Money and respect.

For all of you who said, "f*ck it" to trying to save the rain forest, here's what you are NOT going to do (and what you are going to do).

http://billmoyers.com/episode/ian-haney-lopez-on-the-dog-whistle-politics-of-race-part-two/

For goodness sake, people are hungry. We're in the midst of a recession. There hasn't been a recovery for the broad middle. Why would we cut off stamps now? We cut off food stamps because it's part of this old rhetoric that food stamps is for undeserving minorities, and that this is part of a symbol of government gone amok. That's one of the minor dog whistles. Here's the major one. ObamaCare. Ostensibly, this is about healthcare. But really, it's about Obama and government policy. Obama himself has been subject to a lot of dog whistling, that he's foreign born, not a citizen, a Muslim. What's happening with the term ObamaCare is all of these insinuations are being attached to a government policy. The most recent one: ObamaCare makes you lazy. Right? Now, ostensibly, this is because if you finally have health insurance, maybe you don't have to work that second job. But conservatives have turned it around and said this is about making you lazy. And lazy, of course, is one of these racial code words for minorities.

The Republicans have a real stake in proving that government can't work. They need voters to be hostile to federal government. To see government as the enemy. Because that's the only way voters will support politics that actually give control of government back over to big money.

More than that. Obama's incompetent. That had been a conservative frame for a long time. But it was absurd. It just didn't seem to match up with this cool, composed and sophisticated, incredibly competent individual. But as soon as the government startup fumbled, that racial stereotype of incompetence could be attached to Obama again. And here's the other one that was attached. Remember Joe Wilson, when he interrupted Obama, he says, "You lie." Now, a lot of people said, well, that was a terrible breach of decorum. But very, but fewer people noted that's also an old stereotype, a stereotype of black mendacity, that you can't trust blacks, they're always lying and cheating and stealing.

So when you look at what animates the tea party, there are several different hatreds that are core to the tea party. They hate welfare. Especially, or particularly welfare that's understood as going to minorities. Not social security, for instance, but rather food stamps. Next, they're obsessed about Muslims and Islam. And they really see this sort of threatening, this external threat in the form of the Middle East, but also ostensibly an internal threat of Muslims coming into the United States. For example, this is Kansas passing its law that there shan't be Sharia law in the courts of Kansas. Absurd, except that it triggers this racial fear. Next, they're deeply concerned about undocumented immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants from Mexico. Finally, they hate President Obama. And Obama seems to combine both this sense of welfare, of being a Muslim, of being a brown foreign other, right? So all of these fears that animate the tea party movement at the grassroots level, these are racial narratives. They're racial narratives that say to people, if you want to understand what went wrong in your life, if you want to understand what what went wrong in America, blame minorities.

So, think about what a lot of Republicans are actually doing in terms of their policies. In terms of their policies, they say they're for limited government. But in fact, what they're doing is giving over control of the regulatory state the corporations. They say they want to shrink the federal deficit, but in fact, they're spending massive amounts of money either in tax cuts for the very rich, or in big subsidies that go to corporations, for example the farm bill that was recently enacted. Now, you can't get elected going to the American public and saying, I want to cut your funding for your schools, I want to cut funding for your social security, I want to cut your pensions. And I want to shower all that money on the very rich. You can't get elected that way. But you can get elected going to the American public saying, we're in mortal danger as a country because something has gone terribly wrong with our society. We see it in religion, we see it around gender, we see it around abortion, we see it around same-sex marriage, and we certainly see it in terms of welfare and criminals and illegal aliens. That's the language that a very extreme wing of the conservative, of conservatives has been using to skew American politics, but also to take over the Republican party. Republicans from 30, 40 years ago, would not recognize what the party is today.

I don't get it.

Let's see...

1) We know that we have a system in place in the U.S., and it's a pretty shitty system which needs a lot of changes (for ex, lobbying changes, changes to a tax system beneficial to the rich, etc.), within which it is very difficult to accomplish much for the middle and working classes

2) We know there's been a right wing fad, wave, trend, infection, infestation, call it whatever you like, for the past decades, since Ronald Reagan. In fact, even some Democrats became Reagan Democrats. Revolting. It has caused damage from that point till now, and we still have the same right wing assholes in office pushing to keep the trend or fad or whatever it's called.

3) RWers have made life a living hell for Obama. Whether he's socialist left, center left, or right wing left, anything the man has attempted to do has been met with resistance and the Limbaughs and his minions of brainless zombies have labeled him a Communist and worse.

4) We have fewer election alternatives than most advanced countries do. THIS ISN'T EUROPE. We have LESS to work with.

And then I read these posts. Sheesh.

SOME libs think the SAME way RWers do - that it's all Obama's fault, Obama this, Obama, that, Obama the other. That somehow he could've pulled a magic wand out from between his legs and fought off all those RW assholes, and turned absolutely everything around, corrected the damage done by RWers, changed the laws, changed the system, changed the f*d up rightwing opinions of the country, everything! Are they CRAZY? Do they expect MAGIC? And lastly, why don't THEY get out there and do something to change the system instead of whining and whining like babies who want their diapers changed?

Sorry, these reactions just made me really angry.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/17/us-eu-paying-ukrainian-rioters-protesters-paul-craig-roberts/

And the rich, Walmart and other corporations, and the most well-to-do get these forms of welfare at an alarmingly high rate, much higher than the poor, while the poor are the ones accused of sucking up state funds.

Venezuela's Deep Political Education Means Venezuelans Will Withstand Right-Wing Protests

Americans might be fooled by mass media misinformation, but Venezuelans know what is really happening in their country.

The misinformation in most of the media about the protests in Venezuela is astounding. Often the opposite of reality is repeated as if it were true. Americans who rely on the corporate mass media, politicians and corrupted nonprofits might fall for these tales, but Venezuelans know what is really happening.

The violent actions of the opposition and intentional undermining of the economy are signs of an oligarch class that has lost power and is desperate. It must work outside of democracy to try to retake control of the government.

Maria Paez Victor told us that the opposition will fail because it has no political base outside of the wealthy class. She writes:
"These violent tactics have no hope of succeeding because, unlike 1999, the Venezuelan people are now organized into many groups: the communal councils, the communes, the thousands of health, security, militia, sports, educational, cultural committees. The Bolivarian Revolution has fostered, not a mass of people, but an organized organic population that makes decisions about its living conditions along with its government because Venezuela is now a fully functioning participatory democracy."

Polls show President Nicolas Maduro is the most popular president in Latin America and the people of Venezuela are not fooled by the oligarch protests. According to a poll by International Consulting Services (ICS), 85.3 percent of Venezuelans disagree with protests mounted by sectors of the ultra-Venezuelan right. The poll found 81.6 percent of Venezuelans say that it is the opposition protests that have been violent, and 91.3 percent replied that preserving Venezuelan democracy is very important. The people of Venezuela do not want their democracy undermined by a mob demanding regime change.

Documents released by attorney and journalist Eva Golinger in November 2013 show a plan by the United States, Colombia and the oligarchs in Venezuela to undermine the economy to remove Maduro.

(continues at link)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22121-venezuelas-deep-political-education-means-venezuelans-will-withstand-right-wing-protests

Angry White Men, American Masculinity at the End of an Era, by Michael Kimmel, copyright 2013

I'm currently reading this book, and it's amazing.

Here's the synopsis from the inside flap:

One of the enduring legacies of the 2012 presidential campaign was the demise of the white American male voter as a dominant force in the political landscape. On election night, after Obama was announced the winner, a distressed Bill O'Reilly lamented that he didn't live in "a traditional America anymore." He was joined by others who bellowed their grief on the talk radio airwaves, the traditional redoubt of angry white men. Why were they so angry? Sociologist Michael Kimmel, one of the leading writers on men and masculinity in the world today, has spent hundreds of hours in the company of America's angry white men - from men's rights activists to young students to white supremacists - in pursuit of an answer. Angry White Men presents a comprehensive diagnosis of their fears, anxieties, and rage.

Kimmel locates this increase in anger in the seismic economic, social, and political shifts that have so transformed the American landscape. Downward mobility, increased racial and gender equality, and a tenacious clinging to an anachronistic ideology of masculinity has left many men feeling betrayed and bewildered. Raised to expect unparalleled social and economic privilege, white men are suffering today from what Kimmel calls, "aggrieved entitlement": a sense that those benefits that white men believed were their due have been snatched away from them.

Angry White Men discusses, among others, the sons of small town America, scarred by underemployment and wage stagnation. When America's white men feel they've lived their lives the "right" way - worked hard and stayed out of trouble - and still do not get economic rewards, then they have to blame somebody else. Even more terrifying is the phenomenon of angry young boys. School shootings in the United States are not just the work of "misguided youth" or "troubled teens" - they're all committed by boys. These alienated young men are transformed into mass murderers by a sense of using violence against others is their right.

The future of America is more inclusive and diverse. The choice for angry white men is not whether or not they can stem the tide of history: they cannot. Their choice is whether or not they will be dragged kicking and screaming into that inevitable future, or whether they will walk honorably alongside those they've spent so long trying to exclude. By explaining their rage, Kimmel is able to point to a possible future that is healthier, happier, and much less angry.

He discusses the failure of the American Dream to materialize (and read that, white male American Dream, as there was no American Dream for anyone but white males). He addresses the Mens' "Rights" allegations that men get beaten up by women with the same frequency as women get beaten up by men, and analyzes it with all the available data (and of course finds it to be pure BS). He analyzes the attacks and accusations toward feminists and feminism. He covers all the basics, using an analytical point of view, and studies by the hundreds.

I strongly recommend it!

The history of sex-positive feminists is very interesting. These were Libertarian (that is, right wing women, as Libertarians are right wingers) who were part of the backlash against feminism in the 80s. And it should come as no surprise to anyone that it began in the 80s, right alongside Ronald Reagan and the right wing attacks on the U.S. which have lasted to this very day.

"Sex-positive" feminists are precisely that, Libertarian females whose intention is to promote the degraded-female-as-affirmative and positive and a good, healthy type of titillation. For whom?

A LONDON man who launched an international search to find the man who stopped him from jumping off a bridge has found the stranger who saved him.

Jonny Benjamin was perched on Waterloo Bridge in January 2008 when good Samaritan Neil Laybourn approached him and calmly talked him down.

Mr Benjamin, then 20, had just been released from a month in hospital after being diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and was set to end his life, which he felt had "hit rock bottom".

After Mr Laybourn assured him that things would get better, and offered to take him out for a coffee to talk, Mr Benjamin climbed down off the ledge.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/jonny-benjamin-finds-stranger-who-stopped-him-jumping-off-bridge-after-findmike-campaign/story-fnixwvgh-1226814460971