Mayan campaign mashup 2012: Angry hamsters spinning in a cage

12 09 2012

Sad sad sad.

No, not that the Romney campaign can’t tell its ass from its elbow—good news, from the perspective of this Obama supporter—but that the Republican party refuses to recognize that there is, indeed, a difference between an ass an an elbow.

Which is to say, I’m of two minds regarding the GOPpers gobsmacking incompetence. . . well, wait, three.

Mind one: AHHHAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAA!

Mind two: That one of the two major parties has gone around the bend so far that it doesn’t realize the teeth sunk its buttocks are its own.

Hm, perhaps that’s not the best metaphor. Rabid ferrets? Tasmanian devil feeding frenzy?

(Okay, I don’t really know how the taz metaphor would work: Are they fighting over the carcass that is the GOP? their souls? the spoils of power? Or maybe the hypothesis that all of that snapping at one another has led to the spread of a cancer which is endangering the species is applicable. . . ?)

Where was I?

Oh yeah, trying not to concern troll the GOP. I honestly and truly believe that the major parties in a democracy must also be responsible parties, and, at the federal level, at least, the Republicans are less major- than bush-league. While good, in the short term, for the Dems, this is not good if it persists over the . . . . oh, fuck it, never mind.

Yes, there is a serious point to be made about pluralism and reason and evidence but I’m about ten minutes away from slipping into my pjs and after I’ve posted a vid of howling Tasmanian devils, I can’t really hoist myself to the high ground to reach that point.

So, on to the third mind: Mssrs. Romney & Ryan have had a bad week (heee!). Bummer for them, but a bad week in September may just be a bad week in September. However much I might enjoy their for-medical-marijuana/nope-against-it, for-parts-of-Obamacare/nope-against-it-all, for-military-budget-cuts/nope-against-’em, acknowledgment-of-troops-fighting-in-Afghanistan-is-just-so-many-words acrobatics—and yes, I really do enjoy these contortions—they may not, come November, matter all that much.

Oh well. At least I got to post a vid of Tasmanian devils.


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Talking ’bout what everybody’s talking ’bout

19 02 2012

Let’s not talk about contraception—oh no, no no no.

Can’t talk about contraception—except, as in the case of Senator Lynn Blankenbeker, a Republican legislator in New Hampshire, to talk about not using birth control:

“People with or without insurance have two affordable choices, one being abstinence and the other being condoms, both of which you can get over the counter,” she said. [. . .]

“Abstinence works 100 percent of the time,” she said.

Blankenbeker also asserted that condoms and abstinence offer married couples a wider range of family planning options than oral contraceptives.

“If you decide you want to get pregnant you can refrain from abstinence,” she said.

Uh-huh.

If nothing else, Blankenbeker helps to remind us that women may also qualify for the title as American idiot.

Anyway, let’s talk about all of those who don’t want to talk about what everybody’s talking about: sex and not-making babies. Let’s start with an inquiry into how many children these got-my-fingers-in-my-ears-lalalalalala-can’t-hear-you legislators have.

There are a lot of legislators, of course—100 senators, 435 voting representatives, plus hundreds more state legislators—so why not start small, with, say Representative Darrell Issa (he of the all-male panel on not-contraception) and the 112th Congress’s Full Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:

Republicans
Rep. Darrell E. Issa (CA-49), Chairman: b. 1953, married for over 30 years to second wife, 1 child
Rep. Dan Burton (IN-05): b. 1938, Church of Christ, 3 children w first wife (deceased), 1 child resulted from extramarital affair; remarried
Rep. John L. Mica (FL-07): b. 1943, Episcopalian, married, 2 children
Rep. Todd Platts (PA-19): b. 1962, Episcopalian, married, 2 children
Rep. Michael Turner (OH-03): b. 1960, Presbyterian, married, 2 children
Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (NC-10): b. 1975, Catholic, married
Rep. Jim Jordan (OH-04): b. 1964, evangelical Christian, married, 4 children
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (UT-03): b. 1967, Mormon, married, 3 children
Rep. Connie Mack (FL-14): b. 1967, Catholic,  2 children w first wife (divorced), remarried
Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-7): b. 1951, Protestant, married, 3 children
Rep. James Lankford (OK-5): b. 1968, Baptist, married, 2 children
Rep. Justin Amash (MI-3): b. 1980, Orthodox Christian, married, 3 children
Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle (NY-25): b. 1951, Catholic, divorced, 6 children
Dr. Paul Gosar (AZ-1): b. 1958, Catholic, married, 3 children
Rep. Raul Labrador (ID-1): b. 1967, Mormon, married, 5 children
Rep. Pat Meehan (PA-7): b. 1955, Catholic, married, 3 children
Dr. Scott DesJarlais (TN-4): b. 1964, Episcopalian, 1 child w first wife (divorced), 3 children w second wife
*Rep. Joe Walsh (IL-8): b. 1961, Catholic, 3 children w first wife (divorced), remarried, 2 children (w second wife?)
Rep. Trey Gowdy (SC-4): b. 1964, Baptist, married, 2 children
Rep. Dennis Ross (FL-12): b. 1959, Presbyterian, married, 2 children
Rep. Frank Guinta (NH-1): b. 1970, Catholic, married, 2 children
Rep. Blake Farenthold (TX-27): 1961, Episcopalian, married, 2 children
Rep. Mike Kelly (PA-3): b. 1948, Catholic, married, 4 children

Democrats

Rep. Elijah Cummings (MD-7), Ranking Member: b. 1951, Baptist, married, 3 children
Rep. Edolphus Towns (NY-10): b. 1934, Baptist, married, 2 children, surrogate to 2 nephews
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (NY-14): b. 1946, Presbyterian, widowed, 2 children
Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D.C.): b. 1937, Episcopalian, divorced, 2 children
Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH-10): b. 1946, Catholic, 1 child w first wife (divorced), married to third wife
Rep. John Tierney (MA-6): b. 1951, Catholic, married, 3 stepchildren
Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay (MO-1): b. 1956, Catholic, divorced, 2 children
Rep. Stephen Lynch (MA-9): b. 1955, Catholic, married, 1 child, surrogate to niece
Rep. Jim Cooper (TN-5): b. 1954, Episcopalian, married, 3 children
Rep. Gerald Connolly (VA-11): b. 1950, Catholic, married, 1 child
Rep. Mike Quigley (IL-5): b. 1958, Catholic, married, 2 children
Rep. Danny Davis (IL-7): b. 1941, Baptist, married, 2 children
Rep. Bruce Braley (IA-1): b. 1957, Presbyterian, married, 3 children
Rep. Peter Welch (VT-At Large): b. 1947, Catholic, 5 stepchildren w first wife (deceased), 3 stepchildren w second wife
Rep. John Yarmuth (KY-3): b. 1947, Jewish, married, 1 child
Rep. Christopher Murphy (CT-5): b. 1973, nondenominational Christian, married, 2 children
Rep. Jackie Speier (CA-12): b. 1950, Catholic, 2 children w first husband (deceased), remarried

So what can we tell from this august group? Of the 40 members, 4 are women, 38 are some variety of Christian, and, apparently, damned near all of them almost certainly practice some form of birth control.

“Almost certainly”: I do not know and do not want to know the sexual habits or fertility of these men and women, whether they or their sexual partners have miscarried or had abortions, or whether there were any health problems during pregnancy or with any of their children.

None of this is my business. None.

But what is my business is the public activity of these 36 men and 4 women and what they prescribe to the rest of us in terms of our own, private, business. And while I tend not to make much of the usual gaps between private behavior and public pronouncements—I don’t actually know if any of these representatives have voted against making birth control more accessible—it is nonetheless worth noting that evidence suggests that these representatives (or, perhaps, their wives) have accessed birth control themselves.

________________
*Joe Walsh deserves special mention, and not just because he’s been sued by his ex-wife for child support and chastised by a judge for his non-cooperation; at the not-contraception hearing he stated This is not about women. This is not about contraceptives. We know, you’ve said it, we’ve said it up here. This is about religious freedom. This is about religious liberties.

Because women and religion have nothing to do with one another. Perfect.

(Biographical info from Wikipedia, Project VoteSmart, official home pages)


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Der kommissar

1 12 2011

Mark Pitzke, at Der Spiegel, on the Republican slate:

They lie. They cheat. They exaggerate. They bluster. They say one idiotic, ignorant, outrageous thing after another. They’ve shown such stark lack of knowledge — political, economic, geographic, historical — that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein and even cause their fellow Republicans to cringe.

Pretty much, yep.


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Replace unionized labor with child labor

20 11 2011

Our boy Newt, GOP flavor of the moment:

“You say to somebody, you shouldn’t go to work before you’re what, 14, 16 years of age, fine. You’re totally poor. You’re in a school that is failing with a teacher that is failing. I’ve tried for years to have a very simple model,” he said. “Most of these schools ought to get rid of the unionized janitors, have one master janitor and pay local students to take care of the school. The kids would actually do work, they would have cash, they would have pride in the schools, they’d begin the process of rising.”

You can see why pundits praise his intellect.

(Via Politico)


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The politics of contempt, cont.

12 09 2011

Apostates tend to get attention—of the furious sort from those betrayed, and delight from those whose views such apostasy confirms.

So too with Mike Lofgren, the former GOP staffer whose resignation from the Republicans has been widely quoted, at least among those who agree with his analysis that his party has gone bonkers.

Now, I tend toward skepticism of the reception to such turn-coats, largely because his or her rethink matters less for the thought than for the fodder it provides in the endless schoolyard battle of “I’m-right-and-you’re-stupid/evil”. We welcome the other side’s apostate for the same reason the other side welcomes ours: their apostasy confirms our wisdom.

So, with the additional conditionals that I don’t know Lofgren, I don’t know his motivations, and I don’t know if he’s right, I want to highlight this bit:

I do not mean to place too much emphasis on racial animus in the GOP. While it surely exists, it is also a fact that Republicans think that no Democratic president could conceivably be legitimate. Republicans also regarded Bill Clinton as somehow, in some manner, twice fraudulently elected (well do I remember the elaborate conspiracy theories that Republicans traded among themselves). Had it been Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, who had been elected in 2008, I am certain we would now be hearing, in lieu of the birther myths, conspiracy theories about Vince Foster’s alleged murder. [emph. added]

That we’re in agreement on this dynamic of delegitimization hardly makes us correct. But it does serve to highlight as a problem something which so many of us have taken for granted as a feature of current American politics.

And yes, it is a problem.


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The politics of contempt

7 09 2011

Can I steal from myself? ‘Cause I’m gonna steal from myself.

I’ve been yelping and hectoring and despairing and whatevering for the past year on the battlefield that is American politics, on the Republicans’ scorched-earth tactics, and on President Obama’s unwillingness to open the hose on these arsonists.

There is more to be said on this.

My attention is wavering, however, so I’ll let James Fallows (here, here, here, and here) and TNC run a few legs of this race, and, for now, simply steal the comment I posted at TNC’s joint:

I think this [destructiveness] goes back even further—at least to FDR—but it took a different form then than it does now.

My hypothesis: that the sense of the illegitimacy of any kind of left (center-left on outwards) government used to be on the fringes of the polity, but has since edged into some of the main streams of the Republican party.

There were certainly (loud) mutterings that Roosevelt was a communist, but I don’t know that these came from the Republican leadership. The Eisenhower administration was, of course, attacked by McCarthy, and Kennedy was hardly universally mourned; still, even if the GOP leadership thought that all liberals and Democrats (a phrase that only in the late 80s became redundant) were axiomatically illegitimate, they didn’t say so in public.

The attack on the legitimacy of the government emerged as an open campaign theme in the 1980s; the attack on the legitimacy of Democrats to lead government blew open in the 1990s, culminating, of course, with the impeachment of Clinton. These lines crossed and fused in the 2000s, apparent in the various campaigns, and then going nuclear—with the eventual blessing of the GOP leadership—with the election of Obama.

Again, this is just an hypothesis, and I’d guess that a full exploration of this hunch would reveal all sorts of exceptions and wrinkles and significant subdynamics (such as the movement of white southern Democrats into the GOP); I’d also caution that I think this phenomenon has until recently been confined to the national level.

I’ll let this be for awhile—other things on my mind—but the full flowering of this discourse of delegitimization is nothing less than an expression of contempt for democracy itself.

That bears watching.


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Hippy-hippy forward

2 08 2011

I will try to restrain myself from commenting any further on the debt-deficit-deal-debacle—but only after making the following two points:

1. Politics is not one thing. Yeah, Duh, I know, but in this debt bill there are two crucial pieces: the substance of the deal and the optics of the deal-making.

I am unenthusiastic about the substance, and am pleased that my representative (Yvette Clarke) and one senator (Kirsten Gillebrand) voted against it. I’m convinced by those who state that cutting spending during a time of low demand and high unemployment is a bad idea because such cuts will simply push the lows lower and highs higher.

Yes, I am effectively unemployed and no it’s not because this is hitting me, but I think a far bigger concern than the deficit is unemployment.

Get people to work, and those people start paying taxes on their paychecks. You may at some point need to raise taxes and/or cut spending to curb the deficit, but right now the emergency for tens of millions of people and their communities is unemployment.

Regardless of my unenthusiasm for the deal and small pleasure in Clarke’s and Gillibrand’s votes, I also understand why others voted for it. The debt ceiling had to be raised, most of the cuts are pushed back to 2013 and beyond, and, well, default would have been catastrophic.

Upshot: this is lousy on its merits, but it could have been worse.

On the optics, however, this is worse-er than merely lousy. Obama and the Dems could have dealt with the debt ceiling back when they were still in the majority, and, oh yeah, could have gotten in front of the budget issue in general.

Yes, Republicans were uncooperative before the 2010 elections and even less cooperative between the elections and the seating of the new Congress, but Obama, Reid, and Pelosi could have pushed forward a strong enough agenda that would have required the TeaPer-fueled GOP at least to have to fight for their “No!No!No!” platform. As it was, the Dems retreated before the wave rather than holding on and waiting for the wave itself to recede.

The Dems weakened themselves both in terms of not going hard at the Republicans and in not defending, much less advancing, their own vision for the country—probably because they seem to have forgotten that they ought even have a vision.

There are some good, tough Democrats out there, and yes, I’ll vote for Obama again in 2012, but beyond stopping the conservative onslaught, I have difficulty discerning what is the purpose of the Democratic Party.

Saying “it could be worse” is a truism, not a rallying cry.

2. The notion that Obama’s weakness in, ahem, “negotiating” this deal is due to the apathy of the left and/or the party base is false and infuriating because false.

I’ll give half-credit to those who note that people have to vote, and those who stayed home did failed in not taking advantage of one of few powers we have.

The other side of this, which goes unmentioned, is that it’s up to the candidates and the party to motivate them to vote, and the Dems did themselves no favors in the many months preceding the elections by not promoting what were, in fact, some solid accomplishments.

Again, telling us the other guy is worse ain’t enough.

What really flips my lid, however, are those who raise the FDR card: “The president told us to push him to do the right thing, and we didn’t do that.”

Mm-hmm.

Axelrod and Plouffe and the president himself looking for some hippie to smack when they were, in fact, pushed—how does fit into the whole “keep me accountable” gig?

Mocking and deriding as hippies those left-critics who you invited to speak does at least indicate that the president retains the ability to go after his detractors. Too bad he only deploys this ability against his own side.

Finally, when is telling people to “make me” do the right thing a sign of strong leadership?

Lead from behind, wait-and-see, blah blah—yeah, I get it: the president isn’t a bully and for the most part he dispenses with the pulpit.

But you can be cool without losing strength:

No, the president can’t do what Malcolm did, for all kinds of reasons.

But there’s no reason he can’t also lift his hand and point to where he wants us to go.


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You can’t always get what you want

28 07 2011

Completely irresponsible.

Yes, I disagree with the Republican agenda in general and the Tea Party agenda in particular. No surprise there.

And I’m not particularly happy with the Democrats, either—see my various Bam! posts—and their apparent inability even to generate an agenda (which is likely related to their lack of overall purpose).

But there are certain realities which are indifferent to ideologies and agendas, realities which include a high unemployment rate, divided government, and a wary global economy. There are, in other words, constraints on one’s aspirations, constraints which ought to discipline one’s behavior.

And yet they do not. Or, to put this another way, “limits” are apparently to be used only as an ideological battering ram by the TeaPers, rather than marking out the boundaries of a difficult debate.

Difficulty? What difficulty? We’ll simply wave our “don’t-tread-on-me-flag” and declare that our will is what is.

Why deal with reality when you are the Master of Your Own Universe?

It must be admitted, of course, that life in the real world is a little less heady, a little more complicated, and contains more than its share of frustrations. The notion of living within one’s means requires that we nail down just what we mean by “living with” and “one’s means”, and that the old Rolling Stone lyric is wrong only in that, honestly, you don’t always get even what you need.

We can change the world (the universe? not so much), but not by declaring the world changed. We have to do the work.

So, members of the House of Representatives, put down the flag and do the fucking work.

If you don’t like how and how much the government spends, you deal with that in the budget process. Want less spending? Then allocate fewer funds. Lower taxes? Ditto.

If, however, you want to increase defense spending, maintain agricultural price supports, protect subsidies for oil companies, fatten up the transportation/highway spending budget, fence out all illegal immigration, give money to survivors of tornadoes, hurricanes, drought, and fire, well, then, you have to make some decisions about those taxes.

You don’t get to say “no deficit spending” and then vote for deficit spending.

You want a balanced budget? Then produce a FUCKING BALANCED BUDGET.

And after you’ve produced an unbalanced budget, don’t pretend to have been victimized by your own actions.

Don’t say “hey, spend money on this,” and then refuse to hand over the credit card.

I’d prefer more spending: on multiple high-speed rail routes, a single-payer health plan, scientific and medical research, aggressive development of green technologies, elder care, day care, welfare, environmental protection, job (re)training, mixed- and low-income housing, education—the whole social welfarist shebang. Higher taxes, more and better services.

You want more, you have to pay more, full stop.

But maybe you don’t want to pay more. I think the anorectic approach to governance is wrong, but legitimate—or it is only legitimate if you actually lower your spending levels to match your revenues (and, frankly, if you don’t off-load any costs on to other entities). If you’re willing to tell people that they’ll receive precious little in return for the precious little they pay, then, okay.

But you don’t get say “I’ll cut—and there will be no blood.” And then double-back and proclaim your courage in dealing in “hard truths”.

Don’t paint yourself as a martyr—“I’m willing to risk my seat over this!”—for doing your fucking job, especially when you’re not doing your fucking job.

You took a job in government, a government which has obligations which predate your arrival and will incur obligations after you’re gone. Whether you like it or not, you’re responsible for those obligations.

So start acting like it.


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Bam! Bam! Bam!

12 07 2011

Hellooooooo! Anyone hooooooomme? Democrats, are you theeeeere?

“We think public schools should go away,’’ says Teri Adams, the head of the Independence Hall Tea Party and a leading advocate — both in New Jersey and Pennsylvania — of passage of school voucher bills. The tea party operates in those two states and Delaware. They should “go away,” she says, because “they are hurting our children.’’ […] Adams says the current voucher program “discriminates” against wealthier students by providing public subsidies only to inner-city children in allegedly failing schools. Her group’s e-mails pushing vouchers caught the attention of James Kovalcin of South Brunswick, a retired public school teacher who asked Adams for clarification. She responded via email: “Our ultimate goal is to shut down public schools and have private schools only, eventually returning responsibility for payment to parents and private charities. It’s going to happen piecemeal and not overnight. It took us years to get into this mess and it’s going to take years to get out of it.” [emph. in original]

Can you do something with this? Or how about this—Orrin Hatch on taxation:

No matter what these Democrats tell you, the wealthy and middle class are already shouldering around 100 percent of the nation’s tax burden and 51 percent pay absolutely nothing in income taxes,” Hatch fumed before lambasting the entire system.

“Furthermore, because of this perverse distribution of federal income taxes, there is no way to fix our deficit hole and start paying down the debt by increasing taxes only on the so-called rich,” he said.

And here’s Senator Hatch again, on aid for workers displaced by trade deals (TAA):

I hope we can find a better path forward and the president will now act quickly and submit these agreements for congressional consideration, without including the TAA poison pill.

That’s right, help for workers thrown overboard on the rough seas of  ‘free’ trade is a poison pill.

You can’t do anything with that?

How about Eric Cantor’s proposal to make students begin paying interest as soon as they take out student loans? Republican resistance to corporate tax breaks?

Go after them, all of them. Go into their districts and raise hell, force them to deal with constituents who’d be burned by their policies, make them all answer for the worst of them.

Let the president play nice.

The party, on the other hand, needs to grow a pair of titanium tits and fight! fight! fight!

_____

h/t Zaid Jilani, Think Progress; Michael McAuliff, HuffPo; Pat Garofalo, Think Progress/Doug Palmer and David Lawder, Reuters


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Bam! Bam! Bam!

11 07 2011

“Bad Republicans!”

Putting together a video—hell, a series of videos—on Republican obstructionism and bad governance—shouldn’t be that difficult.

Consider Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in October 2010 stated The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.

The single most important thing: not jobs, not education, not energy, not anything else which would affect the quality of life of Americans, but beating the other team.

Or remember when Vice President Dick Cheney said Reagan proved deficits don’t matter? Where was James DeMint then? Did Eric Cantor have any pushback to this deficit dovery? Paul Ryan? Where was Mr. Budget Butchery then?

This isn’t difficult, Democrats. Sure, the White House wants to take the high road, but what’s to prevent the Democratic National Committee from taking the low road and getting to Scotland afore ye?

And, really, shooting vids on Orrin Hatch stating poor people need to pay more taxes or some Republican expressing horror at the thought of forcing responsibility on financiers or removing tax loopholes for wealthy corporations and individuals is hardly distorting the record. If it’s the low road it’s because the GOP decided to dig a ditch and call it the expressway to electoral victory.

So start counting the bodies on the side of that road and charging the Republicans with hit-and-run.

This is outlaw ultimate fighting, and while the Republicans have been landing their blows low and aiming their kicks high, the Dems are still waiting for the ref to show up.

Fight! Fight! Fight!


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