Cutting Through The Crap

Death By TV

2012-01-27T08:50:00.000-08:00

My usual approach to the Republican debates is to read about them later; there's only so much lying and pandering I can take at a time. Last night, however, I was at the hospital waiting to help with a horrendoma (as we like to call really tough frustrating and dangerous operations) and the debate was on in the surgical staff lounge.

So there I sat, trying not to pay enough attention to cause a hemorrhage somewhere, when they began to address Newt's promise to have colony of 13,000 Americans on the moon by the end of his second term. Cost, in these times of deficits, was mentioned. Gee.

Anyhow, after they blathered for a while about how private business would be only too happy (or not) to invest billions in Newt's big idea, seeing as how the rewards would be, well, fundamental I guess, they got around to the biggest joke of the evening. (Fortunately, I didn't have to watch the whole thing.) Newt reminded us of the inspiration of that great conservative icon, JFK, when he promised we'd have a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Mr Gingrich out-puffed his normal puffiness as he spoke of the kids going into science after that, how they rallied and created and did stuff because of the lure of space. But now, he said sadly, kids aren't choosing the sciences, presumably because we're not thinking Gingrichian big anymore.

At which point I wanted to shout at the screen: Science??? Science!!!??? Really??? Suddenly you're thinking science is good, that our future might somehow depend on it??? The guy in the party that denies science at every turn, that deliberately tries to ruin the teaching of it in our schools, that laughs openly at expertise? That guy -- THAT GUY -- thinks we should be inspiring kids to go into science.

I see I called that a joke back there a paragraph or two. What was I thinking?

Crazy Talk

2012-01-26T08:51:00.001-08:00

Here's a video. I can't embed it, but it's worth watching to the very end; otherwise you'll miss the point.

The Truth Will Set Them Free (From Fox)

2012-01-25T02:10:00.000-08:00

I had coffee yesterday with a couple of really good guys, writers of newspaper columns, one sort of a lefty, the other sort of a righty. One told an astounding story of a series of serious medical calamities that had befallen a family member, one after the other, just as they'd lost health insurance. And just as the Affordable Care Act was taking effect. It saved them from financial ruin.

So this seems a good time to post something I wrote a while back but never got around to clicking the "publish" button:

As people understand what's in (and, overcoming the lies of the RWS™, what's not in) the Affordable Care Act, they change their fox-fed negative opinions of it. From a column in a Michigan newspaper, written by a small businessman:

With the economy still in a slump, small business owners like me are doing everything we can to keep our costs down. A particularly troublesome cost for my business is health insurance.

However, I recently learned there are tax credits in the new healthcare law specifically for small businesses that will help us pocket some extra cash.

In Michigan, 85.1 percent, or 126,300 small businesses were eligible for a credit in 2010; 39,600 small businesses qualified for the maximum tax credit that year.

Unfortunately, I saw a survey from Small Business Majority that said 57 percent of small business owners don't know about the credits. If more small employers took advantage of this opportunity to save money, there would be more cash circulating in our community.

[...]

From my perspective as a lifelong, small, downtown business owner, a relatively small health care reform tax credit helped our company put tens of thousands of dollars into the economy. I see healthcare reform as powerful economic stimulus that really works.

Any cash boost, large or small, is welcome in this economy. We can use the money we save to invest in new equipment and new workers, so we can expand and help grow the economy.

I hope all small businesses owners in Michigan will look into these credits. We need all the help we can get.

Here's a few more facts about the ACA that'll never be known to those who get their "news" from Fox.

Guess what? Thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act (ACA/ObamaCare) and to an unprecedented effort by the Obama Administration, more progress has been made in the past three years to combat health care fraud and abuse than ever before. There was a 68.9 percent increase in criminal health care fraud prosecutions from 2010 to 2011, and 2010 was already the highest ever.

And there are these things already in place:

* brought coverage to 2.5 million young adults
* delivered big savings for seniors on prescription drug costs;
* given a significant boost to small businesses through ACA tax credits;
* slowed the growth of Medicare spending;
* provided new treatment options for cancer patients like Spike Dolomite Ward;
* saved taxpayer money by cracking down on fraud;
* and offered new coverage protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

People knowing stuff. It's the greatest fear of the RWS™ and Fox "news" and every single one of the R presidential candidates.

You're Welcome

2012-01-24T01:49:00.000-08:00

Recently I announced the end of word-verification for commenting here. Since I was getting spam comments anyway, I figured why not just make things easier for the tens of thousands of people who visit and share their views.

For the record, since doing that, I've been getting, and deleting, four times the number of spam comments I used to; and yet, because I'm such a generous soul, I'm still not reinstating verification. What a guy.

By the way, the Blogger so-called spam filter ain't worth a shit.

Significance

2012-01-23T02:12:00.000-08:00

I'd like to think this comment on Andrew Sullivan's blog is prophetic:

... a Gingrich nomination would be poetic justice - or maybe just justice. Gingrich didn't transform the GOP alone, but he is arguably more responsible than any one person for the Republican party becoming the cynical, reckless, destructive piece of shit it is now. I am not a fan of the Reagan Administration, but there is a big difference - as Newt would say a "fundamental" difference - between the party of Reagan and the one Newt was so instrumental in shaping, the current, decadent GOP.
The Republican Party of today is the party of Newt. I think the best bet for reforming it is for Republican grassroots to nominate someone who so thoroughly exemplifies it, and have him lose spectacularly. It would also be cathartic for the country if Obama finally grasped the nettle and took the opportunity to definitively crush, rhetorically as well as electorally, Gingrichism and its variants.

As I've written many times, I most certainly agree with the characterization of today's Republican party as one of despicable negativity: hatred, fact-averse denialism, untruthfulness, unfocused self-pity, especially of the poor-me Christianist variety, and doctrinaire obstructionism. I'd love to think that nominating Newt and his subsequent thumping would cause the Republican party to reassess itself and to return to thoughtfulness and connectedness to reality. But I'm not so damn sure he'd be defeated: I simply have no idea at this point whether Gingrich, with his appeal to the lowest common denominator, his willingness to lie and to play the card of aggrievement represents the fringe or the mainstream. There's no doubt he tapped into a deep well of "fuck-yeah-hate-'em-all-kill-'em-all" mentality in South Carolina. I really have no idea -- but I worry -- whether it's close enough to where we are as a nation that it would prevail in a general election.

Is there now a majority of voters who believe a president should arrest judges with whom he disagrees, after first ignoring any ruling to which he objects; who think Sharia is about to become the law of the land; who are okay with a president who considers himself king, as long as his view of unchecked power is aimed against a free press and checks and balances, who appeals to resentment of all things non-white Christian heterosexual? Have Fox "news" and the RWS™, with their non-stop, coordinated, and well-compensated stoking of hatred and discouragement of rationality finally succeeded in their deliberate dumbing of enough people to win the day? Lose the future?

It doesn't surprise me that Newt might be the nominee of the current iteration of a once-respectible party; but were he to go on to win, it'd be the absolute end of what remains of the confidence I once had in America's ability to find its way in tough times.

Sunday Soliloquy

2012-01-22T01:49:00.000-08:00

Hard not to like Stephen Fry.* In his case, it's not just the English accent, which confers an aura of intellect on anyone. He's witty and an extreme polymath, and his comments above on polytheism mirror what I've written here before: if you look at the world as it is, and feel the need to explain it by invoking deity, it makes a lot more sense to believe there are lots of them, generally screwing around with themselves and us. (And I like his pointing out the inverse relationship, historically, between knowledge and religion.)

Christianity admits the inconsistency and inadequacy of its monotheistic claim by tossing in Satan. As explanations go, it fits a little better with what we see than the idea that there's only one guy in charge, a guy who's all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving. Has a plan for us all. Knows everything about us before we're born. And since, simply by looking around, it's evident god has way more on his plate than he appears able to handle, we also get saints and guardian angels to clean up his little messes, as needed. Judging on outcomes, though, they must be in over their heads most of the time, too. In any case, other than semantically, this is monotheism the way homeopathy is medicine.

Satan, I guess, does offer believers an explanation, more like an excuse actually, for why there's evil in god's perfect world. The unspoken extrapolation, though, is that his existence also fully negates the view of god as perfect. Either that, or Satan, like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell and Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, is actually carrying out their omniscient and omnamorous god's will.

I don't think I've heard anyone argue, though, that Satan is the cause of a child's bone cancer. That, I'd say, pretty much disproves the all³ idea of god. Given that children die of cancer every day, if there is/are god/gods then he/she/they have to be some combination 0f incompetent, inattentive, or uncaring.

In which case, what's the point?

______________________________________

*For Stephen Fry fans, by the way, this video is a must-see.

They're All Insane. Scary Insane.

2012-01-19T13:53:00.000-08:00

The RWS™/teabagger/Fox "news" favorite description of President Obama is as a dictator, a Nazi, an aggregator of vast presidential power. (The last phrase, because it uses a big word, I haven't actually heard.) So it's particularly puzzling, to say the veriest leastest, to see the deluded and clueless audiences stand and cheer Newt Gingrich when he says he'd haul judges before Congress, ignore whatever part of judicial rulings he chooses; without even hiding it, he's claiming the power of an absolute monarch. Which, by the way, is exactly how he sees himself.

So it's even more amazing that when Rick "I'm Running Third In My Own State" Perry bowed out (gee, ya think?) and tossed his feather weight behind Gingrich, he said we need a "humbler" government. That's even more amazing than Sarah Palin's über-ironic claim that four years ago we had a candidate who wasn't properly vetted.

Newt says of our enemies, over the definition of which he'd claim sole authority, "Kill them," and the audience leaps to its Foxified feet. Get rid of judges, he shouts, and they rise like a river of ridiculousness. Funny, isn't it: if some black guy does stuff you don't like, even when it's what he was elected to do, he's a damn dictator. When it's your guy, though, and particularly if he salts it with your favorite racial and religious hatreds, he can literally announce his disdain for the most central check against dictatorial power, and you'll jump around like Oprah just gave you a car. Well, a white Oprah, anyway.

Let's not bring up the fact that the great defender of marriage against teh gay, the guy who reveres marriage so much he's tried it thrice, tried to talk his second wife into an open marriage, okay? Like that's gonna make a difference, right, to the Constitution-loving patriots who adore him because he wants to burn it like a witch in Salem.

How can anyone with half a brain (see, there it is!) not look at these people and weep for our country? Weep? Hell, stab his own ears with an icepick and pluck out his eyes!

RWS™ and every R candidate claim that Obama is seeking deliberately to destroy our country. How? The fact is, with their well-paid propagandists, their obstructionism, their deliberate dumbing down of education, laughing at science, playing the religion card at every opportunity, creating and funding teabaggers and calling them real, lying constantly, ignoring facts at every turn and convincing their fear-forged flock to do so as well, they, themselves, already have. You see it in every audience at every debate.

Short Subjects

2012-01-19T02:02:00.000-08:00

Here's a few unrelated but interesting tidbits:

This one almost makes me want to see Newt elected: he says Sarah Palin would have "a major role" in his administration. What do you suppose that would be? Energy secretary? He's said she's among the country's experts on the subject.

Whatever. I think it'd be great theater to see her in a role of national importance where she had actually to make herself learn stuff, answer serious questions, show up every day and work hard in an intense job that wasn't only about her. Think she'd actually accept a job like that?Wonder how long it'd last... About, I guess, as long as the country would last under a megalomaniacal hothead like Newt "Kill Them" Gingrich.

Next is this fascinoma, sent to me by my oldest friend: Koch brother Charles, funder of all things right-wing and anti-government, financial power behind the Tea Party and all other manner of crazy ideological fundamentalism, is a big fan of Social Security:

There’s right-wing hypocrisy, and then there’s this: Charles Koch, billionaire patron of free-market libertarianism, privately championed the benefits of Social Security to Friedrich Hayek, the leading laissez-faire economist of the twentieth century. Koch even sent Hayek a government pamphlet to help him take advantage of America’s federal retirement insurance and healthcare programs.

Finally, the winter meeting of the Conference of Mayors is being held this weekend in D.C., to discuss the nation's most serious problems, especially the economy and employment. Several D leaders and administration officials will attend; all R presidential candidates, and all R congressional leaders refused invitations. But, sure, they're concerned about jobs and open to ideas from those at the front lines.

I think it's no exaggeration to say that the current voices of Republicanism have no real values at all, except the desire to make money entirely unfettered, with no responsibility to the country that allows it to happen. Say anything, associate with anyone, tell any lie, do whatever it takes to deceive enough voters into giving away the store.

Inequality

2012-01-18T02:17:00.000-08:00

The arguments -- as usual, reduced to meaningless sound bites -- over "income inequality" are pretty damn annoying, and I think Ds and President Obama are more to blame for the indigestion than the Rs. The latter are framing it -- would you believe? -- entirely dishonestly and cynically; and the Ds -- who could be surprised? -- are doing it with disorganized ineptitude. So the Fox "news" version, the Romnified reductio ad absurdum, is swallowed whole by the right with little or ineffective resistance from the left: Obama wants to end capitalism, envies success, wants to punish success, is waging class warfare.

Shocking stuff, right? Easy to grasp, like straws. Poorly -- because it takes more than five words to get people to understand, and requires a desire to do so -- refuted by progressives. The result, as intended, is that the point is missed entirely. It's not, in my view, about the rich getting richer, per se. It's about the consequences of it, as currently manifested, and what it means for our future.

Let's get this part out of the way: anyone who thinks much about it recognizes that capitalism depends on profits; that employment derives from successful businesses; that hard-working or inventive or creative successful people will -- and ought to -- make more money than others. Not a lot of people begrudge the trappings of success as defined in this country. I have no problem with Bill Gates' money, or Jeff Bezos', or Charles Schwab's. Or A-Rod's. (Okay, that last one...) I'm a little less sanguine about Mitt Romney's; the reasons are significant, but not relevant to the "income inequality" argument. Romney's money was made in the worst way, money for its own sake, money on paper, with no regard for the human substrate, for lack of a better word -- the people at the other end. Buying companies cheap, laying off people to make the bottom line look good, selling them off and raking in profits for himself and his investors, unconcerned for the companies themselves, letting them go bankrupt and walking away with millions. No goods; no services; just a lot of profit from shuffling paper and playing games with lives. Capitalism, sure; but at its worst, with no benefit to anyone but Mitt and his partners. None.

But that's still not the point.

Here's the point about income inequality. Two points, actually. First, it means, in a political system as corrupted by money as our is, that power is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a very few. That's what OWS, when you strip away the fuzz at the edges, is about. The very wealthy, the big corporations, get to write the rules, and the rules they write favor themselves at the expense of everyone else. Banks, big corporations. If shit flows downhill, money flows to the right. And the right, methodically, rapidly, is taking down all the protections against abuse that the left had been able to establish over several decades. Planning much more, while using their propaganda machine to make it look like patriotism, they've managed to convince the likes of teabaggers to act against their own interest. Behind the fog of disinformation and distraction, there's a serious threat to what little remains of our democracy; you'd think any non-corporation type of person would be concerned.

The second -- and, given the political leanings of those with the most money -- the more dire point is that income inequality in the US is leading to the end of civilization. Yeah. I guess that'd be called dire, all right. Is it true? Take a look around.

Start with Romney's announced budget plans (while keeping in mind that his tax plan will drastically redistribute wealth further upward):

In the Washington D.C., speech where he laid out his budget vision, he said “we’ll need to find almost $500 billion in savings a year in 2016.” But Romney has not given many details on what that would entail. ... Perhaps that's because the impact of these cuts would scare the bejeezus out of some people.
Taking half a trillion dollars out of $3.6 trillion works out to a 14 percent reduction. (To be precise, it would be 14.1 percent.) Applied equally to all non-defense spending, that would mean approximately $130 billion less for Social Security and about $90 billion less for Medicare, just in 2016 alone. To give you a sense of context, the Medicare cuts in the Affordable Care Act amount to around $50 billion a year in 2016. And those cuts, unlike Romney's, are largely offset by expanded spending on Medicaid and subsidies for private health insurance, thereby cushioning the blow on the health care system.
Of course, Romney could decide to exempt Medicare and Social Security. But then the cuts for other programs would have to be much higher: 25 percent, on average. And when I say “other programs,” I mean every other non-defense thing the government does: Education, transportation, environmental protection, safety net programs, law enforcement…you get the idea. Can we afford to spend a quarter less on highways? How about the Centers for Disease Control and the FBI? Or Head Start, food stamps, and Pell Grants?
... These cuts would be in addition to the automatic cuts already set to take effect in January, 2013, now that the deficit super-committee has failed to reach a consensus. ...
What’s more, the above calculations – which I ran by several budget experts, just to make sure I had them right – are probably on the generous side. They don’t account for the impact of interest, which (for reasons I can explain in a separate post) are likely to require larger cuts. In addition, this is just a snapshot of 2016. The cuts to the big entitlement programs, particularly Medicare and Medicaid, would become larger in future years.
Still not convinced? Then keep in mind that Romney also supports a balanced budget amendment, which would likely require even steeper cuts than these calculations suggest, particularly if Romney were to cut taxes as promised (and thus reduce federal revenue).

There's the bottom line: the Rs all-but-designated hitter has announced (so have all of them) plans for taxes and budgets so skewed toward dismantling government in order to keep wealth sequestered with the wealthy that, if enacted, they'll effectively end our ability to maintain (let alone improve) our country. That's what this talk of income inequality is about. That's what's really at stake in this election. Willingness to spend money to have a future. It's not about simply taking money from some and handing it over to others (you know, Newt's welfare cheats, his rants against whom get standing ovations from his aggrieved and ill-informed audience.) It's about balancing capitalism and its profits with reasonable commitment to paying for obvious needs.

But the Romneys, the O'Reillys, the Hannitys and Becks, the Limbaughs and the Koch brothers, the Murdochs of the world -- mega-multimillionaires all -- are committed to ensuring that people don't see it that way. That their fodder stand up, waving American flags while shedding patriotic tears and hatefully denouncing the false vision of Barack Obama that's secreted from the propaganda machine, thinking they're giving glory to god, saluting their country, while, in fact, blindly facilitating its demise.

Take The Time

2012-01-17T02:21:00.000-08:00

It's nearly an hour and a half long. So some time, instead of watching a movie, watch this. You'll be glad you did. (Although if you're like me, it'll make you weep for what the party of the RWS™ is doing to our future.)

Thanks, Dougie.

Bolton From The Truth

2012-01-16T01:56:00.000-08:00

By its screaming absence, one must conclude that mention of George Bush at Republican debates is as unwelcome as a rat at a restaurant; except I guess that's sort of an insult both to rats and restaurants. Nevertheless, it's clear Rs don't want anyone to remember anything about George Bush or to associate him with them. Except in one way.

When Barack Hussein Obama got Osama bin Laden, Rs were quick to place all credit with George Bush. And just the other day, while standing at the side of Mitt Romney, who actually seems to prefer lying to telling truth, John Bolton, the neocon's dream of the perfect Secretary of State, claimed that giving Obama credit for getting Osama is the same as if Nixon had taken credit for the moon landing. The implication, of course, is that George gets the pelt -- and, by the way, that Nixon didn't try to associate himself with the moon landing like a rat seeking food at a restaurant. Wrong, and wrong.*

Republicans bank on public forgetting. Abetted by their propagandists, they'll do everything they can to wipe out our collective memories. (What better example than Romney's insistence that Obama is putting free market capitalism on trial, ignoring the Bush-era deregulation that actually did put it on trial, and it was convicted.) They'd prefer, for example, that we don't recall when Cheney/Bush, having failed to do so, announced that getting bin Laden was no longer a priority. Walked away from the effort like it was a rat at a restaurant. Likewise, they'd urge we forget that President Obama, in a move I thought a little ballsy at the time, since the Cheney/Bush attempts had come to naught (actually letting him escape at Tora Bora), announced his intention to re-focus on capturing or killing Osama. Setting himself up for failure, he nevertheless went all in. Commitment, some would call it. Leadership. Gutsy. And guess what...

Other than the fact that he's dangerous, destructive, hateful, ideologically hide-bound and trigger-happy, I don't much care what Bolton says, except for the fact that any of the R candidates would likely appoint him Secretary of State. But this little gem has been a perfect microcosm of RWS™ revisionism and delusional thinking, and their certainty that their faithful will, as usual, having been Pavloved into foaming at the mention of Obama, nibble it up like a rat at a restaurant.

____________________________

* Fact is, Nixon did everything he could to bask in the glory of the moon landing, including giving out moon rocks like Halloween candy to foreign governments.

Rs Love Tax Cheats

2012-01-13T02:24:00.000-08:00

The above chart is based on data from 2006, so the numbers are certainly different now. No doubt, the "tax gap" (the difference between tax money owed, and tax money collected; ie, the amount people don't pay that they should, by under-reporting, cheating, or just not doing it) undoubtedly is no longer bigger than the deficit. Still, it's real money.

So, guess what -- and be sure you're sitting down for this. (Well, actually, I think we already knew; but still...) The current crop of Congressional Rs voted down legislation to make it easier for the government to collect the funds already owed. Not to raise taxes. To collect the taxes owed.

Not too long ago, there were signs that policymakers of both parties recognized this. The Bush Administration pushed successfully for new withholding requirements on government contractors on the heels of troubling Government Accountability Office investigations showing widespread tax abuse. Then, in the 2010 health reform law, the Obama Administration teamed up with congressional Democrats to tighten reporting requirements on certain business transactions. These were two modest but real steps forward.
The current Congress, however, repealed both measures.

What possible justification can there be?

Just add this to the stinking pile of teabagger outrages. Without fear of reprisal from their fully-indoctrinated supporters, Rs continue to spit in the faces of everyone but the most wealthy among us. It's simply beyond understanding: not just that they're so blatant about it, so proudly willing to see to it that there's no money left (except, of course, for a bloated military) for even the most basic of needs to secure our future; but that their "base" (in both meanings of the term) -- the ones who aren't millionaires, who need public schooling and decent roads and health care and who'd benefit from research, from cutting energy costs -- are completely willing to let it happen.

So complete is their brainwashing by the RWS™ and Fox "news," so overwhelming is their ginned-up hatred of Barack Obama, based on lies swallowed whole, that they've been made blind and deaf to the reality of what's happening. I've said it a million times, and, as the election approaches, I'll be saying it more, unless rendered mute by what I see. It's another planet, another universe, another reality, based on no reality. Simply astonishing.

Ham Of God

2012-01-12T02:27:00.000-08:00

I don't doubt Tim Tebow is a nice guy, a godly guy. Seriously, I don't. After all, he reminds us of it every day, subtly, like a hammer. Yet, exactly because, shockingly unbiblical, he makes a public show of praying, he's become a hero, a paragon, to evangelicals. For lo, surely the winning football games of which he's been a part confirm the glory of god, the power of prayer, the undeniable rightness of everything in which they believe.

First and ten, sayeth the Lord.

God might ignore tens of millions of starving people around the world, or fail to answer the prayers of kids with cancer or end the ravages of epidemics, do nothing to stop wars fought in his name, but he calls one hell of a football game. For the one team, anyway. These wins are modern-day miracles, not unlike David v. Goliath.

Well, except that nothing important, no lives, no civilization is actually at stake, and that a football game is sort of small potatoes, compared to what else needs doing. Guess miracles aren't what they used to be. Something like grade inflation, I suppose. Or, maybe, god's tired of beating his head against the wall, taking a pass (as it were) on the hard stuff. I can relate: nowadays I spend much more time watching football than saving lives. Heckuva lot less stress.

Not generally one to rain on a parade of prayer, nor -- perish the thought! -- to ask obvious questions about the nature of a god who, according to the football faithful, spends time thumbing the scales for Tim Tebow while floods are drowning, droughts are starving, quakes are quashing his beloved children, I nevertheless can't help but point out something to his millions of fans. (Tebow's, that is.) I'm thinking even god doesn't have enough faith in Tebow to let him play the game on his own. So shaky is his (god's) faith in the kid that he figured he'd done all he could with the material at hand, Tebow-wise. To seal the win, he figured he had nearly to break Ben Roethlisberger's (sounds a little too Jewish, doesn't it, although the "oe" is sort of suspect) ankle and to knock their best defensive player out of the game with sickle trait (he has a plan for us all) before the ball was even snapped. Insulting, I'd call it. Nasty. A Texas-cheerleader-mom kind of move.

Now, as natural as scabies, like people cashing in on an oil smudge, R candidates are scrambling to get Tebow's endorsement (anyone doubt he'll be running for office at some point?), as his fans point to signs of the divine, god turfing us messages in a football stadium, (who needs burning bushes when you have statisticians?) like the fact that he threw for 316 yards, the same number as their quarterback's favorite Bible verse, John 3:16. You know, the one he used to wear, humbly, on his eye black for the world so see how believy he is; the one that promotes the essential untruth, the central guilt-trip of Christianity: that god so loved us that he gave his only begotten son...

Except he, uh, didn't. Dropping him in for, like, a celestial nanosecond, putting on a public dying, he knew he'd have him back in no time at all, good as new, at his side before the start of the second inning of eternity.

I never could figure how that episode constituted sacrifice by either of the two-thirds of the divinity. Unless you think neither of them knew he'd be resurrected (but surely they did, surely an event that newsworthy didn't just get sprung on them, come out of left field, so to speak), there's no way to see it except as a scam. (Tithest thou now or screw-ed thou will be.) Knowing he'd return home before the recliner cushions got cool, God "gave" his son the way Bernie Madoff gave dividends.

Compare the false claim of John 3:16 to the real flesh and blood parents who see their living, breathing kids off to war, knowing the risks, not knowing if they'll see them again... How come there's not a religion based on them???

Sabotage, Detailed

2012-01-11T13:46:00.000-08:00

... If you look back at recent monthly data ... you’ll see that this particular green shoot should have poked through the ground months ago, but was stymied by the GOP’s debt ceiling hostage drama. ...

That’s a year’s worth of data. Taken in the context of the collapse of the credit bubble, it’s a pretty small blip ... But it’s a pretty big hit to a fragile recovery. It was only by November that total consumer credit returned to where it had been before the standoff on Capitol Hill. Look at the graph and you’ll see that the growth we just experienced could have come in July and August in the absence of that fight.

I realize post hoc doesn't necessarily mean propter hoc, and, as I've said many times, I'm no economist. So I leave it to others to confirm or dispose. Still, it's compelling. And, in my mind anyway, there's not the tiniest doubt that the aim of Rs during the debt ceiling posturing was to hurt the country, and therefore Obama, with not the slightest care about anything else but their own power.

Gay Marriage On The Brain

2012-01-11T02:21:00.000-08:00

In times like these, it's beyond comprehension that fighting gay marriage continues to be an important rallying point for conservatives. People like Rick Santorum and those who love him make me feel I'm on another planet; their kind of primal pigheadedness on the subject (to put it more gently than I'm inclined) is as foreign as breathing sulphur.

Never mind "times like these." Why is it an issue at all, ever? In what way does the marriage of Adam and Steve or Ellen and Eve affect anyone else; why do so many people find it in need of outlawing? Outlawing! As I've written about it, and wondered, I think I've danced around the truth of it, tried to bring into focus what, in retrospect, I never fully articulated: if you believe the Bible is the literal word of god, and if your sense of well-being, your very life, in your mind, depends on it; and if you observe that gay marriage is acceptable to some -- to anyone -- then your world falls apart, the props underneath it crumble away. Here's a piece that says, much better than I ever did, what I'd been trying to say, trying to understand. The fact is, it's not about rationality at all, and rational questions are irrelevant:

... Santorum and other homophobes cannot speak frankly because their real motivations are private, emotional, and incoherent. It’s not as though Santorum dispassionately selected Catholicism from a menu of religious ideologies. He believes because he feels. Even before his wife’s miscarriage (in 1996), before his political career, some concatenation of circumstances installed what some have called religious “software” in his brain. Things are good when religion is dominant, bad when it is not. This is the truth of his experience.
I’m reminded of a story told by Tim LaHaye, notorious author of the apocalyptic “Left Behind” series. LaHaye was ten years old when his father died, and obviously devastated by the loss. As LaHaye tells it, it was during a pastor’s eulogy for his father that he truly came to believe. The pastor explained how his father was now in heaven with Jesus, and the young LaHaye knew this to be true, felt it to be true. Indeed, he must have wished it to be true as well. Of course he did; what ten-year-old boy wouldn’t?
That, not evolution or homosexuality or any other point of dogma, is the real issue for people like LaHaye, Santorum, and Chambers: the fundamental comfort that religion provides. If people evolved from apes, according to this logic, Timmy LaHaye’s father is not in heaven with Jesus and Rick Santorum’s son died for no reason.
And this is why we cannot argue with people who subscribe to this framework: there is simply too much at stake for them. They have wedded their fundamental sense of okay-ness to the truthfulness of a set of doctrines. Not only is sociology not at issue for Rick Santorum, Romans isn’t either. What is at stake is his very sense that the world is a good place, that things are basically okay, and that he himself is okay as a result. That may be expressed in a theological framework, but it is a psychological reality. If I marry my partner, therefore, Rick Santorum is not okay...

The phrases bolded by me distill it perfectly. But if they answer the question, they also suggest there's no hope, ever, for changing minds of people like Santorum. If belief in your god is the only barrier between you and emotional collapse, and if that belief says homosexuality is against your god, nothing -- no science, no studies; in short, no reality -- will change your view. The only hope, I guess, is that there are enough emotionally-healthier people out there to keep reason alive. It's an open question. In my state, the (outgoing) governor has just announced her support for legislation legalizing gay marriage. Already the self-righteous initiatives are being filed against it.

The author of the above article ends with a thought that, given the truth of what he'd previously argued, might just be whistling in the dark:

The fake secularism, the fake science, the bogus constructions of homosexuality—all of these are so transparently false because they are mere props. As one after another of them collapse, anti-gays will eventually be left only with their convictions, and the reasons why they have them. Perhaps only then, echoing Portnoy’s therapist, might we say “Now vee may perhaps to begin.”

Lasted More Than Four Hours

2012-01-10T13:09:00.000-08:00

In case it hasn't been obvious on its face to everyone but teabaggers, here's but one example of the stupidity of the oft-heard Republican claim that American health care coverage is already universal, because we have emergency rooms for the uninsured.

TEXAS CITY — A woman injured in a wreck by a wrong-way driver claims a hospital’s $20,211 fee is unreasonable for four hours of examination and diagnostic tests.

[...]

According to Torres’ court filing, her hospital chart showed her total treatment time was 4 hours and 2 minutes.

“She was not admitted as an inpatient, and her treatment consisted of an examination and diagnostic testing,” the filing claims.

The hospital filed a lien on her property in Galveston County, the filing claims.

I can tell you -- and so can anyone else in the medical profession or anyone who's made a trip to the ER -- that this is anything but a singular experience. And yet the impenetrable wall of noise from the RWS™ and Fox "news" drowns out what ought to be easily-understood reality. Hence, unencumbered by any voice of reason from our so-called "liberal" media, and ineffectively retorted by D politicians, R candidates, to a man, proudly proclaim -- to the cheers of those most at risk of medical bankruptcy in their lifetimes -- their plans to undo The Affordable Care Act the minute they plunk their asses in the Oval Office.

Best health care in the world. What a country!

Job Creators

2012-01-10T02:13:00.000-08:00

The above is based on these data. Any questions?

And, as long as we're doing charts, here's (big surprise) the projected effects of Romney's tax plan:

It's the same old shit, done during every era of the red part of the first graph. So, let's just sit back, relax, and let the jobs roll in, right?

Fair's Unfair

2012-01-09T13:20:00.000-08:00

Just because Mitt Romney lies the way the rest of humanity urinates (freely, standing, sitting, asleep, awake, in dribbles, in great geysers), and just because he famously takes Obama's words out of context the way other people take out the papers and the trash, it doesn't mean it's okay when lefties take Romney's words out of context -- Romnification is bad no matter who does it.

So let me say that this sudden ecstasy over Mitt's saying "I like to be able to fire people" is pretty pathetic. Fact is, when he said it he was making a point about competitiveness, about choice in health care; fact is, when he said it, I thought it was a decent argument against single-payer. Unconvincing.* But, given the power of sound bite over complexity, potentially effective. (To be fair to lefties, they're not the only ones doing the piling on.) I also thought it was a dumb way to put it, since he ought to know better than anyone how words get used against people: he's the Platonic ideal of doing so. (And, like diarrhea follows salmonella ingestion, he complained that "Obama people" like to take things out of context. The man has no shame.)

Nevertheless, I hate it when it's done, no matter by whom or to whom. It speaks ill of the distorters, and it speaks ill of our "system," wherein such manipulations are expected (because it's true) to be effective: voters nowadays, most of them anyway, can't be bothered to look behind the rhetoric.

Meanwhile, it's nice to see the message of "Occupy Wall Street" is finally getting through:

"Is capitalism really about the ability of a handful or rich people to manipulate the lives of thousands of other people and walk off with the money? Or is that, in fact, somehow, a little bit of a flawed system," he said to a packed audience of reporters in Manchester. "So I do draw a distinction between looting a company, leaving behind broken families and broken neighborhoods and leaving behind a factory that should be there."

Quoth .... wait for it .... Newt "I will BE the nóminy " Friggin' Gingrich, abandoning conservative principles (while inadvertently acknowledging what OWS has been all about) to criticize Mitt.

_______________________________

* Here's a few responses from people who gave it more thought than I did.

Preview Of Coming Attractions

2012-01-09T02:31:00.000-08:00

[click image to enlarge.]

Of course, all of the R presidential candidates are sensible. And that "50% want another war" thing? After all we've seen, the horrific costs, the physical and mental* destruction of the troops who fight them, surely, despite the constant fear-mongering of the RWS™, the transparent propaganda of Fox "news," the obvious lies of the candidates that minimally thoughtful people must see through, right?, exceptional Americans all: couldn't possibly be true, right?

So we're good.

___________________

*Read the link to the end. Tip of the deep and deadly iceberg: how many more damaged young people are coming home from our neocon adventures? But, oh, how RWS™ love war; especially those (virtually all of them!) who never served.

Iowa

2012-01-06T13:01:00.000-08:00

Saw the above on The Dish. Unnecessarily profane in a couple of places, but otherwise a nice insight.

And here's something even more interesting: that caucus over which political watchers gratify themselves relentlessly every time it happens? This year it garnered the votes of 5.4% of registered Iowans. Long run for a short slide, huh?

Who Is This Guy?

2012-01-06T01:26:00.000-08:00

Gone, it seems, is the wishy-washy guy some have seen in the White House. Awake, it would appear, is he to the fact that there's nothing -- not a damn thing -- he could do around which Rs and RWS™ would not rally against him. Now, we're talking.

With the frothy... spittle still a-foamin' on the chins of the screamers after President Obama made the bold and absolutely necessary move to make a recess appointment to the consumer protection bureau, he's done something the crazies will see, even more, as evil incarnate: he's making rational and needed cuts in the Pentagon budget. The Pentafriggingon! Budget!!

Whatever else it might or might not be, it's damn brave; a clear-cut placement of the needs of the country above his own political future. Because only the most doctrinaire of right-wing zealots think we can balance the budget only by cutting needed services, necessary functions such as education, infrastructure, research, and all of the things now threatened out of existence by R economic policies. Along with cuts in some domestic spending, and raising some revenue, cuts in military spending -- which is and will remain more than twice as much as the next spender, and double the percent of GDP of any country except Saudi Arabia, who spends most of their money buying our stuff -- are absolutely unavoidable and necessary.

But forget reality: let the accusations begin. He's deliberately weakening us so our enemies (of whom he's been a part since his foreign birth and secret upbringing, planned by his overlords since pre-conception, probably including some sort of microchip implantation) can produce Sharia law in every township and crossroads. Right under our noses. Before we know what hit us. (Question for the conspiracy theorists out there: if it were true, wouldn't he wait until he was reelected?)

You can be sure it'll be on Mitt's lips even as I type: Obama hates America. Doesn't believe in it. What better proof than streamlining our military, focusing less on unnecessary wars and more on counter-terrorism and intelligence gathering? The bastard!

It's An Outrage, I Tell You.

2012-01-05T02:22:00.000-08:00

Hey. Have you heard the latest?? Obama has made another recess appointment. "Unprecedented," Rs are crying. A blatant power grab, they scream. Why, it's just, it's horrible, it's....

Never mind. [click image to enlarge]

And let's not forget what this is really about: Rs hate the fact that the consumer protection agency became law. Law. Passed by duly elected members of Congress, signed by the president. In filibustering Mr Cordray, they are, in effect, subverting the law of the land. Why? Simply because they don't like it.

That's the R version of democracy for you. That's the constitutional issue. Which action more threatens the working of government as designed by the Founding Fathers (of whose genetic material, like a vulpine sperm bank, they claim exclusive ownership) and enshrined on parchment?

[Update: here's the serious work Congress is doing, by way of claiming it's not in recess. Who's playing games, and who's governing?]

Theory

2012-01-04T12:29:00.000-08:00

Fact: Pat Robertson says God has told him who'll be the next president. (Refuses to spill. No one asks him to write it down and hand it over to a third party for safe-keeping.)

Fact: Only moments after announcing he was going home to Texas to reassess his campaign, Rick Perry says it's on to South Carolina.

Theory: Pat gave Rick a call and told him God says he's good to go.

I Wonder...

2012-01-04T03:03:00.000-08:00

A plurality of people think the present Congress stinks, consider it among the worst ever. (Proving whatever it is that it proves, 1% claim it's been fabulously fabulous.) So. The question is, will they reelect those hidebound, doctrinaire, conspiratorial, uninformed, hypocritical, phony and self-centered newbies who've made it the worst ever; or will they be persuaded that, in the name of actually dealing with our most serious issues, they need to dis-elect the obstructionist lunatics and put in place people with brains that are functioning and minds that are open? I think the answer is pretty clear.

No.

A couple hundred times no.

The electorate have proved beyond doubt -- enough of them, anyway -- that they'd rather ignore stuff, pretend there are simplistic answers even when they've been discredited; that politics have become like religion -- for them, it is religion -- in that the need to believe the unbelievable overrides everything else, including reality. So, no. A few million times no.

And while we're at it, since it looks very possible the Rs wills take a majority in the Senate (and, gods help us, the White House could soon be occupied by a guy with no core [political] beliefs other than the willingness to lie about everything to get there), there are two questions to the answers to which I sort of look forward (like looking forward to the scary parts of a movie, to get them over with): 1) will the Ds muster the cynicism of Rs and filibuster everything they propose, the way Rs have done, unprecedentedly, to the Ds; and 2) if they do, will Mitch McConnell scream like someone who screams a lot and demand, as he did when GWB was president, "an up or down vote" on everything? Without the slightest twinge of self-consciousness?

And, since 1) and 2) are really mostly one question, here's another: When Ds do filibuster and Mitch does cry like someone who cries a lot, will the teabaggRs think there's sort of a double standard at work? Or will they, like the leaders they love, flip their morality like it was a pareidoliac pancake?

Cri de Coeur

2012-01-03T20:09:00.000-08:00

The above is from another blog, quoting Eric Erickson, Red State guru, as the Iowa results trickle in. Almost makes you feel sorry for the poor bastards, doesn't it?

Except it doesn't. Conservatives stopped deserving sympathy when George the First left office, and Karl Rove became their paragon.

Why I Might Not Survive This Election

2012-01-03T16:50:00.000-08:00

“I think President Obama wants to make us a European-style welfare state,” said Romney. “Instead of being a merit society, we’re an entitlement society, where government’s role is to take from some to give to others. What I know is that if they do that, they’ll substitute envy for ambition. And they’ll poison the very spirit of America and keep us from being one nation under God.”

I simply can't read shit like that without wanting to shoot my computer.

Nutcase In A Nutshell

2012-01-03T01:12:00.000-08:00

Hey, watch this! It's absolutely perfectly illustrative -- the perfect distillation -- of how the right-wing scream machine works: ignore facts. Deny facts. Demand the exclusion of facts from the whole conversation. Anything to keep the false narrative alive.

And do so with the confidence that your sheeplike followers, having been beaten into submission by your constant peddling of fear and hate and lies, won't bother to know the truth. Won't want to know it. Won't even care. Because, as we see daily, they won't and they won't and they won't.

New Year Greeting

2012-01-02T09:58:00.000-08:00

For the new year, I've turned off the word verification requirement for comments. (That'll affect about four people on the planet, but still...) It doesn't seem to stop spam, is somewhat of a pain in the ass for readers, and I'll still moderate comments.

BFD, right?

More To Contemplate

2011-12-30T11:47:00.001-08:00

[click image to enlarge. A little.]

It's from a while back, but, as we are forced to listen to non-stop lying from the right, it never hurts to take a moment to think. (Well, yeah, okay, it hurts them; but not you and me.)

Good Point

2011-12-30T08:55:00.000-08:00

This covers two eulogies pretty well. I already miss Hitchens, sorry for the fact that any words I hear or read from him (words such as these) will henceforth be pre-spoken. As to Kim, well, his literal deification has always been obvious; but Hitch's point about North Korea being a living distillation of religious life and its view of heaven hadn't quite occurred to me.

Sure, believers will object to the characterization. But isn't it just a matter of degree? Isn't it, in fact, pretty much true: the demand of constant praise on pain of punishment -- even for mere thoughts? And what happens when you live with the knowledge (belief) that one person (being) holds total power over you? Not to mention when those around you expect you to show your subservience?

Interesting To Contemplate...

2011-12-29T02:53:00.000-08:00

[Source].

[click image to enlarge]

Tom Tomorrow

2011-12-28T00:25:00.000-08:00

[click image to enlarge]

Puzzle

2011-12-27T03:08:00.000-08:00

Even in the bizarro world of current Republican politics, some things defy explanation. How is it, in particular, that Congressional Rs, especially (but not only) those in the House of Representatives, so blatantly line up against the middle class (offering phony explanations)? It's not the only time they've been so unabashed in their crass defense of tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of providing for the needs of everyone else.

I've wondered about it many times: it seems so self-defeating. Is it simply a matter of brazen clinging to failed ideology, like insisting the earth is six thousand years old; true believers blind to facts? Damn the torpedoed claims, full scream ahead? This article makes a list of other explanations, all of which seem to be at play:

1. Republican lawmakers assume voters aren’t paying any attention. Politicians can get away with quite a bit if they think the public won’t know either way.
2. They assume Democrats, when faced with any pressure at all, will invariably surrender and give Republicans whatever they demand. That’s generally not a bad strategy, but it failed miserably in the fight over the payroll tax cut.
3. They assume the media will, under all possible circumstances, continue to tell the public “both sides” are always to blame for everything. This, too, is a pretty safe bet, but when even Republican media outlets turn against the GOP (take the Wall Street Journal editorial page, for example), this starts to fail.
4. They fear primary challengers. Under this model, Republicans know their extremism will offend the American mainstream, but if they’re defeated by even-more-conservative primary opponents, their careers are over anyway.
5. They figure major right-wing money — from the Koch Brothers, Crossroads GPS, assorted Super PACs, etc. — will come in before the election, destroy their Democratic challengers, and keep them in office no matter what they vote for.
6. They're just nuts.

Some absolute partisans might take exception, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, to #6. The others, though, in all seriousness, must be part of it. It's like I've been saying for years: a dumbed-down electorate, fed misinformation constantly by the right-wing scream machine, lied to until it sounds like truth, whose hatreds and paranoia are played like a harp (what more self-pitying group is there than teabaggers?), are perfectly created to accept and/or ignore whatever their manipulators do.

Stockholm syndrome as political plan.

It really will come down to a pretty stark choice in the 2012 elections; I'd say the starkest ever. Voters will be choosing the direction our country will take at a time when the options couldn't be more divergent. It's not an exaggeration to say that one fork in the road leads to (at least the possibility of) viability, while the other leads to slow but certain suicide. The current crop of Republicans, from their extant and expectant leaders to their public propaganda organs and to their willingly deceived share of the electorate, see a country where government has little if any role, corporations run unregulated and rampant, the environment is allowed to putrify (who are these people??), climate change is ignored and actively denied -- censored! -- and, most dramatically, revenues are, in the name of protecting tax-cuts for the wealthiest, allowed to dry up to the point of having no money to pay for research, roads, bridges, dams, education, cops, libraries, firefighters, medical care for the needy, unemployment benefits ...

They're not hiding it, as discussed above; their priorities are out there for all to see, and they see the elections as just as critical: either they (and their tax-cuts, their voter suppression, their gutting of government protections for all but themselves) win, or the country does; not both. There's no secret what the R agenda is, and what the impact will be on, yes, the 99%. For whatever reason, they simply don't care. Maybe it's because they have theirs and figure they always will. Maybe it's because they believe the end of the world is at hand, so there's no reason to plan for the future: may as well rob as much as they can and enjoy it while it lasts. Not hard to ignore the needy: from the top floor of Trump Tower, you can barely see them.

So the question is not what the choices are really about. The question is whether, now, finally, when it matters most, Democrats might be able to come up with a message -- the truth! -- that is able to overcome the disinformation which pollutes the airways 24/7/365 from the right-wing propagandists. The question is whether, at last, before it's too late, people can be made to realize how they've been played for fools, how they've been made to vote against their own and their country's interests by people who couldn't care less -- about them or the country. People who will ignore facts, reject science, actively distort any reality that doesn't fit with their failed ideologies; ideology that simply doesn't stand up to the scrutiny they try to prevent (successfully, mostly), all ways, at all levels.

The issues are not in question. The ability of people to see them for what they are most certainly is.

A Season For Remembering

2011-12-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

Americans forgot by whom and by what policies our economy came crashing around us within mere months of the catastrophe. So it's worth remembering, for however long it's possible, what the typical R reaction was to Obama's plans for bailing out the auto industry, as American carmakers are having their greatest successes in years:

Rep. John Boehner (R-OH): “Does anyone really believe that politicians and bureaucrats in Washington can successfully steer a multi-national corporation to economic viability?” [6/1/09]
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL): “It’s basically going to be a government-owned, government-run company. …It’s the road toward socialism.” [5/29/09]
RNC Chairman Michael Steele: “No matter how much the President spins GM’s bankruptcy as good for the economy, it is nothing more than another government grab of a private company and another handout to the union cronies who helped bankroll his presidential campaign.” [6/1/2009]
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC): “Now the government has forced taxpayers to buy these failing companies without any plausible plan for profitability. Does anyone think the same government that plans to double the national debt in five years will turn GM around in the same time?” [6/2/09]
Rep. Tom Price (R-GA): “Unfortunately, this is just another sad chapter in President Obama’s eager campaign to interject his administration in the private sector’s business dealings.” [6/2/09]
Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX): The auto company rescues “have been the leading edge of the Obama administration’s war on capitalism.” [7/22/09]
Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ): When government gets involved in a company, “the disaster that follows is predictable.” [7/22/09]

These are the guys whose economic policies we're asked to follow, the piss-poor prognosticators whose ability to ignore what happened less than four years ago, when those theories were in place, are once again given credibility by RWS™ and teabaggers alike.

Not a single R candidate for the presidency -- Mitt Romney, let's remember, called for Detroit to go bankrupt -- has admitted they were wrong; nor have they suggested any meaningful plans for our future other than more tax cuts (except for the 99%, of course) and deregulation. Romney was, if it's possible, even wronger than most:

IF General Motors, Ford and Chrysler get the bailout that their chief executives asked for yesterday, you can kiss the American automotive industry goodbye. It won’t go overnight, but its demise will be virtually guaranteed.

So speakethed the guy who's the likely R nominee. Afraid to take a position on the payroll tax cut, he's willing to wade into the most compelling issue of our time, balls a-poppin', and ~~pander that~~ say he'd deport Obama's uncle. Gutsy. The guy who changes positions like dirty (yet magic) underwear, actually did take a stand on the auto bailout, and was completely wrong. So now he takes the safer path, and just lies. And lies. And lies. (That last link, from a conservative, draws the same conclusion I have: he has so little regard for people that he doesn't care. He cares so little, in fact, that his campaign unabashedly, proudly, admits they lie.) It is, no kidding, his preferred modus operandi. And guess what? Rs (the aforementioned single individual, far as I can tell, excepted) are fine with it. More than fine: it's what they do.

So here we are, as the new year approaches, poised to sign the country up to be screwed once again, as if it never happened. It's a goddam parallel universe, where idiocracy rules.

Pass the eggnog, please, with plenty of bourbon in it.

Now It Makes Sense

2011-12-25T02:52:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas, anyway.

A Time For Generosity

2011-12-24T08:49:00.000-08:00

Christmas, Merry

2011-12-23T03:46:00.000-08:00

Some readers might be surprised to know I love Christmas. I say "Merry Christmas" to store clerks, to operating room personnel. As long as I don't have to live next to this, I think it's really cool to see houses all decorated up; been known to take a drive just to have a look. And I totally love singing Christmas carols, to which I can supply a very impressive (trust me) bass or baritone harmony. Heads used to turn (in a good way), when I'd bellow it out in a group of carolers a few years back. Great stuff.

For as long as I've been married to her (forty years), my wife's family has had some sort of Christmas extravaganza. The oldest of nine kids, aunt to several offspring of her siblings, Judy totally gets into gift-giving, spending hours running around to find the perfect and perfectly personal gift for each person. At her folks' home, presents used to extend so far beyond the would-be drip line of the tree (decorated with ornaments a few generations old, and new ones every year) that it bordered on obscene. But watching the kids open their presents was (mostly) heartwarming.

Once it got too far out of hand, someone came up with the idea a few years ago that the siblings wouldn't give gifts to each of their others; now each sib rotates, yearly, the one to whom a gift is given. Even that has tapered off lately; but the grandkid generation still gets from all. There's nothing wrong with a little love of family, overt, unabridged. And good food, too. For some, it might be that Christmas is the only time everyone gets together for it. (In my family-by-marriage, it happens more or less monthly.)

The religious aspect -- what little of it seems to remain, even for Christians -- I can take or leave. Nativity scenes are fine with me, long as they're on the lawns of churches, homes, businesses. Courthouse terraces? Not so much. The annual Foxian war rhetoric notwithstanding, Christmas seems to have become, on its own, not much more than a marketing tool. Hard to see a "war" when debriding newspapers, daily, hourly, of advertising inserts. And who, other than RWS™, can blame merchants for not wanting to turn away anyone? "Happy Holidays." Why is it a problem? On the other hand, when clerks wish me Merry Christmas, I sent it right back at 'em, with a smile.

My brother sent me the above photo. I replied that, now that I think about it, Yah-weh sounds pretty Chinese.

The Good Thing About Getting Old

2011-12-22T02:44:00.000-08:00

Okay, yeah, well, if I really didn't give a shit I wouldn't be blogging. So it's more like wishful thinking: I'm definitely getting old; I'm still waiting to stopping caring about the future our country. Maybe I've started to care less about mine.

No News Is Good News

2011-12-21T04:10:00.000-08:00

Okay, prepare to be flabbergasted. Fox news makes you stupid. Stupider than if you watched no news at all. (A direct link to the study (pdf) can be found in this article.)

According to the latest results from Fairleigh Dickinson University’s PublicMind Poll, some news sources make us less likely to know what’s going on in the world. ... The conclusion: Sunday morning news shows do the most to help people learn about current events, while some outlets, especially Fox News, lead people to be even less informed than those who say they don’t watch any news at all.

... But the real finding is that the results depend on what media sources people turn to for their news. For example, people who watch Fox News, the most popular of the 24-hour cable news networks, are 18-points less likely to know that Egyptians overthrew their government than those who watch no news at all (after controlling for other news sources, partisanship, education and other demographic factors). Fox News watchers are also 6-points less likely to know that Syrians have not yet overthrown their government than those who watch no news.

"Because of the controls for partisanship, we know these results are not just driven by Republicans or other groups being more likely to watch Fox News," said Dan Cassino, a professor of political science at Fairleigh Dickinson and an analyst for the PublicMind Poll. "Rather, the results show us that there is something about watching Fox News that leads people to do worse on these questions than those who don’t watch any news at all."

By contrast, some media sources have a positive effect on political knowledge. For
example, people who report reading a national newspaper like The New York Times or USA Today are 12-points more likely to know that Egyptians have overthrown their government than those who have not looked at any news source. And those who listen to the non-profit NPR radio network are 11-points more likely to know the outcome of the revolt against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad. ...

[...]

Listening to NPR also helps, but the biggest aid to answering correctly is The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, which leads to a ... 12-point increase in the likelihood of giving the correct answer.

... "The fact that Fox News, the preferred media outlet for many of the candidates, doesn't do better in informing viewers is very surprising."

Really? Surprising?? Must be that the study was the researchers' first experience with Fox.

Of course, making people stupid isn't an accidental result. As I've been saying here forever, at least since Karl Rove, Republicans made the explicit calculation that an ill-informed -- a misinformed -- electorate is their surest and onliest way to get and keep power. In that they've been doing a heckuva job.

Generals Get It

2011-12-20T03:15:00.000-08:00

Pretty much everything the R candidates for president say is egregious in some way: an outright lie, a clueless embarrassment, a failure to understand something basic about how our democracy works. Somewhere near the top of the list, though, is their constant and unanimous refrain that in matters of military decisions, they'd go with what the generals told them. By implication, they like to condemn President Obama for making his own decisions, after input from the generals. And others. Horror of horrors: he hasn't always followed their advice!

I wonder what part of "Commander-in-Chief" those Rs (and the RWS™, the brainwashed teabaggers) don't understand. What part of "civilian control" eludes their comprehension? Refreshing, isn't it, that actual generals, including the current Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey, understand how it works, and like it that way:

"I'll probably make news with this but I find some of those articles about divergence or control of the generals to be kind of offensive to me," Dempsey told reporters traveling with him in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
"And here's why. One of the things that makes us as a military profession in a democracy is civilian rule. Our civilian leaders are under no obligation to accept our advice; and that's what it is. Its advice. It's military judgments, it's alternatives, it's options. And at the end of the day, our system is built on the fact that it will be our civilian leaders who make that decision and I don't find that in any way to challenge my manhood, nor my position. In fact, if it were the opposite, I think we should all be concerned." (emphasis mine)

In politics, we'll always have idiots. Nature of the beast. Lately, though, it seems they're the rule, rather than the exception. But democracy depends on the ability of voters to recognize that idiocy, to know when they're being played for fools. Sadly, as teabaggers have shown us, that ability, becoming a vestigial organ, is withering away at an unsustainable rate.

Arrest Them All

2011-12-19T01:00:00.000-08:00

As if we need reminding of his instability, Newt Gingrich has once again untethered his massive ego from reality, taking flight ever further from grounding in our Constitution. The man is a megalomanical nutjob. To imagine Newt Gingrich as president is to be scared shitless, or depressed motionless. Were it to happen, he could well become the first ever to be impeached and removed from office. By his own party. (One can hope.) Unless, of course, he managed -- and I bet he'd try -- to declare martial law and somehow make it stick. Given the evermore evangelicalization of our military, it's not beyond possible.

There’s “no reason the American people need to tolerate a judge that out of touch with American culture,” Gingrich said on CBS’ Face the Nation, referring to a case where a judge ruled that explicit references to religion were barred from a high school graduation ceremony. And Gingrich recently has said judges should have to explain some of their decisions before Congress.
Host Bob Schieffer asked Gingrich how he planned to enforce that. Would you call in the Capitol Police to apprehend a federal judge, he asked.
“If you had to,” Gingrich said. “Or you’d instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshall in.”

Really? Does it need to be explained? You know: separation of powers; judicial review; rule of law, even when unpopular? Especially when unpopular, ferchrissakes! One might well ask of this man who claims our president is trying to destroy America: how does the idea of eliminating the judiciary at the metaphorical point of a bayonet square with your professed (!) desire to take America back to where it once was?

More than anyone who's ever sought or occupied the White House (Dick Cheney excepted), Gingrich's wet-dream is absolute and unfettered power, unrestrained by any piece of parchment, any branch of government. What, after all, goes better with omniscience than omnipotence?

But Newt's insane grandiosity -- or is grandiose insanity? -- isn't really the issue. It's that a man like him could, even for a second, become the darling of the Republican electorate: the latest in a steady stream of deliberate liars, intellectual lightweights, religious fanatics, or combinations of all three, to be the next not-Mitt. Or, for that matter, the Mitt. How riddled with Obama-hatred and paranoia, how brainwashed by the RWS™ and the propaganda mill known as Fox "news," how dumbed-down and polluted by magical thinking, how ill-informed about our democracy do you have to be even to consider such people, much less refrain from throwing them off the field like a streaker? Are there no thoughtful conservatives left? If so, for gods' sake come out of hiding and stand up for yourselves. Let it be known that knowledge and reason aren't automatic and universal disqualifiers on your side.

These people are an embarrassment, and Newt tops them all: his self-exceptionalism exceeds even the brain-stoppage of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry, the craven malleability and corrupt prevarication of Mitt Romney. Except to those within it and too blind to see, their party has become a laughing stock. Which is not to say they'll lose. Because the whole damn country is on the verge as well. When fully half the population has happily and deliberately taken leave of reality, considers this crew credible contenders for the highest office in the land, unless more people start paying attention, what hope for the future can there possibly be?

O'cult

2011-12-18T03:04:00.000-08:00

[Click image to enlarge.]

No commentary necessary. It's obvious to those to whom it's obvious; and to those to whom it's not, it never will be.

Mysterious Ways

2011-12-16T06:58:00.000-08:00

In the local paper:

Living Nativity performer burned at Richland

RICHLAND, Wash. —
A performer playing a shepherd at Richland church's living Nativity suffered burns to his hands and face when his robe caught fire.

Medics took the 20-year-old to Kadlec Regional Medical Center with first- and second-degree burns.

KVEW reports (http://is.gd/d9aNwn) he was standing next to a campfire at the Cathedral of Joy Thursday night when the fire spread to his robe. He rolled down a hill and others helped put out the flames.

After a short delay the show went on.

Life's Still Good

2011-12-16T01:59:00.000-08:00

Dogs in Cars from keith on Vimeo.

Well Said

2011-12-15T15:19:00.000-08:00

I entirely share this writer's view of the disgraced former Speaker of the House. Sadly, though, it seems Newt's flame is beginning to flicker. How entertaining it might have been. Or might still be.

I don’t claim infallibility, and a good thing too, because when it comes to bad calls, I’ve made some beauts, to paraphrase Mayor Jimmy Walker. The most recent was when someone on Twitter summoned the possibility of Newt Gingrich resurging in the Republican primaries and I tweeted a terse “No.” ...
Allow me to say this in my puny defence, however. One reason I’m such a wayward prognosticator of rightwing trends is that I’m incapable of blacking out enough neural sectors to see the world through reptilian-brained eyes, a prerequisite for any true channeling of the mean resentments and implanted fears that drive hardcore conservatives. (emphasis mine, because I think it's absolutely true.) I also make the mistake of believing that they believe what they profess to believe, which they clearly don’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be inclining to crown Newt king of the marsh. That a thrice-married Catholic convert with a history of marital infidelity would win the flinty hearts of Tea Partiers while true evangelicals such as Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry would find themselves standing on the platform as the train whooshes by, abandoned and bewildered--well, go figure. That a third-rate futurist spieler who rides every wave of pop guru bullshit and management theory would appeal to those who pride themselves on their unyielding, unchanging bedrock values also falls into the “does not compute” category. ...

Some have compared Gingrich’s comeback to Richard Nixon’s after Nixon’s gubernatorial loss in California in 1962... After Nixon lost, he dedicated himself to making hundreds of speeches on behalf of Republican candidates, earning the respect and loyalty of candidates.
...Contrast this with Newt. Who basically has done everything for himself, for the greater glory of Newt and to feed the insatiable maw of Newt Inc and his Tiffany account. And unlike Nixon, Gingrich does not possess a lucid intellect; he’s all over the fucking place.

Itemizing

2011-12-15T03:41:00.000-08:00

Item: Congressional Rs filibuster the proposed head of the consumer protection agency, claiming it's not about the man's qualifications (indisputable) but about objections to the very idea of that agency. In addition to calling the whole idea "Stalinist," Lindsey Graham spoke as if the legislation to create was pending. And yet, it was created by legislation a couple of years ago, which passed with bipartisan support! So, in effect, they're saying We don't like what the majority did, and we're gonna block it. Screw the Constitution and the way legislation happens.

Item: In the second wave of resistance to Obama's horrendous war on Xmas, RWS™ are now outraged that the president is celebrating it too much! Not kidding. That's what they say. And still some people think the President is responsible for the failure of bipartisanship!

Item: The best endorsement quote, ever, directed at Mitt Romney by a formerly-known person who's not a witch: "He's been consistent since he changed his mind."

Smarts

2011-12-14T01:51:00.000-08:00

[Click image to enlarge.]

Recently I alluded to the falsity that is the perceived genius of Newt. Here's a much better distillation:

I have been perplexed for some time why Newt Gingrich is routinely acknowledged even by his bitter enemies within the Republican Party as a "genius," but the answer turns out is simple: he acts exactly like one of those obnoxious elitist intellectual know-it-alls that the right-wing no-nothings think is the hallmark of an intellectual. He is constantly reminding us of his doctorate in history; he routinely claims he understands issues more deeply than anyone else; he has made a career of denouncing or (when he had the authority) eliminating professional expertise that might challenge his own certain pronouncements; and he is a veritable fount of crackpot "big" ideas (mining minerals on the moon, protecting the United States from sci-fi doomsday scenarios, and "fundamentally transforming" everything as a first step to doing anything.

Another useful rule of thumb: real geniuses, as opposed to simple egomaniacs, do not generally refer to themselves in the third person.

And, to be filed under "Gee, really?": Newt's transformational! tax plan, like every one proposed by every Republican since Ronald "That's From A Movie?" Reagan, would enormously increase the federal deficit. Who could have seen that coming? Well, maybe anyone who noted his plan has million-dollar earners paying a lower tax rate than those earning $40 - 75K.

Or, to put it another way:

It's not hard to understand why the wealthy love the guy -- or any R candidate (i.e. any and all of them) who'll make them richer -- but why the rest of the Republican party? Is is more important to them to hate gays and religious freedom for anyone but themselves than it is to secure a future for their country?

That must be it.

Perry, Revised

2011-12-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

Could be, in a recent post, I mistook Mr Perry's real meaning. I'm always ready to admit a mistake:

This Is War

2011-12-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

Daydream Believers

2011-12-12T02:14:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm not sure they actually believe what they say -- not all of them, anyway; but they sure think their followers will. I speak of the Republican noise machine, and their breathtaking ease in countering truth with falsehood. It's the Rovian model: figure out your opponent's greatest strength, and tackle it head on. Not by addressing it honestly, that is, or trying to make a viable counter-argument, but by turning it upside down and telling lies. Admirable in its brazenness, maybe, at some level, it has no equivalent on the other side that I can think of. What's not admirable, though, is the hunger with which it's gobbled up by their credulous side of the electorate, repeated endlessly by their media, and ignored by what's left (is there any?) of the mainstream (meaning thoughtful and bearing some self-respect) media.

Virtually all the the talking points of the right have been discredited as policy or proven false as charges. Name one: apology tour, job creators, tax cuts, regulations, health care... the list is endless.

More recent cases in point:

Think it's hard to spin away the fact that President Obama gave the okay to the raid that killed OBL? Child's play: George Bush gets the credit. Not only that, if Obama "had his way" OBL wouldn't have been gotten at all. No kidding: that's what they say. Coming from Fox "news" you can be sure no one would question either premise, or ask for the tiniest shred of evidence for Obama's purported preference.

How about Elizabeth Warren, toward the effort defeat whom Wall Street is pouring money like twenty-year old bourbon? She's a Wall Street shill. Really: that's what they say.

You're aware of President Obama's war on religion, right? Any one ask Rick Perry WTF he's talking about, what's the nature of this war, where's the evidence that it's anything other than (like Fox "news" annual rolling out of their Christmas outrage) manufactured for teabagger consumption? Doesn't matter. That's what they say.

Now, consider one of the Rs' most central economic points: taxes on small business are killing job creation. Guess what's found when an actual news organizations seeks specific examples: nothing. Unsurprising, given the fact that the entire premise is false:

-- Jody Gorran, chairman of Aquatherm Industries: "This mantra that every dollar in tax increases is a dollar away from job creation -- give me a break. ... It's not taxes that affects job creation, it's demand."
-- Kelly Conklin, owner of Foley-Waite Associates: "I don't decide to hire or buy equipment based on tax policy. ... We know how to make shit out of wood."
-- Debra Ruh, owner of TecAccess: "We need to hire people, but we don't have the cash or the credit to do it. ... I don't mind paying taxes. ... I like living in the United States and having the opportunities here. I don't understand why running a business has to be about avoiding paying taxes."
-- Michael Teahan, owner of Espresso Resource: "What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources -- that has very little to do with tax policy. ... I map my business based on my customers and what my customers want to buy and what they can afford to buy."
-- Rick Poore, owner of Designwear Inc.: "If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It's as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I'll just take the wife to the Bahamas."
-- Lew Prince, owner of Vintage Vinyl: "The economic premise that people won't hire because they might have to pay more taxes if they make more money is beyond laughable. ... You hire when you think there's a way you can make more money with that hire. The percentage the government takes out of it has almost nothing to do with it."

As I've said, as is obvious, as the businesspeople above say: it's not taxes or lack thereof that drives hiring: it's demand. Which is exactly why Congressional Rs continue to kibosh Obama's attempts to increase infrastructure spending: it's the most obvious way government can create jobs, which puts money in people's pockets, which creates demand for other goods, which creates more jobs, which helps America. In which, for purely cynical political reasons, Rs couldn't be less interested:

“Basically we’re still stuck in the situation we were three years ago and we haven’t made any progress at all except that our problems are much worse because of political reasons, because we now have a crazy party in charge of one of the Houses of our Congress and they won’t allow anything to happen because it’s in their vested interest to make things worse,” Bartlett explained in his typically exasperated way. “Plus they have a theory that is completely nuts….

The "Bartlett" is Bruce, Ronald Reagan's chief economic adviser, back when there were still a few honest and thoughtful Republicans. Reagan, after all, saw the failings of his extravagant tax cuts, and proceeded to raise them some eighteen times, if memory serves. I'm no fan of Reagan or of the Reaganismic approach to governance; but clearly there's not a single Republican in Congress or running for president who'd make such a move; and it's needed now more than ever.

Hello And Goodbye To Our Future

2011-12-09T02:27:00.000-08:00

What complete bullshit. Obama's war on religion? Can't pray? This is exactly why Republicans get no respect from me at the moment. (There was a time...) It's sinking to a level of fomenting hatred and resentment based on nothing but the knowledge that there are a lot of Christians out there who like to feel victimized; particularly when asked to have a little tolerance of others.

He won't win, but it's still despicable that this is how he thinks he might. Newt and Mitt will say the same things, of course. And, like Perry, Newt actually believes it. (Mitt will say any damn thing to get elected, so it's a distinction without a difference.)

Meanwhile, Senate Republicans filibustered Obama's nominee for the consumer protection agency, who only got a 53 - 45 vote. And then they did the same to a compromise on the payroll tax cut; they'll raise taxes on workers but never on higher earners. How can you not look at those guys and mourn for our country? They have only two things on their hive-mind: defeat Obama and refuse to help anyone but their wealthy supporters. And they don't even bother to pretend they give a shit about the country.

And, by golly, they've just kiboshed a bill designed to prevent legislators from insider trading base on info they get in closed meetings.

Horrible, horrible people.

Doctors And Death

2011-12-08T03:28:00.000-08:00

I just read an article that's worth reading by everyone. Titled How Doctors Die, it's ultimately about end of life care, futile care, making impossible decisions. And it evokes in me thoughts that I've had many times, in many ways.

The title comes from the writer's (a physician) claim (which he makes no attempt to document, by the way) that doctors tend not to opt for all the extraordinary, expensive, and odds-fighting care they often provide for their patients, preferring to go quietly. I've said many times -- and I hope it's true -- that my plan is to not get sick; and when I do, to have the wherewithal to take things in my own hands and never set foot in a hospital.

From the article:

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. ... All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

Then the article gets to the real point -- unreasonable expectations, impossible choices, insurmountable pressures:

To see how patients play a role, imagine a scenario in which someone has lost consciousness and been admitted to an emergency room. As is so often the case, no one has made a plan for this situation, and shocked and scared family members find themselves caught up in a maze of choices. They’re overwhelmed. When doctors ask if they want “everything” done, they answer yes. Then the nightmare begins. Sometimes, a family really means “do everything,” but often they just mean “do everything that’s reasonable.” The problem is that they may not know what’s reasonable, nor, in their confusion and sorrow, will they ask about it or hear what a physician may be telling them. For their part, doctors told to do “everything” will do it, whether it is reasonable or not.
[...]
But of course it’s not just patients making these things happen. Doctors play an enabling role, too. The trouble is that even doctors who hate to administer futile care must find a way to address the wishes of patients and families. Imagine, once again, the emergency room with those grieving, possibly hysterical, family members. They do not know the doctor. Establishing trust and confidence under such circumstances is a very delicate thing. People are prepared to think the doctor is acting out of base motives, trying to save time, or money, or effort, especially if the doctor is advising against further treatment.
Some doctors are stronger communicators than others, and some doctors are more adamant, but the pressures they all face are similar.

As President Obama has discovered, this is an extraordinarily difficult subject, the perfect platform for political posturing. Ironically, it's the party that most loudly claims to want to cut Medicare spending that has taken the president's reasonable efforts to address this morass as an opportunity for demagoguery. Hard to imagine it addressed seriously. There's global climate change; the political climate shows no sign of cooling.

Mentioned in the article is a patient of the author who'd always made it clear he didn't want extraordinary measures. But then he had a massive stroke and was brought to an ER where no one knew him.

Doctors did everything possible to resuscitate him and put him on life support in the ICU. This was Jack’s worst nightmare. When I arrived at the hospital and took over Jack’s care, I spoke to his wife and to hospital staff, bringing in my office notes with his care preferences. Then I turned off the life support machines and sat with him. He died two hours later.
Even with all his wishes documented, Jack hadn’t died as he’d hoped. The system had intervened. One of the nurses, I later found out, even reported my unplugging of Jack to the authorities as a possible homicide. Nothing came of it, of course; Jack’s wishes had been spelled out explicitly, and he’d left the paperwork to prove it. But the prospect of a police investigation is terrifying for any physician. (Emphasis mine.)

When it came time to withdraw care, I always felt the need to involve the nurses caring for the patient, to ask if any had reservations, and to discuss them. It wasn't as much ass-covering as it was acknowledgment that they'd invested more time and emotion in the patient than I had, and needed to be heard. But, yes, ass-covering was surely on my mind, too.

It shouldn't have to be. It ought to be possible, based on knowledge, compassion, data, patient wishes, and proper education of patients and potential patients, managing expectations, to provide comfort care only when it's the right thing. Not just possible: expected; part of the job; a no-brainer. As it were. Maybe, somewhere, in a society more rational than ours, it can be.

Drek The Halls

2011-12-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Tree Fighting Ceremony
www.thedailyshow.com

Well, you know Christmas approaches when Fox "news" rolls out its annual war on their imaginary war on Christmas, mixed with their predictable outrage that President Obama is taking some vacation time. You know, turning off the phone, going offline, recklessly disregarding all the duties and obligations of his office. The number of vacation days the America-hating black guy has taken is shockingly approaching a third of the number Mr Bush had taken by this time in his term.

That Daily Show clip is worth a watch: I hadn't known about the pilgrimoid views on Christmas.

Bereft of actual ideas, the right wing and their public organ disguised as a news network have become shamelessly dishonest to a level of laughability for anyone with a coma score better than fifteen. Really, you'd think even the sheep-like Fox viewers would get tired of this crap eventually, as Christmas propagation begins earlier and earlier each year and Christianity becomes ever more overtly embedded in our politics.

These are deeply disturbed people.

Dogged Determination

2011-12-07T04:05:00.000-08:00

In my continuing self-delusion that, with enough time and evidence, I can convince a couple of commenters of their erroneous beliefs (strangely, both are related to the medical field, which just goes to show you that education doesn't always equate with learning to think objectively), I offer a pretty deep look into the latest thinking on climate change, and that measly one or two degrees that they like to laugh off as inconsequential.

Climate science has not stood still for the last decade. According to the latest research, the level of damages once expected at 2 degrees C is now expected at considerably lower temperatures. Here's a graph that that shows science's evolving understanding:

[click image to enlarge]

A thorough reading of the article might require poring over some data, and following a few links as well.

I don't expect any results, vis a vis the aforementioned critics. But no harm, other than my wasted time, can come from trying.

Seriously Unserious

2011-12-06T02:45:00.000-08:00

In reference to the R presidential candidates, Paul Krugman distilled something around the bush of which I'd been beating for a long time: To keep repeating and clinging to disproven beliefs and discredited policies, he wrote, you have to either be clueless or a liar. It's true, of course, of their followers as well.

Along those same lines, here's an article that calls it clearly regarding Mitt Romney. In regard to that already infamous ad which distorted Obama's comments on the economy, and in regard to Mitt's justification of the dishonesty, the writer (Jonathan Chait) says...:

...This disposition flows naturally from the disconnect between the Mitt Romney presidential campaign and Mitt Romney the man. Romney is running a campaign as “Mitt Romney,” an Obamacare-hating, tough-on-immigration, climate-science skeptic. Now, obviously, all the Republican candidates are running on a similar theme. Most of them actually believe it. But Romney is acutely aware of the disconnect between the character of “Mitt Romney” and the actor portraying him. Because Romney is too intelligent to fall for his own ruse, his campaign is one large Potemkin facade, designed to shield him from the interjection of reality.

[...]

It seems strange that a candidate as intelligent and articulate as Romney would require such diligent shielding from questions. But it’s precisely because of his intelligence that Romney must stay within his antiseptic bubble. Unlike Rick Perry or Herman Cain, he isn’t a dolt. Unlike Newt Gingrich, he doesn’t exist in a constant state of childlike romantic self-delusion. He has a precise, calculating mind. To his credit, he seems all too aware of his own lies and requires constant protection from them.

Me, I don't waste a lot of time wondering which of the band of blunders are the liars and which are the clueless. For one thing, it's pretty obvious. What keeps me stumbling down the path to despair is that there are evidently so many voters out there willing and able to be so easily deceived. To approve of their combination of proud cluelessness and unrepentant lying.

And now, as if to underscore their abandonment of self-respect and to remove any doubt that they've given up on even the pretense of seriousness, there's going to be some sort of R candidate forum hosted by Donald Trump. Donald Fricking Trump!! This is beyond parody. If George Orwell could have imagined such a thing, he had the good sense not to write it: who'd believe it of a purportedly serious political party? In the world's greatest, most fantabulously exceptional democracy.

Swamp Creature

2011-12-05T00:25:00.000-08:00

I think a good case can be made that the scorched-earth destructiveness of our current politics, the idea that the main aim of one party (in the view of one party, anyway) is to destroy the other one, that tearing down a president of the opposite party is more important than building up the country, arose from the steamy swamp that is Newt Gingrich, with his contract on America, his inflammatory Speakership, his hard-on for impeachment. Nor has he mellowed with age or a couple of new wives.

Memes develop and become conventional wisdom: in the case of Newt, oversize hat in the ring, it's that he has a bloated ego and considers himself the smartest guy in the room. That simply by virtue of having issued from between his loquacious lips, his words are definitionally and, as he'd say, transformationally, brilliant. Indeed, I've said as much here a few times. In this case, the meme is unquestionably (as he'd also say) true. There's something deeply off-putting about the guy, both in what he says and how he says it. More often than not, he's as full of shit as he is full of himself.

And yet.

I also find him sort of intriguing, in a perverse way. If Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry or Sarah Palin or Herman Cain or Rick Froth were the nominee, it'd signify the end of America as we know it, even when they inevitably lost. Because there's simply no way a people half of whom would propose such as those as presidential timber could long survive. Mitt Romney's nomination wouldn't make such a dreadful statement, I suppose; but he's such a sleazy panderer who'll say and do anything to get elected, who has, with no apparent shame, based his campaign (since he has no actual beliefs) on the lie that President Obama hates America, that I find the prospect of him as president equally as repellent as that of any of the others.

With reservations, I'd be fine with Huntsman.

He has no chance.

But Newt.

I can't stand the guy, with his smug simpering and tendency to bloviate untethered. Easy lie the lies that lie within him (cf: I'm not a lobbyist.) But for some damn reason, I don't quite view the prospect of a Gingrich nomination as denoting the end of the electorate's ability to think straight. Given their other choices, were Republicans to draw his card, it wouldn't have been from the bottom of the deck. If one looks at politics as entertainment (the best I can do to stay sane) and as the Republican party as a circus act, there's a certain mordant fascination with the idea of Newt Gingrich floating steatorrheaically to the top of the big top. He was Speaker of the House, after all. Sure, the only one ever tossed because of ethical violations, but still. Christians, evidently, are more inclined to love a guy who sinned (ethics, adultery, lying) and repented than one who, like Mitt, seems never to have sinned at all. Especially if the latter isn't even a real Christian.

And, confoundingly for a party embracing Sarah Palin's war on knowledge and expertise, Mr Speaker was a professor. Who wasn't granted tenure, to be sure; from a college no one ever heard of. Nevertheless the paradox is interesting.

I guess what I'm saying is that it's not impossible to understand -- and not entirely shocking, at least compared to the previously enumerated ignorami -- that a few quasi-thoughtful people could ask Newt for a dance. How they could do so while leaving Jon Huntsman on the sidelines is inexplicable; but if you just look at Newt qua Newt, list his CV and ignore his reality, don't scratch below the surface, he could be considered legitimate.

I know: I'm not making sense. But, unlike the rest of the Republican field, who are mostly a waste of Krebs cycle enzymes, there's something about Newt from which I can't entirely look away. As with cancer, there's both abhorrence and fascination about the fact that he exists.

And then, just as I finished writing the above, I saw this:

And I remembered what a dangerous, zealous theocrat he really is. Never mind the obvious lie in saying he doesn't care to whom you pray as long as you pray. The idea that unless you pray you have no moral compass is typical Christianist deluded self-importance. Coming from a guy who served divorce papers to his wife while she was hospitalized with cancer, and who calls for jailing people who failed to rein in Fannie and Freddie, while himself raking in one-point-three mill from Fanny and Freddie, whose moral compass -- evidence for the existence of which is thin indeed -- points neither to magnetic nor true north, it's pretty damn infuriating.

Had he his way, we'd be looking longingly at the freedoms found in those nations ruled by Sharia law. Those of us, that is, who believe that true religious freedom comes when the state separates itself from all of it. And those of us -- a group which also includes many of the religious among us -- whose view of religion differs from Newt's.

A Word

2011-12-04T04:24:00.000-08:00

Worth hanging in for the last five minutes or so.

Cain Still Can

2011-12-03T12:04:00.001-08:00

The cool thing about suspending your campaign instead of ending it is that you get to keep collecting donations to it. The guy may not know anything, but he ain't dumb. The "dumb" is in his supporters.

Steve Schmidt, who managed Arizona Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential race, offered a far harsher assessment of the Cain moment.
“That Cain’s candidacy was taken seriously for longer than a nano-second in a time of genuine crisis for the country raises fundamental questions about the health of the political process and the Republican party,” Schmidt said.

Or P.T.?

2011-12-03T08:45:00.000-08:00

[click image to enlarge]

(If the title reference is too obscure for some readers, this might help.)

Consistent

2011-12-02T03:33:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have to take it all back: Mitt Romney is a man of constancy after all.

World View

2011-12-01T02:56:00.000-08:00

My oldest friend is traveling in Europe (again). In his emails he's said more than once how astounded Europeans are (yeah, I know, why should we give a shit, right?) at the spectacle of American politics in this election season. Along those lines, and probably breaching some form of netiquette, I'll reprint the following article in its entirety. And I'll remind the reader that the last sentence is something I've said here many times:

A Club of Liars, Demagogues, and Fools
By Scott Horton
The German newsweekly Spiegel takes the latest disclosures concerning Herman Cain and the rise of Newt Gingrich as an opportunity to offer a foreign bird’s-eye view of the current Republican Party and the American media froth around it. My translation:
“Africa is a country. The Taliban rule in Libya. Muslims are terrorists. Immigrants are mostly criminals, Occupy Wall Street protesters are always dirty. And women who claim to have been sexually molested should kindly keep quiet.”
Welcome to the wonderful world of the Republican Party. Or rather: to the distorted world of its presidential campaign. For months it has coiled through the country like a traveling circus, from debate to debate, from scandal to scandal, contesting the mightiest office in the world — and nothing is ever too unfathomable for them… These eight presidential wannabes are happy enough not only to demolish their own reputations but also that of their party, the once worthy party of Abraham Lincoln. They are also ruining the reputation of the United States.
They lie, deceive, scuffle and speak every manner of idiocy. And they expose a political, economic, geographic and historical ignorance compared to which George W. Bush sounds like a scholar. Even the party’s boosters are horrified by the spectacle…
Platitudes in lieu of programs: in serious times that demand the smartest, these clowns offer blather that is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans. But as with all freak shows, it would be impossible without a stage, the U.S. media, which has been neutered by the demands of political correctness, and a welcoming audience, a party base that seems to have been lobotomized overnight. Notwithstanding the subterranean depths of the primary process, the press and broadcasters proclaim one clown after the next to be the new frontrunner, in predictable news cycles of forty-five days.
Spiegel ties the disintegration of the Republican Party to the Tea Party, “a ‘popular movement’ that was sponsored by Fox News and never showed any interest in the business of government — neither in information nor intellect, which are its requisites, but rather in a self-marketing exercise driven by commissions and millions.”
The most important observation Spiegel offers is this: At a time of mounting crisis, when much of the world is looking to the United States for leadership and initiative, the celebration of sleaze and ignorance that has marked the Republican primary is damaging the reputation of the nation as a whole. Even those who despise the G.O.P. should be concerned about the depths to which the party has sunk.

Count me among those who mourn the loss of Republican rationality. The country needs two strong parties, both thoughtful, intellectually credible, each committed to doing what's right for the country, including making necessary compromises. It's only those blinded by Fox "news" and deafened by the RWS™ who fail to see and condemn the obvious degradation of the R party into a destructive, untethered abomination, to the detriment of us all. In this case, the view from Europe is a clear one.

Hyperbole

2011-11-30T02:13:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich -- he of limitless intellectual self-regard -- likes hyperbole the way others like respiration.

To people grounded in reality, it's mostly amusing; but, given the tendency of his listeners to take him seriously (someone recently said Newt Gingrich is a stupid man's idea of a what a smart person sounds like), it's also a little frightening. His is a curious perversion of the Palinesque deliberate anti-intellectualism: she thinks people who know stuff are elitist and unamerican; Newt thinks he's the only person alive who knows stuff. And when facts get in his way, he simply dismisses them. (In that, of course, he's right in the mainstream of twenty-first century Republicanism.) Thus, he recently referred to the CBO as a socialist organization. You know: the budgetary analysts generally regarded as among the most credible and politically neutral agencies in the government.

Says Bruce Bartlett, Republican, once Saint Ronnie's chief economic adviser:

On Nov. 21, Newt Gingrich, who is leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination in some polls, attacked the Congressional Budget Office. In a speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Gingrich said the C.B.O. “is a reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that it has not internally generated.”
Mr. Gingrich’s charge is complete nonsense. The former C.B.O. director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, now a Republican policy adviser, labeled the description “ludicrous.” Most policy analysts from both sides of the aisle would say the C.B.O. is one of the very few analytical institutions left in government that one can trust implicitly.
[...]

...In 2005, he wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Times berating the C.B.O., then under the direction of Mr. Holtz-Eakin, saying it had improperly scored some Gingrich-backed proposals. At a debate on Nov. 5, Mr. Gingrich said, “If you are serious about real health reform, you must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies.”
This is typical of Mr. Gingrich’s modus operandi. He has always considered himself to be the smartest guy in the room and long chaffed at being corrected by experts when he cooked up some new plan, over which he may have expended 30 seconds of thought, to completely upend and remake the health, tax or education systems.

He also likes to speak in threes. And he loves the words "fundamental" and "transformative." And the phrase "single most important..." In his view, any declaration that pops out of his face is, ipso facto, the smartest thing anyone has ever said about whatever the subject might be.

I'll give him this: he's quick on his feet and a good debater, as long as you don't consider truth to be part of the scoring. Given the public's short attention span and lack of interest in facts, and given their evident unconcern for Newt's prior exit from Congress in disgrace, it's gonna be an interesting political season, now that he appears to be the last not-Mitt standing.

[Added -- who'd have guessed -- he just let some Foxotruth slip out:

"One of the real changes that comes when you start running for President -- as opposed to being an analyst on Fox -- is I have to actually know what I'm talking about," he said. The woman let out a startled laugh, and the audience joined in. "It's a severe limitation," Gingrich added.]

It Doesn't Matter

2011-11-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine likes to say that the lottery is the only game in which the odds of winning are the same whether you play or don't.

Similarly, amidst today's news is an item about an impending decision that will have absolutely no effect on the outcome. In other words, it's not news at all. Herman Cain's chances of winning the R nomination are exactly the same whether he stays in the race or drops out. He will, however, try to wring the last nickel out of the self-promotion known as his presidential campaign.

Science And Wonder

2011-11-29T04:50:00.000-08:00

Economic Truths

2011-11-28T02:57:00.000-08:00

[Click image to enlarge.]

Surely this information will end the Republican false claims about corporate taxes and profits, about Obama's so-called anti-business policies. Surely, now, at last, people of the teabagger ilk will realize their errors, and voters will demand truth from people running for office.

Surely trees will grow down and snakes will fly up.

And as long as we're clinging, desperately, to the realm of reality, here's a good article on what did and did not cause the economic crisis in which we find ourselves. Among the points made is one I've written about before: the CRA was not the cause of loan defaults.

But then we all knew that already. And by "we" I mean those more interested in facts than in political prevarication; a group that, as is evident, doesn't include any of those currently running for the R nomination (Jon Huntsman mostly excepted), any of the RWS™ or R Congressfolk, and, most depressingly, that voting group known as teabaggers and those who align with them. Meaning pretty much the entire current iteration of the Republican party.

Healing Hands

2011-11-27T06:21:00.000-08:00

The former (as in, put a fork in him) Herman Cain, on medicine and religion:

He did have a slight worry at one point during the chemotherapy process when he discovered that one of the surgeon's name was "Dr. Abdallah."
"I said to his physician assistant, I said, 'That sounds foreign--not that I had anything against foreign doctors--but it sounded too foreign," Cain tells the audience. "She said, 'He's from Lebanon.' Oh, Lebanon! My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine! She could see the look on my face and she said, 'Don't worry, Mr. Cain, he's a Christian from Lebanon.'"
"Hallelujah!" Cain says. "Thank God!"

Question, Mr Cain, from the back row: Which would you choose, sir, if these were your only two choices -- a competent Muslim doctor or an incompetent Christian one?

Probably, in his "mind" there's no such thing as an incompetent Christian. God guides him, after all. Similarly, I doubt he'd consider the possibility of a competent Muslim.

Blame Obamada

2011-11-23T03:50:00.000-08:00

The failure of the supercommittee was as predictable as the lame attempts of Republicans to shift blame. Gotta admit their latest is a level of chutzpah (ask M. Bachmann how to pronounce it) that eclipses all previous efforts. It's Obama's fault, they say.

Right.

Maybe they're taking that tack because it's obvious that the Democrats on the committee went well beyond halfway. Hard to paper that one over. While Rs refused to consider any tax increases or, amazingly enough, even the closing of the loopholes that allow huge corporations not only to pay no taxes but to get refunds, Ds put billions in cuts in social spending on the table. You can't argue that away (except, of course, to teabaggers, who'll believe whatever the RWS™ tell them.) Grover Norquist pulled the short hairs, and the Rs grabbed their crotches.

So what else is there, other than lying about what they did, but to blame Obama? Bachmann says he was AWOL. Michael Gerson says if only Obama had done something, some thing, everything would have fallen in place.

Really? After years of direct negotiations during which Rs budged not an inch? After declaring their number-one mission -- a priority higher than solving America's problems -- was to see to it that Obama is a one-term president? If he'd intervened in some unspecified way, presumably a way he hadn't already tried a million times, magic maybe, or guns, Rs would have licked milk out of his hand? C'mon, man.

Does anyone doubt that if President Obama had intervened in the committee's work in any way, RWS™ and teabaggRs would have characterized it as arrogant interference? Acting like a dictator (Hitler, I believe, is the teabagger-approved comparison)? Disrespecting the co-equal branch of government? Blamed him for the failure and called it meddling?

Obama's fault. Gimme a friggin' break.

[Added: this essay says it well. To more people than me.]

[Even more: committee members specifically asked Obama to stay away from it:

For all the eleventh-hour, “where-was-Obama?” moaning, the bipartisan congressional directive to the White House as the supercommittee did its work was simple: Back off.
That’s right. The message from both Republican and Democratic members of the group was that presidential involvement could only be counterproductive. The more a particular approach was associated with the president, they argued, the harder it would be for Republicans to embrace it. Anything that looked like an Obama “win” would have been unacceptable to Republicans in an election cycle.

What a bunch of uninformed or willful liars we have on the right. It's all I can muster not to hate them outright.]

Asian Gracefully

2011-11-22T12:16:00.000-08:00

Preferring, I guess, casting aspersions on the "Occupy" movement, or equalizing blame for the super-failure, the media haven't had much to say about our president's just-completed trip to Asia. I must say I hadn't followed it too closely, either. I'd noted the agreement on troops down under, but that's about it. Turns out, we missed some stuff:

The cascade of statements, deployments, agreements and announcements from the United States and its regional associates in the last week has to be one of the most unpleasant shocks for China’s leadership — ever. The US is moving forces to Australia, Australia is selling uranium to India, Japan is stepping up military actions and coordinating more closely with the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, Myanmar is slipping out of China’s column and seeking to reintegrate itself into the region, Indonesia and the Philippines are deepening military ties with the the US: and all that in just one week. If that wasn’t enough, a critical mass of the region’s countries have agreed to work out a new trade group that does not include China, while the US, to applause, has proposed that China’s territorial disputes with its neighbors be settled at a forum like the East Asia Summit — rather than in the bilateral talks with its smaller, weaker neighbors that China prefers.

...It was a surprise diplomatic attack, aimed at reversing a decade of chit chat about American decline and disinterest in Asia, aimed also at nipping the myth of “China’s inexorable rise” in the bud.

[...]

...it was as decisive a diplomatic victory as anyone is likely to see. Congratulations should go to President Obama and his national security team. The State Department, the Department of Defense and the White House have clearly been working effectively together on an intensive and complex strategy. They avoided leaks, they coordinated effectively with half a dozen countries, they deployed a range of instruments of power. In the field of foreign policy, this was a coming of age of the Obama administration and it was conceived and executed about as flawlessly as these things ever can be.

Seems like sort of a big deal. But, you know, it doesn't fit the Foxonewtonian mittstatements that Obama hates America, doesn't consider it exceptional, has no foreign policy, is in over his head. The narrative pumped relentlessly into the brains of teabaggers like sludge into a cesspool.

Fiction Imitates Fiction

2011-11-22T02:08:00.000-08:00

In a nice temporal juxtaposition, two days after the SNL sketch we learn that the man who's taken every position on every issue, who passed on the latest teabaggR morality play lest he be asked about it, has just released a shocking admission of past failings:

"I tasted a beer and tried a cigarette once, as a wayward teenager..."

Yep. Take away the moral cowardice, the blatant pandering, and the awkward demeanor in public places, he's just like you and me. (Oh, I'm way worse: I stole my first cigarette from my dad's supply; and he actually bought me my first beer, after high school graduation.)

When Their Lips Move...

2011-11-21T01:21:00.000-08:00

I guess if Barack Obama doesn't want to have his words deliberately twisted by Republicans and RWS™, he'll just need to stay silent. Meanwhile, the response to his "lazy" comment has been the perfect demonstration of the two things that constitute the sum of Republican, teabaggR, and RWS™ substance: lying, and hypocrisy.

He called Americans lazy, they claim. He didn't.

WE call Americans lazy, they should have said -- because they do, daily -- but they didn't.

About the time I was planning to write about it, I read this. So rather than wasting your time and mine, I recommend following the link. It couldn't be more clear.

I'm a peaceful guy, practically an empath. I like democracy; used to, anyway, till these prevaricators showed up and Americans starting swallowing their excrescences. These people on the right have passed well beyond infuriating in their willingness openly to lie and shamelessly to hypocricize. Their contempt for the electorate knows no bounds; their commitment to thoughtful governance is non-existent. If lies were dollars, they'd have balanced the budget, long since. Based wholly upon and fueled by lies and hypocrisy, their agenda is destructive to everything we once were. If proof were needed, this latest miniseries of misinformation has been the perfect emblem.

Because of the mendacious ministrations of the right (and the eager gullibility of their followers), we've become thoroughly unable to address our problems meaningfully; we are way beyond screwed.

Other than that, I feel fine. Thanks for asking.

Three Sermons On Sunday

2011-11-20T03:33:00.000-08:00

None of the above, of course, would ever be persuasive to believers. Some points are the very ones I've made here and elsewhere. They are, after all, pretty obvious. (I'd not have made all of the above arguments, because some are a little circular in their own right. Which in no way diminishes the rest.) Most importantly, you simply can't reconcile the idea of an all-knowing, all-powerful, and loving god with what we observe of the world. The claims made can only be rejoined by repeating the faith that's being questioned. So the circle remains unbroken, beliefs unquestioned.

Still, it's challenging -- or it ought to be -- to hear such things said eloquently and to realize that to the central arguments -- the suffering, the immorality of eternal punishment and the associated world-views, the fact that Jesus didn't die for our sins and he knew it -- there is no logical disproof. I get that belief is not about logic; it is, in fact, an antidote to it. But you'd think that after all this time, people would have found a way at least to be internally consistent in their beliefs. When immorality is central to the appeal of a particular religion, why does it continue to exist? When what you believe is overtly at odds with everything we can see with our eyes, what's the point?

That the same is the case with teabaggerism is not at all coincidental, by the bye.

Exceptionalism

2011-11-18T03:28:00.000-08:00

Pathetic:

An episode of the BBC's Frozen Planet documentary series that looks at climate change has been scrapped in the U.S., where many are hostile to the idea of global warming.
British viewers will see all seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature series throughout the Autumn.
But U.S. audiences will not be shown the last episode, which looks at the threat posed by man to the natural world.
It is feared a show that preaches global warming could upset viewers in the U.S., where around half of people do not believe in climate change.

Yes, it truly is an exceptional nation we're becoming: a planet-wide embarrassment. Thanks, teabaggRs.

[Update: thanks to a commenter, it's pointed out that the above report is, evidently, wrong. That is indeed good news. Unlike their brethren across the pond, it appears the British are willing to stick to facts. Wonder if it'll change any minds over here when it shows.] [Amusingly, if the commenter is correct, they might be replacing the British voiceover with an American one. Can't have that authoritative diction on a matter such as this.]

Race Card

2011-11-17T14:31:00.000-08:00

[Source]

Considering Police

2011-11-17T03:43:00.000-08:00

Here's something on which to ruminate: As we watch OWS protesters around the country being brought down by some pretty tough police action (arrests, beatings, indiscriminate pepper spray, etc), should we be considering the power police have to quash peaceful protest? At what point does it become a danger to a free society, to the ability of citizens to petition against the government?

I ask this as a general proposition: I have no knowledge of the specific laws which may or may not have been broken by the recent protests in the various cities. Nor, for that matter, about the reasonableness of those presumed laws. But it's worth asking, in the context of peaceful protest, who does and who ought to have the authority to take them down. By what definitions does a protest become something to which police in riot gear need to be sent; and at what point is aggressive action warranted? Who gives the order? On what basis, and by what authority? What is the purpose of the police when they arrive? Maintaining order, or suppressing the gathering? When does one begin to blend into the other?

And how about "detaining" (handcuffing, arresting) reporters on the scene? Anyone have a problem with that?

Seems to me these are questions all people ought to ask; maybe especially those gun-totin' America-loving bulwarks against tyranny: teabaggers, teabaggRs, militias. The RWS™ are only too happy to see the OWS protesters taken down by any means. But should they worry about the possibility of similar action at next Glenn Beck paranoia-fest? It's pretty clear of late that freedom of speech is in the eye of the beholder, and hardly a unequivocal ethos at that end of the spectrum. Whatever the rules, they ought to apply universally, oughtn't they?

I don't think it's a trivial issue. Seems to me it's at the heart of what makes a free and democratic society.

Obvious Question

2011-11-16T15:28:00.000-08:00

Herman Cain has joined the annointed field of Republican presidential candidates who claim god told them to run. At minimum, in addition to Herm, that group includes Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.

So if it's true that god indeed convinced each of them to run, mustn't it also be true that he's fucking with at least two of them? Or, as usual, is he fucking with us all?

"Government Is The Problem" Is The Problem

2011-11-16T02:10:00.000-08:00

Written by a man much more knowledgable than me, this article encapsulates the points I've been trying to make here for years:

....Thirty years ago, a newly elected Ronald Reagan made a fateful judgment: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” Taxes for the rich were slashed, as were outlays on public services and investments as a share of national income...
Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis. He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.
[...]
... Twice before in American history, powerful corporate interests dominated Washington and brought America to a state of unacceptable inequality, instability and corruption. Both times a social and political movement arose to restore democracy and shared prosperity.

[...]

Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making. This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.

In addition to pointing out the error of a recent counterfactual comment here about corporate taxes,* it makes clear what the issue of income inequality is really about, as I've said as well: it's about having the means to do what needs doing if our country is to have a future. The writer seems a little more optimistic than I am about an incipient progressive era; but at least there's a conversation happening in some circles.

Demagoguing OWS as some sort of lazy hippie movement, wanting something for nothing, is easy; and god knows it works on those of teabagger mentality. But it's foggery. Ragged, often embarrassing (to me, at least), the protesters are nevertheless making an important point: we can't go on like this; where "this" is the unwillingness of so many Americans to help pay the tab for living in this country, combined with their willingness to cut funding for the future in order to pay for their selfishness.

And, no, it's not about being against corporate profits or individual wealth. They're what makes the world go 'round. Without wealth and profits, ain't no money to spend on our salvation. But since the Reagan era the trend is perverse and unsustainable: profit without payback; demonizing government as an excuse to accumulate money at the top while income for working people remains flat, the middle class shrinks; and while providing for the needs of the country becomes financially impossible.

_______________________

* I've said before and I'll say again: I have no idea what a proper corporate tax rate might be; and I gather that in the US, even if it's lower than it's been in a long time, it's higher than in most other countries. What that means, I don't know. But it's also true that the nominal rate seems to be paid by very few corporations, and many of our largest ones not only pay no tax at all, but manage to get tax "rebates" from the government. Most, I think, agree that's wrong. Except, of course, teabaggRs, who've opposed any efforts to close the loopholes that allow such travesty.

Down There

2011-11-15T12:56:00.000-08:00

"I wanna know what love is. I want you to show me. I wanna feel what love is. I know you can show me."

Listening to oldies the other day, I heard this song. I've always thought it was about a guy who'd failed at love, asking his girl for an anatomy lesson. And who's to say I'm wrong?

This Is What You Get

2011-11-15T03:29:00.000-08:00

Want to see what happens when people (in this case, the Koch brothers) select a candidate for his likelihood to do their bidding, who's otherwise entirely clueless, and into whose head they try to cram enough information to allow him to hide his cluelessness in order to fool the public (successfully so far, it would appear) into voting for him? Watch the video and weep for our country. It's a stunning spouting (after he painfully, embarrassingly, searches through his overloaded memory banks for his coachery) of half-learned talking points, about which he clearly knows not a damn thing. Pretty appalling.

Unlike Sarah Palin, it appears Mr Cain at least made a half-hearted to learn something. Not that it made any difference: ultimately he doesn't seem to care that he's bullshitting. But let's be of good cheer: looks like Newt the execrable is next into the breach as the transitory not-Mitt. So maybe I should be like this guy, invoking the mercy rule for poor Herman.

Tortured Minds

2011-11-14T09:45:00.000-08:00

It's as if Republicans wait for something to be disproved, and then line up like pre-teen girls at a Bieber concert to support it. Really, it's the most amazing thing: there's nothing they say that hasn't been fully debunked at some point or another. Being wrong seems central to their policies on everything. Tax cuts, regulation. Climate change, creationism. If it's been shown false, they grab at it like David Vitter in a diaper store. If it's true, they drop it like a hundred-million year old rock. Or lie about it.

In the (shudder) foreign policy debate, a series of factual eggs were laid. That, of course, is nothing new. But then, nearly to a man (and, it goes without saying, a woman) the R candidates lined up in support of torture. Bring it back, they demand. We loves us some waterboarding.

Never mind that since Obama ended it, we've intercepted more plots, found and blown up (like it or not) more terrorists than Bush in his most fevered dream. Never mind that the purpose of torture has always been -- and, used by tyrants, remains -- the wringing of false confessions from broken captives. Ask John McCain. Never mind the many experts and military leaders who've told us the information gathered from torture is completely unreliable and that the non-torture methods are far superior. Bring back torture, they demand. It's as American as apple ghraib. I'd like to say those proudly uninformed idiots have finally and undeniably embarrassed themselves; but clearly they have no capacity for embarrassment, nor does their audience.

After months and years of listening to their idiocy, words are all but failing me. I'm literally shaking as I type; I should be on the floor curled into a ball. I'm not sure I can take it anymore. What have we become when that grotesquely gaping group of gasp-inducing gaffers is offered up by a once-respectable political party; and when the more outrageously inaccurate or desperately disgusting are their pronouncements, the louder their audience cheers.

These are the purported leaders of a major political party; the people cheering them on are actually part of our political process, have their fingers on the buttons in the booths that will determine our future. Or lack of it. Bullshit pours from them like, well, shit from a bull. Freely, happily, with no thought aforethought, those laughable know-nothings (the one or two who know one or two things feel they have to hide it from their voters) spew demonstrable falsehoods like puke from a bulimic. It's truly awful. These are disgusting people.

Really, Republicans: this lot is the best you can do? Within this gaggle of grotesquery (Huntsman, when he's occasionally not drinking the tea, excepted -- and he was done before he started) is the one you'd choose to lead our country? Really? You'll support the last one slouching, you can do that without shame?

Evidently, yes. Yes you can.

Speaking Sense On Sunday

2011-11-13T02:45:00.000-08:00

From America's Finest News Source:

PRINCETON, NJ—According to a new report published this week, researchers at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study have definitively concluded that it—all of it—is some kind of sick joke.
The comprehensive study, which carefully analyzed fields as varied as physics, theology, history, economics, sociology, and philosophy, is said to have found overwhelming evidence that it is all just one big sham specifically designed to humiliate us and cause us as much misery as possible.
[...]
"The question we're ultimately left with is what kind of a savage and twisted god would find this funny?" theological scholar Meredith Hemphill said. "Unfortunately, the only thing we can say for sure is that we're not dealing with a benevolent deity or even a detached and unfeeling maker, but apparently some unknowable force that takes a perverted, I would argue psychopathic, pleasure in watching its creations struggle and fail."
[...]
"There appears to be no escaping the feelings of humiliation, emptiness, and despair this barbaric joke exacts on everyone," said Nobel laureate and professor emeritus of psychology Daniel Kahneman. "However, trial studies show humankind is far better off when we push it all into the back of our heads, try not to think about it, and just trudge mindlessly toward death."
"And let me remind everyone that the joke does indeed have an ending, one which generally occurs much, much sooner than we expect," Kahneman added.

The fact that, regarding the triple threat (all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful) god of the Christian right, I've said as much in all seriousness, makes it no less funny; nor, despite coming from a satirical source, is it any less true.

And maybe this is as good a time as any to comment on Penn State.

In particular, I find it astounding, nearly unbelievable except that unbelievable is what belief is about, that Joe Paterno, and, later, members of the board of trustees there, said we should pray for the victims. To whom, for gods' sake? The god who let ten year old boys be raped? Who, in his all-powerful lovingness, gave that coach a hard-on and let him shove it up the rectum of a child? That god? It's he to whom we should direct prayers? So he'll do what, now, suddenly, after decades of abject failure? Bring peace of mind to the children he abandoned? Why? Because more people are begging him now than merely the several victims back then? Those little boys didn't pray hard enough, or were there just too few of them to cross the celestial ego-threshold?

Sickening, at all levels.

At the game yesterday, the teams met midfield to pray for the victims. What pathetic pretentiousness. What willful ignoring. If the god they're praying to answers prayers, then he let the serial rapes happen and doesn't give a good god damn; or he doesn't exist. Either/Or. Take your pick, and save your breath.

Pray for the victims. As if that'll make it all right, get everyone off the hook, including god. That's the greatest immorality of all. And the sickest joke.

Two Faces

2011-11-11T02:42:00.000-08:00

Lost in the amusement over the Perry brain freeze (which, like Cain's proclivities, will likely help him among teabaggers) are a couple of other significant moments from the latest Republican parade of pareidolia.

Asked about the $300K he received as a consultant for Freddy Mac and Fannie Mae, Newt the Simpering Slimeball claimed they paid him to be a "historian" for the agencies. A note-taker, I guess. Accurate, other than the fact that it's a complete revision of the truth:

... Commercial banks regarded Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as competitors and were anxious to pick up business that would result from scaling back the two companies.

Pushing back, Freddie Mac enlisted prominent conservatives, including Gingrich and former Justice Department official Viet Dinh, paying each $300,000 in 2006, according to internal records.

Gingrich talked and wrote about what he saw as the benefits of the Freddie Mac business model.

Dinh wrote a legal analysis of private property rights that viewed a hypothetical government-enforced sale of Freddie Mac assets as constitutionally suspect.

The difference between the facility with which both Gingrich and Romney produce lies is that the former brazens through them with his faux-professorial demeanor, assuming that his "I'm-the-smartest-guy-in-the-room" attitude will simply overwhelm any lesser being who'd think to question him. Romney, on the other hand, sort of slinks by his lies hoping no one will notice. He's more like the kid with the cookie behind his back, pretending the lid isn't off the jar.

Which brings us to the other noteworthy moment: asked about his flip-flopping, Romney claimed the mantle of constancy for staying married and remaining in the church of Moroni. Allowed completely to ignore the central point of the question, he went on to claim that Obama's is the most "political" presidency in modern history, after which he declared that Obama is planning when to leave Afghanistan based purely on politics. Follow up questions, demands for explication? Are you kidding?

I'll ignore Herman Cain's arch arithmetical announcement that for every woman who claims he sexually harassed them, there are thousands who don't. Gotta give him that. Probably several thousand. It's a big country.

The above examples are significant for showing the disregard those sad samples of humanity hold for their public. (It's true, of course, of the whole lot of them with the possible partial sometimes exception of Jon Huntsman; but it's starting to seem as though Newt will be the only non-Mitt left standing, while the rest are just background noise, which means, as I said long ago, it'll be Romney...) And they demonstrate their certainty that the media they love to bash won't ever really call them on it. But mostly, they confirm the Death Valley level to which partisanship has sunk us: among Republican voters, lies don't matter. Facts don't matter. What matters is getting the black guy out of the white house. That their grievances and beliefs about what he has and hasn't done have nothing to do with reality is the least of their concerns. And the Republican candidates know it.

Dare One Hope?

2011-11-09T13:17:00.000-08:00

The anti-union measure in Ohio was soundly defeated. The radical Sharia "personhood" bill in Mississippi went down, too. Can it be that the teabagger wing of the Republican party (not really a wing; pretty much every body part but the head) has gone too far? Might those most adversely affected by the selfish and simpleminded views of teabaggRs (ie everyone but the top 1% -- and when you think about it, as I have, them, too: who doesn't have a stake in the survival of the country?) finally, at long last, be showing signs of cerebration?

Being one who's always sort of admired the idea of America and who prefers to see it stick around, I'd like to think so. On the other hand, the following letters were in my local paper a day or so ago:

I believe it is time to respond to Eugene Robinson's Nov. 1 column, "Let Herman be gone from the spotlight": He seems to be anxious to criticize presidential candidate Herman Cain for something that might have happened 12 years ago. This is another example of researching someone's past to embarrass them and try to get off the real issues that face this nation. There has been no real solid information on these charges, yet Robinson wants him to relax confidentiality rules and release records.

Where was this request when presidential candidate Obama chose not to release educational records, funding, and any background information that could have embarrassed him? When Robinson mentions Mr. Cain's lack of foreign policy, I do not believe President Obama's was very familiar either, with all his voting present during his short time in the Senate. Mr. Cain has many skills for creating jobs, as opposed to a community organizer who blames everyone but himself.

President Obama's statement that he visited 57 states and still had one to go, is rather disturbing, along with so many failed policies. Eugene shows his great writing skills by using words like ignorant, unworkable, goofy, bizarre, unmitigated, ruinous and loopy in describing Mr. Cain. It must be real difficult for Mr. Robinson to see a black conservative excel and he wants to play the race card and confidentiality, both ways. We need a unifier not a divider and a problem solver rather than someone that apologizes for America and needs a teleprompter as his pacifier.

It's as if Fox "news" opened the guy's skull and poured in the talking points. And boy did they stick. Apologizes. Teleprompter. Voting "present."

And the next one:

Regarding the sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain: We've seen this movie before, haven't we? As with Clarence Thomas, some people feel extremely threatened by a successful black conservative who thinks for himself and isn't created by and/or beholden to the mainstream media and liberal ideology. They're frightened to death of him, so they're out to take him down by any means necessary. It probably won't work -- it's interesting that Cain had his biggest fund-raising day the day after the allegations came out. Several questions come to mind:

If the alleged harassment happened 15 years ago, why is it only now coming out? Since when is raising your hand to your chin a sexual gesture? (He was accused of comparing a woman's height to his wife's height by putting his hand under his chin.) If the allegations prove to be false, will the perpetrators be held accountable? Another reason tort reform is badly needed. Losers should pay. Whether or not the allegations are true, does anyone truly care? It didn't seem to matter much when Bill Clinton was having his way with multiple women while occupying the Oval Office. Yes, he was impeached, but not removed from office.

Hook, line, and repeater. And not a little disjointed.

Clearly, there are plenty out there who will buy whatever the RWS™ sells them. I'd have written a letter in response, but there's a three-hundred word limit; how can you say what needs saying in that format? And, obviously, it wouldn't make an ounce of difference.

So, much as I'd like to think it's possible to turn the tide of willful ignorance and that the aforementioned votes are signifiers, I think it's way too soon to exhale. The gullibility of teabaggers and their manifest desire for simplistic answers to complex questions is more than clear. And optimism hasn't been in my bones for a long time. (Which may explain my recent discovery that, sometime in the last couple of decades, I've shrunk from 6' 4'' to 6' 3".)

Personhood Of Interest

2011-11-09T02:33:00.000-08:00

As I write this, I don't yet know the outcome of the vote in Mississippi. It won't change the essential point.

Previously, I've written about what no one can deny: god is the most prolific abortionist of all time. The percentage of concepti that fail to implant, or which are shed so early after implantation that they aren't likely even noticed, is estimated to be at least a quarter of them; and, for the aforementioned reasons, it's probably much higher. (For purposes of this post, let's ignore the number of babies born dead, or who die immediately after birth because of some unsurvivable defect. The lord taketh, and taketh.) Human-directed abortions pale, numerically, in comparison.

In the context of the Mississippi attempt to define life as beginning at conception, conferring "personhood" on any fertilized egg, reflect on this: the proposal treats a fertilized egg with more deference than god, who brushes them away like crumbs on his shirt.

Interesting, huh?

Tom Tomorrow

2011-11-08T13:54:00.000-08:00

[Click image to enlarge.]

It'd be easier to laugh if it were an exaggeration.

Turtle Tunnels

2011-11-08T02:45:00.000-08:00

Wait, what? You mean to tell me R congressfolk have been lying to us?

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's an outrageous tale: The federal government spends one out of every $10 in transportation aid on wasteful projects such as refurbishing a giant roadside coffee pot and constructing turtle tunnels.
That's what Republican lawmakers have said repeatedly in recent weeks in the Senate, in public appearances and in news releases. They are trying to eliminate a requirement that states use a portion of their highway aid for "transportation enhancements," 12 categories of projects from bike and walking paths to scenic overlooks and landscaping.
But it's not exactly true.
To make their case, lawmakers have exaggerated and misrepresented some projects that have received aid.

Well, knock me over with a bridge to nowhere.

First on the list: the Lincoln Highway 200-Mile Roadside Museum in south-central Pennsylvania. It was described as receiving $300,000 in 2004 for signs, murals, colorful vintage gas pumps painted by local artists and refurbishing of a former roadside snack stand from 1927 that's shaped like a giant coffee pot.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was apparently working from Coburn's list two weeks ago when he offered an amendment to narrow the types of projects eligible for enhancement funds....
But no transportation aid was spent on the coffee pot's $100,000 restoration, said Olga Herbert, executive director of the Lincoln Highway Heritage Corridor. The money was raised entirely from preservation and civic organizations and local supporters....

...."Don't tell the people of Kentucky they need to finance every turtle tunnel and solar panel company on some bureaucrat's wish list in order to get their bridges fixed," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said last month in a speech decrying President Barack Obama's request for $50 billion for highways, bridges and airport runways.
....
While turtle deaths prompted the project, the culverts are being used by many other species, including beavers, otters, alligators and snakes. They make driving safer for motorists who were swerving to avoid turtles and alligators...
The project used economic stimulus funds rather than regularly budgeted transportation money. Coburn's list, provided to reporters and posted on his Senate website, said Florida plans to spend $3.4 million on the project, but it will require $6 million more to finish "and it was unclear how long it will take to get the project built."
Actually, the project was finished in September 2010 and came in under budget at $3 million, according to the Transportation Department.

In the article, it's a long list. I guess none of it earthshaking in its own right, but it's revelatory (assuming there are people to whom it isn't as obvious as a dead turtle) of the facility with which these guys lie whenever their lips move, while assuming no one will notice. Or care. In that, they're right on the money.

The Devil Made Me Do It

2011-11-07T02:59:00.000-08:00

This is perfect. It tells you everything you need to know about Republicans as we currently see them, and the religiosity which motivates their thinking (if that word, with "Republican," doesn't constitute an oxymoron.)

After the suicide of a gay student who'd been harassed mercilessly, Democrats in the Michigan legislature wanted a bill addressing bullying in schools. Republicans (who are these people?) didn't. But they finally agreed, as long as the bill contained an out for bigoted haters. Their base, in other words.

In short, Michigan Republicans demanded that bullying be allowed as long as it comes from the bullier's religious beliefs. Want to harass and bully and beat up gays? Not a problem as long as it's your Christianity talking. (Need I point out: these are the same ilk who like to warn us about Sharia law taking over our country.)

If the above isn't enough, consider the upcoming vote in Ohio regarding removing collective bargaining rights for teachers and other government employees. A Republican representative was asked, if teachers needed to take a pay cut, how about legislators. The answer, of course, was no:

In a recent interview, a top Ohio Republican defended this in a curiously belligerent way, one that may reverberate in the race’s final days: He claimed lawmakers don’t need to take a pay cut in the spirit of shared sacrifice, because “I earn my pay,” adding: “Republicans earn their money.”

How many times must it be said: these are awful people.

This is the party that wants to run our country, and might well be poised to do so.

See The Problem

2011-11-04T01:49:00.000-07:00

[Click image to enlarge]

According to the article whence came the above, the D plan cuts over a trillion dollars more than the R plan from the deficit (4.12T vs 3.06T). For those who haven't clicked to enlarge, care to guess what the bars on the left represent?

And as long as we're looking at graphics, check out this one, about competing jobs plans. Then tell us where it's wrong, in pointing out that Obama's actually is one, and the Rs is nothing of the sort. Assuming you're sitting down, I'll pass along the surprising info that Senate Rs killed what I'd consider the most important part of Obama's bill: infrastructure. Country last. (Senatorial dysfunction alert: it failed with 51 votes.)

You'd think the next election would be a walkover for Democrats. Rs have done nothing but obstruct, making it clear they have no intention of letting the economy improve before that election; and what few plans they've produced are demonstrably regressive and damaging, especially to those most likely to vote for them, ie teabaggers. I find it incomprehensible. And (for now anyway) their frontrunner is a guy who proudly knows nothing about economics or foreign policy, an instinctive dissembler. A motivational speaker -- meaning a guy who's made millions selling snake oil.

Only in America. Sadly.