As usual, Morning Joe is on in the background as I work this morning. The big subject this morning is the shameful attack on capitalism aka vulture capitalism is a good thing. Over and over, Scarborough has trotted out the Republican mantra — Bain Capital was just practicing capitalism and hey, you’ve gotta break a few eggs to make a cake and sometimes the recipe just doesn’t turn out right anyway. That is — Bain Capital wasn’t a bad guy. They were just practicing good business when they bought failing companies and tried to turn them around. Everyone around the table just kept nodding sagely to each of his pronouncements and essentially accepting his characterization of what Bain Capital does. Oh, and the new term for Bain Capital is “private equity company” — which is the broad category under which the business model fits, but there are private equity companies that boost and bolster companies, and there are private equity companies who make their money through leveraged buyouts, loading companies down with debt (starting with the money they used to purchase the company, often borrowed using the company they’re buying as collateral for the loan) and lowballing every other stakeholder in the equation.

Actually, to be fair, a few people did weakly raise the other point of view about how Bain Capital makes its money — and by extension, how Mitt Romney made his money — and were subjected to Joe’s standard poo-pooing of their comments with his usual attitude of “you just don’t understand how business works.” The narrative easily shifted from “creative destruction” to a discussion of the benefits of private equity companies in general — which is a whole other subject.

That is, until Joe asked Richard Trumka about Bain Capital and the importance of private equity. Trumka, best known as the evil union thug, responded with a very knowledgeable, cogent response that turned the whole discussion back around. You’ll never see it. It won’t make the rounds of Youtube because there were no fireworks, no screaming and no zingers. He simply described, in basic words, what companies like Bain Capital does and pointed out how that has nothing to do with repairing and rebuilding companies and everything to do with extracting everything of value from the company and leaving it to collapse under the weight of the debt they’ve piled onto it. It was obvious that Trumka knew exactly what he was talking about.

And Joe’s response — priceless. None of his usual bombast and swagger. Not even a response to Trumka’s observations. Without responding or arguing at all, he simply moved on to another subject. That’s it. Apparently, when he can’t intimidate, bully or belittle someone who’s secure in the facts, he just… changes the subject. Union thuggery at its absolute best.

I listened to Mittens’s victory lap after the primaries last night and tried to put my finger on what was wrong about it. I could feel it in my bones, but couldn’t put my finger on it until this morning. Now I’m listening to Joe Scarborough going on and on about “the politics of resentment” — another phrase I just haven’t been able to quite get my head around and it CLICKS.

Dear Mittens, when people call you a vulture capitalist, it has nothing to do with resenting your wealth.

That’s like saying people hate a bully because he’s stronger than them. No. If that were true, they’d dislike bodybuilders in general. They don’t. They dislike people that hurt them. And that’s the issue with people who made their money like you did — and who thinks that it should be a model for the country. There are thousands of wealthy people who engaged in free enterprise and lifted everyone around them up with it. True venture capitalists do that — they find someone with an idea and they fund it, and if it does well EVERYONE makes money. Venture capitalists do not come into an existing company, break it down, tear it apart and walk away with the lion’s share of the money while everyone else licks their wounds, and if they’re lucky, thanks the gods that they were left with the little bit they were able to cling to.

There are not always winners and losers in business. In the best business models, everyone wins — some may win bigger than others, but everyone walks away feeling like they gained something. Or, more to the point, everyone stays because they believe there is something to gain. That’s not the business model by which you made your money. And that’s not the country in which most of us want to live.

Donald Trump Thumps MSNBC Hosts on Obama’s Birth Certificate 3/31/2011

Lots of conversation this week about Trump’s idiocy, cynicism and disingenuousness in demanding to see the President’s “real” birth certificate — as opposed, I suppose, to the one that’s officially issued by the state and serves as proof that he was born in the state of Hawaii. A big part of the conversation is about the effect Trump’s BS has and will have on the political conversation, and on whether or not it makes him a viable candidate for the presidency. They’re missing the real point here… it’s not about whether it makes Trump crazy or crafty — it’s about how it makes other Republican candidates look.In fact, while the issue of the President’s birth certificate has been pushing further and further into the national discussion, Trump’s high-profile championing of the cause as a “presidential candidate” — those are air quotes, y’all — does one thing that no one seems to be recognizing. By pushing the crazy as publicly as he does, he makes candidates like Pawlenty — whose got his own crazy going — look downright sane by comparison. It’s a whole lot easier to vote for a Pawlenty or a Daniels or a Romney — all of whom have some pretty radical ideas for the country — if you can point at The Donald and say, “At least they’re not like him.”

Q: If both the U.S. national anthem and the national anthem of a foreign country were being played at an event (in the United States), which one would be played first?

A: Traditionally, as a courtesy, the foreign anthem is played first.

Just figured I’d get that out of the way.

IMG C. bmendez68

Little girl waving flag at a rally

Last night, in his speech at the Tucson memorial, President Obama called on us to live up to the image of democracy held by 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green.  This morning, Sam Stein had this to say at Huffpo:

Challenging an audience to live up to a child’s expectation would seem noteworthy only for the low setting of the bar.

I wonder if Sam Stein has ever known a 9-year-old. I have, and I can tell you that living up to your 9-year-old’s expectations is not a feat for the faint-hearted.

Christina Taylor Green was 9 years old. She had campaigned for and won a seat on her school’s student council. She was excited at the prospect of meeting her representative in the United States Congress. Her parents report that she volunteered to help with a charity that serves children. She was a little girl who still believed that she, personally, could make a difference in this world — that her actions and her words could help shape her class, her school, her country, her world.

She hadn’t yet reached the adolescent stage of cynicism and disillusionment where children lose that belief in their own ability to effect change. They stop believing in Santa Claus, they learn that their parents have clay feet and they lose that shiny certainty that yes, one person can have an impact on the world. They become a part of the apathetic crowd that doesn’t try because no matter what, the world will never change.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would guess that Christina still believed that her mother could protect her from anything, her father could overcome any adversity and that if someone, somehow, came up with a cure for cancer, the profit motives of the medical-pharmaceutical industry would not stand in the way of making it available to every person who needs it in this world. I suspect she had not yet learned to sort ideas and solutions into right and left, Republican and Democrat, Progressive and Independent.

Given the choice, I want to live in Christina’s world. Given the opportunity, I want to help move us toward becoming Christina’s country. Given the chance — which we all have as long as we are alive — I want to live up to Christina’s expectations, too.

photo credit: hoyasmeg

Thanks to the pioneering efforts of our bold elected officials, we’ll soon be rid of one of the sources of daily stress in our lives — television commercials that are louder than the scheduled programming we’re watching. The new law gives the FCC the power to regulate the volume of television ads instead of telling consumers to use their mute volumes or buy a new TV that comes equipped with a volume stabilizer. The FCC is not allowed to tell Comcast that they can’t slow down your internet if they don’t like what you’re reading, but it can now tell television stations to turn down the volume on advertising across the board. Huzzah to the people’s elected officials — apparently they do know how to get things done, as long as those things really don’t matter at all.

Last night, Scott Brown, the man who will go down in history as the Message from Massachusetts, was sworn in and took his seat in the Senate and all over the TV dial the pundits proved that our message was misunderstood.  Scott Brown was not elected because of some deep, simmering, populist anger — at least, not the simmering anger the pundits think exists. He wasn’t elected because he pretended to be a centrist–he never made any bones about going to Washington to kill health care reform and every other part of “Obama’s socialist agenda”.

Scott Brown was elected for two reasons. In a state that thrives on personal contact with its representatives, he did a marvelous job of reaching out and touching his constituents. Most Massachusetts voters grew up with Teddy Kennedy, possibly the most accessible senator in history. Whatever else you thought about Ted, there was no disputing that when you called his office with a problem, you never ever got a brush-off. Massachusetts votes had a choice in this election between a candidate that dismissed us out of hand as unimportant, and one who courted us with dozens of public appearances in just a few short weeks. Which one sounds more like Teddy Kennedy?

The second reason is the more compelling one, the one that carries the message. All over Massachusetts, progressive Democrats refused to do what we’ve been expected to do far too often in the past 20 years — hold our noses and pull the lever for a candidate who is ‘better than electing a Republican”.  It’s not just that Martha Coakley was a poor candidate. Martha Coakley was absolutely odious to many of us– to quote a friend, “She supports the death penalty and is against CORI reform? What the heck is the Republican like?”

Regardless, I did what good little Democrats are expected to do. I gritted my teeth and filled in the little circle next to Martha Coakley’s name — but it wasn’t a vote for Coakley. It was a vote against Scott Brown. Many of my friends, though, could not and would not bring themselves to vote for the woman who couldn’t be bothered to campaign, who had no actual positions on any of the issues important to us, who won the primary purely on the basis of name recognition in an election cycle that was too short to allow a better candidate to make a real name.

In short, Scott Brown won in Massachusetts, not because the Democratic candidate ran a lackluster campaign, but because she essentially ran no campaign at all. We were taken for granted–something that has become far too common in today’s political climate. In what will probably become the wave of future elections, we did not do what good little Democrats do when presented with a candidate who is less than desirable, but has a D after her name. We stayed home.

Last night and this morning, that clip has been played on loop on every news and political talk show on the air, accompanied by choruses of “Oooh, he di’n't!” or some version thereof. It’s as if Franken had turned to Lieberman and said, “Your mother, buddy!” or “Stick your extra minute up your ass, Senator.”

What he did say, exactly and precisely, was, “As the Senator from Minnesota, I object.”

This is what passes for a sharp exchange on the floors of our hallowed legislative bodies. No frickin’ wonder the rest of the world finds us less-than-entertaining or amusing. This comes at the end of a week when Paul Gogarty, a member of the Irish Parliament uttered the infamous line, “With all due respect and in the most un-Parliamentary language, FUCK you, Deputy Stagg, Fuck you!”

“As the Senator from Minnesota, I object” pales in comparison. It also pales in comparison to the various episodes of fisticuffs that seem to routinely break out on the floors of other legislatures. Face it, folks – we’re boring. It’s no damn wonder that Florida’s Rep. Grayson is seen as such a political bad boy.

The tele’d in guest was RNC Chairman Michael Steele, who was there to take potshots on the misinterpretation of Harry Reid’s remarks comparing the passage of revolutionary health care reform to other legislative revolutions in history, most notoriously, to the passage of emancipation legislation. Like the other Republicans, he is in high dudgeon, acting as if Reid had just called them all sadistic slave owners – though Steele did put a finer point on it. Reid’s analogy, he said, is an insult to the millions of African Americans who are descended from slaves because it compares their situation to the situation of people who don’t have health insurance. It almost makes sense viewed that way – almost – if it didn’t completely miss the point of the analogy: that medical care is a basic human right, and that legislation that recognizes that fact is as revolutionary and game-changing as legislation that outlawed the ownership of another human being.

So what did Deutsch do that made me want to kiss him? He brought the analogy back home after Steele deliberately distorted it, and said it that plainly. “When you bring it back to the basic intent of the analogy,” he said, And he laid out the analogy as it was intended, to portray the Republicans as akin to the naysayers who have tried to block every major revolution in American government by saying “It’s not time yet”.

And Steele’s response?

“I won’t even dignify that with an answer.”

Yeah. Good call when you don’t have any dignity with which to dignify a blatant mischaracterization. That’s the answer that every bluffer knows – it’s a cheesy way to avoid answering a question when you don’t have a good answer. Deutsch’s question called Steele out, and Steele’s best shot was to stand on dignity that he doesn’t have and refuse to answer. And Deutsch noted that as well.

So go Donnie. You’re the golden Ken doll today. Keep this up and I just may have to start looking beyond your hot exterior and start thinking you might have a brain.

About a year and a half ago, I watched in rather unbelieving amusement as a bunch of Republican congressmen turned Congress into more of a sideshow than usual when they  “occupied the House floor” after Nancy Pelosi dismissed the chamber for the August recess. Frankly, it was hilarious watching a bunch of rich, preppy legislators pretend they were revolutionaries, right down to tweeting that the Capitol police were standing outside the chamber ooh noes! and might.. oh, the glory of it! … arrest them!
It was the start of the silly season – but this silly season didn’t last for a single month. Their stunt ushered in a silly season that appears to have no end. I suspect that they won’t be happy till their constituents get to watch them engaging in public fisticuffs on the House floor, swinging chairs at each others’ heads and throwing punches.

This silly season culminated in the entire Congress looking like a sixth grade classroom when Sen. Joe Wilson from S. Carolina missed his cue and yelled out “You lie!” a couple of seconds after his cronies had stopped providing protective cover by loud muttering and booing. Mind you, no one is talking about the booing this morning because Wilson distinguished himself by having the bad timing to shout out AFTER the other Republicans around him had shut up.

It’s a typical rookie mistake that any sixth grade teacher might have recognized. In fact, the Republican party’s entire performance last night – because make no mistake, it WAS a carefully orchestrated performance – resembled an attempted coup staged by a bunch of sixth graders. It was complete with hand-printed signs on notebook paper that they waved in unison at key points and the obligatory outburst of boos when the president mentioned illegal immigrants – and the one kid who goofs it up by overestimating how far his classmates will go to support him.

And immediately following his flub, there was the second of hushed silence, and then the “Ooooooh, oooohhhh!” of the kids in the class as they realize that a challenge has been made – and wait to see if the teacher takes the bait.

And the teacher did not, beyond a pointed stare in Wilson’s direction. Frankly, I’d love to have seen Wilson’s reaction during those few seconds. I’ll bet he was withering and looking around at all his fellows, wondering where the hell were the voices that were supposed to accompany his.

So Joe Wilson, with his bad timing, earned his fifteen minutes of national fame. The reaction on the internets is not surprising – the “serious kids” are shocked, shocked they tell you, and demanding that he be “punished”. The unruly kids that think the teacher is a dictator and must be undermined at every turn are hailing him as a hero. And the vast majority are rolling their eyes, and taking another careful step away from the class clowns.