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Friday, August 28, 2009
From The Art Of Manliness

Ernest Hemingway Motivational Posters

Despite Hemingway’s flaws, he spent his life engaging in all manner of bad assery. I was so inspired by Chris Hutcheson’s article, “The Hemingway You Didn’t Know: Papa’s Adventures”, I decided to put together some Papa-themed motivational posters. Enjoy.

LM

IDIOCRACY

Packing Heat Near the President

By Stephen Stromberg

From the National Rifle Association’s Web site: “At the NRA, we're dedicated to the lawful, effective, responsible and above all safe use of firearms.” If the NRA were to take that commitment seriously, why wouldn’t the organization loudly discourage gun owners from, say, bringing loaded weapons to a presidential town hall, as several did recently? Or from threatening the president while wearing a packed leg holster?

Each incident happened this month, and they’re scary -- even putting aside the fact that we're talking about disgruntled activists brandishing guns near the president. I'm an Eagle Scout trained in firearm use, and I can’t count the number of possible accidents that could result from lugging a heavy semi-automatic into a large crowd. That’s why one of the first lessons I learned about gun safety is that you never bring out your weapon unless you have to -- and, given that there’s no need to hunt game or defend oneself at a heavily policed political rally, none of these gun owners can argue that they had to. Perhaps the NRA’s directors need a refresher course.

True, the NRA probably can’t persuade the nutjobs to leave their guns at home, in their cars or, in some cases, even in holsters. But the organization can and should scream that this isn’t appropriate firearm use, regardless of whether it is legal. And if promoting responsible gun ownership were a priority, the NRA could use one of its most influential tools -- the scores it gives to politicians -- to get more of our leaders to repudiate such carelessness, or at least assure political figures their standing with the NRA won’t be hurt if they do so. That’s not an infringement or even a criticism of the NRA’s interpretation of the Second Amendment. It’s merely an exhortation to treat rightful gun ownership with responsibility.

Instead, though, the NRA uses its scores to do such things as drum up opposition to Sonia Sotomayor. Meanwhile, its implied position on the town-hall toters has cowed even the White House, which just defended the activists’ right to pack heat near the president.

HEY DEMOCRATS : Show A Little Backbone Will Ya ?

Democratic leaders should stop backpedaling, stop apologizing .

By Eugene Robinson

Here's the least surprising news of the week: Americans are souring on the Democratic Party. The wonder is that it's taken so long for public opinion to curdle. There's nothing agreeable about watching a determined attempt to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A poll released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center reports that just 49 percent of respondents have a favorable view of the Democrats, compared with 62 percent in January and 59 percent in April. This doesn't mean, though, that Americans look any more kindly upon the Republican Party -- favorability for the GOP has been steady at 40 percent throughout the year, according to Pew.

What it does mean, however, is that Republican efforts to obstruct, delay, confuse, stall, distort and otherwise impede the reform agenda that Americans voted for last November have had measurable success. And it means that Democrats, having been given a mandate -- one as comprehensive as either party is likely to enjoy in this era of red-vs.-blue polarization -- don't really know how to use it.

That the Democratic Party is no paragon of organization and discipline is almost axiomatic. That's not the problem. The Pew poll suggests that the Democrats' weakness is neither strategic nor tactical but emotional. To quote the poet William Butler Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

There's not enough passion on the Democratic side, not enough heat. There's some radiating from the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, too little emanating from the Democratic majority in the Senate, and not nearly enough coming from President Obama. Republicans, by contrast, have little going for them except passion -- but they're using it to impressive effect.

Step back from the health-care debate for a moment and survey the landscape. Democrats are within sight of a goal that has fired the party's dreams for half a century. They have the power to enact meaningful reform. Polls show that Americans are hungry for reform. The solid wall of opposition once presented by big business has crumbled. Even the insurance companies and Big Pharma are ready to deal. Yet somehow we've gotten sidetracked onto an argument about "death panels," while a provision that many advocates believe is central to effective reform -- a government-run, public health insurance plan -- is suddenly in doubt.

How could this happen? The Pew survey suggests, basically, that Republicans are more passionate about the health-care issue than Democrats.

According to Pew, those who would be "pleased" if health-care reforms proposed by Obama and Congress are enacted outnumber those who would be "disappointed." But when you look at those who feel most passionately about the issue, just 15 percent say they would be "very happy" if the reforms go through, while 18 percent say they would be "angry." Among Republicans, a full 38 percent would be angry if health-care reform finally passes -- but among Democrats, just 13 percent would be angered if it doesn't.

It's hard to argue that anger, per se, is something we need more of in American politics. But passion -- which sometimes, yes, finds expression in anger -- is a powerful and legitimate tool. Health-care reform is something the Democratic Party has been trying to achieve since the Truman administration, and only 13 percent of Democrats would be angry if it fails? Only 27 percent of Democrats would be "very happy" if reform passes, according to Pew, while 42 percent could only bestir themselves to feel "pleased" that the grail long sought by the most beloved Democrat of all, ailing Sen. Edward Kennedy, has finally been attained?

One reason for this imbalance of passion about health-care reform, I believe, is that there is no single piece of legislation around which Democrats -- and others who see the need for reform -- can rally. But it's impossible to deny that the Republican strategy of generating anger and fear has also been a major factor.

Where are the millions who so passionately chanted "Yes, we can!" at Obama's campaign rallies? Where are the legions who cried tears of joy on election night and tears of pride on Inauguration Day? Is Sarah Palin now the only politician capable of inspiring "passionate intensity"?

Democratic leaders should stop backpedaling, stop apologizing and show their followers -- by words and deeds -- that the principle of universal health care is worth fighting for. They should even allow themselves to raise their voices at times -- not motivated by anger but by conviction.

Passion finds expression in anger, but also in hope. Democrats knew and felt that during the campaign. If they forget it, they might as well also forget about achieving the kind of fundamental change that the country sorely needs.

Republicans, Religion and the Triumph of Unreason

By Johann Hari


Something strange has happened in America in the nine months since Barack Obama was elected. It has best been summarized by the comedian Bill Maher: "The Democrats have moved to the right, and the Republicans have moved to a mental hospital."

The election of Obama -- a center-left black man -- as a successor to George W. Bush has scrambled the core American right's view of their country. In their gut, they saw the US as a white-skinned, right-wing nation forever shaped like Sarah Palin. When this image was repudiated by a majority of Americans in a massive landslide, it simply didn't compute. How could this have happened? How could the cry of "Drill, baby, drill" have been beaten by a supposedly big government black guy? So a streak that has always been there in the American right's world-view -- to deny reality, and argue against a demonic phantasm of their own creation -- has swollen. Now it is all they can see.

Since Obama's rise, the US right has been skipping frantically from one fantasy to another, like a person in the throes of a mental breakdown. It started when they claimed he was a secret Muslim, and -- at the same time -- that he was a member of a black nationalist church that hated white people. Then, once these arguments were rejected and Obama won, they began to argue he was born in Kenya and secretly smuggled into the United States as a baby, and the Hawaiian authorities conspired to fake his US birth certificate. So he is ineligible to rule and the office of President should pass to... the Republican runner-up, John McCain.

These aren't fringe phenomena: a Research 2000 poll found that a majority of Republicans and Southerners say Obama wasn't born in the US, or aren't sure. A steady steam of Republican congressmen have been jabbering that Obama has "questions to answer." No amount of hard evidence -- here's his birth certificate, here's a picture of his mother heavily pregnant in Hawaii, here's the announcement of his birth in the local Hawaiian paper -- can pierce this conviction.

This trend has reached its apotheosis this summer with the Republican Party claiming en masse that Obama wants to set up "death panels" to euthanize the old and disabled. Yes: Sarah Palin really has claimed -- with a straight face -- that Barack Obama wants to kill her baby.

You have to admire the audacity of the right. Here's what's actually happening. The US is the only major industrialized country that does not provide regular healthcare to all its citizens. Instead, they are required to provide for themselves -- and just under 50 million people can't afford the insurance. As a result, 18,000 US citizens die every year needlessly, because they can't access the care they require. That's equivalent to six 9/11s, every year, year on year. Yet the Republicans have accused the Democrats who are trying to stop all this death by extending healthcare of being "killers" -- and they have successfully managed to put them on the defensive.

The Republicans want to defend the existing system, not least because they are given massive sums of money by the private medical firms who benefit from the deadly status quo. But they can't do so honestly: some 70 percent of Americans say it is "immoral" to retain a medical system that doesn't cover all citizens. So they have to invent lies to make any life-saving extension of healthcare sound depraved.

A few months ago, a recent board member for several private health corporations called Betsy McCaughey noticed a clause in the proposed healthcare legislation that would pay for old people to see a doctor and write a living will. They could stipulate when (if at all) they would like to be withdrawn. It's totally voluntary. Many people want it: I know I wouldn't want to be kept alive for a few extra months if I was only going to be in agony and unable to speak. But McCaughey started the rumor that this was a form of euthanasia, where old people would be forced to agree to death. This was then stretched somehow to include the disabled. It was flatly untrue -- but the right had their talking point, Palin declared the system "downright evil", and they were off.

It's been amazingly successful. Now, every conversation about healthcare has to begin with a Democrat explaining at great length that, no, they are not in favor of killing the elderly -- while Republicans get away with defending a status quo that kills 18,000 people a year. The hypocrisy was startling: when Sarah Palin was Governor of Alaska, she encouraged citizens there to take out living wills. Almost all the Republicans leading the charge against "death panels" have voted for living wills in the past. But the lie has done its work: a confetti of distractions has been thrown up, and support is leaking away from the plan that would save lives.

These claims have become so detached from reality that they often seem like black comedy. The right-wing magazine US Investors' Daily claimed that if Steven Hawking had been British, he would have been allowed to die at birth by its "socialist" healthcare system. Hawking responded with a polite cough that he is British, and "I wouldn't be here without the NHS." Frank Laffer, the right-wing economist lauded by David Cameron, claimed on CNN that it would be a disaster if the government got its hands on Medicare, the program providing healthcare for the elderly, paid for entirely by... the government.

This tendency to simply deny inconvenient facts and invent a fantasy-world isn't new; it's only becoming more heightened. It ran through the Bush years like a dash of bourbon in water. When it became clear Saddam Hussein had no Weapons of Mass Destruction, the US right simply claimed they had been shipped to Syria. When the scientific evidence for man-made global warming became unanswerable, they claimed, as one Republican congressman put it, that it was "the greatest hoax in human history", and all the world's climatologists were "liars". The American media then presents itself as an umpire between "the rival sides", as if they both had evidence behind them.

It's a shame, because there are some areas in which a conservative philosophy -- reminding us of the limits of grand human schemes, and advising caution -- could be a useful corrective. But that's not these what so-called "conservatives" are providing: instead, they are pumping up a hysterical fantasy, that is only a thin skin covering raw economic interests and base prejudices.

For many of the people at the top, this is mere cynical manipulation: one of Bush's former advisors, David Kuo, has said the President and Karl Rove would mock evangelicals as "nuts" as soon as they left the Oval Office. But the ordinary Republican base believe it. They are being cruelly manipulated into opposing their own interests through false fears and invented demons. Last week, one of the Republicans sent to disrupt a healthcare town hall started a fight and was injured -- and then complained he had no health insurance. I didn't laugh; I wanted to weep.

Indeed, if you spend any time with American right-wingers -- as I have, reporting undercover on events like the National Review cruise and the Christian Coalition Solidarity Tour of Israel -- you soon find that your arguments don't center on philosophy. You have to concentrate on correcting basic factual errors about the real world.

They insist Europe has fallen to Islam, since Muslims immigrants are becoming a majority and are imposing sharia law. In reality, Muslims make up 3 percent of the population of Europe, and most of them oppose sharia law. They insist Franklin Roosevelt caused the Great Depression, and should have cut government spending. In reality, whenever he did cut spending -- as he tried periodically throughout the 1930s -- the economy began to tank. But explain this patiently -- with a thousand sources -- and they simply shriek that you are lying, and they know "in their heart" what is true. They insist gay marriage would cause the institution of the family to collapse. In reality, where it has already been introduced in Europe, heterosexual families continue just as before. On the list goes: evolution is a lie, a blastocyst is akin to a baby, torture produces actionable intelligence...

How do they train themselves to be so impervious to reality? It begins, I suspect, with religion. They are taught from a young age that it is good to have "faith" -- which is, by definition, a belief without any evidence to back it up. You don't have "faith" Australia exists, or fire burns: you have evidence. You only need "faith" to believe the untrue or unprovable. Indeed, they are taught that faith is the highest aspiration and most noble cause. Is it any surprise this then percolates into their political views? Faith-based thinking spreads and contaminates the rational.

Up to now, Obama has not responded well to this onslaught of unreason. He has tried to conciliate the elite economic interests, and joke about the fanatical fringe they are stirring up. He has shamefully assured the pharmaceutical companies that an expanded healthcare system will not use the power of government as a purchaser to bargain down drug prices, while wryly saying that he "doesn't want to kill Grandma." Rather than challenging these hard interests and bizarre fantasies aggressively, he has tried to flatter and soothe them. His healthcare plan is weaker and harder to explain as a result.

But this kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only by over-ruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people with the maddest fears. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens."

However strange it seems, the Republican Party really is spinning off into a bizarro-cult who believe Barack Obama is a baby-killer plotting to build death panels for the grannies of America. Their new slogan should be -- shrill, baby, shrill.

Is Glenn Beck too right wing for Fox ?

By David Usborn

Walmart and other leading US brands pull ads from Beck's show.


It may in the end have little impact on the bottom line of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, but a fast-gathering boycott by some of America's best-known conglomerates of Glenn Beck, a conservative commentator on his Fox News channel in the US, is beginning to take on embarrassing proportions.

The baby-faced Beck joined Fox News in January and has quickly established himself as one of the network's stars by feeding the political prejudices of its mostly conservative audience. Indeed, his daily assaults against President Barack Obama and, in recent weeks his healthcare plans, have helped Fox achieve record ratings.

But Beck, who moonlights on the comedy circuit, stepped on too many sensibilities a few weeks ago, however, when he suggested that Mr Obama has a, "deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture". He went on: "I'm not saying that he doesn't like white people. I'm saying that he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist."

Spearheading the advertisers' boycott of his daily programme is an African-American online political group called Color of Change. Some 145,000 of its members signed a petition asking Beck's advertisers to stop supporting him and the response has been impressive.

On Monday alone, eight new top-brand companies said they were joining the already long roster of firms no longer willing to have their spots aired during Beck's show. They included Wal-Mart, the discount retailing chain, as well as two other big national retail giants, CVS and Best Buy.

"While advertising on Fox is part of our communication plan, we had not requested time on Glenn Beck's show specifically," a spokesman for the chemist CVS confirmed to the Huffington Post website. "We have instructed our advertising agency to inform Fox to ensure Glenn Beck's programme is not part of our advertising plan."

Glenn Beck: 'Our health care is better than Europe's

Other companies that had already agreed to spurn the show included Procter & Gamble, Radio Shack and Geico. None of these advertisers have said they will boycott the Fox channel entirely and thus are likely simply to shift their dollars to other programmes on the network's schedule. But their actions are beginning to resonate on the national stage, if only because it is proving to be remarkably successful.

It also comes at a time when the tone of public debate may have become more acerbic than ever before as opposing sides squabble over healthcare. Beck and some of his rivals, including Lou Dobbs on CNN, seem to be competing over whose insults about the President, liberals and Democrats are the most outrageous and rude. Dobbs distinguished himself this summer by supporting claims that Mr Obama is not, in fact, an American. "It's rare for a campaign directed at a TV show's advertisers to be this successful," said Color of Change founder James Rucker. "But we won't stop here. We're going to continue reaching out to Beck's remaining advertisers."

Glenn Beck: 'The radicals on the left want you to shut up'

Fans of Beck – and they are legion – are fighting back. They offer solace to their brethren and the broadcaster himself with a newly minted website. Called DefendGlenn.com, it boasts a "Turncoat List" of boycotting companies and urges visitors to contact them. "Tell them how big your family is and what you buy, and how much you used to spend on their products each month... and how you bought their competitor's product today," it advises.

Glenn Beck: 'Where the tough questions about health care reform?'

Fox News itself has had little to say of the boycott. It did however issue a statement soon after Beck made the allegations of racism, not on his regular show but on a morning programme called Fox and Friends, saying Beck had "expressed a personal opinion, which represented his own views, not those of the Fox News Channel".

Beck made the remarks after the President suggested that a white policeman who had arrested the black Harvard law professor Henry Louis Gates had acted "stupidly".

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS