Revelatory

Interesting, isn't it, that in Georgia's new "guns anywhere and everywhere" law, which allows them in bars, churches, schools, and most government buildings, the one exception is the state capitol where those who wrote the law work.

I wonder what their explanation is. I wonder how whatever rationalization they offer applies only to them. And I can't think of any answer that doesn't pretty much make the insanity of the law self-evident, and show those lawmakers to be the worst sort of hypocrites.

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Speaking Of Supreme Court Activism...

According to the article from which the above is taken, both sides do it. But, clearly, those right wing, lying, activist, "Originalists" do it more: rationalize their rulings to fit their personal leanings. The current crop of self-righteous "referees, calling balls and strikes," as John "I'll do as I do, not as I say" Roberts would have us believe, are by far the worst offenders. Is anyone surprised?

Like the politicians and oligarchs whose interests they represent, the last thing on their mind is following the law as originally intended, or concern for the welfare of anyone but themselves and those with whom they agree.

[And then there's guys like this, who make the S.C. judges seem like Solomon. (Although I'd bet what's left of my left nut that Scalia and the rest of the fanatical four agree with him entirely.)]

Supreme Stupidity

This is the kind of shit that drives me crazy:

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said “ceremonial prayer is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts far beyond that authority of government to alter or define.” (Italics mine.)

He's talking about the decision to allow prayer at government meetings. And it's not the prayer, per se, that bugs me so, although it most certainly does. It's that sort of rationalization, posing as judicial review. Posing as impartial interpretation of the Constitution. It's clearly true that "many Americans deem..." yada yada. But in what way does that justify nullifying separation? Why is that argument, so often made by so many, deserving of deference by the highest court in the land? And isn't the fact that it's "many" but not "all" Americans that so believe the exact point of the First Amendment, and the very reason why his argument makes no sense? Jesus Christ on a waffle! The highest court in the land. Give me a break!!

I've long since thrown in the mental towel: this country is headed, inevitably, toward theocracy; and it's because people have, in effect, thrown in their mental towels, too. They've given up trying. The problems we face are too big, too hard, too complex for a dumbed-down nation of deniers. How much easier to resort to magical beliefs and pretense. Let's just pray it away. And if that doesn't work, at least we prayed, right, so we should be good when we arrive at the gates. Right?

And I've long since recognized that our so-called "originalists" on the Court are anything but. Following their usual game plan in all matters, rightists complain about liberal "judicial activism" as a way to disguise their own far more outrageous transgressions.

I grew up in a family of lawyers and judges. My dad was everyone's idea of what a judge ought to be: a follower of the law, even when he disagreed with it. A believer that it's not up to judges to change the law; that that's the job of legislators.

When our Supreme Court predictably splits along 5-4 lines on nearly every major decision, it becomes clear there's no such thing as fixed intent of the Constitution. Judicial activism has become SOP for the right, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Using the sort of justification that Kennedy did in this opinion is a travesty.

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Sunday Sermon

Missed this one when it played. It ain't no unhit headless nail.

Bundamentalism

I'd hope that most sentient beings can agree that, regardless of what they might think of the Cliven Bundy Foxaganza, and of the people flocking to support him, with guns, threats, and illegal checkpoints on public roads, the term "patriot" applies to them like "gasoline" applies to "fire suppressant." Let's agree on that much. A guy who denies the legitimacy of the US government ain't no patriot, even if he, without irony, horses around like John Wayne, flying the US flag. People threatening US Senators with physical harm ain't no patriots. Armed jagoffs stopping citizens on public roads and demanding ID ain't patriots. That they think they are only underscores the insanity of it all.

So if we might agree on that much, the question remains: what, exactly, are they? Delusional, without doubt. Missing the "at least be consistent" gene, undeniably. But what sort of people do what they're doing? What are they thinking?

Clearly, they're heroes to themselves. Lying behind concrete with their rifles at the ready, all aimed and trusty, it must be uncomfortable on their bellies with their presumed hards-on (although we might suppose that those same guns might be a reaction to a certain, uh, anatomic inadequacy, so I could be wrong about the pain.) Tough, and safe. Fearless, with nothing to fear. Without fear of having to prove it, they claim willingness to die for whatever cause it is they think they're there for: the rights of people to pick and choose which laws to follow. The right to ignore judicial rulings at will, in direct violation of the most fundamental basis at the very heart of the constitutional democracy for which they proclaim dying love, despite understanding it not one bit.

Do they really wish to become martyrs? Are they hoping for a shooting confrontation with US troops? Guys who reportedly planned to use the wimmenfolk as human shields? Kinda doubt it. And what, we must wonder, do they see as the ultimate outcome of such an event? Public outcry leading to revolution? Of what sort? To achieve what kind of government? What's the philosophical basis of it, and the historical reasons to believe it'd be workable? Or is it just about playing doctor and going home for dinner?

More than that, though, at what point should the US government begin to consider these guys more than laughable? How many people setting up how many roadblocks should it take before direct action ought to be taken? It's not an easy call. In fact, given the evangelicaliztion of the military and the undisguised hatred of our president among many of its leaders, ought one to consider the possibility of refusal of orders to intervene?

Seriously. The one thing the crazies have going for them is that Obama isn't crazy. They must be pretty sure they can huff and puff with no consequences. After all, it's not like they're Kent State students peacefully protesting a war. They're patriots. Other than its laws and the system by which they get put in place, and the document on which the process is based, and more than half the people that live in it, they loves them some America.

I have no answers to the preceding questions. But I think it's about more than the specifics of Bundy and those misguided (generously) militiamen. I'm torn between laughing and crying, between thinking it's a meaningless aberration with no long term consequences, and seeing it as a sign of the coming politiclypse, cheered on by Fox "news" and right-wing screamers who have no idea of the damage they're doing, nor ability to see beyond their primordial midbrain reaction to Barack Hussein Obama, to the undemocratic and unAmerican contradictions at the center of their positions.

Potentially, these self-described protectors of America -- the many people like them and supportive of them, anyway -- are the ones who'll finally, and irreversibly, bring it all down.

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More Reasons To Hate

The stuff in the previous post is, of course, small potatoes. Unless it works, and gets a Republican senate majority. This stuff, about which I've railed for mostly ever and which, as usual, Charles P Pierce does much better than me, is big and starchy, though:

Of all the examples of conservatives and their vandalism that we've seen since the inauguration of the Kenyan Usurper, their performance on infrastructure repair is the most delicate mixture of negligence and hypocrisy that they yet have produced. Everybody in Congress knows that the country is falling apart. Hell, everybody who drives knows the country is falling apart. (There have been landslides in Baltimore and in Yonkers over the last few days because it rained really hard.) Everybody in Washington knows that a massive infrastructure improvement program would stimulate the economy and provide thousands of jobs. And to talk about repairing our existing infrastructure is not even to mention the necessity of improving that infrastructure to cope with the continuing challenges presented by the Great Climate Change Hoax, which adds a soupcon of anti-intellectualism to the steaming cauldron of Stupid. Consequently, everybody in Washington knows the bill is going nowhere, so nobody pays attention to it, and the actual problem thereby gets shoved under the rug again until a sinkhole in Council Bluffs swallows a busload of nuns.

The last thing Congressional Rs want is economic recovery, because Obama. Screw us all. It's not about us or our future; it's about them, and their present(s). The second to last thing they want is to raise the revenue to pay for anything; and the first thing they do want is lower taxes on themselves and their rich friends and corporate sponsors, at the expense of everything everyone besides them needs.

Is there a word stronger than "hate"?

If so, might it also apply to the Congressional R view of everyone outside their inner circle?

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Your Leaders At Work

Hate is a strong word, but I'm really starting to that word these guys: 

Republican strategists say the more dramatic moments in the hearings, where Burwell will face a litany of tough questions from Republican lawmakers, could yield rich material for television ads and social media campaigns. 

"Ultimately, it may be Republicans' only opportunity, certainly before the end of the summer and maybe before the election, to have a senior administration official available to answer these questions," said Lanhee Chen, who advised Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on domestic policy during the 2012 campaign. 

One Republican aim is to trip up the 48-year-old White House budget director and force embarrassing slip under the glare of the televised proceedings.
"One gaffe and they lose the news cycle," a Republican Party strategist said.

They're talking about upcoming confirmation hearings for our president's nominee to run HHS. Not interested, are they, in the job at hand. Or in providing useful alternatives or improvements to the Affordable Care Act. Only lying, they are, and attempting to score political points, caring not at all about the health of the nation. Which, of course, describes in full the entirely of Republican legislative efforts at the national level. (Local level: something else altogether, where they're deadly serious about destroying democracy by voter suppression, public education destruction, health care denial, and theocratization.) Yeah, sure, just business as usual. What's new? Nothing. And it never will be.

News cycle. Of such concerns is great work born.

Yes, yes, I can hear you, when I use the word "hate." You're asking, "What took you so long?"

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Interpretations, interpretations

(It's remotely possible that some might find the above video mildly offensive, despite its undeniable relevance to the issue at hand.)

This is interesting. The United Church of Christ is suing North Carolina over its same-sex marriage ban, claiming that it suppresses freedom of religion. As a church, they choose to perform same-sex marriages, and the law prevents their exercise of that religious pursuit. Seems like a legit argument.

Meanwhile, the response of the North Carolina Values Coalition (gotta love their use of "values"), opponents of same sex marriage, says everything you need to know about them:

“It’s both ironic and sad that an entire religious denomination and its clergy who purport holding to Christian teachings on marriage would look to the courts to justify their errant beliefs,” Ms. Fitzgerald said in a statement. “These individuals are simply revisionists that distort the teaching of Scripture to justify sexual revolution, not marital sanctity.”

Talk about blindness and about missing the point by the width of the River Jordan. Religious freedom (a concept about which they and the rest of "values" voters and every Palinesque evangelical I've ever heard blow hard on the subject know less than zero) is precisely NOT about hewing to one and only one view of one and only one version of one and only one holy book. It's kind of like, how to say it, the fking opposite!!

Pound Sterling

Gotta admit to mixed feelings about the Donald Sterling tempest. He doesn't sound like the kind of guy I'd want to have over for dinner. Seems like an asshole, at least to the extent that those private conversations reflect who he is.

But there's that "private conversations" thing. Had he said what he said in public; had he made racist comments to his players, or to the press, I'd feel a lot more strongly. As it is, by whatever means and for whatever reason, thoughts he expressed with no intention of having them made public, and which had no effect on anyone other than, presumably, his young-enough-to-be-his-granddaughter girlfriend, became public, in what seems like a violation of his privacy.

I mean, geez, we assume the NSA has heard that stuff from him for years, right? And I'm hoping not every word they have on me ends up out there, either.

So now he's banned for life, fined two and a half mill (a pittance compared to his wealth), and may be forced to sell his team, for words he reasonably believed would never be heard beyond his wherever it was. I dunno. If you're a jerk in the woods, does it make a sound?

Far as I can tell, he's a nasty guy. And he got screwed.

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By George

Everything he says, every single word, every fleck of spittle, each perfectly placed profanity, is exactly correct. Particularly, as I've written till I'm sick of it, the part about deliberately dumbing us down. And the why and the how. Fox "news." Right wing radio. Theocratizing our schools, our halls of government. The better informed, the more educated the public, the worse their prospects.

Why repeat the obvious at this point, when the people who ought to be rising up and fighting back clearly don't give a shit and never will? When red states and red districts keep electing those sorts most deserving of Carlin's tirade?

Well, only because of this little dustup, wherein the Heartland Institute, like the Tea Party cleverly named to evoke red-blooded patriotism of the Bundy Ranch sort and faux grass-roots gestation while actually funded by the Kochs and other oligarchs, tried to hijack ol' George's rant, Foxifying it by cropping out the context*, and selling it to their predicably propagandized and mendaciously misinformed substrate.

What better example (except for all the others) of their soulless manipulations, of their complete disrespect for their careful creation, the Tea Party? They (the manipulators) assume they (their target audience) are idiots, because they've spent years making it so.

And, as usual, they're right.
____________________________________
* Hannity played parts of Stewart's takedown, leaving out the clips, as he's done before, that showed his (Hannity's) hypocrisy.

In A Nutshell

Not to mention that it designates as "patriot" a guy who doesn't recognize the Constitution of The United States or the government it established, and who has refused to follow the law or accept his obligations under it.

To me, the definition seems a little loose. Like their grip on reality.

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Reality, From An Unlikely Source

And that's just the most obvious thing that the lionizers of Reagan have wrong.

What Spite Looks Like

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Speaking Of Which...

George W. Bush Debuts New Paintings Of Dogs, Friends, Ghost Of Iraqi Child That Follows Him Everywhere

The Art Of Deflection And Denial

(h/t Mike Thompson)