Archive for June, 2010

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Anti-Americanism Explained

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Via Huffington Post

The video below has been making the rounds, and for good reason. In it, an American tourist (YouTube user simoneharuko) visits what she calls, “pretty much the coolest grocery store of all time” in Alexanderplatz, Berlin, and found something she had never seen before: an American ethnic section. As Eater pointed out, “most of this stuff seems to be there for expatriates who want brands they recognize.”

Here is the video.

 

 

And here is the list of products included in the “U.S.A” ethnic food section:

  • Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate mix
  • Cans of V8
  • Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup (original and “Shell” style)
  • Maple syrup
  • Regular old syrup
  • Betty Crocker Baking Mixes: Blueberry, Chocolate Chip Cookie, Brownie, Cake, Muffins, Bisquik,
  • Betty Crocker frosting: Vanilla and Chocolate
  • Five (5) Pain Is Good Hot Sauce varieties
  • Jim Beam Barbecue Sauce, Steak Sauce, Hot Sauce, and Mustard
  • Four (4) Jack Daniel’s Barbecue Sauces
  • Paul Prudhomme “Magic” Seasoning blends
  • Paul Newman salad dressings
  • Hellman’s Mayonnaise
  • Wish Bone Blue Cheese Dressing
  • Marshmallow Fluff (original and strawberry)
  • Kraft Macaroni & Cheese
  • Cheese Zip (cheese whiz)
  • Head Country Barbecue Sauces
  • Bull’s Eye Barbecue Sauce
  • Hunt’s Barbecue Sauces
  • Cheddar, Nacho, and Jalapeno-flavored squeeze-bottled cheese
  • Mustards
  • Heinz sweet relish
  • Crisco shortening
  • Marshmallows
  • Campbell’s Soups

There is not much here worth eating.

I’ve just returned from Spain and Portugal, and I have spent some time in Italy and Germany as well. If there is one thing Europeans do well it is eat. If you are an ex-pat American living in Europe do you really pine for this stuff? You really want cheese whiz when you can have a nice Allgau Emmentaler?

Of course, our ethnic food sections don’t look much like a real market either. But much of what one finds there is at least edible and sometimes interesting.

A box of Kraft macaroni and cheese might induce all manner of speculation about the “American character” deficit.

 

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Government by Empty Rhetoric

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

The most recent defeat of a jobs bill in the Senate will have far reaching consequences beyond the loss of benefits for the unemployed. The bill included aid to the states, which will not be forthcoming. As Ed Kilgore points out:

Unfortunately, 34 states planned on receiving that money, and its failure to materialize is going to create a whole new round of state budget crises. In many states, we can expect Medicaid cuts and/or reductions in other state spending, quite likely including layoffs of teachers and other public employees. That’s why most Republican state officials did not share the happy-talk of their brethren in Washington about opposing “bailouts of the states.”

State budget cuts will have a baleful effect on the economy, and vague conservative talk that “shringing government” will somehow produce private-sector growth is going to be exposed as illusory.

Kilgore thinks there may be a silver political lining to the Republicans’ refusal to do anything to stimulate the economy.

But there could be political consequences as well, as voters begin to realize that there is no big pot of money labeled “waste, fraud and abuse” that can be tapped to balance state budgets, much less to fund the high-end personal and corporate tax cuts that many Republicans continue to call for in the latest incarnation of the discredited theory of supply-side economics.

In other words, the anti-government populism that conservatives are counting on as electoral magic this November may lose some of its appeal when reality sets in. And Democrats should be quick to point out there is no such thing as a free “austerity” lunch.

Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the public “gets it”. Reality “set in” a long time ago with the financial crisis and consequent recession that was wholly a product of a bankrupt conservative ideology and Republican mismanagement. Yet polls show that voters are poised to put Republicans back in power in the November mid-term elections.

Conservative beliefs continue to circulate in an endless feedback loop, immune to counter-example or evidence and supported by nothing but empty nostrums about “freedom”, “big guvment”, and “free markets”.

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Posted in Domestic Policy, Watching the Conservatives | No Comments »

Mama Grizzlies

Monday, June 28th, 2010

If you have been pining for discussions of Sarah Palin’s political prospects, here is the latest.

Apparently, Sarah Palin has taken to calling her female evangelical supporters “Mama Grizzlies”, invoking her belief that fighting for conservative causes is akin to fighting for your children (or something like that). Are Mama Grizzlies a  new political force like the “soccer moms” of the past election cycle?

According to demographics expert Rudy Texeira, the answer is no. 

Mama grizzlies seem likely to be just the latest in a long line of media-fueled electoral chimeras for the Republicans. The reality is that female evangelicals are not much of a growth constituency. And white evangelical protestants overall are roughly stable as a proportion of the population. They are no larger at this point than unmarried women—who are a growth constituency—as a proportion of eligible voters.
The growth action on the religious front is among unaffiliated or secular voters, who are the fastest-growing “religious” group in the United States. From 1944 to 2004 the percentage of adults reporting no religious affiliation almost tripled, rising from 5 percent to 14 percent. Projections indicate that by 2024 somewhere between 20-25 percent of adults will be unaffiliated.

This trend, combined with growth among non-Christian faiths and race-ethnic trends, will ensure that in very short order we will no longer be a white Christian nation. Even today, only about 55 percent of adults are white Christians. By 2024 that figure will be down to 45 percent. That means that by the 2016 election (or 2020 at the outside) the United States will cease to be a white Christian nation. Looking even farther down the road, by 2040 white Christians will be only around 35 percent of the population and conservative white Christians (a critical part of the GOP base) only about a third of that—a minority within a minority.

These developments will put increased pressure on the GOP to moderate its socially conservative stance. That stance may appeal strongly to a key segment of their base, but that segment will shrink substantially over time as religious diversity increases. A more moderate approach would have some chance of appealing to this diversity rather than leaving the field wide open for the Democrats. But of course Sarah Palin and her mama grizzlies takes the GOP in precisely the opposite direction

It is a relief that people who welcome Armeggedon are not gaining political ascendency.

Perhaps there really is a God.

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Posted in Public Opinion, Watching the Conservatives | No Comments »

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