairdressers to people they’ve waved to on the street.  Right now BBCA is talking about the wedding of the son of Camilla Parker-Bowles.  Very chi-chi.  High society. Astonishingly irrelevant and even, maybe, just guessing, in really, really bad taste.

10:38:  On CNN’s Anderson Cooper they’re showing footage of Princess Diana being helped out of her carriage while her bridesmaids stand by.  Will it totally spoil the mood if I say that her bridal gown looked as if it had been made for a giantess and then tucked and pinned to fit little Lady Di?  Same with the bridesmaids.  Very odd.  But what do I know?  I’ve heard there were thousands of weddings world-wide where brides happily wore dresses that were near-copies of Diana’s.

(Did you hear about the guy who had pictures of Will and Kate tattooed onto his two front teeth?  It’ll wear off in about three months, depending on how often and how vigorously he brushes his teeth, but until then–they’re there.  It’s all here.)

10:55 PM:  Matt Lauer is excitedly talking about the wedding cake.  It’ll be big and beautiful and it’ll taste heavenly.  It’s a Royal cake so it can’t be anything less.  It just can’t.  (Looks like the mayor of London forgot to comb his hair tonight.  Sure hope he remembers tomorrow.  [Update:  He didn't])

11:00PM:  I’m off to bed.  Coverage starts at 3 AM EST.  I’m not kidding.  (No, I won’t be there, either.)

6:00 AM:  I’m up.   Kate is out of the funny, boxy limo and she’s beautiful and her gown is beautiful, if very similar to gowns I’ve seen on “Bridezilla” or elsewhere.  I’m a little disappointed, frankly.  But the tiara belonged to the Queen Mum and for some reason that makes me quite happy.

Here come William and Harry.  Harry is dressed in regalia that’s much more eye-popping than William’s.  Black and gold, compared to William’s more sedate red with blue banner.  One-upped.  Imagine.

I see Beefeaters lining the Cathedral aisle as Kate and her father make their way to the altar.  They really do look wonderfully Gilbert & Sullivan.  What are Beefeaters anyway?  I’ll look them up later, after the festivities.  [Okay, here it is.]

Yes, those Brits know how to throw a wedding.  Is Westminster Abbey the most gloriously ostentatious building you’ve ever seen in your life?

They’ve all met now at the altar and the sopranos are singing the high notes.  I think it’s about to begin. I’m sorry.  I can’t take my eyes off of Harry.  Is he adorable, or what?

Oh, wait, not yet.  Now the crowd is singing.  There’s Elton John.  And Victoria Beckham and that guy. Does Princess Anne ever smile?

The queen is lovely in Daffodil yellow but can’t seem to muster up much enthusiasm.  Prince Philip is looking peaked.  Lady in large blue hat is looking peaked, too. Come on, people!  It’s the Royal Wedding!  Lots of work went into this!

Okay, singing has stopped and the Archbishop of Canterbury just said “Dearly Beloved”.  Shhh, I need to hear this.

I grabbed this off of my TV.  Hope it’s okay, CNN.

They’ve spoken their vows and got through it without flaw.  Whew!  I won’t mention Diana’s mixing up of Charles’s many names.  No, I won’t.

6:20AM/11:20 AM:  It’s done!  The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have moved to the side of the altar and are now. . .standing there singing along with everybody in the cathedral.    Crowd scene.  Lots of fancy duds.  Camilla, true to form, is wearing a ridiculous hat, but this time she’s not alone.

An outside shot.  Crowds of Royal worshipers are seen but I can’t tell if they’re singing. Lots of happy flag-waving.

Kate’s brother James is reading from the scriptures or something, appealing to everyone to “present your bodies for sacrifice”.  What???   Is he reading the wrong passage?   “Extend hospitality to strangers”.  “Weep for those who weep”.  “Do not be haughty but associate with the lowly.”  “Do not claim to be wiser than anyone.”  What the heck?  Who invited him, anyway?

Long shot of the cathedral.  Took my breath away. I mean it.

Small boys singing in high voices.  (No, I’m not thinking what you’re thinking.)  Now the grown-up choir is joining in.  Lovely.  Simply lovely. I miss the Queen Mum.

St. Catherine of Sienna said “Be all you can be and you’ll set the world on fire”.   Speeches now, while Will and Kate sit obediently listening when I know they’re thinking, “Didn’t we just get married?  Why are they still talking? Aren’t we supposed to be walking up the aisle?  Will this never end?”

Shot of the crowd outside.  They’re getting restless.  Who knows what will happen if these guys don’t wrap it up soon?  Wide shot.  Huge screens out there showing the inside events.  Almost as good as  watching it on TV at home.

Will and Kate are back at the altar, standing alone.  Gorgeous scene.  Just saw the Palace Guard marching to somewhere.  The singing has stopped.  Kate and Will are kneeling now.  “Lord have mercy upon us.”  Now the Lord’s Prayer.  Now more preaching.  What an opportunity.  A captive audience,  inside and out.  It goes on and on, with the newlyweds still on their knees.  Good thing they’re young.

Now “Jerusalem” by William Blake.  Played at every British Rugby game, someone just said.  The Brits know all the words.  Nice song.  The crowd is waving Union Jack flags and cheering. Now the stirring British national anthem, “God Save the Queen”.  Everyone singing but the queen herself.

The Maid of Honor just bent over to lift the bride’s train.  Oh, my!  The cleavage!  They’ve walked behind the altar and are, I presume, leaving the building.  The music is swelling.  Shot of the cathedral from above.  Stunning camerawork.  Really.

Oh, I should have known.  Here come Will and Kate again.  NOW they’re finally walking up the aisle.  Kate is smiling and Will looks somber.  Ah, there’s a little uplift of the left side of his mouth. And now a full blown Diana-like shy grin.  All’s right again.

They’re standing in the doorway and the crowds outside are seeing them for the first time.  They’re going wild.  Confetti everywhere.  The bells are clanging.  The red,black and gold Cinderella-like carriage, the very same that carried Charles and Diana so long ago, has pulled up and Will is adjusting his white gloves.  They’re entering the carriage.  The bells are going wild.  Lovely couple.  They’re smiling at each other lovingly.  This could work.

They’re off.  They’ve mastered that Royal side-to-side wave with very little wrist action.  Prancing white horses.  Wide-spread jubilation (according to Piers Morgan, who ought to know).

Piers just reminded us that the sun is shining.  They’re really pleasantly surprised, since it’s England in April and heavy rain was actually predicted.  I seem to remember that the weather cooperated when Charles and Di were married, too.  So much for portents of good things to come.

They’re entering  Buckingham Palace and both Will and Harry have saluted as they enter the gates.  The Royal couple have exited the carriage and won’t be seen again until they appear on the palace balcony.  The queen is arriving behind them.  Prince Philip salutes as they enter the gate.  Charles and Camilla are in a carriage behind the queen.  Aerial view of the crowds.  Pretty impressive.

From now on it’s all talk.  Example:  “We have never seen Prince William kiss Kate.”  They can’t stop talking about the long-awaited first kiss.  They’re actually doing a minute-by-minute countdown until the Big Smooch.

Okay, they’ve kissed.  We’re done here.

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices here)

Michigan, our wonderful, beautiful jewel of a state–the only state in the union that looks like a mitten reaching up to grab a leaping rabbit, the only state surrounded on three sides by three different really Great Lakes, the only state that can lay claim to both Vernor’s Ginger Ale and Sanders Hot Fudge Sauce, has been in the news a lot lately.

Not because we’ve finally been discovered and people are wondering how they could possibly have overlooked us (Weather Channel, I’m talking to you. Bad weather travels from the northern plains to NEW YORK CITY! via a route through Michigan.  There’s no getting around it), but because on January 1, 2011 Richard Dale Snyder (”Rick”, because, you know, he’s just–aaaw–Rick) was sworn in as Governor.

Nothing unusual about a new governor being sworn in in early January, but this particular brand-new governor raised hackles in some circles (okay, in nearly ALL circles outside the corporate honchos and people still having Tea Parties in the midst of the rubble) by stepping off the podium and almost instantaneously barking orders to annihilate anyone outside his own elite space who thought they might be entitled to a taxpayer-funded public education, or wages beyond the truly laughable, or even a retirement free of toil and strife.

For most people bent on taking over an entire state that might have been enough, but some days later this man Rick found the Holy Grail.  An existing Financial Emergency Manager Law that he and his Republican-led legislature then got to work enhancing and extending until it no longer would only be used in–okay–emergencies, but could be tweaked to kill the unions, take over public education and. . .oh, let’s say. . .fire duly elected officials in cities and towns that may or may not have potentially fatal fiscal wounds but do have too many poor people and thus can’t keep the Gov and his court in the style to which they’ve become accustomed.

Robert Bobb (true name) has been the Emergency Financial Manager for the city of Detroit since 2009.  I don’t know how well he was doing in that job before the EFM act gave him infinite powers, but he’s apparently rubbing his hands in glorious anticipation of being able to do away with 53 Public Schools, either by outright closings or mergings or switching them to charter status.  (Rachel Maddow has been reporting on one of them–The Catherine Ferguson Academy, a school for teen mothers.  After learning their school was targeted for closing, the students staged a quiet sit-in and, for their efforts, were handcuffed and taken away by the police, causing enough commotion (not by the students) to make the story go national. Thank you, Rachel–and everyone else who picked up the story and ran with it.  Everything that happens in Michigan mustn’t–must not–stay in Michigan.  We need to shout it to the mountaintops.  We’re under attack and we can’t pretend it’s all pretend.  It’s not.

As Todd A. Haywood reported in Michigan Messenger yesterday, The Mackinac Center for Public Policy,  home of Michigan’s Randian Tea Party, really is a part of the Vast Right Wing Free Market Think Tank Conspiracy.  They’ve joined up with Sauron in the Dark Tower to seek out and destroy anything resembling entitlement programs, government-sponsored good works, university professors’ emails in support of beleaguered Wisconsin, and more importantly, labor unions.  Their goal is small government and their method is to fire all municipal officials and put an “emergency financial manager”–one person–in their place.  One person will run everything, making every decision without fear of being fired or losing elections.  It’s the Fascist version of “we’re not a Democracy, we’re a Republic”.

This group, State Policy Network, is working at installing a host of compliant soldiers posing as Leaders of the People in all 50 states.  Their purpose:  to guarantee the complete and total privatization of these United States of America.  So far they’ve managed to enlist the governors of Michigan, Wisconsin and Indiana, all of whom are not in the least shy about expressing their fascination with the mission they’ve chosen to accomplish.

In Michigan, Governor Ricky is in direct competition with Wisconsin’s Governor Scotty to see who can take down whose state first.  At first glance you might be inclined to say “boys will be boys”, but you mustn’t forget the Eye of Sauron watching their every move.  (Here I’ll repeat:  Vast Right Wing Conspiracy)

More to chew on:

If two members of the legislature get their way, Michigan’s foster kids will have to get their back-to-school clothing from thrift stores because Michigan could save a lot of money that way.  I loved this part but you have to read the whole thing by Susan G. Demas:

So what’s behind these moves by the Legislature? Well, the two DHS panel chairs both live in relatively homogeneous and very conservative enclaves in the state.

[Bruce] Caswell is a Calvinist who’s never had to deal much with Democrats or people with other views on social issues, taxes or government services. He believes he’s doing the right thing and rooting out inefficiencies in the budget.

[Dave] Agema … well, his general philosophy can be summed up in his solution for overworked welfare caseworkers. Rather than hire more workers or work to speed up paperwork processing times, the goat killer suggested that DHS employees be armed with guns to subdue any unruly welfare queens.

Sen. Coleman Young II (D-Detroit) once flippantly described Republicans’ attitude toward the poor and unemployed as: “Too bad. It sucks to be you.”

Who thinks like this?  What kind of person sits around thinking about poor, dispossessed kids and, instead of wondering what he/she can do to make things better for them, concludes that money could be saved if they wore second-hand Government-issue clothes?  And what kind of person is then surprised when reasonable people say, “Hold it right there. . .”.   And who then would say in response, they probably don’t spend it on clothing anyway, and “I think the hardship is negligible“?

(Newsflash:  They’re rethinking this, after a really soul-satisfying (on my part), all-out blogospheric blast attack against it.  Looky here:

Senator Caswell initially proposed issuing a gift card for the clothing allowance for resale shops in order to ensure the money would actually go toward purchasing clothing. After a suggestion from a constituent, he plans to draft an amendment to the proposal that would direct the state to work with major retailers to create a gift card program that would ensure the clothing allowance money only purchases clothing and shoes at their stores. Furthermore, the amendment will direct DHS to negotiate with the retailers for a discount on those clothing items purchased with the allowance in order to get the best deal for the recipients.

Okay, I’m exhausted.  But one last thing.  You know how Gov. Ricky gave supreme power to one lone Emergency Financial Manager in poorest of the poor Benton Harbor?  Yes?  And how they fired everybody (see links above) and then poured salt in the wounds by demoting them to secretarial duties, like taking minutes at meetings?  Yes? Well, Gov. Ricky will be visiting Benton Harbor on May 7.  No, he won’t be looking around to see how well his plan is working. Or to see what else he can do to lift that poor town out of its misery.  No. He’ll be Grand Marshal of  Blossomtime’s Grand Floral Parade.  The parade route will start in St. Joseph:

And end in Benton Harbor:

This is clueless to the absolute ultimate.  This is Nero fiddling while Rome burns.  This is the New America.

So the way I see it, we either get used to it or we fight like hell to end this onslaught.  I know us. We don’t plan on ever getting used to it.

Michigan Labor Legacy Landmark, “Transcending”

“I think everyone agrees with the goal of reducing abortion by encouraging consideration of other alternatives,” [North Dakota governor] Daugaard said in a written statement. “I hope that women who are considering an abortion will use this three-day period to make good choices.”

The governor said state attorneys have agreed to defend the law and that he’s spoken with a sponsor who has pledged to finance the state’s legal costs, the Associated Press reports.   –  Politics Daily, 3/22/11

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard. –Hillary Clinton

Shame was big back then.  When I was a young mother myself, living in neighborhoods where most of us barely had a pot to pee in, shame kept many of my friends from admitting they were pregnant until the evidence was beyond the point of ignoring.  Then the coffee table conversations went something like this:

It was always the woman’s fault.  Birth control was either with condoms or diaphragm or the rhythm method, and if they failed it was because the woman did something wrong.  That accusation was so ingrained, the women themselves believed it was their fault.  There were the lucky few who welcomed another pregnancy, but many, many more were devastated.  I can’t say I knew any woman who went the coat hanger route, (mainly because they never would have admitted to it), but many of them tried drinking supposed miscarriage herbals or douching with chemicals or bumping into things or “falling” down stairs. 

 The feminist movement and Roe v. Wade, if they hadn’t ever done anything else, can be credited with changing the prevailing perception that there were no choices for a person in a woman’s body.  The fact that the works for conceiving were built into them no longer meant that women would be forced to conceive. 

That is the underlying wisdom of freedom of choice and it’s what the Supreme Court saw as a constitutional right.

If, since Roe v. Wade, every child born in this country was afforded the kinds of protections necessary to ensure health and happiness, safety and well-being,  the argument that a fetus must be saved at all costs might hold water.

The sorry truth is that 14 million American children live in poverty right now.

Over 17 million children live in households where there is not enough food.

1.5 million kids go to sleep without a home of their own each year.

In 2007, approximately 5.8 million children were involved in an estimated 3.2 million child abuse reports and allegations. 

A woman who makes the choice to abort a fetus can never be accused of doing it lightly.  That is a cruel falsehood perpetrated by men who will never know the pain of having to live with either choice, or by women who consider their own life choices so superior they have no problem with forcing others of their own gender to bear children–which they then have no problem forgetting about completely and entirely.

None of them lose any sleep over their own actions, but will band together, collecting millions of dollars that could be used to save children living in misery and instead use it to convince the public and a few callous legislators that aborting a fetus is akin to murder and should be outlawed.

Children are our precious gifts and should be our foremost obligations.  There is something crushing and terrible about the fact that lawmakers across the country are systematically defunding social programs currently helping families to just get through the day, if nothing else.  Many of those same lawmakers vigorously support the supposed pro-life groups without once considering the damage they’re doing to the children we need to protect.  These children, no longer fetuses, need us.  The women who make the decision to terminate a pregnancy are not pariahs.  Our moral obligations are to the lesser and to the helpless already in our keep.

Shame on anyone who works against that very basic societal tenet.  Most of us are better than that.

Boy with Frogs – Brookgreen Gardens

For weeks now, ever since the people took over the State House in Wisconsin, we’ve been looking for a leader.  We’ve watched the momentum building, knowing this was our chance and we couldn’t let this die.  Each of us in our own way has been spreading the word, supporting labor, doing what we could to build this movement to such a juggernaut nothing would stop it, ever again.

We all knew that without leaders, once the cheering stopped we were dead in the water.  We looked first to the leaders in the Democratic Party, starting with the president, Barack Obama.  It wasn’t just silence we got from the White House, it was a slap on the hand to the DNC for jumping into the fray (as they should have) and a slap in the face for the rest of us when they called the Wisconsin triumph a “distraction”.

With the exception of a few Democratic politicians, my party leaders–those same party leaders who depend on labor to get them elected–have been maddeningly  non-commital, pretending this is a states issue and all they can muster are a few rah rahs from the sidelines.  The few who have come out in support haven’t been able to find their way to Wisconsin yet.  Russ Feingold has been there, but Feingold, as good as he is, as impassioned as he is, isn’t in office any more.

So here comes Michael Moore, our resident comedic rabble-rouser, our Hollywood style muckraker, and what is he out there doing?  He’s doing what our Democratic politicians should have been doing all along.  He’s committing himself to a cause worth fighting for.

I wasn’t surprised that MM took up the Wisconsin cause.  He’s from Michigan, my Michigan, and Wisconsin is right next door.  We’re so much alike, we two states, we could be twins.  But what did surprise me is the level of thought that went into what he chose to do.

Michael Moore, as unlikely–no, incongruous–as it  seems, is, in my eyes, now the de facto leader of the long-time-coming 21st Century American Class War.  He is our general.  He is leading the troops and if we have any sense about us we will follow.

I know. Look at him.  Michael Moore.

But give him a chance.  Listen to him.  I turn the rest of this post over to Michael Moore.  Just read what he has to say.  Take your time. Understand what we’re up against.  This isn’t just a battle but an all-out war.  A Class War that’s been in the making since the dawning of the Industrial Age and is now so weighted against us it’s going to take massive effort to even get us back to a level where we can breathe again.  (Reading this may take a while, following the links and all, but remember, we’re in a war.  This is just a small part of our preparation):

I am a Democrat, just as I’m a liberal and an American and a Michigander and a woman.  I make no apologies for any of those titles.  They’re indelibly, irrefutably, absolutely who I am. 

I’m hearing cries these days from many people who voted Democratic and now feel betrayed.  Used and abused by what they consider “the party”.  They’re yelling loud and clear that either the party changes or they’re outta there.  What they really mean is either the leadership changes or they’re gone, but by their actions they’re working toward killing the entire party.

I won’t go along in order to get along, no matter how much I admire some of the very people making those charges.  I’m a Democrat.  This is my party.  The Democratic party is one of only two viable parties in the United States at the moment, and I’m getting more than a little alarmed at the calls from every quarter for the destruction of the one party that has consistently worked for protections for all.

We are the party of the working class.  The only party of the working class.  We don’t always choose our leaders wisely, but very often, we do.  We’ve had some great leaders, some good leaders, some mediocre leaders and some truly bad leaders.  But through it all, we’ve been the only party dedicated to advancing the needs of the people who some would consider “the least of us”.  We’re still doing it; we the people of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is made up of people–millions of people–some of whom have worked tirelessly to keep it going.   Over the years we’ve changed the entire landscape of this country for the better.  If we’re being forced to take a back seat to stronger, more powerful forces bent on erasing all we’ve done, the reasonable course of action is to band together to make us stronger, not weaker.  And yet what I’m seeing now is a rage against my party because some of our elected leaders aren’t delivering on what they’ve promised. 

The anger against certain politicians is, for the most part, justified.  But the politicians aren’t the party.  They are representatives of the party, and they can be replaced.  The party, once it’s destroyed, will never come back. 

I’m prepared to fight our enemies.  I fully expect that battle to continue.  But when I find myself having to fight against those who were once allies, I can’t help but think it won’t be long before the final surrender. 

I’m not going to let that happen without a fight.  I’ll defend my party as being the better of the two, and I’ll work at making it the best it can be.  Because I’m a Democrat.  That’s who I am.

*
*

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

 Remember Mark Williams?  The same Mark Williams who was kicked out of the Tea Party Express (!) for writing a letter from the “colored people” to President Lincoln?  The same Mark Williams who called President Obama an “Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug”?

That same Mark Willliams is back, and, in true Mark Williams fighting form, he has a plan:  He’s urging his peeps to pretend to join up with the SIEU in Madison and to pull out stupid signs when the time is right and, well, just be their natural selves so the public will think the union protesters are really, really stupid.

Here’s Mark pretending this movement could be HUGE:

Here is what I am doing in Sacramento, where they are holding a 5:30 PM event this coming Tuesday:  (1) I signed up as an organizer (2) with any luck they will contact me and I will have an “in”  (3) in or not I will be there and am asking as many other people as can get there to come with, all of us in SEIU shirts (those who don’t have them we can possibly buy some from vendors likely to be there)  (4) we are going to target the many TV cameras and reporters looking for comments from the members there  (5) we will approach the cameras to make good pictures… signs under our shirts that say things like “screw the taxpayer!”  and “you OWE me!” to be pulled out for the camera (timing is important because the signs will be taken away from us) (6) we will echo those slogans in angry sounding tones to the cameras and the reporters.  (7) if I do get the ‘in’ I am going to do my darnedest to get podium access and take the mic to do that rant from there…with any luck and if I can manage the moments to build up to it, I can probably get a cheer out of the crowd for something extreme. . .
. . .Chances are that because I am publishing this they’ll catch wind, but it is worth the chance if you take it upon yourself to act…there’s only one of me but there are millions of you and I know that you CAN do this!
Our goal is to make the gathering look as greedy and goonish as we know that it is, ding their credibility with the media and exploit the lazy reporters who just want dramatic shots and outrageous quotes for headlines.  Even if it becomes known that we are plants the quotes and pictures will linger as defacto truth.

De facto truth.  Do they know their crowd, or what?  Tell them black is white, up is down, blue is red.  Tell them often enough and loud enough and pretty soon black is white, up is down, blue is red, and Obama is a Muslim born in Kenya whose mother somehow knew just days after his birth that he might be president of the United States some day and managed to get the newspaper to print a phony birth announcement and the county to file away a phony birth certificate.

Here’s my response to Mark Williams and his band of merry idiots:

Chew on that for a while, you pathetic rejects, you dregs of humankind.  You lose.

(Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices)

NOTE:  Cross-posted at Ramona’s Voices.  This is the second in my Friday Follies series.  See the first one here.

Friday, February 11, 2011

• And what a week it was! (Just this morning, Mubarak stepped down in Egypt.  Nothing can top that.  I mean nothing.)

    Last week Mother Jones (not the magazine) was on the move again.  When the AFL-CIO headquarters in Frankfort, KY sold their building, the union moved the Mary Harris (”Mother”) Jones monument that had stood outside of the old building to it’s new digs in Paducah.  The seven-ton stone work went through rain and sleet and flat tires and pig farms on its journey to its new home, and honestly, you would think it was Mother Jones herself pushing them on, giving them strength, whipping their butts to get the job done.  Yay, they did it! And they’re claiming not a single cuss-word was uttered.  (Not sure Mother Jones would have approved of that.)

Mother Jones in tent city

• Speaking of things porcine (Not Mother Jones.  Oh, God, no!), the Department of Natural Resources and Environment says there are 3,000 to 5,000 feral pigs scattered across 65 of Michigan’s 83 counties, and they’ve declared them an invasive species.  The headline read:  Michigan Declares War on Pesky Feral Pigs.  I declare.  I’ve been in almost every one of Michigan’s counties at one time or another, and I’ve never, ever, ever heard tell of a feral pig being spotted in any of them.  

Owners of hunting preserves — at least 65 swine hunting sites are in Michigan — said their security measures are adequate and the threat of wild pigs is overstated. But the DNRE, farmers and some hunters say the bristly boars are wreaking havoc. The pigs, considered to be omnivores, eat practically anything, including endangered wild plants, the eggs of game birds, young deer or lambs, reptiles and farm crops. “They will really rip up a farmer’s fields,” DNRE spokeswoman Mary Detloff said. “Overnight, they can destroy acres of corn and wheat. They dig wallows 3 feet deep and 5 feet wide, which are a real danger to farming equipment.” The pigs, which can maintain a running speed of 15 mph and are capable of bursts of 30 mph, are generally viewed by state officials as big cockroaches with tusks. The DNRE has essentially OK’d shooting the pigs on sight. “Basically, our policy is shoot first and ask questions later,” Detloff said

• Michelle Bachmann spoke at CPAC this year and got that crowd going!  They especially liked the part at the end about Free Drinks for Everybody.  Yep, Bachmann offered to pick up the bar tab for all 11,000 attendees.  Limit of one, of course.  Tim Pawlenty says he’s going to do it, too, today.  Oh, those Republican hi-jinxers! Are they special, or what?

• So you probably heard that Arianna Huffington sold HuffPo to AOL this week? Did this shock you, too?  No?  You always were smarter than me:

There are also some indications that she has sold out in the ideological sense and committed the Huffington Post to joining the mainstream media – the evil “MSM” of “HuffPo” blogger ire. Announcing the deal, she and her new boss went out of their way to say that the new Huffington Post would emphasize things other than the liberal politics on which the brand was built. AOL Chairman Tim Armstrong said he thinks “Arianna has the same interest we do, which is serving consumers’ needs and going beyond the just straight political needs of people.” Huffington agreed, boasting that only 15 percent of her eponymous site’s traffic is for politics (that’s down from 50 percent a couple of years ago), and she emphasized that politics is just one of two dozen “sections,” including a new one devoted to covering divorces. “It’s time for all of us in journalism to move beyond left and right,” Huffington said Monday on PBS’s “NewsHour.” “Truly, it is an obsolete way of looking at the problems America is facing.”

• There is no question that Arianna has cojones, but does she have Baals?  No, that would be silly.  It’s Fort Wayne, Indiana, that has the Baals.  Or, had.  I was sorry to hear there will be no Harry Baals building in Fort Wayne, Indiana any time soon.  We could have kept that hoary joke going for years.
• But speaking of. . . I guess you heard about Alan Simpson’s Green Weenie comment?  Rachel Maddow takes it on in Debunktion Junction and adds some other great Simpson doozies. (You just have to get through the Jeb Bush stuff but it’s worth it)  Candy Crowley’s reaction?  Priceless.
• So, okay, we’re going from the ridiculous to the sublime–or at least somewhere in between.  President Obama went to Marquette, Michigan on Thursday to talk up his plan to make wireless available to 98% of the U.S.  He chose Marquette, not because it’s the most beautiful “city” in the entire Upper Peninsula, bar none, but because the entire town and the surrounding area up to 40 miles beyond is wired and nobody has to pay a penny for it.  (Promo spot:  If you ever get a chance to go to Marquette, you would be a fool not to do it, it’s that great.  And while you’re up there you could go up the road to Ishpeming and visit Da Yooper Tourist Trap and Museum, where you’ll find Big Gus, the world’s largest running chain saw, and you could buy a poster of the best Upper Peninsula outhouses.)

• But besides Obama’s visit to the U.P, Michigan was in the news big time earlier in the week, on Super Bowl Sunday.  You who don’t know and love Detroit may not be able to understand it, but the Eminem/Chrysler homage to our city caused a whole bunch of us to get really, really teary.  I wrote my own homage to Detroit in November, 2009 (it still gets more hits than any other post on my blog), and there have been many others, but nothing could make as much of an impact as that two-minute sizzler of an advertisement.
• And here is my cartoon of the week.  It’s by Mike Thompson for the Detroit Free Press: