None Of The Above

They, who know him best, say no not only to Rubio (does he matter anymore?) but to the whole lot of them. And what thoughtful person, Republican or Democrat, could disagree?

The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board is not going to make an endorsement in Florida's March 15 Republican presidential primary because the kind of person who should be running is not in the race. (Emphasis by your friendly blogger.)

We cannot endorse businessman Donald Trump, hometown Sen. Marco Rubio or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz because they are unqualified to be president. Ohio Gov. John Kasich is the best of the bunch, but if you measure a candidate by the caliber of his campaign, Kasich's lack of traction and organization make a vote for him count for little...

Be sure to watch the video, too. Succint.

Of course, before the Great Winnowing, they endorsed Jeb (!) To me, pretty much from the start and with only the leastest inspection, he belonged in the NOTA category, too.

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Good Things Happening

Lest it go unnoticed (and, gonna guess here, unreported on right-wing "news" sources), benefits are accruing since the Iran nuclear agreement. Intuitive for all but the fully Foxified, opening talks and trade inevitably leads toward modernization (cf China and, already, Cuba. Putin is trying, but will fail to put the capitalism genie back in the bottle in Russia). Moderation in Iran can only be a good thing. Better, even, than bombing them to oblivion, contra every R candidate.

... Final election results released by Iran's Interior Ministry show that moderates have won a majority in parliament. 

The results broadcast Monday by state TV show that reformists, who favor expanded social freedoms and engagement with the West, won at least 85 seats, while moderate conservatives won 73 seats. Together, they have a majority in the 290-seat assembly. 

Hard-liners, who had adamantly opposed last summer's landmark nuclear deal with world powers, won just 68 seats...

And, yet again, one must ask the confounding question: what will it take for the gullible of our right wing to open their eyes, shed their knee-jerk and well-taught hatred of all things Obama and consider, at the very least, whether those who saw the agreement as tantamount to aiding the terrorists (Reagan tried it, after all, so maybe we shouldn't blame them for thinking it) could be wrong.

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I Get Letters

Stemming from responses to my newspaper columns, I've engaged in email conversations with a few people who wrote to disagree. I always begin respectfully, usually providing evidence for what I've said. Sometimes the conversations go on for a while. In a couple of cases we've met for coffee and actually become friends. More often than not, though, the writer usually storms off in a huff when he (or she, in only one case that I recall) finds the need repeatedly to confront actual facts to be too unpleasant. 

There are a couple of people who like to engage on religion. Boy, to the extent that I try to get them to see other ways of looking at things, is that a waste of energy! But I persist as long as they want to, or until I can't stand the repetition, the circular reasoning, the persisting inability to accept that belief differs from knowledge. Here's an email I just received, to which I responded at length. You can probably guess what I said. I do respect his earnestness and the obvious degree to which his belief gives him what's obviously much-needed comfort. But, geez, what passes for "thought" and cogent argument; and he does go on so...

My first comment would be on the Idea you have presented several times that the only difference between you and I is that I believe in one more god than you.  This is a perspective statement and not a statement of fact.  Let me explain.  Because you have an Atheistic method of looking at the world you also place, perhaps unknowingly, all other perspectives as being subservient to yours.  In your way of viewing the world you see forces or gods as imparting their "will" or "force" onto a given situation.  In your perspective Empathy is the overriding "force" or "impetus" driving the various gods to direct their "will" or "force".  I think then as you have explained it to me this in very brief is your Atheistic world view. 

Another Atheist may have and historically have had, other perspectives or world views.  For instance Stalin was also an Atheist but his overriding impetus or direction of his own "will" and "force" appears to be the establishment of a utopic societal order. You of course could view this in terms of Empathy in a Macro sense (establishing the best human management, i.e. government, system), but in the Micro sense (killing of millions of people) there was no Empathy there.  This then brings into play differences within the Atheistic framework of thinking. There are other Atheists of course that also have different ways of looking at the world while still holding on to a Non-Theistic view of Space-Mass-Time.  In other religions these differences are called "Sects".  I also view these differences within Atheism as "Sects" though nobody would understand what I was talking about if I did this without explanation.  These sects are different competing views of how the overall agreed upon assumptions of any particular religious system work out in real time.  The overall assumption of Atheism is, Secular Naturalism,  or any other non-intelligent force driven explanation for existence.  

In a religion such as Christianity  I also have a perspective.  My perspective is different  than yours and I also place your perspective in a subservient position to mine.  My perspective is that there is one force easily identified by the word "God" but infinitely misunderstood but such a simple title.  That single God-Force brought into being all Space-Mass-Time at his discretion and without impute or assistance from any other.  That single God then created among other things a being he entitled as "Man".  Man was different than "Animal" and different than "Matter".  God Placed Man into a perfect but non-infinite location (Garden of Eden) and gave Man limited Knowledge (knowledge of Good) about his situation/condition.  That God also gave Man the ability to choose to have Knowledge of evil (evil is anything opposed to God) by conducting a singular forbidden choice (Eating the fruit).  Man chose to know evil or know that which is opposed to God, which brought on the current paradigm in which I live.  That is Knowing both Good and Evil.  Through a bunch of events (Bible) God, by words and deeds, explained and was explaining to man both that he, God, was going to provide a way for man to be in right relationship with God again, and that Man was not created with the ability to know evil and have that knowledge be of benefit to him.  Because God created Man I believe Man has intrinsic value, not empathy value, as God has placed that value upon Man and as explained in - of course - The Bible. In particular the facts of Jesus mission on earth and in particular his removal of sin, evil, as a factor in separating individuals from God (Himself) which came at a great personal price/sacrifice of himself who was simultaneously also the creator of the perfect world in the first place.

Within perspectives we can operate sometimes in unison and sometimes in opposition.  For instance:  There was a Christian, an Atheist and a Hindu standing beside a lake.  All three of them saw someone drowning in the lake.  The Hindu refused to come to the assistance of the person drowning.  He cited the fact that Karma ruled within the happenings of the world.  He agreed that drowning was bad but said that the person had done something very bad in a prior life and was being punished for it in this life.  This drowning thing was one method the Brahma was using to bring about balance within universal life.  If he were to save the person from drowning he would be interfering with the Brahma resulting in his own bad karma.  So for the good of the world as well as himself he will let the person drown.  The Christian and the Atheist dive into the water to save the person from certain death. However they have divergent religious reasons for the save.  Lets say the Atheist sees the world through the lens of Empathy.  He then saves the person because he perceives that the biological mass that is drowning will cause sadness in other biological masses (family, friends, community) if his biological functions cease.  The Christian also saved the person.  However he does this because he is given specific instructions by God regarding his relationship with other people.  In short he sees the person as having intrinsic value to God and so he also has intrinsic value to himself not because the Christian declares it to be but because God has defined it to be. 

Now lets go further.  Lets just say that this Christian and this Atheist who agreed on the saving of a life were placed into a different situation.  Lets say the Kim Davis situation (Marriage certificate court order thing) previously discussed.  Regarding the morality of the decisions at play the Atheist says that there are many Gay-Lesbian people who what the title of being "married" conferred upon them by the state.  The Atheist decides out of Empathy that he does not want these Gay-Lesbian people to feel bad or feel out of community or of lesser value by being told by society at large that they can't have the title of "Marriage" applied to their relationship.  The Atheist founds his understanding of this relationship as a random attraction between two persons who just happen to be of the same sex.  The randomness of their attraction is based loosely on the same randomness idea of existence formulated in an Evolutionary understanding of a persons existence.  

The Fundamentalist Christian looks at the same situation and has a different take on it.  That person sees that God created Man Male and Female.  That God created both the Male and the Female aspect of Man incomplete in the boundary of it's own sex.  God created Male and Female to create one whole as a union.  Marriage itself is an acknowledgement before God of ones incompleteness as a self and wholeness as God created it to be.  Societies declaration of a different understanding of "Marriage" is but another instance of the outworking's of the Knowledge of evil.  So As part of Jesus admonition to be the "Salt" of the earth the fundamentalist speaks out against a non-God centered understanding of Marriage.  And so now we have the Atheist and the Christian who both participate in saving a life of a drowning person at odds over the source of correctness of ones attitude towards this specific marriage morality. 

Now on a personal not I don't think the Government should be issuing any Marriage Licenses.  It once was the case that mirages (sic!) were recorded in Churches not Courthouses. 

You say " it’s silly to think that without the Bible, or Koran, or Book of Mormon, etc, one can’t live a moral life".  This is apparently a proverb or axiom you live by.  What is the proof of the statement.  In particular what is morality and who determines morality.  I would disagree for instance that the Koran has the same moral scheme as the Bible as it advocates killing Christians as a class of person.  But then I would place Killing into a moral scheme.  An evolutionist (not you but others) may not wish to do the same.    The book of Mormon is similar to the Bible in personal morality though quite different in the Identity and Destiny aspects of religion. 

 How do you determine what is Moral?  What Process, scheme, science or rational do you use to determine morality?  If you do not need the Bible, Koran, Book of Mormon etc. to live a moral life what is it that you use to determine morality?  How  are you able to conclude that this thing is moral and this thing is not moral?  It seems to me that an Atheist mortality is arbitrary and random.  Is it?  Show me how it is or is not?  I presume you view yourself as living a moral life without these religious guides.  How do you conclude what is moral specifically? 

But more importantly how do you determine what is true?  You say you believe Evolution is true and is a groundwork for your Atheistic belief.  What are the specific repeatable, knowable, verifiable scientific observations/discoveries that lead you to atheism?  For instance I could go into a Cosmological Argument or a Teleological Argument for a designer/God/initiator of this Space-Mass-time Cosmos/Universe.  I don't know if you have any real interest in that.  But I am interested in what specific Science (not this or that person who has a doctorate or is head of a university program believes Evolution) information leads you to conclude that Evolution is the way it all happened.  What repeatable experiment, equation, or set of data lead you to the conclusion that Evolution is on the other side of the Equals sign.

Congratulations if you made it through all that.

This, folks, is the sort of thinking to which the R party has pandered for decades, in the knowledge that such believers will be the easiest of marks. It's this sort of absolutism (the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it) along with inability so see themselves from another perspective, that is the best explanation for the rise of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. And don't even start on what passes for logical argument. It's impenetrable.

Again, for providing comfort and a way through the world that would otherwise be intolerably confusing and threatening, I'm happy such people have found their religion. But when that sort of "thinking" (as opposed to the sorts of Christians I know) becomes the basis for political thought and action, it's deeply, deeply frightening.

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Hitting Them Where It Hurts

This is a pretty interesting read. To hear R politicians tell it, not only is ISIS about ready to jump out of your closet and slit your throat while simultaneously imposing Sharia law at your local 7-11, President Obama isn't doing a damn thing about it. The article shows otherwise.

Of course, the R talking points are all about scaring the shit out of people, and lying about the president, because what else is there for them to run on? (Surely not Drumpf's "new" health care plan, which is a rehash of boilerplate R ideas, based, among other insignificant things, on tax breaks for people to whom tax breaks are meaningless.) It's always been ridiculous on its face to consider ISIS some sort of existential threat, even if they pulled off the occasional isolated attack somewhere. Nevertheless, the article highlights the fact that not only is Obama not doing nothing, the somethings he's doing are pretty effective, given the complexities, and the fact that "boots on the ground" will make things worse, other than as a Trump/Cruz/Rubio demonstration of testosterone-fuelled superficiality. From the article:

... If ISIS is weaker, why haven’t the array of forces on the ground, particularly in Iraq, backed by dozens of daily airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition, made more headway inten months? The U.S. goal is to “shrink the core of ISIS in both Iraq and Syria,” but that still seems a very long way off. 

From where it was in the summer of 2014, ISIL has lost forty per cent of its territory in Iraq. It’s lost Tikrit, an iconic Sunni city. It lost Ramadi. It’s lost its connections between Mosul and Syria, losing Sinjar and a number of critical road connections. ISIL is increasingly shrinking. It takes time. It takes intelligence. It takes relationships. It takes ourselves getting established and reëstablishing networks, which we had to do...

And as to finances:

... We assessed that ISIL was taking in about a billion dollars a year: five hundred million dollars in oil and gas and five hundred million in other forms of revenue—taxes, extortion, antiquities, kidnapping. You have to go at it two ways. In the latter pot, you have to take away their territory. In the former pot, we have to determine how they are getting oil out of the ground, how they are moving it around, where it is going, and then how we can effectively target that. It took a great deal of very hard, very detailed intelligence work about how this is all working. It’s not as easy as, “Oh, let’s just go out and bomb the trucks.” That’s not going to be effective. We really wanted to rip out the spine of their ability to generate revenue...

It's a pretty good read. Not that there's no threat; still, as one who believes strongly that sending in troops, or carpet bombing, or "killing their families," as we hear from the nutjobs of the right, will only make things worse, it's reassuring.

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Except We DO Know What We'll Get...

Matt Taibbi has a way with words. And if he tends to say stuff in ways that'll piss off those most in need of reading it (not unlike me), he's wise and right. This article deserves full and wide attention, and not just because I've said the same thing about the deliberate dumbification of the electorate. The cynicism of pushing an uninquisitive, manipulable idiot like Bush into the White House so those pulling the strings could get away with murder, among other things, is now coming back to haunt those same people. As a wiser man than me once said, "Stupid is as stupid does." (I still don't know what that means, but it sounds applicable):

...But Washington is freaking out about Trump in a way they never did about Bush. Why? Because Bush was their moron, while Trump is his own moron. That's really what it comes down to. 

And all of the Beltway's hooting and hollering about how "embarrassing" and "dangerous" Trump is will fall on deaf ears, because as gullible as Americans can be, they're smart enough to remember being told that it was OK to vote for George Bush, a man capable of losing at tic-tac-toe...

Like Taibbi, I'm not particularly sanguine about the predictions, by frightened GOP leaders, of disaster to Trump's party if he were to be nominated, much less elected. As dishonest, damaging, and despicable as the Foxification of news has been, it's also been undeniably effective. Who knows how many of the R electorate have been permanently propagandized into believing that lies are truth, that information is evil, that "the media" who don't parrot R talking points are, by definition, not to be trusted? From where I sit, being exposed to right wing media for decades causes permanent preference to be uninformed and misinformed. It's so much easier, after all.

And it's more than ironic that after being told that government is pretty much always bad, those same people have reduced their electoral choice to two would-be despots whose announced plans amount to nothing less than totalitarian disregard for our form of government. The same people who accuse, without merit, Obama of "trashing the Constitution" and of acting like a dictator, are wetting themselves with warm pleasure at the idea of installing a president who's, literally, pledged to do exactly that.

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There Goes Ben

Evidently, the grift was wearing thin. You can only sell so many books, I suppose, and only so many there are who believe the pyramids were grain silos. At some point people start demanding substance. So, it's over for kindly Dr Ben Carson. He won't be at the next debate. (How one will be able to tell the difference, I don't know.)

"I do not see a political path forward in light of last evening's Super Tuesday primary results. However, this grassroots movement on behalf of 'We the People' will continue," Carson said in the statement. 

Right. "This grassroots movement." Meaning, I assume, that you'll still be able to buy his books.

It's amusing. When campaigns flame out, when what's been obvious for months finally happens, it's always a variation of "our grand movement, blah blah, will continue." Why not the truth:

Well, it was a poorly-run campaign, and no one seemed to like what few ideas we presented. I was in over my head. I said goofy stuff, but I made some money, so it wasn't all bad. Probably will get lots of speaking offers and, who knows, maybe a gig on Fox "news." (They don't do air quotes for "news" of course.) But, yeah. It was a long time coming, I embarrassed myself, I blew it, and the whole damn thing was a mistake. 

Grassroots movement. Right. Will continue. Riiiiiiiight.

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Judging Hypocrisy

My latest newspaper column:

In the aftermath of Antonin Scalia’s death we have the perfect lens through which to view our current political dysfunction. Starting with the obvious: “judicial activism” is a term describing court decisions with which one disagrees. “Originalism” is the opposite.  But there’s no way objectively to discern “original intent.” If there were, there’d be no need for judicial review. Whether purposeful or by failing to foresee the devolution of information and thought and comity that has befallen America, the writers of our Constitution made it sometimes impenetrably vague, contradictory even, especially with regard to the first two amendments. It’s impossible, for example, to reconcile “well-regulated” with “not be infringed.” 

To read into the Constitution the incalculably destructive inventions that “money is speech” and that “corporations are people,” claims which Scalia aggressively advocated, is to insert naked politics into judicial renderings. You may argue that it’s entirely within the purview of the Court. Fine. I’d call it activism. But what it’s NOT is strict Constitutional divination. Conservatives loved Scalia, the ultimate political animal, because their politics aligned with how he inserted his own into decisions. In his later years, particularly after Barack Obama became president, he stopped hiding it altogether. His religion-based words on gay marriage have nothing to do with civil law; they are the antipode of impartiality. And oh how he loved accepting those free trips! Considering Scalia a model of judicial restraint is as ridiculous as calling Fox “news” fair and balanced. 

Most amusing, following his death, are the hypocritical hypocrites making hypocryphal claims of hypocrisy. Acting on Foxolimbeckian post-hypnotic suggestion, people point to a speech Chuck Schumer made a decade ago, in which he encouraged Democrats, after Roberts and Alito abandoned all pretense of impartiality, to think twice before affirming future nominations by George Bush. “Hypocrisy!” shout Republicans. “Democrats are attacking Mitch McConnell for saying the same thing,” they echo. Sorry, no. It’s apples and apricots. 

When Schumer spoke, there were no court vacancies. He did not advocate blocking, in advance, any potential justice. He urged, depending on the theoretical nominee, voting no, which is exactly what “advice and consent” is about. He was not saying that no candidate, no matter who, should get even a committee hearing, let alone a vote; nor, as a “regular” senator, was he announcing policy. McConnell, the majority leader, did exactly that. 

Republicans are claiming precedent for not approving justices in an election year. Surprise: Mitch McConnell said precisely the opposite about Anthony Kennedy during Ronald Reagan’s last year. Unlike Schumer, that’s the same guy, in exactly the same situation, saying exactly the opposite thing, then and now. Where are the originally intended Constitutional words saying a president’s job ends a year before his term does? Shall we demand that Republicans up for election stop proposing or voting now on new legislation? If there’s hypocrisy on both sides, there’s none as blatant as McConnell demanding “up or down” votes during the Bush years, flipped to his unending obstruction of Obama, purely for his own and his party’s re-electability, country be damned. 

Let’s face facts: there’s no precedent for blanket refusal even to consider any nominee. (Nor, for that matter, far as I know, is there precedent for refusing to have a president’s economic team testify about a budget.) This is astounding, if unsurprising, disrespect and political cynicism, fitting the pattern begun on Obama’s first day, shining blindingly through the aforementioned lens. Yet they’ll deny that such behavior is the root of Donald Trump, or the soil in which he germinated. 

Even if Republicans were to allow hearings, there’s no way confirmation will occur, despite seeing that the person President Obama sends up will be, like his previous nominations, highly respected and eminently qualified. My faith in conservative voters has been deeply shaken; but I trust that if Trump is nominated, the next president will be a Democrat, and justice will be served. 

The good news for Republicans is that it won’t matter: their potential leaders have already informed us that God’s law supersedes the Constitution, and that if the Court renders a decision they don’t like, it’s okay to ignore it. If you’re looking for abject hypocrisy, there it is.  

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Today In Chicken-Roosting

Says Paul Ryan, playing it cool before the convention, regarding Donald Trump's slow walk on rejecting endorsements from the former KKK leader:

"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or any cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people's prejudices."

Yeah. Right. Decades of doing exactly that, when not openly then through surrogates, like Rush and Glenn and Alex and Ann and Sean and Bill and so many more. From whom the party either chose not to separate itself, or to whom they've slavishly genuflected.

Theirs has been a deliberate plan to appeal to uneducated white folks and to dis-educate those who might have previously learned something. To accomplish it, they established an entire media network, aimed at convincing people that "liberal" media (i.e., media willing to report facts) were to be ignored, that expertise was suspect, that science was the enemy, that their religion was under attack, and that everyone who didn't look like them was an overt threat.

And appeal they have. Create a mass of willingly uninformed, information-averse, angry people, untrusting of government yet hungry for totalitarianism as long as the totality is their kind of it, they have. Trump was inevitable from this. Same with Cruz, who only differs in how much his totalitarianism would include religion. Rubio is no different, either, just as far-right intransigent but less able to think on hs feet, as well as being light as a feather.

Yeah. No bigotry, Paul, and no prejudices. Other than, you know, gays, non-whites, non-Christians, 24/7/365, everywhere you look. It is to laugh, except for the crying.

(Added: And then, in what can only be called perfect timing...)

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Watch This!

Everyone thinking of voting for him should. If they did, would it matter? Most of it, after all, has been known. It's just that you have to get your news from places other than, well, you know...

Through The Looking Glass

In the din of hypocrisy and Republican senatorial obstruction surrounding the death of Scalia, I'd sorta forgotten how much of a corporate shill he was, how predictably he defended them against class action suits, among other things. Charlie didn't, though:

... If you think that the Republican intransigence on this issue is strictly a matter of being against anything the president supports, or that it's strictly a matter of loony constitutional theorizing, you're missing half the picture. They're stalling because the people who write them the checks need a reliable Supreme Court so that they can make more money and write more checks. Scalia was someone they could count on...

In my upcoming newspaper column, I link to a piece that's also mentioned in Pierce's (I like that we think alike), by a Harvard law professor who clerked for Scalia. It's worth a read.

... The enemy took many forms. Women’s rights. Racial justice. Economic equality. Environmental protection. The “homosexual agenda,” as he called it. Intellectuals and universities. The questioning of authority and privilege. Ambiguity. Foreignness. Social change. Climate research. The modern world, in all its beauty and complexity and fragility. 

Most of all, the enemy was to be found in judges who believe decency and compassion are central to their jobs, not weaknesses to be extinguished. Who refuse to dehumanize people and treat them as pawns in some Manichean struggle of good versus evil, us versus them. Who decline to make their intelligence and verbal gifts into instruments of cruelty and persecution and infinite scorn...

Two things are certain: President Obama will nominate someone, and whether or not Rs allow a hearing, that person will not be approved (probably not even brought to vote.) It's also predictable that, like his previous ones, any nominee put forth by Obama will be eminently qualifed.

When Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, among others, say the system is rigged, it's undeniable that they're right. It's an insider's game, where the real players are the moneyed people and corporations, the politicians (especially, but not exclusively, of the Republican variety) are their pawns, and voters are their playthings. As if there weren't plenty of proof already out there, Scalia's death makes it clearer than ever.

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Smoked

I'm pretty sure I've seen every X-files episode, and I watched all the new ones. I'm as able to suspend disbelief as well as anyone, as long as there's a certain internal consistency within the make-believe.

Moreover, working at the VA during my surgical residency, I've seen men with tracheostomies from their throat cancer due to cigarettes, smoking through their stomas.

But this, CSM smoking through his trake while talking normally? Not a thing. Anatomically. It's not a thing. You can talk, you can inhale normally. You inhale through the hole, you can't talk. Not a thing.

That is all. Except for the ending.

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Mitch McConnell, Unshelled

This article about Mitch McConnel's decision to block any court nominee starts with the most important background to the Rs obstructionism from Day One of Obama's presidency. "Good of the country" be damned. Pitching in to fix what our party's president broke? Not in a million (or eight but hopefully four) years!

In early 2009, as Barack Obama was about to take office, Mitch McConnell, the leader of the Republican minority in the Senate, assembled his caucus at a retreat in West Virginia. There, he laid out his strategy for taking on the new president, who was sweeping into office on a tide of popularity, historical resonance and great expectations barely diminished by the economic free fall then underway. 

The key, Mr. McConnell told his fellow Republicans, was to stymie and undermine Mr. Obama, but to do so in subtle ways. As one of the senators present, Robert F. Bennett of Utah, later recalled to me: “Mitch said, ‘We have a new president with an approval rating in the 70 percent area. We do not take him on frontally. We find issues where we can win, and we begin to take him down, one issue at a time. We create an inventory of losses, so it’s Obama lost on this, Obama lost on that. And we wait for the time where the image has been damaged to the point where we can take him on.’ ” ... 

... The resistance from Mr. McConnell has had an enormous influence on the shape of Obama’s presidency. It has limited the president’s accomplishments and denied him the mantle of the postpartisan unifier he sought back in 2008. But it has also brought the Senate, the institution to which Mr. McConnell has devoted his life, close to rupture... 

... The best way to understand Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. has been to recognize that he is not a conservative ideologue, but rather the epitome of the permanent campaign of Washington: What matters most isn’t so much what you do in office, but if you can win again...

The article details many examples of McConnell's cynicism; that it's always been about power -- his own and his party's -- and that policy, no matter the impact on the country, was immaterial.

... Mr. McConnell intuited, shrewdly, that if he could bottle things up in Washington with the filibuster and other tactics, the blame for the gridlock would fall mostly to the Democrats — the party in the White House. Not to mention that Mr. Obama had campaigned on the promise of transcending Washington’s divides, which made partisan dysfunction look like a personal failure... 

It's not unlike the kid who killed his parents and threw himself on of the mercy of the courts, on the grounds that he was an orphan. Block everything they can, allow no bipartisanship whatsoever, then point to Obama as a failure. And it's worked nearly to perfection, helped by the constant propagandizing and dishonest clamor from Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™.

Was this unprecedented level of cynical destruction simply because the man who's the perfect example of the worst sort of entrenched Washington power became majority leader? Would it have happened with any Democratic president? Or might it have something to do with the skin color of the president, and the fact that his primary Senate opponent hails from Kentucky?

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Oh, The Fragility

I guess this is a form of liberalism of some sort. To the extent that it is, it depresses and embarasses me. College campuses have gone soft and soft-headed. It's been going on for some time, and I have nothing new to say about it. But my son went to Brown, the subject here, and my wife to Harvard. I went to a "Little Ivy League" school. I don't recall feeling micro-aggressed or aggrieved that people appeared to speak on campus with whom I disagreed. When Robert McNamara was given an honorary degree at my graduation, some classmates stood up and turned their backs. One refused to accept his diploma. But no one shouted anyone down. (Interestingly, being one of the first Vietnam War protests, that mild activity made national headlines.)

So I read this and I despair. It's the other side of the Foxolimbeckian coin: don't make us hear things we don't want to, on the one hand, and don't tell us the truth, on the other.

... one incident that took an emotional toll on activists was protesting an appearance on campus by Natan Sharansky and Michael Douglas, who were there to discuss their perspectives on Judaism, Israel and current-day anti-Semitism. Students for Justice in Palestine decided that this would be a dandy occasion to engage in a loud, disruptive anti-Israel protest. An assistant dean was on hand, in part to provide “academic and emotional support” to the protesters, according to the Herald. 

So there you have it; a group of Ivy League crybullies worn out from the emotional toll of protesting Natan Sharansky, a former dissident and survivor of years of confinement, including solitary confinement, in harsh Soviet prison camps. Is there a better indication of the decline of American higher-ed culture than a bunch of Ivy Leaguers at risk of emotional breakdown due to the presence of one of the great, stoic heroes of the Cold War on their campus? ...

The State Of In State

Is a bear Polish? Who could have seen this coming? President Obama will visit the remains of Antonin Scalia as he lies in state, but will not attend his funeral. And Foxolimbeckians are outraged. Outraged.

Their outrage is only exceeded by that which would have rained down had the president decided to attend. In which case, how dare he make it about him!!??

That his decision is entirely in line with history makes, of course, not a Ronald Reagan commemorative silver dollar's worth of difference. Nor will the fact that the Scalia family understands and agrees with the decision.

God, how I hate these people. And shame on me for it. I guess.

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Admit It, Jeb (!). It's Time.

As surprising and depressing is the rise of Donald Trump and the realization that there are breathing humans who see him as presidential, the non-rise and fast fall of Jeb (!) Bush has been pretty amazing.

I'd never paid much attention to him, even when he was governor of FLA. I guess, because the bar was so low, I accepted that he was "the smart one," but I had no reason to believe it specifically. Then he rose above the horizon with his unspeakably foul role in the delayed death of Terry Schiavo. After that, I should have known.

Still, his level of tone-deafness and amateurish awkwardness has been a surprise. As has his response to the realization that there's no way in hell that he'll be assuming the mantle of the presidency promised to him by his hard-earned Bushness. It borders on inducing sadness, as his campaign has rendered the most pathetic and unceasing series of embarrassments imaginable.

That gun tweet, though. That really does it, says everything. Along with the word "America" it's nearly incomprehensible. The only way such a combination of visual and linguistic awfulness would make sense is if he meant it ironically. As in, "Look at what's become of us, and weep." Clearly, though, he meant it as a showcase of his America-fuck-yeah-itude. The goodest of good old boys, is Jeb (!).

Did he tweet it himself? If not, did it get his prior approval? Is there someone on his campaign staff that craven? Yes, I guess "sad" is the word. It makes you want to turn away, both in revulsion at the message and at the flop-sweat smell of his desperation.

C'mon, Jeb (!) Do yourself a favor, salvage the last remaining quantum of dignity and call it a day.