A Darkling Plain

So is it desperation making them pull out all the stops and stomp on the loud pedal, or is it just another Tea Hall Putsch; rowdies, thugs and goons colluding to bring down the government and the economy so they can bring on a new and lower world order?

It's become difficult for the Rebel Right to sell the idea that the markets and the economy itself are teetering on the brink of collapse; that there will be a "double-dip" recession, breadlines and trains full of hobos,  a degree of health care reform is about to kick in -- one that the public may just find to be a lot better than the apocalyptic predictions from the professional screamers would have us believe.  Maybe it's now or never for the Rebels. Apocalypse now as whores and horsemen like Cruz and Palin kick in their stalls and empty their bowels in anticipation.

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town,” 

Said Larry Klaman to a crowd of foam-flecked idiots in Washington, rallied around memorials his band of Bolsheviks as shut down, telling them to demand that the president  to

 “… get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”

And why?  Because not one of their predictions of doom has EVER come true ( or ones of success either) and they don't have the votes to elect one of their incompetent number or the courage to wait until 2016 and risk further recovery?  What can they do but make a "hail Mary" or a "Heil Hitler" appeal to racism, bigotry and fake history before real history sweeps the stable clean?

“In 237 years, our country has declined more than Rome took 2000 years to do,” he said. “We are ruled, quote-unquote, by a president that bows down to Allah.”

Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since Slavery" said Ben Carson, a Fox Favorite at the "Values Voter Summit"  and attributed the Republican designed plan to Vladimir Lenin -- something only someone as devoid of honesty as Klaman could say and only someone either clinically insane or more ignorant than a baboon could believe.

“one of the most insidious laws ever created by man,”

 said another verbal  terrorist to an audience totally ignorant of the law and what it says, but as always willing to believe anything to support their racist insanity.

I don't worry so much about the ease of assembling an ignorant army at a moment's notice. I think that at any time and in any place enough willing participants to staff a pogrom, man a concentration camp or burn children in a school could be assembled.  It's the highly organized heavily financed group of insurgents that now control a major political party hell bent on taking over absolute control of the United States by whatever means they can.  It's the domination of our news sources by propaganda organizations and corporations with no commitment to the truth and interested only in profit that scare me, because now, as it was a hundred years ago, our country is a pack of dogs happy to turn on itself, but unlike the days of race riots, labor riots, weekly terrorist bombings, lynchings, deportations and suppression of rights, we have 24 hour insanity, 24 hour hate speech, 24 hour lies and hardly a whisper of opposition.

How do we fight by the rules and beat such a ruthless and unscrupulous army?  Is it any wonder that we have a surplus of apocalyptic movies about armies of brainless corpses overwhelming civilization?  Unfortunately we don't have the option of chopping off heads. We don't have the ability to debunk an endless quantity of lies to an audience desperate to believe them. We can't outspend them, we can't shut them up.  We have to hope that in their stupidity they will overreach and fail, but it's a dim hope and it's getting really dark outside.

Democracy or Insurrection?

Let’s face facts. Democracy is a messy business, and competing stakeholders do not always get everything they want. Ours is a system of government designed to accommodate change – gradual or radical - through an orderly and prescribed process. We have elections; we have a balance of power shared between three branches of government; and we have a Constitutional amendment process. 

Although these structures are ensconced in Law, there are also unwritten courtesies, customs, and traditions that smooth the legislative process and keep governance a relatively civilized matter. Thomas Jefferson prescribed these rules of order in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice.

Pending bills originate in the House, move to Senate, are signed into law by the President, and - if highly controversial - are affirmed or overturned by the Supreme Court.  ObamaCare has passed all these benchmarks. Those who wish to modify, replace, or repeal ObamaCare must follow this path in accordance with democratic rules and procedures.

Frankly, the current impasse and government shutdown is NOT ABOUT OBAMACARE, or the Keystone Pipeline, or abortion, or contraception, or ANY OTHER PARTISAN CAUSE.  The government shutdown represents a despoliation of democracy by an unruly rabble.

Do we practice governance as prescribed by Law - according to time-honored traditions of parliamentary procedure - or do we conduct our affairs by ultimatum, blackmail, deception and demagoguery, defamation and vilification, fear mongering, extortion and hostage taking? Do we honor democracy, or do we conduct the nation’s business by insurrection?

Here is what the Constitution states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned [Amendment 14, Section 4].

"Shall not be questioned"  ... how do these words confer a right to surrender the validity of public debt to negotiation? To blackmail? Extortion? Hostage taking?

All presidents have a statutory obligation to preserve and protect the constitution, as do all office holders in Congress. If this or any president capitulates, our traditions of governance will be dealt a mortal blow; and the nation will suffer a slow and painful decline.  All citizens of all persuasions share this responsibility - and an obligation to pass down these traditions of representative democracy intact to future generations.

As far as I am concerned, the GOP is no longer a partner in participatory democracy. As Hannah Arendt states:

“A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.”

By this definition, I consider the government shutdown an act of sedition and treason.

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Monday morning update:  On September 30, 2013, in the stealth of night, behind closed doors and hidden from public scrutiny, House Republicans changed the rules of the house and stacked the deck:

"The Rules Committee, under the rules of the House, changed the standing rules of the House to take away the right of any member to move to vote to open the government, and gave that right exclusively to the Republican Leader," said Van Hollen. "Is that right?"

"The House adopted that resolution," replied Chaffetz.

"I make my motion, Mr. Speaker," said Van Hollen. "I renew my motion that under the regular standing rules of the House... that the house take up the Senate amendments and open the government now."

"Under section 2 of H.R. 368, that motion may be offered only by the majority leader or his designee," Chaffetz said.

"Mr. Speaker, why were the rules rigged to keep the government shut down?" Van Hollen asked.

"The gentleman will suspend," Chaffetz interjected.

"Democracy has been suspended, Mr. Speaker."

Video here:

Reading the Trolls

Troll infections seem to come in clusters. Often frustrated trolls will assume multiple identities so that they can get in another word before they're identified and locked out or perhaps they enlist other trolls down at the International Brotherhood of Morons hall to join them, but they do arrive, each one confident and bright-eyed and sure that some totally irrelevant and baseless observation will cause great consternation amongst the 'Libtards.'  Sure that they can get away with posing as wise and informed and superior as a brown shirt in a beer hall.

I used to have a Shi-Tzu; 12 pounds and elderly, he never hesitated to go after pit bulls and dobermans, pawing the ground and snarling, leaving me to sort the matter out with the usually laughing owner of the other dog. He never learned.  He never could. He was a dog and driven by a dog's instincts. Humans could laugh and drag the animals apart.

But that was in the real world.  The blog world exists in the dark where both the bystanders and those who hold the leashes are invisible. Whence cometh our help?  Don't look up, there's nobody there.  So the guy who shows up under some assumed name, thinking himself a political lion, wearing his Tea Party Ghost Shirt and weighing in with a 97 IQ never has the opportunity to feel shame or hear the laughter directed at his idiocy. As far as the dog was concerned he won every "debate."

Even the pathetic 12 year old with a spray can and a backwards hat can, however briefly, see his initials on the boxcar or warehouse wall. The troll doesn't always have that pleasure unless of course we give it to him by making  the mistake of taking him seriously enough to explain why his treasured contribution is wrong. His only purpose is that brief feeling of significance he gets from making you angry. Reply and he wins. Treat him with dignity and respect and you lose. He's a troll.

Prove him wrong and his argument false?  That's usually, as the inimitable Arnold would say, a Big Mistake, because of course, you can't refute tags like "Obama is a turd" by any rational means, nor can one convince the Klansman or the village idiot that a spray painted swastika on a synagogue isn't just hilarious.  One can only delete, paint over the grafitti before the troll's friends get to admire the shit stains.

More problematic than the "taggers" are trolls who have bought the little red book, full of slogans and shibboleths, talking points and lies so rank and septic you just can't resist that all too easy seeming shot to the head.  They may appear on the surface to be amenable to an easy and irrefutable proof of their error, but it's a trap because one is, in essence, arguing with a zombie -- a mindless program consisting of  countless IF THEN GOSUB routines (for those of you who remember FORTRAN) which take each unassailable observation, every brass bound QED, every thermonuclear refutation and return some irrelevant reply that steers your argument out into the back alley by the dumpster where the thugs lurk.

"No sir, the Blue Cross policy you buy through the ACA does not have hidden provisions to murder your grandmother and prevent your doctor from removing that infected appendix."  Easy to prove, but suddenly you find yourself  arguing about how denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions is what Jefferson devoutly wished for America and how Hitler used guaranteed access to health care to gas the Jews and how Obama is a Muslim, Communist, illegal alien and you're in a labyrinth where every branch has a thousand branches and a Minotaur at every turn.  Health care reform is the worst thing ever to happen in America and worse than Slavery, and Obama will eat your children. They're hear to shout that and not to argue with you.

Annoyed and frustrated trying to prove that A times B equals B times A to a senile Shi-Tzu with cataracts and poor hearing?  That's what the Tea Party is all about; reading Doctor Suess to Congress and blaming the Democrats for not ignoring the law.  Losing the chess game and turning over the board.  Starting a one legged blind man as quarterback and then kidnapping the referee until he "cooperates" with your "negotiation."

The one reason I enjoy The Swash Zone is the comment section and the regular participants. The reason I want to quit, to move to some remote Caribbean cottage with no internet, is the comment section.

TV shows like The Walking Dead have become the metaphor for the Idiot's Crusade and worse -- at least the zombies are independently devoid of brains and full of destructive rage.  The Republican insurgents are being directed, used, sent out like biological weapons to destroy Democracy for a purpose. It's a zombie apocalypse and there are just too damned many of them and more all the time.  Reading the trolls, writing the same things after all this time, getting nowhere leads me inexorably to that one overwhelming question:  Belize or Dominica?

Vidit ergo Lesus. . .

Yes, yes, we've all heard, Pope Francis may be infallible but the guy who mints the medals isn't. Somebody substituted an L for an I (which can look damned similar in certain typefaces) and somebody else didn't notice and so it went out the door as Lesus instead of Iesus.  I'm an old man, I can sympathize about reading small print and at least it didn't say Lexus. We have too many of those on the road as it is.


Of course growing up in the Galilee, the name was  יהושע
or Yehushua but we won't quibble. The sign on the Cross said IHS, not LHS and of course the J is not part of the Roman alphabet.

Vidit ergo Iesus publicanum et quia miserando antque eligendo vidit, ait illi sequre me. says the Gospel of Matthew.  If we're going to be talking about alphabets of course, it's really מַתִּתְיָהוּ Matityahu or 'gift of Yahoo' (you see, the Bible predicts the Internet) and it's a story about how Jesus didn't despise the tax collector and so the tax collector became a follower, or so I think. My latin has become a bit like a Toyota after ten winters in Chicago.  But anyway, like most Bible stories, there's good advice there:  "Don't get too chummy with the man from IRS lest he followeth you around, asking questions."

Anyway, I don't know how many have already been sold in Rome.  I don't see any on eBay yet, but I'll bet collectors will bid them up if he faithful can part with them. Will we see money changer's booths in Vatican Square exchanging new medals for old, or will they find their way out the back door and onto the collector market?   Inquiring minds and maybe pious minds want to know but if you flip these things for a profit, don't forget that publicanus cognoscere cupit nimis -- the tax man wants to know too.

Government Shutdown 2013 – Real Time, Data-Driven Stats

As a public service, Enigma Technologies of NYC offers a real-time, data-driven website that shows various impacts of the government shutdown across all departments and agencies.  If any readers are interested, go to their website here. Highlights as follows:

Total furloughed:  883,392 employees

Duration:  10D : 13H : 9M : 25S

Total wages lost:  $2,007,165,306

WIC food vouchers unpaid:  $138,877,932

Department of Defense:  56% furloughed

Homeland Security:  14% furloughed

Social Security: 29% furloughed

Health and Human Services:  52% furloughed

Treasury Department:  89% furloughed

Agriculture:  68% furloughed

Government functions halted:  WIC Food Program, Small Business Loans, Home Loan Guarantees, Occupational Safety, NIH Research, Parks and Monuments, Museums.

Government functions at risk:  Open Public Data, Food Inspections, Courts, Disease Control, Travel and Work Visas, Space Program (97% furloughed). 

Consider the source

There is no shortage of polls about the Shutdown, the Affordable Care Act and President Obama, mony of them showing completely opposite results.  I got a survey from something called Newsmax.com this morning showing that respondents very strongly blame Obama and the Congressional Democrats for the shutdown and like the Affordable Care Act even less than they like Judas Iscariot. Newsmax of course, although it covers general interest stories, seems to have more inflammatory and  paranoid items that Chips Ahoy has bits of chocolate. One has to consider the source. One has to remember that voluntary polls are not scientific.

That's hardly the results one sees in the probably more objective Gallup polls that show America's opinion of  the Republican party at a lower ebb than it was during the last Republican forced shutdown in 1999.  It was 31% favorable then.  Now it's 28%. There has been a precipitous drop in approval since the beginning of 2013. Perhaps it was the end of an era after all.

With so much effort being made to portray Obama and "his policies" as being increasingly rejected, it's interesting to note that at least according to Gallup, unfavorable ratings of the GOP are a bit higher than they were at the end of the Cheney/Bush era and the economy was losing altitude faster than a coyote running off a cliff.  61% when Obama was elected, 62% now and in a country so heavily intransigent it is nothing short of amazing that lifelong Republicans I've talked to of late don't want to be called that any more.

The obvious seems invisible to the entrenched opinion shouters and faux news sources. Glenn Beck all but spits out his tonsils execrating his array of standard demons and everywhere you look are polls and surveys with as much credibility as goat entrails.  I suspect we're getting to theoretical low point of public approval for the Tea Twinkies and the corporate backed opinion shouters, given that insanity is not as subject to persuasion as reason is.  Many would still listen to Beck and Bachmann and their ilk despite all the spinning heads and green vomit and sulfur smoke the Devil himself could demonstrate.  People on that side of the fence tattoo swastikas on their necks after all.

But as the shutdown continues and as the GOP has to rely on publicity stunts like Michelle Bachmanns at the WWII memorial, the bailouts will continue. With each family ruined by lack of health care, with each family ruined by the furlough, with each business bankrupted by Republican spite, the "Base" will shrink.  Were an election held today, it would hardly be a tea party for the Tea Party and tomorrow could be worse.

Of course this being the Amnesiac States of America, who knows about 2014? 

Such are all their wicked works, and there is no truth in them.

Although most Democrats already know that most Republicans are, as a group, pathological lying sacks of shit, perhaps it will be the government shutdown that brings this fact into focus for most of America.

I doubt it - much of the country is blinded by partisan hatred of our president, and the many of the rest will stick with the "both sides do it" cop-out. But a guy can hope, right?

This tiny-minded Koch-sucking group of overwhelmingly Caucasian males has, for the most part, stopped even trying to tell the truth, because they know that any lie they tell will be twisted by a compliant press to extract what few grains of reality might have accidentally been included.

Alternatively, when there isn't a passing relationship with the truth in whatever ignorant statement they vomited up, Fox "News" and the right-wing blogs will simply repeat it over and over, louder. And through sheer repetition, the hope is that the inbred paste-eaters making up their "base" will come to believe it anyway.

And sadly, this tactic all too often works.

The GOP has turned the act of making ridiculous untruths a standard move in their playbook. They've been lying about the Affordable Care Act for so long, and in such idiotic ways, that they can't even make lucid arguments any more. They just devolve into random spewings of illegitimate talking points and mindless babble.

These "fiscal conservatives" who are so worried about passing along the costs to our children? They're costing the country $300 million per day that the government is shut down.

John Boehner's latest mantra is that he won't even allow reopening the government to come to a vote, because it couldn't pass. Which is an open and blatant lie, as just a little math will tell you. But it doesn't matter. Why would Boehner want to allow the government to reopen? There is ample evidence that the GOP has been trying to shut down the government since at least 2010.

The GOP has lied about the Affordable Care Act so hard, and for so long, that the drooling illiterati don't even know what they want any more. In poll after poll, they show that they support every aspect of Obamacare; they just hate anything named "Obamacare." This is so universal that late night comedians can create viral videos around the concept.



One of the GOP's current talking points is that Obamacare must be defeated because it was "rammed through in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote." Which, of course, ignores an entire year of committee meetings, and dozens of compromises and changes to make it palatable to the Republicans who joined in voting for it.

But the brightest zit on the GOP nose, the puddle of puke that they keep returning to, is "he won't meet with us." Which is eyeball-meltingly stupid. He's met with them multiple times - he just hasn't caved in to their demands. Because you don't negotiate with terrorists.

In fact, that's probably the one fact that's driving them into the most stroke-inducing paroxysms of rage. Obama has been compromising and negotiating with them for so long that, now that he's standing firm on a position, they don't know what to do.

So they've shut down the government, after planning on it for so long. And now that they've done it, they don't even know what they actually want. The few who realize that defunding "Obamacare" is a losing proposition don't care. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) accidentally let slip the fact that they really don't care about the American people any more - they govern with the calm logic of a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. They've taken their hostages and are screaming about what they're going to do to them. It may be time to reactivate Seal Team Six.

Government Shutdown: Truth or Consequences

Carl Bernstein Slams Media Coverage of the Shutdown:

Longtime journalist Carl Bernstein on Tuesday called on the press to abandon the false equivalence that's colored much of the coverage of the government shutdown. 

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the man who helped break the Watergate scandal said that the current budget impasse is not a two-sided matter.

"This is about the Republican Party and what it's going to be," Bernstein said. "Is it going to conduct a fact-based, philosophical argument in our political system or is it going to be a nihilistic, hateful, asymmetrical in terms of facts and the truth part of the party, as in Joe McCarthy?"

And with that in mind, Bernstein said that the press should cover the story accordingly. 

"This is about media as well. These poll numbers are about a totally different media culture than we've had in the past...we need to start covering this story not 50/50 — this much on this side, that on the other — we need to cover it factually," Bernstein said. "Because there are facts here that will show what this event is about. And where, in fact, is this anger, hatred of Obama coming from? What is the root of this?"

(…)

"It's about demagoguery and it needs to be viewed that way," Bernstein said.

Is Government the Problem?

The first problem facing early human beings was survival. 

The second was government.

These are the opening words (rough paraphrase) of an obscure, out-of-print textbook on American government written by Theodore Lowi.  I quote these words because I believe these are relevant to any debate regarding the current political impasse in Washington.

Imagine the earliest Homo sapiens struggling to survive in the Great Rift Valley, in the forests of Europe, on the steppes of Asia.  Imagine how the earliest human beings organized themselves to survive harsh and primitive conditions; how they hunted in groups to overwhelm large prey and better feed themselves; how they divided their labors and distributed scarce and hard-won resources.  In short, social organization - as manifested in government - is an evolutionary adaptation that enhanced survival. 

No doubt, there are rightwing ideologues inclined to interrupt me with this all too familiar screed:  Another stooge of the collectivist, commie-socialist state!  Misplaced invective misses the point.

Imagine Tea Party Republicans of today surviving without the trappings of civilization:  Living in a wilderness without neighbors, hunting their own game, growing their own crops, felling their own trees and sawing their own lumber, with no Internet connection to scam, spam, or troll other folks living in the valley below; with no cell phone - no fire, first aid, or police protection.

At least, with no taxes and no government, their meager subsistence would be theirs and theirs alone for the keeping … as their wives and children are carried off and eaten by lions and tigers and bears.

“Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem,” spoke Ronald Reagan in a failed campaign promise to limit the size of government.  Until the day arrived when government shuttered its doors and then we learned just how vital government is in our lives, our communities, and the life our country.

The first problem facing human kind was survival.  The second is self-sabotage.

$30 Million Per Hour, $1.6 Billion Per Week

If the government shutdown revealed anything, it exposed he craven hypocrisy of Tea Party Republicans whose lust for partisan terrorism far exceeds any real concern for deficits or debt. Forty million dollars per hour, $330 million per day, and $1.6 billion per week … these are conservative estimates of how much the government shutdown is costing the American people.  More here.