Chris Christie: The Second Coming?

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A busted clock is right twice a day. Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then. And it appears that William Kristol has actually been right about something. These are, as Paul Simon sings, days of miracle and wonder.
I know I've been awfully hard on Smilin' Bill, the amiable boob who's the editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard and who's been popping up for years on the Sunday panel shows, grinning like a possum eating persimmons and spouting utter nonsense like "The Iraq War will cost at most $200 billion," "Sarah Palin's resignation won't hurt her chance at the Republican nomination and anyone who says different is afraid of her," and other lack-witted pronouncements.
Kristol is the guy who's often caused me to offer my services to the networks, because I can be just as wrong for half the price.
However, after the last Republican debate, Kristol wrote a "special editorial" on the Weekly Standard's website and summed up the Republican field in one word: "Yikes!" He went on to say that "none of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we're getting politics as usual - and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that."
He quoted a "bright young conservative" who'd emailed him in dismay: "WE SOUND LIKE CRAZY PEOPLE!!!!" He also rather glumly quoted my favorite poem, Yeats' "The Second Coming," to describe the choices before Republicans: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity."
So far, so good. And so right. Kristol, however, can't stay correct for long, and his solution was typically dimwitted: Call in Chris Christie, the corpulent New Jersey governor, whom Kristol calls "a big man for a big job."
Problem is, Christie's said over and over that he's not running. His poll numbers in his own state are awful. He also appointed a judge who's a Muslim to the bench and called people who protested "crazy" and their concerns about the imaginary threat of Sharia law "crap."

He's dead right, but it immediately disqualifies him in the eyes of the crazies who believe in crap.
Oh, and I don't want to be Pedantic Literary Guy here, but Kristol also completely misunderstands the poem he's quoting when he says that the last line ("what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?") "sounds like Chris Christie."
I wonder how Gov. Christie would feel about the comparison, because the "rough beast" Yeats speaks of in his vision is kind of scary. He's a "shape with lion body and the head of a man, gaze blank and pitiless as the sun." Not the kind of candidate you'd want to have a beer with, for sure.
Nevertheless, it seems that Christie is the latest in a series of desperate attempts by the wingnuts and teahadists to find someone who'll save the party from nominating Mitt Romney, a heretic who's actually worked with Democrats and gotten some good things done for his state, like a reasonable health care plan.
But the far right doesn't want compromises with Democrats. They don't want a health care plan for anyone who's not them. They're willing to burn the country down in the name of "taking it back." So they fall for grifters like Palin (perpetually fundraising, perpetually coy about whether she's running) or nutters like Donald Trump and Michele Bachmann.
But then the flavor of the month says something so mind-bogglingly stupid ("The HPV vaccine caused a woman's child to become mentally retarded!") that even the mainstream media can't ignore it, and down they go. So Rick Perry becomes the new ABM (Anyone But Mitt), until he falls apart in the debate, then shows that he's actually got some positions that make sense, such as not punishing children who grew up in America because they were brought here by illegal immigrant parents.
But sanity enrages the goon squads, that noisy cohort the party refuses to acknowledge, yet somehow manages to get invited to every GOP debate. You know, the ones that cheer for executions, shout "yeah!" when someone asks if you should just let an uninsured man die, and boo soldiers in Iraq because they're gay. For those people, Rick Perry's greatest sin is that he's not crazy enough. So the perpetually angry and disgruntled right moves on. Now they turn their eyes to Christie, who's not even running.
Yeah, good luck with that.

If This Be Class Warfare, Let Us Make the Most of It.

 (This is this week's newspaper column which does not, for some reason, appear on the paper's website, although it is in the print version. One of the paper's conservative columnists has noted that his column doesn't appear either. We're trying to find out why. Stay tuned. )

One of the most widely used and abused right wing buzzwords of this wild and wacky century is "class warfare." Sometimes it seems as if it's the knee-jerk wingnut answer to everything. Point out the growing inequality of income in America, in which the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and more numerous, and the middle class is getting smaller and being squeezed harder? They won't bother denying it, they'll just complain that mentioning it is "class warfare."  Propose a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans to pay for upgrades to American infrastructure (and in doing so, create more jobs for the companies who do the upgrading)? "Class warfare!" the Teahadists sputter. 

Well, after hearing the whining of Louisiana representative John Fleming, I'm saying "so what if it is?" Fleming, who owns a chain of Subway restaurants and UPS stores back home, recently appeared on MSNBC and complained that by the time  he paid taxes, paid all his bills, and "fed his family" he had "maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment." When host Chris Jansing pointed out that he probably wasn't going to get a lot of sympathy pointing out that he "only" had 400K left over after expenses, the poor little rich boy went immediately to the standard fall-back, saying "class warfare never created jobs." 

I've got to tell you, Congressman Fleming, when you consider that your buddies in Congress oppose President Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes, which affect primarily middle and working class people, yet continue to insist on tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, that sounds an awful lot like class warfare to me. When you consider that that  400K you regard as so paltry is the equivalent of eight median household incomes ($50,000 was the average in 2010, down 2.3 percent from the year before)....well, it makes me want to reach for a torch and a pitchfork, build a guillotine in the front yard, and say, to paraphrase Patrick Henry, "if this be class warfare, let us make the most of it."  

As for the tired old  protest that higher taxes on wealthy people are "punishing success,” I refer you to Massachusetts Senatorial Candidate Elizabeth Warren.  You may remember Warren as the woman who helped oversee the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the Republicans in Congress are now striving mightily to strangle in its crib. She was recently at a campaign event in Andover and delivered an epic smackdown to the myth of the "self-made American millionaire," saying:  "There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody. You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.” 

Doggone right. Here's the thing. If there's one unshakable rule of economics, it's that stuff costs money. Roads, highways and bridges cost money. Schools cost money. A powerful military costs money, especially when it’s in two wars. Police cost money, as the NC Highway Patrol showed us when they had to suspend their training academy indefinitely, because of budget cuts--cuts necessitated by the Republican-controlled legislature's refusal to consider tax increases. 

Let's face it:  civilization is expensive. Right wingers like to rail against "freeloaders," but it's the people who become successful because society provides the infrastructure and the freedom to use it, and who then refuse to help pay for it, that are freeloading. 

If you're a member of the middle class, keep one thing in mind:  When multimillionaire politicians or pundits or talk show hosts start hollering  about "class warfare," while opposing tax breaks for the middle class and defending them for the wealthy, they want you to pay for the civilization that made their success possible. They've  already declared war. On you.

"We Sound Like CRAZY PEOPLE!!!"

The Weekly Standard's take on the current GOP crop: YIKES!

...in a week in which markets collapsed, Solyndra exploded, our Middle East policy was in meltdown, the Iranian nuclear threat became more urgent, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff fingered our “ally” Pakistan as a sponsor of terror against American forces in Afghanistan—none of the candidates really seemed up to the moment, either politically or substantively. In the midst of a crisis, we’re getting politics as usual—and a somewhat subpar version of politics as usual at that.

Dudes, if you've lost an uber-wingnut like William Kristol, you are in deep kimchee.

Thank You, Ms. Warren

T

This cannot be said enough.

Rep. John Fleming: Poor Little Rich Boy

Multi-Millionaire Rep. Says He Can’t Afford A Tax Hike Because He Only Has $400K A Year After Feeding Family | ThinkProgress: 

"After being asked about the $6 million profit of his businesses last year, he responded that, "the amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million, and so by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment..." 

Let me just say this about that:

Class Warfare? It's on, bitches. It is ON. 

Forward This To Everyone You Know!!!!!!!!

Thanks to John Scalzi for posting this first.