Typical U.S. corner Grocery store of the early 1900’s with horse drawn cart and grocer ready to serve. Copyright Corbis.
Times Square Crowd Celebrating Victory. “Original caption: 5/7/45-New York: Here is a general view of New York’s Times Square, sometimes called the crossroads of the world, at noon showing the surging crowds that celebrated the unofficial publication of Germany’s unconditional surrender. Despite lack of confirmation from the White House, London or Moscow, New York went wild with its usual barrage of ticker tape and torn paper. Times Square, Manhattan, New York, New York, USA”.Copyright Corbis.
National art week, November 25th – December 1st : A work of American art in every American home. CREATED/PUBLISHED Chicago : Illinois WPA Art Project, [between 1936 and 1941]. WPA stood for Works Progress Administration. A public works program that was part of FDR’s New Deal to help alleviate some unemployment.
Italian Immigrants Arrive at Ellis Island. An Italian woman and her children arrive at Ellis Island, New York, in 1905. Copyrighted image.
If you’re in the mood for more this is a great series (slide show) by Life Magazine – World War II: Pictures We Remember
With Mitt Romney only having to officially accept the nomination of his party the official election cycle is upon us. Or we call just as easily call it the season of incessant conservative shrill and falsehoods told so often conservative Republicans will make Alice in Wonderland look like a documentary. The word values is useful only in context. Conservatives have used it incessantly for half a century. In that time, like all historical propagandists have managed to twist the word like a turkey neck neck destined for the carving table. Choking out all life. What remains is the remarkable accomplishment of Pravda-like doublespeak. Making the immoral, the cruel, the ignorant, the mean, the petty, the corrupt, the most base of human inclinations into the new morality , the new values. For those who have not joined in yet, if you should chose to adopt conservative “values” just take a head long dive into the gutter. You’ll find conservative values there. There are plenty of conservatives who would serve as examples, but Mittens is now the official standard bearer. Like many moderate conservatives of the ye early 1990s Romney only told lies about half the time. Which matched the amount of reality such conservatives would contemplate. Liberals, so grateful for half a real person, even rewarded him with a governorship. In one speech. One. Romney has let the USA know that the conservative concept of values is in play. Other than saying good morning in a speech made just recently Romney could not manage to utter one truth,
He blamed President Obama for the “weakest economic recovery since the Great Depression.”
The Great Recession started during the most conservative administration in history. There were various elements to the cause, all of them can be traced back to conservative policies. if you’re a conservative pundit trying to deflect some blame certainly you can find some Democrats who joined in those policies, but they were conservative Republican policies. Romney says is a hard core conservative. Romney shares the blame. His plans for the economy look a lot like Paul Ryan’s(R-WI) shifting more tax burden to the middle-class and working poor, while cutting taxes for millionaires – by historical measurements a prescription for economic failure. Failure for the nation. Though like every other conservative Romney seems more concerned with how the country club set is doing more than how the average suburbs are doing.
He said he would save “about $100 billion a year” eliminating Obamacare.
The only people who believe that are the same people who told us the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves. The ACA or Obamacare will save the nation money.
He accused the president of “taking a series of steps that end Medicare as we know it.” And he claimed Obama had created an “unaccountable panel, with the power to prevent Medicare from providing certain treatments.”
The President did put Medicare on the table in budget negoiations. His plan was to do more in terms of cost control and means testing for the very wealthy. House Speaker Boehner (R-OH) rejected those porposals. The only real threats to Medicare have come from the far Right. Conservative have a long history of trying to gut Medicare.
– Sen. Carl Curtis (NE): During the debate over the creation of Medicare, Curtis said that the “insurance industry has a remarkable record” and that Medicare “is not public welfare. It is not charity. It is not kindness. It is socialism. Socialism is not the answer to anything.” [1965]
– Dick Armey: Armey told reporters in 1995 that “we need to wean our old people away from Medicare.” [1995]
– Newt Gingrich: Gingrich, who is now likely running for president, told a Blue Cross Blue Shield conference how he plans to eventually get rid of Medicare: “Now, we don’t get rid of it in round one because we don’t think that that’s politically smart, and we don’t think that’s the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it’s going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it — voluntarily.” [1996]
– Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX): During an appearance on MSNBC last week, Hensarling referred to Medicare along with Social Security as “cruel Ponzi schemes.” [4/15/2011]
So it goes. Another race for president by a conservative running as a squeaky clean golden boy of values. This has been and will likely remain the major moral failing of conservatism, its value look so much like depraved squalor. Politicians throughout history have managed to, to paraphrase, fool some of the people some of the time. Can conservatives continue as a viable political alternative in their quest to screw over most of the people all the time. It looks like Mitt Romney is going to try.
Its bad manners and a logical fallacy to make an unjustified smear of someone and call it the truth. It is generally considered especially revolting when done while hiding behind some credentials that say the person possesses some kind of expertise – Fox News’ Keith Ablow: Working Moms Like Hilary Rosen Despise Themselves(Ablow is a psychiatrist)
In a new column rife with his usual brand of audacious conjecture, Keith Ablow of Fox News’ Medical A-Team takes aim at Hilary Rosen and all working moms (and arguably all feminists), suggesting they are “anti-gender” and “despise the parts of themselves” drawn to motherhood:
[ ]….Unsurprisingly, Ablow assumes that gender norms are good and haven’t been used to discriminate against women for almost all of humanity. Perhaps he’d like to roll back all of the freedoms women have fought for over the past century so they can fully embrace their “maternal instincts” with nothing to distract them from what he seems to see as their true calling. Ablow, of course, includes a jab at Rosen for being a lesbian, suggesting she’s only capable of supporting “alternative lifestyles.”
As Carlos Maza points out at Equality Matters, Ablow’s column includes all his usual pop-psychology tropes:
Violating professional ethics standards by diagnosing a public figure without permission or a formal examination
Peddling unscientific and sexist stereotypes about how men and women are supposed to behave
Using any excuse to take an unprovoked potshot at the Obama administrationBut all of that aside, Ablow accidentally concedes that the intention of Rosen’s comments was exactly right, suggesting that many of his clients “wouldn’t be going to work for very long if their spouses made millions as investors (as Mitt Romney has done).” If Ann Romney really didn’t go to work, choosing instead to “allow her husband to go out and make the money to support all of them,” why doesn’t Ablow simply agree with Rosen?
We all know how conservatives play the game. They take one person, who misspoke saying that Ann Romney had never had a job, when she should have said never had a job outside the home, like most American moms. Rosen, unlike Limbaugh who called a woman a “slut” and and CNN’s Dana Loesch who called all women who listen to Democrats “prostitutes”, apologized ( Limbaugh’s apology only counts as an apology in Wingnuttia). Conservatives point to Rosen as a way to deflect from the Republican war on women. Ablow is using his diagnosis via the internet to make a professional smear of not just Rosen, but any woman who has not signed up to be the ideal obedient obsequious conservative woman. Ablow had a choice to make between his medical ethics and shoveling out some venal bullsh*t for the team. His ethics did not stop him from choosing the latter. Let’s pretend that Limbaugh and Loesch see themselves as journalists or descent human beings. They also had a choice to make between decency and ethics, or shoveling out some depraved nonsense for the cause of conservatism. They decided to shovel fast and deep.
How out of touch with reality is an average conservative Republican congressional representative? Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has ‘little tolerance’ for student loans
Ladies and gentlemen, the deep thoughts and abiding wisdom of Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), complaining to G. Gordon Liddy (yeah, I know) about the young kids today and how they should all just get a job, hippie:
I went through school, I worked my way through, it took me seven years, I never borrowed a dime of money. He borrowed a little bit because we both were totally on our own when we went to college, totally. […] I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that. We live in an opportunity society and people are forgetting that. I remind folks all the time that the Declaration of Independence says “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You don’t have it dumped in your lap.
I’m not sure how a full-time college student is supposed to come up with $50,000 per year, unless it’s selling things Virginia Foxx probably doesn’t approve of. But I guess back when Virginia Foxx went to college the tuition was five pumpkins and a bag of turnips, and if she could come up with it then, surely an 18-year-old can come up with $200,000 now. Get a job! Well, it’s minimum wage, so get four jobs, slacker! (Oh, and did I mention that back then, they all tied onions to their belts, which was the style at the time?)
For newcomers who haven’t heard of Virginia Foxx before, she is a proud member of the House dimwit caucus, alongside such esteemed freedom-geniuses as Allen West and Louie Gohmert. Amongst their weaponry: Gullibility, foot-in-mouth disease, and a fanatical lack of awareness as to the most basic realities faced by other people in the country. So yes, she says stuff like this all the time.
Most college graduates will graduate from a public university. The national average annual tutiton for a public university is $17k a year. That means, just in tuition – not books, transportation, health costs, food, etc. a total of $64k. There is an on-line costs calculator, but Foxx probably doesn’t know what on-line means, mush less how to use a calculator – A New Way to Compare College Costs Online
The tool tells you that the first year’s “sticker price” at Emory is $55,992, and the average amount of grants and scholarships awarded is $31,161. That leaves $24,831 to be financed. Over four years, you’ll accumulate debt that translates into a payment of nearly $1,500 a month for 10 years — a level the tool considers “high.”
By comparison, Georgia State costs $24,198 for the first year for an in-state student, and average grants and scholarships total roughly half that amount — $12,144. That leaves just over $12,000 to be financed each year. Upon graduation, you’d be looking at a monthly payment of $714, which the tool still considers “high,” although it’s less than half the estimated payment you would have after graduating from Emory. (Of course, if your starting salary is higher than the average — about $31,000, pretax — your debt would be less burdensome.)
If someone works full time at federal minimum wage ( its higher in some states) at $7.25 an hour that means they gross about $15,600 a year. Some Americans live in the real USA and others are…conservatives like Foxx. Completely disengaged from the basic economic facts of life.
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue. ~ Plato
The Long Goodbye 