The lead paragraph from a smart piece in The New York Times Magazine that explains why the old jobs are never coming back, and why any politician who says they are is a liar:
As anyone who rides Amtrak between New York and Washington knows, the trip can be a dissonant experience. Inside the train, it’s all tidy and digital, everybody absorbed in laptops and iPhones, while outside the windows an entirely different world glides by. Traveling south is like moving through a curated exhibit of urban and industrial decay. There’s Newark and Trenton and the heroic wreckage in parts of Philadelphia, block after block of hulking edifices covered in graffiti, the boarded-up ghost neighborhoods of Baltimore made familiar by “The Wire” — all on the line that connects America’s financial center and its booming capital city.
What’s really scary is that the relatively new jobs are disappearing, too. An interesting era we’re in, transitioning from old-style capitalism to a version that’s a lot like feudalism.
On Tuesday, Odd Man Out posted a funny pre-election video in which Chris Rock pretended to argue to white voters that Barack Obama was as white as they are, therefore they should vote for him. Rock’s appeals fell on deaf ears, especially among old white men. But the times they are a-changin’. From The Nation:
If only white people had voted on Tuesday, Mitt Romney would have carried every state except for Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut and New Hampshire, according to the news media’s exit polls. Nationally, Romney won 59 percent of the white vote, a towering twenty-point margin over Obama. (Exit polls were canceled in nineteen states by the consortium of news media that run them…)
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…What’s the matter with white people—especially old white men? They used to run everything. But their share of the electorate has been falling steadily: twenty years ago whites were 87 percent of the electorate; this year they were 72 percent. Could it be that they resent their loss of power in a country that is becoming more racially diverse every minute? The rest of America wants to know…
The gas bag called Karl Rove, an “analyst” for Fox News, seemed on the verge of exploding last night. President Barack Obama had just been declared the victor in Ohio — even by Fox News — which meant that he had won re-election. Rove insisted that the Ohio call was premature, and he spent much of the next hour trying to convince his fellow talking heads that returns from the final precincts could still put Mitt Romney over the top in Ohio.
The gas bag was deflated before viewers’ eyes as reality kicked in and he realized his arsenal of dirty tricks and the record sums he helped raise through American Crossroads and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies hadn’t won the day for Romney.
While discussing the matter with and without Rove, Chris Wallace and Megyn Kelly and the gang didn’t mention the possible connection between Rove’s obstinacy and the fact that he was the key player behind efforts by millionaires and billionaires to buy the election. What a surprise. This would have raised embarrassing questions about their own credibility — questions such as what the hell are you doing in the same studio with this guy?
Progressives don’t have many reasons to smile, but this is one: There were just enough discerning voters out there who realized Romney was poison, despite the best efforts of a right-wing Supreme Court (the Citizens United decision), voter-suppressing Republican governors and creepy propagandists like Rove.
Update: Thank God, all is well between Rove and the rest of Fox’s on-air “talent”:
Karl Rove has made nice with Fox News following a night of media meta-mockery… [Rove’s confrontation with Fox’s “decision desk”] became an awkward moment of frustration on the cable outlet — and it didn’t go unnoticed on rival station MSNBC…
…“I don’t mean to cross-advertise here, but I want to note that conservative cable news network Fox News Channel – Fox News Channel called Ohio for Obama, but the on-air talent is refusing to concede that they believe it,” Rachel Maddow said Tuesday night.
Quipped Chris Matthews, “Can you define that word ‘talent’ for the people who are not in this industry? They happen to have positions. It doesn’t say anything about their quality.”
An old friend just moved to an amorphous suburb of Philly, way out there in Whiteland, and was dismayed but not surprised to see Romney-for-president signs on the lawns of many of his new neighbors. “Who do these guys think they’re voting for?” he wondered.
Two key paragraphs from a recent piece by Matt Taibbi that indirectly addresses this question:
…Hurricane Sandy is a perfect, microcosmic example of America’s attitude toward government. We have millions of people who, most of the year, are ready to bash anyone who accepts government aid as a parasitic welfare queen, but the instant the water level rises a few feet too high in their own neighborhoods, those same folks transform into little Roosevelts, full of plaudits for the benefits of a strong state…
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…It’s this weird national paranoia about being seen as needy, or labeled a parasite who needs government aid, that leads to lunacies like the idea that having a strong disaster-relief agency qualifies as a “big government” concept, when in fact it’s just sensible. If everyone could just admit that government is a fact of life, we could probably do a much better job of fixing it and managing its costs. Instead, we have to play this silly game where millions of us pretend we’re above it all, that we don’t walk on regularly-cleaned streets or fly in protected skies. It shouldn’t take a once-in-a-generation hurricane for Americans to admit they need the government occasionally, but that’s apparently where we are.
Romney is the candidate for voters who think federal help for disaster-stricken states is “immoral” (that’s the word he used). It really does take a hurricane to change the minds of such people.
President Obama was at the Jersey shore yesterday to signal support for those who got slammed by Frankenstorm. If I lived there and Barry came to my door, I’d ask for help but expect him to say, “We’re gonna see a lot more freak storms like this, thanks to global warming. Why the hell do you live on a barrier island?”
No, seriously, I’d thank him for staying on the job even though the election is next week, and for not staging political rallies disguised as charity events. (I’m thinking of cheesy Mitt Romney, collecting canned goods in Ohio, refusing to admit that he’s the guy who vowed to get rid of FEMA.) I’d remind Obama that he’s in a tight race because he seemed in his first term to be more concerned with bailing out Wall Street crooks than with helping create jobs. I’d assure him that he has my vote, but only because his opponent is a human/robot hybrid programmed to tell dangerous lies.
Professor Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University says some people don’t want to hear about global warming because “it gets in the way of their economic interests.”
Chris Matthews of MSNBC says, “Well, Professor Oppenheimer, back in the ‘60s, we called such people pigs.”
I say you can call Matthews impolite, but not incorrect.
Hitting the campaign trail one day after the arrival of Superstorm Sandy, Republican nominee Mitt Romney tweaked his position on abortion today, saying he now supports it in cases where it makes people vote for him.
“I would make an exception for abortion in cases where the life of my campaign is at stake,” he told a crowd in Kettering, Ohio.
Sandy, which slammed into the East Coast last night, was such a powerful weather system that it prevented Mr. Romney from changing his position on abortion for twenty-four hours.
“It was important for Mitt to come up with a new position on abortion today,” said his campaign manager, Matt Rhoades. “It sends a message to the American people that in the aftermath of Sandy, things are getting back to normal.”
Mr. Romney made no reference to his comments about eliminating FEMA, which have been declared a disaster area.
So I was holding my breath for about 24 hours as Frankenstorm surged and tried to decide where to strike next. Even in my zombie funk I knew that, if the Weather Channel was accurate and the weather gods so inclined, South Philly would be slammed with gusts of up to 75 miles per hour and with eight more inches of rain, and the huge weed tree just behind my house would not withstand the onslaught.
I phoned a friend for advice and he said, “Just wait it out. Too late to start sawing.”
In fact, branches big enough to knock me out already were crashing into my little backyard. I made a run to the 7-11 when the rain let up a bit, thinking it was the last calm before the storm, and that Hurricane Sandy would cost me more than I can afford, which is nothing.
Last year, when Hurricane Irene hit, I was ready to roll with it. This year is different. Bad weather is much scarier when you’re broke and out of options.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when the let-up persisted and Frankenstorm more-or-less spared Philly. Global warming is here and the weather guys and gals are getting more accurate, but there’s still room for the gods to smile when it comes to specific forecasts.
Too bad they didn’t smile on NYC and the Jersey shore.
Has any presidential candidate in history lied more frequently and with as much squeaky-clean earnestness as Mitt Romney? Mainstream reporters would ask this question if they weren’t trained to equate telling the truth with being biased. They don’t ask, or tell, so Democrats have to clean up after Romney as he slimes his way through Ohio:
Odd Man Out 