The Preacher and the Slave

IWW songwriters like Joe Hill and T-Bone Slim would often steal the tunes of Christian hymns and rewrite the lyrics. This was done for two reasons. 1) The tune would already be familiar to many in the intended audience who could then sing along which was particularly useful for 2) disrupting Salvation Army rallies (the Wobblies called it "Starvation Army,") by singing along with..rather different lyrics. This song--written by Hill to the tune of "In the Sweet By and By"--also introduced the saying "pie in the sky" into popular parlance.

Ho-hum

This may slide under the radar, but it's quite important to point it out. The NYT today reports that Tom Ridge is claiming in a tell-all book that the Bushies pressured him to raise the turr'st Threat-O-Meter in the days immediately preceding the 2004 election. This basically establishes what most Unserious people already suspected; the color-coded nonsense was little more than a political tool which could be raised and lowered whenever the GOP needed a boost.

Yup

Again, it's difficult to disagree with anything Glennzilla sez.

The attempt to attract GOP support was the pretext which Democrats used to compromise continuously and water down the bill. But -- given the impossibility of achieving that goal -- isn't it fairly obvious that a desire for GOP support wasn't really the reason the Democrats were constantly watering down their own bill? Given the White House's central role in negotiating a secret deal with the pharmaceutical industry, its betrayal of Obama's clear promise to conduct negotiations out in the open (on C-SPAN no less), Rahm's protection of Blue Dogs and accompanying attacks on progressives, and the complete lack of any pressure exerted on allegedly obstructionists "centrists," it seems rather clear that the bill has been watered down, and the "public option" jettisoned, because that's the bill they want -- this was the plan all along.

Much has been made of the wide berth given by Democrats to the screaming, occasionally armed, town hall nutters when Bush and Co. would have anyone with a disagreeable t-shirt sent to the penalty box. Because, quite unintentionally, the crazies are doing the White House a favor by acting as a determined if deranged popular opposition--much out of proportion to the general public, of course--to any kind of public plan. "This is why they started from "public option" rather than "single payer;" they knew when the inevitable Broderist demands for bipartisanship came and they were forced to make concessions, they would already be much closer to the right.

By getting a bill that includes mandatory handouts to the insurance industry, Obama and Emmanuel get the best of all possible worlds. They please their Big Bidness sponsors and, in 2010, Democrats can go home claiming to have passed the promised Health Care Reform, and that will be the end of that for the next 20 years.

Hold on to the water

Just saw this Tweet from Greg Mitchell of Editor & Publisher.

Baseball fans: Wash Nats just hours away from NOT signing top pick Strasburg. MLB's lack of economic parity pitiful.

"Economic parity" in sports sounds nice and socialistic on the surface, but in practice inevitably means artificially reduced salaries and resultant increased profits for management. Which is likely why so many people who would run screaming at any mention of socialism support the idea so uncritically. There's no reason to cry any tears for the Nationals who may be making the smartest move in franchise history so far--given the track record of previous "can't miss" pitchers in the draft--by not succumbing to Boras' ridiculous demands. On the other hand, they knew the risk when they drafted him, so as ever the Nationals can only lose by winning.

How I know there is a common ancestor

Why do primates have the irresistible urge to throw things?

As part of a promotional night to debut the new "Reggie Bar", a candy bar named after Reggie Jackson, fans at Yankee Stadium received free samples. The marketing scheme backfired though as fans threw hundreds of them back onto the field forcing the game to be halted until the ground crew was able to clear them away.

The only reason humans no longer throw our own dung is that no one will conveniently hand it to us.

Naked shilling for the rich

I have to admit I was wrong. I felt the political shit-storm of 2009 would be over Employee Free Choice, but that bill has already undergone a mercy killing by corporate Democrats. But it doesn't matter; the same fundamental dispute is at the heart of the health-care fracas namely, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, the right of the fortunate to not be restrained in exercising tyranny over the unfortunate.

In fact, it may be a blessing that the ruling class has chosen this particular battlefield given the absolute ridiculousness of their position is visible to anyone halfway conscious. Claiming ostrich-like that the 'Murican health care system is da best in the world while Europe and Canada keep the elderly in pens fed with gruel is now roughly the equivalent of saying that Jesus is green unicorn cheese. Yet they push on, feeding their paranoid authoritarian followers with even more absurd hysterics: "Obama gon' kill yo' granny!" Now, apparently, the Gummit is going to going to control all of your bank accounts! This is 9/11 Trooferism elevated to the status of essential debate.

Ah, the Gummit, the Gummit. I've noticed the Gummit started being the bad guy again on or about January 20, 2009. Which is odd, because Obama has never really stopped doing any of the things right-wingers want the Gummit to do; kill Muslims, spend on "defense," eavesdrop wantonly, and erect a wall around information in the name of national security. Suggest that the Gummit could serve the interest of someone other than American business and wealthy straight white men and suddenly you've got a bona fide leeee-getimiate revolution on your hands. Let freedom ring! And such. What is it about the Gummit that makes it so much more ominous and malicious, even when private industry is already doing the very things that hysterics believe are imminent with Gummitcare?

Of course, freedom isn't working out so well for the 50 million citizens without health insurance. But no matter, they deserve it for being poor. And if Jesusamerica decided they deserved to have health insurance, then they would. They certainly shouldn't use their voting rights to elect a government to give them healthcare; that would be voting themselves money they didn't earn. After all, the moneyed classes never vote in their own economic interest; that would just be class warfare, comrade.

Not only that, why, those longsuffering Americans would rather die than have Gummit interference in their health care! What patriots! Now, it's true that their house is burned down, the mail hasn't come in years, and they can't drive on a public highway or take public transit, so it's not likely they've got much of a life left. But they died free, and with their hands off of my money, so we should salute them.

Today in teh stooopid

As far as I care to tell, the Investor's Business Daily is a Serious, well-respected informant for the nation's ruling classes. As such, you'd expect them to be impeccably honest and accurate and those other things our moneyed classes demand of their news sources. Ahem.

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Stephen Hawking is British, and was living in the UK, under the iron-toed boot of the NHS, when his disease was diagnosed.

Belief

Continuing the new bizaro-world right-wing embrace of protesting, the teabaggers have taken to taken to healthcare town hall meetings across the country to read aloud from their inbox and talk-radio script. In a not-quite-revelatory discovery, I've noticed that these self-styled glibertarians who squeal on and on about the Constitution tend to have the same predilections that befall another group of people who claim to take their scriptures literally.

Both Biblical and Constitutional literalists have a fun way of ignoring or creatively interpreting sectoins of the holy book which don't reinforce their prefabricated worldview.

Which is irrelevant because the reason people appeal to scriptures in the first place is to obfuscate the fact that their beliefs--in the case of the teabaggers, opposition to universal health care--can't be defended by appeals to common reason.

(This is especially peculiar for Constitutional literalists, since the document was never meant to be permanently inerrant. So who knows why they cling to the idea.)

Can't imagine why

So apparently the sterling, seminal argument being pushed by right-wingers, including preeminent "Christian" toolbag Tony Perkins, is that government-run health care will lead to a grimy dystopia where the elderly are euthanized to save money, which is borne out by the horror stories of gulag hospitals in Great Britain and Canida. Because, you know, the government doesn't already pay for the health care of citiznes over 65, and 29 other countries--most with national health care--don't have longer life expectancies than the United States.

I'm beginning to think people are kind of gullible.

A long way between horizons

Paul Krugman wonders:

When I saw that Michelle Malkin will be on the Stephanopoulos panel this week, my first thought was that nobody as far to the left as she is to the right would ever appear on such a panel. But then I started to wonder (a) what I mean by that (b) if it’s true.

Well of course it's true. Regardless of whether one finds him agreeable, Noam Chomsky is one of the country's great academics and extremely popular, yet will never appear on a Sunday talk show panel. Partially because the people who would read a Gnome Chomsky book aren't going to watch This Week with George Whoever. Conservatives, for all of their obstinate kvetching about lib'rul media, will gladly flock to whatever corporate outlet genuflects to them. Generally, the only place on television one can find actual lefty or anti-imperialist libertarian voices are on Bill Maher's show or occasionally the Stewart/Colbert hour (such as whenever Lewis Black is on The Daily Show). Turns out not only do you get better news from comedy, but a wider range of opinions, too.