17 October 2010 Just a little sweetness, just a little light

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/opinion/17rich.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

The Rage Won’t End on Election Day

By FRANK RICH

Published: October 16, 2010

“CARL Paladino began his New York gubernatorial campaign by bragging he’d “clean out Albany with a baseball bat.” When an ally likened his main Albany target, the (Jewish) leader of the State Assembly, to “an antichrist or Hitler,” he enthusiastically endorsed the slur. We also learned of Paladino’s repertory of gag e-mails — among them a pornographic picture of a woman having sex with a horse and a photo of an African tribal ritual captioned “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal.” How blind we were not to recognize that his victory in a Republican primary under the proud Tea Party banner was inevitable. “

“That wave of anger began with the parallel 2008 cataclysms of the economy’s collapse and Barack Obama’s ascension. The mood has not subsided since. But in the final stretch of 2010, the radical right’s anger is becoming less focused, more free-floating — more likely to be aimed at “government” in general, whatever the location or officials in charge. The anger is also more likely to claim minorities like gays, Latinos and Muslims as collateral damage. This is a significant and understandable shift, if hardly a salutary one. The mad-as-hell crowd in America, still not seeing any solid economic recovery on the horizon, will lash out at any convenient scapegoat. “

Cassi Creek:

We’re in for a long 2012 election campaign, since it began the day the votes were counted in 2008. Despite what the GOP and the Tea Party apologists say, it is about hatred, bigotry, and religion. The ease with which the right wing propaganda machine lies is eclipsed only by the ease with which their base inhales, ingests, and imbibes the utter lack of truth and then converts it to belief of the truly unbelievable.

I’d love to show up at a local campaign stop for our Congressman, with a list of questions that he can’t or won’t answer. I made the list last year and turned out at the local circus of GOP untruth. After waiting in line, politely, to ask my questions, access to the microphone was ended so that the exalted member of congress could attend a birth day party for a big contributor. I’ve sat through interminable phone conversations, where he lied to aging women about their required appearances before death panels, only to hear, “We’re out of time.” I’ve written requests for formal answers, using his official website only to have the site fail to function. If I see him on the street or in a store in the next two weeks, I’m going to follow him with a video recorder and repeatedly ask him why he lies to his constituents, why he votes for oil and other energy companies against the needs and desires of people in Tennessee. He won’t answer but I might be able to upload something that would annoy his eminence.

Slept in today after a great day Saturday. I’ve spent much of the day trying to rebuild an old laptop computer for a friend of Gloria. This one was taken out of service when it repeatedly crashed on boot and then self-erased much of its programming. It wasn’t a virus, Trojan, or other act of malice. We could never find a cause. After some extensive rebuild time, it came up last night as if it had never so much as hiccupped. So, I’ve scrubbed it of our files and cleaned up as much age-related detritus as I can. A laptop that might fail is better than a desktop that has failed. “I’ve always heard that virtue used to be its own reward.” So Tzedakah may triumph over idleness.

The grill is waiting to be fired up. We’ve burgers made with blue cheese in them for dinner tonight. Tomorrow I’ll drive Gloria to have fasting blood work drawn. We may manage to get breakfast out. That is always enjoyable.