In the first post on our nation’s Social Security system I tried to give a brief history of how the program came about and the immediate needs of people suffering from the Depression that caused FDR to propose and the Congress to enact the 1935 Social Security Act.

In this the second installment of the series I want to deal with two things. One, what were the provisions of the 1935 Social Security Act, and two, how has the 1935 Social Security Act program been changed or altered over the years.

The Social Security Act of 1935 created several different, wide-ranging, and separate programs. The Act created unemployment insurance, old-age assistance (essentially welfare), old-age benefits (we now call this Social Security), aid to dependent children, and grants to the states to provide various forms of medical care.

Below is a description of all of those programs, or Titles, the 1935 Social Security Act created with a brief description of each program.

Title I – Grants to States for Old-Age Assistance was designed to provide “financial assistance” to “aged needy individuals” immediately. In other words, this program was a welfare program for the aged and was to be administered by the individual states following federal guidelines and paid for out of the General Fund.

Title II – Federal Old Age Benefits.” Title II of the 1935 Social Security Act created a social insurance program designed to pay retired workers age 65 or older a continuing income after retirement beginning in 1942. (First contributions had to be collected and a fund built up before being able to pay benefits.)

The Title II program would be paid for by contributions from both the individual and the employer and put into a Trust Fund (created in 1939) separate from the General Fund and for the express purpose of funding old age benefits. This is the program most of us mean when we say, “Social Security.”

Title III – This was also a grant program that provided financial assistance to the states for Unemployment Compensation and Administration and paid for out of the General Fund.

Title IV – Grants to States for Aid to Dependent Children paid for through the General Fund. In effect this was another welfare program.

Title V – Grants to the States for Maternal and Child Welfare, again paid for through the General Fund.

Title VI – Public Health Work, again paid for through the General Fund.

Title X – Grants to States for Aid to the Blind again paid for through the general Fund.

Titles VII, VIII, IX, and XI are administrative in nature and set up the Social Security Board and detailed how contributions/taxes would be collected especially for Title II.

As you can see, The 1935 Social Security Act was a very broad and all-encompassing program extending a social safety net far and wide for those suffering during the Depression and beyond. And except for Title II, all of these programs would be paid for through the General Fund.

[I can’t help but make a snarky remark here. Look at the specifics of this program and how it is targeted to help people in need and compare it to the Christmas tree approach of the current stimulus package.]

Over the years each of these programs has been referred to as “Social Security” since they were all created by the 1935 Social Security Act. But as you see, they are really separate and distinct programs funded in different ways. I tell you this now because I want you to know this and keep this in mind because the unscrupulous among us have sometimes deliberately misled people regarding some of these programs to try and achieve their own selfish agendas, especially as regards wanting to change the old age insurance benefits, or Title II of the Social Security program.

The Title II program is funded by FICA taxes. In short, the individual contributes into the system and the employer is taxed an equal amount. The self-employed must make both contributions. All of this money goes into a separate account, or Trust Fund, to be used expressly for and exclusively for those who contribute into Title II. None of this money ever goes into the General Fund. NOT EVER. Furthermore, no one can receive benefits under Title II unless they paid into the system for at least 40 quarters. If you did not pay into the system you are not eligible to receive any benefits. Therefore, no illegal alien can, and more importantly does not receive any monies from Title II, the Social Security old age insurance program – not one dime! (This is true even if they paid into the system under a phony or even stolen Social Security number, as some do.)

It is a different matter with the other programs that the 1935 Social Security Act created, as you will read a bit later.

Changes Made to 1935 Social Security Act
Now let’s look at how The 1935 Social Security Act has changed over the years. As I researched this I was amazed at how stable the program has been since its inception. It has occasionally been slightly tinkered with here and there, but by and large it is remarkable how few changes there have been. The main changes have tended to be in one of two categories. The first category increases benefits going to recipients, and the second is continually making the program more financially sound.

I am not going to list each and every minute change to this act. If you are interested in minutia you can go to Social Security History and the Social Security Administration has listed them all. I will only hit the highlights.

1935-1939

The original Social Security Act was mostly a white male program. According to Wikipedia most women and minorities were excluded from receiving benefits from all of the various programs through how employment was defined and through specific listing of the job categories that were or were not covered. Certain jobs were just plain and explicitly excluded from the program. For example, most agricultural workers were excluded, as well as nurses, teachers, hospital workers, librarians, and domestic workers to name just a few.

Since many of the programs were also administered by the states, even more discrimination crept into the programs at that level. Fortunately, the practice of discrimination began to change in the late 1930’s as shifting gender roles and positions of minorities in society began to change. By the 1950’s the debate changed from which occupations should be covered by Social Security to achieving universal coverage.

1939

Before Title II even paid out any benefits retirees there were changes made to the program in 1939. Originally benefits were to be paid only to the worker. The 1939 Amendments added two new categories of benefits. Payments could now be made to the spouse and minor children of a retired worker, and second, in the event of a premature death a survivor’s benefit was added.

The 1939 Amendments also increased Title II benefit amounts and moved up the start of the program from 1942 to 1940.

The taxing provisions of Title VIII [see above] were also removed in 1939 (would not have been constitutional) and authority to tax was placed with the IRS (constitutional) and renamed Federal Insurance Contributions Act, or as we affectionately know it today, FICA.

However, the most significant change in 1939 was the creation of a Trust Fund managed by the Secretary of the Treasury for any surplus monies collected. These excess funds could be invested in both marketable and non-marketable securities. I could do an entire post on the Trust Fund and how it operates; it is that all-encompassing. There is not enough room in this post to detail its inner workings.

1940-1950

For ten years between 1940 and 1950 only one significant change was made to any of the programs. The Social Security Board was abolished in 1946 and replaced by the Social Security Administration (SSA) headed by a single Commissioner. The SSA still exists today.

Benefit levels however, remained very low. According to the official Social Security History web pages, “……. until 1951, the average value of the welfare benefits received under the old-age assistance provisions of the Act [Title I] were higher than the retirement benefits received under Social Security [Title II] provision. And there were more elderly Americans receiving old-age assistance than were receiving Social Security.”

So several amendments to the Act were made in 1950. Again, from the official history page of the Social Security website, “These amendments increased benefits for existing beneficiaries for the first time …….and they dramatically increased the value of the program to future beneficiaries. By February 1951 there were more Social Security retirees than welfare pensioners, and by August of that year, the average Social Security retirement benefit exceeded the average old-age welfare assistance grant for the first time.”

Today most people know that the Title II program has an annual cost-of-living (COLA) clause. This was not always the case. The first retirees received the same monthly benefit for the remainder of their life. But that also changed in 1950 when a COLA was enacted by Congress. At that time these increases were not automatic and were enacted by Congress periodically as necessary. It was not until 1972 that Congress enacted legislation providing for an annual automatic COLA based on the average increase in consumer prices.

Also in the 1950’sthe disability provisions were strengthened.

1960’s and 1970’s

The decade of the 60’s brought several significant and major changes to the Social Security Act. Retirees were given a choice of early retirement with a reduced annual benefit.

But by far the biggest change in the decade of the 1960’s was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on July 30, 1965. The Medicare program extended health coverage to retirees by helping them pay for hospital and medical expenses.

Like Title II of the 1935 Act, Medicare is a social insurance plan for people aged 65 or older. It operates as a single-payer heath care plan. This program consists of two parts. Part A is for hospital insurance, and Part B is for medical insurance. The 1965 amendment did not provide for prescriptions in most instances. It would be 30 more years before prescription drugs would be added to the program. Medicare is paid for by additional FICA taxes and is administered by The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). [Snarky comment #2, for those keeping count- which thankfully Tom Daschle will not be heading.]

Above is video of President Johnson signing the Medicare Bill and Former President Harry Truman signing up for Medicare.

As mentioned earlier, another major change in the 1970’s was the introduction of the permanent COLA.

There were a series of Amendments made in 1977 to deal with projected shortfalls due to the bad economy of the 70’s. And for the first time the issue of a projected shortfall due to the baby boom is mentioned and a slight FICA increase was made.

Supplemental Security Income
If you remember, The 1935 Social Security Act created several different programs. Except for title II, the other programs were administered by the states with partial funding from the federal government.

Over the years the programs varied tremendously from state to state with payments to recipients varying by as much as 300% between the states. There were also over 1000 agencies administering these programs. It was a bureaucratic nightmare rife with confusion and inequalities.

In 1969 President Richard Nixon changed that. He initiated reforms that would “bring reason, order, and purpose into a tangle of overlapping programs.” At Nixon’s instance Congress federalized Title I, Title X, and the disabled category (created in the fifties) by creating the Supplemental Security Income program (SSI) in the Social Security Amendments of 1972.

The Social Security Administration, created in 1946 to administer Title II, was chosen to administer this new SSI program because of its reputation for successful administration of the Title II program and because of its nationwide field offices and data-processing and record keeping skills.

However, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a Federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues, not with Social Security or FICA taxes.

In keeping with the original Titles and the disability amendment SSI is designed to help the aged, blind, and disabled people, who have little or no income, and provides cash to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.

I am going to include this next part here, even though it is out of chronological order because it deals with SSI benefits to illegal aliens. This is often the source of the misunderstanding, urban legends, myths, or downright lies about illegals getting Social Security Title II benefits.

During President Clinton’s administration a balanced budget bill was passed and a Welfare Reform bill was passed. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 among other provisions restored SSI eligibility to some non-citizens whose eligibility would have been terminated under the Welfare Reform Act.

Now here is where it can sometimes get dicey. Some politicians and some activist who do not like Social Security (Title II) and want to totally get rid of it, and/or who would like to make some money off of the pool of money in the Title II Trust Fund sometimes play fast and loose with the truth.

When people sometimes will say that immigrants and/or illegals are receiving Social Security what is most likely happening is that eligible aliens are receiving SSI monies. Some folks do not distinguish between Title II monies and SSI monies. And because many people do not know the difference between the two programs, and because both programs are run by the same Social Security Administration, many people believe that illegals are dipping into their retirement pot and that they will bankrupt the Title II system. They are not. They are getting SSI monies.

Beware and ask questions when someone tells you illegals are raiding the Social Security system. Ask those who are telling you these things if the immigrants or illegals are getting Title II monies or SSI monies. Now you know the difference between the two and hopefully you won’t be fooled by the games some folks like to play with your emotions.

The 1980’s

Major changes were made to Title II by President Ronald Reagan upon the recommendations of the Greenspan Commission in the 1983 Amendments. These changes were in response to both short term and long term projected shortfalls in the system.

Contributions amounts went up for both individuals and employers, retirement age went up, some benefits were lowered, more federal employees were added into the system, taxed Social Security benefits, among many other provisions.

The original Title II program was a pay-as-you-go program. In other words, current workers paid for benefits for current retirees. This was great for the WW II retirees as 78.2 million baby boom workers could afford to pay to fund increased benefits for many years. The 1983 Amendments changed this formula. For the first time in Social Security’s Title II history the baby boom generation was funding a part of their own retirement simply because there were not enough citizens behind them to afford to continue the same benefit level for them unless they helped to pay for it up front.

1990’s and 2000’s

In addition to the changes already mentioned under SSI President Bill Clinton also made some changes to the disability portions of the act.

However it was left to President George W. Bush to make the biggest and most controversial change to the Medicare portion of Title II in 38 years. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act was enacted in 2003. During hearings on the bill the projected cost of the Prescription Bill was estimated to be $400 billion.

I will let Wikipedia take up the story from here: “The MMA was signed by President George W. Bush on December 8, 2003, after passing in Congress by a close margin.

“One month later, the ten-year cost estimate was boosted to $534 billion, up more than $100 billion over the figure presented by the Bush administration during
Congressional debate. The inaccurate figure helped secure support from fiscally conservative Republicans who had promised to vote against the bill if it cost more than $400 billion. It was reported that an administration official, Thomas A. Scully, had concealed the higher estimate and threatened to fire Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster if he revealed it. By early 2005, the White House Budget had increased the 10-year estimate to $1.2 trillion.

“Former US Comptroller General David M. Walker has called this “…probably the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s… because we promise way more than we can afford to keep.”

One of the strongest organizations lobbying for the bill was AARP. It was during the Prescription drug debacle that I first learned, realized, or finally understood that AARP is not an advocate organization. It is an insurance company first and foremost. It will look out for its corporate interests first. And making money was clearly more important than helping poor people afford life-saving prescription drugs. To this day I refuse to join AARP for that reason alone.

President George W. Bush also attempted to privatize Social Security, but that did not fly. I think W learned an important lesson. Don’t rile up the senior set. One, they are vocal. And two, they vote!!! However, that issue is not dead and there are still many individuals and organizations who would like to privatize Title II.

We will deal with the issue of privatization in the next installment in this series entitled, “Is Social Security Really Broke?”

CAPTION: On January 31, 1940, the first monthly retirement check was issued to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont, in the amount of $22.54.

Miss Fuller, a Legal Secretary, retired in November 1939. She started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65 and lived to be 100 years old, dying in 1975.

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Until my next installment, please keep these figures in mind:

In 1940 when the first benefits were paid 222,488 people received benefits totaling $35,000,000.

By 2006 there were 7,235,565 people receiving benefits totaling $41,312,000,000.

Since 1935 – for 74 years -The Social Security Act has literally kept millions of retired and disabled Americans from the poor house during the ups and downs, good and bad times, and the recessions and depressions our country has faced. Not bad for a government program!!!!

This past week, Bill O’Reilly took a shot at long-time White House correspondent Helen Thomas. As you all know, Ms. Thomas has been in the gaggle since Jack Kennedy. She’s been treated with respect most of that time. Yes, in the later years of George Bush, she was overlooked from time to time, but even then she was part of a great skit played at the National Correspondence Dinner which showed her stalking the president to get her answers.

But did O’Reilly address her question or her view? No, he said she reminded him of the “Wicked Which of the East”…who by the way,…we never see in the Wizard of Oz outside her feet under Dorothy’s house. Margaret Hamilton played the Wicked Witch of the West.

When he came under fire for this comment by women’s groups and Media Matters he tried to deflect it as, “I said she sounded like, as in her voice…not her appearance” (paraphased). Truth is, Helen Thomas didn’t sound anything like Margaret Hamilton, this was just typical Bill O’Reilly running from his record.

Additionally he ignores that he calls her that “old woman”, then proceeds to mock the idea that he’s an ageist or sexist.

So as usual he invites someone to help him defend himself only to attack the guest in the end. This time it was author Courtney Martin. After trying to run the whole interview, she maintained her ground and in the next segment, this time populated by two other men he says, “I’m right, aren’t I”?

But…enough of the reality of things…I had to get some cathartic release out about Bill O’Reilly’s penchant for bloviation and put it into artistic terms…Here’s the “Bill O’Reilly’s Attack on Helen Thomas – The Easy Teenage Dance Mix vol. 2″
Enjoy

And it serves to remind us that things could be a heck of a lot worse if not for certain federal programs brought to us by President Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” and President Johnson’s “Great Society.” The final installment will show how an inept President Bush nearly destroyed the lives of hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people by monkeying around with Medicare.

Seconds (1966)
Director: John Frankenheimer
Rating: 4 Ambien (out of 5)

On the surface, Seconds is the story of the myth of the ultimate male fantasy. Imagine The Truman Show voyeurism with the lustiness and self-loathing of a Woody Allen character.

Arthur Hamilton (John Randolph) is a successful but miserable banker, the man in the gray flannel suit who is known for his silences. He has a loving wife but their marriage is on life support. His grim life will soon end, one feels, without him experiencing real passion or joy.

A mysterious phone calls leads him to a company who promises to a give him a new life. It’s the world’s swankiest witness protection program. Plastic surgery transforms him into the handsome Rock Hudson. He’s given a beach house in the Malibu Colony, a servant, and the life of an artist. On the surface it seems ideal.

Of course not all is well in paradise. Hamilton (now Hudson) is still the same morose man underneath the good looks and enviable lifestyle. He meets Nora Marcus (the beautiful and underrated Salome Jens) on the beach. She’s the divorced mother of two who is the opposite of Hamilton. Her beauty is faded by the weariness of her life. She left her wealthy husband and the lifestyle he provided in order to live as a bohemian. In the best scene in the movie, she takes Hamilton to a nudist grape stomping “bacchanal” in Santa Barbara. Hamilton can’t relax enough to enjoy himself in a genuine way and, later, he uses drink to loosen up enough to be the man he has been “reborn” to be.

The critic Peter Wilshire writes that Seconds “is a disturbing film to watch. With its unresolved, horrific ending, it’s possibly one of the most depressing films ever made.” I disagree. I didn’t find the movie depressing at all. The movie did leave me with the feeling of 1960s Cold War paranoia, although that’s not the topic in any respect. But I don’t think it’s an accident that Seconds feels foreboding. Frankenheimer directed the ultimate paranoid thrillers of that decade, The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May. In a Frankenheimer movie, things are not what they seem; the world is disjointed, fragmented, and people wear masks — either of their own making or masks that have been forced onto them.

I believe that if Seconds had been directed by another young director of that era, Mike Nichols, for instance, it would have felt far less paranoid and more bittersweet, akin to Nichols’ The Graduate, released in 1967.

Seconds is an imperfect movie but exhilarating in its own way. It’s risky, and for that reason The Insomniac gives it 4 out of 5 Ambien.

Pauline Kael, in her famous essay, “Why are movies so bad?” says “if a movie doesn’t have an easily paraphrasable theme or big stars, it’s hard to sell via a thirty-second TV commercial.” Seconds is complex and disjointed. Does the trailer adequately explain the movie?

What did you think of Seconds? Did you find it depressing? What do you interpret as the main theme? Who was the best actor/actress?

What other movies from the 1960s do you love?

No review next week. The next review will be on December 12. We’ll be discussing The Salton Sea, which comes recommended by OBAMA IS A FRAUD.

h/t to TexasMirth for tonight’s recommendation.

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In an interesting historical aside, Bobby Kennedy was staying at Frankenheimer’s Malibu home during the California Democratic Primary in June 1968. Frankenheimer drove RFK in his Rolls-Royce to the Ambassador Hotel on election night. RFK was gunned down by Sirhan Sirhan in the kitchen pantry. An interviewer asked Frankenheimer if RFK’s death was a defining moment in his life. He answered: “Absolutely. It was the defining moment of mine.”

I love Hollywood movies just like most everyone else. Give me a comfortable stadium seat, a good thriller, a bag of fresh popcorn, and a cold Pepsi, and I am as happy as a hog in warm poop.

But I don’t go to the stars, even my favorite ones, for factual information about any candidate or political position. Every time I hear one mouthing off about politics, I strip away who they are and pretend instead that they are the neighbor next door who watches Keith Olbermann and figures she now knows everything.

The difference is that my neighbor has no bully pulpit. But our Hollywood celebrities get their faces and words out there in the bright lights, and the media eats it all up. Their ignorance metastasizes in an instant.

My latest beef is with Matt Damon, one of the shinier stars and normally among my favorites. He played the part of a genius in (and even co-wrote) Good Will Hunting, but his real-life fact-generating skills are far less impressive.

Damon is trying to scare everyone by suggesting that John McCain would be fairly likely to die while in office—a one in three chance. To “prove his point” he totally misrepresents the actuarial data (probably because he cannot read a percentage chart—if you pretend to be dumb, you can see how he came up with this figure).

First, let’s be clear about mortality actuarial tables. They are used to predict risk, using probability statistics, and the figures do not represent only healthy people. So by the time one gets to 70, some have taken very poor care of themselves and others are chronically ill. John McCain has had bouts with melanoma in the past, but he is under the best doctor’s care and would continue to be were he to be elected President. His dreadful years in a Viet Nam prison brought on lifetime physical consequences, but none seem to have left life-threatening sequela. His mother is alive and well into her 90s. He is married, financially strong, and churchgoing, all of which are positively correlated to longevity. And also remember, the older you get the more years you likely have yet to live. (You get extra credit for living longer.)

Using straight actuarial mortality tables (based on general population trends), McCain has an average of little over a 3% chance of dying each year if in office, starting at age 72. At his current age, McCain’s life expectancy is 12 more years. See exact figures here (and you probably won’t be able to resist checking out yourself).

So, Matt, next time you spout off, get your facts straight!

IF it suddenly seems like the Obama campaign doesn’t have any idea what it’s doing, maybe that’s because it doesn’t.

Barack Obama has never run a campaign against a real Republican. And his main strategist, David Axelrod, is way out of his areas of expertise.

Axelrod specializes inurban politics. He’s run a bunch of mayoral races (usually in cities with lots of blacks), plus contests in true-blue states like Massachusetts and New York.

By creating a culture war between the so-called Whole Foods Nation and working class Americans, Axerod’s tactics worked for Deval Patrick, but not for Freddy Ferrer in the 2005 New York race for mayor or for John Edwards’ primary run in 2004. Cunningham points out Axelrod’s overt class warfare tactics, which included naming sides:

New Yorkers may recall that he was on the Freddy Ferrer team – and how the class-warfare theme of “the Two New Yorks” managed to lose the 2005 mayoral race in a city that’s overwhelmingly Democratic.

Nor did the same shtick do much for Axelrod client John Edwards, who didn’t exactly score big with “the Two Americas” in the Democrats’ 2004 presidential primaries.

As to Deval “just words?” Patrick’s victory in Massachusetts, which also depended on Axelrod’s talents at divisiveness, Cunningham writes:

By the way, it’s not much of a governing philosophy: After less than a year on the job, Patrick has job-approval ratings to rival President Bush’s.

Sarah Palin, John McCain’s pick for VP, has thrown this class warfare strategy into stark contrast. The press and blogs have gone after Palin like meth-heads after a fix. Foaming at the mouth and euphoric at the opportunity to name call, the media sees Palin as the antithesis of the Moveon.org crowd, and more of the poster child for Walmart than for Whole Foods. And rather than be shamed as they think she should be, Palin is proud of that fact.

Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, has a excellent article about this divide in the September 6 edition of BBC Today. Bagent writes:

During this US election cycle we are hearing a lot from the pundits and candidates about “heartland voters,” and “white working class voters.”

What they are talking about are rednecks. But in their political correctness, media types cannot bring themselves to utter the word “redneck.” So I’ll say it for them: redneck-redneck-redneck-redneck.

Bagent is being somewhat facetious in his use of the term “redneck” but not in his description of how the pundits, the politicians and the media work vigorously to attack this culture and their values. According to Bagent, “The term redneck indicates a lifestyle and culture that can be found in every state in our union.” His list of these values is relevant here:

• Belief that no law is above God’s law, not even the US Constitution.

• Hyper patriotism. A fighting defence of native land, home and heart, even when it is not actually threatened: ie, Iraq, Panama, Grenada, Somalia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Vietnam, Haiti and dozens more with righteous operations titles such as Enduring Freedom, Restore Hope, and Just Cause.

• A love of guns and tremendous respect for the warrior ideal. Along with this comes a strong sense of fealty and loyalty. Fealty to wartime leaders, whether it be FDR or George Bush.

• Self effacement, humility. We are usually the butt of our own jokes, in an effort not to appear aloof among one another.

• Belief that most things outside our own community and nation are inferior and threatening, that the world is jealous of the American lifestyle.

• Personal pride in equality. No man, however rich or powerful, is better than me.

• Perseverance and belief in hard work. If a man or a family is poor, it is because they did not work hard enough. God rewards those who work hard enough. So does the American system.

• The only free country in the world is the United States, and the only reason we ever go to war is to protect that freedom.

It’s not such a mystery that the mean machine of the Democratic primaries, which stole the nomination away from Sen. Hillary Clinton, is sputtering so badly now.

We all understand that there is a political class which dominates in America, and that Sarah Palin for damned sure is not one of them. And the more she is attacked by liberal Democratic elements (translation: elite highly-educated big city people) the more America’s working mooks will come to her defence. Her daughter had a baby out of wedlock? Big deal. What family has not? She is a Christian fundamentalist who believes God spat on his beefy paws and made the world in seven days? So do at least 150 million other Americans. She snowmobiles and fishes and she is a looker to boot. She’s a redneck.

Their behavior during the campaign was so far from being progressive that I’ve concluded that they’re not actually progressives — at least not of the New Deal, progressive government heritage. Indeed, Markos proclaims himself a libertarian Democrat, meaning he’s well-off and politically correct.

Regarding the Silence of the Bloggers while the media performed a misogynistic bloodletting on Hillary, Big Tent Democrat writes:

[Digby] KNOWS why [media bias] was not covered by most of the Left bogs until the ABC debate – for the same reason the Media’s bias, sexism and misogyny was not covered by the blogs – because they loved it when it was against Hillary Clinton. The Left blogs failed in the primaries and it is time they owned up to it and why – when it was smears, sexism and silliness against Clinton, all was well. Look at Keith Olbermann for crissakes. Their complaints about McCain favoritism in the Media, to the extent it exists, now rings hollow. Their credibility had been shot long ago.

Now Digby is endorsing attacks on McCain. Does she want to go after his tax policies? How about Iraq? Is it his abortion stance? No, it’s not about policy. Here’s the plan she endorses:

Why not concentrate on character critiques that have some real grounding in reality? Just to give a few examples:

*
McCain is old and gets confused occasionally.
*

McCain is running an ugly, smear-based campaign.
*

McCain has a legendarily short fuse.
*

McCain is annoyingly self-righteous.
*

McCain’s straight talk has evaporated in the face of his need to win evangelical votes.

How to go after McCain and promote a progressive agenda? Ageism. He’s running a “smear-based campaign” (read: he’s racist). Nice coming from a group that allowed (and participated in) Obama’s race-baiting of the Clintons. And please don’t call McCain “annoyingly self-righteous,” while Obama lectures Americans to learn Spanish — a language he does not speak.

The “progressive” bloggers’ desire for power — not a progressive agenda — has turned them into modern day Bolsheviks. There is nothing progressive about race-baiting, sexism, and ageism. The sooner Obama is defeated and these cranks fade away, the better.

PUMAs need to start formulating a vision for a post-Obama Democratic Party, one which I hope is focused on providing opportunities for all Americans regardless of race, sex, or age.

McCain is too Old and Confused to be President. That’s the message that Obama supporters are trying to put out and they have a point. After all McCain is clearly old. McCain is an aged 71 while Obama is a spring chicken at the tender age of 46.

Unlike McCain, Obama is unconfused and on the ball all the time.

For example Obama knows that there are 57 states in the Union and he’s visited every one of them. Particularly Mars.

Obama knows that 10,000 people died in a Kansas tornado that killed only 10 people. Clearly math was never his strong subject.

At Selma, Obama informed us that his parents met four years after he was born and that his Kenyan diplomat father had a flag draped coffin.

He knows that Canada’s Prime Minister is actually a President

Obama knows they speak Arabic in Afghanistan and that there are poppy fields in Iraq

Obama knows that Matt Lauer is really Tim Russert

Obama had no idea whatsoever that his home church and the reverend with whom he had a 20 year relationship was a crazy america hating racist.

Hell Obama couldn’t even figure out how to use the voting buttons in the Illinois State Senate

Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago’s West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.

“I was not aware that I had voted no,” he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”

On March 19, 1997, he announced he had fumbled an election-reform vote the day before, on a measure that passed 51 to 6: “I was trying to vote yes on this, and I was recorded as a no,” he said. The next day, he acknowledged voting “present” on a key telecommunications vote.

He stood on March 11, 1999, to take back his vote against legislation to end good-behavior credits for certain felons in county jails. “I pressed the wrong button on that,” he said.

Obama was the lone dissenter on Feb. 24, 2000, against 57 yeas for a ban on human cloning. “I pressed the wrong button by accident,” he said.

On Nov. 14, 1997, he backed legislation to permit riverboat casinos to operate even when the boats were dockside. Moments after its passage he rose to say, “I’d like to be recorded as a no vote,” explaining that he had mistakenly voted for it.

Maybe Obama was just tired all these years and needed a nap. Let’s just hope he manages to figure out how the nuclear button and the intercom button works before he blows up the planet while trying to order some Spanish ham.

But don’t worry, when Obama’s campaign makes a mistake, it’s always his staffers who are at fault.

After the Politico raised questions about questionnaire Obama filled out in 1996, Obama supporter Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wa., took to Tucker Carlson’s MSNBC Show to say, “He didn’t fill it out and he did not support those positions then . . . That was a questionnaire filled out in his first state Senate campaign back in 1996 not by Senator Obama but by somebody on his staff that didn’t get it cleared.”

Well that sort of thing can happen once or twice, right? Or over and over again. But what can you expect from a guy who doesn’t even know what letters he’s writing or for whom?

In a March 2008 interview with the Chicago Sun-Times to answer questions about Tony Rezko, Obama was asked about the fact that Obama had told the newspaper in November 2006 that he had never been asked to do anything to advance Rezko’s business interests. But the Sun-Times had subsequently learned about a October 28, 1998 letter Obama wrote to city and state housing officials on behalf of a housing project for seniors that Rezko was working on.

Responded Obama: “I wasn’t even aware that we wrote the letter. The answer that I gave at the time was accurate as far as I knew…This was one of many form letters, or letters of recommendation we would send out constantly for all sorts of projects. And my understanding is that our letter was just one of many. And I wasn’t a decision maker in any of this process.”

Who does the buck stop with? Not with Barack Obama who barely even knows when he’s writing a letter in support of building a senior center on a toxic chemical spill waste site for the guy closely tied to his law firm who raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for him. I mean whatdaya expect anyway? He’s not a decision maker.

But with all of Obama’s confusion and his ignorance of how many states there are and his constant inability to keep his staff from fooling him, maybe Obama is just too old and confused to be President.

At 46 isn’t it time for Barack Obama who has had a dignified record of pressing the wrong buttons in the Illinois Senate and a hundred days or so in the US Senate voting Present on many major issues, to be put out to pasture and retire so he can finally enjoy the good life?

Far be it from me to mock Obama’s premature senility but it would seem that his age and mental confusion makes the Presidency a too high pressure job for someone with his fragile memory and awareness.

Instead maybe it’s time for the Democratic party to let in some fresh new blood such as 32 year old Rep. Patrick McHenry from North Carolina or 21 year old superdelegate Jason Rae. They clearly have the fresh ideas and the experience garnered from years of videogaming to figure out which buttons to press to vote on crucial issues.

If younger is better, than we can certainly do better than Obama. It’s time for new ideas and less confusion. It’s time for Obama to take his nap and make way for the younger generation. The fact is he’s clearly too old and confused to be President anyway.

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Visit my blog, Sultan Knish: “from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals The Stories Behind the News.”

Once again Obama’s supporters and surrogates are colluding with neoconservative men, namely Bob Novak, the man who exposed Valerie Plame’s identity. I quote:

Close-in supporters of Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign are convinced he never will offer the vice presidential nomination to Sen. Hillary Clinton for one overriding reason: Michelle Obama.

The Democratic front-runner’s wife did not comment on other rival candidates for the party’s nomination, but she has been sniping at Clinton since last summer. According to Obama sources, those public utterances do not reveal the extent of her hostility.

Michelle Obama has not already revealed her hostility? Where do we begin with this statement: with the video of Michelle Obama “returning to her south side roots” as she denigrates Hillary Clinton for her husband’s improprieties before an African-American audience;

with her unwillingness to uphold Party unity on February 4, 2008, in the wake of the coordinated and unfounded race baiting in which she and her husband engaged when they willfully distorted President Bill Clinton’s statements at the Trumpet Awards on January 13, 2008 and on the campaign trail in South Carolina on January 23, 2008;

with her avowal of a desire to “rip Bill Clinton’s eyes out” while campaigning in South Carolina; with the complete and utter disdain she expressed twice in one day for the country that has offered her and her husband so much;

with her hostility toward those who are wealthy, who she believes should “give [her] something here;” with her unrestrained animus for Americans, who she refers to as “cynics, sloths and complacents;” or with her failed attempt to mock Hillary Clinton before college students at the elite Haverford College after her husband insulted blue collar workers who tote guns and practice religion in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Montana, South Dakota, Oregon and West Virginia? Where does one begin with Michelle Obama? Where does one begin to analyze this woman’s hostility?

I ask these questions, for one can only assume Michelle Obama is profoundly disturbed. Some would say she loathes herself. Indeed, her inability to contain her rage has been a liability to the Obama campaign, or at least this is what some political commentators postulate. Perhaps this explains the new feminine role in which Axelrod has attempted to cast Michelle. I quote an article on a speech Michelle Obama delivered at a fundraiser for Rep. Jan Schakowsky at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois, on May 10, 2008:

Obama suggested that if she were to become first lady, she would take on women’s and family issues, prompted by the stories she has been hearing from females on the campaign trail.

“And if I have the honor of becoming the next first lady, I want to continue these conversations like the ones I’ve had with these incredible women across the country. I want to ensure that their voices don’t get drowned out ever again in Washington.”

Michelle, according to the script penned by Alexrod, will now be the caring, nurturing, feminine First Lady who will champion the issues of women and children. No longer will she be the race baiter she has been in North Carolina and in other states with large African-American populations, and no longer will she issue derisive comments about women whose husbands may be unfaithful; Michelle, now tamed by her male handlers, will be a woman relegated to the margins, to the realm of domesticity. Women, I guess, will not be liberated in the twenty-first century.

But how will Michelle become a paragon of domesticity? How is a woman who exhorted working class women in Zanesville, Ohio, to relinquish opportunities to earn large incomes in the name of working in the “helping industry” possibly prepared to address the rights of women and children? How is a woman who believes working class women of Zanesville, Ohio, can afford to spend $10,000 on piano lessons, ballet lessons and summer camp aware of their plight? How is a woman whose home was financed by a questionable deal involving indicted political fixer named Antoin “Tony” Rezko receptive to the concerns of single and married women who cannot afford to pay their subprime mortgages?

How is a woman whose Rezko mansion is maintained by a housekeeper and a landscaper sensitive to the time constraints of working women? How is a woman whose only legal experience is corporate law aware of the impediments women and children must surmount in order to attain equal and fair representation before the law? How will David Axelrod manage to transform a mound of excrement into a bag of gold?

None of this will matter, for Axelrod has a history of turning political figures into that which they are not. And in the case of Michelle Obama, he necessarily has to cast her as a champion of women, for white women have abandoned the Obamas in droves. I imagine the racially charged speech Michelle Obama delivered at the Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte, North Carolina, on May 5, 2008, did not endear her or her husband to white women. I quote:

But Mrs. Obama, the star attraction, is taking no chances. Walking onstage to chants of “Yes, we can!” and “Fired up — ready to go!” she quickly gets to the heart of her message: There are forces out there who are trying to take away everything Barack has worked for. They — she doesn’t mention anyone in particular but does refer to one “brand name politician” — are trying to win this election for themselves and thereby deny Obama the opportunity to move America to the mountaintop of hope. And they must be stopped.

“We’ve learned that we’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right?” she tells the crowd.

“That’s right.”

“They tell you all you need to do is do these things and you’ll get to the bar — ”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you go about the business of doing those things — ”

“Yes — ”

Her husband has been doing just that, Obama explains — raising money, building an organization, winning caucuses, winning primaries, and amassing a large number of delegates. And yet he still hasn’t won, because nothing is ever enough for those unnamed adversaries.

“You start working hard and sacrificing, and you think you’re getting closer to the bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, you get right to that bar, you’re reaching out for the bar, and then what happens?”

“They raise the bar!”

“They raise the bar. Raise the bar. Shift it to the side. Keep it just out of reach.”

“Yes!”

“And that’s just what’s been happening in this race.”…

Even Michelle Obama herself. “I’m not supposed to be here,” she tells the crowd. “I am a statistical oddity. As a black girl raised on the south side of Chicago, I’m not supposed to be here. I wasn’t supposed to go to Princeton. They said my test scores were too high” — surely a verbal slip, because in the past she has said she was told her test scores were too low — “I wasn’t supposed to go to Harvard Law School, because they said it might be a little too hard for me. And I certainly am not supposed to be standing here with a chance to become the next first lady of the United States of America.”

But here she is, in just that position — only to find that they, as always, are trying to raise the bar a little higher, just out of her and her husband’s reach. Still, she asks the crowd “to close your eyes and do some dreaming…to dream of the day that a man like Barack Obama is standing in front of the Capitol with his hand on the Bible.” With that, the audience erupts into shouting and applause. They’re fired up and ready to go, and all those who love the Lord and will vote for Obama say “Amen.”

According to Michelle Obama, a Caucasian woman named Hillary Clinton, a woman for whom she has an immense amount of hostility, is the “brand name politician” who is responsible for “raising the bar” on her and her ostensible African-American husband. A Caucasian woman, in other words, has made it impossible for her and her putative African-American husband to seize the reins of power. Caucasian women are the enemies of African-Americans, and they must be stopped. Women who believe in self-determination, even or especially those who are African-American, are somehow responsible for the oppression of African-American males. No wonder why a staggering number of African-Americans in North Carolina voted against their economic interests and cast their ballets for Barack Obama: Michelle’s hostility toward women is contagious.

And no wonder why Axelrod attempted to recast Michelle Obama five days later into an exemplar of domesticity during a fundraiser for a female politician who happens to be Caucasian. Now that Michelle believes she has thoroughly destroyed the only chance a woman may have to become President of the United States during many of our lifetimes, she must now try to rise from the ashes left in the wake of her incendiary race baiting and misogynistic rhetoric as the phoenix of women’s rights. No wonder why she is hostile toward Hillary Clinton: in order to become Hillary, she must destroy Hillary. But Hillary, our true feminist mother, will never be destroyed. And Michelle, a woman who exploits misogyny for electoral gain, will never approximate Hillary.

Happy Mothers’ Day, Hillary. And Happy Mothers’ Day to all those who respect their mothers.

I dedicate this essay to all the mothers whose sons and daughters, both literal and metaphorical, never learned to respect them. Let us hope they finally will on Mothers’ Day 2008.

[UPDATE]: Watch this video on Michelle Obama compiled by Fox News. Michelle is a liability for Democrats in the general election. Do Democrats seriously believe ordinary Americans will respect this woman?

And I won’t have it! It’s just so mean and so unfair! LOOK at these blog posts, will you????!!!! I’m dividing these posts into the “Ahhhhhhhhhhhh” (Leave him alone, he tired boy!”) and the “Cackling with glee” posts. (I’m collecting so if you spot any, please, please share below in the comments!)

IN THE AHHHHHHHHHHHHH, LEAVE HIM ALONE department:

MARC AMBINDER — he writes for the “let’s be mature and ‘across the aisle’ about this” for latte elites my-magazine’s-way-older-than-your-magazine Atlantic Monthly — and he’s the head of the “YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED FOR LAUGHING” DEPARTMENT:

From The “If McCain Did This” Files Obama, below, is tired, nothing more. … But if John McCain did this — if he mistakenly said he’d visited 57 states — the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying….

FROM THE CACKLING WITH JOY DEPARTMENT — NO MATTER HOW YOU SLICE IT OR DICE IT, JUST PLAIN MEAN DEPARTMENT:

CAN HE SPELL “POTATO?” — [OHHHHHH that's brutal!]

SISTER TOLDJAH blog tells ya what’s what about all this:

He made these gaffes almost one year to the day after he claimed “10,000″ had died from the Kansas tornadoes, when it was actually only 12.

John Hinderaker at Powerline points out that the media won’t even come close to treating their Golden Boy like they did Dan Quayle’s gaffes.

Or President Bush’s, for that matter.

Marc Ambinder correctly points out that if McCain had said any of this:

[…] the media would be all up in his grill, accusing him of a senior moment. Just saying….

Yup, but maybe just for laughs McCain should strike back at Obama’s accusation of him “losing his bearings” by referencing Obama’s flubs and suggesting that the inexperienced, rookie Senator from Illinois apparently isn’t getting in enough daily naps.

Tom Elia quips:

Personally, I don’t think it was a ‘tired mistake’ as much as this is just how Chicago Democrats are used to counting during elections and election campaigns…

Tigerhawk suggests:

Of course, there is another explanation beyond the steak sauce theory or the traditional lame excuse that he was “tired” (yeah, right, like Winston Churchill used that excuse) or that he’s “lost his bearings”: Barack Obama is an imperialist! His mistake was not in counting the states properly, but in failing to say that he wants to visit 57 states. And who doesn’t? Why didn’t he say that he wanted to bring back “manifest destiny” a little earlier in the campaign? That would have helped him with the Reagan Democrats. For sure.

Heh.

I’d love to see someone come up with a bumper sticker design related to this. I’d display it proudly

“V” sent me a link to a blog that now has special lapel pins for all 57 states. Maybe Barack’ll wear this one?

They are using race by:

• either propelling African Americans to feel that they must vote for him or be accused of betraying their own race
• or playing on white guilt to force well-meaning but naive Democrats into feeling they must vote for him to expiate their ancestors’ past sins.

Now Barack Company Inc. is attacking John McCain by using his age against him, and the McCain campaign is calling him out on it — and in so doing, EXPOSED what the Obama Inc. strategy is ALL ABOUT. GOOD for you, Mark Salter and John McCain:

To: Interested Parties
From: Mark Salter, Senior Advisor
Date: May 8, 2008
Re: Senator Obama’s Attack Today

First, let us be clear about the nature of Senator Obama’s attack today: He used the words ‘losing his bearings’ intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain’s age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning.

We have all become familiar with Senator Obama’s new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is. …

It is important to focus on what Senator Obama is attempting to do here: He is trying desperately to delegitimize the discussion of issues that raise legitimate questions about his judgment and preparedness to be President of the United States.

Through their actions and words, Senator Obama and his supporters have made clear that ANY criticism on ANY issue — from his desire to raise taxes on millions of small investors to his radical plans to sit down face-to-face with Iranian President Ahmadinejad – constitute negative, personal attacks.

Senator Obama is hopeful that the media will continue to form a protective barrier around him, declaring serious limits to the questions, discussion and debate in this race.

Senator Obama has good reason to think this plan will succeed, as serious journalists have written of the need for ‘de-tox’ to cure ’swooning’ over Senator Obama, and others have admitted to losing their objectivity while with him on the campaign trail.

Today, Senator Obama is complaining about comments John McCain made about a senior Hamas advisor stating that Hamas would welcome Senator Obama’s election as president. Indeed, on April 13th, senior Hamas political advisor Ahmed Yousef said, ‘We don’t mind – actually we like Mr. Obama. We hope he will (win) the election and I do believe he is like John Kennedy, great man with great principle, and he has a vision to change America to make it in a position to lead the world community but not with domination and arrogance.’

The McCain campaign has never suggested that Senator Obama supports Hamas’ agenda, but it is more than fair to raise this quote about Senator Obama because it speaks to the policy implications of his judgment.

Just today, the president of Iran, whom Senator Obama wants to meet with unconditionally, called the state of Israel a ’stinking corpse.’ Iran is the paymaster and state sponsor of Hamas.

In his victory speech this week, Senator Obama stated that ‘wisdom’ is meeting with our enemies, including Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea’s Kim Jong Il, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Raul Castro. John McCain couldn’t disagree more. Rather than giving tyrants and dictators the prestige of meeting with an American president, John McCain will instead meet with the champions of human freedom around the world and opposition leaders fighting for liberty .

We understand why Senator Obama doesn’t want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place.

These are serious times that call for a serious debate on the profound issues facing our future. John McCain is ready for that debate and we hope Senato <<image003.jpg>> r Obama will one day get serious and join it.

– Source: The McCain Campaign, via The Page blog at Time magazine.

THERE ARE numerous issues which the Obama campaign can use to counter McCain’s candidacy. But instead of playing fair, they’ve repeatedly misquoted his statements on Iraq, and are now trying to smear him because of his age.

Another friend — who I hadn’t heard from in a while — called me last night. This friend went to grad school in Berkeley, and is about as far left as one can get without veering off into the extremist territory of the likes of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn.

This friend astonished me by telling me that she plans to vote for John McCain in the fall, so disgusted and repelled is she by the tactics and dishonesty and corruptness of the Obama Inc. machine.

Thank god there are a few of us — actually many millions of us — who see through the manipulations: