Full Of Grace

Maria loved that song. Not long ago, when she'd become unable to travel, an opera-singer friend of her daughter sang it to her over the phone from California.

Even as death approached, she remained beautiful. Her hair, which was always perfect, had fallen away, pitilessly, from radiation. Her dentures, which she'd had made with the same gold inlays and fillings that preexisted them so none would know, no longer fit and were gone. Only then, at ninety-three, was she finally starting to look her age. Yet her skin remained perfect: fine and unblemished, smooth and unwrinkled, her face simply did not brook its own gauntness. Absent her cancer, I think she'd have lived to a hundred and five. Until hours before she died, she'd been lucid, recognized us who were there, said "Thank you, Sid" to the things I said to her, took my son in a near head-lock and told him how happy she was for him in his engagement. She's known and loved his fiance for several years. (Hearing from us, when she asked, frequently, when they were getting married, that we studiously avoided bringing up the subject, she said, "Well I can," and she did, telling them she wanted them to marry before she died. She saw the ring, and approved.)

Three days before her death she'd awakened suddenly and said "Seventeen." Only that, then returned to sleep. It was on the seventeenth that she died. Aunt Maria always called her own shots.

In her last couple of months, unable to get out of bed, she still threw parties with crowds of people. "It's more fun with lots of people," she said, correctly. She had an affinity for those younger than her (of course, there weren't many who were older), and enjoyed the company of anyone who enjoyed life as much as she. Good movies, good restaurants, good symphonies, plays, musicals. Museums. Traveling. A good book of nearly any sort. If there are true grande dames in life, she most certainly was one. But with her it was fully real, not an act, neither a pose nor artifice. She simply valued decorum and elegance of a bygone time, it was who she was; for Maria, it was a vehicle for truth, and for showing respect, caring, and love.

She spoke her mind. She read, she followed the news, politics, had opinions and wanted to know yours. The scores of the local sports teams were as important to her as the results of elections, the latest Paris fashion show. To the young son of a friend, she gave a book every year, encouraging his reading; he's said it was central to the Pulitizer Prize he eventually received.

And Maria was tough. A tough broad, a broad though always thin and graceful, tall and commanding. Faced with many challenges throughout her life, she handled them without self-pity, but with the certainty that she'd find a way; and she always did. Her laugh was like bells (unlike my other aunt, whose laugh evoked a tommy-gun), and she graced us with it, enthusiastically, all the time. I loved to evoke that laugh; even the occasionally bawdy or otherwise outrageous attempt was okay with her. If you can take measure of a person by her friends, she was superlative. She had dozens, devoted to her, a couple unbelievably so, glad to be in her company, who helped her generously, because they loved her; but also in the certainty that she'd be doing the same for them, and had.

To her husband, a lot handsome and a little difficult (or, maybe, the other way around), whose considerable wealth came from making the best dog food in the Pacific Northwest and who loved the boating life more than she did, she was the devoted wife; but after his death over a decade ago, she found and gathered her own strength and flourished even more.

Maria's daughter, given by her the gift of life, gave her mother the gift of a good death. Refusing hospice but acceding, if reluctantly, to twenty-four hour home care in the last weeks of her life, Maria made clear that it was still her house and the care-givers (who were great, mostly) were her guests, if also, eventually, friends. Help was okay; demands, not so much. But her daughter, who lives far away, was there nearly always; and at the end, unfailingly. Half a day before her death, Maria was still conscious enough to give and receive love freely. I love yous were said, kisses of the most unselfconscious kind exchanged, often, eagerly. (The gifts were mutual.) My wife and I were honored to be there, too, to be part of it. At the end, with her favorite music playing softly, having remained to the end in her immaculate and well-decorated home with its spectacular view to the east (in her closet, her clothes were covered in plastic, labeled, and numbered), with her daughter stroking her hand and brow, whispering to her, sweet somethings, and my wife holding her other hand, Maria's breathing slowed and finally stilled, without fear or agitation or pain. And she looked even more beautiful.

Of course the tears followed, sobs. But if those who fear death (who doesn't?) could have witnessed it, I think they'd had left feeling some comfort for their own. Would that every death could be so right, so obvious a necessary part of life, so well managed. So meaningful.

A couple of days before her death she called her daughter, son-in-law, granddaughter, great-granddaughter into her bedroom and told them she thought she was dying. And said she felt the presence of God.

[Maria at ninety-two.]

Gee, Ya Think?

File under "duh:"

With Tim Pawlenty out of the presidential race, it is now fairly clear that the GOP candidate will either be Mitt Romney or someone who makes George W. Bush look like Tom Paine. Of the three most plausible candidates for the Republican nomination, two are deeply associated with a theocratic strain of Christian fundamentalism known as Dominionism. If you want to understand Michele Bachmannand Rick Perry, understanding Dominionism isn’t optional.

Put simply, Dominionism means that Christians have a God-given right to rule all earthly institutions. Originating among some of America’s most radical theocrats, it’s long had an influence on religious-right education and political organizing. But because it seems so outré, getting ordinary people to take it seriously can be difficult. ...

Now, however, we have the most theocratic Republican field in American history, and suddenly, the concept of Dominionism is reaching mainstream audiences. Writing about Bachmann in The New Yorker this month, Ryan Lizza spent several paragraphs explaining how the premise fit into the Minnesota congresswoman’s intellectual and theological development. And a recent Texas Observer cover story on Rick Perry examined his relationship with the New Apostolic Reformation, a Dominionist variant of Pentecostalism that coalesced about a decade ago. “[W]hat makes the New Apostolic Reformation movement so potent is its growing fascination with infiltrating politics and government,” wrote Forrest Wilder. Its members “believe Christians—certain Christians—are destined to not just take ‘dominion’ over government, but stealthily climb to the commanding heights of what they term the ‘Seven Mountains’ of society, including the media and the arts and entertainment world.”

Scary, depressing, destructive as this is to everything we once loved about America, there is a certain karmic amusement. Even Karl Rove is worried. He may not have expressed it in so many words, but his plan to dupe the highly religious into the Republican fold, for their gullibility and tautological need for simple truths, might just becoming a bridge too far even for him, the most unapologetically untruthful manipulator since (insert outrageous name here.... Stalin? Machiavelli? L. Frank Baum?) See, the thing is, it's fine -- desirable, really -- to have a bunch of credulous voters, easily manipulable, bathed in religious certainty and preferring it to thoughtful reflection; what better way to get a bunch of people to vote against their own -- and their country's -- interest. But when they're taking over the party, running for office, winning, well, that's another thing entirely:

[Click image to enlarge.]

I'd like to think -- although nowadays it's a long way from certain -- that even for enough Christians to be significant this dominionism is a little much. That among those who see this as a "Christian nation" there are sufficient numbers who retain a semblance of connection, however ephemeral, to the First Amendment, and who'd like the country to remain a thoughtful nation.

But who knows? I guess we'll find out.

Here

Here's evidence the teabaggers haven't a clue.

Here's an oopsie two-step on the stimulus, from Bush's head economist.

Here's another, from another right-wing economist.

Here's how two somewhat well-known governors got AAA credit ratings.

Here's anti-gay hypocrite number gazillion.

Here's relevant info for Michele Bachmann, who stands against raising the debt ceiling (and has no clue what the meaning of the debt ceiling is), and for the rest on her side who agree. And here's but a small (very small) collection of her... what shall we call them? ... lies.

Here's Rick Perry.

Here's a list.

Here's a humor piece that happens to be dead-on.

On What Planet?

How bizarre it is that a straw poll in an obscure town where, evidently, crazy is king (or queen), a person who amasses an astounding total of 4823 votes (crushing the next closest by an astonishing 152) is now the frontrunner of a formerly great party, forcing at least one opponent out of the race.

Not that I'll miss T-Paw (some will), who showed how much prostitution of oneself is now required by the teabaggers, who love crazy candidates as much as they hate facts. Mere moments before gracing Michele Bachmann with their imprimatur, they rushed like kids to an ice cream truck to gain sight of the mother of all crazy and brazen narcissism, mobbing Sarah Palin who just happened to show up in town in time to take the spotlight from Batshitwoman. (Just a coincidence, she purrs.)

What a pair. (I refer to the two women.)

How utterly sensible: after candidates spend more time and money per capita than they'll ever again, hanging out for weeks in a speck on the map, trying to get the attention of the aforementioned less-than-a-handful of voters, sufferers of ADHD, take a tiny poll among those least connected to reality, totaling fewer participants than show up to high-school football games in Perryland, and call it meaningful -- the will of the people. More than that: make it the basis on which the rest of the supplicants will be able to raise money. See ya, Timmy. Good luck, Thaddeus.

By definition, people in the thrall of Michele Bachmann, about whom the only question is whether her non-stop misrepresentations of fact are deliberate lies or simple stupidity, are not the sort who ought to have any say at all over the future of our country.

But there it is, and there it will ever be. Good luck, democracy.

Revealed

Highly believable:

New GOP Strategy Involves Reelecting Obama, Making His Life Even More Miserable

WASHINGTON—Calling a GOP victory in the 2012 presidential election antithetical to the party platform, top Republicans revealed a new long-term political strategy Tuesday: reelecting Barack Obama and making his life even more of a living hell than it already is.

"For three years, the Republican Party has coalesced around the single goal of making President Obama's every waking moment sheer and utter torture," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. "But we can't continue to do that if he's not in office."

"If we are going to make the president a haggard shell of a human being by the time he leaves the White House, we need four more years of never compromising, four more years of miring every piece of legislation in unnecessary procedural muck, four more years of pretending we want to work with the president and then walking away from the table at the last second," McConnell added. "Four more years! Four more years! Obama 2012!" ...

Checkup

Others can wade through the rest of the data and the methodology in the report. The salient charts are these:

[click on images to enlarge]

The first chart is about money spent on health care; the second is about results.

Well, at least we're number one in something. USA!! USA!! USA!!

As long as any attempts to fix the mess are characterized as killing grandma, we won't get very far. On the other hand, maybe teabaggers have shown us the way: as it is with tax cuts, which pay for themselves, all we need to do is stop paying so much for health care (I suggest continuing what's been done so far: stop paying doctors and hospitals altogether) and the problems will fix themselves.

D.O.A.

Well, so much for that idea. Not, of course, that it was unpredictable.

To the so-called Super Committee, Dems have appointed people known for commitment to negotiating; some of them, at least.* And Rs, because it's what they do, have appointed only people who've already signed the future-killing no-tax pledge.

Oh well.

________________________

*To those who buy into the outrage over Newsweek's cover picture of Michele Bachmann: check out the first of the above links.

No Doubt About It

Sometimes you can only gain perspective by imagining a flip-side. Thinking about teabaggers...

If they were liberals – Fox News would run headlines: “Liberals Hate America.” ...

These liberal obstructionists would be called terrorists. Not just maybe once in a private off the record meeting with the VP – but on the record and all the time. Since these liberal freshmen would seem to have the same economic goals for the U.S. as Osama bin Laden – that would be pointed out repeatedly. They’d be accused of treason. ... There would be calls to deport them...

If liberals were doing to their country what extremist tea party Republicans are doing to theirs – it would be called unpatriotic. A whole tsunami of sound bites would sweep the country calling for the sabotage to stop.

Liberal dissent is akin to a security breach but conservative economic calamity is given a pass. We’ve treated the tea party like they are our country’s kooky, graying, drunken uncle at Thanksgiving dinner spouting some non sequiturs he picked up on AM radio. When really they are well-funded economic saboteurs who refuse to participate in the democratic process. Their goal of causing the executive branch of government to fail means our entire country goes with it.

The media likes to pretend it treats the political spectrum as opposite equals. The right is the same as the left – the other side of the same argument. Politics is not symmetrical nor is the coverage of the partisans. Nothing makes this clearer than the coverage and tolerance of the brinksmanship-happy tea party.

If liberals did this to their own country they’d be called criminals. The tea party did do this to their own country and they are treated like avant-garde Civil War reenactors.

The Truth Is Out There

And, yes, Rachel's piece was from a while back. And, yesser than that, it didn't matter. In our political landscape since the advent of Fox "news" and RWS™ radio, truth no longer does.

Made His Mark

With the passing of Mark Hatfield -- governor of and then Senator from Oregon -- there are few if any remaining Republicans of the old school: thoughtful, moderate, a reacher across party lines. I only met him a couple of times, at my parents' house, I think. He recommended my dad, a Democrat, for a vacant federal judgeship on the Ninth Circuit, and LBJ made the nomination. Long story.

Oregon had a tradition of moderate Republicans. Tom McCall was a great governor, an environmentalist, who called the house one afternoon looking for my dad, and when I asked who was calling, said "It's the gov!!" I don't recall that his or Hatfield's party affiliation ever meant much in our home; just that they were good guys, smart, hard-working, and rational.

I miss those days. I really, really do.

Get Foxed

Here's a very good point, the perfect demonstration of what Fox "news" does, along with the people whose water it carries. (Or is it the other way around?) Anyway...

During the machinations leading to the debt ceiling/budget debacle, the Foxians and the rest of the RWS™ were claiming downgrading US credit could be a good thing. Bring it on. Wakeup call....

.... [C]onservative rhetoric only makes sense today if you ignore the conservative rhetoric from July. Throughout the Republicans’ debt-ceiling hostage strategy, a wide variety of prominent voices on the right downplayed the threat, not only of default, but also of a downgrade... Don’t worry about the consequences of the hostage plan, conservatives said, just focus on the ransom.

And yet, notice what happened after the downgrade actually occurred — suddenly the consequences the right “welcomed” are necessarily President Obama’s fault, reality notwithstanding.

Indeed, two weeks ago, Fox viewers were told downgrade might be a good thing. This morning, Fox viewers were told repeatedly that the downgrade the GOP caused is a tragedy that must be blamed on the White House.

There’s a good reason Fox viewers seem so confused so often.

Truly, it's no exaggeration to say that the smoking remnants of the Republican party, and their mouthpieces of the airwaves, and their leadership hopefuls have, with exuberance, taken leave of all pretense of reason. Clinging with bloody fingernails to discredited ideas, singularly focused on regaining and retaining power for themselves and those who've bought them, ignoring long-term consequences to the country they claim to love, they've shown willingness to say and do anything to bring down Obama, while stamping their feet to get their way.

One expects politicians to have a certain facility for fudging the truth. But simply ignoring it, willfully to mislead so blatantly, cynically to foist destruction on the public because they care only about their power and hewing evangelically to their already-failed ideology -- this is happening at a level heretofore unseen, far as I can tell.

I suppose we could hope the effects we're seeing might be a wake-up call to those of the teabagger mentality: they are, after all, the only ones who don't already know. But that would presume a connection between the world and what goes on inside their heads.

[As long as we're on the subject -- and what other subject can there be, really? -- I wish to hell President Obama, in yesterday's useless (except for acknowledging the troops that died) speech, would have finally stated the obvious: that the opposition party no longer has any credibility, that they've deliberately done everything they can to damage the economy so they can blame it on him, that they've long since abandoned the most fundamental principles of our democracy, that their ideas have been tried for the previous eight years and have failed; and it's time to face it and make a decision. If voters like what they've seen from Congress lately they should reelect all the teabaggRs therein. If they can peel the scales from their eyes and look to the future that stands before us as things now stand, and if they find that alarming, then they must -- to save the country -- make it clear by dis-electing these teabaggers of terror in favor of people willing to address our problems sensibly and cooperatively.

How much worse could it get if he did? How much more intransigent could Rs become? Would Rush Limbaugh reach back and find even a higher level of hateful vitriol? Is that even possible?]

Self-Inflicted

Words are cheap. In the case of teabaggRs, they not only have no value; they have no meaning. As they continue to blame President Obama for everything that's happened since they got their way (think about it: they got, in the words of John Boehner, "98%" of what they wanted in the budget catastrophe, prior to which they blocked pretty much everything else Obama has tried to do), it's as obvious as a forest fire what's happened, and Fareed Zakaria says it well:

We've downgraded ourselves. We've demonstrated to ourselves, the world, to global markets that our political system is broken and that we are incapable of implementing sensible public policy.

...What the deal does is once again kick tough choices down the road, this time to a Congressional supercommission that will have to come up with a larger plan to reduce our debt. And it does nothing to spur growth, and, without growth, the debt and the deficit will expand well above current projections.

... Democrats now feel they need to mirror the Tea Party's tactics because they worked and they are becoming unyielding on any cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare. Republicans, emboldened by the success of their bullying, have closed ranks more solidly around a no-tax agenda... More than two years into the Obama administration, hundreds of key positions in government remain vacant for lack of Senate confirmation. The Treasury Department, for example, had to handle the global financial crisis, recession, bank stress tests, the automaker bailouts, as well as its usual duties with about a dozen of its senior positions, almost its entire top management, vacant, nobody in there.

Senate rules have been used, abused and twisted to allow constant delay and blockage. The filibuster, which was historically employed about once a decade, is now a routine procedure that allows the minority to thwart the will of the majority. In 2009, Senate Republicans filibustered a stunning 80 percent of major legislation. ...

Is that how a democracy should function?

No, it's not. It can't. And what's happening now is exactly what I and others have predicted: TeabaggRs, having successfully and deliberately seen to it that the economy cannot recover, having sabotaged their country as a game plan, are now blaming Obama for the very results they produced.

Of that, there's no question. The only question is whether even this current calamity is enough to wake up the teabagging idiots and those who enable them. My guess? No fricking way.

And That's The Way It Is

Poor Standards

I guess no one should be surprised that, as all of the R candidates for president have agreed the S&P downgrade of the US credit rating must be Obama's fault (even if they're not sure why), it's evident that they either haven't read the report, or simply ignored it. On the other hand, maybe we should excuse them: No one in the media seems to have read it, either.

Have you seen, anywhere, in any media, or even heard reported or repeated on NPR, the following sentence? “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”

It’s right there on Page 4 of the official Standard & Poors “Research Update” – the actual report on what they did and why – published on August 5th as the explanation for why they believe Congress – and even the Gang of Twelve – will be unable to actually deal with the US debt crisis. [Preceding emphases mine, naturally.]

Now S&P isn't exactly riding a wave of credibility lately, and I'm not arguing about the rightness or lack thereof of their decision. They said what they said, did what they did, correct or not. But as teabaggRs line up behind the report and squeak their scorn at Obama over it, you'd think their arguments would have at least a passing connection to the actual stated reasons for the downgrade. Those reasons aren't really subject to interpretation, and it doesn't seem too much to ask that pretenders to leadership of a formerly semi-credible party (not to mention our whole country) would deal with it.

In a world, that is, where their party had even the most minimal grasp of or concern for fact. That world, tragically, has long since disappeared from the Universe.

But it's even worse than all that. The tactics used by Congressional Republicans, with nary a one of them objecting, have made it clear to the world that the US is no longer governable. When a major political party has resorted, as its main political modus operandi, to the threat of drowning the baby in the bathwater in order to get its way, there's nothing left of good governance, and no reason to hope for its return anytime soon. [Need proof: teabaggers are actually happy about the damage they've done!]

Real Or Fake?

Fake News:

Obama Turns 50 Despite Republican Opposition

August 4, 2011 | ISSUE 47•31

WASHINGTON—After months of heated negotiations and failed attempts to achieve any kind of consensus, President Obama turned 50 years old Thursday, drawing strong criticism from Republicans in Congress. "With the host of problems this country is currently facing, the fact that our president is devoting time to the human process of aging is an affront to Americans everywhere," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who advocated a provision to keep Obama 49 at least through the fall of 2013. "To move forward unilaterally and simply begin the next year of his life without bipartisan support—is that any way to lead a country?" According to White House officials, Obama attempted to work with Republicans right up until the Aug. 4 deadline, but was ultimately left with no choice except to turn a year older.

Real News: (Well, "real" in the sense that Fox actually said it.)

Fox Nation Calls Obama Birthday Party 'Hip-Hop BBQ'

President Obama held a lavish, star-studded 50th birthday party for himself at the White House on Thursday.

Politico compiled an exhaustive list of some of the many people who showed up, including:

Al Sharpton, Patrick Gaspard, UBS Investment Bank President Robert Wolf, FCC Chair Julius Genachowski, Leader Nancy and Paul Pelosi, Secretary Tim Geithner, Secretary Arne Duncan, U.S. Trade Rep. Ron Kirk, Secretary Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Rep./DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, former Virginia Gov. and DNC Chair Tim Kaine, Anita Dunn and Bob Bauer, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, David Plouffe, Valerie Jarrett, Michael Strautmanis, Pete Rouse, Bill Daley, Deputy Chief of Staff Alyssa Mastromonaco, Denis McDonough, John Brennan, Rahm Emanuel, Tina Tchen, White House chef Sam Kass, Julianna Smoot, Marty Nesbitt, Eric Whitaker, Linda Douglass, and many more.

Celebrities like Jay-Z, Tom Hanks, Hill Harper, Stevie Wonder and Charles Barkley also showed up. It was your usual fancy White House 'do.

But that's not how Fox Nation—the weird aggregating cousin of Fox News—sees the affair! To them, the whole thing had a different flavor. Say what you will—Fox Nation knows how to keep things unique. We also love the url for the item:
http://nation.foxnews.com/president-obama/2011/08/05/obama-parties-chris-rock-jay-z-and-whoopi-while-rome-burns