It struck me all of a sudden: every face on that screen – except Newt – was the face of a “healthy-weight” person. Longer and thinner, and more angular because of that.

Not Newt. Newt is a kind of stocky guy, in the parlance of my childhood. He’s a heavier man. I don’t really care, figuring it to be his own business. But it does occur to me that any female candidate bigger than “pleasantly plump” (also in the parlance of my childhood*) would surely be the target of fat jokes just like any celebrity, of questions as to her ability to maintain control over things (she can’t even control her weight!), of some unspecified derision.

Such are the lives of fat women – criticized by unthinking people who have no clue whether it is a choice or not, and even if choice is involved, who are we to say?

So the absence of critique of Newt’s round face, or pudgy belly, or whatever fruit might be ripe for comedic pickings, is actually the way things should  be: attention on the person’s policy beliefs, ability to get things done, to attempt to prove their worth as a leader. Which Newt will not, at least not to enough people.

But for all his bluster, I think Newt at least thinks of himself seriously, at least some of the time.  I think he lives in a dream world, but within his framework, he at least attempts to make sense. And those are the things the voters focus on, for good or bad, when considering Newt.  Not his weight. His ideas, his record, his potential. Hate him, love him, it’s not about his physique, it’s about what’s going on in that crackpot li’l head of his.

Which, as I noted above, is the way things should be. For everyone, male or female.

* I think from descriptions of“Bess” in the Nancy Drew books.

Why isn’t a national economy like a corporation? For one thing, there’s no simple bottom line. For another, the economy is vastly more complex than even the largest private company.

Most relevant for our current situation, however, is the point that even giant corporations sell the great bulk of what they produce to other people, not to their own employees — whereas even small countries sell most of what they produce to themselves, and big countries like America are overwhelmingly their own main customers.

[....]

Consider what happens when a business engages in ruthless cost-cutting. From the point of view of the firm’s owners (though not its workers), the more costs that are cut, the better. Any dollars taken off the cost side of the balance sheet are added to the bottom line.

But the story is very different when a government slashes spending in the face of a depressed economy. Look at Greece, Spain, and Ireland, all of which have adopted harsh austerity policies. In each case, unemployment soared, because cuts in government spending mainly hit domestic producers. And, in each case, the reduction in budget deficits was much less than expected, because tax receipts fell as output and employment collapsed.

via America Isn’t a Corporation – NYTimes.com.

I’m sure there are many other reasons why governments and businesses are different, and given the way this topic has moved to the forefront of the presidential campaign, there will probably be a number of articles in the weeks and maybe even months to come, which detail the differences quite nicely.

But the bottom line, so to speak, is this: the goals of nations and profit-making enterprises are different. Nations do not prioritize making profits, and that makes all the difference, in policy, in assessing outcomes, in planning for the future.

It’s fair to dispute the idea that Mitt Romney’s business-dude experience was as wonderful as he claims. But it’s perhaps more important to debate the idea that business people have relevant experience for the running of government.  Many people start in business, get interested in government, get a position on a city council or even in their state legislature, and then go on to seek national office in Congress or the White House.  But this seems to me to be a sensible path: take an initial experience as a business person, then spend some time in government learning more about the sausage making of laws and policy, before thinking about running things at the top of our nation’s government. With that path, someone in government uses their business experience in combination with their legislative or policy experience, to hopefully create a perspective truly useful to our nation.

Somehow I don’t get that from Romney.  Greedy in business, apparently not that great of a governor.  Is this someone who can meld his paltry experiences into something useful for the nation as a whole?  Doubtful.

Leaving aside the question of whether someone is good at their job, or whether their achievements are desirable, Ezra Klein looks at this question in light of Mitt Romney’s claim to have skills appropriate to the presidency when he cites his “job-creation” and businessman track record.

Romney was running a private-equity firm that specialized in leveraged buy-outs. Obama is president of the largest economy on earth during the worst economic crisis in 80 years. However Romney performed, however Obama is performing, the two jobs simply aren’t comparable. Romney is not being elected to issue debt, purchase private companies and try to return a profit for the taxpayer. He might be very good at doing all of that, but as president, that won’t be his job. It won’t even be close to his job.

via Romney’s Bain figures don’t add up – The Washington Post.

It often seems that folks forget that running a government and running a business are two different entities – yes, both have a lot of rules and a lot of paperwork and a lot of think-tankish-bull-session qualities, but the goals are absolutely different. And that means that not all administrative skills are applicable to both environments.

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of other, or strikes out against injustice, he send forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

–attributed to RFK (I’m assuming Bobby Kennedy) in The Ides Of 2011 – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast.

Andrew Sullivan sums up the year in social change around the world, and pays a good amount of attention to the rippling revolutions in our nation and elsewhere – Tunisia, Egypt, Libya; Occupy Wall Street, the normalization of gay rights. It’s a good post; it covers a lot of ground in just over a thousand words, because it covers a very tumultuous year. And I think his invocation of Kennedy’s “million different centers of energy,” the sum of which can move great mountains, is a great characterization of the many movements for social change this past year.

Sullivan captures it thus: “This was an inspiring year for human dignity and freedom. Know hope.”

Consider a negotiation in which both sides agreed on extending the payroll tax cut: Republicans would propose extending it for a year, every Democrat in the House and Senate would vote “aye,” and President Obama would sign the legislation into law before the week is out. But that’s not the negotiation we’re having.

Rather, Democrats and Republicans are arguing over the price Democrats are willing to pay and Republicans are willing to accept in order to extend the payroll tax cut for a full year. Republicans want, among other things, the Keystone XL Pipeline and further cuts to discretionary spending. Neither of those things, you’ll notice, is “a payroll tax cut.” Democrats oppose resolving big environmental questions through a rider to a must-pass tax bill, and they’re against some of the cuts Republicans are proposing. Neither of those concerns, you’ll notice, are concerns about a payroll tax cut.

via The ‘payroll tax cut’ debate is not about the payroll tax cut – The Washington Post.

It seems like business as usual in the Congress is to attach all kinds of unrelated issues to bills in order to get them passed more quickly – a piece of legislation about health care will have amendments which related to energy use, or a bill focused on military spending will also include something about national park funding.  I’m making those examples up off the top of my head, but you get the idea.  My understanding is that this has been done in the past to move legislation through more efficiently – less floor time debating, voting, whatever.

But in our current Congress, such attachments seem to have more to do with negotiating, and not always in good faith.  The latest example – payroll tax cuts, which everyone seems to think are a good thing to extend, being tied to the Keystone pipeline – seems to have more in common with holding folks hostage in exchange for something the other party doesn’t really want to give up, and less to do with efficiency.

Does this really make sense?

I’ve often wondered – other than the efficiency angle – why in the world proposed bills are allowed to include unrelated concerns.  If you have legislation about health care, for example, should all the stuff attached to it have something to do with health care? If the bill is focused on taxes, why in the world would it include items about energy use, or abortion, or even benign topics like the naming of post offices or commemorating events? I have often thought legislation should be more cohesive, but the latest antics of the Republicans in Congress make me think it should actually be required that a bill’s components all be related to one concern. Where it might have once been a courtesy to include unrelated topics in a bill to move things forward, now it has become a hostage negotiation.

As Steve Benen and others often say, This is why we can’t have nice things.

…. you know what? It’s irrelevant as a political or a moral matter. Millions of Palestinians now sincerely and deeply see themselves as Palestinians. It genuinely forms part of their identity. It’s not a pose. To tell them that they are all living under some form of mass false consciousness and that thus they have no claim to national rights is profoundly unethical. Gingrich converted to Roman Catholicism just a few years ago, in order to marry his third wife. (Insert joke here). No one would dare say that Gingrich’s newfound religion is fake because it is new or because he “invented” it himself. (They might say that it is false because the man is a massive hypocrite and fraud, but that’s not about timing: that’s about Gingrich).

[....]

In 1782, Thomas Jefferson could call Virginia his “country,” and only a few people in what were formerly the American colonies would have identified themselves nationally as Americans. So that’s invented, too. Are we happy now?

via The Washington Monthly – Ten Miles Square – Newt Gingrich is Right about the Palestinians….

Okay. Two questions:

Why does this matter? and,

If Palestinians are “invented,” aren’t “Americans” also more of a construct than a People.

And, a third question, coming back around: Why would that matter?

Just wonderin’……………………. Newt? anyone?

Oh, remember, Michele Bachmann has been “on the tip of the spear” fighting Obamacare, and just needs voters to grab the shaft. And then more mixed metaphors! She’s the “proven candidate who’s been tested by fire in the lion’s den of Washington, DC.” Seems to me that the key feature of lions’ dens are the lions, and not fire. I’d call that the “fire room,” or something, and I’d be like, “Lions! Get up on out of there!” And the lions would be all, “Sweet Lion God! We were just in our den, denning it up, when some raving woman came in with all this fire, yelling about Obamacare.” And I’d be like, “Damn, lions! That sounds awful traumatic!” And then I’d take the lions to the Rodeo Drive of Washington and tell them to “TREAT YO SELF.” Then the lions would devour a bunch of lobbyists, and I’d probably be prosecuted for aiding and abetting that.

Anyway, Michele Bachmann has faced the fire of the lions den, the slings and arrows of the racetrack, the guillotines of the Library of Congress, and the poisoned ping pong balls of that Starbucks that just opened on K Street, the Rodeo Drive of Washington.

via TV SoundOff: Sunday Talking Heads.

*sigh*

back to normal life, now.

I keep talking to people about both our local Occupy movement, and the Occupations in various cities around the country. I’m curious what folks think, and have found it ranges wildly, from those who are supportive and involved, to those who are confused, to those who are dismissive, to those who are just plain pissed off.

The question I invariably get from everyone who’s not supportive or involved is this: What do they want? That question is stated haltingly by the confused, and angrily by the offended, but it’s the common theme. And this surprises me. I think that’s been obvious from the beginning what inspired OWS and the other occupations, and I tell people that in addition to whatever local issues each city’s Occupy folks have shouldered, there are two issues.

The first is two-fold in and of itself: Accountability by the financial sector for crashing the economy, and setting up safeguards to keep it from happening again.

The second is jobs, and that’s not at all unrelated to the first concern.

Simple, yes? Big issues, but in essence it boils down to some very basic concerns.

So it was that this short clip from Bill Maher’s show, featuring Alan Grayson summing up the same points in a nice, quick delivery really struck a cord with me.  Thanks, Mr. Grayson.

Emily Nussbaum, in New York magazine,
The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto:
Come for the Lady Gaga, stay for the empowerment.

Oh the memories… still a feminist, and proud to count myself among the ranks of same.  But there’s always something new stirring, and every generation brings a new spin on things, sometimes bumping hard up against our older feminist convictions, but always pushing things forward, and generally in good ways.

Conor Friedeersdorf, in The Atlantic:
Stop Forcing Journalists to Conceal Their Views From the Public

Strangely related to my own interests in feminist writing, the publishing of feminist writing.  Back in the 1980s, I worked on “Matrix,” a ‘zine before any of us were calling them ‘zines.  Our editorial policy weighed in heavy on keeping the voice, the cadence, the vernacular of our writers, and journalistic standards be damned.  We preferred our articles to be ones where the author stated her experience, background and biases up front or perhaps throughout her article, and then go forward in as “objective” a manner as she preferred.  Having stated her perspective up front, the reader was then able to form their own ideas about where the author was being objective, and where her biases were (consciously or unconsciously) influencing her work.

In the article I link to, a coherent and clear argument for this kind of upfront statement of bias really spoke to me.  And, as they advocate, it is not in conflict with the ethics of journalism, but rather, preserves it.

The Fourth Estate rules.  Or could.