Obama: President's Address to Congress

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Address to Joint Session of Congress
President Barack Obama
House Chamber, United States Capitol, Washington, D.C.
February 24, 2009

Remarks of President Barack Obama – As Prepared for Delivery
(en español)

Madame Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, and the First Lady of the United States:

I’ve come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.

I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others. And rightly so. If you haven’t been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has – a friend; a neighbor; a member of your family. You don’t need to hear another list of statistics to know that our economy is in crisis, because you live it every day. It’s the worry you wake up with and the source of sleepless nights. It’s the job you thought you’d retire from but now have lost; the business you built your dreams upon that’s now hanging by a thread; the college acceptance letter your child had to put back in the envelope. The impact of this recession is real, and it is everywhere.

But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this:

We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.

The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.

Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities – as a government or as a people. I say this not to lay blame or look backwards, but because it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we’ll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament.

The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank. We have known for decades that our survival depends on finding new sources of energy. Yet we import more oil today than ever before. The cost of health care eats up more and more of our savings each year, yet we keep delaying reform. Our children will compete for jobs in a global economy that too many of our schools do not prepare them for. And though all these challenges went unsolved, we still managed to spend more money and pile up more debt, both as individuals and through our government, than ever before.

In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here.

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely – to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that’s what I’d like to talk to you about tonight.

It’s an agenda that begins with jobs.

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government – I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited – I am. I called for action because the failure to do so would have cost more jobs and caused more hardships. In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years. That’s why I pushed for quick action. And tonight, I am grateful that this Congress delivered, and pleased to say that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now law.

Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs. More than 90% of these jobs will be in the private sector – jobs rebuilding our roads and bridges; constructing wind turbines and solar panels; laying broadband and expanding mass transit.

Because of this plan, there are teachers who can now keep their jobs and educate our kids. Health care professionals can continue caring for our sick. There are 57 police officers who are still on the streets of Minneapolis tonight because this plan prevented the layoffs their department was about to make.

Because of this plan, 95% of the working households in America will receive a tax cut – a tax cut that you will see in your paychecks beginning on April 1st.

Because of this plan, families who are struggling to pay tuition costs will receive a $2,500 tax credit for all four years of college. And Americans who have lost their jobs in this recession will be able to receive extended unemployment benefits and continued health care coverage to help them weather this storm.

I know there are some in this chamber and watching at home who are skeptical of whether this plan will work. I understand that skepticism. Here in Washington, we’ve all seen how quickly good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending. And with a plan of this scale comes enormous responsibility to get it right.

That is why I have asked Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort – because nobody messes with Joe. I have told each member of my Cabinet as well as mayors and governors across the country that they will be held accountable by me and the American people for every dollar they spend. I have appointed a proven and aggressive Inspector General to ferret out any and all cases of waste and fraud. And we have created a new website called recovery.gov so that every American can find out how and where their money is being spent.

So the recovery plan we passed is the first step in getting our economy back on track. But it is just the first step. Because even if we manage this plan flawlessly, there will be no real recovery unless we clean up the credit crisis that has severely weakened our financial system.

I want to speak plainly and candidly about this issue tonight, because every American should know that it directly affects you and your family’s well-being. You should also know that the money you’ve deposited in banks across the country is safe; your insurance is secure; and you can rely on the continued operation of our financial system. That is not the source of concern.

The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.

You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.

But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can’t afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.

That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.

We will do so in several ways. First, we are creating a new lending fund that represents the largest effort ever to help provide auto loans, college loans, and small business loans to the consumers and entrepreneurs who keep this economy running.

Second, we have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and re-finance their mortgages. It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values – Americans who will now be able to take advantage of the lower interest rates that this plan has already helped bring about. In fact, the average family who re-finances today can save nearly $2000 per year on their mortgage.

Third, we will act with the full force of the federal government to ensure that the major banks that Americans depend on have enough confidence and enough money to lend even in more difficult times. And when we learn that a major bank has serious problems, we will hold accountable those responsible, force the necessary adjustments, provide the support to clean up their balance sheets, and assure the continuity of a strong, viable institution that can serve our people and our economy.

I understand that on any given day, Wall Street may be more comforted by an approach that gives banks bailouts with no strings attached, and that holds nobody accountable for their reckless decisions. But such an approach won’t solve the problem. And our goal is to quicken the day when we re-start lending to the American people and American business and end this crisis once and for all.

I intend to hold these banks fully accountable for the assistance they receive, and this time, they will have to clearly demonstrate how taxpayer dollars result in more lending for the American taxpayer. This time, CEOs won’t be able to use taxpayer money to pad their paychecks or buy fancy drapes or disappear on a private jet. Those days are over.

Still, this plan will require significant resources from the federal government – and yes, probably more than we’ve already set aside. But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade. That would be worse for our deficit, worse for business, worse for you, and worse for the next generation. And I refuse to let that happen.

I understand that when the last administration asked this Congress to provide assistance for struggling banks, Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated by the mismanagement and results that followed. So were the American taxpayers. So was I.

So I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you – I get it.

But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger, or yield to the politics of the moment. My job – our job – is to solve the problem. Our job is to govern with a sense of responsibility. I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can’t pay its workers or the family that has saved and still can’t get a mortgage.

That’s what this is about. It’s not about helping banks – it’s about helping people. Because when credit is available again, that young family can finally buy a new home. And then some company will hire workers to build it. And then those workers will have money to spend, and if they can get a loan too, maybe they’ll finally buy that car, or open their own business. Investors will return to the market, and American families will see their retirement secured once more. Slowly, but surely, confidence will return, and our economy will recover.

So I ask this Congress to join me in doing whatever proves necessary. Because we cannot consign our nation to an open-ended recession. And to ensure that a crisis of this magnitude never happens again, I ask Congress to move quickly on legislation that will finally reform our outdated regulatory system. It is time to put in place tough, new common-sense rules of the road so that our financial market rewards drive and innovation, and punishes short-cuts and abuse.

The recovery plan and the financial stability plan are the immediate steps we’re taking to revive our economy in the short-term. But the only way to fully restore America’s economic strength is to make the long-term investments that will lead to new jobs, new industries, and a renewed ability to compete with the rest of the world. The only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.

In the next few days, I will submit a budget to Congress. So often, we have come to view these documents as simply numbers on a page or laundry lists of programs. I see this document differently. I see it as a vision for America – as a blueprint for our future.

My budget does not attempt to solve every problem or address every issue. It reflects the stark reality of what we’ve inherited – a trillion dollar deficit, a financial crisis, and a costly recession.

Given these realities, everyone in this chamber – Democrats and Republicans – will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars. And that includes me.

But that does not mean we can afford to ignore our long-term challenges. I reject the view that says our problems will simply take care of themselves; that says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.

For history tells a different story. History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas. In the midst of civil war, we laid railroad tracks from one coast to another that spurred commerce and industry. From the turmoil of the Industrial Revolution came a system of public high schools that prepared our citizens for a new age. In the wake of war and depression, the GI Bill sent a generation to college and created the largest middle-class in history. And a twilight struggle for freedom led to a nation of highways, an American on the moon, and an explosion of technology that still shapes our world.

In each case, government didn’t supplant private enterprise; it catalyzed private enterprise. It created the conditions for thousands of entrepreneurs and new businesses to adapt and to thrive.

We are a nation that has seen promise amid peril, and claimed opportunity from ordeal. Now we must be that nation again. That is why, even as it cuts back on the programs we don’t need, the budget I submit will invest in the three areas that are absolutely critical to our economic future: energy, health care, and education.

It begins with energy.

We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet, it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient. We invented solar technology, but we’ve fallen behind countries like Germany and Japan in producing it. New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea.

Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders – and I know you don’t either. It is time for America to lead again.

Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation’s supply of renewable energy in the next three years. We have also made the largest investment in basic research funding in American history – an investment that will spur not only new discoveries in energy, but breakthroughs in medicine, science, and technology.

We will soon lay down thousands of miles of power lines that can carry new energy to cities and towns across this country. And we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills.

But to truly transform our economy, protect our security, and save our planet from the ravages of climate change, we need to ultimately make clean, renewable energy the profitable kind of energy. So I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the production of more renewable energy in America. And to support that innovation, we will invest fifteen billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power; advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.

As for our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices. But we are committed to the goal of a re-tooled, re-imagined auto industry that can compete and win. Millions of jobs depend on it. Scores of communities depend on it. And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.

None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. We do what is necessary to move this country forward.

For that same reason, we must also address the crushing cost of health care.

This is a cost that now causes a bankruptcy in America every thirty seconds. By the end of the year, it could cause 1.5 million Americans to lose their homes. In the last eight years, premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, one million more Americans have lost their health insurance. It is one of the major reasons why small businesses close their doors and corporations ship jobs overseas. And it’s one of the largest and fastest-growing parts of our budget.

Given these facts, we can no longer afford to put health care reform on hold.

Already, we have done more to advance the cause of health care reform in the last thirty days than we have in the last decade. When it was days old, this Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for eleven million American children whose parents work full-time. Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives. It will launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of nearly every American by seeking a cure for cancer in our time. And it makes the largest investment ever in preventive care, because that is one of the best ways to keep our people healthy and our costs under control.

This budget builds on these reforms. It includes an historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform – a down-payment on the principle that we must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come.

Now, there will be many different opinions and ideas about how to achieve reform, and that is why I’m bringing together businesses and workers, doctors and health care providers, Democrats and Republicans to begin work on this issue next week.

I suffer no illusions that this will be an easy process. It will be hard. But I also know that nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and the conscience of our nation long enough. So let there be no doubt: health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.

The third challenge we must address is the urgent need to expand the promise of education in America.

In a global economy where the most valuable skill you can sell is your knowledge, a good education is no longer just a pathway to opportunity – it is a pre-requisite.

Right now, three-quarters of the fastest-growing occupations require more than a high school diploma. And yet, just over half of our citizens have that level of education. We have one of the highest high school dropout rates of any industrialized nation. And half of the students who begin college never finish.

This is a prescription for economic decline, because we know the countries that out-teach us today will out-compete us tomorrow. That is why it will be the goal of this administration to ensure that every child has access to a complete and competitive education – from the day they are born to the day they begin a career.

Already, we have made an historic investment in education through the economic recovery plan. We have dramatically expanded early childhood education and will continue to improve its quality, because we know that the most formative learning comes in those first years of life. We have made college affordable for nearly seven million more students. And we have provided the resources necessary to prevent painful cuts and teacher layoffs that would set back our children’s progress.

But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. That is why this budget creates new incentives for teacher performance; pathways for advancement, and rewards for success. We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools.

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

I know that the price of tuition is higher than ever, which is why if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure that you can afford a higher education. And to encourage a renewed spirit of national service for this and future generations, I ask this Congress to send me the bipartisan legislation that bears the name of Senator Orrin Hatch as well as an American who has never stopped asking what he can do for his country – Senator Edward Kennedy.

These education policies will open the doors of opportunity for our children. But it is up to us to ensure they walk through them. In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child. I speak to you not just as a President, but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children's education must begin at home.

There is, of course, another responsibility we have to our children. And that is the responsibility to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay. With the deficit we inherited, the cost of the crisis we face, and the long-term challenges we must meet, it has never been more important to ensure that as our economy recovers, we do what it takes to bring this deficit down.

I’m proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks, and I want to pass a budget next year that ensures that each dollar we spend reflects only our most important national priorities.

Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.

In this budget, we will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste, fraud, and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. But let me perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime. In fact, the recovery plan provides a tax cut – that’s right, a tax cut – for 95% of working families. And these checks are on the way.

To preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. Comprehensive health care reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for years to come. And we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.

Finally, because we’re also suffering from a deficit of trust, I am committed to restoring a sense of honesty and accountability to our budget. That is why this budget looks ahead ten years and accounts for spending that was left out under the old rules – and for the first time, that includes the full cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price.

We are now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war.

And with our friends and allies, we will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away.

As we meet here tonight, our men and women in uniform stand watch abroad and more are readying to deploy. To each and every one of them, and to the families who bear the quiet burden of their absence, Americans are united in sending one message: we honor your service, we are inspired by your sacrifice, and you have our unyielding support. To relieve the strain on our forces, my budget increases the number of our soldiers and Marines. And to keep our sacred trust with those who serve, we will raise their pay, and give our veterans the expanded health care and benefits that they have earned.

To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend – because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. That is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists – because living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.

In words and deeds, we are showing the world that a new era of engagement has begun. For we know that America cannot meet the threats of this century alone, but the world cannot meet them without America. We cannot shun the negotiating table, nor ignore the foes or forces that could do us harm. We are instead called to move forward with the sense of confidence and candor that serious times demand.

To seek progress toward a secure and lasting peace between Israel and her neighbors, we have appointed an envoy to sustain our effort. To meet the challenges of the 21st century – from terrorism to nuclear proliferation; from pandemic disease to cyber threats to crushing poverty – we will strengthen old alliances, forge new ones, and use all elements of our national power.

And to respond to an economic crisis that is global in scope, we are working with the nations of the G-20 to restore confidence in our financial system, avoid the possibility of escalating protectionism, and spur demand for American goods in markets across the globe. For the world depends on us to have a strong economy, just as our economy depends on the strength of the world’s.

As we stand at this crossroads of history, the eyes of all people in all nations are once again upon us – watching to see what we do with this moment; waiting for us to lead.

Those of us gathered here tonight have been called to govern in extraordinary times. It is a tremendous burden, but also a great privilege – one that has been entrusted to few generations of Americans. For in our hands lies the ability to shape our world for good or for ill.

I know that it is easy to lose sight of this truth – to become cynical and doubtful; consumed with the petty and the trivial.

But in my life, I have also learned that hope is found in unlikely places; that inspiration often comes not from those with the most power or celebrity, but from the dreams and aspirations of Americans who are anything but ordinary.

I think about Leonard Abess, the bank president from Miami who reportedly cashed out of his company, took a $60 million bonus, and gave it out to all 399 people who worked for him, plus another 72 who used to work for him. He didn’t tell anyone, but when the local newspaper found out, he simply said, ''I knew some of these people since I was 7 years old. I didn't feel right getting the money myself."

I think about Greensburg, Kansas, a town that was completely destroyed by a tornado, but is being rebuilt by its residents as a global example of how clean energy can power an entire community – how it can bring jobs and businesses to a place where piles of bricks and rubble once lay. "The tragedy was terrible," said one of the men who helped them rebuild. "But the folks here know that it also provided an incredible opportunity."

And I think about Ty’Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina – a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom. She has been told that her school is hopeless, but the other day after class she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this room. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp. The letter asks us for help, and says, "We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina but also the world. We are not quitters."

We are not quitters.

These words and these stories tell us something about the spirit of the people who sent us here. They tell us that even in the most trying times, amid the most difficult circumstances, there is a generosity, a resilience, a decency, and a determination that perseveres; a willingness to take responsibility for our future and for posterity.

Their resolve must be our inspiration. Their concerns must be our cause. And we must show them and all our people that we are equal to the task before us.

I know that we haven’t agreed on every issue thus far, and there are surely times in the future when we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed. That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months, and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground.

And if we do – if we come together and lift this nation from the depths of this crisis; if we put our people back to work and restart the engine of our prosperity; if we confront without fear the challenges of our time and summon that enduring spirit of an America that does not quit, then someday years from now our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, "something worthy to be remembered." Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.

There's more...

The Lost Generation

“Hel-loooooo! Helloooooooo In There! Any body Home?”

I grew up as did our blogfather Steve, a child of to-the-rest-of-the-world “Horrible” Harlem, NYC... reading the journalistic likes of Tom Wicker and R.W. Apple. Jack Anderson and Murray Kempton. I read Gay Talese and the great Jimmy Breslin, (who probably won't remember me doing so, but I nuked a taped segment of his briefly shown ABC show when he did a man-on-the-street segment showing how Americans didn't know their politicians—and I immediately knew who the pictured Tip O'Neill and Caspar Weinberger were. They turned the camera off) as well as Mike Royko, Pete Hamill, and Sydney Schanberg.

Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (who I met two nights ago in Manhattan at a large specialty store) were names in my family household before “All The President's Men”. I mean Goddamn, sportswriters? I'd read about Grantland Rice and his renowned “Four Horsemen” piece in a book on early 20th century American History. I followed the dugout and sideline talk of the creepy Dick Young, the brassy Jerry Izenberg, Beantown's Bob Ryan and the thoughtful Dick Schaap. I even read the execrable Mike Lupica for shits and giggles.

I'm that same nobody who grew up in Harlem and Hollis, going to almost all-Black schools that weren't supposed to teach me a Goddamned thing. Places where I learned about fabled court cases like Brown vs. Board of Education (and Thurgood Marshall's huge role in it), and Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Dred Scott (vs. Sandford) case. The name Felix Frankfurter stayed with me for years just out of curiosity. Abe Fortas and Earl Warren were names attached to one of the first D.C. feeding frenzy scandals I remember seeing unfold. Warren Burger? Watergate, baby. How could I forget that drama.

Yeah. I'm that same nobody who grew the hell up in Horrible Harlem and Hip-Hop Hollis, going to those no 'count second-rate, damn near all-Black schools.

So tell me how in the flying fuck through a rolling donut did I manage to read more newspapers, and end up knowing more about American jurisprudence and current events in my lifetime than the almost brain-dead Republican candidate for Vice President in 2008? “What newspapers do you read?”, and she couldn't even say GRIT? Not even fucking GRIT?

No, seriously...as this is really no longer a joke—how is it that a person who is one of the four people presently most likely to have a turn at running the most powerful nation in the world when asked about what newspapers she reads can give an aneurysm-inducing response like this:



And then, laughing that train wreck off, answer like this to a question about the Supreme Court of The United States? (via TPM)



Okay...now go swig down a couple of tablespoons of fish oil to replenish the brain cells you just Manson-ed watching the above video blights, and I'll give you the answer. (Hopefully your language center survived and you can still read the letter “_”. You can still read _he le__ er “T” can't you? Good! Whew! You had me scared for a second there!

The problem is that there is a generation of Republican politicians for whom the very idea of broader knowledge is anathema. For whom a discerning, analytical brain is seen as a hinderance . For whom smart is dumb, and dumb is smart. Give the devil that is Richard M. Nixon and his generation their due—for all their perfidy and damage, you can't say that they weren't at the very least...intelligent.

Not just shrewd, but actually smart, learned people.

Republicans gave up on the valuing of intelligence with the ultra-marketing and eventual ushering in of the proudly, giddily dim Ronald Wilson Reagan. But Reagan, thanks to decades worth of Hollywood experience was artfully dumb. It looked nice on camera. Or, to paraphrase Will Smith's line in “Men In Black”, 'He made that shit look good.' His wizened acting chops—boiled down to simple soap-opera/ TV movie shorthand worked perfectly in a just post-Charlie's Angels era America. It was the beginning of “The Idiocracy” and he was Highfather Megalord of that new faith, his smiling visage everywhere, all Bryllcreem™, ten-gallon hats, and the best B-movie production design gloss his backers and Michael Deaver could afford.

The political children he would spawn in the “sea change” GOP wave in the 1994 elections were mere bit players and chorus girls bereft of what presentational chops Ronnie had. They were all emotion and NO smarts at all, but luckily managed to ride that boiling wave of hate and fear to an election victory. But they have NOT worn well. The stupid shows through now, clearly.

You see, reading position papers and reciting blast-faxed talking points is all fine and good when nobody asks you real questions. You don't get to cup your hand to your ear and do a bullshit “Whatdjasay” as you stroll majestically to your waiting copter of escape like Reagan did. This is a different world in 2008. It's harder to hide your shit. The twenty-four hour news cycle and alternate reportage (on the net and through the blogosphere) makes it much more difficult. And thus, you get exposed like Palin has. Or how poor Eric Cantor did a week-and-a-half ago. Or GOP shill Kevin James this past May.

I'm reminded about Allan Bloom's “seminal” (at least to conservatiives) tome from the late eighties, “The Closing Of The American Mind”, and just what a transference-crammed mind-fuck that book was. Bloom's “premise” was that the country's collective intelligence—nay, it's very future!—was at risk due to the expansion of the so-called recognized canon of accepted literature and general culture in our schools and culture. Conservatives hopped on this leaky hulled failboat of reason, using it to smack down Ethnic and Gender Studies departments in colleges, claiming that this augmenting and for them, diminishing of the long-held standards of intellectual greatness would surely lead America to ruin.

It seemed so silly then, Bloom's caterwauling...but now I, and I'm sure you see it for the dodge that it was. Just look who the fucking idiots turned out to be in the end. It was used as an excuse by dippy wingnuts to get away from dealing with smarts altogether. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater entiirely. It would beget the likes of the Cro Mag-browed and brained Sean Hannity, the reason-challenged spittle launching of a Rush Limbaugh, the happily simple George W. Bush, and now...the frightfully un-learned Palin. There was actually something of a balance between the raw emotion and the obvious intelligence of a jerk like the aforementioned President Nixon. But that balance of emotion and brainpower that fed awful things like the “Southern Strategy” as well as his canny signing off on major elements of civil rights legislation (to keep a lid on things in the powderkeg of early seventies America) is gone now, totally subsumed by all the silly ass emotion his intellectually lesser descendants could muster. Newt Gingrich is a child of that Nixonian blend of intelligence and venality. And even he realized not long after the '94 “sea change” that the staircase-full of idiots he stood with when he signed the “Contract with America” was a reason-and-intellect challenged bunch who knew only zealotry. Which meant that pragmatism and even the occasional bit of “give” necessary to get a larger thing done was utterly lost on them. These political “savages” did not get it at all—and their hubris and anger could NOT be tamed.

Newt was gone before you knew it as their “leader” / shepherd—inasmuch as one could ever hope to “herd” a pack of rabid, feral cats, one would suppose.

This gang was a “Lost Generation” for whom stupid was the air they breathed, the blood that coursed through them, and the quicksanded earth they trod—with knuckle-drag lines bracketing the footprints within.

There was a time when there were “a couple” of patently stupid people on the right you could point and hoot at...but post 1994, the numbers are too great to chalk up as “a couple”. We have been governed and legislated by fools like Senator “Box Turtle” John Cornyn, and Rick Santorum. Represented by the likes of daft “Mean” Jean Schmidt and Ted “a series of tubes” Stevens. Preznidented over by George W. (as in “What the fuck is the answer to two-plus-two?”) Bush, misdiagnosed by Senator “She's NOT brain-dead, Jim” Bill Frist, and judged by his Daddy Bush's dusky dolt on the Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas, who famously, like Ol' Man Rver, “Don't know nuttin” and “Don't say nuttin” in sessions with his fellow Supremes. (And conversely, we saw actual intellects like Al Gore openly mocked and pilloried for basically “daring NOT to drool” by his haters on the right.)

There are others I could spend an hour mocking the single brain cells of, but you get the point. And Palin is but the natural evolutionary result of this post-Reagan process. Yes, I know she believes humans and Dinosaurs existed at the same time, and that Fred, her great-grandpa ten-thousand times removed, tragically met his end when his foot-powered car tipped over due to a giant slab of bronto ribs being placed haphazardly on the driver's side window sash, but that evolutionary process in republican politics is real, and she is the iteration we have now. But as the GOP has de-volved, the world about it has e-volved with instantaneous fact-checking and alternative media to the one-time “Ghosts In The Machine” that was the mainstream media of a mere ten-to-fifteen years ago.

And the likes of Palin and her fellow travelers, skipping down the road of stupid like Dorothy, The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and Scarecrow...not in quest of heart, home, courage and yes...brain, but power instead—represent the core of what passes for leadership on the right. There is NO brilliant—but wittily evil mind on their side like Bill Buckley's any more. His generation is dead and gone, and he was at least entertaining in a thought-provokingly maddening sort of way. No. What we have is a cloud of dumb-assery, raining grating “Dontchas”, “Betchas”, “Hear-yas”, and “Back-to-yas!” upon us to where we stand knee-deep in in a sludge of bullshit and stupid.

There remains only a vestigial brain—just sophisticated enough to walk, breathe, chew gum and hate with.

Gone is their “Capital Gang”. Say hello instead...to the enfeebled “Capital Ganglia”.

This...is the best they can do. In their slaughter of the middle class, the military and our prestige on the world stage, their point-blank blunderbuss of “duh” has also managed to kill even irony's ass. Stone. Cold. Dead.

My God. You'd think this crew just fell off the rubber-chicken banquet delivery truck. It's as if...they'd “only been at this like what? Five weeks?”



Yep.

And five weeks from now until election day. Here's to the “two smartest mother-fuckers in the room” effectively ending the reign of the “I'm With Stupid” brigade.

So, to you Sarah? As even the functionally illiterate “Krusty The Klown” inspiringly said to the millions of kids watching his show...as he held a weighty tome upside-down...

“Give a hoot! Read a book!”

UPDATE:

Picking up the ball in comments, Stormcrow and Doc Bopper plumb history's depths to note:

Stormcrow: This is not a creation of the 1980s

This has been with us since before the Revolutionary War..

And it's been growing. Decade by decade. Like a cancer, ever since America and the Industrial Revolution first crossed paths.

Google on "Anti-Intellectualism in American Life". Please.

That book was first published back when Ronald Reagan was still an actor.

This was part of my own education. Though it wasn't in any syllabus. It was, I guess, part of my first "incident post-mortem".

Undertaken more than two decades before I learned to use the word "incident" to refer to something other people would call a "catastrophe".

drbopperthp: Stormie is absolutely right. The vein of anti-intellectualism that runs long and deep through the bedrock of American culture has been tapped into and vigorously mined by the enemies of true democracy in this country for 400 years. Mix in a little dollop of -ism schism and inject the plague viruses of ignorance and stupidity and look watcha got.

And they are right. Sometimes, when you “Readers Digest” a issue, that little bit of extra depth excluded can gloss over an important point. One which I made down in comments and will re-iterate here:

...Like a cancer, there is a tipping point—where things metastasize and the cancer touches bone and then...

...it's everywhere.

Reagan was the metastization point and we pretty much went terminal from there.

The idea of this proud stupidity does go back well past a century—into pre-Emancipation America in “Gangs of New York” New York where:

The origin of the "Know Nothing" term was in the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about its activities, he was supposed to reply, "I know nothing."

The moniker would go on as a pejorative in the early 20th century to define xenophobic haters of influence playing to the lowest common denominator.

Familiar? You betcha'!

As called out in the all-knowing Wiki, even William Kristol, the son of one of conservative America's last evil thinkers (The Star Wars “Emperor”-esque Irving):

In 2006, an editorial in the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard by William Kristol attacked populist Republicans for not recognizing the danger of “turning the GOP into an anti-immigration, Know-Nothing party.”

And of course...there is Paul Krugman from just two months ago:.

[K]now-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

Yah got that right!

UPDATE #2:

And thanks to Tata in comments for capping it all off perfectly with this video link:

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RNC: Making the Case for More Education Funding

Really, sometimes words fail.

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More Reasons to Turn Off the TV

As I have shared before, I am not a fan of TV. I know there is some good stuff on the tube-- but frankly not enough to make up for even 10% of the societal ills that TV perpetuates. Seriously, even a great discovery channel show is not as good as going on outside yourself and going hiking somewhere in real nature. I often wonder how many new inventions and discoveries have not happened since the coming of TVs into every room and every part of our lives? People used to tinker, and play, and read, and talk. How many conversations have not happened as interesting people sat in a room together all over the world and said nothing as the flickering images have washed over them?

There have been lots of studies on the bad aspects of the boob-tube. But this is a new one and it is pretty darn troubling.

Even if young children aren't watching the TV, it may be distracting them from their play and depriving them of developing critical attention skills, a new study says.

When children aged 3 and younger played in a room with a television on that was tuned to adult programming, they played for about 5 percent less time than when there was no background TV. More importantly, when there was no background TV, the children's play was more focused with longer play episodes, the study found.

"Background TV is a disruptive and distracting influence. Our evidence is that TV keeps the children from sustaining their attention at a time when developmentally, they're beginning to organize their attention skills and sequencing behaviors," said study senior author Daniel Anderson, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that children 2 years old and younger be exposed to no screen time. For older children, the AAP suggests limiting screen time -- including TV, video games and computer use -- to one to two hours a day of active viewing time.-By Serena Gordon

Message to moms and dads everywhere-- Don't be afraid to use that off button! For now at least, TVs still come with that option.

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Where is Iraq again?

Jim Inhofe Doesn't Know An Ass From a Hole In The Ground

Geographically challenged? No fucking kidding.

The Washington Independent

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) just cut a reelection ad called "Africa" that highlights -- in his campaign YouTube channel's words -- "his leadership for the African people."

In case you missed it, the ad begins:

Ethiopia. Zambia. Iraq. Twenty-nine intense trips in 12 years to the front -- to the saddest parts of Africa.

Exclusive! Must credit the Washington Independent! IRAQ IS NOT IN AFRICA.

Right on Sen. Inhofe. You rulz, dude. So says The General. Salute!

(No Child Left Behind Act Senator™ from Mattel. “That was such über-pwnage.” Mad skillz. Kekeke!!!)

PAID FOR BY FRIENDS OF JIM INHOFE.
Contributions to the Friends of Jim Inhofe Committee are not tax-deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.

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Bullying in Arkansas

Billy Wolfe, target of bullies, Fayetteville, AR, March 2008. photo Angel Franco/The New York Times

“He kept spitting blood out”

Billy Wolfe, 16, has been a target of bullies, since he was 12.

Knocked out, stitched up, left bleeding and bruised lying on the street and the floor at school, his mother has one simple hope: "I pray to God every day they don't kill him," said Ms. Wolfe. "Because of all the things that have happened I honestly don't know if he's going to be O.K."

The New York Times

A car the color of a school bus pulls up with a boy who tells his brother beside him that he’s going to beat up Billy Wolfe. While one records the assault with a cellphone camera, the other walks up to the oblivious Billy and punches him hard enough to leave a fist-size welt on his forehead.

The video shows Billy staggering, then dropping his book bag to fight back, lanky arms flailing. But the screams of his sister stop things cold.

Whatever the reason, addressing the bullying of Billy has become a second job for his parents: Curt, a senior data analyst, and Penney, the owner of an office-supply company. They have binders of school records and police reports, along with photos documenting the bruises and black eyes. They are well known to school officials, perhaps even too well known, but they make no apologies for being vigilant. They also reject any suggestion that they should move out of the district because of this.

Judging by school records, at least one official seems to think Billy contributes to the trouble that swirls around him. For example, Billy and the boy who punched him at the bus stop had exchanged words and shoves a few days earlier.

But Ms. Wolfe scoffs at the notion that her son causes or deserves the beatings he receives. She wonders why Billy is the only one getting beaten up, and why school officials are so reluctant to punish bullies and report assaults to the police.

The Wolfes are not satisfied. This month they sued one of the bullies “and other John Does,” and are considering another lawsuit against the Fayetteville School District. Their lawyer, D. Westbrook Doss Jr., said there was neither glee nor much monetary reward in suing teenagers, but a point had to be made: schoolchildren deserve to feel safe.

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Jill is absolutely on the mark.

Brilliant at Breakfast

This just breaks my heart. As someone who endured my share of bullying when I was a kid, from being psychologically tormented by a troubled kid who was Catholic and delighted in telling me I would go to hell when I died to the boy in fourth grade who used to hit me every day to the time I was asked by a high school principal what I did to make so-and-so angry, I'm appalled that more than thirty years after I finished high school, nothing has changed.

That schools are still blaming the victim because they don't know what else to do is reprehensible. And the prevalence of social networking web sites make tormenting misfits an even more efficient operation.

I think back to the recent case of Megan Meier, who committed suicide at the age of thirteen after a boy she liked had turned on her, and the boy turned out to be a fake MySpace account set up by the parents of a girl with whom she'd had a falling out. And I wonder what on earth parents and schools in this country are doing when they want to put every kid whose brain functions differently on medication, but when you have actual cases of kids being tortured by their classmates, the schools blame the kid being victimized and the parents look the other way.

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The same thing happened to me.

Group News Blog

I Know and You're Stupid
Ass Kicking 101: Age Nine

I got my first serious beating at age nine (not counting Dad and any of the times he beat the shit out of me.) It was downtown at the Temple of Music and Art after choir practice. At nine I was in the Tucson Boys Chorus, working my way up towards the Touring group which I wouldn't make till I turned thirteen after a year spent living in Europe. I attended church regularly and was to all outward appearances a good boy. Boy were appearances wrong.

The problem with genius is simple. Genius plays by its own rules. Yet lives in the world with others. I tested out in the 160's both as a kid and then in my late teens on the adult tests. Certainly there are many people more adapt at solving intelligence tests than I am, but so far as relating to people who are "average", I didn't have a clue for a long, long time. Till I figured out how to put a stop to the bullying, people tended to beat the shit out of me because I was socially clumsy and freely volunteered my opinion that not only was I right, but everyone else was stupid for not seeing life my way. *laughs*

Dad forgot to pick me up on time so I waited. And waited. And waited. Eventually two older kids, teenagers, showed up down in South Tucson where we rehearsed. After questioning me for a bit, they started to hit me. I was different, that's what mattered. My answers were off; I knew too damn much for a freaking nine-year-old and didn't yet know how to hide it. (Sometimes I still don't.) So they hit me. First a little, then a lot. Didn't matter what I said. Didn't matter what I knew. Only mattered that they were bigger and stronger. They beat on me with fists, boots, belt buckles, rocks, whatever was handy, for close to forever. Had me cornered all the way upstairs back where no one could hear me scream. It got dark as they kept it up. Eventually I wore out their fists on my head and they left.

Dad got there several hours later. I was huddled under a lamp post, waiting. Bloody. Not crying.

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What is happening to Billy is wrong.

He is a strong young man to be standing up to this. I applaud his parents for suing the bullies directly, and hope they soon sue the school district as well.

The refusal of the school administration to deal with these attacks is wrong.

Bullying is wrong -- verbal, sexual, classism, racism, and physical.

Attacking someone because they're different is wrong.

All of these are forms of violence against people.

All bullying (violence) is wrong, both individually and in mobs.

Anyone who participates in mobbing or bullying is wrong.

Anyone who watches mobbing or bullying and doesn't help stop it is wrong.

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Montana High School Cancels Nobel Laureate Talk

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Republican Town Refuses Global Warming
Lecture for High Schoolers

There is a reason there were dark ages.

Some people are proud of being stupid.

Some people refuse to learn.

Always, some people line up with pitchforks and lighted torches to burn intelligence to the ground.

The Enlightenment was a long, hard time coming. And in places such as Choteau, Montana, complaints from conservatives were enough to get the superintendent to cancel a lecture to 130 high school students from Professor Steven W. Running, Nobel Laureate.

The New York Times

Dr. Running was a lead author of a global warming report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the 400-member United Nations body that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with former Vice President Al Gore. But when some residents complained that his presentation here would be one-sided because no opposing view would be offered, the superintendent of Choteau School District No. 1, Kevin St. John, canceled it.

Dr. Running was surprised.

“Disbelief was the primary reaction,” he said in a telephone interview. “I’ve never been canceled before. But it was almost comical. I had a pretty candid discussion with the superintendent and the school board, and they said there were some conservative citizens who didn’t want me to speak.”

Mr. St. John said that numerous residents had complained to school board members and that they in turn had suggested that the program be called off.

People on Main Street here were divided over the cancellation. Melody Martinsen, the editor of The Choteau Acantha, a local weekly, said that while she rarely received letters to the editor, “this week I have nine and seven are on the subject, and they are all chastising the school board.”

Kirk Moore, the owner of a farm and ranch store, is a school board member who favored canceling the talk. But he declined to say why. “No comment,” Mr. Moore said. “Go talk to the superintendent.”

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The Republicans legacy leaves our children further and further behind every first world country... in science, math, technology, preparing for an uncertain future.

We sent men to the moon on man-made fire. Now children in Montana are taught to be afraid of the lightening.

Bushism and Republicanism has failed our nation, has failed our children, has failed our planet, has just plain failed. Anyone with the sense of a dog avoiding a skunk knows what's been happening the last seven years is just plain wrong.

Telling children they can't hear a Nobel Prize winner is wrong. It's against everything this country stands for.

Shame on that superintendent and that school board, and shame on Choteau, Montana for being so out of touch with basic American values.

It's just plain wrong.

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Unusual is not the word I would use...

Joppatowne High School in Maryland has formed an unusual partnership with the federal government to build a curriculum to train students for careers in homeland security.

Heard this report on NPR about making a curriculum around Homeland Security with the help of the federal government. After I recovered from the chill that went down my spine, I started thinking what a very bad idea this is. It smacks of recruiters on school grounds. They bring around fancy equipment, and make the world sound all scary and dire. They attract the bullies right from the school grounds... great. I wonder when they will add in the "HOW TO TAZE 101" course.

The woman interview scared me when she made some comment about how this was good because many of their students couldn't go to college so homeland security work would be a good alternative for them. I mean, there is NOTHING wrong with not going to college but I don't exactly think we should be drafting kids who don't like school to get all jazzed up about confiscating my toothpaste at the airport.

And then there is the politics, as the gentleman said in the interview- who's view of security is being taught here????

WTF

Keep an eye on this one folks, I am sure this is just the beginning. If it rears its ugly head in your school district make a fuss! It is not enough that they are running things in our time, but they are so determined to create long term damage. This is why we need progressives running for school board and other important local posts. God help us.

UPDATE
link to the scary school curriculum page.
and a take on the topic over at Mother Jones and this upbeat view on the "growth opportunities" of this new career segment over at USA Today

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Teech...Yur Chilldrun Wel

As Ye Sow, So Shall Ye Reap...

I feel like some sort of silver-suited, NASA-helmeted character at the end of a black-and-white “Twilight Zone” episode, walking a band of similarly garbed “survivors” through the rubble of a bombed-out world many years in the future and describing in deep, grave tones “the moment we doomed ourselves” when I even think to write on the seemingly far-fetched theme rolling around in my mind in recent days. But what makes the theme truly frightening is that it's not some dystopian future I find myself analyzing. The time is now. A scary, “Twilight Zone”-ish now that we've brought upon ourselves...

...A now where intelligence, a high-functioning, critically-thinking brain and all that a powerful intellect can bring—well-reasoned solutions to world problems, challenging art and culture, and...the resulting desire of more and more people to aspire to said brilliance—in frowned upon. No—not just frowned upon, but openly discouraged and disparaged. Mental acuity and the thirst for knowledge is not to be rewarded—rank stupidity...willful, rank stupidity is rewarded. The time when not being afraid to be a buffoon in public was a piece of performance art, relegated to comedians and pratfalling actors going for cheap laughs is gone, and the pool for naked displays of idiocy has deepened and widened to now include politicians, analysts and news reporters—virtually anyone who in the past one could have looked to in the hopes that you could actually learn something from them.

It turns out that ironically, you can actually learn something from them—but that something is just how low the standards for knowledge are these days.

I suppose I could take the nutbar, philosopher view of things and chalk this celebration of stoopid up to “our overly P.C. society”, where we dare not offend or project shame on those who come to the table with the “less-than-optimal”. That tortured line of reasoning would almost pass muster as an interesting, albeit kind of twisted logic. But its inherent flaw is the simple fact that most of the knuckleheads that would argue such a point are the very celebrated dolts in question. How's that for elliptical? I said here last week:

“It's all you ever need to know about these people. Idiots. And proud of it. A badge of fucking honor, this glittering stupidity, and the utter lack of a thirst for knowledge.”

Bartcopfan noted in comments: “Idiots. And proud of it. Thank you for capturing the Bush misadministration in five simple words.”

God, but I wish it were just his administration, but that's just the power structure's manifestation of the bold, new stupid. The movement's effects go far deeper and with more effect than you know.

What is the hereditary legacy of this embrace of willful idiocy? Suffer the little children. (Via Sullivan)

A teacher laments:

I have now received three (3) student papers that discuss Iraq’s attack on the Twin Towers on 9/11. All three papers mention it as an aside to another point. I’ve had two papers on the virtue of forgiveness that argue that if we had just forgiven Iraq for the 9/11 attacks, we wouldn’t be at war right now. I just read a paper on the problem of evil which asked why God allowed “the Iraq’s” to attack us on 9/11. The thing that upsets me most here is that the the students don’t just believe that that Iraq was behind 9/11. This is a big fact in their minds, that leaps out at them, whenever they think about the state of the world.

Somewhere a creaking sound is heard, with the faint ruffle of dry skin peeling back against bone, and Dick Cheney smiles his best “gotcha” smile. Big time.

When one is left to one's own devices, and simply learns from the rough curriculum of whatever the hard world tosses at you from day to day—that level of ignorance can be forgiven. You really can't fault a person for working with just what they have, even if just what they have is less than the best. Spinning straw into gold has as of this writing not yet worked.

But the fool who is happily mis-educated and mis-informed, and spreads that mis-education and mis-information when he or she has what is correct, and true, and obvious right before him...when that person opts to run against the grain of fact and proof and not only crow about 2 + 2's equalling 5—but will then toss away every sane bit of reasoning to try and convince you why 2 + 2 equals 5—that fool is not to be forgiven.

He is to be fought—thrice as hard as he fights against truth.

The sneering at knowledge and logic as an undesirable attribute has long been with us. It's a bedrock principle of faux populism. The clearest and perhaps best dog-whistle of that theme that I can immediately recall is the late Alabama Governor George Wallace's squalling against “outsiders and interlopers” in the South's illegal segregationist doings. He practically spat the phrase “pointy-headed intellectuals” as if it were a poison-dipped dart at his more thoughtful critics. The smarts-hating mantle was handed down to the Bryllcreemed buffoon Reagan who pushed charm over cerebral cortex with a wink and a Beverly Hills swagger. There was a bit of an executive branch break with the crafty Bush 41 and the wonky Clinton/Gore administrations, but what was happening at the congressional level was a mountain's thrust from the ocean floor, causing a stunning sea change. It took years, but the culmination was in 1994 when the GOP's “revolution” hit. The political “children” of Wallace and Reagan stood there, signing off on their “Contract With America”, starry-eyed and all a' quiver with anticipation over the undoing of every helpful law save for gravity. And they would use their fact-free anti-knowledge—so proud and confident in their coordinated, blast-faxed exhortations—against common sense.

“Global warming isn't real”, the reason-rapers will shake their fingers at you and hiss, as the massive polar ice shelves come apart and melt away like so many ice cubes in a tall glass of thirst-and-debate-quenching grape Kool-Aid. And they want as many people as possible to drink up, and refill—drink up and refill on that Kool-Aid, to the point where they only feel the icy, drugged liquid going down, numbing the body's feeling heat blister the skin, and blinding the eyes from seeing fields scorch and the oceans boil.

“Gay marriage will lead to the end of marriage as we know it! Blasphemy! Bestiality! Box turtles!”, those same reason-rapers rail, all a tremble over the sanctity of unions between men and women, wild-eyed and pointing at a fire in the sky as allowing anything else would compromise what goes on in heterosexual folks' bedrooms. It could bring on those dreaded “youthful indiscretions”, and cause otherwise stable husbands to ditch their wives on recovery beds as they reel from chemotherapy! Make 'em sport diapers and engage in odd baby-play with marriage-smashing interlopers, or “gasp!”—dress up like prostitutes in vinyl skirts, fishnets, heels and fake breasts and offer themselves up for money. We should thank our holy, Jebus-kissed stars that it hasn't happened yet. “Whew!”

“Man and dinosaurs co-existed! The planet's 6,000 years old! Fossils? Schmossils! All is as God made it in his amazing six-day Shrinky-Dink™ machine, and the only evolution there has ever been is our developing tough bottoms of our feet from propelling and stopping carved stone vehicles!” Oh yes, the the reason-rapers'll moan that too. Moan it in the face of ancient ice cores, ruins of ancient cities, and prima facie scientific evidence that the age of things unearthed flies in the face of religio-“science” and wooly-mammoth-fur fuzzy-math claims otherwise.

Why do they fight so vigorously, and so maniacally against facts?

Because the desire has always been to open that “crack in the door”, small as it might be—allowing for false and forced “objectivity” to hopefully create that glimmer of doubt in truths, especially inconvenient ones, and turn truth itself into a thing that can actually be commodified. A thing you can barter away. And once you can barter away truth—don't think for a second that what comes next is not the unintended result—you can freely substitute emotion, “truthiness”, and fact-esque positions that can be changed at the whim and to the benefit of who's presenting them. Get enough people to swallow those shiny lures and you've got an “army” to do battle with. They will move to the polls when you want them and how you want them. Your shock troops. Your pawns.

The GOP “elites” that these people look to as demi-gods then laughed up their fucking sleeves at their truth-swapped minions, all the while ignorant of the whirlwind they were about to reap.

You see, when you celebrate stupid, promote stupid, and then superficially reward stupid by placing it at the tiller (while the real powers dictate the course below decks), those proud, dewy-eyed supporters get it in their crazy heads that there's no shame in being “bag of hammers” dumb. You create an atmosphere where it's hip to be a dip.

It begets the likes of a proud, dim-witted, but still somehow-promoted Sherri Shepherd in your face every day with her half-cerebrumed idiocy. All flat earths, and nothing's having existed before Christ.

It begets a Dana Perino—a vain, easily-agitated twit whose job is apparently to smile and flutter hands gracefully over Bush policy like a QVC studio model, when her job is to articulate and explain presidential positions, while having not a goddamned clue about what makes the world around her tick.

It begets a grunting shallowbrow like a Sean Hannity, an ill-educated Play-Doh Fun Factory™ of a pundit who will read any talking point placed before him—a “Ron Burgundy” minus the irony and mustache, who the day he has an original thought based on mulling over facts and actual reason will probably suffer an aneurysm loud enough that Joe McCarthy'll hear the ‘pop”.

And ultimately it begets the chilling rise of a Mike Huckabee in the GOP power structure. A man who doesn't believe in evolution, wants a servile female populace, and holds 1950's-era hygiene film views on AIDS doesn't find himself elevated by sheer magic. The idiot army craves a regent, a leader who really believes in teh stoopid...fervently.

It all started with the steady snowfall at the top of a steep, slippery hill—Wallace's and Reagan's dusting the ground with their sneering, divisive anti-intellectualism. And the snowball was formed from the dusting with the ascent of a idiocy-celebrating congress in '94. The fatal roll down the hill? 2000's elevation of the smirkingly dim George W. Bush to the presidency, gathering momentum and size, bounding and crushing sense and sensibility in it's path.

“It's hip to be a dip.”

Paris Hilton's “continuing celebrity in spite of a giggling admission of brainlessness, Jessica Simpson's chicka-tuna, and Sherri Shepherd's sharp-edged, hopelessly young world. John Cornyn's hard-shell horniness, and Sean Hannity's daily paean to the wordless-without-his-master's stupid-words, Mortimer Snerd. All hail The Flavor of Love and The Kardashians! Clink your glasses to beating “teh ghey” out of you, rambling, vacuous beauty contestants, family dogs gleefully tied to car roofs, pud-pulling pundits who accuse U.S. soldiers of atrocities against the Nazis at Malmedy, and by God—the fever-dream re-imagining of right-wing fascism into some sort of cloaked forerrunner of modern progressivism.

Clink your glasses to all of that, and then wonder no more why we should actually gag a little bit when we mock so-called “backward” cultures beyond us.

When we celebrate dumb-assery from the top down, (as shown in the post's graphic) we reap what we sow as a nation. The willfully dumb politicos, dumb pundits, dumb news and dumb pop culture creates a critical mass of ill-informed-ness, spewing a cloud of foolishness the powers-that-be can no longer contain to manipulate their sheeple to blindly do their bidding. No, it's beyond that now. It spreads to where we see the recent history-dumb kids Sullivan ruefully noted.

The kids. The future...wrecked at the dock before it can even get under way.

At today's press conference, Bush warned against weakening his precious, paper-tiger “No Child Left Behind” act.

I laughed for a second at his fervor in its continuing...and then a parsing of the language itself hit me cold.

Do you leave no child behind by moving everyone forward together?

Or do you actually leave no child behind by holding them all back as a group?

He never really does elaborate on the slogan's true meaning.

But why bother...when actions speak so much louder than any words.

There's more...

Guzzle It

Man Drinks Liter Bottle of Vodka in Airport Line to
Defy Airport Security Rules -- Almost Dies of Alcohol Poisoning.

The word MAN is redundant is the above sentence.

Seattle PI

BERLIN -- A man nearly died from alcohol poisoning after quaffing a liter (two pints) of vodka at an airport security check instead of handing it over to comply with new carry-on rules, police said Wednesday.

The incident occurred at the Nuremberg airport on Tuesday, where the 64-year-old man was switching planes on his way home to Dresden from a holiday in Egypt.

New airport rules prohibit passengers from carrying larger quantities of liquid onto planes, and he was told at a security check he would have to either throw out the bottle of vodka or pay a fee to have his carry-on bag checked as cargo.

Instead, he chugged the bottle down - and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function, police said.

Thursday in I Must Be Right Even When I Know I'm Wrong, I said

Group News Blog

People need to be right.

People need to be right so badly we (me too) will stick with being right even when we know we're wrong.

People need to be right no matter what it costs them. And it costs them. Their reputation, love, money, their health. People die in order to be right.

Bush is unengaged.

By every account I've heard, he believe history will vindicate him.

US News and World Report

In a recent meeting at the White House, Bush told visitors how Lincoln (whose portrait he has installed in the Oval Office) persevered in the Civil War despite many defeats on the battlefield, tens of thousands of casualties, and doubts among Northern voters that the conflict could ever be won. As the campaign of 1864 approached, Bush related, Lincoln admitted privately that he didn't think he would be re-elected, but pursued his policies anyway. Bush also described how Lincoln pressed on despite his grief when his beloved 11-year-old son Willie died in February 1862. The visitors came away with the conviction that Bush sees himself in Lincoln's mold more deeply than ever.

To Bush's critics, the incident is unsettling. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, noting that the president has also compared himself to Harry Truman, told U.S. News: "This is delusional-comparing the equivalent of Warren Harding to two of our greatest presidents!" Adds presidential historian Robert Dallek, author of Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power: "He may come across to some people as a man of principle, but a great majority see him as stubborn and unyielding. ... And everything he touches turns to dust."

This is all nonsense, according to senior White House officials. They say that Bush isn't delusional at all and that history will vindicate him, just as it vindicated Lincoln and Truman. "He believes the correctness of his policies-including the war in Iraq-may not be recognized for 10, 15 years," says a Bush adviser. Adds another confidant: "If something reaches his level, it tends to be bad news, but he keeps it all in perspective, and there's no equivocation."

Equivocation.

Equivocation?

Hmmmm. Google is our friend.

Wikipedia

Equivocation, also known as amphibology, is classified as both a formal and informal fallacy. It is the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning (by glossing over which meaning is intended at a particular time).

Equivocation is the use in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning) of a term several times, but giving the term a different meaning each time. For example:

A feather is light.

What is light cannot be dark.

Therefore, a feather cannot be dark.

In this use of equivocation, the word "light" is first used as the opposite of "heavy", but then used as a synonym of "bright" (the fallacy usually becomes obvious as soon as one tries to translate this argument into another language). Because the "middle term" of this syllogism is NOT one term, but two separate ones masquerading as one (all feathers are indeed "not heavy", but is NOT true that all feathers are "not bright"), equivocation is actually a kind of the fallacy of four terms.

The fallacy of equivocation is often used with words that have a strong emotional content and many meanings. These meanings often coincide within proper context, but the fallacious arguer does a semantic shift, slowly changing the context as they go in such a way to achieve equivocation by treating distinct meanings of the word as equivalent.

In English language, one equivocation is with the word "man", which can mean both "member of species Homo sapiens" and "male member of species Homo sapiens". A well-known equivocation is

"Do women need to worry about man-eating sharks?"

where "man-eating" is taken as "devouring only male human beings".

In literature we find:

Wikipedia

An ambiguous grammatical structure in a sentence.

Some examples:

Teenagers shouldn't be allowed to drive. It's getting too dangerous on the streets.

This could be taken to mean the teenagers will be in danger, or that they will cause the danger.

I once shot an elephant in my pajamas.

A famous quotation by Groucho Marx from the comedic film Animal Crackers, it is unclear if the speaker shot the elephant while wearing pajamas or if the elephant was in the speaker's pajamas.

• Dog for sale. Will eat anything. Especially fond of children.
• Used cars for sale: Why go elsewhere to be cheated? Come here first!
• At our drugstore, we dispense with accuracy!
• Eat our curry, you won't get better!
• (Professor to student, on receiving a fifty-page term paper): "I shall waste no time reading it." (Often attributed to Disraeli)
• No food is better than our food.

Apart from its use as a technical term in logic, "equivocation" can also mean the use of language that is ambiguous, ie equally susceptible of being understood in two different ways. There is usually a strong connotation that the ambiguity is being used with intention to deceive.

This type of equivocation was famously mocked in the porter's speech in Shakespeare's Macbeth, in which the porter directly alludes to the practice of deceiving under oath by means of equivocation.

"Faith, here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven."

(Macbeth, Act 2, Scene 3)

See, for example Robert Southwell and Henry Garnet, author of A Treatise of Equivocation (published secretly c. 1595) — to whom, it is supposed, Shakespeare was specifically referring. Shakespeare made the reference to priests because the religious use of equivocation was well-known in those periods of early modern England (eg under James VI/I) when it was a capital offense for a Roman Catholic priest to enter England.

A Jesuit priest would equivocate in order to protect himself from the secular authorities without (in his eyes) committing the sin of lying. For example, he could use the ambiguity of the word "a" (meaning "any" OR "one") to say "I swear I am not a priest", because he could have a particular priest in mind who he was not. That is, in his mind, he was saying "I swear I am not one priest" (eg "I am not Father Brown who is safely in Brussels right now".) This was theorized by casuists as the doctrine of mental reservation.

Bush is described by his aides and confidants: "He keeps it all in perspective, and there's no equivocation."

Um, no.

His aides and confidants clearly mean that Bush doesn't change his mind, that Bush takes a position and holds it, no matter what. He is determined to be right, no matter the cost, certain that history will vindicate him regardless of the evidence.

He may well -- the evidence would suggest -- go to his grave believing this. To do otherwise would invalidate his entire life.

But his aides are wrong. Bush is indeed, the great equivocator. His aides -- just as Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino doesn't know the difference between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis -- don't know (or don't understand) the difference between equivocation and being determined.

One is using words to deceive. The other is taking a position and holding it.

Bush constantly uses words to deceive. Karl Rove taught him. From why the Supreme Court should order Florida to stop counting the votes, to why the United States should go to war with Iraq, from why he's not talking about Karl Rove's act of treason, to why black and poor people should have I.D.'s to vote... George W. Bush does nothing but equivocate.

He doesn't change his position. But his reasons -- they change like the AMPTP trying to explain to the writers there's no money in the internet so they shouldn't get two and a half cents on the buck, while at the same time, telling network and studio stockholders they're going to make over a billion bucks on this internet thingy.

Why am I not surprised Aides to the President not only don't understand basic vocabulary, they have the usage 100% back-ass-wards?

People want to be right at any cost, even if it kills them -- or others.

Doesn't matter if you're a 64 year-old man sucking down vodka in the airport and almost killing yourself suddenly, or a 61 year-old man ordering surges into Iraq after firing every General who told you it wouldn't work, and killing a lot of troops and Iraqis, suddenly.

It's all about being right at any cost.

Guzzle it baby. Guzzle that self-righteous 'I know someday somewhere for something, they'll put up a statue in my honor' feeling.

Suck on it till you choke.

There's more...