Thanks a lot

This past week at work was “productive,” at least in relation to what is the norm. I delivered 315 carts of cargo; although it was five short of my previous high, at least I had the satisfaction of knowing that I hadn’t missed a single delivery. Of course, there was no “celebration” or even thanks (except from the airline guys who appreciated the fact that I kept their staging area “clean”), although I can always fall back on personal satisfaction. By sheer coincidence, today there is an outdoor picnic—a “thank you” from the company for all the hard work done this summer. Unlike previous regimes that held this event outside the airport, this year as last it is being held in some fenced-off pavilion adjacent to the terminal. I don’t know what exactly the place is for, because it is rarely occupied. When I leaned what day it was on, my interest in attending—and the promise of free food was the only lure—dip dramatically, all the way to zero. Today is part of my “weekend,” which meant that if I chose to go, I would be in my civilian clothes, and thus subject to suspicion and harassment, if last year was any example.

Last year, I arrived at the pavilion to be “greeted” by a Port of Seattle security person, who looked at me suspiciously and minutely inspected my POS badge, before reluctantly allowing me to enter. I grabbed some food and sat down at a table. After ten minutes, I observed two POS police officers arrive; the POS security person nodded toward me and spoke, apparently to air her suspicions. Nobody else paid me any attention, so it was likely it was suspected that I was a party crasher. I started to simmer over this attention, and before I could boil over I decided to leave. Even though my ID badge had already been inspected when I entered, I was told that I had to resubmit it for examination by one of the police officers. They detained me for several minutes, apparently hoping that I would make some sort of “furtive gesture” suggesting that I was “guilty” of something. They could have asked the people who were running the program if they knew me, but they didn’t. I was eventually undetained, but not before I told myself that I wasn’t going to allow myself to be “thanked” in this way again. And people wonder why I have this “attitude.”

Of course, I can’t say this was a “new” experience for me. Some years ago when I was employed at a sports apparel company; the latest information I can find concerning its current status is that it was jettisoned from its near-bankrupt parent company in Italy after it was bought out by some Italian billionaire who decided to get into the shoe business because he was tired of “stinky feet” and wanted to develop shoes that “breathed.” The American subsidiary was bought by its own company president (probably taking on a significant debt load), forming a new company but using the original name as a continuing brand. Its estimated sales figures for last year was $3 million, which is 1/10 the peak year in 2002—although as I mentioned before, this was a greatly inflated figure based on overly rosy sales assumptions; about 100,000 pairs of shoes were returned the following year either as unsold or refused shipments. Some of these shoes sold for $150 retail; needless to say, the impact was if not immediately devastating, sent the company into a sales tailspin it has never recovered from. Last year, it was sued by an Issaquah company that claimed patent infringement on a portable soccer net; this year, it is suing a Seattle company specializing in apparel made from recycled material for delivering substandard soccer uniform kits. Not that I care much about it; I noticed that the same people in management when I was there are still there. With a dozen full-time employees left, they are running out of people to blame for their own incompetence.

But all that is off the track. Once the company in its “glory days” had enough spare change to rent a suite at Safeco Field for a Mariners’ game. The president of the company was actually a big cheese in the American men’s soccer world decades ago, and apparently thought he had enough influence to sell product (the Seattle P-I once had a “Where are they now?” piece on him). He certainly must have felt his position as a local businessman was sufficient to warrant a place among Boeing and Microsoft—companies that had permanent suites at Safeco. Anyways, I decided to show-up for (what else?) the free food. It was a typical picnic layout, except that it was first class all the way; everything was jumbo-sized. Then there was the baseball game. Being at a live game is more a social event, and I’m not very social. I was soon bored, especially after the Mariners fell behind something like 8-1 after four innings. Fortunately, I brought a book, and having observed a lobby just outside the suite equipped with comfortable sofas and a television set, I piled-up another plate of food, and settled myself in for some light reading.

It didn’t take long before I noticed that something was amiss. Someone—or someones—had joined me, somewhere on the outskirts of my peripheral vision. I looked-up and observed a man dressed in dark clothing; the words K-9 were stenciled on the back of his shirt. The other “someone” was a dog. He pretended he was paying me no mind, but I could tell he was hoping that I would be intimidated by his presence, and I would make life easy for him and go away. I figured someone in one of these other suites figured I didn’t belong. Naturally, I just became angry at all this attention and refused to budge. What was this about anyways? Did he think I was a terrorist, did he think I was about to rob one of their “high class” patrons? Since I didn’t make any “furtive” gestures or do anything “abnormal,” the K-9 guy eventually left; however, he was soon replaced by some management type. He smiled at me, in response to which I gave him a “What do you want?” look. He didn’t approach me, apparently because he didn’t want to take a chance of being accused of racial profiling. Since events had settled into a stalemate, he finally did what should have been their first move to begin with: Go inside the adjacent suite, and ask someone if I was part of their group. Behind me, I heard someone say, “Yeah, he’s with us.” When I went back inside the suite, the president rationalized their actions by telling me that it was “strange” that I would be reading a book at a baseball game. Of course, that begged the question of what was so “dangerous” about reading a book at a monotonous baseball game.


I recall once that I was sitting on a bench in a Seattle park reading a book; a cop approached me and asked me what I was doing. I remember wondering if all cops are this dim-witted. Funny how normal behavior is viewed as suspicious by some people, merely because it doesn’t conform to stereotype.

Where does charity begin?

I was sitting alone in a Baskin Robbins where I’m not hassled if I hardly spend any money, fiddling with my laptop, when I was accosted by a little Asian woman. She asked me in barely decipherable English if I wanted to donate to Tsunami relief, presumably in Japan. You have got to be kidding me, I thought; wasn’t that last year? Alright, it was only this past March, but don’t the Japanese have a habit of being an insular people, taking care of their own? Still, it didn’t feel right to shoo her off without at least the pretense of consideration, and frankly I hate being made to feel like a shit in this way—especially when I’m the only charity case I know of firsthand, the kind that is always counting his pennies so he can decide what he can afford to eat over the next three days. I kind of looked at the pictures she was showing me, which I couldn’t quite make out because they were small and blurry, but presumably they depicted scenes of urban carnage. Why can’t these folks ask somebody like the Koch brothers for what for them would be pocket change? Probably because it is too hard for them to part with any of their untold billions, except to finance the Tea Party--you know, the people who want to take away your Social Security and Medicare.

Anyways, I thought I saw a way out after the solicitor showed me something that I found somewhat offensive: a list of names of people who all apparently had donated $200. I don’t know if she did this deliberately to make me feel as if I needed to “compete” with these other donors, or the list was faked for the same purpose. If I wrote out a check (which I haven’t done in years, maybe decades) for that amount I’d be cleaned out, and I’m not the kind of person who goes around begging for change; unlike what the cops and the local Republican gentry think, I always try to find an honest way to make a buck first. I told this solicitor the honest truth: I don’t have that kind money, so I’m sorry, I can’t help you (now go away, please). But she was persistent; $50 OK—$25? She just refused to go away; these people are more annoying than your typical Seattle street corner panhandler. I was starting to wear down, and she sensed it. Anything that I could give was good. Really? I reached down into my wallet and took a look at the five one-dollar bills that I had intended to use to purchase my supper of a Cheeseburger-bite, chips and milk from 7-Eleven. I didn’t know if I should be embarrassed because all I was giving her were these five measly dollars, or be disturbed because I wasn’t going to have anything to eat tonight, and this was of no concern to this person.

I gave the solicitor my five ones, and she said God bless, and I mused about whether that same God was going to do something for me now. I probably made her day anyways, because she asked a patron who just walked in for funds, and he acted as if she wasn’t there, and when asked the proprietor said “Not today.” I could understand his reluctance; I have to confess that ever since some thugs broke in one night and stole the widescreen television that was attached to the wall, business hasn’t been so good; I don’t recall exactly when this happened, except that it had to have occurred sometime after January 24, 2010 because that was the day when the employee on duty considered calling Western Washington Hospital to pick me up, after observing my reaction to watching a particular NFL quarterback throw a football that everyone could see wasn’t going anywhere except into an opposing player’s hands.

Riots in the UK expose similarities--and differences--with the U.S. idea of "community."

I had been living in Seattle for less than a year when I observed my first “riot.” I just completed an evening work shift and arrived home sometime after midnight. I decided to watch a few minutes of television before I went to bed. To my astonishment, the local channels were filled “live reports” from breathless reporters racing about downtown Seattle from one “hotspot” to the next. So what was going on? A riot was going on. Funny how I hadn’t noticed anything suspicious, seeing that my place of employment at the time was a only few blocks north of the Westlake Center. Since my apartment was a stone’s throw from downtown, I decided to take a stroll and see what all the excitement was all about.

It turned out that the “excitement” was essentially a copycat reaction to the rioting in Los Angeles following the acquittals of the police officers who beat Rodney King in 1991. What was surprising was that most of the people I saw where white kids. The initial activities were likely initiated by black youths who were genuinely angered by the verdict--or were thugs using it as an excuse for thuggery--but it soon became an “event” where kids either observed or took part in vandalism and looting; I recall someone trying to break a jewelry display window with a brick, which ended up getting stuck in the glass. It looked like some surreal artwork. I walked around, noticed that some newspaper stands had been knocked over, and some car windows broken, became bored by the pointlessness and went home; I noted that in a few places there were lines of police in an intimidating stance, but otherwise they did little to stop the goings-on.

I suppose it could be said that other than the initial outrage at a perceived injustice, there was little that could be said to justify the subsequent activities. Most of these white kids were from middle-to-upper class families, bored with their easy life, and now given the chance to do something “naughty,” they engaged in the thrill of “civil disobedience.” In the future, they might expand on their adventure, telling their kids and grandkids the thrilling story of how they took to the streets, faced down the police and defied the economic and political elite—all in the name of a holy crusade for civil rights and justice. In retrospect, it is remarkable how an incident and its aftermath that occurred in another city and state could have such an effect on a nannytown like Seattle, especially when today police shootings and beatings are fairly commonplace—which save of rare circumstances, like the John T. Williams shooting, hardly merit more than handwringing. It is as if people had become accustomed to such behavior and satisfy themselves that the victim must have done something “bad”—either at the time or in the past.

Now, the riots in the United Kingdom seem to have caught some people off-guard, since the Brits are supposed to be superior, and with that accent that can sell any American schlub a paper sack full of dog doo-doo (I saw that in a one of those old Mad Magazine paperbacks). Of course, riots don’t simply occur in a vacuum, and they need not have occurred if politicians and the police had been less insensitive to the passions they were dealing with. A black man, a father of three young children, was shot dead by police. At the first the police claimed that the victim was armed and he had shot at them first. However, in a scenario we in the states are all too familiar with, the initial story was unfortunately contradicted by facts, and the police admitted that the victim was unarmed. When the police and government seemed less than forthcoming with answers, a crowd of demonstrators was organized to demand said answers. Police confronted the demonstrators, telling them that they were “heard” and should go home. Unsatisfied, a 16-year-old girl separated from the crowd and approached the police, angrily demanding an explanation for the unjustified killing. According to witnesses, the police “set upon” her, enraging the crowd; it was from that point that events got out of control.

In reaction to the scenes of looting and burning, you might find reactions such as the following I found on the internet: “Time to break out the bayonets and introduce these feral rats to the 'feel of cold steel.'” Prime Minister David Cameron, didn’t go that far, but as typical of conservative politicians, blamed an apparently unBritish “culture” of disrespect of “boundaries” of acceptable behavior, and refusal to recognize your place in a class-riven society. Historian David Starkey worked-up a storm by declaring on a television discussion panel that “A substantial section of the chavs have become black. The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic gangster culture has become the fashion…Black and white, boy and girl operate in this language together. This language which is wholly false, which is a Jamaican patois, that’s been intruded in England and this is why so many of us have this sense of literally a foreign country.” Odd how that attitude sounds so familiar—and just as hypocritical. Starkey proceeded to bring-up the sore subject of conservative politician Enoch Powell’s “River of Blood” speech in 1968, in which he gave voice to paranoid racists and cultural xenophobes in Britain with the following “prophecy”:

“For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’"

What Powell was so up in arms about was an anti-discrimination law which he feared would allow dark-skinned immigrants to demand redress for unequal treatment, and once receiving satisfaction through the courts, compete on an equal footing with “native” Brits—perhaps even with the possibility of some of these immigrants surpassing natives in the social and economic hierarchy. In his speech Powell’s provides an anecdote to “bolster” his position, about an older white woman who owns a boarding house, and who refuses to rent to “blacks” out of principle. She is clearly a racist, but Powell treats her as a “victim” of a fearsome society peopled by animals in human form: “When she goes to the shops, she is followed by children, charming, wide-grinning piccaninnies.” Powell in fact praises her racial prejudice, and steps into Ku Klux Klan territory when he goes on to say “The other dangerous delusion from which those who are wilfully or otherwise blind to realities suffer, is summed up in the word ‘integration.’ To be integrated into a population means to become for all practical purposes indistinguishable from its other members.” Powell gave this speech before a group of fellow conservatives, none of whom expressed any discomfiture at his remarks, and as many people in Britain praised as condemned his sentiments. Starkey admitted that the country hasn’t seen the “barbarians” seize control of the political and economic institutions of the country that Powell predicted—to be the occasion of “blood”— but rather it was seeing the annihilation of white Anglo culture, replaced by one “barbaric” in nature: white Brits were becoming “barbarians” themselves.

There are other opinions, of course. There is a “joke” making the rounds on the internet involving Cameron and his Parliamentary coalition partner Nick Clegg (a so-called Liberal Democrat) that goes something like this: “Cameron looked at Clegg, chuckled and said, ‘You know, I could throw a £1,000 note out of the window right now and make somebody very happy.’ Clegg shrugged his shoulders and replied, ‘I could throw ten £100 notes out of the window and make ten people very happy’ Hearing their exchange, the pilot of plane said to his co-pilot, ‘Such big-shots back there. I could throw both of them out of the window and make 28 million people very happy!’” But in the main, voices criticizing the conservative government’s policy of deep spending cuts that have had the effect of sending the economy into a shambles with unemployment in the “immigrant” neighborhoods particularly devastating, are ghosts in the wilderness. Even when voices are heard, their message is deliberately marginalized and vilified. Take for example a video that was being passed around the media circuit: Two 17-year old girls in the London suburb of Croydon were apparently standing in front of a shop, helping themselves to wine they had apparently relieved from the shop. The girls justified their actions by rather boldly asserting that “It’s the government’s fault—the conservatives—in a way it’s showing the police we can do what we want—that’s what it is all about—showing the police we can do what we want, and now we have…this is why this is happening, because of rich people, we’re just showing the rich people we can do what we want.”

It is such bold-speaking, apparently middle-class and articulate white youth that conservatives like Cameron and Starkey should be fearful of. Instead of staying in their “place” and towing the party line, they are identifying with those who perceive as insensitive government policy turning a blind-eye to suffering, expecting everyone to be quiet and not make a fuss. Cameron and Starkey would prefer that they stay with “their own” as Powell counseled, and pay no mind to the “others.” The girls’ message should have been a powerful antidote to the one being conveyed by the forces of conservatism, forcing the Brits to actually take note of the inequality of their society, and that maintaining an unjust society does have consequences. But instead of showing the poverty, despair and injustice the girls were alluding to, the video juxtaposed their comments with scenes of arson. Instead of providing a context to their views, they were made to look like young, hypocritical thugs who were merely excusing their actions in phony, juvenile-level moralizing; their concerns could be dismissed out of hand.

None of this was lost on right-wing commentators, of course. Extremist blogger Steve Gill declared that “Most of what is driving the violent riots in London is racism, pure and simple (meaning “black” racism). But some on the streets who are looting and burning are doing it for “good fun”. They are the product of a liberal, socialist culture who are showing the “rich people”, you know, BUSINESS OWNERS in neighborhoods who have invested, created a business, and HIRED people, that their property doesn’t really belong to them because they are the “evil” rich! This is where Obama’s class warfare will take us soon. So arm yourself and your family so you can protect what you own from those who will try to take it from you!”

Fortunately, there were a few more clear-thinking people who preferred to take a deeper look at the circumstances surrounding the riots. Jon Davis of The Guardian observed that “It is becoming clear there was a wide variety of motives for those who rioted a fortnight ago. Though there was a wide spread of ages involved in the disturbances, it was marked how many young people took part. Some spouted about "taxes", "government" and "the rich", as if some of the doom-laden analysis of their generation's prospects – that they will have to work harder, for longer, for less – had translated into blunt political messages.”

Is it all just “envy” of the rich and anger at the insensitivity of the political right—or is there something to the rage? We can first look at the UK economy, which like the U.S. economy experienced the “noughties”—that is the “naughty decade,” synonymous with lack of accountability by many sectors of the economy and financial firms. The U.S. should take a lesson from the UK’s response to the 2008 recession, which implemented fiscal austerity programs and tax cuts, which instead of leading to an economic rebound, merely led to economic flat-lining. Although all races in Britain are affected in some measure by the uncertain economic and financial instability of the country, helped not at all by rising inflation that far outraces wage increases, and because of stagnant growth, a sharp increase in unemployment looms on the horizon. As in the U.S., recent job creation has tended on the lower-income side.

As might be expected as well, racial minorities suffer out-of-proportion with their numbers. The Asian and Afro-Caribbean communities have nearly double the unemployment rate of whites, and even those who are employed are twice as likely as whites to have no savings—a fact rather strongly attested to by a 2009 wealth and assets survey that showed that the average white household possesses three times the assets of black Caribbean households, and 10-times that of Bangladeshi and 15-times that of African. Government austerity programs that target social safety net programs have naturally tended to adversely affect these communities more. Chancellor George Osborne, the power behind the austerity pogrom—has made some noises about “eradicating” the various economic disparities in the country, without addressing the continuing problem of discrimination; in 1968, 70 percent of those polled in Britain agreed with the views expressed by Powell in the “River of Blood” speech. Why should we think the numbers are significantly different today? The British education system has also failed its minority population; even though Cameron called the miniscule presence of black students at the major universities “disgraceful,” instead of improving opportunities for advancement, the Conservative government has only offered policies that increase the difficulty for advancement and opportunity. While Cameron and his government have expressed concern for the lack of moral “boundaries” among youth in the aftermath of the recent riots, he and his government have sent a clear message that they have no interest in addressing the suffering being experienced, once the everything returns to “normal.”

Davis noted the incongruity of the UK’s current ruling coalition that has given the Conservatives an authority not justified by any “mandate,” and that their scheme for governing for the minority had consequences. Neither the Conservatives nor Labour have a majority in Parliament on their own, thus making the Liberal Democrats the “swing” block. Logic states that because they are technically to the left of Labour, they should have joined with their ideological brethren to form a parliamentary majority, but instead “made a “180 degree U-turn from a professed need for an urgent budgetary stimulus to an emergency austerity package. Deputy prime minister (and Liberal party leader) Clegg's prediction in April 2010 that riots could result if a future Conservative government sought to slash and burn swathes of the public sector without a popular mandate seemed risible at the time, but has proved tragically correct. More and more, it appears that their joining the coalition represents the single greatest betrayal of electoral trust in modern times.”

This betrayal of trust is much different than the variety one’s sees in the U.S.; in our country, even when a party receives an apparent “mandate” for “change,” the minority party is supplied with weapons—particularly the U.S. Senate—to engage in legislative obstruction for the most obnoxious of partisan reasons. In the UK, despite the fact that an apparent majority of the electorate who voted to the left of the Conservatives, it is they who been able to thrust their ideology on the nation with the aid of cynical power politics without regard to principle.

If in the UK the conservative government chooses to attack the result rather the symptom of the problem, in the U.S. there is a tendency toward a lack of empathy for the poor, based not necessarily on “culture” but prejudice. A 2001 study commissioned by the Brookings Institute examined “Why Doesn’t the United States Have a European-Style Welfare State?” It found that “altruism” crossing racial lines is at a premium, something we can plainly see by “philanthropists” who prefer to spend their largesse overseas when we have poverty and hunger right here in this country. The study concluded, after dismissing the likelihood that differences in economic and taxation variables between the U.S. and European have an observable impact, recognized an electoral system that inordinately favors the majority white against racial minorities (regardless of what the majority of these groups feel), and that

“Racial fragmentation in the United States and the disproportionate representation of ethnic minorities among the poor clearly played a major role in limiting redistribution, and indeed, racial cleavages seem to serve as a barrier to redistribution throughout the world. This history of American redistribution makes it quite clear that hostility to welfare derives in part from the fact that welfare spending in the United States goes disproportionately to minorities. Another important difference is that Americans dislike redistribution because they tend to feel that people on welfare are lazy, whereas Europeans tend to feel that people on welfare are unfortunate. Apart from the fact that, in the United States, there is indeed a stronger connection between effort and earnings than in Europe, we do not know what explains these differences in beliefs…Our bottom line is that Americans redistribute less than Europeans for three reasons: because the majority of Americans believe that redistribution favors racial minorities, because Americans believe that they live in an open and fair society and that if someone is poor it is his or her own fault, and because the political system is geared toward preventing redistribution. In fact, the political system is likely to be endogenous to these basic American beliefs.”

So what does this mean? In the UK it appears that part of the problem the riots should have exposed stems from a regard of Asians and blacks as a “foreign” presence that exists on the peripheries of the national consciousness—until such time that they make their presence “known” and then everyone is “shocked” to discover there is a problem. But these groups being ignored or despised is not considered a reason to end social safety net programs; poverty in Britain was a fact long before immigrants from colonial past arrived on its shores. But in the U.S., the white population, from the time of its first encounters with the native population, marginalized and demonized non-Anglo peoples. Whites would make even there own suffer if it means discomfiting minorities who they stereotype as being solely at fault for their “condition.” The only way whites could be poor is if they were also “lazy” and “stupid,” just as the so-called Army IQ tests conducted during World War I classified certain Caucasian “races.” Both the U.S. and the UK have similar views on race, but in the UK the concept that the maintenance of a civil society requires something communal in nature mitigates against wholesale destruction of social and health care programs based on racial prejudice; in the U.S.—especially if we believe the rhetoric of the Tea Party “movement”—a large segment of the population is to each their own, everyone is responsible for themselves, even when the actions of one are consciously a detriment to another; laws and government are not permitted to intervene when one commits an injustice against another in the name of greed and selfishness.

Time for a counterrevolution

I came across a web pop-up that proclaimed that teabagger Rand Paul wished to tell me something that Barack Obama did not wish me to know about the federal deficit. Frankly, there was plenty that he wished that I didn’t know about him. Considering his numerous bizarre statements that reveal a curious kind of naïvete, one suspects that his election to the U.S. Senate was based solely on the “reputation” of his father Ron Paul, and the fact that voters simply decided to send a goofball to gum-up the works further than it already was, just because they could.

Teabagger Paul was the candidate who thought that the BP oil spill was just an “accident,” and that it was “un-American” to criticize the company. Teabagger Paul was the candidate who derided the 1964 Civil Rights Act, saying on MSNBC "I don't want to be associated with those people (presumably black), but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilized behavior because that’s one of the things freedom requires is that we allow people to be boorish and uncivilized, but that doesn't mean we approve of it." In another venue, teabagger Paul managed to get his tongue tied-up in knots, saying “I’m not for profiling people on the color of their skin, or on their religion, but I would take into account where they’ve been traveling and perhaps, you might have to indirectly take into account whether or not they’ve been going to radical political speeches by religious leaders…But if someone is attending speeches from someone who is promoting the violent overthrow of our government, that’s really an offense that we should be going after — they should be deported or put in prison.”

Teabagger Paul isn’t quite as inflexible on his views as might seem at first blush. I have to admit that I had no idea that the capital of Kentucky is a city called Frankfart (it’s a joke, get it?), but at any rate this is where last year Rand gave a speech at a pro-gun rally with a crowd of mostly militia types from an outfit called the Ohio Valley Freedom Fighters. The group’s political “manifesto” includes the following thoughts:

“The treasonous left wing socialist politicians, and their lapdogs in the press, have gotten a wedgie here recently in their underpants over the tea parties. And a little broken glass (wink, wink). I sure hope they’re out there today. If they read history, they should know and fear what came after those events over 200 years ago. This latest forced health care bill, which is really about people control, the same thing as gun control, is the modern day equivalent of the 1765 standback, its only more disastrous to our freedom living way of life, etc…

History it seems is ready to repeat itself. After a long and costly civil war that is eminent, and sure to be forced upon us, we are taking note of those who are responsible for the treason, and they will be held accountable. I advise the press to start getting it right from this moment on, and stop aiding and abetting un-American activities. Like the Tories of old, the worst shall be hung, most will be exiled, and I’m a contractor so I have a little bit of tar and feathers for those who are only partially guilty.

In closing, let me implore you to keep the torch of freedom burning bright, god bless the republic, death to the New World Order. We shall prevail.”

The only people who seem to be advocating violent overthrow, death and destruction these days are the people teabagger Paul hangs out with. Anyways, in a former life teabagger Paul was a doctor. Back in 1998, somebody quoted as saying that Medicare doesn’t work because it doesn’t have “sufficient price fluctuations.” Maybe it should be left to him to explain what he means, although I doubt he’d want us to know. Teabagger Paul has criticized private health insurers in past; does that mean he favors a tax-finance single-payer system?

“We need to get insurance of out of the way and let the consumer interact with their doctor the way they did basically before World War II.” Oh, far out. Rand, like his contemporaries Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, is proof that our education system is failing our students, particularly in even rudimentary civics teaching. The fact is that “accident” insurance was first offered in the mid 19th century, and eventually evolved into “pre-paid” health plans and then into the current insurance system. Is he saying that everyone, regardless of income status, has to haggle a price, or not receive “service” if the doctor isn’t satisfied? Teabagger Paul skirts the issue by offering another “plan”: "I believe in making every American eligible for a Health Savings Account (HSA), and removing the requirement that individuals must obtain a high-deductible insurance policy before opening an HSA." Oh geez, thanks. I guess that means if you get sick, you’ll have just enough money to pay for the visit where you are told you have a serious illness; now you can go home and wait for the reaper to show-up.

Teabagger Paul: "I believe that the primary Constitutional function of the federal government is national defense, bar none." Remember when the House Republicans made everyone read a portion of the Constitution? The preamble states the following: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The fact is that the preamble means exactly what it says, and national defense has only a token presence in the Constitution, and the founding fathers didn’t envision the country being continuously entangled in foreign conflicts—particularly the “preemptive” variety.

And Sen. Rand is the current “darling” of the Tea Party Movement.

I recall when self-proclaimed “number one” progressive commentator Thom initially believed that the “vigor” of the Tea Party “movement” could be harnessed into some kind of “populist” movement that would encompass an overall philosophy of “the people” against the powerful elites and corporations who were abusing them. Some of us who were never fooled for one minute by the true nature of the Tea Party tried to dissuade Thom from this belief; these people were in fact the frontline battalion of the extreme right. Before I was booted off his website for being too uppity, I commented how he was like a particularly NFL quarterback who soldiered on despite getting continuously battered and bruised behind a porous offensive line, taking hits for the “team.” Thom thinks the teabaggers are on his “team,” but he took sack after sack from a certain John O’Hara, who claimed to represent the true nature of the Tea Party “movement.” O’Hara disabused Thom of all of his romantic notions about teabaggers—that they were playing on the same “team” with the same idea of how to win the “game.” Teabaggers are not “populists.” Teabaggers are against health care reform. Teabaggers are not against CEOs and Wall Street hooligans making millions and billions of dollars. Teabaggers are against government spending to create jobs. Teabaggers think that tax cuts are the answer for everything. Thom, I said, wasn’t going to “win” with these guys, let alone go to the Super Bowl (unless he paid for the tickets).

Some of us on the “left” saw right through the Tea Party from the very beginning. I think Thom was taken in by their anti-immigrant rhetoric, since he himself frequently scapegoated undocumented workers for the problems of “workers” in general, and to be fair he wasn’t alone in this among so-called progressives and “populists.” This scapegoating along racial lines, is, of course, more symptomatic of the right, so once we went one step beyond that it was a simple evaluation to make. Long before the BBC exposed the Tea Party “movement” as the creation and puppet of powerful right-wing political and corporate interests such as the Koch Brothers, the fact that the Tea Party chose from the very beginning to identify itself with the Republican Party rather than as a legitimate “third party,” indicated that its ideology was not a “grassroots” movement, but an attempt to give a new rhetorical “legitimacy” to extremists within party who thought they were being marginalized by the party regulars. The fact that it “emerged” almost as soon as Barack Obama took office, and proceeded to oppose his programs without offering any counter policies suggested their actions were based on reflexive assumptions based on a large extent racial stereotypes; the fact that they frequently accused Obama of being a “racist” and used racially-insensitive caricatures suggested that saw in Obama an “us” against “the others” dynamic.

To disguise the racial aspect of the anti-Obama campaign, the forces of reaction, such as the Koch Brothers and Dick Armey, set-up front groups that supplied the teabaggers with various slogans and propaganda lines. Unlike left-wing radicals, it was never exactly clear what the Tea Party was for, although they made it abundantly clear that they were against “big” government, regulation and tax increases; it is much easier to be “against” something than it is to be “for” something, because to be “for” something means that you actually have to have a plan to do something constructive to help the common people rather than grovel before corporations and the wealthy. That is why we see that the teabaggers in Congress have yet to offer a single job creation bill (or anything else, for that matter, save impotent votes on laws passed in the previous Congress). Why? Because that means real governing, and the teabagger philosophy is to govern as little as possible and let the corporations run the country. Even Reagan didn’t go that far; people forget that his tax cuts were but a fraction of the Bush cuts, and even he realized that with the country in recession his massive military building program had to be paid for, so he agreed to various backdoor avenues of revenue increases.

Thus the Tea Party movement should be seen either as the extremist wing of the Republican Party, or fringe-right fanatics that were given a catchy name and given far more press and credibility than they deserved (for ratings, of course). We know what to expect from Fox News and CNBC, but outside a few commentators on MSNBC no one has had the mettle to stand-up to a teabagger and say to hell with your racial paranoia and your insane insistence on gutting both the federal budget and taxes in a down economy where corporation and the wealthy are simply holding on to their money instead of creating jobs: What is it that you plan to do to create jobs given this reality? What is your jobs plan, and don’t give me your cheap slogans. OK, you just gave me a cheap slogan; you don’t mind expanding on that “idea,” do you? How can the American people trust you with bringing the country out of its current distresses largely due to the policies you are now advocating, simply because you want the other party to fail? You’ve just given me more cheap, meaningless slogans. Businesses are sitting on $1.93 trillion in cash reserves—why do they need more tax cuts to create jobs? In this age of increasing wealth disparity, what is your “plan” to maintain a civil society, besides jailing everyone (presumably anyone who isn’t 100 percent white American) who can’t find a job? Well, we’ll have to end this conversation because you have not given me a single sensible answer.

There is a website called Tea Party Patriots, and its “mission” statement rather succinctly reveals its lack of governing acumen: “The impetus for the Tea Party movement is excessive government spending and taxation. Our mission is to attract, educate, organize, and mobilize our fellow citizens to secure public policy consistent with our three core values of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.” Even Thom can’t ignore that. It declares that “This is no longer about Democrats or Republicans. This is about the future of America. The current crop of politicians have ZERO credibility when it comes to promising to cut spending. Their political careers are more important than their service to their country and those they represent.” Tough talk, but because there is no actual detailed policy discussion, it is simply more empty sloganeering. The Tea Party is so lacking in substance itself that it has to borrow ideas from the so-called libertarian Cato Institute, whose theories on budget cutting includes wholesale slaughter of education, health care and infrastructure—foolish considering that the states have already been drastically cutting their own budgets in these areas, to the detriment of the long-term health of the national (of course we could also consider the possibility that this is more evidence that the Tea Party is not a “grassroots” movement, but a facade).

When the teabaggers have to think for themselves, they come-up empty: A link to their “detailed plan to reduce the deficit by 2017 without raising taxes” leads to a webpage that contains nothing more than a banner with the words “Strong America Now: No deficit, no new taxes.” That’s it??? You want to read something even more amusing? How about this:

“Tea Party Patriots, Inc. ("TPP") is a non-partisan, non-profit social welfare organization dedicated to furthering the common good and general welfare of the people of the United States.”

This statement drips with bloody irony and mendacity. Either through ignorance and deliberate deception it does “profit” one group over the other in a partisan manner—the wealthiest Americans over the considerably less well-off. “No new taxes,” of course, means no tax increases on the rich, which apparently includes extending yet again the Bush tax cuts, and not closing tax loopholes and breaks. “Free markets” naturally means a return to Bush-era corporate irresponsibility and financial bubbles, and “fiscal responsibility” and “limited government” means gutting or eliminating social safety net programs. Its claim that it is a “social welfare” organization interested in the “common good” of all people is beyond easy incomprehension; we can only deduce that by “welfare” they mean “prosperity” for the chosen few as opposed necessity for the many. The fact that they wish to gut any and all programs that aid in the opportunity and wellbeing of a major chunk of the public only draws a feeling of disgust. The fact that these teabaggers have only become interested in “fiscal responsibility” during the Obama administration—when the fiscal policies of the previous administration are almost wholly to blame to the current budget and revenue morass went “unnoticed”—indeed is more evidence that gives the lie to their claim of non-partisanship. Furthermore, the teabaggers’ insistence on a “constitutionally limited government” betrays a nostalgia to a darker time, back to the days of the antebellum South when everyone knew their “place.” Only this time, the masters are in the corporate boardrooms, the politicians are the overseers. “Poor whites” still act like poor whites, their racial animosities preventing them from analyzing the truth.

“Free markets” has always been the mantra of the right, so given the fact the Tea Party is on the extreme right, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they are all for it. It matters not what we saw as the result of unfettered free-marketeering in the past decade: A net loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs during the Bush administration after three decades of stability (if not growth), while financial freebooters sought to make millions not by making things, but by gambling with money that was not theirs or did not exist, particularly in derivatives. When the bubble burst, there was no foundation to rebuild on. And this is what the Tea Party wants us to rest the future of the country on. In their desire to cut grants for higher education, the Tea Party shows us that they don’t even believe in the American People, except those who have lots of money.

The Tea Party, in effect, doesn’t have a vision for the future. Its desire to do away with the Department of Education demonstrates that it doesn’t want to invest in people; a recent story in the Seattle Times noted that there are thousands of high-paying jobs in the state going wanting because not enough “native” citizens are educated in the technical fields required; but a man from India that I know told me that his brother—a recent immigrant—was hired by Boeing for an engineering position almost as soon as he made the inquiry. Washington state has always ranked near the bottom in the country in its financial support for education, and still continues to make dramatic cuts in education spending; the University of Washington doesn’t even try to hide the fact that it actively seeks foreign students rather than native residents because of the higher tuition fees that they are required to pay.

The Tea Party would also do away with Social Security and Medicare. Think about it: The Tea Party believes that doing away with these programs with lead to more tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, who will allegedly use that money to create jobs. One problem is that outside the Warren Buffetts of the world, the wealthy and people who run corporations do not have the national interest in mind, let alone the common person. Surprisingly, Donald Trump—who derided Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget cutting plan as “stupid”—recently admitted to George Stephanopoulos that he thought that the super rich who did not want to pay higher taxes were not “patriotic.” These people are not saying “We need to create more jobs because too many people in this country are suffering.” They are saying “How can we maximize profit?” Do we need to cut more jobs?” The federal government is in fact the largest employer in the country, and has been the most reliable; the smaller government that the Tea Party yearns for will only send even more people onto the street—to an even smaller social safety net, if there still is one.

Hard to make sense of the past week

There doesn’t seem to be much that makes sense in this world these days. Take for example events in the past week. Standard & Poor’s threatened to lower the credit rating on the national debt unless some kind of agreement was reached on raising the debt ceiling. When an "agreement" was finally achieved, S & P lowered their rating anyways. To avoid this, Congress could have simply agreed as they did hundreds of times before to raise the debt ceiling without attaching anything more than the usual pretend bluster concerning the deficit; during the Bush administration, Republicans told us that deficits don’t matter, so they were glad to do it. But because Rush Limbaugh and Fox News blowhards were telling us that Barack Obama is an anti-white “socialist” who wants to communize the country, suddenly there is this irrational fear that the debt is out-of-control because of this spendthrift maniac of a president out to steal more of “your” money to give to “his people.” It’s absurd, but many paranoid millions believe it. Not only that, but those on the left are equally critical of Obama for not demanding another stimulus package, as if there was any chance of getting one from a House full of rabid Tea Partiers who don’t understand the realities of public and international debt.

The debt issue is actually quite simple, if you think about it. If you don’t have enough money to pay your bills, you use a credit card. As long as you pay a minimum balance every month and stay below your “debt ceiling,” you still have credit you can draw on if you fall short. As long as you have a more or less steady income, you should be in no danger of being unable to make your minimum payment. Thus it is with the federal government; as long as there is an expectation of a certain amount of revenue, and can pay a minimum amount of interest on its debt, the government will remain solvent.

It is not that we shouldn’t be concerned about how high the national debt is, but it is useful to note that the extent and problem of a nation’s debt varies wildly. Japan’s public debt is 225 percent of its GDP, and its government borrowing actually exceeded its revenues last year. Yet there seems to be this assumption that the Japanese have it all in hand; The Economist noted that Japan’s head-in-the-sand approach includes a break-away political party seemingly modeled on the U.S. Tea Party movement, claiming to be reformers but who seem to believe that anti-immigrant nationalism is the “tonic” Japan needs to solve its decreasing economic output, as its native labor pool continues to age. On another extreme is the UK’s international balance of payments debt, 400 times that of its GDP. Thus the U.S.’ short-term debt picture tends to be falsely characterized by the media, politicians and the public. The country’s external debt—its international balance of payments—is over 90 percent of GDP, but this is not necessarily a measure of government debt, but of trade imbalances; whenever you buy a Japanese-made car or a Chinese-made laptop computer, you are contributing to that debt. The U.S. public debt (debt held by non-governmental entities, usually in the form of sales of Treasury bonds) is about 60 percent of GDP (according to the CIA Factbook), which is fairly manageable compared to other countries. These figures, however, do not take into account “intra-governmental” borrowings from trust surpluses (like Social Security) and Medicare funds. The federal deficit numbers usually bandied about do take into account this debt, but the public debt as a short-term concern is overblown; but for the long-term, intra-government borrowing is a significant concern if draws down the Social Security and pension trust funds too far too quickly.

So what credibility should we give Standard & Poor’s lowering of the U.S. credit rating? A BBC World News reporter went out on the streets of Times Square and asked passersby what they thought of the ramifications. One man had this to say: “This all began with Clinton, Bush didn’t do anything about it, and Obama made it worse.” This is about the kind of sense you might expect from someone who gets all his misinformation from Fox News and CNBC. But while many Americans have reached the conclusion that something really bad has happened, one needs to put this in proper perspective, and apparently some people already have: While the Stock Market plummeted on Monday, people who were selling off their stocks were apparently re-investing them—in the U.S. government, just as they did in 2008. As the LA Times reported, “The continuing global stock market panic is the gift that keeps on giving to the U.S. Treasury. Despite the U.S. credit-rating downgrade by Standard & Poor's last week, the Treasury on Wednesday saw huge demand when it sold $24 billion in new 10-year notes.” Despite all the media handwringing, this was a direct slap in the face to S & P, which many commentators on both the right and the left were already deriding as without substance or credibility. Barry Ritholtz of the Washington Post recently noted it was, after all, rating firms like S & P who contributed to the Great Recession:

“Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings — all originally served bond investors, who paid for their research. But that model changed in the 1990s to one that was funded by the syndicators and underwriter of structured financial products such as mortgage-backed securities. Essentially, bankers “purchased” the rating they desired. As a result, the performance of the rating agencies decayed, as they were no longer judged on the quality of their analytical reviews. Second, the underwriting quality of syndicators fell, as they —not a neutral third party — were, in effect, picking their own credit ratings. The real question for the financial markets is why we even require rating agencies to evaluate complex financial products any more.”

The “model” changed thanks to fanatical deregulators like the incompetent Sen. Phil Graham, who subsequently chose to blame the victims rather than the perpetrators of the 2008 financial meltdown. The greatest failing of Bill Clinton’s presidency was not the Lewinsky scandal, but caving in to the Republican Congress’ deregulation madness—in particular the repeal of Glass Steagall, which allowed banks to be run like gambling casinos with depositors’ money. George Bush and the federal regulators on his watch gleefully turned a blind eye to the consequences, while ratings firms like S & P added hydrogen to the financial airship by providing usefully improper credit reports. S & P’s latest actions should be seen not as a reaction to its past indiscretions, but as a purely political move. It criticizes the political stalemate in Washington, but it is clear what side of the political fence it leans on when it insists on major social program cuts to get back in its “good” graces. When Obama came with his statement on Monday, he only tepidly disagreed with S & P’s move; he should have forcefully brushed it aside by noting as Ritholtz did that S & P is a self-glorified stooge of the banking industry, and in effect incompetent to make a judgment one way or the other.

Meanwhile, on NPR economist James Galbraith and some Wall Street Journal editor I dismissed as a right-wing partisan hack in the Fox News mold (the WSJ, as we know, is now owned by Rupert Murdoch) argued about who was responsible for the present economic morass. A third commentator—probably correctly—intimated that there is little the government can do about the economy, since it seems impervious to any policy tinkering; tinkering only marginally helps one side or the other—meaning either the rich or everyone else, but not both. Despite the intransigence of House Republicans, they all blamed Obama alone for the debt crisis and the failure of the economy to more rapidly emerge from its doldrums. One side says that Obama has done too much, the other side says has done too little. There was a lot of talk about his supposed inability to lead; there was less talk—or rather no talk—about how Republicans do not want to be led, except by the nose by the Tea Party.

But Obama had nothing to do with the disastrous policies that led to the “Great Recession,” and he has been able to do little but nibble at the toes of those policies. Had Clinton’s tax and fiscal policies—which had gone a long way to fixing the damage done by Ronald “Deficits Don’t Matter” Reagan and George H.W. “Doo the Voodoo Too” Bush and their tax-cutting for the rich and military spendthrifting—been continued during the Bush II administration, the nation would have gone a long way toward erasing its national debt. But remember what Bush II told us? The poor rich needed a break, and with increased employment, the subsequent taxation on that income would make-up for the initial losses in revenue. Only Republicans seemed to believe this; after the controversial 2000 election, Bush told us that he “heard” the American People” and had second thoughts about the extent of the tax cuts. But Congressional Republicans demanded the whole hog, except that instead of getting it all at once, they passed part of it in 2001 and the rest in 2003.

Bush also forgot to tell us that he intended on starting a war from the very start, just like Gov. Scott Walker forgot to tell Wisconsin voters that he was going to gut public union bargaining rights. It was also Bush who pushed predatory home loans to those who did not have the means, after gutting affordable housing and rental subsidies. His SEC regulators apparently had little do except watch internet porn (and it wasn’t just men who were guilty of using government property for their illicit activities: “A Regional Office Staff Accountant received nearly 1,800 access denials for pornographic websites using her SEC laptop in only a two-week period, and had nearly 600 pornographic images saved on her laptop hard drive” according to the SEC inspector). Then Bush started his two mostly needless wars; instead of a marginalized Saddam Hussein who at least served as a bulwark against Iran, fanatical anti-American cleric and Iranian place-holder Muqtada al-Sadr waits in the wings to engage in a bloody overthrow of Iraqi “democracy.” Just last week, al-Sadr announced that any American soldiers remaining in Iraq after 2011—even those serving as trainers—would be targeted for death as infidel “occupiers.”

Bush’s continuation of Reaganesque “voodoo economics”—that is, the “trickle down” theory—only led to 3 million net manufacturing job losses, and while only increasing overall job gains by a net of 2 million in eight years—compared to 22 million during the Clinton years. But these losses were masked by a booming housing construction bubble based on very unsound credit. When the Bush administration gutted low-income housing subsidies, “in return” it made it easier for lenders to avoid accountability by luring potential low-income homeowners with low “teaser” interest rates that went-up dramatically at a certain time. Since many of these lenders were outside the commercial banking sphere, their practices were not regulated at all, and home loan borrowers who were not educated in the potential hazards involved were exploited by these lenders, who could easily foreclose to get their money back. But these lenders didn’t wait for that to happen; they sold their mortgages in bundles to banks or to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, who in turn might sell them to investment firms. The expectation was, of course, that homeowners would continue to pay their monthly mortgage.

We’ve heard of derivatives; what do they have to do with this? When people buy a security like a stock or bond, they own a piece of what they are buying, thus they gain or lose according to that security’s market performance. But when someone invests in a derivative, they don’t actually own a “piece” of a company, they are placing a wager on whether the security will rise or fall in price, and it is quite likely that many of these people had a very good idea of what they were betting on. Insurance companies like AIG engaged in derivatives when they sold policies in which losses from mortgage-based investments would be covered. This “insurance”—called “credit default swaps”—led to speculation on the future yield of these mortgage-based investments in which these speculators could "influence" the course of events; the actual owners of the investments faced most of the risk, and insurance companies like AIG could face massive losses if the housing bubble burst. By the time of the financial crisis of 2008 occurred, an incredible $60 trillion in mortgages were insured—compared to just under $1 trillion when Bush first took office. All that was propping this up was rising home prices and the ability of home owners to pay their mortgages—who were often of such impoverished means that they were forced to borrow on their home equity, putting themselves in deeper into debt and one paycheck from losing their home. When the “bubble” finally burst and home prices plummeted and homeowners could no longer pay their mortgages, even “only” a 7 percent default rate was disastrous for the insurance companies, banks and investment firms who were heavily involved.

Then as now, as the stock market plummeted, investment in Treasury bonds soared, since the U.S. government was still viewed as the safest investment haven. This didn’t, of course, help the economy; despite the $700 billion infusion of cash into banks who owned toxic home mortgage securities, banks chose not to use the money to lend, but to buy Treasury bonds, thus hindering economic recovery. Given the stagnation of the economy at the moment, it seems certain that whatever economic growth occurred in 2009-2010, was largely due to the Obama stimulus program; more than seven months into the extension of tax cuts for the rich, there is almost no sign that they have done anything to stimulate the economy or job growth. It seems obvious that more—not less—government spending is required to spur job creation and consumer spending; with the rest of the world’s economy (save in China and India) in question, this country has to do something shocking—do the sensible thing and demand that Congress make job creation--not more useless tax breaks for businesses--its number one priority, which does not include job-killing budget cuts to fix a “problem” which exists mainly because the government has done too little rather than too much, to correct the country’s wealth imbalances.

"Common sense," said Obama in his Monday statement, is what we need more of in Washington. Of course, that means having a "sense" of what happened the past three years. We should have learned that unfettered deregulation of financial markets, giving money to banks and tax cuts for the wealthy have not worked to jump start the economy, while targeted stimulus funds did work. But with the Tea Party in charge, the children are running the nursery.

For once, latest Favre rumors are only that.

Last year, I expended a great deal of space defending former NFL quarterback Brett Favre and his various on-field/off-field antics. Note that I used the word “former.” Favre was always “hinting” that he was ready to hang it up since at least 2004, but I always took these noises with a grain of salt. This was a guy you couldn’t keep off the field, his boyish enthusiasm never seeming to run dry. I never thought he intended on retiring in 2008; he was just frustrated that the Packers management kept hounding him about making a decision “now” instead of letting him make his decision when he was damned good and ready to, preferably after the spring camps were over.

I sensed that Favre was of two minds about wanting to come back last year, despite the beating he took in the NFC championship game against New Orleans. He recently told a Buffalo radio station that after his enforced "retirement" from Green Bay, he had a chip on his shoulder to prove to the "haters" that he wasn't washed-up, but one suspects that there was some unfinished business to take care of--and it didn’t all have to do with having come so close to the Super Bowl. After the 2009 season, statistically his best, Favre was just shy of several as yet unreached milestones: 500 touchdown passes, 10,000 pass attempts and 70,000 yards passing. If he stayed healthy through the 2010 season, there was also the 300 consecutive games started mark. People might scoff at playing for statistics; Tom Brady may not, but Peyton Manning certainly is stats-conscious. You think Drew Brews wasn’t aware that Manning was going to break his single-season pass completion record of 440 if he didn’t do something quick about it? Manning completed 450 passes last year, but Brees put in a final burst down the stretch, finishing the season just short with 448 completions. Anyone who thinks that players shouldn’t be stats-conscious fails to take into account that statistics are the principle measure of the man; they determine how much money he makes and his longevity. They are also a sense of professional and historical pride; even a lousy player who played in only one game can proudly point to the stat line and say that he was a part of football history. The reality is that calling someone a “team” player is a euphemism for a mediocre player.

This year, Favre doesn’t really have anything to play for; after all, he has won a Super Bowl. Except for 300 career starts (he has 298), there are no significant career milestones for him to achieve. Of course, that doesn’t mean that some people, based on past history, think that he still has the “fire” to play. After the lengthy lockout, one or two commentators floated the idea that a few teams might be considering giving Favre a call. Miami Dolphins coach Tony Sparano did not specifically rule out the possibility of a Favre resurfacing on his team when asked, and ESPN’s Skip Bayless said on “Mike and Mike in the Morning” that he believed Favre had another year left, and that if he was Sparano, he’d make that phone call. Favre’s agent, Buzz Cook, said there was no foundation for such rumors, although Favre had made him look foolish before. A Miami Herald reporter, Jeff Darlington, was sent down to Hattiesburg to find Favre and discover the truth. This is what he found:

“His body moved slowly and gingerly, each step appearing to take as much deliberate effort as the next. Brett Favre didn’t look like a man capable of returning to the NFL on Friday…At one point Friday, Favre took a seat in the shade near a concession stand at Oak Grove High School, slowly moving himself to the ground from a standing position. Once he was back to the standing position, he walked toward a set of bleachers the way a runner might look on the day after his first marathon.” If that description was anything like the aftermath of my first “marathon,” Favre is definitely finished. I remember walking in a 40 kilometer volksmarch—a real volksmarch--in Augsburg, Germany when I was in the Army. Our company commander told us that if any of us completed the march we would have two weeks off from morning PT, which sounded like a good deal to me. The day after I completed the march I discovered why the CO was so generous: My legs felt like they were encased in cement, a condition which lasted for about two weeks. I had no fun at all (I had even less "fun" a few months later when I was involved in a jeep accident that had me laid-up in a hospital for a month; when I returned to the kaserne, I discovered that whoever did the "inventory" of the contents of my wall locker apparently thought that I would not miss the commemorative patch I was given for completing the march).

Favre looked flabby and beaten, according to the reporter. School officials said he hadn’t thrown a pass to high school football players as he had in the past. Finally mustering the strength to escape to his pick-up truck, Favre snapped at the reporter “I haven’t heard anything, and I don’t have any interest.” Of course, that doesn’t mean that if he had heard something from the team, that his “interest” would improve. But even if he was “interested,” Favre is apparently in no shape now to take the kind of beating he has taken for the past two seasons in Minnesota. It seems that we can now finally safely say the Brett Favre Era is over.

The right's second reaction to Norway massacre sounds a lot like their first

Remember Jayna Davis? Of course you don’t. She was the Oklahoma City reporter who delighted right-wing conspiracy nuts by claiming she found “evidence” that Saddam Hussein, one of his henchmen—Hussain Al-Hussaini—and an Al-Qaeda hit squad teamed-up to help Timothy McVeigh blow-up the Murrah Federal Building. She also wrote a best-selling book—“The Third Terrorist”—which claimed to detail the whole sordid plot. Two problems with the book, well, actually three—or four or five or six: Davis claims that “dozens of witnesses” say that they saw McVeigh “colluding” with Iraqi soldiers—or rather “foreign-looking” people—in the months before the bombing. The only physical “evidence” to back-up this assertion is a grainy video camera capture, supposedly of Al-Hussaini (who was in the news briefly when it was discovered he was one of the homeless men who was arrested for fighting another homeless man in a Boston suburb last March), but frankly looks like a curly-haired white man. Except for a rogue CIA agent or two interviewed on Fox News, federal intelligence agents have called these claims preposterous. Davis’ “evidence” also takes grand leaps of imagination when she tries to draw links from Terry Nichols’ Filipino wife to Muslim “terrorists” in her homeland. Filipino wife-Muslim terrorists. It makes perfect sense! The 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef used a rented Ryder van to carry the explosives—and McVeigh used a rented Ryder van as well. See? An Al-Qaeda link! Isn’t it obvious?

As we might recall, in the days following the OKC bombing, there was widespread belief that the perpetrators were Muslim, and there were numerous reported attacks on Muslims in the country. Although Bill Clinton cautioned against jumping to conclusions before all the evidence was in, later—after all the “evidence” was in—he and the Republican Congress passed a counterterrorism bill that essentially ignored domestic terrorists like McVeigh but focused on Mideast threats. We can all say in hindsight after 9-11 this was the proper focus—although something obviously failed in the translation to the Bush administration—it was symptomatic of the country seeking out foreign scapegoats instead of looking inward. So it is with most of the people who take Davis’ book seriously, who are almost exclusively of the right-wing extremist, Islamophobe stripe; I did find one commentator, however, who decided that the credibility of the author was in question because she never took into consideration McVeigh’s ties to white supremacist groups, for which there is ample evidence. When Steve Jones, McVeigh’s first attorney, said "They (the FBI) short-circuited the search for the truth. I don't doubt Tim's role in the conspiracy. But I think he clearly aggrandized his role, enlarged it, to cover for others who were involved" he wasn’t referring to Al-Qaeda or Saddam Hussein. He was referring to McVeigh’s proven links to the white supremacist compound at Elohim City.

For example, an Associated Press story reported that “hotel receipts, a speeding ticket, prisoner interviews, informant reports and phone records” showed that McVeigh was in contact with members of the compound shortly before the bombing, and that they knew of his plan. A federal agent wrote a memo stating that "It is suspected that members of Elohim City are involved either directly or indirectly through conspiracy”—including as a violent bank robbing gang that McVeigh was involved in for at least one robbery, to help fund their plots. According to the AP story, “The FBI teletype revealed that the gang members who were present when McVeigh called were familiar with explosives and had made a videotape three months before McVeigh struck vowing a war against the federal government and promising a ‘courthouse massacre’"—the courthouse referenced was likely the federal courthouse directly opposite the Murrah Federal Building. It was also reported that an informant claimed that members of Elohim City were “discussing bombing a federal building in Oklahoma” and based on this information “the FBI specifically had worries such an attack could occur April 19”—the very day of the bombing. Yet even armed with this knowledge, the FBI took no added measures to secure suspected targets. After the bombing, Carol Howe, the informant, was sent back to the compound to glean additional information; she reported that one member discussed concocting alibis for the day of the bombing; the same person also discussed the bomb McVeigh used, claiming that he had constructed another fertilizer bomb before the attack for testing. Yet despite all of this evidence, the FBI—in an apparent attempt to minimize the depth of responsibility—focused only on those people who could be most directly linked to the bombing. Still, while white supremacist ties to McVeigh are clear, the FBI did not find any credible evidence to suggest that McVeigh had any contact with Muslim terrorists.

Why do I bring-up this old news? Because like the initial reaction to the OKC bombing and the nature of right-wing comment since, the massacres perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik--who killed 77 people in two separate attacks in Norway--the first,and second, reaction by the right runs as far from the truth as is possible. The assumption immediately after news of the attacks on an Oslo government building and the massacre of young people taking part in an island retreat was that this was the act of Muslim terrorists. Naturally, Fox News took the lead in putting the cart before the horse; Laura Ingraham, filling in on The O’Reilly Factor, proclaimed to the two-thirds of cable news viewers that "In the 'Back of the Book' segment tonight, two deadly terror attacks in Norway, in what appears to be the work, once again, of Muslim extremists" juxtaposed with images of 9-11. Although the segment had been pre-recorded so that the Fox crew responsible could get out early for the weekend, what was inexcusable was the assumption before the facts were in that the perpetrators were Muslims.

Of course, the blogosphere was going wild; on a website called “Legal Insurrection,” Cornell University law professor William Jacobson posted

“No one expected the barbarians to hit Norway. No one, that is, except the people of Norway. And among those there is one woman named Hege Storhaug who anticipated it most clearly and cruelly. Her thoughts on the subject are frighteningly prescient. Storhaug begins this piece with a bit of optimism, crediting Germany’s Merkel and France’s Sarkozy with standing up to the catastrophe of multiculturalism”:
“Europe is finally waking up to the threat posed by decades of policies which preached tolerance, yet bred the exact opposite: an intolerance by many immigrants, particularly Islamists, for the values of their new homelands.”

I sent the professor an email on the Cornell website asking him if he had any further comments; naturally he didn’t respond. On the History Channel website, there were comments like “the only things in Norway, besides the blond haired, blue eyed Norwegians, who have been historically against violence of that nature, are, gasp!, the Islamofascist immigrants into Norway and they wouldn't be capable of such a thing, would they?” and "If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck my friend." Another person observed that “It certainly wasn't planned and carried out by Republicans. They're usually too busy putting food on the table, roofs over their heads, clothes on the kids backs and shoes on their feet after they've finished paying their taxes, to have much time left over for manufacturing and planting bombs this size or setting up the massacre of a bunch of kids at a kids camp. Didn't planting bombs and killing police use to be one of Bill Ayer's specialties? And just who might Bill Ayers be a friend of?”

Well, just to put things in their proper perspective, except for the townhouse explosion that killed three of its own members, no one was ever killed as a result of the Weather Underground’s activities, or at least was ever proven; all of their bombings were staged to avoid casualties—exactly the opposite of the intentions of the right-wing terrorists we have recently seen in action. In this country, we’ve seen the arrest of white supremacist militia members in Michigan plotting to kill police officers, and in Norway suddenly we discover that it was a blonde, blue-eyed man of right-wing extremist and fundamentalist Christian leanings who carried out the attacks. By all appearances, Breivik is neither mad nor insane; he was simply doing what he felt he had to do to stop the “onslaught” of “multiculturalism”—that is, “conservative” Islam, the “crimes” of which in his manifesto he likened to that of the Nazis, a rather curious comparison and suggests he draws a distinction between “conservatives” and the “right.”

Although Breivik quoted freely from American Islamophobes like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the right quickly distanced itself from him. While those on the left wring their hands in shame whenever even the taint of crime with a left-wing slant is suggested, when horrific actions by those of the political and social right are committed, the right goes to the furthest reaches of the universe to deny any taint of culpability; the right’s utter lack of a sense of responsibility—due in no small part to its pig-headed insistence on confrontation rather than compromise—merely guarantees the probability that such acts will occur in the future.

Simon Maloy at Mediamatters, meanwhile, reported how right-wing commentators all over the country, rather than engage in sobering reflection, were trying to spin the story as best they could, comparing Breveik to a “jihadist.” An Adrew Breitbart website mendaciously proclaimed that “This Norwegian terrorist was not a Christian or a conservative. He acted contrary to the teachings of the Bible and conservatives from Burke to Madison. He was instead a jihadist, blinded by an ideology who resorted to violence rather than engaging in a public debate of ideas. He was a coward who planted bombs and killed innocent people. For him, violence was the only answer. He claimed to be fighting jihadists...but he actually became one. He didn't kill one islamist [sic] terrorist with his actions-only innocent Norwegians. Change the location, and he acted like so many jihadists in the Middle East. He became one of them.”

Apparently you are an accepted member of the right-wing extremist and Christian fundamentalist tribe until you actually act on the hate rhetoric they engage in, and then you are hypocritically disavowed. It would be useful to observe that Breivik didn’t just kill random people; the victims were members of a youth organization associated with the liberal Labor Party. Meanwhile, CNN’s Erick Erickson—who initially assumed it was a Muslim attack, but felt perfectly justified in the assumption because

“First, those of us on the right who point out the now fairly common ties between terrorists and Islam do so largely because the secular left has become willfully naive. The fact of the matter is violence and Islam may not be very common among American Muslims, but internationally it is extremely common and can fairly well be considered mainstream within much of Islam. Read Andy McCarthy if you suffer on the delusion that it is not mainstream…With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts. In fact, in as much as there is an Arab Street filled with Muslims more often than not cheering on the latest terrorist act of radical Islamists, you will be very hard pressed to find a Christian who does not condemn the act regardless of the faith of the person doing the killing…Over the next week, assuming the budget fight in Washington doesn't over shadow it, you can expect lots more gloating that the guy in Norway described himself as a conservative Christian. Never mind that a conservative Christian would not do what the guy did. The left, however, will not be persuaded otherwise. They are of this world and this world is all that matters until the last day.”

So much for CNN’s claim that “news” matters. White supremacist and neo-Nazi groups all profess to be “Christian” organizations, and Timothy McVeigh was certainly exposed to Christian Identity “theology”; I’m also certain that Sean Hannity, Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Glenn Beck, Peter King, Michelle Bachmann and all those other Muslim-baiters also regard themselves as “Christian.” Erickson seems to be walking on hot coals, trying to differentiate between Christians and what he presumably means “true” Christians. It’s odd how many of these “conservatives” speak like moderates after the shameful truth is exposed. Since Breivik targeted youth of the liberal Labor Party, he was trying to make a “political” statement, essentially accusing the Labor Party of being too tolerant and “blind” to the “danger” of Muslim terrorism. No one on the left is “gloating” over this massacre, but they do want the right to demonstrate some amount of accountability. But the right has never shown itself to be populated by anything other than cowardly hypocrites; the failure of self-examination has not only crippled Congress, but apparently simple human decency. "There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler Youth or whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that's all about politics? Disturbing," exclaimed Beck on the Norwegian youths who were killed.

So while the right is trying to sanitize its cesspool of hate rhetoric, The New York Times reported that Norwegian intelligence agencies were aware that the “biggest threat” of terrorist activities on its soil was from homegrown extremists, but intelligence reports purposely chose to emphasize “the dangers of radical Islam.” That is not to say that radical Islam is not a danger, but it is too easy to focus on the Islamists and not to confront nationalism, nativism and xenophobia within one’s own society. When a segment of society chooses to focus on the faults of dark-skinned “others” rather than its own, the rhetoric of hate only increases the feeling of national paranoia and fear—and we are supposed to be “surprised” when on occasion someone feels that the hate talk isn’t quite leading to the “resolution” of the “problem” hoped for? Instead of the O’Reillys, Hannitys, Limbaughs, Bachmanns and Palins of the world toning down their hate rhetoric (if we had Britain’s public airwaves laws, Hannity and Limbaugh would be working in the sewers instead of contributing to them), they first deny all, and continue on as if nothing bad ever happened.

Will the Norwegian attack open many eyes here, unlike the OKC bombing, the Holocaust museum attack by a white supremacist two years ago, the Austin IRS building suicide plane attack by an anti-government fanatic last year, and the Tucson massacre this year, perpetrated by a man influenced by the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant extremist rhetoric of the American Renaissance? The Associated Press reported, to no surprise to anyone, that in the wake of the Norwegian attacks New York Republican and Islamophobe Peter King “said he had no plans to broaden contentious hearings about the radicalization of Muslim Americans” and “his committee focused on terrorist threats with foreign ties and suggested that the Judiciary Committee might be more appropriate for looking at non-Muslim threats.” Oh really? As we may recall, a Department of Homeland Security report on rightwing extremist threats was met with outrage from Republicans and the right-wing media; DHS director Janet Napolitano, like a sniveling coward, withdrew the report and apologized for even suggesting such a thing. According to the same AP story, Daryl Johnson, who authored the report, said that after he left DHS in 2010, “the number of analysts assigned to non-Islamic militancy of all kinds was reduced to two from six” and compared to that, “30 analysts worked on Islamic radicalism when he was there.”

Anders Romarheim, of the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, said after the massacre in his country "With 9/11 in America, people could ask, 'Who are they?' and could pour their rage out on someone else. But we can't disavow this person; he's one of us. That's a sobering thought." But as might be expected, the Norwegian massacre and what it means will quickly fade from the collective memory in this country. What will not fade is nativism, racism and xenophobia. Fox News and right-wing media will continue spreading hate as they have before, unapologetically and as strenuously as before. And when another massacre from a person influenced by right-wing hate occurs, his aiders and abettors will of course deny all and call him a “madman.”