Question Man

One of my trolliest of commenters, in response to my usual debunking of his typical respouting of Foxobeckian drivel, asks:

"Really, Sid. Is this how you speak to people in real life? Does this make you feel more manly on the Internet? Are you unable to be polite to people with whom you disagree?"

Aside from the hilarity of the framing, coming as it does from a guy whose comments are, in most cases, the equivalent of dropping by to take a dump, there is a grain of a reasonable question there.

This being a blog which by its own title announces my intention to rant, readers ought not expect silken speech. However: I base everything I say on fact, demonstrable and demonstrated with relevant links. I make no excuses for responding to ubiquitous idiocy and craven cynicism with strong language, but I most strenuously lay claim to careful thought and open-eyed assessment.

Similarly, the careful reader will note that when challenged by commenters with reasonable questions and interesting documentation (yes, it has happened) I respond -- happily! -- in kind. I love to engage those who disagree, when the disagreement amounts to something -- anything, in fact -- more than the schoolyard taunts and -- what shall we call it? Blue language? -- that usually appear. It's particularly amusing to read the above questions, coming from a person who evidently has no idea how uninteresting and unoriginal his (or her) comments are. "I know you are but what am I" is not a style that carries much weight after about the third grade.

So. Were it ever to happen that the person in question engaged in actual discourse, responding to a point I'm trying to make in a given post with actual counter-arguments while keeping at least a toe on the firmament, he (or she) would be engaged most enthusiastically, with respect commensurate with that given to my argument. In the case of this individual, however, there's no evidence that there's the capability.

Meanwhile, I suppose I owe answers:

1) No.

2) Huh?

3) No.

The Man Behind The Smear

As the RWS™ carry out their usual hatchet job, retracing the bloody footprints they left after destroying Van Jones, Shirley Sherrod, and many others less well known, it might be revelatory to get to know the victim of their latest attack, Donald Berwick, nominated to head Medicaid and Medicare. To them, he's evil incarnate. To the reader of his recent graduation speech at the medical school in which his daughter was among those graduating, a different man emerges.

.....Let me read to you an email I received on Thursday, December 19, 2009. It came from Mrs. Jocelyn Anne Gruzenski – she goes by “Jackie.” I did not know Jackie Gruzenski at the time; she wrote to me out of the blue. But I have since connected with her. And, she gave me permission to read her email to me to you. Here's what she wrote:

…

“My husband was Dr. William Paul Gruzenski, a psychiatrist for 39 years. He was admitted to (a hospital she names in Pennsylvania) after developing a cerebral bleed with a hypertensive crisis. My issue is that I was denied access to my husband except for very strict visiting, four times a day for 30 minutes, and that my husband was hospitalized behind a locked door. My husband and I were rarely separated except for work,” she wrote. “He wanted me present in the ICU, and he challenged the ICU nurse and MD saying, "She is not a visitor, she is my wife.‟

.....What might a husband and wife of 19 years, aware of the short time left together, wish to talk about – wish to do – in the last days? I don‟t know for Dr. and Mrs. Gruzenski. But, I do know for me. I would talk about our children. I would talk about the best trip we ever took together, and even argue, smiling, about whose idea it was. .... We would have so much to talk about. So much. The nurses would pad in and out of the hospital room, checking i.v.s and measuring pulses and planning their dinners and their weekends. And none of what the nurses and doctors did would matter to us at all; we wouldn‟t even notice them. We would know exactly who the visitors were – they, the doctors and the nurses. They, they would be the visitors in this tiny corner of our whole lives together – they, not us.

..... [T]oday you take a big step into power. With your white coat and your Latin, with your anatomy lessons and your stethoscope, you enter today a life of new and vast privilege ..... [S]ociety will give you access and rights that it gives to no one else. Society will allow you to hear secrets from frightened human beings that they are too scared to tell anyone else. Society will permit you to use drugs and instruments that can do great harm as well as great good, and that in the hands of others would be weapons. Society will give you special titles and spaces of privilege, as if you were priests. Society will let you build walls and write rules.

......... But, now I will tell you a secret – a mystery. Those who suffer need you to be something more than a doctor; they need you to be a healer. And, to become a healer, you must do something even more difficult than putting your white coat on. You must take your white coat off. You must recover, embrace, and treasure the memory of your shared, frail humanity – of the dignity in each and every soul. When you take off that white coat in the sacred presence of those for whom you will care – in the sacred presence of people just like you – when you take off that white coat, and, tower not over them, but join those you serve, you become a healer in a world of fear and fragmentation, an “aching” world, as your Chaplain put it this morning, that has never needed healing more.

Congratulations.

Read the whole speech, then tell me: is he the devil the screamers say he is?

If, as I said recently, the worst thing the right-wingers have done to our country and our world is the killing of climate legislation, then the runner-up is their characterization of health care reform as "death panels" and "genocide" (as a group of Larouche supporters, complete with Obama-as-nazi signs, claimed a couple of days ago, parading near my local post office). In the latest of uncountable examples, these people, the screamers, the radio guys, the talking headless of Fox "news", Congressional Rs, teabaggers who've dipped and drunk deep, who have no desire or ability to enter the marketplace of ideas, would rather don the vestments of hate and hyperbole, and blow themselves up like al Queda in a farmers' market, taking down as many innocents as possible. What, I wonder, do they expect to see when they find their imaginary paradise?

More importantly: why do so many people buy into the lies, rally around cynical people who treat them like idiot sheep? Using scare tactics and buzzwords like "rationing," taking reality-based remarks out of context while advocating tax cuts for the rich and unspecified spending cuts, how has it been so easy to convince so many, with so much evidence to the contrary, that they're on the right side of the argument?

Simple; and I've said it again and again: we've become a nation of selfish and stupid people, too lazy to think for themselves, unwilling to do the hard work of living in a democracy. Giving lip service to "patriotism" while in fact espousing the very ideas that have brought us down, as a way to justify their selfishness, which is exactly what it is: selfishness. Wrapped in the Shroud of Turin.

The right wing has recognized it, stoked it, counted on it, and is ready, once again, to take the money and run.

High (Definition) Life

So I finally made the leap to HDTV. It arrived yesterday, got set up with dispatch by a couple of Hispanic guys, who hooked it to a little soundbar/subwoofer combo, also new. In a pretty small space, it really doesn't need surround sound; and the TV is a mere 46 incher. LED, though. Very nice. Thin, bright, all the things I'm not.

Now in possession of such a compelling machine, along with my laptop, I may never choose to step outdoors again. What's out there but despair: screaming teabaggers, trying (and evidently succeeding) to take us back to the just-gone insanity; falling markets (the gods punish me thus, whenever I indulge myself); broken politics making for a broken country.

It's a lot easier to tune it all out now, diodes directing dancing dioramas directly and deeply; plasticized pixels producing profound pleasure, palliating pounding pronouncements of pending panic of pandoran proportions. An infusion of juniper-tinged two-carbon fragments, the recliner tipped to weightless, watching my Korean-brand TV, assembled in Mexico: I may have found the long-sought way to cope.

Bad News, Good News

The usual suspects -- RWS™, Congressional Rs, teabaggers -- are gleeful over the prospects of campaigning against Democrats for any of several trumped-up reasons. The ethical troubles of a couple of them -- Rangel and Waters, in particular -- have them fairly floating on clouds. I'm not defending those purported miscreants, but I'd like to point something out.

When Rs were in charge of Congress, ethics investigations were a sham. Their handling of Tom DeLay was beyond laughable, beyond outrageous, beyond shameful. (Shame, of course, being as rare as reason among those Rs). So whereas it's not especially propitious that there's trouble afoot, it's pretty amazing that such high profile members are bearing the brunt of actual investigation, actual consequences. Just as Nancy Pelosi promised.

The most telling remark uttered by anyone in the wake of the release of the ethics charges against Rangel came from one of his most dedicated right-wing antagonists, Peter Flaherty of the National Center for Policy Analysis. "We're kind of astonished it's gone this far," said Flaherty, whose organization instigated one of the early investigations of the Harlem congressman. "We always believed the allegations against Rangel were serious, but we never thought the Ethics Committee would do anything."

Obviously Flaherty, a lifelong Republican who once headed a lobbying group called Citizens for Reagan, expected that the committee would function much the same way under Democratic leadership as it did under the Republicans. Which specifically would mean playing dead, particularly with respect to any allegations against a committee chair or majority leadership figure. He was wrong.

Back when the Republicans controlled the House, however, their stewardship of ethical standards was a pitiful sham. They set the coverup agenda when they voted in November 2004 to withhold any sanctions against Tom DeLay, then the House majority leader, even if he were to be indicted on a felony count. Naturally they held that vote in secrecy, just after the presidential election, because they represent honesty, transparency and apple pie. (Eventually a surge of public outrage forced them to restore the Democrats' old rule requiring an indicted member to step down.)

Politics and politicians. I doubt it'll ever be a clean companionship. But there is reason to admire the Democrats for making an honest effort at fixing what's broken. It's something Congressional Rs haven't done in a long time, if ever. Just another of many differences. Both sides: a long way from perfect. One side: trying.

Morning Constitutional

I recognize that the right wing attack on the 14th amendment is pure politics, just the latest attempt to gin up hate-as-vote-getter for the next election. I've said before: Republicans always campaign on hate, and do so because their actual political/economic ideas are so empty. And, of course, because in this version of America, it works like a charm.

I also know the reason for the "birthright" part of the amendment was so that children of freed slaves would have citizenship, which, clearly, was the right thing.

But I have to admit: I don't know why it ought to be the case, in the twenty-first century, that any child born in this country is automatically a citizen, even if the parents are illegal aliens. Or, for that matter, even legal residents but not citizens. Which is not -- obviously -- to say that people living here legally, citizens or not, ought to be denied, say, health care. But automatic citizenship? I can't make an argument.

I'd like to hear them. I think the anti-immigrant frenzy ginned up by the RWS™ and the rest of the usual suspects is shameful and destructive and, per usual, highly cynical. Without immigration, we'd be screwed. Look at the kids graduating at the top of their classes, getting scholarships, winning prizes. But that's not the issue, vis a vis citizenship. In the case of legal immigrants, on their way to citizenship, it makes sense that their kids born here would be citizens without having to take a test at age two. But the question is regarding illegal immigrants. What's the argument there?

[Update: commentary from a conservative judge and Fox "news" personality.]

Obtuse Angle

And thus the raison d'etre for Fox "news."

Think about it: this tiara of teabaggers thinks democracy works best when the press is beholden to our government, asking not only just easy questions, but only the ones they want asked, so they can give pre-selected answers. Not to mention ask for money.

I suppose I should give her credit for honesty, but, really, this is just so stupid that I think the stupid filled the room, displacing air along with reason, making everyone nearby stupid. Maybe even people who watch the video, in which case I apologize. It's stupid as baseline; stupid that replicates and infects, destroys gray matter just by existing. And yet, it certainly reflects the thoughts of teabaggers and their ilk ("ilk". Such a nasty, condescending word. This might be the first time I've used it, but there's no one more ilky than a teabagger. I'll take mine with ilk, please.) And it's exactly why we're in trouble and heading for much, much more. People only want to hear what they think they already know, and they gravitate to the "news" outlet that gives it to them.

Fox brags that it's the most watched cable network. Really, it ought to be a mark of shame.

Mosque Deaf

As the usual RWS™ keep adding to the crazy over the Cordoba Initiative (which, by the bye, was just given initial approval), it's worth hearing the occasional voice of sanity. Information-based sanity. (I apologize for using those three words together, in a way that several of my readers -- and we all know who they are -- will be unable to comprehend. Sorry. I wish I could help.)

This seems like such an obvious point, but it is apparently not obvious to the many people who oppose the Cordoba Initiative's planned mosque in lower Manhattan, so let me state it as clearly as possible: The Cordoba Initiative, which is headed by an imam named Feisal Abdul Rauf, is an enemy of al Qaeda, no less than Rudolph Giuliani and the Anti-Defamation League are enemies of al Qaeda. Bin Laden would sooner dispatch a truck bomb to destroy the Cordoba Initiative's proposed community center than he would attack the ADL, for the simple reason that Osama's most dire enemies are Muslims. This is quantitatively true, of course -- al Qaeda and its ideological affiliates have murdered thousands of Muslims -- but it is ideologically true as well: al Qaeda's goal is the purification of Islam (that is to say, its extreme understanding of Islam) and apostates pose more of a threat to Bin Laden's understanding of Islam than do infidels.

I know Feisal Abdul Rauf; I've spoken with him at a public discussion at the 96th street mosque in New York about interfaith cooperation. He represents what Bin Laden fears most: a Muslim who believes that it is possible to remain true to the values of Islam and, at the same time, to be a loyal citizen of a Western, non-Muslim country. Bin Laden wants a clash of civilizations; the opponents of the mosque project are giving him what he wants.

To put it another way:

If Osama bin Laden were to write a script for what he'd like to see happen here, it'd be identical to the one Gingrich & Co. are following. This isn't intended to question their patriotism, but rather, their sanity.

I'd not be that kind. If one's so-called patriotism is so misguided; namely, where there is no religious tolerance, where (briefly to raise another issue) nativism trumps the Constitution, where a democratically-elected president doing exactly that on which he campaigned is seen as fascism -- in short, when that patriotism is directed at a country that doesn't exist -- then it's hard to know the meaning of the term.

Also, Feisal Abdul Rauf is Sufi.

[Far be it from I to go on and on. So let me refer the reader to a knowledgeable and thorough response to the Newt-onian (and we all know what onanism is) lies about Cordoba, which have taken root in the dung. A significant sampling:

The problem is, in order to give that impression of immediacy, Newt elides three-hundred years of Christian and Muslim history. Three-hundred years. The Muslims conquered Cordoba in 712... and the mosque only became "the world's third-largest" late in the tenth century, after a series of expansions by much later rulers, probably around 987 or so.

[...] Muslim historians writing about the Great Mosque don't point to it as a symbol of Muslim triumph over Christians; rather, they treat it primarily as a symbol of Muslim victory over other Muslims.

[...]

The mosque was indeed begun in the wake of a Muslim conquest--just not the conquest of the Christians. Rather, it was ordered built by the Umayyad emir Abd-ar-Ramman I, probably in part to commemorate his successful conquest of Cordoba in the 750's, fought against otherMuslim chieftains loyal to the rival Abbasid Caliphate, and his successful repulsion of subsequent Abbasid attempts to dislodge him by force throughout the 760's.

[...]

Muslim historians of the late tenth century tell that Abd-ar-Ramman bought the church from the Christian congregation after sharing it with them for fifty years "following the example of Abu Ubayda and Khalid, according to the judgement of Caliph Umar in partitioning Christian churches like that of Damascus and other [cities] that were taken of peaceful accord". The Christians, we're told, took their money and relocated their church to the outskirts of Cordoba. Now obviously, these are Muslim historians writing two-to-three-hundred years after the events they describe, so we must always take their accounts with a grain of salt (as we would with any historian's work, Muslim or not) and consider the political motivations responsible for their histories.

[...]

This is the important fact that Newt hopes those who read his polemic will be ignorant of: for a ruler to be legitimate in Muslim eyes in the tenth century, during the time when the Great Mosque was being expanded into its present-day dimensions, it was important to emphasize the peaceful succession of Islam from the other religions in the area. A caliph was expected to have arrived at an accord with the Christians and Jews over which he ruled. Far from "symboliz[ing] their victory" the Mosque was held up by Muslim historians a symbol of peaceful coexistence with the Christians--however messier the actual relations of Christians and Muslims were at the time.

[...] So it's easy to see why a group of Muslims creating a community center in the heart of a majority Christian country in a city known for its large Jewish population might name it "The Cordoba House" They're not, as Gingrich hopes we would believe, discreetly laughing at us because "Cordoba" is some double-secret Islamist code for "conquest"; rather, they're hoping to associate themselves with a particular time in medieval history when the largest library in Western Europe was to be found in Cordoba, a city in which scholars of all three major Abrahamic religions were free to study side-by-side.

Newt is as screamy a RWS™ as they get. His bullshit just smells a little better at first whiff, because he drapes himself in academe like a bacon-wrapped date stuffed with Boursin. Which is delicious, by the way, and can be done over a campfire as my wife recently demonstrated.]

Diners' Dilemma

Sometimes a meal is so perfect that I find myself thinking ahead to the end. What, I ponder, should be my last bite? With which gustatory sensation do I want to end the evening, which flavor is to be the lingering memory? It takes a little planning, and isn't often easy.

Well, tough times are everywhere.

Anyway, I was thinking of it tonight as my wife and I worked our way to the end of an excellent meal at a new (to us) place in Seattle. Not fancy, not particularly expensive for what we got; just really nicely done, every portion nearing the perfect Platonic ideal of its iteration. As usual, we ordered different items, and passed them back and forth. It was all good. I made my choice, lined up a couple of forkfuls, followed the plan. It was the right one, tiding me over until the chocolate terrine arrived, thence to take its place among the top ten desserts of my lifetime.

As the world keeps wobbling on its axis, as our politics continue their descent into the impossible, it was a pleasant diversion. Planning the last morsel of a meal, as opposed to contemplating the last days of America.

Judge Meant

As surprising as sunrise, conservatives are enraged. The judge was gay. The judge was gay. THE JUDGE WAS GAY.

Funny. Everyone knew it, including all the lawyers for both sides. Why do you suppose there were no objections? (When I asked the question in a comment thread, it was met with silence.)

Because even the lawyers defending Prop 8, who could find only two lousy witnesses for their sides (and by lousy, I mean idiotic and laughable) knew the obvious: if they objected to the judge because his sexual orientation made him prejudiced, the other side would (I'd have to hope) do so about a straight judge. What argument can be made for the one that can't be made for the other?

I'm sure those lawyers must have given it some thought. But some things are so obvious that even bigoted denialists have to recognize them. How it must have stuck in their collective craw: our arguments are fine for political campaigns when directed at the thoughtless and willingly misled. But if we make them under the brightest of lights, in courtrooms, where they'll be subjected to actual scrutiny by people who know how to think (enough, anyway, to be noticed), we'll have to try to make sense.

Damn.

Pathetic

Pardon me for stating the obvious, but in every election in the past who-knows-how-many years, Republicans have campaigned on hate and fear, usually in that order. Lately they've had a little problem with their go-to pistol-whipping of gays, as a semblance of humanity has glimmered its way to the mid-brain of enough former cretins to be making a difference. Gay marriage? Ho hum. (Well, not exactly. But it no longer brings the blood to the eye that it once did, when it helped elect George Bush.)

With no ideas that have any traction, none that haven't already been shown to be devastating to our economy, where's the fallback this cycle? On whose back to dump the hate, to rally the frothers, to win the power once again to steal the piggy bank? What's a good Rovian Republican to do?

......

Wow. That was easy. 9/11 and Muslims. Nine years, and it still works. Even most American-made cars can't claim that kind of reliability.

In a happy bit of timing, a couple of days after I started this post, Sam Seder, who is way funnier and cleverer than I, came out with another in his series of "That's Bullshit" videos.

What a pathetic bunch are the current Republican leaders. How cynical, hateful, useless. How sad that their style works as well as it does, on people who ought to know better. Assuming, of course, they believed in education, tolerance, and America.

It's getting to be too much.

Simple

With respect to the Prop 8 ruling, a person I know writes to me and asks,

...tell me if it fits with what your understanding of the Constitution provides. One man, overruling a majority in a vote, on a Proposition approved as constitutional by the State Supreme Court.

Yes: good move No: he was one man against the majority...
Real simple.

Since the person wants a simple answer, clearly, it's "Yes. Good move." But, sadly, for what appears to be a majority of Americans, and probably nearly all teabaggers, all the RWS™, it's far from simple. Because these people, these self-described patriots who claim fealty to the Constitution (while wanting to amend it severally and serially and cynically, for votes), don't have a clue about what it says. And, to the extent that they do, they simply ignore it.

To those who are outraged by this decision, this decision by a conservative judge, argued, among others, by a Republican former Solicitor General, I say, READ THE DAMN RULING. You might learn something about the law, and why we are a nation of laws, the role judges have in protecting minorities, upholding principle and law. I admit it's not often seen nowadays; but it's a shining example of judicial restraint. It's the opposite of judicial activism. It's a non-ideological finding of fact. It's, well, conservatism. At its best. Which we rarely see any more.

As simply as I can say it: we have laws, and we have a judiciary whose job -- its most important job, anyway -- is to keep people from running roughshod over those laws. A majority can't legally ignore the Constitution. State courts can't invalidate the Constitution. If people don't like the Constitution -- and god knows Republicans really don't -- there is a constitutional way to change it. You can't do it by state proposition. Period. People who don't get that either fail to understand the idea of constitutional democracy, or don't really love the country as established and defended for the last two hundred thirty four years. Simple.

I get that many religious people are horrified by homosexuality. In the case of many of the most public of them, clearly it's because they loathe themselves for being homosexual. For them, I feel sorry. (I'm a liberal.) For the rest, it's because their interpretation of their religious literature tells them that homosexuality is some sort of an abomination. Okay, fine. Believe it. There's nothing I can do to convince them otherwise, any more than I can convince them the earth is older than six or twelve thousand years, that evolution happens, that homosexuality is not a choice for any but a small percentage, that the climate is changing. Believe what you must. If humans valued fact, we wouldn't have religion. Or teabaggers.

As the judge said, there's simply no argument to be made against gay marriage other than a religious one. None. All the arguments -- about kids, about degradation of straight marriage, about agendas -- are simply false, as was factually established during the trial. Excluding gays from the right of marriage is discriminatory, it's religious based, it's predicated on hate for a class of people the recognition of whose rights produces no demonstrable harm to a state, to the country, to anyone; and the denial of whose rights offers no demonstrable good to those doing the denying, and only harm to those discriminated against. It's obvious. I've been married for thirty nine years. When gays got the right to marry in a couple of states, it did nothing to my marriage. Nothing. There's no way it could. (DOMA. How despicable, what a laughable title for an act. How shameful that Bill Clinton approved it.)

If you don't approve of gay marriage, don't do it. If you don't like gays, don't associate with them. Don't let them in your church or your home. Hold up nasty signs and shout at them if it makes you feel good, if your low self-esteem or shaky sexuality, your perverse view of WWJD demands it. If you think gay is a choice, an infection that you can catch, well, you're sadly misinformed, ignorant of fact, and a perfect match for the Tea Party. Join up. It's your right, it's all your right. What's not your right is to vote away the rights of others.

What in god's name is the harm to you caused by gay marriage? Down the street, around the corner, in another state? What is the state's interest in being involved?

The judge, who must be an incredibly brave man whose life, I'd have to say, is now at risk (given the hatred regularly whipped up by the RWS™), did what any person with open eyes and guts of steel -- free of prejudice, valuing the idea of the rule of law -- would have done. He struck down a law that has no place in America; a law that clearly denies rights to people with no justification; a law for which there is no constitutional argument. That a majority chose to harm a minority is no excuse. It's exactly why we have federal courts. It couldn't be clearer why we need them. And why it's a tragedy that so few people really get it. Even those on state courts.

Judicial review is as basic to America as fruited plains. Without it, we'd be Iran, or Soviet Russia. But that's not simple, it's not easy. It's hard. Democracy is hard. Respect for minorities, for the law, is hard. Accepting the rights of those with whom you disagree is hard. Being a RWS™, being a teabagger, is not hard. It's about wishing away reality, because reality is hard. It's about anger and fear, with no need to produce solutions. It's about giving in to the basest instincts, and calling it patriotism. Or something.

Unless there are more judges like Judge Walker out there, we're on our way to oblivion. And the people who are taking us there, who are responsible, are pointing their fingers in exactly the wrong direction.

And, yeah, the question pissed me off.

[Update, 8/8: I'm not the only one who sees the judge's decision as conservatism at its best.]

Nutcase Screwjob

Can we all just agree that John McCain has gone over the edge? One might argue as to when -- I'd say it began in Hanoi -- but that it's true isn't really in doubt. His latest ego-driven move to hurt our country is his single-handed hold on the nomination of James Clapper as director of national intelligence. Maybe it's the word "intelligence" that makes him feel so threatened. And lest anyone think he's taking a sensible stand, the man was approved unanimously in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Unanimous. In these times, that's philosophers' stone stuff.

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services committee, has evoked his procedural right to hold the nomination of the leader of the intelligence community, which could mean it will be weeks before the opening is filled, as the Senate has only one legislative work week left before it recesses until September.

"Sen. McCain requested a specific report from Mr. Clapper, and, until that report is provided, Sen. McCain will continue to hold his nomination," McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said via e-mail.

So it's pique, a hissy-fit. No matter that there's universal approval of the man; no matter that having a director seems sort of important in these times. John McCain will not be treated with disrespect, I tell you.

Of course, it's not just John McCain. Senate Republicans have held up Obama's nominations, especially for vacant judgeships, at twice the rate Bush's were, even when Democrats were in the majority.

It's pure politics, at its very worst. Screw the country, screw the people's business. We're Republicans, so we simply don't give a shit. It's who we are.

It's simply indefensible. And it's incomprehensible that these people, with this unprecedented level of destructiveness, now and in the past presidency, are claiming the right to take over again. And will probably get it.

I know why it is, and I've said so. But I simply can't stomach that we've become so stupid as a nation. It's as if we (and by "we" I mean "they") actually want to see our country fail. It nearly did. And if they have at it again, it surely will. How can it not, when all they want is to return to the exact policies that brought us down?

In the meantime they'll see to it that no appointments get confirmed. No damn way.

Still, Small

Several times on this blog I've wondered out loud if there are any thoughtful conservatives left, ones who'd call out their own. Certainly there are none among those who leave their droppings here. But, it turns out, there's at least one more, after David Stockman, which is practically a crowd. I've never heard of him, but still. And he pretty much says everything I've been saying.

These days it's getting increasingly embarrassing to publicly identify oneself as a conservative. It was bad enough when George Bush 43, the K Street Gang, and the neo-cons were running up spending, fighting an unnecessary war of choice in Iraq, incurring massive deficits, expanding entitlements, and all the rest of the nonsense I cataloged over the years in posts like Bush 43 has been a disaster for conservatives.

These days, however, the most prominent so-called conservatives are increasingly fit only to be cast for the next Dumb and Dumber sequel. They're dumb and crazy.

He goes on, to provide a list:

Let's tick off ten things that make this conservative embarrassed by the modern conservative movement:

1. A poorly educated ex-sportwriter who served half of one term of an minor state governorship is prominently featured as a -- if not the -- leading prospect for the GOP's 2012 Presidential nomination.
2. Tom Tancredo calling President Obama “the greatest threat to the United States today" and arguing that he be impeached. Bad public policy is not a high crime nor a misdemeanor, and the casual assertion that pursuing liberal policies--however misguided--is an impeachable offense is just nuts.
3. Similar nonsense from former Ford-Reagan treasury department officials Ernest Christian and Gary Robbins, who IBD column was, as Doug Marconisobserved, "a wildly exaggerated attack on President Obama’s record in office." Actually, it's more foaming at the mouth.
4. As Doug also observed, "The GOP controlled Congress from 1994 to 2006: Combine neocon warfare spending with entitlements, farm subsidies, education, water projects and you end up with a GOP welfare/warfare state driving the federal spending machine." Indeed, "when the GOP took control of Congress in 1994, and the White House in 2000, the desire to use the levers of power to create “compassionate conservatism” won our over any semblance of fiscal conservatism. Instead of tax cuts and spending cuts, we got tax cuts along with a trillion dollar entitlement program, a massive expansion of the Federal Government’s role in education, and two wars. That’s not fiscal conservatism it is, as others have said, fiscal insanity." Yet, today's GOP still has not articulated a message of real fiscal conservatism.
5. Thanks to the Tea Party, the Nevada GOP has probably pissed away a historic chance to out=st Harry Reid. See also Charlie Crist in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky, and so on. Whatever happened to not letting perfection be the enemy of the good?
6. The anti-science and anti-intellectualism that pervade the movement.
7. Trying to pretend Afghanistan is Obama's war.
8. Birthers.
9. Nativists.
10. The substitution of mouth-foaming, spittle-blasting, rabble-rousing talk radio for reasoned debate. Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Hugh Hewitt, and even Rush Limbaugh are not exactly putting on Firing Line. Whatever happened to smart, well-read, articulate leaders like Buckley, Neuhaus, Kirk, Jack Kent, Goldwater, and, yes, even Ronald Reagan?

I like that he seems to get a little self-induced embarrassment as he includes Ronnie in that last one.

The guy is a law professor, so maybe in addition to embarrassment he feels a bit threatened by the aggressive anti-intellectualism of his party. Whatever the reason, he's saying, practically verbatim, the things I've been saying for years. Would that people like him would regain prominence in the Republican party. Because, as I've also said many times, we need two strong parties in this country, each able to function as intelligent, thoughtful, loyal, and reasonable opposition when the other is in power. We're so far away from that now that it's impossible to imagine finding our way back.

Truth Teller

Saying the obvious, Ronald Reagan's own budget director (David Stockman is still alive? Who knew?) calls out Congressional Republicans. To people with fingers in their ears, saying "la la la la la" as loud as they can, he argues:

IF there were such a thing as Chapter 11 for politicians, the Republican push to extend the unaffordable Bush tax cuts would amount to a bankruptcy filing. The nation’s public debt — if honestly reckoned to include municipal bonds and the $7 trillion of new deficits baked into the cake through 2015 — will soon reach $18 trillion. That’s a Greece-scale 120 percent of gross domestic product, and fairly screams out for austerity and sacrifice. It is therefore unseemly for the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to insist that the nation’s wealthiest taxpayers be spared even a three-percentage-point rate increase.

The article, which appears in NYT online next to an ad (when I first saw it, anyway) showing Fred Thompson asking for help in keeping the Bush tax cuts (because god knows we need to help the rich actors, for the good of... the rich actors) also says:

More fundamentally, Mr. McConnell’s stand puts the lie to the Republican pretense that its new monetarist and supply-side doctrines are rooted in its traditional financial philosophy. Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts — in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance — vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes.

This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. [Emphasis mine, but it should be everyone's.]

Okay, yeah, the Keynesianism dig is aimed at Democrats. Nevertheless, it's refreshing, if also amusingly ironic, to have the guy who engineered the first shot at destroying fiscal responsibility under wrongly-revered Ronnie Reagan speak up now. A few decades too late, but still...

Andrew Sullivan, among the last thoughtful conservatives writing in public, had this to say after reading Stockman's piece:

No intellectually honest person can hold Barack Obama responsible for this long term sabotage of America's fiscal health. The spending he has authorized has to be seen in the context of the massive financial crisis that nearly caused the second Great Depression and may well still cause a lost generation of output and jobs and productive lives.

But the central point Stockman makes is that all of this was not conservatism as it should be, but the degenerate mockery of conservatism that has come to dominate the GOP: a blend of fiscal abandon, politicized religion, lawless foreign policy and utter electoral cynicism. Until this is confronted, owned and refudiated, we may have a Republican future ahead, but not a conservative one.

Such reality-based thinking, of course, has been and will always be thoroughly rejected by the RWS™ and their teabagging fodder.

Epoch Fail

If there's anyone left to write it, history will show that the greatest crime committed by Fox "news", the RWS™, congressional Republicans, and the teabaggers who make them possible, is their climate change denial. With it, they have sealed the fate of our country, and of our planet. It's entirely at their feet. That the senate has abandoned attempts to craft meaningful legislation when the evidence is as clear as it is simply reflects the effects of the aforementioned idiocy. And it makes clear that our system of government is no longer capable of governing, and that the people it serves -- and who elected them -- have not enough collective wisdom to overcome being dragged down. It was a nice country, it was a nice planet, while it lasted.

What does it say about us when the formerly backward China gets it and we don't? What can be more dispiriting than this failure, given the evidence? It's as if a family decided not to leave its burning house because their favorite show was on. Or because someone told them that's not smoke anyway, that fear of flames is just a liberal plot to... to.... uh... something something.

See, the problem is that doing something would require people to think beyond their own personal gratification; and ever since Ronald Reagan they've been told they don't need to. Republicans give lip service to the idea of patriotism and sacrifice for the country they claim to love; but actually to save it, if doing so would require paying a little more in taxes, using a little less oil, thinking long-term, abandoning preferred (meaning "easy") beliefs to face facts, well, forget it. George Bush, after all, told us at the one moment we were together and maybe even shocked into willingness to do the hard stuff, that all we needed to do was go shopping. Go to Disneyland. And, of course, to pay less in taxes. That's when the idea of sacrifice, on life support since Ronald Reagan kissed Bonzo goodbye and placed his hand on the Bible, officially died.

I do understand, of course, that when a party has nothing to offer, tearing down the people with ideas is its only option. But it has always escaped me why certain things -- factual things -- should split along party lines. Climate change, evolution, age of the earth: shouldn't it just be, well, human, to be able to assimilate data, and not political? Evidently not, when one party deliberately and necessarily selects for uncritical thinkers. Non-thinkers. And praises them for it, while laughing at smart people.

How hard is the basic concept? Stop using fossil fuels. Or, to put it another way: STOP USING FOSSIL FUELS!!!!!

Yeah, well, actuation ain't as easy. But you don't even have to believe in anthropogenic climate change to see the need. 1) Sooner or later we'll run out of the stuff (unless you're among the lunatics who believe in abiogenic oil); 2) The faster we get off our need for imported oil, the safer we'll be; 3) NO ONE denies the effects of air pollution on our lungs (do they?), which, after all, are attached to our bodies even if we can't see them. So, you'd think, even as there is legitimate disagreement on how it should happen, everyone should be down with the idea that we have to get there. But no.

What kills me (all of us, actually) is the fact that our failure to do the right thing stems, as usual, not from having had a thorough debate and intelligent discussion of the issue and its solutions. It's because of stupid Senate rules and the way they allow complete idiots like James Inhofe to prevail. And it's because an entire network full of goons and morons legitimizes the idiocy in the eyes of the public. One can only imagine to what end.

I wish I'd live long enough to see those destructors live long enough to realize how wrong they were and how they killed our planet. On the other hand, these are clearly not people who'd ever muster that sort of introspection, extrovision, or self-criticism. But, corporatists that they are, they'll die after me, because they'll be the last to afford thousand dollar a gallon gas, the last to be able to pay for air conditioning, and a grand or two for a hamburger. The last to see what they did, even as they deny it.

One can hope.