Friday Fish Wrap:September 3, 2010

How long do you think it will take before Democrats might stop allowing the right-wing ministry of misinformation scare tactics about bailouts and taxes to make them lie in their advertising?

Watch this by Dina Titus D-NV and extend it to similar claims by fellow Dems Mary Jo Kilroy D-OH , Frank Kratovil D-MD, Glenn Nye D-VA and Kathy Dahlkemper D-PA:

It’s only right that she intervened to help hard-working Nevadans save their homes, but to gild the lily with a false claim - that she voted against the Bush-approved, Congress signed, $700 billion TARP bailout money - when the vote she made was largely symbolic and after the fact. The Treasury already had the money.

The way the request for the second half of the money was structured, it had to be asked for separately by the administration as sort of a second installment.  In for a nickle, in for a dollar. The first $350 billion was a drop in the bucket for a banking system that was going down hard.  Bush filed the request on Jan. 12, 2009. Obama followed up on it. The vote that Titus and the others refer to was on Jan. 22nd - uh, after the horse had left the barn.

It’s this kind of knee-jerk reaction to right-wing misinformation that earns Dems scorn from those in their own party. People like me. Harry Reid pulled a similar gaffe when he started making noises about the ‘mosque’ being too close to Ground Zero. There he was, allowing himself to be steered by the TeaNut sound machine. Rory Reid can’t utter what needs to be shouted - that we need to raise taxes to get this state moving forward again. It’s absurd, watching him and Sandoval dance around the 900-lb gorilla of taxation like they can actually ignore it.

BAH!

Democrats spend far too much time and resources pandering to false, unfounded, misinterpreted, crazy fears, red herrings and straw man arguments designed to draw them off message and deeper into the swamp. Where they get good and stuck. That’s why I love Alan Grayson, D-FL so much. What a character. Bearer of giant cojones. He calls it just like he sees it. Probably why he won’t get re-elected.

I know, I’ve heard it before … Sniff, sigh “but we have to play these games to get re-elected”.

Yes, you do. Only so long as you don’t insist on robust campaign finance reform. Publicly financed elections - without the shadow government of string pulling contributors, lobbyists, billionaires like Koch Industries fronting bogus Tea Party organizations - would allow our political candidates to stand up and tell the truth if they chose and still be electable.

That, and reversing that horrible SCOTUS decision that essentially gives the likes of Koch Industries the same ‘voice’ in government as you and I.

Jeeze.

Here’s your joke for the day:

Did you know that the words “race car” spelled backwards still spells “race car”?
                               
That “eat” is the only word that, if you take the 1st letter and move it to the last, spells its past tense, “ate”?
                               
And if you rearrange the letters in “so-called tea party Republicans,” and add just a few more letters, it spells: “Shut up you free-loading, progress-blocking, benefit-grabbing, resource-sucking, violent, hypocritical assholes, and face the fact that you nearly wrecked the country under Bush.”  
                              

How weird is that?

Ha! Thanks to alert reader, Susan for that one.

Oh, you can now order the movie/documentary version of Thomas Frank’s awesome book “What’s the Matter With Kansas” on DVD. Have a house party viewing with all your rational friends! I’ve ordered. Maybe I’ll invite you. Depends on what wine you’re gonna bring.

“What’s the Matter with Kansas?” movie - theatrical trailer from WMKMovie on Vimeo.

Here are two welcome new trends that I’ve been waiting for -

The end of the McMansion. You know - those self-important arks that now litter the foothills around the Truckee Meadows. Check this out … you ought to be able to wheel and deal on them - to house your entire extended family:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The return of ‘ladylike’ dressing. I can stop feeling completely out of place- like I really ever cared if I did. Today, I had to run some errands - including taking my elderly Mom to physical therapy. Mr. Maven said, “gee, let me take your picture. You look really nice.” Blush.

Yes, those are pearls. So? But it was this feature on the Today Show that drove it home. Call it the ‘Mad Men’ look if you will, I call it ‘attractive’, ‘powerful’, ‘classy’, ‘assured’, ‘confident’. In my own case, I’m just working on my future ‘cougar’ look. Hey, you’ve got to plan ahead.

I’ve always lived by the following maxim:

The only way to atone for being occasionally a little over-dressed is by being always absolutely over-educated.
——-—Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the Young

Oh, speaking of women - notice I didn’t say ‘ladies’. Have you noticed that Gov. Jan Brewer, R-AZ, has joined the ranks of ‘I Don’t Do Windows or Debates’, founded by Sharron Angle. 

Gov. Jan Brewer (R) has put the kibosh on all future debates with her Arizona gubernatorial opponent Terry Goddard (D), after her rather embarrassing display at Wednesday’s debate. “I don’t believe that things come out in proper context in an adversarial atmosphere,” she defended herself.

Yup. These unfortunate little women in the Tea Nut camp have issues with anything confrontational. They pull their skirts up over their heads and run for the hills - while admonishing us for not defending the Second Amendment. In Brewer’s case, it was most embarrassingly after reporters repeatedly asked that she tell just where she got her information about her baseless but bizarrely intriguing assertion that the Arizona desert was littered with headless bodies. Uh, that’s why they needed Nazi like ‘immigration reform’, I guess.

Here’s where this all comes home for me. The other day I was in my doc’s office for a follow up on nothing in particular. He and I are also social friends and I know he isn’t a Democrat. But he just had to share that he and the wife had recently been invited to attend an evening with Sharron Angle - and danged if he wasn’t just so surprised and pleased that she can speak in complete sentences and ‘she really made sense. Not like all those sound bites where she seems, well, weird’.

Silence from me. I’m not going there. Just a stunned disbelief that I tried to cover with awkward humor.

This guy is smart, but like a lot of professionals, far too narrowly focused. Duh, Sharron was no doubt in a very friendly crowd, and even those who might ask a tough question are far too well-bred to cause others to spill their expensive wine.

Get what I’m saying here? But this guy is a big wheel in the medical community here in Reno, and if he can’t see through this….

When will the GOP see that speaking to the chorus doesn’t reveal much - of substance - about a candidate? I wouldn’t vote for a Democrat that couldn’t go out and mix it up with the opposition and stand tall. I’ll bet she spouted the same well crafted, GOP refined talking points - that she has very well tuned and in the memory banks now. She is looking a lot better and more polished. She ought to by now. But that doesn’t equal smarts or an actual platform based on anything.

Sheesh.

Don’t bother with ‘The American’. As much as I love George Clooney movies … uh, this one sucked. If you see it, and understood it, let me know WTF it was about, alright? It was all so very stylishly European. But like Sharron Angle and TeaNuts mistaking bible belt ‘morality’ and self-righteous patriotism for a platform, this movie was a self-flagellating attempt at giving George something to do that didn’t take him too far from home at night … it was filmed in Italy. There were a lot of great close-ups of George fighting the good existential fight. Loads of barely contained angst. Some moments of reasonably good soft porn.

I think maybe the director should have just stuck to making a soft porn flick out of ‘The American.’

We had dinner at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse at Sierra Summit. We had a freebie there and thought we’d give it a second chance. BJ’s is one of those chain-factory restaurants that I leave wondering how such a big menu can produce so little. You might walk away full, but not satisfied. The menu has something for everybody - from the fat and sodium deprived to the calorie conscious and the gluten intolerant. They’ve filled all the squares - as lamely as humanly possible. They’re a veritable WalMart of fine dining options.

It’s going to be a quiet Labor Day weekend around here. All my usual playmates are out of town. So, I’ll be biking - Mr. Kingsbury Grade and I are going to do a Washoe Valley ride. Then there is the annual  informal Civil Air Patrol alum association BBQ in Carson City that we attend. We’re the token Liberals. Breakfast with Momma. Tomatoes into the dehydrator.

It’s quiet without any drama. And I like it that way.

Stay safe. Enjoy the ribs over at the cookoff. The mere thought of several hundreds of thousands of pounds of tasteless factory raised and inhumanely slaughtered pork served up amid thousands of the flip-flop unwashed kinda turns me sick-ish.

Urp.

Oh, if you know somebody that wants a good deal on a whole kayak set-up - a single with PFD, paddle, Yakima rack and more - have them get in touch with me. I’m over it. I’m a survivor in it for the long term and no longer think I need to try/do everything in a hurry just in case. Good deal will be made.

-maven