Oh. Thanks For Clearing That Up.

Karen Tumulty, "Virginia elections may be a warning sign for Obama". November 8

Katherine Q. "It's Not Fair Steno Sue Is Alliterative" Seelye, "Anti-Abortion Initiative 26 Defeated in Mississippi". November 8

a)

Tuesday’s legislative elections in Virginia appeared likely to add more evidence — as if national Democrats needed it — that the terrain of the political map will be significantly more rugged for President Obama next year.

It is difficult to draw a bright trend line from an election in which fewer than one-third of those registered voted. When turnout is as light as it was on Tuesday, those who do show up tend to be the most dogged partisans.

But analysts and political strategists of both parties said the expected Republican gains — even if less than was expected — underscored the need for the president to reinvigorate his supporters and close what is becoming known as the “enthusiasm gap” between the two parties.

and, b)

Taken together, Tuesday’s results could breathe new life into President Obama’s hopes for his re-election a year from now. But the day was not a wholesale victory for Democrats. Even as voters in Ohio delivered a blow to Gov. John R. Kasich, a Republican, and rejected his attempt to weaken collective bargaining for public employees, they approved a symbolic measure to exempt Ohio residents from the individual mandate required in Mr. Obama’s health care law.

FIRST: how many biennial election cycles have these two personally witnessed, many of them as political reporters? What percentage of those offered hope and/or warning to incumbents? Hint: if you answered less than "100" you will need to show your work.

(I know, I know; even the best kitchen has to turn out toast points and coddled eggs on occasion. Doesn't mean they have to crow about it.)

Second, the Great State of Mississippi, which is to personal freedom what Wal*Mart is to fine wines, defeated personhood for blastocytes legislation. Mississippi. This is not a minor electoral blip. It is not, as some halfwits might have it, a "blow" to the "so-called 'personhood' movement", but a death knell.

Not, of course, that those bozos actually go away when they die. Or even fall over.

And this compares to "expected, but not as large as expected" Republican gains in Virginia?

Fer chrissakes, if you couldn't write "2008 May Be Difficult for Obama To Duplicate in 2012" in, uh, 2008 you've got no business voting, let alone writing about politics. Maybe you should write "Lessons of 2011 for Obama: Don't Fuck Up in 2009".

You can, in the right circumstances, be too fucking cracked for Mississippi. This is news. If you want to make some over-arching conclusion about our national politics, try this: Maybe someday it'll be possible to be too fucking cracked for the mass-market media in this country to take you seriously.

I Guess The Real Question Now Is

"Just how bad do you wanna be President, Mr. Cain?"

"Highlights Of The Cain-Gingrich Debate": The Shortest Volume Since "History Of German Humor".

HOLY crap, I taped this thing. Then I tried to watch it. Y'know, part of me secretly understands that even hack journalists--and "hack" may actually be the collective noun for a herd of journalists--are underpaid, at least those who are forced to view something like this, which must, at some level, be like some vile and malevolent god forcing you to watch a highlight reel of the ritual vivisection you'll be undergoing every twenty minutes for all Eternity once you reach your Reward.

First, it was hosted by US Representative Steve "Not Even the Smarmiest Wingnut Named King in Congress" King; I barely made it through that. Is there something in the Constitution which requires Iowa be represented? Practically the first thing out of his mouth was "Something-or-other Lincoln-Douglas debates". After a few minutes and a large cognac I started watching again, and was rewarded with the folksy little tale of how much his new granddaughter ("Reagan Anne") was born owing the Federal government. I stayed for the graph of its growth over her young lifetime, when she, by the way, will be paying no taxes but will be operating as a write-off, and was rewarded by King explaining to the audience that it could've been made to look much worse if his fucking staff had just jiggered the scale the way he asked somebody to tell them to.

Tell ya what, Steve: consider what it would have looked like if the scale was such that we could all see just what that money was going for. Little Dutch will have her own aircraft carrier by middle-age.

Then came the discussion of the explosive growth of Federal spending. This time we went with a pie chart, since even the Teabagger audience might've noted how a timeline corresponded to King's own tenure in Congress. And this, sadly, was where I just gave up.

Three guesses.

Right the first time! Because we start off talking about "Entitlements" vs. "Discretionary spending", with an eye to gulling our audience--not that a broad cross-section of white Houston exoburbian Teabaggers required any--about what's a work here. Social Security and Medicare "entitlements" are no less subject to Congressional oversight than "discretionary" Defense spending; we might note, for one thing, which side of that equation has proved vulnerable to attack. When you make the Social Security Slice look the same size as the Military, you kinda sorta elide the part about how the former is a Trust, paid for by taxpayers who are in the system, up to a certain, artificially-low level of their income. "Defense" is paid for by every taxpayer, hasn't gone begging for a COLA increase since Pearl Harbor, and the last time anyone suggested it might be cut in some small fashion resembling, I dunno, a Distant Glimmer of Reality we showed 'em what a portion of that overkill was for. King eventually got around to noting that Defense was an equal-sized slice of the pie, assuming you fell for the optical trick, but that in his opinion we didn't wanna go cuttin' that, unless we wanted Ruskies pounding on the door tomorrow morning. I believe this is referred to in Iowa as an "airtight case".

I'm sorry. I this point I turned the damn thing off again, considered hitting "Erase", left it intact, went back, and flipped through Lincoln and Douglas trying out new ideas for their next books, to the genial fellow-feeling of the hall. You can have your money back.

How'd we get here? Yes, indeed, how did we get to where a reptilian carnival barker and the James Brown of cardboard pizza empires--and not the good James Brown; the one who shot at people for using his towels--are a) running for President, and b) able to draw a crowd of 800? I mean besides the fact that we let Georgia back into the Union too easily?

But the bigger question is how'd we get to 1946? The narrative is a fake; we know the narrative is a fake. The enormity of deceitful wars--funded not by us, but by Reagan Anne King--and laissez-faire looting of the financial system are less important than Godless Socialism, the same way we conveniently ignored the rise of Nazism, and the First World War which it rode to power, and set off to win the Battle of Light vs Dark with a little help from German rocket scientists and medical technicians. Y'know, a lot bigger question than "Who takes Herman Cain seriously?" or "What does a Gingrich candidacy tell us about an uncaring God?" is how it is that this crap gets repeated ad infinitum without contradiction. Defense is at least 50% of the Budget, and it buys us a more bloated bureaucracy than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and France, combined. For nothing, or nothing like what is claimed. Social Security is vital, vital to vast swathes of America, and even Texas. Who th' fuck is it so important that we bomb?

Can't somebody make any of these guys answer a real question?

WaPo, You Slut!

Getting In On The Ground Floor, Before It Sinks Any Lower

David Brooks, "In Praise of Fracking, and Other Theological Developments". November 3

I'M in a bad mood already, so don't start with me about America. Because we watch The Daily Show/Colbert at supper around here, I just caught thirty or forty seconds of Tom Fucking Brokaw with Jon from Wednesday night. (And only because my Poor Wife had the controls and the idea that I'd do my Brokaw impression, which is barely passable, and which it is probably more accurate to describe as my impression of Harry Shearer doing Tom Brokaw. I'm more of a phonetic impressionist. A week or so ago my PW was watching Camelot in the living room--I can only assume the remote was lost again--and I was in the kitchen, and started repeating a single syllable as Richard Harris, over and over, until she snorted her way into finding the thing and changed the channel.)

We watched just long enough to hear Brokaw lamenting the horrible, worse-than-ever divisions in our nation's capital--would you please retire, already? Or take up Japanese?--which apparently is creating unpleasant cross-currents for the centrist tide-bobber. So unlike the good ol' days of "Dutch" Reagan and "Tip" O'Neill giving each other after-hours backrubs. Why can't politics be fun again?

Does Stewart really believe that Brokaw is less responsible for this state of affairs than Tucker Carlson? Brokaw was the Princeling of Faux Balance. He's the guy NBC went to when it wanted to convert from news organization to infotainment, when it wanted to syphon off some of ABC's successful right-wing mojo in the era of Librul Media backlash. He was the spokesmodel for tearing down the grand old structures of television news, replacing them with Megamalls, and then filling the B. Dalton window inside with his lavishly illustrated paean to those great old buildings.

This is when the working class got stiffed (I mean, when the current round began); don't tell us you didn't notice, Tom. Don't tell us that Ronald Reagan's affability had you hypnotized. The loss of Courtesy now is deeply troubling to you, but the loss of All Reason in the 80s bothered you not one whit, or not enough to actually report on the actual effects of the Great Reagan Looting Party until after they had occurred, and the statute of limitations run out.

You were on the anchor desk, Tom--meaning that 1/3 of most Americans got their news from you--throughout the Reagan Swindle, through the transparently phony PR campaign which turned him into an American Folk Hero Action Figure, against the Details Formerly Known As Facts, and blamed all the bad stuff on Jimmy Carter. That's where you sat when his reelection campaign appropriated Bruce Springsteen. And Reagan's veniality there is not the issue; it's that Springsteen's clear message of an America of closing factories and broken promises and co-opted freedoms was increasing difficult to find during your tenure, faux-balanced and whited-out from a classic American narrative as old as Old Hickory and as relevant as the Civil Rights movement, becoming something that resembled a rude, persistent coughing from the back of the lecture hall where Heinz Kissinger and Jerry Falwell were discussing the Founders. The 1988 Presidential election was about Willie Horton. The '92 and '96 elections were about Bill Clinton's dick, as was everything else in those days, for that matter. The 2000 election was about Al Gore inventing the internet. You stood by. Forgive me, but I don't think the fact that sane people want nothing to do with Louie Gohmert quite measures up.

One of our major parties is clinically fucking insane; the other is corrupt and cowardly. And you're afraid to mention it, and so hope that scolding them for a lack of bonhomie will have some results. This is not necessarily unprecedented in the history of the Republic, but it continues at a time when the powerful are more powerful than ever, and the powerless increasingly so. Our problems--our fingertips-on-the-ledge dilemma--were not created by both sides, and are not to be solved by admonishing both to Work Together. If you won't leave the Newsotainment industry, Mr. Brokaw, and you think things may be so serious that at some future date you might have to let the weekend chauffeur go, or write your own books, then start putting what blame belongs on your own side where it belongs.

Is David Brooks a minor or a major problem? I think you know my thoughts. If I'm the Times and I read this I have to wonder why, in a period of contracting ad revenues, Big Energy gets a free slurpee on my Op-Ed page; if I'm a Timesman I have to wonder why I'm bothering with getting anything right. Brooks pens a column which begins, ostensibly, as a poignant tearstained letter about our modern muddle; the miracle of shale oil production--everyone who stands to make a buck on it agrees--is yet thwarted by environmental concerns.

The U.S. is polarized between “drill, baby, drill” conservatives, who seem suspicious of most regulation, and some environmentalists, who seem to regard fossil fuels as morally corrupt and imagine we can switch to wind and solar overnight.

Sure, sure, it's a Tell--or several--you could go All In on all night long: "conservatives" "seeming a little suspicious of regulation" vs. environmentalists who are frequently unbathed and are motivated by hatred of decent people. Never mind that this followed six paragraphs of the sort of puffery which would make a Pope blush. The sober, Grown-up, David Brooks view is that a couple of "conservatives" may be a little too radical about laissez-faire capitalist plunder, while environmentalists plain go too far. And we must balance these extremes, because they are preventing the "conservative" view from running the field at will.

It takes another three paragraphs before we learn that maybe, just maybe, the dirty hippies have a point, though one which they're not smart enough to realize is trivial:

Like every energy source, fracking has its dangers. The process involves injecting large amounts of water and chemicals deep underground. If done right, this should not contaminate freshwater supplies, but rogue companies have screwed up and there have been instances of contamination.

The wells, which are sometimes beneath residential areas, are serviced by big trucks that damage the roads and alter the atmosphere in neighborhoods. A few sloppy companies could discredit the whole sector.

Martin Luther may or may not have been the first to note that much depended on whose ox was being gored. What we do know is this: we've known about it since the 16th century at least. "Special interests"--in true Libertarian fashion Brooks is willing to add the coal industry to the villains list, since this gives him Let the Chips Fall Where They May credibility while costing neither him nor his energy sector friends with benefits anything--are what oppose you screwing with someone else's property; "Sound regulation" is what opposes someone else screwing with yours. For the corporate apologist and Bright Future human mic, criminality, environmental disaster, and eroding personal rights are always the result of one or two bad actors, not the inevitable consequence of letting the worst sort of person do the worst sort of thing because Profit will make it all better, and clean up after.

I don't know any more about shale oil than Brooks does; I'm just honest, and poor, enough to know that when someone calls Effects "side-effects" you might look for a financial interest, and not be surprised to find one. We can't expect to solve, or even salve, real problems while virtual jabberers promote the opposite, and their fellows recommend splitting the difference.

Aphorisms Suck! Part 16

T.S. Eliot never had to rake leaves.

-Jimbo Riley

Apparently There's Now No Distinction Between "Conservatism" And "A Fractured Carousel of Tired Gripes"

George Eff Will, "Conformity for diversity's sake". November 2

TAKE that, Academy!

Seven-hundred fifty words, arguing that the First Amendment, if properly interpreted (that is, if interpreted according to George Eff Will, not legal precedent) guarantees the right of private groups to behave as they see fit, even under the aegis of Vanderbilt University, without restriction.

Six-hundred eighty words before we get around to mentioning that Vanderbilt University is, itself, a private institution.

I'm not going to waste time typing "George Will is intellectually dishonest". * George Eff Will has clearly demonstrated, and more than once, that he would short-change a blind street merchant.

Time and place of public expression. If you don't understand that this is a major philosophical stumbling block in the history of the First, then you're unqualified to even discuss it. Vanderbilt has as much right to control the terms of operation of its student groups as an employer has to control the distribution of Communist literature in his parking lot.** End of discussion. How is this even relevant?

Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive” public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.

So Vanderbilt, which doesn't actually qualify, is here as a stand-in for the thousands of "progressive" right-think conformity farms--I'm sure George Eff will get around to listing them in due time--which are clearly violating the First Amendment, not to mention the Special "Conservative" Intellectual prohibition against Actions Which Can Be Described Ironically.

Okay, George. We'll untangle this for you. Follow along closely; it's real confusing.

Vanderbilt, which is a private institution of higher learning (though that private/public distinction really just obscures the principle rather than illuminating it), sponsors, as most such institutions do, student and community organizations. And, as any such institution which sponsors such organizations and isn't run by absolute morons, Vanderbilt requires those organizations to meet its guidelines. (Which, not to interject too much fact at once, none of these put-upon religious groups has done yet, and which, as a result, they've been given provisional approval to operate anyway. Throw off your Chains!)

This is, in fact, enough to close the argument for sensible people, but here we are required to go further. The fact that the Court has upheld the right of some St. Patrick's Day Parade assholes to be bigoted assholes under the First Amendment , or of the Boy Scouts to restrict molesters in their ranks to the avowed heterosexual type, is beside the point. Those are free association issues. Like the California case which you find so baffling, Vanderbilt doesn't restrict what individuals or organizations believe, or say; it restricts what organizations can do and still get official recognition. The Association of Bible-Believin' Students can say or think whatever it pleases; it cannot discriminate against gay Vanderbilt students and qualify for rent-free meeting space or on-campus fundraising, or whatever else Vanderbilt--and any public institution, for that matter--makes available to them under the rules.

Is this really hard to understand? Free speech is not license, but the law has tended to protect it short of risk to public safety or reasonable restrictions on time and place (including the right of property holders to permit or deny speech at their whim). The Boy Scouts can keep out the gays, Bob Jones University can keep out the the coloreds, and the Washinton Post can bar the ethical. They cannot do so with public monies, because the public has wide-ranging, but not total, rights against discrimination. Homophobes can march down the streets of Boston the way Nazis can march through Skokie. They can start a private club and get together to rub dicks without allowing gays in. They cannot open a public boiled meat and vegetable emporium and discriminate against large classes of customers. Is this really that tough to understand? A public university is not required to let anyone at all attend classes. And it's not required to give official recognition to the Jesus Hates Fags Alliance.

You'd think, really, that the nation's Last Remaining Mediocre 19th Century Mind would recall that his own religious sect was discriminated against in just this fashion a mere century ago, and that it is a belated response to all such practices--and especially non-citizenship for women and partial personhood for non-whites--which informs this today. Too bad that some people prefer to live in an earlier, more hate-filled time. They're sure entitled. But they're not entitled to require everyone else set his clock back to accommodate them.

All this is standard George Will Reds in the State Department/ Fluoride in the Water Supply As Updated for the Reagan Era babble. Didn't Will essentially become The Leading Conservative Intellectual thirty years ago with his groundbreaking monograph "PC Campus Goons vs. Free Speech"? I'd'a just moved right along, but for this:

Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right — to, say, engage in homosexual practices — is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

Sound familiar? It should. First, abortion should be an individual’s choice. Then, abortion should be subsidized by government. Next, pro-life pharmacists who object to prescribing abortifacients should lose their licenses. Thus do rights shrink to privileges reserved for those with government-approved opinions.

Because, y'know, there's lying cupidity, there's partisan shit-slinging, and there's politically-motivated haberdashery, and then there's the idea that, alone among licensed professionals pharmacists should have the right to deny proper medical care to citizens they don't agree with--and in this single instance, of course--We're not saying a druggist should refuse cramp medicine to an unclean woman!--which is the stupidest thing anybody but Jonah Goldberg has ever said.


_____________

* Unplanned praeteritio, hence exempt from the requirement of a warning sticker.

** But not Guns & Ammo, not in Indiana. Oh, the publication, probably. Just not real guns and real ammo.

Forget It, Jake.

David Weigel, "Bi-monthly attempt to write the history of the Teabaggers in a way that makes David Weigel seem relevant, OWS edition". October 31

I WON'T go so far as to call them principles, but let's say this blog has as a persistent article of faith the idea that Dick Fucking Armey is a Republican. And the Koch Brothers are Republicans.

And that the Republican party has been the Party of Mellon since the end of the Great War, when the Progressive wing of the party was taken out and shot because of Woodrow Wilson, who was neither Progressive nor a Republican. And this marked the end, at least to date, of the Republican party doing anything that made sense.

And you might say that, at least to some extent, I believe that history is, or more accurately, should be, composed of "facts". I like facts. I'm not head-over-heels in love, but I do prefer a sensible, responsible fact to the bad boy on the motorcycle with the sleeve tattoos.

So if you, in 2011, want to try to convince me that the Teabag Party, in 2009, was the creation of some teevee chatterer and a housewife in Florida, and represented something entirely unheard of in Republican politics to that point, then let's just say I prefer you do so with evidence, and not by recounting the Narrative.

Before [Santelli's] fiery speech, the right had been protesting President Obama but struggling for tractionSome of the groups that would drill the Tea Party into an electoral force, such as David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, were already campaigning against the $787 billion stimulus bill and the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act. But according to Jared Bernstein and other veterans of the White House’s economic team, Santelli’s rant and the subsequent rallies spooked the right people. Suddenly, a president who had entered office with a 70 percent approval rating had to explain why his policies made people so angry.

Before Santelli's speech, "mainstream" or "official" Republican leadership--which differs from the Republican donor list in that it's the faction in position to receive the largess and dole out the favors, and which differs from the Republican base in that it's the faction in position to receive the largess and dole out the favors, had gone to the President's Post-Partisanship Banquet, left the room, and vowed to never vote for a single thing the man proposed to do.

While he was enjoying that 70 percent popularity.

So let's conclude from this that either a) Republican intransigence was a forgone conclusion or b) Barack Obama seriously misplayed his hand, or displayed a weakness seasoned charlatans like John Boehner picked up on like a cat hears a can opener, or c) both.

(And if we could just repeat, here, that from our own lazy perspective, the Teabag Revolution imagery had been used in the Indianapolis mayoral campaign of 2007, in which a similar group of pretend grassroots irritants with an average net income of $250,000 ceremoniously and camera-readily dunked property tax bills in the Indianapolis Water Company Canal to protest the incumbent Democratic mayor, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the rise in those property taxes. *)

“The left had always protested,” explains Brendan Steinhauser, director of state campaigns for FreedomWorks, now one of the most influential Tea Party groups. “Conservatives getting out into the streets—that was a paradigm shift.

Previously they rented.

Now, insTead of fighting the GOP, a Party with a dingy brand and no credibility, the Democrats were fighting a new political force that voters kind of liked. If the Tea Party hadn’t caught on, the Obama Team would be fighting the same conservative movement that it had defeated in 2008. And a few more victories could have meant life for some legislation that died prematurely. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s “big bang” strategy of win after win after win could have happened — if it hadn’t been for all those people waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and panicking about “death panels” when members of Congress went back to their districts.

First, "fighting" is too strong a word here, unless its used in the sense of "Fighting fire with prone supplication and offers of unlimited buttsecks". Second, Republicans were--I think History will bear me out--the minority party in both Houses at the time, and thus incapable of defeating anything the Democratic party decided to do, as in "accomplish". And the Democrats called on their famous circular firing squad as a result. As with the Clinton healthcare debate twenty years earlier, the Obama legislative package wasn't defeated because the minority party's base was upset about something (what else is new?). It was defeated because the corporate masters of the GOP also control a sizable chunk of the Democratic party as well. Maybe a majority. Maybe all. The point is, it wasn't Teabagging killed the beast.

What bills could have passed in a Tea-Party-free America? For one, some kind of climate legislation to limit national greenhouse-gas emissions could have moved. One massive problem with the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June 2009 was that Democrats faced angry crowds at home when they defended it. That happened again and again on other issues, too, as Tea Partyers — talking to each other online, tuning in to Glenn Beck — would learn of some nightmare moving through Congress and turn their muskets on it. The in-person pressure, tactics they’d seen the left use for years, slowed down the Obama agenda.

And, again, assuming this is what did it, and not the usual transfer of cash from vested interest to vested suit, all Democrats had to do was show some balls, or, at the very least, some recognition that a solid narrative beats a thousand little maybes. You can't be too careful in your choice of enemies.

But the Obama agenda would have had tough going anyway. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was determined to block the Democrats, and the Tea Party only helped him do it. So let’s consider what the Tea Party prevented him from doing. McConnell wanted Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s capable, conservative secretary of state, to be the next U.S. senator from that state. But the Tea Party made sure that Grayson lost to the libertarian scion Rand Paul. It brought down Sen. Bob Bennett in Utah, and it almost beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. For two years, it declared war on any Republican who had backed the bank bailout or suggested compromising with Democrats.

Bum disposal methods having been wholly unheard of in American politics to that point.

Fuck. I'm from Indiana, a state so Red it voted against FDR three times. There's always a Teabagger challenge or a religious nutjob in the wings here, ready to take some Republican incumbent's job. Religious cranks staged a mini-revolt in the Indiana House in 2004, the year of My Man Mitch, and it was kept from spreading only because the Big Money (at the top) clamped the lid down. Those guys got to bluster and badger and buffoon their way through successive legislative organization weeks, but they never got a bill out of committee, not before Mitch Daniels was a lame duck governor and a non-Presidential candidate. People now talk about this Murdock character's challenge to Dick Lugar, but Lugar's 109 years old, and he's still going to win his 64th term next year going away. In the meantime the nuts get him to lie about things their way, instead of some other way, for a while before it's back to business as usual.

This is confusing fact with Cherished Narrative. Teabaggers won some seats! Teabaggers changed some legislation! Teabaggers almost comically defeated Lisa Murkowski, before even more comically losing to a write-in candidate. So what? Some Ayn Randian or Rand Paulian intractable idiots get elected. Some bump in the road is navigated, some bridge to nowhere is painted Red not Blue. So what? Six Republicans voted against the Iraq War resolution. Anybody think if any of their votes--including the other Paul dingbat--was crucial they wouldn't have gone the other way? Backwoods religious troglodytes are an important constituency, too. Backwoods religious troglodytism was the New! 100% genuine grassroots political game-changing formerly-not-Republican movement from 1980-1992. If people who talk to dead carpenters who rule the universe can be co-opted, anybody can be co-opted. You think there's going to be a Teabagger Let-the-Gol'Durn-Gubmint-Default revolt with a Republican in the White House? If it's even more contrary to large-scale election prospects than the last one was? Yeah, sure there will. Like Republicans voted against the Iraq war.

The 2010 primaries—the wins and the threats—kept Republicans honest.

"Kept the Republicans honest? Ten thousand comedians are out of work, Dave.

In 1995, the GOP briefly fought a debt-limit vote but then balked. In 2011, there were rallies and new conservative power brokers demanding concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit.

Yeah, and in 1962 Charlie Manson was knocking over 5 and 10 cent stores. We don't consider what happened afterwards to be a measure of his progress.

Without the Tea Party, Paul, Lee and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) wouldn’t have been in the Senate to give the debt standoff form and focus.

And as a result, what? Default is now a better idea?

That is where this alternative history starts to look good to Republican leaders. The debt fight hit both parties, but it knocked the most out of the GOP. As the party has turned its attention to the presidential race, it has watched the man with the most endorsements—Mitt Romney—spar with pretenders, candidates who shouldn’t be competitive, given their fundraising and organizing limitations. Why is Herman Cain relevant? Because the Tea Party learned last year that it can demand the world—and nearly get it.

The definition of "demanding the world" being "put a wholly unqualified crank who, frankly, it must now be asked how he came to manage a Godfather's franchise, let alone run something, then congratulations are in order. I guess. The Republican party has found a way to make itself more incoherent with each passing day. It's not an accomplishment.

And it's not new. The current incarnation surely dates to the nomination of George Herbert Walker Horrible Sperm Factory Bush, which was according to Hoyle, or the laws of coronation. George H.W.Whatever Bush was hated for proclaiming No New Taxes, and then, well, Taxes. He was a politician who lied. Okay, that didn't narrow it down any. He lied rather dramatically, and stupidly, to a national convention audience. Everybody says, "Then he went and raised taxes, the dolt." Nobody ever mentions how Republican politics, in the Age of Reagan canonization, made him posture in a way which wasn't good for the country, and made him pay for daring to do what was right. Then, of course, Clinton Scandals, Inc., during which time Doubling Down became the Republican Strategy version of No Taxation: Real Republicans do it, every time. Real Republicans don't look around--let alone look at the fucking facts--and say, okay, losing proposition, let's move on. No, they start another investigation, and another, and they find a man who'll buttfuck a diseased rodent corpse if that's what it'll take.

We know where the rest of this goes. And look, if there was a Teabagger Revolution, explain why Mitt Romney turned into the World's Greatest Panderer in 2007. Explain Sarah Palin. Herman Cain? Herman Cain is a crackpot. Crackpots rule the party. This is only something new if you consider Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich to be classical scholars.

A world without the Tea Party would have been a little brighter for the Republican establishment. But it wouldn’t have been so bright for conservatives. They learned that there’s nothing like a megaphone-blaring, flag-waving populist movement to move the country your way. That’s why the Democrats now embracing the Occupy movement are kicking themselves for not getting into the streets sooner to protest Wall Street. Why did they ever imagine a world without it?

Because they're Democrats, and because they're as disinclined to reward their base as Republicans are inclined to give theirs smacking good lip service. And the reason in both instances is that's what the money masters require.

Money created the Teabaggers. Money created the Occupiers, too, but in the reverse sense. A lot of us have seen that movie before, and think we know how it ends. But, then, a lot of us feel the Spit Bubble of Reaganism should have disappeared by 1987, and think it's partly a shame that modern humanitarian notions precluded jacking up the S&L looters on poles and leaving them to this day on bridges across America, which, on top of everything else, would probably be better maintained as a consequence. This shit has gone on far too long, far too long without an acknowledgement of its fallacies, its failures, its consequences, and the real populism now turning to the Occupy protests with admiration, not dirty hippie jokes. Maybe someday Decency and Sense might just happen to win one, and all you babblers and flunkies and fellators and facilitators better hope we run out of bridges before your number's called.


__________

*Slight exaggeration. Bart Peterson, the Republican-Democrat, had exercised a local-option tax provided for by the Republican legislature in order to pay existing police and fire pensions, whose plans were in poor shape. The incoming Ur-Teabag Republican replacement left the option tax in place. You were sitting down, right?

It's One Thing To Be A Liar. It's Another To Be An Ill-Informed, Third-Hand Liar.

Ross Douthat, "What Tax Dollars Can't Buy". October 30

FOR starters, having Herman Cain on the Sundays might be justified by his front-runner, or "front-runner", status--might be; it sure isn't justified by anything else--but if you have to talk about that fucking ad, then the point is not "promoting smoking" but "perpetrating this phony Fuck You! USA! shit" which has gone on thirty years past its expiration date now because no egghead's gonna tell me not to eat tainted meat-like substances. That shit worked for Reagan (when it shouldn't have, and wouldn't have if the Press had pressed, instead of raising its hand and hoping to be recognized by the big Hollywood star) at a time when product bans (DDT, cyclamates) were still news, and widely misunderstood by the public, with help from industries disinclined to be bothered with the common good unless there was a profit in it. Tobacco, of course, was still the beneficiary of a well-funded counterintelligence campaign. Today it is time to understand that the great majority of Americans now get the concept, aren't flummoxed by the very concept of risk, prefer safety to faux economy, and want nothing whatsoever to do with cigarettes, including being within fifteen miles of somebody smoking one. And they are right.

I don't give a shit if someone smokes a cigarette on camera. (Hell, half my teevee viewing is Turner Classics.) This might be a minority opinion these days, but to accuse Herman Cain of "promoting smoking" or, more accurately, to accuse him of "not caring" that the ad might possibly promote smoking, is to lead with your chin into Herman Cain's wheelhouse or, more accurately, the general location of Herman Cain's wheelhouse, if he had one. The question is why Herman Cain, in a Presidential primary campaign we'll be nice for once and call "quixotic" (when calling it "a campaign" is probably far too generous already), finds it necessary to trot out this phony issue of Cigarette Freedom, especially in a fucking Republican primary, where it distinguishes him not one whit from the rest of the field, and why he would imagine it bestowed some benefit in a political process where 98% of Americans clearly believe not being forced to walk through clouds of carcinogens wherever they go out in public is a more important freedom than the right to choose cancer.

Of course, this was Bob Schieffer, who clearly took a look around in the mid 70s, realized he had half the talent of Dan Rather and one-third the talent of the talented people at CBS, and opted for the career strategy of making himself seem as innocuous to the Nixonites as possible.


LET us examine, for a moment, the other side of the George Eff Will "conservative" coin, though I'm not certain "moderate" "conservativism" is distinctive enough to be considered something separate. If Will's bright balloon is never more than the business end of a toothpick away from full-on anti-fluoridationalism, Douthat is George Will if Will had grown up listening to babbling hillbilly schizophrenics in place of the Latin Mass.

Compared to graceless Ross, Brooks' simpering "reasonableness" seems almost genuine in its abject marketability, and Mitch Daniels' calculating venality sounds like intellect. Douthat's "moderation" amounts to nothing beyond the fact that by the time he got to Hahvahd it was no longer possible to pretend to be Bill Buckley, Defender of the Faith at the Liberal Ivies, because that ship had sailed, and the American right could no longer read. Scratch him and you get Jerry Falwell with social pretensions.

But true social mobility and broadly shared prosperity are not so easily achieved. Remember that those tax dollars, once collected, would not be disbursed with perfect effectiveness to the most deserving members of the American middle class. Instead, they would be used to buy a little more time for our failing public institutions — postponing a reckoning with unsustainable pension commitments, delaying necessary reforms in our entitlement system and propping up an educational sector whose results don’t match the costs.

This is how one displays one's Republican reasonableness (consider Mitch Daniels and the culture war on slow simmer): agree that the opposition has a good point. And then explain why the answer is the same Republican crackpottery as before (or, in a pinch, explain that it should be left to sort itself out, which is sure to happen once you're back in charge).

We have a roaring cascade of inequality in this country, and it is directly traceable to the argument--and the tax policies--of the Reagan administration thirty years ago. There's no question. And, for those who tend to forget the inconvenient, let us remember that the point of all that was not More Wealth for the Wealthy, but the beneficial effect all that water was supposed to have on everyone's little dinghy.

And let's add to that, as is always necessary, that the current Horrible Budget Armageddon Caused by Libruls amounts to an increase in the deficit essentially equal to the size of all that tax cutting all these years.

So, just for starters, raising taxes on the wealthy is justified. There really need be no other argument than this. The deficit is life-threatening? Return lost revenues. Incontinent tax-cutting, thirty years on, has produced an even worse, and considerably more stratified, economy? Do away with it. Put it to right.

The argument failed. Twice. As algebra. You had thirty years.

Connecting it now to the social safety net, union hatred, and education, for fuck's sake, where the only reason you can even make out the category on the Federal pie chart is the massive increase in Federal spending and meddling under the Bush II administration, when "conservatives" and soon-to-be-disowned "conservatives" decided to make over the educational system in the image of the Great Conservative Permanent Majority to Come, just demonstrates what's been going on all along. Social Security is solvent, all the Withered Anti-New Deal hornswoggle to the contrary, and it's a trust, not part of the general revenues. Not to mention that the Jobs Creators barely pay into the thing. Eliminate Social Security altogether and you do nothing for the Deficit. It shouldn't even be part of the argument. Unfunded Federal pensions have grown substantially, but that isn't a prima facie argument against pensions; it's an argument for responsible government funding its obligations. As in levying equitable taxes.

Instead we've had this two-shoe Republican method of "bankrupting" the government (Freedom!) followed by "the only way to fix this is to do away with all the programs we are too politically cowardly to face head on". And, as such, I'll believe you're serious about the deficit when you start proposing to balance it with military cuts.

And I'll believe you're serious about rescuing the lower classes…no. I won't.

Federal Bow-tie Tension Guidelines: Opposed By The Very People Who Stand To Benefit The Most

George Eff Will, "Mitt Romney, the pretzel candidate". October 28

IF I had to choose a single reason for the thirty-five years I've spent trying to ignore George Fucking Will as much as humanly possible, it's here: like his Latin-cognater idol Buckley, Will is really never more than a couple paces from complete, mouth-foaming, Anti-fluoridationalist rant of the sidewalk wingnut sermonizer. Either man would have been entertaining, if not interesting, had he been able to keep that in check. But had he been able to keep that in check he wouldn't have been such a crackpot in the first place, because the wingnut mentality can take hold only with a constant source of cranky flapdoodle near at hand. Quemoy and Matsu are to the American Right what a creek that flows throughout the summer is to the cattle rancher.

The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

Correct. Cognitive dissonance is the relationship between that second sentence and the first. What the Republican presidential dynamic is is reduced cognitive ability.

Obama, a floundering naif who thinks ATMs aggravate unemployment, is bewildered by a national tragedy of shattered dreams, decaying workforce skills and forgone wealth creation. Romney cannot enunciate a defensible, or even decipherable, ethanol policy.

And this is not cognitive dissonance. It's a non sequitur.

Life poses difficult choices, but not about ethanol. Government subsidizes ethanol production, imposes tariffs to protect manufacturers of it and mandates the use of it — and it injures the nation’s and the world’s economic, environmental, and social (it raises food prices) well-being.

In May, in corn-growing Iowa, Romney said, “I support” — present tense — “the subsidy of ethanol.” And: “I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution for this country.” But in October he told Iowans he is “a business guy,” so as president he would review this bipartisan — the last Republican president was an ethanol enthusiast — folly. Romney said that he once favored (past tense) subsidies to get the ethanol industry “on its feet.” (In the 19th century, Republican “business guys” justified high tariffs for protecting “infant industries”). But Romney added, “I’ve indicated I didn’t think the subsidy had to go on forever.” Ethanol subsidies expire in December, but “I might have looked at more of a decline over time” because of “the importance of ethanol as a domestic fuel.” Besides, “ethanol is part of national security.” However, “I don’t want to say” I will propose new subsidies. Still, ethanol has “become an important source of amplifying our energy capacity.” Anyway, ethanol should “continue to have prospects of growing its share of” transportation fuels. Got it?

Got it.

That is, I've got this: the wholly crazed American Right, which likes to call itself "conservative", doesn't like Mitt Romney. This much is easy to understand. For the life of me, I can't figure who does like him, or why; the best argument, the only argument, is that he isn't one of the other guys. I understand why "conservatives" don't think Mitt is one of them; he isn't. He's a born-rich rich guy and the son of a politician, like the ethanol-enthusing last Republican president, who appears to have the same relationship to power that thirteen-year-old boys have to eroticism: you can tell he's desperately interested in the game, but he seems to have no idea how it's played, and he lunges around so gracelessly you can only imagine he's trying to mimic something he saw somewhere and missed the point of.

On the other hand, he does have long experience pandering, and his routine here is pretty much standard politics (which reminds me, another ethanol fancier is diminutive Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, George Eff Will's dream candidate). Romney may not do it particularly well (who does?), but if we want to suggest that this qualifies as actual cognitive dissonance, and thus disqualifies a candidate from the intellectual rigor required to run an economy, we might consider who else gets caught in that net. And we might start with Ron Paul, the anti-government-subsidy legislator with the history of earmarks. Or Michele Bachmann, the anti-socialist nutball with the bank balance stuffed with government funds. Or Rick Santorum, subsidy hypocrite and the Sacred Right to Lifer who finesses his own wife's medical pregnancy termination into a miscarriage. And that's the three Republican candidates--none of whom can ever have expected to be the nominee, and thus really get called on this shit--willing to oppose ethanol subsidies in front of Iowa audiences. For principle.

Hey, this is fun, if familiar; what else is there? Carter's ethanol subsidy deal was a pander, coming during his reelection campaign, but he'd resisted subsidizing Gasoline, Now With 10% Less Gasoline! in favor of fossil fuel alternatives to that point. Free-Market Ron's sugar embargo, still in effect, which resulted in high fructose corn syrup replacing the sugar we add to everything, didn't damage his reputation with "conservatives" like Will, though with Reagan we're always left to define where "pander" leaves off and "ongoing criminal conspiracy" begins. (Not that he invented the Sugar Production scam, our nation's longest running.)

Can you spell politics without pander? Probably not. We could take the money out of it; we could reform the electoral process, the major party domination, make it more inclusive, use the public airwaves to create a better-informed electorate. Those ideas don't seem to garner a lot of Republican support, or generate too many George Eff Will columns. Is there some Freedom! argument, or something in the Pledge of Allegiance, which guarantees Iowans the right to screw up the first eighteen months of every Presidential campaign roll-out? Sheesh if there's one thing Republicans have proven to be good at over the last four decades, it's suggesting rules, regulations, and Constitutional amendments designed to save themselves from what they want to do. You can't propose a bylaw that triggers a Blue Ribbon Panel selected by the Competition Committee once the level of pander reaches some designated point?

Every day, 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, from which they will receive, on average, $1 million of benefits ($550,000 from the former, $450,000 from the latter). Who expects difficult reforms from Romney, whose twists on ethanol make a policy pretzel?

I guess this is supposed to qualify as an argument; it's a little bit of a shock to see Will succumb to the modern practice of letting the Reader fill in your point for you in order to save time. Of course, I don't read him very often, and he has been working the Unreliable Narrator thing since the 70s.

But, look, maybe Ross Douthat or one of those other young hot-shot techno-linkers can explain to me where those figures come from. In the meantime, all I know is there's a 3.6% COLA raise in Social Security due next year which will raise the individual take to 13,452 lucky-ducky bucks per annum. So if my calculator skills haven't deteriorated, this means that Baby Boomers, on average, are expected to live to be 105.886 years old.

Can anybody suggest any good cat food stocks?

A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.

And here I imagined its success was the problem, and that Romney was just trying to find some way to criticize the President for a favorable outcome in a way which might pass muster with that sliver of the Republican electorate known as "somewhat sane".

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Heaven forfend. Do, please do, nominate a real "conservative" and continue the work thus far so nobly advanced, give or take a few utter disasters. How else are we to see another complete collapse of the Savings and Loan industry, or the banking system descend into piracy, without "conservative" principles to guide them? And how else will be get the principled response of Letting Everything Turn to Shit as a result? You know, the way in would in a perfect world.

"Dear Penthouse: I Never Thought I'd Be Writing You At Age 70. Then One Day I Bought A New York Times…"

David Brooks, "This Oughta Be Good For Two Holiday Columns At Least". October 27

I RARELY tackle Brooks in one of those Sociology reveries of his, when he's apparently imagining himself at some private, exclusive, expensive liberal arts college, be-Tweeded and Meerschaum'd, privately discussing her semester grade with some pillowy coed, just enough of sixteen, or fifteen, still echoing in her cheeks, or tongue-moistened lips, just enough college girl experience in her eyes, stubby little fingers a bit too fidgety, paint-chipped some ridiculous color or two. Extra credit! The sinecure's wet dream of a sinecure. Because, frankly, I'm subject to fits, and this computer desk has sharp corners.

If the Times wants to pay a rank amateur to regularly fill its Op-Ed pages with unlettered and highly selective culls of social science articles written for the general reader, well, it's not like it has much of a reputation left to lose.

It's bad enough that Brooks evinces no awareness whatever of the basic issues in the social sciences; what's worse--or, at least, what's a greater risk to my maxillofacial structures--is how Brooks seems to imagine he can use this stuff to reinforce his Preppy Monarchist routine without anyone being the wiser. It's always relentlessly aspirational, always wowed by some Untapped or Recently Discovered Human Potential which, in the future, will serve the ever-perfection-bound perfection of Capitalism well, or would, if it weren't largely a shell game. Brooks didn't get where he is on the back of a turnip truck. That doesn't mean he doesn't actually believe this shit. It just means he has to know that not everyone does, and might consider writing accordingly.

Today's column is a bleg for seventy-something readers to write their life stories, and a couple of columns, for him ("around Thanksgiving". Good timing.). This will benefit young readers, who rarely get the advice about adulthood they so desperately crave from withered senescents.

And so does Youth turn to David Brooks for help! like he's an elevated sleeping platform 12 hours up the overnight trail. Actually, Dave recently "stumbled across" brief biographies written by Yalies, Class of 1942, for their 50th reunion. While looking for the definition of "bleg", I'm guessing.

So, first off, young reader, I'm with Dave on this one. I wish someone had advised me to be wealthy enough to attend Yale during a Great Depression.

Of course, Young Dreamer, we are not here to discuss what sort of effect Every Fucking Opportunity in the Book might have on your Life Story, as this is why you have been provided bootstraps, or a Times to sleep under. There is, after all, a 1 in 2 chance you are female and a 1 in 5 chance you're black, or otherwise disadvantaged, and so wouldn't be writing about your time at Yale in the 40s in the first place. Mutatis mutants, future entrepreneur! Enjoy your refrigerated beverage! Not so common among your kind back in those days, yet look where you are now. Consider the selection in the beverage aisle! Consider the opportunities in the burgeoning field of refrigerator repair. Or the admittedly spartan, but relatively inexpensive housing afforded by their ubiquity. David Brooks did not happen to stumble on a treasure trove of bios from the Alumni of the Watts Riots or Khe Sanh or the Auto Industry. Take what aid life gives you, and be thankful he didn't stumble over your bedroll on his way to the Deli.

For example, you might consider a double major--"Appliance Repair" and "Dumpster Diving", say--if you wanna be truly happy:

The most common lament in this collection is from people who worked at the same company all their lives and now realize how boring they must seem. These people passively let their lives happen to them. One man described his long, uneventful career at an insurance company and concluded, “Wish my self-profile was more exciting, but it’s a little late now.”

This, of course, is welcome news had you planned on a career in public education, manufacturing, or anything else, actually, not involving nepotism.

Looking back, many were amazed by the role that chance played in their lives. Others point to the pivotal moment that changed their lives. One man was nationally humiliated when he lost to Charles Van Doren in a television quiz show (Van Doren was cheating).

From which you may learn, Future Leader, that it's a lot better to be the major corporation running the crooked game than it is to be the pawn in that game who broke no law, went on to a distinguished academic career, and will forevermore be referred to as Cheater. At least so long as it's up to the David Brookses of the world to assign blame.

The men all mention serving in the war, but none go into detail about their war experiences.

Take note, Young American! Although if you actually do happen to be headed to Yale you can just skip that part.

That's All I Can Stand, Vol. CCXLVI

Peter Lattman, "A Stunning Fall From Grace for a Star Executive". October 26

Diana B. Henriques, "Ruth Madoff Says Couple Tried Suicide in 2008". October 26

Susan Saulny, "As Cain Promotes His Management Skills, Ex-Aides Tell of Campaign in Chaos". October 26

FUCKING Hell. If there's anything I want to say about Ruth Madoff, unfairly unincarcerated Dowager Queen of East Ponzistan, trying to kill herself it's this: Next time, consult a professional. On the dosage.

I heard at the time how Poor Ruth Madoff was trapped inside her luxury condo. That was one time too many. I'm a humanitarian. I believe in redemption, but I believe in sincere atonement, too. Madam, kindly crawl back to wherever it is society is kind enough to let you keep living, and pull it in over you. For about the next three lifetimes. Then we can hear what you have to say.

Had you been unfairly, demonstrably unfairly, imprisoned, that would make you American #268,438 whose story deserves to be told. Barring that you're Human Being #6 billion 750-some million anyone should give a shit about. Have the decency to shut th' fuck up.

There oughta be a hole now where CBS News once stood. I mean a literal one, not just the figurative one that's been in place for years.

What can you say about someone who trumpets this stuff, except that he obviously believes there's no shit Americans won't eat? That his only reality is his own reality, one where Bernie Madoff is a "story", one where Bernie Madoff formerly was "a winner".

Regardless of the case’s outcome, the charges punctuate a stunning fall from grace for Mr. Gupta, whose personal story reads like a caricature of a Horatio Alger tale.

Nobody reads Horatio Alger. Plenty of people read True Crime.

So let's start here: Horatio Alger heroes rose from being street urchins or bootblacks to productive, respected members of the community. They did not climb the ladder to the corporate board room penthouse so they could piss on the next generation of newsies.

Orphaned at 18! Something tells me this doesn't qualify as tough luck for Josie from Accounting. In fact something tells me this doesn't qualify as a tough luck story except for people who automatically add "and the Trust Fund doesn't kick in until twenty-one" when they hear it.

At any rate, fuck you. The difference between Rajat Gupta and a sleazy pornographer is that the latter earns an honest living. Simple self-respect and basic human decency are all that was required to ashcan that Brown Skin to Riches story in the first place. There's no reason today to suggest that anything about Gupta's career ever amounted to anything beyond a swindle. He clawed his way to the top so he could steal a bigger pile. If that's not 100% accurate the fractional difference is too small to matter any more. It shouldn't make anyone nostalgic for a time when he hadn't been found out.

And, for fuck's sake, if we can't stop talking about Herman Cain altogether--yet--can't we at least stop talking about Herman Cain as though he's ever uttered an honest or sensible word on the campaign trail? No, there is no mystery that "despite Herman Cain's claims to managerial expertise" he turns out to be a crappy manager. Despite Herman Cain's claims, everything he's ever said is a load of crap. Despite the White Star Line's claims, the Titanic is at the bottom of the Atlantic. This does not mean the actual truth is swimming around at 1900 meters.

And, while we're at it, "ex-Herman Cain volunteer" ranks right up there in credibility with "former Goldman Sachs director".