Let's pity the victim

There should be an emoticon for a dumbfounded guffaw or something less childishly vulgar than WTF? to express my reaction to Michael Steele's attempt to make himself a martyr instead of a hypocrite. It would save so many keystrokes.

It takes a desperate man and a little man to dismiss the scorn over his involvement with the kinky strip club incident GOP contributors unknowingly funded. There's something distinctly oily about his assertion that he has a "slimmer margin of error" as a black man, even though that might be true in general.

"It's a different role for me to play and others to play and that's just the reality of it. But you just take that as a part of the nature of it"

he explained on Good Morning America this morning.

Whether or not he actually is held to a higher standard than a non-African American in his position as RNC Chairman would be, that frisky business is certainly at a level where anyone would be condemned for it and above the level where a white Democratic president might be impeached for it.

Yes, it's true that an honest politician (we're speaking hypothetically here) has to walk on eggs, so to speak and it's true that one of a minority group has to have even more delicate toes, but that certainly doesn't apply to a gleeful romp in the slime bucket, does it Mr. Steele? Falsely posing as a victim doesn't help real victims either.

Twilight of the Godwins

I have to credit the rhetorical craftiness of self-anointed conservatives who often get away with dismissing inevitable and even necessary comparisons by invoking Godwin's Law. Yes, it's inevitable that when discussing sudden transitions from civilized societies, the implosion of modern, liberal democratic, constitutional governments into to absolutist and racist tyrannies and the techniques employed, Hitler will come up. It's just as likely that Albert Einstein will come up in discussions of relativity or Tomas de Torquemada in studying the Inquisition. Just try to study the Bush administration and not think of Orwell. Try it, I dare you. Invoking Godwin as though it were more than a humorous observation is simply a tactical diversion and it seems to work by embarrassing the one who brought it up.

Barack Obama is hardly the first President to be accused absurdly of tyranny, fascism or of being a socialist, for that matter. Lincoln's assassin called him a tyrant, both Roosevelts were accused of being socialists long before the current president was born and in my day, anyone who didn't think it worth millions of lives to keep Vietnam from holding free elections was simply a Commie. Remember when Ho Chi Min wanted Humphrey to win so Happy Hubert was a Communist?

Hell, anybody who Joe McCarty didn't like for quoting the Constitution or really any reason at all was carrying that invisible card and his name was on the invisible list. Too bad there wasn't an easily produced "law" telling us that the longer a right wing apologia goes on, the more likely that Stalin or Mao will come up. Too bad there still isn't one, since people likely to make such transcendentally hyperbolic comparisons between the pragmatic, cautious Mr. Obama and absolute tyrants who caused tens of millions of deaths aren't likely to listen to arguments that are factual or too long to fit on a hand lettered cardboard sign. It would be nice to shut them off with Fogg's Law, wouldn't it?

As of late, discussions of the president begin with or are preceded by the rather airborne assumption that he's Mao Zedong, Joe Stalin, Adolph Hitler and Pol Pot rolled into some bearded bin Laden burrito, but then his father was black. Bill Clinton's father was only a white drinker and perhaps a philanderer so one usually had to wait for a sentence or two before the comparisons were dredged up -- and dredged up they always were. Yes, Bill was not only a murderer, not only going to "force health care down our throats" but going to give control of our armed forces to the UN. Bill, who murdered Vince Foster and ran a Coke smuggling operation out of Little Rock was planting nuclear weapons underneath our cities while indulging in Communist free love and of course his socialist tax increase was going to bankrupt our economy within months and destroy capitalism forever!

But no, it was terribly wrong to bring up fascism when his successor made that office the most powerful it had ever been, with the power to override congress and the courts and the Constitution. Terribly wrong when his propaganda machine began to scapegoat real and invented enemies, terribly wrong when he demanded and got special emergency powers by invoking threats that were substantially imaginary if not fraudulent. Smile and say Godwin and we're done.

Obama? Of course he's Communist and Fascist and never mind the contradiction. Of course he's a tyrant for the same reason Lincoln was a tyrant, the same reason Teddy Roosevelt was and FDR and don't you dare bring up Godwin this time!

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TODAY IS?

A NEW DAWN IN ENERGY DEVELOPMENT

While many people will disagree with the President’s decision to open oil drilling off the VA coast, his administration does seem to have a cohesive plan to control damage while trying to relieve fuel woes and continuing the push for affordable, renewable energies.

I am really encouraged by some of the “out of the box” energy solutions currently being used on a small scale like Klamath Falls, OR where geothermal energy is being tapped to provide heat and hot water to the downtown area, including keeping the sidewalks warm and ice free.

They are in an area where tapping hot water from the depths of the earth is feasible at a reasonable cost but research is ongoing to develop a system to use the same technology in other areas of the country.

And the nanotech industry continues to impress with a small, cost effective device that desalinates ocean water on a smaller scale, opening the way to fresh clean water for drinking and crop irrigation to third world countries and island nations around the world.

And the new generation of transportation is being unveiled with the introduction of the Chevy Volt, a hybrid gas/electric car and the Nissan Leaf all electric vehicle. Already in use at some major airports are hybrid shuttle buses. Future development is being done by Chevy and Mercedes on hydrogen fuel cell technology.

Organic solar cells in development will be made of a thin film with the ability to be applied to all sorts of surfaces taking solar power to a new level.

Of course, the use of many of these technologies on a mass scale are years away. But at least they are here, moving us toward a future of affordable, renewable energy sources.

The rage is not about health care

President Obama could have proposed a tax rebate of $10,000 and the conservatives still would have gone stark raving mad. When the Health Care Bill passed Republicans and Tea Partiers turned into a raging sea of childishness, insanity, ugliness and stupidity.

Representative John Boehner went apoplectic chanting "Hell no, you can't." Frank Rich, in a New York Times Op-ed piece, The Rage Is Not About Health Care, suggests Boehner "had just discovered one of its more obscure revenue-generating provisions, a tax on indoor tanning salons."
In a debate with David Ploffe on ABC's "This Week," Karl Rove frothed at the mouth and went on a non-stop tirade. Such antics have become less funny and less entertaining.

Republicans have shouted "you lie" and "baby killer" in House chambers, violating every rule of decency and decorum. To steal a phrase from Joe McCarthy, Republican Congressional representatives have become Tea Party "fellow travelers."

For over a year Tea Party protests have attracted increasingly large crowds. They have grown louder, uglier, more threatening and more violent as time has passed. They have shouted racial and homophobic slurs at respected members of Congress and have thrown bricks through their offices - similar to a mini-Kristallnacht in 1938 Germany.

According to Rich, there was heated reaction when Social Security was passed in 1935 and Medicare thirty years later. "When L.B.J. scored his Medicare coup, there were the inevitable cries of “socialism” along with ultimately empty rumblings of a boycott from the American Medical Association."

But there was nothing like this. To find a prototype for the overheated reaction to the health care bill...you have to look to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.... it was only the civil rights bill that made some Americans run off the rails. That’s because it was the one that signaled an inexorable and immutable change in the very identity of America, not just its governance.

That a tsunami of anger is gathering today is illogical, given that what the right calls “Obamacare” is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare, an epic entitlement that actually did precipitate a government takeover of a sizable chunk of American health care. But the explanation is plain: the health care bill is not the main source of this anger and never has been. It’s merely a handy excuse. The real source of the over-the-top rage of 2010 is the same kind of national existential reordering that roiled America in 1964.

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer...

The election of a black president and a female House speaker, the appointment of a Latino to the Supreme Court, and a gay Congressional committee chairman "would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play."

In this writer's opinion, the Tea Partiers - just like the Birchers, the patriot groups, and other extremist groups have a serious case of paranoia. And racism - despite social scientists' claims to the contrary. Maybe they should have read the liberal blogs in the early days - especially those written by southerners.

The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935.By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, some responsible leaders in both parties spoke out to try to put a lid on the resistance and violence. The arch-segregationist (Richard) Russell of Georgia, concerned about what might happen in his own backyard, declared flatly that the law is “now on the books.” Yet no Republican or conservative leader of stature has taken on Palin, Perry, Boehner or any of the others who have been stoking these fires for a good 17 months now. Last week McCain even endorsed Palin’s “reload” rhetoric.

Are these politicians so frightened of offending anyone in the Tea Party-Glenn Beck base that they would rather fall silent than call out its extremist elements and their enablers? Seemingly so, and if G.O.P. leaders of all stripes, from Romney to Mitch McConnell to Olympia Snowe to Lindsey Graham, are afraid of these forces, that’s the strongest possible indicator that the rest of us have reason to fear them too.

In my very humble opinion the Tea Partiers and Beck and Co. are one thin hair away from being seditious. If we were a police state, as that monumental wonder Beck proclaims, everyone of those thugs would be in jail.

Oh no we can't!

I know, the worst thing one can do is to feel shame for your community, your country, your fellow man. Patriotism, being the same as dishonest self-promotion and hyperbolic Chauvinism, I'm certainly being unpatriotic by saying that the relentlessly partisan viciousness, the partisan slander and libel and indeed the abuse of political and religious freedom by my own community is shameful. Certainly others who agree with me have been so labeled.

Recently some local students at the Martin County High School Junior Achievement Club put together a website and planned a "Recovery Rally" to bring attention to the unemployment and the high foreclosure and business failure rate which plagues our county. They put together a video with the object of sending it to the President as an invitation to attend. It ended with a proud "yes we can!" Some would call that sort of community spirit and enthusiasm inspiring, others:

COMMUNISM! MARXISM!

Imagine allowing citizens to petition for redress of grievances! Why that's just like Pol Pot or Ho Chi Min! What kind of good ol' cracker conservatives would permit that without a fight? I mean it would have been OK to invite Bush and indeed when he made a five minute appearance after Hurricane Frances flattened several counties; when he disrupted critical activities at the Red Cross and then promptly forgot about us, he was sold as a hero, but then, he wasn't a Marxist, Muslim, Communist, Kenyan Antichrist who pals around with Terrorists and murders old women, you betcha.

Yes I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed at the letters from idiots who write to the local paper. I'm ashamed of people who want to pull their kids out of a school that allows kids to participate in peaceful attempts to attract government interest -- because Government is, by the Gospel of St. Ronald, all evil. Diana Blackard went on Fox last week to howl at the moon about her daughter's future being ruined by having said "yes we can" in public.

“I’m concerned about this turning up 20 years from now when she’s running for political officer [sic] herself, trying to get a high-profile job,”

Certainly it constitutes paling around with terrorists to promote local businesses. It's almost treason to suggest that the people can do anything at all in a democracy without it being communism and Fascism. It's dangerous to respect the president, said another deranged citizen writing to the paper.

"since the dems think respect is given like all their other entitlements."

Hard to know what he means but then insanity is like that, Republican politics are like that.

"I resent dealing with people who believe they can spit on us and burn our flag "

says the dishonest but passionate Fox-Republican of the President of the United States -- without any apparent concern that he's done neither, or anything remotely like it.

"Filled with vile hatred, there is no common ground"

says a writer of all who support any effort to let the government be the government, all who are willing to use the government to serve the people, all those who reject the cancerous, self-hating, self-defeating Fox-Fundamentalist doctrines choking the life out of our country. Unaware like so many of the brown-shirt thugs of Martin County Florida of being a maggot, a vile worm eating away at the heart of America.

Christ in camouflage

No, we don't have to worry about private militias and of course they don't represent the "conservatives" who jabber and jape, mock and malign the concept that a dark skinned President could be legitimate, election results notwithstanding. They're nothing to worry about.

It appears to be our right to play soldier and prepare to overthrow the government and rave about American being for "Christians" only because Jesus wants it that way. Of course there's no law against believing or teaching that the President of the United States is the child of an imaginary horned god of evil and is here to destroy everything good, including the good Christian militias who train for a mythical battle of the gods cribbed from Zoroastrian splinter sects and Gnostic fantasies. It's a free country -- so far.

It sure is scary shit though. If you're a resident of rural Martin County Florida, you might be a redneck, but even if you're not, there's a chance you're buying all the .223 and 7.65X39 you can get hold of at inflated prices and squirreling it away for Armageddon and the next Presidential election or for whatever the Mayans allegedly forsaw in the stars. There's also a good chance you're just a nostalgic and frustrated old Confederate and that decal on your pick'emup and the flag waving over your cracker shack indicate a serious longing to try it all again.

At any rate, if you're any of the above, you're not alone and you're less alone than you were a few years ago when the right hand of Jesus presided over his crusade and his omnipotent presidential powers. Militias are prospering as they haven't since 1861.

"The only thing on earth to save the testimony and those who follow it, are the members of the testimony, til the return of Christ in the clouds. We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming."

It's the credo of the Hutaree, a Christian Militia, who are waiting and training in anti-Satan warfare for the end of time just in case God can't handle it himself; all the Jew killing and rapturing and devil chasing ain't easy, and needs reinforcements. The Anti-Christ Obama is damned near omnipotent after all, even if he has such a hard time getting the Republicans to behave like adults. No, if you want to stop Satan you need lots of camo and lots of ammo and it won't hurt to kill some cops and their families either. I know it sounds a bit questionable, but it's all there on their website. Hutaree, explains the camo clad site means Christian Warrior in some undisclosed language. Moronish, perhaps?

It was that plan that prompted the indictments today of 9 self-styled "patriots" after a series of raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The idea was to spark some kind of war against the police by killing at least one and them blowing up his funeral so as to help bring on whatever it is they think needs bringing on. Sounds a bit like Charles Manson's strategy, but I'm sure they thought of it independently.

Meanwhile, back in Michigan, the allegedly unrelated Michigan Militia still plans to hold their "Open Carry Family Picnic & Tea Party" to be held on April 10, 2010 so while the bomb making classes at the Hutaree house of hate will be on hold for a while you can still take the family to Michigan for a good old family time and play games like pin the mustache on Obama, kill the gun grabbers and Let's Pretend our taxes are going up.

And while we're playing games, does anyone want to bet that more commenters will bash me for "misunderstanding" the teabag patriots than will be concerned about armed madmen and trying to take over the government by killing the police?

The Party of Yes! Oh God, Yes! Harder, Please!! (or, le vice RNC)

A wickedly fun and perfectly frivolous post, no harm intended -- except between consenting adults. Since, after all, “All blogs are quite useless.” (Fake Oscar Wilde quotation.)

Now, I’m sure the Republican National Committee and Michael Steele will have an appropriate response to the topic addressed in Jason Linkins’ HuffPo Article today (namely, if I have understood aright, RNC-paid visits to a bondage-themed nightclub in WeHo), but at the moment they’re, well, you’ll understand -- all tied up.

Hosannah to Our Lord in the Highest for this good man’s tenure as RNC Chair. I couldn’t make this stuff up if I worked at it, uh, “24/7.”

I don’t mind stories like this playing rough with the daily headlines: dominate us, you sexy right-wing sadists, DOMINATE US! All through November 1st -- the day before the election. We just can’t get enough….

PS -- just so y'all don't accuse me of plagiarism, the "Party of Yes" ha-ha headline (without the naughty additions I made) first appeared in HuffPo.

A response to Robert J. Samuelson’s WaPo op-ed column today

Robert J. Samuelson has written a piece today for the Washington Post entitled “With health bill, Obama has sown the seeds of a budget crisis”.

Now first of all, let me say that Robert J. Samuelson has an impressive mustache, and this is an important qualification for an economist or an accountant, as anyone who is familiar with the Woody Allen character’s dictum on that issue should know. Especially since I myself have no mustache of any kind -- not even an unimpressive one (dinos have only pin feathers, you see) – I must, in order to maintain any credibility in this area -- agree with Mr. Samuelson in at least one area. It is an important one: notwithstanding certain Republicans’ smugness about the debt not mattering in political terms, I believe Mr. Samuelson is correct in his fiscal-conservative claim that the huge gap between our spending obligations and our tax revenues will at some point become ruinous if we can't close it -- even for a colossus like America, borrowing for a huge percentage of expenditures is dangerous, and hoping that we will always be able to grow our way out of staggering debt is not a viable long-term strategy. I would add that the only reason this borrowing hasn’t been cast as a massive Ponzi-Madoffian scheme – by which I mean in general any scheme that’s viable only so long as everybody goes along with the illusion that fuels and underwrites it – stems from our tremendous economic significance and, of course, from the indisputable fact of our military supremacy. In plain English, America is still a country you don’t want to mess with: in the economic sphere, if we get taken down, a lot of others are going with us. Only certain religious fanatics want to see America burn; everybody else realizes that we are still vital to the global economy even though other countries (China above all) are growing in importance at an astonishing clip.

But Mr. Samuelson’s impressive whiskers only ingratiate him so far with this commenter. I disagree with him about the allegedly reckless quality of the current president’s decision to move forward with health-insurance reform even during an economic downturn. I don’t consider it unfair to point out that the previous administration’s irresponsible fiscal policies and rampant militarism contributed a great deal towards our present difficulties. Their most reckless spending had little to do with social programs. I would even argue (this is not directed at the writer or any particular individual) that the political right’s long-term goal is simultaneously to reduce the tax base and expand military spending to the point where it will no longer be possible to do any meaningful social promising or promise-keeping. So in a sense, running up huge deficits actually furthers the oligarchical right’s interests: it ensures that in the long run, tax revenues can and will only go to economic endeavors that further enrich them but bring no relief to ordinary people just trying to survive.

But on a more congenial note, I suggest that President Obama’s health-insurance changes amount to an advisable realignment of priorities: access to good health care is among the handful of “big things” in which government really should take an interest on behalf of the people, so I don't see why we should call it reckless to put health-care access high on the country’s To Do list. The president has recognized the importance of health to the nation’s well-being, and he has acted accordingly.

If we want to get our national outgo and income into alignment, I suggest, we will need to take a look at revitalizing the tax base (I don't mean this as code for "soak the rich") as well as examining just how many areas of life we think the government really needs to be involved in. But in my view, access to health care is not one of the areas in which the government’s involvement can fairly be labeled unwarranted or merely intrusive.* Whatever one thinks of the insurance reform bill’s particulars, its orientation towards the common citizen who actually pays most of the tax money that will be used for services seems to me entirely appropriate, and I don’t believe its arrival at a difficult socio-economic moment should count against it or lead to charges of fiscal irresponsibility.

*Not that this was necessarily Mr. Samuelson’s point, I should make clear.

No need to fear November

It has become conventional wisdom to expect serious losses for the Democrats in this November's elections, but I'm not worried. While the Democrats will very likely lose a few seats -- that almost always happens to the party in power in midterm elections -- there are important factors working in our favor.

(1) HCR is a plus, not a minus. Polls already show a modest bounce in its approval rating since it was passed. Many who opposed it did so because they felt it didn't go far enough, not because it went too far. Many who oppose the package actually like the individual programs that make it up -- they object to the bill because they are misinformed about what's in it. And some of its provisions will take effect before the election. Voters will then be judging the reform by what they see it actually doing, not by horror-fantasies about death panels and Communism.

(2) The biggest factor influencing the vote will be employment. The job-loss data don't lie -- losses have decreased almost every month since Obama took office. Recent economic growth has been stronger than expected, and although employment is always one of the last indicators to recover after the end of a recession, it will do so. The hopeful-sounding predictions by the administration's enemies that the economy will slide back into recession have the air of an increasingly-desperate clutching at straws. They will come up empty. And Congress has plenty of options for acting to stimulate job growth.

(3) With enemies like these, who needs friends? The Republicans' relentless obstructionism on HCR and their bitter-end negativity may be energizing to the worst of their base, but they can't be appealing to the broad center, which is where elections are won. And Republicans' failure to condemn or even quite acknowledge last week's rash of violence and threats against Democrats is even uglier. Intemperate statements now will turn up in campaign ads later. And don't forget the NY-23 syndrome -- hard-line rightists undermining more electable moderate Republicans. An example is teabagger JD Hayworth's primary challenge to John McCain in Arizona, which has pushed McCain into a series of increasingly extremist statements in an effort to out-loony Hayworth for the sake of base primary voters. Either Hayworth will win the primary and (probably) lose the general, or McCain will prevail, but as damaged goods in the eyes of centrist voters and still viewed with suspicion by the base.

(4) A President should be a strong leader. During 2009 Obama's fixation on bipartisanship, futile in the face of the Republicans' intransigence, made him look weak, dithering, and unable to get things done. Since January he seems to have realized that such efforts were pointless, and the change has affected his image as well as the actual results achieved: Working with Congress to get HCR through despite the lack of Republican support, and using recess appointments to fill essential posts despite Republican obstruction, not only is strong and effective leadership, it also looks like strong and effective leadership. There will be more, and it will all help in November.

It's always possible, of course, that some unexpected major event could happen and change everything. But barring that (and such an event might be one that favors rather than harms our side), I don't think November's going to be all that bad.

Update (29 March): Arthur Greene has more detail on why HCR will probably help the Democrats in November -- benefits for critical groups like the elderly and the middle class will already have taken effect. Greene is a conservative and writes from an anti-HCR viewpoint, but his points on this are solid. Blogger DemWit also e-mails:

The Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act, otherwise known as CLASS Act, provides for a national insurance program to help cover the cost of long-term care -- something 70 percent of people over 65 will need at some point along the way. The premiums will be much lower than those for private plans, and you won't get screened out because you've already had some health problems.

Class act indeed. So much for the death panels.

Hatred

Back by popular demand and apropos our times.

Christ Carrying the Cross by Hieronymus Bosch

by Wisława Szymborska

Look, how spry she still is,
how well she holds up:
hatred, in our century.
How lithely she takes high hurdles.
How easy for her to pounce, to seize.

She is not like the other feelings.
At once older and younger than they.
She alone gives birth to causes
which rouse her to life.
If she sleeps, it's never for eternity.
Insomnia doesn't take away but gives her strength.

Religion or no religion
-- as long as she's in the running
Motherland or no-man's land
-- as long as she's in the race.
Even justice suffices at first.
After that she speeds off on her own
Hatred. Hatred.
The grimace of love's ecstasy
twists her face.

Oh, those other feelings,
so sickly and sluggish.

Since when could brotherhood
count on milling crowds?
Was compassion ever first across the finish line?
How many followers does doubt command?
Only hatred commands, for hatred knows her stuff.

Smart, able, hard working.
Need we say how many songs she has written.
How many pages of history she has numbered.
How many human carpets she has unrolled,
over how many plazas and stadiums.

Let's be honest:
Hatred can create beauty.
Marvelous are her fire-glows, in deep night.
Clouds of smoke most beautiful, in rosy dawn.
It's hard to deny ruins their pathos
and not to see bawdy humor
in the stout column lording it over them.

She is a master of contrast
between clatter and silence,
red blood and white snow.
Above all the image of a clean-shaven torturer
standing over his defiled victim
never bores her.

She is always ready for new tasks.
If she has to wait, she waits.
They say hatred is blind. Blind?
With eyes sharp as a sniper's,
she looks bravely into the future
-- she alone.

Trans. from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak.

GOP says NO to civility

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele said NO to Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine's proposal to write a joint statement condemning threats to members of Congress.

The draft text of the statement says that while Steele and Kaine disagree on the health care bill, they would "together call on elected officials of both parties to set an example of the civility we want to see in our citizenry" and ask "all Americans to respect differences of opinion, to refrain from inappropriate forms of intimidation, to reject violence and vandalism, and to scale back rhetoric that might reasonably be misinterpreted by those prone to such behavior."

Sounds civil to me.

DNC spokesman Brad Woodhouse told reporters that Kaine sent the letter to Steele today and then phoned him asking the chairman to release a joint bipartisan statement "condemning the threats and acts of vandalism over the past week, calling for an end to such tactics and urging a more civil tone in our politics." "This afternoon, Chairman Steele, through staff, declined Chairman Kaine's offer," Woodhouse said.

Oops. Stonewalled again.

RNC spokesman Doug Heye whined to TPM, "Gov. Kaine had an opportunity to condemn such activities when he was sitting next to Michael Steele on the set on Meet the Press. He chose not to, and instead decided to use it as an opportunity to raise money,"

Heye added:

Obviously, a large majority of Americans - a broad coalition of Republicans, Democrats and Independent - are upset that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid pushed through health care legislation that increases premiums and raises taxes and did so through strong-arm tactics, closed door meetings and sweetheart deals. Voters have a right to be angry. Unfortunately, some have chosen to engage in language and actions that go too far.

So that's it. The Republicans are just mad that they didn't get their way and they want to punish the outlaw Democrats. One thing for sure, the right-wing nuts have learned well from their mentors if their blog comments are any indication. SOS. SOS. SOS.

NO, that's not it. How can the party of "you lie" and "baby killer" say YES to civility? Why, they could never be uncivil again! They could not abuse traditional rules of House decorum! Worst of all, they could not encourage the wing-nuts to get down and dirty!

HELL NO, they don't want civility.

If Gore had won Kentucky. . .

That Al Gore lost the state of Kentucky in the 2000 Presidential election was a bit of a surprise to some of us. Polls had him up as much as 8%, but of course he lost that state and his loss was accompanied by jeers, of course. Republicans love to hate Al Gore although some have since begun to love Lieberman. They'd also love to forget all the accusations of voter fraud and the way they excoriated all who were suspicious that those voting machines with no means to check whether they had been hacked or not might have in fact, been tampered with in several states. Sore losers, we were called by the smug victors who currently are losers sore enough to the point of threatening us all with violence and insurrection.

In a country with a memory, the mockery might haunt Republicans, but of course they live in the moment and reality is created anew every day to suit each day's requirements. The conviction of a former judge and seven others on Thursday gives renewed strength to the argument that the electoral victory in 2000 and perhaps the Bush-Kerry contest were influenced or decided by corrupt Republicans. former Circuit Judge R. Cletus Maricle and former school Superintendent Douglas C. Adams along with five others were convicted of a federal racketeering conspiracy and several of them of other charges, including mail fraud, extortion and laundering the money that was used to buy votes.

Some of the juries are still out but the mockery, the Liberal bashing, the accusations of treason are sounding more and more off key as we move forward from the 8 year reign of the Right and we have to speculate on what might have been, for better or for worse, if the corrupt and unscrupulous, with all the lip service paid to freedom, had had respect for the law and tolerance of Democracy.

The Inestimable Dr. Johnson: Theatre, Bricks, and Tea

Samuel Johnson never had much patience with us revolutionary tax-cheats and tea-crate-tossers back in 1776. Still, some perceptive remarks he made in the context of literary theory may be worth mentioning here. Certain Republican politicians have been all but blaming the Democrats for pointing out that people are wrong to throw bricks through their windows and to call them with death threats. That, you see, apparently amounts to capitalizing on their misfortune. Damn liberals go wah wah wah just because someone threatens to hang, draw, and quarter their entire family (or whatever the specific threats are). Well, here is the good doctor having his say about people who insist on dramatic illusionism at the theater:

He that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the Ptolemies, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of Actium. Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation . . . (Preface to Shakespeare).

The point for us regarding today's political environment would be that the officeholders and talkers on the right who have been spreading lies, innuendo, and baseless fear among the populace have unleashed the floodgates of "delusion"; they have obviously peddled their absurdities and falsehoods in the hope that a large enough percentage of the population would take them literally and act upon them to make reforming health care access impossible. The pols and talkers nearly succeeded, and to at least some extent, they are morally accountable for the persistence and bad eminence of the delusionary state they have encouraged, as well as for the material effects that have ensued and may yet ensue from it.

Dr. Johnson was quite certain that his ideal spectator at the theater was never in any danger of getting taken in by the spectacle, neoclassical precepts about verisimilitude notwithstanding; his remarks on this score are brilliant:

The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. . . .

It will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. It is credited with all the credit due to a drama. It is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original . . . . The reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. If there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment . . . . The delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more.

Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.

Well, that's the stage, and for Dr. Johnson, who more or less follows Aristotle in such matters, it is a rational, neat affair: if we are sane when we go to the theater, we will know the difference between reality and spectacle or illusion, even though the emotion we feel while watching a play is genuine and refers us back to something real or at least possible. I wish I could believe that the neat scission between reality and fiction holds for "political theater," but I can't. Politics may be theater, but it's always also tied to real life, to material consequentiality. Oscar Wilde's dictum that "life imitates art far more than art imitates life" may hold true for the fine art of politics. If you tell me a lie that preys upon my anxieties, my prejudices, my fundamental assumptions about who I am, or who you or "they" are, etc., it's likely that I'm going to become possessed by that lie; my obsessions may well get the better of me and lead me to do that for which I may be sorry. I find certain Republicans' failure to understand this fact inexcusable.

Grrrrr and Minor Impact Tremors: In This I Must Speak Only For Myself (all 3200 lbs. dinodupoids and 36 feet in length)

“Threats spur increased security for lawmakers : At least 10 House Democrats are offered stepped-up attention in the wake of last weekend's health-care vote, after death threats and vandalism.” Washington Post, 3/24/2010.

That’s the sort of headline we are seeing this week. These are the times that try a dino’s soul, times in which overly temperate utterance seems downright inappropriate and nothing short of a full-on, predatory battle-roar would be appropriate. So let me say the following in response:

To those (and only those) who are responsible for this sort of thing and who agree with what they’re doing – you are thugs. Note that I’m not saying you are “like” thugs or “acting like” thugs. The time is past for weak similes. I’m saying that you ARE thugs – criminal thugs, in the case of the malefactors referenced above.

It has become obvious that your goal is simply to make rational, respectable people give up on America’s civic culture. And you know what? That was exactly the aim of the organized Brownshirts and semi-organized rabble Hitler used back in the 1920s during his rise to power – to frighten and dispirit the populace by throwing bricks through windows, tossing ethnic and other slurs, making death threats, etc. I suppose next you’ll move on to administering beatings in alleys and burning books that you can’t read anyway. You are the very stuff, the raw material, of the American Nazism that could come to pass if we should fail to sustain the republic. Proud of yourselves, trash? You went around painting little Charlie Chaplin mustaches on Barack Obama’s portrait last summer, labeling the reforms “fascism,” and so forth. That’s the most manifest case of projection one can imagine – you’re the fascists here in the States, not President Obama, and the fact that you don’t understand it only proves that you are either bottomlessly stupid or outright insane.

Perhaps like many others in the liberal, centrist, and thoughtful-conservative blogging community, I used to give you the benefit of the doubt, and supposed that you were just confused and perhaps a bit dull-witted, but in my view there is no further room for doubt: you are violent, irrational flotsam and your sole objective is not to protect your own liberties but instead to destroy the republic any way you can. Why? Because you can’t stand freedom – you don’t have the courage; you can’t stand debate – you don’t have the brains; you can’t stand living in a country where the majority of people think it’s wise to help others in a time of need – you don’t have the heart. Again I say, ye are vile thugs. Set it down for a certainty that you are the nation’s disgrace and that I (and, I can hope, all decent people here in America and elsewhere in the world) hold you in unmitigated contempt.

Oh, and no matter what you do, the health-care bill is going into effect within the next few days. Choke on that fact. At least now you’ll be able to get some health care without “choking” being labeled a pre-existing condition, you dumb, illiterate, violent, childish, knuckle-dragging anti-American degenerate mother*uckers. I know you for what you are, and I don’t believe you will get your authoritarian dystopia in which conditions are so vile, so abject, that the low likes of you can become the norm. America isn’t perfect, but it’s better than that – better, that is, than YOU. I believe that the normal, the caring, the civic-spirited, and the patriotic (I don’t mean only “liberal” by any of those terms) will prevail, and that they won’t do it with your weapons of choice, either – bricks, guns, bombs, filthy-threat-laden calls in the dead of night, or physical intimidation. No, the most powerful things good people have on their side are justice and right, along with a firm desire to see them done in the proper ways. Decency and humaneness are IDEALS, and we all know that you can’t kill an ideal, however hard you may try. You’re wasting your time with those bricks and phone calls, morons. First learn how to spell: it’s “extremism,” not “exremism,” you stupid *UCK!

Finally, if you look in the mirror and don’t like that little Charlie Chaplin mustache you see materializing there (is that a mustache which you see before you, or a mustache of the mind?) , I would gladly welcome you into the sphere of normality and civilization – better late than never. I’m sure it will be so new for you there, you’ll feel just like a kid in a candy store.

See something? Say something!

We've all seen the signs of what looks like the beginning of a new wave of far-right terrorism -- the Tiller murder, the Austin plane attack, and so on. With the outbreak of vandalism and threats following the passage of HCR, and the more-hysterical-than-ever rhetoric on much of the right, the danger of terrorism or violence directed against the political leadership and institutions of this country seems more serious than ever.

If you see or hear anything that suggets a serious threat, report it. The Secret Service and the FBI are helped in their work by an alert public. You could save a life, or many.

Link to FBI contact information

Link to Secret Service field office phone numbers

land of the Prison, home of the Coward

Yes, our personal freedom has been irrevocably damaged by a weak attempt to control swashbuckling Insurance company practices and there's nothing ahead but free fall into the pit of Socialism - or Fascism if your paranoia runs better in that direction. I can't get through an hour without hearing the whining about "Obamacare" and "American values."

Of course there's little fear that the attempt to make it legal for a suspect to be held forever without trial will jeopardize our "freedom" at all. There's not too much concern that proof of innocence can't overturn a death sentence either. Freedom you see, is a personal, even solipsistic thing and like personal income, we Libertarians don't want to share it or spread it around. I need to be free to do anything, free from any responsibility to the country, but you can rot in hell, for all I care. Some call that Libertarian, some conservative, but either attempt is like pasting a label to Teflon - it won't stick. What it really is, is panic and what it's really not is justice. Yes, I know, if your one of those Glennbecky sorts, you'll insist that justice itself is one of many gates to hell and the corridor to Communism, but if you're one of those, you belong there anyway.

But here's an example or two: Senator Lindsey Graham, who sits on the Senate's Armed Services, Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, wants to talk us into legislation that allows a "terrorism suspect" to be held forever without charges and without counsel. That's right, I said suspect. What's a suspect? it's whatever some justice department apparatchik or some informant or unnamed source says it is.

“There has to be some type of statute -- and he’s been clear on that -- for indefinite detention,” said Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop. An accused person is "too dangerous to release; but we also aren’t going to try them in either a military or a civilian court. So there has to be a system for that, and that’s why Senator Graham is looking for a legal framework."

Too bad there's no longer any framework to determine whether someone is actually dangerous, is a terrorist or even what terrorism is under such legislation, but never mind -- the government just knows and we're comfortable with that. Limited justice and limited freedom you see, is limited government.

And that doesn't scare you; not like filling out a census form, not like keeping your insurance from being canceled the day after they find that tumor because you had an unreported toothache in 1972. None the less, we want limited government, but only as concerns us, not them. A life sentence for suspicion is

"un-American and violates our commitment to due process and the rule of law,"

says the ACLU, as you'd expect from those Commies. Don't they understand we're afraid? Don't they understand that American values aren't worth taking a risk for?

They aren't worth taking a risk for in Texas; just ask Troy Davis, sentenced to die for a brutal triple murder in a trial so flawed it makes my hair stand on end. One of the victims, for instance, had complained of abuse and threats from a third party, who was not even interviewed by police. Ten years ago David Protess, at The Innocence Project at Northwestern University, whose group has exonerated 17 condemned prisoners using DNA evidence the court never saw, re-examined the case with his students and concluded Skinner is innocent. Texas won't reconsider a conviction based on new evidence. In Texas, innocence is no defense and Texas, for all it's guns and bravado is so terrified of Davis that they're willing to kill him and the hell with reasonable doubt. Fortunately, the Supreme court isn't from Texas and has granted a stay, just an hour before the execution

Sure, we want limited government, but with unlimited power to do whatever feels expedient and damn the very idea of social justice and screw anyone who ever thought the USA was worth fighting for. Don't you understand we're afraid?

HOW TO INCITE INSURRECTION AND SPIN THE TALE ON THE DONKEY

“I hope Obama fails,” spoke Rush Limbaugh four days before the inauguration of President Obama. “We want to promote failure, we want to promote incompetence …”

These words spoken by a radio hack gave the Grand Obstructionist Party what it needed most: A strategy to hijack the election by sabotaging our new President. Within months, the GOP unleashed a barrage of daily attacks (source):

First, it started with the Birthers, those who sought to undermine the legitimacy of a newly elected President with fabricated conspiracy theories about the authenticity of his birth certificate and the legality of his presidency.

Next came the Tea Baggers, followed by the town hall hooligans, followed by gun-toting thugs at presidential rallies, followed by GOP Congressman Joe Wilson’s outburst of “Liar!” before a special session of Congress, followed by GOP Congresswomen Michelle Bachmann calling for armed resistance against Obama’s legislative agenda, followed by GOP Congressman Trent Franks threatening a Birther lawsuit against Obama and calling him an “enemy of humanity,” followed by GOP Governor Rick Perry calling for Texas to secede from the union, followed by Newsmax columnist John Perry dreaming of a military coup against President Obama, followed by a FaceBook poll asking: “Should Obama be killed?”

For months, we have heard the repeating rhythms of Obama the Communist, Obama the Socialist, Obama the Islamofascist, Obama the Jihadist … and the steady and relentless drumbeats of a GOP run amuck driving us towards civil disorder and insurrection.

One year and four months later, the Grand Obstructionist Party has brought us to the brink. The party of ‘NO’ is blaming tea party rage on Democrats while ignoring the fact that former GOP Majority Leader Dick Armey organized the tea party movement as an Astroturf event, which the GOP exploits at every opportunity ... and the party of ‘NO’ is refusing to be held accountable for what it unleashed.  Here is a snapshot of incidents within the past week alone:

Ohio Congressman Outraged By Newspaper Ad Showing Daughters

Talk Radio Attacks 11-Year Old Whose Mother Died

Tea Baggers Harass Man with Parkinson’s Disease

Sniper Threatens Congresswomen – Brick Thrown in Window

Severed Gas Line at Home of Congressman’s Brother

Protesters Spit on Congressman – Hurl Racial Epithets

Noose Images Faxed to Clyburn and Stupak

The climate of intimidation and fear exploited by the GOP is pervasive and pernicious. Earlier this evening, I read this comment at the Huffington Post:

Many of you have seen the video I did with my husband the Gulf War vet on the medical situation we found ourselves in. What I didn't say is that the two founding members of the Coffee Party are now living away from their home and going under assumed names since they have had their home address and phone numbers posted on right-wing sites ... in a addition to receiving death threats.

Out of curiosity, I visited the website of Fox News to read their version of these events. It wasn’t their spin on the story that caught my attention, but these readers’ comments:

pantherhunter - Will you stand, will you fight (...) the only way to deter Social___ism [sic] is by force (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 9:00 PM).

lightningtom00 - The only good politicians is [sic] one 6 feet under (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 8:44 PM).

golf67 - bring on the civil war, ive [sic] got my guns and my church (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 8:40 PM).

e5dra5 - The only way America can be what it's meant to be is to be rid of the Dems entirely (…) ONE VOTE, ONE PARTY (REPUBLICAN), ONE AMERICA (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 7:55 PM).

leftiswrong - These traitors to the constitution have committed a severe crime (…) Time for the populace to push back.  If somebody dies in the process, oh well...... (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 7:37 PM).

irocthisgt67 - I do beleive [sic] that violence may need to be used to get these scum bags out of our country (...) Death to them all (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 4:48 PM).

yellowduke - Perhaps if a dozen or so of the threats were carried out their hearing may improve. Dust a dozen of them (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 6:17 PM).

Outrageous and shocking! In the interest of fairness and balance, not all comments at the website of Fox News were as inflammatory as the above. There was also this:

bobloblaw - Good job Fox. You give right-wing nut jobs a platform to spread lies and hate. Then when things like this happen you get a story and say I told you so. The FBI should investigate not only these nuts. They should also start taking a good look at Beck and company (Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 5:04 PM).

Yes, by all means, investigate Glenn Beck; but don't forget Dick Armey, Minority Leader John Boehner, Michele Bachmann, and the other GOP skinheads who have exploited hatred and violence for political gain and brought us to the edge of anarchy.  And do it now before there is blood in the streets.

Dawn of the Palin

Oh God no - please don't let Sarah Palin have a TV show where she takes us around Alaska while entertaining us with her faux folksy youbetchaisms. Variety posted yesterday that the Discovery Channel will be paying a million dollars per episode for the rights to Sarah Palin's Alaska and if it airs, I'm going to have to boycott my favorite family of TV channels.

I wonder if we'll be treated to action shots of wolf strafing, holy rolling, turkey slaughtering, Russian Island watching and witch hunting with Pastor Muthee. All in rougue style, of course.

Ann Coulter -- Liberal

I've been told for decades that the culture of victimhood is a Liberal thing; that the lazy slackers of America simply pretend to be victims when they could simply get a job instead of mooching the "hard earned" dollars of hard working Americans.

I think I agree and that's why when Ann Coulter stunk up Ottawa today by claiming she's the victim of hate crimes by a University of Ottawa today. You see, the university’s vice-president of academic affairs and provost François Houle sent her an e-mail encouraging her to brush up on what’s considered acceptable in Canada whose laws about free speech may be unfamiliar to her. You have to admit that's just as egregious as lynchings, firebombings, painting swastikas on Synagogues and dragging some gay kid to death behind a truck. It's hate speech if I ever heard it and according to time honored righty dogma, claiming to be a victim makes Ann a liberal.

"You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges.”

said the e-mail and who could disagree that its message is in every way a conservative one: Learn the law and obey it. Ann is a Liberal, no doubt about it and even though the e-mail was obviously inspired by her previous performance in London, Ontario, it's a hate crime directed at consrvatives and what could be more liberal than that? At the University of Western Ontario, she attacked gay rights activists, the mainstream media, Barack Obama's administration and told a Muslim student to "take a camel" as an alternative to flying. Republicans have all been highly critical of any American criticizing the president or the government while abroad -- any Liberal American, that is -- so I'm expecting we'll hear them all chime in soon.

Yes, cautioning someone whose actions have bordered on the criminal to be careful while in Canada is a hate crime if ever there was one and it's just like a liberal to ask for special rights for a minority group: psychotic blond transvestites. I think it's fitting to quote one of her most often used phrases, because it says it all: "Liberals go wah -- they go wah, wah,wah."

And nobody gives a shit.