Mongers, Denied

So, just to be sure I understand: if, by some means, we are able to accomplish the goal of ridding Syria of its chemical weapons without the need to drop bombs, with the attendant collateral killing of innocents, that's a humiliation. HUMILIATING, I tell you!!

If Vladimir Putin, whose hypocritical column in the NYT has the crazies going crazy, gets some credit, brought into the mix by whatever means (which, horror, might even include deliberate and on-going behind the scenes negotiating by Obama), that somehow instantly erases the obvious imbalance between our two countries in terms of economic and military strength and of round-the-world credibility? Just because Putin can, with a straight face, lecture us about equality and democracy while demonstrating the opposite in terms of gay rights, free press, political protest, it means he'll be taken seriously as a standard of decency?

Gimme a break! This Syria episode has been a circus in all ways from all sides; but the obvious disappointment among wingnuts that we didn't (so far) get to bomb another bunch of Muslims may be the most instructive of all. Their certainty in American "exceptionalism," whatever that is, is so ephemeral that it melts like a gallium spoon if we can't put on a war once in a while, or if we don't act unilaterally like bullies around the planet. Because it's worked out so well whenever we have. If this is patriotism, then it's weak tea, indeed. If their only measure of strength is in kilotons, if their only view of America's strength is borne of military might, then they don't have a clue of what this country is (or has been, anyway) and don't deserve a seat at the table. Especially if food is served.

What a pathetic bunch of insecure losers today's "conservatives" have become. Walk stupidly and carry a big dick. (To make up for their small ones, one must assume. Not that I've ever seen one.)

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Sunday Column

My latest column in our local newspaper. Sort of a pre-swan song.

A recent letter writer has a point: I’m no Charles Krauthammer. Ever since I started doing this column thing, I’ve asked myself why, and who am I to be doing it? Krauthammer, despite his hyper-partisanship and blinding contempt for our president, has a national forum and a Pulitzer. Me, I’m just some guy who reads too much, thinks too much, and gets upset. 

I’d argue the writer misses an important point, though: he’s correct when he says I’m, shall we say, unkind to today’s Republicans. But he overlooks the “today’s” part. If there’s been a consistent message in my writing, it’s lamenting the insanity that’s officially overtaken that party, nationally. As many ways as I can, I’ve said we need two opposing parties to make our democracy work. But when one has gone galloping over the edge, electing people like Bachmann, Gohmert, Braun, and so many others, science-rejectionists all, spinners of conspiracies, uncaring obstructers who offer no alternatives except defunding everything our future requires, well, there’s a problem. And Sarah Palin! Proudly simplistic, hard work averse, slogan-slinging and hypocritical self-promoter. Still considered credible. Seriously? 

So I’ve cried out. Clearly, though, the message doesn’t get through. Maybe it’s because I lack persuasive eloquence; or maybe it’s because of the insanity itself: the writer says Krauthammer calls the facts “as he sees them.” That, in a nutshell, is the problem. I state the facts as they are. Then offer my opinion. There’s a difference. 

I’ll argue until my last breath that there’s no comparison between our current political parties in terms of seriousness, of trying to do what’s most right for the most people. Among Democrats there’s no equivalent to Louis Gohmert, who just said he thinks liberals might be trying to “cull the population” using vaccines. That’s insanity of galactic proportions: if his words were fog, there’d be thousand-car pileups on interstates across the land. I mean, vaccines have wiped out polio and smallpox, right? Worst culling ever. Republicans elected that guy; his wild-eyed pronouncements are countenanced by his peers, and greeted with enthusiasm by his voters, who’ll surely reelect him. We’ve always had raving lunatics, and always will. But how is it that one party’s solution is to send them all to Congress? When has one party so unwaveringly refused to rise above petty politics? 

Absent Democrats, nothing George Bush proposed would have become law. Literally nothing. TARP, No Child Left Behind, Medicare part D, the awful authorization to invade Iraq. Without Democrats, the flaws in NCLB and Medicare part D would have been left to fester; instead, they joined the battle to help fix them. It’s how good stuff happens. Compare and contrast: The Affordable Care Act. Balancing the budget. 

I wish today’s Republicans would come to their senses and engage the process with sincerity, because actual conservative ideas, long since abandoned by the people in control of their party today, need to be part of the mix. Snohomish County hasn’t elected Gohmert/Bachmann equivalents. Yet. Maybe we have enough thoughtful voters that if they were to speak out and not reflexively defend the indefensible, it could help bring our political process back to workable. I’m not optimistic. 

But here’s the real point of today’s column: I’m gonna bag it. I agree with that writer: I have no business doing this, even though the facts are on my side. Maybe if I weren’t so troubled by comparing today’s decidedly not conservative party to what once was, I could write with less exasperation. But, so help me, I can’t help it. I might have a grandkid one day, and I’d like her to be born into a world where there’s hope. But today’s Republican party, with its denial of science, its attacks on public education, its hidebound refusal to spend money where it’s needed for our posterity, makes me think there is none, and won’t ever be. 

I could write more about our community, I guess; but the fact is, I’m not concerned about it: our worst local Republican is better than the best national one. (Admittedly a low bar.) Washington will hang in, until Congressional Republicans ruin everything for everyone. 

It isn’t the criticism. That’s been the fun part. One writer said I brought his fish back to life when he wrapped it with my column. Great line! But I agree: I’m not the one to be producing a column like this. I have three more pieces I’ve already written. After that, as they say in the business: -30-

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Pedophilia For God's Sake

How many instances does it take to make a pattern? Why is it that those who rail most loudly against whatever particular sin they rail against most loudly are most likely to be committers thereof? At what point might people who prefer religion decide to do their praying and communing with their gods away from the hallowed halls where roam the pedophiles and hypocrites? "Youth pastor." Based on countless episodes, there oughta be a special term for it, similar to "oxymoron." Something like "immiscible," maybe. Take a pastor, definitionally suspect for reaction-formation anyway, put him with yoots, as Joe Peschi so famously called them, and what do you get?

... have you heard of the Iowa youth pastor who is walking free after confessing to raping boys to “cure” them of homosexuality? 

Well, that’s precisely what happened in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Brent Girouex, 31, was arrested on 60 counts of suspicion of sexual exploitation by a counselor or therapist... 

... Girouex told detectives that his actions were meant to “help with homosexual urges by praying while he had sexual contact with [them]” in order to keep them “sexually pure” for God. He then allegedly told police that “when they would ejaculate, they would be getting rid of the evil thoughts in their mind.”  (ed note: haven't had an evil thought in years.)

Victims say Girouex took them to his own home to violate them. It’s the same home Girouex’s wife and four children resided in. 

... The judge in the case sentenced Girouex to 17 years in prison last week, and then immediately suspended the sentence in favor of sex offender treatment and five years probation. All Girouex has to do is avoid violating his probation and he’ll NEVER spend a single minute in a prison cell.

And why not? After all, it's not as if he harmed anyone. And we all know how well sex-offender treatment works. Sounds like a thoughtful, god-fearing judge.

The louder a religionist rails, the further away you should run.

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Mindblown

At least they're making it easy to see: there's no longer even a pretense that Rs are about anything but rejecting whatever Obama is for, even if it's what they were demanding of him before he was for it. The Republican Party has completely abandoned seriousness, wholly endorsed assholery as modus operandi. I guess they're confident that their voters are like-minded: if Obama is for it, we're agin' it. No need for policy; and certainly not for coherence:

Brian Beutler raised a good point today. 

When the full story of the Obama administration's clumsy involvement in, and (possible) disengagement with, Syria is told, we'll have a clearer sense of whether it was bungled all the way, or whether a diplomatic resolution was actually the product of a credible military threat and clever negotiating. Or maybe a bit of both. 

But whoever tells that story should reserve a footnote for the handful of politicians and public figures who did a complete about-face from opposing President Obama's proposed military strikes to mocking -- and even rooting against -- an unexpected diplomatic alternative. 

If you took both of those positions you have some 'splainin' to do. 

Karl Rove offers a helpful example, having insisted a few weeks ago that Obama go to Congress because lawmakers would obviously approve a resolution to use force, only to then condemn Obama for having gone to Congress because there's no way lawmakers will approve a resolution to use force. 

But Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) has been even more brazen. He demanded that the president answer his questions about Syria and then asked no questions when he met with the president; he supported military strikes until Obama endorsed the same idea; and as Brian noted, Cornyn is now questioning the value of a possible diplomatic solution. 

In other words, the #2 Republican in the Senate is, quite literally, against whatever President Obama is for -- even when the president changes course.

In a democracy that, heretofore, has succeeded because of the good that comes from serious conversations between people with differing approaches, one can only conclude the obvious: we're screwed. The Republican Party is no longer a serious player; and those that mindlessly support it are doing so, either blindly or willingly, with total disregard for addressing issues seriously. Having that black guy in that white house has, I must conclude, simply blown their minds. I can't think of anything else at this point. Because from the point of view of logic, of politics, of history, of humanity, it simply makes no sense in any other context.

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And With That, It's Over

So the NRA succeeded in recalling, in Colorado, home of the Aurora mass murder, two Democratic state legislators who voted for (puny) gun restrictions. And that's that. Or, as Charles Pierce says:

... A few feet away stood Steven Martin, 53, a recall supporter with a Beretta handgun holstered on his hip. "It's a deterrent," he said. "I love my country." 

A gun. Outside a polling place. I knew I missed something not growing up in Argentina. 

Guns have won. Period. The people who make them have won. The people who sell them have won. The people who want to use them to shoot up elementary schools have won. Iowa's arming the blind. The NRA's fighting state laws to reduce the amount of lead in the bullets used for hunting because there's evidence that the lead in abandoned carcasses is leaching into the environment, and lead does very bad things to the body. We have decided to be an armed nation. And the next time some lunatic opens fire in a movie theater, it really would be nice if we could dispense with the maudlin national mourning pageants on cable-TV and admit that these are the kind of things with which we have chosen to live. It at least would be honest.

So we've gone from "a well-regulated militia" to everyone packing, everywhere. And any politician foolish enough to think that trying to moderate that in order to lower the incidences of mass killings or, as is a practically every-day occurrence nowadays, little kids blowing themselves away because their idiot parents left loaded guns around, is toast.

Okay, then. Exceptional America, the only "civilized" country that has made gunplay part of daily life, accepts the fallout as simply the price of doing business. If it's sort of inexplicable, if there's no reality-based reason for it, we now know for sure: it ain't gonna change. So, let's live with it. And, hopefully, not die from it. Case closed.
 
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"Hypocrisy" Starts With "F"

Just in case there's anyone out there who still thinks Fox "news" is something other than a propaganda network (actually, there are tens of millions) whose sole mission is to bring down President Obama no matter what he says or doesn't, no matter what he does or doesn't, note what they were claiming after Obama's speech on Syria. Awash in people saying the same thing, the message was that, in finding a diplomatic approach which involved Russia, the US had been "humiliated."

Then consider what, months before the president actually did it, Fox president Roger Ailes said he'd have done:

In Zev Chafets’ 2012 book Roger Ailes Off Camera the president of Fox News is quoted saying if if he was in the Oval Office he would “open a new front” in Syria, and that he’d use use flattery and the promise of international prestige to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to join the intervention.

From Ailes’ comments in the book:

“Putin is angry. He thinks the United States doesn’t take him seriously or treat Russia as a major player. Okay, fine, that’s how he feels. If I were president, I’d get in a room with him and say, ‘Look at the slaughter going on in Syria. You can stop it. Do it, and I’ll see to it that you can get all the credit. I’ll tell the world it was you who saved the innocent children of Syria from slaughter. You’ll be an international hero. You’ll go down in history.’ Hell, Putin would go to bed thinking, ‘That’s not a bad offer.’ There will still be plenty of other issues I’d have with Russia. But instead of looking for one huge deal that settles everything, you take a piece of the problem and solve it. Give an incentive for good behavior. Show the other guy his self-interest. Everybody has an ego. Everybody needs dignity. And what does it cost? You get what you want you give up nothing.”

Let us await, breath abated, for the interview with Ailes the Foxies will surely produce, shall we?

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Off To See The Wizard

[Full cartoon here.]

Black NRA

Genius

Former favored commenter Frank Drackman, with whom (some may be surprised to know) I've been carrying on a regular email conversation for many months, has generously come up with a solution for the Syria problem. I cut and paste directly:

And I have a Terrrrrrrrrr-if-ick(HT Tony The Tiger) way for EICSSRLDOTUS(Evolver in Chief Skeet Shooting Red Line Drawing OTUS) to come out of this thang a Hero.

       Get this(Whispering)

Parachute the 82 and 101st Airborne Divisions, Amphibious Land the 1st, 2d, 3rd, and 4th(Marine Unit Numbering is so much simpler) onto Syria's Coast(They have one! I checked), Infiltrate Seal Teams, Launch Tom Cruise Missiles, and the Air Force can do what they do best,

Fly Really Fast, Low, and Loud,

butttttttttttttttttttttttt

everybody wears "Sneakers" not "Boots" so technically, there won't be any "Boots on the Ground" maybe 400,000 pairs of Sneakers, but No boots.

Frank

Brilliant. I told him he should call the White House and leave a message.

For the sake of the community, it almost makes me want to revive commenting here. Almost.

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By Any Other Name

Full cartoon here.

He's Right, Sadly

Karl Rove, near the top of the list of people responsible for the carnage of the past decades and for the descent into paralysis of our political system, says it's "Amateur hour at the White House."

Goddammit. He's absolutely right.

I think Barack Obama is a smart guy. I have to assume he has smart advisers, and that he gets advice from all points of view. John Kerry? Not so sure. But he's not dumb. So what explains the embarrassing and incomprehensible way they've managed the Syria issue? Has it evolved from the "red line" comment? An unprepared answer to an unexpected question?

The latest: Obama says we don't have evidence "beyond a reasonable doubt" that Assad used chemical weapons. And Kerry says a strike will be "unbelievably small." Like what? Someone sneaks into Assad's garage and sets off a firecracker? (Fuller context here.)

It seems pretty clear at this point that, if he ever once did, Mr Obama no longer wants to strike Syria; and he's handing Congress all the reasons they need to say no. But why the hell didn't he just say so way back when? Even after the "red line" comment, if he thought better of it, he could have been honest about it. This has become painful, on many levels.

"We don't know for sure if gas was used, and if it was, by whom. If we've learned anything in these past few years it's that intervening in civil wars in tribally and religiously divided countries is a fool's errand, no matter at what level we go in. And, maybe most importantly of all, even if we think we know who the good guys are, even if John McCain guarantees it, we really don't."

I put that in quotes because I wish our president would have said it. He still could. The whole thing is a mess, a tragedy, over there and at home. People are dying, and there's not a hell of a lot, except aiding the refugees, that we can do about it.

That's bad enough. But it might be even worse, in terms of here at home, that Obama has botched this so badly. The "I told you so's" will slop over into everything else he's done, most of which is pretty good, and all of which is better than what his opponents, then and now, would have done.

Shit.

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How It Should Work

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I can't find video of the entire speech, but there's a partial summary here. What he says above, though, is so obvious that only a teabaggR could fail to recognize it.

And they should know, based on the disastrous start of Bush's Medicare Part D. The contrast between the dishonesty and hypocrisy of what Rs are doing to Obamacare, and what Ds did to rescue Bush's program, couldn't be more stark.

Meanwhile, evidence accumulates that one of the main R talking points, skyrocketing premiums, is (brace yourself) false:

The expected monthly premium for a 40-year-old adult purchasing a silver-level plan (the baseline, which covers 70 percent of costs) on a marketplace had been $320, according to previous projections from the Congressional Budget Office. But in 15 of the 18 regions studied by Kaiser, the average premium will be below that — thus the study’s conclusion that the prices are going to be lower than anticipated. 

“While premiums will vary significantly across the country, they are generally lower than expected,” the authors wrote. 

The study does not compare marketplace premiums with current prices in the individual insurance market. Instead, that conclusion is based on how released prices are comparing to previous projections for coverage costs under Obamacare. It follows a report last week by RAND, which suggested that claims of premium increases had been overstated. 

If Kaiser’s estimates bear out, it could be a big blow to one of the main conservative talking points against the Affordable Care Act: rate shock. Everybody from House Republicans to think tank types like the Manhattan Institute’s Avik Roy and the Heritage Foundation have been warning that consumers would see skyrocketing prices under the law.

No matter how it shakes out, clearly -- unless you think our health care system was just peachy as it was -- the best and most helpful (Rs can look up the word) approach is to address issues as they arise, and fix them. Because it's better than anything else anyone has suggested (and when it comes to Rs, that means no suggestions); and, as someone recently said, it's a decent place holder until the right system, of necessity (i.e. single payer), comes along.

Sunday Thoughts

There. That wasn't so hard, was it?

[They have a website, too.]

Sunday Column

Here's the latest iteration of my Sunday column in our local newspaper. Small potatoes, compared to the other issues at hand, but what the hell.

I went to a small college. Now coed and doubled in size, at that time it was all men, and totaled a thousand students. We played Division III sports, and weren’t terrible in any of them. For four years I played rugby (a club sport), discovering it after my first and only year playing football there. 

The school has produced a couple of pro athletes, but for the most part sports were viewed as a way – a darn good way -- to enhance the educational experience. Most guys played some sport or other, if only intramural; but there were no athletic scholarships, no courses designed for jocks, equally high academic standards for all. Those who played varsity sports (even football!) took the same classes as everyone else and, in fact, were typically in the upper ranks of scholars. And they were my friends, so, as opposed to bigger schools where prime beef athletes are separate and unequal, rooting for them was personal. They went on to every occupation imaginable, including professors, clergy, contractors, soldiers, astronauts (a classmate fixed Hubble!), lawyers, and the occasional physician. 

As it frequently is, the NCAA has been back in the bad news, with silly sanctions and pretenses of maintaining standards while claiming some imaginary level of integrity. I enjoy watching Division I college sports, especially basketball and football, but I don’t kid myself that I’m looking at what their coaches cynically refer to as “student athletes.” Those kids, on the men’s side anyway, and in the top divisions for sure, aren’t there to become educated, except by accident or by virtue of uncommon desire and effort. They’re there to make money for the schools, and they do. Lots of it. (Exhibit A: Husky Stadium. Exhibit B: that enormous Duck palace, fully funded by fancy shoes, granted; but a mammoth monetary monument to skewed priorities.) So why not cut the cozenage and give players their due? 

Division I schools should be honest with themselves, their alumni, and, most importantly, their money-sport athletes. “You’re here to play ball,” they should tell them. “If you want an education, we’ll do what we can to facilitate that. But if you only want to play your sport, sign a few balls, that’s cool, too. You get free room and board, a monthly stipend of (market price), and all you have to do is play the game and avoid being convicted of too many misdemeanors, no more than a couple of felonies.” Because at that level, sports are not about scholarship. With its recruiting violations, academic scandals, abusive coaches (recently defended, testosteronically, by Fox “news”), double standards for athletes, cover-ups, wrist-slaps and posturing, the NCAA is an unfunny joke. Get rid of the phony academic rules, and make it a junior professional sport: pay ‘em the going rate, expect a certain level of performance, separate it entirely from the halls of academe, which it already is, except in name: a revenue stream, period. Would alumni care? 

For the kids who don’t make it into professional sports, it’s the worst of all possible worlds: studies were a pretense, designed to skate through meaningless requirements, leaving them with nothing gained from their time at school. So how about this for a fair deal: play ball for us, do your best, and if you don’t make it as a pro athlete, come back and we’ll give you that education, on the house. Don’t let one distract from the other. First time around, their job is financial fodder, glorified fundraisers, conduits for considerable cash into collegiate coffers. If and when they’re ready, they can be students; they earned it. 

We’ve got way bigger problems in this country than cleaning up the corruption of the NCAA. It doesn’t keep me awake the way regressive Tea Party obstructionism and coldhearted economic amnesia in Congress do (and now, Syria). Maybe it’s that it’s a symbol – and, unlike the bigger stuff, an easily fixable one – of the larger issues of our society. Like so many others of our citizens, so-called student athletes are being hoodwinked (with too-perfect symmetry, as Fox “news” cheerleads) by a small number of avaricious and powerful people into thinking they’re acting in their own best interest, when, in fact, they’re doing the opposite. Sure, the really gifted ones will likely become millionaires. But the majority, who won’t, will realize only after it’s too late that they signed on to the wrong priorities, and ended up with nothing to show for it. It’s muscle-bound political metaphor.  

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Strong Words

I saw some of John Kerry's testimony regarding Syria, and the most striking thing to me was the obvious discomfort (to say the least) evidenced by General Dempsey, the Joint Chiefs Chairman. At one point, Kerry asked him if he'd like to field a particular question, and he said, "Not really, Mr Secretary." It's pretty evident that the military isn't on board with President Obama's plans (if that's the word). In that regard, this opinion piece in the WaPo the other day, is pretty tough stuff, and hard to read; harder to fault:

A war the Pentagon doesn’t want 

By Robert H. Scales, Published: September 5 

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army major general, is a former commandant of the U.S. Army War College. 

The tapes tell the tale. Go back and look at images of our nation’s most senior soldier, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and his body language during Tuesday’s Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on Syria. It’s pretty obvious that Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, doesn’t want this war... 

Dempsey’s unspoken words reflect the opinions of most serving military leaders. By no means do I profess to speak on behalf of all of our men and women in uniform. But I can justifiably share the sentiments of those inside the Pentagon and elsewhere who write the plans and develop strategies for fighting our wars. ... 

They are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. ... 

... They are outraged by the fact that what may happen is an act of war and a willingness to risk American lives to make up for a slip of the tongue about “red lines.” ... 

Our people lament our loneliness. Our senior soldiers take pride in their past commitments to fight alongside allies and within coalitions that shared our strategic goals. This war, however, will be ours alone... 

Soon the military will salute respectfully and loose the hell of hundreds of cruise missiles in an effort that will, inevitably, kill a few of those we wish to protect. They will do it with all the professionalism and skill we expect from the world’s most proficient military. I wish Kerry would take a moment to look at the images from this week’s hearings before we go to war again.

There's much more in the article. Worth reading.

I can't defend Obama in this, really, and have said so. But I'll say this much: as Congressional Rs line up to vote against war, showing their desire to stick it to Obama in all things supercedes their desire to be tough guys, here's a solid bet -- had President Obama announced he doesn't plan to do anything, those same Rs voting "no" would be screaming to the heavens that Obama is weak and giving comfort to our enemies.

Badly mishandling it he may be, but I think he's honestly trying to thread an impossible needle; while Rs are simply, and as usual, playing whatever game they think will hurt the president the most, irrespective of what's right. Which, in this case, is impossible to know.

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