Forget national politics.

This series is an attempt to explain (rather convincingly) where the real world is heading. And the people we elect are making it happen. Take a couple of hours to watch it, or not. It's up to you. Darkness can also be your friend.

INHERIT THE IGNORANCE

Apparently, in order to be supported by the GOP's base, a presidential candidate must debase him/herself and announce to the world his/her distrust of science. All of the presidential contenders, save for Jon Huntsman, have proudly voiced their doubts about Evolution as settled science, thus making monkeys of themselves in the eyes of enlightened minds in all corners of the world. All corners except in America, where we are at the bottom of the heap in all surveys that ask what percentage of our population accepts Evolution. Only Turkey is lower than we are.

This will warm the hearts of wilfull know-nothings and ensure that their children will carry on in their tradition of believing in a book written by Bronze Age superstitious, women-hating, old men. Good on them.

No amount of evidence will ever dissuade these types from their inscient world view. And as the presidential popularity polls show, the dumb and the ignorant will surely inherit the top Republican polling spot.

Here is Richard Dawkins, eminent ethologist and evolutionary biologist with his take on the lastest embarrassment from the GOP, Governor Rick Perry:

　
"There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.
A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well.
Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.
[skip]
There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election."
Richard Dawkins wrote this response to Governor Perry for
On Faith, the Washington Post’s forum for news and opinion on religion and politics.

Montezuma’s Revenge (Hint: Human Sacrifice is Good for You)

By Octopus

I have often wondered where John F. Kennedy cribbed the phrase, “ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country.”

Researching the Internet yesterday for a clue, I finally located a source: Huitzilopochtli (plus a curious codicil from House Republicans, Eric Cantor and Ron Paul).

If you want to serve your country and heed the call of Cantor and Paul - which means pull the plug on FEMA, emancipate seniors from Social Security slavery, cast out MediScare, and gut food safety regulations - please note: Human sacrifice is pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

No money for disaster relief?  No problem!  Let hurricanes drown all deadbeats on the Federal dole.  Distribute emergency food to the hungry?  Let them eat brioche!  Only 28,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths from tainted food each year?  Save money with salmonella!

With fewer folks making demands on the gubbermint, more supplies will surely trickle down to the rest of us. After all, human sacrifice is pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

How many sacrificial human beings will it take to balance the budget?  To reach a savings of $2.7 trillion, a mere 100 sacrificial billionaires will suffice - compared to 163,279,483 middle-class Amerikaners.  But everyone knows billionaires have no hearts worthy of sacrifice, which is not pleasing to Huitzilopochtli.

Huitzilopochtli will be counting on us to do our civic duty.  So ask not what House Republicans can do for you - ask what you can do for House Republicans.

Math is hard, Barbie!

The Trophy Wife asked me a question, which turned out to have a slightly different answer than she thought. Her question was "When was the last hurricane to hit New York?"

Because Irene got more media attention than normal, she figured it had been a while.

As it turns out, there have been 84 "tropical or subtropical cyclones that have affected the state of New York since the 17th century." About one a year, recently.

However, looking over the list, I noticed something. The groups seemed roughly the same size, but the last one, up to modern day, was a decade. The groups preceding it were quarter centuries. Then a half century. Then a century.

So I charted it (thank you, Excel). Filtering out Irene (to keep it in even decades), the X Axis (that's the horizontal line, for those of you with a standard American education) is decades. The Y Axis (that's the other one) is the number of storms. (Feel free to do the math yourself.)



I'm not saying it means anything. Because we all know that climate change (a.k.a. "global warming") is a myth, right? Just because there have been increasing numbers of storms hitting New York since the Industrial Era? Coincidence, right?

Tropical Storm Irene and the Meteoric Rise of Ron Paul's Descent

Perhaps it won't be amiss to post this little piece alongside Capt. Fogg's now since we've gotten onto the subject of cynicism, snark, Irene and Ron Paul.  So here goes....

It was bound to happen, you know. While Ron Paul is by no means what you'd call an extremist – at least not, that is, if you go by a sufficiently rigorous definition of the term that involves forcing people to accept your beliefs and being willing to kill or imprison them if they don't – at a certain point the out-thereness of the man's philosophy, the almost infinite impracticability of it in the real world, couldn't hide under all the copies of Atlas Shrugged in the world piled up in one blessed spot.

I believe we have reached that point in the current presidential campaign. If you weren't too busy battening down your own hatches against H/TS Irene today or worrying about how poor old Uncle Harry and Aunt Matilda are doing over there on the East Coast, you may have noticed Rep. Paul popping up on your tv screen (here's an MSNBC clip, for example) explaining with patient passion that FEMA really shouldn't be involved in this whole operation since there's "no magic" about that outfit whatsoever. It's unnecessary, you see, because as we all know, helping people is a task best relegated to the various states and local government entities. That apparently remains true even when the help may need to be provided to millions across a huge swath of the country swamped and blasted by a storm itself the size of Texas or California.

When Ron Paul makes such a statement, he might as well have just admitted that he likes to cuddle up every night with a big stuffed bear named "Aynie the Pooh." The effect on anyone's ability to take him seriously is approximately the same. The word for the day is "Galveston," where a huge hurricane took thousands of Texans' lives back in 1900 – a period back to which Mr. Paul evidently looks nostalgically: "We ought to be like 1900…."

Perhaps his recent pronouncements are admirably consistent of Rep. Paul, but they're also apt to be taken rather badly by the 99.99999999% of the American public who don't insist on their libertarian ideologism in the middle of a monster storm that's pelting them with uprooted trees and flooding their homes. The healthy core of libertarianism has always been that its proponents genuinely favor civil liberty -- government shouldn't be snooping on you in your bedroom and meddling in your private life generally. But if the bed that was in your bedroom yesterday happens just now to be bobbing wildly in debris-strewn storm surge with you hanging on for dear life atop it (and the bedroom itself is you've no idea where), I think you really WANT some nosy government types on the lookout for you – as many as possible, to be precise. Even if there's nothing "magic" about them.

When libertarian philosophy meets the real world, the former almost invariably comes off looking mighty foolish and ineffectual, the helpless victim of massive forces like hurricane-force winds and corporate monopoly that it simply cannot process, not even in its dreams, if it has any. This is the proper stuff of college kids hashing out pure ideas in their dorm rooms, not something that belongs in the company of serious political deliberation for the benefit of anyone with a fair amount of life experience.

Manha de Carnival

Baseball? Football? Hell no, the American national pastime is snark, that kind of idiotic cynicism that makes the worthless hunk of big city, small minded protoplasm feel wise and worthwhile.

No, I didn't wake up this way this morning, but I did go looking for live streaming of the remnants of TS Irene on her way through New York. I do, after all have friends and relatives in the area and as of 10 AM today it looks like it won't be all that bad for those not foolish enough to go surfing or walking out on piers to see the waves as idiots are wont to do to the delight of the sharks.

No, what got to me were the endless comments from people using their good fortune to scream the usual brainless things about the inaccuracy of storm strength predictions. Ha, ha, ha -- the worst case scenario seems not to have occurred and as the first licks of wind began to affect the wormy apple, the giggling about the "experts," the government and their liberal inadequacy began.

So perhaps there were ten good heterosexual Christian people in the greater New York area and so God, who as you know is in control of all natural disasters affecting America, decided to spare the city. If so, that small group isn't evident in on line news commentaries. But God or no God, hurricane strengths are subject to too many variables to be accurately forecast so the smart person, the person who has been there, done that and had the T-shirt ripped off his back by the wind, ignores the giggling and prepares for the worst.

There aren't a hell of a lot of New Yawkahs who remember the storm of 1938. Even in Florida in 2004 the locals, many of them from New Yawk were smirking and snarking about the silliness of taking Francis seriously. It was fun to see them lined up at FEMA in their big Republican cars waiting sheepishly for food and water. Many of them no longer have houses in my part of Florida after a cat 2 and a cat 3 hitting the same town in the same month. Even so, in the following year some were still talking about Chicken Little when Wilma was predicted to be a weak Cat 1 yet by the time it came down my street, there were big oak trees rolling like tumbleweed in a Western movie and tall palms flapping like overcooked pasta or being torn to pieces and I still can't sleep through a storm for remembering the deafening noise of that storm.

So keep laughing you smug, know-it-all New York nitwits. Keep telling us we don't need FEMA or the National Weather Service or any silly thing that sounds like government -- just don't go looking for help when the looters come to your door, if you still have a door or are floating out to sea on the remnants of your house after a phone pole came through the wall at 160 MPH. Go have a Tea Party meeting in the soggy rubble stinking of drowned rats and dead crabs and tell yourselves about the every-man-for-himself paradise that comes from having no "government programs." I'm 800 miles away and it ain't my concern.

Race and Politics in the 21st Century

It's somewhat jarring to be reading, say, the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, and stumble across the following exchange.

In gay conversation over our wine, after supper, he told us, jokingly, that he much admir'd the idea of Sancho Panza, who, when it was proposed to give him a government, requested it might be a government of blacks, as then, if he could not agree with his people, he might sell them. One of his friends, who sat next to me, says, "Franklin, why do you continue to side with these damn'd Quakers? Had not you better sell them? The proprietor would give you a good price."

"The governor," says I, "has not yet blacked them enough." He, indeed, had labored hard to blacken the Assembly in all his messages, but they wip'd off his coloring as fast as he laid it on, and plac'd it, in return, thick upon his own face; so that, finding he was likely to be negrofied himself, he, as well as Mr. Hamilton, grew tir'd of the contest, and quitted the government.

This is not to say that Benjamin Franklin was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, just that he was no more racist than other white people of the time.

People occasionally complain that the meaning of words has changed over time. But it's not just words, it's attitudes that evolve, as well. Ideas and terms that used to be completely acceptable are now things that you want to avoid.

But because it's hard to argue that racism doesn't exist, the right-wing now has to hide, disguise, and lie about their own bigotry in order to keep pushing us boldly backwards into the 19th Century.

Now, you should understand that I'm not trying to claim that all Republicans are racist. But when you're fishing for trout, you go to a river, not a sandbox.

It’s funny how often the right wing has to apologize for calling Obama "tar baby" or "boy, but for some reason, they keep using those very same terms. Why is that?

The answer, of course, is that it’s all about "dog whistle terminology" – the simple stereotypes that racists prefer; terms that they can slip into conversation or speeches to alert other racists that they've found a "fellow traveler."

Our friends at World Net Daily are fond of the stereotype of Obama as lazy. Last week, WND publisher Joseph Farah wrote a column where he said "You won't hear me complain that Obama is taking his 17th vacation in the last two-and-half years... We should be grateful the man has no work ethic. Just imagine the damage he would have done to the country if he did."

That's just another example of the Republican Party’s badly-hidden language of racism. Because, in reality, we know how lazy Obama is, right?



This strategy was explained in 1981 by Reagan advisor Lee Atwater.

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968 you can't say "nigger" - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.

Sometimes, racism comes with collateral damage. In New Jersey, for example, Assemblyman Pat Delaney resigned from his position representing the eighth district last July, when, not he, but his wife, sent an email to challenger (and former Olympic Gold medalist) Carl Lewis, which included the line "Imagine having dark skin and name recognition and the nerve to think that equalled (sic) knowing something about politics." (I wonder if it equalled knowing something about spellcheck?)

The right-wing efforts to keep race in the forefront of what we laughingly call "people's minds" take a relatively predictable course. They have to present Obama as different from "you and me," like he's somehow alien, and therefore dangerous.

One of the most infamous efforts of recent times would have to be Fox Nation's front page from two weeks ago, reprinting a story from Politico.



Have to give them points for accuracy: Obama's birthday party didn't create jobs. On the other hand, neither did John Boehner's golf game, Haley Barbour's Klan rally or Mitch McConnell masturbating to pictures of sea turtles. But since it was an unreasonable comparison, we'll ignore that part.

The primary slant to the story is the specific mention of "hip-hop" (with its connotations of "scary black thug"). Odd how Fox "News" zips past mention of hip-hop luminaries like Nancy Pelosi, Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, and completely ignores things like a performance by all-white pop group OK Go.

As Chris Good put it in The Atlantic:

There doesn't seem to have been a whole lot of hip hop at this BBQ, based on Politico's account, except that a DJ played some of it, along with Motown and '70s and '80s R&B -- which sounds, and correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't go to a lot of these, kind of like the musical sampling at a contemporary bar mitzvah party.

Of course, that was Fox Nation, and Media Matters documented Fox Nation’s curiously high number of race-baiting headlines. But it's all part of the same strategy. It's why they kept talking about Obama going to a "black power" church (and why they're going to be talking about it again, coming into the 2012 election).

Because he's black. And therefore, he's a scary thug.

(Incidentally, do a quick google for "obama+thug" - you might be surprised at the number of hits you get).

It's actually an on-going strategy (as you might have guessed from fact that Lee Atwater explained it 30 years ago.) Pat Buchanan, for example, has a long history of making racially-questionable comments, but he recently wrote an article where he made the following curious turn of phrase.

Mocked by The Wall Street Journal and Sen. John McCain as the little people of the Lord of the Rings books, the Tea Party "Hobbits" are indeed returning to Middle Earth -- to nail the coonskin to the wall.

He didn’t just pull that particular word out of thin air – it doesn’t relate to anything else in the article.

Perhaps, if GOP members don’t want to be accused of racism, they should avoid passing around racist pictures. Especially if they've been caught doing the same thing before.

(Incidentally, please stop saying "I can't be racist! I have black friends!" That's not an excuse - that's an old joke.)

But as that great philosopher Lee Papa is wont to point out, the one thing we know about motherfuckers is that they will fuck their mothers.

Being the group of greasy lying assbags that they are, our friends on the right wing will open their eyes wide, wave their hands in distress, and say that their words are being taken out of context, that people are too sensitive (or "playing the race card"), and that liberals take an "innocent joke" and blow it all out of proportion.

And that might even be a valid point, if this only happened once in a while. But when it happens over and over on a continuous basis, that denial starts to stink worse than the decaying corpse of their collective conscience.

The Cracked Obelisk

" Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."

-Pat Robertson-

______________________

Beside the fact that this contemptible idiot is low enough to compare Washington DC to Jerusalem and medieval enough to insinuate that every shake rattle and roll this planet has experienced in the four billion years it's been around indicates the anger of God, besides the fact that this worm thinks his hate is God's hate, he presumes to speak for me and for America in general and that's unforgivable.

No sir, and I use that title in a contemptuous way, I don't think of a nation under God when I look at that monument and I'm certainly old enough to remember when the Knights of Columbus inter alia twisted Eisenhower's arm into bastardizing the children's pledge in 1954. I think of a victorious general and of the first president of the first secular democracy in Western history -- a man who asserted that this is not a nation under Pat Robertson's God or anyone else's.

Like some prehistoric shaman, squinting at goat entrails and attributing every meteor and comet and eclipse to angry but invisible entities for his own detestable profit, Pat Robertson always has a list of grievances to air when any natural process is noticed. Those grievances seem to have little to do with evil even on a gigantic scale, as God never shook his finger at Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot or Tomas de Torquemada for that matter, but only at the failure of our secular government to assume the aspect of God's enforcers in private matters - like love - that this black-hearted abomination can make a career out of raging about.

It's not of course that this tin-horn prophet is alone, nor is it restricted to pseudo-Christian pretenders like Robertson who have decided that tolerance for love's many forms is God's main obsession rather than injustice and oppression and exploitation or even murder. Yahweh, the Hammer of Homosexuals.

It's an insult to God, an insult to America; to freedom, to Democracy, to secularism and religious tolerance and all the other things our country actually is "under." This of course is the Worm who told us that God had no power over plate tectonics when the tsunami hit the eastern Pacific not long ago, but yes, I'll judge and I'll judge you viciously. I can't shake the ground or crack monuments and I'm too furious to crack jokes but because God is always silent and never says the same thing to different people: because divine retribution is indistinguishable from random natural events, I will judge you myself, weigh your words and find you wanting.

Great big balls of ice

It takes balls to stand up to the IMF and just say "no." And that's just what the people of Iceland did. Crippled with debt from their disastrous experiment with neo-Liberal finance, Icelanders broke with the EU and the America and refused to repay their debt. Instead of compliance with the international banksters there was a national uprising and the people forced their government to take action. They nationalized their banks and wrote a new constitution for themselves—online—and involving the entire population. Talk about participatory democracy.

This is the story no news media is reporting. You owe yourself a read.

Iceland is what the left should look like in times of crisis. (Of course, it's always impossible in America.) Sorry Barackistas, Demolition experts, Tea Partiers and Rape-ublicans, y'all seem to be way off track. It's no wonder Iceland's story isn't being reported...

An Urgent Appeal ...

By Octopus

Among all life forms known on this planet, there is no limit to the limitless decadence and moral depravity of human beings.   It is no longer enough to enslave dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, and goldfish as pets for self-amusement.  Now these upright-walking, downright loathsome bipeds are plotting the abduction of my friends, the jellyfish, as trinkets to display on every desktop:

One especially fiendish biped has invented a way to keep jellyfish in small aquariums next to your iFAD without sucking them into the water filter intake.  Most cruel and diabolical of all, circulating water will confine my friends to the middle of the tank ... consigning them to a lifetime circus performance with no breaks, no benefits, and no collective bargaining rights.

Octopus is appealing for your help.  If you have biped friends with a pulsating invertebrate fetish, tell them to get a goddamn lava lamp instead.  Better yet, tell your biped friends to bag one of these …

… and pretend it's a jellyfish!

"The Problem We All Live With"

That's the title of the famous Norman Rockwell painting dipicting Ruby Bridges of New Orleans walking to her first day of school.


Ms. Bridges was only six years old when her parents volunteered her to help integrate New Orleans schools.  As a result, she became the subject of a Norman Rockwell painting that captures her innocence and the malignant hatred the little girl endured on the day she walked into the all white William Franz elementary school in NOLA.

"The court-ordered first day of integrated schools in New Orleans, November 14, 1960, was commemorated by Norman Rockwell in the painting The Problem We All Live With.^[5] As Bridges describes it, "Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras." Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we're all very proud of her."--Wikipedia

The Norman Rockwell painting was recently placed in the White House on a temporary basis. 



More here.


The election of our first bi-racial president has brought out the racism that never really disappeared after the Civil Rights Act, but, instead, went underground; and in parts of this country, flourished.  All one has to do is read the comments under the report in Politico to understand that reality.  All one has to do is look at the racist emails sent around by conservatives who think it's only a "joke" to depict the First Family as primates; all one has to do is stomach one afternoon listening to Rush Limbaugh bring Mr. Obama's race into his rants against the president's policies and then listen to his followers call it "comedy;" all one has to do is read the remarks spoken by members of the media and Congress--remarks that, make no mistake, are based on Mr. Obama's race.

This weekend a memorial to The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., will be dedicated at the Mall in Washington, and already I've read people complaining about this the way certain people complained when a day was set aside to honor Dr. King's birthday.

None of this surprises me; all of it saddens me.  I thought, within my lifetime, I would see a lessening, not an increase of the problem we all live with.

The Clutching of Tea-stained Pearls

Three California House members held a "Kitchen Table Summit" ("Town Halls" are so passé), and Maxine Waters did what so few of our congresscritters are willing to do. She took a stand.

"I'm not afraid of anybody. This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell."

Personally, I think she should have gone with "Teabaggers," but, you know, decorum and shit.

I have no problem with what she said (particularly since her statement has been an unspoken theme in many of my blog posts over the last two years or so). But interestingly, it seems that some people got their panties all knotted up when her harsh words assaulted their delicate, shell-like ears.

Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, are calling on President Obama and leaders of the Democratic Party to "censure their own." They lambasted previous comments from Democrats that Tea Party supporters are "terrorists" and "hostage takers."

"Is civility required only of their opponents?" Martin and Meckler said in a statement. "...The president's silence on these latest violations of civility has been deafening, but not surprising."

Or to translate: "She said mean things and he didn't do anything!"

I suppose we should ignore that Obama's been staying out of almost all of the partisan infighting. And I guarantee that we're supposed to ignore all of the following statements:

"(An) Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug" ~~ Mark Williams, national spokesman for the Tea Party Express (2009-2010), on President Obama

"You lie!" ~~ Joe Wilson (R-SC; member, Tea Party Caucus), interrupting Obama's address before a joint session of Congress, after Obama said his health care plan would not cover illegal immigrants (Sept. 9, 2009)

"He has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity." ~~ Trent Franks (R-AZ; member, Tea Party Caucus), on President Obama (Sept. 26, 2009)

"We're on to them; we're on to this gangster government... I'd say it's time for these little piggies to go home," ~~ Michele Bachmann (R-MN; founder and chair, Tea Party Caucus), at the Tea Party's Tax Day protest in Washington, D.C. (April 15, 2010)

Please note: only one quote from Bachmann, despite reams of the stuff, from "death panels" to calling members of Congress "anti-American"

"You know if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying my goodness what can we do to turn this country around? I'll tell you the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out." ~~ Nevada GOP candidate and Tea Party darling Sharron Angle (Jan. 14, 2010)

And yes, only one Sharron Angle quote, too. She also had a raft of 'em, but she didn't get elected.

And to be fair, she might have meant "take out" as in "take out of office." Unless you take the whole quote in context, that is...

"As your governor, you're going to be seeing a lot of me on the front page, saying Governor LePage tells Obama to go to hell!" ~~ Governor Paul LePage (then Tea Party-backed candidate LePage, Sept. 29, 2010)

And I'm not saying that particular quote sounds familiar or anything...

"The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror" ~~ Iowa Rep. Steve King (member, Tea Party Caucus), on the result of candidate Obama getting elected president (Mar. 8, 2008)

Please note that I mostly avoided any failed Tea Party Candidate (except Angle, who was too wide-eyed and drooling to avoid). Like Glen Urquhart, who asked why liberals were Nazis (very common among the unhinged Right), or... really, Christine O'Donnell was one of the only Tea Party candidates who didn't spend most of her time vilifying her opponents - she was too busy proving herself to be a science-hating fundamentalist, with no real talent for either logic or statistics.

I'm not saying it means anything. I'm just saying that it's interesting.

Tea and Reason

Rick Santorum: the whole line-up of Tea Party candidates -- can't stand to listen to them, not allowed to drown them in a cesspit. What's a patriot to do?

We have all the 'important' Teabagger candidates now segueing smoothly from condemning the president for action to laughing at his inaction after he acted contrary to their threats and demands and tantrums. Santorum, in case you haven't heard, was quick on the draw in assuring us that President Obama was an "indecisive" man who can't take any credit for the fall of the Libyan despot, Moamar Gaddafi and his sons. Obviously, an Obama success; a mission actually accomplished, must not be allowed to interfere with the program of sabotaging our country, its economy, its prestige and anything good we ever pretended to stand for.

Of course, people who admire vermin like Santorum; Tea people who call their jive talking, hate stinking, subversive jihad a political party, aren't biologically capable of asking themselves why Obama was to be impeached just a short time ago for being too decisive by assisting NATO in helping Libyan rebels to overthrow the government -- but by having done so is "indecisive." Like other satanic saviors who come to mind, the lie's the thing. Keep saying it, shouting it repeating it, blogging it, blasting it from the Foxhole relentlessly around the clock and it becomes true. The steadfast become indecisive, the brave cowardly, and anyone who isn't an outright thief becomes a Communist.

One doesn't need to walk on water to be seen as a savior to these atavistic genetic accidents desperate for self esteem. One needs only to be a bigot, a fool a scoundrel and a bastard. (No offense intended to people whose parents never married.) Frankly any person who tolerates and supports such anti-American Tea Party idiocy is doing more than trying to make the president fail so they can put a moron and a crook in his place, they're assuring, promoting and cheering the failure of our country. Remember, the only difference between reason and treason is a T.

Texas, Taxes, and Divils to Adore for Deities

"'Spreading the wealth' punishes success," [Rick Perry] said during his announcement speech on Saturday, "while setting America on {a} course to greater dependency on government." ("Texas Tax System Heavily Burdens Poor Residents.)

Please just think about that for a moment. "'Spreading the wealth' punishes success ...." We wouldn't want to go and punish success, would we! Do any of these godbotherers ever read a single word of the bible they bandy about and hide behind? Never mind who the right-wingers' Jesus would bomb, what would the more authentic figure – I mean that long-haired radical proto-hippy fellow from the gospels, with his open contempt for wealth and penchant for hanging out with sinners and speaking up for fallen women -- say about such a philosophy?

"Good master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" asked a ruler of the day.

And wouldn't you know it, that impertinent socialist peacenik said, "sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me." (Luke 18:18-22, KJB).

We are told that the ruler who had asked the question walked away sorrowfully. For Lo, giving away one's wealth to the rabble punisheth success.

Well, pardners, it kinda sounds like Jesus didn't have much patience with what we now call "the gospel of prosperity," and I doubt that he would appreciate its being applied at the secular level to sock it to the poor in taxes for the benefit of the rich. Verily I say unto you, too many of our modern "Christians" are surely hypocrites. I believe the Jesus of the gospels would more than blush to call them followers – yessir, I reckon he'd vomit right down in his ten-gallon hat, if he'd worn one. But commies don't wear cowboy hats, so it's silly of me to conjure it up. Well, I think I remember seeing a picture of "Gorby" wearing a cowboy hat once, and if memory serves, Karl Marx considered emigrating to Texas in the mid-1840's. Even so, I apologize.

I'm more than happy to give the Guv'nuh some refining and wiggling room and of course the snippet I referenced isn't his entire announcement (easily Googled), but as far as I am concerned, those who emphasize a principle of worldly success over the well-being of their fellows, and call themselves Christians, are in fact devotees of Mammon. And in case any of us have forgotten the Ten Commandments as handed down to Charlton Heston by God Almighty in 1956, let's recall that one of them has to do with it being a very big no-no to worship idols in place of the Lord of Hosts:

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. . . . . (Exodus 20:4-5; for all the details about what you mustn't do, see Exodus 20:2-17, and Deuteronomy 5:6-21.)

Yet, the suggestion coming out of Texas seems to be that it's downright irresponsible to take a little silver from even the most impressive of personal Mammon-hoards and toss it in the public coffers for dispensation to the needy, lest the industry of the successful be dispraised and neglected and unrighteousness spread amongst the poor like wildfire in droughty woods. It smacks of idol-worship and forbidden self-sufficiency to me.

Mammon, as Milton points out in Paradise Lost, is almost admirable for his enthusiasm amongst the fallen rebel host in his determination to wrest the necessary riches from Hell's landscape and start building a rival, divided empire. He counsels infernal self-reliance: let us "seek / Our own good from ourselves, and from our own / Live to ourselves" (2.252-54). But even he was a collectivist by Republican standards, from the sound of it. Well, whatever the case, it would apparently be un-Christian to get in the way of excessive attachment to one of the most deplorable of pagan "Divils to adore for deities."

Yes, "divils." Don't you just love Milton's spelling? Even more cheerful is the thought that he and his contemporaries might have pronounced it that way, too.

Fantasy Islands

There have been a number of great social experiments since the founding of the United States of America as a secular republic whose legitimacy arose from the consent of the governed rather than the approval of some leader presuming to speak for God. It's too soon to know if it's been entirely successful.

If the Ayn Rand style social experiment envisioned by young venture capitalist Peter Thiel ever gets off the ground, or more accurately if it floats, since it's to be conducted on an artificial island, we may get a more definitive answer in a much shorter period of time, or so I suspect. Thiel, the fellow who helped found Paypal and Facebook, would like to construct a series of floating city-states in the Pacific where the 'principles' of Ms. Rand would be tested. They would somehow be established along "strict libertarian lines with a minimalist government free from the regulation, laws, and moral suasion of any landlocked country" says Details Magazine.

How a technology-intensive creation such as a floating city could be built without rules puzzles me since the builders and owners would in essence be the government and a government responsible only to its investors like Thiel and Patri Friedman, ultra-Libertarian grandson of economist Milton Friedman and the brains behind the idea. What sounds Libertarian on the drawing board may be corporatocracy at sea -- or perhaps just a bunch of little boys whose adulthood has been stunted by their massive wealth, playing Peter Pan. I have to wonder which one is Wendy.

And of course, the islanders wouldn't be randomly selected from the teeming masses real America is composed of, if I'm guessing correctly, so perhaps the Island of Randtopian Objectivist Dreams wouldn't have to deal with the real world's most intractable problems nor would any lessons learned about the value of living without the burden of altruistic responsibility be worth the effort. Think of a Petri dish with a Plague bacteria culture. One might never know the dangers it presents since the vectors that spread it aren't present as it sits there peacefully digesting its agar.

Our country has long been home to many social experiments, some of which have withered away either by banning reproduction or lack of further interest by the participants. Some have gradually turned from the founding principles and melted into the larger American pot. Some are alive and growing, even if slowly changing. But a few thousand rich and aggressive millionaires on an oil rig without "government intrusion" forcing them to treat others in the way they'd like to be treated might be an interesting experiment, but what would the results actually mean in terms of conducting that kind of experiment outside the Petri dish: in a nation of 300,000,000 rich, poor, healthy, sick, young, old smart, stupid, people with varying degrees of neurosis? Would the experiment mean anything at all if everyone there were so wealthy that the normal concerns and normal needs of normal people never manifest themselves?

Beats me, but this is an experiment proposed by young billionaires full of enthusiasm and self-esteem or should I say, overweening egotism. The real problems of real life are far away from their experience and all too easy to associate with other people and dismiss as the "bad choices" lesser people make. Far too easy to move away from to a fantasy island where disease, suffering, old age and bad luck fear to tread and the good times always roll like those long Pacific swells.

Little Ricky

It seems that our friends in the media are now considering Governor Goodhair to be a viable candidate for President. Well, sure. He might be some mutant version of a "serious statesman." Why the fuck not? Hell, if Michelle "Batshit Crazy" Bachmann is a viable candidate, why not Rick Perry, right?

And, really, while I know that the media is too scared of accusations of "liberal bias" to get tough with the man, I have some questions that I'd like to hear somebody ask. Like the following:

Now, Governor, you keep hinting that Texas should secede. You never quite say "the s-word," but you come so close, because you know the crazy people love that shit.

Now, if you think that Texas should split off from America, but then you say you want to be the President of that same United States... how do you balance those two thoughts?

In fact, if you think about it, Governor, despite your rhetoric that Obama was taking us over the edge, we're still here. Haven't gone over any edge. And not likely to, either. But you felt that the American people would allow themselves, to be taken in (hell, already had been) by a demagogue. Why do you think that everybody who doesn't believe just like you do is stupid and easily-led? Why don't you believe in America, Ricky?

Of course, right after saying that government was too big and spent too much money and Texas should (consider that maybe they might, if they wanted to) secede, you told Obama that you wanted half a million dollars worth of Tamiflu, and later told Obama he wasn't sending enough troops to secure the border... a border that you would have to secure for yourself...

I'm sorry, Governor. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around that. Anyway, I hope that by this time you're aware that the whole "Texas can secede!" thing is a steaming pile of lies, right? And that the other politicians in Texas are laughing at you over this, right?

First of all, Governor, I'd just like to say that your hair looks spectacular. Of course, it always does, doesn't it? Now, there's a rumor that's been following you for several years now, that you might be gay. Although I don't believe that there's anything more than a passing resemblance between you and one of the Village People, I was wondering if you'd care to comment on that?

Recently, your college transcript was leaked to the press, and it turns out that at Texas A&M, you could barely pull a C average: couple of F's, a lot of D's, and only two A's, one of them in something called Improv. of Learning - what exactly is that, Governor? Is that a remedial course or something? Never mind; it doesn't matter. But anyway, Governor, Texas Agricultural & Mechanical University is not an Ivy League institution (seriously, somebody should look up what Texans mean when they call somebody an "Aggie"); so, if it's true that your time there "helped shape who (you are) today," and you spent that time trying to flunk out of school, who exactly does that make you?

On that subject, a Bachelor's Degree is also called a "four-year degree" - you took five years at Texas Pigs & Tractors, from 1968 to 1972, to earn your Animal Science degree. Does your leadership as governor for the last decade have anything to do with Texas now leading the nation in percentage of adults without a high school diploma?

You've been pushing the power of prayer a lot; you seem to feel that people should talk to God. On April 21, you called on the citizens of Texas to pray for rain. At that point, about 15% of Texas was experiencing what's called "exceptional" drought conditions. By August 9th, that had increased to almost 80%. What was God telling you then, Rick?

You seem very proud of Texas. You seem to think you've done great things for the state, as it's longest-running governor. And you have. Texas leads the rest of the nation in a number of areas. It has the fourth highest poverty rate; last year, it tied with Mississippi for the largest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs; you lead the country in percentage of workers without health insurance, and kids without health insurance (and since Texas is less healthy than 80% of the country, think about what that means).

Face facts, Perry. In the same way Bush wrecked the country during his tenure as President, he ass-raped Texas during his time as governor. The difference is, in Texas, his successor only made things worse.

Politics and Reality

On occasion I feel the need to do a follow up piece to a post. Generally it's because someone makes a comment that makes me go, "That's not what I meant at all." I received such a comment on my last post in the Zone. An anonymous comment dismissed my  post, Pragmatism, the Presidency, and Activism as being another piece comparing Obama to Lincoln, a topic which he or she is tired of hearing.

Thanks for the comments from others who have pointed out that I didn't write a piece comparing Obama to Lincoln. I still find anonymous' comment way off target and bearing no logical relationship to my actual post.

My focus was on the mythologizing that time tends to bring to our remembrances of the past. The Obama and Lincoln comparison, as well as the FDR and Obama comparisons have been unfavorably made for some time. Primarily the comparisons are used to depict Obama as weak and ineffective when compared to Lincoln and FDR. My analysis of Lincoln was to contrast the factual reality with the mythology that we've built around Lincoln. The abolitionists criticized Lincoln as weak and ineffective. They questioned his commitment to ending slavery. Lincoln's primary goal was not to end slavery it was to do whatever was necessary to preserve the Union. He compromised a great deal as did Roosevelt. I'll save that stroll down history lane for another day. Interestingly, the group sold out the most significantly by FDR was African-Americans. (African-Americans and the New Deal)

Compromise is the cornerstone of legislation. No one ever gets all that he or she wants in a bill. Republican and Democrat doesn't really mean a great deal behind closed doors when bills are in their infancy; everyone compromises to give birth to a bill and curries favor so that when their side is presenting a bill they can call in those favors. The horror of this new crowd of inexperienced legislators is that they don't understand how the system works and they draw lines in the sand. All that they create are impasses. 

Obama's efforts at transparency have resulted in more public disclosure of the process and everyone believes that this is a significant change when this game is as old as politics itself. Those same politicians in Congress who make great speeches condemning the opposition's position on an issue, go out afterwards and share a bottle of scotch. A great many politicians are lawyers. One of the first things that you learn as a litigator is that nothing in the courtroom is personal. To zealously represent your client, you're perfectly willing to suggest that opposing counsel is hiding some dirty secret, dishonest, and robs babies and the elderly for sport. During recess, it's possible that you will have lunch with the opposing counsel. Ex parte communications apply to lawyer/judge exchanges outside the presence of the other counsel but there are no rules that prohibit opposing counsel from sharing a drink or a meal. My point is that the moment the adversarial stuff is over, most everyone reverts to being just folks. Democrats and Republicans for the most part keep government functioning through the art of compromise.

The Tea Party Republicans elected in 2010 are for the most part a very inexperienced lot. Some of them have never held any public  office until they landed in the U.S. Congress. They are a different breed as demonstrated in the recent debt ceiling crisis. From 1981 to 2010, presidents from Reagan to Obama had no difficulties getting Congress to pass legislation increasing the debt ceiling regardless of the party in power in Congress. It was rational and logical that the President, nor most of Congress would anticipate the ridiculous holding hostage of the debt ceiling that took place in 2011.

The graph indicates which president and which political party controlled Congress each year.

My point is that all of the dramatic declarations that Obama has sold out the American people are hyperbole. That the role models to which he is unfavorably compared were not the darlings of their time either and were subject to the same criticisms regarding being week, unfocused, ineffective, a sellout etc. I also want to clarify that it is not criticism to accuse the President of the United States of being a traitor the the people and his country. A great many people appear to be unable to distinguish between criticism and character assassination. If you understand that distinction, then we don't have an issue.

It makes a lot of difference. If you state that the President should have held out for a public option in the health care bill, that's criticism. If you assert that the reason that he didn't push for a public option was because he was in cahoots with big pharma and offer as evidence of the conspiracy that there were meetings at the White House with big pharma, that provides fodder for those who are desperately looking for grounds to impeach the president. It's also naive. Of course pharmaceutical companies and hospitals and physician's groups were interested in exactly what affordable health care would mean to their business interests. They were provided opportunities for input. This is not a new thing. 

The critique of the President's actions is legitimate criticism. I don't support that point of view but it's certainly anyone's right to object to the actions of any elected official. However, the attribution of motives to the President involving a conspiracy with big pharma is character assassination. You can't then turn around as election day approaches and state with any credibility that you were just holding the president accountable but now plan to campaign to encourage people to vote to re-elect him. What kind of fool would vote for a dishonest scalawag who has betrayed the public intentionally?

All of these dramatic positions attacking the President's character from some progressives will affect his ability to run a successful re-election campaign. Protestations that Obama is a good guy and I'm just critiquing his flaws is bull. Recovering from criticism is a standard part of being a public official; recovering from character assassination seldom happens. Remember John Kerry?

Obama, betrayer of the American people?

Despite the well-intentioned defence of Barack Obama, his present and former financial-policy advisors including Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, Hank Paulson, Paul Volcker and others, explain more about Obama's commitment to the health and well-being of the American people (as opposed to the wealth of the American elite) than his attempts at "pragmatic" negotiated solutions—which have usually ended in the selling out of the American public to corporate interests.

The most telling of these include the failure to raise the top marginal tax rates to the wealthy. But don't just take it from me. Check out today's New York Times. Warren Buffett tells it like it is. Check out his extraordinary op-ed piece.

In the end Obama may be remembered as the second coming of Herbert Hoover (who was not necessarily a bad president), rather than another honest Abe Lincoln.

Pragmatism, the Presidency, and Activism

I have repeatedly read posts by others who argue with great passion that President Obama should follow in the examples of Abraham Lincoln in addressing slavery and FDR in addressing the Great Depression. I appreciate the beacons that both former presidents are in the history of this country; however, what we believe to be true and what is fact often are vastly different.

A recent article, Frederick Douglass, the activist who would not 'grow up' offers a frame for evaluating the repeated criticism of President Obama from many members of the left. This article deals with President Lincoln as assessed by Frederick Douglass, not as a historian many years after the facts but as a witness to those events.

One of the most common misrepresentations of history is the oft repeated mantra that Lincoln freed the slaves. He didn't. The Emancipation Proclamation only applied to slaves that lived within the borders of states that were in rebellion against the Union; it did not apply to any slaves in the border states that were still loyal to the Union nor Confederate states which had already come under Union control; President Lincoln did not wish to lose the support of those slave owning states. The goal was to preserve the Union. As the Confederacy was not under the President's control, it did not accept Lincoln's offer to agree to the emancipation of slaves in exchange for compensation. The reality is that the Emancipation Proclamation was a grand gesture and of great symbolic value but it didn't free any slaves. [see for ex. pbs.org, thinkquest, national archives] In the year prior to the EP, 1862, Congress had passed a law that freed any Confederate slaves who escaped to the Union states and added those slaves to the Union's military ranks. Slavery did not officially end in this country until 1865 with the passage of the 13th amendment. [Id.] 

The factual details don't lessen what Lincoln accomplished. I offer this history lesson because I think that the adherence to mythology is interfering with the ability of progressives to get on the same page and work at the business of re-electing Barack Obama. Lincoln was no cowboy riding in on a white horse. He compromised on  what Frederick Douglass and  the abolitionists saw as the most significant cause of the Civil War, ending slavery. He did so because the Union could not afford to lose the slave owning border states to the Confederacy.

In 1862, Horace Greely, editor of The New York Tribune addressed an editorial to Lincoln in which he suggested that Lincoln's administration lacked direction and resolve in its war efforts. Lincoln responded with a letter to Greely that few seem to accurately recall:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. [Lincoln letter]

Frederick Douglass took issue with Lincoln's willingness to abide slavery if that was necessary to preserve the Union. However, Douglass was also pragmatic and eventually came to respect Lincoln's seemingly measured tread.  

In April 1876, in a speech delivered at the unveiling of the Freedmen's Monument in Memory of Abraham Lincoln,  Douglass said of Lincoln: 

...I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things: first, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible...Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. [emphasis added] [Douglass' Oration]

Frederick Douglass was an activist and activists do not have to answer to a constituency, nor do they have to play well with others. There are those who no doubt will dismiss my evaluations of activism vs. politics as narrow and cynical. I intend it as neither, but simply pragmatic. 

Activism is an essential part of political and societal change but the demand that such activism be regularly and blatantly engaged in by this President is to ask him to go beyond the bounds of his office. I chose to focus on Lincoln because of sheer laziness. Lincoln has been a hobby of mine for years and I didn't have to do a lot of research. However, similar issues can be raised with FDR's presidency.

Douglass' evaluation of Lincoln doesn't diminish the man at all but it does make it clear that no man walks on water and offers a prism that reflects how I believe history will also view Obama. Just as was Lincoln, Obama is the President, not an activist. His responsibilities are vastly different than those of an activist. I believe that far too many are demanding that Obama take on a mythical role that no president has ever exercised. 

Bachmann just won the straw vote election out of a field of Republicans, any of whom is saner than she. I find that frightening. Rather than contributing to the constant criticism of President Obama and the continual refusal to acknowledge all that has been accomplished (an extensive list) our common goal should be to ensure that the President has a second term to work towards our goals. Douglass voted for Lincoln in 1864 in spite of his concerns and supported Lincoln's campaign. We have a president who understands the system and who is working that system with every tool at his disposal. What we need are activists; the campaign slogan has always been, "Yes we can." What have you done lately?

Turkey In the Straw II - The Turkening!

So, Michelle Bachmann has won the Iowa Straw Poll. What does this mean for the country?

She's gotten more coverage in the last few weeks than she could've hoped for. On the basis of his showing in the straw poll, Tim Pawlenty dropped out of the race. Our submissive media has been trumpeting this particular "first American caucus" as if it were the most important indicator of the election.

Well, I think it's important to note one little detail about the history of this particular poll.

The Ames Straw Pole has been held a total of six times (in 1979, and then in 1987, 1995, 1999, 2007 and now in 2011). In all that time, it correctly predicted the upcoming president of the United States once. In real terms, that is an accuracy rate of 17%.

It's roughly as accurate as throwing a handful of corn over a list of candidates, and letting the chicken choose the winner.

So the results mean less than nothing, and we can expect to see the GOP continue to do what they've always done.

That, my friends, is the importance to the American political landscape of the Ames Straw Poll.

Turkey in the Straw

What does the Iowa Straw Poll really mean as an indicator of who might actually be the chosen Candidate to bring about the "end of an error?" I really don't know, but it proves that the extremist barn dance is still the thing in Iowa. I'm referring of course to the the fact that, although the lineup (or the menagerie if you prefer) included all sorts of wild things, the Minnesota Gobbler herself came in first. Here's the list as published in the Huffington Post:

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.): 4,823 votes
U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas): 4,671 votes
Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty: 2,293 votes
Former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.): 1,657 votes
Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain: 1,456 votes
Texas Governor Rick Perry: 718 votes
Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney: 567 votes
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich: 385 votes
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman: 69 votes
U.S. Rep Thad McCotter (R-Mich.): 35 votes

Neither Romney, Gingrich or Huntsman campaigned actively and Rick Perry had announced his candidacy only shortly after the barnyard gates were closed. All of them were thus at a disadvantage, but you'll notice that Ron Paul was only a half step and a do-si-do behind Bachmann. Perhaps Iowan Tea Tipplers think her 'holy roller two-step' dance gives her that ol' show-time religion shamanship the straight-talking Dr. Paul lacks.

Who knows? But it seems Rick Pawlenty is adding 'former candidate' to ' former governor' on his resume. He announced on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour this morning that he was scraping the muck off his boots and going home.

Once again, I have no idea what all this means and who will be the great Republican Hope come next year. I do suspect that if he or she wins, the much wished for end of an error will be the beginning of a disaster.

Gimme that old slime and religion

The Republican circus' Big Top is beginning to fill with snarling dogs, rooting hogs and booming frogs fighting to get into the center ring -- the kind of things once relegated to side shows so as not to frighten young children and more 'sensitive' viewers.

Rick Perry is, as I write this, now announcing his candidacy from the State of South Carolina, where the First Civil War started with the booming of cannons 150 years ago. The Cold Civil War is heating up and so is the rhetoric. Rhetoric just as emotional and just as full of vain invocations of the common divinity. "It's time to get America working again" he says as though his party hadn't presided in ZERO job growth in the eight Republican years and as though we haven't had significant job growth since. Has Perry suggested anything positive or anything other than blind faith in what got us into this mess? Remember he's the guy who thinks the climate responds better to prayer than to carbon dioxide levels. So far it's still not raining in Texas.


Not all the candidates, however, are quite so willing to engage in such a pitched battle on an even field. All the likely female contestants for instance -- like Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachmann and Newt Gingrich seem to prefer to come out slapping and eye gouging but should anyone be so unfair as to ask such inappropriate, unfair "Gotcha" questions as "which newspapers do you read" or just what Mrs. Bachman meant when she said:

"But the Lord said, 'Be submissive. Wives, you are to be submissive to your husbands.' "

Perhaps since she wears her religion, not only on her sleeve and on her shield like a crusader, but constantly suggests the superiority it gives her along with the right to make peremptory statements about how the rest of us live our lives, it's an appropriate question. It's the same Question President Carter asked of the Southern Baptist Church and not liking the answer, quit the church in which he was raised and spent his life. She'd have us believe she only meant "respect" contrary to the literal word she's so eager to worship. But she didn't say respect, now did she? Nor did the word of God she thinks she's quoting.

Suggesting both that it's offensively inappropriate for anyone to ask clarification of Bachmann and that her explanation would be far too nuanced for us heathen to understand, we have Roland Martin writing on CNN.com today.

Martin tells us she was asked by Byron York:

"As president, would you be submissive to your husband?"

Forgetting the "Billary" gambit directed against Bill Clinton, Childe Roland hesitates not a bit to be offended on behalf of Biblical literalists and for the shy, sensitive and ever-so-subtly nuanced Bachmann who brought the subject up in the first place.

I don't know how old Roland Martin is; whether he remembers the Republicans' question as to whether John Kennedy would obey the Pope instead of the Constitution or whether like the other hand-waving, special pleading, smoke and mirrors artists he can only take refuge in fog shrouded ineffability when someone asks a damned good question he wouldn't hesitate to ask of others.

It's a question asked only because she's a woman, asserts Martin rather tautologically. After all, men aren't ordered to obey their wives in the old books some people confuse with the US Constitution. Apparently he thinks men aren't even asked similar questions about the conflict between their beliefs about the the legitimacy of government, their credos and their ability to administer secular laws in a secular country they may disapprove of.

He's quite wrong of course. These questions are asked and not just by me -- and they are important questions to ask of a party that is insisting in ever louder voices that secularism is a problem and that the country rightly belongs only to those with suitable church affiliations.

Romney vs Heston

OK, so Mittens exposed himself in public this week.



So, we know where he stands in the fight between people and our corporate overlords, right?

By the way, doesn't that statement sound awfully familiar?



Yeah, somebody else got that idea, too.



And then there's this post.

Now, we need to keep this quote out there in front of people (yeah, it's sad when Mitt Romney looks like a reasonable candidate, but look at the rest of the field...), but I suppose we should think about things carefully, though.

How long before a meme just gets worn out? Will this one stick to Romney's shoe like a 4' piece of errant toilet paper? (Anybody remember the Howard Dean Scream?) Or will this one just get old and stale before the 2012 elections?

Just spitballin' here.

Queen of the Damned

And, in few words, I dare say; that of all the Studies of men, nothing may be sooner obtain'd, than this vicious abundance of Phrase, this trick of Metaphors, this volubility of Tongue, which makes so great a noise in the World. But I spend words in vain; for the evil is now so inveterate, that it is hard to know whom to blame, or where to begin to reform.

(Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society, 1667)

_____________

When I got my copy of Newsweek yesterday; the cover showing Michelle Bachmann looking upward as though reading a celestial teleprompter, I fired off a letter similar to the one I wrote when Sarah Palin became the cover girl not long ago. "Indecency or obscenity can be difficult to define" I said, "but I recognize it when I see it."

Somehow, her supporters saw it differently, condemning the wide-eyed lunatic pose as having been selected by the "liberals" to make her look crazy, but scanning the web for other photos, I found it hard to find one where she doesn't look like a two year old who has just, to her great surprise, soiled her diaper -- but that of course, is only my opinion. No offense to incontinent toddlers is intended.

Her stance on "the evils of Government" as the headline blares, is harder to see as being other than obscene unless it's the indecent dishonesty behind her rhetoric that pushes your particular buttons.

I have to wonder: if Democracy is so inherently bad, what kind of government would she then prefer? If Government itself is the enemy of freedom, who or what could be the ally? I have to wonder if the government is really broken or is she trying to break it to prove her point?

Making big noises in Kansas about an oppressive government that makes tyrannical rules about what kind of light bulbs to use and destroys our freedom by inspecting meat, she certainly begs the question of why she nonetheless promotes a "faith based" government that tells us what kind of sex we can have and with whom; promotes poisoning the well if someone can get rich doing it, which encourages us to pray rather than to fix our problems and to be a nation of individuals who owe nothing to anyone.

Then there's also the question of the deceit involved in taking government subsidies under false pretenses and using one of them illegally to fund prayer sessions in the guise of psychotherapy. Really, if we can't call her crazy, what other excuse can we make for her? Ignorant? Malicious? Greedy?

It's a two tier government she dreams about, with one set of rules for 98% of us that exist to preserve and increase the capital and the power of Corporations, Plutocrats and Theocrats. Of course no one with any understanding of Capitalism and what makes it expand would recommend policies that shrink the numbers of people whose spending makes Capitalism work while the one-percenters send capital and jobs abroad, but what made you think the Teabaggers are Capitalists in the first place? The kind of Randian, take the money and run Utopia these people claim to envision is Feudal as well as futile and self-destructive. The rabble-rousing and specious rhetoric smells more of the Brown Shirts and Bolsheviks than Tom Paine or Tom Jefferson.

Of course those who follow the Tea Party Queen like the mice of Hamlin, should be intelligent enough to realize that not only do we not have an oppressive, confiscatory tax situation, but that very low marginal rates inevitably produce bubbles and busts as they did in the 1920's and at the end of the last decade. They should recall that the years of low debt and high prosperity were the years of high marginal tax rates. They should be smart enough to see that all that extra cash in already deep pockets does not create US jobs, but inflates the market and makes hedge funds flourish - but only for a while. They should be, but they're either too ignorant or too stupefied by the pied pipers of the radical right. But like the Shadow, Bachmann knows what rage lies in the hearts of men. Unlike the Shadow, she's hell bent on making a buck for her backers out of it.