3 weird sisters

As if things weren’t already bad enough, what with most people not being able to figure out who he really is, and those who have deciding that they don’t like him and people making fun of him on the internets with things like this:

…now comes word that, after the Bataan Death-March which this year’s GOP nominating contest has become, following a divisive and dispirited convention in which Dog-on-Car battles Man-on-Dog to the preordained Pyrrhic victory,  both he and Republicans in general face an astounding 55 point gap* with the President and the Democrats among Hispanic/Latino voters.  Add that to the pre-existing gap with women, which has grown into a chasm in the midst of a quixotic national slut-shaming campaign by conservatives (slut = any woman who ever has, or has ever had, sex – or thought about it) and it all adds up to no way this guy can win, probably not even with the assist of the most aggressive attempts to stop the wrong people from voting that we’ve seen since the days of Jim Crow and unlimited superPAC funds.

In a way, you almost have to pity Romney.  He seems like he’s not a horrible guy, just one who’s very out-of-touch with the daily realities and concerns of people who aren’t quarter-billionaires.  Unfortunately, the only principle he seems to be able to hold firm is that he should be the president, and this opens him to a world of ridicule.  There’s just something unseemly about a guy with that much wealth debasing himself with awkward greetings of “Mornin’, y’all” and visibly insincere paens to “cheesy grits” (note, Mitt – they’re cheese grits, not “cheesy” grits).

Even in a Republican party not gone insane, Mitt would still be a less-than-compelling candidate.  But he has the misfortune of having his turn come up at a time when the party faithful will accept nothing less than barking lunacy in a candidate, and to his discredit, he’s tried to accomodate – which has earned him a slight plurality in the nomination race.  The Beatles were right all those years ago – money can’t buy you love, but it can certainly insulate you from those who don’t love you – if only you’ll let it. 

On second thought, maybe Romney’s as crazy as the rest of the bunch – he’s sought this out, when he could just be hanging out around the pool at his 11,000 sf seaside mansion, playing with his grandkids and secure in the knowledge that his fortune will keep them wealthy to the end of their lives.  Instead, he spends his time on the road, sleeping in motels and probably eating fairly crappy road food, to pander to people who don’t really like him under the pretense of being a fellow Wal-Mart shopper. 

In the larger sense, Romney’s tragedy is the tragedy of the Republican party.**  As I noted elsewhere, back in the Reagan era, Evil drove the conservative bus; Stupid just paid for the gas.  That’s completely reversed now; Stupid is driving the bus, and it’s being funded by Evil in the form of the Koch brothers and folks like Sheldon Adelson, Gingrich’s pimp daddy.  Reagan had to pretend to be smarter than he was to win; Romney has to pretend to be dumber than he is to secure the nomination.  I remember thinking back at the beginning of the whole teabagging thing about Churchill’s quote:  “Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount.  And the tigers are getting hungry.”  I thought then that encouraging the expression of sheer id the party had appealed to for the past 30 years was probably not a very good idea; but encourage it they did.  It now appears that the 2012 election will be one where we witness the tigers feeding upon the entrails of their former riders. 

One can always hope, anyway.

*This is a Fox News poll, so it doesn’t have any of that icky liberal media bias on it.

**For all values of “tragedy” which fit the Mel Brooks definition (paraphrased):  “Comedy is when you fall down a flight of stairs and break your neck.  Tragedy is when I stub my toe.”

This comes courtesy of John Cole at Balloon Juice.  I don’t recommend watching the whole thing, but there is one bit that’s almost inspired in its lunacy at about 10:30 into the clip.  This comes from the floor of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Oklahoma – a state which, I have long averred, would be where God would stick the tube should He decide in His infinite wisdom to give the United States an enema. 

Of course, I was reminded of this:

Not surprising that Oklahoma bellies right up to the part of Texas featured in True Stories; folks in more enlightened lands might not have realized it when the movie was made back in the late ’80′s, but it was a very accurate representation of that part of the country.  In the 25 years since, the views of the majority of people in this area have not moderated; if anything, they’ve only grown more extreme.  Oklahoma and west Texas rival South Carolina for the title of most reactionary area of the country.

Yes, this image is a few years old, but it’s timely:

…thanks to barking-mad Indiana state legislator (Republican, of course) Bob Morris, who in a letter to other Indiana Republican legislators, urged that they not support a resolution honoring the 100th anniversary of the Scouts.

“Many parents are abandoning the Girl Scouts because they promote homosexual lifestyles,” Morris’ letter reads. “In fact, the Girl Scouts education seminar girls are directed to study the example of role models. Of the 50 role models listed, only three have a briefly-mentioned religious background — all the rest are feminists, lesbians, or Communists.”

He also wrote that the fact that first lady Michelle Obama is honorary president should give lawmakers pause and that “abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood.”

I’d like to thank Bob Morris and Cerberus at Sadly, No! for giving me an excuse to post this image, which has been hanging around in My Pictures for quite some time.

*Title courtesy of Pat Robertson, from 1992 Iowa fundraising letter opposing a state equal-rights amendment.

Even his name is vaguely Dickensian

So the results are in from the primary voting for America’s Most Racist Party™ in America’s Most Racist State™, and not surprisingly, the candidate making the most openly racist appeals won.

I got into quite the online discussion last night with someone insisting that we should fear Gingrich more than Romney.  I disagree; while Romney really isn’t liked by most everyone, he’s not loathed the way Gingrich is in most places.  I noted that I wouldn’t be surprised if turnout was up yesterday in South Carolina, given what was offered on the menu – appeals to states’ rights (Paul), appeals to stick-up-the-ass faux religiosity (Santorum), and not-even-veiled appeals to racial bigotry (Gingrich).  You’d expect such a smorgasbord to really draw them out of the woodwork in the most reactionary state in the country, and it turns out this is exactly what happened – turnout was around 602,000, compared with 445,000 in 2008.  But let’s look where those “extra” votes went – Romney improved his 2008 showing by about 100,000 votes, which still put him far back into second place.  Gingrich bested him by about 70,000.  Both scored more votes than winner John McCain did in 2008. 

So what does it all mean?  Well, I don’t think it’s all that complicated, really.  I think what it means is that in the most reactionary state in the country, a lot of voters are motivated not by who they think is most likely to win a head-to-head matchup with the president, but by who they think is most likely to call him “ni**er” to his face, and Newt won that contest walking away.  I’m sure the magic underwear didn’t help Romney any with the snake-handling crowd, either.

Should we be worried about this?  Not particularly, I think.  Turnouts in both Iowa and New Hampshire were about even with the apathetic turnout in 2008, probably because the concentration of crazy in those states simply isn’t nearly as high as in South Carolina.  Sure, Newt may race-bait his way to further victories in primaries in the states of the old Confederacy, but that shit doesn’t play elsewhere.  Add to it the man’s history of shooting himself in the foot at the worst possible moment, and this is definitely the guy we’d prefer to go up against in the general election.  Because while Romney isn’t really liked, he’s not overtly offensive to many in the mushy middle.  Gingrich, on the other hand, seems to think it’s his life mission to be as offensive as possible to as many as possible.  And can you imagine evangelicals turning out in droves to support this guy in the general election?  I mean, we know from experience that they will be instructed from the pulpit to “fall in line” once the nominee is chosen, no matter how unpalatable to the brethren that choice may be.  But I can imagine quite a few of those folks just deciding to quietly sit at home on election day rather than going to the effort to show up and pull the lever for a serial adulterer whose fidelity to any particular church has been no better than his fidelity to his multiple spouses. 

So, while it’s true that the crazy isn’t confined to the south, what’s needed to harness it varies a great deal around the country.  God-botherers in the Midwest aren’t going to be motivated by code phrases like “food stamp president” in the way southern wingnuts will be, and Newt doesn’t have the religious fundamentalist chops to appeal to those folks the way he appeals to the bufords in South Carolina.

Go Newt!  Whether you win the nomination or not, your continuing presence in the race can only help in delivering victory to Obama in November.

Who knew that all it would take to get some participation up in here would be for me to go AWOL for a month?  Whatever the reason, I’m glad to see another of the Weird Sisters dropping a few pearls here.  I’m actually worried that I won’t be able to top the kink of a Christmas decoration depicting a guy whipping another guy, but on my word, I will try…  O yes, I will try.  Just not in this post.

No, this post concerns something near and dear to my heart, and to Beth’s as well:  our awesome US Postal Service, which like all else that serves the overall public good rather than just one small wealthy slice of the public, is under attack from various morons, ninnies, and lying assholes these days.

Under category the last, we find this bit of toxic effluvia issuing from the pen of one George F. Will (you know what the F stands for) and appearing in the pages of the used-to-be-a-newspaper, The Washington Post.  It’s essentially an ideological hit piece, and at turns, both a comically clueless and willfully dishonest paen to the concept that only activities which return a profit are a) worthwhile or b) efficient.

Let’s tackle “willfully dishonest” first.

Will starts by citing big scary numbers about USPS’ “red ink”, while carefully omitting the fact that it can all be attributed to one cause:  the departing Bush Congress in late 2006 gave one final flip of the bird to the American public and passed a mandate requiring the post office to fund employee benefits 75 years into the future from revenues over the next 10 years.  Yes, the USPS is currently funding benefits for workers it won’t even be hiring for another 25 or 30 years, and if not for this one purposely created problem, the post office would have shown a small profit for every year since 2006.

Will then spews out a bunch of factoids about the percentage USPS, UPS, and FedEx respectively spend on labor costs to try to demonstrate that USPS’ labor costs are out of control thanks to the evils of unionization.  Of course, he faithfully omits that he counts the pre-funding of benefits USPS is forced by Congress to pay now as part of the USPS’ percentage of current labor costs.  Using this tactic, he claims that 80% of USPS revenue goes to labor costs; the actual figure is 60% when Will’s dishonest accounting is thrown out.  This compares to 53% labor cost for UPS and 32% for FedEx – that last figure being hardly surprising, since the non-unionized FedEx has quite a few employees earning the princely sum of $8.50 per hour, which may explain why, even though the volume of mail I’ve sent/received via FedEx is much less than 10% of what I’ve sent/received via the USPS, FedEx managed to lose or misdeliver my packages with such regularity that I stopped using their service 10 years ago. 

But I digress.  The big issue here is that “percentage of revenues devoted to labor costs” is a dishonest measure of efficiency to begin with.  Will waves it around as though it’s the end-all, be-all, which is understandable given that the cause of his butthurt is the idea that the people who handle our mail are paid living wages because they’re unionized.  Will wants to pretend that if they weren’t, the post office’s financial problems would disappear and we would also get better service.  But “labor costs” considered in a vacuum are meaningless; you’d expect that a business with twice as many employees as another business would have higher labor costs, for example, and this is why Will uses the “percentage of revenue” dodge.  Again, though, that’s not a measure of “efficiency.”

For comparison, I did what Will would have done if he were other than a dishonest hack, and compared USPS’ revenues, size of workforce, and daily delivery volume with that of UPS and FedEx, then calculated how much each costs in terms of deliveries to separate, unique addresses.  It’s not an exact comparison, because for UPS and FedEx I can’t locate data for “delivery locations” but only for number of letters/packages delivered daily.  Here’s what I found: 

FedEx has annual revenues of $40 billion and a workforce of 290,000 to deliver 3.5 million letters/parcels per day.  If we assume that each of those 3.5 million pieces are going to a different address, FedEx’s per-location cost works out to $44.82.  Keep in mind that this is the conservative figure; if FedEx is dropping multiple packages at locations, this means that their cost per delivery location is actually higher.

UPS has annual revenues of $49.5 billion and a workforce of 340,000 (inside the US) and delivers 15 million parcels per day in the US.  For that maximum possible 15 million delivery locations, this works out to $12.50 per delivery location.

USPS has annual revenues of $67 billion and 574,000 employees and delivers to 142 million delivery locations per day, at a cost of $1.86 per delivery location.

If we look at it from a standpoint of labor cost per delivery location – which we should, because otherwise we’re comparing apples to oranges – FedEx’s labor cost per delivery location is an astounding $14.34 and UPS’ is $6.63, or more, compared to a USPS labor cost of $1.12 per delivery location, thus proving that private business is a lot more efficient at hoovering money out of people’s pockets for performing essentially the same functions as evil government non-profit enterprises.  Which, after all, is what Will REALLY means whenever he waxes on about the glorious “efficiency” of private business.

Now, to be fair, both UPS and FedEx operate on a different model than USPS – it does cost more to move things cross-country and deliver overnight, just as it costs more to move large and heavy parcels.  But the fact remains that neither of them are able to cover the ground USPS does for 6 – 13 times the labor cost.

Will also throws around claims of how great privatized mail systems are working in other countries.  I looked into that as well, and found that most of the countries that conservatives claim have privatized their mail systems simply haven’t.  What they’ve done is lift the government monopoly on first class mail, allowing private carriers to compete in providing first class mail service.  This is true of both the UK and Sweden.  Other countries conservatives claim have privatized have only partially done so, as in Germany, whose service is 69% private.  The only example I came up with for a fully-privatized postal system is the Netherlands, where you can send a first class letter from one side of the country all the way to the other side 100 miles away for only 50% more than what we pay for first-class postage from Miami, Florida to Nome, Alaska (first class postage rate for the Netherlands is $.62).

So if a privatized mail system in a country smaller than most US states and more densely populated than any other on earth costs almost 50% more than what we pay, how would a privatization of our mail service compare?  There aren’t any vast, sparsely populated areas in the Netherlands which are more expensive to serve like we have here.  A private system can only work in the US if it’s mandated to cover unprofitable routes as well; otherwise you end up with companies cherry-picking the areas that cost the least to serve and so yield the highest profits, and either neglecting the less profitable or unprofitable areas completely or charging exorbitantly for service in those areas.  This is why both UPS and FedEx send about 25% of their shipments via USPS for “last mile” delivery – because the post office is already going down that rural route in Wyoming, and it’s uneconomical for UPS or FedEx to go there themselves. 

Here we come to the comical in Will’s hit piece, where he suggests that Wal-Mart could take over the role of the local post office.  Because as we all know, if there’s anything more appealing than standing in line at the post office, it has to be going to Wal-Mart and standing in a line there.

All of the preceding ignores that the entire USPS deficit for the current year could be solved with a $.03 increase in first class rates or by a lower first class increase coupled with a bulk rate increase.  The seemingly insurmountable projected deficit of $14.5 billion forecast for 2012 would raise first class rates another $.09 – that’s if we did nothing else  – no repeal on the benefit pre-funding farce, no increases on bulk rate, no closing of distribution facilities or community post offices, no cut-back to 5 day delivery.  Taken together, if the post office addressed the deficits with only an increase in first class rates, we would be paying $.56 instead of the current $.44.  That’s a large increase percentage-wise, but hell…at $.56 for delivery in 5 days or less to any address in the US, that’s still a hell of a bargain – and it’s less than almost any other first-world country pays for first class mail currently.  Note that it’s still less that what the Dutch pay in their fully privatized system to serve their postage-stamp-sized country.  At $.56, our cost for first class mail service would still be less than every country I looked at other than Brazil (at $.39, the only country currently cheaper than the US for mail service), Poland ($.46), New Zealand ($.47), Israel ($.46) the Czech Republic ($.53) and Mexico ($.52).  All the other European countries, Canada, Japan, and Australia are already charging more than what we’d have to charge to keep our system just as it currently is.

So it is indeed discouraging to hear the discussion I heard on NPR day before yesterday, in which NO ONE bothered to point out any of the above facts, but instead both host and guests just solemnly intoned that “the USPS is broken,” “mail service is a dinosaur,” “they haven’t kept up with the times,” and etc.  None of that is true.  What is true is that with falling volume on first-class mail, there is no doubt that some tweaks need to be made.  But don’t let anyone fool you – none of them would require cutting back delivery to 3 days per week, or closing mail distribution centers in remote areas, resulting in delivery slowdowns of 2 days or more.  Those things aren’t necessary if the post office is allowed to do what any other business would do in the same situation – raise prices.

I fear this is all too late.  What will come next is the gutting of the postal service – as the mail is slowed down and deliveries per week are cut back, the morons who elected the morons who created the problem will conclude that the morons they elected are correct – government can’t do anything right, because look at the post office.  It costs more than it used to and we’re getting less in return.  Unfortunately, being morons, they will conclude that the answer is to turn the whole enterprise over to some private company, who will likely provide even worse service for double – or more – the price we pay now.  Imagine Comcast in charge of delivering your mail, and you get an idea of just how bad it could be.  And then there’s the issue of legally certified mail, ballots sent by mail, and other things of that type.  I’m sure Koch Brothers Delivery Services, Inc. will make sure those ballots are handled correctly.  Of course, they’ll also be paying employees a sub-living wage to maintain profit share, which will further ensure that we’re getting the best possible service.  And then, all will be right with the world and George Effing Will will finally be happy, as some worthy investor is profiting from a service where the revenues used to go to support the lazy layabouts who delivered our mail, and their families.

Roger Ailes

Could Newt Be The Next F.D.R. Let’s expose him to the polio virus and find out.

Sometimes a comment is so good, it deserves its own post. 

I’d like to hold this comment’s hands while staring dreamily into its eyes as we loiter over a bottle of good cabernet in a picturesque French bistro.  I’d like to bear this comment’s children.  And etc….

That’s from the good Roger Ailes (the one who blogs and frequently comments over at roy’s joint – not the one who runs Fox News), in comments at Charlie Pierce’s Esquire blog.  The topic was this tweet by courtier journalist Jon Meacham:

It’s a goofy news report, but I feel sure that this will get an evil chuckle out of Jaffner. Who must need one since we haven’t heard from her for a while.

Over at America’s Shittiest Website™, a creature by the name of Julie Gunlock is quite upset that Sesame Street is introducing a character whose family sometimes experiences hunger.  According to Ms. Gunlock, because 94.3% of families don’t experience “food insecurity”, it’s not a problem that 5.7%, or 15 million Americans, do.

Let’s hope no one tips her off to this obvious attack by Sesame Street on God, America, apple pie and all we hold sacred:

EPIC!!!

So, today’s the anniversary of 9/11, the day we will Never Forget™, and here is how I’m going to commemorate it:  by not thinking about it at all, as soon as I finish this piece.

Seriously, it was a bad and traumatic thing at the time, but what grew out of it was even worse.  I can still recall my first three thoughts on that morning 10 years ago, which were:  1)  Oh my god, those poor people, 2)  Sweet christ, you mean we’re going to have to deal with this with that buffoon in office (said buffoon was at that moment fleeing willy-nilly cross-country, in a display of strong & resolute leadership), and 3)  Fuck, now I’m gonna have to hear that Lee Greenwood piece of shit played in heavy rotation 24/7 for at least the next 6 months.

Those were my actual thoughts; I’ve never pretended to be a better person than I am.

My discomfort grew in the days, weeks, and months following.  I vividly recall being told to “go shopping” for the good of the nation; the false assurances of the then-head of the EPA, who told all the Ground Zero cleanup workers who are now either dead or struggling with chronic illnesses that there was nothing to worry about; and the shameless manipulation of illogical people’s fears, ala duct tape and plastic sheeting.  I feared for my sanity, but only because it seemed it might be impossible to remain sane in a country where insanity was the order of the day.

I recall wondering why it was that we were so eager to make sure that surviving families of those killed at the WTC were “compensated” with millions of dollars each, when our normal reaction (public-policy-wise, as a nation) is to tell those who lose a family member to an ordinary cause like an auto accident or illness to “tough it out” and pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Don’t get me wrong:  I know the citizens of New York, and families who lost loved ones in the attacks, were deeply traumatized.  My point is that we could say the same of anyone who loses a loved one to any cause.  For them, our response is to cut Social Security survivor benefits and Medicaid.

And as the months unfolded, I watched in horror, though not much surprise, as the natural inclinations of the American public revealed themselves in a lust for blood, whether it was that of the guilty parties or not.  (We saw another manifestation of this at the Republican debate last week, when Rick Perry was loudly cheered by the crowd for being the killingest governor of them all.  Never mind that the evidence is strong that at least one of those he killed was innocent…which makes him a murderer.  We love those types in this country.)

Now, 10 years later, those who overreacted with misdirected aggression continue to insist that if they were wrong, it was “for the right reasons,” and those of us who pointed out at the time that they were wrong and about to drag us into a huge and costly mistake are still not to be taken seriously, because who can trust a bunch of pacifist hippies, hurr-hurr-hurr, amirite?  And the nation’s downwards spiral continues.

No, there’s nothing – aside from the memory of those lost – of value to remember here.  Just as we don’t typically commemorate the onset of an illness that leads to death, so we should also turn away from maudlin remembrances of an event that put the nation on the road to oblivion. 

Because, in some very important ways it did, and we’ve made the choice over and over and over again since then not to deviate from that path.

So, ignore the horseshit you’ll hear from media outlets hoping to score a ratings boost with talk about how the events of that day 10 years ago “united” us.  It didn’t unite us in any way that would do anyone any good.  If you want to see the event that tells the story of what America has really become, you have to look at early September 2005, when as thousands of our poorest and most helpless citizens were clinging to life in a flooded ruin of a city, our media spent the first few days – while grandmothers were still drowning in their attics - fretting about how some people were losing stuff to looters.  And that was before the “blame the victims” rightwing media swung into full gear and we were treated to endless blather about how pointing out the obvious, that federal relief was a fucking joke, was “playing the blame game.”

If you want to see what this country REALLY is, look there.  In the absence of some foreign other to blame, we lost no time turning the victims into the villains.  That’s who we really are.  And that’s nothing to celebrate.

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