Violence Against Hope

Along with the tendency of some liberals to be overly credulous when it comes to "alternative" medicine, rejection of vaccines, and other forms of medical woo, I find myself deeply disturbed by the persistence -- increase, really -- of thin-skinned political correctness and complete misunderstanding of free speech, unwillingness to brook, much less listen to opposing views, that seems to characterize many college campuses. It's no more liberalism than the theocratic promulgation of ignorance we see in today's Republican party is conservatism.

There've been plenty of examples recently, the latest having occurred at Smith College, just down the road from where I went to college, and where I distinguished (!) myself playing Conrad Birdie in "Bye Bye Birdie" about fifty years ago.

... Lawyer and author Wendy Kaminer found herself at the center of that heated debate this year when she joined a free speech panel discussion at Smith College and used a racial slur while discussing its use in literature and academia. Kaminer joined HuffPost Live on Wednesday and explained what transpired on the panel. 

"I was accused of committing an explicit act of racial violence because I questioned our growing list of words we can only know by their initials," Kaminer said. "I questioned the value and the uses of euphemisms and in doing so, I uttered a few forbidden words, including a racially charged word. And by doing so, I was accused of committing an act of racial violence." ...

The mind reels. Racial violence. For using a word. In a discussion about free speech. Even Jerry Seinfeld agrees it's gotten ridiculous. Well, sure, if you can't be a little crazy in your youth, what's the point. But these are "elite" students at an "elite" college, and you'd hope they'd be smarter than that. More able to hear hard stuff and deal with it.

Hard as it is to agree with them, conservative pundits are right when they criticize this stuff, and these kids are handing them all they need to convince teabagger types that liberalism is effete nonsense. They have no idea what liberalism is but neither do those students. Kids getting drunk and screwing on the beach over Spring break bothers me a lot less; hell, if I'd been able to get girls in my college days, I might have, too.

This, though... this is not very different from the denialism and preference for falsehood, the rejection of unpleasant realities that characterizes today's Republican party. It's unwillingness to hear stuff they don't like. And if today's yutes are gratifyingly more open-minded about same-sex marriage, less fundamentalist in their religious views, less frightened of immigrants, less militant than the last generation, this sort of thing makes me less optimistic (if that's possible) about our future and theirs. Because I sort of count on them to reverse the effects on our politics of the Palin/Gohmert/McConnell/Bachmann/Ernst/Hannity/O'Reilly/Inhofe/Graham/Huckabee/Santorum/Walker/Perry/Jindal brand of mendacity and stupidity, and return us to the days of honest discourse about things that are real and that matter.

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So Far Out Of Touch They Can't Be Reached

Funny. All the R presidential candidates, real and imagined, have no trouble saying that a major initiative that clearly worked, and may have prevented another depression, was a mistake. OTOH, when it comes to Iraq, the benefit of which is unclear at best, and which has cost uncountable lives and money, plunging the region into chaos, strengthening our enemies, they hem and haw.

If you want to understand the temperaments and governing philosophies of the Republican presidential candidates, pay close attention to the way they talk about an iconic moment of President Barack Obama’s tenure: His decision, in the spring of 2009, to rescue Chrysler and General Motors. 

Most of the top GOP contenders have said the decision was a mistake. The latest to do so was Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, who boasted Friday during MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that he was against all bailouts -- including the one for General Motors. “When corporate leaders make bad mistakes, they need to be held accountable, whether they are on Wall Street or on Main Street,” Perry said. 

Perry and the other Republicans critical of the auto industry rescue might sincerely believe it was the wrong policy. Or they might simply fear the wrath of Republican primary voters who can’t stomach support for an initiative that came from Obama. Whatever their motives, Republicans who say they would not have extended the same lifeline that Obama did need to reckon with a key fact: 

By nearly all accounts, the 2009 rescue package saved a vital U.S. industry and, just maybe, the economic fortunes for an entire region.

The nice thing about calling the bailout a mistake is they don't have to address the consequences of not having done it. Because it was done. No consequences derive from their claim. Free pass pander. Iraq, on the other hand, is staring them in the face, its failures as undeniable as Donald Trump's hair. On that, however, they prefer not to opine.

But what the heck. It's not as if any of them is even pretending to be in touch with reality. Scott "the other Koch brother" Walker, for example, fresh off ruining his state's economy but proud of demonizing teachers, now stands ready to welcome a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Marco "the foreign policy expert" Rubio stepped on yet another rake trying to explain the difference between "nation building" and "helping to build a nation." Rick "don't google me" Santorum is still trying to confirm how it is that he is welcome to opine on climate change whereas the Pope is not. Or how it is that the world faces "more pressing problems" than climate change, i.e., jobs for Americans.

Well, at least Lindsey "they'll kill us all" Graham says Caitlyn Jenner is welcome in the Republican party. Here's the sound of Republicans around the country shouting their agreement.

[Image source.] [One might only hope it's true.]

The War On The War On Christians

As I've said, many times...

But, hey, if it gets the votes, who cares if it's bullshit, right? Because running on b.s. is what every one of the R candidates for the presidency plans to do.

Why Fox "News" Is NOT News

Question: if Fox "news" is a serious news organization, and if Meyn Kelly is a serious "journalist," why do they spend so much airtime on the Duggars, the Duck people, criminals like Cliven Bundy, etc?

Just curious. Probably I'm missing something.

Trump Card

So Donald Trump, the great patriot and humble man of hair knows just how to defeat ISIS. But he ain't telling:

Donald Trump totally knows how to defeat ISIS, but there’s no way he’s telling any of us what his plan is yet. Trump spoke with Fox’s Greta Van Susteren tonight and bemoaned how the U.S. has “totally messed up the balance in the Middle East.” He believes the U.S. has to do something to combat ISIS. 

Van Susteren asked him exactly what that would be. Trump said, “I do know what to do and I would know how to bring ISIS to the table or, beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly.”
He then added, “And I’m not gonna tell you what it is tonight.”

It'd be worth having him run just to find out his plan. And if he insists he'll only reveal it if he wins, and, as is as certain as global climate change, he loses, it'll be interesting to see if he tells the next president. Of course, if he has a plan and is willing, for purposes of his ego, to let countless people die before telling the president, then he's even more of a narcissistic idiot than he seems to be.

Here's my guess: either he's bullshitting, or whatever it is he thinks he came up with is bogus. Just like the "amazing" stuff his investigators were finding in Hawaii about Obama's birth. Seems to have slipped his mind to reveal it.

There are actual human people in the US, so-called conservatives, Republicans, who fall for the man's bullshit and want him to run. Simply amazing.

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Searching For Just The Right Words...

Really. So this is what Rick Perry chooses to campaign on. "Obama's war on religion." Virtually admitting he has nothing important to say, among all the actual problems we face, he picks one that doesn't exist and lies to pretend it does; to pander to that slice of the Foxolimbeckified population that actually believe it. Wearing leather.

Oh! I think I just found the right words: despicable smarmy dishonest cynical puke. And that's as generous as I can make it.

[Update: I won't take it down since I already posted it and people have seen it, but the above video is from his 2012 campaign. I'm gonna guess he'll bring it up again; but since he now wears glasses he might try to mention something real. We'll see.]

No Good Deed...

Needlessly provocative title notwithstanding, here's a well-written, seemingly objective and thorough article about the Clinton Global Initiative, which began with none but good intentions, has had an immeasurable and impressively positive impact on millions of people around the globe, is unprecedented in its ability to mobilize money and action from wealthy people all over the planet from all parts of the political spectrum, and nearly singular in the portion of its money that goes straight to its good works.

Such a huge and successful enterprise gets messy, I guess, when a party to it decides to run for president; questions get raised for legitimate as well as for clearly cynical and purely political reasons. I suppose it'd be par for the course of American politics if the unlikely outcome were to be the end of Hillary's candidacy. Given the enormous good the Initiative has produced, it'd be a travesty if it scared away donors in the process. 

If it's true that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when the dysfunctional mess known as the American way of governance and electioneering is mobilized, there ought to be no way such a plainly altruistic and uncommonly effective effort to help people in need can survive, much less even have existed at all. No ex-president has ever attempted or accomplished such a thing. Some spend their time doing not much more than making paintings of their feet in bathtubs, and cats. And, yes, as the article points out, Bill Clinton hauls in big bucks speaking on behalf of his work. Hey, I got paid for saving lives, too. Admittedly, on a somewhat lesser scale.

I can see why suspicions have been raised. If there was real and significant hanky-panky, we ought to know about it, and shame on them. But, far as I can tell, at its center is a vast organization dedicated to good works; the messiness is a side effect, its impact exaggerated, the claims of the Foxified fallacious. So far. 

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Voices From Under The Bed

Well, as I've said, Lindsey "some of us will have to go but not me" Graham is running on the promise of war, based on scaring the shit out of people. Which is probably a winning message to about half the population, especially the America-fuck-yeah crowd who've never been in a war (I have) and who never will. Nor their kids.

His is sort of the reverse and perverse Underpants Gnome scenario: Phase 1, ISIS exists; Phase 2, (?); Phase 3, we all die. Someone needs to get him to fill in the parentheses. They won't. He can't.

The operative words are "don't vote for me." I wonder how many will take his advice. Because it's a lot easier to sit there with a figurative (and, quite possibly literal) hard-on for kicking some ass than it is to do it, and make it stick. Peace and jubilee will prevail, they'll love us, and become our BFFs. Oh sure, it hasn't worked yet, every time we've tried. But, hey, why not? This time it will.

For sure.

Uh Oh, This Can't Be Good...

Pluto's Moons Are 'Tumbling In Absolute Chaos,' NASA Says

Learning Curves Are For Pussies

The Daily Show
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The best summary of our adventures in the Middle East you're likely to see.

Throwing In The Towel?

Anyone else find this quote from Rick "google me" Santorum amusingly ironic?:

“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we're really good at, which is theology and morality,” Santorum said. "When we get involved with political and controversial scientific theories, I think the church is not as forceful and credible."

Leave science to the scientists. If that isn't a clear statement that we should accept the opinion of scientists on matters of science, I don't know what is. So, has Rick Santorum just agreed that manmade climate change is a thing, and that, as science is telling us, we need to do something about it damn fast? Guess so, huh?

(BTW, il Papa has a master's degree in chemistry!)

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Sleazeball

There was a time when I thought, despite his generally assholery, that Jeb Bush might not be an unabashed sleazeball. Just wrongheaded but not necessarily a grifter on par with the rest of his field. What was I thinking? Had I forgotten the Terry Schiavo horror? Or, for that matter, his role in the fiasco known as the election of his brother? But now, as if it needed to be emphasized that he's no better -- worse, really -- than the rest, there's this:

WASHINGTON — Jeb Bush is under growing pressure to acknowledge what to some voters and a number of campaign finance lawyers seems obvious: He is running for president. The lawyers say Mr. Bush, a former Florida governor, is stretching the limits of election law by crisscrossing the country, hiring a political team and raising tens of millions of dollars at fund-raisers, all without declaring — except once, by mistake — that he is a candidate. ... “When you look at the totality of the activities, could a reasonable person conclude anything other than that he is seeking the presidency?” asked Karl J. Sandstrom, a campaign finance lawyer who served on the Federal Election Commission. For a candidate to avoid restrictions by simply not declaring his candidacy, he said, “makes a mockery of the law.” 

See, the thing is, as the article makes clear, were he to declare he couldn't be using superPACs the way he is, couldn't pile on the cash as he's doing. Because it would be illegal. Technically, I guess, he's not quite breaking the law. He's just deliberately flaunting it, unlike his brother who had no problem breaking it like a child's leg.

If it's true that around half the country would align with the R party (only because they have no clue what it really stands for and because they've been Foxified into voting on carefully curried outrage instead of their interests, but still...) you'd think they'd be able to come up with at least one candidate who's not an embarrassment to the human race. You'd think there might be at least one person unwilling to treat the electorate like the idiots they've become, appeal to their once-active higher minds. Really? No one, no where?

Jeb Bush, it turns out, it just a slightly more articulate version of his brother. Amoral. Manipulative. Aim low sort of a guy. What a pathetic assortment of disappointments is the current and potential Republican field of presidential candidates. But the party has no one to blame but itself. It set its course when it pandered to the teabaggers, and has sunk lower and lower ever since. Believe it or not, I feel sorry for the country, which needs two strong opposing but thoughtful parties. We've only had one for quite a while now, and it shows.

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Inevitably, The Grift Appears

So the guy who organized that draw Muhammed scrotum-fest in Phoenix wants $10,000,000 from his admirers, to "protect his family."

It's of a piece, of course. When they're not making it clear how stupid they think their voters are, pretty much all public Republicans of today's variety are thinking of ways to separate the credulous and the fearful from their money. Palin, Huckabee, Carson, all the second-tier pretenders; bakers and florists. This might be the first that fails to enrich; but he's got a meta shot at it, from ginned-up outrage at the shutting down of his first con.

Do you feel stupid yet, teabaggers yet? Used? If not, what will it take?

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Behold The Morality

Evidently John McCain doesn't spend all his time on talk shows lecturing us about the superiority of his values in all things, over those of our president. Nope, he has time for a little sub-rosa graft and deception, too: 

... The campground lies at the core of an ancient Apache holy place ... and has had special protections since 1955, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower decreed the area closed to mining... President Richard M. Nixon’s Interior Department in 1971 renewed this ban.
... 

The land grab was sneakily anti-democratic even by congressional standards. ... (Among those involved was Rick Renzi, a former Republican representative who was sent to federal prison in February for three years for corruption related to earlier versions of the land-transfer deal.) It always failed in Congress because of lack of support. But this time was different. This time, the giveaway language was slipped onto the defense bill by Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake of Arizona at the 11th hour. The tactic was successful only because, like most last-minute riders, it bypassed public scrutiny. (emphasis mine)

It’s worth noting that Rio Tinto affiliates have been McCain campaign contributors, and that Mr. Flake, before he made it to Congress, was a paid lobbyist for Rio Tinto Rössing Uranium (a huge uranium mine in Namibia). ... Rio Tinto, incidentally, has been called out in the past for environmental devastation... 

There was a time when it was less hard to respect the guy. Ever since Obama was elected it's become entirely impossible. This is only the latest example of why.

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Simply Amazing

Well, maybe it's just a reflection of the weakness of the entire field that a governor who's presided over the crushing failure of his state, who'd apply those failed policies to the entire country were he to win, and who hasn't even officially declared yet, leads the pack in a latest poll:

Scott Walker's popularity streak in Iowa is real: He's seven percentage points ahead of his nearest competition in the presidential horse race here, chased by a tight pack of four in a clear top tier: Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Mike Huckabee.

Okay, the poll refers to Iowa, the inexplicably important focus of all serious presidential contenders; and it places Carson and Huckabee, the former a know-nothing panderer and the latter an increasingly mendacious grifter, right up there, too. So, yeah, I suppose it really is just because they're a remarkably appalling collection of lightweights; still it's pretty amazing.

I have to assume that those who approve of Scott Walker have no idea of what he's done to his state, that they like what he says about taxes and teachers and unions (and evolution!), and either deny or approve of his being a puppet of the Koch brothers, because, hey, it's a comfy little bubble in which to live, and it's what they hear on Fox "news" and right-wing radio every day. But at some point, even to teabaggers, isn't reality sort of a thing?

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