Monday Mashup (11/14/11)

I give you the latest chapter of “Unpacking The Crazy” with Mann Coulter (here, with an appropriate response from Media Matters here, on the supposed “sexual misbehavior” of former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod):

- Axelrod lives in Illinois with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

- Sheila O'Grady is “close” to Axelrod, and while chief of the Illinois Restaurant Association after being Daley’s chief of staff, she supposedly found the “dirt” on Repug presidential candidate Herman Cain on behalf of Cain accuser Sharon Bialek.

- Oh, and did I mention that Bialek and Axelrod lived in the same apartment building?

If this is “sexual misbehavior,” then I’m the Marquis de Sade (and rest assured that I’m not).

Next, it’s time for a big pile of steaming glibertarian crap from Tyler Cowen in the New York Times (here, about the “Occupy” movement of course)…

In the future, complaints about income inequality are likely to grow and conservatives and libertarians won’t have all the answers. Nonetheless, higher income inequality will increase the appeal of traditional mores — of discipline and hard work — because they bolster one’s chances of advancing economically. That means more people and especially more parents will yearn for a tough, pro-discipline and pro-wealth cultural revolution. And so they should.

It remains to be seen how many of us are up to its demands.

Oh yes, receiving taxpayer-funded handouts after turning our economy into a casino and utterly crashing it took place because of “discipline and hard work.” Please…

In response, allow me to point out how those supposedly lazy Occupy DC protesters were, in Cowen’s view, not working hard enough I guess when they were run into by a car (here). And I suppose the Occupy Denver protesters weren’t working hard enough either when they faced down tear gas and rubber bullets (here...and as noted here, people of color in poor neighborhoods in this country are pretty much “occupied” already).

And for good measure, I give you this from none other than Alan Grayson, who tells us exactly why the “Occupy” protesters are protesting anyway (Grayson being someone who once toiled in the hallowed halls of academia, a place from which Cowen’s world view of real people has apparently calcified beyond repair…wonder what the millions noted by Grayson would say to Cowen and his trite bromides about hard work?).

Update 11/16/11: I wonder if the folks noted here were "working hard enough" for Cowen?

Continuing, I should note that there was a time at this blog when I followed the doings of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (I couldn’t keep up too much with world news as things turned out), but as noted here, he stepped down as PM last weekend (as noted here, he lost in 2006 to center-left candidate Romano Prodi, though, as I recall, Prodi flamed out pretty quickly and Berlusconi was returned to power).

And for the occasion, I thought it was a good idea to revisit this post, where Silvio promised to abstain from sex until the 2006 general election and once called himself “the Jesus of politics” (as well as promoting his “fishy” entrepreneurial success). Also, Berlusconi tried to demonize gypsies (typical playbook for European politics I guess) and put the army to work picking up trash, sucking up to his best bud Dubya all the while as noted here.

If nothing else, Silvio kept things interesting, so I guess he deserves credit for that (more fun is here, including the stuff about Silvio and Tessa “Little Pincushion” Jowell – si bene, bene…).

Finally, Repug U.S. House Rep Darrell Issa, head of the House Oversight Committee, and Sen. Charles Grassley have said that “heads will roll” over the “Fast and Furious” operation that went wrong in Arizona (here).

I’m not really going to comment on the clownhall piece, but I only mean to point out that, while the murder of border patrol agent Brian Terry was tragic, there is more to the story (“Fast and Furious” was an operation to flood guns into Mexico from the U.S. to see how the guns were used by Mexican gangs, though the operation apparently got messed up to the point where the guns could not be traced, and one of them was used to kill agent Terry…a typical right-wing overreaction is here).

Apparently, a similar operation to “Fast and Furious” called “Wide Receiver” (love the names) was concocted by Bushco, though their sycophants have been spinning it to make it sound as if it also took place under the current administration (here), to the point where the accusation has been made that the Obama Administration pretty much allowed Terry’s murder to happen so they could use it as an excuse for passage of common-sense gun laws, a monstrous accusation even for Fix Noise (here).

I believe this article provides some interesting background on the battle raging between the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the NRA; basically, as wrongheaded as “Fast and Furious” and “Wide Receiver” may have been, the interference from the NRA didn’t leave the agency many other options to try and slow down the murderous trafficking of guns in this country, particularly along the Mexican border.

Meanwhile, Congress hasn’t confirmed anyone to head the Bureau of AT and F in six years (ATF acting director Kenneth E. Melson and Arizona U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke were forced out over “Fast and Furious”), and the agency’s budget hasn’t been increased since 1972. And we hear nothing about successful operations by the ATF (yes, they do occur).

That tells you just how loud the NRA’s money (and influence) talks (oh, and by the way, Mr. President, veto this gift to the gun nuts with extreme prejudice, if you please).

Update: And by the way, the beat goes on.