Credit: Tom Tomorrow, This Modern World.
Credit: Jen Sorensen, Slowpoke Comics.
Credit: Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press.
BTW, Octopus will be away until Tuesday, Nov 16. Who is minding the beach?
Friday, November 12, 2010
Thus Spake Shimkus
Now, this atheist has been accused of having it in for Christians, but since I staunchly maintain I've never met one, I must deny it. What makes me the angriest, and it does make me angry, is not some abstract faith in an ineffable power, but the scriptural inerrancy epidemic spreading like a dangerous plague. It's not a Christian thing, it's a dementia thing and as far as Bible as the inerrant word of God cult goes, it's a stupid thing. All religions and much political thought is susceptible to the disease.
There isn't any God but the ones we make up, nor does he do anything we don't do for him, but if our definition includes honesty or coherence or lack of self-contradiction or even a 21st century child's knowledge of cosmology, he didn't write the books of Moses, the Gospels, the various different versions of Isiah found at Qumran or any of the rest of it, culled and selected and edited and redacted by generations of people from a wider library of books. For lack of space I simply can't cover all the territory, but for it to have been written by an all-knowing, it must describe an alternate universe, not this one.
But I digress. My point was that Jews like Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) have been turned into truth eating zombies far more dangerous than B movie producers ever imagined. It's not a Christian thing. He thinks that we shouldn't worry about climate change because God won't allow any dire consequences. It's not that I think we're likely to all be drowned and not about how accurate I think current projections might or might not be, it's that people of this ilk get people killed. Electing Shimkus is like hiring a blind chauffeur who drives by faith. He's like a general who tells his troops the other guys are firing blanks. Don't mind those bullets, our religion will protect you, said Jack Wilson and not one bullet was stopped and how many Indians died? If you're not dumb enough to think that's right, you're too smart to support Shimkus in seeking chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
No, Shimkus believes in his version of his selected book and not in any other. If I could ask him why, he'd either have to do his own Ghost Dance or give me evidence for it's power to predict what will or won't happen with the weather, crustal movements, the evolution of microbes the outcome of battles and the flight paths of asteroids - and he can't. There's no test of reality it can pass. There's no way to show it more accurate than the Popol Vuh or the Quir'an or Bullfinch's Mythology, Aesop's Fables or a random number generator. Therefore the choice is his and it's a choice not based on evidence. What he calls God's voice is Shimkus' voice and thus spake Shimkus and Shimkus alone.
I'm always amused by people who call my logic arrogant. As people who tell you what God will or will not do and does or does not like, the title really belongs with beli
evers, not with skeptics since we're not claiming anything special. The burden of proof to show that since there are an infinite number of words from an infinite possibility of gods, it's just your personal celestial ventriloquism at work? I don't have to, I'm not making assertions. The burden is on the believer. They proclaim endlessly about God's will as clearly set forth but when the predictions don't work, or contradict themselves, when life and death are random and there's no order or justice - well then they say we can't understand. Which is it?
It's your choice what to believe and your conclusions are no more divine than mine, although your knowledge may be superior and your reasoning better: it's still only you and me. God hates fags? Well no he doesn't, but I'm speaking of the true god Zog and I should know since I invented him and can invent as many more as I like all equally above question. Zog knows all about physics and mathematics and history and in fact everything I know, he knows -- and that's surely more than yours does. Zog says magic doesn't work, prayers fall on deaf ears, no danger will be averted lest you take measures and I know it's true because I believe and my belief can't be shown to be more or less well founded by any means I know of.
There isn't any God but the ones we make up, nor does he do anything we don't do for him, but if our definition includes honesty or coherence or lack of self-contradiction or even a 21st century child's knowledge of cosmology, he didn't write the books of Moses, the Gospels, the various different versions of Isiah found at Qumran or any of the rest of it, culled and selected and edited and redacted by generations of people from a wider library of books. For lack of space I simply can't cover all the territory, but for it to have been written by an all-knowing, it must describe an alternate universe, not this one.
But I digress. My point was that Jews like Representative John Shimkus (R-IL) have been turned into truth eating zombies far more dangerous than B movie producers ever imagined. It's not a Christian thing. He thinks that we shouldn't worry about climate change because God won't allow any dire consequences. It's not that I think we're likely to all be drowned and not about how accurate I think current projections might or might not be, it's that people of this ilk get people killed. Electing Shimkus is like hiring a blind chauffeur who drives by faith. He's like a general who tells his troops the other guys are firing blanks. Don't mind those bullets, our religion will protect you, said Jack Wilson and not one bullet was stopped and how many Indians died? If you're not dumb enough to think that's right, you're too smart to support Shimkus in seeking chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
No, Shimkus believes in his version of his selected book and not in any other. If I could ask him why, he'd either have to do his own Ghost Dance or give me evidence for it's power to predict what will or won't happen with the weather, crustal movements, the evolution of microbes the outcome of battles and the flight paths of asteroids - and he can't. There's no test of reality it can pass. There's no way to show it more accurate than the Popol Vuh or the Quir'an or Bullfinch's Mythology, Aesop's Fables or a random number generator. Therefore the choice is his and it's a choice not based on evidence. What he calls God's voice is Shimkus' voice and thus spake Shimkus and Shimkus alone.
I'm always amused by people who call my logic arrogant. As people who tell you what God will or will not do and does or does not like, the title really belongs with beli
evers, not with skeptics since we're not claiming anything special. The burden of proof to show that since there are an infinite number of words from an infinite possibility of gods, it's just your personal celestial ventriloquism at work? I don't have to, I'm not making assertions. The burden is on the believer. They proclaim endlessly about God's will as clearly set forth but when the predictions don't work, or contradict themselves, when life and death are random and there's no order or justice - well then they say we can't understand. Which is it?It's your choice what to believe and your conclusions are no more divine than mine, although your knowledge may be superior and your reasoning better: it's still only you and me. God hates fags? Well no he doesn't, but I'm speaking of the true god Zog and I should know since I invented him and can invent as many more as I like all equally above question. Zog knows all about physics and mathematics and history and in fact everything I know, he knows -- and that's surely more than yours does. Zog says magic doesn't work, prayers fall on deaf ears, no danger will be averted lest you take measures and I know it's true because I believe and my belief can't be shown to be more or less well founded by any means I know of.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Veterans Week, Part II: Adam's Table
Our handsome young waiter, with the fast-talking, Yankee ways, was unexpected in this most Southern of southern towns. And much too much for a couple of fagged out seniors. Mr. Razzle-dazzle, high energy, hard sell. I hate that even when I'm at my best. He was Adam and he would be HELPING US OUT! He moved like Tony Manero headed onto the dance floor on Saturday night. I wondered if he was hopped up on something or just manic.
Of course, we should know that the bottle was a better deal than the glass and the premium wines were so far superior to the cheap ones that he hated to even discuss them with us. We could do this or that or some other unintelligible thing...But, hey, it was obvious that the choice was hard. He'd make it easy for me; let's start with White or Red! I quietly and wryly told him we'd start with the crappy Blackstone Pinot Grigio, for me only, thanks...and clamped my mouth in a way that spelled STFU, Adam.
And he did, briefly. He brought the wine and tea and water with barely a beat in his step and left us alone for a few minutes. We hardly noticed how much time had passed, because we were past tired and into punchy. I think we jointly analyzed America's entire problem, and from a unique perspective--which I can no longer remember, but it was sublime.
And then Adam was back, empty-handed. He squatted and rested his elbows on the edge of our table in a way that said, "Now that we've become so close...," and informed us that he 'd screwed up with our order, had failed to push some button or something and our food would be up as soon as humanly possible and he was abjectly sorry. And, somehow, he mentioned a son. And that lots of regular "guests" asked for him when they came in. He offered us free salads and slipped away.
DH was waxing a tad sarcastic by this time, mugging to me, comically annoyed and impatient, blood sugar bottoming out. I was laughing at him, promising that I would personally ask for Adam each and every time we returned to his restaurant and we WOULD return, since it was right next to our motel. And the food came. It was surprisingly good. We felt much better. And Adam refilled DH's tea glass after each sip.
When we were ready for our check and feeling so much more human, thank you, and the place was clearing out for the night, Adam settled in for some serious talk. He asked where we were from, heard our standard answer, "We're from the Air Force, originally." Adam said he'd once had no respect for the Air Force, buncha pampered wusses, but he'd changed his mind. And then the story that Adam had been waiting all day to tell--the story that, we sensed, so often inserted itself into his days--came tumbling out.
Adam wasn't used to Tennessee. He was an Ohio boy and was only here for a few months to take care of his mother. The girls in the South were hell-bent on getting married from Date Number One and it was freaking him out. He'd taken the wait job just until the end of the month, and then he had to head back home. He had a young son, but was never married. He'd been in Afghanistan and, after 9-11, in Iraq as part of the 10th Mountain Division.
His group was IED'd in Fallujah and combat disabled, having lost at least two-thirds of their number. They were under ambush attack and he was hit twice, one in the chest that his body armor stopped and one upward from his armpit through the shoulder. He found himself trying for the first time to call in an air attack. He asked an A-10 Warthog to drop ordinance within 300 yards of his position, a range the Warthog questioned. When he got agreement and the Mark-82 was dropped, the concussion blew him backwards. The Warthog circled back to use its Gatling gun to pick off the one machine-gun mounted Toyota pick-up that almost got away. Warthog pilots saved his life.
We shook his hand and thanked him for his service. We honor the warriors despite condemning the war. And we'll be asking for Adam's table.
Why Repealing DADT Is the Better Choice
Don't Ask Don't Tell (DADT) is still law. I think that it's bad law; however, I also think that President Obama has logical reasons for wanting Congress to repeal DADT rather than allowing a court ordered injunction to halt application of DADT or using an Executive Order to end DADT. Here's why.
It's dangerous territory for the president to attempt to repeal duly passed legislation via exercising his executive power. There is a tendency to make comparisons to Truman's use of an Executive Order to end segregation in the military. It's an invalid comparison. Truman didn't have to contravene existing federal law in order to desegregate the armed forces. Jim Crow segregation laws were a hodgepodge of state laws. It also should be noted that it was five years after Truman issued his executive order before the armed forces were more than 90% integrated.
A good friend feels that Obama needs to play hardball to earn the respect of Congress, either by directing the Justice Department not to appeal the court decision or by issuing an Executive Order to end DADT. I disagree. Obama won't earn their respect, they'll just use his actions as a ground for the ever growing rumblings about impeachment. It doesn't matter that they can't oust him; it didn't stop them when it came to Clinton. Impeachment is a time consuming process and detracts from time that the president needs to spend on important matters such as the economy.
Another risk is that if DADT is repealed by a court order rather that a change in law, it could succumb to the same fate as Brown v.the Topeka Board of Education. In the 1990s, white parents began bringing lawsuits against school systems arguing that the 1954 Brown decision had exceeded the authority of the courts. Specifically they opposed the use of race as a factor in pupil assignment to achieve integration. These cases were filed and won in federal courts. In 2007, the big kahuna of these cases was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court when two cases were combined, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS) v. Seattle School District. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the school systems in Seattle, WA and in Louisville, KY had violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by their use of a student's race in deciding whom to admit to particular public schools.
The decision has resulted in public school systems across the country being barred from using race as a factor in student assignments. Some systems have realized that they can still achieve racial integration if they use socioeconomic class in pupil assignments. However, the new trend is the one playing out in my local school system. The newest board members want to abandon the use of socioeconomic class and make assignments to neighborhood schools, the same term used in the 1960s as not so subtle language for maintaining segregated schools. The result has been a resegregation of schools not just in the south but particularly in major cities in the Midwest and Northeast. According to a 2009 report by Professor Gary Orfield, "...40 % of Latinos and 39 % of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools, in which 90 to 100 percent of students are non-White. The typical Black or Latino student attends a school where nearly 60% of the students are low-income, creating a doubly-damaging race and poverty divide that is worsening the isolation felt by these minority communities."
What courts render, they can undo. It took nearly 50 years to undo Brown, I think that it won't take nearly as long to reverse a decision from the courts to repeal DADT. Especially as the current decision is from a federal district court, not the Supreme Court.
Let's say Obama successfully issues an executive order ending DADT. Let's assume that he wins in 2012. DADT will remain repealed. In 2016, he can't run again. Say a Republican wins the presidency, a conservative right winger who ran on a program of promising to reinstate DADT. He/She could follow Obama's precedent and do it using an executive order. He or she wouldn't be making new law; the law was never repealed. Or a party with standing could file a federal lawsuit that DADT was unconstitutional--perhaps some members of the military who believe that DADT demeans morale. SCOTUS agrees to hear the case and holds that the use of an executive order to repeal DADT was a violation of the authority of the executive office because it stepped in prior to there being a chance for Congress to hear and vote on whether to repeal DADT.
All of this is supposition but it's plausible supposition. If I've thought of this, you can bet Obama, who is a true constitutional scholar and a lot more knowledgeable lawyer than I am, has considered this and that he and his staff have been discussing all the angles.
I'd like to see DADT repealed by Congress. However, it's like in the horror movies when some nitwit knocks out the monster and doesn't make certain that it's really dead. If DADT isn't killed outright it will rise again and bite us in the butt.
So what can we do? The bill repealing DADT has already been passed by the House; it's being held up in the senate. Contact the Senators who are sitting on the fence and the leading democrats in the senate. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) recommends that we contact the following Senators via email, snail mail, or telephone calls and tell them that you support repealing DADT. Harry Reid (D-NV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Scott Brown (R-MA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Kit Bond (R-MO), Joe Mancin (D-WV), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Kirk (R-IL).
There are multiple sites that you can use to get email, snail mail addresses, and phone numbers for your senators. My favorite is
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.
Other sites are:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and http://www.senate.gov/
It's dangerous territory for the president to attempt to repeal duly passed legislation via exercising his executive power. There is a tendency to make comparisons to Truman's use of an Executive Order to end segregation in the military. It's an invalid comparison. Truman didn't have to contravene existing federal law in order to desegregate the armed forces. Jim Crow segregation laws were a hodgepodge of state laws. It also should be noted that it was five years after Truman issued his executive order before the armed forces were more than 90% integrated.
A good friend feels that Obama needs to play hardball to earn the respect of Congress, either by directing the Justice Department not to appeal the court decision or by issuing an Executive Order to end DADT. I disagree. Obama won't earn their respect, they'll just use his actions as a ground for the ever growing rumblings about impeachment. It doesn't matter that they can't oust him; it didn't stop them when it came to Clinton. Impeachment is a time consuming process and detracts from time that the president needs to spend on important matters such as the economy.
Another risk is that if DADT is repealed by a court order rather that a change in law, it could succumb to the same fate as Brown v.the Topeka Board of Education. In the 1990s, white parents began bringing lawsuits against school systems arguing that the 1954 Brown decision had exceeded the authority of the courts. Specifically they opposed the use of race as a factor in pupil assignment to achieve integration. These cases were filed and won in federal courts. In 2007, the big kahuna of these cases was heard before the U.S. Supreme Court when two cases were combined, Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education and Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS) v. Seattle School District. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the school systems in Seattle, WA and in Louisville, KY had violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment by their use of a student's race in deciding whom to admit to particular public schools.
The decision has resulted in public school systems across the country being barred from using race as a factor in student assignments. Some systems have realized that they can still achieve racial integration if they use socioeconomic class in pupil assignments. However, the new trend is the one playing out in my local school system. The newest board members want to abandon the use of socioeconomic class and make assignments to neighborhood schools, the same term used in the 1960s as not so subtle language for maintaining segregated schools. The result has been a resegregation of schools not just in the south but particularly in major cities in the Midwest and Northeast. According to a 2009 report by Professor Gary Orfield, "...40 % of Latinos and 39 % of blacks now attend intensely segregated schools, in which 90 to 100 percent of students are non-White. The typical Black or Latino student attends a school where nearly 60% of the students are low-income, creating a doubly-damaging race and poverty divide that is worsening the isolation felt by these minority communities."
What courts render, they can undo. It took nearly 50 years to undo Brown, I think that it won't take nearly as long to reverse a decision from the courts to repeal DADT. Especially as the current decision is from a federal district court, not the Supreme Court.
Let's say Obama successfully issues an executive order ending DADT. Let's assume that he wins in 2012. DADT will remain repealed. In 2016, he can't run again. Say a Republican wins the presidency, a conservative right winger who ran on a program of promising to reinstate DADT. He/She could follow Obama's precedent and do it using an executive order. He or she wouldn't be making new law; the law was never repealed. Or a party with standing could file a federal lawsuit that DADT was unconstitutional--perhaps some members of the military who believe that DADT demeans morale. SCOTUS agrees to hear the case and holds that the use of an executive order to repeal DADT was a violation of the authority of the executive office because it stepped in prior to there being a chance for Congress to hear and vote on whether to repeal DADT.
All of this is supposition but it's plausible supposition. If I've thought of this, you can bet Obama, who is a true constitutional scholar and a lot more knowledgeable lawyer than I am, has considered this and that he and his staff have been discussing all the angles.
I'd like to see DADT repealed by Congress. However, it's like in the horror movies when some nitwit knocks out the monster and doesn't make certain that it's really dead. If DADT isn't killed outright it will rise again and bite us in the butt.
So what can we do? The bill repealing DADT has already been passed by the House; it's being held up in the senate. Contact the Senators who are sitting on the fence and the leading democrats in the senate. The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) recommends that we contact the following Senators via email, snail mail, or telephone calls and tell them that you support repealing DADT. Harry Reid (D-NV), Carl Levin (D-MI), Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Richard Lugar (R-IN), Judd Gregg (R-NH), Scott Brown (R-MA), George Voinovich (R-OH), Kit Bond (R-MO), Joe Mancin (D-WV), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mark Kirk (R-IL).
There are multiple sites that you can use to get email, snail mail addresses, and phone numbers for your senators. My favorite is
http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.
Other sites are:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
and http://www.senate.gov/
For Our Veterans (and not only)
Sergeant Chuck Luther was wounded by mortar fire, then held in a closet for over a month until he signed papers saying he suffered from "personality disorder."
For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.
According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.
More from Joshua Kors.
PalinWatch: Baked Alaska
Somebody's got to do it, distasteful as it may be -- and what's she up to now? Same old thing. Presented with the facts, she said "thanks, but no thanks."
We all remember when the song was that Obama was the most liberal legislator - ever and it's fun to remember it and more fun to listen to people try to reconcile that idiocy with the likelihood that he will imitate Bush in giving the 1% who own it all another tax break like the one instrumental in causing the First Great Depression and the more recent BushDepression Recession. Obama is as liberal as Corporate America allows him to be, and that's to the right of Reagan.
But wait, there's more. Sarah's now slinging the one where Obama is the most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House and slinging it with the same, soggy, snickering spite and scorn for reality. "Obamacare" of course will fund abortions, said she yesterday at a half-full old Texas Vaudeville house, even though it won't, any more than there are death panels trying to kill your grandmother or that the President's trade mission to the far east is using up half the Navy and will cost billions. Behold the power of rumor over a willing audience.
But bullshit in motion tends to stay in motion despite any friction caused by the truth and maybe it's that strange "dark energy" but these days it seems actually to expand at an increasing rate.
Exceedingly hard? Understated humor is so refreshing these days.
We all remember when the song was that Obama was the most liberal legislator - ever and it's fun to remember it and more fun to listen to people try to reconcile that idiocy with the likelihood that he will imitate Bush in giving the 1% who own it all another tax break like the one instrumental in causing the First Great Depression and the more recent Bush
But wait, there's more. Sarah's now slinging the one where Obama is the most pro-abortion president to occupy the White House and slinging it with the same, soggy, snickering spite and scorn for reality. "Obamacare" of course will fund abortions, said she yesterday at a half-full old Texas Vaudeville house, even though it won't, any more than there are death panels trying to kill your grandmother or that the President's trade mission to the far east is using up half the Navy and will cost billions. Behold the power of rumor over a willing audience.
But bullshit in motion tends to stay in motion despite any friction caused by the truth and maybe it's that strange "dark energy" but these days it seems actually to expand at an increasing rate.
"People do not process information in a neutral way. Their preconceptions affect their reactions. Biased assimilation refers to the fact that people assimilate new information in a biased fashion; those who have accepted false rumors do not easily give up their beliefs, especially when they have a strong emotional commitment to those beliefs. It can be exceedingly hard to dislodge what people think, even by presenting them with the facts."Cass Sunstein, "On Rumors"
Exceedingly hard? Understated humor is so refreshing these days.
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
MEET YOUR NEW SENATORS
Senator-Elect Rand Paul (R-KY)
Senator-Elect Marco Rubio (R-FL)
Senator-Elect John Boozman (R-AR)
Senator-Elect Pat Toomey (R-PA)
Senator-Elect Rob Portman (R-OH)
Senator-Elect Ron Johnson (R-WI)
Senator-Elect Dan Coats (R-IN)
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
So, just when do we end the insanity?
OK, so you think my last post was petty, or over the top and just plain silly? You think the country hasn't lost any connection with reality and we haven't turned into gap toothed, tattooed and camouflage clad Chatty Kathy dolls who squawk the same old tinny phrases when anything at all pulls the string? You think that objective, fact based and reasoned perceptions aren't more rare than raisins in some off brand breakfast cereal?
CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.
I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.
The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.
CNN.com is running a story today about a countrywide Federal crackdown on sex traffic in underage girls. This Federal initiative began in 2003, but according to the kind of people who post comments, child prostitution is Barack Obama's fault. And not just that - Obama likes people to abuse young girls. You see, some of the culprits were from Somalia where most people are Black and nominally Muslim. Obama's father was from Kenya which is on the same continent as Somalia. Therefore Obama is a Muslim and a child molester who wants to protect child molesters.
I realize it's fashionable amongst liberals who aren't scientists to say that IQ means nothing, but it certainly does. If yours is above room temperature, you'll question the presence of "therefore" anywhere in that statement. You won't see it as the fair and balanced "other side" of the story.
The inability to see that this string of pronouncements doesn't even superficially resemble a logical or factual progression seems more than prima facie evidence of congenital and irredeemable idiocy. I'm sorry to sound all Democrat here, but there's something wrong in making it hard for a brain surgeon to get a green card while allowing massive political power to people who only resemble human beings in that they walk on two legs - and rising to power by riding their wave of idiotic anger.
John1865
Pickin' on Paul or Kentucky Windage
Face it, it's become traditional for Republicans to declare that a Democratic election winner is a failure before he takes office, and in Obama's case, even before he was elected. Reality is no longer a prerequisite, if indeed, it ever was.
So why shouldn't I take this opportunity to declare that Rand Paul is a failure as the Senator from Kentucky and why not start off with a nasty, childish nickname like Runt Paul, to reflect his father's superior claim, in my opinion, to be respected for his views. Oh, come on, it's an American tradition and I'm not even claiming he was born in Nepal -- nee-Paul, get it? Of course we don't know for sure, do we? He's ignored my request for a birth certificate. By the way, isn't is suspicious that he want to an expensive, elitist Ophthalmology school? Who paid for it and why can't he produce board certification? Where is Orly Taitz when you need a nutjob attorney?
And look, I've even got a plausible story. Remember how cutting earmarks was the important part of reducing the cost of government both in Runt's rhetoric and that of the GOP in general? Well, that was then and now that we've put away the Punch and Judy puppets, he's now just fine with earmarks as long as they are earmarked for Kentucky. But of course he's still not going to let Washington - or reality - change him as he explained to the Wall Street Journal. I mean he still hasn't let the end of segregation change him. He still thinks it's a violation of property rights - kinda like freeing the slaves.
Of course the federal porkbarrel is not all that large when held up against the Supertanker of Federal spending, even though that spending as a percentage of the GNP isn't quite as huge as it appears when spoken of in dollars, but that sort of relativity sounds socialist or at least overly obscure to the public and we don't need to go into it. Besides, and to his credit, Runt accepts that we're going to have to look at the Massive Military Budget too. Good for him! but maybe that's just aLiberal Conservative ploy and if Kentucky is chosen to build some trillion dollar superbomber to win the cold war that ended before he started to wear a hairpiece, things will be different, so let's just assume, in the fine American tradition, that he's already gone back on his word - on all his words, actually. I mean, he might, so he already did. All's fair, right? If Obama raised taxes by lowering them, Rand Paul has already increased military spending - or maybe cut it. It doesn't really matter. It's all really about whose side you are on anyway so let's not get picky.
So did you hear that Rand Paul wants to make our country weak and is soft on Terrorism?
So why shouldn't I take this opportunity to declare that Rand Paul is a failure as the Senator from Kentucky and why not start off with a nasty, childish nickname like Runt Paul, to reflect his father's superior claim, in my opinion, to be respected for his views. Oh, come on, it's an American tradition and I'm not even claiming he was born in Nepal -- nee-Paul, get it? Of course we don't know for sure, do we? He's ignored my request for a birth certificate. By the way, isn't is suspicious that he want to an expensive, elitist Ophthalmology school? Who paid for it and why can't he produce board certification? Where is Orly Taitz when you need a nutjob attorney?
And look, I've even got a plausible story. Remember how cutting earmarks was the important part of reducing the cost of government both in Runt's rhetoric and that of the GOP in general? Well, that was then and now that we've put away the Punch and Judy puppets, he's now just fine with earmarks as long as they are earmarked for Kentucky. But of course he's still not going to let Washington - or reality - change him as he explained to the Wall Street Journal. I mean he still hasn't let the end of segregation change him. He still thinks it's a violation of property rights - kinda like freeing the slaves.
Of course the federal porkbarrel is not all that large when held up against the Supertanker of Federal spending, even though that spending as a percentage of the GNP isn't quite as huge as it appears when spoken of in dollars, but that sort of relativity sounds socialist or at least overly obscure to the public and we don't need to go into it. Besides, and to his credit, Runt accepts that we're going to have to look at the Massive Military Budget too. Good for him! but maybe that's just a
So did you hear that Rand Paul wants to make our country weak and is soft on Terrorism?
Veterans Week, Part I: The Sunken Road and The Angel of Marye's Heights
 |
| Headstone, Civil War Veteran, Fredericksburg, VA |
One story comes from Fredericksburg, VA, which we visited last week, and the other from near Franklin, TN. (I'll be visiting Franklin this week and will tell that story in a second post).
Fredericksburg, VA: A perfect little college town, walkable and so packed with Revolutionary and Civil War history and livable charm that I was pricing housing...again. We made some beautiful shots of the charm, but Fredericksburg is a town with a job and that's what I want to convey: it works to preserve America's stories so that we may be informed by them, so that we may not repeat them. The story of The Battle of The Sunken Road haunts me.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Oklahoma is OK
Says the tautological and largely meaningless slogan on their license plates. No, Oklahoma isn't an Apache word for xenophobia, but it may well become an English metaphor, and it certainly isn't OK with regard to having a clue about the consequences of their actions.
Yes, the strict Constitutionalist Nativists of the Southwest would love to be able to pick and choose what part of that document they feel comfortable with and ignore other parts that suggest that Oklahoma cannot set requirements for US citizenship all by itself nor can neighboring Arizona forbid certain kinds of employment to those with an accent that doesn't suggest Aryan "Abstammung," even though they did.
They're apparently also stupid enough to fear that Oklahoma judges will decide to opt out of Federal, State and local law and enforce Sharia, or Islamic law, since so many of them are Islamic fundamentalists in disguise or likely to spontaneously become one. You know, like some people just burst into flames or get abducted by aliens. You really can't trust any judge not to decide to enforce Liechtenstein law or that of France or Andorra, you know, and so they voted for the Save Our State amendment.
It may just work. It may save Oklahoma's free thinkers, Buddhists, Hindus and adherents to Native religions from being beat over the head with selected Jewish laws in the name of being a Christian nation. Sorry Tea folk, when you ban the courts from referencing "laws of another nation" that didn't apply in the first place, you ban the Ten Commandments as well as the other 603 Biblical laws you're not literate enough to know about. Mount Sinai wasn't just outside Muskogee, you know and Israel remains a foreign country.
Just as Sharia is binding only on Muslims, Jewish Mitzvot are only binding on Jews and if any are enforced in the courts, it's coincidental. Muslims have laws against murder and theft too, you know and some of theirs seem more liberal than ours. Sometimes ignorance opens the door to enlightenment.
Of course these landlocked Okies have forgotten that treaties the US Government enters into with foreign entities do have the force of law ( unless those treaties were made with the various Indian tribes without the slightest intention of good faith ) and so refusing to enforce them is unconstitutional and not good for international business, if there is any in Oklahoma.
Just can't win, can ya? So thanks for standing up for the first amendment, cowboy -- maybe you really are OK.
Yes, the strict Constitutionalist Nativists of the Southwest would love to be able to pick and choose what part of that document they feel comfortable with and ignore other parts that suggest that Oklahoma cannot set requirements for US citizenship all by itself nor can neighboring Arizona forbid certain kinds of employment to those with an accent that doesn't suggest Aryan "Abstammung," even though they did.
They're apparently also stupid enough to fear that Oklahoma judges will decide to opt out of Federal, State and local law and enforce Sharia, or Islamic law, since so many of them are Islamic fundamentalists in disguise or likely to spontaneously become one. You know, like some people just burst into flames or get abducted by aliens. You really can't trust any judge not to decide to enforce Liechtenstein law or that of France or Andorra, you know, and so they voted for the Save Our State amendment.
It may just work. It may save Oklahoma's free thinkers, Buddhists, Hindus and adherents to Native religions from being beat over the head with selected Jewish laws in the name of being a Christian nation. Sorry Tea folk, when you ban the courts from referencing "laws of another nation" that didn't apply in the first place, you ban the Ten Commandments as well as the other 603 Biblical laws you're not literate enough to know about. Mount Sinai wasn't just outside Muskogee, you know and Israel remains a foreign country.
Just as Sharia is binding only on Muslims, Jewish Mitzvot are only binding on Jews and if any are enforced in the courts, it's coincidental. Muslims have laws against murder and theft too, you know and some of theirs seem more liberal than ours. Sometimes ignorance opens the door to enlightenment.
Of course these landlocked Okies have forgotten that treaties the US Government enters into with foreign entities do have the force of law ( unless those treaties were made with the various Indian tribes without the slightest intention of good faith ) and so refusing to enforce them is unconstitutional and not good for international business, if there is any in Oklahoma.
Just can't win, can ya? So thanks for standing up for the first amendment, cowboy -- maybe you really are OK.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Strategery, Obummer and the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality
It's worth reminding ourselves from time to time that when any of us blames one party or the other for election strategy, atmospherics, and organizing models, we're rearranging and polishing the deck chairs on the Titanic. Isn't the real issue that the economic model has changed to something decidedly post-industrial and that nobody knows what to do about it? The way the political parties talk about this shift doesn't even come close to capturing its complexity. Neither political party addresses the facts on the ground, and to that extent, their proposals and our criticisms fall short
Even a rotting capitalist order can keep the chickens from coming home to roost for a while -- an economic system can be perpetuated for a surprisingly long time even though an ever-shrinking percentage of people benefit from it because everything is stacked in the winners' favor. They constitute a charmed circle, those "shiny happy people holding hands," don't they? But such a situation can't continue forever -- ordinary citizens won't tolerate misery without hope of relief, especially when hope has been held out to them for so long, as it has been in western industrialized societies.
Here's where I think we stand -- a change has come over the economic life of the nation, and we don't know how to deal with it. I still think it's much better to have Democrats in power than Republicans, but there's no easy way out of our difficulties. That's why, I suggest, those (especially progressives or liberals) who are always reproaching "Obummer" and the Dems are missing the point – he and they are running up against a murderer's row of what Allen Ginsberg called "the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality." Those things tend to swerve as cannily as Democritus's atoms right in your direction, just when you think you've outsmarted and evaded them all.
Even a rotting capitalist order can keep the chickens from coming home to roost for a while -- an economic system can be perpetuated for a surprisingly long time even though an ever-shrinking percentage of people benefit from it because everything is stacked in the winners' favor. They constitute a charmed circle, those "shiny happy people holding hands," don't they? But such a situation can't continue forever -- ordinary citizens won't tolerate misery without hope of relief, especially when hope has been held out to them for so long, as it has been in western industrialized societies.
Here's where I think we stand -- a change has come over the economic life of the nation, and we don't know how to deal with it. I still think it's much better to have Democrats in power than Republicans, but there's no easy way out of our difficulties. That's why, I suggest, those (especially progressives or liberals) who are always reproaching "Obummer" and the Dems are missing the point – he and they are running up against a murderer's row of what Allen Ginsberg called "the Drunken Taxicabs of Absolute Reality." Those things tend to swerve as cannily as Democritus's atoms right in your direction, just when you think you've outsmarted and evaded them all.
Cooling down the hotbeds
"Every word is a prejudice,"
said the man across the table.
"you know these colleges are hotbeds of Liberalism!"
"These kids just aren't old enough to be able to tell what they're being taught from the truth. They're not teaching both sides."
He's got an interesting point. High levels of education in our country do seem to be associated with high levels of free thinking and pragmatism and therefore must be caused by it as proved by the cum hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy -- and whereas that's obviously bad and according to the divine doctrine of judging truth by what the less educated are comfortable with, it's therefore quite obvious that opposing viewpoints in other fields this Republican might
Disciplines like mathematics, physics, biology, engineering and medicine? they only teach one side and that's elitist. Everything has two equal and opposite sides, the right side being, by definition -- right. You know all those things are best left to folksy opinion, anonymous blog commenters and to websites run and funded by Republicans who hold forth from country club and yacht club dinner tables all over America.
In history classes, we can be sure courses are not being taught about the secret liberal cabal ruining the world from its headquarters in Kenya, about the danger of subjecting corporations to the law rather than letting them write it, or that those poor women in Salem really were agents of Satan and why universal suffrage doomed the country to Divine wrath. Why, even Pythagoras and Newton and Einstein are treated as relatively established authorities and one hardly hears of the four elements or phlogiston or the aether or divine creation as acceptable differences of opinion at those hotbeds any more. And what of alternative cosmologies and opposing views in the sciences and history and literary criticism? Well, in fact they are being talked about and constantly tested, but we do have the other conservative doctrines of "if I don't know, nobody knows" and the inapplicability of past experience to the present time -- and that, dear reader, is that. It's a hotbed.
No, what they should be doing at Columbia or The London School of Economics and Political Science and other centers of Liberal propaganda and academic honesty, is reciting the catechism which includes such credos as: tax cuts pay for themselves and never, ever cause recessions; that massive concentrations of wealth and political power in the hands of a tenth of one percent of the population make for "freedom" and that like a driverless car, the markets will always stay on the road -- and so government should stay out of business practices and move into the pulpit; as God and the Founding Fathers intended.
Face it; universities, public and private are hotbeds and that's cold comfort. Hell, why don't we do as that great Capitalist prophet, Mao Zedong did and simply close them down? The people know best!
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
Yes, those were the days Archie and Edith Bunker sang about and the man who led us from market crash and credit crunch into full blown depression by blaming the workers instead of the actual causes. Somehow we've forgotten that Archie the lovable, small minded bigot and ignoramus was supposed to be a joke.
I admit it, I went and hid my head in Caribbean sand for a week so I wouldn't have to watch the madness, the hysteria and the lies, or endure the Fox News fits and fables -- or most of all, witness the continuing spectacle of my country eating itself alive out of a desperation to keep doing what always produces everything we're trying to fix. Sooner or later however, and Hurricane Tomas argued for sooner, one has to come back and face the discord.
It isn't easy. It isn't easy to accept that Americans will support politicians that truly are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader and that Americans will elect politicians who don't think the government has any business interfering with our "right" to abuse and exploit and segregate other Americans or to accept that Americans will just childishly stay home and let some 20% of the voters put a plutocrat affiliated with a billion dollar medicare scam in the Florida Governor's mansion out of contempt for "elitism" and because Obaaaaaaama and the 'Librils' haven't restored the Bush bubble, the Bush soaring debt, the Bush job loss, the Bush expansion of Federal size and power, the Bush redistribution of wealth, the Bush disenfranchisement of voters and infringements upon civil rights soon enough to please them. Yes, that's a hell of a long sentence, but how we sank this low is an even longer story and when it comes to telling it, it's not me whose head is buried in the sand.
No, after 8 years of job stagnation, job loss and declining earnings, all we'll be hearing about is about that 9.6% unemployment Obama created without any help from Bush's tax cuts and wars -- and we won't be remembering the 9.5% unemployment in Reagan's first term. ( nor his tax increases nor the effect they produced) We'll hear the gloating and bragging about the president's low popularity although Reagan's was lower at the same point in his career. We'll hear about profligate spending, but not a word about the payback with interest that tells a different story. We'll keep hearing about the debt, but not the policies that produced it and how it can only be solved by a policy that has produced the largest government sponsored redistribution of wealth in our history without creating a single new private sector job -- a policy that must be maintained for fear of Communism. Like Archie, we'll keep longing for that romanticized version of a Hobbesian hell with every white man for himself, minorities in the minority, stragglers will be shot and no prisoners taken. We'll keep ignoring reality and we'll keep repeating the slogans as we count our beads, fabricating facts and citing false history when we pay attention to history at all.
Meanwhile the sand is warm and the hurricane is moving out to sea. . .
I admit it, I went and hid my head in Caribbean sand for a week so I wouldn't have to watch the madness, the hysteria and the lies, or endure the Fox News fits and fables -- or most of all, witness the continuing spectacle of my country eating itself alive out of a desperation to keep doing what always produces everything we're trying to fix. Sooner or later however, and Hurricane Tomas argued for sooner, one has to come back and face the discord.
It isn't easy. It isn't easy to accept that Americans will support politicians that truly are nowhere near as smart as a fifth grader and that Americans will elect politicians who don't think the government has any business interfering with our "right" to abuse and exploit and segregate other Americans or to accept that Americans will just childishly stay home and let some 20% of the voters put a plutocrat affiliated with a billion dollar medicare scam in the Florida Governor's mansion out of contempt for "elitism" and because Obaaaaaaama and the 'Librils' haven't restored the Bush bubble, the Bush soaring debt, the Bush job loss, the Bush expansion of Federal size and power, the Bush redistribution of wealth, the Bush disenfranchisement of voters and infringements upon civil rights soon enough to please them. Yes, that's a hell of a long sentence, but how we sank this low is an even longer story and when it comes to telling it, it's not me whose head is buried in the sand.
No, after 8 years of job stagnation, job loss and declining earnings, all we'll be hearing about is about that 9.6% unemployment Obama created without any help from Bush's tax cuts and wars -- and we won't be remembering the 9.5% unemployment in Reagan's first term. ( nor his tax increases nor the effect they produced) We'll hear the gloating and bragging about the president's low popularity although Reagan's was lower at the same point in his career. We'll hear about profligate spending, but not a word about the payback with interest that tells a different story. We'll keep hearing about the debt, but not the policies that produced it and how it can only be solved by a policy that has produced the largest government sponsored redistribution of wealth in our history without creating a single new private sector job -- a policy that must be maintained for fear of Communism. Like Archie, we'll keep longing for that romanticized version of a Hobbesian hell with every white man for himself, minorities in the minority, stragglers will be shot and no prisoners taken. We'll keep ignoring reality and we'll keep repeating the slogans as we count our beads, fabricating facts and citing false history when we pay attention to history at all.
Meanwhile the sand is warm and the hurricane is moving out to sea. . .
Friday, November 5, 2010
Hey Gov. Jindal: Now Would Be A Good Time To Ask Forgiveness
Remember those sand berms our "experts" like Sarah Palin said just had to be built to protect the Louisiana coastline from the BP oil disaster, while the real experts said they'd cause more harm than good? Remember Jindal leading the Conservative Chorus in portraying the president as a dithering wonk who did nothing to protect Louisiana’s coastline because some fancy-pants geeks with a bunch of alphabet soup behind their names said sand berms would be a waste of money?
Remember this:
Remember this:
Gov.Jindal:to avoid ravished coast, build the berms.Ask forgiveness later;Feds are slow to act,local leadership&action can do more for coast
Good times! Well, turns out the real experts were right, and Jindal wasted over $200 million:
Louisiana Rethinks Its Sand Berms
In a story in late October, I reported on the continuing effort by Louisiana to build sand berms in the Gulf of Mexico to block and capture oil from the BP spill. Back in June, BP ponied up $360 million for the berms, of which roughly $140 million was left.
Federal officials and scientists I interviewed called the construction of additional berms pointless because little surface oil remained in the gulf and urged that the remaining money be spent on coastal restoration, a move that BP said it would support.
At the time, however, Louisiana officials insisted they were committed to spending the remaining money on more oil-blocking berms.
Several weeks later, Louisiana has changed its tune considerably. On Monday, Bobby Jindal, the state’s governor, announced that $100 million of the remaining berm money would be redirected toward coastal restoration, a move endorsed by BP.
This is what happens when the mainstream media presents the politically-motivated opinions of partisans as "the other viewpoint" in a scientific, fact-based debate. This is what happens when the Conservative Chorus outshouts the reasonable people with alphabet soup behind their names. Thanks, guys.
So, once again the reasonable people were proved right and the people who have been wrong about everything since forever are still wrong. I know, y'all are shocked. After wasting a few months (and $200 million) doing shit that didn’t work but made for some good headlines, we learn this:
Like other scientists, though, he considers the berms a failure in their original role as oil-blocking structures and a colossal waste of money. According to state estimates, the berms have captured just 1,000 barrels of oil so far, at a cost of $220 million. By way of comparison, Mr. Bahr pointed out, the recently opened Hoover Dam Bypass, a four-lane highway bridge that soars 840 feet above the Colorado River, cost $240 million.
“That’s an awesome structure that’s going to be around beyond the end of petroleum, and here we’ve spent $220 million and got virtually nothing to show for it,” he said. “It just seems appalling to me.”
Yup, it’s appalling alright.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
What hath the midterms wrought?
So, what do we know about the election results?
Well, New Mexico just installed a teabagger in the governor's mansion, so where does that leave us? Well, I can be glad that I decided against a second career in the police, or as a teacher, when I got out of the military.
Then again, I'm working in a hospital, and Medicaid cuts are pretty much a certainty, so little comfort there.
GOP lapdog Steve Pearce got his old job back as Congresscritter, so at least our newly-crowned Governor Martinez won't be lonely.
On the national front, the candidates endorsed by Sarah Palin didn't fare as well as some people expected: if you discount the ones who were already shoo-ins before the Palinator bestowed her blessing on them, her batting average was about 0.5 or so. (It hardly matters - even if she'd had a 100% failure rate, her followers have long since proven themselves to be invulnerable to little things like "logic" or "reason.")
Jerry Brown has been reelected as governor of California, with just a little gap of twenty-seven years between his second and third terms.
(I know Ahnold hasn't been working out as much as he used to, but who would have thought he could be beaten by a 72-year-old former Jesuit seminarian and law clerk?)
Harry Reid held onto his seat, despite a particularly mendacious campaign by teabagger favorite Sharron Angle. In fact, the Tea Party candidates didn't do well overall - not a single teabagger picked up a contested seat in the Senate, with national jokes like Angle, Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell going down in flames. (Admittedly, Kentucky elected Rand Paul, but that's more a symptom of inbreeding than anything else.)
To counteract the GOP depression brought on by Reid's continued presence in the Senate, Alan Grayson lost his House reelection bid, which probably gives John Boehner as much of an erection as he can get since that horrible melanin overdose.
Regarding the "traditional wisdom" of Grayson losing because he was an "outspoken liberal," Southern Beale pointed me to an analysis by Digby, who said:
And in barely related news, McDonald's has brought back the McRib sandwich, which is an interesting coincidence: with Republicans on the rise again, pork is back in fashion. Imagine that.
___________
Update (11/4/10): It has been suggested that Ahnold wasn't running against Jerry Brown; Meg Whitman was. Noted. However, I refuse to give up on a perfectly good joke based strictly on something as minor as "reality."
Well, New Mexico just installed a teabagger in the governor's mansion, so where does that leave us? Well, I can be glad that I decided against a second career in the police, or as a teacher, when I got out of the military.
Then again, I'm working in a hospital, and Medicaid cuts are pretty much a certainty, so little comfort there.
GOP lapdog Steve Pearce got his old job back as Congresscritter, so at least our newly-crowned Governor Martinez won't be lonely.
On the national front, the candidates endorsed by Sarah Palin didn't fare as well as some people expected: if you discount the ones who were already shoo-ins before the Palinator bestowed her blessing on them, her batting average was about 0.5 or so. (It hardly matters - even if she'd had a 100% failure rate, her followers have long since proven themselves to be invulnerable to little things like "logic" or "reason.")
Jerry Brown has been reelected as governor of California, with just a little gap of twenty-seven years between his second and third terms.
(I know Ahnold hasn't been working out as much as he used to, but who would have thought he could be beaten by a 72-year-old former Jesuit seminarian and law clerk?)
Harry Reid held onto his seat, despite a particularly mendacious campaign by teabagger favorite Sharron Angle. In fact, the Tea Party candidates didn't do well overall - not a single teabagger picked up a contested seat in the Senate, with national jokes like Angle, Joe Miller and Christine O'Donnell going down in flames. (Admittedly, Kentucky elected Rand Paul, but that's more a symptom of inbreeding than anything else.)
To counteract the GOP depression brought on by Reid's continued presence in the Senate, Alan Grayson lost his House reelection bid, which probably gives John Boehner as much of an erection as he can get since that horrible melanin overdose.
Regarding the "traditional wisdom" of Grayson losing because he was an "outspoken liberal," Southern Beale pointed me to an analysis by Digby, who said:
Regarding Grayson, well, we have a little controlled experiment. His neighboring first term Democratic congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, in a very similar district, took the opposite approach to Grayson. She ran as hard to the right as she could get away with, never had a controversial thought much less uttered one, was rewarded with big money and support from the DCCC --- and she lost too. This race was bigger than both of them. Florida is turning hard right.But more than that, having landed on Digby's Hullabaloo, I was led to this statistical recap of the election by Ed Kilgore.
Finally, something must be said about the electorate that produced these results. According to national exit polls, 2010 voters broke almost evenly in terms of their 2008 presidential votes; indeed, given the normal tendency of voters to "misremember" past ballots as being in favor of the winner, this may have been an electorate that would have made John McCain president by a significant margin. Voters under 30 dropped from 18% of the electorate to 11%; African-Americans from 13% to 10%, and Hispanics from 9% to 8%. Meanwhile, voters over 65, the one age category carried by John McCain, increased from 16% of the electorate to 23%.Or to put it another way, the party in power always loses in the midterms. It is as it always has been. Nothing new going on here.
These are all normal midterm numbers. But because of the unusual alignment of voters by age and race in 2008, they produced a very different outcome, independently of any changes in public opinion. Indeed, sorting out the "structural" from the "discretionary" factors in 2008-2010 trends will be one of the most important tasks of post-election analysis, since the 2012 electorate will be much closer to that of 2008. That's also true of the factor we will hear most about in post-election talk: the "swing" of independents from favoring Obama decisively in 2008 to favoring Republicans decisively this year. Are these the same people (short answer: not as much as you'd think), or a significantly different group of voters who happened to self-identify as independents and turned out to vote?
And in barely related news, McDonald's has brought back the McRib sandwich, which is an interesting coincidence: with Republicans on the rise again, pork is back in fashion. Imagine that.
___________
Update (11/4/10): It has been suggested that Ahnold wasn't running against Jerry Brown; Meg Whitman was. Noted. However, I refuse to give up on a perfectly good joke based strictly on something as minor as "reality."
Random Musings on the Midterms
Due to the time difference, I didn’t find out the results of the midterm elections until this morning. I knew the Democrats would get their asses handed to them on a silver platter. I just didn’t know how badly the Republicans would spank them.
So when I woke up this morning my first thought was “It’s my daddy’s birthday!” My second thought was “Did he get a split Legislature for his birthday gift or are the Republicans in the driver’s seat for the House and the Senate?” After checking my iGoogle, which is just a sh*t ton of news sites (yes, I’m that big of a nerd), I found some interesting results. My people rejected Christine "The First Amendment establishes the Separation of Church and State? Really?" O’Donnell (yes!) and elected Rand “Issues with the Civil Rights Act” Paul (WTF Tennessee!?). And the Republicans, as predicted, took the House and obtained a sizable gain in the Senate.
Now I’m turning towards the next two years, the next round of midterms and of course the next presidential election. The Republicans got what they wanted: more political power. But now it’s balls to the wall time (Republican) ladies and gents. Imma need y’all to bring it.
No more bitching about how the Democrats are destroying our country. Now you’ve got at least as much power as the Democrats, if not more, since the Republicans can keep things nicely tied up for as long as they like...and then blame Obama for being ineffective. This is where the “Obama is f*cked” part comes in. If they wanted to, the Republicans can bring business to a halt and stop any worthwhile legislation from getting through.
The optimist in me hopes they won’t. The optimist in me hopes neither side will let partisan politics get in the way of governing my country. The optimist in me hopes the Right actually puts up viable alternatives instead of standing around with their thumbs up their ass calling Obama a fascist Nazi commie socialist. Basically, the optimist in me hopes it won’t be a repeat of the last two years. But given the poisonous political environment since Obama’s election, the cynic in me just smacked the optimist in me while laughing hysterically.
But who knows? Perhaps the Democrats and the Republicans will actually learn to compromise. Perhaps both sides will put aside their difference and work together to do what’s best for America. And perhaps unicorns are real. I suppose anything is possible.
Cross-posted from http://
Election 2010: Not Exactly a Knockout
The bad news is that the Democrats took some solid punches in the midterm elections; the good news is that the injuries aren't life threatening.
There was significant voter turnout, especially for midterm elections, but the numbers weren't as good in some states as in 2006. I've been reading blog posts, mostly from the young folks--the 35 and under crowd--which called for showing the Democrats their displeasure by not voting. A lot of these calls for desertion of the Democrats came from young African-Americans and Latinos who have decided that President Obama has betrayed them. They have all the impatience of youth and and want everything yesterday.
One young blogger refers to Obama as the Changeling, the mythical creature from the fairy tale who replaces the human child and has evil intent on the unsuspecting family. It's an interesting but inaccurate metaphor.
In order to make a statement to Obama about his imagined betrayal and to teach the Democrats not to take them for granted, there were a number of folks who advocated not voting at all. I'll try and remember to ask them in about two years how that "I'll show those Democrats" thing has worked out for them.
In the meantime, the Democrats have a few moments of glory from Tuesday night. It appears that reason prevailed and Chris Coons defeated "I am not a witch" Christine O'Donnell in Delaware. Harry Reid pulled the rabbit out of the hat and managed to wrestle a win away from mad hatter Sharron Angle. Blumenthal out wrestled Linda McMahon in Connecticut. Jerry Brown is back as governor of California and Barbara Boxer managed to hold on to her senate seat. (Click for NY Times' Election Results)
There are a lot of serious bruises. Republicans have gained 60 seats giving them control of the House with a possibility of gaining four more when all the counting is done. In comparison, the Republicans gained 54 House seats in 1994 (Clinton administration). In 1946, the Republicans gained 56 House seats and in 1938 a record 80 House seats.
However, although the Republicans gained Senate seats, the Democrats continue to control the Senate and Harry Reid still holds his position of power in the Senate.
Two states were still too close to call as of 6:30 a.m. --Colorado and the state of Washington. In Alaska, it appears that the write in candidate has the most votes. The only candidate running as a write in candidate was Murkowski, but Alaska has some law that prohibits identifying the write in candidate until the ballots are counted. Of course, Murkowski has been all over the news thanking her supporters. Go figure!
I read a comment on Facebook by a 35-year-old who declared that all was lost and that we (progressives) were done and may as well accept that there is no hope. I'm far from Pollyanna but I think that's pretty extreme. Unless you're planning on dying today, how can anyone be done? It's an election and there will be other elections. The political scene changes like the wind; you never know which way it's going to blow.
The Republicans cannot do most of the things that they touted in their campaigns; even if they get legislation through the House, they still have to get the necessary Senate votes. If they succeed in getting it through the Senate to the president's desk, he can veto it. They can override his veto if they can get enough votes (a 2/3 vote in each chamber) to do so in both the House and the Senate. If they adjourn before the president decides to sign or not to sign, then the president has effectively killed the legislation with a pocket veto. Isn't politics fun?
What does their win mean? Probably a lot of deadlock where nothing much gets done and what is accomplished is done very slowly. In other words, business as usual.
P.S. Don't worry about the Republican threat to repeal the Health Care bill. I doubt that they want to tell the American public that they've decided to allow the insurance companies to end coverage for all those newly insured folks with preexisting conditions and are taking away grandma and grandpa's Medicare donut hole benefits.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Why I did not vote Republican (and why you should not): I REMEMBER!
Don't mean to step on anyone's toes, but I thought this was worth posting on this important day.)
November 2, 2010: Votez-Vous, Already!
Hope Nameless Cynic won't mind my posting this extra call in addition to his impassioned and well-written plea -- but the more, the merrier on such an occasion, right? So here goes:
Well, today's the day. I know all y'all on this site will be casting a ballot, and I'm equally certain everyone I know is going to do the same. But if there's any "damn liberal" out there desultorily reading this blog and planning to practice the fine art of not bothering -- you, that's right, you! Winston Smith in Apartment 22B! Buck up, comrade! Just think of what our boys are going through every day on the Malabar Front! -- if you even dream of not voting, you had better wake up and apologize. From what I've been able to gather, AMONG REGISTERED VOTERS, DEMOCRATS LEAD; AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, THEY DON'T.
Ay, there's the rub -- so move your mind and spirit in the direction of the damn-well-gonna voters. If you don't, may some mean English teacher from your grade-school days return in your dreams and compel you to write, "Speaker Boehner," "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" and "B. Hussein Obama is a Kenyan Moozlum Socialist" on the nearest blackboard five hundred times or until you say Uncle, whichever comes first.
"Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner"
"Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner"
Now write! I mean it, dammit!
I thought Rachel Maddow's show Monday offered an excellent and mature analysis of the mid-term prospects. Rather than blaming the Dems for not doing enough, she chose to highlight the things they HAD done – plenty of it and pretty good stuff, at that. The list is one that any soon-to-be-outgoing congresspeople can be proud to have moved along. Yes, some of it has been only partial, or frustratingly incremental in its implementation. But that's the way these things often go -- people extend you almost unlimited credit for jabbering and posturing. When you actually do something, half -- or more than half -- of them get madder than a wet hornet and call you a commie pinko. RM reminded us that LBJ took quite a hit in Congressional Dem numbers enacting the Great Society (he gave himself six months to get it on the books, before everyone started to turn against him) and that that's just the nature of political capital -- you've got to use it sometime, and when you do, you're going to get into trouble. It would have been cowardice to hide under the Oval Office desk and do nothing, to plead the necessity of delay, etc.
Hey, if we don't do well today as a party, so be it – if you look at it from the Maddovian and properly historicized perspective, a partial loss may best be construed as something like "noblesse oblige." No good deed goes unpunished, but woe unto you if you hide your talents and your heads in the sand.
Again, please vote and encourage like-minded friends and colleagues to do the same -- don't make the "enthusiasm gap" an unfortunate reality for progressive causes in 2010. Do your part, and whatever happens, you will be able to say you did what you could.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stroll down to my local church and vote, just as I've done for years. Somehow, they never seem to question the fact that a large extinct reptile is standing in line waiting to cast his ballot, so I'm hoping my luck will hold again this time around. Or maybe a horde of infuriated teabaggers will stomp on my tail, throw rocks at me and drive me from the polling station in fear for my socialist khaki hide…. We shall see.
Well, today's the day. I know all y'all on this site will be casting a ballot, and I'm equally certain everyone I know is going to do the same. But if there's any "damn liberal" out there desultorily reading this blog and planning to practice the fine art of not bothering -- you, that's right, you! Winston Smith in Apartment 22B! Buck up, comrade! Just think of what our boys are going through every day on the Malabar Front! -- if you even dream of not voting, you had better wake up and apologize. From what I've been able to gather, AMONG REGISTERED VOTERS, DEMOCRATS LEAD; AMONG LIKELY VOTERS, THEY DON'T.
Ay, there's the rub -- so move your mind and spirit in the direction of the damn-well-gonna voters. If you don't, may some mean English teacher from your grade-school days return in your dreams and compel you to write, "Speaker Boehner," "Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" and "B. Hussein Obama is a Kenyan Moozlum Socialist" on the nearest blackboard five hundred times or until you say Uncle, whichever comes first.
"Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner"
"Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner" "Speaker Boehner"
Now write! I mean it, dammit!
I thought Rachel Maddow's show Monday offered an excellent and mature analysis of the mid-term prospects. Rather than blaming the Dems for not doing enough, she chose to highlight the things they HAD done – plenty of it and pretty good stuff, at that. The list is one that any soon-to-be-outgoing congresspeople can be proud to have moved along. Yes, some of it has been only partial, or frustratingly incremental in its implementation. But that's the way these things often go -- people extend you almost unlimited credit for jabbering and posturing. When you actually do something, half -- or more than half -- of them get madder than a wet hornet and call you a commie pinko. RM reminded us that LBJ took quite a hit in Congressional Dem numbers enacting the Great Society (he gave himself six months to get it on the books, before everyone started to turn against him) and that that's just the nature of political capital -- you've got to use it sometime, and when you do, you're going to get into trouble. It would have been cowardice to hide under the Oval Office desk and do nothing, to plead the necessity of delay, etc.
Hey, if we don't do well today as a party, so be it – if you look at it from the Maddovian and properly historicized perspective, a partial loss may best be construed as something like "noblesse oblige." No good deed goes unpunished, but woe unto you if you hide your talents and your heads in the sand.
Again, please vote and encourage like-minded friends and colleagues to do the same -- don't make the "enthusiasm gap" an unfortunate reality for progressive causes in 2010. Do your part, and whatever happens, you will be able to say you did what you could.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stroll down to my local church and vote, just as I've done for years. Somehow, they never seem to question the fact that a large extinct reptile is standing in line waiting to cast his ballot, so I'm hoping my luck will hold again this time around. Or maybe a horde of infuriated teabaggers will stomp on my tail, throw rocks at me and drive me from the polling station in fear for my socialist khaki hide…. We shall see.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)